The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,114

cutting: MAN IN COMA AFTER KARTING ACCIDENT.

He pulled open the door beneath the drawer and groped inside. There was a carrier bag at the back of the compartment. It was full of glasses: around twenty pairs of spectacles, most of them old -fashioned, with brown frames. Jamie furrowed his brow and emptied the bag, tipping the glasses all over the floor, revealing a couple of what he quickly realised were hearing aids, and a single USB stick. Not knowing what to make of all this, he slipped the USB stick in his pocket and moved on.

He dug deeper in the cupboard, finding a manila folder. Inside it was a marriage certificate. He almost threw it aside, but a word caught his eye:

Pica.

His heartbeat skipped.

The two names on the certificate were Christopher Robert Newton and Lucy Marie Pica.

He tore through the rest of the desk until he found a letter with the estate agent’s heading: Anderson and Son. He read the letter in stunned horror. It confirmed the sale of the ground floor flat, 143 Mount Pleasant Street to Jamie Knight and Kirsty Phillips from Ms Lucy Pica. He dug deeper. There was another letter, dated May, confirming the sale of the flat from Letitia Matthews and David Robson to Lucy Pica.

Lucy had bought the flat in her maiden name from Letitia and David and then sold it on to Jamie and Kirsty, making a healthy profit – and getting two new people to torment into the bargain. And as the sellers of the flat, they would have the keys and plenty of time to install surveillance equipment so they could watch and listen to their victims’ suffering to make their pleasure even greater. The recordings of them having sex weren’t made through the ceiling as they’d suspected: as well as the camera in the living room there was probably a microphone somewhere in their bedroom, hidden beneath something, which would account for the muffled sound on the recordings. The keys also gave them the chance to walk into the flat at any time that Jamie and Kirsty weren’t at home.

Jamie threw all the papers to the floor. A wave of anger crashed over him, blinding him. He stood in the centre of the room. The walls spinning around and around, getting faster, everything going white, blurred; going red, crimson, the colour of blood.

He roared. The cry ripped something in his throat, made the room shake around him. He pulled the CCTV monitor out of its cabinet and threw it against the wall. All his working out had made him strong. The monitor hit the wall with a deafening crunch; shards of glass flew across the room. Jamie roared again.

There was only one way to deal with this.

He stomped across the room into the kitchen, throwing open the cupboards beneath the sink. He pulled out bottles of cleaner, bleach, rubber gloves, throwing them behind him. Then he saw what he had hoped to find: a large bottle of white spirit, almost full and extremely flammable. He unscrewed the top and went back into the living room. He splashed the white spirit around, up the walls, over the furniture. He carried it into the bedrooms and splashed some on the beds. He threw some against the poster of Chris. He trailed the stinking liquid from the bedrooms back into the living room.

He took his matches out of his pocket, then pulled out his cigarettes. He threw the empty white spirit bottle onto the carpet in front of him and wiped his hands on his trousers. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, and stood there, motionless, for a moment. He would be burning all the evidence, erasing any proof of what Chris and Lucy had done. He had one moment to change his mind.

He threw the lit cigarette across the room.

It hit a patch of spirit and immediately blue flames flickered to life, racing across the carpet, growing as they spread, orange replacing the blue, smoke quickly filling the room. The flames caught the end of the curtains, ran up the sofa. The crackle and roar grew louder and louder. Fire danced on every surface, and started heading towards Jamie, who had backed up to the threshold of the room. He stood in the doorway for a second, entranced by the flames, and then turned to get out.

It was at that moment that Chris ran into the flat and crashed into him.

Jamie went flying into the living room. Above the roar of the flames