The bell rang again, and then the letterbox cover flapped open, and a woman’s voice called: ‘Hello . . . is anyone home? Holly, if you’re there, can you open the door, hon? It’s Suzie from across the road. I need your help.’
Intrigued, Holly got up and tiptoed out into the icy hallway. She peeped through the spyhole and quickly unlocked the door when she saw Suzie standing on the other side wearing a short dressing gown and slippers.
‘What’s up?’ she asked, rubbing her eyes as she peered out at her.
‘Thank God you’re still up,’ Suzie said, glancing nervously round at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. ‘Can I come in for a minute?’
‘I’m not really supposed to answer the door,’ Holly said. ‘My mum—’
‘Is she here?’
‘No, she’s at work.’
‘Well, I won’t tell if you don’t,’ Suzie said. Sighing when Holly still didn’t open up, she said ‘Please, hon. I can’t go home till I’m sure Rob’s not there. I don’t know if you saw what happened earlier, but he put me in hospital and I’ve just had to walk back like this.’ She held out her arms and looked down at herself in disgust. ‘Some knob-heads chucked milkshake at me, and then I nearly got mugged in the alley. I wouldn’t have bothered you, but you’re the only friend I’ve got round here.’
Flattered to hear that the woman considered her a friend, given that they had only spoken once, Holly said, ‘What can I do?’
‘I need to use your phone,’ Suzie said. ‘I left mine at home when they took me to hospital, and I need to check if Rob’s there. It’ll only take a minute, I promise.’
Holly knew her mum would go mad if she found out that a stranger had been in the flat. But Suzie wasn’t a stranger to her, and she couldn’t see any harm in letting her come inside for a minute or two.
‘You’re an angel,’ Suzie said, stepping into the hallway when Holly opened the door wider. ‘Bloody hell, that’s loud.’ She glanced up at the ceiling.
‘The guy upstairs is always having parties,’ Holly told her. ‘It’ll be like this till three or four.’
‘Rather you than me,’ Suzie said. Then, shivering, she asked, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got something warm I can put on, have you? I’m getting goosebumps on my goosebumps here.’
‘I’ll have a look,’ Holly said, showing her into the living room before rushing back to her bedroom.
Suzie was at the window, peering over at her house, when Holly came back with the phone, a jumper and a pair of jogging bottoms.
‘I didn’t realize you had such a good view of my place from up here,’ she said. ‘I bet you can see straight into my lounge and bedroom when the blinds are open.’
Sure now that she had been spotted at the window on the night of the fight, and – worse – that Suzie probably thought she’d been watching them in bed as well, Holly blushed as she handed the items over.
‘You OK?’ Suzie gave her a questioning look. ‘You look a bit flushed.’
‘Just hot,’ Holly lied, perching on the sofa and slotting her hands between her knees.
‘Lucky you, I’m bloody freezing,’ Suzie said, quickly pulling the jogging bottoms and jumper on before flopping down beside her. ‘Right, let’s see where he’s at – if I can remember my number.’
‘I thought you wanted to text Rob?’ Holly said.
‘It needs to go to my phone,’ Suzie said, already typing out the message. ‘That’s what kicked him off earlier,’ she explained when she glanced at Holly and saw the confusion in her eyes. ‘He went through my phone and found some old messages from a guy I was seeing before him. I told him it was a girlfriend messing about, but he didn’t believe me, and he was threatening to ring the number to see who it was when the police turned up. If he sees this message and tries to ring back on this number, I’ll know he’s definitely there, and I’ll call the police and let them deal with him.’
‘Oh, right,’ Holly murmured, wishing that she hadn’t agreed to let Suzie use her phone now that she knew the plan. The look Rob had given her outside Suzie’s the other day had terrified her, and she already knew he was violent. What if he decided to punish her for helping Suzie to trap him?
‘What d’you think of this?’ Suzie said when she’d finished. ‘Hey sexy, are we still on for tonight? Let me know when it’s safe to come round. Kiss kiss. Doesn’t sound too girly, does it?’
Holly shook her head and twisted her fingers together nervously when Suzie pressed Send.
