In the Dark Alone Read online

  In the Dark Alone

  D M Macdonald

  Published by D M Macdonald, 2022.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  IN THE DARK ALONE

  First edition. April 2, 2022.

  Copyright © 2022 D M Macdonald.

  Written by D M Macdonald.

  Also by D M Macdonald

  No Place to Run

  In the Dark Alone (Coming Soon)

  IN THE DARK ALONE

  Brother don’t leave each other

  D M MACDONALD

  Contents

  In The Dark Alone

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by D M MACDONALD

  In The Dark Alone

  Brothers don’t leave each other alone in the dark.

  * * *

  D M MACDONALD

  Chapter 1

  The last time I saw Jimmy Knowles was the day he disappeared with my money and my wife. The sight of him year later on the TV news so jolted me that I tipped my evening Chardonnay down my trouser leg. I was also startled to find that I felt sorry for him when a large policeman hauled him out of a police car. Briefly. That was Jimmy’s stock in trade. I hoped the police were immune.

  The newsreader announced that Steven Johnson, Jimmy had as many aliases as he’d had haircuts, had been arrested for the murder of his fiancée. My heart somersaulted. Not Marianna, surely not Marianna.

  A picture of the dead woman flashed on the screen. It wasn’t Marianna.

  Pretty little Marianna. My nearly ex-wife. My surge of emotion at the thought of her death caught me by surprise. The pain of losing her had long since faded to mild regret. I felt guilty about that. Well, I did when I thought of her, which wasn’t often.

  I tried, with less success, not to think of Jimmy either. I never really blamed her for running off with him. When he wanted to, Jimmy had the sort of charm that filled a room. If he asked you to sell your soul to the devil on Thursday and buy it back for three times the price on Friday, you would. And you’d probably beg him to take a cut in the middle.

  Like most successful con men he had the ability to seem as sincere and honest as a curate. When Jimmy focused on you, you could believe you owned the world. Then he’d smile, and at that moment, if he asked you to, you’d have killed for Jimmy Knowles. It was only later that you found he’d stripped you of everything, including your self-respect.

  Marianna never had a chance.

  Back then I’d wanted to kill Jimmy. I still wanted to kill Jimmy. Every time I visited my brother David I wanted to kill Jimmy.

  I stared at the television set, not seeing it, while a halo of tension tightened around my head. A year. Twelve months of hell. A bell rang. I was heading for the door before I realised it was the microwave. My frozen gourmet delight was no longer frozen. I poured three fingers of brandy to go with it. Better than wine. More kick.

  Marianna and I met Jimmy when her business partner, Anthea Wilding, brought him to our first wedding anniversary party. We were still in the first flush of marital bliss at the time. Our lives were organised. Marianna’s art gallery and the business my brother and I had set up were looking good, and we had plenty of plans as soon as the profits began to roll in.

  Then we met Jimmy.

  At first glance he was an ordinary looking man. Average height, average weight, average everything. All I could remember was sandy hair, nondescript grey-blue eyes, not good looking, or bad looking. Just ordinary. That first night I didn’t notice him at all until the extremely noticeable Anthea, with her fluttering bright fabrics and jangling jewellery, dragged him over to meet me. To this day my first impression of Jimmy is an apologetic grin obscured by drapery.

  He didn’t need to duck away from the cameras as he had tonight, no one would ever remember what he looked like. Until the charm switched on. Then you were so dazzled you didn’t bother with anatomical details. That chameleon-like ability to disappear into the background was why he got away with as much as he did. Which was plenty.

  Seeing him again that night, trussed up and at the mercy of the law, brought the whole sorry story screaming up from the bottom of my mind. I sat, not seeing anything, not tasting the food I chewed, not even thinking, just feeling. Jimmy had done more than break up my marriage and steal my money. I could have dealt with that. The really hard part was that he had destroyed the one person that I loved completely.

  My brother David.

  `Fuck you, Jimmy fucking Knowles.’ I said it aloud, tears filling my eyes. My phone rang startling me into tipping the dregs of the brandy down my shirt. I snatched it up.

  `What?’

  `My, we are cranky tonight.’ It was Suzy, David’s fiancée.

  When he was first becoming ill he’d told her to leave him, to go away and make a real life for herself. She hadn’t.

  `He can’t stay ill forever,’ she said.

  I wasn’t so sure. Our mother had. Lately, he hadn’t told anyone anything. He hadn’t spoken at all for nearly a year.

  `Did you see? On the news?’ Suzy’s voice was high and excited.

  `Yes.’

  `Isn’t it great?’

  I suddenly felt very tired. `What’s so great about it? The bastard killed somebody and I hope he gets it, that’s all.’

  `You don’t see, do you?’

  `See what Suzy? I see that bastard Knowles hauled in, surrounded by cops, on a murder charge. What else is there to see?’

