Verbatim

by Andrew Hill

  “Hello, who is this?”

  The breather made no response.

  “This is the Lord Chancellor’s Department, how can I help?”

  There was still no response but the heavy breathing carried on. She put the phone down and returned to her work.

  A further hour passed and once more the phone rang, Carol answered it. Once more there was silence at the other end apart from the traffic noise. Then the heavy breathing began again.

  “Who is this?” said Carol.

  The breathing continued.

  “Are you some sort of pervert or what?”

  The breathing continued. Carol slammed the phone down. Several of her colleagues witnessed this. One of them enquired, “What was that all about?” Carol explained about the previous phone calls she’d received throughout the morning. Her colleague replied:

  “It’s probably someone who phoned a random number and because a woman kept answering it then he’d do it again.” She went on, “I shouldn’t think he knows you, he’ll stop when the novelty wears off.”

  The phone rang again, this time it was answered by a colleague. Although belonging to a woman it was clearly not Carol’s voice. At the other end there was traffic noise but otherwise silence. She put the phone down and confirmed what Carol suspected.

  “So why,” said Carol, “didn’t he breathe heavily at you?”

  “If I’d have answered the phone for the first time he probably would have.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Carol again resumed her work and tried to put it out of mind. The rest of the day passed without incident. However, another colleague who overheard this conversation said while Carol was elsewhere, he’d answered the phone much earlier and there was no one and no heavy breathing. They speculated that this was because it was a man’s voice and decided to say nothing to Carol.

  Carol was still a little upset and told Rob what had happened once he’d come out of court. It had been a slightly unsettling experience but she soon put it to one side.

  * * *

  Six weeks or so passed, the book launch was getting ever closer and Carol was getting ever more excited. As an unknown author there wasn’t going to be a big splash of publicity by Fielding Novels but they knew just how to market it. A well-known bookshop had been hired for the event.

  With just a few days to go, Carol walked past the Charing Cross Road store to see photographs of herself and a mock up of the book, announcing the arrival of a new novelist who had received good reviews from literary critics.

  Dead Letter Perfect was announced by the poster; ‘a first novel from a bright new author, Verity Green’. So what happened to Verity Faithful? Alan Fielding was never keen on it and had persuaded Carol to use her real or at least her maiden surname to which Carol readily agreed; she did not want to be seen to be awkward and ‘Verity Green’ had a certain ring to it which pleased her. Carol frequently made unnecessary trips along Charing Cross Road to see her name and photograph and pinched herself to confirm it was all really happening.

  Friday, the day before the launch came and Carol was finishing her work when the phone rang, there were traffic noises and after a moment or two the heavy breathing began. Carol slammed the phone down and was very upset with tears almost running down her face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s that damned heavy breather again,” only she didn’t say ‘damned’. “It’s been ages, I thought he’d stopped.”

  “You should report it.”

  Carol thought for a moment and then put down the papers she was about to file and headed straight to see her manager. Here was a woman in her early forties a career civil servant. She was quite tall at five feet nine with dark red hair accompanied by a gravelly voice and thought by most under her charge to be a lesbian though she had never come out but you know how it is when someone reaches that age, isn’t married and never talks about a particular boyfriend. Doreen, that was her name, said that she could have her calls recorded which Carol, at first, wasn’t happy about.

  “Do you mean every call I make or receive will be recorded?”

  “No.” Doreen talked through the procedure explaining that the calls she initiates would not be recorded only the one she receives, “They won’t be monitored, no one will be listening in and the recordings are wiped after a few days. But if you receive a call again and report the time to me then that call and only that call will be listened to and they may be able to trace where it came from.”

  That satisfied Carol.

  Tomorrow was to be an exciting day with the launch of Dead Letter Perfect, though you would never have thought so. It was a quiet journey home for Carol and Rob with a certain follower at close quarters. Carol spent most of the journey in Rob’s arms and said little. A suggestion came from her husband perhaps they should go for a meal and maybe the cinema in an attempt to put the incident with the heavy breather to the back of her mind. But this proposition clearly didn’t find approval from Carol who shook her head gently at Rob’s counsel.

  On reaching street level the two walked slowly home. Too slow for their uninvited follower to stay behind so he crossed the road and walked ahead of them. Soon Rob and Carol emerge from the lift and appeared on the landing outside their flat. Rob glanced up at the now barred window through which Grant had affected his entry and a thought occurred to him. Rob had always believed the burglar had deliberately targeted ‘his’ flat, to be more precise his wife’s, because surely no one would have taken such a chance otherwise; there must be easier targets. Could the burglar and a heavy breather be the same person? He considered it to be a little fanciful but the possibility wouldn’t go away; he could not really see why anyone would do such a thing to Carol. He, of course, said nothing of these deliberations to his wife.

  The couple spent a quiet evening together with a simple meal prepared by Rob. That night he lay in bed with his mind occupied by the heavy breather and the burglar. He turned and looked over to his young wife who was clearly not in the right frame of mind to satisfy Rob’s desires.

