Tariq’s words are still rolling through my thoughts when I arrive back at my desk. The light is flashing on the answerphone machine and I press play, but the crackling white noise at the end of the line is almost deafening, and after a moment I press delete.
There is a back catalogue of emails to catch up on as I settle back at my desk and I stay there, with my eyes fixed to the screen, for a couple of hours before standing up to have a cigarette.
I’ve barely taken a drag, finally allowing myself to return in my mind to the spate of stabbings, when my thoughts are interrupted by Ben, calling out from the office. ‘Answer your phone, would you? I’m about to throw it out the fucking window.’
Moving inside, I get to my desk just as the ringer stops. Looking over at Ben, I shrug and he rolls his eyes.
‘Have you written up that piece on the new parking proposals yet?’
I make a face. ‘But I’m working on the stabbing …’
‘Isobel,’ he says. ‘This is a local paper, you can’t ignore the bread-and-butter stories at the expense of the steak.’
‘Right,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘I really must get my priorities straight.’
At 4 p.m., Si arrives in the office, straight from court. I notice my pulse quicken when I see him, looking away before he can catch my eye.
For a moment, I consider going over to him, talking him through what happened on the Heath. If this was a story I needed to work through, he would be one of my first ports of call. But what would be the point? I’ve reported it both officially and to Oscar, and there was no sign of anything having happened. Maybe the truth is I have fabricated the whole thing in my mind. In the circumstances, it’s not an unreasonable conclusion that I might have misconstrued the situation. I was, after all, what would be officially classified as off my fucking tits at the time.
Two hours later, I file my last piece, Si watching me as I shut down my computer.
‘You’re off early. You all right? You look like shit.’
‘Apparently so, thanks for reminding me,’ I say.
He grins, ‘Oh don’t worry, I’d still shag you.’
Reluctantly, my face cracks into a smile as I swing my bag over my shoulder.
‘Night, Si,’ I say as I move towards the door.
‘Fancy a drink?’
I shake my head without looking back. ‘Not tonight. Apparently I need some beauty sleep.’
‘Fair enough. Oh yeah, a package came for you earlier,’ he adds flippantly, and I stop, turning slowly on my heels.
‘For me? What was it?’
‘I don’t know, I thought it might be considered bad manners to open someone else’s post.’ His eyes remain fixed on his screen. ‘It’s down there.’
Following his gesture towards the corner of the room, I pick up the box. Something about it makes me hold it slightly away from my body.
‘When did this arrive?’
‘Hmm? Oh, I don’t know, this afternoon. You were out front having a fag.’
Using a pair of scissors I slice along the packing tape, the blade pressing beneath my fingers until the cardboard bursts open. My fingers move uncertainly over the tissue paper as I peel it away.
Si looks up as I step backwards, the parcel in my hands falling towards the floor like a dead bird dropping from the sky. His eyes follow mine to the carpet, towards a pair of red suede trainers.
‘What’s wrong?’ he says, standing and walking towards me.
‘What the fuck?’ My voice is little more than a whisper as I look from one shoe to the other.
‘Si, where did they come from?’ Still, I don’t look at him, my eyes unable to tear themselves away from the floor, from the trainers I had left in my bag on the Heath.
‘I told you, someone dropped them off. What’s the matter?’
When I fail to respond he holds out a hand to me. ‘Issy, what’s going on?’
Looking up suddenly, I pull my arm away, my eyes darting across the room.
‘Where did they come from?’
He raises his arms. ‘Isobel, seriously, I have no idea. Someone left them with Elaine at reception. I just picked them up on my way in—’
Before he can finish his sentence I’ve pushed through the door to reception. Elaine’s empty desk and a well-worn doormat are the only thing between the office and the world beyond.
‘What …?’ My hands fly to my cheeks, and my whole body shakes as I run to the front door, flinging it open and looking out at the flood of people moving back and forth across the street, my eyes searching for something they cannot find.
Si has to roar to make himself heard above the din of the World’s End pub. He speaks slowly, picking up one of the glasses of whisky on the table between us. You have to drink quickly in this place to forget the stench of stale sick and rancid beer.
‘So let me get this straight … You’re saying that this guy, whoever he is, murdered a woman in the middle of Hampstead Heath, then saw you watching them, somehow found your shoes, discovered where you work and then brought them to your office.’
‘I didn’t say murdered.’ My eyes are fixed over Si’s shoulder, scanning the figures passing back and forth, I’m vaguely aware of my feet tapping at hyper-speed against the sticky surface of the floorboards. Si looks at me, taking another slug of his drink.
