‘Right then, Amelie. Daddy is going now. I hope you like living in the supermarket but I should warn you it gets very cold at night here. And they switch off the lights.’
He turns his back and pushes his trolley towards the tills, all the time watching the scene in the window reflection.
Amelie stops screaming almost immediately but stays on the floor. After a little while she lifts her head to check his progress. The gran stands guard. One more minute and Amelie gets up, looking utterly bemused. Then a tad worried. As Matthew places item after item on the rolling belt, humming a little tune, Amelie starts to walk slowly along the aisle. He glances again at the window reflection, that familiar beat of surprise at how much taller he is than everyone else in the queue, but he does not turn round.
Very soon he feels his daughter’s body pressed against his left leg and can hear her quietly sobbing, her little shoulders heaving up and down with the full weight of defeat. He pats her hair but continues with his task. ‘Want to help Daddy unload?’ The trick, he has learned, is not to make eye contact just yet; to limit her humiliation which could so easily morph into another tantrum. He passes a cereal box, which she puts on the trolley belt. Then a loaf of bread in its paper bag.
They continue their double act until finally the sobbing ceases and the shoulders still.
‘I sorry, Daddy.’
And now his heart explodes. He pats his daughter’s hair again as a sign it is OK between them. He wonders if it will always be like this. Love. War. Love. War. He wants suddenly to go back and buy all the Pippy Pocket biscuits on the shelf to show how much he forgives her and loves her. But he knows he must resist and so he strokes Amelie’s hair some more and just keeps passing the lighter items of shopping.
He turns now to lift his hand as a thank you to the mystery gran, who is smiling at them. He remembers his own mum warning him on their last family visit that he must not wish time away, however hard it gets. She says these years will go too fast and he will look back one day and wish he was right back here. Tantrums and all.
The problem, he thinks, is that when you are here – right here with this unpredictable two-year-old who will not sleep, will not put her coat on, will not get into the car seat and will not get up off the floor – it is all so permanently exhausting. And so you can’t help wishing for the next phase. For a bit. More. Calm.
As they finish loading the belt, his mobile sounds. He sees from the display that it is a call automatically forwarded from his office in Exeter. Damn. He is starting late this morning to allow Sal to visit the hairdresser’s, but doesn’t like to appear part-time to his clients; he also hates anyone realising that he still doesn’t have a secretary or assistant.
‘Hello – Matthew Hill, private investigator.’
The woman on the till raises her eyebrows and Matthew widens his eyes in return.
‘Hello, Mr Hill. Right. Um. My name is Tom Stellar.’ The voice sounds thirties. Nervous, which is par for the course. Most clients find it hard to make the leap. Make the call. ‘I’m wondering if you might be able to help me. Well, my girlfriend actually.’ There is a long pause.
‘Go on.’
‘She’s being harassed. Some kind of stalker, we think. Nasty phone calls at first. I was hoping it would pass, to be honest, but instead it’s getting worse. A delivery to her office. I’m really very worried. The police don’t seem to be able to do very much and so I was wondering . . .’ He’s talking faster and faster.
‘OK, Mr Stellar. I hear you, but I’m on a case right this minute and it’s difficult for me to talk properly right now. I’ve logged this number, so how about I call you back very soon. Within the hour? Would that be OK with you?’
‘Oh.’ The man sounds deflated. ‘It’s just I’m so very worried. It’s urgent.’
‘I absolutely promise I’ll get back to you shortly. Then you can tell me everything and we can decide how to move forward.’
‘Right. OK. She’s with the police at the moment but she’s very upset, and I don’t have much confidence in the police, frankly. Last time they seemed to just fob her off. Sent her home – on her tod, would you believe.’
Matthew sighs, still stroking his daughter’s hair. He doesn’t like to hear the police criticised. Deep down there’s an old loyalty he cannot shake. Most officers do their best. It’s a tough job; he of all people knows that from his past. But the truth is that stalker cases are the force’s worst nightmare. So difficult to handle; to get right. And never enough resources to do what officers would like to do.
