Five Strangers Read online

  FIVE STRANGERS

  E.V. Adamson

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Copyright © E.V. Adamson 2021

  Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Cover photograph © Susan Fox/Trevillion images (couple in foreground), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

  E.V. Adamson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008439262

  Ebook Edition © 2021 ISBN: 9780008439279

  Version: 2021-03-05

  Praise for Five Strangers

  ‘An ‘of-the-moment’ mystery which keeps you wondering until the final page’

  Jane Corry, author of I Made A Mistake

  ‘Meticulously plotted with an ending I really didn’t see coming’

  Sarah Vaughan, author of Anatomy of a Scandal

  ‘Five Strangers is a powerful psychological thriller disentangling what lies behind a bloody opening murder scene at one of London’s most famous beauty spots. A gripping and ingenious read where nothing is ever quite as it seems, it explores the dark side of confessional journalism and how deceptive memory or even friendship can be. Like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, Five Strangers is a rollercoaster until the very end.’

  Tanith Carey

  ‘A twisty, dark, urban thriller’

  Cass Green, author of The Killer You Know

  ‘It starts with a chilling act of murder and continues with twist after twist’

  Claire McGowan, author of The Push

  ‘From its gripping first chapter, reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, Five Strangers took me on a breathless, twisting ride. So perfectly pitched it gave me vertigo’

  Kate Weinberg, author of The Truants

  Dedication

  To Clare Alexander

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Five Strangers

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  1

  JEN

  From a distance it looks as though all of us are trapped in a spell. We are standing at the top of Kite Hill, on Parliament Hill Fields, gazing down at the city. Not many people speak, apart from the occasional brief comment about the changing nature of the London skyline.

  It is an impossibly bright day, one of those afternoons when you can almost smell the optimism in the air. The sky is cloudless and blue, and the light is of such quality that everything seems precise and well-defined. But it is the unreality of the view, rather than its beauty, that has rendered us speechless.

  There is a dreamy quality too in those strangers’ eyes, as if all of us have willingly allowed ourselves to be drawn into a make-believe world. The city seems as though it is putting on its best side. We are viewing it from afar, away from the ugliness of buildings seen at close quarters.

  The spell will soon be broken by an event so horrific it too will seem like it could only exist within the realms of fiction. But for that moment – or rather, those long, lazy minutes before the incident on that day, 14 February – many of the spectators exist in a balmy glow of contentment.

  It’s Valentine’s Day, after all. Couples have taken the day off work, or perhaps escaped their normal routine of a sandwich at their desks, to sneak away from their offices in order to climb this hill to admire the view. A dark-haired man in his twenties and his beautiful girlfriend, sitting on one of the benches, are sharing a bottle of fizz and some chocolates. An elderly couple stand hand in hand, eyes closed and heads tilted back to capture the full rays of the sun on their pale faces, before slowly moving on. A middle-aged man, who despite his age has the perfect skin and glossy hair of the rich, and his younger boyfriend, sit at one of the other benches, stroking their sleek Weimaraner, their fingers occasionally brushing against one another across the dog’s elegant back. The younger guy pulls out his phone and starts to take a selfie with their dog. As he presses the button even the dog seems to grin.

  As I watch the other couples, drunk with love, I hardly dare let myself dream about tomorrow, about Laurence. Apart from the occasional text or email, I’ve had little contact with him since that awful night last year, but the next day we’re due to meet up for lunch. I feel what I can only describe as a giddy fluttering of the heart, a delicious sensation of excitement and anticipation. Did we still have a future together? Is he
ready to take me back? As soon as these thoughts enter my mind I push them away again. I can’t allow myself to think like this. I’ve talked about my hopes with Bex, and she’d listened patiently to my fantasies of getting back together with him, before telling me that I was delusional. ‘Who’d want to go out with a mad bitch like you?’ she said. Although I knew she was joking, there was an element of truth to this. I’m not the easiest person to love. I’ve driven some men away. But as I’ve often said to Bex, I’d rather be single than trapped in a loveless, failing relationship.

  I’m meeting Bex here, halfway between Hampstead Heath and Kentish Town, and although it was her idea, there’s no sign of her. We’re going to have a coffee and then get the bus into town to see a film and grab some food. I also promised to have a glass of pink champagne with Penelope back at the house later. That morning Penelope had told me that she had been without her last husband for thirty years – she’d kicked him out on Valentine’s Day, 1989 – and surely that was worth a celebratory drink.

