When he says this his hand creeps downwards to rest on my thigh. I stay rigid, willing him to move it. He doesn’t. ‘Did you say Hanna’s mum was an addict?’ I say, to distract him. ‘That must have been really tough.’
‘Tough? How would you know, Ava, with your perfect posh family. Mummy’s an artiste, isn’t she? Or would that be Maman?’
I feel a chill. My mum is a French teacher at a secondary school. She’s always painted, but only started getting her work into a gallery in Chichester in the last few years. Hardly a well-known artist. He must have stalked my family to know this. I think of Matt and my stomach drops. Is it possible he wasn’t lying? Is he dead? He senses my distress, even if he doesn’t understand the cause. ‘Oh dear, was I being mean? Did I hurt your fucking feelings? Some people have everything. And they’re not even grateful. The whole world is set up for the benefit of people like you.’
I want to scream, punch him again and again until he stops talking. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a difficult time,’ I say.
‘But you’re not though, are you?’ He grabs me by the shoulders. ‘You’re not sorry.’
His face is so close to mine, there’s almost no space between us. It’s a split second decision; not even a decision – it’s instinct. I throw my head forward violently, smashing his skull with my own. It’s painful but I’m expecting that. He staggers back in surprise. I fling myself on him, grabbing for his shoulders, trying to pound his head on the concrete floor. We wrestle silently. He’s stronger than me, but I’ve got gravity on my side. For one soaring moment I think it’s going to be like my fantasy, I’m going to crack his skull, knock him out and escape. Then he brings his knee up hard into my groin.
My body betrays me, reacting to the pain, even though I thought I had steeled myself against it. He flips upright like a scorpion and grabs me round the throat. I can’t breathe.
‘Thought you’d check out early, bitch? I can help with that.’
I scrabble against his face with my nails, tearing and gouging, but his skin is protected by the mask. It’s agony, my lungs feel like they are going to burst. Then he releases his grip slightly, just enough to let me get some air. I don’t even think of fighting back, I’m too desperate to catch my breath. I draw in the air in shuddering gasps, wheezing like an old woman.
‘I said do you want to check out early?’
‘No.’ My voice is barely audible.
His grip tightens again, cutting off my air supply. ‘Sadly, you don’t get to make that decision.’
Terror is a scream in my head, a scream I can’t release because I can’t breathe. My legs look for his body but instead kick uselessly against the floor. This man is going to kill me. My body senses it, carries on fighting, even as my mind fractures and dissolves into darkness.
Frankie
‘We’re going to have to tread a fine line with this,’ Charlie says. ‘Ava’s family are doing an appeal, but Frankie’s also going back to speak to Lily’s parents. We don’t want to make it feel as if Ava is a lost cause.’
Kiera sighs. It’s the morning meeting and by tradition, as the news editor, this is Charlie’s domain, but she clearly isn’t pleased by the arrangement. Frankie and the other reporters sit around in a circle, slumped on chairs or leaning against various desks. There’s an odd atmosphere; nobody knows where the power lies. It reminds Frankie of dinner time with her mum and dad before their divorce, when she and her sister Natalie would turn from one parent to the other across the table, as if watching the world’s most passive aggressive tennis match.
‘Why are we going back to Lily’s parents?’ Kiera asks. ‘I can see why we’d speak to them after the trial but why now?’
‘They aren’t happy with the media coverage,’ Frankie says. ‘They called me to say they feel the police and press are treating Sandra and Lily as second-class murder victims because they were sex workers.’
Kiera pulls a face. ‘Interesting enough, I suppose, if they’re not happy with the police. But it feels a bit small fry with a serial killer on the loose. Go along, see what they say, but we can’t spare a camera.’
‘But I thought that—’ Frankie begins.
‘That’s enough, Frances. It’s just one house in Lowestoft, you’ll be fine.’
‘I’d best be off now, then.’ Frankie stands up. ‘So I’m not late.’ She walks out of the newsroom not looking back at Kiera or Charlie. There’s plenty of time to get to the interview, but she can’t bear to spend any longer in the meeting.
