I took the long route to get back to the flat, changing direction more or less at random, my head full of John Webster and how he had inserted himself into my life three years earlier and what dark roads that had taken me down. I was tired, almost to the point of tears, by the time I trailed up to the big gate, put in the code and let myself into the courtyard that was surrounded by eight flats. They had been converted from canal-side factory units a few years earlier with minimal attention to niceties like insulation. My flat was tucked in one corner, on the upper level, with a metal staircase leading to the front door.
It’s a human trait to want to find significance in random events, I reminded myself – an order, a pattern. Shapes in clouds and faces in wood grain and secrets in the tea leaves. Pareidolia: that was why I saw a threat in Belinda’s death, and in the scaffolding incident. I knew violence all too well, and I expected it to follow me like my own shadow, but that didn’t mean anything.
I was fine.
Nothing had happened to me.
I let myself in to my flat and switched on the lights, looking around to see everything was as I had left it. The flat was essentially a single large space with a bathroom attached. There was a sofa with a sleeping platform over it rather than a proper bedroom, and a table with three chairs, and not much else.
Five minutes after getting home I had changed into jeans and a disreputable sweatshirt, coaxed the heating into life, poured myself a large glass of wine and peered into the fridge to decide what I was going to cook for dinner. If I behaved as if everything was normal, everything would be normal.
But a black feeling sat on my shoulders. It got heavier and heavier as the light faded outside.
Ridiculous, I told myself.
I had checked and double-checked that the door was locked, as were the flat’s only two proper windows. They overlooked the courtyard, which itself was behind the large and heavy gate. I was safe; the only thing that could threaten me was my own imagination.
I looked at my phone.
Leave it. The scaffolding could have been a coincidence.
Someone called your name.
Or I imagined it.
Maybe you did, said the worried little voice inside my head, or maybe you didn’t. And Belinda is definitely dead.
I could go back and forth on it all night, but until I made this phone call I wouldn’t get any peace.
It took me a minute of scrolling through my contacts to track down the number I had for DC Adam Nash, thirty seconds to leave him an incoherent voicemail message, and three hours for him to call me back. By that time I had decided he hadn’t meant it when he told me to phone him if I ever needed to. I was lying wide-eyed in the dark, convinced that the thudding of my heart was footsteps on the stairs to my front door. Sleep was as remote as the stars, and when my phone vibrated next to my ear I answered it on the first ring.
‘Ingrid Lewis.’
‘It’s Adam Nash.’ His voice was instantly familiar, even though it was a long time since we’d last spoken. Serious, unhurried, measured. ‘Sorry I’m so late getting back to you. I had my phone off. I was in interview.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ I sat up and put the bedside light on. ‘I’m just glad you called. I wasn’t sure you would remember—’
‘I remember.’
‘Right.’ I put a hand to my forehead. Why did I feel like crying? Because I had found someone who might understand how I was feeling – someone who could tell me if I was going mad or not. When Webster turned his attention to me, after the trial where I’d represented him, there had been a trial, and publicity. Nash had contacted me after he was convicted, to offer his assistance if I ever needed it. Adam Nash was a little bit obsessed with John Webster, I thought, and I appreciated it in a way that was the exact opposite to how I felt about Webster’s obsession with me. For him, Webster was the one who’d got away.
‘The thing is – well, I’m not sure if you could understand what I said in my message.’
‘Parts of it,’ he said carefully, and I almost laughed: I hadn’t been at my most eloquent. ‘Maybe you could start at the beginning.’
I stumbled through what had happened to Belinda and how I felt I wasn’t getting the full story from the police who were investigating it. ‘And then I was going home and I thought someone said my name – and then some scaffolding fell down, right in front of me.’
‘Scaffolding.’ He sounded dubious and I swallowed, hard.
‘A piece of scaffolding. A coupling piece. The big metal things that hold the poles in place. I was walking underneath and – stopped. And it fell just where I should have been.’
‘Lucky.’
‘Very.’
‘And you think it wasn’t an accident.’
‘No.’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it the usual route you take from work?’
‘Yes.’
‘At your usual time?’
‘Yes.’
A tiny silence. Then, in a voice carefully scrubbed of judgement, Nash said, ‘We talked about changing routines, didn’t we?’
You can’t change your routine all the time, I thought. There aren’t infinite ways you can move through the world if you have a fixed point A where you live and a fixed point B where you work.
‘I try to vary it,’ was what I ended up saying. It sounded lame, even to me.
‘What street was this scaffolding on?’
‘Field Lane, near the station.’
‘And what was the address?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ I said truthfully. ‘I don’t know who put up the scaffolding either, and I’m not all that keen to go back and check.’
‘I can find out.’ I could hear him tapping on a computer. It was the middle of the night; he’d have been justified in telling me to call him back the next day or not at all, but he was completely focused on what I was telling him. I should have found that reassuring, but in some ways I’d have preferred him to dismiss me and my fears instead of taking them seriously.
