Strangers

by C. L. Taylor

  She searches through the soft, fleecy pockets again. Nothing. Nothing on the floor either, or on the bed. Nothing on or under the chest of drawers. Nothing in the laundry basket. Nothing caught up in the folds of her damp T-shirt. She searches the room from top to bottom, then wraps her dressing gown around her and slides back the security chain on her door. She hurries into the bathroom and scans the top of the toilet cistern, the sink, the floor, even the shower, then walks the length of the corridor, scanning each gap between the boards. But it’s not there. She turns slowly and stares at the closed door to her landlord’s room. The small scrap of newspaper, carefully pressed between two thin pieces of cardboard, didn’t just disappear. Edward took it back.

  Chapter 20

  Gareth

  His mum is asleep in the armchair when Gareth gets home, the TV booming out the seven o’clock news. He stands in the doorway, watching for the rise and fall of her chest. He can’t remember when he started doing that, checking that his mum was asleep rather than … the alternative. Was it after the official dementia diagnosis and he realised that both of their lives had swerved, roughly and painfully, onto a new course? Or was it before that? He hadn’t ever thought of his mum as old before. She always had so much energy, always visiting this person or that, forever baking and cleaning, gardening and shopping. Maybe he’d started to worry about her around the same time he’d looked in the mirror one morning and hadn’t recognised the tired, lined man staring back at him. Ageing didn’t creep up on him, he didn’t notice a wrinkle here and a dark spot there. It was as though he looked in the mirror one day and, BAM, he was stunned by what he saw. Nothing could have prepared him for the shock of acknowledging the jowly, tired man it had taken him forty-eight years to become. He started growing his goatee the very next day.

  As he watches his mum sleep he thinks about his dad, about the mental image he’s been carrying around for the last twenty years. His dad at fifty-seven, his hair more grey than brown, with a lined, sagginess to his face that hadn’t been there in his forties. Just ten years older than Gareth is now. Until the other day, he’d never imagined him as an old man. And now he was struggling to concentrate at work. Even though he was convinced that Mackesy was behind the postcards he couldn’t stop himself abandoning whatever he was doing and zooming in every time he spotted a male with white-grey hair amongst the shoppers. But none of the men were wearing an olive-green jacket. None of them had a military posture. And none of them were his dad.

  He scans the living room, looking for anything out of place, and his gaze rests on the vase of flowers on top of the sideboard. Mackesy’s flowers. Sighing, he leaves the room and heads upstairs. He had a thought earlier, while he was at work, about the donation his mum had made. He’d jumped to the conclusion that she’d taken money out of her account to give Mackesy, but how could she? She’d never signed up for internet banking, her branch was in the centre of Bristol and she hadn’t used a bus in years. She didn’t send Sally or Yvonne out to get her some money either; he texted them both to check. He opens the door to his mum’s room then drops down to his knees and reaches around under the bed.

  For as long as he can remember his mum’s kept money in an old shoebox; to make sure she has enough at hand to pay tradesmen in cash or to slip into a birthday card. He counted it before he employed Sally and Yvonne three years ago, just in case either of them had sticky fingers. There was £220. He’s checked it sporadically since and there’s never been any less. He grunts as he pulls out the shoebox, then opens the lid and takes out the wad of cash, held together with an elastic band. He counts it quickly, his forefinger slipping over the notes – £140. So his mum gave Mackesy £80. He blows out his cheeks. It’s not as much as he feared but he was right to confront the man. The bunch of flowers he sent her had to have cost at least £40. Why do that unless he was buttering her up to donate more? Gareth puts the lid back on the box and slides it back under the bed. He’s told Sally and Yvonne that they’re not to let Mackesy in again and if he forces his way in they’re to call the police.

