Muriel Gray
Tess had biscuits ready. The last two times the cops had come she felt bad she had nothing to offer them. Now she had biscuits. She’d asked Andy not to lose it, but here he was, already red in the face and pointing.
“You. Are. Shitting me!”
Tess stroked his arm. Then squeezed.
“Language, pet. No need.”
He shrugged her off. Still pointing in the cop’s face.
“It was bloody you! Well, not actually you, but one of your guys, yeah? Said, ‘Oh, these fake CCTV cameras are mince’.” Andy affected a high-pitched mimicking voice. It was not going down well, but he carried on. “Didn’t you? Said thugs could spot them a mile off. Your words.”
The big cop’s radio crackled on his shoulder and he turned it down. He said nothing but leant back, recrossing his arms over his stab vest. Andy went on, pacing now in front of the laptop on the desk.
“So, okay, we get a real one. Not cheap. Here it is. And look…voila! All-you-can-eat footage of the pair of little shits actually in the act.”
He jabbed a finger at the screen. It was frozen on a clear picture of two hooded figures climbing over the fence, heaving James’s birthday bike over the top like Marines wrestling a log round an obstacle course.
The cops both nodded sagely.
Andy stared at them.
“So?”
The smaller cop shifted his weight.
“Yeah, that doesn’t give us anything to go on. We’ll give you the crime number. To pass to the insurance company.”
“It’s not bloody well insured.”
Both cops made disapproving noises.
“Would you like some tea? Biscuit?” said Tess, noting the rising colour in her husband’s face.
Andy clenched his fists by his side.
“Let’s be clear. We’re looking at a four and a half minute high-resolution video of a couple of robbing little bastards climbing over the back fence, breaking the lock on the shed, taking our son’s bike, pushing it back over the fence and riding off up the street on it. On three different cameras. Three!”
He held up the requisite number of fingers.
“With the date and time code!”
He tapped the screen for emphasis.
“And you say there’s nothing to go on? Nothing?”
Big cop sighed. Little cop had taken a biscuit with a grateful nod. Tess smiled.
“Could be anyone,” said big cop.
“And that’s it?”
That was it.
The cameras in question dutifully recorded the two policemen leaving the front door, walking down the small driveway, opening the gate and driving off. The clarity of the images was outstanding, proving that at least the £875 for equipment and installation reflected the quality of the purchase.
Tess watched the screen as Andy walked down the path after them, hands on hips watching them go, then turned to stare back up and into the lens.
He picked up a stone and threw it. Straight at the camera. It missed.
* * *
“We’re not getting a dog.”
Tess wiped the pot and put it away without comment. Andy wasn’t finished.
“Know how much these big ones cost?”
“Just a thought,” she shouted back from the kitchen.
“Thousands. Not even kidding. For a puppy. Never mind pet insurance. And you’re going to walk it, are you? Every sodding day?”
He was lying on the couch idly flicking through loud sports channels, which was lucky. Andy didn’t hear the gang of boys kick over their bins in the street. As she watched them through the kitchen window, she thought she recognised the tall one. From that family at the edge of the estate by the bus stop. One of about five or six brothers, and a mother who shouted in the street when she was drunk. Tess worried that one day Andy would get out there in time to confront them. And then who knew what would happen? You read about knife crime every day. Some have-a-go homeowner being stabbed.
So Tess watched the rubbish tumble out over their tidy square of grass and neat monoblock driveway and waited until the gang had moved on, laughing and kicking idly at fences and tins in the gutter as they went. She fished out a black binbag from the kitchen drawer, pulled on rubber gloves and went outside. It was better this way, that she tidied it up without telling him. Andy would chase after them. Then they’d only come back.
Outside she discovered her bird table had been broken. The sweet shell-shingled roof was lying on the grass, one side smashed and splintered. She picked it up tenderly, then put the pieces into the binbag. Tess really wished this would stop.
* * *
“What d’you make of this?”
Andy called his wife over through to his computer desk in the front room.
She left Kieran eating cereal at the kitchen table, looking at his phone and ready for school.
“Guaranteed. It says so. One hundred per cent guaranteed or you pay nothing.”
Tess wiped her hands on her jeans and bent forward.
