Killing You Softly

by Lucy Carver

  Hooper took Zara’s phone and spoke to me. ‘Ripley’s there, waiting to interview her. By the way, why didn’t you stick around?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to be here, remember. Anyway, I’ve only solved half the problem. There’s still the small matter of nailing the guy who did it.’

  There was a pause then it was Zara again. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Me and Hooper – we were talking before I called you. We both think it really is time to hand the case over to Ripley’s team.’

  ‘Not this old story,’ I sighed. ‘Zara, you can stop right there.’

  ‘No. Let them do forensic tests – they’re bound to find our psycho’s fingerprints in the workshop or a strand of his hair on Galina’s clothes. They’ll find a way to identify him.’

  ‘They haven’t up till now,’ I reminded her. ‘Forensics worked for ages at the scene of Scarlett’s murder. They didn’t come up with anything, so far as we know.’

  Hooper again. ‘You need to put yourself first for a change, Alyssa. Forget the super-sleuth stuff. Your safety is more important.’

  ‘This is my safety,’ I argued. ‘Hooper, he’s threatened me again, saying it’s going right down to the wire this time.’

  ‘Wow, that’s bad – honestly, Alyssa, it’s really bad.’ He paused then went on, ‘So where are you? What will you do?’

  ‘I’m staying with Ursula in the Bottoms. He already found that out and trashed the place. That’s where I am now.’

  Zara again, as I paced the floor and lifted the blind to peer out. ‘So is there anything we can do?’ she offered.

  ‘Just don’t tell Ripley where I am – OK?’

  ‘OK.’ She sounded reluctant and uneasy.

  ‘And try to get hold of Jack for me. I’ve tried his phone, but it went on to voicemail.’

  ‘Hmm, OK. We could go to the hospital, except it’s after visiting hours so they probably wouldn’t let us in. Anyway, what do you want us to say if and when we do get hold of him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just keep an eye on him for me, will you? The last thing he said to me was that he was going to call the cops about it not being Marco.’

  ‘Well, they know that now even if they didn’t before.’

  ‘Exactly. So what you have to do is make sure Jack doesn’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘Like what?’ Zara asked.

  ‘Like try to sneak out of the hospital to find me.’

  ‘Whoa, that would be stupid,’ she agreed. ‘Broken ribs and all.’

  ‘But it’s the kind of thing Jack would do if he thinks I’m still in trouble. So talk to him, would you? Tell him everything’s cool. If not tonight, then first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ Zara said.

  ‘What about you? What will you do?’ Hooper wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t worked it out yet.’ I frowned as I let go of the blind and turned to look at the chaos inside the room. ‘Probably tidy up more mess here before Ursula gets back.’

  Hooper laughed. ‘Typical Alyssa,’ he said. ‘Your life is on the line and all you can think about is housework.’

  ‘I’ll go over things in my mind as I restore order, the way I always do,’ I promised. ‘Something will come to me.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The tiny missing link. The one vital thing I’ve overlooked that’ll allow me to identify the guy. If I think long and hard enough, I’ll remember.’

  I put Ursula’s TV back in place and found that it still worked, so that was one good thing. I re-stacked the DVDs. When she texted me to tell me she was staying over at Jayden’s, I texted back OK.

  Midnight came and went, with an old suspense/horror movie called Don’t Look Now on the telly, which was a bad thing because it totally freaked me out, but I couldn’t make myself stop watching images of a tiny missing kid in a red hooded coat running down the labyrinthine back streets of Venice. Sod’s law – the coat would have to be red, wouldn’t it? Shiny red plastic with a hood.

  The movie ended and I went back to the window to peer through the blind on to a back yard piled with plastic crates and empty cardboard boxes sagging under the weight of recent snowfall. There was more cloud in the sky now, obscuring the moon.

  What had I missed? What wasn’t I seeing?

  It was twelve thirty and the light bulb in Ursula’s living room died. The TV went off as if a gremlin had grabbed the remote.

  No gremlins, I told myself firmly. Ursula’s electricity must be controlled by a fuse box, which has just thrown a major wobbler. All I have to do is find the bloody thing in pitch darkness!