‘OK, attacked … I mean, fucking hell, Is, this is nuts. Have you been to the police?’
I nod; the motion of my foot tapping against the floor causes the table between us to vibrate.
‘What did they say?’
‘Fuck all.’ My jaw is tense, I need a cigarette.
He looks like he wants to probe further, but thinks better of it. ‘OK, look. I’m not saying you’re exaggerating at all, but for a moment – just bear with me – ask yourself: why would he do that? If someone attacked a woman on the Heath and he saw you and for whatever reason he knows where you work, and he found your shoes … Why would he return them to the office?’
There is a pause.
‘You think I’m making it up?’
‘No, Issy, of course I don’t. I’m not saying that – I just said I’m not saying that … I’m just asking why. Why would he do that? We need to think.’ His voice softens as he leans in, trying to catch my eye. ‘You’re a reporter, surely you’ve already asked yourself that question?’
‘Of course I have, you patronising prick. I don’t know, Si, maybe because he’s a psychopath?’ I hiss, looking up at him and shaking my head. ‘Maybe it was a warning, his way of telling me that he knows where I am?’
When Si’s considered silence becomes too much, I say, ‘Maybe he is freaking out because he attacked someone and he knows I saw him and he is shitting it that I’m going to tell someone?’
I take out a cigarette and starting rolling it between my fingers, breathing out through my nose, trying to block out Si’s concerned eyes, the eyes of the doctors and the nurses and all those bloody counsellors. The eyes that say clearly what the voice doesn’t dare: I don’t believe you.
I want to stand up and throw my chair at him, to storm out of the pub and run down the high street and scream in the faces of strangers who pass me until I find the man I am looking for, but instead I look up at Si and take a moment to compose myself. It’s not like I have a million other people left on my side to turn to.
‘You’re right,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘I probably just imagined it.’
‘Issy, I’m not saying that you imagined it, for God’s sake, will you listen to me? Jesus, you are so bloody frustrating. What I am trying to say is that if this happened – or rather as this has happened – then we need to go back to the police …’
‘I have,’ I say, quietly, looking down at the unlit cigarette.
‘And?’
I don’t want to tell him about my delay in going to the station, about the reason I held off, about the party and the drugs. I don’t want to tell him any of it, so that he can take it back to Ben and the two of them can roll their eyes in pity, or divine some sort of intervention. I’ve already had more pity in the past year than I can stomach.
‘They’re looking into it,’ I say.
He stops. ‘Isobel, you know you can talk to me, yeah? I know you’ve been having a really hard time, with your friend and … everything.’
I push my chair back. ‘I’m knackered, I need to go home.’
Si reaches out his hand. ‘Don’t go.’
‘No, seriously, I’m tired,’ I say, picking up my bag as he stands.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, Si, not tonight. I need to sleep.’
There is a flash of hurt and then he sits back down and takes a swig of his drink.
Looking away, he says, ‘Fine then, see you tomorrow.’
The walk from the pub to my front door takes less than five minutes. Camden Town has descended into its usual haze of stumbling drunks and anxious crackheads lurking in phone boxes. Briefly I find myself comforted by the familiar tinkle of bottles smashing somewhere in the distance, car horns and swells of sound drifting onto the street as pub doors crash open and shut.
But as I reach my front door, the atmosphere changes. The prospect of a night alone is suddenly terrifying and for a moment I wish I’d let Si come back after all. Then again, I know that I need to be alone, and besides, I can’t afford to give him the wrong idea, for him to think that a night out will automatically end up back at mine.
The broken pane in the front door has been sealed with a piece of cardboard and gaffer tape. I stumble upstairs to the flat, the steps creaking beneath my feet, my heartbeat racing as I fumble with my bag. The windowless hallway is in darkness and I bash my key unsuccessfully against the lock, patting my fingers along the wall for a light switch. As they find it, the sharpness of its features is a relief, but when I flick the button, nothing happens.
‘Shit,’ I mutter under my breath, making a mental note to remind the landlord to sort out the light in the hall.
It is the same feeling I used to get as a child when I got up in the night needing the toilet; that dread at having to wander through the house alone in pitch-black, imagining something I couldn’t see moving closer and closer. The same rising terror circles me now as it had running back towards my childhood bed at full speed and jumping the final distance, convinced someone would reach out from under the bed and drag me down by the ankles. Except this time, as I lift my key, I remember that the bogeyman is real.
