Last of the Magpies

by Mark Edwards

  He stood up, put his coat on and walked out of the pub, waiting for Emma to catch up with him.

  6

  Extract from An Innocent Woman, unseen first draft, by Lucy Newton

  At first glance Christopher wasn’t really my physical type. The men I found and used were usually slight and boyish, eager to please and easy to intimidate. Precious boy-flowers. Christopher, or Chris as he preferred to be called, looked like he was made of potatoes. A big lumpy head, a torso like a giant King Edward, and bulges beneath his shirt like he’d stuffed several spuds up his sleeves.

  But that first glance told me something else too. I could see it in his eyes, which reminded me of that photo of Great-Uncle Howard. They roamed the room, assessing, searching, judging. And when they landed on me, he too recognised a kindred spirit.

  He recognised a fellow wolf among the great flock of sheep.

  He was the first man I found who saw the world as I did. By then, I had figured out what Great-Aunt Nessa was talking about when she told me there were two things worth living for. The first was physical pleasure. Not just sexual pleasure, but good food, the warmth of the sun on one’s face, and the crisp snap of autumn against your flesh. I discovered that certain sounds gave me pleasure too, sending little ripples of ice up and down my spine. A cat’s purr. The repeated clicking of fingernails against plastic. The sound of weeping, like that of my now-dead aunt at Sharon’s funeral.

  The other thing worth living for – well, some of my first lessons in that were related to Sharon too, although I suppose I had first learned about it on my mother’s knee. The torment of other people. Playing with them, unspooling their happiness and spoiling their contentment. Turning the screw slowly but steadily until everything good in their life is dead and gone.

  It’s fun. It can be intellectually challenging. And, despite their protests, everybody understands this to a degree. Seeing a friend fail. Watching a colleague crash and burn. Hearing about a divorce or messy break-up, or learning that a friend’s children have failed their exams. Dear reader, if you deny you have ever experienced the thrill of schadenfreude, you are a liar.

  The difference is that most people feel guilty about it and can only take it so far. Normal folk are unlikely to smile when they hear that a friend has terminal cancer or that their dog got run over. Most people don’t go out of their way to engineer suffering. They probably obtain just as much pleasure from hearing good news, from seeing a happy couple kiss at the altar or from looking at baby photos on Facebook.

  That was what made Chris and me different to most people. Because we had already discovered, separately, that the suffering of others was what made us glad to be alive.

  Great-Aunt Nessa had advised me to find someone like me because it would be safer. She understood that the world can be dangerous – because of stupid laws and common morality and hypocrisy – for people like me and her and Chris.

  What she didn’t mention was that teaming up was not only safer, but far more efficient and effective. Two dark minds are better than one. Chris and I were able to turn our lives into something akin to performance art, playing the happily married couple, living right there among the sheep.

  But I am getting ahead of myself.

  I had just started at Orchard House when we met. It was early December and the place was bedecked with tacky decorations, with a fake plastic tree and a constant stream of seasonal adverts playing on the TV in the communal room. Soon, the smell of liquidised turkey would waft through the building. Halfway through the month, we had the staff Christmas party, and that was where I met Chris. His company looked after our IT, and he had been invited along by one of the care assistants, a chubby girl called Debbie. She fancied him, though she must have known he was out of her league.

  Later, Debbie would testify against me in court, because the stupid bitch was obviously still smarting from that night, when Chris ignored her and left the party with me. On the walk home, we took the piss out of Debbie, laughing at her mannerisms and mocking her physical shortcomings. She had a slight lisp and Chris did an uncanny impersonation of her. We linked arms and he took me to his flat, which was decorated in what can only be described as utilitarian chic. The walls were bare, everything was neat and minimal, and he had the biggest television I’d ever seen. He showed me how he had rigged it up to a CCTV system. In his work, he had plenty of opportunities to install spy cameras, in offices and bathrooms, and he had spyware installed on the computers of many of his clients. Looking back, it was incredible how much he shared with me on that first night. It was a risk. But, as he always said, he could tell within minutes of meeting me. We were going to be a team.

