No Smoke Without Fire

by Claire S. Lewis

  Having someone to chat to on the long journey had taken her mind off her concerns about stalking and stalkers. She was grateful to Emily for coming along – some uncomplicated female company was just what she needed. But it was more than just companionship that she needed today. For what was about to happen, she would need not only a companion, but also a witness.

  PAST

  33

  She pounds up the muddy path, crying out as sharp stones and rough tree roots cut into the bare soles of her feet. Fear gives her wings. She hears him following, crashing through the undergrowth, still shouting, calling her a ‘frigid bitch’, commanding her to ‘Stop! Wait!’

  It’s not him she’s scared of anymore. Even the feeling of disgust is gone. All of her fear is concentrated in one horrific premonition – what she will see when she gets to the crest of the hill.

  He comes up behind her just as she comes out of the trees on to the lawn. He grabs her arm to steady himself, more than to hold her back.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he shouts. And then louder, the same words, again and again, ringing with despair. While he stands rooted to the spot, she sprints ahead of him across the lawn, to where two fire engines are pulled up in front of the barn, with their hoses trained on a bonfire of flames coming from the windows on the upper level below a gaping hole in the roof.

  She hasn’t enough breath left to scream. As she crosses the grass, five or six girls, crying and dishevelled, in a state of drunken panic, run to meet her. The girls surround her babbling incoherently. ‘Thank God, we couldn’t find you…’ ‘You didn’t answer your phone…’ ‘We thought you were inside…’ They hug her and each other. ‘It’s OK, we’re all accounted for now. Just you and Ben were missing…’ ‘We’ve done a head count. Everyone’s out…’ ‘Everyone’s safe…’

  Ferociously, she shakes away their clinging hands and throws them to one side as she pushes past. Now she’s found her voice – shouting at the top of her lungs as she runs towards the police officer keeping watch over the motley crew of teenage partygoers gathered on the lawn.

  ‘Tom! Where’s Tom? Tom… Has anyone seen Tom?’ All she can see is a circle of dumb, shocked faces, looking at her. Why won’t they tell her where he is? She screams, high-pitched yelping animal screams she didn’t know she was capable of. ‘My little brother’s inside,’ she cries hysterically, fearing the worst. The officer holds her in a vice, gripping her wrists firmly, to stop her beating him round the face, as she tries to break free and force her way into the barn.

  ‘Calm down,’ he shouts. ‘If you want to help your brother, you’ve got to calm down.’ The officer puts his face close to hers. ‘Where was he? Where did you last see him?’

  ‘In the bedroom,’ she screams. ‘At the top of the stairs. He’s up there. Let me go.’

  As the officer breaks away to alert the fire brigade, Harry steps in and folds Celeste firmly into his arms. Her shoulders are bare. She is trembling.

  In a waking nightmare, she sees Ben crossing the lawn and closing in on them. She can’t bear to look at him. He’s become a monster. Her legs give way and she falls to the ground.

  Ben heard the police officer’s question and his instinct for self-preservation takes over. He runs after him.

  ‘He’s in my bedroom,’ he says. ‘We left him in my bedroom, playing with my Xbox.’ His face is stricken. He nods back in her direction, collapsed on her knees in the grass holding her head in her hands. ‘She locked him in,’ he yells frantically. He stares at the officer with wild eyes, wide with terror. ‘I told her not to… But he’s only eleven. She locked him in to keep him away from any trouble at the party.’

  She hears him but she can’t speak. Her shock and horror at his words is unspeakable. Her senses are overwhelmed with the crackle and roar of the flames, and the beat of the music, belting out from the speakers in the living room that is unbelievably untouched by the fire. Her head is filled with the sweet, smoky, voice of the pop singing goddess Rihanna as the brutal lyrics resound and reverberate in the night sky like the soundtrack to the raging fire. ‘Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, that’s all right because I like the way it hurts, just gonna stand there and hear me cry, that’s all right because I love the way you lie…’ She chokes on the pungent smell of black smoke that’s hurting her lungs… and the wine and the shots and the spliff he made her smoke…

  She leans forward and retches into the grass.

