I settle myself at the kitchen table, open my laptop, and check the time. Twelve minutes past eight. It’s three minutes until my Zoom call is due to start, and nervousness is twisting my stomach. When I got back from seeing Amber yesterday, I paid my neighbour, Johnny, a quick visit, came back down to my flat and paced up and down for a while, then messaged Nathan to say I’d pretty much made my decision. But if I’m going to do this – which, despite grave misgivings and waves of queasiness every time I think about the reality of it, I’m almost certain I am, now – I’m going to need help. Lots of help.
My chat with Johnny confirmed what I’d already been thinking as I travelled back from HMP Downhall. Johnny is an ex-cop; he was a detective inspector for West Midlands Police in Birmingham until he retired six years ago. I think our shared interest in crime is one of the reasons we get on so well, even if my experience of it so far has largely been limited to reading about it in novels. Without giving any real detail, I ran past him what I said was a ‘hypothetical scenario’, asking him what it would take to get a closed case re-investigated, after someone had already been found guilty and sent to prison.
He raised an eyebrow, clearly curious, but he didn’t press me for more information.
‘It wouldn’t be easy,’ he said. ‘It would have to be something like an error in the trial proceedings possibly. Or new evidence, of course. A new testimony that wasn’t available at the time of the original trial. New witnesses, new documents. If the defendant pleaded guilty to the crime you can’t request a case reopening, though. Does that help?’
It does, and now I tap my laptop keyboard to wake up the screen and log on. A minute or so later, there they are, two faces, smiling at me. On the right is Felicity, looking very similar to how she looked when I met her at Words on the Street, her blonde hair pulled tightly back from her face in a little bun or ponytail, I can’t tell which. And on the left is her brother, Nathan. I had, out of interest, looked him up online after our first phone call, but the photos I found don’t do him justice. He’s gorgeous – blond like his sister and broad-shouldered with muscular arms shown off by the sleeves of his white T-shirt pulling tight over his biceps.
Nice, I think, then instantly reprimand myself. Really, really not the time.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Good to see you again, Felicity. And to finally see your face, Nathan.’
‘Lovely to see you too,’ they both say at exactly the same time. As we all laugh, my heaving stomach calms a little, the tension in my body easing.
‘Sorry. We do that a lot. Weird brother-sister thing,’ Felicity says. ‘We lost both our parents quite young, so we’re pretty close. But it’s great to see you, and to hear you want to go ahead. I know it all sounds mad, but if we can get some sort of justice and show everyone who Jack Shannon really is… And we can do it if we work together, Heather. I honestly believe that.’
‘So do I,’ says Nathan. ‘Thank you so much, Heather. You don’t know what this means, to me and to Lacey too.’
‘That’s OK, but…’ I hesitate. ‘Look, I’m almost a hundred per cent certain I’m going to give it a go. Not all of Amber’s story is totally convincing, partly because she doesn’t seem to be able to remember much detail about the night of the stabbing. Trauma, maybe? But on the whole, I think I do believe her. And I think you’re both right – I don’t think there’s any official way of doing it, of getting the police to investigate him, without something to show them first. I’ve spoken to a friend who’s a former police detective – don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything – and he agrees. The police won’t reopen the case unless there’s new evidence, or a new witness who didn’t come forward at the time. I mean, that witness would be you, obviously, Nathan, but if you think it’s too risky for you, without new evidence to back you up, that’s fair enough. So that leaves us with finding that new evidence, which is where I’m going to have to come in. I’m just glad Amber stuck to her not-guilty plea, because if she hadn’t, that would have scuppered everything, apparently. So, yes, if you really, really don’t think a private detective’s an option, and there’s no one else who can do this…?’
‘We don’t,’ Nathan says quickly. ‘Jack doesn’t let many people get close, you know? And as I said, you’re the one who got away. I’ll be honest – I don’t know whether he’ll want you back because there’s real feelings there, or just because he’ll want to, you know… try to punish you in some way, because he didn’t do that last time. But either way, I genuinely don’t think he’ll need much persuasion to go on a date with you again. And once you’re back in there…’
He shrugs.
‘And you won’t have to be there for long,’ he rushes to add. ‘We’ll get you in and out as quickly as possible. Felicity and I will be on call day and night for you. We’ll help as much as we can. And if he does start anything weird, we’ll be one step ahead of him this time, won’t we? We know what he’s capable of. There’s no way he’ll be able to do to you what he did to Rose and Amber. We can outsmart him. Knowledge is power, right?’