Rob was standing at Suzie’s bedroom window, gazing out along the road through the partially open blinds and wondering where the hell she’d got to.
He’d hidden out at his mum’s house after doing a runner earlier, and had spent the day flicking through the news channels, waiting for his mugshot to pop up and to hear that he was wanted for murder. As the day dragged into night with no mention of him or Suzie he’d begun to relax, thinking that maybe he hadn’t killed her, after all. A call to the local hospital pretending to be her brother had confirmed his theory, and he’d been massively relieved to hear that she was waiting to be seen and didn’t appear to be in a serious condition.
That was when he’d decided to come back to the house: to wait for her and see if they could put this latest tiff behind them. He’d always talked her round in the past, so he was sure he could do it again. Although, by rights, it was her who ought to be doing the grovelling, since she was the one who’d cheated.
Those messages had made him see red, and he’d wanted to fuck Suzie up so badly she wouldn’t dare look at another man again. He hadn’t meant to kill her, though, and the realization that he’d almost done exactly that had rapidly brought him to his senses. After thinking it over, he had decided to forgive her – as long as she came clean and told him who JC was. All he needed was a name and address, so he could pay the cunt a visit, then he and Suzie could put this behind them and get on with their lives.
Confident that everything would be fine – and impatient to see her, because make-up sex with Suzie was the best sex ever – Rob had placed another call to the hospital after arriving at the house. Happy to hear that she’d discharged herself by then, he had carried the bottle of whisky and box of chocolates he’d nicked from his mum’s up to the bedroom. Scotch didn’t really agree with him, but it was all his mum ever drank, and he didn’t have enough money to buy anything else, so it would have to do.
Setting the scene for their romantic reunion, he had lit some of Suzie’s scented candles and placed them around the bedroom, and then he’d lined up a playlist of her favourite R & B tracks to get her in the mood. But an hour had passed since he’d heard she was on her way home, and she wasn’t back yet.
On his third glass of whisky now, and getting a headache from the cloying scent of patchouli, he snatched Suzie’s phone off the bedside table when it pinged. An ice-cold rage surged through his veins when he read the message on the screen. So those other messages had been old ones, had they? The lying fucking bitch! She was obviously still screwing the cunt and had promised to give him the all-clear when Rob had been arrested and it was safe to come round. Well, he’d get the all-clear, all right. But the sneaky prick was in for a shock if he thought his bit on the side was the one who’d be waiting for him when he got here.
‘What did I tell you?’ Suzie said when a reply to her message appeared on Holly’s phone screen. ‘Hey, baby,’ she read it out with a sneer. ‘All clear, come now. Can’t wait to see you. Kiss kiss.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Holly’s brow puckered in confusion. ‘How does he know it’s you?’
‘He doesn’t. He thinks it’s my secret lover. So he’s playing smart, pretending to be me to lure the man round to the house.’
‘Why?’
‘So he can kick the shit out of him and teach us both a lesson,’ Suzie muttered, tapping 999 into the phone. ‘Police, please . . . Hi, yeah, my ex is on the run for attacking me earlier and I’ve just come home from hospital and found him in my house . . . N
o, I’m at a friend’s across the road, but he’s definitely there . . . Because I left my phone at home, and when I sent a message to it he replied pretending to be me . . . Look, I know it sounds weird, but I haven’t got time to explain. I saw him at my bedroom window a minute ago, and he’s got a gun . . .’
Eyes wide with fear when Suzie had given her details to the operator and ended the call, Holly said, ‘Has he really got a gun?’
‘No, course not,’ Suzie said, getting up to peek out of the window again. ‘But if they think he has, they won’t mess about. Now shush with the questions and let me watch.’
Terrified that Rob was going to come after her when he found out that she’d helped Suzie to set him up, Holly wished that she’d followed her mum’s instructions and ignored the door.
As Suzie had predicted, the police didn’t waste any time responding to her call. Two dark vans arrived a short time later, minus the usual lights and sirens, and parked around the corner, out of sight of the house but in view of the flats. Several officers in riot gear piled out, and some went round the back while the others crept past the fences of the other houses to approach Suzie’s from the front.