“But what is it?”
The website was a colourful affair, festive reds, yellows and greens like Chinese supermarket graphics. In the centre of a circle was a painting of a pantomime robber, hands up, screaming in fear as his sack of loot fell to the ground.
“Home security company.”
“It doesn’t look as if it means this country.”
Andy pointed to it again.
“No, it does. Look at the reviews. All UK. All five stars.”
Tess read the page.
AOYIN Security. UK number one in stop crime.
Free instalment. 100% satisfaction guarantee. Monthly payments. All money back if not happy. No argue.
AOYIN. Best Safe Life for You.
Tess stood straight and looked incredulously at her husband.
“Why would you trust that? It’s ridiculous. Not even properly translated.”
Andy tapped the side of his nose.
“Searched the tiny name at the bottom there. See? Then I found this on a map.”
“A lock-up down the back of the railway line?”
Andy smiled. That satisfied smile when he’d researched something to its limit and was the new expert. He clicked a few times and zoomed into a satellite picture. The greens and browns started to focus into a picture of an idyllic mountain setting, in the middle of which were the ancient walls of a solitary building perched on a rock. From this aerial vantage point, red tiled outbuildings and a walled garden full of blossom trees was clearly visible.
“There you go. See? It’s a monastery.”
“A monastery’s address being used for a scam security firm?”
“No. They must make the device.”
Tess stared at her husband.
“You being serious?”
“Straight up. Why not trust them? It’s monks make that Buckfast wine, isn’t it? Would trust monks more any day of the week than that bloody shower at AllYouTech.”
“How much is it?”
“Five pounds a month. Direct Debit.”
“Oh, come on. That’s just stupidly cheap. You wouldn’t even notice it.”
Andy flitted around the page, clicking on reviews.
After the simplest of installations, we have enjoyed complete peace of mind and security. S. Henderson. Middlesbrough.
AOYIN security is so good we’ve stopped locking the doors. So lovely to have the children, friends and family come and go as they please. Can’t recommend highly enough. Mrs. Sahid. Largo.
Tess shook her head.
“I don’t know, Andy. It doesn’t even say what they’re installing. Has to be a scam.”
He clicked on the menu.
“Here. Look.”
Full instructions by AOYIN person installer.
Andy pulled down another page. He wore that smile again. The researcher smile.
“You know me. Amateur keyboard detective. Found this bit of blurb about it. Monastery’s called Gi Kumpa in Tibet. Nearly a thousand years old. Read this bit.”
He tapped the screen.
“Says that because of its remote location, political unrest and local depopulation, the monks now ‘rely on a variety of commercial ventures to fund their order’. Order members are all over the world now, it says.”
Tess knelt, pointing. Her other hand went to her throat.
“Oh, it’s beautiful. Look at the carvings on the walls. Zoom into that bit.”
The single grainy black and white picture enhanced to show intricate carvings above an ornate door that stood at the top of a seemingly endless flight of vertiginous steps. Figures merged with snakes, tigers and monkeys, and writhing around them were dragons and winged, sharp-toothed creatures twisted into terrifying shapes. In the background the massive peaks of mountains rose into clouds.
“I’d love to go there. See that,” sighed Tess. “Stuff like that,” she said, turning to her husband and putting her hand on his arm. They never went anywhere. Andy was a stay-at-home person. His home was everything.
“Fat chance. Strictly closed order, it says. That photo’s from the fifties. The last time anyone was allowed to approach it.”
She harumphed. Removed her arm.
“Not surprised they need money then.”
Kieran’s kitchen chair scraped back as he got up to leave for school. Tess would have to drive him now. Until they could afford to get him a new bike.
She left Andy scrolling through, humming quietly.
* * *
Tess looked through the spyhole before she opened the door. The camera had shown a small man holding a box walk up the driveway. He wore a thick, fur-hooded anorak with a light blue robe hanging below it to his ankles, like a surgeon’s scrubs.
He knocked on the door, ignoring the bell. She opened it.
The man bowed.
“Sykes?”
“Yes. I’m Mrs. Sykes.”
“Aoyin.”
Tess was confused.
“Yes. Yes, I’m in at the moment.”
