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  For One Night Only

  A Killer Thriller

  First published in 2019 in Great Britain.

  Copyright©foronenightonlywendyreakes2019

  The moral right of Wendy Reakes to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

  the copyright, designs and patents acts of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in

  any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the author and copyright owner.

  ISBN: 9781689621403

  Imprint: Independently p

  1981

  From where he was hiding in the bushes at the side of the road, Drake Fisher could see the entrance to Seaview: a small gated community upon a narrow headland on Lynton Bay. He didn’t live there, nor was he born there, but somewhere around there, on the banks of the river Lyn, he was conceived.

  He had to admit he thought about his conception a lot, ever since he was bestowed his name, Drake, after a dumb duck. In post-war Britain, he was just five-years-old when his parents took it upon themselves to share that particular moment of intimacy, and now, in his adult years, whenever he chanced upon a river bank somewhere, a picture always popped into his head of his mother and father ‘doing it’. So vivid was the image in his mind, that whenever it popped in there, he was forced to bang the side of his head three times on the left and twice on the right. He didn’t know why it was three on one and two on the other. It was just how it was, no explanation necessary.

  Lying belly down on a grass verge, hidden from sight, with headphones covering his ears, he listened to Phil Collins playing on the radio singing In the Air Tonight. And as he waited for a certain car to come past, he thought about his parents and the time they’d recounted the story of his conception, along with the momentous occasion they’d made him ‘out of tadpoles and eggs’.

  Drake had been sitting at the kitchen table. He wasn’t allowed to get down until he’d finished his broccoli, so said his parents who had their backs to him as they performed the same washing-up ritual they performed every night. He recalled his mother wearing a flowery pinafore over a new dress, a lime green short-sleeved crimplene shift, the zip down the back slightly puckered. That's how she'd got it on sale, she told father, ‘because the zip wasn't quite right.'

  Holding a tea towel and a wet dish in one hand, his father, Mannie, moved his free hand from around her waist, up to the neckline where he took hold of the little pulley piece and tugged the zipper down. As his mother screeched and whipped Mannie with a wet sponge, five-year-old Drake noticed red welts on her bare skin below the horizontal strap of her off-white bra.

  “Ooh, Mannie Fisher,” mother said. “Our little Drake is watching you get all flirty.” She laughed, and his father chuckled with a deep sounding ho-ho-ho, like he was Santa Claus, except it was more of a dirty haw-haw-haw, not sounding like Santa Claus at all.

  Drake’s intense dislike for green vegetables did nothing to temper his bad mood. He was a tired five-year-old so he should have been treated with a lot more caution than they’d given him credit for. He should have been the subject of their attention, not hanky-panky as his mother often called it. He watched them with a scowl on his face as father’s hand slid underneath the tie of mother’s apron and down to her backside, squeezing it with one large hairy hand, making the flesh bulge through the gaps of his fingers. That was when Drake banged his dinner knife down on the table with one loud crash.

  Mother swung around giggling, just as Mannie’s hand came up and squeezed her left breast, as meaty as the cheek on her arse. “Haven’t you finished that dinner yet, my little Drake,” she’d said, brushing off Mannie’s indelicate advances with a look that said, ‘don’t go doing that in front of the baby’.

  “I don’t wan’ it,” Drake yelled as he picked up his fork and threw it so hard across the table that it fell on the floor at his mother’s feet.

  “Bad boy, Drake. Bad boy.” She kneeled down and picked it up, just before Mannie stepped forward and placed his hands on her, gyrating his hips against her bent body. Mother squealed and got up as Mannie began kissing her neck with that haw-haw-haw moan of his.

  “Drake,” his father yelled after he’d removed his lips from mother’s red neck. “You stay there and don’t get down until you finish that broccoli. You hear me, boy?”

  “Mannie…” mother chided with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Come on,” he said, leading her by the hand, taking her to the lean-to, just off the kitchen at the side of the house. That old lean-to held all the stuff they couldn’t cram into the small terraced dwelling; clothes rack, floor sweeper, ironing board, and lots of old dirty boots.

  Within seconds, six-year-old Drake heard that familiar bang-bang-banging he heard most days and nights, bang-bang-bang and moan-moan-moan. Day and night, every day, every night. As the noise became faster, Drake chewed his broccoli, mixing it with saliva until it was pulp in his mouth. The taste was revolting, but he had no intention of swallowing. He hated vegetables, especially the green ones.

  The noise stopped and they came back in. Father’s face looked flushed, as mother took the chair opposite Drake. And as father carried on drying those dishes, mother told Drake the story of how he got his name. ‘Father had gotten all amorous,’ she said, ‘down by the river near Clovelly Waterfall.’ That’s where you were made, little Drakey,” she said, “Just when father’s little tadpole swam up to mother’s eggs, we heard a duck quacking.” She laughed, remembering the event. “That’s when we decided to call you Drake.”

