Rebound

by Aga Lesiewicz

  We walk down towards the pond. I’m determined not to say anything and eventually she breaks the silence.

  ‘I do appreciate you coming here with me, Anna. As you may have guessed, this is not an official enquiry, more of an informal chat.’

  She leads the way, following exactly my usual running route.

  ‘In order to catch the bastard who’s killed all these people I need your cooperation, Anna. I need your help.’

  There is something so sincere in her voice that my belligerence begins to evaporate.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Ms Jones.’

  ‘Vic, please.’

  ‘What do you want me to say, Vic?’

  It feels strange calling her by her first name, but somehow appropriate now.

  ‘You knew Belinda. And I know there is a connection between you and the last victim.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ She looks at me incredulously.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I say honestly.

  She stares at the horizon, hesitates.

  ‘What I’m going to tell you is still confidential, but it’s bound to come out in the media soon.’

  She hesitates again and I can barely contain my curiosity. Who was he?

  ‘The last victim’s name was Mark Thomas. Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas.’

  It slowly sinks in.

  ‘You mean he was a policeman?’

  ‘My Chief Super.’

  This is too much to take. I stagger towards a bench and sit down heavily. DCI Jones sits down beside me. I’m desperately trying to think, to make some sense of what she’s just told me, but my mind’s gone blank.

  ‘He was your boss?’ I ask her at last.

  She nods.

  ‘Was he involved in the investigation?’

  ‘Not directly. But he was kept informed of all the developments.’

  I struggle to comprehend what I’ve just heard.

  ‘I can see it’s come to you as a shock. Why?’

  I shake my head and say nothing.

  ‘Anna, we have evidence that links you to DCS Thomas,’ she says quietly. I look at her, uncomprehending.

  ‘Evidence?’

  Vic doesn’t answer, observing me. I feel my arms and legs go numb as I try to breathe normally. That’s it then. There’s no point lying any more. I don’t even want to speculate what kind of evidence they’ve got.

  An unexpected sense of relief washes over me as I start telling her about the Dior Man. At last I can unburden myself, share my secret with someone who’s not going to run away screaming or moralize. Vic may charge me with obstructing the police investigation or withholding information, but I know she’s not going to pass judgement. I skip a few steamy details, but stick to the story pretty much as it happened. I’m not hiding the fact that I instigated the encounters and try to be succinct and matter-of-fact.

  Once I finish, she doesn’t reply for a long time. I know my story has put her in a very awkward position. She’s learnt something about her deceased boss that she probably didn’t want to know. Is she going to disclose it to the rest of the department or keep it to herself? Can she keep it to herself? Surprisingly, now that the story’s out, I don’t care whether the whole CID knows about it. Well, that may not be entirely true.

  Eventually she looks at me and I can tell she has a plan.

  ‘Thank you for being honest with me, Anna. Finally.’ There is a sparkle of emotion in her eyes, perhaps reproach, then she looks away. ‘I’d like you to do something for me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want you to go home and make a list of all the encounters with Chief– DCS Thomas. I want dates and times – try to be as precise as you can. It would also be helpful if you could pinpoint the locations. Do you think you can do it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She gets up with new energy, a woman on a mission.

  ‘Let’s get going.’ She starts walking back to where we came from.

  ‘We’re not going to the crime scene, then?’

  ‘It’s no longer necessary.’

  We walk down in silence, then stop by her Mini. There is a parking ticket behind the wiper on the windshield, which she removes, folds and puts in the back pocket of her jeans, without any sign of annoyance.

  ‘Would you like a lift back?’

  ‘No, thank you, I think I’ll walk back.’

  She nods and opens the driver’s door.

  ‘I’ll be in touch this afternoon. Please try to have the list ready by then.’

  ‘Vic?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Was he married?’

  She gives me a heavy look before replying.

  ‘Yes.’

  I lean on her red Mini as she gets in and slams the door shut. She starts the engine and I move away. She drives off without giving me another glance. So that’s what she really thinks of me.

