In Her Image

by Adam Croft

  Eventually, we reach the top of the stairs and he drags me into a bedroom. He picks me up and throws me onto the wooden bed. I hear something snap — maybe a strut or leg from the bed. He looks around and goes through a couple of drawers, as if looking for something. Then he stands, appears to have an idea, grabs my arm and yanks me up from the bed. I feel my shoulder pop in its socket.

  He pulls me over towards a walk-in wardrobe, opens the door and throws me inside. Before I’ve even hit the back wall, the door has slammed behind me and I hear the sound of him dragging the wooden bureau across the floor and putting it in front of the door. I know there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to get out of here, so I don’t even try. I fall to the floor in the complete darkness, and sob.

  A few minutes later, I hear footsteps again, followed by the sound of the bureau moving. The door opens and the light streams in, hurting my eyes. Toby leans in and grabs my arm again, yanking the same shoulder as I squeal in agony.

  He throws me down on the bed, and climbs on top of me, pulling the ball of twine from his pocket and tying it around my wrists and ankles, before binding those to the bed frame. The twine is cold. I presume he’s kept it in the shed over winter.

  When he’s finally done, he pulls the dirty socks out of my mouth and leans over me, his legs still astride me, and looks into my eyes.

  ‘How dare you,’ he says, more as a statement than a question. ‘How dare you take her name in vain? How dare you pretend to be her? Who do you think you are?’

  It feels as though these are questions that don’t need answers. And in any case, what can I say? It’s all over. Whatever I say now isn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference.

  ‘You fooled me, Alice. You tried to make me look stupid.’

  ‘You were in my house,’ I say. It’s the only thing I can think of. I need answers. I need to hear him tell me why he’s been doing this. Why he picked me.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I was,’ he says, eventually. Just hearing him say it makes me sigh with relief. As if I hadn’t just been imagining it all along. Hearing your stalker tell you he broke into your house shouldn’t flood me with relief, but it does. It vindicates me.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I could.’

  I’m not sure what this means, but before I can ask, he tells me.

  ‘You made it too easy, Alice. Especially the last time. Those new locks were good. Solid. Your locksmith knew what he was doing. But it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference if you forget to lock the door.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Why what? Why all this? Why any of it?’ I nod. ‘Because I had to. Because I really, truly believed it. You let me believe it. Even today, downstairs,’ he says, spittle flying from his lips as I see him getting angrier and more emotional at my betrayal, ‘you led me to believe you were her. You told me you were her.’

  The look in his eyes is something I’ve never seen before. He doesn’t look angry. Just deeply, deeply hurt.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, his eyes turning to sorrow and regret. ‘I didn’t want to have to do this. But I haven’t got a choice.’

  He leans back for a moment, freeing his hands from supporting his weight, before placing them around my neck and squeezing tight. He puts his weight back on his arms, pushing my neck backwards, the force crushing my windpipe, stopping any air from getting into my lungs as I make a deep gurgling noise.

  My vision starts to turn watery, the edges swimming as I begin to see twinkling flashes of light and darkness encroaching from the sides. I hear nothing other than my own gurgling, until the sound of the floorboard creaking and the familiar sight of Kieran stepping into view, just as Toby Sheridan looks round and sees the heavy wooden rolling pin connect with his own forehead.

  70

  ‘Kieran, stop!’ I choke helplessly, as I flail around on the bed and plead with him not to carry on caving Toby Sheridan’s head in. He pulled him off of me after the first impact, then carried on hitting him. The thuds are sickening, each one reverberating around my head.

  Kieran straightens up and looks at me, his chest heaving with emotion and physical exertion as he pulls a strand of hair from his eyes and tucks it back behind his ear.

  ‘Is he...?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not yet. His chest is moving. But he isn’t getting up.’

  ‘Call the police,’ I say. ‘There’s evidence downstairs. Photos. Loads of them. There’s got to be more stuff, too. Enough to convict him. Enough to end all this.’

  He looks at me with something in his eye that I’ve never seen before.

  ‘I can end it all right now, Alice. Another couple of blows to the head and he’s gone. Or a knife through his fucking throat,’ he yells at Toby, who’s lying on the floor at the side of the bed, out of my view.

  ‘No, Kieran. Please. You can’t. You’ll go to prison.’

  ‘Self defence,’ he says, not taking his eyes from Toby.

  ‘That won’t work if you beat the life out of him or stab him. One hit to get him off me, maybe. Bludgeoning the man to death won’t do anything but get you a life sentence.’

  He seems to recognise the sense in this, and I start to recognise him again as the Kieran I know and loved.

  ‘Untie me,’ I say, my arms and legs throbbing and my back tight. Kieran does as I say. ‘How did you get here? How did you know I was coming?’ I ask him, surprised that this hadn’t crossed my mind sooner.

  ‘Darryl told me. He was worried about you and said he’d told you his address. I thought you might do something stupid so I went over to yours. You weren’t in. I figured you’d come here.’

  ‘But the doors were all locked.’