I don’t want to have to do this again.
Any witnesses?’ Adam asked.
‘Loads, but I didn’t get their names.’
‘Emergency services respond?’
‘Not while I was there. No one was hurt.’
‘And you didn’t see anyone acting suspiciously. You just heard someone say your name.’
‘Maybe.’ I bit my lip. ‘I was thinking about him. You know how it is. I might have imagined it.’
No need to specify who I meant when I said him.
‘Could he have been following you from work?’
‘He could, I suppose.’
‘How did you get to King’s Cross?’ He listened as I described my journey home. ‘Did you use your Oyster card to pay your fare?’
‘My bank card.’
‘Give me the number. I can use that to trace which bus it was and get BTP to check the CCTV on board so we can see if he was on it, or nearby.’
‘You think it’s him, then.’
‘Don’t you?’ His voice softened. ‘Isn’t that why you called me?’
‘Yes. It is.’
‘I’m not surprised he’s back. I knew this would happen.’
I didn’t say anything. I had known it too, after all. I’d just hoped Adam Nash would say I was wrong.
I had an early start in the morning, going up to Luton to cover a bail application for someone else. Glamorous it wasn’t, but it was work. I got dressed in the suit and shirt I’d laid out the previous night, and from habit double-checked that I had my gown and my wig tin – a battered black and gold oval tin with a hinged lid and my initials stencilled on the top – as well as my laptop, charger and the papers I needed to work on. I looked around the flat before I left to check that everything was as it should be, which was reasonable and the sort of thing anyone normal might do.
You do realise, my counsellor had said in what turned out to be our final session, that consciously avoiding the behaviours connected with surviving trauma doesn’t mean that you haven’t experienced trauma, or that it hasn’t had a long-term effect on you.
I know that.
I think you don’t like being the victim. You’re used to being in a position of power in court, in control. You don’t like being the one on the other side for a change.
No one wants to see themselves as a victim, I had said, and she had smiled.
You’re bright enough to control your actions, but you can’t outthink your feelings. One day they will overwhelm you.
I think, I had said, I’ve got as much as I can out of counselling.
We’re not finished though.
You might not be, but I am.
I hadn’t liked that counsellor, and she hadn’t liked me. She’d thought I was arrogant. What I hadn’t allowed her to know – what I couldn’t even say – was that my fear was as loud and all-consuming as a blast furnace, and keeping the door closed to it was essential for my survival.
So I didn’t take elaborate steps to check whether anyone had broken into my home, and I didn’t open all the drawers and cupboards ten times a day or catalogue the contents of my underwear drawer, but I wanted to.
I let myself out of the flat and locked the door before heading down the stairs, treading as softly as I could because it was still early.
I was glad to have work to think about, having spent all night worrying about John Webster. Nash had agreed to meet me to talk it over when I got back from Luton, which should be mid-afternoon. I wasn’t sure how he could help but at least it felt as if I was doing something to take control – although how you could take control of a situation when you weren’t even sure what that situation was—
‘Hi.’
I was halfway across the courtyard, skirting the rectangular pond at the centre of it, and I hadn’t noticed that anyone else was there. A woman, sitting on a bench in a shaft of morning sunshine. Steam twisted upwards from the mug she held in both hands. She was my age, with a round, friendly face that looked freshly scrubbed. Her hair was damp and she had plaited it into two fat ropes.
‘Sorry. Did I give you a fright?’
‘Not really.’
‘I’m your new neighbour.’ She gave me an awkward little wave, still smiling. ‘Helen. Just moved in a week ago.’
‘Congratulations. I’m Ingrid.’
‘I live downstairs from you.’ She dimpled. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t listen to loud music or have lots of parties.’
‘Me neither.’
‘It’s nice, here. The garden.’
I looked around. ‘Yes, it is. It’s one of the reasons I moved here.’
‘I suppose it won’t get much sun later in the year.’
‘I’ve never really noticed.’ I hesitated. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m on my way to work, so—’
‘Of course! Sorry! I don’t want to delay you.’
I started to walk away.
‘Are you a stewardess?’
‘Excuse me?’
She was looking at my bag. ‘Are you a stewardess? I’ve seen you coming and going with the bag, so I wondered.’
‘No.’ I moved towards the gate with decision, and this time she let me go. It wasn’t the most friendly way of ending the conversation, I thought, as I let myself out, but I felt uneasy about Helen. She was trying far too hard. No one ever sat in the courtyard to enjoy the morning sunshine – not that early in the day, when it was cold enough for me to need gloves. If she lived downstairs from me, she could have heard me getting ready. She could have come out to intercept me.
What did she want?
Paranoia, my old friend. I hadn’t missed it.