Class Murder

by Leigh Russell

  Refusing to look round, Peter hurried towards his home, walking as fast as he could on the icy pavement. He was already through the gate and had reached the narrow path that led up to his front door when he changed his mind. The situation was becoming intolerable, and he had been a fool to put up with it even for a moment. He resolved to discover the stalker’s identity for himself and put an end to the problem once and for all. Spinning on his heel he darted back out on to the street, pumped up and ready to confront the stranger and demand what the hell was going on.

  There was no sign of the man. Peter looked both ways, peering through the darkness, but the mysterious figure had vanished. Uncertain whether to feel relieved or more unnerved than before, he went home. Closing the front door behind him, he was enveloped in welcoming warmth. His landlady kept the heating on all day and night, professing to suffer dreadfully from the cold. In his panic, Peter almost barged into her at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘You’re in a hurry,’ she smiled. ‘Are you going out somewhere nice tonight?’

  Too worked up to answer, he shook his head. It took him a few seconds to compose himself, but she didn’t seem to notice anything unusual in his demeanour.

  ‘No, I’m not going anywhere,’ he replied at last.

  ‘I’ll make us some supper then, shall I?’ she asked. Plump and smiling, she bustled past him towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll put some lamb in the oven…’

  Although she had no way of knowing about the danger he was facing, he was nevertheless irrationally offended by her ignorance of his plight. All at once he seemed to be suffocating in the warm air of the house, hemmed in by her cheerful hospitality. Without a word of explanation, he flung the front door open again and ran out into the night.

  The street was deserted, but he had a feeling his stalker wasn’t far away. Lowering his head as though that would shield him from view, he dashed down the road and slipped into the pub. He didn’t think anyone had seen him go inside. Nodding at the landlord, he felt safe for the first time in days as he went to the bar and ordered a pint. He didn’t know anyone else in there, although one or two people looked vaguely familiar. Had it been a Saturday evening the bar would have been packed. Raised voices would have been competing to be heard above loud music blaring out through the PA system. Sometimes there was a band playing. They weren’t usually up to much but the landlord said he liked to support local talent.

  Finishing his pint he ordered another one. He was beginning to relax. Already the memory of his mysterious stalker was beginning to fade, like a half-forgotten dream. He had obviously been mistaken. No one was going to be interested in following him around. By coincidence he had seen several men, similar in appearance, in the space of one evening. It was hardly surprising that he would have seen more than one man dressed in a long coat, hat and scarf, in such cold weather. By the time he left the pub it was dark, and he was feeling slightly woozy from downing a few pints on an empty stomach.

  The night air was sharp and cold. Feeling queasy, he crossed the road and walked straight ahead, towards the canal. The towpath was deserted at that time of night in winter. After the warmth and colour and pungent smell of beer in the pub he would be able to think clearly in the quiet darkness by the water and, more to the point, no one would see him if he threw up there. Even the ducks had disappeared for the night. He could have been the only living man on the planet.

  Until he heard soft footsteps on the path behind him.

  Stifling a cry of alarm, he spun round. ‘Who’s there?’ he called out, hearing his own voice quiver. ‘Where are you? I know you’re there.’

  13

  The apartment rented by the victim was being carefully examined. Days after the incident, clues could still be discovered at a crime scene. Stephanie’s flatmate, Ashley, hadn’t left York but was staying with a neighbour on the floor above. She had gone back to work so Geraldine didn’t go and see her until the evening. The door was opened by a woman in her forties. Hearing who Geraldine was, she introduced herself as Gloria.

  ‘I had the room empty, with my daughter being away at college, so I checked with my daughter and she said it was fine to let Ashley stay until they’ve finished searching her flat. Although, what she’d want to go back there for…’ she broke off with a shrug. ‘Anyway, come on in. We’re sitting in here.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Ashley on her own.’

  Gloria looked slightly put out but she nodded and gestured towards the room where Ashley was waiting. Geraldine entered a neat square sitting room. The carpet was pink and white, as were the curtains, and the walls were painted white with a tinge of pink. The whole room gave an impression of warmth and homeliness. Coming in from the cold winter air outside, Geraldine immediately felt comfortable as she sank into a soft armchair. It would have been nice to put her feet up and turn the television on and simply relax. Making a mental note to buy a rug for the wooden floor in her living room, she smiled at Ashley.

  ‘I had to go back to work,’ she said, as though she felt the need to apologise for appearing to recover from the recent trauma so quickly. ‘I couldn’t stay in the flat. I mean, they wouldn’t let me anyway, but I didn’t want to be there right now, and I can’t sit around here all day…’ she broke off and glanced at the door which Geraldine had closed behind her when she entered the room. ‘Gloria’s very nice,’ Ashley went on in a whisper, ‘but she talks about her daughter all the time.’

  ‘I want to ask you about something you told us,’ Geraldine said, launching straight into the reason for her visit.

