The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  He writes paranoia and delusional?

  ‘Do you know who was watching you?’

  Her breathing is quickening again.

  ‘So what did you do?’ he asks.

  ‘I knew I couldn’t go to the burger bar, never again, because he’d obviously worked out that I go there and will be watching it, waiting for me. And I knew I couldn’t go home, because he knows where I live.’

  Her eyes open and her head shoots round to face Joe. ‘He knows where I live. I’m not safe there. I think he can get in. I’m getting the locks changed but it might be too late.’

  She is still in her trance. In spite of her frantic words, her eyes have a vague, unfocused look about them.

  ‘Go on,’ Joe says. ‘Tell me what you did.’

  ‘I knew he was following me. I just ran. And when I couldn’t run any more, I carried on walking. I could feel that he was behind me, so I kept going. I think I would have walked all night. And then you rang.’

  Joe notices, although she may not have, that the vague someone has become a very specific person. A he. The hypnosis has gone better than he could have hoped, and he wants more than anything to push her further on the man she believes was following her. But there is not much of the session left, and he needs to talk to her out of the trance state. Regretfully, he brings her back.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She looks bewildered and, also, a little ashamed.

  ‘Do you remember everything we talked about?’

  She nods her head. ‘In a way, it’s a relief,’ she says, ‘to know what I did. And I can remember more now, I think. I remember putting petrol in my car. There was a man at the next pump on his phone while he filled up, and someone else told him off.’

  Her eyes drop to the flowers on the coffee table. ‘I could smell them, while I was – you know – under,’ she says. ‘It was nice. Calming.’

  The flowers, a huge bunch of tall, columned blooms, have a powerful scent. The first night after they came, Joe had put them in his bedroom. In the small room, the smell had become slightly nauseating.

  ‘Scented stocks,’ Felicity says. ‘There’s something very English about them.’

  ‘From my mother,’ Joe tells her, and wonders why he feels the need to point it out. ‘She thinks I need cheering up.’ Again, the wrong thing to say. ‘I don’t,’ he adds hurriedly. ‘She’s very protective.’

  ‘I’m sorry about our appointment,’ Felicity says. ‘I don’t know what got into me. And, of course, I don’t think they’re a waste of time.’

  ‘No apology necessary.’

  They hold eye contact for several seconds, then several more, and he thinks she is on the verge of saying something. Then her eyes fall. ‘We must be out of time,’ she says.

  ‘Would you like to talk about who you think was following you?’ he says.

  She bends to pick up her handbag but he sees the shudder all the same. ‘No. I mean, that has to be nonsense,’ she says. ‘Who would be following me?’

  There are still several minutes of the session left, but Felicity gets to her feet, pays him and leaves.

  * * *

  Joe is straightening his desk when he hears voices on the stairs. Felicity has bumped into his mother. He listens to Delilah panting her way up the last flight and then her heavy footsteps along the landing. She knocks and pushes the door open in one swift movement.

  ‘Met one of your patients on the way up,’ she says. ‘Pretty girl. Seems nice.’

  ‘You don’t know she was one of my patients,’ he replies. ‘And I have nothing to say on the matter. Tea?’

  She looks at her watch.

  ‘You can have a drink if you’ve finished work for the day and didn’t come by car.’

  ‘Tea it is,’ she grumbles.

  ‘Heard from the lab,’ she tells him, when the tea is made and they are sitting in the white armchairs. The big room in his flat doesn’t get the evening sun, but the light on the rooftops of King’s is almost better than the sunrise.

  ‘Definitely prints that aren’t yours on your knife,’ she goes on. ‘The same recent fingerprints on your fire escape, back door, window frames and throughout your flat.’

  This is not good news.

  ‘No match on the system that we can find.’

  This might be good news.

  ‘But Ezzy Sheeran’s prints aren’t on the system,’ she says. ‘She was wearing gloves when she came at you. And we found nothing on her belongings.’

