The Warning

by Sophie Hannah

  The most puzzling question is this: why arrive at the victim’s house with a knife and a knife sharpener when you have no intention of stabbing him? Why sharpen that knife at the crime scene if all you’re going to do is tape it, flat, against his face? For that purpose, the knife would work just as effectively if its blade were blunt.

  Or, looking at it another way . . . if you’ve got a newly sharpened knife, and you’ve covered your clothing to protect it from blood splashes, and if, coincidentally, you also want to write a strange message in big red letters on the wall, why not stab the guy and use his blood to write with? Because you particularly want to suffocate him? Then why not do it more straightforwardly, with, say, a plastic bag over his head, taped round his neck to make it airtight? Why use a knife at all?

  For some reason, you wanted to kill this man with a sharp knife, but you didn’t want to stab him. Why not? And the photograph you emailed—what’s that about? What are you trying to communicate? Is it ‘Look, I could so easily have stabbed him, but I didn’t’?

  I realise I’ve slipped into using ‘you’ when I talk about the murderer, rather than ‘she’, or ‘he or she’. I’m sorry. I’m not accusing you of killing anybody. Maybe you’re not the murderer of the well-known man. You might be someone who wishes he were still alive, someone who loves him, or once did – a lover, a close friend. I’m really not sure. All I know is that you’re reading this and you know the answers to the questions I’m asking. You desperately want to tell someone what you know.

  I’m the person to trust with the information. I’ve taken a huge risk in sharing so many secrets, in the hope of eliciting a reply from you. So, please, contact me. I’m waiting, and I promise I won’t judge you. Whatever you’ve done, you had your reasons. I am ready to listen and understand.

  Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

  C (for Confidant) x

  • Location: Wherever You Are

  • It’s NOT OK to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

  Posted: 2013-07-04, 16:17PM GMT

  Chapter 1

  MONDAY, JULY 1, 2013

  IT CAN’T BE him. All policemen wear high-visibility jackets these days. Lots must have sand-colored hair that’s a little bit wavy. In a minute he’ll turn round and I’ll see his face and laugh at myself for panicking.

  Don’t turn around, unless you’re someone else. Be someone else. Please.

  I sit perfectly still, try not to notice the far-reaching reverberations of every heartbeat. There is too much distance trapped in me. Miles. I can’t reach myself. A weird illusion grips me: that I am my heart and my car is my chest, and I’m shaking inside it.

  Seconds must be passing. Not quickly enough. Time is stuck. I stare at the clock on my dashboard and wait for the minute to change. At last, 10:52 becomes 10:53 and I’m relieved, as if it could have gone either way.

  Crazy.

  He’s still standing with his back to me. So many details are the same: his hair, his height, his build, the yellow jacket with “POLICE” printed on it . . .

  If it’s him, that means I must be doing something wrong, and I’m not. I’m definitely not. There’s no reason for him to reappear in my life; it wouldn’t be fair, when I’m trying so hard. Out of everyone sitting in their cars in this line of traffic, I must be among the most blameless, if I’m being judged on today’s behavior alone: a mother driving to school to deliver her son’s forgotten gym bag. I could have said, “Oh well, he’ll just have to miss games, or wear his school uniform,” but I didn’t. I knew Ethan would hate those two options equally, so I canceled my hair appointment and set off back to school, less than an hour after I’d gotten home from dropping the children off there. Willingly, because I care about my son’s happiness.

  Which means this has to be a different policeman up ahead. It can’t be him. It was my guilt that drew him to me last time. Today, I’m innocent. I’ve been innocent for more than three weeks.

  Drew him to you?

  All right, I’m guilty of superstitious idiocy, but nothing else. If it’s him, he’s here on Elmhirst Road by chance—pure coincidence, just as it was last time we met. He’s a police officer who works in Spilling; Elmhirst Road is in Spilling: his presence here, for reasons that have nothing to do with me, is entirely plausible.