  I fumbled under the sink, checked the storage cupboard between the living room and the bedroom and decided that the fuse box must be in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.

  But before I could find out if I was right, up came a message on my phone. Heart skips several beats as I identify sender – Hooper. Relief. It’s a short message.

  I’m always here for you, Alyssa. Remember that.

  He signs off with a single emoticon heart.

  I made a mental note to thank him next time I saw him – ‘Thank you, Hooper, but what’s with the heart?’ Keep it light when you talk to him, try not to offend him, but as always keep the boundaries very clear.

  What’s with the heart? I was standing in the dark at the exit to Ursula’s flat.

  Four red hearts from Marco that turned out not to be from Marco.

  My stalker kills me softly, tells me he loves me when I’m angry.

  And I’m back to the start of term, having breakfast with Hooper.

  ‘We don’t do Christmas at my house,’ he tells me through a mouthful of honey-roasted ham.

  It’s the first time I see him after I get back to St Jude’s. We’re talking unenthusiastically about our lacklustre vacations.

  ‘My mother’s a pagan and my dad’s a mean bastard.’

  ‘Hah!’ Hooper amuses me – he always does. I tell him I wish we had normal parents, or any parents at all in my case. I also tell him that Jack is stuck in Denver and can’t get back to school until Tuesday.

  ‘How will you go on living without him?’

  ‘I have no clue.’

  ‘Maybe I could stand in for him for seventy-two hours,’ Hooper offers with a hopeful look.

  I laugh again. He’s cool – we joke along and say all kinds of stupid things.

  ‘No?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. He’s amazing but not my type. Jack is. End of.

  Now I had a red heart from Hooper on my phone. No electricity, someone watching my every move, restricting every breath. I stood paralysed by the door.

  ‘My mother’s a pagan and my dad’s a mean bastard.’

  ‘… Come on, Alyssa – they said you were smart! Why so slow to pick up the clues?’

  ‘… Why is this guy sending you love and kisses, Alyssa?’ Jack asks.

  ‘… The killer is in plain sight.’

  No electricity. Total darkness closed in on me, forcing me to remember more details.

  An email message from cockrobin@gmail.com. The killer tells me he is doing all he can to point me in the right direction.

  He cares about me; he wants to warn me. Killing me softly.

  Flashes of light penetrated my consciousness. I was finally remembering, stringing it all together like precious, glowing pearls in the depths of a dark ocean.

  Hooper asks me over breakfast – why so bleary eyed?

  ‘Am I? Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not because you regret these pics by any chance?’ He turns his iPad towards me and gives me time to study an image of a girl in a tiny red bikini, posing provocatively by the edge of a swimming pool. It takes me a while to realize that the girl is a Photoshopped image of me.

  It was Hooper who came up with the theory that the pictures could be revenge porn. Hooper had been the one to run off and drag Molly into the row with Will about my missing laptop, Hooper again who set me on Will’s trail, who told Jack that
it was Marco who sent me the row of red hearts and suggested to me that Marco was right in the middle of the frame. I wasn’t making it up – it had been Hooper at the centre of the action all down the line, every centimetre of the way.

  Think about it. Remember. Trace it back. And forward.

  A red heart now. ‘I’m always here for you, Alyssa. Remember that.’

  Always here. Always looking over my shoulder, being my friend, offering to stand in for Jack, sending me a heart.

  Shock blasted through me like a hurricane. I crouched against the wall at the head of the stairs, stubbornly refusing to examine my whirling memories, but finding that one blast followed another in a relentless storm.

  I’m in the calm before the storm when I run into Hooper in the sports centre.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’ Hooper asks me on the day Jack gets run down.

  I’m in my bikini, heading for the changing room. ‘He cycled into the Bottoms to post a letter. Why?’

  Hooper wants to stay and chat. I want to get changed. I’m wrapping my towel around myself, feeling embarrassed. Is Hooper looking at me in a different way to usual, or am I being super-sensitive? Yeah, it’s me – imagining a frisson that isn’t there.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah – why?’

