The Magpies A Psychological Thriller

Eleven


Jamie couldn’t stand the smell of hospitals. The cloying stink of disinfectant; the vapour trails of anguish and pain and disease. He was glad that Kirsty showered and changed when she got home from work – he would hate it if that smell clung to her all evening instead of the clean, warm natural smells of her body. He sometimes felt that he had a more finely-tuned sense of smell than most people – a sensitivity that made it impossible for him to stay in certain malodorous places. When he drove past a crematorium, he could smell ashes and fumes. Public toilets contained many horrors. The stink of body odour on the Tube made him want to be sick. But the worst smell of all was the smell of hospitals.

He sat beside Paul’s bed, sucking a mint, exhaling in sharp breaths so its smell replaced that of the hospital. Walking up the corridor this afternoon he had seen a porter hurriedly pushing a trolley on which there lay a dead body, covered from head to toe with a green sheet. Now Jamie looked at Paul, his chest rising and falling, the steady pulse of his heartbeat amplified electronically by the machines that monitored his condition, and felt a rush of gratitude and relief: Paul was still alive, and whatever else happened, that was a blessing to cling to. Every morning, a nurse came to give Paul a wash and a shave. Periodically, hospital staff trimmed his nails and cut his hair. In fact, Heather had asked if she could cut his hair herself and, having done so, she carried a lock with her in her bag. Jamie thought that was pretty morbid himself, but he understood Heather’s motivation. Paul’s body was still functioning – growing, aging, shedding, replenishing; all the things that bodies do. These things were a tangible reminder that Paul was still with them.

Jamie sat silently as usual. He had spoken to Dr Meer earlier, who said there had been no change in Paul’s condition. Jamie wondered how far beneath the surface Paul was, if he was making any progress that they couldn’t see. He wondered if, in his comatose state, Paul dreamed – and, if so, what he dreamed of. Women, probably. Megan Fox mud-wrestling with Rihanna.

He stood up. It was six o’clock – time to meet Kirsty and take her home. As he was about to leave the room he turned round and looked down at his friend. He could have sworn he had moved. He bent over him, holding his breath, searching for signs of movement or change. There were none.

‘Must have imagined it,’ he murmured to himself. He touched Paul’s cheek. It was warm.

He walked back down the corridor and up a long flight of stairs. A pair of nurses passed him as he headed towards the children’s ward. They recognised him, and smiled. After they’d passed by he heard them laugh, and he felt a stab of paranoia, convinced they were laughing at him. He hurried on, suddenly desperate to be out of here, away from the smell and the people and the bright, sterile lighting. He wanted to be at home.

But when he thought of home, he felt anxious too.

All day he had been haunted by a creeping sense of unease. Last night, they had written and delivered the letter to Lucy and Chris. Writing the letter had made him feel better, but after he’d got to work this morning he’d started to worry about what their response would be. Mike, the guy who sat opposite him at work, had asked him if he was alright, commenting that he seemed really spaced out, and Jamie had snapped at him, told him to mind his own business, feeling immediately remorseful. It was so rare for him to feel like this – he was usually so relaxed and easy-going. But he wanted today over with. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day.

‘Hiya darling,’ said Kirsty, when they met outside the main entrance. He was so pleased to see her he almost burst into tears.

‘Are you alright? You look–’

He nodded quickly. ‘I just want to get home.’

‘OK.’

Kirsty took the wheel because Jamie didn’t feel in the mood to tackle the traffic. He couldn’t even stand listening to the radio. The news gave him a headache so he turned it off and they drove home in silence, Jamie resting his head against the window, gazing out at the city streets.

Litter twisted and turned as it danced along the pavement from the high street McDonalds. A group of boys stood on the corner outside the off-license, trying to persuade passers-by to go in to buy them some beer, hurling abuse after everyone who said no. A young Asian woman in a business suit stood at a bus stop, studying her reflection in the sheen of the glass that covered an advert for health insurance, reapplying her lipstick. A fat man stood close by with a Staffordshire bull terrier on a lead. The dog shivered as it pushed out a large turd, then the man produced a plastic bag and a scoop, cleaning up after his pet before hurrying away. Somewhere up ahead, a police car’s siren wailed histrionically before stopping dead. This evening, the city seemed tawdry and sad. Jamie heard himself sigh. Kirsty touched his leg.

‘Do you want to pick up a Chinese on the way home?’

‘I’m not really hungry.’

‘Suit yourself.’

He stretched out a hand and stroked her soft hair. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s just, I don’t know – I feel really down today.’

‘Was it seeing Paul?’

‘No, not really. In fact, seeing Paul made me feel slightly better, in a strange way. I guess I’ve been worrying about Lucy and Chris. I’ve got this horrible feeling that we’re going to arrive home and find our windows smashed.’

‘You are silly.’

‘I know. But what if we don’t get any response at all?’

‘Oh I think we will.’