  Rationally, the argument stands up, but I’m not convinced.

  Because you’re a superstitious fool.

  If it’s him, that means I’m still guilty, deep down. If he sees me . . .

  I can’t let that happen. His eyes on me, even for a second, would act as a magnet, dragging the badness inside me up to the surface of my skin, making it spill out into the open; it would propel me back to where I was when he first found me: the land of the endangered.

  I don’t deserve that. I have been good for three weeks and four days. Even in the privacy of my mind, where any transgressions would be unprovable, I haven’t slipped up. Once or twice my thoughts have almost broken free of my control, but I’ve been disciplined about slamming down the barriers.

  Turn around, quick, before he does.

  Can I risk it?

  A minute ago, there were at least fifteen cars between mine and where he’s standing on the pavement, a few hundred meters ahead. There are still about ten, at a rough guess. If one of the drivers in front of me would do a U-turn and go back the way they came, I’d do the same, but he’s more likely to notice me if I’m the first to do it. He might recognize my car, remember the make and model—maybe even the license plate. Not that he’s turned around yet, but he could be about to. Any second now . . .

  He’d wonder why I was doubling back on myself. The traffic isn’t at a standstill. True, we’re crawling along, but it’s unlikely to take me more than ten minutes to get past whatever’s causing the delay. All I can see from my car is a female police officer in the road, standing up straight, then bobbing down out of sight; standing up again, bobbing down again. I think she must be saying something to the driver of each car that passes. There’s another male officer too, on the pavement, talking to . . .

  Not him. Talking to a man who, please God, isn’t him.

  Inhale. Long and deep.

  I can’t do it. The presence of the right words in my mind is not enough to drive away the panic, not when I’m breathing jagged and fast like this.

  I wish I could work out what’s going on up there. It’s probably something dull and bureaucratic. Once before, I was stopped by fluorescent-jacketed police—three of them, like today—who were holding up traffic on the Rawndesley Road as part of a survey about driver behavior. I’ve forgotten what questions they asked me. They were boring, and felt pointless at the time. I remember thinking, My answers will be of no benefit to anyone, and answering politely anyway.

  The car in front of mine moves forward at the exact same moment that the policeman with his back to me turns his head. I see him in profile, only for a second, but it’s enough. I make a choking noise that no one hears but me. I’m embarrassed anyway.

  It’s him.

  No choice, then. Driving past him is unthinkable—no way of avoiding being seen by him if his colleague stops my car to speak to me—so I’ll have to turn around. I edge forward and swerve to the right, waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic on the other side of the road so that I can escape. Please.I’ll feel OK as soon as I’m traveling away from him and not towards him.

  I edge out farther. Too far, over the white line, where there’s no room for me. A blue Toyota beeps its horn as it flies past, the driver’s open mouth an angry blur. The noise is long and drawn out: the sound of a long grudge, not a fleeting annoyance, though I’m not sure if I’m still hearing its echo or only remembering it. Shock drums a rhythmic beat through my body, rising up from my chest into my throat and neck, pulsing down to my stomach. It pounds in my ears, in the skin of my face; I
can even feel it in my hair.

  There’s no way a noise like that car horn isn’t going to make a policeman—any policeman—turn around and see what’s going on.

  It’s OK. It’s fine. Nothing to worry about. How likely is it that he’d remember my car registration? He’ll see a silver Audi and think nothing of it. He must see them all the time.

  I keep my head facing away from him, my eyes fixed on the other side of the road, willing a gap to appear. One second, two seconds, three . . .

  Don’t look. He’ll be looking by now. No eye contact, that’s what matters. As long as you don’t see him seeing you . . .

