Perfect Stranger: A gripping psychological thriller with nail-biting suspense

by Jake Cross

  Rose approached Chris with a glass of whiskey. ‘It’s not the same brand you have in your attic Ivory Tower, but maybe this will chill you out just the same.’

  He grinned at her and took a mighty swig. Rose glanced around to make sure nobody was within earshot. ‘I was thinking, perhaps we should call the police for an update on what they know? About Katie. They might know where she is.’

  ‘A waste of time, I think. The police said people can sometimes vanish for a while without telling people. I don’t think they’re out searching for her yet. There was no evidence of foul play. She’s an adult. Remember your “missing white woman syndrome” thing. She fits the criteria for a massive search if the police really thought there was danger.’ Yeah, homelessness and mental instability aside.

  She took a little more convincing to agree to wait for news, but he got her back into the party spirit. Around nine, the four-year-old whirlwinds had to be returned to their parents. Minus Sally, Mr Jernigan’s smile turned upside down and he decided to call it a night. The peaceful countryside was a double-edged sword, it seemed. The Redferns returned to their cabin, and Rose prepared cake and candles, but it was all a far cry from the function they’d passed up in order to come here. They ate and smiled and tried to pretend they were having a grand old time, as you might if not stalked by a lunatic.

  Afterwards, Rose decided to take a bath. It was while searching Chris’s car for her earphones, because she couldn’t bathe without an audiobook, that she found damning evidence that would ruin the homely atmosphere.

  Forty-Four

  When he walked upstairs, she was sitting fully dressed on the side of a full bath, looking grim.

  ‘What’s wrong, Rose?’

  ‘Thursday. Your errand. Where did you go, again?’ She had her phone in her hand, and shook it, like a sign. Like a message. He felt a lead weight settle in his stomach at the knowledge that this conversation was coming back upon Louise.

  ‘Where do you think I went?’ He was careful not to outright lie, because he didn’t know what she knew.

  What she knew was a lot.

  ‘I checked your satnav for Thursday night. I don’t even know why, but I did. I googled the address and found a news story about Louise. It’s Louise’s address, isn’t it? You went to Louise’s house on Thursday night.’

  A band seemed to tighten around his throat, making words hard. ‘What are you saying? That I’m having an affair with Louise?’

  He knew she didn’t think that, but he wanted her deflected. Or, at least, he didn’t want to give her a suspicion she might not already have.

  She already had it. ‘She was attacked that night, Chris. The night you claimed you were going to your boss’s house, but instead went to hers. The night someone saw your car in her area.’

  He looked at the floor. ‘I shouldn’t have to explain anything, should I? I’m your husband. You already know the truth, or you don’t. Tell me right now if you think I half-killed Louise. A woman ten inches shorter than me.’

  ‘Where’s the hammer from the toolbox, Chris?’

  He was angry. ‘So you’ve made up your mind. I’ll be around when you decide you’ve made a big mistake and are willing to apologise.’

  She got off the bath and approached. For a second, he thought she was going to grab him, bury her face in his chest and spout apologies through tears. One second only, though, because that was all it took for her to cross the bathroom and slam the door in his face.

  Like a form of ‘hammer-on’ cancer, the darkness started in nooks and crannies beneath trees, and welled up in corners of the rooms and beneath chairs, and stained the sky in blooming shapes and then settled in Chris’s gut. By the time the visible universe was black, Chris was in a mild panic. It got worse when his phone vibrated. He hadn’t set his to block.

  He ignored the call, made sure Julia wasn’t likely to remove herself from in front of the TV, and then slipped out the back of the house and stopped on the garden path.

  His shadow was on the ground in a square of light. He looked up and around. The bathroom light, where Rose was locked all alone and wondering if her husband was a would-be killer. Rose. He would have to talk to her soon. And tell the whole, sorry truth.

  The call was from a Sheffield number he didn’t know. He returned it.

  ‘South Yorkshire Police,’ a voice answered.

