She pulled herself together and answered him, trying to work out as she went through the staff if that particular individual could possibly have some kind of grudge. It would have to be a damn big grudge.
‘Are you thinking that one of my colleagues might have sent the texts?’
Barnes shrugged and didn’t answer.
Through her fear, Laura felt a stab of irritation with him. He was scaring her badly, he should at least explain things to her properly so she knew the worst, instead of leaving her to try and guess.
‘I’ll do this as discreetly as I can,’ the detective said, taking his own mobile from his jacket pocket. ‘I’m going to call the number and see if we can hear where it’s ringing. Andrew, can you take the first floor.’
The constable went off up the stairs leaving the door open behind him. Monica appeared, offering tea, eager to find out what was going on. She was disappointed. Her tea was refused, and Barnes waited until she had retreated to reception before dialling.
Laura felt sweat start on her forehead. Listen for the phone; don’t think about what it means.
Barnes made the call but she could hear nothing. Was the number actually ringing? She didn’t know, he didn’t say, just sat there with his impassive face, the phone to his ear.
A loud shout came from upstairs and she almost jumped out of her skin. So much for discreet. Barnes shot off towards the first floor, nearly colliding with Monica, who’d either been lurking in the corridor or was extremely quick off the mark. Laura followed, less eager, held back by a feeling of dread. Monica was ahead of her at the top of the stairs with Barnes; he was pointing towards an office, asking whose it was. Laura assumed it was where they’d heard the phone though there was no longer any sound of it ringing. By the time she arrived the three of them were inside the room. She stood in the doorway staring in shock and surprise.
Monica had her back to her, her body craning towards the two men standing by the shelves of law books on the far wall, listening to what they were saying. There was a gap in one of the shelves and a few books were lying on the floor. The constable was examining a mobile and talking to Barnes. He stopped abruptly when he saw Laura appear.
‘We understand this is your office, Ms Maxwell,’ said Barnes in a tight voice.
It wasn’t a question and she didn’t reply.
‘The mobile was hidden behind the books,’ he gestured at the shelf.
Laura stared blankly. She felt light-headed.
‘Can you tell us how it got there?’
This time it was a question, a big question, and she had no answer.
‘Can you explain how Ben Morgan, as you allege, could have used it to send you threatening texts,’ he stopped then added, ‘or anyone else for that matter, Ms Maxwell?’
The ‘Laura’ was gone. She knew what he was thinking – that she was some kind of nutter; a flake who wanted attention, for what reason he could not begin to guess and didn’t much care. He suspected that, as a way of getting it, she had sent the texts to herself.
She walked unsteadily into the room. ‘I have absolutely no idea what’s going on,’ she said, leaning heavily against her desk.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Barnes made it clear he wasn’t going to continue to look for Ben Morgan or anyone else in connection with the texts. He referred to them as ‘alleged threatening texts’ and, with a sardonic look on his face, gave her back her mobile. He thought she’d been wasting police time.
Rather belatedly, he asked Monica if she’d mind leaving the room while he talked to Ms Maxwell in private. She did mind but she had no choice; in any case, she had a fair amount of gossip to be going on with. Laura Maxwell had complained to the police that someone was sending her nasty texts; they had investigated and found the offending phone hidden in her office. Laura couldn’t explain how it came to be there; they suspected she’d been making the whole thing up.
Monica was hardly surprised. Laura Maxwell was neurotic, no doubt about that. From the minute she’d arrived as some hot-shot from London, it was obvious she was highly strung with an over-inflated idea of her own importance. The way she’d treated poor Sarah Cole was heartless and shocking, blaming her for her own mistakes then getting her fired. Monica’s pinched face had a rare, satisfied look.
Laura recovered enough self-possession to try to persuade Barnes to think again. It was true she had no explanation for the phone being here in her office, but everything she had told him was true. Why, after all, would she make it up? She saw him raise an eyebrow at that as if he might be expecting her to provide the answer.
‘If I sent the texts to myself’, she protested hotly, ‘why would I be stupid enough to hide the phone in my office where you would be bound to find it?’
Barnes looked at her speculatively, ‘I don’t think I’m the person who can answer that, Ms Maxwell,’ he said.
She was scared, she told him, very scared, frightened for her life. Please, at least would he keep trying to track down Ben Morgan? No go. He had better things to do. She wanted to yell at him then, to yell that he was making a big mistake and that mistake would kill her, and when it did, it would be his fault. But she said nothing because she thought it would only make things worse. She remembered the website posting and that the police had found no evidence it had come from Harry Pelham’s computer – probably Barnes thought she had sent that to herself as well. She knew his attitude was not unreasonable, that he might have grounds for his scepticism, but the knowledge didn’t help, just filled her with a hopeless, directionless fury.
When the policemen had gone, Laura’s anger drained away fast, replaced by dread. She wanted to ring Joe and tell him what had happened but she shied away from it, knowing that when he heard where the phone had been found, he, too, would doubt her.
Would anyone believe her, she thought despairingly. Would Emma believe her or would even Emma think she had gone nuts? It was academic anyway because Emma was away and couldn’t help her. There was no one to help, she realized, her insides churning with fear, she would have to deal with this on her own. She was alone with whoever it was out there who wanted her dead, had promised she would be dead, painfully, by the end of the week. She wondered if this was the day she would die.
