FORTY-FOUR
ERIN
The sound of life outside wakes me with a start.People. The noise they’re making brings me abruptly out of my sleep. I rub my eyes, burp – I’m still feeling a touch gassy after all the food I ate last night – and check the time. It’s 5.47 a.m., early, and yet the pavement is already buzzing withso many people. People running, people walking, people with coffee cups, people with prams, people walking their dogs, people on bikes, people waiting for buses, delivery people… I realise there’s people everywhere of course, but in London it’s something else. You can’t escape them. And the noise isdeafening. I think about Dan’s young son. He’s deaf. I read it in that newspaper article on him, that PR exercise I imagine he was cajoled into doing by his domineering boss. I could tell that he wasn’t comfortable talking about his son. I had sensed such sadness too, like somehow he thought it was his fault he was deaf. But I know it isn’t. It was just chance, the way the cookie crumbles, the wrong side of luck. It was justlife.
A woman in fancy running gear turns her head to look at me through the car window as she jogs past. I turn away, flip the visor down and check myself in the mirror. I rub the rims of my eyes with a licked finger. My mascara has run – teach me forbuying the cheap stuff – and the red lipstick has all but vanished, but otherwise, I’ll do.
I sit up, bring the seat back to an upright position and glance over at Dan Riley’s apartment. His car’s still here, but, oh… hang on, it’s him! He’s making his way out of the front entrance now, and he’s getting into his car! How’s that for timing?
I scrabble around for my car keys.Shit, shit, shit. He’s on the move. I start up the engine, wait for him to pull out of the complex. I don’t want to follow him too closely. I can’t afford to arouse his suspicion.
I can barely see through my sleepy eyes as I indicate left, keeping a safe distance behind him as I follow him through the traffic lights, down the unfamiliar streets. My heart is thudding painfully against my ribs. It’s too early for this. And I haven’t even had breakfast. I take a breath, switch the radio on, press a few of the buttons in quick succession.
‘… and on this gloriouslycloudymorning as well! Next up, it’s our Kimberley with the London news…’
‘Thanks, Douggie.’ The husky female voice rings out through the stereo. ‘Met Police are still searching for a missing former mental health patient in London following her disappearance last week. Erin Santos, forty-one, originally from Leeds…’
‘Forty-one?’ I shout at the radio. ‘I’m forty! Jesus!’
I throw a hand up in the air. They’re trying to put years on me! As if I haven’t lost enough of them already! They had better get it right in my obituary, not that I’ll ever get one of those, I suppose. Who’s going to write anything aboutmydeath, aside from all the journalists and keyboard warriors commenting on how it couldn’t come too soon? And of course, they’ll show that awful photo of me, won’t they? The one that makes me look like a deranged child killer who’s never heard of concealer. I’m sure, when they go on to make the documentary about this case, about me and my madness and my ‘crimes’, they’ll wheel outDr Wainwright to have his say.Hewould never miss such an opportunity to be in front of the camera, the centre of attention. I can just see him now, sitting there in his office, that portrait of him in the background as he talks in that slightly condescending way that he does, a make-up lady pressing powder onto his sensitive skin. I’d noticed, over the years, that Dr Wainwright’s skin was sometimes quite red and inflamed across his cheeks. I asked him about it once, during one of our sessions, and what looked like a particularly angry flare-up. I could tell he didn’t like the fact that I’d mentioned it. He tried to disguise it, but I knew that secretly he was seething that I, this mad, murdering degenerate who was so far beneath him, would have the audacity to point out what could even be considered as a flaw in his otherwise perfect image of himself. He said it was a rare skin condition that he’d inherited on his father’s side.
I say it was karma.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’thateDr Wainwright, it isn’t that. He isn’t that different, or special, to most people really. He’s just so busy looking into the flaws of others that he’s blind to his own.
‘You can’t park up here, love.’ An old man taps on my window and I jump. My hand shoots up to my chest. ‘Restrictions… roadworks,’ – he rolls his watery grey eyes – ‘all up this bleeding road they are. You’d think they were digging for treasure! Best to take a different route.’
I nod and wave politely.
‘Yah… thanks for the heads-up!’ Or that’s how I think Alexandra Fisher would say it, anyway.
I shiver as I close the window. It’s a damp, chilly morning and I turn the heating on, gasp as the cool, stale air hits me. I wish I’d brought my onesie with me now.
‘Why are you dressed as a dog?’ Malcolm’s voice speaks to me,again.I reallymuststop doing that. I have to build a firewall around my thoughts. I can’t allow them to wander, or distractme. But it was just thewaythat he’d asked me the question, as if it was perfectly normal for me to answer the door dressed as a dog, and he was just curious. I realise I’m smiling as I swing another left. Dan is two cars ahead. I mustn’t take my eyes off him, not for a second. My adrenalin levels are peaking. I can feel it, sense it like rain. Something is coming.My day of reckoning is nigh.
He’s goneto work.
I feel my dopamine levels crash and burn as I watch him pull into the underground car park at the police station. I pull over. I’ll have to hang back. Wait. Watch. See where he goes next.
My stomach growls as I recline my seat once again. I need coffee. Why didn’t I think to get a coffee? A pain au chocolattoo? I look out of the window, try to distract my thoughts away from food.
‘And put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. Proverbs 23:2.’
I must try to exercise more self-control.A knife to your throat… Boom!The flashback hits me hard as Bojan Radulovic comes marching out of the apartment complex, his brow all wrinkled up as he powers towards me with purpose.
‘He’s got a knife, Erin!’ Samantha grips my arm in fear. ‘He’s going to kill me!’ I can feel it in my hand, the smoothness of the handle against my skin, the cool blade glinting as she hands it to me… only now when I look down at Bojan’s hand, it’s not a knife that he’s holding.
I didn’t much like her, that Detective Pritchard, but she’d told me the same thing at the time, when she’d interviewed me.
‘It wasn’t a knife he had in his hand, Erin, it was his mobile phone.’
Only I didn’t believe her. I truly believed at the time that I had seen the knife for myself, in his hand as he’d approached, only it had all been the power of suggestion, hadn’t it? Ithoughtit was a knife becauseshetold me itwasa knife. And seeing him there with it in his hand, it all fitted into place, because, whywouldn’the have a knife? For months, Samantha had been telling me that he was violent, that he was abusing her and had threatened to kill her, just like Ray Denis killed my mum. She tapped into my trauma so completely that in that moment, I would’ve done anything she said, anything to save her from him.
A fresh rush of anger fires up inside me, but hang on… Dan’s back on the go again… He’s alone as he steps out of the police station, his sidekick’s not with him, the one he referred to in his article as his ‘work wife’. He turns left out of the station, and I quickly indicate, pull out. I stay close, but not too close, behind him.
After about five minutes, he turns right off the main road and right again, down a side one. I slow down behind him, pull in behind a cluster of parked cars. I watch as he exits his vehicle, hear the ‘beep, beep’ of his alarm as he locks the car and begins to make his way towards a set of apartments, only he’s comingthisway. I snatch my phone up, look down at it, pretend to read something. He doesn’t even turn to look as he walks straight past my window, and I let out a breath of relief. He hasn’t seen me. My eyes follow him, watching as he presses the intercom buzzer. I crane my neck, see if I can get a clearer view, but I’m way too far away to see which number it is and… My phone slips from my grip and falls straight between the driver and passenger seats. Whydoesthat always happen? I curse, slide my hand in between them, try to grip it with the tips of my fingers. When I look back up, Dan is no longer there.
‘Brilliant!’ I bash the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. ‘Bloody brilliant.’
