Strangers (ARC)

by C. L. Taylor

  Do you think anything else will happen?

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  NO! Now step away from Google and forget about that loser.

  You’re getting obsessed.

  But Alice can’t step away from Google. She has to find out

  the truth, or at least try.

  She searches her brain for the tiniest sliver of information

  that will aid her. She doesn’t know Simon’s surname or where

  he works but he did tell her he lives in a three-bedroom house in St George’s. But surprise, surprise, he didn’t mention the name of the street. What else? He was engaged to a woman called

  Flora, an actress.

  Alice tries imdb.com. That’s where all actors and actresses

  seem to be registered. If she can’t find Simon then maybe

  contacting Flora is her next best bet. A few results are returned but the women are either too old or too young. Maybe Flora

  isn’t successful enough to be on IMDb or, like a lot of people in the profession, she’s got a different stage name. Alice searches Facebook next, looking for Floras in Bristol and dozens of tiny Flora profile photos fill her screen.

  She discounts any that are too old or too young to match the

  woman she’s looking for, then clicks on the first possible match and hits the message button.

  Hello, my name is Alice Fletcher. Are you an actress and were you ever engaged to someone called Simon? If so I need to talk to you. Please message me back.

  ‘Urgh.’ She runs her hands over her face as she copies and

  pastes the message into the next profile. It’s going to take her hours to contact them all. It’s almost as though Simon deliberately withheld any facts that would help her track him down.

  But why? What was he trying to hide?

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  Chapter 30

  Gareth

  Gareth shifts his weight in the hard-backed plastic chair, putting his hands on the arms so he sits up taller. He looks across at the clock on the wall and taps the soles of his leather shoes on the floor: left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Mark Whiting looks up from his computer screen.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Gareth presses his feet into the floor. It’s 1.42 p.m.

  The meeting was scheduled for 1.30 p.m. and Liam Dunford is

  twelve minutes late. Maybe he’s ill, Gareth thinks. Really ill. So ill he couldn’t ring in that morning to explain why he wasn’t

  coming to work. Maybe, an evil little voice whispers in the back of his head, maybe he’s dead.

  ‘Well.’ His boss stops his one-fingered typing and sits back in his chair. ‘It’s not looking hopeful, is it?’

  For one terrifying moment Gareth thinks he’s talking about his job prospects but then Mark adds, ‘I think he’s a no-show, don’t you?’

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  ‘Yeah.’ Gareth moves to stand up then slumps back as his boss

  waggles his hand, indicating that he should stay where he is.

  ‘So are you going to tell me what this is about? This urgent meeting that you requested?’

  Gareth rubs his palms together. ‘Liam’s not said anything to

  you?’

  Mark sits forward, elbows on the desk and his chin on his hands and fixes Gareth with an enquiring look. He’s a good ten years younger, all designer suits, shiny shoes, gelled hair, tanned skin and eyebrows that are suspiciously tamed. ‘Liam’s not said anything. I sent him a text yesterday, reminding him about the meeting. He replied saying he’d be here but I haven’t heard anything since.’

  Interesting that Liam didn’t get in first with his version of

  events. Gareth had assumed he would.

  ‘You did ring him when he didn’t show up this morning,

  didn’t you?’ Mark adds.

  ‘Of course I did but there was no answer on his mobile or his

  landline. I assumed he’d been out drinking and slept through his alarm again . . .’ He pauses, letting that little nugget of information sink in. ‘I rang him again an hour later and there was still no answer.’

  ‘And you’re not going to tell me what all this is about?’

  ‘I um . . . no. I’d rather wait until we’re both in the same room, if that’s all right with you?’

  Mark nods his head wearily. ‘Look, whatever this is about

  I’m not going to pursue it unless Liam can be bothered to turn up. Give me a ring or send me an email when he’s back in work.

  And when he does come in, tell him he’s got a verbal warning

  for not ringing in.’

  Gareth coughs into his hand to hide his smile. ‘Yes, boss, of

  course.’

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  Chapter 31

  Ursula

  ‘I’m not going to steal anything,’ Ursula tells herself as she strides across the Meads landing, sweating under her thick woollen

  coat as she heads for Mirage Fashions. ‘I’m just going to look.’

  It was all she could do not to head straight there after she’d walked back to her van, feeling Paul Wilson’s eyes burning into her spine. She hadn’t though, she’d forced herself to finish her round, trying and failing to push the desperate expression on

  Nicki’s face out of her mind. She’d thought she was helping her by calling the police to report a suspected domestic abuse situation but she’d only made things worse.

