The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,117
do it.
He was glad he hadn’t. Because after a long time on the edge, he was finally regaining control of his life. He had been given a second chance and he wasn’t going to waste it.
For a long time, he had wrestled with his conscience. Because although he had pleaded not guilty, he felt guilty. With the evidence he had found in the flat, he could have gone to the police and shown them that Lucy and Chris had been making their lives a living hell. But because he had lost it at that moment, a man had died. He was responsible for the death of another human being, even if it was Chris, one of the two people he hated more than anyone else in the world. He wondered what had happened to the other one: Lucy. She had sat on her own during the trial, staring at Jamie, making him feel cold and vulnerable. Jamie’s lawyer had urged Jamie to ask the police to prosecute Lucy for harassment. Jamie said no. He just wanted to forget about it. He imagined she was living with someone else now, in a flat somewhere, making somebody else’s life miserable.
Last week, he had been sitting in a small cafe in Brixton when Heather walked in. She did a double take, then came over and sat down.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Your eyebrows.’
‘I know. Apparently, they’ll never grow back.’
‘God.’
She bought him a coffee and they talked. Jamie told her what he had been doing since the trial. She tutted a lot and looked sympathetic. She was now working at a hospital nearby. It was no fun working at St Thomas’s since Kirsty left.
‘Have you heard from her at all?’ she asked.
‘No. The last time I saw her was at the trial. I tried to talk to her afterwards but she hurried off with her mum and dad.’ He paused. ‘Are you in touch with her?’
Heather nodded. ‘Yes, although I don’t see her very often. She lives in Reading now.’
‘Is she married?’
‘No, but she has got a new boyfriend. Andrew. I feel awkward telling you.’
‘It’s OK. I didn’t expect her to spend the rest of her life on her own.’
‘I know – but they’ve got a little girl as well. Six months old. Her name’s Isabel.’
Jamie stirred his coffee slowly. He smiled. ‘That’s good. I’m pleased.’ But he felt a hard lump in his throat and he was unable to speak again for a few minutes.
‘Have you heard from Paul?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘That bastard. I can’t believe how cut up I was over him.’
‘You were a nightmare.’
‘God, don’t remind me. But I’ve got a new boyfriend now, and he’s twice the man Paul was. Or is. I haven’t heard from him at all.’
‘He must still be out there, wandering the world.’
Heather looked out at the rain. ‘Yeah, and I bet he’s somewhere a lot sunnier than this. I’ll never understand why he became so friendly with Lucy and Chris. Did you ever contact him, tell him what they did?’
‘No.’ Thinking about Paul was painful. Something had happened to him when he’d had his accident, something that still didn’t make sense. If Jamie had been a religious or superstitious person he might believe that something supernatural had happened to Paul while he was in that coma, that he had lost part of his soul. But there had to be a rational explanation for it. Had the accident done something to the wiring inside Paul’s brain? Maybe it had made his brain more like Lucy and Chris’s: the mind of a psychopath, self-centred, cold, acting without conscience. If that was the case, then Paul would have had more in common with his new friends than he did with Jamie and Kirsty.
He kissed Heather goodbye and she gave him her number, told him to call. On the way back to his digs, he screwed it up and threw it in a bin. Heather was a link to the past. If he was going to make a fresh start, all such links had to be severed.
Now, he stood up and decided to head back to his room. Tomorrow, he would go to the job club, get his CV updated, check out the job sites. He had a lot of experience, even if his knowledge of computers was no longer completely up to date. It wasn’t going to be easy finding a new job, but he knew he could do it. And once he had one he could rent a