  “Quack, quack, quack,” his parents chanted together, intent on making him laugh. “Quack-quack-quack.”

  When they both leaned down in front of him, quacking their stupid quacks, Drake pulled in his stomach and opened his mouth to let that broccoli and saliva pulp spray all over their stupid faces.

  As they coughed and spluttered, Drake clutched a dinner knife under the table. If they kept up their bang, bang, banging and their quack, quack quacking, he’d shove that knife into mother’s neck until she dropped down dead. And then afterwards he'd do it to father. That'll show ‘em. Instead, as his rage was unleashed, he slapped himself on the face, three times on the left and twice on the right.

  Now he could hear a vehicle coming along the road. The lights got brighter as the car got closer, and as the fabulous Mr C sang In the Air Tonight, Drake's mind was soothed and stimulated all at the same time. When the Cortina turned into Seaview, he got up from where he was hiding and rushed through the gates before they closed, singing the lyrics softly. "There's something in the air tonight…"

  Chapter One

  1981

  When Rhianna Loxley left home and moved in with her uncle at Seaview, little did she know she’d be fighting for her life that Saturday night in 1981. She had barely unpacked when the whole matter occurred and if anyone in the future happened to ask her about it, she could honestly say that she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that perhaps it was all meant to be. That was Rhianna all over. People called her Miss Positive.

  The night before, Friday, she had driven through the Valley of Rocks, trying to find her way to Seaview with a roadmap of Devon unfolded and spread out on the seat next to her, and since she was a positive girl by nature, she was loath to complain about how she couldn’t navigate in the dark. She often said that one day the map people, whoever they were, might invent something a little more user friendly, something that lit up at night. She could only hope.

  Since time was getting on and she’d promi
sed her uncle she’d be there by seven o’clock at the latest, she was reluctant to pull over again. She had already made two stops, flicking on the interior light and running her finger over the route she was following. Her dad had marked the road with a red marker pen, which was thicker than the actual line on the map, but still…

  She’d only passed her driving test six months before, so she couldn’t call herself confident behind the wheel. And she was after all female, and like her mother and many other women she knew, she always got confused with directions, even on maps.

  As she kept going straight on the A39, she was barely listening to the radio as Phil Collins sang his new song, In the air tonight. Finding her way was more important, but she couldn’t help singing a few of the lyrics when the drums came on.

  It was just at that moment, as the drums reached a crescendo, she came up behind a car driving slowly ahead. She quickly remembered she had full beam on. “Sorry,” she muttered, while quickly dimming them. She hoped she hadn’t blinded the driver and that he realised it was just a momentary lapse of concentration.

  She should go past him so that she could offer her apologies. She’d never overtaken a car before, not even when she’d taken her first drive on the M5, but since there was no one else on the road apart from the white Triumph Herald in front, she thought she’d give it a go. If nothing else, it would increase her driving experience, which would serve to help her in the future. She recalled the lesson from her father. ‘Dip your clutch, put the gear down into third, indicate and accelerate. When you’re past, indicate left and go back into fourth. Continue driving.’

  As she went by, she offered an apologetic wave for the high beam incident and was met with a rather rude V sign from the driver. She was shocked. She hadn’t expected such a rude gesture from a stranger, a man too. She noticed an elderly lady sitting alone in the back behind the driver. She turned her head to stare while Rhianna drove on past with a shocked look on her face. The woman had a faraway look about her, as if she was being kidnapped and afraid for her life.

  Now that she was once again in front, and that dreadful man was far behind her, she turned her lights up again and cast a swift look at the map at her side. The turning into the estate should be coming up soon. She hoped so. If she got lost, she doubted there’d be a telephone box out there in the sticks.

  Her car was a white Cortina. Her parents had bought it for her when she was offered a permanent job as a fully-fledged news reporter for the Devonshire Post. Since she had to move from London to take up the position, her mother had arranged for her to stay with uncle Rolf who lived on a rather nice place near the sea. Seaview. Just for a week or two until she found somewhere to rent in Taunton

  “There it is,” she announced to herself. Ahead, the double gates of Seaview loomed, floodlit, as if they were a gateway to heaven.

  She slowed down and indicated right, stopping just inside the gates. She reached over to the glove compartment and grabbed a letter from her uncle stating the code for the security panel. Don’t worry, he’d written, the gates will open automatically, so you don’t have to get out of the car.

  She rolled down the window, stretched her arm out and tapped in 95873.

  Waiting for the gates to slowly open, she looked into her rear view mirror and saw the white Triumph Herald indicating on the road. He too was entering Seaview, and now she was worried he was following her to give her a piece of his mind for nearly blinding him on the road.

  Nervously, Rhianna drove inside, keeping the rude man in the white car in view and wondering if she should lock her car doors.

  The road in front was a large figure eight. Her uncle had explained in the letter that she should look for No.6 in the top right-hand corner of the eight, next to the rather large house at the top of the headland.