  ‘Because I thought I saw him before when I caught the bus back from town. Unless you tell me he’s got a double, Jack was definitely outside Greenlea Shopping Centre. It looked like he was waiting to meet someone.’

  ‘So he changed his mind.’ I’m not alarmed. I smile and say goodbye.

  Hooper was in Ainslee the day the guy in the Merc ran Jack down! He was everywhere, over everything all the time – the puppet master pulling the strings.

  But I’m not his puppet – I’m a good mate. We became friends because we’re both outside the mainstream movers and shakers at St Jude’s – people like Luke, Zara, Connie and the rest. Hooper wants to help me; he always has my back.

  We’re in the girls’ dorm, waiting for Charlie to fetch Molly so we can tell her our suspicions about Marco. A light goes on in the boys’ dorm. Someone comes down into the courtyard.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s only Hooper,’ Eugenie reports.

  ‘What’s with the “only Hooper”?’ he asks. ‘Alyssa, what the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Connie takes charge. ‘Honestly, Hooper, you don’t want to know.’

  He gives me a disappointed, hangdog look.

  I feel sorry for him. I lead him away from the gaggle of girls. He accuses me of not trusting him, after all the work we’ve done together, him and me.

  ‘Don’t take it personally,’ I say.

  ‘How else can I take it?’

  Out of loyalty I eventually have to tell him that I’ve recognized the interior of Marco’s car in the video.

  He expels a quick, short burst of breath.

  I captured Hooper’s face, freeze-framed in my eidetic memory.

  He doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t look shocked. It’s more an expression of contempt – a kind of ‘pah!’.

  He’s arrogant and trying not to show it. He actually finds it funny.

  For Christ’s sake, Hooper is the enemy and didn’t I just speak to him on the phone and tell him what I planned to do next? He’d laughed at me again. He’d made me tell him that I was alone.

  He’s the enemy taking it right to the wire.

  He’s here now! I crouched at the top of Ursula’s stairs, blown to smithereens by the terrible truth.

  No, he can’t be here. He was just at St Jude’s with Zara. So how long will it take him to get from school to the village so that he can ratchet up the terror? Will he drive or come on foot through the woods? He’ll drive, I decided. No way will Hooper choose the hard, slow way.

  There were noises down in the yard. The door at the foot of the stairs opened and then someone shone a torch up towards the landing.

  ‘Ursula?’ a woman’s voice queried.

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ She came up the stairs. The torch beam wobbled against the wall.

  ‘I’m a friend of Ursula’s.’

  The woman found me crouched against the wall. ‘What time did the lights go out?’

  ‘Not sure. I was looking for the fuse box.’

  ‘The fuses aren’t the problem,’ she explained, shining the light on my face. ‘A neighbour called me to say the electricity along the whole of Main Street is out. Snow the other side of Banbury brought down cables. It won’t be fixed till morning so I drove over to check things were OK here and to give Ursula these, just in case.’ She handed me two spare torches.

  I stood up from my crouching position and took them.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Ursula’s landlady asked. She was middle-aged, Cotswolds-smart in Barbour jacket and Hunter wellies.

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘Were you scared of the dark?’

  ‘No. Yes. But I’ll be fine now, thanks.’

  She nodded then turned to go. ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’ she said over her shoulder.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And you’re a friend of Ursula’s, a visitor?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was willing her to get the hell out of there. She nodded then turned, and I waited to hear her footsteps retreat across the yard, followed by the opening and shutting of a car door, an engine starting.

  I’d lost time. Hooper could have left school and be almost here by now. And I wasn’t going to sit here and wait for him to arrive – no way!

  Thank you, Ursula’s landlady, for the torch and the dose of cold reality. My head was back together and I was thinking straight again.

  OK, so if Hooper thought I would sit like a hare caught in car headlights, I’d prove him wrong. I’d be out of here, torch in hand, before he had time to drive across.

  In seconds I was down the stairs, following in the landlady’s footsteps through the snow, out on deadly dark Main Street, cutting quickly through the churchyard into the woods beyond. Through the trees I caught sight of a car driving down the street and stopping outside Five-a-Day.