  Ashley nodded when Geraldine mentioned the matter she wanted to discuss. ‘Yes, I remember saying that.’

  Geraldine breathed a silent sigh of relief. She had been afraid Ashley was going to say she had been confused.

  ‘We’re trying to trace this violent ex-boyfriend Stephanie mentioned to you,’ she explained. ‘Can you help us?’

  ‘She went out with a guy called Tony for quite a while, but I don’t think it could have been him. I mean, I don’t think he ever hit her or anything like that.’ Ashley frowned. ‘Steph told me he was a bit of a wimp. I think she had the upper hand in that relationship. But they were together for quite a while and I think she was happy enough with him until they split up.’

  ‘Why did they part company?’

  ‘Oh, she was bored with him. They were just drifting on, you know.’

  ‘So she finished it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know how he felt about that?’

  ‘According to Steph he just accepted it when she suggested they have a break. I think that was the final straw for her. He didn’t seem to be bothered. From what she said, he wasn’t exactly the passionate type. But,’ she leaned forward, and her eyes narrowed, ‘I think he was already seeing someone else, because he moved in with her before Steph and I moved to York. I mean, he didn’t hang about!’

  Geraldine noted down what Ashley told her. It didn’t sound as though Tony had killed Stephanie in a rage. If anything, she was the one who might have had cause to be jealous.

  ‘What about Peter?’

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘Peter Edwards.’

  Ashley looked surprised. ‘Blimey, that was back in school. I didn’t know he was still around.’

  ‘Could she have been seeing him again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sound very definite.’

  ‘I would have known about it if they were.’ Tears suddenly spilled from her eyes and coursed down her pale cheeks. ‘Steph and I were close. She was a good friend.’ She began to sob.

  ‘Ashley, I’m sorry to press you,’ Geraldine said after a moment, ‘but you did mention that Stephanie had a violent ex-boyfriend. If it wasn’t Tony or Peter, who was it? We really need to find this man and talk to him. Do you have any idea who it was?’

  Ashley made a clear effort to pull h
erself together, blowing her nose and shaking her head, as though she could shake off her emotional outburst.

  ‘I honestly don’t know who she was talking about, really I don’t. It was only a brief conversation. We were comparing notes on past boyfriends.’

  ‘But you said you’d have known if she’d been seeing Peter, so didn’t you know who else she was seeing?’

  ‘We were best friends at school, and we’ve been very close lately, since she split with Tony and we agreed to flat share, but we did drift apart for a while after we left school. So she might have met someone then, before she went out with Tony, or maybe even while she was seeing him. But I don’t know who. Like I said, we drifted apart for a while.’

  Geraldine questioned her further, but she had nothing more to tell. It was beginning to look as though Stephanie’s violent ex-boyfriend might have been nothing more than a piece of idle gossip. When Ashley had told Stephanie that she gone out with a violent man, her friend had responded with a similar claim that could have been groundless.

  ‘So you really have no idea who it was?’ Geraldine asked once more.

  Ashley shook her head. ‘She never said.’

  The following morning, when the team met to discuss the case, Geraldine reported her discussion with Ashley. Naomi agreed that Stephanie might only have said that she had once had a violent ex-boyfriend because her flatmate had claimed that first.

  ‘But why would she lie about it?’ Ian asked.

  ‘It’s the sort of thing a girl might say,’ Naomi explained. Seeing Ian look puzzled, she went on. ‘She probably wanted be in with her friend.’

  Ian remained unconvinced but Geraldine concurred, as did Eileen. There was little else to report. Door-to-door questioning of neighbours along Stephanie’s street hadn’t yielded any information. Most of them knew nothing about her. The same was true of the residents of the apartment block where she had shared a flat with Ashley. It was frustrating. All the police could do was wait for the results of the forensic search of the crime scene, and hope someone would come forward with a new lead.

  When the briefing was over, Geraldine returned to her own desk in the busy open-plan office. She missed her quiet office back in London, but as a sergeant her situation was different. She could no longer expect privacy, but she didn’t mind that too much. She never had trouble focusing when she had something to work on. Her problem now was that she had nothing pressing to investigate. She had been so sure that the violent ex-boyfriend was worth pursuing, but that lead seemed to have come to nothing. Ian was out at the crime scene, and she was stuck at her desk writing up her notes.

  Just as she was settling down to work, she received a summons. This was the first time she had been called in to the detective chief inspector’s office. Since her demotion, Geraldine felt as though she had lost all her confidence. She wondered how much her former self-assurance had rested on the fact that she was an inspector, well on her way to further promotion. Now she was afraid that being summoned to the detective chief inspector meant she was about to receive a reprimand. With a sinking feeling, she walked along the corridor, wracking her brains to think what she might have done wrong. The detective chief inspector didn’t ask her to close the door when she entered the office. Geraldine took that as a good sign. If a reprimand was coming, Eileen would have wanted to speak to her discreetly. Then again, Eileen might not care if another officer turned up and overheard her admonishing Geraldine.