Shut up. Stop scaring yourself. Concentrate on what you can do about it.
She made a big effort to get a grip and work out what to do. She was no further forward than she had been a few days ago, when it all began. Except it didn’t seem like days, but like months and years, an eternity of dread. Another injection of fear, fast and terrible, shot through her. Of course, she was further forward because she knew now, for certain, that none of it was chance. She was being relentlessly targeted by a killer, a killer who liked to play vicious games.
Was it Ben Morgan? Had he somehow got past Monica and sneaked up to Laura’s office to hide the phone without anyone seeing him? But why, if he’d got so far, hadn’t he just waited and attacked her when she came in? Was he worried it was too public, that she’d scream and people would come running, that he could not be sure of killing her? And what was the point of leaving the phone? Easy question, she could answer that one – to discredit her with the police, to leave her vulnerable, to panic and confuse her.
There was something very calculated in what was happening that didn’t really fit the Ben Morgan she remembered. He had been highly emotional, on the edge of coping. He had lashed out because he thought he would lose his daughter, but that had been the crazy act of a sick man. She tried, without very much success, to picture him as the perpetrator of this purposeful, ruthless campaign against her.
But if not him, then who? Someone who had access to her office. Someone close by then. Her eyes flicked nervously towards the door. Someone out there wanted to kill her and now that someone was in here, in her own office. Nowhere was safe for her anymore. Not out there, not in here, not anywhere.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Harry Pelham had spent Monday evening spying
on his wife and daughter. He had taken a risk and gone home to collect his car. He reckoned he had a good chance of getting away with it so long as he was careful and he needed the car if he was going to watch her. A taxi dropped him at the end of his road and he walked, very cautiously, towards his house. It was possible the police would be waiting for him, but he doubted they had the manpower to stake out his home all the time. Most likely, they checked now and again to see if he’d come back.
The house was detached and well screened from its neighbours, and, so far as Harry could tell, the coast was clear. He avoided the house itself, made straight for the garage to the side of it, and within a couple of minutes, had taken his car and was gone. He checked the rear-view mirror; there was no one in pursuit.
He drove to the country lane where his wife and daughter lived, leaving his car a few hundred yards short of their cottage where the lane widened and he could park anonymously among residents’ cars. He walked towards the cottage, passing a couple of houses and arriving at the gate without seeing anyone. He crept inside, stood in the cover of the boundary hedge, and waited.
It had turned out to be a cold and fruitless exercise. All he had got from it was a glimpse of Martha through the kitchen window.
Later that night, he had walked down to the sea front and sat on a bench in the chill, bright night. But it was not the cold that made his hands tremble. He had stayed a long time, staring out at the sea glittering under the moon, considering his next move. Then he went back to his hotel. Hard to sleep. Uneasy dreams.
He’s collecting Martha. She’s in a building, on the twelfth floor. He’s waiting by the lift, waiting for a long, long time. He’s getting impatient. At last it arrives. The doors open but there’s no lift; just thick ropes hanging down covered in bright red jelly. A security guard walks over to him, hands him one of the ropes, tells him he must climb to the twelfth floor if he wants to see his daughter.
He starts climbing, but he’s afraid. His hands keep slipping on the jelly. He looks up and sees two men dressed as clowns laughing at him from the twelfth floor. He carries on, gets halfway up the lift shaft, then realizes it’s not jelly at all. It’s blood. Bright red blood. He lets go of the rope in shock and he falls …
Harry woke up urgently needing to see his daughter. He could not wait a moment longer. Ben Morgan’s words were in his head, eating away at him, ‘She’s heartbroken, she misses you so much … she cries herself to sleep and talks to you through her favourite teddy bear.’
He told himself the man was deranged, perhaps so traumatized by his own experience that he was muddling up his daughter, Millie, with Martha – putting her words into Martha’s mouth. More likely still, it was all a product of Morgan’s unhinged imagination. In any case he was a fool to let it bother him. Harry told himself these things but his heart rebelled.
It was half-term week and Martha was going away on Wednesday to stay with a school friend. She would be back at the end of the week and he was due to take her out for the day on Saturday. That was all organized before the bail conditions, of course, he thought bitterly. Now he was not due to take Martha out at all, not ever.
On Tuesday morning Harry texted his daughter, asked if she was free any time that day to meet him, just for half an hour or so. It was a stupid thing to do, he knew that, a deliberate breach of his bail, and if his wife and her lawyer got to know about it, he was in trouble. But he was desperate so he did it anyway.
Martha replied that she was spending the day with her friend, Jessie. Her mum was about to drop her there and then Jessie’s mum was taking them shopping in town and then bowling. She supposed she could meet him but it couldn’t be for long, before lunch maybe. Did he want her to keep it a secret?
Her message sounded so grown-up that it made him wince. Mixed emotions. Pleasure that he could see her, guilt that he was involving her in something she thought of as a deception. It astonished him how she picked up the vibes, how instinctively she knew she should keep quiet about meeting him. She was only eight but already she was wise in the ways of adults. It scared him like a lot of things had recently.
