A Face in the Crowd: An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller

by Kerry Wilkinson

  There’s another thing that has stuck with me: Harry asking about a ‘crazy ex-boyfriend’. It didn’t sound like he meant it as a joke, even though he laughed it off. The timing is extraordinary, with it being the anniversary of the crash. First the money, then the police turning up, all the times I’ve run into Melanie, and now Harry being attacked. There are little things, too. The phone calls from Unknown, Karen’s money.

  As for Harry, I shouldn’t have kissed him – I know that for certain now. When our lips touched, there was no spark; no weak-at-the-knee moment – if that’s even a real thing. The little voice that won’t go away tells me I can’t be so picky at thirty; that Harry seems nice enough. It’s surely better than being alone…?

  The streets are largely empty as I walk across town with my hands in my pockets, but it isn’t long before light starts to seep around the buildings as the sun creeps above the horizon. In seemingly a blink, the main road is full of queuing traffic, so I cut in a few streets to avoid the fumes. Kids in school uniform are booting a ball along the middle of the road, while one of them commentates on what’s going on.

  The yawns begin as I round the corner to take me onto the street on which Hamilton House sits. My bed is calling and I can almost feel the softness of the pillows as Billy snuffles at my feet.

  I’m at the pelican crossing waiting to get onto the other side of the road when I realise there’s somebody standing outside our building. The green light flashes as the beep to cross echoes along the street, but I stand transfixed by the man who’s watching Hamilton House.

  It’s the person who Elaine pointed out was standing close to the hedges near the pub after the memorial service. The gatecrasher. He’s wearing the same green fleece as the previous day but has added a backpack this time around. As I watch, he angles his phone up towards the building and takes what I assume to be a photo. It’s with a chill that I follow his gaze upwards, realising it might well be my apartment he’s trying to picture.

  I move away from the crossing, tucking myself in next to a hedge and not losing the irony of how our roles are now reversed. The man scratches at his ridiculous sideburns and it’s hard to know where the hair begins and ends. I watch for five minutes, but he does little other than check his phone, scratch his backside and watch the building. Figuring he isn’t going anywhere soon, I continue along the opposite side of the street behind him and then cross at the far end. There’s a lane that runs along the rear of the building and I follow it until I’m at the back door. In the four years I’ve lived in Hamilton House, I’ve only used this entrance once. That was after a fire alarm that, predictably, left everyone shivering in the cold all because someone downstairs had burnt their toast.

  It takes me a moment to remember which key is the right one, but I eventually bluster my way into a freezing corridor next to the laundry room. I hurry up the stairs and let myself into my apartment. The room is a mess, with the unmade bed down from the wall, taking up enough space that it would give any feng shui expert a coronary.

  Billy is in his own bed but clambers to his feet as I enter the flat. His routine has been blown to pieces in the past few days and he must be struggling to know what’s going on. I take his lead from the back of the front door, which would usually instigate a mini Staffie-shaped bull rush. Not on this occasion. He mooches over to me with his head down.

  I crouch and rub his back. ‘Oh, Bill… have you caught something nasty off Judge?’

  He nuzzles into my palm but lowers his head enough for me to attach his lead.

  ‘I need you to be big and fearsome,’ I tell him.

  Fearsome is not Billy on his best of days – he’s more likely to lick a person to death, or sleep on their feet to stop them moving. If Judge is ill, then Billy seems to have it, too. I’ll have to ask Nick if he took Judge to the vet and, if so, what was said.

  Billy traipses down the stairs at my side and we leave via the front door. I head directly towards the man, hoping the presence of Billy will give me something of an edge. It’s immediately obvious that the man recognises me. I glance to him and his eyes are wide with recognition, even though I have no idea who he is. His hair is redder up close, especially the beard, and he looks younger – perhaps late twenties, as opposed to the early forties I’d guessed from distance. His green jacket is covered with sew-on badges, though it’s hard to make out any specific words or images from a brief look.

  I’m not quite sure what I’m doing. There’s a part of me that wants to stop and ask him who he is; but another entirely that wants to hide. I sense the man’s eyes on me as I walk past with Billy, trying to keep my pace even and my hand steady on the lead, as if I haven’t noticed him. If there is any danger, then Billy doesn’t seem to realise. I was hoping there might be another person or two on the street, but living in a quiet area has its disadvantages. Either way, I’ve got my closer look.

  As I continue along the street, I try to block out the distant hum of traffic and focus on whether there are footsteps behind me. Would this man really be following openly in something close to daylight?

  Billy pulls gently on his lead to head off to a bush where he sniffs and raises his leg. I wait for him, not daring to look behind… not yet. When Billy has finished, I lead him away from the hedge towards a zebra crossing. There’s a moment in which I think the BMW is going to plough on through without stopping, but, at the last moment, the driver notices me and stomps on his brake. He scowls through the windscreen at the inconvenience of not being allowed to rattle along residential roads at twice the speed limit.

  It’s as I step onto the road that I risk the merest of glimpses to the side – to where the man from outside my flat is following at a distance. He’s clutching his phone in front of him and possibly filming.