The drive to Lowestoft takes Frankie across country, with little variety in the flat green landscape until she gets to the flash of silver crossing the River Waveney. It’s not the sort of road where you pay huge attention to your surroundings, but about half an hour into the journey she becomes vaguely conscious of the white car behind her. It’s some distance back, driving slowly, but while other cars turn off or overtake, this one remains steadily present.
She’s just beginning to feel anxious when the white car turns off down a side road on the outskirts of Lowestoft. Frankie feels a wash of relief. She realises her hands are cramped from clutching the steering wheel and relaxes them.
The Sidcups live on Pakefield Street on the edge of the town. It’s one of the prettiest parts, a row of small Victorian houses right on the coast. Lily’s family home isn’t on the side of the road with a direct view out to sea, but she would have grown up just minutes from the coastal path and the vast expanse of blue. Frankie parks up and unloads her camera kit before knocking on the front door. She notices the trellis in the shape of a heart is still on the wall, with pink autumn roses in bloom. Vicky Sidcup, Lily’s mother, opens the door.
‘Hello Frankie love,’ she says. ‘No Gavin today?’
Vicky seems to have aged since the last time Frankie was here. Her carefully made-up face is unable to hide the puffy red eyelids and dark circles beneath her eyes. ‘Not today, I’m afraid,’ she says. ‘Just me.’
‘Well, come in. You know the way. Ian’s in the lounge.’
Frankie walks through to the back room, which looks out on the Sidcups’ small garden. The garden where Lily is laughing in the photo her family released to the police. Ian Sidcup rises to shake her hand, but seeing she is laden down, takes the tripod instead. ‘Here, let me have that. Bit heavy for you,’ he says.
Frankie is conscious of pictures of Lily on every surface of the room. There are the annual official school photos of her as a chubby-faced child, hair tightly plaited, and others of her as a teenager on the beach with her younger brother, whose name Frankie can’t remember. And in between the pictures, there are sympathy cards on the mantelpiece, poorly scanned supermarket poems that try to make sense of her parents’ agony.
‘Go on, sit down, make yourself comfortable,’ says Vicky, coming in with a mug of tea.
‘Thanks,’ says Frankie, taking it. She perches on a wide leather footstool, which she hopes was not Lily’s favourite spot. ‘I’m really sorry you’ve been finding the coverage so hurtful. What sort of things did you want to talk about today?’
‘We just want people to see Lily as a person, not . . . not . . .’ Ian hesitates, struggling to find the words. ‘Not what she was doing when she died. She had a lot of troubles, I’m not denying that, but she was our little girl, you know? And she had such a good heart. That’s what did for her, really.’
‘That bastard,’ says Vicky. Frankie knows she means Lily’s boyfriend, not the killer. The last time they met, Vicky told her he was to blame for Lily’s drug addiction and the life she led to feed the habit.
Ian pats his wife’s hand. ‘We don’t need to talk about him.’
‘Did you say you weren’t happy with the police too?’
‘They’ve not been too bad,’ Vicky says. ‘Not really. It’s more the papers.’
Frankie’s heart sinks. If the Sidcups aren’t going to criticise the police, she’s worried Kiera might not run the story, meaning Lily’s parents could be baring their souls fo
r nothing. She puts her tea down on the carpet, starts setting up the tripod and camera. ‘OK, well, we’ll film this as a chat. Tell me whatever it is you want to say about Lily.’
Vicky and Ian talk to Frankie about their daughter for over half an hour. She hears all about Lily’s love of animals as a child, how caring she was, what a good aunt to her brother Derryn’s children, how she wanted children of her own some day. They tell her how upset they are by the media’s relentless focus on the last two years of Lily’s life. At one point Vicky has to break off to cry. The whole interview gives Frankie a pain in her chest, as if she’s swallowed glass. Whatever she reports, it’s never going to do justice to this family’s grief, any more than the hackneyed rhymes on the mantelpiece about angels and stars can adequately describe their loss.
When she packs up, Frankie notices an old PC on a table in the corner. She thinks about the blog and feels relieved that the Sidcups don’t seem to have read it. ‘Before she went missing,’ Frankie asks, ‘when you saw Lily, did she mention any post or stuff online that had been bothering her?’
