Talking to Strangers, page 16
FORTY-ONE
KIKI
Thursday, February 20, 2020
My mum lets herself in bang on six o’clock and shouts a cheery hello up the stairs. I let out a breath and smile. I’d expected Ma to still be huffy after Tuesday’s outburst, but turns out there’s something she wants to see on my Disney Plus.
“You look nice,” she says as she pulls Pip to her on the sofa. I do. I’ve blow-dried all my hair, not just the front, put on a dress and heels, and feel like a woman with a date instead of just me.
“Thanks.” I do a twirl. “Right. Are you okay for snacks? Cheesy films?”
“Go on—we’re fine, aren’t we, Pip?”
“I won’t be late,” I say, dropping a kiss on my daughter’s head when I hear the taxi outside.
Sitting in the back, I redo my lipstick and try to stop thinking about the BOBs, telling myself I need a few hours off. And that I’ve probably overreacted to the events at the vigil. The BOBs are saddos, not dangerous predators. “We’re talking about Eammon, for God’s sake,” I say out loud, and the driver raises an eyebrow in his rearview mirror.
My phone rings to save my blushes. It’s Elise King, and my pep talk dies on my lips. I go to say, “Do you know who sent me the photo?” but she gets in first.
“I see you’ve lobbed another grenade into our investigation,” she snaps, and for a second I have no idea what she’s on about.
“Are we talking about the cyberflashing?” I say.
“We are not.” She clips every syllable. “We are talking about your exclusive interview with Evelyn Clayton. I’ve just caught up with my news alerts.”
Shit! I thought I’d got away with that.
“Are you deliberately trying to sabotage this inquiry?” Elise barks down the phone.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I try wounded innocence, but I know it won’t wash—she’s got too many miles on the clock.
“Telling the public that Karen was posed,” she snaps. “We were keeping that back for operational reasons.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I could tell her about Evelyn’s red shoes and Noel’s hobby, but I’m fed up with being told off. She can wait.
When she hangs up, I sit back in my seat and try to recapture my mood.
Rob is waiting outside the bar, looking out for me. He’s exactly like his picture, and I want to cheer.
“Hi—I didn’t want you to have to walk in on your own,” he says when I reach him. “You look lovely. Shall we?”
It’s nicely noisy inside, so I don’t need to fill any awkward silences in the conversation. We keep smiling at each other as we weave through the crowd to a table, and I try to relax while he gets me a glass of wine.
He’s tall enough to reach over people’s heads at the bar to take the drinks and is back within minutes.
“Cheers,” he says and clinks my glass. “Thank you so much for coming—I have a good feeling about this evening.”
So do I. He starts asking me about myself, and I’ve already decided to skirt round the whole reporter issue. It can derail things. People start saying, “I’ll have to be careful what I say, won’t I?” or give me grief about phone hacking. So I’m a writer tonight. Short stories. Well, it’s sort of true. And we move swiftly on to the hilarious pitfalls of adult dating.
Rob makes me laugh more than anyone has done for years. And when he looks deep into my eyes, something inside me does a backflip. Warmth floods through my body and I love this feeling. Of being desired again. He moves closer, so our thighs are almost touching. And I tell him things I haven’t told anyone for a long time as he strokes my fingers.
When we leave, I happily get into his car—there are no red flags here—and when he glances across and says, “Are you really ready to go home yet? I’d love to carry on talking,” I say yes without hesitation.
“Do you want to go to another bar?” I murmur.
“It’ll be so noisy. We could park up and chat. Just the two of us?”
He drives past my road and out of town to a quiet lane near the sea. I can hear the waves when we get out. It’s freezing and I pull my coat tighter. “Are you cold?” Rob whispers, and puts his arms around me to warm me up. “Is that better?”
I nod against his chest. I can smell his musky aftershave and feel the strength in his arms, and I have a tiny flutter of nerves. But it’s as if he senses it. He lets me go and takes my hand.
“Can I?” he says softly. And I nod.
And the power of that first kiss catches me completely off guard. It’s been such a long time since I’ve experienced any sort of heat and passion. I just don’t want it to stop.
And I don’t resist when he pushes me against his car and opens his coat.
It’s so cold, the sex is quick and urgent before Rob rushes me back into the car and kisses me again. He puts the heating up high and turns the radio on, humming along, occasionally stroking my hand while I look out the window, still in a sort of trance. Struggling with how I feel now.
“You can drop me off at the end of this road,” I say when we get close.
“No, no, I’ll take you to the door—there are all sorts of strange people out there,” he says. “You must have heard about the murder down the coast.” And the reminder of Karen makes me go all shivery. I had judged her for doing exactly what I’ve just done. I can’t get out of the car fast enough.
* * *
—
“Oh, God, you’ve had sex with a man you only met tonight,” I whisper to myself once I’ve waved off my mum and stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Angry-looking blotches bloom on my neck and face. The stigmata of shame. I scrub at my cheeks with a flannel.
“Stop it!” I tell my reflection, and put down the flannel. “You had a great time. And he won’t be a stranger next time you see him.” Next time. I smile at the memory of that first kiss. It was lovely. He could be a keeper.
