S is for Stranger

by Louise Stone

  I scanned the other windows and my eyes came to rest on the top floor of another Victorian semi. The large windows were lit up and the occupant hadn’t bothered drawing the curtains.

  A woman stood silhouetted against the light and I watched as she talked and laughed. She appeared to be cooking: perhaps for a guest. Moments later, as if she could feel my eyes on her, she came to the window, peered out. I froze feeling like a Peeping Tom. She shook her head and drew a curtain across one window and looked out briefly again before doing the same with the second.

  I stood up and prepared myself to head back. But something out the corner of my eye stopped me in my tracks. I backed up a couple of paces, glancing behind me as I went to ensure I didn’t collide with my neighbour’s recycling box or step into the street lamp’s light, and turned my head fully to the right.

  There was a person, in an old Ford car, watching my house.

  A cold prickly sweat worked its way over my body and I moved half a step back in order to get a closer look. The person’s dark clothing, and the reflection from the street lamps, made it impossible to make out their features or build. I needed to get closer and I edged toward a small wall dividing the two houses.

  From here, I could see it was a man.

  I moved one further inch to my right, my eyes never leaving the car.

  My mind worked quickly; I knew I couldn’t do anything sudden as he might drive off. A cat wandered up to me, mewing. The animal was moving in circles around my legs and it lazily made its way up to the house’s porch.

  The man looked in my direction now and I stood stock-still. He started the engine and moved off and, without thinking, I took a deep breath and started to run after the car. Blood rushed in my ears and I squinted, desperately memorising the number plate.

  Panting hard, I ran to the end of the street and watched as the retreating car easily sped off toward the river.

  I snuck back inside, my mind buzzing as I tried to figure out who the man could have been.

  I phoned DI Ward. She answered right away. I could tell she had not been asleep yet.

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘There was a man,’ I spoke fast, ‘outside my house. Watching my house.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ DI Ward was typing on a computer as she spoke, I could hear the clickety-clack of keys being struck. ‘What were you doing outside? I thought we told you, for your safety, you need to stay inside the house.’

  ‘I needed air.’

  She sighed. ‘Sophie, I’ll look into it. Don’t worry yourself. Get some sleep.’ She cut the call.

  I stared down at the phone in my hand. DI Ward clearly thought I was delusional, that there could have been no one watching me. Despair washed over me. If the police didn’t take me seriously, then how were we going to find my daughter?

  I spotted a USB stick on the side and remembered it was the video of Amy’s first school play Paul had sent me. I hadn’t been allowed to attend, even though I had asked if the rules could be bent just this once. Paul, out of pity I suspect, had sent me a video of it. I imagined Sarah and Paul sitting near the front, proud as punch at Amy’s delivery of her lines. I clenched my stomach at the thought of Sarah watching Amy like she had given birth to her.

  I sat at the kitchen island, my old laptop (this one had been released back to me, the others were still with forensics) whirring as I watched the video on loop. Paul zoomed in on Amy’s face; she had that nervous habit I had, of nibbling her lower lips as she waited for her turn to speak. Then, irritatingly, I noticed how Paul turned the camera toward Sarah who, as I had suspected, looked on delightedly at my daughter. But I didn’t want to see Sarah’s face over and over again, that’s not why I watched the video on loop. It was because at the very front, I thought I had imagined it but then I saw her again and again and again.

  The woman walking down Oxford Street, the woman at the fair, was sat watching my daughter act for the very first time. The back of the woman had a ghostly familiarity about it and she was wearing that black coat again: it was undeniably her. Every time I saw the silhouette of her shoulders and head, my certainty grew. It was her, there was no denying the woman had been there that night. I tapped the play button three times before I allowed myself to watch it again, and again. I would show DI Ward in the morning, and prove to her that I wasn’t mad. I felt sick that this woman had been in our lives all along. She must have been laughing at us, the way we ignored her clues.

