Five Strangers Read online

  ‘No, it’s not him,’ I say. ‘He wouldn’t do this to me.’

  ‘What if …?’

  But she stops herself.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘No, it’s too ridiculous for words,’ she says. ‘But what if Laurence is the one behind all of this?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘No, just forget I ever said anything,’ she says.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Bex, just tell me!’ I shout.

  She looks slightly taken aback and so I repeat the question in a more reasonable manner. But instead of saying anything, Bex takes out her phone and tells me that we should phone the police. Her fingers linger over the screen, but as she’s about to dial 999 I take the phone from her.

  ‘No, not if it’s Laurence,’ I say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If there’s a chance it is Laurence who’s done this then it will all come out about what I did to him,’ I say.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I just can’t bear it,’ I say. ‘I’ve got enough shit going on at the moment without all that being dragged up.’

  ‘You can’t be serious?’ Bex looks incredulously at me. ‘Somebody nearly brained you, Jen – can’t you see that? And what if it wasn’t Laurence? What if it was Steven? Or someone else entirely? Someone you don’t know.’

  I lower my head and say nothing.

  ‘Jen – what aren’t you telling me?’ asks Bex.

  I start to talk, too quickly. ‘Did you see the MailOnline this morning?’

  ‘No, why would I? I never read that shit.’

  ‘There was a report that Victoria Da Silva was pregnant,’ I say.

  ‘Oh my God, the poor girl – but what has that got to do with you?’

  ‘I went to see the Da Silvas and when I was on the point of leaving, Mrs Da Silva told me that her daughter was pregnant. I told Penelope the news. God, I wish I hadn’t. I had a horrible row with her this morning. I accused her of leaking it. She denied it, of course, but you should have heard her, Bex, she said some truly awful things to me. Really cruel.’

  ‘Well, I never liked her, you know that,’ she says.

  I smile, even though I’m in pain. ‘I’m sorry, Bex, for what I said yesterday. I didn’t know what I was—’

  ‘Ssh,’ she says, squeezing my hand. ‘It’s all forgotten. The main thing is that we’re friends. Friends for ever.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, my eyes filling with tears. I cough, clear my throat, and try to resume my earlier train of thought. ‘So I’m wondering whether the person who did this to me is neither Steven nor Laurence, but someone who believes it was me who betrayed Mr and Mrs Da Silva. I can’t say I blame them. After all, although they knew I was a journalist, I did promise them not to reveal anything about their daughter’s pregnancy.’

  ‘Do you think they would go so far as to send someone out to attack you like this? And would they be able to organise something so quickly?’

  ‘The story has been online for hours, since late last night I think. The Da Silvas seemed like such nice people, but I suppose you never know.’

  ‘But if you’re suspicious, then you really do need to go to the police,’ orders Bex.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I reply.

  I can feel the strength of Bex’s harsh gaze on me. ‘I understand you’ve had a horrible shock,’ she says. ‘And even though I think you’re mad, I can understand why you may not want to involve the police. But what if L— this man tries again? What if next time he hits you harder? Jen, listen to me, you need to report this to the police, and you need to do it now. Okay?’

  I know she’s right.

  ‘They might be able to extract some DNA, or whatever it is those CSI people do, from the surface of your scalp,’ she says, a comment that makes me smile. ‘I won’t leave your side, I promise, and after that we’re going to Penelope’s and you’re going to pack a bag.’

  I begin to protest, but she shouts me down.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with that bitch if she gives you any trouble,’ says Bex. ‘And then you’re going to move back in with me, until all this has blown over.’

  I feel my eyes light up with joy, as if Bex has given me the best present ever.

  ‘You mean it?’ I ask.

  ‘I mean it. Now let’s get you to the police station.’

