June
It was a beautiful morning, at least. I stared out of the window at the quiet street, empty apart from an early jogger on the other side of the road and tiny birds flitting from one tree to the next. No one else seemed to be up, which wasn’t surprising. I wouldn’t have been up if I hadn’t been getting the train to Leicester for a hearing that morning.
Everything looked normal, I told myself. Everything was fine. It was going to be a good day.
The cat stropped himself against my legs, purring, and I reached down to stroke him. ‘I know, Geoff. You want feeding. You’ll have to wait until I get dressed.’
The email I’d had four days earlier from Liz Rowley kept repeating in my mind. John Webster had persuaded the police he had nothing to do with the website. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe someone else had thought it was funny.
I turned away from the window and headed to the bathroom to wake myself up with a brisk shower. The morning routine was soothing, requiring no thought as I dressed, applied make-up and did my hair with practised ease. I had shuffled into the bathroom squinting with tiredness and yawning; I strode out of it looking cool and in control, ready for court or just about anything the day might throw at me.
Our bedroom was warm, the blinds glowing with the promise of a hot day ahead. One knocked against the window frame as a breeze caught it. That would probably be the last cool air of the day. Mark lay sprawled across the entire bed, face down, his light brown hair tousled, one arm stretched across the space where I had been as if he had reached for me. We had reduced our bedclothes to a single linen sheet because of the hot weather and it was crumpled around his hips, leaving his bare torso exposed. I yearned to run my hand over the tanned skin of his back, tracing his spine.
No. Concentrate.
Quietly, moving with the care and deft control of a burglar, I scooped up my watch and earrings and my engagement ring from the bedside table. My phone was next and I switched it on to check it quickly: no calls, no messages, nothing untoward.
Should I kiss him goodbye? I didn’t want to wake him. I stood with my shoes in my hand, hesitating, and had just made up my mind to leave when he spoke.
‘What time is it?’
‘Quarter to six.’
‘Christ.’
‘Go back to sleep.’
He rolled over and prised an eye open, rubbing the other one with the heel of his hand. ‘What time will you be back?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll text you. It should be a short hearing, but you never know.’ The sheet had slipped even further. I found my eyes tracking down Mark’s torso. Oh …
His thoughts must have been running along the same lines as mine. His other eye came open and he gave me a look that was by no means sleepy. He sat up on one elbow, stretched out his hand and found my leg, his fingers curling around my thigh, just above the knee. ‘Are you in a hurry?’
‘I should go.’ I didn’t move.
‘What time is your train?’ His hand slid upwards, slowly, and the heat of his touch spread through my entire body.
‘I—’ I would need to get ready again, to do my hair and my make-up. I really didn’t have time. I pulled a face. ‘I can’t. Later. When I get back.’
He grinned and let himself fall back onto the pillows. ‘I can wait. It was worth a try, though.’
‘Always.’ I kissed him goodbye and went downstairs with Geoffrey running ahead of me, his tail in the air. I felt lucky, and loved, and like it would take very little for me to abandon Leicester in favour of a day in bed with my handsome fiancé.
It was already hot, I discovered when I stepped out onto the doorstep. The milkman had been, and I put the bottles in the hall. The tiled floor was cold, even during a June heatwave; Mark could put the milk in the fridge when he got up in half an hour or so. I walked down the garden path, smelling the jasmine that clustered around the porch of the house next door, and – because it was London – the bitter stink of an urban fox who had left an olfactory calling card on our wall. It wouldn’t smell any better as it aged. I would wash it off later with the hose when I watered the front garden, I thought, stepping down off the pavement to cross the road, imagining myself in the cool evening, dressed in shorts and a strappy top instead of this fitted suit, a glass of wine waiting for me in the kitchen, cloudy with condensation—
Something crunched under my feet and I looked down to see broken mirror glass glinting in the road. I glanced back to see where it had come from.
‘Oh no.’
Mark’s car was parked on the street, just outside our house. Parking was a major issue locally because none of us had drives or garages; the houses were Victorian and terraced and the street was relatively narrow, so you parked your car and folded in the wing mirrors and hoped for the best. On this occasion, he must have forgotten to push the roadside mirror in (which wasn’t like him) and someone had driven past with enough speed to knock it off (which was absolutely typical). The casing for the mirror dangled against the side of the car, scratched and shattered, as if whatever hit it had been moving fast, and there was a scrape mark the length of the driver’s door. He was not going to be pleased to discover his car was damaged, I thought.