  We watched some live surveillance streams for a while but nothing exciting happened. Then we went to bed. To be honest, the sex was disappointing. His penis resembled a Walnut Whip – a kind of pyramid with a knobbly bit on top, neither a grower nor a shower – and his foreplay was all fingers and thumbs. Later, I would teach him how to use his mouth and hands effectively, but Chris had the lowest sex drive of any man I’ve ever met. He got his kicks in other ways.

  Chris despised normal people even more than I did. They made him angry. In fact, the weaker they were, the more furious they would make him. Early in our relationship, I watched him destroy the life of his boss, a married man with two children and a penchant for teenage girls. Chris knew this because his boss used his work laptop – on which Chris had installed a special piece of software – to watch dodgy babysitter porn. He would also send dick pics to his daughter’s friends after befriending them in chat rooms. Pathetic behaviour, made more pathetic by the self-loathing he would go through immediately after each episode, when he would research suicide methods, though he was never brave enough to go through with it. Chris thought about gently nudging him, but first he used the evidence he’d gathered to blackmail this worm of a man, forcing him to resign from his job and install Chris in his place. Then Chris told his former boss that he would send the evidence to his wife and daughters if he didn’t kill himself.

  We both attended the funeral. The weeping sent shivers down my back.

  Chris and I got married in a registry office in Ealing, went on honeymoon to Tenerife – awful place – then bought the garden flat on Mount Pleasant Street, where we spent a number of satisfying years. The couple above us, Letitia and David, were as sappy as they come. They seemed to think they had bought a slice of paradise not a first-floor flat in North London. She was a real Pollyanna, always happy and smiling and dancing around like a fairy elephant to the most dreadful music. We immediately befriended them and started our first great project.

  Those were some of the best days of my life. After an ‘accident’ at the beach led to the death of one of their friends – I forget her name but she had a laugh that went right through me – Letitia had the most hilarious nervous breakdown and they put the flat on the market. Desperate for a quick sale, we snapped it up using my maiden name and sold it on to another sappy couple. And then.

  And then . . .

  AND THEN THAT PIECE OF SHIT JAMIE KNIGHT RUINED IT ALL.

  7

  Kirsty scrutinised the young woman who was standing outside her front door and smiling at the security camera. She didn’t recognise her, and that immediately set Kirsty’s nerves jangling. Ever since Lucy’s apprentice, Anita, had turned up a year ago, an encounter that had led to the most horrific night of Kirsty’s life, she had been scrupulous about security. Some would say paranoid. Andrew certainly did, whenever he came round to take their daughter, Sasha, out. ‘Do you really need all those cameras? And three locks on the front door?’ he’d said last week. ‘It’s like trying to get in to see the bloody prime minister.’

  ‘You want me to take that risk?’ she snapped. ‘I doubt you’d be happy if one of Lucy’s fucking acolytes murdered me and left you as a sole parent. That would seriously cramp your style, wouldn’t it?’

  Andrew had sighed, as he always did, and asked her how the session at Lond
on Zoo had gone. It was a dig, a subtle way of asking her if she was really dealing with her fears when she had her ground-floor flat locked down like Fort Knox. It might have led to another huge argument if Sasha hadn’t appeared and run into Andrew’s arms. And Kirsty knew that one of the reasons she was so angry with Andrew was that she knew he was right. Despite all the therapy and meditation, despite the attempts to confront her vulnerability, she was still scared. Still hiding in her own personal fortress.

  And this week had been worse than normal.

  She realised she’d zoned out and still hadn’t spoken to the woman on the security screen.

  ‘Kirsty?’ the woman said. ‘My name’s Emma Fox. I’m a friend of Jamie’s and he asked me to come and see you.’

  A friend of Jamie’s? What, like a new girlfriend? Somewhere inside, so deep she didn’t have to acknowledge it, she felt a tiny flare of something dark and unpleasant. An emotion she immediately pushed away.