He squinted at her.
“Aoyin.” He held up the box. A small, aged wooden crate. On the side a paper label reading ‘AOYIN Home Security’ was peeling at the corners.
Tess took a small step back.
“Ah. Right. Of course. We were expecting a call first. About installation?”
The man bowed again.
“Here now. Install.”
She looked beyond him onto the street to see if there was a van. The street was empty.
“I’ll just get my husband.” She cleared her throat. “He’s more technical than me.”
There was quite a gap while Andy spoke in quiet tones to the man. After a while he came into the kitchen to fetch her. He seemed pleased.
“You have to come and do this too.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t know. Part of the installation.”
For the next twenty minutes Andy and Tess followed the small man around their garden. Tess tried conversation.
“So have you come all the way from China? Tibet? Is that part of China? I’m so sorry I don’t really know my geography,” she asked the man tentatively.
He looked at her as though it were a child who had spoken.
“Huddersfield,” he replied.
“Oh well. Quite far enough, I suppose.” She threw a weak smile his way, embarrassed.
He didn’t return the smile, continued his task and she made no further attempt to engage him, blowing her nose with a tissue to hide the flush on her cheeks.
Every so often he would stop, open the box, take out a small scrap of paper and ask them to say the words on it. They were meaningless. Jumbles of consonants and vowels.
Several times he had to correct them, making them say it again until he was satisfied it had been correctly pronounced. Then he would kneel and bury the paper in the ground.
Tess whispered to Andy.
“This is ridiculous.”
He shushed her. “Don’t offend him.”
Tess raised an eyebrow. Her husband wasn’t usually this reverential about tradesmen.
“What is this? Where’s his equipment?”
Again he raised his finger to his lips.
Tess did as she was bid and after half a dozen more stops, in unlikely places such as behind the shed and under a broken flagstone, the man finally turned to them and bowed very low indeed.
“Install. Good.”
He stood up and spread out his arms, offering the box to Andy.
“Om Vajrapani Hayagriva Garuda Hum Phat.”
Andy took the box.
“Right. Thanks. Instructions inside?”
The man waved his arm at the garden.
“Installed.”
“Would you like some tea? Biscuit, perhaps?” asked Tess.
He shook his head, bowed once more, then turned and left.
Tess and Andy looked at each other and the corners of Tess’s mouth twitched in mirth, but the look in Andy’s eyes stopped her from laughing. His look was hope. Trust. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to protect his family. Somehow any merry mockery had died in her. She slipped her arm through his and they went back inside.
* * *
Tess knew what she should do with the video. Relieved that Andy was still at work, she picked up her glass of wine with a hand that trembled, and sipped as she rewound it again.
There they were. Five of them this time. They’d been sitting on the Hussains’ low wall across the road, smoking and mucking about. Lobbing their rubbish, cans, bottles and cigarette packets into the garden behind them. She watched as Kieran opened the gate and walked up the drive. You could see from his backward glances and swiftness of step he was scared of the boys. Though there was no sound, it was clear they were shouting and jeering. Kieran entered the house quickly and the camera framed their empty garden once more, the gate swinging open as her son had left it.
She switched cameras. The one at the side of the house was only partially able to pick up the boys crossing the road.
Privacy laws insisted they could only film their own property, but a gap in the hedge meant this camera sneakily could see a portion of the street. Over went the wheelie bins. Rubbish was picked up and thrown after the departed Kieran. One of the boys pushed at the half open gate. He seemed to hesitate, then stepped onto their path.
She stopped the recording, freezing the frame on the picture she’d now looked at a dozen or more times.
The boy’s body was making a star shape, arms flung wide. His feet seemed to be inches off the ground, as if he’d jumped but without having first bent his legs to make the movement. And grainy as it was, she could make out the shape of his mouth beneath his hooded top. It was open in a wide black scream.
She tapped the keyboard. The next frame showed he was higher still in the air, back arched like a high jumper taking a pole backflip.
Tess took another mouthful of wine, because despite having seen the next picture so many times it got worse instead of better.
She switched to the camera feed that looked onto the small fragment of pavement. The hooded figure’s body was partially visible, its splayed limbs arranged at hideously unnatural angles on the ground like a dropped doll.