  At Kentish Town police station I tell them that I’ve been attacked. I’m taken in a car to the Whittington Hospital. In the back of the car a policewoman asks me a series of questions. I tell her about the man in the mask. Did I know if anyone had a reason to attack me? I shake my head. The police are bound to know about the fact that I was a witness to the murder of Victoria Da Silva, and so I tell her that perhaps it is linked to that. But that was a straightforward murder–suicide. The person who killed Victoria is dead. I inform them that I wrote a brief news story about the incident, but don’t say any more about what I’ve discovered since then. Neither do I tell them about Laurence. And I don’t want to point the detectives in the direction of Steven Walker or the Da Silva family because I need to carry on with the investigation myself. I’m given some advice on personal safety, and they wait for me while I go in to see a doctor.

  I grip the edge of the examination table as a young medic gives me something for the pain and patches me up. As the doctor treats me I close my eyes and think back to the attack. I am sitting on the bench. There is a noise behind me. I open my eyes. A man in a mask, wearing a hat. He’s also gone so far as to cover his neck with a scarf and his hands with gloves to make sure no hair or skin is showing. How tall is he? It’s difficult to say, as I only caught a glimpse of him. It could have been anyone, perhaps a thug employed by Mr Da Silva. But Bex mentioned that she had seen both Steven and Laurence.

  I know it’s time I let go of Laurence completely. Thinking of him is driving me insane. I tell myself – yet again – that I have to acknowledge that he has no feelings for me. Or rather, that his feelings for me are far from loving ones. If anything it seems as though he might actually hate me. Who was I trying to kid? To think that I believed we had another chance. I’m pathetic, I realise that. I must ask Bex whether she managed to have a word with him about being on the Heath that day. Perhaps she did, and this was his idea of a response. Nice. I think about the video that Alex took that day. I’m certain that Laurence was the mystery jogger. But what would make him want to attack me? Was it some kind of revenge for what I had done to him? Or was it a warning of some kind? A message to leave the case alone? To put me off the scent? But what did he have to do with Victoria Da Silva and Daniel Oliver? I’d never heard him mention either of them. But again, apart from the texts and emails and that brief meeting at his house, I’d had no contact with him since that awful night.

  And then it comes to me. I feel faint and nauseous.

  ‘Do you need some more pain relief?’ asks the doctor.

  I don’t answer. I think about what Bex said on the Heath: the possibility that Laurence was behind all of this. I knew Victoria Da Silva had been having an affair.

  But what if the man she had been seeing was Laurence?

  34

  BEX

  I’ve prepared myself for a stand-up row with Penelope and so I’m disappointed that when Jen opens the door we find that she’s not there. To make sure, Jen climbs the marble stairs, calling her name, but after exploring the upper floors she shouts down to tell me she’s out. There’s no note of explanation of where she’s gone or when she will be back. Although I’m sure Jen is relieved, I’m angry. It would have been good to get a few things off my chest.

  As Jen is upstairs packing her bag I take the opportunity to look around the house. My first thought is, what does one person do with all this space? In Penelope’s case she fills it with clutter: paintings, many in gilt frames, books – shelves upon shelves packed with them – antique vases, candlesticks, display cases full of glasses, sideboards crammed with ceramic bowls, desks crowded with postcards and paperweights.
I spot a laptop and slowly open it. When it asks for a password I try ‘PENELOPE’, then ‘Penelope’ and finally ‘penelope’, but give up after the third attempt. Next to the laptop is an A4 pad, full of scribbles. A couple of names jump out at me: Victoria Da Silva, Daniel Oliver, followed by the facts of the case. There are some notes in shorthand, which I can’t read, and a few newspapers.

  I walk over to her drinks cabinet, a glittering altarpiece of glass and steel, sporting every liqueur and spirit you could name. I take two heavy crystal glasses and pour a couple of decent measures of expensive cognac. I’ll have a drink ready for Jen for when she comes down with her bag. We can toast her escape.

  Driving in the car over here from the hospital Jen had told me some of the things Penelope had said to her during their argument. While some of them might have been true – I agreed with Penelope that Jen wasn’t in a fit state of mind to investigate the story of the murder–suicide – there were other things that she had said that were just plain cruel. All that stuff about the meaningless nature of Jen’s column, about how it was like something you’d read on the inside of a toilet door. Why did she have to go and say that to her?