They pulled into Mount Pleasant Street and saw that the Newtons’ car was parked in its customary position. Kirsty parked and they got out and went inside. Jamie checked the post. Among the junk mail was a handwritten envelope with no stamp. It was addressed to The Ground Floor Flat.

‘This is it,’ said Jamie, feeling his throat go dry.

Kirsty took it from him and carefully unsealed the envelope. She read the letter aloud:

HOW DARE YOU complain about the noise we made when we had our barbecue. Our friends were shocked and appalled that you have described them as having raucous laughter. I can’t believe what hypocrites you are, especially as we have to endure the sound of your own shrieking and guffawing day and night. We can tell you that we will have our friends over whenever we like and will stay up as late as we like. YOU CANNOT tell us what we can and can’t do. We believe in live and let live. Why don’t you adopt the same philosophy?

Kirsty and Jamie stared at each other, dumbfounded.

‘’I’m absolutely…speechless,’ said Jamie.

‘You cannot tell us what we can and cannot do. Jesus wept. And this bit – we believe in live and let live.’

‘Do you think they’re being ironic?’

‘No, I think they mean it.’ She shook her head in disbelief.

Jamie read the letter through again, and as he did so he felt all the unhappiness and frustrations of the day stir up inside him, turning to anger, a rush of blood to his head that made his ears feel hot and his skull feel too tight around his brain. How dare they? How f*cking dare they?

‘I’m going down there.’

‘Jamie…’

He ignored her and stormed out of the flat, out through the front door and down the steps. He banged on the Newtons’ door, then banged again, harder.

‘Come out here,’ he shouted. ‘I want to talk to you.’

Bang bang bang.

‘Come on out!’

When there was no reply he ran back up the steps, brushing past Kirsty and marching through the flat into the bathroom. He unbolted the back door and went down the steps from the balcony into the garden.

The second his foot touched the grass at the bottom of the steps, Lucy came out of her own back door, waving her arms angrily.

‘Get out of my garden.’

Jamie flapped the letter at her. ‘I want an explanation of this. And I want you to erase the recordings you’ve made of us. Now.’

She shook her head. ‘Get out or I’ll call the police.’

‘Go on then, and I’ll tell them how you’ve been harassing us – recording us illegally. I’d like to see you explain that to them.’

She ignored him. ‘Chris. Chris!’ she called. ‘Phone the police. Tell them we’ve got a trespasser.’

Jamie looked up at Kirsty, who was leaning over the balcony. He felt exasperated, unable to believe this was really happening. It was crazy. Completely stupid. He tried to see through the Newtons’ open door, to see if Chris really was there. Half of him wanted Lucy to call the police. But really, he just wanted to get this whole, ridiculous mess sorted out.

He lowered his voice. ‘Look, Lucy, can’t we talk about this? We’re supposed to be friends, aren’t we? Let’s sit down and talk about it.’

‘No! I’m going to count to ten.’

‘Let me speak to Chris.’

She smiled with one half of her mouth, a horrible, lopsided expression that made her look unhinged. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t want to talk to Chris right now. Let me tell you. You really wouldn’t want to.’

‘I bet he’s not even in…’

‘Lucy,’ Kirsty called from above. ‘Why are you being like this?’

Lucy’s face had gone pink. Jamie thought she looked like she was about to burst something. ‘How do you expect me to react when you write me threatening, insulting letters?’

‘But it wasn’t threatening. We were trying to make peace. And you wrote to us first.’

Lucy shook her head violently. ‘No I didn’t.’

‘But Lucy, we’ve got the letter to prove it.’

Lucy threw her arms in the air and turned round, putting her hand on the door handle. In a calm, quiet voice, she said, ‘I really am going to call the police now.’ As she went inside, Lennon ran out of her flat and bounded up the garden. Jamie looked up at Kirsty as if to say, Did you see that?

Kirsty said, ‘Jamie, come on, get back up here.’

He walked up the stairs slowly, defeated. The moment he got back inside and Kirsty shut the door, he started to shake. Kirsty put her arm around his shoulders, pulling his body against hers. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

He sat on the sofa and Kirsty handed him a beer. He drank it without tasting it. All his life he had tried to avoid conflict – shying away from arguments, never going near a fight – and the scene with Lucy left him feeling shocked and numb. He could hardly believe it had happened to him. She had been so aggressive and irrational. When confronted with something as crazy as this, he didn’t know how to react. It left him floundering.

‘She’s mental,’ he said, looking up at Kirsty.

She sat beside him.

‘Completely mental.’

Kirsty kissed him just above the cheekbone. ‘I was kind of proud of you, though.’

‘Why? What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Seeing you stand up for us. I know you want a quiet life, and I thought you’d always shy away from confrontation. It was actually quite nice to see you get passionate about something – to get angry.’

‘I’m often passionate.’

