Chapter 1: Two weeks before Christmas
He had been living there for almost as long as she had. After the trial and her disgraceful release, he made sure she would never be out of his sight for long. He counted himself lucky: he had time on his side. It was a time to think and a time to plan. It was very near the sixth anniversary, and his strategy was soon to pay off. When it did, she would be exposed to the world for what she had done, what she was...and he would rejoice.
The house was perched on a promontory of sandstone and rock. It was an old house, built about two hundred years previously and 'modernised' by a goatherd-turned-builder, as were many houses on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The two-storey dwelling had three bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor, and downstairs, the area was just one open-plan room with a typical Cypriot kitchen set in one corner. The renovation work was poor. The windows were draughty and ill-fitting in the metre-thick walls. There was no heating except for a bottled-gas fire and a hearth filled with wood scavenged from around the neighbouring woods and fields. The furniture was the original that the owner had installed soon after the place had been finished. It had been cheaply constructed, with no concession to comfort. The surrounding garden was much the same, with piles of rubble and broken breeze blocks, dead plants, rubbish and discarded lengths of plastic piping littering the place. He hated the property, but it was ideally situated for his purposes.
The one redeeming feature about the place was the cellar, which he had found by accident. He rented the place because of its advantageous proximity to her house. At first, he only had a rough plan of his intentions. He was still uncertain how it would work. Once he discovered what lay beneath the floor of the outhouse-cum-garage, he knew he had struck gold. Months earlier, he had cleared some of the trash littering the floor of the building. It was then free from most debris and apart from a stack of logs, two old pitharia positioned to face the garage wall, and his car, it was almost empty. He discovered that when he walked over a certain part of the concrete floor, it sounded hollow beneath his footsteps. He swept away at the dust and gravel to reveal the rough outline of an old trapdoor. Years of accumulated rubbish had worked its way between the wooden frame and the entrance itself, and it took him a good hour to clear this before he could finally raise the door.
He discovered he was standing at the top of a flight of narrow shallow steps. Composed of dirt and stone slabs, they disappeared into a black hole, which was later revealed to be a room of about twelve feet by nine. Along one blackened and dank-smelling wall, there stood another two clay pots or pitharia like the ones above in the garage. He knew that in the past, they would have been used for storing water, oil or wine. Smiling, he paced the room, mentally planning where to put the furniture. One small bed would suffice. Now, everything would fall into place-and it was going to be so easy!
Dragging his thoughts back to the present, he stared out from an upstairs window and saw how the sky had changed in such a short time from a pale light blue to a stark greyness. The weather was often hot and sunny in December, but this winter had seen some changes. Narrowing his eyes, he turned and stared at the mountains in the distance and saw how the snow line had extended down into the valleys. According to the newspapers, he could expect his own land to be carpeted with a light dusting within twenty-four hours.
He hated it there. He hated the people, whom he considered stupid and backward, bound to a religion steeped in archaic doctrine and hypocritical hogwash. The food was lousy, repetitive, unimaginative, and expensive. The house he rented-for what he considered an exorbitant amount from the goatherd-added to his hatred, but it suited his purposes. It was near to her.
Moving away from the window, he shuffled further into the room. He had gained weight over the years, and the excess pounds made him breathless and slow. But it had been necessary for his disguise. His hair was longer than he liked, worn tied back in a greasy ponytail: grey strands streaked with black. He paced the room before coming to a decision and clattered down the stairs. He went into the living room and stopped once he reached the dining table, a cheap affair made of mismatched pine, and picked up a pair of binoculars. The field glasses were most probably the most expensive item in the whole house, and he was proud of the 50-mm lenses, which he could switch from a ten-time magnification to fifteen. So what if they had cost him over a thousand pounds? That was small fry compared to what he hoped to achieve. He swung the binoculars around his neck and squinted through the eye pieces.
Outside, it was getting darker every minute, but Debbie's house was easy to see through the expensive lenses. He turned his body so he could get a better angle and within seconds was looking right into her kitchen. He could see her quite clearly. Debbie was at the table. She was standing, and from her body movement, he knew she was talking to someone. He couldn't see anyone else and knew she had to be talking to the children, who were most probably sitting down. The children. He felt his mouth go dry and his hands shook.
Debbie looked very young as she stood there. It was hard to believe she was thirty-four. She was wearing her blonde hair in a short style, but he knew Debbie's real hair colour was a deep chestnut and that she used to keep it long-long, always fragrant and curly. She didn't look her age. She had a captivating quality about her: young, fresh and soft.
He swallowed as he felt his mouth go even drier, but under his armpits he was wet and hot and stinking. He let the binoculars drop onto the strap around his neck, and he smiled. Not long to go...she would be exposed. When the police got to her, they would ask the same questions the others had asked six years ago...
"Debbie, what have you done with your children?"
