The Death Knock

by Elodie Harper

  Seeing Zara’s incredulous face, she feels both reassured and irritated to have her deepest fear dismissed. ‘How can you be sure though? It’s not just what’s in the blog, and that’s bad enough. He did target Hanna on there too, remember, not just me? And then there’s this whole weird vase thing—’ She stops, not sure she wants to share it all, but Zara is staring at her, waiting, and she knows she doesn’t have a hope of deflecting her friend’s nosiness now she’s caught a whiff of something more. ‘Hanna got sent broken glass in the post before she was kidnapped,’ she explains, ‘and now somebody’s sending me postcards of chipped vases. There was a creepy smashing vase on Lily’s memorial page and now there’s the exact same image directed at me by Feminazi Slayer. And I think a car may have followed me to Lowestoft, though I can’t be sure.’ As she finishes, she realises that the whole thing sounds rather paranoid.

  Zara is frowning. ‘Have you told the police all this?’

  ‘Yes, though I don’t know how seriously they take it.’

  ‘Could that be a good thing, do you think?’ In reply Frankie makes a face. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean it’s OK for the police to underplay your worries, but if they aren’t too worried, hopefully that means you don’t have to be either. Donald Emneth has been arrested now. Surely they must be pretty confident he’s the killer?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Frankie says. ‘But it’s still bothering me. You know Zachary Allen, Grant’s son, also killed his girlfriend with a vase?’

  ‘OK, well, that is all a bit weird,’ Zara says. ‘Though it doesn’t prove anything.’ She sees Frankie’s irritation and puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Look, I’m not discounting your murderer theory – if I’d been going through all that stuff you have I’d be absolutely crapping myself – I just don’t think it should put us off visiting Grant Allen. He’s been estranged from his son for years, hasn’t he? We can let Mark know exactly where we’re going, and tell Grant that our newsdesk knows where we are, just in case he has any funny ideas.’ Zara runs a hand through her short hair. ‘But I think the only way we’re going to know if his organisation is linked to this Feminazi guy is by seeing how he acts around you. And then monitoring if there are any give-aways on the website itself.’ Zara is looking at her, one hand hovering over the keyboard waiting to type.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ says Frankie, sitting back on the sofa. ‘Let’s see what he says.’

  Full of beef stew and red wine, Frankie lies on the sofa bed in Mark and Zara’s spare room as they get ready for bed. She takes a last look at her mobile, with its good-night message from Jack, and places it on the carpet beside her. There’s the sound of the tap running in the bathroom on the other side of the wall, as Mark or Zara brushes their teeth. Thin curtains let the moonlight into her room, along with the orange glow of the lamppost on the opposite side of the street. This is the only space in the house that’s plain white, and the only one that feels empty. Instead of physical objects it’s full of longing for what it lacks: a baby.

  Frankie tries not to think of that as she hears the click of the bathroom light next door. It’s too painful imagining all the heartache that must be going on under her friend’s cheery exterior. She knows the Hydes’ second round of IVF starts in a month. At least Mark is a supportive partner; Zara told her once that he gave her all the injections because she found it too difficult to do it herself.

  Zara had obviously filled him in on the blog before he arrived; he’d patted her arm with a murmured ‘rotten luck’ but hadn’t asked her anything more. It was a relief not to have to explain it all. He hadn’t looked too thrilled, though, when Zara mentioned their proposed visit to Grant Allen. With a pang of guilt, she wonders if the stress of tracking down the blogger is the best build-up to Zara’s fertility treatment. Frankie turns over on the hard foam base of the sofa bed, fluffing up her pillow. On the other hand, knowing Zara, it’s precisely the sort of distraction she would relish. A car passes the house, its headlights briefly illuminating the ceiling. She stares at the window, trying not to think of Feminazi Slayer’s montage, or his message. We’re watching you. Frankie closes her eyes. At least here, in her friends’ house, she’s safe.

  In the morning she comes down to breakfast feeling crumpled in yesterday’s work clothes. She and Zara had stopped off at the supermarket, just in case anyone was lurking near her flat, so she could get a toothbrush and spare pair of pants, but it means she didn’t come with a change of clothes. She wanders through to the blue galley kitchen. The 1930s-style radio on the counter is playing Classic FM. Mark is there in a stripy knitted jumper, frying bacon. He raises a cafetière at her.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Thanks. Can I help?’