With an inward sigh I ran back to the house to break the bad news.
It had promised to be a good day but that was a lie. I’d been late for my train, late for court and then late getting back, landing in the middle of rush hour when I got off my train. The incident with the car mirror was entirely responsible, I thought, battling through the crowds with my bag as my hair stuck to the back of my neck and sweat pooled at the base of my spine. My clothes were clinging to me, clammy now from a day of hacking around in the heat. Mark had been upset, of course, and swore blind that he hadn’t left the mirror sticking out. Our conversation attracted the attention of the neighbours who came out of their houses in ones and twos, until there was quite a crowd standing around the car in various states of undress, chatting about other car-related incidents and whether the council should do something.
‘These things happen in London,’ I offered, and Mark looked at me across the group of neighbours with a tiny frown denting his forehead, because he knew as well as I did that these things happened a lot more often if someone was making sure they did.
‘Would you watch where you’re going?’
I came back to myself to find an elderly gentleman scowling at me, one hand to his shin. The bag I was towing across a crowded concourse was a liability and I needed to be more careful. I apologised, given that I was totally in the wrong, and tried to focus on where I was and what I was doing. The station was far too crowded and all I wanted was to get to the Underground and go home. Some clear space opened up in the crowds in front of me and I darted forward, only to stop as the phone in my pocket began to hum. Unknown number, the screen informed me.
‘Hello?’ I jammed my hand against my free ear. ‘Hello?’
Nothing.
I ended the call and looked at the phone for another second, wondering. They would call back, if it was a police officer or a CPS lawyer or another barrister trying to get hold of me.
There was no reason to think it was John Webster, any more than I should think the car was his work – and yet I did think that.
I spent a lot of the journey home checking over my shoulder.
At twenty past two in the morning, the landline in the house began to ring, startling me out of an uneasy sleep. Mark slid out of bed before I was fully awake and ran downstairs to answer it, swearing all the way. I put the bedside light on and sat up to listen, wary in case it was his parents, or mine – some unexpected disaster that couldn’t wait until morning.
‘Hello?’
I heard him end the call, and then press a couple of buttons and listen, before he hung up. A cable rattled against the floor and he started back up the stairs again.
‘What are you doing? What was it?’ I asked as he came into the room.
‘I checked. The call was from a withheld number.’ He stood by the door, tall and angry, his hair standing up on end. ‘I’ve disconnected the phone, in case.’
In case. He didn’t need to say in case of what. In case the next four hours were filled with more silent phone calls, or calls where there was just the sound of breathing, or faint music, or screams, or barking dogs, or any of the thousands of noises that John Webster had played to us the last time he’d tormented us.
‘It’s him, isn’t it.’ I was shaking, I discovered, tremors that came from somewhere deep inside me.
‘Turn out the light.’ He lay back down and turned towards me, drawing me into his arms in the darkness. ‘It might not be. And if it is, we’ll deal with it.’
‘Mark, I’m scared.’
‘I know.’ He pressed his forehead against mine. ‘But we’re together. We’ll get through it together.’
The next morning was Saturday. He plugged in the landline while I watched from the kitchen doorway, eating a bowl of cereal.
‘There. Although I was thinking maybe we should get rid of the landline. We hardly need it.’
I shrugged, and began to say something, but I was cut off by the high-pitched shrilling of the telephone. I jumped and the bowl seemed to leap out of my hands, spinning through the air to smash on the floor. Milk and cereal splashed the walls and my feet, but I barely felt it.
We stared at one another in silence as the phone rang on and on and on.
The phone rang eighteen times in a row that morning, until Mark yanked the cable out of the wall again with a muttered curse and we had peace. Peace, until a shocked neighbour knocked on the door to tell us – because she thought we should know – that someone had drawn ‘something horrible’ on our wall.
Something horrible proved to be the word ‘cunt’. They hadn’t drawn it, I discovered, when I tried to wash it off. They had burned it, with a blowtorch, so it scarred the brickwork and couldn’t be removed.
Nothing happened on Sunday. No calls. No visits. No criminal damage. Mark researched alarm systems for the house, grimly, and I tried to work on my case for the following day. I spent most of the time gazing into space, flinching whenever there was an unexpected sound.
