The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,96
Christ’s sake, Jamie, I can’t be involved now. He’s my boss. I mean – yeah, the bloke sounds like a psycho – but I can’t afford to lose my job. I can’t risk it.’
‘But you have to.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Please.’
‘Jamie, I’m sorry, alright? But it’s out of the question.’
He made to leave the room but Jamie stepped in front of him. Mike tried to dodge round him but Jamie grabbed his sleeve.
‘Jamie, leave it. I cannot get involved. That is it. My final answer.’
‘Mike, please.’
‘If you don’t take your hands off me I’m going to have to hit you.’
Jamie let go. ‘Let me contact them myself.’
‘What?’
‘Your friends. Give me their number and I’ll contact them myself. They don’t have to know it’s got anything to do with you. I’ll tell them I heard about them through someone else. I’ll make something up. You hadn’t already given them my name, or Chris’s or Lucy’s, so just give me the number and I’ll sort it all out. Nobody will even know you were involved.’
Mike exhaled through his nose.
‘Please.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. OK. But if you mention my name to them you’ll be their next victim.’
‘Alright. I promise I won’t mention you.’
Mike pulled a scrap of paper and a pen out of his trouser pocket. He scribbled a number down. ‘The name to ask for is Charlie. Alright?’
‘Right.’
Mike left the room, having instructed Jamie to wait another ten seconds before leaving the gents. Jamie looked at the number in his hand. He put it safely in his wallet, then pushed open the door and looked left and right. There was no sign of Chris. As he walked towards the lift he took a last look around. He knew he would never be coming back to this place again. How could he, with Chris working here – as his boss, no less? He now understood why Chris had sent the virus, in Jamie’s name, to his workplace: so he would have an excuse to sack him after he became the manager. God, he was clever. But fuck him. Jamie wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
He had never realised Chris was so high up at Scion. He thought he was just a lowly wage-slave like himself. But he was obviously powerful enough to engineer the takeover of a smaller company and move himself in as manager. Jamie felt quite sick with the shock of it: the lengths the man would go to to destroy him.
What had he ever done to him?
OK, when they had moved in they had thrown a party, but they had invited all their neighbours so it wasn’t their fault Chris and Lucy had chosen not to come. And when they apologised afterwards they were told by Lucy that Chris had slept right through it! The very first lie she had told them.
What else had they done? Had sex – but no more noisily or frequently than any other couple their age. Played music – but certainly not at excessive volumes. How could any of that lead Chris and Lucy to do such terrible things? Especially when sound hardly carried between the flats.
The truth was, they had done practically nothing to provoke them, but they had still invoked their wrath. Jamie had lain awake at night thinking about it, and it all came back to one simple fact: Lucy and Chris were evil. They enjoyed causing misery; they revelled in other people’s pain. And they were prepared to put themselves to great trouble and effort to cause that pain. If it wasn’t happening to him, Jamie wouldn’t believe it possible. But it was true. It was really happening – and it was happening to him and Kirsty. Life wasn’t meant to be like that. It wasn’t fucking fair.
All this, caused by two apparently normal people. They weren’t monsters. They weren’t vampires or demons or phantoms. They were just people. Actually, Jamie thought, that made sense. There was Brian upstairs writing his horror stories for kids: supernatural tales in which werewolves and witches terrorised children. He shouldn’t be writing about monsters or magic, though, not if he wanted to teach children a lesson about life. He should be writing about people like Lucy and Chris.
He climbed into his car and sat back. He fished out his wallet and looked at the phone number again. What was the name? Charlie. He didn’t yet know what story he would make up to explain how he had got the number, but he would think of something.