Vicky shakes her head. ‘No, though Derryn has all her Facebook passwords and said she’d been getting some very odd messages.’
‘I think they were sent after she died,’ Ian says. ‘They’re odd but probably well-meaning.’
‘Do you mind me asking what the messages said?’
‘You can have a look if you like. Derryn’s left her page up, so we can see whatever her friends post.’ He moves over to switch on the PC. ‘Lots of people loved her. Derryn’s turned it into a tribute page.’
Frankie leans over to look. There are hundreds of messages. Rest in peace Angel xxx Miss you beautiful girl. She looks at Ian. ‘It’s lovely so many people care. Is it OK to see the weird posts you mentioned?’
‘Sure.’ He clicks down through the page. ‘There you go. That’s one. They’re all the same. She got sent about five.’
He moves so Frankie can see the screen. Somebody has posted a gif. It’s a crystal vase against a black velvet background. It wobbles slightly, then falls, smashing into fragments. Then the video restarts and the vase is whole. Then it smashes again, over and over on a loop. The footage looks grainy and flickers, like an old black-and-white movie. Frankie stares at the image, unable to look away.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ says Vicky who has come to stand by her shoulder.
‘Very,’ says Frankie, whose heart is pounding. She feels so frightened she can barely move. She thinks about the glass Hanna was sent in the post, the cards somebody has been sending to her house. The Sidcups are just behind her, but she doesn’t feel safe; she’s standing in a dead woman’s home, with people who were powerless to protect their own daughter. ‘Have you told the police about this?’ she says at last.
‘I don’t think so, no,’ says Ian. ‘It was posted after she died. I think maybe somebody was trying to be kind, saying she was like a beautiful vase.’
Frankie watches the crystal smash again, the shards spreading outwards, jagged, towards the screen. She doesn’t see any kindness in the image at all.
Ian insists on helping her out to the car, and hands her the tripod when she packs the kit into the boot. ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ll let you know when the interview’s going out. It may not be today, but I’ll keep you posted.’
Ian shakes her hand and she gets into the car. Frankie didn’t film the vase on the computer screen, even though she knows that this is the one element that’s likely to prick Kiera’s interest. She tells herself it’s because she’s protecting the Sidcups from seeing their daughter’s tribute page flooded by trolls, but the truth is more complicated. She doesn’t want @Feminazi_Slayer2, or whoever has been sending her cards, to know what she suspects.
As she drives off, Ian and Vicky stand in the doorway by the climbing roses. She glances at them in the rear-view mirror, raising a hand in farewell. It’s only as she turns to face the road that she sees the white car out of the corner of her eye, parked opposite the Sidcups’ house. She whips round to look back. The car doesn’t move. There’s somebody sitting in it, though she’s too far away now to see whether it’s a man or a woman. She keeps driving, slowly, gripping the wheel, but the car doesn’t follow her; instead it pulls out into the road and heads in the opposite direction.
Frankie continues along Pakefield Street until there’s a space to pull over. She’s shaking too much to drive. She turns the engine off and checks all the car doors are locked before getting her phone out of her bag. There’s a message from Charlie saying he’s sent Rachel to cover the Lindseys’ press conference as Kiera was worried she wouldn’t be back in time. She suspects it’s a snub, but feels relieved. It means she’s spared witnessing more desperate parents’ anguish, and also that she has some time before she has to be back. Frankie takes Dan Avery’s card out of her purse and calls his number.
They meet at Earlham Road police station. She explained on the phone it was a chat rather than a formal statement, and so Avery makes them both tea before leading her to a private room off the main office. She’s interviewed a neighbourhood police team here before, and as she follows him, walking past desks with officers at work, it feels disconcerting. The prospect of being the subject of an interview feels very different to asking the questions.
‘Thanks for seeing me, detective,’ she says, hovering in the doorway.
‘Please, it’s Dan,’ he says, gesturing her inside and closing the door behind them both. ‘So tell me what’s bothering you. Besides the obvious.’
