Obsessed

by Alex Carver

certain the figure was male, barely avoided falling over her and Holly as his momentum carried him almost to the foot of the stairs. He recovered quickly and jumped over them both to run up the stairs.

  From her position on the floor, which she couldn’t change without so much pain it was almost unbearable, Kirsty had very little idea of what was going on. All she could do was strain her ears, and fight against unconsciousness, which was a losing battle, to listen to the struggle on the stairs above her.

  The struggle didn’t last long, at least not as far as she could tell, her sense of time was far from certain. After a few moments, she heard someone tumble down the stairs; she had no idea if it was Patrick, or the man who had burst through the front door, but they landed heavily on top of her. That was the last she knew as an unidentified body part collided with her head.

  Kirsty woke to darkness, with no idea where she was. All she could tell, from the little she could make out through the darkness, was that she wasn’t at home. She tried, briefly, to push herself up into a sitting position, so she could look around better and figure out her location; she quickly decided that moving was not a good idea, however. The attempt only increased the pain, which was radiating through her body from three distinct locations, to an almost unbearable level, and led to her discovering that her left arm was encased in plaster and secured to the side of the bed.

  “Good morning, Miss Newsome,” a voice said from somewhere above her as Kirsty tentatively opened her eyes, some hours after she first woke, and saw a strange woman standing over her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like crap,” Kirsty managed to reply. “Where am I?”

  “Thank God she’s awake.” Another voice spoke up from the other side of the room. “That snoring was driving me round the bend.”

  “Holly,” Kirsty said the name in surprise, smiling automatically at her friend’s comment. “Where are we?”

  “Where do you think we are, dummy?” Holly wanted to know. “We’re in hospital, just where you’d expect to be after surviving a knife attack. Unless you think we’re both dead, and this is Heaven, in which case I really have to question your choice of nurse. I know if it was me, I’d have picked someone a bit hotter to look after me.”

  Kirsty was used to the way her friend spoke, and so didn’t let her comment bother her. “So what happened? The last thing I remember is someone landing on me.”

  “I know about as much as you. I answered the door and found Patrick there. I never expected to see him on our doorstep after he and Julia broke up. When I asked him what he was doing there, he pulled a knife. He stabbed me and then shoved me back into the house so he could close the door.

  “The police didn’t say anything when they told us Julia and Gary had been murdered, but I heard on the news they were both stabbed repeatedly…”

  “We were hoping that wouldn’t be reported.” The comment, coming so unexpectedly, made both girls turn quickly, and painfully, to see the speaker in the doorway. “But you can always rely on the media to report the lurid details of any crime.

  “Good morning, ladies, I’m Detective Sergeant Fuller.” The middle-aged man in the much-wrinkled suit introduced himself as he moved further into the room. “I apologise for interrupting, you were telling your friend what you know of last night’s events, please, continue.” He helped himself to a seat from the side of the room, which he positioned squarely between the two beds.

  A little nonplussed by the detective’s arrival, and the break in her train of thought, it took Holly a few moments to get back to what she had been saying. “The news said both Julia and Gary were stabbed repeatedly,” she continued finally, “and I thought for sure he was going to do the same to me. I just lay there on the floor, hoping he’d either kill me quickly or go away, and I’m not sure which I was hoping for the most. I’ve never felt pain like it, I could barely think, but I remember being relieved when you called out, and he forgot about me to go after you. I’m sorry.” She felt terrible over the relief she had felt when Patrick left her to chase her friend. “I wanted to call out and warn you, I started to, but I was scared. I thought if I called out, he’d realise I wasn’t dead, and he’d stab me again.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “It’s okay,” Kirsty forgave her friend; had she been able, she would have gone to her, just the thought of moving ramped up the pain she was feeling, however. “I’d probably have been the same if it was me. I wouldn’t have wanted him to know I was still alive either.

  “I guess I know what happened after that,” she said after a few moments, when they had themselves under control. “I ran back to my room and called the police, and when Patrick broke through the door I threw tennis balls at him. After that I ran back out of the room and tried to get away. He caught me at the top of the stairs and stabbed me.

