It’s so strange, staring into the face of a man she first saw printed on a tiny scrap of newspaper, but it’s definitely him, the man standing next to her. Simon Hamilton is the man plastered all over Edward’s bedroom wall.
‘A shrine?’ Simon says, his grey eyes searching hers.
‘Well.’ Ursula shrugs uncomfortably. ‘That’s one word for it.’
She’s not sure how to describe what she saw when she walked into Edward’s room but ‘shrine’ is too innocuous. One wall was plastered with photos of Simon – newspaper clippings, computer printouts. There were other things too, handwritten notes saying ‘smug bastard,’ ‘pride comes before a fall’ and ‘he who laughs last laughs longest’, maps, red wool, coloured tacks, photos of BBC Radio Bristol and a couple of printouts of houses and streets. There were printouts from Facebook too, with faces circled.
After Paul made his escape, Ursula moved to the window and watched as he jumped into his car and pulled away. She needed to call the police, warn them that Paul Wilson was a domestic abuser who was hunting for his wife and child, but he’d taken her mobile with him and there was no landline in the house. She’d have to find a payphone. She looked back at Edward’s wall. It was like something from a serial killer film with all the photos and the threats and maps and the wool. Who was this man that he was so obsessed with? She cast a glance back towards the hallway, torn between leaving to call the police and staying to find out more. An email, pinned to the wall, caught her eye. Several sentences were picked out in neon yellow highlighter pen:
Please stop contacting me.
Some people have better things to do with their time.
Don’t be a troll all your life.
The email was signed Simon Hamilton, Presenter, BBC Radio Bristol, but it was written to someone called Ann Friend. Edward hadn’t told her not to change the channel on the kitchen radio because he was trying to mask the sound of his pets; he was waiting for Simon Hamilton to start broadcasting again.
It wasn’t until Ursula turned to leave that she spotted another set of photos. Pinned up on the right hand of the door were printouts of a woman. In one she was sitting at a table in a cafe with Simon. In another she was walking down a road alone. Then there was one, quite close up, of the same woman in an outfit that Ursula recognised: it was the bright pink blouse the staff wore at Mirage Fashions with ‘Alice’ picked out in black on a white badge. She was gazing above the line of the camera, at the person who’d secretly taken her photo, her brow creased into a frown. Underneath, Ed had written: Who’s laughing now?
‘Shit,’ Simon says, his hands shaking as Ursula hands him the photo of Alice. He glances towards the back of the shop where the sound of crying and raised voices has dropped to a low murmur. ‘Does she know?’
Ursula shakes her head. ‘I drove here to warn her but I couldn’t see her anywhere. I heard one of the other women telling a customer she was out the back so I thought I’d wait.’
‘Why didn’t you just call the police?’
‘I did. I called them from a phone box and told them after … after I spoke to them about something else. They said they’d send someone round but I couldn’t stay there, not in that house. What if Ed had turned up?’
Simon exhales noisily through his nose. ‘This has gone on long enough. We need to go to the police station – you, me and Alice. We need to show them all this … all this stuff … and tell them everything.’
‘Tell the police what?’ Alice asks as she walks towards them.
Simon shoves the printout into his pocket. ‘Ursula here has discovered who my stalker is.’
Alice gawps at him, then at Ursula.
‘Who is it?’ she asks.
‘My housemate,’ Ursula says. ‘It’s a long story but basically—’
‘Is it a woman? Is she called Flora?’
Ursula shakes her head. ‘No. His name’s Edward.’
‘Edward who?’
‘Bennett,’ Ursula says, remembering the name she saw on the tenancy agreement.
Alice looks at her blankly. The name’s not ringing any bells.
‘Who is he?’ she asks Simon.
He shakes his head. ‘I’ve got absolutely no idea.’
‘And you trust her?’ She gestures towards Ursula. ‘You know she’s a shoplifter? I wouldn’t trust a word she says.’
‘Can we just go?’ Simon looks pained. ‘Please? She’s got evidence. We need to take it to the police.’ He points at the shutters. They’re all the way down. ‘How do we get those things open again?’
‘We don’t,’ Alice says. ‘We leave through the back. Come on, I’ll show you.’
‘Right,’ Alice says as they reach the back door to the shop. ‘I’ll let you two out but I’m going to need another five to ten minutes to tell Lynne she can go, get rid of the three people in the changing rooms and explain to my area manager that I need to leave urgently.’ She takes a breath. Her brain is whirling at a hundred miles an hour. It’s torture, having to wait to find out more about the man who’s been making her life a misery for the last week, but she can’t just abandon the shop. She needs to do her job. ‘Wait for me in the car park, by my car.’ She looks at Simon. ‘White VW Golf?’
He nods.
‘Great.’ She pulls on the handle to the back door, then swears under her breath. ‘Sorry. It’s locked. The keys are in the office. Wait here for a sec.’
Ursula waits with Simon for all of two or three seconds, then hurries after Alice. She obviously doesn’t like or trust her and she wants to talk to Alice before they go to the police station, to apologise for stealing from her shop.
‘Alice! Alice!’ she calls softly as she jogs round the corner, sweating under the weight of her winter coat, one hand clutching her ribs. But Alice is way ahead of her. She’s already at the other end of what looks like a staff changing room and approaching a small office with a closed door and Venetian blinds at the window.
‘Alice!’ she says again but her shout is lost in Alice’s scream.
It all happens so quickly. One minute Ursula is watching Alice step into the room and the next she’s gone, yanked inside by an arm that appears from behind the door and hooks itself around her throat. Before Ursula can react, before her stunned brain can process what she just saw, a man steps into the doorway with Alice in his grip.
Ursula blinks, then blinks again. The man standing about four metres from her is holding a knife in his right hand. He’s small and slight with little round specs that make his eyes seem bigger than they are.
Ed.
His eyebrows flash upwards in surprise as he meets her gaze, but then his face is a blank again. The muscles in Ursula’s thighs twitch and her heart pounds in her chest. She needs to get out, to get help, to—
‘Stay where you are.’ Edward casually moves the knife to the base of Alice’s neck. ‘Or I’ll cut her throat. You can come out now!’ he shouts to someone standing out of sight.
A woman with a dark bob wearing a pink Mirage blouse stumbles out of the office on shaking legs. Ursula’s seen her before. It’s Lynne, the woman who chucked her out of the changing room the other day.
‘Sit!’ Ed orders, gesturing at the ground at his feet.
A sob catches in Lynne’s throat as she does as she’s told. ‘Alice, I’m sorry. He locked me in the office when I went in with a coffee. He wouldn’t let me leave.’
‘Enough.’ Ed’s gaze flicks towards Ursula. ‘You need to sit down too.’
He smiles as she walks towards him on unsteady legs and lowers herself onto the cold lino and gathers her knees to her chest. ‘Right then, Alice. I think it’s time your boyfriend joined us. Don’t you?’