Hold Still – Tim Adler #3: A Psychological Thriller Read online

  Hold Still

  Tim Adler

  urbanepublications.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Urbane Publications Ltd

  Suite 3, Brown Europe House, 33/34 Gleamingwood Drive, Chatham, Kent ME5 8RZ

  Copyright © Tim Adler, 2016

  The moral right of Tim Adler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part 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 both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-910692-69-1

  Design and Typeset by Julie Martin

  Cover by Susanna Hickling

  Cover image courtesy of www.TinaApple.com

  urbanepublications.com

  The publisher supports the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®), the leading international forest-certification organisation. This book is made from acid-free paper from an FSC®-certified provider. FSC is the only forest-certification scheme supported by the leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace.

  To enter Tim Adler competitions,

  exclusive previews and news, sign up HERE

  Visit Tim's author page on Facebook

  Visit Tim's author page on Amazon

  Follow Tim on Twitter

  or contact him directly via his author website

  www.timadlerauthor.com

  Contents

  Books by Tim Adler

  Friday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Saturday

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Sunday

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Monday

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tuesday

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wednesday

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Thursday

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  One week later

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Acknowledgements

  Excerpt from Surrogate

  About the Author

  Thrillers by Tim Adler

  Books by Tim Adler

  The House of Redgrave:

  The Lives of a Theatrical Dynasty

  Hollywood and the Mob

  Slow Bleed

  Surrogate

  Hold Still

  For the real Kate

  HOLD STILL

  Everybody has a secret

  'A photograph is a secret about a secret.

  The more it tells you the less you know.'

  DIANE ARBUS

  Friday

  Chapter One

  Kate Julia photographed the moment of her husband's death.

  Sliding backwards through the photographs she took that day, she saw everything that led up to his death in reverse. Here were the fireworks exploding over the square in Tirana. White Night, they called it. And here were the tourists sitting in the café below, and Paul standing next to his cousins, and his mother seated in an armchair, and a shot of the hotel entrance. Expanding the iPhone photographs with her fingers, she kept searching for a clue, anything that might have anticipated the terrible thing that happened later. She remembered the painting of Paul's grandfather and Paul telling her he looked as if he didn't have long for this world. Her husband standing in the middle of their room asking if they would always be together. And Paul slumping in the back of the taxi and saying, "Christ, I feel like a ghost."

  Then there was the brooding weather, how the sky glowered behind the mountains, anticipating the storm to come. The first fat drops of rain hitting their taxi roof before the heavens opened – rivulets of water chasing each other down the windscreen like tears. But all this was after the fact. You keep looking for clues or signs, she thought, when really there aren't any.

  Wait. She stopped at one photograph. There was one clue.

  Paul looking wan, after staying up all night.

  He had spent the last twelve hours sitting beside his uncle's coffin at his mother's flat. It's the way they do things in a Muslim country, he said. She remembered adjusting his tie and noticing how his longish hair needed cutting. It was already turning grey, and soon he would have to wear it short. Paul turned and looked at himself in the hotel mirror, making final adjustments to his outfit.

  They had flown into Tirana from London the previous night. Kate hadn't known what to expect; all she knew about Albania was that it had been cut off from the world by a Communist dictator and that it had a reputation for lawlessness. The Irishman sitting next to her on the plane had warned Kate not to use ATMs. "They copy your card details," he confided. "Me, I always carry my money in my sock. And the officials are the worst. They always want this…" He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

  It had been dark when they got in, and Paul had headed straight off to the wake. The first morning Kate wanted to see something of Tirana, even if they were on their way to a funeral. All she had glimpsed from the taxi last night was a city much like any other. Yet the way Paul described his country, everything was upside down and back to front. This was his first visit home for a long time; his mother had always come to stay with them in London. But Paul had been close to his uncle, who, he said, had become his dad after his real father died when he was young. So his uncle had paid for his education, enabling his nephew to study computing in London.

  Her husband lay down on the bed, and it was Kate's turn to look at herself in the mirror. Smoothing her black dress down, what did she see? A woman in her thirties with long, black hair that she had been dyeing since she was eighteen. A long face that some thought beautiful but she reckoned made her look like a horse. Black horn-rimmed glasses and a gap between her teeth. Good figure. Her thighs, though, were on the heavy side, and she wished that her legs were longer.

  "Why do they say no when they mean yes?" she said, shifting in the mirror. The receptionist downstairs had shaken her head last night when Kate had asked if somebody could help them with their luggage.