Frankie sits down, and Dan takes a chair opposite. He’s a slim man, probably in his mid or late twenties. She can’t imagine him single-handedly grappling too many burly villains to the ground but he has a quiet authority that puts her a little more at ease. ‘I hope this doesn’t sound too crazy,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if it’s linked to the blog. I don’t know if it means anything at all, but when I spoke to Hanna Chivers’ flatmates they told me she had been sent glass in the post before she went missing and it really upset her. I thought that was creepy at the time. Then today I spoke to Lily Sidcup’s parents and they showed me a weird message somebody posted on their daughter’s Facebook page. It’s a smashing vase.’ Frankie swallows hard. ‘Then, well, the next bit really is going to sound stupid.’
‘Go on.’ Dan doesn’t look as if he finds her foolish. He’s been writing everything she says in his notepad and now glances up, looking direct into her eyes. ‘What else?’
‘I’ve been getting pictures of a vase in the post,’ she says, pulling the card out of her bag. She hands it over to him without looking at it. ‘This is about the third or fourth we’ve got. My boyfriend and I aren’t sure how many there’ve been, we threw some away.’ Dan studies it, turning it over to look at the typed address on the back. ‘They’ve all been like that, printed, no handwriting. But the main thing is, you see it’s cracked? I think that crack is getting bigger. I can’t be sure because we chucked the others, I thought it was a flier, but I’m almost certain in the first one the vase was virtually intact.’
‘Do you mind if I keep hold of this?’ Dan asks. ‘And obviously let me have any others if you get them.’
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘And the other thing. Well, this is almost certainly paranoia, but I thought I saw a white car follow me to Lily’s house today. I lost it before I got there, but then when I left, I’m sure I saw the same car outside their house. There was someone sitting in it.’
‘Did you get a good look at the person, or the reg plate?’
‘No, I was too far away, and then they pulled out and drove off in the opposite direction. I was too flustered to clock the registration. I think the car was some sort of saloon. A Mondeo maybe, but I’m not very good with makes.’
Dan nods. ‘Completely understandable,’ he says. ‘But if you see the car again, try and get the reg if you can, if you think it’s safe. Is there anything else?’
The detective constable is looking at her with such sympa
thy that Frankie cracks. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I just can’t help feeling that the blogger on the website is connected to the killer, whatever your colleague says. I know you told me whoever is on there claiming to be the Norfolk Strangler is most likely a troll, but how can you be sure? And it doesn’t reassure me at all that the blog’s not a main line of enquiry. What if I’m the next target?’
Dan puts his notepad down. ‘I know being targeted online like you’ve been is very upsetting. Do you want me to put you in touch with someone from victim support?’
‘I don’t need victim support,’ Frankie says, exasperated. ‘I want to be sure I’m not going to get kidnapped by some murdering nutcase!’
‘I’m not part of the team investigating the murders,’ he replies. ‘But I promise you I’m going to tell them everything you’ve told me and I’m hoping someone from the investigation will call you in to speak with you, OK?’ Frankie watches him closely, trying to judge if he is fobbing her off or not. ‘I’m being serious,’ he says, as if reading her mind. ‘I’m concerned about everything you’ve told me and I want you to be extra vigilant. Try not to go places on your own, be very aware of your surroundings and always tell people where you are going.’
‘You think I might be a target, don’t you?’
‘I don’t want you feeling alarmed, these are just precautions,’ Dan replies. He sounds calm but Frankie sees the flicker of hesitation before he speaks. She can tell he knows she’s noticed. ‘You can still call me anytime at all,’ he says. ‘But if you think somebody’s following you again, please call 999.’
In the newsroom Frankie doesn’t mention her visit to Dan Avery. As she walks in she’s met by Rachel, who looks upset.
‘Oh, you’re back, are you?’ she says. ‘Kiera wants you to do the Lindsey family presser report, not me. I’m just good for fluffy stories about kids and garden fetes, apparently.’ Rachel hands her the memory stick with the rushes on it. ‘Then why send me? She’s so bloody rude!’ Frankie knows Rachel is angry with Kiera but feels some of her resentment has spilled over onto her. Kiera certainly knows how to foster a toxic working environment.
The Death Knock Page 17