Follow You Home (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

I
was pinned to the floor on my back, foul, meaty breath in my face. A growl came from deep inside my attacker’s body and I pushed as hard as I could, but my attacker was on top of me, a blur in the darkness. Teeth and saliva and wet lips grazed my throat and, as adrenalin surged into my system, I found strength I didn’t know I had, shoving and twisting on to my side. A second later and the dog—the black dog that had leaped out of the darkness—would have torn out my throat.

As soon as I twisted on to my side I saw the knife, just within reach. I grabbed it and swung it at the dog, which wriggled away as I tried to slash it. Instead, the blade nicked the side of its nose, and it let out a whimper of pain. As quickly as it had leaped onto me, it bounded away. I was free.

It shot out through the front door, growling and barking, as I pushed myself up, coughing and feeling my neck. Just stinking saliva, no blood. If I hadn’t been able to twist away, if I hadn’t been carrying the knife . . . I didn’t want to think about it. The dog had had a Rottweiler’s face but was completely black and the size of a pit bull. A dog bred to guard, to fight. To kill.

I staggered to my feet and went out into the hallway. The dog had run down the stairs and was dashing to and fro in the lower hallway, frantic, thumping into the door, bouncing off the walls. I stood at the top of the stairs, looking over the handrail so I had a full view of the hallway, coiled and ready to rush back into my flat if the animal showed any sign of coming back up the stairs.

At that moment, the door of my downstairs neighbour opened and she appeared in the doorway. She was in her thirties, frizzy hair, glasses, wearing a thick pink jumper. She pointed a finger at me. ‘Hey, you’re not allowed dogs in this building.’

The dog leaped towards her. She screamed and slammed the door shut with surprising reaction speed; the animal hit the wood mid-jump, crashed and fell to the floor, stunned for a moment before getting back on its feet. It turned to look up at me, baring two rows of teeth like knives.

I dashed back into my flat, shutting the door, plunged into darkness again. Once more, I crawled across the living room floor, and my hand made contact almost immediately with my phone. I said a silent prayer and hit 999, listening as the dog rushed around downstairs, emitting a series of harsh, lo
w barks.

The police came and summoned a dog warden, who captured the animal using a loop on a stick and dragged it into the back of his van. After he’d taken it away, the young police officer helped me examine the fuse box, finding that two of the fuse wires needed replacing. Fortunately, one of the neighbours, most of whom
had co
me out to see what was going on, had some spares, so my lights were soon working again.

‘Bad luck for two to blow at once,’ the officer said. His name was Sadler. ‘So, sir, what happened?’

I hesitated. On impulse, perhaps because I didn’t want him to start looking at me in the way PC Sargent had, I said, ‘I don’t know. It must have followed me in when I got home, snuck in through the door behind me. When I found the lights weren’t working I left my flat door open and it came in and attacked me.’

He tutted. ‘Lots of strays around here. Most of them come from the estate.’ He shook his head at the state of the city he policed. ‘Do you need a doctor?’

‘No, I’m fine. It didn’t bite me. I’m just a bit . . . shocked.’

‘Understandable, sir.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t have any sausages in your bag, do you?’

I had temporarily lost my sense of humour.

He said goodbye and went off to take a statement from the woman downstairs.

After taking a moment to gather myself, I stood up, my legs unsteady, and went into the bedroom. It looked like a tornado had ripped through it. The bedside lamp lay broken on the floor, along with books, papers and framed photographs of Laura and me; the bedding was trampled and one pillow had been chewed, pieces of foam scattered around. I wondered why I hadn’t heard it as soon as I came in and guessed it must have fallen asleep after destroying my room and been awakened by the sound of my punching the floor.

There was a terrible stench in the air, the source of which I found quickly: a huge turd curled on the little rug in front of the chest of drawers. I rolled the rug up and stuffed it into a black bin liner, taking it and dumping it in the bin outside. I sensed a presence nearby and looked up to see the scavenging fox standing nearby. It turned and slunk away, tail dragging on the pavement.

Needing to calm my jangling nerves, I poured a shot of vodka and walked over to look out at the dark, empty street. Icy rain streaked the glass. I wondered what had happened to the dog. Would it
be pu
t down or would they attempt to rehome it? I waited u
ntil th
e warm bloom of the alcohol had slowed my heartbeat, quelled
the trem
or in my hands, then took out my phone and opened the app that had come with the camera.

Immediately, I could see that a video file had been created and stored on the cloud. The camera had captured whoever had come into my flat. The room was silent, and I found myself holding my breath, aware of my pulse thrumming in my ears.

The video started to play.

