“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“Because I thought I could cope, but last night was the last straw.”
“What happened last night?”
“Somebody broke into my home, Ash. While I was asleep, in bed! Jesus Christ.” She glanced at the e-cigarette but dismissed it, she wanted the real thing.
“Somebody broke into your home, who?”
Jackie cocked her head, as if Ashley had just asked the world’s dumbest question.
She rephrased it, “Why would somebody break into your home?”
“Why do you think? To hack the hard drive of my computer, why else?”
“You mean they stole the manuscript?”
“Yes. Wiped the computer clean. What they don’t realise is that I have a copy.”
“You do? Where? On a cloud account?”
Jackie scoffed. “You think they haven’t already hacked into that.”
“What then?”
“I’ve gone off grid, as they say. And taken other precautions.”
Ashley looked puzzled.
Jackie rolled her eyes. “I copied it to a pen drive. In fact, I’ve been working off that ever since I started writing the manuscript. There were just fragment documents on my hard disk. But you don’t have to be a genius to work out that the last file I worked on was located on an external drive.”
There was a pause and then Ashley asked, “So, where is it?”
“It’s safe,” Jackie whispered, looking around the room to make sure that nothing but the walls was listening. “I’ve stashed it in a secret hiding place in my bedroom. Somewhere London’s finest wouldn’t even have the balls to look.”
“You need to go to the police.”
Jackie let out an incredulous laugh. “They are the police, Ashley.”
“There must be another, oh I don’t know, branch you can talk to.”
Jackie shook her head.
“…Maybe Scotland Yard or even MI5.”
Jackie kept on shaking her head.
“…There must be somebody you can go to.”
Jackie leaned forward, “Don’t you get it? There’s nobody. This is how it works, they protect their own.”
“I don’t believe that. It’s a book, Jackie. Not national security.”
“Well, you believe what you want.” Jackie hissed.
Both women took the time to ponder what had just been said. Ashley wondered if any of this bore any relation to the strange things that had been happening to her. Was there really somebody in the penthouse this morning? Had someone actually been calling her name in the car park? Maybe someone was trying to scare her, make her think she was going mad.
“Now you seem perturbed,” Jackie said, taking a despondent bite out of one of the scones.
Ashley forced a smile, “It’s nothing. I’m just wondering what you’re planning to do.”
“I’m planning to leave the country. That’s what I’m planning to do. I’ve already booked the ticket. I’m going to lay low for a while until this whole thing blows over.”
“But what about the manuscript?” The question had come out before Ashley had a chance to think about it.
Jackie shook her head. “Is that all you’re worried about?”
“No, of course it isn’t. It’s just that in one breath you tell me how these people have been tormenting you, making your life a misery, and in the next, you’re telling me that you want to let them get away with it. I am worried, Jackie. I’m concerned to hear that the very same people we’re supposed to trust to protect us are also capable of something so awful. And then, instead of remorse, have the balls to persecute you for it.”
Jackie’s eyes narrowed, “You don’t need to lecture me,” she said through gritted teeth and watery eyes, “I was there, remember?”
“Exactly. You were there. You were held down while your colleagues, members of our police force, took it in turns with you, and now you’re thinking of telling them that it was okay, and that not only did they fuck you that night, but that it’s okay for them to them to fuck you now too!”
Suit man looked across at them once more, but if Ashley felt his eyes on her, she ignored them.
Meanwhile, the tears had broken through, and with trembling lips, Jackie uttered, “I don’t have to listen to this.”
She grabbed her bag, her glasses and left the table.
Ashley could have kicked herself.
She took a few seconds to contemplate her next move. She resolved to follow the would-be author out onto the busy streets, and into the drizzle that had now metamorphosed into rain.
Jackie was hurrying along the pavement, dodging people and umbrellas as Ashley rushed after her.
“Jackie!” She called.
Nothing.
“I’m sorry, Jackie. I shouldn’t have said that” Ashley gasped when she finally caught up with her.
“It’s alright for you; you live in a posh penthouse with a bloody millionaire for crying out loud. The force was my life. The realisation of a dream, and it’s been shattered. I have nothing left, nothing but the nightmares and the humiliation of that trial, as well as the phobia that one night I’m going to wake up to find someone standing over me. Christ, if they broke in to wipe my hard drive, they can do anything and nobody would be any the wiser. They’d be untouchable. There’s no one else in a better position to fabricate or lose evidence. They could slit my throat, pass it off as suicide and nobody would give a shit,” she growled through tears, “I’m not going to live like this; I can’t live like this anymore. I want it over. I want them to leave me alone!”
“Running away is not going to help, Jackie. They’ll be waiting for you when you come back.”
“Then I won’t come back!”
“And what about the others, the new recruits who come in after you? If they get away with this, they will think they can do it to anybody.”
