And suddenly, now, she was scared. Really scared.

‘Like I said, Eden, you’re a very stupid woman with your hare-brained plan to try to frame me. All you’ve actually done is set me up with the perfect alibi. I don’t need a “no body” murder any more. You see, it’s not possible to murder a dead person.’

He took a step towards her. ‘Too bad you didn’t work that one out, but then you never were as smart as you thought at chess.’ He took another step towards her, remembering the words of the tall, burly copper who’d first come to the house to interview him. ‘Our unfinished game, Eden. You thought you were beating me, but you’d made a fatal error with that one. A move you hadn’t spotted. Black Queen’s Knight to King’s Pawn three, eh? Shall we call this my last checkmate?’

‘Shit! Something’s going to happen here,’ Roy Grace yelled, dropping his glasses and frantically looking for the door handle. ‘GO, GO, GO!’

He clambered down from the camper and, closely followed by Branson, sprinted across the car park towards the road, radioing Taylor for backup as he did.

Suddenly, all Eden’s confidence had drained away. Niall was just inches away from her and the cliff edge was just two feet behind her. She stared at him, trembling in terror. There wasn’t enough room between them now for her to drop to the ground, as Rebecca had instructed her. Her brain raced desperately, thinking of what to do, what to say.

Then a tornado erupted from a bush a few feet behind Niall. It slammed into him, propelling him sideways. Then forward. Then forward again.

Eden heard a thud. Another thud. A grunt.

Then, suddenly, he was gone.

Vanished.

A faint, terrible, piercing scream that faded away.

Followed by complete silence.

109

Friday 13 September

‘Bex!’ Eden screamed at the figure in the hoodie and baseball cap, and lunged at her in blind, shocked fury. Rebecca stepped back, then back again, parrying her flailing arms.

‘Bex – what – what have you done?’ she screamed again.

Her lover looked at her with an expression Eden had never seen before. It wasn’t the face of the woman she knew. It was almost as if something totally alien was looking mockingly back at her. ‘I’ve done what you were too spineless to do, Eden.’ Her voice was icy and as dark as the night.

Suddenly, Rebecca lunged forward, grabbing Eden’s wrist in a vice-like grip. ‘Join him, why don’t you? If you loved him too much to kill him, then join him, have him, have him forever, he’s all yours!’

She was being propelled towards the cliff edge, Eden realized, her brain too frozen in terror to make any sense of what was happening. This wasn’t Bex, this was some kind of a demon. Pulling her towards the edge.

‘Bex! Stop!’ Eden tried to break free of Rebecca’s grip. But with one sharp tug she was propelled forward again, straight at the edge, only Rebecca gripping her wrist preventing her from falling. As Rebecca did so, she swung Eden round.