  He feels a bit lighter as he walks back down the stairs and wanders into the living room. His mum’s still asleep and the TV’s still blaring away. He reaches for the remote control on the side table beside her and inches the sound down bit by bit (too quickly and she’ll wake), then puts the remote back. He’s just about to head through to the kitchen to start making dinner when he notices something lying on the floor to the left of the armchair, something rectangular and white, centimetres from his mum’s loose fingers. He crouches down to pick it up then sways on the spot, darkness clouding his vision as he stands up too quickly. It’s a postcard, in the same neat cursive as the last one.

  To my darling Joan

  We will be together again. Very, very soon.

  I love you,

  John.

  And this time there’s no stamp.

  Chapter 21

  Gareth

  Thursday

  Gareth is standing on the top rung of the stepladder, one hand pressed against the outside wall of his house, the other gripping a drill, when someone shouts his name. He turns, carefully, to see Kath and Georgia leaving their house; Kath looks lovely in a black pencil skirt, grey jumper and low heels, while Georgia’s in her school uniform with a bag clutched to her chest and a scowl on her face. In an alternate universe, the one where he and Kath are an item, he’d probably tell her to put her feet up for a bit while he gave Georgia a lift to school on his way to work.

  But this is his reality, so he smiles instead. ‘Good morning!’

  ‘Your peephole’s a bit high, isn’t it?’ Kath points to the hole Gareth’s drilled above his front door.

  He gestures at the small black camera on the top step of the ladder. ‘CCTV.’

  ‘Ooh.’ She looks mildly impressed, as though he’s just announced that he’s getting a new car or an extension, then her expression changes. ‘You haven’t …’ she glances at Georgia, who’s turned away and is fiddling with her phone ‘… you haven’t been burgled, have you?

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. I’ve been meaning to put it up for a while. Mum’s not getting any better.’

  ‘Has she been going on walkabout then?’

  Walkabout. The word sounds vaguely ridiculous to Gareth’s ears. It reminds him of a book he read at school about a brother and sister who survived a plane crash in the Australian outback and then wandered around aimlessly, looking for help. His mother has never walked aimlessly anywhere. She’s always strode, Margaret Thatcher-like, swinging her handbag at her side. Even now, in the grip of dementia, she still moves with purpose through the house even if, once she enters a new room, she frequently forgets what she’s doing there. He’s had multiple conversations with her since her diagnosis, about how she shouldn’t go out unless accompanied by Sally, Yvonne or himself, but she refuses to listen.

  ‘No one’s going to keep me a prisoner in my own home.’ It was a dictat, rather than a discussion, the last time he brought it up.

  There’s only a small snatch of time – two or three hours tops – when she’s alone in the house each day and, while she’s unlikely to stray much further than the corner shop and post office at the end of the road, he finds himself holding his breath as he walks up the path and looks for the flicker of the television in the front room and the familiar shape of his mother in her favourite chair.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that the CCTV camera could keep an eye on her movements but now Kath’s mentioned it it’s definitely a bonus. His primary motivation is to catch Mackesy in the act of leaving another postcard. The first one was posted but the second one was almost certainly hand-delivered; it had to be, considering there was no stamp.

  ‘She’s allowed to go out,’ he says to Kath, then immediately regrets his sharp tone as her chin drops and she mutters, ‘Of course she is.’

  He’s tired, that’s why he’s being so prickly. He barely slept last night for worrying about his mum and the situation at wor
k. He came up with a plan for dealing with Dunford as he paced his room a little after midnight but now he’s not sure if he can go through with it. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but when he woke, and cool dawn light crept through the curtains, so did chest-crushing doubt.

  ‘I don’t often see you two leaving together,’ Gareth says, forcing a bright tone. ‘Getting a lift in are you, Georgia?’

  ‘We’ve got a meeting with her head of year.’ Kath silently mouths the word ‘bullying’.

  Georgia’s bent head and slumped shoulders reminds Gareth of himself as a teen. He can still remember waking up with a feeling of dread in his stomach and having to force his legs to walk through the school gates at the start of the day. He tries to think of something encouraging he can say but nothing that crosses his mind – they will stop eventually, I stood up to my bullies and won, I was bullied but I’m really successful now – is true. Instead he flashes the young girl what he hopes is an expression of empathy but suspects looks more like a gurn.

