Tightrope

by Marnie Riches

  Four seconds : she shut the filing cabinet.

  Three seconds : she darted to the window.

  Two seconds : the handle turned and Angie was faced with a choice – to hide or to attempt escape.

  The door opened and Jerry walked in.

  CHAPTER 7

  Bev

  Hello Cat

  My, how lovely it is to speak to someone so enthused about science and engineering. Thanks for your kind words. You’re clearly a woman of taste! Ha. Are you a voter in my Cheshire seat? I hold a surgery where I can meet constituents face-to-face.

  Regards

  Jerry

  Bev read the LinkedIn message again, trying to decide if there was an undertone of flirtation in Jerry Fitzwilliam’s words or not. He had taken less than thirty minutes to come back to her. Was that normal for a busy shadow cabinet minister whose days ought to be diarised to the nines, from waking to sleeping? Thirty minutes. With a prompt for further contact, though he hadn’t studied her fake LinkedIn profile carefully enough to read that the fictitious Belfry Automotive Engineers Ltd was in the Midlands.

  ‘Have you got something to share with the group, Beverley?’ Mo asked.

  Her shrink was sitting at the head of their circle in his flowery armchair ; a quizzical smile on his face.

  Shit. Why the hell had she checked her phone during a session? Her compatriots looked at her expectantly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m waiting for an important text. Work. You know?’

  In a safe space where honesty ruled supreme and everyone was supposed to pay attention to the person speaking, out of respect, her excuse rang with insincerity. Big Debbie, who had been describing how she’d been unable to make an important doctor’s appointment because she kept getting her home security ritual wrong, glared at her.

  ‘What makes you think your obsessive collecting bullshit is more important than my problems?’ she said, sitting bolt upright in a chair that looked uncomfortably too small for her. Folding her meaty arms.

  The rest of the group followed suit, one by one, in a Mexican wave of uptight body language. All except her unlikely friend, Doc, who slouched with his arms hanging by his sides, as usual. He wore a nonchalant smirk on his face. Rolling his eyes at Big Debbie, who was easy to insult at the best of times.

  ‘Put the phone away please, Beverley,’ Mo said. ‘I think you owe Debbie an apology.’

  Bev slid the phone into the pocket of her hoodie. Wishing she were anywhere at that moment but in a health-centre meeting room that smelled of cheap floral disinfectant . . . or was it the sickly-sweet stink of Mo’s psychiatric goodwill wafting off his trim little body?

  She felt the phone vibrate twice. Another LinkedIn notification. Had Jerry Fitzwilliam followed up his first response with a prompt? Should she play hard to get?

  ‘Now, Beverley.’ Mo leaned forwards and smiled. Hands on his knees. ‘You seem preoccupied this week. Do you want to share what’s on your mind with the group?’

  She realised she needed to give him something. Mo knew her too well.

  All eyes were on her. Gordon, the Klepto, who seemingly never washed. Neil, the gym addict, who looked like the picture of health but whose continual twitching said his mental well-being was precarious at best. Wanda, the compulsive eater, who dieted constantly and never lost weight thanks to the heavy bag of snacks she carted around in the secret compartment of her handbag. The new guy whose name she couldn’t remember, whose health anxiety saw him knock back thirty different vitamin supplements per day. Big Debbie, with her repetitive door-slamming and repeated setting and unsetting of her alarm. Sam, the clean-freak. Doc, the tech nerd with a similar collecting compulsion to hers and her only real ally in the group. None of the others had any idea how the connection between her and Doc had grown outside their therapy setting, morphing into something akin to a business partnership. His skills were an invaluable resource to have at her disposal in her new career as a PI.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I bought another origami kit.’ Bev examined her nails and blushed, though she knew this was only half of it. She felt a twinge in her groin when she privately considered the other addiction which she hadn’t revealed.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t!’ Gordon said. ‘And after all that guilt-tripping you laid on me last session.’

  She stared blankly into the serial shoplifter’s doughy face and feigned contrition. ‘I know. I’m really sorry for that. I don’t know what came over me.’ Flashbacks to the skinny man with the giant cock who had come over her in a rather different sense of the word. She’d sneaked him from the local nightclub back down to her basement flat a few nights earlier. Remembering the conquest, her cheeks felt like they were being superheated on the inside, flashing red to alert the therapy group to her lies. ‘It’s been a really tough week. I was in a car crash.’ That would do the trick.