He realises this is the first time he has been asked, as a private investigator, to get involved in a stalker inquiry, and isn’t at all sure what to say. Whether to even consider the case. Deep down he doubts he will be able to help very much. Not on his own.
‘I’ll call you back very soon, Mr Stellar. Try to get an update from your girlfriend meantime, and we can see where we are.’
CHAPTER 6
ALICE
I am in the editor’s office now and look up at the window on to the newsroom, several faces looking in. They turn, embarrassed, as I catch their eyes.
‘So you’re saying you think this is the fourth thing?’ The woman police officer is staring at the evidence bag on the desk between us, turning it over to read the card which was inside the cake box with the dying flowers. ‘Each thing happening on a Wednesday?’
I nod. I want to speak but I am afraid that I’m going to cry and there is no way I want to do that in front of this woman or the other journalists still glancing in. It is good that Ted loaned us this space but I wish it had blinds. More privacy.
The only relief is that my mother is OK. I’ve spoken at length to the staff at her home. A carer is with her and they’ve reassured me about their security; they log all callers and won’t allow any visitors to my mother without my say-so.
I look back across the desk at the police officer. She seems very nice, understanding completely why I freaked out over my mother. I’m embarrassed now that I don’t remember her name. She’s a DI, which suggests they’re taking it more seriously – or Ted has leant more heavily on his mate Alan. From her initial questions, she’s clearly competent; sharper than the officer they sent last week, I would say. She has a warm and open face but she is heavily pregnant, and for some shameful reason this really troubles me. You will struggle to find a more outspoken feminist than me, but right now I feel a complete fraud – all my thoughts betraying the sisterhood.
I can’t explain it but I don’t like the idea of sucking this nice, pregnant woman and her unborn child into this horrible thing that’s going on. This man who talks of using cheese wire, who sends nasty decapitated flowers, who mentions my mother, and who I now believe has been into my home. I find myself glancing at her belly. It makes me think of my sister – how protective I felt of Leanne when she was pregnant. I am thinking of the new life starting there; the wonder that in a few short months it will be a real, little person. The innocent child. And then I think of this cruel and horrible man . . .
‘I think he’s been in my house.’ I reach for the cup of water as I speak. I didn’t even plan to say this yet. I’m still trying to work out in my head if this can really be true. I have to take out my phone for my diary, to check all the dates again.
‘Right. No hurry, Alice. When you’re ready, talk me through it from the beginning. One step at a time. Why do you think he’s been in your house?’
I stare at my phone and scroll through to check the date I went to London and then the emails to my landlord. Yes. Jeez. It really fits.
‘OK, so when I got that phone call to the office – the one using the voice changer last week, I thought it was the first thing. Was hoping it would be the only thing.’
‘Yes. I’ve looked back at the statement my colleague took. There was no mention of any other incidents.’
‘That’s because I didn’t realise the connection then. But this box turning up today with the message, mentioning my mum.�
�� I stare again at the evidence bag containing the little card, still on the desk in front of the officer.
She turns it over again and reads it aloud.
‘Your mother’s favourites? Like the flower on your car? Oh – and did you miss the light bulb, Alice?’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your name, Officer. So rude of me but I’m a bit all over the place and I didn’t really take it in properly earlier.’ I can feel myself blushing. Did she say Mandy?
‘DI Melanie Sanders.’
‘Right. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome to call me Melanie.’
‘OK. Thank you.’ I pause. ‘Melanie.’ I don’t like to say that this doesn’t feel right at all; to call her by her Christian name. As if she is my friend. My buddy. As if I can know yet whether I can trust her.
‘So talk me through this card, Alice. The flower on the car. What’s that about?’
I let out a little huff of air as I picture it. The peony on my windscreen. Why didn’t I realise right from the beginning?
