The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,43

turned to Jamie. ‘I’m PC Dodds, this is PC Sutton. We’ve had a complaint.’

‘We know what this is about,’ Jamie said. ‘And I can tell you right now, it’s all a load of crap, whatever they’ve said about us.’

Sutton wandered across the room and looked at Jamie’s computer, then moved over to the window and looked out in the direction of his car.

‘What do you mean by that?’ said Dodds, having to speak up above the roar of the boiling kettle.

‘Well, tell me what Lucy and Chris said about us and I’ll tell you what I mean.’

Sutton came back towards them. ‘We’ve had a complaint that you were trespassing in your neighbours’ garden.’

Jamie shook his head. ‘I knew it.’ He sighed. ‘This whole thing is a total waste of your time. But I’ll tell you the story from the beginning.’

He waited until the drinks were ready, then gestured for Dodds and Sutton to sit down.

‘We moved in here in the summer.’ He told them how they had befriended the Newtons, inviting them to dinner, chatting with them whenever they saw them, seemingly getting along fine. ‘Then we went go-karting with them, and that’s when everything went weird. Our friends Heather and Paul came along too, and Paul had an accident, suffered awful head injuries. He’s in a coma right now.’ He swallowed. ‘The thing is, Chris was involved in the accident. He and Paul were racing, and, well, we don’t blame Chris – it was an accident – but since then neither Chris nor Lucy have spoken to us. It’s as if they’re pissed off with us – as if we’d done something to one of their friends. We didn’t really think much of it at first, though we were a bit annoyed that they made no effort to find out how Paul was. They didn’t even send a card.’

‘And then we received the first letter,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’ll show it to you.’

While she dug out the letters from the desk, Jamie said, ‘Basically, the Newtons are harassing us. For no reason. No reason that we can fathom anyway.’

Kirsty handed Dodds the first letter. He read it, then passed it to Sutton, who smirked as he read it. He looked at Kirsty and raised his eyebrows. Jamie could read the young policeman’s mind. Noisy sex. He was wondering if it was true.

‘We were really surprised by the letter. Firstly, we’re not really noisy.’ Jamie cleared his throat, suddenly feeling embarrassed. ‘And secondly, we didn’t understand why they couldn’t come up here and talk to us. They didn’t even refer to us by our names in the letter. We thought it was really odd.’

Dodds leaned forward, nodding sympathetically.

‘And then we received the CD.’

‘The CD? Of what?’

‘Um…it was a recording of us having sex. They’d obviously set up a mike in their bedroom and recorded us. The noises on the CD are a bit muffled, but still quite loud. I can’t believe that we sound so loud downstairs.’

‘Have you still got the CD?’ Sutton asked, looking at Kirsty.

‘Yes, but…’

‘We don’t need to hear it,’ said Dodds, giving his younger colleague a filthy look.

‘We’ve got the CD,’ said Jamie, ‘and we know that Lucy and Chris must have the original file on their computer. We wrote to them, trying to be reasonable. This was after we’d been down there, trying to talk to them. But they wouldn’t answer the door to us.’

‘Did you keep a copy of your letter to them?’

‘No. We had a rough draft but we threw it away. Shit, I wish we had kept a copy, but we thought our letter would resolve the situation.’

‘What did your letter say?’

‘Just that we thought we were friends and that we should be able to sort out any problems by talking about them. It was a very reasonable letter, except that we made the mistake of mentioning their barbecue. We were trying to make the point that when you live in a flat you have to be willing to put up with a small amount of noise – it’s just the way it is. A little while ago they had a barbecue, which was quite noisy, and went on late, and we stressed in the letter that we didn’t complain about their barbecue, so why should they complain about us? This is what we got back.’

He nodded to Kirsty who handed Dodds the second letter.

‘We got this one this evening. I was so annoyed I went down to try to talk to them,