by A J Waines
‘Oh, my God… I see what you mean.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Annie shuffling closer, but she kept quiet.
‘They look completely genuine until you see them altogether,’ said Daniel. ‘Then, we finally get to the originals. Look, this is you! In every one of them.’
Sophie pressed her hand over her mouth. ‘These are me! These were our pictures.’ She stared at them, shaking her head the entire time. ‘I believed them, of course I did. It fitted with everything else I found.’
Daniel took stock. These must have been the photos sent to her office, just as she said. They must have triggered some kind of mental breakdown where she started imagining other ‘evidence’ to support her assumption.
Sophie’s face clouded over. ‘Where did you find these?’
‘Rick made the mistake of leaving them around,’ he said.
‘Rick?!’ Sophie swallowed with a loud gulp.
‘I found them in his flat.’
Annie’s jaw fell open. She looked as though she’d been swept into an episode of EastEnders.
Sophie froze with her mouth half-open and she blinked hard. ‘He must have been the one who left them for me at Otterbornes,’ she whispered haltingly.
She sat back, staring into space. ‘Were the others fake, too? The ones with you and that redhead? At the Thorndike Tavern?’ She flicked through the pile looking for them.
He’d been expecting that question.
He cleared his throat. ‘Ah… no… they were real pictures, but they were taken completely out of context.’
Annie straightened up, folding her arms. Sophie turned up her nose as if she was being fed rotten meat.
‘Honestly, they were completely innocent,’ he insisted. ‘A few pats on the back after a performance I’d been to, because that’s what theatre people do.’
She shook her head, unconvinced.
‘But it must have been Rick who took them,’ he went on, desperate to plead his case. ‘He was there in the Tavern. He asked me to meet him that night.’ He flapped his hand around aimlessly. ‘He’s been trying to make it look like I’ve been with other women.’
‘Why?’ Sophie’s voice sliced through his protestations.
‘I don’t know. To reinforce what you thought was going on? To add fuel to the flames?’
‘But why would he?’
‘I don’t know! To destroy our marriage?’
She dropped her head into her hands.
‘Maybe he’s in love with you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he wants you for himself?’
She let out a loud guffaw. ‘You’re joking. He’s an idiot. I’ve only put up with him coming in to see me because he brought Ben.’
‘So, you and he––?’
‘Daniel!’ Her dismissal was reassuringly absolute. ‘What has he said?’ She was indignant now.
‘Nothing. Not a thing. He doesn’t know I came across these photos. I wanted to see you first. I was completely thrown. There’s something else…’
He explained about the intruder, about changing the locks.
‘He must have stolen a key,’ he concluded. ‘Or had one copied. If you think about it, he’s been turning up to our house a lot since last summer.’
Her gaze went back to the photographs. ‘Are you absolutely sure it was Rick? He’s useless with this kind of thing, isn’t he? Remember when I asked him to crop a screenshot of a paperback Otterbornes were publishing. He didn’t have a clue. He wouldn’t know the first thing about photoshopping images, like these.’
‘I know! That’s one of the weird things about this.’
‘And why use hard copies when he could have sent images online. It’s a bit old-fashioned, don’t you think?’
Daniel had considered that, too. ‘I reckon Rick didn’t know how to email them without giving away his own details as the sender.’
‘How to post them anonymously, you mean?’
‘Far too sophisticated for Rick, I’d say. And the ones delivered to the reception here were probably left by him too. He would know you wouldn’t have access to your mobile phone in here.’
She toyed with her lip. ‘He has been a bit strange when he’s brought Ben in here to see me.’
‘In what way?’
‘When he talked about you it was as though he was playacting. On the surface he was defending you – saying you were gloomy without me, stuck indoors the whole time – then he “accidentally” let it slip you’d actually been out quite a bit. Like he was doing the opposite and actually maligning you.’
Daniel thought about it. ‘Hmm… he was pretty keen to bring Ben in to see you. Perhaps that’s why. He wasn’t “helping out” at all, he was using it as a chance to turn you against me. To drive a wedge between us.’
Sophie was silent, but her eyes continued to dart around the room. ‘I don’t believe this… this is… I mean – it’s incredible.’
‘Yes. It explains a lot.’
She bit her lip, her eyes unfocused, no doubt still piecing things together in her mind.
‘Are you going to confront him?’ she asked.
He returned to the question he’d been chewing over for the past twenty-four hours.
‘No,’ he said, nipping his lips together. ‘Not yet. If I force a showdown, I won’t be able to watch what he’s up to. If he thinks I have no inkling––’
‘But this is all lies…’ she threw a glance at the pictures, strewn on the table. ‘Can’t we tell the police?’
‘There’s no crime. He hasn’t broken the law,’ he said with a sigh. ‘People create fake pictures all the time. To wind people up, to make themselves look important, successful. And we have no proof it’s him.’
‘It might not be him,’ she interjected. ‘Perhaps he was looking after the photos for someone else.’
‘Hmm…’ He shrugged.
‘So, you’re not going to do anything?’