  ‘I’ll let you get off!’ He nods at Kath and raises a hand in goodbye. He’s already made the hole as big as it needs to be to feed the CCTV cable through to the camera but he picks up his drill anyway. It’s weighty and powerful and as he pulls the trigger he idly imagines the drill bit whirring its way through the centre of Liam Dunford’s forehead.

  I can do this, Gareth tells himself as he keys in the code to the cramped, airless room that serves as a bag and coat drop for the security staff – a toilet cubicle at one end, benches under the coat hooks and absolutely nothing else. When he started at the Meads thirteen years ago one wall housed a row of metal lockers, the sort you’d find in a swimming pool changing room, but they were ripped out at the end of last year because they were so damaged they’d become a health and safety hazard. Replacement lockers have been ordered but, in the interim, the guards have no choice but to hang up their belongings and hope their colleagues don’t have sticky fingers. There was a discussion about whether to install a CCTV camera in the room but it was ruled out because of the cost and disruption it would cause. At the time, Gareth was pissed off with management but now, as he surveys the row of largely black, grey and tan coats and jackets in front of him, he’s quietly grateful.

  Liam was waiting when he arrived at work, standing outside the CCTV office at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Today’s the day.’ He grinned at Gareth, revealing the penny-edge gap between his front teeth.

  ‘The day for what?’

  ‘That you give me a pay rise.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that. It’s set by head office. I can’t just magically award you extra cash. It’s just not possible.’

  Liam coughs. ‘Who said anything about getting head office involved? Like I said yesterday, five hundred pounds should be enough to give me a touch of amnesia.’

  Gareth shifted his weight to one side and leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. ‘You’re blackmailing me.’

  ‘That’s an unpleasant word. I prefer to think of it as two colleagues helping each other out. You don’t end up in the shit and I get a bit of cash to put towards my next holiday. We both win.’ Gareth laughed, a low, incredulous rumble. What planet was Liam living on, thinking he’d just hand over that kind of money? It was ridiculous. He glanced over his shoulder to check that no one more senior was walking up the stairs, then looked back at the man. ‘If you think I’m giving you anything, you can get fucked.’

  ‘Harsh, really harsh. Well, I guess you’ll need every penny you’ve got when Mark sacks you. You know he’s looking for any excuse. You said as much too the other week. Didn’t you, Gaz?’

  Gareth unfolded his arms and pulled himself up to his full height. He was a good four or five inches shorter than the other man and had to raise his chin to look at him. He clenched his hands into fists and drew back his shoulders.

  ‘Like I said, get fucked.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got? Good luck on the breadline!’ Liam raised a dismissive hand. ‘There’s a food bank in Bedminster if your mum gets hungry.’

  As Liam sauntered down the stairs, rage surged through Gareth like nothing he had ever felt before. It was as though a fire had been lit in the base of his brain. It spread rapidly, travelling down to his throat, his arms, his torso, his legs and he leapt forwards, hands reaching for Liam’s shoulders. He wanted to shove him and watch him tumble down the stairs. He wanted him to shut the fuck up. He wanted him gone. Dead.

  But as his fingertips grazed the thick fabric of Liam’s jacket the fire in him was damped down by a new thought. If you go to prison, what will happen to Mum? He snatched back his arms, feet see-sawing on the edge of the top step as he fought to keep his balance and Liam Dunford, completely oblivious to his sliding-doors fate, continued on down the stairs.

