Five Strangers Page 7

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want to take up any more of your time,’ I say. ‘But before I go, Jamie told me that you took some photographs that day.’

  ‘Yes, and I wish I hadn’t,’ he says.

  ‘I thought Jen might find them useful, to use as background,’ says Jamie, ‘I told you she’s writing a feature about that day.’

  ‘Really?’ asks Alex, his nose crinkling as if taking in a whiff of a bad smell.

  ‘I’m sure I can look at them later, or you can always send a few over by email,’ I say.

  Jamie puts his hand around the boy’s neck and squeezes his shoulder slightly. The touch makes Alex relax and smile.

  ‘You can have a look, I don’t mind,’ he says, taking his iPhone out of his pocket and unlocking it. He uses his thumb to navigate to the right page. ‘There you go. It starts here – with a photo of the skyline.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, taking hold of the phone.

  I’m instantly taken back to that afternoon.

  Here is the expanse of the city. The glittering towers. St Paul’s in the distance. The Shard. The half complete blocks stretching into the sky. There is the photo of Jamie, Alex and Freddie, their faces full of joy, just moments before everything changed. There is an image taken towards the ponds, down the path that travels eastwards. I can make out Julia Jones. And the jogger, his face obscured by his black hoodie. There is a sleeve belonging to the teenager. I can see a fragment of a leg, which must belong to Ayesha Ahmed. I continue to scroll on, the photos documenting the horror of the incident frame by frame. The nasty scowl on the face of Daniel Oliver. His eyes full of anger. His hand raising the broken champagne bottle. The terror in the face of Victoria Da Silva. The muscles straining in her neck as she tries to scream. A spurt of blood. The cut in her face. There are some blurred shots of the ground, the grass, the corner of a bench, as Alex loses control of the camera.

  ‘I think I must have switched on the video mode accidentally,’ says Alex. ‘It’s pretty bad quality, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No, don’t worry,’ I say, realising that my focus is so intense that I don’t want to look up from the screen.

  I press the play button and watch the nightmare come to life.

  I hear quickened breathing, a counterpoint to the screaming in the background. The image jumps, as if the phone itself is shaking with fear. I see Julia Jones, who looks as though she might faint. There is the peaceful face of Ayesha, wearing her headphones, enclosed in a state of blissful ignorance. I see myself, or at least a version of what looks like me, my eyes full of terror. And then I see the jogger, moving along the path towards Alex, towards the camera. The jogger’s neck turns, his black hoodie falls back slightly. The camera goes out of focus for a moment, melting into a blur, before it restores itself. I can’t take in what I’m seeing. I blink, trying to make my own eyes function again.

  It’s a face I know. A face I loved.

  Laurence.

  14

  BEX

  Jen calls me in a panic.

  ‘It was h-him, oh my God, Bex, it was him.’ She can hardly get her words out.

  ‘Just calm down, and tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘He was there, the other day, on the Heath,’ she says.

  ‘Who? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Laurence – he was the jogger.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve just seen a video – Alex, that’s Jamie’s boyfriend, he took it on his phone.’

  ‘I thought you said you were going to drop this whole thing?’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘But there’s something not right about this.’

  ‘You’re scaring me now, Jen,’ I say. ‘You need to hold it together and tell me what’s going on.’

  I hear her take a deep breath. ‘I know it sounds mad, but what was he doing there?’ she asks. ‘And why didn’t he come forward?’

  ‘So you’re saying that Laurence was there on the Heath, the day of the murder?’

  ‘Yes, he had a black hoodie on – he ran straight past me … when it was all happening.’

  ‘And you’re certain it was him?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve just seen the footage,’ she says. ‘Alex, he sent it on to me. Oh Bex, what the fuck is going on?’

