Perfect Stranger: A gripping psychological thriller with nail-biting suspense

by Jake Cross

  ‘Is that you, darling?’ Rose called out.

  Chris found Rose and Julia eating in the kitchen. Theirs were hot meals, but Rose had prepared him a salad because she never knew exactly how long it would take him to get home – so she always claimed. He figured it was because he’d hit midlife, that period when fending away illness and weight gain became an uphill struggle.

  He showed Rose the whiteboard and gave her a look that said he wanted a quiet word.

  ‘Love, there’s a problem with the bedroom curtains. Come up with me and have a look?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I’m not a fool, Mum. If you want to talk to Dad about things I’m not supposed to hear, you don’t need to make up an excuse to leave the room.’

  Fair enough. A particularly bad day for Rose’s joints meant it took a while for her to get up the stairs, even with his help. And that she didn’t laugh when he pinched her bum on the way up.

  ‘How did your physio appointment go?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Yeah, it went fine,’ she said, sounding as if it had been anything but. She was happy to talk about her arthritis on good days, but the bad ones made her feel inept and embarrassed. He knew not to push the conversation. But she had more pressing worries, anyway.

  Once in the bedroom, she shut the door and came right out with it.

  ‘So, did you ask at work?’

  ‘No, but I searched for her in the system and checked her file. She hasn’t had any treatment at my hospital.’

  ‘Maybe she went to the doctor under a false name,’ Rose said, taking a seat on the bed, leaning slightly to one side because it was more comfortable on her hips. ‘Makes sense if it was a sexual disease. So nobody would know.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I’m not sure that’s possible. She’d have to prove her identity before a surgery would put her on its books.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened. It’s just… I mean, I can’t help but think about what happened with Dana.’

  Chris nodded, frowning slightly at the memory. Dana, while working Respiratory, had committed the cardinal sin of contacting a patient whose results she knew before the patient did. She had commented on one of his Facebook posts.

  He’d written:

  Going to get my suit tomorrow. Vegas in three sleeps, baby!

  And she’d replied:

  Don’t bother, get some pyjamas and a big book instead.

  A throwaway comment no one gave a shit about, until two days later when the guy was in pyjamas in hospital, tuberculosis confirmed, and Infection Control was probing into his nearest and dearest. A sleuth-like friend of his put two and two together, kicked up a stink, and now Dana was suspended.

  Chris sat beside Rose and took her hands in his. ‘You know I’d never do anything as reckless as that.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But if anything else comes through the door, we go to the police.’

  He gave her a hug, told her not to worry and silently prayed that there would be no more notes.

  As Chris made his way downstairs to half-heartedly eat his salad, he caught a snippet of conversation leaking through the gap in Julia’s bedroom door. Something she said stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘—kill herself.’

  He virtually kicked the door open. Julia yelped, her phone now clutched to her chest in shock.

  ‘Christ, Dad, try knock—’

  ‘Who’s killed herself? What do you know about it, Julia?’

  ‘About what?’

  He thundered across the room and snatched the mobile from her hand. She looked almost scared, but mostly annoyed.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he snapped into the phone.

  Julia snatched it back. ‘What are you doing? I’m on the phone.’ She told the person on the phone she’d call back and hung up. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You said something about someone killing herself. What was it?’

  ‘Simone. My friend. She’s coming down from uni tomorrow. Why?’

  ‘And? What’s this got to do with…’ He left it there, because he was already starting to think he’d got the wrong end of this stick.

  ‘It’s her ex. He knows she’s in town soon. He’s been on Facebook saying she better not cross paths with him when she comes down.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Calm down, Dad. What’s this about?’

  ‘Has someone killed herself?’

  ‘No. Marc said—’

  ‘Who’s Marc?’ he asked, more exasperated than afraid, now.

  ‘Simone’s ex. He reckons he’ll kill Simone’s new boyfriend if he comes down with her. He wants Simone to kill herself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s a togmuppet. Why are you so bothered?’