  At last, there’s space for me to move out. I spin the car around and drive back along Elmhirst Road towards Spilling town center, seeing all the same things that I saw a few minutes ago, except in reverse order: the garden center, the Arts Barn, the house with the mint-green camper van parked outside it that looks like a Smeg fridge turned on its side, with wheels attached. These familiar objects and buildings seemed ordinary and unthreatening when I drove past them a few minutes ago. Now there’s something unreal about them. They look staged. Complicit, as if they’re playing a sinister game with me, one they know I’ll lose.

  Feeling hot and dizzy, I turn left into the library parking lot and take the first space I see: what Adam and I have always called “a golfer’s space” because the symbol painted in white on the concrete looks more like a set of golf clubs than the stroller it’s supposed to be.

  I open the car door with numb fingers that feel as if they’re only partly attached to my body and find myself gasping for air. I’m burning hot, dripping with sweat, and it has nothing to do with the weather.

  Why do I still feel like this? I should have been able to leave the panic behind, on Elmhirst Road. With him.

  Get a grip. Nothing bad has actually happened. Nothing at all has happened.

  “You’re not parking there, are you? I hope you’re going to move.”

  I look up. A young woman with auburn hair and the shortest bangs I’ve ever seen is staring at me. I assume the question came from her, since there’s no one else around. Explaining my situation to her is more than I can manage at the moment. I can form the words in my mind, but not in my mouth. I’m not exactly parking. I just need to sit here for a while, until I’m safe to drive again. Then I’ll go.

  I’m so caught up in the traumatic nothing that happened to me on Elmhirst Road that I only realize she’s still there when she says, “That space is for mums and babies. You’ve not got a baby with you. Park somewhere else!”

  “Sorry. I . . . I will. I’ll move in a minute. Thanks.”

  I smile at her, grateful for the distraction, for a reminder that this is my world and I’m still in it: the world of real, niggly problems that have to be dealt with in the present.

  “What’s wrong with right now?” she says.

  “I just . . . I’m not feeling . . .”

  “You’re in a space for mothers with babies! Are you too stupid to read signs?” Her aggression is excessive—mysteriously so. “Move! There’s at least fifty other free spaces.”

  “And at least twenty-five of those are mother-and-child spaces,” I say, looking at all the straight yellow lines on the concrete running parallel to my car, with nothing between them. “I’m not going to deprive anyone of a space if I sit here for another three minutes. I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling great.”

  “You don’t know who’s going to turn up in a minute,” says my persecutor. “The spaces might all fill up.” She pushes at her toothbrush-bristle bangs with her fingers. She seems to want to flick them to one side and hasn’t worked out that they’re too short to go anywhere; all they can do is lie flat on her head.

  “Do you work at the library?” I ask her. I’ve never seen a Spilling librarian wearing stiletto-heeled crocodile-skin ankle boots before, but I suppose it’s possible.

  “No, but I’ll go and get someone who does if you don’t move.”

  What is she, then? A recreational protester whose chosen cause is the safeguarding of mother-and-child parking spaces for those who deserve them? She has no children with her, or any books, or a bag big enough to contain books. What’s she doing here in the library parking lot?

  Get the bitch, says the voice in my head that I mustn’t listen to. Bring her down.

  “Two questions for you,” I say coolly. “Who the hell do you think you are, and who the hell are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter! What matters is, you’re in the wrong space!”

  “Read the sign,” I tell her. To save her the trouble of turning around, I read it aloud to her, “‘These spaces are reserved for people with children.’ That includes me. I have two children. I can show you photos. Or my C-section scar, if you’d prefer?”

  “It means for people who’ve got children with them in the car, as you well know! Shall I go and get the library manager?”

  “Fine by me.” I’m starting to feel better, thanks to this woman. I’m enjoying myself. “She can tell us what she thinks the sign means, and I’ll tell her what it says, and explain the difference. ‘People with children’ means ‘parents.’ Those with offspring, progeny, descendants: the non-childless. There’s nothing in the wording of that sign that specifies where the children need to be, geographically, at this precise moment. If it said, ‘This space is reserved for people who have their kids with them right here and now in this library parking lot,’ I could see a justification for moving. Since it doesn’t . . .” I shrug.