  ‘I’m sure there must be some kind of logical explanation,’ I say. ‘I mean, look at it this way. Laurence lives – what? – a ten-minute jog from there? If he wanted somewhere to run then that place, Parliament Hill Fields, would be his nearest spot, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but, why didn’t he stop when he saw what was going on?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe he didn’t realise until it was too late. Or perhaps he—’

  ‘And why didn’t he make himself known to the police? After all, he’d read my news story. It said that the police were looking for a jogger dressed in a black hoodie who was seen at the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Maybe he was scared, I don’t know, Jen,’ I say. ‘Look – where are you?’

  ‘I’m just outside Jamie’s – Jamie Blackwood’s house in Primrose Hill.’

  ‘Why don’t you come over to mine and we can talk this through?’

  The line goes silent.

  ‘Jen – are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here – I just thought I saw someone … someone watching me. What if it’s that weirdo from Twitter?’

  ‘Jen – what can you see? Who is it?’

  I hear Jen’s heavy breathing. I repeat her name several more times, but there is still no answer.

  ‘Oh, it’s okay,’ she says finally. ‘They’ve moved on, they’ve gone.’

  ‘So you don’t think you’re being watched?’

  ‘I don’t think so, I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘But I don’t feel right.’ She starts to cry. ‘There’s something wrong. Bex, I’m scared.’

  She is beginning to lose it. Again.

  ‘Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you,’ I say.

  She gives me the address. ‘I’m going to jump in an Uber,’ I tell her. ‘And don’t worry. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes – twenty at the most.’

  I punch the address of Jamie’s house into Uber and wait, thinking what to say to Jen. I rehearse some lines in my head, remembering how I’ve dealt with her in the past.

  The journey passes in a blur as a series of images, all of them distressing, float through my mind. Jen, broken in pieces, after her confession to me. Jen, her make-up running down her cheeks as her face seems to melt away in a stream of tears. Jen, comatose from too much drink, a pile of vomit on the carpet by the sofa where she slept. Jen, a mess. A fuck-up. But also my best friend.

  Jen and Laurence seemed like the perfect couple. I remember the first time we met him. We were in the French House in Soho. It was a late Friday night in winter, and the space was packed with people. Jen and I had already had a few glasses of wine. I was coming back from the bar, trying to pass her a drink, reaching through and over the crowd, when someone nudged my shoulder by accident. The force of the impact pushed me forward, and I had to steady myself with my free hand, gripping the arm of a woman next to me. But I could do nothing to stop the contents of the glass flying out and splashing the faces of Jen and the man standing next to her.

  ‘What the fuck, Bex!’ said Jen, blinking like a cartoon character.

  ‘Indeed, what the fuck are you doing, Bex?’ echoed the dark-haired man whose face dripped with white wine.

  They turned to one another and laughed. He produced a clean handkerchief from his jacket – she joked what kind of man even carried a handkerchief nowadays – and the conversation was off. And didn’t stop all night. He was called Laurence, an architect who lived in Tufnell Park. Mid to late forties. Divorced. No children.

  ‘And you’re not gay?’ she asked.

  ‘No, what makes you say that?’ he replied.

  ‘Just that you seem nice. You’re handsome. Funny and—’ she said.

  ‘So you don’t think straight men
can be nice or handsome or funny?’ he replied.

  The flirting continued in the same vein all night. Laurence introduced me to his friend, another architect called Peter, a slightly overweight man in glasses, and although we were polite, there was no spark between us. Peter and I had to stand by and watch as the electricity bounced back and forth between Jen and Laurence. I felt pleased that someone was taking an interest in her like this. It had only been a few months since Chris had jilted her, something that hit her hard but which at least gave her lots of material for ‘Being Jen Hunter’. She wrote hundreds, thousands of words, about the humiliation of the split a few weeks before the big day, how she felt unworthy of love, how her low self-esteem held her back, how no man would ever find her attractive again. And here was someone who looked as though he was taking an interest in her.

  Just before last orders we went to the loo together.

  ‘I’m so pleased for you, Jen,’ I said. ‘He seems really nice.’

  ‘He does, doesn’t he?’ she said, her face lighting up with joy.

