No Place Like Home Jane Renshaw (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📖

harm has come to him, isn’t it more likely to have been the youths who’ve been harassing us?’

Of course. Of course that was what he and Kirsty would be thinking. Bram should have suggested that right off the bat.

‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘And you know it.’ He looked from Kirsty to Bram. ‘There weren’t any youths. There never have been. It was us.’

Us?

‘What?’ Bram could only gasp as Sylvia collapsed to the verandah floor, her legs folding under her.

Andrew stooped over his wife, putting a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged him off. Behind him, Bram could see two policemen, running up the track towards them.

‘I don’t understand,’ was all he could find to say.

And by that time the two PCs were on the verandah.

‘Okay, folks,’ said the older one firmly. ‘What’s going on here, then?’

‘He killed him,’ Sylvia mouthed, all the fight seeming to have gone out of her.

‘You need to arrest him,’ Andrew said. ‘This man has killed our son.’

‘But you can’t think…’ Kirsty blustered. ‘You can’t think Bram has anything to do with whatever’s happened to Finn?’

‘Let’s just calm this down,’ said the cop. ‘Mr and Mrs Taylor, can you come with us back to your property and we’ll–’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Sylvia. ‘Andrew? Tell them what you did. Tell them!’

Andrew closed his eyes for a second, then nodded. ‘You might want to write this down.’

The cops looked at each other, and then the older one took out a notebook.

‘We – I hatched a plan to…’ Andrew flicked a look at Bram. ‘To drive these people out of Woodside and buy the place back at a bargain price. Hence all the sinister happenings – it was Finn who shot the guide dog, shot at us with the BB gun, dumped the heart in the pan, all that. And I’m responsible for the water supply “failing”, and the bridge collapsing. The idea was that, given all this, they’d feel it would be an uphill struggle to sell the place on the open market, so when I approached them with a low – very low – offer, they’d bite my hand off.’

‘The bridge…’ Kirsty had gone pale.

‘Okay, let’s get this straight,’ said the older cop. ‘You’re saying you were responsible for everything that went on here? The shooting at animals, the home invasion, the tampering with the bridge…?’

Andrew nodded. ‘We’re in pretty dire financial straits. Overextended ourselves to buy Benlervie, and the restaurant is going down the tubes. We’re having trouble making the mortgage and business loan repayments.’

‘So he had this ridiculous idea!’ Sylvia wailed.

‘To drive the Hendriksens out?’ The cop made a note.

‘Yes,’ said Andrew. ‘And buy back Woodside at well below market value. Resell quickly at a healthy profit.’

Bram shook his head. ‘But who would want to buy the place, given all the trouble there’s been here?’

‘We were intending to make out to potential buyers that you were a couple of nutters seeing threats that weren’t there. We’d point them in the direction of your blog, which, given the trolls’ input, does seem pretty paranoid.’

‘You’re the trolls,’ said Bram.

‘We started it off, yes, but it soon snowballed – randoms piling in with the mob mentality you get online.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Kirsty.

The younger cop was looking shell-shocked, but the older guy just shook his head in a seen it all before way as he continued to make notes.

‘So Finn…’ Bram was shaking. Could the cops see that he was shaking?

‘Finn was the foot soldier, so to speak,’ said Andrew dully. ‘But it was down to me. I was directing the campaign. I palmed a front door key when I called over, weeks ago, while the place was still a building site… Got a copy made and returned it a couple of hours later, so no one was any the wiser.’

‘So you planned this… Right from the start?’ Kirsty shook her head. ‘From before you even sold us the plot?’

Bram wanted to throw back his head and howl. While he’d been able to tell himself that Finn was just a little yob who had, to an extent, brought what happened on himself, it had been possible to attempt to rationalise what he’d done. But now it turned out that Finn was only doing what Andrew had told him to?

‘Oh, yes,’ said Andrew with a sort of grim satisfaction. ‘Had it planned down to the last detail. And then when I found out that Kirsty’s boyfriend had been Owen Napier, I used that to subtly suggest that maybe whoever had killed him was after Bram. Got Finn to write “Your next” in blood on the worktop. Hoping that would really freak you out.’

‘Christ,’ was all Bram could say.

‘But you know it was us. Don’t make out like this is all a big shock. You caught Finn, didn’t you, prowling round the house? He’d got a couple of roadkill badgers and was intending to pose them in the wood, hang them from the trees, and then run round the house shouting, taking potshots at your security lights. Wearing the monster mask, so you wouldn’t be able to identify him. But you caught him? What happened? There was an altercation?’

‘No,’ said Bram.

‘We had no idea,’ added Kirsty.

‘I – Obviously we didn’t want to have to admit any of this, but weighed against Finn’s life… Please.’ Andrew’s voice suddenly broke. ‘Please just tell us what happened. Where is he? Is he dead or… Are you keeping him somewhere?’ The hope in his eyes was a dagger in Bram’s heart. ‘Locked up somewhere – to teach him a lesson, maybe?’

‘No,’ Bram repeated weakly.

‘This is ludicrous!’ Kirsty protested. ‘Where the hell would we be keeping him?’ And as she met Bram’s gaze, it struck them both at the same time: the car. What if they looked in the car?

‘Feel free to search the house,’ Bram said hurriedly. ‘If you think we’re keeping him prisoner here, for some bizarre reason, please – search the place.’ And as the younger cop started to speak: ‘No,