In the Still of the Night

by Charlotte Lamb

  But when she opened her eyes again it was still there. There was no envelope, just the card: wildly romantic, a huge red satin heart, trailing white lace ribbons which fluttered against her fingers as she shakily, reluctantly, reached for it.

  There was a message above the heart in red, glittering foil. FOREVER MINE.

  She shrank back from it, and that was when she saw the little spots of blood on her white pillow. She looked at the rose – when it ran into her shoulder, had she bled? Was that her blood? Or … his?

  The blood and the card seemed to mock her – love and horror linked in her mind, inextricable, unavoidable, as in her dream – Johnny and Roger Keats, pleasure and pain … red roses, an agony like dying.

  Annie’s heart began to beat so hard it hurt. She couldn’t breathe. She opened it, the stiff card rustling.

  The printing was the same, but this time, for the first time, the words were different.

  ‘BE SEEING YOU SOON, ANNIE. NOT LONG NOW. I TOLD YOU I’D BE BACK TO GET YOU, DIDN’T I?’

  Panic surged through her. How had it got there? He must have got in while she was asleep. Oh, God, he must still be here. Where? Where is he?

  She threw a terrified look around the room, half fell out of bed, stood there, tense and shaking, listening to the echoing silence in the house, then ran barefoot to the door and opened it, listened again. Not a sound.

  Then it hit her. Her mother wasn’t here, Jerri wasn’t here. There was nobody but her in the house.

  Her and him … wherever he was.

  She closed the door and bolted it, then bit her lip. What if he was hiding in here? What if she had just locked herself in here with him? There were plenty of places to hide. Under the bed, in the wall-to-wall closet, in the bathroom … he could be anywhere. Her terrified eyes flicked round the room. Nothing moved. Not a sound.

  She ran to her bedside table and unlocked one of the drawers in it, slid out the one thing it held. A handgun she had kept there ever since she had some police training on firearms – one of Sean’s ex-colleagues, a retired police superintendent, had given her the gun when she had some rather nasty threats against her from a fan who was caught later trying to get into her house.

  He turned out to be a schizophrenic who had stopped taking his medication and was in a manic phase. He had been returned to a mental hospital, but Annie had kept the gun. She had got a licence for it, but she had never for an instant imagined she might ever use it.

  She almost dropped it, her fingers were shaking so much. It made her feel a lot safer and yet at the same time it scared her, it made the situation seem too real.

  Holding it too tightly, she went down on one knee to look under the bed, pushing aside the frilled valance. No, nobody there.

  She tiptoed over to the bathroom door, it was ajar and she could see the whole room reflected in the mirror on one wall. Empty. He wasn’t in there.

  Annie turned then and stared at the wardrobe. That was the most likely place, wasn’t it?

  She crept over there, hesitated, stiffened the hand that held the gun, pointing it, then slid back the first door, nerves stretched in case he leapt out at her. In the crazy way the mind worked, she thought of a jack-in-the-box; she had always hated them when she was small.

  She hated anything that made her nerves jump. She could feel the blood beating in her ears, deafening her. Her fingers tightening round the trigger, she breathed fast, shallowly, as she opened each compartment.

  Nothing happened; the clothes just hung there, moving faintly on their hangers. Taking an audible breath, she put out the hand that didn’t hold the gun and pushed clothes aside, fingers trembling. Nothing.

  Annie looked round the room – there was nowhere else in here for him to hide. Was he somewhere in the house? Downstairs?

  She sank down on the edge of her bed, her knees giving, put down the gun on her bedside table, jerking at the little click the metal made on the wood. Her hands were shaking and damp with sweat. Thank God she hadn’t had to use the gun – she had had a week’s training, she was quite a good shot. But to fire at a human being … no, she could not imagine doing that.

  She reached for the phone. What if he had cut the wires? But the phone purred obediently, so she hurriedly punched in the number of the emergency services.

  ‘Emergency – which service do you require?’ The female voice was indifferent.

  ‘Police.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Annie Lang. Please …’

  ‘Is that Miss or …’

  ‘Miss,’ she said, frantic to get help. ‘Look …’

  ‘And your telephone number and address, Miss Lang?’

  Annie gave them impatiently. ‘Hurry up, get me the police, I think there’s a man in the house … a burglar … any minute now he might …’

  ‘I’m connecting you now, Miss Lang. Hold the line.’

  Another voice, male and matter of fact, spoke a few seconds later. She told him about the red rose, the card.

  His voice changed then, took on a note of amusement. ‘I see. So, miss, you found a red rose on your pillow this morning? And a Valentine’s card on your bedside table?’

  ‘Yes, he must have put them there while I was asleep. How could he have got in? My house is fitted with the most sophisticated alarms, I set them last night myself. The house should be as tight as a drum, nobody-should have got in!’

  ‘It is Valentine’s Day today, Miss Lang,’ the man at the other end of the line said, a smile in his voice. ‘Can’t you think of anyone who might have let himself in and …’

  ‘No! There are four sets of keys – I have one, my cleaner has another, my mother has a set, but she’s in hospital, and her keys are still here, in her handbag, in the house.’

