her, make sure she’s okay. In the meantime, I’m afraid there’s still nothing he’s done that we can prove as harassment, and until he does we can’t start considering an injunction against him to keep him out of your way.”
I shrugged. “The person he was pretending to be—Mike Newell. I was wondering if the police checked up on his CV, whether his friend in Spain would still be prepared to pretend he’s been working there for the past year. Although that still doesn’t prove that Mike Newell and Lee Brightman are the same person.”
“Leave it with me,” she said, finishing the last of her pint. “I’ll keep in touch. And in the meantime, I’ll check up on your friend, too.”
She stood up and stretched.
“Christ, it’s been a long day.”
“Are you off duty now?”
Sam nodded and smiled. “Yes. I’m going to have a curry and a long soak in the bath, I think.”
I walked with her as far as the junction with Talbot Street, then shook her hand as she turned toward the Underground.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “If you need help. Easter.”
“I won’t,” I said, and left her with a smile.
It was nearly dark by the time I got home. I was still smiling as I put the key in the lock on the front door, and it opened without me even turning it. Someone had left it unlocked.
The flat door was locked, as I’d left it, and there was nothing out of place inside. Nothing out of place, and yet still I was uneasy.
I stood in the middle of the living room, looking out toward the balcony doors and the yard beyond, the trees still, the air in here stale and stifling. I checked the balcony doors again—still locked and secure—and then opened them wide. The breeze that had chilled my skin in the yard of the Rest Assured had dropped, and despite the sun going down it felt warmer still.
The gate at the bottom of the yard was open, half hanging on its hinges. It had been like that since a gale last February. I’d asked the management company to fix it, and they’d sent someone, once, who propped it up again. It was a halfhearted effort. Nobody used the yard anyway, in fact I’d never seen anyone else using the path that ran along behind it, so the fact that it was half-open wasn’t what was bothering me.
There was no sound at all, not a breath, not a birdsong, not a whisper. But it felt strange nonetheless. The air was close and heavy, the clouds gathering overhead.
I wondered what he was doing, where he was, whether Sylvia was locked in her bathroom, bleeding, waiting for someone to come and save her, the way Wendy had saved me.
Wendy had told me afterward that she’d been unpacking her shopping from the boot of her car when he came out of the front door. He looked dazed, she said, as if he was a bit drunk, as he got into the car and drove away. But that wasn’t what had disturbed her. When he’d turned to get into the driver’s seat she’d seen the blood on his hands and down the front of his shirt.
And, luckily for me, he hadn’t shut the door properly. When she was certain that he’d gone, she pushed it open, she told me, calling out “Hello?” up the stairs, finding me lying on the carpet in my spare room. She thought I was already dead. The recording of her 999 call was played out in court. Wendy, so together, so calm, so gentle, screaming for help and sobbing with the shock of finding someone naked, bleeding from a hundred different places and scarcely breathing. I found it hard to listen to. I think that might have been the last day I made it into court—I don’t remember much else from the trial, anyway.
Suddenly my phone rang from my handbag on the sofa, and it made me jump.
“Hello, you,” Stuart said, his voice unbearably tired. “I missed you today.”
“You, too. Are you nearly done?”
“Yup. I’m just writing up some notes, then I’ll be on my way. Shall I get us something to eat on the way home?”
“That sounds good,” I said. “Listen—I’m just going to pop out for a bit. I want to check something at work.”
I heard his voice change. “You’re going back to work?”
“Yes, don’t worry, it won’t take long. I’ll probably be back before you get home.”
There was a pause on the other end