  In the distance, a reflection bounces off one of the glass towers. For a moment I get the feeling I’m standing in front of a mirror. The whole skyline seems to melt away and I’m faced with nothing but a shimmering surface where once the city had been. I see myself as a young teenager standing in front of my parents’ full-length mirror. I know the glass is showing me something I don’t like. And then, with a blink of the eye, the skyline defines itself once more. I take a deep breath and squint into the horizon, making out the Crystal Palace transmitter and the hills of the North Downs. This is the here and now, and it is beautiful. The past I don’t have to think about.

  What is it that first alerts me to the fact that something is wrong? Is it the sound of a bottle hitting the ground? Or is it the stifled cry of the woman? I turn my head to see the young couple on the bench. The man has raised his voice and his girlfriend has started to edge away from him. I catch the eye of the older gay guy with the dog – both of us are probably thinking the same thing: should we intervene in some way? – but then the man on the bench puts his arm around his girlfriend and starts to apologise. She smiles and nods her head. Whatever argument they’ve been having is now over. I turn away and check my phone. It is 1.17 p.m. Where the hell is Bex? She is nearly twenty minutes late.

  As I finish scrolling through my emails – still no reply from any commissioning editors to the ideas I had sent out that morning – I take in the scene around me. There is a young Indian woman wearing nice, expensive clothes sitting on another bench, with eyes closed, headphones on, perhaps asleep, certainly dead to the world. A teenage boy has stopped to look at the plan of the skyline, his eyes flitting between what has been mapped out on the plan in front of him and the vastly different reality in the distance. An overweight, late middle-aged white woman, with a vaguely familiar but very red face, dressed in grey sweat gear, stops for breath as she reaches the top of Kite Hill. A male jogger, with a black hoodie pulled over his head, is running up the hill, racing past her when, in that instant, all of our lives change.

  I say in an instant, but it happens both so quickly – as if time has somehow sped up – and also so slowly, the very worst things being cruelly dragged out as if to prolong the agony of it all. I hear the smash of a bottle and then a cry.

  I turn around to see the young man pulling his girlfriend to her feet. He holds the broken champagne bottle to her neck. The wine pours down his arm onto the front of his girlfriend’s white blouse, making the fabric translucent. My first instinct is to rush over and cover her up. She doesn’t need the world to see the outline of her breasts.

  ‘You bitch,’ the man says, spitting out his words as he bends his girlfriend’s left arm behind her back. ‘You fucking whore.’

  He presses the sharp edge of the shattered bottle down onto her neck, drawing blood. A drop falls onto the collar of her white blouse. Her eyes stretch wide with terror and with her right arm she grapples for something, anything, she can use to defend herself. But there is nothing around to grab hold of apart from the top edge of the bench. The fingers start to claw at the wood.

  ‘Of course I still love you,’ she says. ‘Dan, I’ll always love you, but—’

  Dan draws her closer to him and she cries out in pain. ‘I told you I’d kill you and you didn’t listen,’ he says. His accent is from the East End or Essex. ‘You didn’t fucking listen!’

  The older guy with the dog, who I later learn is called Jamie, takes a step forward. I notice that he looks pretty strong and muscular. What is he thinking of doing?

  ‘You need to step away from her,’ he says. ‘I’m sure we can sort this out, make sure nothing gets out of hand.’

  ‘And what the fuck do you know?’ shouts Dan. ‘Do you know what she did?’

  Jamie raises his right hand as if he is trying to calm a wild animal. ‘What’s her name?’ he asks. There is no response. ‘What’s your name, love?’

  The girl opens her mouth to speak, but Dan raises the bottle and smashes it into her mouth. ‘Don’t you fucking talk. Don’t you say another fucking word!’

  The girl’s scream splits the air. Blood splatters across the front of her blouse. Her mouth looks like a mass of red ribbons. Her free hand comes up to try to dislodge herself from Dan’s grip, but as she tries to scratch his face he tears into her flesh with the sharp edge of the bottle.

  As Jamie rushes towards her, his boyfriend screams at him not to get involved, and the Weimaraner barks its own terrible warning.

  Dan points the broken bottle at Jamie’s head. ‘Take another step and I’ll cut your face into pieces too,’ he says. ‘Get away from me you fucking queer!’