  Police? His heart thumped. ‘My name is Chris Redfern. You just called me. What’s happened?’

  ‘Hold a moment, Mr Redfern,’ the operator said.

  ‘No, I want—’

  But the beeps of hold took over. It was a long moment. Then a voice was back, but not hers. Not even female. And not a lowly constable.

  ‘Mr Redfern, this is Superintendent Butlin. You’re not at home, right? Where are you?’

  A superintendent. Top guy in a division. Chris felt his heart jump because right then he knew something was badly wrong. He knew this wasn’t about Louise.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said.

  ‘Your house caught fire a little while ago, Mr Redfern. Are you telling me you didn’t know this?’

  Now his legs felt weak and he had to sit on the cold garden path. He could see his shadow shaking. ‘What do you mean? How?’

  ‘Where are you, Mr Redfern? Where are your wife and daughter?’

  Obvious concern in the man’s question. He was worried about Chris’s family. Worried that Chris had hurt them?

  ‘I didn’t burn my own house,’ he barked, losing his nerves, the fear making him impatient and angry instead. ‘My family is fine. Listen. I was waiting until I got my family safe before I called you. I was planning to call. I’m in trouble. There’s someone after me. I’m with my family far from home to keep them safe. If you say my house burned down, then I know who did it. That means you need to take me seriously and listen to what I have to say.’

  ‘I do, Mr Redfern. Very much so. But I need to know your wife and daughter are safe.’

  ‘What do you mean, safe? Do you think – right!’

  Fired-up, Chris ran to the living room, where Julia was attempting to get a fire going in the grate. With a forced smile, he told her to shout what she thought of the cabin.

  ‘Spooky.’

  ‘What about your wife?’

  She’s busy wouldn’t have gone down well, so he told the Super to wait a minute and made a nervous trek up the stairs to knock on the locked bathroom door.

  No answer.

  ‘Mr Redfern, what’s going on? Where is your wife? I need you to put her on the phone.’

  Feeling silly, he said, ‘Rose. I need you to say aloud what you think of the cabin.’

  No answer. But it beat some outburst about Louise – imagine if she’d asked him again if he’d attacked her?

  ‘Rose, can you just confirm aloud for the police that you’re not dead and buried in the garden?’

  The lock clicked and the door opened. Rose was wrapped in a towel, wet, still angry and numb. She pushed past him, but thankfully, she also told him to get out of her way. Nice and loud. She slammed the bedroom door behind her, and Chris rushed into Julia’s room.

  When there were two shut doors between him and another’s ears, he said: ‘There. My family is fine. I haven’t hurt them, they’re not kidnapped, and I didn’t run off after burning my house down. I ran with my family because there’s a nutter out there who wants to hurt me. Understand? Now you need to listen to me because I have quite a shocking story.’

  The Super said, ‘I understand. But if you feel you’re in danger, Mr Redfern, then you need to come in. There are questions to answer, and there will be no safer place than in a police station. It doesn’t help you to be off hiding somewhere if there’s someone who means you harm. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And I want you to let me speak to your wife.’

  ‘No, not yet. You don’t understand. They’re calm and settled. I’m not dragging them back there, not tonight. We’ll do
this tomorrow. But you haven’t even asked me who’s after me. This nasty mess involves Dominic Everton, that fugitive everyone is after. There, now you’ve got a chance to stop being hounded by the public. So will you listen to me?’

  ‘Mr Redfern, you need to come in. Listen to me carefully. There was a body found in your house. Do you understand what I just said?’

  Suddenly, Chris couldn’t feel the phone jammed hard against his ear, or in his tight fist. Everything went numb. ‘Dead body?’ he wheezed.

  ‘Mr Redfern, you need to return to Sheffield this instant. Tell me where you are and I’ll arrange for officers to be with your family while you and I speak about this. Where are you?’

  He blurted: ‘Have you IDed the body? Who is it?’

  ‘I was hoping you could answer that. Who burned the house, Mr Redfern? Do you know who’s lying burned to a crisp in your home?’