  The bitch better watch out.

  35

  JEN

  Back at her flat Bex makes sure I’m comfortable. She takes out a pile of lovely blankets and cushions and arranges them around me on the sofa. She even rustles up some hot chocolate for us and tops it off with frothy cream. She knows that’s what I like.

  ‘You’re spoiling me rotten,’ I say when she hands it to me.

  ‘Well, you’ve had a shock. And I’m still feeling guilty for storming off like I did and leaving you on the Heath.’

  I pat the sofa and she comes and sits next to me like an obedient dog.

  ‘Woof!’ she barks, which makes me laugh.

  She says it’s lovely to see me like this – here, once again living with her, and nearly back to my old self, even if I have suffered a minor head injury. ‘So you’re sure the doctor says that you’ll be fine?’ she asks.

  ‘Apparently so,’ I reply. ‘There’s no concussion, and I just have to take it easy for a while.’ I study her closely. ‘But how are you?’

  ‘Me? You know me, I’m always fine!’ There’s a certain brittle, artificial quality to her words. She takes a sip of the hot chocolate.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course – it’s you we need to worry about. You need to get some rest. Put everything that’s happened to the back of your mind. Try to forget about that awful thing you saw on the Heath.’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ I say. ‘I can’t forget about it.’ I shift my position and look directly at her. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that I’m attacked just as I start to delve deeper into this thing? It can’t be a coincidence, surely? That must mean one thing – I’m getting closer to the truth.’

  I’m sure Bex doesn’t mean to snigger, but she says she can’t help it. ‘Sorry, Jen, but you should hear yourself, you sound … I don’t know. Weird.’

  ‘I know it might sound absurd, but what other reason could there be?’ I say, putting down my hot chocolate. ‘I witness a terrible murder and then a suicide on Parliament Hill Fields on Valentine’s Day. One of the people there, who runs away from the scene, just as it unfolds, turns out to be my ex-boyfriend, Laurence. I start to get a series of creepy messages from an account called @WatchingYouJenHunter. I begin to look into the crime, in order to investigate whether there could be any truth in the idea, suggested to me by this @WatchingYouJenHunter, that Daniel Oliver didn’t kill his girlfriend, Victoria Da Silva. Then, soon after I learn that she was having an affair and that she was pregnant, I get attacked by some man in a mask.’

  ‘Yes, when you put it like that it does seem odd, but the truth is I’m worried about you. I don’t want to see you get hurt. Have you had any more of those weird messages?’

  ‘No, not for a while, so maybe that’s the end of it,’ I tell her.

  ‘Let’s hope so. You feel safe here though, right?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘You know you can stay as long as you like. I know it’s not as fancy as Penelope’s house – I’m afraid I don’t have a garden as big as a tennis court – but I want it to feel like home.’

  ‘Thanks, Bex, for everything,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ I fall silent for a moment before I continue. ‘Can I ask you about Laurence?’

  ‘Oh yes, that fucker. What about him?’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I wondered what you said to him?’

  ‘I told him not to mess with you or he’d have me to answer to.’

  ‘Seriously, I want you to tell me what you said to him and what he said back. Just in case it was him who attacked me, I need to know everything.’

  ‘Okay, but what about another hot chocolate?’ she asks as she stands up.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Something stronger?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I’m fine at the moment. So – what happened?’

  ‘I went round to Laurence’s house and of course, he denied once again that he was the jogger,’ she tells me as she comes and sits down again. ‘He’s such a lying bastard. But then I played him the video that you sent me, over and over again until he finally admitted that it was him. He had no choice, really. However, he denied the fact that he ever sent you any messages on Twitter or that he had set up any fake account. He did tell me that he would go to the police and give a statement about being on the Heath on Valentine’s Day. He said that he was scared, that’s why he ran away, but that he has nothing to hide.’

  ‘And do you believe him?’ I ask.

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I believe a word that comes out of his lying mouth,’ she says.

  ‘But why didn’t he tell the truth to begin with – about the fact that he was on the Heath that day?’