  He pours her a cup. ‘All under control,’ he replies.

  ‘Morning!’ Zara calls out. She’s sitting at the dining table in the conservatory at the end of the kitchen with a coffee, her laptop open. ‘Looks like we’re in business.’

  Mark shifts over so Frankie can get past. ‘Not sure this is such a great idea,’ he says, sticking some bread in the toaster. ‘But you pair know best, I suppose.’

  ‘No supposing,’ says Zara with a grin. She puts her feet down off the chair next to her so Frankie can sit down. ‘Mr Allen is keen to get his mug on TV, it seems. He can see us this afternoon.’

  ‘That is keen,’ says Frankie. ‘What does he say?’ Zara shoves the laptop over so she can see.

  ‘Dear Mrs Hyde,’ she reads. ‘It’s encouraging to hear that the Eastern Film Company aren’t taking a narrow-minded view of Donald Emneth’s arrest. I had my doubts from your colleague’s rude reaction. Glad she’s come round. Mr Emneth’s already seen his name trashed by the mainstream media and it would be good if we could work together to rectify this. I’m at home in Brandon until 3 p.m. today and could spare half an hour for you both if you want to drop by. Regards, Grant.’

  ‘Anybody who uses the term “mainstream media” is bound to be a wanker,’ she says. ‘But aside from that, his complete lack of manners and the fact he’s sympathetic to a guy who just kidnapped a single mum and possibly murdered a bunch of women, he sounds lovely.’

  Mark steps down into the conservatory with two plates of bacon, eggs and toast. Zara jumps up from her chair to fetch the third portion from the kitchen. ‘Still not sure this is a great idea,’ he says as he puts Frankie’s breakfast down in front of her.

  ‘Don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud,’ says Zara, returning with her plate in one hand and a fistful of cutlery in the other. She spills it out on the table in a clanking heap. They help themselves to knives and forks.

  ‘Thanks, this looks amazing,’ Frankie says.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Mark replies. ‘Seriously though, if he’s the blogger aren’t you just going to feed his obsession with Frankie?’ He gives Zara a meaningful look. ‘Not to mention give him somebody new to focus on.’

  Frankie chews on her poached egg and toast, feeling uncomfortable. The last thing she wants is to be the cause of a row. ‘Maybe we should give it a miss,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, the pair of you!’ Zara replies, sawing through her crispy bacon with force. ‘I don’t see how it can make things any worse for Frankie, the police don’t seem to be doing much. Though you didn’t tell them about Brett, did you? Do you think maybe you should?’

  ‘Maybe. But there are so many creepy guys in my life. Hard to choose between them,’ Frankie says, with a forced smile. She’s beginning to wish they weren’t going to visit Grant Allen; it would be much nicer to go for a long walk with Zara, Mark and Snoopy instead, perhaps all meet Jack in town for a pub lunch. Anything but keep thinking about the blog and all the abuse. ‘If we are going,’ she says, ‘I’d better let Jack know.’

  Zara rolls her eyes. ‘You boys. No sense of adventure at all.’

  Frankie can’t get hold of Jack, which is odd, but she leaves him a message. They set off for Brandon in Zara’s battered old Peugeot with Snoopy in the back seat. Until they g
et to the A11, Zara lets him sit with his head lolling out of the window, barking at passing cyclists. The sky is clear blue and the air crisp. It makes Frankie feel even more depressed about spending her Saturday on the county’s most monotonous A-road rather than out in the countryside.

  ‘We’ll say he’s yours,’ Zara says, pushing her dark glasses on top of her head as they approach Brandon. ‘If Grant’s the blogger he’ll know you don’t have a dog and his reaction might tell us something.’

  ‘He can’t be, surely,’ she replies. ‘I mean he wouldn’t agree to see us if he were.’

  ‘One thing this job should have told you a long time ago is people are bonkers,’ Zara says. ‘They never do what you expect.’

  They drive down the high street, then on to the town’s outskirts. Grant Allen lives in a bungalow on one of Brandon’s small meandering residential roads, all of which seem to have been named for Catholic saints, near the border with Thetford Forest Park. It looks like an unremarkable place, with neatly trimmed lawns and carefully raked plots of gravel. Frankie wonders if any of the neighbours know about Mr Allen’s work at Justice4Jailbirds. Or the years his son spent in prison.

