Sky Garden Read online

  Sky Garden

  Jenny Schwartz

  On the rooftops of London, you can be anyone.

  A year ago, Lanie Briers escaped a serial killer. She grew up in a theatre family and her act was mediumship, but not anymore. Life, now, is a hidden retreat above a quirky Bloomsbury museum, where she waits and watches.

  Nick Tawes is an unexpected intrusion. He’s a landscape architect filming a television series on roof gardens, and he intends to build one in Lanie’s aerial territory. He has his own demons, old family troubles, that lure Lanie out of her refuge and into living again.

  But as summer progresses and the sky garden grows, Lanie’s enemy is closing in—because some secrets must go to the grave.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 1

  A cage, but he held the key.

  Nick Tawes shone his torch at the iron grille of the outside staircase, unlocked it, then lunged to catch it as it swung heavily towards the wall of the house. Fatigue from the long flight from Tokyo dragged at his muscles and he swore beneath his breath. He should have waited to visit, the roof wasn’t going anywhere, but he didn’t want to be in England, and old ghosts had him restless.

  He slipped inside the staircase, shoulders hunching against the claustrophobic compression of its barred sides. The house was a Georgian townhouse, four stories high. For the first floor, he took the tight spiral of stairs fast, before his foot slipped on an uneven step and he had to grab the railing, his weight pressing against the external bars. He took the remaining steps slower as the bars vanished, no longer required to protect inhabitants from street-level, illegal intruders.

  Head down, he forced his feet up the endless, dizzying stairs.

  Abruptly, the wall of the house ended. He swayed, blinking at the transition from shadowed darkness to light. He’d reached the roof. His jetlagged brain bounced between explanations of neon light or moonlight as the source of illumination. Tokyo roofs were seldom dark; London skies seldom cloudless in his memory.

  Concentrating on his feet, he negotiated the awkward step up and over a concrete wall edge, and down onto the roof. He looked up.

  A woman looked back at him.

  Soundless, he watched her mouth open and the plate she held drop. Water and soapsuds fountained up.

  The light came from a kitchen window.

  His brain kicked into gear. “It’s all right. I’m from the solicitor’s. I have a key.” Ridiculous words, but the fear in her expression demanded reassurance.

  She held a phone up, soap suds running down her bare forearm to the pushed-up sleeve of an apple-green pullover. The phone was brandished as a weapon.

  “A key,” he mouthed exaggeratedly. “I have a key.”

  A stand-off. He didn’t dare move. He must have frightened her when she’d felt safe and alone on this rooftop. He couldn’t understand how she and her kitchen were here at all.

  She leaned forward across the sink and pushed open the window. “Who are you?” Her voice was cool and clear, confident and laced with command. But the hand holding her phone, shook.

  “Nick Tawes, landscape architect. I’m here to look at the roof.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the roof.”

  “No. I mean…” He didn’t know what he meant. “I got the key from the solicitor’s, just before his office closed. Then I dumped my gear at a hotel, showered and came here.” He was rambling. He shook his head, trying to clear it, to focus. “I wanted to see the roof, what we’re working with.”

  “You can’t look at a roof at night. It’s dark.”

  “I brought a torch.” He showed her Exhibit A. Only when he saw her expression did he realize that burglars and worse also used torches. “You could phone the solicitor. He must have an afterhours number.” Mustn’t he? Surely clients got in trouble after business hours? “He can vouch for me. Mrs. Smith.” He wrenched the name from his hazy brain. Nelson had said the woman was delighted with the idea of them working here. “The owner of the museum agreed to everything.”

  “Mrs. Smith hasn’t said anything to me about work on the roof.”

  “She didn’t tell me you were here, either.” And now that he’d gotten over the shock of that discovery, he automatically assessed the structure in front of him. Door, kitchen window, another window high up and barred. Probably a bathroom. A corner, turning blankly, the space beyond it showing the city. He ignored the view. Back the other way, along the side of the house, soft light glowed past the corner, indicating another window or windows on that wall.

  Someone had built a box of a flat on the roof—and damn Nelson for not mentioning it.

  The roof was meant to be empty. A project on the top of a soulless museum. Something that didn’t engage the emotions and required no negotiations with residents; something easy.

  “I live here,” the woman said.

  Her quiet statement brought his wandering attention slamming back to her.

  She was young, mid-twenties, with wide brown eyes and pale skin. She looked ordinary; extraordinary only for being here.

  He’d scared her. “I’ll come back in daylight.”

  “Not to the roof.”

  Guilt at scaring her faded a bit. He mightn’t have wanted this project, but it was his now. The program was planned around it.

  “Meet me in the museum, tomorrow,” she continued. “There’ll be people around.”

  And just that quickly, he felt a bully and an intruder, again.

  She might be staking a claim to “his” roof, but with possession being nine-tenths of the law, she had a right.

  If only Nelson were in London, he’d let his friend deal with her. But Nelson was in Mexico, confirming details of their final project. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

  “Can you lock the staircase door behind you?” She made no apology for speeding the unwanted guest.

