by Agatha Frost
Barker tapped the spray against his chin. “I never looked at it like that. Okay, we’ll keep the spray in the house for emergencies.”
As she watched Barker dig around in the bag for his next item, Julia suddenly had no appetite. She pushed the plate away and gulped down more coffee to wake her mind fully.
“A flashlight,” Barker said, holding out a small torch for Julia. “An essential.”
“Don’t tell me, does it turn into a bomb if I twist it a certain way?”
“No, it’s just very bright.” Barker shone the torch in Julia’s eyes, and she almost fell backwards off her stool. “Good for dazzling people.”
Julia regained her balance as she blinked away stars; if she hadn’t been awake before, she was now.
“Last but not least.” Barker pulled out the final item. “A Swiss army knife. Before you ask, it’s legal to carry this around as long as you keep the blade retracted.” He flipped the blade out to show Julia how it worked before slotting it back. “Of course, if you use it, that’s another story, but hopefully it doesn’t get to that. If you haven’t scared them off with all this other stuff, a flash of this thing should do it.”
Julia was somewhere between touched and dumbfounded as she stared at the counter full of self-defence items. “Barker, I’m touched, but don’t you think this is a little extreme?”
“It’s better to be—”
“Safe than sorry,” Julia jumped in. “I know, and in theory, that’s a lovely idea, but do you really expect me to carry all this around with me every time I leave the house? My bag is small!”
“Well, you just need a bigger bag.”
“I’d need an overnight bag for all this.” Julia reached across the counter and rested her hand on Barker’s. “Thank you, but you need to trust that I’ll be okay. The world is a scary place, but I refuse to live in fear of it, and neither should you.”
“I only want you to be safe.”
“But where does that end?” Julia chuckled. “I start wearing stab vests and riot gear to pop down to the shop when we’re out of milk?”
“Now that’s an idea.” Barker assessed his haul. “Perhaps I went a little overboard.”
“Perhaps a little.” Julia cast her eyes over the items before plucking out the torch, whistle, and alarm. “I’ll take these, okay? The rest can stay in the house. And please, give Christie that pepper spray back. It’s not worth breaking the law for.”
“And what if we’re burgled in the middle of the night?”
“There’s a pepper grinder in the cupboard.” Julia stuffed the items into her handbag. “Improvise.”
Leaving Barker to clean up the mess he’d made in the kitchen, Julia carried her new phone through to the sitting room. It took a full hour to set it up. When she had everyone’s phone numbers transferred from Barker’s phone, she sent all her contacts a message to let them know she had a new number. Johnny, Roxy, and Leah texted back immediately with similar messages along the lines of ‘is it true you were mugged last night?’
“How do you text three people the same message?” Julia asked Barker. “I don’t know how many ways I can explain this without sounding repetitive.”
“Jessie showed me how to do group messages.” Barker pressed a couple of things on Julia’s screen, merging the messages with Roxy, Johnny, and Leah into one. “There. Now you can all talk together.”
Julia didn’t know how, but her friends seemed to know they were now all in one chat together. They bombarded her with messages, one after the other.
“Barker, I want my old phone back.” Julia held the device out as it beeped with each new message. “This is too complicated.”
“You’ll get the hang of it. If you ever feel like you’ve had enough of the messages, just click that button on the side. It will put it all on silent.”
Julia clicked the button, and the beeping stopped, but the messages kept coming through. She quickly typed a response:
Yes, it’s true, but don’t worry, I’m fine. It will take more than a bunch of kids to stop me. Will explain later when I see you all! Please don’t worry about me (and stop with all the messages. Still getting used to the new phone haha) x
Julia pressed something on the keyboard, and the letters turned into tiny pictures. She sent a laughing crying face, a ghost with its tongue out, and a thumbs up. Leah and Roxy both sent back the same confused face, but Johnny sent a yellow grinning face donning a cowboy hat.