  He relaxed – somewhat. False alarm.

  ‘You think I should tell Simone what he’s said? She’s not on his Facebook and—’

  ‘You’ve got a good head on your shoulders,’ Chris cut in, turning to leave. ‘I know you’ll do what’s best.’

  He paused at the door.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘If I scared you, I mean.’

  Julia shrugged. ‘Whatever, it’s fine. Just don’t go morphing into the overprotective dad, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Chris said with a small smile.

  But the note was already changing him, and with someone out there watching his family, he knew his promise to Julia was one he couldn’t keep.

  On the stairs, Rose was giving him a burning look.

  ‘We can’t let this note get to us, okay?’ she said.

  Chris rubbed a hand across his brow, sighed, and nodded. Rose was always right.

  ‘Good,’ she continued. ‘It’ll be good for us to get out of the house, have some fun. You drive because my hands are playing up.’

  Rose clocked the quizzical look on Chris’s face.

  ‘How could you forget? The cinema.’

  ‘Sorry, yes, of course,’ he said. The cinema, every Monday evening. That damned note was eroding his concentration.

  She stepped towards her husband and gave him a reassuring kiss. ‘Make sure you don’t bring Eve Levine out with us. Her and her ilk are not going to ruin our evening.’

  He almost laughed. His entire day had already been torpedoed.

  Four

  The local cinema was only half a mile away, but walls of woodland sent them on a circuitous route that increased journey time. Indefinitely, as it happened, because they had to ride Herries Road South, and that was where it happened.

  Trees lined each side, cutting off the rest of the world, leaving them alone for the short drive through the dark woodland. Just them and whoever was in the car parked ahead by the side of the road. Its hazards were on, so Chris veered to the right to bypass it, edging into the opposite lane.

  No cars swung around the corner towards him, but that was where he was looking when the C-Max, hazards still flashing, leaped into the road. Right into his line. No time to avoid it.

  ‘Chris, watch out!’ Rose yelled. But too late.

  He crushed the brake pedal but had no doubt that the cinema was now a no-go. With luck, they’d drive away from this one, but this one was definitely happening.

  He was almost cut in half by his seatbelt as his car struck the other’s rear. It was all over in the next second. A soft impact, no write-off, maybe no pain in the ass of awaiting a tow truck. With the stoppage of both cars, the whole world seemed to pause.

  ‘Everyone okay?’ He put his hand on Rose’s arm and looked at Julia in the back seat.

  ‘What happened?’ Julia said, unhurt but shocked. She’d been watching her phone when the crash happened.

  ‘Idiots,’ Rose snapped, as if that explained everything.

  But Chris didn’t agree. He’d noted the grimy paintwork of the C-Max, and the dents and the old registration. And the paranoid part of him made a leap. Not the crash-for-cash scam leap, though.

  Two guys jumped out of the Ford. Big guys. With baseball bats. Not crash-for-cash, and not an act of road rage
. No matter how paranoid somebody was about confrontation, nobody kept a pair of long baseball bats sitting there in the front of the car.

  Dark road, nobody about, and two guys who’d been sitting there, no seatbelts on, bats in hand, like army guys ready to deploy the second the chopper touches down. Prepared. With an intention. Following a plan.

  ‘Oh, God. Chris, what do we do?’ Rose asked. She looked round at their daughter, and a boosted expression of shock told him Julia must be terrified.

  ‘Julia, it’s fine, don’t worry. Nor you, Rose. I’ll handle this,’ Chris said.

  When the two guys passed the back of their C-Max, they didn’t even look at the damage. That was what you did, no matter how angry. You checked out the damage in order to make a quick assessment of how much of your time and money had just burned, and maybe to decide just how much rage you were going to employ.

  Instead, the men walked past their own car and alongside Rose’s. One down the left side of the bonnet, one down the right. Rose quickly buzzed her window up, and Chris jabbed the central locking button hard enough to hurt his finger.