‘I really hope so,’ says Felicity quietly.
‘Can we just not go there for now?’ I say. ‘I’m hoping it’ll be very quick. A couple of weeks max. Hopefully he won’t have time to start any funny business. And you know what? If he really wanted to punish me, as you put it, he’s clever enough to have done that from a distance, don’t you think? And he hasn’t. So, I just don’t want to think about it. If I do, I’ll chicken out.’
Felicity nods vehemently.
‘Right, let’s talk tactics then. Was your break-up a bad one?’ A frown furrows her brow. ‘That’s worrying me a bit. I know you think it’ll be easy, Nathan, but if it was me, and some guy dumped me and then two years later he starts calling me again saying he made a mistake, I don’t think I’d be too impressed.’
‘It wasn’t too bad,’ I say. ‘It was more of a slow drift. I’d been thinking of ending it for a few weeks, but I was scared about how he might react, so I kept putting it off. I kind of did it gradually in the end. I cancelled on dates a few times, then I finally plucked up the courage to tell him I was just too busy for anything committed and I didn’t really see a future for us. Thankfully, because he was so engrossed with work, he just sort of said fine, whatever, and that was that. There was no massive row, no big falling-out or anything. That’s why I’m hoping it might be OK—’
‘Of course it’ll be OK. Men are different when it comes to stuff like this, especially men like Jack,’ Nathan says, interrupting me. ‘If there’s a beautiful woman he once very much had feelings for who wants to keep him company again, it won’t take much to get over his ego, even if it is for vindictive reasons. I’d bet my house on it.’
A beautiful woman? I can feel blood rushing to my cheeks at the compliment and hope fervently that the picture quality on our video call isn’t good enough to make the sudden colour change too obvious. I clear my throat.
‘Right, well. I suppose I’m in then,’ I say, and I feel my throat tighten. ‘For better or for worse. I still have his mobile number, assuming he hasn’t changed it. So I guess I’ll just drop him a text? Say something like I’ve been thinking about him recently and wondering if he’d like to go out for a drink? What if he’s dating someone else, though?’
‘He’s not. I’ve checked,’ says Nathan. ‘I keep in touch with a couple of my former colleagues and I gave one of them a buzz the other day just for a catch-up. I managed to steer the conversation round to Jack and casually asked how he was and if he was seeing anyone. He’s been single since Amber, apparently. The rumour at the office is he’s still too “traumatised” by what happened to date anyone.’
He draws air quotes with his forefingers as he speaks, rolling his eyes, and then turns suddenly as a small figure appears behind him.
‘Lacey!’ he says. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’
It’s a small girl, dressed in pink pyjamas with tousled fair hair.
‘I need a drink,’ she says, and he slips an arm around her.
‘Daddy’s just chatting to Auntie Felicity and our friend Heather,’ he says, pointing at his screen. Lacey peers at us, grinning widely and waving as she recognises her aunt. She’s adorable. Nathan tells her to go back to bed, saying he’ll bring her some water in two minutes, and she nods and skips away. I think about Nathan’s claims that Jack threatened not just his life but this child’s too and feel a rush of loathing. How could he?
Nathan turns back to his webcam.
‘Yes, text him,’ he says. ‘I’m sure that’ll work. And once you get back into his house, I suggest you try to stay over as much as possible, if you can bear to. Easter’s coming up; maybe you can use the holiday weekend as a chance to hang out, if you’re not working? We need you to be there alone, when he goes off to work or when he’s asleep, so you can do some snooping. I’m going to email you a comprehensive list of exactly what to look for, OK? There’s also at least one other person we might need to approach, but we’re going to have to tread very carefully. And if you feel threatened or scared in any way, just get yourself out of there immediately, OK? It’s not worth anyone else getting hurt, or… well, or worse…’
His voice trails off, and the knot of anxiety in my stomach tightens again. Then Amber’s face flashes into my head, and I lick my dry lips.
‘It’s fine. I’ll be fine. Send me that email, OK? And I’ll text Jack this evening to get the ball rolling. I’ll keep you both posted.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Felicity and Nathan say, again simultaneously, and we all smile.
This time we have the upper hand, not Jack, I think. It’ll be fine. And if I can pull it off, and expose all this… wow. Just wow.
‘Right, I need to run,’ Nathan says. ‘Fliss, I’ll speak to you over the weekend. And Heather… good luck, OK?’