Mirror Mirror: A shatteringly powerful page-turner Read online

  Mirror Mirror

  Nick Louth

  Ludensian Books

  For Louise

  Nick Louth is a best-selling thriller writer, award-winning financial journalist and an investment commentator. He has been a regular contributor to the Financial Times, Investors Chronicle and Money Observer, and has published seven other books. Nick Louth is married and lives in Lincolnshire.

  Praise for Nick Louth

  Bite

  “Fast, smart and terrifyingly plausible. Bite is a thoroughly assured thriller with an unusual and alarming setting – it sinks its hooks into the reader from the first chapter and does not let go.”

  Jon Henley, Guardian journalist

  “A fast-paced thrill-ride, a book that I couldn’t put down and that took me on a journey of fear.”

  Linda Mather, author of Gut Instinct

  “The depth of the author’s research is staggering. His story, and the accompanying sub-plots, are entirely convincing and held my attention from beginning to end. A thriller in every sense of the word.”

  John Leach, Amazon.co.uk

  “Once I’d started to read Bite, I couldn’t put it down until the very end. Truly the most gripping thriller you’ll ever read!”

  Samie Sands, Amazon.co.uk

  “It has an intricate multi- layered plot that cleverly weaves to a joined up conclusion.”

  B. V. Price, Amazon.co.uk

  “This is my kind of book; a thriller that until the last page is thrilling to read and that manage to deliver some surprises.”

  Mara Blaise, Amazon.co.uk

  “Be warned, this book is dynamite!”

  Wilma, Amazon.co.uk

  Heartbreaker

  “I loved this book from start to finish. A gripping page-turning thriller with plenty of twists and clever turns. The author obviously delves into his own experiences to portray with panache the complex and confusing Middle East conflict.”

  Estuary, Amazon.co.uk

  “A truly superb book. Twists and turns like a slippery eel.”

  S. Laurie, Amazon.co.uk

  “Nick Louth somehow transforms the stuff you half-hear on the breakfast news to an utterly believable and multi-layered narrative”

  Amazon customer, Amazon.co.uk

  See Nick Louth’s other books on Kindle

  UK: amzn.to/1NMgAQ4

  US: amzn.to/1TKGaFF

  Mirror Mirror

  When evil and beauty collide

  Voted the world’s most beautiful woman, twenty-three-year-old Mira Roskova is admired, envied and desired. With a world-famous footballer for a boyfriend, plus top modelling and endorsement deals, Mira’s meteoric rise to fame comes with what her millions of Facebook and Instagram followers imagine to be a perfect life.

  But celebrity extracts its pound of flesh. Threatened and harassed online, stalked by besotted fans, beaten up by a man who claims to love her, Mira is assailed on all sides. Home isn’t safe, friends can’t be trusted, freedoms melt away. Where does the image end and the real person begin?

  As the threats multiply, the biggest danger is overlooked. In Broadmoor, Britain’s most notorious psychiatric hospital, one man has long been obsessed with this most perfect beauty. His crimes are so awful that a judge ruled they must never been revealed to the public. But his plans to possess Mira are well advanced, and he has the charm and the cunning to make them work.

  Chapter One

  It was the night of her twenty-third birthday. Surely she should be granted a wish? A desperate little prayer to save her life? That now, nearly midnight on a wild and rainswept January Saturday, someone should drive along the B6478 in Lancashire’s Forest of Bowland, near the village of Thewick. That on this lonely rural road they would notice Lowe Mill Barn, a converted stone farmhouse, isolated on the shoulder of Easington Fell. They would see her trapped in the first floor bathroom, the only light for miles, banging frantically on the window. They would hear her screaming for help and the repeated booms of the locked door which was being kicked down by a man intent on killing her. And they would rescue her.

  She needed a prayer. She was bruised, bleeding and defenceless. No phone, no money, no shoes. Just pyjamas, and a grey hooded jogging top grabbed from the bedroom when she fled. All she wanted was someone to hear her screams, someone to fetch help, someone to save her. Someone. Anyone. Anyone at all.

