The Closer I Get

by Paul Burston

  ‘Oh, so it’s Evie now, is it? Not troll or stalker or madwoman? Why the sudden change of heart? Anyone would think you were scared.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ Tom says, as confidently as he can. But he is – and not just of her but of what he might do.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, taking another step towards him. ‘It doesn’t hurt for long. It’s really just a question of mind over matter.’

  She pulls up the sleeve of her jacket and drags the tip of the blade across the inside of her wrist.

  ‘I’ve got scars you wouldn’t believe, Tom. Real scars. Not the wounded looks you faked for the police. See?’

  As the blood wells up, Tom sees the marks she’s already made there – a crisscross of white lines against the pale skin. He stares at her in disbelief. ‘What are you doing to yourself?’

  ‘You did this to me, Tom. You and her. But that was a long time ago. She can’t hurt me anymore. I’ve seen to that. Now I’ll see to you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘My mother,’ she says. ‘I killed her. My own flesh and blood. So you see, killing you will be easy.’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ Tom says. But somehow he knows she isn’t.

  She points the knife at him. ‘I want to hear you say it.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Admit you lied about me. To the police. In court. You said I threatened you with violence.’

  Tom glances at the blade. ‘You’re threatening me now.’

  ‘Now, yes. But not then. Not when I came to your flat. All I wanted was to talk. That’s all I ever wanted.’ She raises the knife. ‘Admit you lied. You fabricated evidence against me. Those emails. The death threats. You set me up. Say it!’

  ‘This is insane!’

  ‘Say it!’

  Tom drags the words up from the pit of his stomach. ‘Okay. I admit it. I lied.’

  ‘Now say you’re sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Now please—’

  ‘Too late!’ There’s a flash of silver as she lunges at him.

  Tom raises his arms to block her, and seconds later there’s a searing pain as the blade slices across his left palm. ‘You fucking bitch!’

  Suddenly he doesn’t feel so drunk anymore. The adrenaline has kicked in. He feels it coursing through his body, sharpening his senses.

  He stares at the blood dripping from his hand.

  Evie smiles. ‘What’s the matter? I thought you’d be pleased. You always said I was violent. Now you’ve been vindicated.’

  ‘You fucking mad bitch!’ Tom manages to take several steps backwards, not seeing where he’s going but afraid to take his eyes off her for even a second.

  She charges at him again, but this time he’s too quick for her, dodging behind the nearest steel pillar as she stabs furiously at the empty air. She loses her balance and stumbles. Then, before she can find her footing, he grabs her from behind, pinning both arms to her sides and wrestling with her writhing body until his hands are locked firmly around her wrists. He squeezes until she cries out in pain and pulls the knife from her grasp. It slips through his fingers and clatters to the ground. He kicks it with his right foot, sending it skidding across the shingle, disappearing into the darkness.

  She twists and turns, hissing and spitting like something possessed. Tom tightens his grasp and blood oozes between his fingers. He can’t tell if it’s his or hers. He pictures their blood mingling in some perverse bonding ritual, and it sickens him to his stomach. He imagines the satisfaction she’ll derive from it. Her and him, exchanging bodily fluids.

  She’s stronger than she looks. It takes all his strength to hold on to her as she bucks and squirms, elbows and shoulder blades digging into his chest. Her heels kick back against his shins as she heaves and groans, her voice as wild as the wind whipping around them.

  Finally it’s as if all the fight has gone out of her. Her shoulders relax and her chest heaves as she starts sobbing gently.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ she whimpers. ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. All I ever wanted was to be close to you.’

  Alarmed by her tears and the feel of her body against him as she shudders, Tom releases his hold on her. She pulls away and spins around to face him – her eyes dry, lips stretched thinly into a mocking smile.

  ‘I’ll never stop, Tom. You know that, don’t you? I’ll never leave you alone. You’re all I have left now.’

  She raises her arms as if to hit him, and he grabs her by both wrists. There’s a brief struggle, then she pulls one hand free and swipes at him. A bone hard smack lands on the side of his face, making the blood bang in his ears.

  Anger bubbles up inside him as he tries to warn her off. ‘Stay away from me!’

  She laughs. ‘Or what? You’ll go running to the police? Or are you ready to teach me a lesson? You said you wanted me dead. Here’s your chance. There’s no-one here now. Just you and me. It’s always been you and me, Tom, from the day we met. And it always will be, until one of us dies. So what’s stopping you? Not man enough?’

  ‘Stop it Evie, or I’ll—’

  ‘Or you’ll what? Hit me? Go on, then. You know you want to!’

  Grabbing her by the throat with one hand, he raises the other above his head, fist clenched, shaking with rage. The fear of losing control flashes like a warning sign inside his head.

  ‘Come on!’ she taunts. ‘Do it! You know you want to. If not for yourself then for poor Colin. He didn’t deserve to die.’

  Tom feels a stab of anger in his chest, as surely as if she’d knifed him. He pictures Colin alone in his apartment, lying in a pool of his own blood. And then in his mind’s eye Tom sees how this all plays out. Him constantly looking over his shoulder. Her always on his case, never leaving him alone. What’s a few years in prison to her? What use is a restraining order? She’ll only breach it. She has no intention of stopping. He’ll never be free of her. Not now. Not ever.