  She keeps an eye out for the security guard as she walks

  through the entrance of Mirage Fashions but surprise, surprise, he’s nowhere near the doors. He’s hovering by the checkout,

  watching the shop assistants as they work. He’s definitely the laziest security guard in the whole mall. Unlike some of the

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  Fashions seems to be counting down the days to retirement.

  Ursula heads for the back of the shop. She doesn’t slump or

  move furtively. At six foot three she’s visible whatever she does and to try and shrink herself down would only draw unnecessary attention. Instead she walks confidently, shoulders back, as

  though she’s got a wad of cash in her pocket and a burning

  desire to spend it. Her eye is drawn by a rail of pretty, multicoloured skirts. They’d be mid-calf on most women and

  knee-length on her but she could carry one off with the right

  top and her favourite boots. She runs a hand up and down the

  material then plucks at the elasticated waistband. They only go up to a size twenty and she’s a twenty-four but there’s enough give in the cloth that it might actually fit. She keeps her eyes on the security guard on the other side of the room as she unclips the skirt from the hanger and swiftly folds it up. The flatter she can make it the less likely she’ll be noticed once she shoves it under her top. Her gaze flits to the CCTV cameras on the ceiling.

  She’s standing so close to the rail there’s no way they can pick up what she’s doing. Her heart beats faster as she pulls at the elastic at the bottom of her sweatshirt. Two, three minutes tops and she’ll be out of the shopping centre and well on her way

  to the van.

  ‘Careful. That rail’s really loose. If you flick through the clothes too fast it collapses.’

  Ursula jolts as a woman, dressed in the store uniform, appears to her left. She’s young, barely out of her teen
s. Her gaze flicks to Ursula’s waistline and the size twenty skirt in her hands.

  Where did you pop up from? Ursula thinks as she frantically tries to decide what to do. She really wants the skirt but making a break for it would be too risky. But she doesn’t want to leave without it. The dark cloud she’s spent the last two years running from will descend the second she makes it back to the van and

  she can’t let that happen, she won’t.

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  She looks at the shop assistant and smiles brightly. ‘Could

  you point me in the direction of the changing rooms? I’d like

  to try this on.’

  Ursula glances at her reflection in the changing room mirror,

  the skirt hooked over her arm. Her cheeks are flushed, there are dark circles under her eyes and her damp fringe is clinging to her forehead. She hastily looks away, peeling off her coat and hanging it on a hook on the wall. She plucks at the hem of her sweatshirt and moves it back and forth to try and get some air to her clammy skin. She wants to sit down to catch her breath

  but there’s no chair in the cubicle so she sinks onto the floor instead and gathers her knees up to her chest. The sound of

  voices, and clothes being arranged on rails, drifts from beneath the swing door. The young sales assistant is chatting to a colleague at the entrance to the changing rooms.

  ‘You know someone else has gone missing? Another man.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah. Last seen heading for the Harbourside at about three

  in the morning. I heard from Kaisha who heard from someone

  who works in Costa that he was one of the security guards that works here.’

  ‘Not Larry!’

  ‘No! He’s out there, you massive twat.’

  The sound of laughter rings through the cubicles.

  ‘God, that’s really scary. His poor family. That’s the second

  bloke to disappear on the Harbourside in how many weeks?’

  ‘Actually it’s three now. I had a look on the internet and

  there’s been two go missing, a month between them, and then

  this guy. And the police are still claiming that there’s no

  Harbourside Murderer.’

  ‘But if someone is pushing them into the river how come they

  haven’t found their bodies yet? Surely they’d wash up eventually.’

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  ‘Who says they went into the water? There’s no CCTV there,

  that’s why the police have got no leads. They could have been

  bundled into a van then chopped up and buried in Leigh Woods

  for all we know.’

  The young woman gasps. ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I’m just saying what other people are thinking, that’s all. Just promise me you’ll stay with your friends on a night out. Don’t get any stupid ideas about walking home alone.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Jeez. Thanks for that, Lynne. I’m not going to

  be able to sleep tonight now!’

  As the voices drift away Ursula slowly gets to her feet, the

  conversation she just overheard still ringing in her ears. She looks down at the skirt in her hands and makes a decision. With no one manning the rack at the end of the cubicles she’ll be

  able to walk straight out with it. She can easily get to the exit without being caught.

  ‘Seriously? You let her use the changing rooms!’ She jumps

  at the sound of a raised voice and hurried footsteps on the lino flooring. ‘Kaisha, she’s a bloody shoplifter. Her face is on the staffroom wall!’

  ‘You!’ The door to her cubicle is yanked open and a pink-

  cheeked woman with a short brown bob glares up at her. The

  grey-haired security guard appears beside her, swiftly followed by the younger shop assistant. Before Ursula can say a word,

  the skirt is snatched from her hands. ‘I’ll take that, thank you very much.’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss.’ The security guard steps forward and takes

  Ursula by the elbow. ‘But you’re going to have to leave. You’re banned.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done,’ Ursula protests as she’s frog-marched along the line of cubicles and onto the

  shop floor, ‘but you’ve got it all wrong. This is my favourite shop.’