  “Right,” Short Bangs snaps at me. “You wait there!”

  “What, in the parking space you’re so keen for me to vacate?” I call after her as she stomps toward the library. “You want me to stay in it now?”

  She makes an obscene finger gesture over her shoulder.

  I’d like to wait and argue with the librarian—all the librarians, if possible—but the return of my normal everyday self has brought with it the memory of why I left the house: to deliver Ethan’s sports bag to school. I should get on with it; I know he’ll worry until he has it in his hands.

  Reluctantly, I slam my car door shut, pull out of the library parking lot and head for the Silsford Road. I can get to the school via Upper Heckencott, I think. It’s a ridiculously long-winded way of getting there, involving skinny, winding lanes that you have to reverse back along for about a mile if you meet a car coming in the opposite direction, but you generally don’t. And it’s the only route I can think of that doesn’t involve driving down Elmhirst Road.

  I check my watch: 11:10 A.M. I pull my phone out of my bag, ring school, ask them to tell Ethan not to worry and that I’m on my way. All of this I do while driving, knowing I shouldn’t, hoping I’ll get away with it. I wonder if it’s possible, simultaneously, to be a good mother and a bad person: someone who enjoys picking fights with strangers in parking lots, who lies, who gets into trouble with the police and nearly ruins her life and the life of her family, who thinks, Fuck you, every time anyone points out what the rules are and that she’s breaking them.

  I blow a long sigh out of the open window, as if I’m blowing out smoke. Ethan deserves a mother with no secrets, a mother who can drive to school without needing to hide from anyone. Instead, he has me. Soon he’ll have his gym bag too.

  It could be worse for him. I’m determined to make it better, to make myself better.

  Three weeks and four days. A verbal scrap with a self-righteous idiot doesn’t count as a lapse, I decide, at the same time as I tell myself that I mustn’t let it happen again—that I must be more humble in future, even if provoked. Less combative, more . . . ordinary. Like the other school mums. Though less dull than them, I hope. Never the sort of person who would say, “A home isn’t a home without a dog,” or, “I don’t know why I bother going to the gym—forty minutes on the treadmill and what do I do as soon as I get home? Raid the b
iscuit tin!”

  As safe and honorable as those women, but more exciting. Is that possible?

  I like to have it both ways; that’s my whole problem, in a nutshell.

  AS SOON AS I arrive at school, I am presented with an opportunity to put my new non-confrontational manner to the test. “We discourage parents from going into classrooms,” a receptionist I’ve never seen before tells me, standing in front of me to block my way.

  Since when? I’ve been into both Sophie’s and Ethan’s classrooms many times. No one’s ever complained.

  “It’s emotionally disruptive for the children if a parent suddenly pops up during lesson time,” she explains. “Some of them think, Oh look, Mum or Dad’s here—they can take me home, and get very upset when Mum or Dad disappears again, leaving them behind.”

  “I promise you Ethan won’t be upset.” I smile hopefully at her. “He’ll just be pleased and relieved to have his gym bag.” And, obviously, since he wants it for games this afternoon, he won’t, on having it handed to him, expect to leave school immediately and miss the PE lesson that he needs it for, you stupid cow. “There’s really no downside to letting me take it to him myself, honestly,” I add in what I hope is a wholly positive tone of voice. “It’ll save you a job too.”

  “Nicki!” a high-pitched female voice calls out, one that would be better suited to a cheerleader than a head teacher. Correction: headmistress.

  I sag with relief, knowing that everything is about to be all right. Kate Zilber is here: five foot short, petite as a ten-year-old, the most indiscreet person in professional employment that I’ve ever met. Kate refuses to be referred to as “principal” or “head”; “headmistress” is her title, prominently engraved on the sign on her office door, and she insists that people use it. She once described herself to me as a megalomaniac; I soon discovered that she wasn’t exaggerating.