After calling the bank to cancel her cards, which thankfully hadn’t been used after all, Julia showered and dressed. By the time she put her shoes on, it was already past five, and the sun had started to set. It felt strange to start her day so late, but she had promised to meet Oliver, and she wasn’t going to stand him up.
“I’m going to help Jessie clean up the café,” Julia called into the dining room while Barker caught up on the work he’d missed while shopping for weapons. “She’s been doing too much on her own.”
“Be safe.”
“I will.” Julia waved her new phone in the air. “I’m taking my car, anyway. No getting stranded this time. I shouldn’t be too long. After we’ve finished with the café, I’ll collect Vinnie and come back. Figure out what we’re having for dinner if you get a minute. I haven’t had time to go shopping, but the freezer is full.”
“Yep,” Barker said, barely looking up from his typewriter. “Will do.”
Leaving him to his work, Julia drove into the village and parked behind Jessie’s car next to her café. She was glad most of the customers had already left because she wasn’t sure how far word of her mugging had spread, but when Evelyn’s eyes landed on her, she knew most people in the village likely already knew.
“Julia!” Evelyn cried. “Oh, poor Julia! I’ve been trying to call you!”
“I have a new phone number.” Julia patted her bag. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, not over the phone! I was trying to call you psychically, and it seems to have worked because here you are!”
“I suppose it did.” Julia chuckled as Jessie circled her finger around her head behind Evelyn’s back. “I’m going to assume you’ve heard.”
“Heard?” Evelyn exclaimed, fanning herself dramatically. “I foresaw it! Moments before it happened, I saw something sinister in the tea leaves. I didn’t know who the warning pertained to, but I knew it was someone I cared deeply about. Unfortunately, it was you, Julia! I do wish I could have forewarned you in some way.”
“I wish I could have forewarned myself.” Julia unbuttoned her coat and rolled the sleeves of her jumper up. “If you don’t mind, Evelyn, I’m going to help Jessie close up now. Make sure to tell people you saw me, and I was completely fine.”
“I will radiate that message around the village,” Evelyn said as she floated to the door. “Take care of yourself, Julia. We’re ten days away from a full moon. I predict stranger things will happen in this village before then. Goodbye!”
Evelyn hurried out of the café, leaving Julia to lock the door behind her.
“I wish she’d predict something before bad things happened for once,” Jessie muttered as she began clearing the day’s unsold cakes out of the display case. “She’s always the first to swoop in and say she foresaw it, but she never knocks on your door to deliver the bad news, just to say, ‘I told you so!’”
“She’s harmless.”
“She’s batty!”
“I believe that she believes, and that’s enough for me.” Julia rested her hand on Jessie’s shoulder. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“No. Why would there be?”
“I don’t know,” Julia lied, her mind casting back to what Dot and Percy claimed to have seen on Mulberry Lane. “Anything at all. I’m always here to listen if you need to talk.”
The silence that followed dragged out until Julia realised Jessie wasn’t going to respond. They cleaned the café in silence, each doing a deeper clean than they usually would on a Friday night. When the caf
é was gleaming in every corner, Julia had ten minutes to spare before Oliver’s arrival—not that she was sure he’d turn up at all.
“You can go home,” Julia said. “I’ll finish up here.”
“But we’re finished.” Jessie frowned. “And you’ve boxed my car in.”
“Then I’ll move it.”
“You never want to stay behind and clean on your own.” Jessie stepped to the side to stop Julia grabbing her car keys from her bag. “You’re still sleuthing, aren’t you?”
“No,” Julia said quickly. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m meeting a kid called Oliver. He’s in a pretty bad place. He was Tony Bridges’ assistant, and I want to see if he knows anything that could help flesh out why someone would want to kill Tony. That’s all. He’s not dangerous. He’s about your age.”
“Those thugs last night were about my age,” Jessie replied flatly. “If you’re meeting this guy, I’m staying behind.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“If that’s what you want to do, then okay.” Julia wrapped her arm around Jessie’s shoulders. “Just remember that I’m here for you, just like you’re always here for me.”