‘Armed police!’ one of them yelled when they were in position. ‘Come out with your hands where we can see them!’
Suzie and Holly both jumped when a battering ram was slammed into the door. Two booms and it flew open, then the officers rushed inside. Lights went on all over the house and dark figures moved stealthily through the rooms.
‘Got him!’ someone called out. ‘Front bedroom! Unarmed . . . Unarmed!’
More shouts followed, all indecipherable, and Holly chewed on her knuckles as she waited in dread for the sound of a gunshot. Several anxious minutes passed before two police officers appeared, manhandling a handcuffed Rob through the hallway and out onto the path.
‘I haven’t done anything!’ he was protesting. ‘She’s lying about the gun – just like she lied about me attacking her earlier. She likes it rough; that’s how she gets her kicks. But I never meant to hurt her, I swear! It was just a stupid sex game that went too far!’
‘Lying bastard,’ Suzie spluttered. ‘We weren’t having sex; he’d gone off his head ’cos of those messages!’
Holly’s phone started ringing on the coffee table and they both dropped to their haunches when the glow of the screen lit up the room behind them. Crawling over to shut it off, Holly accidentally accepted the call instead, and she glanced at Suzie when a woman’s voice drifted out, saying: ‘Ms Clifton, it’s Janet Moore – the police operator you spoke to earlier. If you’re there, can you pick up, please?’
Suzie nodded and Holly slid the phone over to her.
‘Hello?’ Suzie whispered, as if scared that Rob might hear her, despite the fact he was still loudly protesting his innocence outside. ‘I know, I’m watching them now . . . Oh, really? Sorry, I honestly thought I saw one . . . Yep . . . No, that’s fine. Thank you.’
‘What did she say?’ Holly asked when Suzie ended the call.
‘They didn’t find the gun, so they’re going to search the house,’ Suzie said. ‘And they want to talk to me.’
‘They won’t come here, will they?’ Holly asked, worried that one of the neighbours might see them and mention it to her mum.
‘I didn’t tell them where I was, so they couldn’t even if they wanted to,’ Suzie said, looking out of the window in time to see Rob being bundled into the back of a police van. Tutting when loud bangs came from inside, she said, ‘I bet the idiot’s been on the whisky. He always goes crazy when he drinks that shit.’
The bangs faded as the van pulled away, and Suzie released a tense breath before turning to Holly.
‘Right, I’d best go and face the music. Thanks for helping me out, hon; I really appreciate it. And thanks for the loan of the clothes. I’ll leave them in a bag on top of my bin so you can pick them up on your way to school. If I don’t get arrested for wasting police time,’ she added with a grimace.
Hoping that Suzie wouldn’t get into trouble, but relieved that it was over, Holly showed her out – praying, as she closed the door behind her, that the woman would keep her out of whatever came next.
9
As promised, Suzie had left Holly’s jumper and jogging bottoms in a plastic bag on top of her bin the following morning. Hoping that no one spotted her taking them and marked her down as a bin-rat, like the junkies from the next block who rooted through everyone’s rubbish before the communal bins were emptied on Wednesdays, Holly rushed up the path and grabbed the bag. A sweet floral scent drifted up to her when she opened it and she was embarrassed when she realized that Suzie must have washed the clothes. She’d worn them a couple of times since she’d last done the laundry and hadn’t thought to check if they were dirty before handing them over.
Sure that Suzie must think she was a tramp, she was stuffing the clothes into her schoolbag when someone said, ‘Morning,’ and she blushed when she looked up and saw her neighbour, Gee, crossing the road. He’d spoken in passing, but the mere fact that he’d acknowledged her made her feel giddy, and she couldn’t stop grinning as she made her way to school.
Holly didn’t see Suzie again that week, but she was too busy revising and making plans with Bex to worry about her. As she’d suspected might happen, as soon as Bex heard that their celebrity crush’s double lived in Holly’s block she had offered to meet her on the estate that weekend, instead of making Holly walk the two miles to the park behind her house where they usually met.