  The weather took a turn for the worse overnight but I stayed up, moving to the sofa instead. At some point, I registered it was half four in the morning and I woke up suddenly. The laptop had slid in between the cushions and I had developed a painful crick in my neck. I manoeuvred myself off the sofa, albeit slowly, and tried to shake off the grogginess.

  It was only then that I realised there was a light on in the kitchen. Had I left it on? No, I clearly remembered turning it off. I rose quickly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. Noiselessly, I grabbed the empty vase from the centre of the coffee table and tiptoed toward the kitchen. My legs wobbled beneath me. The previous night’s events flashed through my head and I gripped the vase even tighter.

  The door was within arm’s reach. I could just about make out the sound of someone’s deep breathing over the ticking of the clock and I counted to three. Adrenaline pumping fast around my body, my heart beating crazily, I charged into the kitchen. Barely thinking, I swung the vase to and fro.

  ‘What the hell?’ a voice shouted.

  I froze, grabbing the vase to my chest and gasped. ‘Oli!’

  He was stood up against the counter, his face pale. ‘Bloody hell, woman.’

  ‘How on earth? What are you …’ I started before I burst into laughter, placing the vase on the side. ‘I thought you were …’ I broke down. ‘You …’ I couldn’t form any words.

  ‘You silly woman, you nearly killed me,’ Oliver said, catching his breath, his face tight with panic.

  ‘What the hell are you doing back? How did you get in?’

  ‘You left the door unlocked.’

  I tried to remember if I had. ‘Why didn’t you knock?’

  ‘I did.’ Oliver looked at me. ‘You can’t have heard me.’

  ‘Why are you back?’ I said again, trying desperately to soften my voice, push down the fluttering in my stomach.

  ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘Why?’ I was still on the defensive.

  ‘Because you haven’t been the same recently. It feels like we’ve gone back twenty years and your head is all over the place. I can’t walk away from you, Sophie, I never have been able to. Especially now, when you clearly need someone. I want to be here for you. Let me be here for you.’

  I nodded slowly. My phone buzzed. It was DI Ward.

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions before the press conference,’ she said. ‘OK?’

  ‘Yes, fine. I’ve got something to show you too.’ I glanced at my laptop, at the USB stick.

  CHAPTER 17

  DI Ward sat me down. We were in her office this time.

  She hovered, almost as if unsure how to start, and then said, ‘Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Tea, please.’

  She nodded. The kettle in the corner was already boiling, and I noted that she only made me one, not herself. We didn’t talk as she made me the drink and then she sat down. Her eyes were red, tired.

  ‘What do you think about the car, the man outside my house?’

  She nodded, ignored me. ‘Your ex-husband, Sophie.’ She skimmed over some scribbles in her notebook. ‘He owns a security company? What do you know about it?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Not much. I mean what do you want to know?’ I studied her face. ‘Why aren’t you answering my question about the man?’

  ‘Has he owned it long?’ DI Ward pressed. Back to the subject of Paul.

  ‘He owned it long before we met, if that’s what you mean.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘What’s this got to do with the investi
gation, Detective?’

  She pressed her lips together. ‘Maybe nothing.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I wasn’t trying to be smart; it just seemed strange to be asking me questions about Paul’s career when he was just downstairs waiting for the conference to start.

  ‘I have,’ she replied simply. ‘I asked him what he did before he set up his own company. I’ve looked up the details. He started his company up in 1992.’

  ‘Right …’ I couldn’t see where this was headed.

  ‘He was twenty-five. Told me he hadn’t gone to college, left school at sixteen and travelled the world a bit. This all ringing a bell?’

  I nodded, rubbing my hands together to try and warm them up. ‘Yeah, of course, why would he lie about something like that?’ I sighed. ‘What does this have to do with Amy?’

  The DI skirted the issue. ‘I’ve had one of my officers do a bit of a background check on Paul. You know, phone up the various companies he quoted at us. See if they’ve got him on record. Most of them had but here’s the thing …’

  ‘Yes?’