  For five desperate minutes there had been no one. No car, van or truck. No pedestrians, no late-night dog walkers. Only the scudding clouds, the lashing rain, and the howling wind. And an empty, narrow, winding road.

  Everything now depended on her own decisions. Her tactics, her determination, her survival skills. Her only ally was the solid oak bathroom door, with its good iron bolt and mortice lock, plus the heavy antique linen box she had wedged against it. Each kick still made the door shudder. She had to get out, before he got in. But how? The old sash window over the washbasin was tight, and would only slide up eighteen inches. Then it was a fifteen foot drop onto a gravel drive. She threw some towels out, to cushion her fall but the wind whipped them away. She climbed onto the basin, and began to squeeze out, feet first, face down, holding onto the taps. Her cut lip spattered the porcelain crimson as she wriggled out into the freezing cold and driving rain, until finally her arms were fully extended. She listened, trying to screen out the pounding on the door.

  She dropped. The pain of landing made her cry out, but she had to move. Fast. That bathroom door would be broken down in a moment, and he would be after her. She hobbled down the short drive to the road, her feet stinging. There she had a choice. Going right led into the village four or so miles downhill, normally an easy jogging distance. But not barefoot. She knew too that if she followed it she would be found and murdered, because this was the logical way to run. For safety, for survival. And he would follow. Going left, she might escape him, but at what cost? It would take her high into the moors. No houses, nothing, for many miles. She could quickly die of exposure waiting for a car-borne saviour.

  As she dithered she heard behind her Lawrence’s bellow of fury as he finally burst into the bathroom. Still there was no car. The next one now would be his black Range Rover, pursuing her. In this rage he would run her down, the same way he had knocked down and then reversed over the cyclist in Manchester.

  Cross-country was the safest way, through the garden and out into the rough pastures and the myriad stone-walled fields. A slower and colder way down to the village, but safer. She ran back up the drive, and ducked under the arched hedge. The damp turf felt freezing under her feet as she edged along to the stile, beyond the light from the bathroom, a light which was now her enemy. Her bruised feet welcomed the numbing cold. She had walked this footpath only yesterday, enjoying the cream stone byres and gurgling brooks, the rustic gates, and the memories it had brought back. But now, effectively blind, under the soughing and groaning branches, and chilled by rain-laden gusts, it was alive with danger. Rough stones from tumbled walls on which to stub her tender toes, windblown sticks, brambles and nettles, all cloaked by darkness. Far to the south, way beyond Thewick, the clouds held the faint reflected orange glow of the lights of Clitheroe, a town she had once called home. One of many fleeting childhood homes in the north of England, from a time when flight and fear had been a way of life. Against the glow she could see dripping jagged branches of blackthorn, dotted with shrivelled sloes, swaying in the gale. The slimy wooden plank stile, edged with barbed wire, was next to it. She tore the leg of her pyjamas getting over, and at the bottom put her foot in something soft, that squeezed between her toes. The sound of the Range Rover, and the sweep of headlights
made her duck. The far end of the field, two hundred yards ahead, was briefly illuminated, showing a wooden ladder stile over a high stone wall. She made for that point, running close to the left hand wall which bordered the road. The rough stone construction was a man’s height and reassuringly solid, enough to shield her from the road and from some of the freezing rain. The Range Rover shot past towards the village, the gunned engine indicating that his fury had not subsided.

  Relaxing just a little as the engine faded into the distance she smashed her foot on something metal and fell in agony. It was an abandoned rusty harrow, almost swallowed by encroaching grassy tussocks. Her left foot bleeding and throbbing, she hobbled carefully down the length of the field, her eyes gradually becoming more accustomed to the darkness. She climbed the ladder stile, into another long and hummocky field, and then stumbled down to another stile at the end. She climbed and looked over the top into a farm track, like a dark canal between high stone walls. Opposite was another high ladder stile. She climbed down into the puddled lane and listened carefully, considering whether to turn right. This lane she recalled led eventually to the rear grounds of Hooksworth Hall, a crumbling manor house now being renovated by the National Trust. Partially roofless, shrouded in scaffolding and uninhabited, there was perhaps refuge there from the weather, but nothing more.