FRIDAY:
DAY 7
FORTY-TWO
KIKI
Friday, February 21, 2020
I can’t get going this morning. I sit on the loo seat after my shower and slowly dry my feet as I remember last night. His smile, those eyes, and the instant attraction between us. It was like being pulled into one of those Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks romances I used to happy-cry over as a teenager.
Pip starts banging on the door, demanding her turn, and I stumble up and wrap myself in a towel, telling myself I’ll text him later.
* * *
—
“Miles!” I say for the third time, and his head finally jerks up. He hasn’t spoken to me since I got in, and I’ve kept myself busy interviewing a sea swimmer about sewage—“We call it going through the motions,” the swimmer said obligingly—but I can’t get past the intro.
“What?” Miles barks back.
“The BOBs!”
“What? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. On it.”
I give it five minutes, then go and stand at his side, upping the pressure in case he decides to disappear down some other virtual wormhole.
“Sadly, they’re not all as stupid as the numpty from Portslade,” he mutters. “A couple of them know what they’re doing. They’re using VPNs so I can’t get to their IPs and locate where they’re based.”
I nod as if I know what he’s talking about.
“Luckily, Lenny and the Captain are less savvy.” He smiles in triumph. “Their IPs show them in the Ebbing area, but that’s as far as I can get.”
“Ebbing? But that’s bloody brilliant,” I cry, and he almost jumps out of his chair.
“Chill!” he mumbles. “I haven’t got their names and addresses. You’ll have to track them to other chat rooms and forums where they might share different pieces of info you can piece together to ID them. Course, they’ll likely go under different names.”
“So how the hell will I know it’s them?”
“By looking at the language they use—people repeat words and phrases all the time—and matching bits of personal information from the first chat room.” Miles grinned. “Treat it as a sort of psychological Tetris.”
“What do you mean, ‘you’ll have to’?” I scowl down at him. “I thought we were doing this together.”
“Busy,” he says, and pulls down the shutters.
I groan and go to buy coffees from the shop downstairs.
In the queue I look at my phone. There’s a text from a withheld number, and I almost drop my phone in my haste to read it.
Hi, the sex was great last night. Let’s do it again tonight. Maybe somewhere warmer? Rx
It’s like a slap in the face. Nothing about the laughter in the bar. The slow burn. The connection between us. You silly cow! I shout silently at myself. What were you thinking? This was only a big romantic moment in your head. It was just a hookup for him.
I tap out my reply, my disappointed fingers fumbling the keys: Sorry—need to put my social life on hold for a bit—up to my ears with work and family. Good luck online!
I just want to close the whole episode down.
But it doesn’t work. Rob texts back immediately with reasons why I should go out with him again. He clearly isn’t taking no for an answer, and I can’t block calls and texts from his withheld number. He told me last night it was a work security thing. And I nodded along while giving him my mobile number, like an idiot.
Ignore him. He’ll get bored in the end. Find Lenny and the Captain.
An hour later, my head hurts from the tedious toss that people talk in chat rooms. Why do they bother? It’s mainly just pile-ons—let’s all hate *insert as applicable*—or pretending to have inside knowledge on international conspiracies despite being a shelf stacker in West Bromwich.
The Captain’s old posts could be the work of a fourteen-year-old—sniggering about tits and scoring dates like a judge on Britain’s Got Talent.
Lenny clearly spends more time online, spreading his misspelled wisdom on gay men, femminists (sic), and working mothers. But he’s not sharing today. Scared off by Simon, no doubt. I’m about to give up when I stumble upon a random thread with him giving advice on tiling a bathroom. Apparently, you need to add 10 percent to your calculations or something. Maybe this is the way into his sad little world. Posting as Danny, I try a dingbat question first, building Lenny up as the tiling guru: Good to find someone who knows what they’re talking about. What color grout for metallic tiles?
Gray, Lenny responds five minutes later. What surface area?
I pick a number and pretend I’m having second thoughts on silver.
Mettallic tile’s are a bugger to clean, he posts back. Mite have to get your old lady on the job.
Bloody hell, he doesn’t hang around, does he?
I reply with a winky emoji, and he sends me a link with the message Have a look.
When I click on it, the back view of a woman cleaning a bathroom wearing only yellow rubber gloves appears on my screen. Bleach-scented porn? Bit niche.
I’m about to click back to the chat room to pick up the banter with Lenny when the naked cleaner turns her head to say something and her expressionless face is caught in the mirror over the sink.
“Bingo,” I say, and pick up my car keys.
* * *
—
The Claytons’ shop is closed when I get there. There’s a piece of paper stuck to the door announcing “Stock Take.” When I walk round to the outbuildings to see if I can see anyone, it’s deserted. But I can hear a dog barking frantically somewhere behind the back fence. I stand on tiptoe to look over and see a shabby-looking bungalow. Evelyn Clayton is at the window. She’s got her clothes on now.
Her husband suddenly comes out with a big dog, which is pulling and biting at its lead.