  ‘Hello?’ Emma said. ‘Is this thing working? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, I can hear you. And I’m not letting you in.’

  ‘Jamie said you probably wouldn’t. And that’s fine. I know what happened to you and I understand. I just wanted to ask you a question. It’s for something Jamie and I are doing.’

  The intercom line was terrible, and Kirsty had to strain to hear what Emma was saying.

  ‘What something?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re making a podcast about—’

  The intercom crackled and obscured the last couple of words. But Kirsty knew what this woman had said. And, gripped by fury, she left her flat and marched down the hallway to the front door, which she yanked open. Emma’s expression changed from happy surprise to concern in an instant, as Kirsty pointed a finger at her.

  ‘Get the fuck off my doorstep.’

  Emma put her hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have come here, saying that bitch’s name, should you.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s Jamie? Cowering behind a lamp post?’

  Emma, no doubt realising Kirsty probably wasn’t going to punch her, had regained some of her composure. ‘He asked me to come. He’s . . . nervous about seeing you.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet. Because he knows I’ll tell him some home truths. Like, get over it. Stop obsessing over Lucy fucking Newton.’

  Kirsty hated hearing herself swear like this. She could hear her mum threatening to wash her mouth out with soap. But she couldn’t help it. Not where Lucy was concerned.

  ‘With all due respect,’ Emma said. ‘You’re not over it either, are you?’

  Kirsty glowered at her.

  ‘And I don’t think either of you ever will be until Lucy’s found and justice is done. Which is what Jamie and I are trying to achieve.’

  Kirsty bristled at the way this attractive young woman said Jamie and I. She was about to yell some more at Emma when she noticed her neighbour, who was sweeping leaves from his front path, watching them with keen interest.

  She studied Emma for a moment. It seemed highly unlikely that she was here to do her harm. Besides, Kirsty had pepper spray inside and she’d been taking martial arts classes. She felt confident she could overpower her if necessary.

  Kirsty made her mind up. She gestured for Emma to follow her inside, triple-locking the door behind her. She noticed Emma watching her do this with a raised eyebrow.

  Kirsty stood with her arms folded. ‘What exactly are you and Jamie doing?’

  ‘Can we take a seat?’

  ‘No. Tell me what you’re doing.’

  Emma nodded. At least she wasn’t going to argue. ‘Okay.’ She explained how she was a well-known true crime podcaster, telling Kirsty a little about the last series she’d made. Kirsty only half listened, wandering over to the window and peering out at the street. It was quiet out there today; just the sound of her neighbour sweeping leaves. She tuned back in as Emma said, ‘And we’re convinced somebody must have picked Lucy up.’

  ‘Hardly a novel theory.’

  ‘Perhaps. But the police have never managed to find this person, and Jamie and I think that we have an advantage over them – because the two of you know Lucy better than anyone.’

  ‘God, what a thought.’

  ‘But it’s true. Are you sure we can’t sit down?’

  Kirsty sighed and capitulated, flapping a hand at the sofa. Emma sat but Kirsty remained standing. ‘So what exactly did you want to ask me?’

  Emma told her.

  ‘Paul? You want to try to contact that arsehole?’

  Kirsty hadn’t thought about Paul in a long time, even though he had been part of the whole nightmare on Mount Pleasant Street. When she thought about those days – which she tried not to – she was so focused on Lucy and Chris that Paul faded into the background. His betrayal had hurt Jamie more than it hurt her. And Heather, of course, who he had dumped before he even got out of hospital. She had, as far as Kirsty knew, almost completely forgotten about Paul. She certainly never mentioned him these days.

  ‘Do you really think Paul could have helped Lucy?’

  ‘It’s a long shot. But if he was friends with Lucy maybe she told him about other friends she had. Acquaintances. I need to try to understand how Lucy thinks, so the more people I can talk to who knew her, the more chance I have of doing that.’

  Kirsty noticed a movement outside on the street and looked out. Just the postman. She turned back to Emma.