  She tapped her pen on the table. ‘Between 1988 and 1991, we can’t find any record of Paul’s employment, he’s not registered on any electoral role and yet s…’

  ‘Go on.’ I moved forward in my seat, waiting with bated breath.

  ‘His bank account was looking more than a little healthy.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand. What does that mean? What does “more than a little healthy” mean?’

  ‘He appeared to have gone from working as a night guard at the local supermarket, earning just above minimum wage, to the big bucks.’

  ‘So, what has he said? Surely, there’s some explanation.’

  ‘He says,’ she watched me carefully, ‘that there has to be some mistake.’

  I stuck out my lower lip. ‘So, there you go.’

  ‘You’re suddenly on his side, Sophie?’ The DI cocked her head to one side. ‘Last Saturday, you wanted him charged with the abduction of your daughter and, now, you don’t find that sort of information incriminating or strange?’

  ‘I just don’t see what it’s got to do with Amy’s disappearance.’ I stuck my jaw out. ‘I want to know why you’re not answering my question about the man outside my house. I’d say you’re ignoring my safety at the moment, Detective.’

  She nodded slowly, avoided eye contact. ‘Just thought you might be able to offer us some insight into Paul, that’s all.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, more defensively than I intended, ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Clearly.’ She looked at her watch. ‘When you met Paul, remind me when that was?’

  ‘My final year at university.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. Amy was born the same year?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I nodded, swallowing hard. My throat was dry and I slurped greedily at my tea. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Paul was doing well when you met him?’ She blinked slowly. ‘His house is certainly very nice.’

  A tickle in my throat made me cough. ‘Yes, we’ve always lived comfortably.’

  She sucked air through her teeth. ‘Well, yes, he had a good amount of money to invest in his company. Especially for a start-up company. Very good indeed.’

  ‘What do you want me to say? You have to ask Paul these questions. I never asked him how he got the money to create his business.’ I shook my head. ‘I never thought to question it but, then, why would I? It’s who he was, you know? The company was who he was. I didn’t need to ask questions.’

  DI Ward nodded briefly. ‘Fair enough. So he owned this company when you met him, in a club? So he’s the older man, were you attracted to the older man?’

  ‘I was told I met him in a club, but that was the night Bethany was murdered.’

  ‘Told you met him in a club?’

  I clenched my jaw. ‘I’ve been over this. Yes. I woke up in my bed and Paul had brought me back. We hit it off but I don’t remember a club, I remember going out with Bethany.’

  ‘OK, so he’s the older man with a successful business that you don’t ask any questions about?’

  ‘If you’re going to go down some Freudian route of him being like a father figure I’ve never had,’ I said hotly, ‘you’ll find he’s about as far removed from my father as you can get.’

  ‘Sophie, you’re getting very edgy.’ She sat back.

  ‘What does Paul say about all this?’ I was almost afraid to ask but I needed to know. ‘He gave you consent to look at his accounts?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’ She shut her notebook. ‘He says he was doing odd jobs. Cash in hand type of thing and, as for the money in his account, we must have made a mistake.’

  ‘I guess that’s all there is to it.’

  She smiled. ‘Maybe. Except it’s unlikely my officer would make a mistake. But, moreover, a bank couldn’t make up the kind of figures I’m talking about.’

  She stood and I did the same.

  ‘You ready for the press conference?’

  I nodded. ‘What about the man I told you about? Don’t you think it’s important? I mean you could put one of your guys outside the house and they could …’

  I saw it then: the slightest flicker of something in her face. And then it dawned on me.

  ‘That was one of your guys, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It’s for your own safety.’

  I looked at her. ‘Then why the secrecy? Surely, you’d want me to feel safe?’

  She didn’t say anything. Clicked her pen twice. I willed her to do it again.

  I got it. ‘You don’t trust me.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. We should get to the press conference.’