  ‘And the fourth set?’

  ‘I have that, too, now. My mother had a companion/nurse, but she has left now, and I got the keys back. Look, will you please send a police car round here at once? For all I know he could still be here. I haven’t dared look round the house yet. I’m in my bedroom, I’ve locked the door.’

  ‘You said you had an alarm – is it still working?’

  She hadn’t thought of that. Panic had stampeded her too much. She turned to look hurriedly at the computerised panel beside her bed. It showed a glimmering green with the words STATUS ALARM standing out on the screen. That meant it was still set, the alarms all switched on so that if a mouse ran through one of the control beams it would set off a noise like Armegeddon in the house and down at the police station, with which the alarm was linked. Once or twice in the past it had gone off at night, through computer malfunction, and the police had been here within minutes. She had had to apologise profusely for the error and make them all coffee before they went back to work.

  ‘Is it working, Miss Lang?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, biting her lip, almost ready to believe she had imagined all this. ‘But …’

  The policeman was fatherly, indulgent, patronising; his tone made her teeth meet. ‘Well, then, no stranger can have let himself in there, can he? Or it would have gone off and woken you up. As I said, he must have a key – and knows the control number of your alarm so that he could turn it off when he came in, and on again before he left!’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Now, I suggest you have a little think, Miss Lang, and see if you can’t remember anyone who has a key, knows the combination of your alarm – and might want to bring you red roses and a Valentine.’

  By then she was so confused and bewildered she was half ready to believe him.

  He waited a moment, then said with a smile in his voice, ‘I love the show, by the way, Miss Lang. We all do, you have a lot of fans in the station. If ever you need any advice or suggestions for unusual cases give us a ring, we’d be happy to give you some ideas.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, remembering to sound grateful but wondering how they would explain it if, after having asked for their help and been turned down
, she was found with her throat cut? ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Any further problems, give us a ring, of course, and I’ll send a car round. But I think you’ll realise you know someone who might have played a practical joke on you. But if I were you, I’d get that key back from him, unless, of course, you want him to come and go as he pleases!’

  He laughed. She hung up, seething. As if she wouldn’t remember giving her key to someone! Tracy, her cleaner, couldn’t have brought the rose and the card – even as a joke. A single mother with two kids under five, their father long gone and untraceable, Tracy was disillusioned, down to earth and bleakly honest. She had been working for Annie for two years. When Trudie Lang began to forget things and started having her little accidents, Annie had asked Tracy to take care of her, but Tracy couldn’t work full-time because of her children. She was quite happy to look after Trudie while she was there, but she could only work while her children were at nursery school in the afternoons.

  Annie liked and trusted Tracy. They didn’t meet very often because Tracy usually arrived long after Annie had left for the studio, and left before she got home, but when Annie was between series she liked to take a real rest, get up late, laze around in a dressing-gown, watching TV and reading novels as well as scripts her agent sent along.

  Those times, Tracy would make coffee for her and sometimes sit and drink a cup too, while they talked; they had got to know each other pretty well. No, Tracy couldn’t be involved in this, and there was absolutely nobody who had another key, despite what that desk sergeant had assumed.

  Well, she had better search the house, anyway. She picked up her gun again, unlocked the door, and began a slow, thorough search from room to room.

  But the house was totally empty, not a sign of anyone having been there since last night, except the rose and the Valentine’s card.

  Frowning, Annie went back to her bedroom, locked herself in again, showered and got dressed in a pair of jeans and a warm sweater. She put her gun back into the drawer, locked it, and was about to go downstairs to have breakfast, when her eye fell on the Valentine’s card still lying on her bedside table. A cold qualm hit her.

  Nobody else had a key – yet there was no getting away from the fact that somebody had by-passed the alarm system, got into the house, into this room, while she slept. Icy cold and trembling, Annie stared at the card’s red satin rose and ribbons – the thought of him, in here, standing by her bed, watching her, while she was so unaware of him … Oh, God, he could have raped her, even killed her.

  Why hadn’t he done anything except leave the card and the rose? He had been threatening her for years – why had he got in here last night and then gone away again without even waking her? Was this the final phase in the long-drawn-out game he had been playing with her for years – did he want her to know that he could get in and out of her home just as he pleased whenever he chose and there was nothing she could do to stop him?

  Roger Keats had been sending her Valentines for seven years. Every year he had simply posted a card – now he had broken into her home. His campaign of terror was stepping up. What next? Was he going to show up any minute now?

  But why now? After seven years? Why had he waited so long, and why was he coming now? Was it because his wife was close to her at work and could spy for him? Marty Keats could have told him that Annie was alone the house. She looked at the message again, biting her lip. See you soon, he said, and the threat raised the hair on the back of her neck.

  Just when her career was really taking off – when the series was doing brilliantly, the ratings the highest they had ever been. In the late autumn she’d been voted the best actress in British TV – Roger was bound to have noticed that. Had Roger been waiting for her to reach real fame before he made his move? It would be just like him. She had ended his career eight years ago. She could be sure he would love to end hers.

