The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,46
ended – if they didn’t get delayed, that was. She didn’t feel angry with him any more. She just wanted to get home, to check that he was alright. There had to be a good explanation for his absence. She only hoped something hadn’t happened with Lucy and Chris.
Since the night the police had been round, they hadn’t spoken to the Newtons. Nor had they received any letters, or CDs, from them – not directly anyway. Instead, they had been flooded with hoaxes. Letters, parcels and phone calls. Even emails sent from an anonymous Hotmail account, although neither of them could work out how Lucy and Chris had found out their email addresses (which Jamie had now changed). Of course, none of the hoaxes carried their neighbours’ names, but they knew who was responsible – just like they now knew who had been responsible for the first wave of hoaxes that had started almost as soon as they moved in.
There had been letters from credit card and insurance companies; circulars from Christian organisations; free samples of beauty products that Kirsty might have been pleased with if they hadn’t been so obviously intended to offend: anti-wrinkle cream, hair dye to cover up those grey hairs, cream to rub into your cellulite, wax strips to remove unwanted facial hair. They had received more offers and parcels from websites and magazines, including subscriptions to the Shooting Times, and a porn magazine called Barely Legal, which was full of girls who looked underage but weren’t really. They were sent several monstrosities from ‘Collectables’ companies, such as a porcelain clown that made Kirsty feel physically sick to look at, and a plate commemorating the Royal birth. All of this had to go back, which involved a phone call to the company and a trip to the post office, with a wait for the return label to arrive in between. It was inconvenient and stressful.
‘Why don’t we just dump them on Lucy and Chris’s doorstep?’ Jamie asked.
‘Because then we’ll get billed for them. And there’s no way I want to be taken to court for not paying for DoDo the Ugly Clown or whatever he’s called. Just enter it in the log. If we ever do end up in court, this will all be evidence.’
One thing they had done was ask the various mail order companies to send them scans of the original order forms. Several of the companies responded happily (they weren’t happy that they had been hoaxed either) and when the forms arrived it gave Jamie and Kirsty the final piece of evidence they needed. Because all the forms were filled out in the same handwriting. And the handwriting matched that on the letters Lucy and Chris had sent them.
Jamie phoned the police station and asked for Constable Dodds. He told him about the handwriting.
‘That’s good to have, although it’s not much use on its own. It’s hardly the crime of the year.’ Jamie realised this was one of Dodds’ favourite phrases. ‘Hold on to it and make sure you keep a record of everything, including conversations you have with the mail order companies. But I’d still advise you to hold fire for now. Sooner or later these people are going to get bored, I promise you.’
‘What did they say when you went down there to see them?’
‘To be honest, they didn’t say very much. We told them we’d asked you not to enter their garden uninvited again, and they thanked us. That was pretty much it.’
‘Were they both there? Lucy and Chris?’
‘Yes. But she did all the talking.’
‘I can believe that.’
When Kirsty and Jamie discussed the situation, which they did every evening, they found that without realising it they had begun to focus their anger and upset onto Lucy. She had become the arch villain, while Chris was just her sidekick, an acolyte who, despite being married to her, didn’t share her insanity. It was always her writing on the application forms; it was her who stood in the garden and shouted at Jamie, while Chris hid inside. Jamie wondered if it would be worth trying to talk to Chris alone, to see if he could reason with him, man to man.
‘No,’ said Kirsty, when he suggested this. ‘Stay away from them both. We might be wrong. Chris might be the driving force behind this. And the more I think about it, the more I blame him for what happened to Paul. If he hadn’t taken us karting…’