  Jamie looks around him in a desperate bid for help. His boyfriend is talking into his phone as he tries to explain to the police what is happening, holding onto their dog, which is straining at the leash, going mad with anxiety and fear. The teenager has frozen to the spot, panic paralysing him. The woman in the grey track gear has been forced to steady herself by one of the benches and looks as though she might be sick. The young woman on the bench still has her eyes shut and remains oblivious to the scene that is unfolding before her.

  ‘Hey you,’ Jamie shouts to the jogger, who has slowed his pace slightly. ‘We need some help here, mate.’

  But the jogger, instead of stopping, seems to quicken his pace and continues to run over the crest of the hill.

  ‘Stop!’ Jamie shouts after him. ‘For fuck’s sake – someone, please help! Alex?’

  Alex shakes his head. He is too scared to move. Jamie begins to walk back towards his boyfriend, but then in a move that surprises us all, maybe even Jamie himself, he turns and launches himself at Dan and tries to take him down.

  Dan tries to withstand the assault, whipping the bottle around his head with a frightening ferocity. Jamie manages to push the girl out of the way and she falls back onto the ground, her face a bloody mass. I run towards her, to try to get her out of the way, but I feel a kick in my stomach, winding me with such force I can’t breathe. The next couple of seconds remain a blank for me, but when I come round I see that Jamie has managed to wrench the bottle from Dan’s hand. The fight has not been an easy one. Jamie’s own hands are cut, and blood pours from his wounds, staining his skin and his clothes. Dan has suffered in the struggle – there is a cut on his cheek, his wrists and forearms have been gouged by the bottle – but it’s difficult to have any sympathy for him. The attacker stands there, head bowed, hands on his knees, as he tries to recover.

  ‘Are the police on their way?’ shouts Jamie.

  ‘Yes, yes they are,’ says his boyfriend.

  ‘Thank fuck,’ says Jamie, as he turns to address Dan. ‘And what the hell were you thinking?’

  There is no response.

  ‘And we need an ambulance too,’ he adds. ‘Did you ask for an ambulance?’ His boyfriend nods, temporarily struck dumb by the thought that Jamie has just risked his life for this young woman. Jamie bends down next to her, stares into her blood
y face, asks her name again, tries to comfort her, but she remains silent. ‘He’s done a lot of damage and she’s losing blood, but he hasn’t cut into any of the major arteries,’ he says. It seems that he must have had some kind of medical training. ‘I think she’s in shock though – well, all of us probably are.’

  ‘Jamie, you’re bleeding,’ says the younger man. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ says Jamie. ‘You don’t need to worry about me. It’s the girl I’m worried about.’

  Our little group – one that will be bonded together in ways none of us can ever have predicted – stand there not knowing what to say. There is an interchange of, ‘Are you okay?’ and, ‘How are you feeling?’ and mutual assurances that although the woman has been savagely attacked, at least she’s escaped with her life.

  ‘Thank goodness you stepped in when you did,’ says the middle-aged woman in the grey exercise gear to Jamie. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jamie, Jamie Blackwood,’ he says, wiping some blood from his face.

  ‘Very brave of you.’ She speaks with the upper-class accent of the privileged and well-educated. I realise I know who she is: Julia Jones, the Labour MP. She turns to me and thanks me for my intervention too.

  ‘And what’s your name?’ she asks.

  ‘Jennifer – Jen Hunter,’ I reply.

  ‘That name sounds familiar,’ she says. ‘Have we met before?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘But I used to have a column in—’

  But before I can finish I hear a scuffle and then a scream. Dan has grabbed hold of his girlfriend again. In his right hand he has a knife. A split second later he presses it to her throat.

  ‘Put the knife down!’ shouts Jamie.

  ‘Don’t come anywhere near me!’ says Dan. Tears stream down his face. There is a desolate, empty quality in his eyes, as if he knows the game is over.

  ‘Listen, Dan, you need to stop this now,’ says Julia Jones.

  ‘Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?’ Dan says. ‘The fucking Queen?’ He turns to his girlfriend, who has her eyes closed and is shaking with fear. He starts to stroke her hair and, for a moment, it looks as though he is going to let her go. He kisses her forehead, whispers something in her ear, and then, with a quick slash, whips his knife across the young woman’s throat. The girl opens her eyes in shock, tries to break free from him, but he holds her close as the life begins to seep out of her. Blood spills from her, so much blood, flowing down her neck, staining her clothes, pooling by her feet.