“Back in an hour,” he calls. “I’ll have that ham for my lunch.”
I wait until he’s loaded the hound into his car and driven off.
“Come on, Kiki,” I tell myself, slipping through the gate and walking up to the house. “You might be able to get her to talk about her husband and his revolting hobbies. And if he took pictures of Karen.”
The curtains have been closed by the time I get to the door, but I press the bell hard. Evelyn opens the door on a chain, a towel around her shoulders.
“Hello again,” I say, and she frowns, clearly trying to place me.
“Oh, God,” Evelyn says, panic making her voice shrill when she remembers. “Did he see you? You can’t come in.”
“I’ve seen the video of you cleaning the bathroom,” I say gently.
Evelyn blinks and whispers: “It’s just a hobby—a bit of fun.”
“Is it?” I say.
“He’s always taking pictures. Of trees and things.”
“And you—in the wood with your red shoes on.”
Evelyn Clayton closes her eyes. “Just a bit of fun,” she repeats, the mantra she’s been taught.
“For who?” I ask. “Look, can I come in? Just for a minute?”
Hair dye paraphernalia is all over the kitchen table, and the smell of ammonia makes my eyes water.
“I’m doing my roots,” Evelyn explains unnecessarily. “He said I looked a mess. Look, he can’t know I’ve talked to you again. He went mad about that article you wrote.” She touches her left shoulder unconsciously.
“What did he do?” I ask, queasy at the thought that my questions may have provoked him.
She just looks away and shakes her head.
“Did he take photos of Karen, Evelyn?” I ask softly.
“Karen?” She gasps. “No, she wasn’t interested, he said.”
“No, I mean after you found her body?”
Evelyn sits in silence, playing with a comb for a moment, then looks up, face a blank. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I’d like you to go now.”
She walks behind me as I file out, and when I turn to say good-bye, I stub my toe hard on the hall table and a basket of scarves and wooly hats goes flying. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I say and bend to scoop everything up.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it,” Evelyn twitters, clearly anxious to get me out of the house, so I hand her the black beanie I’ve just picked up and two gloves fall out. Blue gloves.
FORTY-THREE
ELISE
Friday, February 21, 2020
Mal hadn’t called Elise like he’d said he would, and she’d told herself it was probably for the best as she’d tossed and turned last night. But she buttered her burned toast so violently it shattered beneath the knife, sending shards under the table.
She was reaching to pick them up when she heard his back door open and close. She half stood and then forced herself back onto her chair. He’s changed his mind. End of.
Mal’s face suddenly appeared over the fence, and she was in plain view through the kitchen window. “Hi,” he called, smiling like he meant it. “Can I pop round?”
Elise scrambled to her feet as soon as he disappeared, stripping off her old dressing gown and throwing a jumper over her pajamas. She listened for his footfall outside.
He knocked lightly, and she opened the front door so quickly he stepped back, laughing.
“Hello! How are you doing?”
“Good, thanks. You?” Play it cool, Elise. He may be here to make his excuses.
“Fine. I decided I’d talk to you face-to-face instead of ringing—bit of a nonsense when we live next door, isn’t it?”
He hasn’t changed his mind, she thought, and felt the blush rising up her neck.
“So, have we got a date tonight?” He smiled. “I thought we could drive into the South Downs and find a cozy pub. What do you think?”
“Er, I’d love to, but I’ve got a reconstruction.”
“Reconstruction?” Mal’s face fell.
Oh, God, he’s thinking about my lost breast.
“It’s a week since the murder,” she babbled. “We’re reconstructing Karen’s known movements on the night she disappeared, hoping to jog memories. We’re hoping to find new witnesses who might have seen or spoken to her.”
“Oh, right, of course, I see,” he babbled back.
“But what about tomorrow?”
“Done,” he said, his face glowing. “I’ll pick you up at eight. Hope it goes well tonight.”
Elise sank onto the sofa after he left. She needed a moment to catch her breath. And enjoy the butterflies fluttering flirtatiously in her stomach. This was good, wasn’t it? A proper date after three years of solitary. What the hell would they talk about? The butterflies became a swarm of flies, buzzing with anxiety.
For God’s sake, she told herself. It’s dinner, not a proposal. And it’s not for another thirty-six hours. I’m going to be too busy to even think about it until then.
* * *
—
When she finally arrived, the incident room was crammed with bodies—the district commander had given them dozens of uniforms to swell the ranks, and Caro was briefing the troops to flood Ebbing later.
“We need to be everywhere Karen was a week ago,” she said. “Jogging memories, asking questions. Mina Ryan has agreed to walk the route from Karen’s flat to the Neptune and back. DC Lucy Chevening will be with her, dressed like Karen. Any questions?”
There were, and it wasn’t until an hour later that Elise was able to extricate herself and look at the day’s task list.
Andy Thomson was deep in the dark world of Tinder prowlers when Elise went to find him.
“Hello, boss,” he muttered.
“Go on—who are you today?” Elise asked.
“Er, Angie. I’m using an ex-girlfriend’s picture. She’s about Karen’s age.”