Jackie snorted and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, “Jesus, you really don’t get it do you? They have already got away with it. The courts set them free! Nobody is going to give a fuck whether or not I publish a book about it now.”
“Well, they obviously do. Why do you think they are so hell bent on stopping you?”
This made Jackie pause for thought. Ashley hoped it would be enough to make the woman see reason, but there was a determination in her stride until Ashley caught her arm and stopped her. “Please think about this,” she shouted over the din of the lunch hour traffic.
Jackie hesitated, “I have and I’m leaving today.”
With that, she turned and stepped into the busy road, causing a car to swerve and yell at her with an angry blare of its horn.
Ashley hunched in terror, as she watched other cars react in the same fashion, as the crazy pedestrian slowly made her way across the busy road.
One by one, cars swerved, stopped, skidded. All to a cacophony of angry car horns that Jackie seemed oblivious to, as she slowly made her way to the other side of the road.
Then there was that Ford, the silver one, driven by the middle-aged executive who was deep in conversation with his colleague, sitting in the backseat.
They’d just had a very bad meeting with a client, and he was angrily engaging with his passenger by looking at him in the rearview mirror, rather than keeping his eyes on the road ahead.
Which meant he failed to see the crazy lady in the red coat and sunglasses cross the street, right into the path of his vehicle. It was only when his colleague, sitting in the passenger seat next to him, yelled, “Look out!” that he saw the stupid bitch.
He stomped on the brake pedal and surrendered himself to the inevitable; along with losing one of the company’s most important clients, he’d be adding murderer to his C.V.
Ashley could only watch, in abject horror, as the speeding silver car proceeded on a collision with the controversial ex-police officer.
She screamed, “JACKIE!”
But her warning was too late. The silver ca
r had already engaged its brakes, and these screeched angrily over what they were being asked to accomplish at such speed, at such a short distance.
Yet, by some miracle, just as Jackie was stepping off the road and onto the pavement, the car skidded and slowed enough to allow the driver to swerve and miss crazy lady by what must have been millimetres.
All of the occupants of the car were still screaming in stupefied high-pitched terror, even as the car came to a halt.
Meanwhile, Jackie Harris, hunched against the rain, casually made her way towards the multi-storey car park, as if nothing had happened.
Ashley was still holding her hands to her mouth in a silent scream when she felt a tap on her arm and snapped around to see Julie Emerson, Romance Editor, grinning at her. She was wearing a suede jacket and carrying a yellow umbrella.
“Hey, there you are,” Julie said. “I thought it was you. Where on earth have you been all day? I’ve been looking for you.”
She moved in closer to shelter her friend from the rain. Then, following Ashley’s gaze, she asked, “Who was that?”
“That,” Ashley said, not taking her eyes off Jackie until she disappeared into the building, “is Jackie Harris.”
“The Jackie Harris, the one you’ve got Martin all steamed up about?”
“The very same.”
“I didn’t recognise her with that scarf over her head. So, has she finished the final draft?”
“I think so.”
“And is it what you expected?”
“I don’t know; she won’t let me see it.”
Julie’s eyebrows lifted in an inquisitive fox kind of way.
“She doesn’t want us to publish the book any more,” Ashley added.
“What? But she’s signed a contract.”
“Somehow, Julie, I don’t think she could care less about that right now.”
“Oh girl, I’m so sorry. Is that why you look so tired?”
“That and a host of other things. “
“Like what?”
“Oh God, where do I start?”
“The beginning; it’s normally a good place.”
“I’m sorry, Julie, I can’t right now. I’ve got so much on my plate today. What are you doing Saturday night?”
“You mean besides going out on yet another bad date?”
Ashley smiled, grateful for Julie’s light humour, “Yes besides that.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Coming over to yours for dinner?”
They laughed.
“It’s actually at Rupert’s.”
“Nice,” Julie nodded appreciatively.
“Eight o’clock okay?”
“Sounds fine, but you have to promise to tell all.”
“I promise.”
What happened next was over in seconds but would haunt the two women for the rest of their lives.
The traffic moved, people walked and the rain fell, as a screeching of tyres and scraping metal pierced the air, followed by a thunderous Whomp!
A giant cloud of dust and mortar appeared above them as the parapet of the fifth floor of the car park exploded outward, raining blocks of concrete onto two pedestrians below; cracking the head of one woman and snapping the neck of the other.
A red SUV emerged from behind the cloud, and plunged to the road. It slammed onto the roof of a passing car then flipped forward, ejecting the driver through the windscreen and onto the wet tarmac. There, like a herd of raging animals, the oncoming traffic trampled over the body, while shunting the vehicle thirty feet down the road.
The grotesque scene unfolded to a medley of squealing brakes, screeching metal, screaming people and car horns as, one by one, cars slammed into and swerved to avoid each other.
Ashley and Julie could do nothing but watch in incredulous horror, as two more speeding cars trampled over the lifeless body in front of them. They broke bones and squished organs, before skidding or crashing to a halt.
