After work, Fiona wandered home in the dusky light, Simon Le Bon obediently trotting by her side. This was the first time she had done this in over a week. The front door scraped as she pushed it open against all the mail that had gathered on the floor in her absence. She stepped over the small pile on the doormat, not having the energy nor the inclination to pick it up, let alone open any of it. She could deal with that later.
As she wandered into the hall switching on the lights, the place felt unfamiliar and un-lived-in. What was it about the absence of a person, even for a few days, that turned the air stale? Fiona sighed and stooped to unclip Simon Le Bon’s lead. He wasted no time in doing several circuits of the downstairs, sniffing his way around every room to check all was as it should be.
It felt good to be home. Even better to be alive. But as she drifted into the kitchen, with its rustic painted-wood cupboards, her surroundings appeared alien and strange. She felt like a ghost in her own house. The debilitating thoughts that had threatened to occupy her head earlier came slithering back.
Strictly speaking, back at the shop, they should have been investigating the latest victim, her namesake. Fiona had managed to subtly steer the conversation away from this. Truth be told, she didn’t have the stomach to pry into the woman’s life, to discover the intimate details of a person who could have been her lying dead on a slab. It was too close to home. It made her shudder, made her nauseous that she’d come so close to being killed. Why her and not me? she asked herself. A large shard of guilt speared her mind. How had the killer decided that she lived while the fifty-something divorcée had to die? By what mechanism had he made that choice?
She poured herself a large gin and tonic, and would’ve added ice and a slice of lemon, but she didn’t have any lemon and she’d neglected to fill up the ice tray before hastily moving into Partial Sue’s — it hadn’t been high on her list of priorities.
She took her drink into the lounge and sank into the soft, slightly battered brown leather sofa. It moulded around her familiar shape. She should have really lit a fire, but she couldn’t be bothered. Simon Le Bon hopped up and snuggled beside her, offering her warmth in dog form instead.
It was the first time she had been alone in a while. Since the issue of the Osman warning, she’d always been in the presence of others, either at the shop or at Partial Sue’s. Though she dearly loved her friends, she had also longed for the sanctuary of her own space. For peace and quiet.
Careful what you wish for.
The silence that she’d craved now hung about her, oppressive and threatening. She felt isolated, alone and vulnerable, but strangely not depressed. Survivor’s guilt had overshadowed everything. There was something to be said for safety in numbers. She instinctively reached for her canine companion, stroking his fur for comfort. He sighed contentedly. At least one of them was relieved to be home.
After a few sips of her drink, all the strength it had taken to hold it together while her life had been under threat began to wane. All that nervous, adrenalin-laced energy departed her body. Nothing remained except exhaustion, leaving her hollow. She would have afforded herself a tear or two, but she was too tired even to cry.
Her eyelids began to descend. She kept flicking them open, but it got to the point where she couldn’t prevent them from closing. She let herself be taken by sleep.
* * *
Fiona awoke to a tap-tap-tapping, erratic and irregular. She listened harder. The tapping sound wasn’t on its own. There was some scraping in there too. Dozily, she glanced around. Somehow, she had made it up the stairs and into bed last night after dozing on the sofa. In the dim morning light, through sleepy, half-lidded eyes, she took in the familiar surroundings of her bedroom: the low pitch of the roof beams casting awkward shadows; her curtained dormer windows; and the tall, stately figure of her carved armoire. Simon Le Bon was curled up on the bed next to her, his nose tucked into his tail, fast asleep and oblivious to anything. Oddly he didn’t seem bothered by the noise.
Fiona flinched and drew the covers closer as the sound came again. Scratchy and abrasive, it was coming from one of the windows. DI Fincher’s warning thundered through her head like a freight train. The killer is still out there. Exercise caution and be vigilant.
Was someone trying to break in? Was it the Domino Killer adding another Fiona Sharp to the list, because this one specifically was too much of a meddler?
The noise ceased abruptly. Maybe the killer had given up. She didn’t have time for relief. It came again. The scraping switched to the other dormer window. Clearly, the killer had had no luck with opening the first one and had moved on to try his hand with the second. Fiona reached for the GPS alarm and her phone.
She glanced across at her alarm clock. It was twenty to nine. She’d overslept and today was the first Wednesday of the month. It wasn’t a killer outside her house scratching his fingernails to get in, it was Martin the window cleaner.
She clutched her beating heart. It was throbbing hard enough to pump blood into outer space.