  He nodded, already swinging away; regretting the impulse that had driven him here. “Yes.” Then he halted, looking over his shoulder. “I don’t know your name.”

  A pause. She had her hand on the window. “Lanie. Lanie Briers.” She slammed the window closed.

  Lanie watched the man shrug before he clattered down the staircase. Her concentration broke when he vanished. She stopped straining her eyes, and saw again her reflection in the glass, the fluorescent lights of the kitchen combining with the darkness outside to work as a transparent mirror. She looked haunted. Fear made her eyes huge and thinned her lips, stretching them back against her teeth. Her skin was tight over her bones.

  She dropped her phone onto the bench beside the sink.

  Whoever Nick Tawes was, and whatever he intended to do to the roof, he wasn’t interested in her. He wasn’t here for her.

  She dried her cold, wet hands on a tea towel, and wiped the sink and cupboards where the water had splashed. Her pullover was wet, too, and had soaked through to her skin. She shuddered because the clamminess was like being touched by a ghost, as if ectoplasmic seaweed caressed her with every breath she took.

  Breathe deep. Don’t let the panic control you.

  She snapped the roller blind down, for once careless of its age, and walked the perimeter of her small home, closing blinds that she’d grown accustomed to leaving open. In the b
athroom, she stripped off and stepped into a hot shower to wash away the chill in her bones and the sweat of fear on her skin.

  Warm flannel pajamas and her woolen dressing gown were an automatic choice. Growing up on tour with her parents, she’d learned the value of the unglamorous combination. Short-term accommodation was generally draughty and cold. She snuggled her toes into the softness of sheepskin slippers and shuffled the few steps from her bed to the narrow sofa in front of the television.

  Through the wide doorway to the kitchen she could see her sewing project spread out on the table, but she couldn’t concentrate on it, tonight. The navy blue dress with its white polka dots would have to wait to be hemmed. Her nerves were jumpy and her hand-stitching would look like a four-year-old’s attempt.

  Besides, sewing was for idle hours, a hobby.

  Her laptop, abandoned on the low coffee table in front of the sofa, showed a political blog. It wasn’t one of the more serious ones. Instead, it showcased real life gaffes and manufactured memes. There were lots and lots of unflattering photos of British politicians and their hangers-on.

  Lanie averted her gaze from its screen and fumbled the laptop shut.

  She needed noise and laughter, normality. Her pulse boomed in her ears, a kettle-drum of panic, commanding her to run. She found an American comedy show on the television, and turned the sound up. The jokes weren’t funny and the canned laughter grated on her nerves. She forced herself to echo it. Laughter told the body that things were okay, and she needed her body to believe her. So she listened and laughed and barely followed the threadbare plot. The plot didn’t matter. She watched with intense concentration, waiting for that magic moment when the adrenaline rush of panic ended and her muscles went limp.

  There. Finally. She embraced the slump, reveled in it, let her body fall limply as she no longer had to clamp down on the urge for fight-or-flight. This was the moment. Now, her thoughts wouldn’t skitter like panicked mice. She could be a rational person again.

  Panic was like being possessed, and she hated it. Control was very important to her. She breathed deeply, hearing the exhalations steady, and prolonging them. Hyperventilating only encouraged anxiety.

  No need to wonder though at what had triggered this panic attack. The roof had become her refuge, and she hadn’t anticipated a stranger’s intrusion.

  She released her concentration on breathing and tucked her feet under her. Panic averted, her brain ticked over the problem presented to her.

  Nick Tawes had a key from Mrs. Smith’s solicitor and instructions to repair the roof of the museum. Lanie hadn’t noticed any damage to the roof, but Mrs. Smith was a dauntingly organized woman, and Lanie could believe that she scheduled maintenance on a seven year plan. This year might be the Year of the Roof. A little thing like being eighty eight years old herself wouldn’t stop Mrs. Smith from instituting seven year plans.

  So the roof was a likely project, even if the builder had chosen a funny time to inspect it.

  She had to accept it and the invasion of her privacy until it was finished. She picked up a cushion and hugged it. Hopefully, work on the roof would be little more than an inspection and some minor repairs. There was a gutter she could point out…

  She wasn’t sure if Nick Tawes would notice it. He’d been an odd mix of distracted and astute. He’d gathered fast enough that she was terrified. She had to give him credit for backing off. But he’d also been vague, unfocussed, almost swaying where he stood. She replayed the scene in her mind and couldn’t place his accent in the few words he’d said. There’d been a drawl in the terse words, an overlay of other places coloring an English accent.

  Had he really said he was staying in an hotel? Odd.

  He’d had an advantage over her in the encounter. She’d been lit by the harsh fluorescent lighting of the kitchen, clearly visible, while he’d stood in the overflow of it, merging with the shadows. She hadn’t been able to see his face. She’d had an impression of height and swift movement, of mussy dark hair and fixity of purpose, somewhat blurred.

  “Tired.” Belatedly, the right word occurred to her.

  Exhaustion was like drunkenness: the swaying, the disjointed speech, the fixation on an idea. In this case, his decision to view the roof even though it was dark.

  He was exhausted. Possibly he’d flown in from somewhere; hence, his mumbling of booking into an hotel.