  ‘Have you told him what you do?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep, he knows I’m a journalist. He’s cool with that.’

  ‘But about what kind of journalism – the fact that you write a column about your life?’

  ‘No, not yet. We’ve swapped numbers, but it’s early days. We’re just having a bit of a flirt, that’s all.’

  At the end of the night we were really drunk, all apart from Peter, who left the bar early. Jen got a taxi back to her rented flat in south London, while Laurence and I agreed to share a black cab to Kentish Town/Tufnell Park. At some point as we drove up Camden High Street the cab driver swerved to avoid a cyclist, forcing Laurence’s left leg to brush against me. Although he apologised, he didn’t move it away. The sensation was electrifying. He turned towards me and placed his hand on my shoulder. I felt his lips touch my cheek. I had the chance, in that moment, to say something. But as I opened my mouth he slipped his tongue into it.

  The cab pulled up outside my flat and he whispered in my ear about how beautiful I was and asked whether I wanted the night to end. I could come back to his house for another drink. That was another opportunity for me to step away. I could have said something as simple as Jen’s name – one word that would serve as a sign that he should stop, a signifier that showed I valued my friendship with Jen more than a quick shag – but I didn’t. After Laurence paid the driver we ran into his house, greedily feasting on one another, stripping off our clothes in the hallway, nearly fucking on the stairs, holding off with difficulty until we made it into his bedroom. By this time, any thoughts I’d had about Jen had disappeared from my mind. I’d become brainwashed by a combination of alcohol and desire. The sex when it came was like a little explosion that sent shockwaves through my core.

  Just after dawn, my mouth sawdust dry, I blinked my way into a painful consciousness and spent a moment studying Laurence, who was still asleep. I’d had a few boyfriends, some I’d fallen for really badly. But was he the one? I’d thought that about other men in the past, but for one reason or another things hadn’t worked out how I would have liked. Could I imagine spending if not necessarily the rest of my life with Laurence, then certainly a considerable stretch of time? Perhaps. He was certainly handsome and in good shape. No strings or baggage. With a great house. Oh and one helluva good fuck, which is what I intended to give him with when he woke up.

  As I got up to use the bathroom and rub some toothpaste around my mouth I ran through what I would say to Jen. Surely, she would understand. She’d want me to be happy. Yes, they’d liked one another, but they’d only had a drink. Nothing had happened between them. I would take her out for lunch and explain: how we’d started kissing in the taxi, and how one thing led to another. She would probably find the whole thing hilarious, something that perhaps she could write about in her column – the friend who stole a prospective boyfriend from under her nose! – just as long as she didn’t use my real name. We’d laugh about it in years to come; perhaps she could even use it as a funny anecdote when she gave the best woman’s speech at my wedding. But I realised I was running away with myself.

  I slipped back into bed and pushed up against him. I felt him hard next to me. He groaned as I straddled him. The fuck was a quick one, and both of us came in a matter of minutes. Afterwards, as I reached out to cuddle him, he got up from the bed and said he needed to get ready to go into the office. I grabbed his white dressing gown and walked down to the kitchen. As I waited for the coffee, I searched the drawers for paracetamol for my throbbing head, but couldn’t find any. I made two cups and took them up to the top floor, where Laurence was dressing.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, as he took a cup from me. I noticed he couldn’t meet my eye. Was he the kind of man who was embarrassed to admit he enjoyed sex? Did such men still exist? Perhaps they did – after all, he was the kind of chap who carried a handkerchief in his jacket pocket.

  ‘That was great,’ I said, hoping to reassure him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘Listen, last night was wonderful – it really was. And I think you’re a lovely-looking woman. But …’ His voice trailed off while he tried to find the right words. ‘I think it’s best if we just leave it there, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘But I thought that you—’

  ‘I’m not great at doing this – talking like this – but I want you to realise that I had a fantastic time. And I hope you did too. Normally I only have one or two drinks, but I had way, way too much last night. Things got out of hand. I probably shouldn’t have kissed you in the taxi. I know that was wrong of me.’

