Five Strangers

by E. V. Adamson

  76

  BEX

  It looks like it’s worked. We’re on the train back to London. We’re not talking – well, at least not about what I told her on the platform. It was perhaps not the whole truth, but a version of it.

  She’s looking concerned and worried, as if at any moment I’m going to jump up and throw myself out of the train. She’ll never leave me now, not when I’m on suicide watch. I wonder how long I can keep it up for. Of course, I can do the weeping at will, the appearance of being consumed by the black dog of depression, but I know I shouldn’t overplay it. Subtlety is the key.

  Inside, I smile to myself, knowing that I’ve prevented Jen’s impromptu visit to my home town. No doubt she was on her way to talk to Karen Oliver. I don’t know exactly what Dan’s mother would have said about me, but none of it would have been good. Luckily, both sets of foster parents and adopted parents are dead now, so they can’t tell tales. But it’s possible Jen could dig up some of Daniel’s old mates, even some of mine from school. Yes, I’ve bought myself a bit of time, but I know that it would be impossible to stop Jen from making future investigations. To prevent that I realise that I need to have some kind of hold over her.

  Of course, the answer is staring me straight in the face: our plan to ‘scare’ Laurence. I know I can’t mention this on the train, and so, after repeated apologies about my silly, thoughtless, selfish behaviour, I ask her more about her feature. In turn, she says that she’s sorry for not telling me why she was on the way to Colchester. She insists that she does have to file the piece early and that she will have to drop by the office to look at the headlines and layout. We pass the rest of the journey staring out of the window with occasional glances at one another. At intervals, Jen’s phone vibrates with a flurry of texts.

  ‘Don’t you want to answer those?’ I ask.

  ‘It’ll just be Nick at the paper, hassling me again,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t mind – honestly. It’s work. You should see what he wants. Get back to him.’

  ‘It’ll wait – you’re the priority here.’

  I study her jeans pocket and see the outline of her phone pushing through the denim.

  ‘I insist – work’s important to you. Especially now, especially this piece.’

  I fix her with my eyes and smile. She has no choice. She takes out the phone, looks at the screen and slips it back into her pocket.

  ‘Yep, just as I thought – Nick asking where I’ve got to. But honestly, it doesn’t matter. I can stay with you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  As the train speeds through the Essex countryside, I catch her looking at me with what looks like suspicion, but then the suspicion turns to sympathy. I continue to watch her. Sometimes, a thought crosses her mind and she opens her mouth as if she’s going to ask me something, before she thinks better of it and remains silent. That, or she questions me about my work, local planning applications, my colleagues at the council. To a fellow passenger we would appear to be two acquaintances, both perhaps a little pale from lack of sleep, who don’t really know one another; women who’ve met by chance on a train and are passing the time of day with one another, catching up with one another’s news, until their eventual arrival in London. They would not know the secrets we carry, both about ourselves and each other.

  But then again, how much does Jen really know about me? And how much do I know about her?

  77

  JEN

  We’re back at the flat. I’ve settled Bex on her bed, given her a couple of sleeping pills, and told her that she’ll feel better after a rest. The relief I feel when I shut her bedroom door is immense. The mask I’ve been wearing since travelling back from Colchester slips away. I don’t have to endure her looking at me, studying me, at least for the hour or so that she’s asleep.

  I don’t know what to think, what to feel. The scene on the station platform plays itself over and over in my head. I don’t know whether she believes the story about me having to go into the office. But it’s all I could think of and I need an excuse to get away. On the sofa, I read through some of Penelope’s messages, messages that I could only glance at when I saw them flash onto my screen on the train. She’s sorry for going through my coat pockets. She needs to speak to me. She is insistent. And the last text: she thinks I’m in danger.

  78

  BEX

  I don’t stay lying down for long. I pace the room, working out what to do next. Think, Bex, think. Then it comes to me, an idea almost perfectly formed. I stand at the door and hear Jen talking. She says the name Nick a couple of times – I know he’s the editor working on her story. I wait until she finishes the call before I open the door and see her sitting on the sofa still staring at her phone. She looks up, surprised, and tells me I’ve given her a shock because she thought that I was asleep. I tell her I didn’t take the pills.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Nervous. Stupid. Guilty. Sad. Angry. Not a good combo.’

  I walk across the room and stand by the sofa. Jen puts her phone back in her pocket. I sit down next to her and she edges slightly away from me.

  ‘Is your editor still hassling you?’

  ‘Nick? Yeah, I tried to put him off, but he still wants me to call in at some point today.’

  As she continues to talk about the feature I stop listening to her.

  ‘You know I followed you this morning, don’t you?’ I interrupt. ‘To Colchester. I waited until you left the flat and then I trailed behind, watching you.’

  It’s obvious that she’s not expecting this confession. She blinks and swallows hard.

  ‘You see, I thought you were about to …’ I continue. ‘I don’t know, I thought you might be on your way to do something to Laurence.’

  ‘What – what do you mean?’