  And if he was that tired, she wouldn’t expect to see him tomorrow until late in the morning or in the afternoon.

  Relief sent a surge of energy through her muscles. She dropped the cushion. The few extra hours felt like a reprieve. She didn’t want her space invaded, not even for the short time required for a roof inspection. She didn’t want things happening outside of her control.

  The canned laughter on the television ended. The absence of maniacal noise caught her attention. A documentary started, with termite mounds stretching up to the stark blue of an Australian outback sky. Then the scene was a jungle, deep and mysteriously green. Ants. The documentary was on ants. She watched the insects scurrying busily, purposively re-making their world. None were important individually, but together, they created entire ant cities.

  She looked away from the screen and blinked, jolted, to see the blinds closed and the view she sought, shut out.

  Like an ant, her own city stretched around her. She’d adopted London as home. If she were to stand at the window and lift the blind, she’d see the lights of London impressing human ambition against the clouded sky. With all those lights, it was seldom truly dark in the city. The light bounced back, diffuse and unreliable, from the smothering clouds.

  But unlike ants, Londoners strove independently. They kept secrets and competed with one another. They might socialize, but then they withdrew into private spaces. They pursued their individual agendas.

  Her gaze flickered to the laptop and away. No. She’d defeated her panic; no point testing her precarious calm.

  Leaving the ants to the television presenter’s droning narration, she went into the kitchen to make a mug of tea. While the kettle boiled, she emptied the sink of dishes, and rinsed and stacked them to drain. The blankness of the closed blind above the sink bothered her, but not enough to raise it. She still felt fragile.

  It was disturbing to realize just how flimsy her sense of security was. Just how quickly it could be attacked. She might be on a quest, but she was also the hunted. Maybe.

  She put a hand on her stomach as panic quivered its nerves.

  Just for tonight, she’d draw the safety of the small flat around her and indulge in its fantasy that time had stopped in the 1950s. This was her refuge, a place outside of time and above the city. True, Nick Tawes had demonstrated how easily the fantasy tore, but the doors were deadlocked.

  She wiped dry the sparkling chrome taps and padded back across the patterned linoleum floor to the carpeted living area-slash-bedroom. A quarter circle of curtaining allowed her to hide her bed if she wished to, but she never did, so the curtain stayed pushed back against the wall. She never invited anyone up here to her home.

  But as Nick Tawes had proven, apparently invitations weren’t required.

  Lanie’s morning commute amused her, even if this morning she looked around carefully before stepping out of the flat. She locked it behind her, swapped keys and walked five paces to the museum’s old elevator, unlocked its cage, pressed a button and listened to the doors rattle open. The clunky ride down in the little box with its flickering single globe was her commute.

  In winter, that short commute had been a heaven-sent respite from the fog, cold and even snow, that others had faced. She’d been snug above it all.

  She gave the racketing elevator an affectionate pat.

  Whoever had modernized the house in the 1950s had respected its Georgian elegance to some extent. The elevator was tucked behind the sweeping main staircase. It awed her each time she considered the sheer nerve of whoever had punched an elevator shaft through the guts of the house.r />
  Lacking a mirror in the elevator, she nonetheless patted her hair. The slick upswept chignons of the 1950s were far harder to achieve than people thought, especially given that her hair was only just long enough to stay in one. However, the hair-do matched the chic vintage wool suit she wore with its deep wine color and white silk blouse. She hadn’t been able to find shoes the same color, but black heels were acceptable, and she’d done her make-up to match.

  She hadn’t cared for vintage clothes before, but living in the time capsule of her flat, the temptation to go all-out was irresistible. So she’d started prowling the street markets for clothes, and especially accessories, from the 1950s, and snapped up sewing patterns from the era. Then she could make her own costumes. And they were costumes. A tiny part of her knew that she was employing a classic distraction ploy: dazzle people with a costume or some outrageous trick of appearance, and they tended not to notice anything else. Not the shape of your nose, the line of your jaw, the way you walked. There was nothing quite so anonymous as an eye-catching costume.

  The elevator doors wheezed shut behind her as she dashed across the hallway and punched the security code into the panel by the front door. It didn’t disable the security system but switched it from its overnight mode to simply guarding the perimeter. Then she walked more slowly back across the tiled floor and pushed open the green baize door to the kitchen.

  She liked this room with its white-washed walls and flagstone floor, the old gas stove and coal-fired range, the stone sink and the imposing pine table in the center of the room. “Cook’s chair”, a solid rocking chair padded with cushions, occupied the cozy corner by the range, and in winter that was a great place to be. Forget central heating. When a school group was booked to come through, Lanie lit the stove and let them see and feel how earlier generations had cooked. On those days, that rocking chair was the best seat in the house.

  Crisp cotton curtains in apple green and white framed the windows. A braided rug in faded red and green lay by the back door beside an iron boot scraper in the shape of a hedgehog. There was no tablecloth on the table because it was a working table. It was where vegetables were prepared for soup, pastry rolled out for pies, and bread kneaded. Silver could be polished at it or servants gather around it for an early breakfast.