The Dead Dog Day

by Jackie Kabler

  Then a floorboard creaked in the hallway below, and the anger left her again as suddenly as it had arrived, fear flooding back, her fingers suddenly icy cold and her feet leaden. She froze, hand still outstretched towards the switch. No. No light. In the dark, she might be able to evade whoever it was, this stranger who couldn’t know the layout of the house she knew so well. Maybe she could get out, run to a neighbour, get help. She took a deep breath and listened again. Nothing. OK, this was it.

  One hand gripping the vase, and the other on the banister, she began moving stealthily down the stairs, one step at a time like a small child. She stopped every few seconds, peering into the darkness below, listening. Still nothing. Almost silently, she crept downwards, down and down, only a few steps to go now …

  And then, suddenly, a dark shape loomed below her, and she heard a man’s voice, shocked and loud in the stillness, and the untied belt of the dressing gown, dangling unnoticed, wrapped itself around her ankle and she was falling, crashing down onto the hard floor of the hallway, her skull smashing onto the tiles, the vase slipping from her hand and shattering, sharp yellow shards peppering the floor, and lights were flashing and stars bursting and pain searing and blood roaring in her head. And then, there was only darkness.

  51

  ‘Cora. Cora, please! Oh for God’s sake, Cora, wake up, please wake up!’

  The voice was loud and urgent, and startlingly familiar. Cora groaned. What was going on? She slowly became aware of a sharp pain in her forehead and a dull ache in her left ankle. And it was so hard, and cold, this bed she was lying on …

  ‘I’m so sorry, Cora. I didn’t mean to frighten you, please wake up!’

  Who was that? She recognised the voice, but her brain wasn’t working properly. Slowly, painfully, she opened her eyes, squinting in the glaring light, her vision blurred. Where was she? All she could remember was coming downstairs and then … she gasped in fright as the memories flooded back. There was someone in the house. Police. She needed to call the police. The phone. Where was the phone?

  She hit out wildly with her right hand, using her other arm to prop herself up, then recoiled in shock as her flailing fingers made contact with skin.

  ‘Ouch!’

  Again, that familiar voice. So familiar …

  Justin? It couldn’t be. But it was, she was sure of it.

  ‘Justin? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m so sorry … but that’s quite a right hook you have there …’

  Cora sat up carefully and rubbed her eyes, her vision clearing. To her utter amazement, it was indeed Justin, crouching next to her in the hallway, rubbing his own eye.

  ‘Justin, what the hell?’ She couldn’t quite take it in. Was Justin her stalker?

  ‘I know, I know, I have a lot of explaining to do. But please, don’t be scared. I never meant to hurt you. In fact, quite the opposite – I’ve been trying to protect you.’

  Cora stared. ‘Protect me from what, exactly? Was it you, stalking me? Am I dreaming? None of this makes any sense …’

  ‘It’s a long story. No, it wasn’t me following you, but I know who it was. And he never meant to frighten you either. Look – can you stand up? We need to get you off this cold floor. You were only out for a few seconds, but we probably need to get you checked out by a doctor too. I was so scared when you tripped …’

  Justin had slipped an arm around her and was gently easing her to her feet. She whimpered slightly as her weight shifted onto her left foot.

  ‘Ow. Think I’ve sprained my ankle.’

  ‘Lean on me.’

  He half led, half carried her into the lounge and helped her onto the sofa, propping her injured foot up on a cushion. Then he pulled an armchair closer to the couch and sat down himself. Cora looked at him properly for the first time, her heart lurching a little. Despite everything, despite what he’d done to her, the callous way he’d simply left, it was so good to see him. He was a little thinner than he’d been when they were together, but the muscles were still there, his arms looking hard and defined through the thin fabric of his long-sleeved blue T-shirt. He ran his fingers through his dark crop and returned her gaze.

  ‘You look good, Cora,’ he said softly.

  She smiled. ‘I look like someone who’s just woken up, had a horrible fright and then fallen down the stairs, but thank you.’

  He grinned back, then reached out and gently touched her forehead. She winced.

  ‘You’ll have a bruise there tomorrow. I’m calling a doctor, OK? And once that’s done, we’ll talk. There’s so much to tell you, so much I need you to understand. But I need you to know right now, that I’ve never hurt anyone, OK? And I will go to the police. I’ll come back with you. Once I’ve told you everything. Is that alright, Cora?’