  ‘He came out with all this stuff about not wanting to get dragged into a police investigation. Said it wouldn’t look good for his reputation and his practice, crap like that.’

  ‘Did you ask him whether he knew Victoria Da Silva?’

  ‘No – should I have done?’

  I tell her my suspicions: that Laurence might have been having an affair with the dead girl, that I believe there’s a chance that Victoria was pregnant with his baby.

  ‘Fuck, so let me get this right – you think that Daniel found out about his girlfriend’s affair and her pregnancy? And do you think, that day on the Heath, that he recognised Laurence as her lover?’

  ‘There’s every chance,’ I say. ‘Perhaps seeing Laurence there on Parliament Hill Fields was the final straw. Daniel might have thought that Laurence was taunting him. And so he took the ultimate revenge – he killed Victoria, along with the child she was carrying. And that would also explain why Laurence didn’t want to acknowledge the fact he was there on the Heath that day.’

  ‘Obviously there’s the video, but do you have any other proof? That Laurence was Victoria’s lover or that he was the one who got her pregnant?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ I reply. ‘But I intend to get it.’

  36

  BEX

  I tell her that I will help her – but only if she wants me to. I know it’s something I discouraged her from doing, that I was worried about whether she was strong enough, but now I can see that she is going to investigate this crime no matter what. She’s got that look in her eye that means she’s determined to see something through, despite or maybe even because people have warned her against it.

  ‘What’s the saying – if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em?’ I quip.

  Jen flings her arms around me.

  ‘Easy, tiger,’ I say and we both laugh.

  Before I know what’s happening she’s jumped up to fetch her bag. She pulls out a pile of papers, a couple of notebooks and her phone and starts to talk about the case at top speed. The words come tumbling out: Victoria Da Silva. Daniel Oliver. Champa
gne bottle. Stabbing. Blood. Affair. Secret pregnancy. Stalking. @WatchingYouJenHunter. Witnesses. Julia Jones. Jamie Blackwood. Ayesha Ahmed. Steven Walker. Parliament Hill Fields. Mystery jogger. The video. The attack on the Heath. The man in the mask. Laurence. Laurence. Laurence.

  ‘Slow down,’ I tell her. ‘If we’re going to do this properly we need to approach it in an ordered and logical manner.’

  She talks to me about everything she knows, takes me through the interviews she’s done. I start to make some notes of my own and begin to plot everything out so I have it clear in my head. I want to make this work.

  ‘So although it can’t be denied that Daniel Oliver killed his girlfriend and her unborn child, what you’re suggesting is that there was someone else involved? Is that it?’ I ask. ‘You think that there’s someone in the shadows who was manipulating all of this?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly it,’ she says, her eyes lighting up with energy. ‘What we need to do now is find out who that was.’

  ‘But Jen, what if it’s … dangerous,’ I say, hearing my voice break. ‘I don’t want you – or us – to get involved in something that puts us at risk. I mean look at what someone did to you.’

  ‘I know, and I’ve thought about that,’ she says, her hand rising automatically to her head. ‘But this means that I’m onto something. Of course, I could step away from it and go back to my failure of a life trying to eke out a living from the occasional freelance piece. Or I could take the easy option out and give up journalism completely. All the signs are there telling me I should. I’ve been sacked as a columnist for making stuff up. Nobody is in a rush to commission me. I suppose I should be thankful the industry doesn’t know about why I was given the push. But what else is there for me?’

  She falls silent and tears come into her eyes.

  ‘You know up there, on the Heath, before … before someone came up and attacked me, I was actually thinking about the possibility of ending it all.’

  ‘Oh, Jen—’ I say, reaching out to her.

  But she interrupts me and carries on, brushing the tears from her cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t actually thinking of … doing it. But I had a vision of myself in the not too distant future, living alone, drinking too much, my mind destroyed by mental illness, living on benefits and just … fading away. Becoming nothing. The hardest part wasn’t dying, but recognising that no one really noticed that I’d gone.’