The Magpies (24 page)

‘You must know their name.’

‘I can’t remember it. It was a foreign-sounding name, I remember that.’

‘Because if we can contact these people and they tell us that they did indeed give a key to your neighbours downstairs, that’s evidence that they had the means to get in here.’

Jamie brightened at the sound of that word. Evidence. And then a chill went through him. If Lucy and Chris did have a key, who knows how many times they had been in the flat?

‘I’ll find the house buying documents. Wait there.’

He ran into the spare room, where all their documents and old bills were kept in a battered bureau that had been in the family for years. When the baby was born it would have to go to make room for the cot. It was a hideous thing anyway.

Jamie pulled out a fat foolscap document wallet and carried it into the living room, where the policeman was examining the DVD collection.

‘Here it is. Ms L Pica. But the only address given for her is this one. Hmm, the flat was only in her name. No mention of her boyfriend.’

‘That’s not unusual.’

‘I guess not.’

The policeman made a note of the name. ‘OK. We’ll see what we can do. But any help you can give us will speed things up. To be honest, at the moment we have absolutely no evidence that a crime even took place.’

‘But I was away when the emails were sent. I have proof of that.’

‘Is it not possible to program a computer so it will send an email at a future date? And besides, don’t you have a smartphone?’

Jamie paused. ‘Yes….’

‘Well, there you go. Frankly, sir, at the moment, as far as the law is concerned, you’re wasting everybody’s time.’

As soon as the policeman – whose name, Jamie found out, was Lockwood – had gone, Jamie phoned the solicitor who had handled the sale for Miss Pica. He was put on hold for five minutes before finally getting through to him.

‘I’m afraid Ms Pica left explicit instructions that her new address should not be passed on to anyone.’

‘But it’s important. I have to talk to her.’ He started to explain about the break-in and what the policeman had said, but the solicitor interrupted.

‘Whatever story you have to tell – and I imagine it’s a very long story – it won’t change the fact that I cannot give you the address.’

He hung up.

‘Bastard,’ Jamie shouted. Then he had a thought: Surely Ms Pica and her boyfriend must have left a forwarding address with one of the neighbours just in case any mail turned up here for them? That was what Jamie had done at his last address, just in case anything turned up after the Royal Mail stopped redirecting their post. Who was the most likely candidate? Maybe Brian and Linda, though he didn’t really want to talk to Brian at the moment. He would try Mary first.

On his way up the stairs, he remembered what Lucy and Chris had said about the previous owners of the flat. They said they were noisy and difficult to get on with. Not so much hypocrisy as a malicious lie. He could imagine Lucy at work, telling her colleagues how awful it was having to live below Jamie and Kirsty: They put us through such hell; I can’t sleep; I’m sure they do it to spite me. And her colleagues saying, Poor you, poor Lucy.

What were the odds that the Newtons had put the previous occupants of the flat through exactly the same kind of hell they were now inflicting on Jamie and Kirsty? They probably had awful stories to tell about Lucy and Chris. I bet that’s why they moved out, he thought. They couldn’t stand it any more. They gave in.

His heartbeat accelerated. They would be able to back him and Kirsty up. Then the police would have to listen. If Ms Pica and her partner got on so badly with the Newtons, it was unlikely that they would have entrusted them with a key. That was bad news, because it left the question of how Chris had got in unanswered. But it would still be worth talking to them. At the moment, Jamie felt like hardly anyone believed him when he told them about the Newtons. It seemed too far-fetched to be true. But if someone else told the same story, not only would other people have to listen, but Jamie would no longer feel paranoid that he was dreaming all this up.

He knocked on Mary’s door and paced around in the hallway waiting for her to appear. But there was no answer. He knocked again but to no avail. He decided to go up and try Brian and Linda.

Linda opened the door. In her forties, she was still an attractive woman, with pale red hair and bright blue eyes, a striking combination. She conformed to Jamie’s stereotypical idea that male writers always attract good-looking women, beauty drawn to intellect. He couldn’t imagine her behind the counter of Boots. It was a fact that clashed with the other things he knew about her – which wasn’t much, admittedly. Of all the people in the block of flats, she was the one he had had least contact with.

‘Brian’s in his study,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

‘Is he angry with me?’

‘What for? The computer?’ She smiled. ‘He hates computers anyway. Blames them for most of the ills in society. I think he was actually quite pleased when it all went wrong. It proved to him that he was right after all.’ She called out: ‘Brian, Jamie’s here.’