Julia held her breath and waited for Jessie to reveal what was going on with her, but no revelations came.
“Don’t make it weird, cake lady.” Jessie shrugged off Julia’s arm and started making herself a coffee. “I’m staying to make sure he’s not a psycho killer.”
When Oliver turned up at the café at 6pm on the dot, Julia knew she’d had no reason to doubt him. He’d been honest about finding the EpiPen, and now he was here to help her.
“Do you want anything to eat or drink?” Julia asked from behind the counter as Oliver hovered in the middle of the café clutching a laptop bag. “I can make almost any drink you can imagine, and there’s a fridge full of cakes in the kitchen.”
“No, thank you.”
“You can say yes.” Julia tried her best to look as disarming as she could. “I’m not going to bite, Oliver.”
“I might,” Jessie added as she pulled out a chair for Oliver to sit in.
“She won’t,” Julia said when she saw the fear in Oliver’s eyes. “She’s joking.”
“I’m not.”
“She is.”
Jessie leaned into Oliver’s ear and whispered, “I’m not.”
Julia shook her head at Jessie and gave her a look that she hoped read ‘leave the kid alone!’, to which Jessie rolled her eyes before sitting at the table next to Oliver. Despite his protests, Julia made him a cinnamon latte and plated up a chocolate-topped cream choux bun.
After making her own cup of tea, Julia sat across the table from Oliver and watched as he tucked into the choux bun. Her baking often acted as the perfect icebreaker. Regardless of how Jessie was glaring at him, he appeared to relax.
“Are you ready to talk about Tony?” Julia prompted after sipping her tea. “Take your time and tell me anything you can about him, whether you think it’s useful or not.”
“I could spend hours telling you what an awful man Mr Bridges was, but you already know that.” Oliver reached into his bag and pulled out a beat-up old laptop covered in stickers. “Or, I could show you what I found last night. When you said you wanted to talk to me about Mr Bridges, I didn’t know what I could tell you that you hadn’t already witnessed. The Mr Bridges I experienced was the Mr Bridges you—”
“Are you going to call him Mr Bridges the whole time?” Jessie jumped in. “Because if so, that’s going to get really annoying. The man is dead. He can’t fire you. Call him Tony.”
“Fine.” Oliver shot Jessie a cold look. “Tony was the man he came across as. I worked for him for a whole year, and I never saw another side to him. I went to bed dreading waking up because I knew I’d have to spend another day walking on eggshells.”
“If it was that bad, why didn’t you just quit?” Jessie asked with a roll of her eyes.
“Because I didn’t have a choice,” Oliver fired back, growing in confidence with every word. “I didn’t grow up with a family who had a business. I didn’t grow up—”
“Neither did I,” Jessie cut him off. “I was orphaned before I could walk or talk. I didn’t have anything handed to me. I was homeless when Julia first met me, so don’t give me that nonsense. You always have a choice. You chose to stay working for him. And even if it was only for the money that’s still a choice.”
“Okay, so it was a choice.” Oliver exhaled as he typed on the laptop. “The point is, Tony was awful around the clock, and I was usually with him around the clock. I had to go everywhere with him every day, and I usually ended up sitting in the corner for hours on end until he needed me.”
“Is this going somewhere?” Jessie asked before yawning. “My bed is calling.”
“Jessie!” Julia snapped. “You don’t have to stay.”
“I’m not yet convinced he’s not going to kill you,” Jessie said after another yawn. “Continue, kid, just get to the point.”
“Fine.” Oliver typed something else before spinning his laptop around. “The point is, two months ago, Tony’s laptop broke, and he insisted on using mine. He only gave it me back last week. I had to save for months to buy that thing. He could have bought a new one, but that’s how little he cared about me. I told him how important that laptop was to me, but he ignored me. He only gave it me back because I told Camila and she bought him a new one.”
“The point?” Jessie pushed again.