  ‘Doesn’t Jamie know how to get hold of him? Paul was his friend.’

  ‘No, Jamie’s lost everything. We thought maybe you’d still have an old address book with Paul’s parents’ address or phone number. Jamie can’t even remember their names.’

  Kirsty rolled her eyes. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. But I’m sure Paul’s mum is called Janet. His dad’s called Mark or Mick or something like that.’

  Kirsty could tell that Emma was committing this information to memory. ‘Jamie said they lived in Brighton.’

  ‘Yeah. Hove, actually.’ She thought about it. It seemed highly unlikely that Paul could be helping Lucy, or that he would remember anything that would be useful. But Kirsty had an in-built need to be helpful. And she had a much better memory for names and places than her ex-husband. As a nurse, she had trained herself to remember the details people told her about their lives; the little things that were important to them. She was able to recall that Paul had told her and Jamie that his parents had both been members of the Hove Running Club.

  ‘Janet and Matt, that was it,’ she said.

  ‘That’s brilliant. Thank you so much.’ Emma got up. ‘If I find him, do you have a message for him?’

  Kirsty only just managed to stop herself from swearing again.

  She unlocked the door but stood in front of it, not wanting Emma to leave quite yet.

  ‘How is Jamie?’ she asked.

  Emma seemed to weigh up her answer. ‘Not great. I think he’d be a lot better if you contacted him. He misses you.’

  Kirsty was taken aback. ‘He told you that?’

  Emma shrugged. ‘It’s plain for anyone to see. You must know that he still loves you. And I can tell you don’t feel comfortable talking about it, but I like him and I feel for him. For both of you, in fact.’

  ‘You feel sorry for me?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Kirsty yanked the door open. ‘Well, you can take your patronising attitude with you, and tell Jamie—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kirsty, but I think you need to hear it. Jamie’s miserable, and he makes out that it’s all because of Lucy, but it isn’t. A lot of it is because of you. And you don’t seem particularly happy either. You seem scared and jumpy and . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I hardly know either of you. I don’t know exactly what went on between you. But you should talk to him. It seems such a shame, to let what Lucy did destroy your relationship forever.’

  She left, leaving Kirsty speechless and angry. How dare she? Th
e interfering, patronising, conceited little cow. She certainly didn’t know anything about Kirsty and Jamie. And Kirsty had already made her mind up. The only way to get fully better was to cut any remaining ties with her ex.

  But what was that feeling, when Emma had said, You must know that he still loves you? Was it pleasure, or pain?

  Whichever, it was something. When all she wanted to feel, where Jamie was concerned, was nothing.

  8

  The offices of Tyler & Greene Literary Agency were based in a beautiful Victorian townhouse between Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. Jamie was sat in reception, surrounded by books. Thousands of them, covering every inch of wall, every surface. It felt like the building itself was constructed of literature. The receptionist tapped away on a laptop while Jamie peered at the shelves, trying to see if Lucy’s autobiography, An Innocent Woman, was among them. There was no sign of it.

  A man appeared among the volumes. He was tall, in his mid-forties, with unkempt hair and thick-framed glasses. He stuck out his hand.

  ‘Jamie Knight? Edmund Tyler. Such a pleasure to meet you at last. Coffee? Tea?’

  Jamie held up the bottle of water he was carrying. ‘I’m good, thanks.’

  Edmund beckoned for Jamie to follow him into his office, where even more books lined the shelves or were stacked in piles on the floor. Among them were framed photos of people posing with Edmund. Jamie recognised a few of them. Celebrity authors; a couple of TV personalities including a comedian who was now a bestselling children’s author. And then he spotted it, with its cream spine. An Innocent Woman. He saw Edmund tracking his gaze and tore his eyes away, smiling awkwardly. He didn’t feel at home here.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get you to come and see me for a long time,’ Edmund said, sitting behind his desk. Jamie took a seat opposite. ‘What made you change your mind?’

  ‘I haven’t necessarily changed my mind about anything. I’m only here for a chat.’