  ‘Is this it?’ she asks, as they pull up outside a house with a mock Tudor diamond pattern on the windows.

  ‘Yup,’ says Zara. ‘Nice gnomes,’ she adds, nodding at two little figurines on the freshly mown lawn. They appear to be fishing in the world’s smallest ornamental pond. ‘Snoopy will drink from anything. If we’re not careful he’ll end up knocking one in.’

  ‘Sounds like a great way to ingratiate ourselves.’

  The front door opens as they get out of the car and a barrel-chested man with silver hair walks over. He looks like the type of hale pensioner who might star on the cover of Saga magazine. ‘Grant Allen,’ he says, holding out his hand. ‘You the ladies from the Eastern Film Company?’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Zara, shaking hands. ‘I’m Zara Hyde, this is my colleague Frances Latch, who you’ve spoken to before.’

  Frankie extricates herself from a bone-cruncher handshake. Grant Allen is wearing glasses with thick blue frames, the same colour as his cable-knit sweater. He’s so close, she can smell the cigarette smoke on him. ‘How are you with dogs?’ she asks, as Snoopy’s bark booms from inside the Peugeot and he scrabbles against the glass. ‘Can I bring mine in or would you rather we left him out here?’

  ‘Rather he stayed where he was, if it’s all the same to you,’ says Grant, eyeing the drooling Labrador with distaste.

  ‘Of course,’ says Frankie. ‘I’ll just wind the window down a bit.’

  ‘Thanks for seeing us at such short notice,’ Zara says.

  ‘I couldn’t refuse the woman who brought down HMP Halvergate, could I?’ he replies, with a grin. ‘Made my year, watching you expose those bastards on the telly. Of course, I’d been saying the place was bent for years, but nobody gives a toss what the father of a lad who’s actually been inside has to say.’ His face darkens. ‘Not like I have direct experience or anything.’ Grant seems to have slipped from friendly to aggrieved in a matter of moments. Humouring him could make for a heavy-going afternoon, Frankie thinks.

  ‘Well, we’re interested in what you have to say,’ Zara says, with a shamelessly oily smile. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  He waves them over towards the bungalow. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he says as they follow him over the driveway’s crazy paving. ‘Poor Donnie’s already taken a pasting. Going to be hard for the old boy to get any justice.’

  ‘D’you know him, then?’ Frankie asks.

  ‘No, why?’ Grant stops abruptly. He looks at her sharply, perhaps still harbouring a grudge over their phone calls.

  ‘It’s just you used his nickname.’

  ‘Common enough for Donald,’ he says. ‘Lucky guess.’

  They step inside. The front room looks more like a gym than a home, every inch of floor space is covered in fitness equipment. He gestures for them to take a seat. Frankie and Zara have to inch past a massive exercise bike to reach the grey sofa. The place reeks of stale tobacco. Grant Allen may have iron biceps but his lungs must be full of soot.

  ‘I’ll get us all a brew,’ he says, pushing aside a punch-bag that hangs in the archway between the living room and the kitchen. It swings in the empty space after he’s passed through.

  ‘Blimey,’ mutters Zara.

  Frankie looks at the floor. There’s a pile of Justice4Jailbirds flyers stacked at the foot of the sofa. She picks one up. The text is riddled with exclamation marks. She thinks about the vicious but controlled tone of Feminazi Slayer’s blogs. If it was Grant who wrote those posts, he did so in a different voice to the excitable one he uses for his campaign website. She turns the leaflet over. On the back are mugshots of some of the prisoners Grant is helping. Jamie Cole is there, along with three others. With a start she realises all four men pictured have been imprisoned for violent offences against women.

  ‘It’ll be Donnie’s face on the next one. If he accepts my help,’ Grant says, standing in the archway, watching them. He pushes past the punch-bag, gripping three mugs of tea. ‘There you go.’ They take a mug each and Grant perches on a bench press opposite. ‘So, ladies, what do you want from me? Fire away.’

  ‘At this stage,’ Zara says, ‘this is more of a punt. As Frankie explained to you, we couldn’t do anything until after Donald Emneth’s trial – if he ends up being charged – but we’d be interested in talking to you as part of our coverage when the verdict’s in.’