  He stuffs his fist into his pocket and holds out his bedroom door key to the police officer… just like a small boy putting out his hand for the cane.

  But the police officer has already charged past him, ignoring his injured outstretched hand, yelling at the top of his lungs to the fire crew and gesturing to the window of Ben’s bedroom.

  ‘There’s a boy trapped inside – top of the spiral staircase, first door on the right-hand side of the landing. The child’s in the bedroom.’

  A key will only slow them down.

  Ben’s wild staring eyes are fixed on the officer’s back as he runs towards the fire crew. He closes his fist on the key and after a moment’s hesitation, he zips it into the interior pocket in the lining of his leather jacket.

  PRESENT

  34

  I’ve been waiting about twenty minutes when I hear his footsteps. I should be well camouflaged in this rat hole, which smells of men’s urine. I shut my eyes, hold my breath and sit very still. I hear the key turning and the door closing behind him. Lights go on in the first-floor flat casting out the shadows and revealing the dead leaves, cigarette butts and used condoms that litter the floor. I don’t know why it surprises me that even in this chic and exclusive part of Chelsea inhabited by the mega-rich, life’s debris finds its way into unused underground stairways.

  She’s wearing soft-heeled flats, so when she walks up to the front door above my head more than two hours later, I smell her before I hear her. As if in anticipation of things to come, she has that milky talcum powder smell of newborn babies.

  Before her key is in the lock the door flies open and he sticks his head out. He grabs her roughly by the arm. ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last three hours.’ She stumbles on the step and mumbles something I can’t hear. Although the house looks solidly built, I can hear him ranting through the walls. On and on it goes. I decide it’s time to leave my hiding place and relocate to the garden square. If one of the neighbours calls the police, I don’t want them to find me here.

  *

  ‘Let’s have our picnic first,’ said Celeste, ‘before we start on the headstones.’ They found a grassy spot, in the partial shade of a cherry blossom tree. ‘Oh, isn’t this heavenly?’ Celeste lay back and looked up at the branches shimmering overhead. She closed her eyes, relishing the soundtrack of birdsong and insects – if you only stopped to listen, the graveyard was teeming with life, an ecosystem of biodiversity in the heart of the city. It was like a chorus of renewal. The sap was rising in nature and the sap was rising in her. As the breeze rustled the branches, she felt cherry blossom petals dropping gently onto her face and her closed eyelids. Like a kiss – cherish blossoms, she thought sentimentally. Someone is smiling down on me.

  ‘People always talk about looking for “peace and quiet” in green open spaces,’ mused Celeste out loud. ‘But listen, lie back and close your eyes. It’s so peaceful here, but it’s anything but quiet. If you really start to focus, you’ll hear the cacophony of noise.’ They lay there listening to the individual sounds – the cooing, chirping and tweeting of various species of birds, a dog barking in the distance, the buzz of an early wasp, the fluttering of wings, and from God knows where in this part of North London, a cockerel crowing for his mate – and that was just sixty seconds’ worth of sound. Celeste sat up and started unpacking the picnic.

  ‘Imagine if you went out one day into the countryside and you could hear absolutely nothing – now that would be scary.’ She handed Emily a sandwich. ‘Total silence wo
uld mean everything had died. It’s kind of reassuring to hear that this garden of the dead is bursting with life.’

  After the picnic Celeste was feeling sleepy.

  ‘I feel in need of caffeine,’ she said. ‘I saw a café, on the other side of the road just opposite the entrance. Do you mind getting us drinks?’ She handed Emily a ten-pound note. ‘I’ll have a latte with almond milk, if they’ve got it please, and get whatever you fancy for yourself. While you do that, I’ll have a look around and try to find the plots.’

  Emily was already back with the coffees and a chocolate bar to share when Celeste returned to their picnic spot.