  “Everything’s a bit fuzzy from then on. Was it the police who fought with Patrick on the stairs? I know someone burst through the front door and fought with him, and one of them fell and landed on my head. That’s the last thing I know.”

  “No, it wasn’t a police officer who tackled your attacker,” Fuller answered Kirsty’s question, though it had been directed at her friend, not him. “It was your neighbour, Jason Greendale.”

  “The old pervert who lives next door?”

  “I think he might object to that description,” Fuller remarked to Holly, “since he’s only twenty-eight.”

  “So he’s a young pervert, not an old one, he’s still a pervert. I’ve lived there for six months, and never once seen him outside. He’s always at the window, watching whenever one of us walks past, though.”

  “As I understand it, Mr Greendale has a rare skin condition that makes it painful for him to be out in sunlight, consequently he spends most of his time indoors. As for his always being at the window when one of you goes past; he apparently works from home as a software developer, you’ve probably seen him working at his desk.”

  “So he rescued us?” Kirsty asked, ignoring the disbelief on her friend’s face. “How did he know we needed rescuing?”

  Fuller answered the question by taking a tennis ball from his pocket and tossing it onto Kirsty’s bed. “That smashed through Mr Greendale’s conservatory. When he investigated the sound of breaking glass, he found that tennis ball and saw your broken bedroom window. Since he rescued you the other night, and had heard about the murder of your housemate on the news, he realised you were in trouble again, and this time your attacker was in the house. He raced round to your house and kicked in the door in time to find Patrick O’Herlihy descending the stairs, bloody knife in hand.”

  “He’s the one who rescued me the other night?”

  “He admitted as much when we took his statement during the night.”

  “Then why did he disappear after he chased off Patrick? I assume it was Patrick who attacked me the other night.” A nod answered the question. “Did he kill Jules?” Another nod. “Oh God! Why? I know he wasn’t unhappy when Julia finished with him, but that was months ago.”

  “Unhappy, he was pissed off,” Holly remarked to her friend. “He threw a glass at her in the pub, and had to be dragged away by David.”

  “If you ladies will permit me to continue, I’ll answer your questions shortly, Miss Newsome. Mr Greendale entered your house in time to see Mr O’Herlihy descending the stairs, holding the knife he stabbed you both with.” Fuller took up his narrative again. “Jumping over you both, he raced up the stairs and tackled Mr O’Herlihy without hesitation. A very brave act, if you ask me. They fought for a short while, until Mr O’Herlihy fell down the stairs, landing on you, Miss Newsome. Despite receiving a rather nasty cut to his arm, Mr Greendale didn’t hesitate to chase after Mr O’Herlihy when he ran from the house. He caught up with him in the street, where they fought again.

  “I’m afraid to say your car suffered during the fight, Miss Newsome. It now has a rather large dent in the passenger door. Mr Greendale hit Mr O’Herlihy against it until he was unconsciou
s. I shouldn’t condone such violence, but given the confession Mr O’Herlihy made when I spoke to him after he woke up, I can’t say I’m inclined to make an issue of it. And that brings me to your questions. I’ll start with the easiest, the reason Mr Greendale didn’t stick around the other night; because of his skin condition, Mr Greendale has spent the greater portion of his life indoors, and generally away from anyone other than family and doctors, with the result that he has never learned how to deal with people. He’s uncomfortable with strangers, and when he heard you, Miss Cutler, looking after your friend when he returned from chasing off Mr O’Herlihy, he decided there was no need for him to stick around, so he returned to his own home, out of the way.”

  Kirsty found it hard to imagine being uncomfortable around people, meeting and getting along with people, even strangers, was second nature to her.

  “Why did Patrick kill Jules?” Holly asked, she was far more interested in knowing the answer to that question than in understanding her mysterious neighbour.

  “Because he’s a nut-job.” Fuller gave a succinct answer, which explained nothing.

  Holly looked at the detective as though he was a nut-job for a moment. “Is that an official description?” she couldn’t help asking.

  “Well it certainly isn’t a