‘When I read that on the card – about the flower – I suddenly realised it was him. The first thing, I mean. About a month back. The first Wednesday. I just checked the date in my diary. I was up in London at the headquarters of the housing association involved in a story I’m working on. Demolishing the Maple Field House complex and building new homes.’
‘Yes, I read about that. Good outcome.’
‘I’ve been doing the campaign stories; all the features. So I went up to London for an interview about the place of housing associations in a landscape where councils fund so little new social housing. I used the train from Plymouth and I left my car in the railway car park. When I got back – quite late because I wrote and filed my story from Paddington station – there was a single flower on my windscreen with a business card. I’m not going to lie – it did startle me a little bit because of the coincidence that it was a peony. It’s my mother’s favourite flower, you see.’ There is a slight crack to my voice. I cough, hoping she didn’t notice this. ‘But the card seemed to be from a florist, and you often get flyers left on cars in car parks. I thought it was a gift. A gimmick – just some clever marketing. The choice of flower a coincidence.’
‘What did the florist’s card say? Have you still got it?’
‘No. Unfortunately not. Mine was the last car in that section of the car park and I just assumed all the cars would have had them. I took the peony home and put it in water. But I threw the business card away.’
‘Try to remember, Alice. What it said. The name on the card. Close your eyes if you like; that can help sometimes. Try to picture yourself sitting in your car with the card in your hand.’
I feel self-conscious but she widens her eyes in encouragement, so I do as she says and am surprised to remember something almost instantly. Yes. The card had a pink border. Lacy, like trellis work. But it was matte. Thin cardboard. Not very professional.
‘It was one of those cheap business cards, like the ones you can order online or print off from a machine. It had a fussy pink border and the name was . . .’ I screw my eyes closed more tightly and start to see the word. ‘Oh hell.’
‘What is it?’
I open my eyes, shocked to picture it so precisely. ‘Wednesday Wisdom. Say it with flowers . . . That’s what it said. You know, like a Twitter hashtag. Wednesday Wisdom. I thought it was the name of the florist. But it wasn’t, was it? Oh, dear Lord . . . it was the beginning of this.’ I can hear my voice changing; can feel myself trembling.
DI Sanders is leaning forward.
‘OK. So try to stay calm, Alice. Your mum is fine. We’ve checked with the home too. But we need to get to the bottom of why this person even mentioned your mother. We’re going to help you. All of these things are horrid. Upsetting. But it actually helps that you’re putting it together now, because all these pieces of information add to the picture. More evidence for us; they are all things we can check out. The business card, I mean. But what about the choice of flower – the peony on the car and now the peonies in this posy. Why is that significant? And who else would know that it’s your mother’s favourite?’
I look away to the left, frowning as I take in the three tall stacks of newspapers on a side desk.
‘It’s not a secret. All the family know that they’re my mum’s favourite flower.’ I find that I hate talking about her in this context; as if sucking her into this. I think of her with her oxygen. Her wheezing . . .
‘I’ve probably mentioned it to quite a lot of people.’ I realise I have told loads of people. Too many. ‘Oh goodness, I may even have written about it in a column for the paper. Sometimes we take turns to write a personal column.’
‘OK. So we’ll need to take a look at those. Can you pull up copies of all your personal columns over the past . . . say, six months?’
‘Sure.’
Next, DI Sanders – I can’t see myself calling her Melanie again; not yet – wants to know about the light bulb, and why I think this man has been in my house. I know it’s going to be difficult to explain. Only now am I remembering that I wrote about that in one of my blessed columns too.
I need to buy time to figure it out in my head, and so I say I feel a bit odd and ask if I can have a cup of tea with some sugar.
As we wait for someone to nip next door to the café for drinks, I realise that it all goes back to the rapist case. The first thing. The light bulb. I feel a bit sick even thinking about it.
