The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,69

1924. It took a moment for it to sink in. She was looking at the grave of a woman and her dead baby.

Beloved wife and daughter. The Lord took you together. May you both Rest in Peace.

Jamie pulled her away just as the sun retreated behind a cloud, casting a shadow over him and Kirsty and the grave; merging their shadows together while above them the crow circled before returning to the church roof. They could hear it caw as they pushed open the door of the B&B and retreated inside. In a single dark moment, their bubble of happiness had been burst.

Eighteen

‘Somebody’s been in here.’

As soon as Kirsty walked into the living room, just behind Jamie, she knew something was wrong. There were no immediate tangible signs, but she could feel it. The atmosphere in the room felt wrong. There had been a shift in the air, a strange shape imprinted on the molecules that hung around them and made up the fabric of the room. She could smell it, this unwelcome odour. She felt like an animal, its hackles rising as it caught the scent of a stranger, an invader, an enemy encroaching on its territory. She put down the fistful of post and walked very slowly into the room, looking around, scanning every surface for evidence that their possessions had been touched, moved or tampered with. She sniffed the air and turned round in a slow circle. She couldn’t see anything obvious; there was nothing she could point to and say, Look, that’s been moved – that wasn’t there before, or Where’s such-and-such – it should be there. But if there was such a thing as a sixth sense it was working now, telling her that someone had been in here. She felt cold. ‘What are you doing?’ Jamie asked nervously.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Somebody’s been in here.’

‘What?’ He looked around, apparently checking for the same signs she had looked for. ‘It all looks fine. Nothing’s missing, is it?’ His voice wavered; he didn’t sound very sure of himself.

Kirsty shuddered. The idea of someone coming into the flat when they weren’t there terrified her. Worse than being recorded. More awful than spiders. The only worse thing she could imagine was rape. This was the second worst violation.

Jamie continued to check around the room. He went into the bedrooms and bathroom, Kirsty clinging to his arm now, afraid that someone might leap out from behind a piece of furniture or appear in a doorway. They would be large and would almost certainly be holding a knife. They would tie Jamie up and make him watch as they raped and murdered her, also killing the unborn child in her womb. Then they would kill him. She gripped Jamie’s arm tightly.

There was nobody there. There was no sign, in any of the rooms, that someone had been in there. The windows were shut and locked. The front door had been locked, as had the balcony door, which Jamie checked twice.

‘I can feel it too,’ he said. ‘A lingering presence.’

Kirsty shivered. ‘Jamie, you’re scaring me.’

She was just beginning to recover from her moment of horror in the graveyard, and now this. The fact that that they could feel it but not see it made it even more scary. It was as if there was a ghost in the flat.

She had to sit down.

For the next ten minutes, Jamie combed the flat, opening cupboards, checking drawers, looking inside boxes, under the sofa. He studied the pictures on the wall, wondering aloud if the intruder might have moved one, accidentally brushing against it and tilting it. He took out photographs they had taken in the summer and held them up, comparing the room in the photographs to the room as it was now. Of course, they had moved things since the summer, added ornaments, shifted furniture, accumulated more junk. The photographs were no help.

‘Maybe we’re imagining it,’ he said, finally sitting down beside Kirsty.

‘But we can both feel.’

‘That might be because we’re putting ideas in each other’s heads.’

She knew what he would do now – switch into reassuring mode.

‘Look, we’ve both been pretty spooked since yesterday afternoon, and I know I was nervous about coming back. I’ve always been paranoid about burglary, plus I had this thought at the back of my mind that Lucy and Chris might do something while we were away. I suppose I brought my worries in with me and my imagination ran away with itself. But