  Now he felt dizzy. ‘Katherine Hugill. My daughter.’

  SUNDAY

  Forty-Five

  Three times over the years had Julia known her mother to do the bedroom thing, where she locked herself away after a raging fall-out with Dad. She knew Mum wouldn’t come back downstairs this night, and her father was in an armchair, trance-like and stiff, like a criminal in an electric chair. With her parents engaged, Julia finally succumbed to the urge that had been eating her for the last hour.

  Donna had messaged through the dating app earlier, wanting to meet. Julia sent a reply.

  I’m miles from u babe and deep in the woods sorry.

  A message from Donna flashed up almost instantly.

  Never done it under the night sky.

  Julia smiled. The clock on the wall rode past midnight, into a new day, and she decided it was time. She got up and went into the hallway, sending her girlfriend another message.

  No need for us to b cold I know a place.

  At the front door, she lifted the keys from the hook to expose the House Rules sheet.

  Sounds good will bring wine where are you?

  Julia took a photo of the House Rules – or at least the important portion at the bottom, with the postcode. She sent the photo along with a specific location in the woods.

  Cant wait babe.

  As she tried to hang the keys, the rack fell away, just like before, and clattered to the wooden floor. She heard her father grunt, and the creak of the chair as he jumped up. A moment later he was in the doorway, staring at her.

  ‘What’s going on? You can’t go out this late.’

  She gave him a look like he was being an imbecile. ‘I know, Dad. Why would I be going out in the woods this late anyway? I was taking a photo of the House Rules for a joke I’m sending someone. Calm down. How come Mum isn’t downstairs?’

  She knew that question would get rid of him. He mumbled something she didn’t catch and went back into the living room.

  Ill be there see you soon wrap up n keep that body warm 4 me.

  It had started to rain outside. But that text from Donna made her smile. She went back into the living room to try to kill time: 113 minutes until the 2 a.m. rendezvous. Dad was still giving that thousand-yard-stare, but he didn’t look sleepy yet. He was probably thinking about the argument with Mum and worried about this Dominic Everton guy.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. ‘It’ll be worse if you stay down here and Mum wakes in the night alone. In this place.’

  She went to her room, closed the door and put her ear to it. Beautifully, her warning had worked and she heard him head up the stairs. Then enter the main bedroom. Then shut the door.

  Then nothing, except the rain battering the house.

  Julia quietly got dressed and sat on her bed to count the minutes down.

  Rose’s phone was on the pillow, trailing earphones to her head. He could hear the tinny rasp of her audiobook. The light illuminated her face, making her look beautiful as well as ravaged by anxiety. He hated himself for what she had been through. Was still going through.

  He slipped into the bed, naked, and close to her. She was turned away, wearing pyjama bottoms but no top. Warm. As he snuggled up, slowly, carefully, she grunted. He put a hand on her hip.

  ‘There’s something I can’t get out of my mind about Eve,’ Rose said softly.

  Chris slid a few inches away from her, worried.

  ‘In America. September 24th, 2000. Your holiday, when you met her. You said, being with her, you didn’t mind missing Michael Schumacher win the World Championship. But he didn’t win it in America. He won it in the next race, in Japan, with one race to go. Carol’s husband said that. I looked. He’s right. Japan is eight hours ahead of us, so an early afternoon there would be the middle of the night here. You got your races mixed up. What was in the envelope, Chris?’

  ‘What’s wrong, Rose?’ But he had a feeling he knew exactly what was wrong.

  ‘The eighth of October 2000. That was the date of the Japanese Grand Prix. That was two weeks after your America holiday. A week after we conceived Julia. The same day I told you I suspected I was pregnant. What was in the envelope, Chris?’

  ‘A chain,’ he said, sitting up. ‘Just a necklace chain. You saw it. I don’t understand what you’re saying, Rose.’