  ‘I know we’d talked about it – giving him a fright – but I thought you’d got it into your mind to go ahead with the plan by yourself. I assumed that you were so angry on my behalf – after what I’d told you – that you intended to harm him in some way. And I suppose I wanted to see it. Witness it. After what he’d done to me, I wanted to see him suffer. So I called in sick at work and followed you. But then, when you started to walk down towards the Tube, I realised that you were going somewhere different and, instead of turning back to the flat, I continued after you. I couldn’t help myself. It was like I was being hypnotised. I saw you board the Colchester train at Liverpool Street and that’s when all the memories started to come back. By the time I got off the train at Colchester I realised that I was trapped in some weird kind of prison. Sorry, I’m not explaining this very well.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I understand. Go on.’

  ‘I thought the only way to escape the past – the terrible thing that happened with my parents, what Laurence did – was to … end it all. Of course, I don’t think I intended to do it. After all, it wasn’t even a proper attempt, and I knew you were close by, ready to save me. I suppose it was a classic cry for help. I realise I must sound pathetic to you.’

  She takes my hand, but her skin has a clammy quality.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re not pathetic. You’ve been through a lot, suffered terribly. You’ve been incredibly brave.’

  I look her straight in the eyes. ‘I’m going to ask you something and you must answer me honestly. Okay?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I think I’ve found a way of helping us both. It involves … Laurence.’

  She repeats his name like a whispered incantation. ‘Laurence.’

  ‘I know we agreed to give him a shock, a scare. But what if we … if we went further?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘From what you’ve said I suspect you must have wished him dead – after what he did to you, after what he still might do to you. After what he did to me. I could help you … I could help both of us.’

  ‘You’d be willing to do … that?’

  ‘Of course – you
know how I’ve always been there for you.’

  ‘But m—’

  She can’t bring herself to say the word: murder.

  ‘You know that map of the Heath I showed you, the one I marked up showing the sections covered by CCTV? Like we said, we could attack him when he was out jogging, but instead of just frightening him, we’d finish him off. And the beauty of it is, we wouldn’t be caught. Nobody would see us, we’d make sure of that – we’d do it in an area not covered by any security cameras. We’d make it look as though he’d been attacked by … I don’t know … by a stranger, a teenage gang member, make it look as though it was a robbery gone wrong.’

  Her eyes widen in astonishment, expectation, excitement. She sits there silently, taking in the implications of what I’ve just said.

  ‘But why would you want to help me?’

  ‘As I was standing on the station platform earlier I realised just how much damage Laurence had done. I know it’s some time in the past, but the rape …’ I break off, pretending the word is choking me. ‘Seeing him on the Heath, seeing what he did to you, remembering what he did to me, set off some kind of, I don’t know what you’d call it, some kind of trigger or something.’ I run my hand through my hair. ‘I’ve gone mad – sorry. I’m talking nonsense. Ignore me.’ I stand up to go back to the bedroom. ‘Perhaps I do need that sleeping pill after all—’

  She reaches out and grabs my wrist. If she pressed a little harder I’d start to feel a band of pain.

  ‘No, it’s not nonsense,’ she says. ‘Sit back down and talk me through it all. Tell me again what we need to do.’

  79

  JEN

  We’ve started out at a gentle pace, dressed in black running gear, jogging at a safe distance, watching the figure of Laurence in front. We’ve followed him from his house, through the streets of Tufnell Park and Dartmouth Park, to the edge of the Heath. The sun is just beginning to go down, covering the landscape in a delicate apricot light. There are a few other joggers and dog walkers around, but we always knew that there’d be other people out and about.

  Bex had thought about that, she said she’d thought of everything. She’d talked me through the plan. Despite my assertion that I was familiar with the annotated map, marked up with arrows showing which areas were covered by CCTV, she made me memorise it again. She’d talked through Laurence’s transgressions once more. His callousness. His cowardice. His cruelties. He was a misogynist, a monster. He’d drugged and raped her. He’d stalked and attacked me. We had to protect ourselves. It was a form of self-defence. After all, he’d said he wanted to slaughter me like a pig. And if nothing else, our actions would stop him from hurting other women. It was the right thing to do.

  She spent the best part of the day instructing and schooling me. Bex had used gaffer tape to strap a sharp kitchen knife to the lower part of my left arm, which I then covered with my long-sleeved top. How did it feel? she asked as she finished binding it to my skin. Not too uncomfortable? Not at all, I’d said. In fact, it felt great. Like I was wearing a piece of armour that shielded me from harm. I had to be careful not to injure myself when I was running, she told me; also, it had to be secured in such a way that it wouldn’t drop out. And so we practised various movements in the flat – lunging, jogging on the spot, squat jumps – but the knife remained in place. Bex said that I had to be able to retrieve the knife from its casing quickly and so this was something she made me repeat until I’d got it right.

  She told me that we might not be able to kill him that day as it would depend on the correct alignment of various circumstances – our proximity to Laurence, being in a CCTV-free zone, the absence of other witnesses. But if all these things came together I had to be prepared to act quickly and decisively. Could I do that? I said I could. She showed me where to strike to guarantee death: the two carotid arteries in the neck. She would distract him, stop and talk to him, and all I had to do was steal up behind him and cut his throat. I had to go in deep, though. There was no point in just cutting muscle and skin. I had to slice open the arteries that supplied oxygen to the brain. If I did that he would bleed out in a matter of minutes – just like Vicky and Daniel, I thought to myself.