Her hand paused over the keyboard and then tapped. It was gone. Erased. That day, and the day before. The day with the cat incident.
Though she had waited, nobody had come to the door when the ambulance arrived. It had been high drama in the street, flashing lights and panic, and neighbours with their arms crossed holding mobile phones. She’d told Kieran to stay in his room and she watched from behind the bathroom blinds upstairs with the lights off. But Tess feared the cops might come. Blinding the cameras was for the best. She finished her wine in one gulp and switched off the computer.
* * *
They did come. Just the one. A policewoman. Doing door to door. They could see other cops at other neighbours’. She didn’t even ask to come in.
“Na. We’ve never had a dog,” she heard Andy say.
He called Tess to the door.
“You know anything about this? Kid got mauled or stabbed or something. Just here in front of the house.”
Tess shook her head, shrugged.
“God. No. Was this the other night?”
The policewoman looked at her.
“Thursday evening. Did you see anything? Hear anything? Any kind of commotion?”
She shook her head, looked at Andy, her eyes wide in surprise.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Well, I mean, of course, not until that ambulance came. There was lots of shouting and so on then. But before? No. How horrible.”
The policewoman nodded, took their names, thanked them and left.
Andy closed the door gently and looked at his wife.
“You okay with lasagne again tonight?” she said.
He nodded. Tess went back to the kitchen.
They sat in silence as they ate their dinner, broken only when Andy told Kieran for the hundredth time to put away his phone when he was at the table.
The teenager sighed and did as he was told.
“That’s three now,” he said sulkily into his plate.
“Three what?” asked Tess.
“Cats missing. There’s posters on lampposts.”
“They should take more care of their pets.” Andy stirred his food around, then gestured widely with his fork. “Used to be a good neighbourhood this. You let things run wild, well then…” His voice trailed off.
Kieran looked glum.
“There’s still blood on the pavement, Mum.”
Tess patted her son on the arm.
“That was that accident. With the boy? It’s fine now.”
They finished their dinner, Tess cleared away the dishes and Kieran retreated to his bedroom.
Tess glanced at Andy. They both knew they’d done what was right. Everyone wanted a safe life.
* * *
The young couple seemed nice. She worked for the NHS and he was something in IT. The difference in the street in the last five years had raised house prices to a new level. The fact that people like these, professional people, were looking to buy proved it. Tess had made quite the effort to spruce up the place. Scatter cushions and throws. Nice-smelling wooden sticks in jars in every room.
Outside on the estate gardens were attractive and well-tended. Litter was gone and children played happily in the street. Not many played around the Sykes’s house, but then they were on the corner nearest the busy road, so that seemed like a reasonable explanation. Theirs was one of the quietest houses in the neighbourhood. All the Sykes’s CCTV cameras had been taken down, though one or two in the houses opposite had been recently installed.
Sometimes Tess had noticed glances from neighbours as she left to go shopping, and she would smile and say hello, but mostly they would look away. Nobody ever parked in front of their house and having that space for the car was an unexpected bonus.
Today Tess had put out the little solar water feature on the front lawn. There wasn’t much sun, but the limp trickle of water was pleasant. More importantly it hid the mess on the grass where those magpies had been killed.
“So how long have you lived here?” asked the nice woman as she opened a cupboard in the hall.
“Nearly ten years. We don’t really want to move, but our son’s at university now and Andy’s promotion means we have to relocate.”
The woman nodded. “We’re hoping to start a family ourselves. This neighbourhood seems very quiet. Good place to raise children.”
Tess nodded vigorously.
“Oh, it’s ideal. Safe. Very, very safe.”
She and Andy watched through the window as the departing couple took another look up at the house from their car and hugged each other. Andy thought he should have put the price higher.
* * *
Amara picked up the pile of mail from the doormat and shouted to her husband. “That’s me off, Jack. Can you get this mail? My milk’s in the fridge. Text me if you need anything on the way home. I’m doing Nadja’s shift, so Tesco’ll still be open.”
Her husband wandered through and kissed her, picking up the pile of letters and closing the door behind her.