  ‘Yeah, they were. Until the stupid bastard went out to the shed,’ he says, delivering a kick to Sheridan’s ribs. A thought crosses my mind. The twine. ‘So much for slating you for not locking your door.’

  There are a few moments of silence before he speaks again.

  ‘So what now?’ he asks, as if I’ve got all the answers.

  ‘We call the police.’

  I look at Kieran for a sign that he agrees, that he’s not going to kill Toby.

  He looks back at me and nods.

  71

  Jane McKenna’s tone is conciliatory as she sits in my living room and explains what they’ve discovered in the days since Toby Sheridan was arrested. She still hasn’t apologised for not believing me, but at the same time she hasn’t questioned me about why I didn’t tell her I recognised his photo that day in the police station. The unspoken agreement is that we’re even.

  ‘His mother died when he was thirteen,’ she explains. ‘Cancer. It’s an impressionable age to go through the pain of your mother dying. By all accounts, she doted on him. She was a campaigner for social justice. She’d been very active in the sixties when she was younger, and that vibe had never quite worn off. She’d obviously made an impression on him, more so than most mothers do. Toby was an only child. His father disappeared before he was born. He never knew him. I don’t even know whether his mother did. It seems as though he never quite got over her death.’

  She leaves that hanging in the air, as if it’s meant to mean something. As if it’s meant to explain why he did what he did to me.

  ‘I don’t get it. What’s that got to do with anything?’ I ask.

  She looks at her sergeant before speaking, as if they’d hoped I wouldn’t ask for more information and would just accept that it happened and that was that.

  ‘Ever since she died, it seems he’s been convinced she would come back. He’s not said much — he’s not really able to — but he mentioned something about her spirit being too strong. About knowing she’d return. We turned his place upside down, as you’d expect, and we found quite a few photos of her hidden under the bed. By all accounts, Alice, you’re a dead ringer for her. We reckon that’s what he spotted. He saw that you looked like her, and wanted to mould you into becoming her.’

  ‘What about the other
women?’ I ask.

  ‘Some of them were the same. They looked similar to her in many ways. Some didn’t. We aren’t sure about those, but we presume there must have been something that he spotted, something that made him think they resembled her. Maybe something in their personalities.’

  ‘I don’t get it, though. Why wasn’t something done about them?’

  McKenna looks at her sergeant again. ‘Honestly? A few reasons. Lack of evidence in many cases. We never had him down as a suspect in any others, because he was so careful. He hid in plain sight. And the other cases just sort of fizzled out. He left the women alone.’

  ‘Why? Why not me?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I honestly don’t know. Maybe he really thought you were the one. Perhaps something you did — completely inadvertently — made him escalate things to this level. We might never know.’

  I don’t know what else to say. Maybe I’ll never get all the answers. I guess it must all make sense in Toby Sheridan’s mind, but I also know we might never get access to that mind.

  ‘But what I don’t get is how he had access to that building where he had his studio. The cleaner told me there was no-one in that office space upstairs,’ I say.

  McKenna cocks her head. ‘We can’t be sure, but it looks as though there’s a link between him and the firm of architects downstairs. He went in for a meeting a couple of months back, apparently. Something about plans for a new build house. While he was there the intruder alarm went off. The rear entrance to the building was permanently alarmed. He came out of the toilet next to that entrance just as one of the staff members went to investigate and shut off the alarm using the keypad. They didn’t think much of it until we went in to ask about him a couple of days ago.’

  ‘He watched them shut off the alarm and memorised the code?’

  ‘Looks like it. Whether he picked the lock on the door first when he went in that weekend to set up his photography stuff, I don’t know. We might never know.’

  ‘Is he still in hospital?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah. Probably will be for a while yet. I’ve got to tell you, it’s looking like he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life at the very least. His brain injuries are pretty severe.’

  ‘Is he talking?’

  ‘Not much. A bit, but we’re struggling. Hopefully we’ll get there eventually.’

  I don’t know what to feel. Part of me is pleased, although I know that sounds bad. How can I be pleased that a man who’s clearly mentally ill has ended up having to spend the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair — and possibly worse? But the truth is that at least he won’t be able to do this to anyone else. Even when he’s out of prison — if he ever gets sent there, or ever gets out again — he’ll likely have to be in a home for the rest of his life.

  ‘But how was this allowed to happen? How did he manage to get a job working for the police if he was that mentally unstable?’

  ‘Psychological testing’s only as good as the the person taking the test is honest. He gave all the right answers. Nothing was flagged up at any level. To all intents and purposes, he came across as a totally normal person. He’s a good actor.’

  ‘Well. It’s over now,’ I say.

  ‘I’m obliged to tell you,’ McKenna explains, ‘that due to the way you’ve been treated throughout this investigation, you’re entitled to lodge a complaint with the IPCC.’

  ‘What does that mean? For you, I mean.’

  She shrugs and tilts her head. ‘I don’t know. If they investigate and find that we were negligent in some way, then it’s possible there’ll be some form of disciplinary action.’