‘It seems crazy to carry on as normal, but I think it’s best to hang fire. I don’t want to do anything rash. I need to find out what the hell he’s up to. To observe. Be patient.’
‘Better the devil you know?’
He gripped her hand. ‘Yes!’
At last, they were on the same page.
Chapter 39
It came to him in the middle of the night.
It was the day Daniel had the home alarm system installed, and as the engineer set up sensors and connected wires, it led him to reflect. Sophie always said he switched on his super-meticulous brain when he went to Kew and switched it off the moment he walked through the door at home. From now on, he was going to have to change that. He’d need to tune in to sharp-brain mode every hour of the day if he was going to work out what was going on.
With that in mind, just before he turned in, he’d made a list of the unnerving events that had taken place at his house after the stabbing. He’d then tried to add dates to each one.
He couldn’t remember exactly when he noticed the framed picture was missing on the landing or discovered the grit under the loft hatch. But none of those dates mattered, because they only pinpointed when he’d noticed those irregularities. It didn’t mean they’d happened then.
He’d also noted the couple of occasions when the side of the cot had been lowered and Ben had been pottering around in the dead of night. The second time was definitely after the evening meal in Soho. Edith had put Ben to bed and Daniel had checked he was asleep when he came home. Everything was as it should have been. The cot could only have been tampered with during the night.
The only other incident he could pin down to an exact date was when he found the front door wide open and the light on in the cellar. That was definitely April 12.
What had shaken him out of his sleep was that final date.
Rick hadn’t been in London on April 12. It was during the Easter holidays and he’d been moaning about being forced to lead a school trip to Paris.
Nevertheless, Daniel didn’t just take Rick’s word for
it. He opened his laptop and looked up the Facebook page for Rick’s school. On that precise date, a photo had been posted of a bunch of teenagers standing by the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie. Rick was there, all right, at the back. Several comments had been left on the page by pupils making fun of his deerstalker hat.
Daniel spent the rest of the night in a spin.
If Rick wasn’t the intruder sneaking around the place, who was?
Chapter 40
When the curtain fell for the final time, there was the usual rush of actors retreating to their dressing rooms as the stage crew checked their clipboards and began rearranging props. Jody was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to shed her costume and get home. She gave her face three half-hearted wipes with a wad of moist cotton wool and flung her wig and outfit on the rack.
‘Sorry, Gina, I haven’t the energy to hang them up.’
‘Don’t worry, girl,’ said her dresser. ‘Go on, clear off home, I’ll sort this lot out.’
‘Gina, you’re the world’s best wardrobe manager and I’m going to take you out for dinner one of these days,’ said Jody, blowing her a kiss as she ducked out of the door. Two steps down the corridor she heard Gina calling after her.
‘I want that in writing!’
Jody fled from the smell of greasepaint and stale sweat out onto the street. It got too hot and claustrophobic in the theatre; the lights, the heavy costumes, the tight backstage squeeze. She filled her lungs with sweet London night air and managed to flag down a black cab straight away.
Twenty minutes later, she paid the driver and opened the gate to her house. As she walked up the path and before she reached the front steps, she had the distinct impression she wasn’t alone. It was hard to explain; something intuitive.
She looked about her, peering into the dark bushes to the left of the path, but saw nothing. She put her jumpiness down to the recent break-in. Surely it was a one-off incident. Burglars don’t return to the scene of the crime, do they? Except it hadn’t been a straightforward burglary; neither she nor Nikki had discovered anything missing.
She was standing on the top step, unzipping her bag, when she heard a branch snap behind her. She turned again, telling herself not to be stupid. It was probably just the neighbour’s cat.
She was about to pull out her keys when, out of nowhere, a gloved hand clamped over her mouth and she was shoved into the front door. The figure pushed a fist into her spine, as the other hand kept her mouth covered. She was finding it hard to breathe; the thick woollen glove pressing over her nose, blocking her airways.
She struggled, but her elbow was being yanked right up towards her shoulder and the pain was excruciating. She yelped, but the sound was muffled by the glove.
Why was her front door so far from the road? Even so, surely with the light on over the porch, someone would see her, realise she was in trouble, come to her aid. She was about to use her stiletto heel to stamp on one of the feet behind her, but what if he – she was certain it was a man – had a knife? What if he tugged her head back and smashed it through the glass panel in the door?
If only Nikki had still been here. Jody could have manoeuvred her weight so she fell against the doorbell to raise the alarm. But Nikki had already gone to the airport.
Forcing his knuckles into her spine, the man said two words: ‘Open up’.
‘Okay, okay,’ she said, through the glove, nodding her head.
With one arm loose and her whole body shaking, she fumbled in her bag for her house keys. Her fingers found the keyring, but she made a snap decision. No way was she letting this creature inside her house. There was just one thing she could try.
She let the keys fall to the ground. When her abductor looked down, she put her foot over the keys. She knew she was taking a risk as she reached for the small canister right at the bottom of her bag. She gripped her fingers around it and took in a sharp breath before pointing it over her shoulder and firmly pressing down the top. Instantly, a piercing squeal took the attacker by surprise and Jody managed to shake herself loose. The ear-splitting noise seemed to temporarily paralyse him, so she grabbed the keys, kicked off her shoes and scrambled down the steps towards the gate.