  "It's not really saying no, it's more of a circular motion," said Paul, propping himself up on his elbows. "It's a local custom. I told you, everything's the wrong way round here. Part of its charm, I guess. Did you know the Albanian alphabet has thirty-six letters? That's a lot more than other alphabets."

  "Remind me of your cousin's name."

  "Which one? I've got so many."


  "The one you were closest to. When you were growing up, I mean."

  "Hashim. There were about seven or eight of us who used to knock around together. We would get into scrapes, silly stuff. People had big families back then, when the state took care of everything. Hashim was my best friend, though; we were like brothers when we were kids." He paused. "It's funny being back here again. Everything seems so much smaller. I want to show you around once we get the funeral out of the way. Not that there's much to see. There's a national art gallery you might like, full of hideous paintings. Communist heroes fighting western imperialism." Paul rose from the bed while Kate fixed her other diamond earring.

  "I'll order some coffee from downstairs. You must be exhausted."

  Kate picked up the telephone and dialled reception, admiring the bedspread and curtains while she listened to it ringing. She had designed the textiles for the room, which is why they'd got such a good deal on the penthouse suite. She had been freelancing as a textile designer for the past ten years, after quitting her full-time job at the Designers Guild. Paul was the one who had encouraged her to go freelance. A job she'd had designing wall hangings for a Thai restaurant led to doing interiors for a luxury bed-and-breakfast, which turned into doing a refurb for a flagship hotel. At art school she had wanted to be a photographer, but her teachers had steered her towards textiles. She knew she didn't really have what it took to be a professional snapper, but photography was still a hobby. She glanced at the iPhone on the bedside table. Tomorrow would be a good day for taking photographs. Coffee would be up in a minute, the receptionist told her.

  "We could always go to the seaside, if you want. It's only an hour away," said Paul behind her.

  "What, in November? It'll be bloody cold."

  "There's a fish restaurant on the seafront that does this pasta with clams. Datteri, I think they're called. The Italians rave about them. There's a ban on fishing them in the EU. Not here, of course."

  Kate opened the French windows and stepped onto the balcony. On the far side of the square there was a café and, weirdly, a sculpture of an upside-down church with its spire piercing the ground.

  "This was an atheist country. Down with religion," said Paul, reading her thoughts. He put his arms around her waist and smelled her hair. "You smell wonderful, like honey."

  "Careful," she said as the telephone rang, startling them. Paul went to answer it. It wasn't room service: their taxi was waiting downstairs.

  Their boutique hotel was one of many opening in Tirana. Its Italian owners had liked Kate's work for a London branch of the chain and wanted to use the same designs. Her first thought when Paul got the bad news had been to book a room here. She was glad they were getting away, and being offered a deal on the room was a bonus given the size of their overdraft. Lately Paul had been preoccupied and troubled; there was something on his mind, something he was not telling her, and she guessed it was about his business.

  Paul owned a website design and hosting company near Liverpool Street station, where she used one of the desks for her freelancing. Business had not been good. Paul had been forced to make some staff redundant, which he hated. But every time she broached the subject, he withdrew into himself. Getting away for a few days would do them both good, she hoped. Most evenings they barely had enough energy to heat up a ready meal, unscrew a bottle of plonk and slump in front of the telly.

  Their taxi was waiting on the other side of the revolving door. Crossing the Italianate lobby, Kate noticed a couple of groups of businessmen huddled together.

  Their hotel was right in the city centre, the heart of the government area, Paul said, getting into the taxi after her. The driver started the engine, and they circled the square before pulling out into the main avenue. All this was built by Italians before the war, Paul continued, warming to being a tour guide. They passed by an apartment building painted in crazy psychedelic camouflage, and another in bold Mondrian squares. She would photograph this neighbourhood tomorrow, Kate thought. It would make the most wonderful album on Facebook. She reached for Paul's hand. "I told you you would like it," he said.

  The taxi had gone down a shopping street, and Kate was amused to see that all the big-name brands they had in London also had stores in Tirana – or rather the shops had misspelled their names to stay one step ahead of the lawyers: "Bloomydales", "Disneey" "Abercromby & Fitch". Wedding dresses were on show in the upper windows. "Why bother buying something if you're only going to wear it once," Paul remarked, but Kate could tell his mind was elsewhere. He kept compulsively checking his mobile.

  "Was your mother close to your uncle?" she asked.

  "Dad was the older brother, but he hated farming. He wanted to be in the city. So he handed the farm over to my uncle, which was fine with him. My uncle already had five sons and they had a sheep farm."

  "You've never told me what your dad did for a living."