  ‘Is she still presumed dead?’ Joe asks, because he knows he must.

  Delilah’s face is grim. ‘She is. But I don’t need to tell you there’s some distance between presumed dead and a body in the mortuary. She was slippery as an eel, that one.’

  ‘Can you tell anything from the prints?’ he asks. ‘I heard you can identify gender, age, history of drug use, that sort of thing.’

  Delilah sighs. ‘You’re talking about technology that won’t be in common use for years yet. I can request advance fingerprint screening but it costs an arm and a leg and I can’t see it being approved for a break-in.’

  She falls silent for a moment, thinking. ‘If I can demonstrate a link between the attack on you in April and the break-in, then I might have more of a chance. It will take a while though.’

  ‘Has Ezzy actually been seen?’ Joe asks. ‘Any remotely possible sightings?’

  Delilah shakes her head.

  ‘It can’t be her,’ he says.

  ‘No, it’s more likely to be one of the other nutters you make your living from. It could even be one of the nutters you spend most evenings of the week with and who don’t even pay you for your time. Are you seeing them tonight?’

  ‘Mum, how many times—’

  Her mug lands on the table a little too fast and tea spills over the edge. ‘I know,’ she snaps. ‘The homeless need help and there’s practically none available from the state. And the mentally ill are far more likely to harm themselves than others. I know all this, Joe. You’ve told me till I’m sick of hearing it. And I’m sure it’s all true. Until they do harm others. Until they harm you.’

  ‘Nothing happened, Mum.’

  ‘Somebody broke in here and helped themselves to one of your knives while you were sleeping. I’d call that something. I want to put a camera on the back of the building.’

  ‘OK.’

  Joe sees his mother’s surprise that he has agreed so quickly. She doesn’t know, because he won’t tell her, that his ability to sleep for more than a few fitful hours has abandoned him since the incident.

  ‘Nice flowers,’ she says, as she picks up her mug again and wrinkles her nose. ‘Powerful scent.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, too much on my mind. Thank you, they’re lovely.’

  The mug of tea makes its way back down to the table. ‘What are you talking about?’ Delilah says.

  Joe nods down at the flowers he’s just learned are called scented stocks. ‘Thank you, for the flowers,’ he repeats. ‘I’m not sure I can make that any clearer.’

  Delilah glares at the coffee table as though it has suddenly become a crime scene. In a slow, low-pitched voice she says, ‘What on Earth makes you think they’re from me? When have I ever sent you flowers?’

  ‘They were waiting by the internal front door when I got home on Monday. You and your lot were here for most of the day. There was no card, so I assumed you’d left them. To cheer me up.’

  Delilah’s face is hard as stone. ‘If I thought you needed cheering up, I’d tell you a joke. And I didn’t come here on Monday. I couldn’t get out of a meeting.’

  Joe wonders if it is possible to feel any more of a fool.

  ‘Are you telling me someone came into the house, while my frigging people were here, and left you flowers?’ Delilah gets to her feet. ‘Jesus wept, Joe.’

  She leans down, as though to lift the flowers and stops herself. ‘Did they come wrapped?’ she says. ‘Have you still got the cellophane?’
>
  ‘Kitchen bin,’ he tells her.

  She strides from the room, pulling disposable gloves from her bag. He hears her rummaging around in the kitchen, the sound of the bin lid swinging, then she is back, with the florist’s wrapping.

  ‘They’re from the flower shop on Chesterton Road.’ She pulls the flowers from the vase. ‘I’ll go round tomorrow myself. And I want a burglar alarm installing in this place.’

  ‘It’s against the terms of the lease.’

  ‘Bollocks to that.’

  Joe sighs. ‘I’ll talk to the management company.’

  ‘How did the bugger get in the building?’

  ‘The other tenants aren’t that hot on security. It’s possible someone in one of the other flats buzzed them in. And if your lot were coming and going most of the day, the front door could have been left open.’