When the lock finally gives way with a crack, I fall into the room, slamming my hand against the wall, feeling for the switch and flicking it on so that the room suddenly fills with light.
It is exactly as I left it, the same cups discarded by the sink.
The previous owner of this flat, which I have rented for the past year, since everything happened, had divided it in two with a cheap stud wall, to transform it from a studio into a one-bed. Checking behind the internal door to my bedroom to confirm that I am alone, I go to the bathroom, turning on the bath taps before moving into the kitchen, popping out a Xanax, splitting it in half and pouring myself a small glass of whisky.
As I lower myself into the bath a few minutes later, at last I allow my mind to grapple with what I’ve been keeping at bay all day, the memory I had begun to believe I might have distorted. This time, when the picture starts to blur and contort, the discomfort lodging itself in my chest, I push through so that certain pieces of the puzzle flash into focus: the depth of the man’s voice; the name: Eva.
Then what? Placing myself back in the moment, I imagine tearing through brambles, emerging into the daylight and pounding barefoot across Parliament Hill, past the tennis courts, straight across the zebra crossing at Swain’s Lane, narrowly avoiding a white van which blasted its horn as I darted between the sparse early morning traffic; Highgate Road rushes past in a blur; I was moving as though running for my life. My legs had not stopped until I reached Camden Town, met by a sea of strangled faces, their features blurred. Finally, I picture my hands, trembling as I reach into my pocket and pull out my key.
But what about him: what had he done? How does he know where I work?
The thought causes me to shiver.
He can’t have followed me, not least because I would have noticed a man pursuing me through the streets at such breakneck speed, but also because I went straight home. If he knew where I lived, then why wouldn’t he have sent the shoes to the flat? And yet, the brick: that had happened the very same night. Perhaps Oscar was right, perhaps the two things were unconnected. But fuck Oscar and his patronising assumptions. Besides, everyone knows there’s no such thing as coincidence.
And then it hits me. The purse. Amongst all the crap – the bar receipts, the outdated loyalty cards – was my business card. Five of them, each a little creased, with my name on the front: job title and work address.
For a moment, the voice of reason raises its head. Perhaps then it was a dog walker who returned my shoes to the office, or a jogger? Someone simply found my purse and shoes and had the courtesy to send them back to me. Silly girl, the voice says. The voice of the nurses and doctors, the voice of someone whose mouth was pursed in a knowing smile, one leg pressed over the other.
Except, where was the purse? The only thing that could have given away my identity was nowhere to be seen. If more evidence were needed, there was no note. Encountering local heroes is a hazard of the job when you’re a reporter, and I’ve learnt a bit about the kind of people who get off on this kind of community spirit. Nine times out of ten, they want their picture taken and paraded in the local rag. It isn’t so much about doing good things as about being seen to be doing them.
And yet whoever sent me the shoes didn’t leave a note. There was only one thing the parcel could represent, and that was a message. As I dunk my head beneath the water, holding the air in my lungs until my chest feels as if it will burst, I know it – regardless of what Si or Oscar or anyone else has said. I feel it, and sometimes that is as much as one can hope for.
As for finding out my home address, the truth is that it would have been pitifully easy. I’m not on social media, not anymore; I haven’t unwittingly given away pieces of my life online for any stranger to map together. This is more straightforward than that. Anyone who had got into my office – and hadn’t someone left the window open over the weekend? – would only need a couple of minutes of looking through papers to find my address. For God’s sake, I keep my payslips in the drawer. Easier still, he could have followed me.
Despite the fact that there are no windows in this room, I find myself crouching over to protect my body from prying eyes as I step out of the bath. The room is bitterly cold. Aside from the muted sounds of the outside world seeping through the cracks in the kitchen window, the flat is silent.
Moving across to the kitchen counter, a towel wrapped around me, my chest rises and falls in heaving movements. Turning, I grab a chair and then another and lodge them against the door, jamming the handle.
Every inch of my body is hyper-alert so that I am like a wolf stalking through a forest as I move through the bedsit towards my bedroom – except wolves move in packs, and I am alone.
It is extraordinary how quickly people disappeared after it all kicked off. Some were happy, at first, to send a text or occasionally a card telling me how much they cared and wanted to meet up, but it was rarely followed through. Those who did visit were clearly there to absorb the details first-hand, and then fell away again once their thirst for gossip had been satiated.
Besides, there is only one person I want to speak to now, and she isn’t here.