  He looks at her now, laughing at him the way that bully at school laughed at him before Tom took his power away, pinned him to the ground and punched him so hard he nearly knocked him unconscious.

  He can’t go on like this. He can’t let her destroy his life, his reputation, everything he’s ever worked for.

  He feels his temper rise and tries to push the thought away.

  But it’s no use. The blood rushes to his head. It bangs inside his brain.

  He sees red.

  PART THREE

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  31

  AUTHOR ACCUSED OF MURDER

  Bestselling author Tom Hunter stands accused of the murder of Evie Stokes, the woman previously convicted of harassing him. Stokes was found guilty in June last year, after sending Hunter hundreds of emails and tweets, calling him ‘queer’ and ‘gaylord’.

  A restraining order was in place at the time of her death in Hastings, where Hunter was spending the summer. He denies the charges. As previously reported in this newspaper, the Boy Afraid author recently signed a major deal for two new books. His publisher was unavailable for comment. The trial begins today.

  I didn’t mean to kill her. I must have gone over this a thousand times in my head. There are so many small decisions that led up to that moment, so many things I wish I’d done differently. But this much I know for certain: it wasn’t intentional. I’m not a murderer.

  I tried reasoning with her. I tried telling her this wasn’t good for either of us. But I swear she went completely mad. It all happened so quickly. One minute we’re talking and the next she’s right up in my face, spitting obscenities like something possessed.

  She struck the first blow. I want to make that clear. She slapped my face so hard, I saw stars. I stumbled backwards – disoriented, not seeing where I was going. Then just as my head cleared and I managed to regain my footing, she launched herself at me.

  The next thing I know, I’m flat on my back and she’s straddling my chest, her hands locked around my throat. I see t
he look in her eyes – angry, demented, murderous. Fear turns to panic. She has every intention of killing me. There’s no doubt in my mind. If I don’t stop her, she’ll choke me to death.

  I claw at her hands, but her grip is too strong. I can’t breathe. My vision blurs, and my head feels like it’s about to explode. Desperately, I reach around, scooping up handfuls of shingle and sand. Then my fingers close around something larger – a stone as big as my fist. I swing it upwards, striking the side of her head. Then again, and again – until the grip on my throat loosens and she slumps forwards, the full weight of her body on mine.

  I wriggle out from under her and kneel on the shingle, struggling to get my breath back.

  ‘Evie?’ I say finally. ‘Are you okay?’

  She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t move a muscle.

  What the hell have I done? I try telling myself that she’s simply unconscious. I wait for her body to stir, like someone waking from a deep sleep. But she just lies there, face down, her hair fanned around her head, darkening against the wet shingle. Blood oozes from her shattered skull, soaking into the sand. A cold feeling hits me in the pit of my stomach. I know she’s dead.

  I think I’m going to be sick. I clasp one hand over my mouth and climb unsteadily to my feet. Fumbling in my pocket for my phone, I try to dial 999, but my fingers are shaking so much, I keep pressing the wrong buttons. Then I stop. What will I say? I just killed someone. I didn’t mean to but I did. I could go to prison for this. At the very least, I’ll be charged with manslaughter. What sentence does that carry? A few years? I wouldn’t survive a few months.

  I panic. You think you know what you’d do in a situation like this. But you don’t, not really. Not until it happens. I tell myself to breathe, calm down, think it through. But my nerves are jangling and my head is all over the place. The coppery smell of her blood pricks my nostrils. My heart races. The wind howls and it’s like a wake-up call. I need to get away, before anyone sees me. I look around. There’s no-one else in sight. It’s just me and her. Or what remains of her.

  The stone I used to fight her off is lying next to her body. I pick it up, walk down to the water’s edge and throw it as far as I can. It hits the water with a loud plop. If someone sees me I’ll be just another tourist tossing pebbles into the sea. I picture it sinking to the bottom, lost among a million others. I wonder how far the current will carry it, what the likelihood is of it being found and identified as the murder weapon.

  Another wave of panic hits me, and I turn and run up the steep bank of shingle towards the top of the beach. I say ‘run’. Have you ever tried running over shingle? You can’t. Your feet slip and slide, making progress slow. I feel the ground shift beneath me, and my whole world seems to tilt on its axis. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re so drunk the room starts to spin – sky, sea, moon, stars and shingle all kaleidoscope together. My stomach heaves and my breath comes in short, shallow gasps. But somehow I make it up to where the shingle levels off and the lights from the promenade cast deep shadows along the sea wall.

  I stay close to the wall, edging my way towards the wooden steps, listening carefully for voices or footsteps from above. But no sound carries down. The adverse weather has driven everyone away. The promenade is deserted.

  When I reach the top of the steps, I stop and look back towards the pier. The tide is rising. I tell myself that the water will wash everything away – the guilt, the evidence, the body. The tide will rise and fall, and by the morning she’ll be gone, dragged out to sea by the current, never to be seen again.