  ‘It wasn’t wrong, Laurence. There was nothing wrong about it. It was bloody sexy.’

  ‘Well, I’m pleased you didn’t think it was a step too far on my part. As you know, I find you an extremely attractive woman. It’s just that …’

  As I waited for him to finish the end of his sentence I saw the dream life I had created for myself begin to collapse. There would be no ‘us’. He would not be ‘the one’. Instead, he’d just be another man who fucked me and then fucked off.

  ‘I thought we had something, Laurence,’ I said. ‘I thought we might have been able to see one another again?’

  ‘We did have something special – yes, very special – but it’s just that I’m not ready for that kind of relationship at the moment.’

  Please don’t say it, please don’t say, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. If he did that I would have to stop myself from throwing my coffee cup at him, or something worse. Of course, he went ahead and said those words. The most excruciating fucking words in the English language.

  Laurence continued to talk, but I stopped listening as I put on my clothes. I didn’t tell him what I was really feeling. Instead, as I left, I turned to him and told him that I understood: we were both adults, I could deal with it.

  ‘But can you do me a favour?’ I asked. ‘I think it would be best if we kept this between ourselves, don’t you? I’d hate it if Jen found out. I think she was quite taken with you.’

  ‘Was she?’ he said, his bloodshot eyes lighting up. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell.’

  Two weeks later I got an excited call from Jen to say that Laurence had been in touch and that they’d been out for a drink. She told me they got on like a house on fire. At the end of the evening they’d taken a cab back to his place. The sex had been the best she’d had in years, she said. I thought that would be the end of it, that Laurence would tell her just what he’d told me – that he wasn’t up for anything long-term. But they continued seeing one another, even after she had told him about the nature of her column – he admitted that he’d never read it – and about how she might have to mention that she’d met someone new. But she could change his name, so he needn’t worry about being identified. He was fine with that, she said. Jen kept me, and her readers, up to date with every aspect of the burgeoning relationship. They seemed like the perfect match. In fact, I couldn’t have chosen a bet
ter man for her if I’d tried.

  The sex continued to be amazing, she said. He made her laugh. His house was so neat and tidy. No wet towels on the floor, no dirty socks strewn across the bed. She loved his work. He seemed to adore her quirky sense of humour. Her unpredictability. The fact that she wasn’t like all the other women he’d met. By the end of six months Laurence – or James, as he was known in her column – asked her to move out of her rented flat and into his big house in Tufnell Park.

  And they had lived there happily together until … well, until that awful night.

  The voice of the Uber driver telling me that we had reached our destination brings me back to the here and now. I thank him, get out of the car, and look for Jen. I can’t see her. I walk up and down the street, check again that she gave me the right address, but there’s no sign of her. I call her phone. But it goes straight to voicemail.

  She’s gone.

  15

  JEN

  I can still feel someone watching me. I turn my head but can’t see anyone. I look through the windows of one of the houses. I’m sure I see a sliver of something, someone, move away from the open shutters. Were they standing there, studying me?

  I think about going back into Jamie’s house. But I could tell Alex didn’t want me to hang around. And they might regard me not as a professional but as a madwoman. I look at my phone. I don’t want to stand on the street, waiting for Bex to arrive, and so I start to walk. I quicken my pace, feeling sweat on my forehead, under my arms. It’s February, for God’s sake – why is it so warm? I make my way down the street, along past a terrace of canary yellow, baby blue, and candy pink houses.

  I can’t get the image of that video out of my mind. Laurence, the jogger trying to hide his face in that black hoodie. What was he doing on the Heath that day? Had he followed me up there? And why didn’t he stop? Why didn’t he come forward and make himself known to the police? Was he hiding something? And this morning, when I saw him at Gospel Oak, what was he doing? I think about the tweets from @WatchingYouJenHunter. A wave of nausea hits me and I have to stop. I reach out and steady myself by a parked car. Surely that can’t be him … can it?