She smiled. ‘Yes, I know. But I don’t mean in that way.’ She paused and sipped her beer. ‘But you’re right – she’s mental. Mad as a bloody hatter.’

‘But what are we going to do?’

‘I don’t…’

The doorbell rang. They froze and looked at each other. ‘Who is it?’ Jamie whispered.

Kirsty stood up and crept to the front window, peering through the crack in the curtains. She turned and faced Jamie, her eyes wide. ‘It’s the police.’

‘She really called them! I don’t believe it.’

‘But this is good, Jamie. It gives us the opportunity to tell them what’s been going on.’

‘You’re right.’

Jamie went out into the hall and opened the front door. Two policemen stood there, one of them looking over his shoulder towards their car, which had already attracted the attention of several children, who crowded round it, peering in through the windows and – in the policeman’s mind – threatening to remove the wheels and smash the headlights.

Jamie said, ‘Can I help?’

The older policeman said, ‘Can we come in, sir?’

Jamie shrugged. ‘Sure.’

They followed him into the flat, the younger policeman seemingly reluctant to leave his car at the mercy of the local hooligans. Eventually, he managed to tear himself away, but it was obvious his mind wasn’t going to be on the job.

‘Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?’ Kirsty offered, as soon as the policemen were inside and Jamie had shut the door.

‘That would be smashing,’ said the older policeman, and his colleague nodded. ‘Yeah, I’d like a tea, please.’

The older man 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, but again they wouldn’t answer the door. So I went down the back steps from our bathroom into their garden. I was just going to knock on the back door. I wanted to talk to them. That’s all.’

‘Lucy came out,’ said Kirsty, ‘shouting and making threats. She said she’d call the police, and after Jamie had tried to reason with her, he came back up the steps. That’s the whole story. Jamie was not trespassing.’

Dodds stood up. ‘OK. Well, obviously we’ll have to speak to Mr and Mrs Newton, but as far as I’m concerned this trespassing thing isn’t worth pursuing. I don’t think going into your neighbour’s garden to talk to them counts as the crime of the year. However, I should remind you that if someone asks you to leave their property, and you don’t do so straight away, they have every right to call the police.’

‘I understand that,’ said Jamie. ‘But what about Lucy and Chris’s harassment of us? What can we do about that?’

Dodds shrugged. ‘The only thing I can suggest is that you keep a log, a record, of what goes on. Keep any correspondence between you, including copies of anything you send to them. In fact, I’d strongly suggest that you stop writing to them – and that if you really do need to write to them you do it through a solicitor.’

‘So you’re not going to do anything?’

‘What can we do?’ said Sutton. ‘They haven’t done anything illegal. They haven’t threatened violence, they haven’t written anything obscene. They’ve just complained about the noise they say you make.’

‘But what about the CD?’ said Kirsty. ‘Surely that’s obscene.’

‘I don’t know,’ smirked Sutton, ‘I haven’t heard it.’

Dodds said, ‘It’s perfectly legal to make a recording within the confines of your own home. People do it all the time if they’re trying to make a case with the Environmental Health people against noisy neighbours.’

‘But we’re not noisy neighbours,’ protested Kirsty. ‘Neither of us have ever had problems with any other neighbours we’ve had.’

‘I didn’t say you were noisy. But the Newtons obviously think you are. It might be an idea to check with the council, see if your neighbours have complained about you to them. If they complain about you seriously, the council will send someone round to measure the amount of decibels coming from your flat.’

‘I wish they would. It would make Lucy and Chris look bloody stupid.’

‘Well, perhaps. But I think you should try to ignore them. Just get on with your lives. Keep any letters they send you, and let us know if they do make any threats, but otherwise try not to provoke them. I’m sure in time this will all blow over.’

Jamie saw the policemen out. Sutton looked profoundly relieved that their car was still in one piece.

‘We’re just going to call on Mr and Mrs Newton now,’ said Dodds. ‘We’ll tell them we’ve had a word with you and that you won’t go uninvited into their garden again, OK?’

‘OK. Are you going to mention the letters and the CD?’

‘Do you want me to?’

Jamie thought about it for a second. ‘I think it would only antagonise them.’

‘I agree.’ Dodds paused and looked up at the house. ‘Nice place you’ve got here. Must have set you back a bit.’

‘It took us to the limit of what we could afford. But we love it. It’s everything we want in a home. And we don’t want it to be spoiled by a pair of nightmare neighbours.’

Dodds nodded. ‘The way I see it, it’s like a new cat moving in next to an established cat’s territory. The established cat gets a bit fidgety, a bit jealous of its domain. But once it’s shown the new cat where the boundaries lie, it settles down. That’s what’s happening here. Don’t worry. In six months you’ll all be right as rain. You’ll probably be inviting them for dinner again.’

Jamie didn’t think much of the policeman’s cat metaphor. But he nodded and said, ‘I don’t know about inviting them to dinner. But I hope you’re right. I really do.’