  The day was finally upon them. Carol was up early and seemed much less morose than the previous night. The book signing was later that morning at eleven o’clock leaving Carol unable to relax. There was plenty to occupy her until the time to leave came but she couldn’t settle herself and walked around from one room to another and back again engaged in no more useful activity than occasionally gazing out at the front window to the street below to no gainful purpose. There was much less traffic on the road due to being a Saturday with fewer people making the daily drudge to work which Carol soon hoped would no longer be her daily grind.

  A youngish man was sitting on a public bench the other side of the road facing the apartment. On such a chilly morning why would anyone be sitting there at 8am? But no such question entered the head of the restless and exited novelist with so much else passing through her mind. An hour and half passed and a slightly less restless Carol looked at herself in the bedroom mirror, opened her lipstick and applied a small amount, not something she normally did prompting Rob to comment: “You’re too good looking to need lipstick.”

  She smiled back at him.

  “That’s the first time you’ve smiled since we left work yesterday.”

  Rob and Carol were now as ready as they’d ever be to commence the journey into the unknown world of the novelist; a world which would soon become known to them both. Down in the lift they go, through the lobby and onto the street where Rob noticed a youngish man on the public bench opposite, like Carol, he didn’t think anything of it while his wife had too much on her mind to notice him a second time. The two made their way to the station oblivious to the man who was now following them.

  The tube train arrived carrying fewer people than it would have been on a weekday. Rob and Carol sat on one of those seats where you tra
vel sideways, entering the carriage behind them was the man from the bench who occupied a similar oriented seat at the far end of the carriage. Rob found nothing sinister when half noticing it was the same man he’d seen on the bench.

  The follower knows where Rob and Carol are going and to throw them off the scent, assuming they were following one, he remained firmly in his seat when the couple departed. At the next station the man from the bench made his way back to the bookshop on foot.

  Rob and Carol were soon there and discover Alan Fielding waiting. He escorted them to the first floor where there was a table surrounded by posters for her novel and other tables with copies of the novel ready for the punters who were by then queuing. Carol counted a dozen or so and more were joining steadily. The clock reached eleven, Alan Fielding gave a short introductory speech about the novel and, of course, Carol herself. Photographers, especially from the literary periodicals and the press flashed away as Carol took her seat and began to sign.

  Among the early customers was a youngish tall man quite good looking. It was only subtle but there seemed to be a slight hint of recognition from Carol but nothing suspicious crossed her mind. She asked his name.

  “Ralph,” came the reply.

  Carol wrote a small dedication to ‘Ralph’ and signed ‘Verity Green’.

  By one o’clock the signing was complete with all of two hundred and fifty copies sold.

  “There was someone in the queue,” said Rob on the way home, “and I think I’ve seen him before.”

  “Which one?” enquired Carol.

  “I think he called himself Ralph.”

  “Sounds as though you don’t think it’s his real name.”

  “I don’t mean that but I’ve definitely seen him before.”

  “There were several Ralphs,” said Carol, “there was one who gave me a funny look, I thought I’d seen him before as well.”

  “I’ve got it now,” said Rob. “He was on the tube we were on but he stayed on when we left, funny he was at the signing.”

  “I don’t see what’s funny about it, I wonder if he recognised me from the photographs before seeing me at the bookshop.”

  Rob continued, “Come to think of it I’ve often seen him on the tube.”

  “Maybe he lives near us.”

  And with that their conversation about the mysterious Ralph concluded.

  * * *

  Three months later Carol boarded the tube train to make her way to the magistrates’ court where, perhaps surprisingly, she still worked. One of those free newspapers was lying on a seat which Carol now occupied. Today she was alone, Rob was taking the day off work because of a cold. Carol glanced through the pages of the paper without paying much attention to what she saw when her eyes fell upon a photograph of a familiar looking man. The accompanying article proceeded to tell that his name was Grant Webster who had been convicted at Southwark Crown Court of trafficking heroin and sentenced to nine years in prison. He had previously served a sentence for burglary. Prisons are universities of crime and Grant had been a very good student with the equivalent of an upper second at least.

  Carol looked once more at the photograph:

  “Where have I seen that face before?”

  While walking from the tube station to her place of work it suddenly came to her:

  “Of course, I know where. He bought a copy of my book and I signed it and I’m sure I’ve seen him on the tube.”

  That evening Carol showed the article to Rob and he agreed he was very much like the man they’d both seen.

  ‘Well,” he said, “we shan’t be seeing him on the tube for a while.”

  A few weeks passed and Carol was no longer nervous about answering the phone as there had been no heavy breathing in that time. We know why of course. On the journey to and from work Rob and Carol were no longer being followed at close quarters and no young man was ever seen on the bench opposite. Well, he wouldn’t would he? Rob had even ceased thinking about the possible connection between the burglary and the heavy breather even when his eyes caught the barred window above the door.