Nothing exciting. Electricity bill. A thank you card from Amara’s niece. Some spam about a pizza takeaway. And then the usual. At least six business envelopes with the same logo, the same postmark and the same bloody demand.
He walked back into the kitchen and sat down. He picked up a piece of toast and chewed on it as he looked at them. He opened one.
‘Sorry for inconvenience,’ the letter started as usual. ‘Please note that payment is needed now for last chance to keep install AOYIN Security Best Safe Life for You. Please tell bank. We thank you.’
He smiled at the ridiculousness of it. The guy they’d bought the house from had mentioned this. Told them how to keep paying some standing order or something to this firm for security. In fact, he’d been pretty insistent on it, giving Jack the Direct Debit bank account number and writing it down on a pad in case he forgot.
Of course, they hadn’t bothered. What did it even mean? Subsequent demands for payment, a paltry sum it had to be said, were ignored and binned. But this was becoming a nuisance. Worse than a private car parking firm. At least there hadn’t been any fake bailiff letters.
There was no address on these irritating missives. No email or phone number. Otherwise, he’d have enjoyed giving them a piece of his mind.
Upstairs the baby started to cry. He opened the pedal bin, dropped the letters in and went to attend to her.
* * *
Spring was stunning this year.
Jack was working at the window on a spreadsheet but kept being distracted by the sweeping and whirling finches and titmice that flocked over the neighbour’s garden across the road. They swooped in and out of a beautiful Kanzan cherry, paying little attention to a squirrel happily stripping the tree of its buds. It occurred to him as he watched how little wildlife their garden enjoyed. Maybe a bird table and feeder would help. Amara would like that. Now she was nearly six months old, Nala would love it too. She was already sitting up, and he imagined her squeal of delight and chubby hand reaching out for hopping and chirping robins. He logged out of his work and started searching online for garden products.
Movement made him look up from his guilty diversion.
It was the postman. He was waving at him from the street, from the other side of the hedge. Jack stood up and looked. The postman saw him and waved again.
He opened the front door and walked down the path to the gate.
“You okay, mate?”
The postman looked sheepish.
“Just wanted to let you know there’s post. I just left it here at the gate.”
Jack looked down to the small pile of mail on the pavement, then back up to the postie.
“We’ve got a letterbox.”
“Yeah. I know. I just didn’t want to…I thought I saw. Anyway, there it is.”
He strode quickly away.
“Thanks a bunch,” called Jack sarcastically to his back. He picked up the letters, sighed and walked back into the house.
“Well, well,” he thought as he sat back down at his desk. “Haven’t had one of these for a while.”
He opened the familiar letter; familiar except that this time it was accommodated in a blue envelope.
Sighing, he leant back and read it.
‘Please be knowing and warned that AOYIN security is now not installed. NOT INSTALLED. Please make plans to be safe.’
Jack read it again, and something about its tone, the repetition, the capitals, and not just the clumsy translation, made him uneasy. But that, he reasoned, was the intention. It was incredible how people could be scammed these days. But part of him admired it. If the guy who’d sold the house had been paying this fiver every month for years, along with all the other mugs this shower had conned…well, it all adds up. Somebody somewhere was doing very nicely indeed.
Jack shook his head at the letter’s audacity, laughed, crumpled it up and binned it.
“I think we’ll struggle by,” he said out loud to himself, and carried on with his work.
One bird table and squirrel-proof wire feeder added to his cart and he was back on the accounts of a law firm, tidying up their quarterly report.
On the crackling baby monitor Nala started to cry. He waited. Sometimes at this time in the afternoon she’d get restless and settle back down. The crying stopped. He carried on scrolling.
She screamed. A piercing, shrill screech, the real thing doubled in intensity by the electronic version of the monitor.
Jack stood and arched his back. He walked to the kitchen to get her feed, and fussed around getting the bottle ready.
Nala screamed again.
He stepped out the room and looked up the stairs.
“Daddy’s coming!” he called.
He went back into the kitchen to attend to the ping of the microwave, unaware of the tiny spot of blood that had dripped from the upstairs banister and landed softly on the back of his shirt.
“Somebody’s very, very hungry, aren’t they?” he said to the nicely warmed bottle.