  "A bit of this and a bit of that. He was a wheeler dealer. You've no idea how hard it was to get things during the Hoxha era."

  "So he was a spiv?"

  Paul laughed for what seemed the first time in ages. I love to see you like this, Kate thought.

  "I hope you're not going to be too shocked by my family. I'm very different from the rest of them."

  "How do you mean?"

  "It's a tough life in the Highlands. It's where the partisans came from, the ones who fought the Nazis in the war. Tough mountain people."

  "What sort of things did your uncle farm?"

  "Oh, mainly olive trees, and sheep, of course. I think dad couldn't wait to get out. He loved the city. Mum stayed in her flat in Tirana after dad died and brought me up as a single parent."

  "But your uncle paid for your education, right?"

  Paul nodded, and Kate thought about the last time she had seen Paul's mother, Marina, during a visit to London. She was a large, heavyset woman dressed in Balkan black who had cleaned their flat immaculately when they got home that first night. The message from her mother-in-law appeared to be that her daughter-in-law didn't look after her son well enough, which left Kate feeling angry and resentful. By now they were in the countryside. They passed a shopping centre that Paul said hadn't been there the last time he had visited. This was where city dwellers fled in the summer when Tirana got too stinking hot, he said. The countryside reminded Kate of Wales, and she noticed castles dotting the hills. Paul said Albanians love castles. The moment they had any money, they wanted to build themselves one.

  Looking back, she supposed there was one premonition. "Christ, I feel like a ghost," Paul said, closing his eyes. He slumped in the back seat, and Kate told him to try and get some sleep. How could she have known that her husband would be dead in less than eight hours?

  Their taxi wended its way uphill and came to a stop in a queue of cars, all trying to get to the same place. They were in a traffic jam. Paul and the taxi driver began talking in Albanian. "We had better get out and walk," Paul said. Cars were backed up along the single lane that went to the cemetery. Glimpsing the hillside graveyard, Kate noticed how many mourners there were, at least a hundred. There was even a photographer. What was interesting was that the men and women were walking into the graveyard separately.

  "Your uncle must have been a popular man," she said.

  "It wasn't just me. He did a lot for others. He helped a lot of people."

  There was a crack of thunder overhead, and the inevitable rain started. People put up umbrellas. When they reached the cemetery, Paul greeted a group of men who Kate could only describe as a gang of toughs almost comically squeezed into tight suits. Presumably these were Paul's cousins. They all had what she came to know as the Balkan haircut: a crew cut shaved almost bald at the back and sides. Paul was chatting with two of them when he suddenly turned back to look at her. She would always remember that haunted expression on his face.

  Kate spotted Paul's mother talking to a group of women and she raised her hand. At that moment, people turned to watch the hearse arr
ive. The coffin was smothered with flowers, and some mourners held more wreaths in their hands. There was something showy-offy about it, as if they were competing with each other as to who could make the most extravagant gesture. Vulgar, really. Mourners parted to let Paul's aunt through, and Kate could see she was very different from her mother-in-law. There was a steely self-possession about Paul's aunt as she nodded to friends, as if she was used to being listened to and her words acted on.

  The mourners stood by the graveside as rain pattered on their umbrellas and the imam began ululating. Paul's aunt threw the first handful of soil on the coffin and some of the women started wailing. Paul's mother pulled at her hair and, again, there was something theatrical about the gesture, as if the women were trying to outdo each other in their grief. Not Paul's aunt, though. She just stared dryly at her husband's coffin. Eventually everybody drifted away, leaving her alone to say goodbye.

  "Who will run the farm now that your uncle has gone?" Kate said.

  "My cousin Hashim will take over the farm."

  "Which one is he?"

  "He's not here. Apparently he's out of the country."

  "Not to come to your own father's funeral, it's not very respectful."

  "He and Uncle Dritan had a falling out. They had a really bad argument. My other cousins think it's what brought on his heart attack. Anyway, cousin Hashim was banished. He was cut out."

  "It all sounds very biblical."

  "Yes. The old man came to see sense before he died. The return of the prodigal son and all that. I just hope he remembers what happened to Joseph."

  "What do you mean?"

  "His brothers ganged up on him and threw him down a well."

  There was a disturbance as they came out of the cemetery. Kate could see two of Paul's cousins pushing the photographer aside, shoving him in the chest. They were shouting, telling him to go away. One of them grabbed the man's camera and yanked it over his head. For a moment Kate thought he was going to smash it on the ground. Paul raised his eyes and said he would go and sort it out.