  Julia slid into the centre of the back seat. ‘Is this a trick to rob us or something?’ she said, throat croaky with fear.

  ‘Everything’s going to be okay,’ Rose whispered to her. She didn’t sound like she believed it herself.

  The headlights were kissing the back of the C-Max, so there wasn’t much illumination. One of the guys was heavyset, bearded and wore a cap that a fisherman grandfather might have handed down. A versatile look. With a comic book in hand, he might have seemed like the neighbourhood weirdo. But here he definitely fit the profile of a thug.

  His bat slammed down on the bonnet. It was a one-handed strike, designed to pass a message rather than cause damage. ‘Money or the bat,’ he said, very matter-of-factly. He sounded like a guy who’d done this before and had had it go his way far more often than not.

  Chris already knew it was going to go this guy’s way tonight, too.

  The guy on Rose’s side was skinnier, taller, with a shaved head and long arms like some cartoon character who’d had them stretched by lifting a too-heavy weight. He tapped the windscreen with his bat, also softly. Another message: locked doors weren’t going to save them here.

  ‘Toss your purse out,’ Chris said. Rose started to object. ‘Just do it.’

  Chris lowered both front windows, a couple of inches each, just shy of thug-arm width, and a purse and a wallet thumped to the tarmac in unison.

  Both guys bent down. Wallet and purse lifted off the ground in unison.

  Two bats tapped the windscreen. The bearded guy Chris’s side said, ‘Jewellery.’

  Rose gasped and threw her hands to her throat, as if to protect her necklace at all costs.

  ‘You’ll have to give it them, Rose.’

  ‘It’s my mother’s, Chris, I can’t just—’

  Her words were cut off by a loud prompt from the skinny guy’s bat. Two-handed this time. It hit the roof with a mighty dong. A much clearer message.

  ‘Jewellery,’ the bearded guy repeated, nice and loud. He shifted his stance and swung back his bat. His intention was clear: the windscreen was going in if more goodies didn’t quickly appear.

  Now Julia burst into tears, too. Rose’s hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t get the necklace off and resorted to trying to yank it free, although it held. Their panic hit him hard and he grabbed the door handle, knowing he had no choice but to try to reason with these men. Out there, where he could draw their focus away from his wife and only child. He grabbed the satnav from its dashboard cradle as a bargaining chip.

  ‘Rose, you’re going to have to drive away if this goes bad for me—’

  He stopped as white sliced through black far ahead. A single, powerful ball of light like a moon dropped from the sky into their small patch of forest. A headlight. Both batsmen looked round, and then looked at each other. The skinny guy pointed his bat at the windscreen.

  ‘You’re one lucky bastard.’

  Amazingly, beautifully, both men turned their backs and ran to their C-Max. Chris didn’t dare believe it was over, until it was. The C-Max leaped away and shrank ahead of them in the headlights, passed the oncoming car, turned the corner and was gone. Just like that. Like a magic trick.

  In the back, Julia hugged herself and cried, and Rose tried to calm her down. Chris’s hands throttled the steering wheel as dwindling fear cleared a path for anger.

  Those thugs had tried to rob his family. First the note, then this: two major headaches on the same day. And the thug had the nerve to call him ‘lucky’. Lucky! He was anything but.

  Worse, he couldn’t shake the words he’d so often heard Rose say.

  Bad things always come in threes.

  Five

  It soon became clear that the bright light that had been the family’s saving grace was not a car but a motorbike. It pulled up a few metres ahead, same side of the road, headlights of both vehicles creating a dazzling white sun in the space between. Beyond, the rider, a tall silhouette, climbed off.

  Rose pulled out her mobile and struggled to get her shaking hands to dial.