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  The security guard laughs. ‘Course it is, you haven’t been

  caught before.’

  As he walks her through the entrance and onto the concourse,

  Ursula tries to turn back but his grip on her elbow is surprisingly strong.

  ‘Wait! I’ve forgotten my coat. It’s still in the cubicle. Please, just let me go back and get it.’

  ‘Nice try, love.’ Before she can say another word, she’s

  propelled out of the shop. ‘Now get on your way or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Shit,’ Ursula says as she opens and closes the cupboard doors in the galley kitchen. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  Tears trickle down her cheeks as she takes out the last tin of beans from her cupboard and drops two pieces of bread into

  the toaster. It was a shock, being bundled out of Mirage Fashions like that. Humiliating, too. She’s never been caught shoplifting before and, for once, she hadn’t actually stolen anything. The expression on the shop assistant’s face as she snatched the skirt from her hands is burnt onto Ursula’s brain – anger and revulsion, like she was the lowest type of scum.

  Nathan bought the coat she was forced to leave behind. He’d

  known she’d been eyeing it up in Evans for weeks but couldn’t

  justify the eighty-pound price tag. He’d popped in to buy it on his lunch break one day and hung it up on the coat rack at

  home for her to find. She hadn’t immediately spotted it when

  she came in. She was tired after eight hours spent wrangling

  five-year olds and all she wanted to do was get out of her clothes and lie in the bath with a book. But as she climbed the stairs Nathan shouted up to her, asking her to help him get the food

  shopping in from the car. A complaint formed on her lips but

  she swallowed it back. He was tired too. When he told her to

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  chucked over the banister at the bottom of the stairs, only for Nath to point at the rack.

  ‘No, not that one,’ he said. ‘Your other coat.’

  He’d helped her put it on, standing behind her on tiptoes as

  she slipped her arms into the soft wool mix. When she stooped

  to kiss him she didn’t think she’d ever felt happier. It was the greatest gift she’d ever been given. Not the coat. Him.

  Now, as she stirs the baked beans in the pan, she swipes the

  back of her hands over her cheeks and tries to blink away

  the tears. Rain is beating at the glass panel of the back door and the garden beyond is a blur of green and brown and grey.

  Let it go. She hears Nathan’s voice in her head. It’s just a coat, Albi. It’s not me.

  But I haven’t got you either, have I? And that coat was—

  She looks sharply towards the back door as a frantic chir-

  ruping cuts through the pitter patter of the rain and the tinny blare of the radio.

  ‘Shit.’ She rubs a circle in the condensation and swears again.

  There’s a cat crouched under the tree, holding something small and feathery in its
mouth. ‘Hey!’ She bangs on the glass, then turns the key in the lock and pulls the door open. ‘Hey! Shoo!

  Leave it alone.’

  The cat looks at her, a tiny fledgling clamped within its jaws.

  ‘Shoo!’ Ursula claps her hands together, then stoops down,

  picks up a small stone, and hurls it across the lawn. It doesn’t hit the cat but the motion startles it. The bird falls from its mouth and it springs away, jumping from the grass to the wall.

  ‘Shoo!’ Ursula shouts again as the cat vanishes from the top

  of the wall, disappearing into the next garden or the alleyway beyond. She runs back into the hallway and slips her feet into her battered trainers and grabs the nearest coat. She doesn’t

  give a thought to the fact that Edward will bollock her for

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  over her head. She just wants to get back to the bird before

  the cat does.

  But there’s no cat in the garden as she hurries through the

  rain, her trainers slapping against the wet patio then trampling on the grass. Out of the corner of her eye she sees a small white-washed window poking out of the pebbles at the base of the

  house but she doesn’t stop to examine it. She has to rescue the bird.

  ‘Please be alive,’ she prays as she scoops up the tiny, still, feathered body. ‘Please, please, please be alive.’

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  Chapter 32

  Gareth

  After his meeting with Mark Whiting, Gareth has one of the

  busiest afternoons in the Meads that he can remember. He breaks up a fight outside Costa between two blokes in their early fifties, then chases and apprehends two shoplifters. After this he moves to the control room and deals with a three-year-old girl going missing (eventually located in Claire’s Accessories, pulling all the jewellery off a display) and calls in the cleaners after a shopper drops a tin of hot chocolate that explodes over the

  floor. Over the last couple of hours he’s barely had time to pee, never mind anything else, but he did make sure he bought a

  bunch of flowers for Kath during his break.