Now in a calmer frame of mind Angela sat in a woodland picnic sight making plans for the rest of her trip to Stranraer. She could hire a car and make the trip shorter, but she’d run the risk the chance of road blocks up ahead. Or she could travel by coach and hope for the best. She stood up and walked slowly around the pond. The thought of getting through a police cordon undetected thrilled her. Such a challenge, but she needed to get home. She was in fact desperately yearning for her own home. Now her revenge was satisfied.
How? That was the question. Road, rail or fly? Each one of these options would be being watched, but she could outwit them all. Hadn’t she done that already by throwing them off the scent, sending them running up to Glasgow while she enjoyed a small break in the Ettrick Valley?
The caravan site was small and invisible to the road, and she, it’s only camper till the weekend, so Jason, the owner, informed her.
“Would you like to order a newspaper for tomorrow,” he’d asked.
She’d smiled at him.
“Oh, no thank you, Jason. All that doom and gloom. Murders and mayhem, it only upsets me. So I usually don’t bother. At least there nothing like that here, thank goodness.”
He’d smiled and agreed.
As she crawled into bed in the caravan she’d stuffed a towel against her mouth in case Jason heard her screaming with laughter. Then she settled down in her temporary new home. From here hours would be spent enjoying the walks, animals and birds, even the midges wouldn’t spoil her peace.
Four days later she knew what she would do next to help her on the road to home.
Next morning, as promised, Jason took her into Hawick to do some ‘shopping’. He dropped her outside a butchers shop.
“I’ll meet you back here,” he said, “about three o’clock, if that’s alright?”
“That would be wonderful, Jason, so kind of you,” she smiled warmly.
He said he was going off to some nearby farm, ‘that me father owns’, for lunch.
She slipped into a department store toilet dressed as a happy camper, haversack and all, and left as a smart woman about town. Her natural blonde hair with shiny silver threads had been washed and brushed to perfection the night before in the campsite’s shower block and her nails painted a subtle pink.
She slipped into her new outfit in the toilet cubicle and, stuffing the old one into the now empty carrier bags, Angela walked slowly up the high street.
A passing youth ogled her and was granted the gift of a smile. Her step was light, her mind at rest. All she needed now was a cup of coffee and a spot of lunch and she’d be a very happy woman.
The café she chose was busy, that way they were less likely to look at her closely. A baby screamed while his red faced young mother tried to calm him, another distraction that would suit her until she’d ordered her meal.
“I think I’ll have a ham and cheese roll and a large coffee,” she asked the harassed woman in front of her, but the woman’s eyes kept drifting to the baby, screwing up her face whilst struggling to hear the order.
‘Good’, thought Angela, ‘at this rate she’ll never remember me, the stupid bitch can’t think of anything but that squalling brat’.
She ate the surprisingly tasty roll and was sitting sipping her coffee when suddenly she felt sure someone was staring at her. Her skin crawled as covertly she looked around the room, now positive someone was watching. As the baby was happy now, sucking milk from a bottle, and his mother trying to eat a sandwich, she was sure it wasn’t the mother. Her eyes swept the room as she pretended to be looking at the paintings adorning the walls and there she was, in the corner nearest the counter, a young woman in a rather cheap looking, orange trouser suit. As her gaze met Angela’s she looked quickly away and began to write something in a notebook.
‘That bitch is too clever for her own good,’ Angela thought, barely able to contain her anger. ‘She knows who I am. She’s writing it down before she telephones the police. The bitch!!’ Her hands were gripping the table and her muscles were so taut she couldn’t move her arms. What was it about her that attracted this female’s attention? With the new clothes and glamorous hair she looked nothing like the artist impression she had seen in the papers or on the television.
Little did Angela know that the woman was admiring the new outfit so much that all she was doing was making a drawing of it? The small black dress with matching coat and those wonderful buttons looked something like ‘Coco Chanel’ she was sure of it. As a ‘dedicated follower of fashion’, with very little funds, the woman, Elsie MacDonald, would make paper patterns of items she saw and liked and then run them up on her mother’s sewing machine. Of course they never looked as good as the real thing, mainly because she could not afford the expensive fabrics.
Angela was making plans as she looked around the room for a telephone. There wasn’t one. She relaxed a little. She still had time to disappear before they came. How clever was the trouser suited bitch? Well, she was cleverer, and she’d prove it. The woman was standing near the counter paying her bill when Angela next looked up. She chatted to the girl at the till before saying,
“See you tomorrow, Babs,” and leaving.
Angela went to pay her own bill and watched from her place at the counter which way the woman turned.
Smiling broadly at ‘Babs’, she paid for her meal and hurried out of the café.
She spotted the trouser suit ahead of her, the owner studying something in a shop window, and was forced to follow her for half an hour before the girl entered a public toilet and Angela was able to show her just how clever she could be.
Elsie stepped from the cubicle still tucking the white blouse into the trousers of her nylon suit. Suddenly she froze as a sinuous arm wrapped round her throat and her screams were silenced by the strong hand on her mouth. Unable to call for help she was dragged back into the cubicle, and finally, unable to breath at all as the strong, ruthless arms broke her neck.