  She nodded, slowly. She’d been so scared, but somehow she felt safe now. This was Justin, her Justin. Well, not hers any more, but she still trusted him, believed in him.

  ‘Right, let me find a medic, and then – tea, maybe?’

  ‘Tea would be great.’

  It was nearly 1 a.m. by the time the local emergency doctor had been tracked down, arrived, declared her to be generally fit and well and issued a prescription of painkillers, ‘taking it easy’ for a couple of days, and a cold compress on her sprained ankle.

  Justin had been a star. He’d lit the fire, arranged blankets and pillows around her on the sofa, fashioned an icepack from an old tea towel and something unrecognisable from the freezer, and made copious cups of tea. Now he settled down into the chair next to her, proffering a plate of buttered toast.

  Cora took a piece, surprised at how hungry she felt at this strange hour. It was weirdly comforting to find herself being looked after by her ex after such a ghastly few days. But now she was suddenly desperate to hear what he had to say, to get some sort of explanation about his appearance on the CCTV footage, the odd tweets, the stalking. She munched her toast, waiting.

  Justin carefully put his tea down on the floor and took a deep breath.

  ‘Right. Here goes. Cora – this is going to sound mad, insane. And I know you won’t believe me, or WANT to believe me, when I tell you what I’m about to tell you. But I’m pretty sure I’m right. I’d stake my life on it.’

  Cora sat up a little straighter against her pillows, and swallowed her toast. She suddenly felt a little sick.

  ‘Well – go on then. I’m listening. But first – you said you knew who was stalking me?’

  Justin nodded, a little sheepishly. ‘He wasn’t stalking you, not exactly. He was … this sounds crazy, but he was a private detective. I hired him, Cora, because I was worried about you. I thought you might be in danger – I’ll tell you why in a minute – and I wanted someone to be there, to keep an eye on you. I tweeted you a couple of times, trying to tell you to be careful, but I didn’t want to terrify you, and I wasn’t sure I was right, and …’

  His voice tailed off as he noticed Cora’s face, which had taken on an astounded expression.

  ‘But – I thought you were threatening me, when you sent those tweets. I thought that you thought I was going to tell the police about the CCTV, and that you were warning me off. I was really scared, Justin. I thought I had a stalker, for goodness’ sake!’

  Justin’s head was in his hands. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing. I’m an idiot.’

  ‘Well, did he follow me all the way here? How did you know where I was? I don’t understand …’

  ‘No, but he managed to follow you to Heathrow. He’s been cursing you with all your tearing up and down the motorway! He watched you check in for a flight to Spain and then called me. I made an educated guess, thought it was likely you’d be coming here, and decided it would be a good place to come and talk to you, sort all this out. Amazingly, I remembered how to get here, and –’

  ‘That car. That navy car! I knew I was being followed. He’s rubbish at undercover work, Justin – I hope he didn’t cost you too much. I sp
otted him loads of times. But anyway – back to you, you idiot – you couldn’t have knocked on the door, like a normal person? What possessed you to break in in the middle of the night? I presume that was you, creeping around in the bushes earlier?’

  ‘Yes, that was so stupid. I spotted you by the pool, and I didn’t know what to do, whether to just walk up and say hello, or phone … so I went for a walk, trying to decide, and ended up in a little restaurant. Then before I knew it, it was dark. It was just so late, and I didn’t want to scare you, and also – well, also, I thought you might call the police or something if you saw me outside in the middle of the night, and then we’d never get to sort this all out. So I broke a window – just a tiny one, in the back door, I’ll fix it tomorrow … and thought I might nap on the sofa till you got up …’

  Cora sighed. Her brain was still racing, a thousand questions buzzing unanswered through her mind.

  ‘But I still don’t get it. Why did you think I was in danger? You weren’t even in the country, were you, for the past few months? What on earth made you think I needed protection?’

  There was a long pause. Finally Justin looked up, his face serious. He rubbed his nose, and Cora remembered the gesture from the CCTV footage, the gesture that had convinced her beyond doubt that her ex was the man police were searching for.