  Delilah looks ready to rip the flowers into pieces. ‘I can’t frigging believe this. I don’t know who I’m more livid with, you or the idiots I sent to check the place out.’

  ‘Mum, they’re only flowers. I’m fine.’

  Delilah takes a deep breath. ‘Can you stay away from the homeless for a while?’

  ‘These people depend on me.’

  ‘Your kids depend on you.’

  Joe is astonished to see tears in her eyes. He had no idea his mother could cry.

  ‘I depend on you,’ she says.

  Joe takes the flowers from his mother and pulls her into his arms. They stand together for some time. He isn’t entirely sure who is comforting whom. He also knows that the entire time he is in the church hall this evening, talking to Dora, and Michael, and whoever else wanders in, his mother will be in her car, outside, watching over him.

  37

  Felicity

  Felicity returns to work after her appointment with Joe. She has several outstanding projects to close if she is to travel to South Georgia before the summer is out, and she is more productive when the office is empty. She works until nearly ten, when it is almost completely dark outside and when she suddenly becomes aware that the lights in her large, open-plan office make her very visible to anyone outside.

  You think there’s any place on Earth he won’t find you?

  She calls down to the front desk to check security are in place, but even though her call is answered immediately, she isn’t reassured. She decides to call it a night.

  She locks her car doors the second she is inside, but still her heartbeat increases each time she has to stop at lights or pedestrian crossings.

  He’s getting closer.

  Outside her house, she sits in her car for some time, watching the rear door of her property. She sees nothing to cause her alarm and so plucks up courage and leaves her car. It is a beautiful summer evening, rich with scent and bird song and she feels a moment of anger that she is too afraid to enjoy it.

  There is no one in her courtyard.

  She makes for the large kitchen window, intending to peer inside and see if the triangle of cans is still behind the door but stops, feet away. Someone has been here. Someone has drawn, in black paint, on the glass of her kitchen window. A simple, cartoon-style drawing. Two large upright ovals with a single black dot in each. Cartoon eyes. The paint is on the outside of the glass, which is better she supposes, than being on the inside, but the message is as plain as if it had been written in words. Someone is watching her.

  38

  Shane

  It is the silent hour of the night and Shane is walking. He walks swiftly, because the voices are loud inside his head tonight. They remind him about every mean and shameful thing he has ever done, every dirty thought that’s crossed his mind, everyone he’s hurt or thought about hurting. They tell him he is useless, that he will always be useless, and that everyone he meets turns away from him like toxic waste.

  He strides down Portugal Street and has to curl both hands into fists to stop himself breaking into a run, because when he runs, the panic and the rage build and the voices rise from incessant whispers to screams in his ears.

  Normally, the quiet of the city calms the voices. On most nights when he walks, the gentle sleeping noises the city makes – the distant hum of traffic, the musical chimes of the church clocks, the mew of a cat – lull the voices back to sleep. Nothing is working tonight and they keep on at him, voices that have plagued him for all of his life, and others that he hasn’t heard before. They tell him to cut. They tell him to stop wasting his time making ever more scars on the flesh of his lower back and make one final sweep across his throat. They tell him to cut the flesh of others. They tell him to kill.

  He walks on, because the saner, better part of him knows that only the walking and the silence will keep him grounded. He turns into New Park Street and makes for the car park where the homeless hang out. Seeing their sleeping faces can help, but tonight he fears it might not. The voices are telling him to hurt and the homeless lie so quietly and so helplessly. He passes the old woman in the green coat dozing on a bench. Beside her is a shopping trolley that probably contains everything she owns.

  A sound startles him. A harsh discordant humming. An image leaps into his head: that of a giant insect. He turns, and the insect is there, coming straight at him, low-flying, huge, humanoid in shape. Shane cries out in horror. His mind has finally parted company with sanity.

