by Jules Wake
‘Here’s one that says no call out charge. Or what about this, OAP discounts. Do the over-sixties lock themselves out regularly?’
‘Yes, if they’re anything like my gran. She had keys all over the village – she was always locking herself out.’
Emily turned up just as I was finishing my call with Locks R Us. I was dreading her rushing up to Daniel and hurling herself into his arms, but I needn’t have worried. As she rounded the top of the stairs, a guilty look slid across her face.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked hurriedly. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’
‘Daniel … Olivia. What are you … doing here?’ she stuttered, hurriedly pulling her jacket back on.
I knew why. That skimpy top looked like last night’s clubbing outfit to me.
‘We’ve been so worried about you? I was imagining all—’
‘What are you on about?’ she asked defensively. ‘I was at … at Caroline’s last night.’
Her eyes didn’t meet mine, which suited me fine – my own guilt was probably plastered across my face.
‘Do you want to tell her, Olivia?’ asked Daniel looking stern.
‘It’s Peter,’ I explained. ‘He’s stalking you.’
‘What do you mean?’ Emily pulled a face, rolling her eyes at Daniel as if humouring me.
‘Here on this tape I got from Miriam, you can see Peter watching you at the premiere.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you absolutely sure it is him?’
‘Definitely.’
Emily’s eyes darted to Daniel.
‘I know all about it,’ he said dryly. She coloured and glared at me.
‘I hope you explained that it was all down to you,’ she snapped, her voice softening as she turned to Daniel. ‘I only went on the speed-date to keep her company – biggest mistake I ever made.’
Not, if she was with the man I suspected she’d been with last night. A certain someone she’d met at the speed-date. Someone who had access to tickets to the Phantom of the Opera, liked Japanese food and completed The Times crossword every day.
‘Emily, I’m not interested,’ said Daniel wearily. ‘There’s a much bigger issue. Peter. He looks like he’s been here. Taking things. Like your scarf.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’ve been listening to little Miss Paranoia.’ She rounded on me. ‘You lost my red scarf. Do you think I believe that? Honestly.’ She rolled her eyes at Daniel, trying to enlist his support.
‘Emily,’ I said as calmly as I could, my back teeth grating. ‘I’d show you. It’s quite clear on the video tape.’
‘How convenient. Who still uses video tapes these days?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘Emily, I promise you I’ve seen it. This guy was definitely at the premiere, watching you and wearing your red scarf.’
‘My God. That’s so creepy. How did he know I’d be there?’ Emily hugged herself and sank onto the sofa.
‘Dunno. But can you remember when the scarf went missing?’
‘It was …’ She went silent. ‘No, it couldn’t …’
‘What?’
‘You remember I lost my keys?’ Emily asked Olivia.
‘Of course I do. I rang you in a panic when I thought there was someone downstairs.’
Daniel’s head shot up. ‘You never said anything about that before.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t …’
Shit, had we just given the game away to Emily. Her face was an icy mask. Her eyes narrowed on Daniel. Trying to distract her, I said, ‘Thought you’d left them at work.’
A brief look of embarrassment crossed her face. ‘Not exactly,’ she hedged. ‘They were handed in to reception. Someone found them outside the front door of the office.’
Everything clicked into place. ‘Cara said he’d dropped your bag,’ I said, butting in. ‘He took your keys.’
‘My God. What’s he up to? Why’s he following me?’ Emily looked ashen, her breathing shallow. ‘I’m scared. What does he want?’
As if asking permission, Daniel glanced my way before going over and sitting down next to her.
‘Look, Emily,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘A locksmith’s on his way to change the locks but you need to call the police in. You have to report this.’
‘Why can’t Olivia? It’s her fault – and her cousin’s,’ said Emily, turning to him and laying her head on his shoulder. ‘What am I going to do? Oh, Daniel. I’m so glad you’re here.’
He looked up helplessly. I shrugged. An Oscar winning performance.