  `Robin,’ Her voice dropped half an octave. `Look at what’s happened.’

  There was a silence and I could almost hear the cogs whirring in her head. She took a large noisy breath and hissed in my ear.

  `We’ve got him. We’ve found him.’

  I sighed again. `The police found him, Suzy. We’ve got nothing.’

  `But we know where he is. Don’t you see? We can get to him. Make him tell us what—Look—I’m coming over.’

  `No Suzy.’ But I was talking to the ether. She was already on her way. Pinning Suzy down was like trying to catch the wind. Just when you thought you had her, when you put your hand out to touch her, she was gone.

  I started picking up the worst of the mess I lived in. I reckoned if no one else could see it and I didn’t care, why bother? But if I didn’t clean up, Suzy would. I got an instant headache at the thought of her boundless energy flitting about my apartment, peppering me with questions about where this and that went.

  I was shoving the last of a month’s newspapers into the box under the window whe
n I heard a loud scream followed by the squeal of tyres. I glanced up in time to see a dark-coloured car roar off down the street.

  My first reaction was panic. My second was to turn the other way, not be involved, to close myself up like a snail. I did neither. I peered out the window, dread spearing through me. The light was fading fast and it was difficult to see who was doing what to whom. There was a lot of shouting, in Italian mostly. Most of my neighbours were Italian. People were arriving from everywhere until there was quite a large crowd surrounding someone lying on the ground. Suzy’s little red car was parked on the other side of the road.

  I felt sick. The room swam. It was the same as yesterday.

  * * *

  The car had roared out of nowhere. One minute I was wandering along the edge of the pavement, the next, in a stink of petrol, a rush of air, and a flash of pain I was spun around and dropped hard on my backside in the gutter. I had a glimpse of a dark car, accompanied by the bellow of a powerful engine. Just like tonight.

  Hands came from everywhere, a policeman appeared and a shopkeeper brought a towel and dabbed at my dripping clothes. At least one person thought I was drunk and said so. The policeman took a sniff too, while he cast around for witness’s comments. The crowd instantly dispersed muttering a collective, `I dunno.’ When I told him I didn’t know what happened, he shrugged and walked away, shaking his head.

  I stretched each limb carefully. I was sore but there was no damage, except to my clothes and my dignity. An old woman in a plastic raincoat and rubber thongs who was sitting against the wall, surrounded by overflowing plastic bags, beckoned with a dirty hand. I sidled over, intrigued. She waved a forefinger at me then grabbed my jacket and pulled me towards her. With her lips working around bare gums her words were so distorted I had trouble working out what she was saying.

  `E went for ya on purpose, the bastard. I seen the look on `is face. `E was real mad `e missed ya.' She nodded for a long time, then bent muttering, to her bags.

  She started when I touched her shoulder. Obviously all her interest in me had evaporated, until I took out a ten-dollar bill and thanked her. She snatched it with a hand that moved like lightning and stashed it out of sight down the front of her dress. She neither looked up nor answered when I said goodbye.

  * * *

  And now Suzy? I pushed my panic as far down as I could and ran to the door just in time to be met by a clump of people surging up the stairs. A small hand waved from its centre. She was all right. Thank God.

  Her face was strained and white in the dim light, but she was smiling. She peered up through the gloom. `It’s all right, Rob,’ she called.

  As the excited group flowed through my open door, pushing me up against the wall, I recognised Vanni and Lorenzo, my next-door neighbours. I followed them inside and was immediately flattened against the wall again as everyone came back out, shooed by Vanni.

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, but not before Senora Ricci, who lived in a little old weatherboard house next to the block of flats, had pinched my cheek and patted my chest. She shook her head sadly and said, `Povero ragazzo.’

  She always said that and looked sorrowful. Lorenzo said it was because I wasn’t married, and that she did it to Vanni and him too. He didn’t think it was useful for him to say that he and Vanni were married to each other.

  Eventually peace returned. Suzy was settled on the sofa, with Vanni fussing around her. She looked at me, mimed drinking, and grinned. Vanni and Lorenzo also looked at me. It took me a minute to realise what was expected of me.

  `Oh, yes…er…coffee everyone?’ I finally stammered.

  `Robin,’ Suzy protested, `we’d rather have what you’re having. Eh, boys?’ She looked pointedly at the bottle of brandy. Vanni and Lorenzo nodded, grinning.

  `Yes, yes, of course.’ I closed my mouth and poured brandy all round. The neck of the bottle clattered against each glass as I poured, but by the third one I managed to stop my hands from trembling. I tried several times to ask what happened but no one would answer until the glasses were in their hands.