  ‘Because, Cora, as you and only you know, I was outside TV Centre when Jeanette died. And I think – well, now I’m almost positive – that I know who killed her. I wasn’t sure, not a hundred per cent, not at first, which is why I hired the private eye while I researched it all. I didn’t want to just call you and tell you what I suspected, just in case I was wrong … I didn’t want to destroy your life until I was absolutely certain, Cora.’

  Cora felt a chill run through her. ‘Destroy – my life? What on earth are you talking about?’

  She stared at him, almost willing him not to answer, and starting to hope that this might actually be a nightmare from which, any moment, she might wake.

  ‘It’s – it’s because it’s someone you know. Someone you’re close to. And I was scared, Cora. Scared that you’d get hurt too.’

  Cora’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘Someone I know? A friend of mine? A friend of mine pushed Jeanette out of that window?’

  Justin nodded. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but yes, I think so. Oh and by the way – she wasn’t pushed.’

  ‘Wasn’t pushed? What? It was suicide after all? You’re not making sense, Justin!’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it was murder alright. But she wasn’t pushed. She was pulled. Pulled out of the window. From the outside, Cora.’

  52

  Cora stared at her ex-boyfriend again.

  ‘Pulled? From the outside? On the seventh floor of a tower block? How did that work then? Did Superman fly by and decide to be a baddie for a change?’

  She laughed, feeling slightly hysterical. This night – or morning, as it was now – was taking on a rather surreal feel.

  Justin took a deep breath. ‘Look, let me tell you the story, how I saw it, from the beginning, OK?’

  ‘I’m all ears. But this is feeling more and more like a weird dream, Justin.’

  He smiled briefly, then his face was serious again. ‘I bet. Right. Here we go. I felt bad, Cora. I felt terrible, in fact, that I’d ended things with you by telephone. It was a horrible, cowardly thing to do, and I should never have done it like that.’

  Cora nodded vehemently, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘I think, if I’m honest, that I’d been, well, depressed for a few months before that – I mean properly depressed, not just a bit down. I wasn’t sure where my life was going, what I wanted, and I just started to feel really … really low. Like a twat I didn’t say anything to anyone, you know what us blokes are like. And we were hardly seeing each other anyway, were we, with work and everything, and things just got on top of me, I suppose. So I decided to go away, get out of the country for a little while, take a break from work and from everything, try to sort my head out. I just needed to be alone for a bit, so I even ditched my UK mobile – I knew I’d get a load of grief from everyone for dumping you like that, and I just couldn’t take it. That’s why I used Twitter to contact you, instead of phoning or texting. I just couldn’t handle the angry phone calls I’d get from you … from everyone, if they had my number. I even shut down my email account when I left, because so many people had my email address and I knew I’d be bombarded. I know that makes me sound like a pathetic coward, but it’s the truth.’

  He paused. Cora said nothing, suddenly feeling horribly guilty that she hadn’t realised how depressed her boyfriend had been.

  He carried on. ‘I’d booked a flight to Spain for later that morning, the eighteenth of December, and I checked into a hotel in London the night before. But in the middle of the night, I suddenly decided I needed to see you before I went, just to say sorry, and to say goodbye. So I got up at stupid o’clock – I still have no idea how you do that every day, Cora – and called a taxi to take me over to TV Centre. I knew you’d be arriving at work in the early hours and I thought I could catch you before you went in. But the taxi took ages to arrive, and by the time I got there it was about 4 a.m. and I knew I’d missed you.’

  ‘So you hung about, for four hours? You were on CCTV, Justin, lurking around till about eight o’clock! No wonder the police were suspicious!’ Cora couldn’t help it – she felt totally exasperated again.

  He groaned. ‘I know, I know, I haven’t handled any of this very well, have I? Yes, I hung about. I nearly went inside a couple of times, to ask Reception if they could call up and tell you I was there, and then chickened out of that. And then I thought, I’ll just hang about till the show’s over, and catch you coming out. It was freezing, and there’s nothing open round there at that hour, no cafés or anything, so I kept wandering off, doing laps of the building to keep warm. There was a security guard roving around a bit, and I avoided him in case he made me leave. It was sort of fun, in a perverse way, hiding in the shadows.’

  He hesitated, coughed, and then carried on. Cora’s eyes were fixed on his face.