‘You’d have thought,’ she glared at me as if I was personally responsible, ‘that checks would have been in place to stop this sort of thing. Why didn’t you warn me, Olivia? You’ll have to phone the police. Barney’s your cousin.’
That’s right put all the blame on me. I don’t suppose it occurred to her that her inflammatory emails had poured oil on a troubled mind.
‘You’re the target,’ said Daniel exasperated. ‘The emails came to you and it was your computer he sabotaged. The brick was probably just random.’ His voice softened as he said this and Emily gave him a sharp considering look. ‘He wouldn’t have known whose room it was.’
Suddenly she was mutinous. ‘If we change the locks Peter can’t do anything else, can he? He’ll know we’re on to him. That’ll stop him.’
‘No, Emily. Daniel’s right. We have to call the police.’
She dismissed me. ‘Olivia, you’re over-reacting. I can’t think about this, now. I’m going to have a bath.’
‘Emily—’
‘What difference does it make if we phone later? It can wait.’ She deliberately turned her back on me.
‘Daniel,’ she said, her tone far sweeter. ‘You don’t mind if I slip off for a soak.’ After a pause she asked, ‘Are you … erm, staying?’
‘Actually, we need to talk,’ he said ominously. My heart skipped, which was wrong of me but she deserved what was coming. I doubted she’d be too bothered, all the signs were that she’d got Daniel’s successor lined up. Then again, she never liked to lose face.
Her fleeting look of worry was quickly replaced by a cocky, knowing look. ‘Anyone want a glass of wine? I think I’m going to need one.’ Before either of us could answer, she wheeled around and tripped off to the kitchen as my phone beeped announcing a text message.
As I read it anxiously, Daniel studied my face.
‘Not Kate,’ I said despondently looking up, rolling my head back and kneading my left shoulder which was full of knots. ‘Why hasn’t she got in touch yet?’
‘Try not to worry. It’s still the middle of the night there.’ He stepped towards me and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.
From the kitchen we heard a bad tempered bang as Emily slammed a cupboard door closed.
I withdrew my hand and pulled a face at Daniel. ‘I’m going to hide in my room,’ I whispered taking my cue for a diplomatic retreat.
‘Can I come too?’ he whispered.
‘Daniel.’ I tried to be stern but I couldn’t help smiling at him, he was doing a puppy dog look. ‘Are you a man or a mouse?’
‘Definitely—’
Suddenly there was a piercing scream. A cry of such terror that it punched straight through to the nervous system. We both reacted in the same way, running panic-stricken to the kitchen.
An overpowering smell hit us, a rotten, stomach turning stench that made me physically recoil.
Emily was standing in front of the open fridge, gripping the edge of the door. Her eyes fixed on something inside.
Daniel took hold of her, peeling her fingers away from the door and deliberately manhandling her so she could no longer see what was so terrifying. Clinging to him, she burst into noisy heaving sobs, her shoulders shaking. I hovered uncertainl
y, my stomach heaving as the sweet, bitter smell permeated my lungs. It was the worst thing I’d ever smelt in my life.
‘Hey, it’s all right. It’s all right. We’re here,’ he soothed, awkwardly rubbing her back.
‘Cat. Downstairs. Cat,’ she moaned.
What was she talking about? I couldn’t make out the words. All I could see was her white face, screwed up in terror and her throat swallowing furiously as if she might gag at any second. I was trying not to breathe through my nose. Daniel passed Emily out of the way and towards me so that he could get to the fridge properly. She was soft and pliable, as if all her bones had been removed and it felt as if she might slip through my arms at any second.
Even though he’d steeled himself, Daniel’s flinch said it all. His face paled as he closed the door firmly. His mouth turning down at the corners.
‘Don’t look, Olivia, it’s not nice.’ Judging from the smell, that was an understatement.
‘What is it?’ I breathed, my arm around Emily, holding on tight to keep her upright, every muscle bunched with tension. She’d started to cry and her teeth were chattering. She was slipping into shock.