  The silhouette removed its helmet and, holding it, stepped into the middle of the road, out of the obsidian abyss and into the overflow from the headlights. Better lit, some of his textures appeared. A young man with a beanie cap, young-looking, in jeans and a wax jacket. There was something on the side of his face. He spent a few seconds staring at the minor damage on the front of their Kia, then approached Chris’s side. That was when Chris saw big eyes and a petite nose and noted clumped blonde hair that protruded from between the cap and the ears, and he realised his error. Not a man at all. A young woman. Maybe Julia’s age. He started to open his door.

  ‘Oh, no, you just stay indoors, please,’ she said, a hand raised to say stop. Her voice was deeper than he’d expected, a gravelly purr that reminded him of Eighties singer Bonnie Tyler.

  Chris closed the door. The woman pulled a small torch from her pocket and did a full revolution of the car, slowly, and at each side window she put the beam inside, taking turns to light up the faces of Julia and Rose.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rose almost yelled as the light stung her eyes. She had her phone to her ear.

  The woman flicked off the torch, circled around the bonnet and retook almost the exact same spot on the driver’s side of the car. A few careful feet away.

  ‘Hello, police, please,’ Rose said, and then ‘Hey!’ as Chris snatched her phone.

  ‘Don’t phone the police yet.’

  ‘Why? Chris, those bastards just took our stuff. They robbed us.’

  ‘I know, I know. But just wait a minute.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wait while I talk to this girl.’

  The girl stepped forward and knocked on Chris’s window, then moved away again. That safe distance.

  ‘So, what happened here?’ she said, suspicious. ‘Why did that other driver speed off?’

  Chris buzzed his window down a couple of inches so he could speak quietly. ‘Two men mugged us. They had bats. You scared them off. Thank you.’

  In the pause, the two seconds of silence before she replied, Chris heard something strange from the woman. A ticking sound.

  ‘Right, right. Muggers. Of course.’ She couldn’t have sounded like she believed him less. ‘Can I see your licence?’

  ‘Why?’ Rose said. ‘Chris, let’s just go.’

  The woman squeezed both wrists in a fist, one at a time, and cracked them. As if gearing up for trouble. ‘Ms, excuse me, but this road’s had its share of late-night wacky trickery. Like muggings when some poor young woman like me stops to help someone who’s claiming to have broken down or crashed. So, if you don’t mind, all of you stay right there in the car. I want a name to give the authorities if I end up having to walk home.’ She pulled out her mobile and waved it to highlight her point.

  Rose snorted derision. ‘Did you not se
e that other car race away from here? Do we look like—’

  Chris put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Rose.’

  ‘It’s not okay, Chris. I just want to go. After what we went through, I’m supposed to have this girl waste our time? And Julia’s upset. And we need to call the police.’

  Chris leaned towards Rose. ‘You made me drive, and I’ve had half a bottle of wine. If I get caught out by the police, I could lose my damn job. Let’s just go through with this and get home. Keep calm for thirty seconds and we’ll be out of here and we’ll call the police when we get in.’

  She gave him a long, unhappy look that said he’d pay for this later, but she didn’t object. He pulled his licence from a pocket in the driver’s sun visor and slapped it against the glass. The woman stepped forward to look, using her torch. Backlash off the glass lit her up and Chris saw clearly exactly what was on the side of her face.

  ‘God, that scar…’ Julia said.

  That scar ran diagonally from just below the earlobe to just beside the nose. A rugged line, sunken and pinched, like a dry riverbed, but old and not discoloured. Certainly not a surgical scar but something left to fix itself. Chris saw the woman look to her left, at Julia, and he hoped his daughter hadn’t just caused a big problem with her even bigger mouth.

  No problem. The girl smiled at Julia. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ She returned to the licence. And that grin instantly vanished, her eyes wide in surprise. Or was it fear?

  She backed off, turned away and climbed on her bike. Chris watched as the girl put her helmet on and started the bike. It moved forward. Closer.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ Rose asked.

  But Chris’s attention was fixed on the girl’s movements, her bike now parallel with his window. He dragged his gaze from her eyes and down to her hand. It was extended, and it was holding a small white envelope.