  A bead of sweat dribbles down Gareth’s back and settles under the thick elastic waistband of his jockey shorts as he surveys the row of bags and jackets. He pulls on a pair of latex gloves. Theft. Ironically, the offence most sacked security guards commit. That and brutality, but Liam’s been on his best behaviour recently and there isn’t time to wait for him to screw up again. No, what Gareth needs to do is transfer some of the valuables from the other guards’ bags into Liam’s sports holdall, then sit back and wait for the drama to unfold. He knows Liam will point the finger in his direction as soon as the crime is discovered but he’s pretty sure some of the other guards will back him up. Or at least he hopes they will. Old Larry who does the security for Mirage Fashions can’t stand Liam but he’s not sure how Adrian, Jakub and Hafeez feel. He knows Adrian’s been for beers with Liam before.

  Gareth twists his hands together, his palms sweating beneath the latex. He can’t do it. He can’t bring himself to rifle through his colleagues’ belongings. It’s not the kind of thing he does. He’s not a vengeful man. He’s not deceitful. There isn’t much he prides himself on, but he’s always been a man of integrity. ‘Upstanding’ – that’s the word his mum would use to describe him. Gareth Filer, a good, upstanding man. He can’t fit Liam up. That’s not who he is.

  Sighing, he peels off his gloves and chucks them into the bin in the corner, then he heads for the CCTV room to ring his boss. A man of integrity indeed. Why couldn’t he have been born an arsehole instead?

  Chapter 22

  Alice

  Alice is sitting on a hard plastic chair in the staff changing room chewing on her sandwich and grimacing at the combination of soggy bread and briny tinned tuna (it’s two days until pay day and it’s all she’s got left in the house). Her mobile vibrates on the table in front of her and the jingly jangly tones of Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ fill the air.

  ‘Hello?’ She frantically swallows back the last of her mouthful then promptly has a huge coughing fit as it goes down the wrong way. She reaches for her water bottle and takes a swig. ‘Sorry, I was just having my lunch.’

  ‘I could ring back later if it’s a bad time.’ There’s a note of impatience in DC Mitchell’s voice.

  ‘No, no. It’s fine. I can talk.’

  ‘Great. I just wanted to give you an update on Michael Easton. You said you thought he might be behind the damage to your car the other night.’

  I thought? Alice thinks. Aren’t you supposed to be the detective?

  ‘Okay …’ she says.

  ‘Well, we got in touch with Michael and he was in Barcelona the night your car was scratched. And he has witnesses to prove it.’

  Alice takes a moment to let the news sink in.

  ‘Has there been any other communication from Michael at all?’ the detective asks. ‘Emails, texts, notes. Anything at all?’

  ‘No. Nothing since the Facebook message warning me off Simon.’

  ‘That was the one that ended …’ Alice hears the sound of a mouse being clicked ‘… “Who is Michael?” Right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is there anyone else who could be behind this, Alice? Anyone you’ve fallen out w
ith? Friends? Family? Former employees?’

  The face of the last person Alice sacked surfaces in her mind – a nineteen-year-old called Jenna who shouted ‘you can stick your stupid fucking job up your saggy fucking arse’ as she stormed out of the shop. But that was fourteen months ago and, other than a near miss when she spotted Jenna in the cinema queue one night and waited round the corner until she’d bought her ticket, she’s hasn’t seen her once.

  ‘Not really no,’ she says. ‘Although …’

  ‘Although what?’

  ‘Simon, the guy I’m seeing, he mentioned something to me about an ex-fiancée who he didn’t part on best terms with. Her name’s Flora. I don’t know her last name.’

  ‘Did he mention where she lives?’

  ‘No. I’m guessing she’s in Bristol but I’m not sure.’

  ‘Right. Well, we’re keeping an open mind at the moment, Alice, about who might be behind all this. But I don’t think you need to worry about Michael. When I spoke to him yesterday he said he’d be in Barcelona for at least the next six weeks. He said he was staying with a friend. The implication was that he was doing a bit of soul-searching.’

  ‘Oh.’ The tight knot in Alice’s stomach doesn’t loosen. It’s the unpredictability of it all that’s the scariest thing. ‘So what do I do now?’ she asks DC Mitchell.

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’