  She had just started to edge right along the lane when she heard ahead of her a ticking sound, as of cooling metal, and saw the faintest of reflections from a chrome trim a few dozen yards further on. Dazzling lights flicked on, and an engine gunned into life. She threw herself forward towards the stile, leaping up to the top rung just in time. The Range Rover shot past, the wing mirror smacking her trailing ankle as she threw herself over the wall. Landing in a heap on the other side, she rolled onto her back as she heard the car door open and heavy footsteps ascend the ladder.

  ‘I know where you are, you slippery bitch.’ The voice was slurred. Drunk.

  She crawled into the lee of the wall, trying to insinuate herself into the hewn fabric of rough but comforting stone, the soaking pads of lichen and moss; petrified, that’s exactly what she was. She smeared mud on her face and her hood, and sank her feet into the freezing ooze between a bank of thistles and a hawthorn bush. Lawrence had a torch, and was cursing her as he climbed the stile. She held her breath. She was never going to escape. Lawrence Wall was a world-class athlete, adored by millions, a man who had built a career from speed, strength and intimidation on the pitch, whose name was a chant that rang round the stadium before the start of every match.

  ‘The Wall, the Wall don’t never cross the Wall, no way, no way, not any fucking day.’

  The rhyme rang in her head as she tried to still her panicky, ragged breathing. The torch light shone down, sliding over the lumps and bumps of misplaced stones and the straggly rosehips that sprouted through the craggy fissures in the wall. The beam crossed her mud-caked feet not once but twice. Now she was a piece of landscape, as fluid as mud, as cold as stone. The light then swung out into the field, left and right. It picked out the reflective eyes of a score of cattle only a dozen yards away, brooding and implacable, clouds of vapour rising from their cud-sodden mouths.

  The vision triggered a groan from her pursuer. This was a chance. Lawrence was a city boy. Even getting him here for a supposedly romantic weekend two months into their relationship had been a trial. He preferred terraced streets to hills, motorways to lanes, and manicured stadium turf to its real country cousin. Countryside was as much a mystery to him as the moons of Neptune. He’d never admit to being afraid of cattle, or afraid of anything. But actions speak louder. He wouldn’t follow her there. Five freezing rain-sodden minutes passed, and she heard him get back into the Range Rover and roar off.

  * * *

  Mick Tasker rarely got to bed before one-thirty on a Saturday night, otherwise he might have missed it. He and Mary had been the licensees of The Hare at Thewick for only a few weeks, and balancing the till, clearing the bars and correctly loading the idiosyncratic dishwasher still took time. The locals were always reluctant to head off home before midnight, especially on a night like tonight. Squally rain had been forecast, and at seven that evening it had swept in from the Irish Sea and across the hills and vales of Lancashire. Mick had stoked the fireplaces in the two lounges and the snug while rain dripped from the moss-blocked gutters and pattered on the metal tables still stacked outside from the long-forgotten summer. The pub’s rusting metal sign squeaked in the wind, and the weed-strewn hanging baskets twisted on their chains. With all that racket they might have been at sea. It would certainly have been easy to miss the frantic knocking at the kitchen door. Mary was already in bed, and the bar staff had long gone home. Wiping his hands on a tea towel Mick walked through the still-lit kitchen, and saw a tallish figure in a filthy grey hooded top banging on the window.

  ‘We’re long closed, mate. Go home to bed,’ he said in his most authoritative tone. He didn’t know all the locals yet, but there were some he’d seen already who didn’t know when enough was enough.

  ‘Please, I need the police. My boyfriend attacked me. Please, I’m freezing.’ A woman’s voice, educated. Not a local accent. There was blood and dirt on the pane where she’d pressed her face and filthy hands against the glass.

  ‘Don’t you have a mobile?’

  ‘He’s got it, and my purse, everything. Please. Please. Please.’