  On the other side of the crossing, there is an entrance to a park. The gates are open and a group of children in school uniform are surrounding one of the benches.

  I stop a fraction inside the gates and listen for the revs of the BMW’s engine. It’s humming gently, waiting at the crossing and then, as soon as the car pulls away, I step out from behind the gate and turn to face the man in the green jacket.

  He’s so stunned that he jumps backwards, almost stumbling off the pavement into the road. I half want Billy to snarl or growl protectively, but he seems uninterested in anything but sniffing the base of the gate.

  ‘Why are you following me?’ I ask, trying to sound firm and confident.

  The man glances quickly both ways and then notices the group of children. His eyes widen again, the unease apparent. I’ve seen dramas with seasoned experts at following people. This guy is not a pro.

  ‘You were at the service yesterday,’ I add. ‘Then at the pub afterwards. Now you’re here. Who are you?’

  He opens his mouth but no words come out. I wonder if I’ve misread things because, instead of being overbearing or intimidating, this man is tongue-tied and timid. I don’t recognise any of the symbols on his sew-on badges but one has a slogan, ‘Believe in Reality’. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean but it seems like the type of supposedly deep nonsense someone would post on Facebook.

  I reach for my phone to take a photo, but Billy chooses that moment to pull against his lead and yank me into the park. By the time I’ve spun around to tell him ‘no’, the man is rushing away along the pavement at something close to a jog. I could probably catch him, but the young people have noticed something going on. One of them shouts across to ask if I’m all right and I end up flustered, trying to say I am while, at the same time, giving off every indication that I’m not. A couple of the boys in uniform start walking towards me.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ one of them asks.

  Billy has somehow got his lead wedged between my feet and in an effort to disentangle myself, I stumble into the gatepost before righting myself. When I look up, the man is almost at the corner of the hedge that surrounds the park.

  ‘My dog tangling me up,’ I reply
.

  The lads continue over to me anyway. One of them pokes his head around the corner and looks both ways along the street; then they both crouch to make a fuss of Billy. He’s still not quite his exuberant self, but he sniffs both of the lads’ hands and lets them pet his head.

  ‘Thanks for checking on me,’ I say.

  It’s not the first time that I’ve been upstaged by Billy. The lads call him a good boy and smooth his head and back until they realise their friends have started to walk off without them.

  The lads stand and take one last look towards me before heading after their friends. When it’s just us, I rub the back of Billy’s head myself. ‘You could’ve chased after that man,’ I tell him. He looks at me as if to say, I would’ve done if you weren’t busy falling over my lead. He has a point.

  We head back over the zebra crossing and amble towards home. It wasn’t that long ago I was ready to return to bed, but the weirdness of being followed has woken me up. I have the sense that the man in the green jacket wanted to talk to me, as opposed to specifically follow.

  I’m lost in those thoughts as the shadow of Hamilton House falls across the street. I almost miss it and it’s only because Billy pulls towards the lamp post that I don’t. Taped to the lamp post is the thing I’ve been dreading since Friday. There’s one big word at the top of the poster: LOST.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I can’t stop staring at the poster: it is simple but effective, with black ink on white paper. It must have been taped sometime since last night. I was so focused on the footsteps behind me that I missed it on my first pass.

  LOST!

  I misplaced something important on the No. 24 bus on Friday 29 October. If you have any information please email me

  There’s an email address at the bottom and that’s it. It feels incomplete, and yet whoever wrote this could hardly have put, ‘I lost £3,640 on the bus’. If he or she had left a phone number, they could have been bombarded with any number of crank calls. I guess it had to be something of this nature.

  I could ignore it, pretend it’s not there or that I never saw it, but this represents more than that. This is a test of who I am as a person. When I first realised what was inside the envelope, I told myself I would hand it in. Then, when I spent a bit of the money, I told myself I would replace it. Gradually, over the past few days, all of that has eroded to the point that I’ve blown through a thousand pounds. Am I that person, or am I someone who’ll email this person and say I found the envelope?

  Money does strange things to people.

  I take a photo of the poster and, after entering the hall, I let Billy off his lead and we head up to the apartment. He lags behind, tired from the morning walk. I end up waiting for him at the top of the stairs as he nudges past me, head drooped to the ground. After I unlock the door, he pokes his way in and immediately heads for his bed.

  It’s as I’m about to close the door that I notice a sliver of light arcing across the landing floor. The source is quickly obvious: the door of Jade’s old apartment is open a crack. I stare at it for a second, wondering if it means someone’s about to pop out or in. When nobody does, I head into my own flat, leaving my door open a small amount in case I hear any movement from the corridor.

  I swill out Billy’s water bowl and put down a fresh lot, then spoon some of his food into a separate dish. Billy would normally already be getting under my feet, ready to pounce the moment the bowl touches the ground, but when I look over to him, he’s on top of the blankets that line his bed, his ears down, eyes closed. I pick up the bowls and cross the room to hunch next to him, before ruffling his ears. His breathing is steady but even and he opens his eyes to acknowledge me.

  ‘Hungry?’ I ask him.