  I was wrong about that. As it turns out, I was wrong about a lot of things.

  I remember the first time I saw her in court. I remember thinking how fragile she looked, how unlike the monster you’d described to me so many times. I remember thinking back to all the other little things that didn’t quite add up. I’d had my doubts, Tom. Something wasn’t right. There was something you weren’t telling me. I’d had this feeling for months.

  I recalled the way you rejected my offer to accompany you to the police station the day you first went to give a statement. I’d never known you to refuse my support before. I couldn’t think why you’d want to do this alone. It wasn’t until later that it struck me: you were like an actor preparing for a role. You needed to get into character, rehearse your lines, get your story straight. Of course you didn’t want me there. I know you better than anyone. I’d have seen through your performance.

  That day in court, when you were giving evidence and practically broke down in the witness box – you were acting then, weren’t you? And the story you told, about how this woman had wormed her way into your life and refused to leave you alone – that wasn’t entirely true, was it? I’m not saying you made the whole thing up. There was some truth in what you said. But a lot of it was embellished. I believed you when you said she wouldn’t stop contacting you. But when you described the impact her actions had on your quality of life and told the court how fearful you were, I had my doubts.

  You said you’d had friends who’d died of AIDS, that her tweeting about you as ‘the AIDS generation’ brought back painful memories. Yet you’ve never mentioned these friends to me, not in all the years we’ve known each other. Not once. Why is that? At the time, I told myself that I wasn’t being fair, that you had every right to play for sympathy if that’s what it took to win the case. The judiciary love a good victim, after all.

  Besides, I’d seen for myself the state you were in. That night you came for dinner at my place after giving your impact statement to the police, you seemed so stressed. You were drinking heavily. You barely touched your dessert, despite the fact that it was your favourite – blueberry cheesecake. I’d gone to a lot of trouble baking it. Not that I minded; not really. What bothered me was that you were smoking again. You said it helped keep the weight off, that the antidepressants were making you balloon. But you didn’t look overweight to me. If anything, I thought you looked rather gaunt.

  We talked a lot that night. You told me things you hadn’t mentioned before, like the time you posted her address on Facebook. You were worried about some of the things you’d said on Twitter and the fact that you’d exchanged pleasantries with her before things turned nasty. You thought the defence would use it against you, that you’d lose the case. I remember asking you if that was all. You assured me it was.

  And still it kept nagging away at me. Something wasn’t right. Call it woman’s intuition, but something didn’t quite add up. I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that something was wrong. Why were you acting so strangely? Was it all down to her? Or was there something else you weren’t telling me?

  That first day in court, she barely spoke, and when she did she was ordered to stop. ‘You’ll have your chance to speak!’ the judge scolded her. But I wondered if she would, really. I never told you this, but the day after you gave evidence I went back to court to hear what she had to say. I wasn’t able to stay long. I had a client meeting at noon. But I heard and saw enough to convince me that she wasn’t fit to stand trial. She kept incriminating herself. Even her defence lawyer looked embarrassed to be there. It seemed to me that her fate had already been decided. Nothing she said now would make a blind bit of difference.

  What rankles me is that I also gave a statement to the police, describing the impact she’d had on you, the stress you were under, the various ways in which her actions had been detrimental to your health. I did it because you asked me to. You said it would help strengthen your case. How could I refuse? But you misled me like you misled the police and the court. Had the prosecution felt it necessary, I’m sure you’d have let me take the stand and lie on your behalf. You’d have let me perjure myself. Because, by the time the trial was over, I knew that what you were saying wasn’t the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  It’s hard to say when exactly the nagging voice in my head became impossible to ignore. I supported you throughout the court case, despite my misgivings.
I was there for you when the judge delivered her verdict and when the sentence was passed. I might have had my doubts, but you were still my friend. I hoped that now, finally, things would go back to normal, and you’d put the whole sorry business behind you.

  But that’s not what happened, is it? If anything, you seemed more obsessed with her after the trial was over than before it began. I started to wonder if you were suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. I urged you to seek counselling. I even made the mistake of mentioning victim support.

  ‘I’m not a victim,’ you replied, sharply.

  It was then that I began to seriously ask myself who this person I’d been supporting all this time really was. Because if you weren’t the victim in all of this, what exactly were you?

  After you left for Hastings I went to your flat. I let myself in with the spare keys and I had a good look around. What else was I supposed to do? You were definitely hiding something and I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to know who you were. For years I thought I knew you, but apparently that was just wishful thinking on my part.

  So there I was, a loyal friend who thought she’d earned your trust, reduced to snooping around your empty flat. I’m not sure what I was looking for. Something to prove me right? Something to prove me wrong? I think I was hoping, somehow, that my suspicions were unfounded. I wanted to think the best of you, not the worst. I always have.

  And then I found them, going through your desk drawer – the antidepressants you were supposed to be taking. But you never took them, did you? The boxes were unopened. The repeat prescriptions were never handed in. I counted half a dozen of them, going back months and months. All those times you told me the pills were making you sluggish, all the side-effects you described to me in such detail – it was all a pack of lies. And if you’d lied to me about that, what else were you hiding from me?