  * * *

  The novel had been selling well but hardly a bestseller, this wasn’t much concern to Carol who had more money now than ever before in her life. After several more months Carol bought a three bedroom house in Ealing and had given up the civil service. Rob carried on working at the magistrates’ court and was able to transfer to one much closer to where the couple now lived. Work started on a second novel which was to be a sequel to the first. I have said very little about Dead Letter Perfect. Let’s put that to rights, Dead Letter Perfect is an expression sometimes used by actors to mean ‘word perfect’ but the novel has nothing to do with actors, it is a murder mystery involving Genevieve Wellesley, a novelist of around Carol’s age who solves a murder and becomes a minor celebrity for a short while at least. Carol hoped to write a whole series of novels about her.

  All was going well, though perhaps not quite all. Carol and Rob were still childless, this wasn’t because they aren’t trying. One day perhaps.

  The novel was successful, the money poured in at first but soon fell away. What Dead Letter Perfect had done was provide Carol her home mortgage free at an age others would die for and with a decent sum left over coupled with Rob’s regular income they were, for the foreseeable future, set up. What a bonus it would be if some very nice film producer came along with an enormous offer for the film rights.

  Part Two

  1

  A beautiful summer morning in an Oxford house, Carol was up early as was Josh despite being a teenager. Yes, Rob and Carol had finally made it some fourteen years earlier. Six more novels in the series which began with Dead Letter Perfect have appeared on the bookshop shelves up and down the nation and although falling short of bestsellers they have provided Carol with a very comfortable income. To Carol, Oxford seemed appropriate and her large four bedroom house was in an upper-class suburb of this great historical city and was also convenient for London. Daphne, her regular cleaner, comes in on Mondays but this being Wednesday meant no Daphne. A gardener cultivated the grounds both front and rear.

  The school summer holiday meant that Josh was now home from his boarding school. Carol is so proud of him; he’s bright and a gifted musician who plays the French horn to grade six and has ambitions to become a professional in a symphony orchestra. But Carol knows just how good you need to be and perhaps with some luck along the way. Josh is now reaching an age when certain distractions lever him from his music but he still practices a lot and Carol enjoys listening in an adjacent room to him play, except for those boring scales and arpeggios but the lyrical music of the great classical composers are a joy.

  Carol sat at her dressing table contemplating whether to wear lipstick and decided she didn’t really need to. After a moment the sound of the opening of the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony could be heard from the lips of Josh. Carol sat there and listened. You can teach someone how to play an instrument but you can’t make them into a musician. That’s what Carol thought and Josh was a musician. Where he acquired his talent who can tell? Carol was no musician nor was Rob or anyone else in either family. But his talent like his bright red hair came from somewhere. Now don’t get concerned there is no subplot here, Rob is Josh’s father, end of.

  She misses Rob.

  So what became of him? It was seven years earlier, Carol was waiting for Rob to come home from the magistrates’ court in Oxford where he then worked. Rob seemed to have no greater ambition than to remain a court clerk. On this particular day he was much later than usual when Carol heard a knock on the front door and was confronted by Janice Long, a police officer in her thirties.

  “There’s something wrong, something’s happened?” a great fear almost overcame Carol.

  After first confirming that this was Rob’s address and that Carol was his wife, what Jan
ice Long said next was to change Carol’s life.

  “What’s happened, where’s Rob?” The nervous quiver in Carol’s voice betrayed that she feared the worst. And the worst it was. Rob had been killed in a hit and run accident on his way back from work. After Janice had returned to her other duties Carol was left alone with the hardest of all tasks to perform. Josh was in the garden with the young friend kicking a football about. Carol approached the kitchen window and looked out at the boys. Her eyes became watery and tears began to run down her face; something she was frequently reduced to in those bleak weeks after the accident.

  The car had been found, not surprisingly the driver had fled the scene while the owner was in the clear; her car had definitely been stolen and reliable evidence proved she could not have been the driver. The official line was that the car was driven by a so called ‘joy rider’ but no trace of him or her was ever found. There has been no real closure for Carol who has never truly recovered from it all and perhaps never will but you wouldn’t think so unless you knew her very well, which few people do. Carol soon discovered she had few friends but plenty of acquaintances. Close friends she formally had in the civil service were long gone from her life; she wasn’t good at keeping in touch.

  Let’s return to the beautiful summer morning which was not to be a usual one for Carol. Never before had she met a TV executive, but today, Carol was to meet Charlie Spencer a big noise in a TV production company calling itself ‘Diamond Ace’. Charlie had shown interest in Genevieve Wellesley, remember her, the main protagonist in the ‘Genevieve Mysteries’ as the sequence of novels had become known. This could be a very lucrative deal with seven stories already out there in the world and an eighth on the way. Carol hadn’t ever written a screenplay and it seemed a very different process with its own set of challenges and that’s a talent that Carol doesn’t have. The main aim just now is to make certain that at least the pilot episode is made, and she certainly wasn’t about to upset matters by advocating her own writing potential. Go along with the professional opinion was Carol’s hallmark and it had served her well right from her first encounter with Alan Fielding which seemed to Carol such a very long time ago.