  Billy rolls his head to the side and I tickle his chin. He laps the water and sniffs the food, though makes no attempt to eat anything. I spend a couple of minutes at his side, but it seems as if all he wants to do is rest – which is something I can understand.

  I return to the hall where the apartment door opposite is still ajar. I take my key and pull my own door closed and then check both ways along the empty corridor before stepping across to the other side. I knock on the frame itself and call ‘hello…?’ through the slit.

  Nothing.

  I knock once more, check both ways again and then gently give the door a nudge. It creaks open ominously, like something from a horror movie before the bad guy surprises the plucky hero.

  ‘Hello…?’

  There’s no reply and I take a single step into the apartment. When Jade lived here, I would occasionally catch a glimpse of the room within, but I’ve never been inside before.

  ‘Hi…?’

  I wait on the precipice; one foot in, one out. Nobody comes to interrupt me. If anybody is inside the flat, then they’re hiding. The decision is made, so I step fully inside and turn to take in the apartment. For the most part, it’s a mirror image of mine. There’s one big room, with part of it separated into a kitchenette. The biggest difference is that it’s significantly cleaner and emptier. There’s a sofa and a small wooden table – but that’s it. The floor is covered with the same kind of vinyl that’s on mine – but it’s brighter and newer. The walls are bare: no photographs or other decoration.

  After another check that the corridor is clear, I push the door until it’s almost closed behind me and return inside. There is a bed built into the wall, but when I ease it down, it is only a bare mattress. It doesn’t look as if anyone has slept here recently.

  I push the bed back into the wall and then spot an Ethernet cable plugged into the wall near the window. The lead has been coiled neatly and left on the bare floor and there’s no sign of whatever it might have been attached to.

  The kitchen cupboards and drawers are empty and there are no products in the shower room. I’ve done a full lap of the apartment and arrive back at the door, wondering where the music I’ve heard comes from. All I can think is that it could be somebody’s phone hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker. If it is, then there’s no sign of a speaker here.

  I’m about to leave when I remember the one place I’ve missed. If our flats truly are mirrors of one another, then there should be a wardrobe built into the wall close to the shower room. The handle is hidden within a foldaway panel, which wrenches outwards with a low, groaning squeak. The inside is dark and the rack is empty except for a single item which beams bright through the gloom.

  It’s so surprising, so striking, that it’s as if I am momentarily paralysed. I stare for a minute, maybe more, until my limbs finally start to work and I reach to remove the coat hanger. On it is dangling a slightly crumpled red anorak.

  Melanie’s anorak.

  It was the first thing I saw when she was on the park bench the morning after the money dropped into my life. It was there again after I’d been fired and walked out of Crosstown Supermarket in disgrace. It’s been following me around since Saturday morning and, now, here it is in the apparently empty apartment across the hall from where I live.

  I remove the coat from the rack and push the wardrobe door closed. It snaps into place but the creaking continues – which is when I realise the front door is opening behind me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘The door was open,’ I say.

  Karen nods and steps into the apartment. She is by herself and stares around the empty space before focusing back on me. ‘Empty, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘I told you it was some bloke with a fancy woman. Nobody’s living here. What would they do all day? There’s not even a television.’

  I step confidently away from the wardrobe as if it’s totally normal that I’m here.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I say.

  Karen does a lap of the sofa and stops to check the Ethernet cable before deciding it’s nothing important. She turns back to me. ‘Mark my words,’ she says, ‘sooner or later, one of us is going to run into him and we’ll find out it’s some ri
ch city banker who’s bringing his women here. Either that, or it’ll be a politician. Probably a Tory. You know what they’re like. They’re all at it. Try and get a photo – the Sun’ll give you a few quid.’

  She glances towards the red jacket in my hand but says nothing. She either assumes it’s mine or doesn’t care that I’ve pilfered it.

  I edge across to the door, ready to leave. Karen’s seemingly going nowhere, though. She sits on the sofa and squidges herself around to get comfortable.

  ‘Did you hear about Jade?’ she asks.

  At first I think she’s talking about what the police told us, but her accompanying sigh doesn’t bode well.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘She was found in a shallow grave out at Dale Park Woods. I found out from one of the girls on the school gates. Her husband’s best friend’s cousin’s half-sister’s husband works as a paramedic and she’s friendly with someone at the police. They reckon it’s a full-blown murder enquiry. They’ve been covering it up, but it’s all going to go public soon.’

  Karen’s at her gossipy best but stops for a moment, shocked by her own revelations. ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’ she adds.

  I nod, not sure how to reply. ‘Horrible’ feels like a massive understatement.

  ‘Poor girl,’ I say.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why would they cover it up?’ I ask.

  There’s a pause and then Karen shrugs. ‘Dunno. That’s what I heard.’

  Dale Park Woods is around thirty miles away and encompasses a large country park as well as, obviously, a big wooded area. It’s popular in the summer for hikers, dog walkers and children. At this time of year, it’s grim.

  ‘Probably some stalker boyfriend,’ Karen adds. ‘Something like that.’

  It occurs to me that, if this is remotely true, the man outside could have been a reporter. Perhaps he’d heard similar rumours and had come to ask residents what they’d heard? And I ended up chasing him away.