  He had a wife. He’d go home after our dirty sex in the bushes, have a shower and snuggle up to his wife. God, what a mess.

  DCI Jones hates me. Of course she does. I’m this privileged slut who seems, in some inexplicable way, linked to the deaths on the Heath. What is she going to do? She strikes me as a righteous person, a solid and grounded policewoman, who is not going to try to hide anything in order not to tarnish the name of a fellow police officer. Would my story really tarnish his memory? The romanticized notion of the Dior Man has all gone, replaced by Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Thomas. Trust my luck to stumble upon a policeman in the bushes. A married policeman. A policeman who is now dead. A cold shiver runs through me. She thinks I’m linked to the attacks on the Heath. Am I in danger? I instinctively pick up pace and cast a glance behind me. The lane is empty. If I were at risk, wouldn’t she be sending a guardian angel, preferably in the form of DS Kapoor, to watch over me? I have a feeling I’m straying into the realm of Murder She Wrote. This is real life, and Jessica is not going to come to the rescue. But there is something I can do to help the woman who hates me right now.

  When I get home I go straight to the kitchen and get a clean sheet of paper. Then I fetch my Filofax from the bedroom. My well-worn, leather-bound personal organizer is a nostalgic throwback to the eighties, totally obsolete and practically unknown to most people under the age of forty. But it’s served me well over the years and I have no heart to throw it away. So each year I faithfully go on Amazon and buy a Filofax Diary Refill, then spend hours painstakingly marking the birthdays of all my friends on its pages in green pen. This is also where I mark all the events that would never, ever make it into my iCalendar. And this is where I’ve written four tiny letters in the right top corner of each day I encountered the Dior Man on the Heath. DIOR. I count five DIOR, but I’m pretty sure I saw him twice before I started marking the dates in the Filofax, when I first saw him and the second time, when we bumped into each other while running. Something tells me it’s the DIOR days that will be of utmost interest to DCI Jones. What will she do with them? Check them against the dates of the attacks on the Heath? I grab my laptop and Google ‘attacks on the Heath’. It turns out there are plenty of places called the Heath in the world that have been witness to all sorts of acts of violence. I keep narrowing my search until I have the right Heath and the right attacks. I check the two sets of dates, the attacks and the Dior Man encounters, against each other. The sequence that emerges makes my blood run cold. The first rape happened four days after I had sex with the Dior Man for the first time. The second, on the day after I met him for the second time. The rapist struck again two days later. I returned to the Heath after a break of nearly two weeks and ended up with the Dior Man at the Ladies’ Pond. Two days later Bell got murdered. I put the pen down and look out through the kitchen window. There is a bird frolicking on the Japanese maple bush that seems on fire with its orange and brilliant-red leaves. It makes me think of Bell. Fighting the tears, I get up and put the kettle on. Is the pattern I’ve just discovered coincidental or is th
ere really a connection between my encounters with the Dior Man and the horrible crimes on the Heath? With a mug of tea I go back to the table. There is one more DIOR mark in my Filofax. It’s on the day I saw the Dior Man for the last time. The day he left a message under Wispa’s collar asking me to call him. Twenty-four hours later he was dead.

  Now I know how he knew my name. He was a police officer, indirectly involved in the investigation into the death of my best friend. What was he trying to tell me that day he chased me in Kenwood? Had he worked out the connection himself and was trying to warn me? There is, of course, another possibility. I put the mug down as the thought strikes me. The violence on the Heath had nothing to do with me, but with him. He was a policeman after all, dealing with all sorts of shady characters who probably held grudges against him. And who were capable of committing terrifying acts of violence.

  I need to speak to DCI Jones, tell her what I’ve discovered, talk to her about my suspicions. There is no point in hiding the remaining details: Samantha’s strange visit, Alden’s recent freak-out, Ray’s behaviour which I witnessed in Upper Street, anything that can help solve this gruesome case. I must admit I’m also curious what DCI Jones will make of my theories.