  The flurry of concerned voices came all at once. Was she OK? Was it her fault? Did the car get totalled?

  ‘My Polo might get written off,’ she said. Caught Doc’s eye but focused on Big Debbie to deflect attention. ‘Some silly cow in a Range Rover just came out of nowhere.’ She rubbed her left shoulder and grimaced, conscious that her phone was pinging and buzzing away in her pocket. ‘I’ve got rotten whiplash.’

  But Mo wasn’t that easily fobbed off. ‘So you consoled yourself by indulging in the very habit you’d sworn off?’ He sighed. ‘Oh, Bev. How long had it been since your last origami purchase? Three months?’

  Bev chewed the inside of her cheek, already bored by the cross-examination and wanting to check her phone. ‘Three months, two weeks and five days. It was a rare kit.’

  ‘How did you feel afterwards?’

  ‘Dissatisfied. Dirty. Like a failure.’ That much, at least, was the truth. It had felt the same after skinny, clubbing wang-man. She didn’t need Dr Mo to tell her why she did these crazy things, of course. Everybody needed a panacea to life’s miserable challenges and disappointments, didn’t they? It was just that some panaceas were more socially acceptable and practically workable than others. And thanks to Rob’s spiteful flapping tongue and his solicitor’s £300 per hour legal vitriol, the judge had declared that her particular addictions were utterly unacceptable and impractical, given her aspirations for the future. Without attending the court-ordered weekly therapy to quash her compulsive behaviour and to demonstrate her fitness as a responsible adult, Bev’s dream of righting all the wrongs was just that – a flight of fancy. Bastards, the lot of them, she mused.

  ‘Jesus, Bev,’ Doc said. ‘Stop beating yourself up. You’re only human. Next time, just give one of us a call.’

  She could see him checking the time on the clock behind her. He too had itchy feet today.

  The hour was up. Grabbing her parka, Bev hung back near the toilets, waiting for Doc to fall into step with her. What on earth was he doing? Talking to Mo, wearing his most earnest expression. Nodding.

  Itching to know if Jerry Fitzwilliam had pinged her again, she thumbed through her notifications. There it was :

  Tell me more about yourself then, Cat. How did a woman like you get into the automotive industry? Judging by that photo, you certainly don’t look the type to spend your day around grease monkeys!

  He’s flirting, Bev thought. Not overtly, but it’s there. Either he’s a fanny merchant and just trying to be charming, or else he’s got an eyeful of my tits in that old photo, taken in flattering light! She knew she used to scrub up well enough before the divorce, but she wasn’t labouring under any illusion that she was some long-limbed beauty. She had legs like bananas and a chest that was far too big for anything but porn, which she mainly hid beneath baggy jumpers. Her subtle catfishing definitely had him on the hook, though. Flattery. Curiosity. Where should she go from here? She didn’t have anything like enough evidence for Angie yet.

  ‘Wanna go for a coffee then?’ Doc asked, suddenly at her side, peering over her shoulder in a bid to read the phone’s sc
reen. He flicked his lank fringe out of his eye. Shoved his bony hands deep into the pockets of stonewashed jeans that were yellowing at the knee. ‘You can tell me what all that crap was about in there.’

  Bev hastily put her phone away. ‘Shut up, will you? Mo will hear.’ She dragged him into the car park, bundling him past the parked vehicles and down towards a row of run-down shops that were a precursor to Sale’s tiny high street. They found a cramped café near the Waterside, opposite the town hall. Inside, it smelled of frying sausages – the evidence of a brisk breakfast trade that was only just petering out thanks to a late influx of hungry builders.

  With a mug of strong tea steaming before her on the smeary table, Bev told Doc about her latest job.

  ‘I need to get access to his emails. Bank statements, texts, whatever I can dig up.’

  He shook his head ; blond eyebrows arched in disbelief above heavy-lidded eyes with livid purple shadows beneath, attesting to late nights spent staring at a screen. ‘Are you mental?’