  As she drove slowly along the tarmacked road, she glanced in the mirror and saw the white Triumph pulling into a drive of one of the houses near the gate. Just as she expelled a sigh of relief that he wasn’t following her, she then saw yet another car come in behind him, parking in the first house on the left.

  Seaview was a busy place, she thought.

  Just before she looked away, while the gates were automatically closing, quite inexplicably, she saw a small dark figure dart inside to hide in the shadows.

  It only took her a few seconds to decided that her eyes were surely playing tricks on her. She was exhausted. She should simply drive on and find uncle’s house.

  He helped her with her luggage, just a rucksack, a vanity case and a bag with essential supplies. “Well, Rhianna,” he said, “Your photographs don’t do you justice. What a pretty young lady you are.”

  He was shorter than her, but Rhianna had inherited her height from her father’s side. At 5’10, she seemed to tower over everyone she met. It was an embarrassment at school, especially when platform shoes came in fashion in the early seventies. It had been an unfortunate item of footwear, since hers had lifted her up another three inches.

  Uncle Rolf had thinning grey hair and a moustache which wasn’t as grey as his head. He wore a cardigan over a shirt and tie, just like her father always did. Rhianna thought the look was old fashioned, very post-war, and she’d mentioned it to her dad many times. He still hadn't worn that nice cashmere tank she'd bought him for Christmas. She’d bought the same for uncle Rolf, as a gift.

  “Come on through and have a cuppa tea,” uncle Rolf said. She followed him into the lounge, a strange looking room. The house was modern, just two years old, but the furniture had obviously been brought from a much older house. It looked like it had been bought in the fifties, complete with antimacassars over the backs of the chairs.

  She sat down while he went to the kitchen to fetch a tray, laden with teacups and saucers, milk jug, sugar bowl etc, all matching. He placed it on a central coffee table with four splayed legs. In the middle was an ashtray with a pipe resting on its side and a green marble table lighter.

  “I’ll pour,” she said.

  “I’ve got a casserole in the oven. We’ll have that when you’ve unpacked.”

  “Lovely.” She picked up the stainless steel teapot. “This is a lovely place,” she said as she poured the tea.

  “Thank you.” He poured his own quantity of milk, followed by one sugar. “Did your mum tell you the story.”

  “A vague account.”

  He stirred the tea with a silver spoon. “Me and your aunty Barbra bought it when it was built two years ago, but she never got to live here. She died the day we moved in. All the stress of moving, the doctor said.” He stared longingly at a black and white photo displayed on the mantelpiece. It was a picture of him and aunt Barbra on their wedding day.

  “That’s very sad.”

  He perked up. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you around. The beach will be a bit windy and the sea too rough, but we might be able to manage the steps if it’s not raining.”

  “I can’t believe we’re so close to the sea.”

  “Well, you’ve lived in London all your life, so I can imagine Seaview being a bit strange.”

  They both sipped their tea. “Hmm, lovely,” she said.

  “You’re starting your new job on Monday then.”

  “Yes, I’m terribly excited.”

  “So why down here? You could have got a nice job in London, couldn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I wanted to get out of the city. It’s all such a cliché, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.” He looked like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I just think there may be some meaty stories to cover in the country. Things that people in the big cities don’t get to see.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know if you’ll find much going on here. Especially in Seaview.”

  “Well, I may have to go beyond the gates.”

  They both laughed, enjoying each other’s company.

  “Don’t forget to ring your mum. The phone’s out in the hall.”

  “I will in a
minute.” She put down her cup and jumped up. “I’ve brought you a gift,” she said going out into the hall.

  She heard him say “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  She went back in and handed him the parcel. “I hope it fits.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone wasting your money on me.”

  “I wanted to. Just to thank you in some small way for having me.”

  He pulled out the red cashmere tank and looked at it as if he didn’t know what it was.

  “It’s a vest,” she said. “You wear it over your shirt.”

  “Oh, yes, my father used to wear one, but his was knitted by my mother.”

  “My grandparents,” she said smiling.

  “You never knew them, did you? They were good people. Your grandfather fought in the war.”

  “And you too, mum said.”

  “Well, I was in the catering core. Not exactly a valiant position.”

  “The most important, surely,” said Rhianna. “If the ones at the front hadn’t had their food, they’d have starved and wouldn’t have been able to fight.”

  “I’ve never looked at it like that before.”

  “There. You are a hero after all.”

  He smiled and ran his fingers over the cashmere wool. “Well, I’m very happy with this jumper. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  The doorbell chimed.

  “I wonder who that is.” Uncle Rolf placed the sweater on the arm of the chair and went out to the hall. A man followed him back in.

  “This is my neighbour, Wilbur, from number 2.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, young lady,” he said shaking her hand.

  The two men stood in the centre of the room while Rhianna finished her tea. She bit into a Custard Cream.

  “What can I do for you?” Uncle Rolf asked.

  “I was wondering if you fancied coming down the pub for a game of darts, but I didn’t know you had company.”