  ‘Are we talking a ten-second clip or time in the studio?’ he asks. There’s an unmistakable gleam of hunger in his eye. Everyone wants to be on TV, thinks Frankie.

  ‘That all depends on our editor,’ Zara hedges, well aware that even Kiera might not want Grant Allen spouting his controversial views on the studio sofa, racking up complaints to Ofcom as well as longed-for clicks to the website.

  ‘I’m really interested in your motivation,’ says Frankie. ‘It’s unusual that you’re not concerned about the men’s guilt or innocence.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he says. ‘Zach was guilty. Just because you’ve committed a crime society thinks is beyond the pale, doesn’t mean your human rights go up in a puff of smoke.’

  ‘Does Zach help you with your campaigning at all?’ Zara asks, pretending she doesn’t know about their estrangement. ‘He must appreciate what you’re doing.’

  ‘We’re not in touch,’ he says, looking away. It seems to Frankie that Grant’s pugnacious stance wavers slightly; there’s an almost imperceptible sag in his shoulders. For the first time she feels a flicker of sympathy. ‘I don’t get any help. Justice for Jailbirds is a one man band.’

  ‘Sorry to hear about Zach,’ she says. ‘That must be hard.’

  ‘I can understand why,’ he replies. ‘I try not to take it personal. The lad wanted a whole new life, forget about the past, all the shit that happened. And I’m not exactly a fade-into-the-background kind of guy, am I? Be bound to shoot my mouth off at some point and spoil things for him.’ He looks round the room, which Frankie has already noticed is devoid of any photographs. ‘The campaigning is like a secret signal between us. As long as I’m out there, talking about it all, he knows I’m thinking about him.’

  Frankie isn’t sure that constant reminders of the time he spent in prison would be the most welcome connection for Zach but she nods sympathetically.

  ‘It must be hard for you though,’ says Zara.

  ‘Harder for him,’ Grant shifts over on the bench press to get a wallet out of his back pocket. ‘I can’t really have any photos out,’ he says. ‘Might give the boy away. But I always keep this with me.’ He hands over a tiny crumpled picture to Zara, who leans over to take it. She holds it out so Frankie can see. A younger, beaming Grant is holding a baby in the crook of one arm. With the other he’s holding a woman’s hand; you can just see the edge of a floral skirt, but the rest of her has been sliced off the photo. It must be Zach’s
mother, the one who left, Frankie thinks. She hands the tiny relic back. ‘He’s a bright lad,’ says Grant, returning the photo to his wallet. ‘I’m sure he’s doing all right for himself somewhere. Took his A-levels in prison, did really well. I was dead proud.’

  ‘Was he bitter about everything that happened?’ she asks. ‘I guess he must have been.’

  ‘No more than most.’ Grant looks between her and Zara, a slight frown on his face. ‘Look, I could talk about my boy all day,’ he says. ‘But it’s not going to bring him back into my life. It’s Donnie you’re here for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Zara agrees. ‘It’s just interesting for us to know the background to your work. And very sad to think of all Zach went through at such a young age.’ She pauses, waiting to see if he takes the bait and talks more about his son, but Grant is now watching them both with a wary expression.

  ‘You were saying a crime doesn’t cancel out someone’s human rights,’ Frankie says. ‘Is that where your interest in Donald Emneth lies?’

  ‘Exactly. And it’s not like anyone else is interested. I daresay you ladies don’t do it on purpose, but it comes across like the whole media are kicking the poor bastard like a dog when it’s down.’

  ‘How do you think cases like this should be treated?’ Zara asks.

  ‘With a sense of proportion,’ he replies.

  Frankie wonders, but doesn’t ask, what proportion looks like when applied to murder. ‘Do you mean the context of the crime?’ she says, carefully.

  ‘That. And the aftermath. As I say, just because you did something wrong doesn’t mean you should be treated like dirt.’ He leans over and adjusts one of the weights on the press. ‘That’s just hypocritical, isn’t it? That’s the justice system acting as bad as the criminal.’

  ‘Quite.’ Zara nods vigorously. ‘I see you’ve got Jamie Cole on your leaflet. Did you know one of the women Donald Emneth may have killed gave evidence against him?’