Brian came out of his study, wearing a par of reading glasses that made him look about ten years older than he was. ‘Hi Jamie. Got the day off work?’

‘The whole week, actually.’

‘Very nice.’

‘Hmm. How’s the computer?’

Brian laughed. ‘Dead.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hey, don’t worry about it. I was thinking of getting rid of the bloody thing anyway.’

‘What about your book? Wasn’t it all lost?’

‘No, I had it all printed out so it’s just a matter of retyping it. In fact, doing that has allowed me to make a lot of improvements, so really you did me a favour.’

‘Oh. Good. Perhaps you should invest in an external hard drive, so you’ll have everything backed up in future.’ Jamie was relieved. He had been worried that not only would the downstairs neighbours hate him, but the ones upstairs would begin to as well.

‘How’s Kirsty?’ Linda asked. ‘You both must be very excited. The patter of tiny feet and all that. If you ever want a babysitter, just give me a shout.’

Jamie wanted to ask Linda why she didn’t have any children of her own. She was obviously keen on babies, from the way her eyes lit up when she talked about them. And Brian was a kids’ author. It was another fact that didn’t fit. The most obvious answer was that they were unable to have children – for biological reasons – and he didn’t want to bring up such a sensitive subject.

‘Has Kirsty got the week off too?’ Brian asked.

‘No. She’s at work. I get more leave than her.’

‘Lucky you.’

Jamie was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘The reason I came up – apart from to see if your computer was alright – was to ask if you have a forwarding address or telephone number for the couple that used to live in our flat.’

Linda shook her head. ‘Letitia and David? No, we don’t.’

‘I seem to recall they moved out in a real hurry. We didn’t know about it until after they’d gone.’ Brian removed his reading glasses. ‘Mary was closer to them than us. She might have an address for them.’

‘She’s not in.’

‘I just heard her front door close,’ said Brian.

‘Really?’

Jamie thanked them and went back down the stairs. This time, Mary answered her door straight away.

‘Jamie! Hi!’

Despite her enthusiastic greeting, she looked like she had a cold. Ginger obviously hadn’t worked for her. He knew he ought to enquire after her health, but he wanted to get straight to the point and ask her his all-important question.

‘Come in,’ she said, before he could open his mouth. ‘I was just making a tea. Do you drink herbal tea?’

He was going to be asking a favour. It would only be polite to say yes, even though he thought herbal tea was revolting. ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’

He followed her into the flat, looking around for Lennon. ‘Is Lennon here?’ he asked.

‘No. He’s out and about somewhere.’ She took two floral-patterned mugs down from the cupboard.

She chattered away about the cat while she made the tea. Camomile. Jamie tried not to grimace when she handed it to him.

‘You know the people who used to live in our flat?’

‘Letitia and David?’

‘Yes. I don’t suppose you have a forwarding address for them? Or a telephone number? It’s just that some mail has come for them and it looks quite important.’

Mary looked at him as if she were trying to see inside his mind, to ascertain if he was telling the truth. He blinked innocently.

‘Yes, I have got their address,’ she said. ‘Postal address, not an email unfortunately.’

His heart leapt.

‘I was forwarding their mail to them. I’ll forward the mail you’ve got as well, if you want.’

‘No! I mean, no, it’s OK. I’ll do it.’

She studied him for a long moment, then said, ‘Alright.’

She picked up her address book – decorated with a picture of a fat white cat – and copied the address onto a piece of card. She handed it to Jamie.

‘Scotland?’

‘Yes. Quite a remote village, as far as I’m aware. They told me they wanted to get as far away from London and people as possible.’

That sounded very much like evidence to Jamie. Wanting to get away from people. Isn’t that exactly what you’d want to do if you’d had a bad experience with your neighbours? He sometimes fantasised about it: living in the remote countryside, among sheep and chickens, no people nearby to cause you grief. Except he was determined not to be driven out of his home. He was not a quitter.

‘Thank you for this,’ he said, holding up the scrap of card.

Before he left, Mary gently caught hold of his arm. She looked into his eyes. ‘You’re not in any kind of trouble are you, Jamie?’

‘No. What makes you ask that?’

‘You just seem a bit stressed out.’

‘No. Everything’s fine. Just got married. Baby on the way. We couldn’t be happier.’