Adam, our crime correspondent, covered the court proceedings, but we discussed it a lot in the office and it spooked the life out of me. There was this rapist on the very edge of our patch – about six, maybe eight months back – who had a particularly nasty MO. Four cases – all in South Devon and all similar. He would watch single women living alone to work out their shift patterns. Then he would break into their houses while they were travelling home from work in the winter after dark. He would remove the first light bulb in their house – from the hallway or sitting room – so that they would think the bulb had gone and would move, oblivious, into darkness. Then he would pounce. In a mask.
He was jailed – the rapist. But I got so wound up by this horrible, horrible case that I started carrying a torch in my handbag, sometimes even in my pocket, just in case. Got so spooked for a while that my heart pounded every time I arrived home after dark. And I wrote about all that in a personal column.
I can feel my eyes narrowing as I wonder how I could have been so stupid. To expose my feelings to everyone. In a local newspaper column. In print and online, too. Why the hell did I do that? Why do we writers share so much?
I think again about me and my stupid soapbox – my obsession with courage and cowardice. Always banging on about it. That’s what the column was about really; trying to assess whether the fear we feel is defining. Or simply human. I remember using a quote from Nelson Mandela. Probably a bit pretentious of me. Courage is not the absence of fear . . . I wrote that previous generations had proved themselves through wars. But most of us these days have never had our temperament truly tested. Brave? Or coward? When the chips are down . . . which will we be?
Once tea has arrived and I have taken a few sips, I tell DI Sanders about the rapist and my column and how three weeks back – on a Wednesday again – I came home to find that the first bulb in my rented house had blown. It was in a light fitting high up in my entrance vestibule, which is an odd design, covering the full height of the two-storey property. So it was impossible to replace the bulb myself. The fitting is a very contemporary design – covered by smoked glass. I just assumed the bulb had blown and it was too high for me to do anything about it.
‘Because of the rapist case, it spooked me. I mean, I knew the guy was in jail but it was such a horrible coincidence, and it really unnerved me not having a light at the entrance. So I emailed my landlord straight away, asking him to arrange for it to be replaced,’ I tell the policewoman. ‘That’s how I realise now that it was a Wednesday. I j
ust checked the email.
‘The landlord hasn’t sorted it yet and I’ve been really cross. I’ve sent a couple more emails. But now I’ve seen the message on that card . . .’ I nod to the card in the evidence bag on the desk. Did you miss the light bulb, Alice? ‘I’m worried that this man, whoever he is, read my column and somehow got in my house and took the bulb to upset me. Frighten me.’
DI Sanders’ face changes completely, and she turns to the male detective sergeant beside her. His face changes too. ‘OK. So we’ll need to come back to the house to check this light fitting. Whether the bulb is still in place, I mean – just blown. Or actually missing. You say it’s up very high?’
‘Yeah. It needs a special ladder.’
‘I’ll get our CSIs on to all of this. The cake box. The card. Your home. I’m wondering . . .’ Again she glances at her partner. ‘Once we’ve done the checks for fingerprints and so on, is there somewhere else you could stay? Just for a bit? While you get the locks changed and so forth, and we finish all the tests we need to do? And if that light bulb is missing, we’ll need to know who else has had a key up to this point.’
I feel this sinking deep in the pit of my stomach. I had a private security firm do a check on my home last week, not realising that someone may already have been inside. A part of me was hoping she would simply counter my theory. No. It’s unlikely he’s been in your house. I had wondered if I was being overly dramatic. Paranoid. The fact she is taking this theory seriously makes me feel so much worse.
‘Um. Keys? My landlord, obviously. A neighbour keeps a spare for emergencies. And my partner Tom has a key.’
‘We’ll need to talk to your partner and neighbour. And the landlord about their security over the storage of keys.’ Again she is looking at the sergeant, who is making notes in a book.
‘Right, yes. Of course. Tom will be keen to help—’
‘And now’ – the policewoman’s face is even graver – ‘I want to talk about the reference to cheese wire, Alice.’
I feel extra fluid in my mouth suddenly. Have to swallow. Cough.
I Will Make You Pay Page 3