  ‘Ian’s not here,’ Eileen said.

  Geraldine nodded, wondering what was coming next.

  ‘Peter Edwards is in an interview room,’ Eileen went on.

  Relieved, Geraldine understood that she was being asked to go and talk to a potential witness.

  ‘You’ve spoken to him before, so I’d like you to find out what he wants, if you can. The desk sergeant said he’s been drinking, so let’s see if you can get any sense out of him.’

  Geraldine felt a surge of excitement. She might be about to hear a confession. Any concerns for herself forgotten, she hurried to the interview room.

  14

  If anything, Peter looked scruffier than Geraldine remembered him. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see he was still wearing the same creased T-shirt under his coat. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was dishevelled, and there was an unmistakable whiff of alcohol in the room. But the most noticeable alteration in his appearance was the expression in his eyes. Even though he was seated in an interview room in a police station, he started when she entered, and glanced up, wide-eyed, like a rabbit caught in headlights. Geraldine thought she saw him tremble.

  ‘Peter,’ she said, in as reassuring a tone as she could muster. ‘You have something to tell me?’

  He leaned forward in his chair, and she saw that his hands were shaking. ‘I’m being followed,’ he blurted out. It was the middle of the day, but his speech was slurred and he had clearly been drinking. ‘Someone’s following me. I think he might have followed me here.’

  When he glanced around the room as though there might be someone hiding in the corner, she wondered what had happened to prompt his sudden paranoia. The last time she had seen him, he had appeared quite relaxed.

  ‘Who’s following you?’ she asked him, when he didn’t speak again.

  He shook his head, his expression fearful.

  ‘Peter, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what this is about.’

  He shook his head again. ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered, although there was no one there to hear him apart from Geraldine and a constable who stood by the door staring straight ahead, who might as well have been deaf for all the response he gave to what was said.

  ‘What makes you think you’re being followed?’

  Peter took a deep breath and spoke more clearly. ‘I thought I was imagining it at first, but every time I go out, he’s there.’

  He broke off, staring past Geraldine.

  ‘Who do you see every time you go out, Peter?’

  In random snatches, Peter explained what was worrying him. Piecing together what he said, Geraldine gathered that he had spotted a man standing across the road from the house where he was staying. Although he had seen him three or four times, he couldn’t describe him. The man had been wearing a long black coat, with the brim of a hat pulled low over his brow, and a scarf wrapped round his neck and over his chin.

  ‘I could only see his nose,’ Peter said. ‘He looked like a spy in one of those old films, you know.’ Unexpectedly, he sniggered.

  Geraldine didn’t point out that it was hardly surprising apparel for someone standing outside in the freezing cold weather.

  ‘I know you’d expect someone to be wearing a coat and hat and scarf in this weather,’ he went on, as though he knew what she was thinking. ‘But he didn’t want me to see his face. I know he didn’t.’

  His face creased in consternation and his voice cracked. He looked down and coughed. Geraldine waited to hear what he would say next, but he didn’t look up or speak. She was uncomfortably aware of the constable watching them impassively, and wondered fleetingly if he had been posted there to report back to Eileen on how her new sergeant was getting on. It seemed that Peter’s paranoia was contagious. After a pause, she asked him what had convinced him that he was being watched.

  ‘At first I thought it was a coincidence, him being there outside the house every time I went out.’

  ‘How many times did you see him?’

  He shrugged. ‘Two or three times last week. I thought it was nothing to do with me, but then he followed me down to the canal last night. I thought he was going to kill me, but he was just watching me. He’s always watching me.’

  Geraldine frowned. ‘Did you see his face when he followed you?’

  ‘No, but I heard him.’

  ‘So how can you be sure it was the same person?’

  He stared at her wit
hout answering for a moment. ‘What are the chances that different people would be standing on the pavement outside my house on different days, dressed in identical clothes?’ he asked at last.

  When Geraldine asked if he had any idea who could have been watching him, he glared miserably at her without speaking. She repeated her question.

  ‘You think I’m imagining all this, don’t you?’ he replied at last. ‘You don’t believe me, but I’m telling you, someone’s following me. You have to do something about it. I demand police protection.’

  He was evidently making an effort to control himself, but his voice rose, betraying his agitation.

  ‘Peter, why would someone be following you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’d like to help you, Peter, but so far all you’ve given me is a vague impression you have that someone might be stalking you. I need a lot more than that if I’m going to follow this up with any action.’

  ‘You have to help me. You’re the police. It’s your job to protect me. You can’t just do nothing.’

  ‘Has this unknown person threatened you?’

  ‘Not exactly, but he’s following me. He must be intending to do something.’

  Peter had become increasingly agitated while they had been talking. When Geraldine repeated the suggestion that the stranger’s appearance on more than one occasion might be a coincidence, he leaned further forward in his chair. Behind her, Geraldine heard the constable stir. She too leaned forward in her chair until her face was inches away from his and their eyes met.