‘Dead cat,’ he said tersely. ‘The junk shop cat. Now’s the time to phone the police.’
My stomach was churning with fear. Had Peter deliberately killed poor Charlie? The room felt incredibly cold. Wrapping my arms around myself, I tried to stop shaking. I wanted a cardigan but didn’t want to go into my bedroom by myself. Peter must have been in there. I remembered things now, unexplained at the time, my necklace on the floor, Emily’s missing underwear. It all made sense now.
We’d retreated from the kitchen and Emily was weeping copiously, all over Daniel. Shit, it was hard to ignore the way her tiny frame fitted so neatly on his knee, her head just tucked under his chin.
All three of us nearly leapt six feet in the air when the locksmith arrived. It was left to me to answer the door. There was no way Emily was vacating those muscular thighs. Succumbing to my inner bitch, I thought it was a shame she’d stopped screaming. I would have enjoyed giving her a good slap.
A man of few words, Mr Lukic made short work of installing a new lock, even without my constant interruptions.
‘Look, love,’ he said with a sigh eventually, after I’d badgered him solidly for five minutes with questions about the security of the new locks. ‘There are millions of permutations of these keys. No one is going to have a copy.’
‘Are you sure?’
He put down his tools, and looked up at me. ‘Yes, love.’
‘But what about someone picking the lock?’ I asked.
His brow furrowed like corrugated cardboard. ‘That happens in films. Not real life, love. Burglars. Opportunists they are. Easy access – they’ll take that every time.’
It wasn’t a burglar I was worried about. I’d read enough psychological thrillers to know that psychopaths started small, torturing and killing pets before graduating to humans. My stomach twisted. Poor Charlie. What had Peter done to him? How could he? Charlie had been such a sweet little thing. He’d probably walked right up to Peter, weaving in and out of his legs, purring away like he always did. God, I was going to have to tell Charlie’s owner? My eyes welled up. What was I going to tell him?
‘There, love,’ Mr Lukic’s raspy voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘All done.’ Catching sight of my tears, he busied himself putting away his tools. ‘Safest thing. Always put the chain on when you’re in.’
It cost £120 by the time he’d finished, easy money for forty-five and a half minutes work. Nice work if you could get it especially with all those keyless OAPs wandering around in their slippers. Mr Rolling-in-fivers was handing out fresh keys by the time the police finally turned up.
Given that a murder wasn’t actually in progress when we’d dialled 999, the police appeared quite quickly – by South London standards. They called it a ‘Suspicious Incident’ but I think Emily’s hysterics in the background had a lot to do with it. Probably took pity on us – her voice can be a bit high-pitched.
To my disappointment there wasn’t so much as a flash of a blue light to herald their arrival. They ambled in, in their black uniforms. Starsky and Hutch they were not.
PC Carpenter and WPC Cartwright were local veterans, so the contents of our fridge didn’t faze them too much, even though they pronounced that poor Charlie’s throat had been cut. At that news Emily keeled over in a suspiciously neat faint, while my stomach tried to turn itself inside out. Daniel’s face turned even greyer.
Despite his youthful appearance, I swear it must have taken him three days to grow that stubble, PC Carpenter had probably clocked up more fatal stabbings and drive by shootings than he’d had hot dinners. He was a fairly weedy looking specimen, while gravelly voiced WPC Cartwright had probably had more packets of unfiltered Gauloise than hot dinners. Pushing forty, her hard, lined face told you that she’d seen and done everything, although she admitted a feline corpse in a domestic appliance was a new one.
She dutifully declined a cup of tea and plonked herself down on the sofa to take notes, propping up her notebook on her knee. It was left to me to relate the full tale, which when told sounded fairly fantastic.
‘Did you make it clear the emails weren’t welcome?’ asked Cartwright, her hand pausing, glancing up from her closely written notes at Emily.
‘Sort of,’ said Emily wincing.
