47: Frank, Then Katrina
Chapter 56: Katrina, Then Paddy
The leather case containing the guns was cumbersome and heavy, making her shoulder muscles scream with the effort of pulling it towards her. Looking around to check that she wasn’t being watched, she tried to drag it out of the boot of her Porsche Panamera. Dead weight. Looked around again towards the garaging. The doors were closed. No sign of his car, thankfully.
‘Come on, Sheila,’ she counselled herself. ‘Grit your teeth, girl.’
With a grunt, she heaved the case out. Dropped it heavily onto the gravel, narrowly missing the peep toes of her purple suede Louboutins. Slammed the boot shut, chipping a nail in the process.
‘Bastard thing,’ she said, lugging the guns awkwardly across the courtyard and up the steps to the front door. She would definitely have a couple of bruises on her shins by tomorrow. Shit. But at least the determined Mancunian rain wasn’t falling on her freshly blow-dried hair.
Inside, her house was silent and pristine. The wooden floors shone. The smell of furniture wax was pungent in the air. The cleaners had gone for the day and the gardener wasn’t due until Friday.
‘Anybody home?’ she called out. Her voice bounced off the hard surfaces of the glazed banister and naked oak of the staircase. No response, though she hadn’t expected one.
Flinging her keys onto the sideboard, Sheila kicked off her heels, carrying the guns to the lower level of the house. She bypassed the spa area and pool to enter the cinema room. It smelled of stale cigar smoke and the dregs at the bottom of Paddy’s empty single malt bottle and dirty tumbler. She made a mental note to chastise the cleaners for having missed it. Wrinkled her nose at the manly stink that reminded her too much of the Green Room in her brother-in-law’s club.
‘Hide it with the other guns and surprise him with it after tea, or leave it out for him to find?’ Sheila contemplated aloud, setting the leather case on the coffee table and clicking open the antique silver locks. She appraised the delicate metalwork of the shotguns, studded with semi-precious stones. Both guns were safely ensconced in their own blue velvet bed. Not her cup of tea, but she knew Paddy would appreciate these Ottoman flintlock rifles. Seventeenth century, the dealer had said. They’d go with his collection of swords, pistols and other shit, he had assured her. It was a perfect apology. She’d forked over a pile of her own cash for them, hoping they would be the ultimate oil to pour on troubled waters after Paddy had ‘discovered’ the email she had sent to Mam and Dad.
All those years she’d fantasised about reforging the bond with her parents that Paddy had insisted she jettison. Decades of being desperate to tell her folks about the girls; about her life; about how much she missed them every single day. Bloody typical that Paddy had gone snooping through her email account when she’d finally had the balls to contact them on the quiet. She made a mental note to change her email password. Couldn’t hide anything from that nosey old bastard. Still, he had her best interests at heart, didn’t he?
‘Paddy, Paddy O’Brien,’ she intoned, looking over at the oil painting of her imperious husband that made him look a good deal less hatchet-faced and more sanguine than he really was. ‘You difficult, moody sod.’ She snapped the gun case shut. ‘I hope to God these cheer you up.’
The sound of a door slamming against a wall and a trill of what she was sure was a woman’s laughter made her freeze. Sheila stood tall. Breathing in shallow gasps, she strained to work out where the sound had come from. The spa, perhaps? There was certainly somebody in the house with her. Snatching one of the antique long-barrelled flintlocks, she held the gun out ahead of her and stalked towards the spa. Heart thudding. Forcing herself to be brave. No way of creeping back upstairs to see from the alarm keypad if there had been an intrusion via another zone in the sprawling Bramshott mansion.
To speak, or not to speak. That was the question.
‘Who’s there?’ she said quietly. Unconvincingly.
The thick grey carpet swallowed the sound of her shoeless footfalls. Just ahead loomed the glazed door that separated the cinema room from the spa area and pool. A glimpse of the turquoise glittering pool, its spot-lit ripples dancing white and silver on the vaulted brick ceiling. There was the laughter again.
‘Oh, Paddy!’ shouted a woman’s voice.
Paddy’s low voice, rumbling. Saying something indistinct. More laughter.
Sheila edged open the spa door, shaking with adrenalin, poised for fight or flight. Her sharp eyes darted to the left. To the right. Scanning the tranquil scene. Clean,