Because the camera was triggered by motion, as soon as the video started I found myself looking at the top of someone’s head and shoulders. They stood a few feet in front of my front door. The image was grainy and slightly blurred, presumably because it wasn’t very well lit, but there was still natural light in the room. It got dark about 4.30 p.m. That meant they must have been in here late afternoon, probably while I was with Jake.

I willed the person to step further into the room so I could see them better. All I could make out at the moment was that they were wearing a black top and a hat. I assumed it was a man. He took a couple of steps forward into my living room, the room where I sat now, so that he was visible down to his waist and then turned around. I leaned forward eagerly.

At the exact moment that he turned, somebody else walked into shot, obscuring his face. There were two of them! And as they both walked further into the living room, I saw that the second person had the black dog who’d tried to kill me, on a short leash.

The second person was also wearing a hat. The two of them stood still, apparently looking around, though maddeningly I could only see the backs of their heads. I could see their bodies now, though. They were both dressed in black long-sleeved tops and black trousers. But as I squinted at the screen, at the shape of their bodies, I suddenly realised I had been wrong to assume their gender. One of them, the one holding the dog, was a woman. And as they turned to talk to each other I saw that they were wearing masks, those plastic masks that you attach to your head with a piece of elastic. But both masks were blank, plain white with two eye holes and a small circle to breathe through. Looking at the blank masks sent a shudder through me. It was like looking at two phantoms, faceless creatures who had invaded my home.

The woman yanked at the dog’s leash and her mask slipped a little. Frustratingly, she caught it and pushed it back into place. T
hen she
walked out of shot towards my bedroom with the
dog. Whi
le she did this, the man walked around the room, opening drawers and cupboards, carefully shutting them again.

After a while, the woman came back with the dog and s
hook he
r head. I wished I’d bought a camera with an audio recorder, as they had another conversation. The man gesticulated angrily, pointed at the dog and then towards my bedroom. The woman nodded.

Then the man went over to the kitchen, disappearing from sight. The woman was facing the camera so I had a perfect view of her. She was slim with small breasts and narrow hips. The dog pulled at the lead and she jerked it back, causing it to jump up onto its hind legs. Poor thing. Whoever she was, she was strong.

The man returned and they both walked out of shot, towards my bedroom. And that was it. The video captured another minute of still life and then ended.

They had come in, cut the fuse wire—presumably so when I arrived home in the dark it would be harder for me to avoid the dog attack—then shut the animal in my bedroom, leaving just before it got dark.

I shut the laptop and stared at the space where they had stood. I could feel their presence imprinted on the air.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I
t was unusually quiet on the South Bank, the bad weather keeping the day-trippers away; there were just a few
Londoners
scurrying beneath the snow-pregnant sky, hurrying to their homes and offices. The London Eye seemed to be turning more slowly this afternoon; the boats that drifted by on the grey, churning Thames looked like they should be carrying the dead across
the Styx.

I browsed around Foyles for a while, then grabbed a coffee from Starbucks and took it to a bench that overlooked the river and the grand buildings on the Embankment opposite. I checked my watch. She should be here soon.

I felt strangely nervous, as if we were meeting for a first date, which was ridiculous. We knew each other intimately, inside and out . . . At least, I’d thought I’d known everything about her. Recently, she had been a different person, an alien that had wrapped itself in Laura’s body, only occasionally showing me a glimpse of the person she used to be. But Jake said I was like that too. I hadn’t contacted him since the previous afternoon, when he’d had to rush
off. I
 resolved to call him later. I needed to tell him the rest of the story.

‘Daniel.’

I turned around. ‘You came.’

‘Of course.’

Laura looked thinner and paler than ever, even more so than when I’d seen her in the hospital. She had her black coat wrapped around her, a coat which used to fit her perfectly, hugging the contours of her body, but which now seemed two sizes too big. She was wearing a woollen hat too, and make-up—a little mascara and a dash of pink lipstick. It was the first time I’d seen her wearing make-up in ages. She sat down beside me and clasped her gloved hands together. Her knees bounced up and down. She smiled but it slipped from her face almost immediately.

‘You look . . . better,’ I said.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Hmm.’

‘No, really. It was so horrible seeing you in that hospital bed.’

‘It wasn’t much fun being there.’ Her knees continued to bounce up and down. ‘I do feel better now, though. Much better. My skin’s grown back.’

‘Huh?’

‘But it’s . . . different. New skin.’

I stared at her. ‘Laura, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Did you get my message yesterday morning?’

She stared at me, her eyes wide and blank. Her voice dropped to a whisper, just audible above the wind that whipped across the Thames. ‘Message?’

Before I could say anything, she said, ‘I’ve got some news for you. I’ve quit my job.’

‘Oh, Laura, but you loved that job. You always said it was your calling.’