  ‘Alright, alright.’ With a heavy sigh, Mick undid the lock, and opened the door a crack. He saw a flash of pleading green eyes under the soaking hood. Rain-darkened hair framed a muddy face, and a top lip crusted with blood. Thin, soaked pyjama bottoms, spattered with blood, bruised and swollen feet. She was shivering.

  ‘You had better come in, love. Christ, you are in a state,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  She flipped down the hood, and despite the mud, the bruises and the matted hair, Mick absorbed the slender neck, the curves, the poise, the class. He realised with a jolt that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  Mary had come downstairs and was framed in the doorway in a bathrobe, watching the girl wiping mud off her face and legs with the hand towel Mick had given her. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Beaten up by the boyfriend,’ Mick said, indicating the woman with his thumb, as if it happened every day. ‘Wants us to phone the bobbies.’

  ‘They’ll not come out all the way from Clitheroe, duck. Not this late. Not for a domestic. What we’ve got to do is get you out of those wet clothes, before you die of cold. What’s your name?’

  ‘Call me Lydia.’ She flashed a quick but dazzling smile, shyly pulling a hank of hair across the swelling bruise below her eye.

  ‘Earth calling Mick,’ Mary said, prodding him in the back. ‘Stop gawping and get her a brandy, while I find her something to wear. She’ll need ice for that eye.’

  When he returned from the bar, Mick found the woman in the snug, on a wooden chair close to the fire wearing his bathrobe and holding an ice pack to her eye. He gave her the drink. ‘On the house on this occasion, but please don’t tell the locals.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Realising he was staring again, he then set to at the fire where the dying embers were receptive to some judicious poking.

  Mary arrived with the cordless phone. ‘Is there anyone who can come pick you up?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone in the area. Do you mind if I make an international call?’

  Mick heard his own sharp intake of breath. ‘Of course,’ he heard himself say, surprised at his largesse.

  ‘I’ll be quite quick and I’ll pay you back.’ That smile again. ‘Thank you very much.’

  Mary guided Mick away, telling him to organise a hot bath, turn on the electric blanket in the spare room, and get some fluffy socks warmed on the radiator. She went to look for bandages, scissors and antiseptic. A little later Mick found himself outside the bathr
oom door, listening to Lydia sobbing in the bath. The face he had glimpsed seemed somehow familiar, not a person he knew as such, but one that reminded him of some glamorous TV actress, though he couldn’t think who might be about in this neck of the woods. Through the frosted glass the girl’s long back was a slender pink blancmange topped by a dark swirl of hair. He tapped on the glass and asked her if she needed a cup of tea. She sniffed, thanked him and said yes please, but did not turn around as he had hoped.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Mary said, manhandling Mick away from the door.

  ‘Did you see her feet?’ he said. ‘They are in a terrible state. They really need bandaging.’

  ‘Well, don’t you even think of offering to do it. First aid certificate, or no first aid certificate, Michael Philip Tasker. I’ll do it.’ She wagged a warning finger at him.

  The mood of suspicion lasted until Mary had taken care of the girl, shown her into one of the guest rooms and had come to join him in bed. As she slipped under the covers, Mary tossed him the copy of Marie Claire magazine from her bedside table. He picked it up and gasped at the cover. ‘ “Mira Roskova: The new face of beauty”? Never heard of her.’

  ‘Now there’s a surprise. Advertises posh shampoo, lovely Swiss chocolates, designer handbags, Asprey’s jewellery. Pretty much everything I never get bought,’ Mary said, flicking absent-mindedly through a copy of Cosmopolitan.

  ‘But she said she was Lydia.’

  ‘Oh get a grip, Mick. Really.’

  * * *

  Mira lay very still in a bed she had never wanted to return to, watching an unwelcome Sunday morning slide in through Lowe Mill Barn’s pale yellow curtains. The clock showed ten forty-five. Lawrence was out of it, rumbling away; a dormant cider-drenched volcano. In the half light he was a brutalist monument: giant concrete shoulder, a blue-green python of an arm sleeved in tattoos and a craggy crop-haired boulder of a head, with that scorpion tattoo on the scalp that she had never liked.