“The point is, he left his emails logged in, and I don’t even think he realised it.” Oliver pushed the laptop to Julia. “I didn’t realise it until last night. When you mentioned you wanted information on Tony, I searched my laptop to see if he’d left any trace of his activities. He’d saved his email password to my laptop on the first login, and let’s just say the man had no idea how to clear a search history.”
“Have you gone through them?” Julia asked as she scrolled through the endless emails.
“I haven’t slept.” Oliver offered a sheepish smile. “The ones with the stars next to them are the ones I thought were important. I always knew Tony had a screw or two loose, but I never realised how paranoid he was.”
“Paranoid how?” Jessie asked, her interest captured.
“Well, for a start, he sent twenty-three emails to the Cotswold Baking Society confirming his peanut allergy.” Oliver leaned over the screen and pointed to some as Julia scrolled. “Look at the subjects. ‘URGENT!’, ‘IMPORTANT!’, ‘PLEASE RESPOND!’ I read them all, and they were all just him confirming and reconfirming that they knew about his allergy. They replied the same things over and over, but he never seemed satisfied. And it doesn’t end there. He thought he was being followed.”
“By whom?” Julia asked.
“Everyone.” Oliver pulled the laptop from Julia and opened a folder of images. “I downloaded all these from the emails. There are over three hundred images that he took of people he thought were following him. Only two people pop up in more than one image; the rest are random people in the lines at coffee shops and people behind him in the supermarket.”
“Who were the people following him?” Julia asked as she squinted at the thumbnails.
“Well, I think you already know one of them.” Oliver double clicked on an image, and it popped up to fill the screen. “Bev, his ex-wife. There were dozens of pictures of her outside their house, but they were all dated within a twelve-month period, and the last one was over a year ago. The other person was more recent.” Oliver clicked on another picture. “This guy actually seems to have been following Tony, unless it’s a coincidence that he popped up in all these pictures in the last six months. The most recent one was taken the day before the bake-off.” Oliver clicked on another picture to show the same man standing in a public bathroom. “It looks like Tony was hiding in the stall.”
“Who is he?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t know,” Oliver admitted. “I saw him a couple of times, but I thou
ght Tony was just making it up. He liked to pretend he was more famous than he was and having people obsessed enough to follow him gave him an ego boost.”
“Who was he sending these emails to?” Julia asked.
“That’s the weird part,” Oliver said. “Until last year, he was sending them to his lawyer, but I found an email from the lawyer telling him they were no longer working with him because Tony hadn’t paid his bills for months. Since then, he emailed himself with the same subject in them all.”
Oliver clicked back onto the emails and then typed one word in the search bar. PROOF. Eighty-nine emails popped up, all with image attachments. Julia opened a couple, and the same guy popped up in almost all of them.
“A stalker, maybe?” Jessie suggested. “Or a crazy fan?”
“Either way, I almost feel bad that I never believed he was really being followed, but this proves it.” Oliver leaned back in his chair. “Maybe if I’d listened—”
“He would still have been an unbearable idiot,” Jessie jumped in. “Don’t feel too bad.”
Oliver smiled at Jessie, and she smiled back. Oliver reminded Julia of Jessie when they’d first met; full of fear and confused by the world around him.
“This is all really good stuff,” Julia said, patting the laptop. “I’m not sure what it means, but something was going on. Is there anything else in here?”
“Aside from him emailing the radio station once a month to ask for a pay rise, nothing out of the ordinary.” Oliver pulled the laptop back towards him.
“I know it’s a long shot, but can you forward me all of his emails and the images?” Julia asked, her fingers drumming on the table as she mulled over the information. “If it’s not too much trouble?”
“It’s already compressed into a folder and attached to an email,” Oliver replied. “I just need your email address.”
After Julia handed over her address, and Jessie promised to help her figure out how to ‘un-compress’ the file on the other end, Oliver finished his coffee and packed up his laptop. When Julia glanced at the clock, she was surprised to see that they had been talking for an hour.