  The insect is a girl on roller skates. She hurtles towards him, the wheels of her skates screaming over the rough tarmac of the road. At the last moment she swerves, avoiding him, hissing in his face. He catches a glimpse of a face, young but twisted with anger, and then she is gone. She skates like a professional. The bumps and holes in the road make no difference to her. She turns a corner and vanishes from sight.

  The voices, shocked into silence by the girl, start up again. They are loud, insistent. Shane pulls his knife out and lifts his sweatshirt. He reaches up and back. The blade makes contact with his skin.

  A siren sounds loud through the night and in the reflections of a nearby window, he sees the blue flashing lights. The car is almost on top of him.

  Shane drops the knife and flees.

  39

  Felicity

  Felicity is being pinned, face down. She cannot see the burning end of the cigarette, but she can smell it.

  ‘No, please don’t.’

  A searing pain tears into the soft flesh of her left buttock.

  ‘No, please. I’ll do anything. Just stop.’

  She is turned on the bed, and then the burning is replaced by a different pain, every bit as bad and when she opens her eyes, the face above her in the darkness has handsome, clean lines and golden hair.

  She starts awake in the dark of her own bedroom and feels a cold breeze on her face. Her bedroom door is open and she knows she never leaves it like that. She cannot sleep with a bedroom door open.

  Switching on the light, she gets up, as a church clock somewhere strikes the quarter-hour. The chill in her house increases as she steps into the hallway, and a door slams shut. She walks towards the kitchen, even though she knows she locked and bolted the back door before she went to bed. No one can have entered her house.

  She moves down the hallway in a state of calm that feels beyond despair. She pushes open the kitchen door and is not remotely surprised to see the back door is wide open.

  When she has checked her house from top to bottom, even the loft; when she has locked and bolted the doors and windows, she goes back to her bedroom and turns on every available light. She pulls off the T-shirt she sleeps in and stands naked with her back to the full-length mirror. Using a hand mirror, she angles it until she can see the cluster of burn scars around the creases where her buttocks meet the top of her thighs.

  Not a dream then. A memory.

  40

  Joe

  ‘It’ll have to be quick, Mum. I’ve a patient on the way up.’

  ‘We’ve made some progress,’ Delilah says. ‘It might be good news.’

  ‘Always up for that,’ Joe r
eplies.

  ‘Well, first up, I went to the Cambridge Flower Shop, where your secret admirer bought your floral tribute. Turns out she, or he, didn’t buy them. A bunch was stolen from the buckets outside the shop early on Monday morning. The owner was pretty pissed off about it. I think she thought I’d nicked them myself when I walked in with them.’

  ‘Is this the good news?’ Joe asks.

  ‘Just being thorough. So, that was a dead end. But then, last night, a patrol car pursued a white male down New Park Street. They only caught glimpses of him but he seemed to fit the description of this Shane we’ve been trying to track down. He got away, but he left a knife behind, and the fingerprints on it match those found in your flat.’

  ‘And this is good news?’ Joe is teasing. He knows exactly why this is good news. Fucking hell, it’s good news.

  ‘Well, all things are relative. If this guy Shane has been stalking you, we know it’s not that roller-skating psycho. We can breathe more easily on that one at least.’

  ‘We can.’ Joe feels his whole body relax. He starts to laugh. The relief is overwhelming.

  ‘But he’s still the prime suspect in a murder, Joe. Really not someone you want in your flat at night. Don’t suppose you can account for that?’

  Joe waits for the fear to come back. It doesn’t. A disturbed homeless man called Shane. Bad enough, of course. But compared to what it could have been …

  ‘I get waylaid a lot,’ he says. ‘Some of these people are very wary of approaching me in anything like an official capacity. Maybe he just wanted to talk.’

  He hears his mother let out a long, deliberate breath.

  ‘So did Shane leave me the flowers?’ he asks.

  ‘No prints other than yours and the florist’s on the cellophane wrapping, but probably. Joe, I’m not kidding. You need to watch yourself until we find him.’