She clearly didn’t believe him, but she didn’t push it. Instead she said, ‘If you ever need any help, Jamie, you know where I am.’ She squeezed his arm.

He hurried down the stairs.

He dialled directory enquiries and tried to get a telephone number for the address Mary had given him. The operator told him the number was ex-directory. He wasn’t exactly surprised. He Googled Letitia Pica too, but despite it being an unusual name, nothing showed up.

Okay. If he couldn’t call or email them he would have to write them a letter. He found some writing paper – the same paper they had used to write to Lucy and Chris – and sat on the sofa with a cushion on his lap.

Dear Letitia and David

Firstly, let me introduce myself. My name is Jamie Knight. My wife, Kirsty, and I bought your flat from you earlier this year. I will not beat around the bush. We have been having a few problems with Lucy and Chris downstairs and I wanted to ask you if you had had similar experiences.

I also need to know if you ever gave them a key to the flat…

He let it all flow out. By the time he had finished, the letter was nine pages long. He read over it, corrected a few spelling mistakes, and then folded it and put it in an envelope before he changed his mind. He didn’t have any stamps, so he needed to go to the post office.

Leaving the flat, he froze. Lucy was standing in the entrance hall, looking through the post.

He took a few steps towards her. ‘What are you doing?’

She ignored him.

‘I said, what are you doing?’

She rolled her eyes, huffed, then turned and looked at him. ‘I was checking the post. Seeing if there was anything interesting.’ She looked back down at the shelf of mail, where a number old letters for previous occupants and junk mail lay. ‘For us, I mean.’

‘If anything comes for you, I’ll bring it down.’

Lucy turned fully towards him, folded her arms and looked him up and down. ‘Would you really?’

Talking to her made him feel sick. ‘Yes, I would.’

‘How’s Kirsty?’

‘What?’

‘It must be weird, having something living inside you.’ She looked up at a cobweb on the ceiling and said faintly, ‘I would hate it.’

‘I can’t picture you as a mother.’

She stared at him. Her expression was blank, her eyes unfocused. It would have been less creepy if she’d given him daggers, or sneered at him. Instead, she broke into a smile.

‘I have to go,’ she said brightly. ‘We’re expecting company.’

He exhaled.

As she stepped through the front door she paused. ‘Be careful, Jamie,’ she said. And then she was gone.

Twenty

Kirsty and Heather sat in the staff canteen. Heather was going on and on about how Paul had ruined her life.

Kirsty was sympathetic, but she was also tired of hearing about it. Firstly, it wasn’t as if Heather was the first person in the history of the universe to get chucked. It happened every single frigging day, but Heather was acting as if life had conjured up a cruel punishment for her alone; something unique. All that had happened was that Paul had decided that he didn’t want to be with Heather any more. He had been through a trauma. He clearly had things to work out and work through, and Heather was in the way. End of story.

Secondly, Kirsty had problems of her own. The dreams had returned – the terrible dreams of delight turning to horror inside the gingerbread house. To make things worse, details from Paul’s coma dream had seeped into her dream, so the roof of the house was battered by flying beasts, creatures with sharp talons and a rank smell, creatures that – she knew without a doubt – wanted her dead.

Waking up offered little respite. Jamie was in a world of his own, paranoid and jittery, convinced he was going to lose his job and all his friends because of this business with the computer virus. He had stayed awake all night, making these bizarre grumbling noises. She didn’t think he was aware he was doing it. He had looked really shocked when she had taken a blanket with her into the living room and curled up on the sofa.

She was sick of it all. She wanted out.

Their dream home had turned out to be, well, a nightmare. They were living above a pair of psychopaths. That was the only word for them. Sending spiders in to terrify her; taping her in her most private moments; robbing her of the ability to relax. That was one of the worst things. She had a really stressful job – ten times as stressful as Jamie’s job, dealing as she did with mortality and sickness every day – and she needed a sanctuary. Somewhere to switch off, chill out, recover from the stresses of the day. But no – she was forced to tiptoe around her own flat, and if she forgot about the Newtons for a second, Jamie would say something to remind her. Before they went to Gretna, she had been coping. The thrill of finding out she was pregnant and the thought of being a mother had made her feel calm and happy. She had managed to switch off; she had made a conscious effort to leave the worrying to Jamie. She couldn’t afford to worry. She had another life inside her. Anxiety and stress were bad for the baby. That was common sense.