‘How?’ persisted the police lady.
‘I told him to … stop emailing me.’
Cartwright was nobody’s fool. She just looked intently at Emily.
‘All right, I told him to piss off and leave me alone and that he was a sad loser. OK?’
Cartwright’s pen scribbled away furiously, asking the odd question about the content of the emails. I got the impression that in her vast and unseemly experience, the emails weren’t even mildly offensive. As she explained wearily, there were guys out there beating seven bells out of their wives and girlfriends every night – often killing them.
In the background PC Carpenter poked about the flat, making obvious comments like. ‘So this is the bathroom.’
I could see why he wasn’t a detective.
As I got to the end of the story, PC Cartwright’s back got straighter and her frown of concentration more intense. Coming to the end of the story, I explained how Daniel and I had seen Peter on the tape, and realised that he’d been in the flat, even before we’d come home to find the unmentionable in the fridge.
Cartwright looked sharply from me to Daniel, and then from Daniel to Emily. She shook her head slightly. I think she thought he was running a harem.
‘We’re definitely dealing with a harassment matter. Have you had any further contact with the young man?’ she asked.
Emily shook her head.
Cartwright pinched her lips tightly and hesitated before she spoke again. ‘This could escalate. I would like you to be aware of that. What we can do, if you would like us to, is warn him about his behaviour under Section Two of the Harassment Act.’
‘What does that involve?’ asked Emily, gnawing at her lower lip.
‘He’s officially warned in person by a police officer and a record is made of this on computer. After that warning, if he persists in his behaviour, we have the power to arrest him and it could go to court. In that case your tape would then be evidence. In the meantime, you best hang on to it,’ explained Cartwright, her wrinkled eyes narrowing into something resembling a sympathetic smile.
PC Carpenter returned from his amble around the flat. ‘If you could prove that it was him chucked the brick through the window, you might get him for criminal damage. Did you report it at the time?’
‘Yes,’ I piped up. ‘I’ve got the crime number.’
‘What about your neighbours? Any of them see anything?’
‘Dou
btful. The junk shop downstairs is empty at night, the owner lives several doors down and we’ve never even see the people on either side.’
‘Might be worth popping round and asking them,’ observed PC Carpenter.
‘What about the scarf?’ asked Daniel.
Cartwright patiently explained that it was circumstantial evidence and unless we could prove that Peter had taken it from the flat, the police had no grounds to arrest him and seize the scarf for forensic examination.
Talk about unsatisfactory. Basically we had no proof.
‘What about breaking and entering?’ asked Daniel, bewildered that the law didn’t seem to be able to help.
‘I’d like SOCO to come round and see if they can get some fingerprints from the fridge.’ She sighed wearily. ‘Normally they wouldn’t come out for harassment but this … well … I think it warrants it. Don’t touch the fridge again until they’ve seen it.’
‘Socko?’ asked Emily. ‘What’s that?’
‘Scenes of Crime Officers,’ I piped up. Cartwright raised her eyebrows at me. I smiled weakly. ‘Too many crime thrillers. Not first-hand knowledge.’ I almost added, honest. I always had a compulsion around the police to let them know I was a good upright citizen.
‘Carpenter, can you get on to that right away,’ said Cartwright, ignoring us both. ‘Might be a good idea to get them here as soon as.’
‘Will do.’
‘So in the meantime, what next?’ asked Daniel. ‘Two girls living on their own. The locks have been changed, but what if he comes back?’
WPC Cartwright softened slightly at his visible frustration. ‘Look, I understand you’re worried. We can flag this address so that if you call 999 there’s a note on the computer about what’s been going on. If anything happens you’ll be a priority. In the meantime we’ll contact,’ she looked at her notebook, ‘Barney Snowdon, and see if he can give us this Peter’s contact details. If all else fails we’ve got his email address and we can contact the service provider.’
God only knows what Barney would say when he heard the police would be in touch. That was one call I really didn’t want to make.