Normally, by this time she’d be up and leaving the house for work, handing Martin his twenty quid (he preferred cash in hand) and, more importantly, a cup of tea. How had she overslept? She never overslept. Perhaps, after several nights of consistent insomnia at Partial Sue’s, it was no surprise. The seductive comfort of being in her own bed had lulled her into the deepest of slumbers. Her body had taken full advantage of its surroundings, getting recompense for the deficit of sleep that had racked up.
Fiona swung her legs out of bed and threw on some clothes. Leaving Simon Le Bon snoring on the covers, she hurried downstairs and made Martin a quick cup of tea. While she waited for it to brew, she checked her purse. Empty. She had no cash to give him.
Throwing on her coat and pushing her feet into a pair of blue Crocs, Fiona stepped outside into the crisp autumn air. She found Martin still working on the front of the house with a brush on a stick, long enough for Olympic pole-vaulting. It reached up to Fiona’s uppermost windows, while the other end had a thin yellow hose snaking its way to the van parked out on the road, on which was emblazoned a huge graphic of Martin’s red-bearded head photoshopped onto the bronzed torso of a Californian lifeguard, to go with the name of his window-cleaning business: Bay Wash. It used to be called Fire and Water, which Fiona had preferred, because Martin was also a local firefighter and did this as a sideline to make a bit of extra cash. Previously, his van had been airbrushed with two mighty dragons, one breathing fire, the other water. But he’d never got any work from it as no one had understood what his business did. People had thought he supplied role-playing game equipment and would often phone the number on the side asking if he had the latest edition of Warhammer.
“Morning, Fiona,” he called.
“Morning, Martin. Here’s a nice cup of tea for you. I’ll leave it on the windowsill. You look like you’ve got your hands full.” Still delirious with sleep, Fiona wasn’t quite sure how she was managing to arrange her words in the right order. Coherency was hard to come by without that first cup of tea in her hand. Why had she made the window cleaner one and not herself? “I’m just popping to the cashpoint so I can pay you.”
“Right you are,” Martin said.
“Won’t be a minute.”
As she made the short walk along Grand Avenue, drowsy thoughts swam through her head. Everything seemed surreal. Even her own road, the houses, the trees and front gardens, all usually so familiar, felt peculiar. At least her state of mind had improved since last night.
Crossing Southbourne Grove without incident, she saw with dismay that a queue had formed outside Southbourne’s one and only bank and, therefore, its one and only cashpoint. There had been several major banks in Southbourne but they had all closed, replaced by apps. She joined the end of the queue, yawning several times, hoping that inhaling extra oxygen might help clear her head.
With her mind still wandering, she glanced around, idly reading the signage everywhere to try to stimulate her groggy brain. Posters in the bank window offered mortgage rates together with meaningless lifestyle shots: a parent swinging a little child around in the park; two pensioners looking lovingly into each other’s eyes; and a young couple laughing while painting a wall. There were more serious notices, mostly above the cashpoint, telling you to shield your PIN and look over your shoulder to make sure no one was watching while you punched in your number. Beside the cashpoint was a little box for putting out cigarette butts, offset with a cautionary message telling you how many people died of lung cancer every day.
Fiona’s eyes drifted to a telephone cabinet next to the cashpoint, which stood neatly against the wall. Painted in racing green, the box was about the size of a very narrow sideboard. It too had not escaped being commandeered as a medium for shouting out instructions. A large sticker with block writing told her to call an 0800 number if she saw this cabinet open or damaged. An instruction, in Fiona’s experience, that would mostly be ignored. When she’d worked in London, she had passed one of these on her daily commute and, seeing its doors hanging open, had caught a peek at the wriggling mess of telephone wires within. Despite her calling the number several times, it had remained that way for well over a week, until one day she had found the doors closed and locked. Her mind drifted back to her old life in London, the bustle and hecticness of living and working in the capital. Never a dull moment and every day on fast-forward. Things were different now, slower and more sedate.
What was she thinking? There was nothing slow or sedate about having a serial killer after you. She had never had to contend with that in London. The closest she’d ever come to a crime was reporting that a telephone cabinet had been broken into. Not exactly urgent, judging by how long it had taken for the problem to be rectified.
The person in front of her took one step forward as the queue moved closer to the cashpoint. Fiona didn’t respond. She just stood there, held by an invisible force. She didn’t register the grumpy harrumphs uttered by the people queuing behind her. Something weird was happening to her brain. If there was such a thing as a mental slap in the face, Fiona had just got one.