The Magpies A Psychological Thriller

Twelve


The Tube train shuddered and groaned as it pulled out of the station. Kirsty had managed to grab the last seat in the carriage, beating a man with a combover to it by a whisker. Now he stood over her, hanging on to the overhead rail, the tssk-tssk-tssk that emanated from his headphones worming its way into her head. All around her people wore frowns, staring into their own personal spaces, wishing the journey away. A woman at one end of the carriage was eating a Big Mac, the gherkin and meat stink filling the train. There was a man with an acoustic guitar at the other end of the carriage, and Kirsty was worried that he would start playing at any moment, bashing out some tuneless rendition of a Beatles standard before lurching along the carriage with his hand out, demanding his reward.

God, she hated the Tube. If the man with the guitar did turn out to be a busker he wouldn’t get anything out of her. She had already given away the last of her spare change to a woman sitting outside the station. Kirsty passed dozens of homeless people every day, and simply couldn’t afford to hand money over very often, but this woman (this girl – she couldn’t have been older than sixteen) had been holding a baby. The sight had chilled Kirsty, and she had reached into her bag and taken out her purse, emptying the coins into her palm and handing them to the girl. This certainly wasn’t the first homeless girl with a baby she had come across, but it was the first since she had found out.

She rested her hands on her stomach, feeling the need to be protective, wishing she wasn’t down here, in the unnatural heat, God-knows-how-many diseases drifting around. She should have got the bus, or taken a taxi. But there had been a part of her that had wanted to play the martyr, so that when she got home she could say to Jamie, ‘I had to go on the Tube because of you.’

She wondered how he would react when she told him – not that she had been on the Tube, but that she was pregnant. OK, she didn’t know for certain. She hadn’t taken a test yet. But her period was four days late, which was unheard of for her, Miss Regular As Clockwork. And she had known anyway. She had felt it at the moment of conception, and she had a feeling Jamie had known too. She was sure he would be delighted – she knew he really wanted children – but was this the right time?

Yes. Yes it was. Despite everything that had been going on. Or maybe even because of it.

She had been thinking about telling him tonight. She knew he wouldn’t be keeping track of her period (he was always surprised when it arrived – ‘What, already? Surely it hasn’t been a month?’), and he had been preoccupied lately anyway, so she knew she wouldn’t be telling him something he already knew, even if he had felt the same sensation as her when it had happened. But she was pissed off with him now. He’d been supposed to pick her up from work, she had waited out the front of the hospital for half-an-hour and he hadn’t turned up. She’ gone back inside to ask if there had been any phone calls. There hadn’t so, in a huff, she had stomped off towards the Tube station. He had forgotten about her. How could he?

To her horror, the man with the guitar pulled it to his stomach and began to play a tune. He did the first verse and chorus of ‘She Loves You’ then stopped and asked everyone in the carriage for cash. I should have been a fortune teller, Kirsty thought. She put her head down and made certain she didn’t catch the busker’s eye. Thankfully, the train pulled into a station before he reached her, and he got off.

She still couldn’t believe Jamie had forgotten about her. It was very unlike him. What if he hadn’t forgotten? What if something had happened to him? She hadn’t been able to get hold of him on his mobile. She had a sudden image of him crashing the car, his head going through the windscreen, shards of glass spraying passers-by as Jamie bounced back in his seat, his lifeless body slumping. She quickly shook away the image. It was replaced by an image of him being attacked in the street, a mugger stabbing him in the chest and grabbing his wallet, Jamie falling to the pavement, soaked in his own blood, grabbing his chest as his life ebbed away.

What was wrong with her? Why did she have to think of such things? She felt beads of cool sweat stand out on her forehead. She looked at her watch. Ten more minutes before this awful journey 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…’

That had been one of the most sickening pieces of mail they had received: an invitation to join the National Go-Karting Association. Jamie had marched down to the basement flat and rammed it through their letter box, fighting the temptation to put a brick through their window. The letter had made Kirsty cry, and only a great effort of willpower stopped her from going down and throwing that brick through their window herself.

She hated them. She had never hated anyone before, not like this anyway. She realised it was unhealthy, especially if she was pregnant. It would do her no good to fill her body with hateful poisons, to let malice and spite drip into her bloodstream. She had to stay calm, relax, chill.

And she had to get off this f*cking Tube train.

Finally it halted at her stop, and she pushed her way through the hot, closely-crammed bodies onto the platform, where she gulped down air like she had just crossed the desert and the air was fresh water.

As she approached the flat, she saw Jamie’s car. So he was home. She sighed with relief. She had almost begun to convince herself that something terrible had happened to him. Now, though, she wanted to know why he hadn’t turned up at the hospital.

Walking up the path, she spotted Lennon, looking down at her from Mary’s front window. A moment later, Mary appeared at the window. She waved and Kirsty waved back. Mary had bought them an expensive bottle of wine to say thank you to them for feeding Lennon while she was away. Kirsty was glad they had already drunk it, because if her suspicions were right, she wouldn’t be able to drink for a while.

As soon as she got inside, Jamie hurried across the room and hugged her. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I was stuck in a meeting and my phone battery died and I couldn’t find my charger. There’s loads of shit going on at work – they’re saying that this takeover might really be going ahead, and everyone was called into a big meeting that went on all afternoon. I couldn’t get to a phone, and when I did finally escape I called the hospital and they told me you’d already left, so I came straight home.’

She kissed his cheek. ‘It’s OK, Jamie. Don’t worry.’

‘You’re not angry?’

‘Well, you will have to make it up to me.’ She flopped down on the sofa.

He crouched in front of her and unlaced her shoes. ‘A foot massage?’

‘Mmm, that would be lovely. And a cup of tea.’

‘Your wish is my command.’

She leaned back and closed her eyes as he rubbed her heels with his thumbs. It felt good. ‘Any post?’

‘The usual junk. A letter from Oxfam asking why you hadn’t set up the direct debit you’d promised to after you told them you were going to sponsor a child.’

‘Jesus.’

‘And shortly before you got home, a taxi turned up and an extremely pissed-off driver told me he’d been sent here to take a couple to Battersea Dogs Home. When I told him we hadn’t called him and that he’d been hoaxed he wasn’t very happy, to say the least.’

‘Have you written it all down?’

‘Oh yes.’

Kirsty sighed. A broken promise to sponsor a poor child. This had gone beyond the realms of good taste long ago. She took deep breaths to keep her anger at bay, concentrating on the pleasant feelings in her feet as Jamie massaged them. She rested her hands on her stomach. Tomorrow she would go to the doctor, find out for certain. It was about time they had some good news.