  ‘We’re both mental, Doc. But that’s beside the point. Come on. When I get paid, there’s a wad of cash with your name on it.’

  ‘You want me to get up in the shadow Science Minister’s shit? No fucking way. I bet the secret service has beaten me to it, anyway. Are you telling me they don’t keep tabs on high profile MPs? Especially the opposition.’ He gripped the tabletop and rocked back on the chair.

  Bev looked down at his grubby fingernails, inwardly wincing. She was partial to strong hands. Doc’s never did anything more action-packed than hammering a games console or rattling across a keyboard as he surfed the Dark Net for its sordid secrets. ‘Come on, for Christ’s sake!’ she said. She downed her tea. Slammed the cup onto the table. ‘This is what you’re brilliant at. This is what we’re brilliant at. Details. Pernickety little things that normal people overlook.’

  ‘What, like the details of a public figure’s finances? Can’t you go through his bins like a normal PI?’

  ‘Don’t be facetious.’ Bev glanced over at the cakes displayed in a glass cabinet. Remembered she was already having to undo the top button of her jeans and turned away. ‘Everything’s online now, and a man like Jerry Fitzwilliam is hardly going to cob his highly confidential mail into the paper recycling bin, is he?’ As Doc’s hand swooped down to retrieve his espresso, she snatched it up. Clammy and weak. Her mother had called hands like his, ‘wet kippers’. But she clung on nevertheless. ‘This is what you do for a living, Doc, and you’re damned good at it. You wanna proper job? Go ahead. See if some bank or law firm in Spinningfields will take you on as their IT manager.’ She let go of his hand. ‘I’m sure they’d happily turn a blind eye to your record.’

  Doc rocked back on his chair, looking up at the ceiling so that his Adam’s apple protruded as though he’d swallowed a small wireless mouse. ‘You’re a piece of work. Do you know that?’

  ‘I wasn’t the one caught running a phishing scam—’

  ‘I was fresh out of college. I was wet behind the ears!’

  ‘Oh. And the small matter of the weed farm in your roof void? I bet the jury loved you when you appeared before the judge. Long hair and shitty trainers, trying to look respectable by wearing your dad’s oversized tweed suit. Ha!’ Was he weakening? Bev couldn’t be sure if her tactics would draw him in or push him away.

  Biting his lower lip, Doc’s nostrils flared. The fine blue veins were more visible than usual beneath the almost translucent white skin on his temples. He was agitated. ‘Gen-pop doesn’t care much for Oxford grads,’ he said. ‘Especially not computer-science geeks. I was dead in the water before I even got in the dock. It was intellectual discrimination that got me a year inside. If I’d been a hard-working electrician with a sob story, I’d have got away with it.’

  Bev laughed. She screwed up her napkin and threw it playfully at his Iron Maiden Aces High T-shirt, hitting the sinister zombie icon, Eddie, squarely between his gleaming satanic eyes. ‘Give over with the “year inside” crap, you melodramatic dick! You got community service. What did they have you doing? Picking up litter from motorway sidings.’

  Doc drained his espresso and stared dolefully into his empty cup. ‘I’ve still got a record, though.’

  Now, she had him. ‘Precisely! So, how the hell can you turn me down, when a job like this is a walk in the park for you? It’s easy money. It’s no different from what you did for me last time.’

  ‘The guy was a curtain and blind salesman, Bev. Not a top politician.’

  Bev’s phone buzzed twice. She withdrew it and gasped when she saw there was yet another message from Jerry Fitzwilliam.

  Hey, Cat. If you’re a floating voter, how about I win you over with a drink and we can discuss your campaign tactics?

  She shared the thread with Doc. ‘This guy’s a sleaze and a wife beater.’ She googled a photo of her target in all his pink-faced, chalk-stripe-suited glory. ‘I know you can’t stand prats like this.’

  ‘College was full of them. Rugger-buggers from public school. Big thick, arrogant twats.’

  Bev found a photo of Angie on Facebook. ‘Think of those shovels Jerry Fitzwilliam calls hands wrapped around his Mrs’s skinny little gullet. Because that’s the bullying arsehole I’m dealing with, here.’

  Doc was gnawing at his lip again. Narrowed eyes locked onto the phone’s screen.