  ‘Why are we having another press conference so soon?’ I asked.

  ‘I want to press the public, put pressure on whoever has Amy.’ She looked at me. ‘Do you know what I mean? Let’s really hit close to home. Talk about the things that you, as her mother, understand about Amy better than anyone else.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like talk about her favourite toy. Let’s try and highlight the maternal loss here. Not sure that message is getting out there.’

  ‘What is that meant to mean?’

  ‘You and Paul feel detached from the proceedings, if I’m being honest. I need more from you in particular.’ She looked at the door. ‘You only have to read what the press are saying, Sophie. It’s time we get the press focusing on Amy again.’

  ‘Opposed to?’

  ‘You,’ she said bluntly.

  I was feeling slightly unnerved by her insinuating looks. I couldn’t let this go. ‘How are we ever going to find my daughter, if you’re not on my side?’

  ‘I am on your side.’ She paused, opened the door. ‘You have to understand my predicament. Paul and you can’t agree. I have more than one mystery to solve if you think about it. There are two sides to every story but only one of you is telling the truth.’

  I held up the USB stick. ‘I have something to show you.’

  She took it from me, frowned, and we sat again. She stuck it in the side of the laptop and I waited for the video to appear. I pressed play and paused it within moments of it starting.

  ‘That’s the woman, there.’

  ‘What?’ DI Ward squinted at the screen.

  ‘That’s the woman at the fair, who’s got my daughter.’

  ‘She looks different to the one on the CCTV footage, Sophie.’ DI Ward studied my face, I felt myself flush.

  ‘No, I’m sure it’s her.’ I looked again. ‘See the black coat, the shape of her shoulders.’

  ‘She looks different to me but I’ll keep it, show the officer who’s scanning the CCTV footage.’ She stood. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Is that it?’ I stood too, wondering why the DI wasn’t taking this evidence more seriously.

  ‘Not much to go on really, Sophie. We don’t have an image of this woman’s front. As far as I’m concerned that’s just a woman, probably a parent, wearing a black coat.’

/>   She walked out the door and I followed her out the room and back down the long corridor. Paul and Tom were waiting outside the pressroom. DI Ward opened the door, nodded at the both of us and we started to follow her in. I hung back: Paul could sit next to DI Ward. The room fell silent and the journalists readied their cameras, notebooks and Dictaphones.

  The DI began. ‘Right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get started then. OK, Ms Fraiser will speak first.’

  I cleared my throat, gripping the note tightly. ‘I once told Amy a story.’ I found a camera lens and started again. ‘Darling, do you remember that story, the one about the princess whose family loved her so much? She was loved so much, just like you are.’ My voice cracked. ‘Please come home, darling.’ I let my head hang. ‘Please, let her go whoever you are.’

  DI Ward nodded her silent approval.

  ‘We just want our daughter back. Back where she belongs,’ Paul said.

  DI Ward warily asked if there were any questions.

  A woman stood. ‘Is it true that your friend was murdered at university? That you think the person behind that might have kidnapped your daughter?’

  I looked at her, blood roaring in my ears.

  The same woman continued, unrelenting. ‘I spoke to an,’ she consulted her notepad, ‘Oliver Dyers. He says you’ve had a lot on your plate recently. That you’re trying to get custody of your daughter again? He says that you’ve been reacquainted recently.’ She was just reading her notes now, matter-of-fact, no emotion. She looked up from her pad, her eyebrows raised. ‘He says he’s always wanted to be with you, that you would make a great couple. Sounds like a happy scenario, Ms Fraiser, don’t you think? Just you and him, no children.’

  I sat stock-still. Oliver. Oliver would speak to the press about me? About us? Make out we’re in some loved-up, honeymoon phase?

  ‘Please,’ DI Ward came in, I could feel her bristling, ‘this is not a time for personal attacks. Let’s be professional.’

  ‘I do not believe Oliver would talk to you,’ I said, my voice threatening to crack.