  Did I want to say something to Laurence before he died? She told me that, after leaving the scene, we’d soon run into an area covered by CCTV and it was important to appear as though we’d witnessed nothing suspicious. Our clothes would have to be free of blood and the knife would have to be taped back inside my arm, out of sight. In her backpack she would stash some tissues and some more tape, as well as a change of gear. We could dispose of the evidence later, she said, at our convenience.

  I shouldn’t be afraid, she added. She’d be proud of me once all this was over. Perhaps we could even go on a holiday to celebrate. It would be her treat. She reiterated the litany of Laurence’s crimes again. He was a serial abuser. A rapist. A sadist. He’d got away with so much over the years that his instinct for ever-increasing forms of violence was becoming normalised. By the end of the afternoon I was possessed by a fury. Anger surged through my veins. Murder was not only on my mind, but in my body too. Every cell in my being wanted revenge. I’d never understood the term bloodlust before, but now I felt it. A rawness. A hunger. An appetite that could only be satiated by death.

  Bex’s.

  Earlier, while Bex was in the bathroom, I’d crushed a sleeping pill into a cup of tea and watched her as she drank it. I left a note to say I’d gone into the newspaper office and would be back soon. Just to be certain she wasn’t trailing me I took a bus up to Archway, in the opposite direction to my destination. On the top deck of the 134 I replayed the conversation I’d had with Penelope when I was in the flat. She had asked me whether I was safe to talk and when I’d said I was in the flat she had instructed me to make up a name of a caller just in case Bex was listening.

  As I pretended to talk to Nick, Penelope had outlined her fears. She wasn’t sure exactly how it might manifest itself, but she was certain that I was in danger. She went over what I already knew: the deaths of Bex’s parents in a murder–suicide, the fact that Bex had had a relationship with Daniel Oliver when he was a teenager. If I was in any doubt about the veracity of any of this, she implored me to contact Karen Oliver. I didn’t have time to travel back up to Colchester again, but I had her number. Outside Archway station I scanned the streets for signs of Bex. Nothing. I dialled Mrs Oliver’s number with fingers that trembled so much it took me three attempts before I got the right number. The call went straight to voicemail.

  Next, I phoned Laurence. It was imperative I speak to him. He was the only one who could answer my questions. I dialled his mobile and he answered, but he told me he was in a meeting and that he’d call me back. As he cut the line dead I realised that my nerves were shot to pieces. My head was a mass of unanswered questions. The whole thing was a terrible gamble. Would he return the call? Even if he did talk to me, how would I know whether he was lying? After all, he’d denied being on the Heath that day, and yet I knew it had been him – he was the mystery jogger.

  But why had he not owned up? What had he to hide? I’d already accused him of sending me a string of messages, which he denied. But I needed to ask him about the mask and the attack on me on the Heath. When I saw his name flash up on the screen of my phone I had to do everything in my power to keep my voice steady. He’d had enough of me being hysterical. The last thing he needed to hear was me shouting. I apologised, told him that I was sorry for the way I’d behaved. But it was important that I see him, if only for five minutes. I wasn’t going to accuse him of anything. I was proud of myself for controlling my emotions and, despite his initial reluctance, punctuated by a chorus of sighs, he said that he could give me a few minutes of his time if I came down to his office. Twenty minutes later I was standing in Argyle Square. I rang his mobile and told him that I had arrived.

  When he first caught a glimpse of me I saw the expression on his face change from mild irritation at having his after
noon interrupted to one of concern. ‘Oh my God, Jen, you look terrible,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I need to ask you some things. Some of the questions may sound … well, they may sound like the rantings of a mad woman. But bear with me.’

  He studied my serious expression, nodded his head and said, ‘Let’s find somewhere to have a coffee.’

  He led me to the same café where I’d spent hours waiting for him. Memories of how I’d followed him down onto the Tube crowded my mind. We took a table at the back of the busy space and, once we’d ordered, I began by telling him that I had to talk to him about what happened that day on the Heath. He closed his eyes in discomfort as if he were being forced to endure an unpleasant dental examination.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t have stormed into your house like I did,’ I said. ‘Asking about what you were doing there, accusing you of all sorts, and you’d every right to be angry with me.’

  ‘No, I’m the one who should be apologising to you,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘I should have told you the truth. But after what had happened, I was scared you might use it, I don’t know, in a piece for a newspaper or magazine. You remember how much flak I got from my friends whenever I – or “James” – made an appearance in “Being Jen Hunter”. I knew you’d lost your contract, but I could see how desperate you were getting and I … I didn’t want my name splashed across the press.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Vicky. I know you and she were, or had been, together.’

  The comment took him aback. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I’ve been doing a bit of research and—’

  ‘I said I didn’t want you to write anything about me. Fuck, Jen. You don’t change, do you?’ He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. ‘That’s one of the reasons why … well, I’m not going to get into all of that with you now. I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘It’s not for a piece – it’s much more important than that,’ I said. I wasn’t sure how much to reveal. ‘Please sit back down.’