  Too late, Hooper – I’m gone!

  I hurried under moon and stars through the oak trees until I came to a frozen stream with a stone footbridge. Then more trees and hard going through the slow-to-melt white drifts, torch beam too faint to predict obstacles ahead, slipping and sliding, tripping over roots as I met the bridle path leading to St Jude’s. Then it was easier, smoother, quicker. I saw where the trees ended and the school lawns began. Able to pick up my pace even more, I skirted the lake and headed up the slope towards the dark, stately buildings where centuries of wind and weather were etched into the walls and the ageless moon glinted in the leaded windows.

  Too late again, Hooper. I’m heading for the boys’ dorm. I’m sneaking in behind your back, creeping along the corridor to your room where I’ll find evidence that you killed Scarlett and kidnapped Galina. This is it – you won’t be able to stop me.

  My torch was off so as not to attract attention. I climbed the worn stone steps until I reached the long, low corridor and felt my way along.

  Generations of landed gentry in lace collars and cravats followed me, staring silently from their gilt frames. The uneven floorboards creaked.

  ‘Bloody hell, Alyssa!’ The door to Hooper’s room suddenly opened and Will stood there, almost naked.

  Shit! I’d overlooked Will. I should’ve thought through the consequences of taking Hooper’s roommate by surprise. What now? ‘Shh!’ I said. ‘No need to wake everyone.’

  ‘Who are you looking for?’ Will challenged, pumped-up body blocking the doorway. He made it clear that no way was he suddenly going to start trusting me, not after what I’d put him through with the cops.

  ‘Hooper – I’m looking for Hooper.’

  ‘Not here. Anyway, Jesus, it’s the middle of the night!’

  ‘That’s OK. I just want to pick up something that belongs to me,’ I lie
d. ‘It’s in his bedside cabinet.’

  ‘At two in the morning?’

  ‘Yes. It won’t take a minute.’ I was on a wing and a prayer, improvising as I went along. ‘Are you going to let me in or not?’

  Will shrugged and let me squeeze past him, only because he couldn’t be arsed to argue. He watched me go ahead and rummage through Hooper’s belongings.

  First I opened the shallow cabinet drawer and found a hairbrush, a shaver, toothbrush and toothpaste, a box of tissues on top of a box of thin latex gloves – the sort surgeons wear – everything neatly arranged. There was a small mirror, a plug adaptor, black and red felt tips, a couple of computer memory sticks, which, in my haste and without thinking, I slipped into my pocket.

  ‘I thought you said it wouldn’t take long.’ Will stayed by the door, impatient for me to leave.

  ‘Yep, I just need to look in the cupboard.’ Opening the cabinet door, I found more orderliness from Hooper (who does that remind you of?). There was a black scarf carefully folded, a grey knitted hat on top of a shoebox. I lifted the hat and scarf opened the lid of the box and found about a dozen mobile phones. ‘Yeah!’ I said, as casually as I could. ‘Found what I was looking for!’

  I slid the scarf, hat and box out of the cabinet, tucked them under my arm and headed for the door. ‘Thanks,’ I told Will.

  So what does a guy want with twelve pay-as-you-go mobile phones if not to send anonymous threats?

  They said you were smart, Alyssa …

  … Hah, gotcha! Sent you another video. Check it out, why don’t you?

  And every creepy, weirdo message in between – all on anonymous phones, expendable and untraceable. Hooper had planned ahead and covered every angle in his obsessive, one-step-ahead-of-the-game, inimitable way.

  I carried the items back along the corridor, down the stairs. OK, I had what I needed and was ready to head back to my room and finally call Ripley.

  Across the courtyard and up the stairs to the girls’ dorm, saying a silent hi to Lady Anne and her surprised Jacobean eyebrows then quietly along the corridor to the refuge of Room twenty-seven, stockpiling evidence to hand over to the police.

  Check out the grey hat and black scarf to see if they match the ones worn by the guy caught on CCTV outside The Fleece, close to Ainslee Westgate station. Then check out these phones.