  My phone rings. It’s Claire, asking whether I’m coming into work today. I glance at the clock. Good grief, it’s nearly one. I know I should be there, keeping my finger on the pulse while all the fighting and scheming goes on, but I’m so preoccupied with my own investigation that I tell her I’ll be working from home for the rest of the day. Then I call DCI Jones’s mobile number and leave a voicemail message asking her to get in touch as soon as possible. Chiara, who’s come to pick up Wispa, is horrified by the news of her poisoning and swears to me that she always keeps an eye on the dogs when she takes them out. I have no reason not to trust her. Once she’s gone I eat some nondescript pasta dish defrosted in the microwave and find myself pacing around the house, waiting for my phone to ring. When eventually it does, I grab it and answer without checking the caller ID. But instead of DCI Jones’s baritone I hear a different female voice. It’s Laura, Julian’s assistant. She’s asking if I will be able to pop into Julian’s office tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Of course, I say, too distracted to ask her what it’s about this time. As I put the phone down I suddenly remember the embarrassing scene in his office last night. Julian and Gary, what a sight. This explains, of course, Gary’s recent transformation from an office plodder to a corporate star. I try to imagine Sue’s face when I tell her about it. Then I check myself: this is something I should probably keep to myself.

  My phone rings again and it’s the Beaumont Sainsbury Animal Hospital with an update about Wispa. She’s responding well to treatment and the vet is hopeful, but we’re not out of the woods yet. I put the phone down with a cautious sigh of relief. Then it rings again and this time it is DCI Jones. I tell her I have the list and some new theories and she promises to come by within the hour. That’s fast; she must think that whatever I know, consciously or not, about the case, is important. Which makes me feel both flattered and anxious.

  She arrives exactly forty minutes later and I begin to wonder whether the Heath attacks are the only case she is dealing with at the moment. We go straight to the kitchen and she accepts my offer of coffee, revealing she’s as addicted to it as I am. I present her with the list of dates I’ve made and she studies it for a long time in silence. When she puts it away I tell her about Samantha’s visit, Alden’s abusive behaviour and my acquaintance with Ray. She listens carefully to everything I say, but I can tell she doesn’t consider my revelations as important as the dates linking me to the Dior Man. Then I put forward my theory of the attacks being somehow linked to his life rather than mine and she nods.

  ‘We’re looking into it right now. But we have to bear in mind that you were linked to two of the victims, and DCS Thomas, as far as we can tell, only to you.’

  She rubs her forehead and I notice that she looks tired. Having your boss murdered on your watch must be a nightmare. She finishes her coffee, puts my list away in her black notebook and gets up.

  ‘Thank you, Anna, I really appreciate your help,’ she says and I know that this time she means it. ‘Do give me a call if you think of anything else. I’ll be in touch anyway.’

  I close the door behind her, feeling that I’ve done something useful and right.

  Eighteen Days Later

  I wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. Another nightmare. I find myself looking for Wispa, but of course she’s not in her usual place by my bed. The house feels so empty without her. I turn the bedside lamp on and pad barefoot to the kitchen to get a glass of water. The dream is still vivid in my memory: a man was trying to break in through the bedroom window, pounding on the double-glazed pane, leaving dirty handprints on the glass. I screamed at him and just as he managed to break the window and started climbing in, I pushed him out and he fell from the first floor to the ground. When I looked out of the broken window he was lying on the patio below, spread-eagled on his back, a dark pool of blood seeping out from under him. The Dior Man.

  I haven’t had so many nightmares since I was a child. But then I kept dreaming about monsters hiding under my bed, ready to snatch me as soon as I stuck my leg even an inch outside the duvet. The nightmares were getting so bad that I started wetting my bed until one day my mum gave me a small brown bottle with a yellow label. ‘Anti-monster spray’ it said on the label and it gave detailed instructions about how much spray one should use depending on the size and the type of the monster. I’d spray my bedroom generously every night and it worked like magic. The monsters disappeared and my sheet and mattress remained dry. It took me years to realize the spray was the lavender water my mum used to make herself. Till this very day I connect the smell of lavender with my childhood, monster-free bedroom. I wish I had the spray now.