  ‘Come on! Think of it as earning karma points. He needs taking down and we’re the team to do it.’ She sensed success, only a final slurp of tea away. ‘I’m nothing without a good IT man.’

  ‘I’ll hack his cloud first,’ Doc said. ‘Let’s take it from there.’

  CHAPTER 8

  The Wolf

  The Wolf is standing on the other side of the road, observing through the large window of the café how she is talking to her lanky idiot friend. Is she fucking him? He looks like a heavy metal throwback from the 1980s. They are deep in discussion about something or other, but there is no erotic promise or chemistry apparent in their body language. Good.

  How dearly he would like to know what plans they are hatching, or what confidences they are sharing, in that café. Perhaps he could walk straight in and sit behind them, covering his face with a menu, should she look his way. Of late, he has been fantasising a great deal about getting closer to her. If he’s to make her pay and get away with it, it will be essential to know the finer details of her life.

  Being a busy man makes it difficult to track someone like Bev Saunders. She darts to and fro in the world like a dragonfly – fragile, mysterious and difficult to catch but a glimpse of her true colours at any one time. He has seen her in that basement flat, coming and going at unpredictable times of the day and night. These days, she most often wears a harried, grey-faced expression, looking like a sack of potatoes in that androgynous scruffy garb she insists on wearing. She’s put on weight. Occasionally, though, she is dressed to kill, as she used to be. He knows where she’s going with all that make-up and those heels on. The Wolf remembers the glow of her porcelain-perfect skin beneath the harsh lights of the city’s fleshpots. He imagines the pain she still inflicts on other hapless men who only want to please her but whom she dismisses as though they were shit on her spike-heeled shoe. He feels their exquisite agony. This bitch needs to be punished and The Wolf is the man to do it. He is the bringer of death and hellfire. He is the tamer of wanton women who don’t know their place. Again he remembers the Russian and smiles.

  Suddenly, the greasy-haired boyfriend stands and slings a rucksack on his back. They are emerging from the café together in the drizzle. Both pull the hoods of their anoraks up. His, over his tracts of mousy hair. Hers, over her thick, dark braid. They look like young people with old faces. He’s downwind of them, but their chatter is still swallowed by the swish of cars’ tyres over the wet asphalt. Though they leave the café together, they then go their separate ways, with Bev walking towards Waterside multi-storey car park and the man disappearing in the direction of the tram.

&
nbsp; The urge to know the nature of their relationship bites deep. He’d like to spend more time observing her and deciding how best to have his revenge for what she’s done. But the only windows of opportunity he has in which he can indulge in voyeurism like this are the occasional snatched half hours in between meetings, appointments and family commitments. He makes a mental note to find a way of eavesdropping on her conversations. Perhaps if he places a bug in her car, he’ll be able listen in on the phone calls she’ll inevitably have during those lengthy stakeouts that are part of her new job. It would be less risky than installing a camera in her home, though he’s giving that thought too.

  As the rocker boyfriend disappears from view, he follows Bev towards her car. She pays for her parking, validating a ticket. He is careful to hang back behind a ragged privet bush while she does this, lighting a cigarette and pretending to check his phone. Up the ramp she goes. He moves off again, dogging her every step some fifty paces behind. What would she say if she turns around and discovers him? How long would it take him to squeeze the life out of her? She’s no physical match for him but she’s a grown woman – certainly able to put up more of a fight than the Russian whore.

  Aware that he’s becoming aroused, The Wolf lengthens his stride. She’s fumbling in her bag, now. Still not aware of his presence. The distance between them is shortening and he realises that he can take her now. There is nobody else in the car park – certainly not on this deserted third floor. Only row after row of parked cars which he can duck behind. He is stalking his prey.

  He reaches out. She is mere feet away.

  CHAPTER 9

  Boo

  ‘Go on, Boo. Have a go. You’ll love it,’ Antonia said, collapsing backwards against the wall and sliding down until she was sitting on the floor, legs splayed at awkward angles. She held her hand in front of her face and started to laugh uncontrollably. Showed her palm to Boo as though a thing of wonder were visible. Then pulled what appeared to be a small Post-it note or a large stamp from her pocket. There were tiny, brightly coloured cartoons on it. A clown with googly eyes.