It would only be the second time Bex had deigned to visit the estate in the entire time she and Holly had been friends, and her refusal to meet halfway pissed Holly off. But she pushed her irritation aside, happy that Bex was coming – even if it had taken a boy to make it happen – and they’d be able to hang out and have a laugh without Julie Gordon sticking her beak in.
Up bright and early on Saturday morning, Holly raced through the shopping, the laundry, the dusting and vacuuming before heading outside to wait for Bex. She took a seat on one of the benches that were scattered around the estate – all facing the road, as if the residents had nothing better to do than sit and watch traffic. A few minutes later, three lads walked round the corner, and her stomach sank when one of them clocked her and started heading in her direction.
‘Yo . . .’ He stopped in front of her. ‘What you got?’
‘Piss off,’ Holly said, determined not to show fear, but silently praying that an adult somewhere was watching and would chase them off.
‘Y’what?’ He scowled. ‘You lookin’ for a slap?’
‘Leave her, man,’ one of the others said, nodding down at her feet. ‘She ain’t got nowt. Check the state of them.’
Embarrassed when they all looked down at her grubby, unbranded trainers, Holly self-consciously pulled her feet under the bench.
‘Fuck me, d’ya nick them off a tramp, or what?’ the first lad jeered. ‘Here, go buy yourself a new pair.’ He flicked a coin at her. ‘But don’t go spending your change all at once, eh?’
Laughing, he and his mates walked away, and Holly waited until they’d gone before scooping the coin up off the floor. Pleased to see that it was a pound and not the penny she’d expected, she stuffed it into her pocket and took out her phone to find out where Bex was. Before she had the chance to call her, she heard her name being called, and muttered, ‘Great!’ when she looked round and saw Bex strolling towards her arm in arm with Julie. Even from a distance she could see they were both plastered in make-up, and they were dressed almost identically in white skinny jeans, silver puffa jackets, and short pink tops that showed off their fake-tanned bellies.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ Bex said, flopping down on the bench when they reached her. ‘This one took forever getting ready.’
‘Hey, even perfection needs maintenance,’ Julie quipped, flicking her white-blond hair extensions back over her shoulder. Then, frowning, she peered down at Holly, and said, ‘Wow, babes, you look really p
ale. You haven’t caught that stomach bug that’s been going round, have you?’
‘Why are you here?’ Holly asked, seeing right through her show of concern.
‘I asked her to come,’ Bex said. ‘I wasn’t gonna come on my own and get raped or mugged, was I?’
‘I could have met you somewhere,’ Holly said, grudgingly shifting over when Julie plonked herself on the other side of Bex.
‘Told you she’d moan.’ Julie rolled her eyes.
‘I’m not moaning,’ Holly protested. ‘I’m just saying I could have met her so she wouldn’t have had to walk here on her own.’
‘So where is he, then?’ Bex changed the subject. ‘I haven’t dragged myself all the way over here for nothing.’
‘He’s probably still sleeping,’ Holly said. ‘His party went on till late last night.’
‘Well, he’d better get up soon,’ Julie grumbled, taking a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket. ‘I’m not sitting out here all day freezing my tits off.’
‘No one asked you to come,’ Holly muttered.
‘I did,’ Bex said, taking a cigarette from Julie and leaning forward to get a light.
‘You can’t do that here,’ Holly said. ‘My mum’ll stop me hanging round with you if she sees you smoking.’
‘God, how old are you?’ Julie sneered. ‘You sound about three.’
‘I’m fifteen, same as you,’ Holly replied tartly. ‘And I don’t see why I should get into trouble ’cos you can’t wait till you get home.’
‘I’m allowed to smoke, actually, ’cos my ’rents are cool,’ Julie said, defiantly lighting up and blowing the smoke in Holly’s direction.
‘You’re such a liar,’ Holly sniped, wafting it away.
‘All right, pack it in you two,’ Bex said, sliding the unlit cigarette into her pocket. ‘I’ll save mine for later if it’s gonna cause trouble.’
Witness Page 5