She ran straight out into the narrow road, clutching her bag, waving and screaming as cars approached from both sides. Make as much commotion as possible! The street was suddenly alive with screeching tyres and tooting horns; the alarm in her hand still giving out a high-pitched wail. One car swerved, but didn’t stop, and she could hear herself whimpering, ‘help me, help me’ as a second car began to slow down and the driver wound down his window.
‘I’m being mugged!’ she cried and pressed herself up against the car.
The driver got out. He was short and overweight, with thick eyebrows and a T-shirt with the words “Pete’s Diner” emblazoned on it.
‘Okay, love – you all right?’
‘He grabbed me…’
Jody looked up towards her front door. The man had gone. There was no sign of him. There was no indication that anything had happened apart from the continuing screech of the rape alarm. She didn’t know how to switch it off.
She strained to see both ways along the street and could see no one, except a woman strolling towards them with a small dog.
Chapter 41
The Past – 12 September 2017
Rick lifted the shoebox out of the bottom drawer of his desk and took off the lid. Then he stuffed the photograph he’d been carrying around in his wallet all week at the bottom. He’d made no headway whatsoever in working out why it was significant. But there was definitely something disturbing about it. Nevertheless, seeing it every time he reached for his credit card was just annoying him now.
Apart from the rather nifty discovery of his grandfather’s vintage pocket watch wrapped in tissue paper, there had been nothing in the box but a batch of old family snaps. A trip down memory lane.
He’d already flicked through the timeworn pictures; some of his parents after their wedding; several at the seaside and more that looked like they were taken in Egypt or Morocco. They didn’t mean much to him.
This time, as he lingered over the rest, he felt himself unexpectedly dewy-eyed. A picture of Louise – around ten years old – doing a handstand with her skirt falling down over her head, and several of Miles in the garden when he was about seven. Rick stood that snap against his mug and sighed. He missed him. He’d been about twenty when Miles was born, an age when the idea of a baby brother coming along was about as exciting as finding out there was a sequel to Bambi.
But once he’d got past the nappy stage, Miles had turned out to be a cute little chap. He was wide-eyed and enthralled by Rick’s magic tricks and sleight of hand. Mile’s favourites were when Rick made things disappear. Like the time he made all the coins in his mother’s biscuit tin vanish. Or the time Rick cast a magic spell at bedtime. By morning all the gnomes in the neighbours’ front garden had gone. Miles thought that one was great.
Rick pulled out another photo and leant it against the computer screen. The camera had captured Mile’s quirky half-grin and Rick realised that over time he’d let it slip from his memory.
All he could remember were the hushed voices when Miles was lying in hospital, his bleached-out face barely distinguishable from the cotton sheets; the rain at the funeral and the half-sized coffin. And Whitney singing ‘I will always love you’, as the little box parted the curtains. He didn’t even make it to the age of ten. That was by far the cruellest trick life could ever play on them.
Rick was about to put the lid back on the box, when he spotted that blasted picture again. Dog-eared and slightly out of focus, it had worked its way to the top of the stack. Last week, it had stood out from all the rest because it was in a frame. A silver one, as if it was special. He’d taken it out to look at it more closely, but this time he went one step further and held up a magnifying glass.
Aha – what do we have here?
He took it to the light
of the window to be sure, but he was right; it was definitely Daniel and a group of others at a party.
He’d turned it over to see the date again: 30 March, 2002. He and Daniel would have been nineteen.
It was definitely Oxford; he recognised several other faces as fellow students. Why had Daniel made the trip over from Reading University that day?
Suddenly he twigged: it must have been the annual boat race. Scenes of dark blue bodies hitting the water under Chiswick Bridge flooded his mind. Daniel must have come over for the race and Oxford had won that year. As good an excuse as any for a party.
Still, the party itself rang no bells for him whatsoever.
He sat back and tried to remember what it was like being nineteen. Second year of university. Oxford came with ready-made friends and its own neat structure. It was a gift. Late nights, lie-ins, a few lectures thrown in if he could be bothered. You didn’t have to think about anything. Not like real life, where you had to make choices and face the consequences.
Something about the picture felt strange, but he couldn’t for the life of him work out what it was. He leant back in the lopsided typists’ chair he’d pinched from the school skip and tapped the glossy paper with his nail. He tried to put names to the faces: Stanley Meredith – a brainy twat who annoyed the hell out of him. And that girl who couldn’t keep her legs together… what was her name? Nancy something. Bet Daniel had his hands all over her. Other faces were too blurred to make out, even with the magnifying glass.
He tutted and slapped the picture back in the box.
Then it hit him.
What the f––
He leant forward, doubling over as the realisation grabbed at his belly like an invisible animal trying to rip open his flesh. Why had it taken him so long to work it out? It was obvious.
This was going to blow everything sky-high.