  ‘There were these cradle things on two sides of the building – you know, the kind window cleaners use? They were on the ground, presumably waiting to be used later on. And then, well it was still quite dark, but it was nearly eight o’clock, and I was doing another lap, and I heard this creaking sound, coming from above. I looked up, and one of the cradles was up there, instead of down on the ground where it had been earlier. I stopped and looked up for a bit, wondering why it was up there so early. And then I heard voices coming from up there, muffled voices. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it sounded like a man and a woman, arguing. And then I was even more puzzled – what were two people doing on a window cleaning cradle, when it was barely light?’

  Cora’s heart was pounding. ‘Are you saying the killer was in that cradle? Seriously? I suppose it explains why nobody saw anyone go in or out of her office. So – go on. You saw? You saw what happened?’

  ‘Well – sort of. It all went quiet for a bit, and then I heard noises again, and it looked like something was being hauled out of the window above … it looked like a big sack or something at first. There was grunting, as if it was a struggle, something heavy, you know?’

  He stopped again, breathing deeply.

  ‘And then seconds later – oh God, Cora, the noise. I’ll never forget it. Something whistled through the air just a few feet away from me, and then there was this thud, the most sickening, crunching thud. And I knew. I knew it was a person, a body. Right there, right in front of me.’

  He moaned slightly. His face had turned white, his eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

  ‘Are you OK? Justin?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I’m fine.’ He rubbed his eyes fiercely.

  ‘The cradle started to come down really quickly, and I was scared. I know that makes me sound like a total coward, but I was scared, Cor
a. If this person had just pulled someone out of a window and thrown them to the ground, what else were they capable of? So I just shrank back, into the shadows, flattened myself against the wall. The cradle hit the ground, and this man, a tall man, wearing a black balaclava or something like that, leaped out of it. He walked over to the body on the ground, and pulled something off her face … there was a ripping sound, as if it was tape, I think. And then he just walked away.’

  Cora could barely breathe. ‘But you said – you said you knew who it was. How? How did you know? If his face was covered?’

  ‘Because, as he left, he pulled it off. The mask thing. And I caught a glimpse – just a glimpse. But his face was so distinctive, Cora. I knew I’d never forget it.’

  ‘So – who? Who was it?’ Her voice was just a squeak now, hardly audible.

  ‘It was Benjamin, Cora. Benjamin Boland.’

  53

  Cora leaped from the sofa, pain in her bad ankle forgotten, staggered to the kitchen and threw up, violently and for a long time, in the kitchen sink. When she’d finished, Justin gently wiped her mouth with a handful of tissues and led her back to the living room. She sat there shivering, hands shaking, brain numb. Benjamin? Her Benjamin? So not only was the wonderful man she’d thought she loved a dirty little two-timer, he was a murderer too? Really? Really? Well, this beat them all, didn’t it? She knew how to pick them, didn’t she? Yep, she sure knew how to pick them …

  ‘I’m so sorry, Cora. That’s all I seem to be saying to you today, but I really am so sorry, to be the one to tell you this. I just had to, I couldn’t let it go on any longer – you do understand?’

  Cora nodded, still trembling. ‘How can you be sure, Justin? You saw him for – what, a couple of seconds? The man. The man who killed Jeanette. Are you positive, really, that it was – that it was Benjamin?’

  Justin leaned forwards, taking her quivering fingers gently in his.

  ‘That’s just it. I wasn’t, at first. I’m not a great TV watcher, as you know. But that glimpse, that glance I got – I only knew at first that the face looked sort of familiar. I couldn’t place him, but I knew I knew him from somewhere. That’s why I didn’t say anything in those first messages I sent you. I just wanted you to know that I had nothing to do with the murder, but I didn’t want to start throwing names around because I just couldn’t remember where I’d seen that face before. And then I just stopped answering your messages, and I know that must have been incredibly frustrating for you, but I was just trying and trying to remember who he was and I didn’t want to talk to anyone until I’d done that. I desperately wanted to talk to you, tell you what I’d seen, but you can’t accuse people of murder, can you, unless you’re pretty sure? It wasn’t until I was browsing the British newspapers online, and I saw that picture of you and him together – you remember, when you got photographed at some do?’