He waited for her outside a doll and teddy bear shop in The Lanes. Not so long ago it had been a favourite place but, lately, she’d made it clear she was far too old for it. Unlikely then, he thought unhappily, that she would talk to him at night through her favourite bear. He realized then that it was not something he would feel able to ask her.
He saw the three of them approaching and his heart squeezed. Martha was tall for her age and thin. Almost too thin, Harry thought, though she liked her food well enough. But Anna was strict. No daughter of hers was going to be overweight, she said. Anna had told him she had once been fat herself and had suffered badly for it.
He was relieved to find that he didn’t recognize the woman or Jessie, the other child. Martha ran the last few yards, threw her arms around him and hugged him in her usual enthusiastic way. She smiled up at him with his own dark brown eyes. In looks, at least, she resembled him a lot.
The woman was friendly enough; she seemed to have no problem with the meeting and asked no awkward questions. They agreed that he would bring Martha back in an hour’s time to the Italian place round the corner where they were having lunch.
‘I told her you had to go away for work and I wanted to see you now,’ his daughter announced proudly when the other two had gone.
Harry put his hand on her head, stroked her long, dark hair. She was lying for him now and it made him feel awful. He said gently that it wasn’t really a good idea to make things up.
‘But Daddy I had to tell her something or she might have rung Mummy to check. I thought she might anyway so I said Mummy knew about it and it was like a last minute thing.’
He sighed and she asked him if anything was wrong. He understood then that she was anxious, that his text had been out of the ordinary and it had upset her. He wished he hadn’t troubled her. What purpose had there been in it anyway, except his own selfish desire to see her and to reassure himself that the things Ben Morgan had said were not true? A gloomy helplessness descended on him, these days he seemed to call everything wrong.
‘Sweetheart, everything’s great. I just wanted to see you, that’s all. You know how much I love you, don’t you? And I miss you.’
She gave him the ‘look’, the one that, even though she was eight-years-old, was always dead on and never missed. He remembered that he never could fool her.
‘I love you too, Daddy,’ she said in a serious voice and his heart twisted.
He sat with her in a café for the next hour in a state of forced cheerfulness, her dark eyes watching him over the top of her strawberry milkshake. He talked of anything but what he wanted to say. At the end of it he hoped he’d set her mind at rest but his own was still in a mess. He could not be sure that tonight she would not cry herself to sleep, could not be certain that the teddy bear was a fiction.
‘Is Joe a friend of yours too?’ she asked him. It came out of the blue just as they were about to leave.
‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure I know him,’ he said carefully, then with a sudden flash of intuition added, ‘but maybe I do. Is he a teddy bear?’
She looked at him as if he was a total idiot. The scorn in her young face withered him.
‘Of course he isn’t,’ she said sternly, ‘he’s a friend of Mummy’s. He came to see her yesterday.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
For almost three hours they’d kissed and touched and tasted and pressed their bodies together and still Anna Pelham had not had nearly enough of him. His beauty overwhelmed her and she experienced, for just a few moments, a total joy. But then the maggot of doubt was crawling back into her Eden, bigger than ever, feeding off her insecurity and terror – the terror of losing him, the unshakeable fear that she was on borrowed time.
Just the thought of his arrival had given her a tremendous high, a buzz all through her body. Even now, after months of knowing him, her heart beat a little
faster, butterflies fluttered in her stomach, and the palms of her hands were damp. She checked herself in the bedroom mirror. Did she look good enough? Good enough for him.
She had washed her blonde hair twice and it shone. Long legs, flat belly, lots of curves, waxed all over. Joe Greene found all these things hot and she made sure she didn’t disappoint. She kept herself fit and slender, relentlessly expelling any hint of fat. She exercised with a personal trainer twice a week and whenever she could, which was nearly every day in term time, she swam fifty lengths at the pool.
She loved the cottage because everything in it reminded her of him. His smell was on the sheets, on the duvet as she hugged it to her face. Before leaving Harry, she had searched long and hard for a place to rent; a place not just for herself and Martha, but for herself and Joe, where his visits could pass unnoticed, where nosy neighbours could be kept at arm’s length, where one day they could be together, forever, as they were meant to be. As they had always been meant to be.
He visited mainly during the day when Martha was at school but sometimes, if Martha had a sleepover at a friend’s house, Joe would come in the evening. There had been two heavenly occasions when he’d stayed all night. On one of them, while he was sleeping, she had taken a photo on her mobile of the two of them in bed together. She knew it was reckless because they mustn’t be found out, but she couldn’t resist it. She needed it, needed something definite to cling on to when he was not with her, something to look at, and love.
In Anna’s subconscious, though, he was with her all the time. She felt his presence in every room. In the early evening watching TV with her daughter, he was sitting there with them like a proper family; when she took a bath he would slide down with her into the warm water; at night he slept with her in the double bed. She would desire him, reach for him, imagine that he held her close and it would light the fire inside her. Later, when her hand lay flat on the empty sheet, she would feel a pang of disappointment at the realization that he was not actually there.
Someone Out There Page 17