Two days later I was on the Victoria Line on my way to work, travelling north between Oxford Circus and Warren Street. A hot wind pushed through the carriage from the window at the end, and it blew my hair around my face. I turned towards the front of the carriage so that my hair was blowing behind me instead of into my eyes, and glanced idly through the open window to the carriage in front, where a man was standing by the last door.
John Webster, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, with a bag slung across his torso. His hair was short, his skin tanned. He looked fit and well and as if he was lost in his own thoughts, tapping a pair of sunglasses against his leg.
I glowered at him, willing him to turn his head, to acknowledge me. I was clenching my fists so hard that later I discovered my nails had left half-moon cuts in my palm. He seemed oblivious to me and I knew he wasn’t.
As the train came into Warren Street, I tried to guess what he was planning and where I should go – should I get off? Move carriages? Ask for help?
‘Sorry—’ A young woman pushed past me and I lost sight of Webster for a second as I moved back, out of her way. When I looked again, there was no sign of him. He wasn’t in the other carriage. Panic caught my throat, making it hard to breathe. I rushed to the door and peered out even as the warning bell sounded, but there was no one on the platform.
He had gone.
The doors slid closed and I leaned against the carriage wall, fighting for composure. It was a coincidence, except that John Webster didn’t do coincidences. It was nothing you could take to the police. Oddly, although he hadn’t tried to talk to me, I felt thoroughly shaken. The phone calls were annoying; the car was expensive to fix but ultimately just a car. This was different. He had followed me without my knowledge. He had proved he could get close to me.
For the first time I felt truly unsafe.
‘Ingrid …’ Martin Holdsworth QC was a large, confident man, terrifying as an opponent, avuncular and kind as my head of chambers. He was red-faced and cheerful, prone to opening a bottle or two of wine on a Friday afternoon and throwing an impromptu party in his room in chambers.
What he wasn’t, as a rule, was diffident, which made it very surprising that he was standing in the doorway of my (shared) room, holding an open cardboard box, looking as if he really wished he was somewhere else.
‘What can I do for you, Martin?’
‘This came for you.’ He held the box delicately in his shovel-like hands, touching it with the tips of his fingers. ‘It was addressed to me, which I’m afraid I really don’t understand as I certainly wouldn’t buy anything from this particular – ah – vendor. So I opened it and – well, your name is on the invoice and so I assume …’
‘What is it?’ I stood up and moved towards him.
‘Well, I don’t really …’
It was very unlike Martin to be lost for words, and his face had turned a worrying shade of puce. He pushed the box into my arms awkwardly, and muttered something as he hurried away. For such a big man he was capable of moving quickly.
‘What the hell did you buy?’ Henry – one of the other barristers who shared my room – came to stand beside my desk as I opened the box. ‘I’ve never seen Martin in such a— oh.’
The invoice lay on top of the items in the box: Love! Sex! Fun! It proclaimed across the top, along with Martin’s name, the address of chambers and my name as the purchaser. I lifted it out.
‘Oh shit.’ Henry leaned in so he could see better. ‘Oh that is nasty. What is that, twelve inches?’
A large dildo lay in the bottom of the box, along with a leather harness and a pair of handcuffs. I stared at them, feeling sick. ‘Clearly I didn’t order these.’
‘Clearly,’ Henry said sarcastically, reaching in to pick up a bottle I hadn’t noticed. ‘Lube. Well, that’s considerate. Mark is a lucky guy.’
I snatched it out of his hand and threw it into the box, folding the lid so I didn’t have to look at it any longer. ‘I didn’t buy these things! And if I had, why would I have them delivered to my fucking head of chambers, Henry?’
He looked bemused. ‘You’re really upset, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Look.’ His voice softened. ‘It’s clearly someone’s idea of a joke. You can explain that to Martin. Don’t fall for that oh-gosh-oh-no routine of his – he tells the filthiest jokes I’ve ever heard and he’s been in the game long enough to deal with thousands of sex cases. This is nothing. In fact, I bet he was in on it.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. I was staring at the invoice in my hand, my horror fading as the wheels of my brain began to turn. ‘I think I know exactly who did this. But I think he just made a mistake.’
‘What was that?’
‘The invoice has a credit card number on it.’ I fanned myself with the paper. ‘I’m going to show it to the police. Maybe they’ll believe me now.’