  She remained turned away. ‘You were with Eve when Michael Schumacher won the World Championship. Katie’s Facebook even confirmed it: the eighth of October. The second time, when you gave her a false name again. After me. After Julia. You were there. With her. This was in the envelope.’

  Her right hand, buried beneath her right flank, came up and deposited something on her left shoulder. In the light from the phone, he saw it was a tiny silver book, an inch high, with hinges and letters in bas relief saying ‘OLIVER TWIST’. It was open and he could see a little tuft of white. The corner of the slip of paper bearing a phone number, torn away when he pulled it free.

  ‘It’s tacky silver junk. It could have been your anniversary gift to me.’ That line was dripping with sarcasm.

  ‘Rose, listen—’

  ‘I remember that locket on a necklace you had when I met you. Found it, you said. Gave it to a friend, you said, when it was gone. But it was gone because you gave it to Eve Levine while you fucked her as men raced around a racetrack. While I sat waiting for you with Julia in my belly.’

  Forty-Six

  ‘We used protection in America. Eve left her necklace behind by accident. The hotel we booked for the afternoon returned it to my hotel later that night, after I’d said goodbye to Eve. Neither of us knew where the other was staying, so I kept it. I started wearing it. Yes, a week later, when I met you, I told you I’d found it in America.

  ‘Then a week after that, I bumped into Eve in Sheffield. A bar was staying open late to show the Japanese Grand Prix, and we were both fans, and she was there. We drank all night because the TV was showing scenes from before the race, like the warm-ups. It was five or six on the Sunday morning in Britain before the race, but long before then we were very drunk, too drunk to stay up. So we went to a hotel.

  ‘She saw the necklace and I said I’d been holding it for her. She liked that. She thought I’d come to the bar just to find her, that I’d been hoping to find her and return the necklace ever since America. One thing led to another. This time we were very drunk. It was one time.

  ‘Afterwards, we argued because I told her it was a mistake, that I was with you. And I abandoned her. Again.’

  She didn’t speak.

  He continued, ‘I’d suspected after looking online at the name of her pub, but when I saw that necklace in the envelope, I knew for certain who Eve was and that the woman who gave it to me was her daughter. And that she must be contacting me because she thought I was the father. I suspected Eve had probably made a deathbed confession. When you asked what had been in the envelope, I had to give you something, but I knew you’d recognise the locket. So when I put my hand in the door pocket for it, I ripped off the locket and showed you only the chain. I’m sorry.’

  He waited for
her to get out of bed, take the car, leave with Julia, abandon him here. But she didn’t.

  He said, ‘Julia should have been born first. But she was nine days late, and Katie must have been premature by a few weeks. But I wish it had been Julia, because then you would have known the truth straight away. I wouldn’t have had a chance to get caught up in this awful lie, which I’m so, so sorry about.’

  Again, he waited for her to climb out of bed and begin the process that would see him abandoned here, homeless, wifeless on his anniversary, hated by his entire family.

  Instead, Rose said, ‘And those were the only two times you ever met her?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and he was glad of the darkness and that she was facing away. He didn’t trust the look in his own eyes.

  ‘In the morning you tell me everything.’

  It puzzled him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I found that locket in your car at the same time that I discovered your satnav, that you’d been to Louise’s house. Two lies. One of those we can maybe get past. I don’t know about the other. So you will tell me everything. But in the morning.’

  He understood. Next to her suspicions that he had attacked someone, an ancient affair paled. ‘I will. I know you were suspicious of how quiet I’ve been. It’s just because with Katie in our lives…’

  ‘A ripple in your neat, ordered life. I know. It’s hard for you. It’s hard for us all.’

  ‘Yes. That’s all it was, though. But about Louise… I—’

  ‘Stop,’ she cut in. ‘I need sleep. I don’t want to worry this late. Don’t tell me another word.’

  ‘I will. I’ll tell you everything.’ He pressed his hand harder onto her skin, just in case she couldn’t feel it, and awaited a reaction. ‘Are we okay? Until then? I can sleep downstairs if you want.’