  Suzy had parked her car on the other side of the road. She was almost all the way across and was waving to Vanni and Lorenzo when a car swept out of nowhere. It would have run her down if Lorenzo hadn’t grabbed her. It was Vanni who’d screamed.

  She reached towards a pink-faced Lorenzo and kissed him on the cheek.

  `Thanks, gorgeous.’ Suzy always teased Lorenzo, promising that if ever he changed his mind, she wanted to be the first in a long queue of lusty woman panting for his body. He turned pinker and murmured that anybody would have done the same.

  Vanni, who'd been quiet for a while, staring out the window and swirling his drink, said suddenly, `It was on purpose, you know.’

  Chapter 2

  That made three. Including my other near miss. The one outside my office. The one where a piece of construction steel had speared into the ground less than a metre from my head.

  Three what…Coincidences? Close encounters anyway. Two for me, and now Suzy? It had to be coincidence. What else could it be? People have near misses all the time. And the way Suzy plunged across roads it was certain she’d have one occasionally. In fact she’d be lucky if they were only occasional. It’s just that nobody talks about them. I mean, who wants to hear about what nearly happened to you? I shook myself. Coincidence, that’s what it was. Just coincidence.

  `Don’t be ridiculous Van,’ said Lorenzo. Vanni turned back to us.

  `It’s not ridiculous. That car swerved towards Suzy, not away from her as you’d expect if it was accidental.’

  I took an audible breath. They turned towards me.

  `Would it necessarily swerve at all,’ I asked, `if the driver didn’t see her?’ It had to be a coincidence. It wasn’t allowed to be anything else.

  `Or…I don’t know…maybe he saw her only at the last minute…maybe he turned the wheel the wrong way in shock,’ said Lorenzo.

  Vanni looked at Suzy, who'd gone pale again. He put his glass down, smiled and touched her cheek. `I’m just being dramatic again. Sorry love. Of course it was an accident.’

  `Careful, she’s mine,’ said Lorenzo. We all laughed as the two of them headed for the door.

  `He could be right,’ Suzy said, after they’d gone.

  `Don’t be stupid.’ I snapped. Suzy’s eyebrows shot up. `Sorry, but it was just Vanni being a drama queen.’

  `Maybe?’ She smiled and held out her empty glass.

  I smiled at her. `You’ll get drunk if you have much more. You know you can’t drink.’ Three drinks and she was away. She was so small and slender that there was nowhere for the alcohol to go.

  `I don’t want you to have to drink alone.’ Her response was flip, but we both knew how serious my drinking had been in the past year.

  `I’ll have to stop then.’ I threw the words over my shoulder. `To save you from yourself.’

  I capped the bottle and put it away with no regrets. We relaxed. The moment was gone as quickly as it came. Suzy gestured at me to sit down.

  `Now, Jimmy Knowles. The man who never murdered anyone.’

  `What do you mean? He’s been charged.’

  `I know that, but he didn’t do it,’ she said. I stared at her, eyes narrowed, as she continued. `Jimmy Knowles never killed anyone because Jimmy Knowles never needed to kill anyone, and certainly not a woman.’ I started to protest but she raised a hand and kept going. `Think about it, Rob. Jimmy always gets exactly what he wants by persuading people to give it to him. Women fall all over him. If he doesn’t get one, there are always plenty more waiting in the wings. And he does a terrific disappearing act, as we know.’

  I attempted to break in but the hand came up again.

  `Jimmy is very careful with his precious carcass. He wouldn’t risk being caught for something as nasty as murder. You could go to jail for a very long time for murder, and Jimmy Knowles does not want to go to jail. Not for any time. Among other things, some of the inmates are b
ound to be people he swindled. No, Jimmy’s too smart to kill anyone.’

  `Okay,’ I said. `So?’

  She jumped up, the tension flowing from every cell of her body.

  `Now that we know just where Jimmy is, and that he’s not going anywhere, at least in the short term, we might be able to find out what he did with David’s work.’

  `It’s gone,’ I said, my head ached again as she paced around the room. `Jimmy has sold it to someone and even if we do find out who’s got it, we have no way of proving it was David’s work.’

  `Is David’s work.’ She swung back to me, her mouth tight and her eyes glittering. `And we might be able to prove something, Rob. This is the first time we've had anything concrete. Someone who actually knows something. If we can find out from Jimmy who bought David’s work, there might be a way of—I don’t know, getting them to acknowledge something, or pay something. They may not even know the work was stolen. We have to try.’

  She grabbed my hands and stared into my face. When she fixes her great eyes on you it’s extremely difficult not to be swept along by her passionate personality. The impossible seems easy. The enormous energy that is only just contained in her tiny body swamps your will, your doubts and fears. It’s easy at moments like that to imagine her taking over the minds of thousands of people at once and convincing them that she can float above the ground. That the twisting of her body into impossible positions takes no effort at all.