  4

  She spent a lot of the day curled up on the sofa, wearing jeans and a sweater, answering fan mail, which piled up faster than she could ever reply to it, and most of which was dealt with by the studio if it fell into certain categories. Any letters asking for a signed photo, unpleasant or threatening letters, letters asking questions the studio could answer – none of those were passed on to her, but some letters were considered more personal and Annie answered those, dictating her replies into a tape machine for a typist at the studio to type out later, and, when they ran short of signed photos, signing more of them, to be sent out with the letters.

  By lunchtime she had had enough of her correspondence, and wandered out into the kitchen to make herself a light lunch, a green salad, tossed in a vinaigrette she made up from a freshly squeezed lemon, a dash of olive oil and a little English mustard powder, served with a fillet of sole she grilled.

  Sean rang her at three o’clock that afternoon. ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘A little better today.’ Annie had rung the hospital twice; they were very reassuring.

  ‘You don’t sound too cheerful,’ said Sean. ‘Did you get another Valentine?’

  She wished she hadn’t told him about Roger, but now that she had she knew she wouldn’t shake him off the scent easily, so she reluctantly told him how she had woken up to find it next to her bed.

  Sean’s voice deepened, roughened. ‘He’s got into the house? This is getting serious, Annie. Was that all he did, leave a rose and the card? Was anything moved or taken?’

  She told him no and he asked, ‘You didn’t wake up at all? Had you taken a sleeping pill?’

  She admitted she had, saying that she preferred not to take sleeping pills, but sometimes it was essential if she had to get to the studio very early and had trouble getting to sleep.

  ‘Have you called the police?’ asked Sean.

  ‘Yes, and got laughed at for my pains.’ Annie repeated what the policeman had said to her, and Sean sighed.

  ‘Well, sorry they weren’t more helpful, but they’re probably up to their necks in burglaries in your area; it’s a local hobby. Look, I’ll come over and dust the place for fingerprints, take a look around.’

  ‘No, don’t bother. Even if you found any fingerprints, what good would that do? He isn’t a criminal with a police record.’

  ‘Well, you will have your locks changed, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I rang someone, first thing, and a locksmith is coming round this afternoon. I’ve got to go out, but my cleaner is here.’ She could hear the buzz of Tracy’s vacuum cleaner upstairs; they had had a cup of tea and a biscuit together half an hour ago. She frowned. ‘I wish I knew how he got in without my alarms going off.’

  ‘God knows. He must have found out the number you’re using. What was it?’ He gave a curt laugh as she told him. ‘Your birthday? Well, that was clever, wasn’t it? The first number he’d try. You must change that, too, at once. A good idea is to write down numbers from 1 to 9 on pieces of paper, throw them up in the air and then pick up four at random. And don’t forget to memorise them before you key them in – you don’t want to forget the number and have to get the alarm people round to let you in to your own house.’

  ‘But I still can’t understand how he got into the house – I keep my keys in my bag, and I always have my bag with me.’

  A silence, then Sean said drily, ‘Except for a few minutes yesterday, when your bag was stolen, remember? That motorbike was out of sight of all of us for a couple of minutes. Quite long enough for him to get an impression of your key.’

  Annie turned pale. ‘So the man on the bike could have been …’

  ‘Roger Keats, yes, exactly.’

  ‘It never even entered my head!’ She was appalled by the idea that Roger Keats had been so close without her even guessing. She tried to remember what the man on the bike had looked like, but in black leathers, with a helmet visor over his face, he had made no impression on her at all. How many other times had Roger Keats been around without her knowing it?

  How had he known where to find them
out on location?

  ‘His wife,’ Sean said, as if reading her mind, and Annie started in shock.

  ‘What?’

  ‘His wife knew you would be on location in Petticoat Lane Market on Sunday morning. I’ll have a word with Harriet, we’ll have to get rid of her.’

  ‘No, don’t!’ Annie protested urgently. ‘If Harriet had her moved and she complained to her union, it would cause a lot of trouble – what possible excuse could I give? It would look as if I was being vindictive. After all, she hasn’t done anything. She’ll just tell them I was responsible for her husband losing his job, now I’m trying to get her fired – what do you think her union is going to say? We don’t want a strike hitting the production.’

  Sean argued with her, but had to admit she was right. Then he tried to talk her into having someone move into the house with her while her mother was in hospital.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, not wishing to admit she had no relatives except her mother, and very few close friends. As a child she had had friends at school, but her mother was so protective that she would never allow Annie to play out in the street, or go to anybody’s home. Trudie had insisted that Annie should come straight home after school and she was rarely allowed to take anyone home with her. She had begun to make friends at drama school – but then she had been forced to leave, and for some years after that she had been so traumatised she hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone unless she had to. When you worked in the theatre your world shrank to a small circle; you went to bed late and got up late, you worked all evening, you couldn’t go out to dinner or the theatre, so you saw very few people except on a Sunday. Your only friends were often the others in the cast, for the run of that play, and, however close the friendship, it always faded once the play ended. You might stay friendly, but you simply didn’t see each other very often any more.

  Television was different only in that you worked hard all day and went home in the evening, but you were usually so tired that you didn’t want to go anywhere after dinner, except off to bed, to get up at crack of dawn next day.