  ‘I started drinking mine. I hope you don’t mind. It was getting cold,’ said Emily.

  ‘Of course,’ said Celeste. She put down her floristry workbox. ‘I found the husband’s grave – it’s over the other side of the wall, by that tree. I couldn’t find the baby’s one – the mother’s map is very confusing. We can start with the husband, and then we’ll look for the other one together.’

  It didn’t take them long to attend to Edward Mark Hunter’s burial plot. The municipal cemetery was well kept, with the lawns mown short and small shrubs planted between the headstones, to soften and add colour to the landscape. Together, the young women fetched watering cans from the caretaker’s hut and scrubbed the headstone until it shone, front and back, like an iceberg rising up out of the green grass.

  ‘At least Edward lived to a decent old age,’ said Emily, calculating the span of his life from the inscription. ‘He was seventy-seven years old when he died.’

  ‘That shows how young you are! Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of twenty-four—’ Celeste laughed ‘—seventy-seven sounds far too young to me.’ She adjusted the viewfinder and snapped away with the camera. ‘I want to live at least until I’m one hundred.’

  She moved the tripod around to capture different viewpoints, then checked through the photos on her camera screen.

  ‘OK. I’m happy with that,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some nice pictures for the client and I can put a couple on the website too. Let’s go.’

  They set off in the direction of The Children’s Memorial Garden and Celeste handed Emily the hand-drawn map.

  ‘Here, you see if you can work it out – I couldn’t find it.’

  It didn’t take Emily long to identify some landmarks in this section of the cemetery graveyard and they followed the path leading towards the grave. It seemed that a new shelter housing water taps, dustbins, watering cans and the like had been erected recently as it didn’t figure on the mother’s map.

  ‘Maybe that’s why you couldn’t find it earlier,’ said Emily.

  Emily walked ahead of Celeste and stopped beside a headstone a little way in from the path.

  ‘This is the one,’ she said. It was made of pale, grey marble, about half the height of a typical headstone with the short inscription,

  George David Hartley

  ‘Georgie’

  7th April 2010

  Held for a moment

  Loved for a lifetime

  ‘Oh my God! It’s so sad,’ mumbled Emily, her eyes fixed on the headstone. She stood there – lost in the moment. Eventually, she looked round to beckon over Celeste, then unexpectedly dropped down to her hands and knees to peer at what, from Celeste’s viewpoint, looked like a group of little flags stuck into the grass in front of the headstone.

  ‘This is really weird,’ Emily called out to Celeste. ‘Come and see.’

  Celeste walked over briskly and sank down next to Emily.

  It was Celeste’s turn to exclaim, ‘Oh my God!’ Celeste changed her expression from sadness to horror.

  The entire plot in front of the baby’s headstone was decorated. But the squares of paper fluttering in the breeze were not flags. They were laminated photographs, each individually taped to a jumbo-sized, flat wooden lolly-stick, pushed into the turf.

  ‘This is freaking me out,’ said Emily. ‘Every single one of these photographs is a picture of you.’

  Emily pulled out one of the wooden sticks and passed the photograph to Celeste. ‘What on earth is all this about?’

  Celeste stared at the photographs, then manically, she began to tug them all up, glancing briefly at each image before throwing it on to the grass into a messy pile.

  ‘Did Meghan tell you about my stalker?’ she asked.

  Emily began to look through the pile. ‘They all seem to be taken in front of different graves, in different locations,’ said Emily. ‘Meghan told me someone’s been following you around. Is this the work of that student?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Celeste quietly. ‘I suppose it must be him.’

  ‘It looks as if whoever it is, has been stalking you for weeks,’ said Emily. ‘Different outfits, different times of the day, different seasons… in every photograph. This is scary. It’s psycho. He’s been following you everywhere. He must be absolutely obsessed with you.’

  Suddenly, Celeste cried out urgently. ‘Oh God, put them down. We shouldn’t be touching them. If I go to the police with these now, they might be able to get fingerprints.’