‘It was.’ She stared out at the river. ‘But not now. I just can’t . . . do it anymore. I could try but I’d be letting everyone down. Letting the children down, the ones I’m supposed to help.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t let anyone down.’ I touched her arm lightly. ‘But maybe it is for the best. You need to get well, and then I’m sure you could go back to it. Although,’ I swallowed, ‘you won’t be here anymore, will you? You’ll be in Australia.’

She hugged her knees, which at least stopped them from bouncing. ‘I’m not going.’

I hardly dared speak, in case I’d misheard. ‘Say that again.’

‘I’ve decided not to go. I’m going to stay in London.’

‘Oh! That’s amazing.’ I moved to hug her but she shrank away. I gathered myself. ‘What made you change your mind?’

She opened her mouth to reply, then stopped. I could see that she was trying to decide how much to tell me. ‘Like you said, it would be running away. I don’t want to run anymore. I don’t want to be a coward. I want to start again.’ She spoke slowly, a spaced-out expression on her face. Had the doctors put her on more
medication
?

‘But,’ she continued, ‘you said you have some stuff you need to tell me. When you texted me this morning.’

‘Laura, are you
really
all right?’

A smile, a little more like the old Laura. ‘Yes. Of course. I’m fine. Come on, tell me what it was you brought me here for.’

‘OK.’ I wasn’t convinced, but what could I do? ‘Can we walk and talk? I’m freezing.’

‘Sure.’

We stood up and she gave me another little smile, the kind of smile she used to bless me with, and I was gripped by an urge to tell her, again, that I still loved her, that I wanted her to come home. But I knew if I did it would scare her away. So I swallowed the words and we walked along by the railing in the direction of the Millennium Bridge.

As we walked, I told her about everything that had happened so far: the fraudulent use of my bank card, the return of my laptop after the burglary, my therapist’s death. Laura listened intently, nodding but not saying much. She flinched when I told her about the fire. Finally, as we drew parallel with the Tate Modern, I brought her up to date by telling her what had happened the previous day.

She stopped walking. Her smile had vanished. ‘A dog? What did it look like?’

I described it.

‘Like the dogs we saw at the station,’ she said, nodding to
herself
as if this confirmed something.

I didn’t think it would be possible for her to look any paler but all the remaining colour had drained from her face. The sky shifted and all the light was sucked from it, like the moment before a st
orm breaks.

Laura spoke. ‘Maybe you should talk to her. It might help you.’

‘Who?’

‘Alina. She’s here.’

So she
had
been imagining ghosts again.

‘Laura, Alina is dead.’

‘I know. But she’s come to find me.’ She leaned even closer, her eyes stretched wide. She looked left then right, checked behind her. Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper. ‘I know what’s
following
us, Daniel. It’s
evil
. The evil from that house . . . It followed us ho
me. Yo
u need to be careful, to stop telling people about what happened. Because every time you tell someone, you prise open the crack a little more and let the evil through.’

The way she was talking, the intensity of her gaze, the darkening sky and the echo of everything that had happened . . . For a second, I believed her. This was it, the explanation. Evil. The supernatural.

‘The black dog—it wasn’t real,’ she said. ‘It was . . . a
symbol
. Or maybe, maybe a physical manifestation of the darkness that
followed
us out of the forest. The evil.’

I tried to keep my voice even. ‘It was very real, Laura. It jumped on top of me, tried to tear my throat out.’

She looked at me sadly. ‘Oh, Daniel. I’m not saying it was a . . . phantom. Like I said, it was a physical mani—’

‘No, this is crazy.’

Something soft touched my face and I realised it was snowing again. But this time it was fat, substantial, the kind that settles, closing schools and shutting down train lines. Heavy snow, this early in the season . . . It added to my feeling that the weather was somehow echoing my emotions. No doubt Laura would say we had caused it—that it was coming through this crack she talked about, brought forth by evil spirits.

The snow swirled around us, the air suddenly so dark and thick that the Tate Modern became a shimmering silhouette, and it felt like Laura and I were the only people in the world. When she took my hand I wanted more than anything for it to be the way it used t
o b
e. I wanted to kiss her, to put my arms around her and just
cling to
her, to hold on and hope that all of the madness would go away, leave us alone. Let us be.

‘It’s OK,’ Laura whispered. The snow was settling already. It clung to her hat and coat and her face was wet. She blinked
snowflakes
from her eyelashes. ‘Alina will help us.’

‘But Alina is dead! Laura, I know you believe in ghosts, I understand everything that happened when you were a kid, but this is in your head. Caused by . . . what happened and the drugs you were taking. And all this stuff about growing a new skin.’ I spoke gently. ‘You need to get help.’

‘No, Danny. No. Don’t you see? She’s come back to guide us.’

‘Laura . . .’

She tilted her head. She hardly seemed to be aware of the
snow. She
should never have been discharged from the hospital, I thought.