Jackie Harris’ body lay, twisted.
Her deathly, glassy gaze watched the morbid curiosity of traumatised onlookers while on the nearby tarmac, a grey scarf rolled slowly in the breeze, until it was weighted down with blood and rainwater.
23 The Letter
5:00 am, one week later.
William Barber walked into the Royal Mail’s Cambridge sorting office and headed straight for his colleague’s station and was pleased to find it empty. This meant that he wouldn’t have to make small talk, nor ask for his personal mail, he could retrieve it himself.
He quickly sifted through the various items until he was left with three personal letters.
The first was a gas bill, the second, a catalogue promotion and the third... he took in a deep breath; the postmark slogan on the front read, ‘Harrison - For a Good Read’.
His heart skipped a beat. This was it; the letter he had been waiting for.
He looked around; he was standing in a corridor of yellow pigeonholes, in front of them stood grey sacks full of post, waiting to be sorted into the first mail delivery of the day.
So far, only a couple of his colleagues had arrived for their shift but it wouldn’t be long before the place was teeming with postmen.
He considered taking the moment into the privacy of a toilet cubicle, but decided against it; he needed to know, now.
Don’t prolong the agony, just open the thing!
Gingerly, he ripped open the envelope, pulled out the letter and studied the Harrison logo, the thick bond paper, his printed name, address and then the text:
Dear William Barber,
TALES FROM A TOMB
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read Tales from a Tomb.
Your manuscript captured a raw and distinctive sense of horror that is quite often lacking from many of today’s modern novels.
There’s no doubt that you have a talent for storytelling.
However, we are driven by current market trends, budgetary constraints and of course, our own personal criteria. In order for us to accept a manuscript for publication, the editorial team has to feel very strongly about it. Unfortunately, in the case of Tales from a Tomb, we did not.
I am very sorry to have to communicate this news to you, and would like to stress that this is simply our personal opinion and that other publishing houses may feel differently.
We strongly advise that you seek the guidance of an independent editor, and perhaps a literary agent, who these days, are more than often worth their fee.
You can find a list of agents in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook.
Thanks again for thinking of Harrison Publishing.
Yours Sincerely,
Ashley Marshall
SENIOR FICTION EDITOR
William read the letter two more times, for he was finding it hard to digest exactly what it was saying.
Meanwhile, the early morning scram to get the first delivery sorted and prepped for delivery had started.
There were stories of the night before, laughing and somewhere, somebody was shouting at him to get a move on.
But William could not move. He had waited months for this letter and never had he allowed himself to consider the possibility that the content may treat his destiny with such harshness.
It had taken three years to complete this manuscript, another two revising it and another year sending excerpts out to every agent and publisher he could find.
All of them had rejected him. All had said that he did not fit into that year’s publishing schedule, all except for Harrison Publishing.
And this is what he was finding hard to deal with.
The other publishers had just said no, they hadn’t even bothered to ask for excerpts, but Harrison was different, they’d asked for more and then taken three fucking months to make this decision.
If no news was supposed to be good news, then what was this shit, and why had they taken so long just to reject him? It seemed that, after all this time, they had turned out to be no better than all the other heartless bastards befo
re them. And this woman, this, this, what was her name, he looked at the letter’s signature, ah yes, Ashley Marshall. She had written this letter, regurgitating the same crap he already knew off by heart. All of those empty words he had already read a hundred times before.
But she was worse.
She had twisted the knife; she had given him hope, made him believe that his dream might finally come true and then...
…He ran his hands over his balding scalp; he’d broken out in a sweat and was trembling, not from the cold but from the rage that was twisting in his gut like a coiled cobra.
Oh God. I’m trapped!
He was trapped in that shitty job and there was no way out.
He clutched his chest. It felt tight, really tight, as if someone, probably that bitch from Harrison, had placed it in a vice, and was squeezing his palpitating heart out of his throat…
…He couldn’t breathe, he was choking…
…now the lights were dimming and the walls were leaning in to swallow him whole.
I’m going to die. Right here, in this place I fucking hate. In this job I despise, and it’s all down to one person.
Marshall.
“Hey!”
Ashley Marshall.
“Shakespeare!”
The voice was familiar, and it cut through his thoughts like an angle grinder through sleep, first thing on a Sunday morning.
William looked up.
It was Daniel, a twenty-three-year-old lout with a shaved head. He was the ringleader of those who derived much pleasure in ridiculing his aspirations, the very same people who would whisper about him and laugh when he failed to finish his rounds on time.
Ever since he started working as a postman just over six months ago, none of them had offered so much as a word of encouragement.
They just mocked. Humiliated.
And now he was standing there, grinning that fucking grin the way he always did before he would say something loud enough for the others to hear, something that would elicit equally loud howls of laughter, at his expense.
Unspeakable Page 16