  ‘Would you lose your job?’

  ‘It’s not likely,’ she says, seeming to become a little defensive. ‘I followed procedure to the letter and did everything I could with the information we had available. It’s not an easy job and I believe I did everything I could.’ She pauses for a moment, before calming slightly. But if I was you? I’d be on the phone to them right now.’

  It’s not an apology, but I can tell it’s the closest I’m going to get. It’s a tacit admission that the way she treated me was diabolical, and that she feels remorse for it. I don’t see the need in throwing salt in the wound by putting in an official complaint. It’s over. Sheridan’s life has effectively ended and I can start to rebuild.

  ‘You’ll let me know when you have more news?’ I ask, making it clear that I want to be kept informed of what’s going on. No more concealing information, no more hiding the facts from me.

  ‘Yes. I can promise you that much,’ she says. ‘And in the meantime, you call me any time you need to ask anything, alright? Personally, I’m keen that we do right by you. We should have done earlier. If it’s something to do with the case and the prosecution, though, you’ll need to go through DCI Cosgrove. He’s leading the case now.’

  ‘They took you off it?’

  She nods, a sad look crossing her face. ‘Yeah. Standard procedure when they think there might have been some sort of operational cock-up. It’s understandable.’ She rises to her feet, and her sergeant does the same. ‘You take care, alright? You’re free now. You don’t need to worry about him any more.’

  I nod and watch as they make to leave.

  ‘Jane?’ I call after her.

  She turns back to look at me.

  I smile. The first genuine smile I’ve smiled in a long time. ‘Thank you.’

  Epilogue

  I exhale heavily as I walk down the stone steps at the front of the courthouse, the summer sun warming my skin. There are journalists waiting as we leave, but I’ve already told my solicitor I don’t want to make any comment. Besides, the Chief Constable has far more to say than I do. She’ll have the press hounding her for explanations on officer vetting, public safety and the integrity of their detectives. Me? I just want to get home.

  Sheridan tried pleading insanity at the trial, but that was quickly jumped on by the prosecution. After all, how could someone who was clinically insane manage to hold down a job as a police officer? Or even get the job in the first place? Rumour has it, according to my solicitor, that he retracted that plea after Sheridan’s own solicitor — under pressure from the police — convinced him that it would be better to accept his punishment rather than try to wriggle out of it and potentially get a longer sentence. The cynic in me thinks this was just damage limitation by the police force. After all, if the court accepted that he was clinically insane, what would that say about their staff vetting procedures? The shockwave that would send through the general public would be enormous.

  I squeeze Simon’s hand, and he looks at me and smiles. He’s been an absolute rock since he found out what had happened. I had to tell him — he would’ve found out eventually, anyway. The story’s been all over the news since Sheridan was arrested. I was worried at first that it might scare Simon off, but it had the complete opposite effect. He’s been my constant ever since, looking out for me and allowing me to take my time, never pressuring me into telling him any of the details.

  We’re taking it easy, seeing how things go. When people ask, I tell them we’re a couple. Deep down, I’m fairly sure this will be long-term. I can’t see any other way, and I’m certain he feels that too. But as things stand I’m cautious about making any predictions for the future. I’ve seen how quickly things can change.

  I thought Kieran might have reacted badly when he found out about me and Simon. I tried telling him as soon as I could, as soon as I felt sure that Simon and I were an item. He looked at me for a couple of seconds before breaking out into a smile — a smile I knew was honest and true — and telling me he was happy for me. I could see in his eyes that he meant it. I think he knew we would never be able to be together and that Simon was good for me. I hope I can prove him right.

  Mandy jogs up behind me as we walk to Simon’s car, and punches me playfully on the shoulder.

  ‘You coming for a celebratory drink?’ she asks me, before looking at Simon. ‘You�
��re invited too, Karate Kid.’

  I look up at him, feeling safe and secure, but still wanting to gauge his opinion.

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  He shrugs. ‘I don’t mind.’

  I look back at Mandy.

  ‘I dunno. We’ve got a few bits to sort out at home.’ I call it home, but it’s not my home; it’s Simon’s. I stayed a few nights with him after Sheridan’s arrest and we took it from there. When I realised I couldn’t go back to my own place — that I still didn’t feel safe there — Simon said I could stay with him for as long as I wanted. The long-term plan is to put my house on the market and move in permanently. Perhaps he’ll sell his flat too and we can get a place of our own. Start afresh.

  ‘Oh yeah, because I forgot it’s just an everyday occurrence to see your stalker sent down for ten years,’ Mandy says, pulling a sarcastic face. ‘So. Zizi’s? If you run home and put some proper clothes on we might just make happy hour.’

  I laugh. ‘Proper clothes? It’s a dress suit. I was just in court, in case you hadn’t noticed. We can’t all turn up in jeans and trainers.’

  ‘Hey, these are new,’ she says, sounding offended.

  Simon smiles at me. I smile back, then look at Mandy.

  ‘How does six-thirty sound?’

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