  Emily threw them to the grass as if they were on fire. Then she said, ‘But Celeste it’s too late. Your fingerprints will be on every one of them. You pulled out every photograph.’

  ‘Oh God! What was I thinking of?’ said Celeste. ‘But still, his fingerprints may be on them too.’

  It was too late but nevertheless, she put on her lightweight gardening gloves from her floristry workbox and gathered the photographs into a black bin liner.

  ‘What confuses me,’ said Emily, ‘is why would the stalker want you to know? That he was stalking you, I mean. I would have thought a stalker would want to keep his spying secret from you – and would take pleasure in deceiving you.’ She put her hand on Celeste’s knee protectively.

  Celeste looked at Emily and said solemnly, ‘On the contrary, I think he wants me to know he’s stalking me. He wants to intimidate me, to make me feel within his power. It’s all about coercion. That’s how these people who are sick in the head operate.’

  Emily stood up. Celeste’s hand trembled a little as Emily helped her up to her feet, concerned that she was feeling faint from the shock of the discovery.

  Celeste looked around the memorial garden with an anxious expression on her face. ‘The frightening thing is that whoever took these photographs is probably here right now…’

  She tailed off, and Emily completed the sentence for her.

  ‘Watching you.’

  ‘Shushh…’ murmured Celeste, clutching on to Emily’s arm. ‘Listen…’

  Emily stood stock-still, listening with bated breath.

  ‘The sound of silence.’ Celeste’s voice was barely a whisper and there was fear in her eyes. ‘It’s absolutely still. Nothing… Even the birds have stopped singing.’

  PRESENT

  35

  I pick a spot in among the bushes as my new watching post and take out a small pair of binoculars. In his temper Ben must have forgotten to pull down the blinds. I can see them in the open-plan kitchen. He is pacing the kitchen, alternating between scrolling through a mobile phone and jabbing his finger in her face as he berates her. I’m guessing the phone is hers and he doesn’t like what he’s reading on it. She turns her back on him and starts to stack the dishwasher. The breakfast bowls and mugs are still on the table. He blocks her way. Still yelling accusations, he picks up one of the bowls and smashes it to the floor. He does the same with the second and then with the mugs. She cowers away from him.

  Suddenly he picks up a half-empty glass of orange juice and slings it straight at her head. The juice goes flying across the kitchen in an impressive orange arc. She ducks with lightning speed and the glass shatters against the tiles behind her head, sending shards ricocheting across the kitchen.

  For a moment she is stunned and stares at him with rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights eyes. Then she sidesteps over the broken glass and lung
es for the door. He gets there first. With one foot he jams the door to prevent her escaping from the room and traps her so that she is standing in front of him with her back to it. He stands head and shoulders above her. For a moment he puts his left hand to her throat and seems to hesitate between leaning in to embrace her or closing his fingers around her neck. Then he takes one step back, forms a fist and punches her pregnant belly with all his might.

  Now it’s my turn to be stunned. I can’t believe my eyes. In all the hours I’ve spent watching people, it’s the most disturbing thing I have ever witnessed.

  He stands back and runs his hand through his hair while she crumples over and down on to her knees. I look on in horror. I would call the police, but I don’t want them to trace me. I do the next best thing. I race for the front door and press all the buzzers. I tell the first neighbour to answer, that I have a delivery for him, and he buzzes me in. Once in the hallway, I scan the walls to find the break-glass unit that activates the fire alarm system for the building. I smash it. Then I run.

  *

  Because it was the May bank holiday weekend, it wasn’t until the Tuesday morning that Meghan got a chance to grill Celeste about the photographs.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ said Meghan. ‘This is getting out of hand. You should report him to the police. He must have been following you everywhere. He must be seriously obsessed.’

  The Saturday girl had blabbed. Celeste had known that she would, of course. Meghan was quick to pick up on the expression of annoyance that came over Celeste’s face.

  ‘There’s no point getting angry with Emily,’ said Meghan. ‘She’s very worried about you. This guy sounds like a freak.’