  It takes me hours to get back to sleep and when my alarm rings at 6.30 a.m. I feel exhausted. But I force myself to go for a short run, which feels sad and lonely without Wispa, take a long hot shower, limit myself to two Arpeggios from my coffee machine and get to work half an hour before my meeting with Julian at 9 a.m. I have barely enough time to skim through the subjects of my emails, opening a few that seem urgent.

  He greets me cordially, enveloping me in the cloud of his aftershave. I’m pretty sure it is, ironically, Eau Sauvage by Dior. He leads me to his pristine leather sofa and the image of him and Gary flashes through my mind. Is that why he invited me here? To somehow strike a deal about what I saw on Monday night?

  ‘Anna.’ His voice is full of compassion. ‘I’m afraid I have a bit of bad news.’

  He pauses and I brace myself for whatever might come.

  ‘Your position has been made redundant.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  For a moment I think this is some kind of an elaborate joke and in a second we’ll both be laughing at it. But he is not laughing; there isn’t a hint of smile in his face, just ruthless satisfaction.

  ‘Your position is no longer viable in our new structure.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He sighs and opens his hands in a gesture of hopelessness, so incompatible with his face.

  ‘I know. It’s been such a hard decision. Believe me. We greatly value your experience, your skills, your honesty and sincerity, and it will be a great loss to our company. And to me personally. I have really enjoyed working with you and I’ll be very sad to see you go. But such are the times. They call for change, for tough austerity measures, for a new slim-lined structure, and even for letting go of our best people.’

  I tune him out and try to understand the implications of what he’s just said. Julian keeps talking and I watch his stony face, his hard, uncaring eyes and his thin mouth moving eloquently, delivering my sentence.

  ‘. . . is a thankless task,’ he continues. ‘It is an emotional process and we’ve set up measures to help you go through it. I’ve arranged a follow-up meeting with HR for y
ou on Friday. Anthea will go through all the details with you, the redundancy package and your rights, of course. You’ll see how much we’ve appreciated your hard work.’ It’s intended as a promise but sounds like a threat. ‘In the meantime, go home, take the time to think of the future. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow. Anthea will be in touch regarding Friday.’

  He gets up and I have no choice but to get up as well. The meeting is clearly over. He takes my hand in both of his and looks into my eyes with the compassion of an alligator.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Anna, but you’ll find it’s for the best.’

  Shell-shocked, I leave his office and take the corridor to the emergency access staircase at the back of the building. I swipe my card and pull the heavy door open. The staircase is the office sanctuary, used only occasionally by the maintenance staff and a few fitness freaks who prefer the stairs to the array of lifts at the front of the building. One can spend hours here without being accosted by a single soul. I sit on the vinyl-covered step at the top of the stairs. As the initial shock subsides I see the reality of the situation. It’s really quite simple. I’m out of a job. Just like that. And I’m dying for a cigarette. I haven’t smoked for years, but the sudden craving takes me all the way down to the underground car park and the office of the security guys. I bum a Marlboro Light off one of them and stand outside by the car exit, inhaling the smoke greedily. As soon as the nicotine buzz hits me, I begin to feel better. I’m ready to face the world. Well, almost. I take the back stairs up to my floor and go straight to my office. Gary passes my door and raises his hand in greeting. I wonder if he knows. Not that it matters one way or the other. Soon everyone will know and the place will be rife with gossip and speculation. It’s better to leave as soon as possible, Julian was right about that. I log off my laptop, pack my bag, grab the picture of Wispa that has been sitting on my desk since I started the job and leave, closing the door behind me. Luckily, Claire is not at her station, so I don’t have to invent a lie about leaving work so early.