‘Laura, I think you should see a doctor.’

She smiled sadly. ‘Another one? See if they’ll give me m
ore drugs?’

‘Not that kind of doctor.’ I groped for something to say to persuade her. The weather was getting worse. Eventually, I said, ‘Let’s get inside before this snow buries us.’

She appeared to come to her senses, and I took her hand and ran with her towards the gallery. We took shelter in the vast entrance hall, shaking the snow from our clothes, the security staff glaring as we dripped all over the floor. She went into the Ladies and I went into the Gents, which was empty. I stuck my wet head beneath the drier then studied my face in the mirror. I dried my glasses on my T-shirt and tried to trap the thoughts that were running wildly around my head, to save them for later.

I waited for Laura outside the Ladies. Several women came out, but no Laura. When a woman around my age came out
five minutes
later, I asked her if she would check if my ‘wife’ was in there. She strode away, leaving me open-mouthed, shocked by her rudeness. I stuck my head in the door, calling Laura’s name. All the cubicles stood open. She had gone.

I hurried back towards the entrance and approached the security man.

‘The woman I came in with—have you seen her?’

He shook his head. ‘You’d have to be mad to go out there,’ he said. ‘It’s a blizzard.’

I went over to the door and peered out. The air was opaque, the snow so heavy that it seemed possible that it might bury the city. Through the curtain of snow, I saw a dark figure in the
distance. I 
ran outside, calling, ‘Laura!’

If it was her, she was swallowed up by the snowstorm. I went back inside, brushing the snowflakes from my coat, and considered looking around the gallery. Maybe she was in the café or the shop. Perhaps she had gone upstairs to look at the art. But before I could decide what to do, my mobile rang.

It was my friend Barney, someone Jake and I hung around with sometimes. He had moved out of London and started having kids. I hadn’t heard from him for ages.

‘Barney! Sorry, it’s not a great—’

‘Have you seen the news?’

His tone of voice scared me. ‘No, I’m out. Why, what’s
happened
?’

‘It’s Jake. I think . . . I assume you can get online on your phone? I’ll send you the link now.’

It felt like the snow was falling directly into my bloodstream. ‘What about Jake? Come on, you have to tell me.’

He hesitated and I knew this wasn’t going to be news about Jake getting a big record deal.

‘I think you should read it yourself,’ he said. ‘But ring me after, yeah?’ His voice cracked and he hung up before I could say anything else. A text arrived from him containing a link to BBC News. I hesitated, happy to be ignorant for another second, then clicked. I found myself looking at one of Jake’s publicity shots, his eyes downcast, looking sensitive and brooding. Above this was the headline:

Tragic suicide of musician on the brink of the big time

Police have confirmed that they are treating the death of Jake Turner, whose body was found beneath Thornberry Bridge last night, as a suicide.

Turner, 32, was on the verge of signing a deal with a major record company, his manager said.

Then there was a section about famous musicians who had killed themselves. I stared at my phone, unable to take it in. Jake—
dead?
Last night?
He had left me at around 4 p.m. and gone straight to the meeting with the record company. And
suicide
? Jake was the least likely person to kill himself I had ever met, and when I saw him he had been on a dizzying high, about to achieve all his dreams. Had the record company let him down, crushed those dreams? Surely he wouldn’t commit suicide because of that. And he had told me
he ha
d two other companies interested. Even if the first meeting had gone badly, he would still have had hope.

I knew Robin, his manager, and called him, facing away from the security guy, who was watching me curiously. My hand was shaking and I was sure I was going to throw up. But at the same time I was sure this was all a mistake. Jake couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. My eyes filled with tears as I heard the ‘user busy’ tone.

I called Barney instead.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Jake wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t depressed. Everything was going fucking amazingly for him.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Do you know how he’s supposed to have done it?’ I asked.

He hesitated.

‘Come on, Barney.’ I raised my voice. ‘If you know, just
tell me.’

‘He jumped off a bridge. Thornberry Lane.’

‘In Archway?’ I knew the bridge well. It was a ten-minute walk from Jake’s flat.

‘Yeah. You know, the three of us have walked over that bridge loads of times.’

We both fell quiet for a moment.

‘And did he . . . Do you know if he left a note?’

‘I don’t know.’

We ended the call with Barney muttering something about seeing me at the funeral. I wandered outside and sat on a wet bench, oblivious to the snow swirling around me and the cold moisture soaking through the seat of my jeans.

I couldn’t believe it. Jake, committing suicide. When I saw him yesterday he had been so happy and excited. He had been horrified by what I had told him about Romania but . . .

It struck me.

I had spoken to two people about what had happened to Laura and me, both within the last few days. I’d told Dr Sauvage part of the story, and more to Jake.

And now they were both dead.