The Magpies A Psychological Thriller

Eighteen


‘Somebody’s been in here.’

As soon as Kirsty walked into the living room, just behind Jamie, she knew something was wrong. There were no immediate tangible signs, but she could feel it. The atmosphere in the room felt wrong. There had been a shift in the air, a strange shape imprinted on the molecules that hung around them and made up the fabric of the room. She could smell it, this unwelcome odour. She felt like an animal, its hackles rising as it caught the scent of a stranger, an invader, an enemy encroaching on its territory. She put down the fistful of post and walked very slowly into the room, looking around, scanning every surface for evidence that their possessions had been touched, moved or tampered with. She sniffed the air and turned round in a slow circle. She couldn’t see anything obvious; there was nothing she could point to and say, Look, that’s been moved – that wasn’t there before, or Where’s such-and-such – it should be there. But if there was such a thing as a sixth sense it was working now, telling her that someone had been in here. She felt cold. ‘What are you doing?’ Jamie asked nervously.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Somebody’s been in here.’

‘What?’ He looked around, apparently checking for the same signs she had looked for. ‘It all looks fine. Nothing’s missing, is it?’ His voice wavered; he didn’t sound very sure of himself.

Kirsty shuddered. The idea of someone coming into the flat when they weren’t there terrified her. Worse than being recorded. More awful than spiders. The only worse thing she could imagine was rape. This was the second worst violation.

Jamie continued to check around the room. He went into the bedrooms and bathroom, Kirsty clinging to his arm now, afraid that someone might leap out from behind a piece of furniture or appear in a doorway. They would be large and would almost certainly be holding a knife. They would tie Jamie up and make him watch as they raped and murdered her, also killing the unborn child in her womb. Then they would kill him. She gripped Jamie’s arm tightly.

There was nobody there. There was no sign, in any of the rooms, that someone had been in there. The windows were shut and locked. The front door had been locked, as had the balcony door, which Jamie checked twice.

‘I can feel it too,’ he said. ‘A lingering presence.’

Kirsty shivered. ‘Jamie, you’re scaring me.’

She was just beginning to recover from her moment of horror in the graveyard, and now this. The fact that that they could feel it but not see it made it even more scary. It was as if there was a ghost in the flat.

She had to sit down.

For the next ten minutes, Jamie combed the flat, opening cupboards, checking drawers, looking inside boxes, under the sofa. He studied the pictures on the wall, wondering aloud if the intruder might have moved one, accidentally brushing against it and tilting it. He took out photographs they had taken in the summer and held them up, comparing the room in the photographs to the room as it was now. Of course, they had moved things since the summer, added ornaments, shifted furniture, accumulated more junk. The photographs were no help.

‘Maybe we’re imagining it,’ he said, finally sitting down beside Kirsty.

‘But we can both feel.’

‘That might be because we’re putting ideas in each other’s heads.’

She knew what he would do now – switch into reassuring mode.

‘Look, we’ve both been pretty spooked since yesterday afternoon, and I know I was nervous about coming back. I’ve always been paranoid about burglary, plus I had this thought at the back of my mind that Lucy and Chris might do something while we were away. I suppose I brought my worries in with me and my imagination ran away with itself. But there’s no evidence that anyone’s been in here. The door was locked. The windows are shut tight.’ He tried to smile. ‘We must be wrong.’

‘I guess so.’

It was growing dark outside, long shadows pointing towards the house as the sun went down. Kirsty yawned. ‘I’m tired. That long journey’s worn me out. I might go to bed for a while.’

‘OK.’

She drew the curtains in the bedroom and slipped beneath the cool duvet. She lay there with her eyes wide open, shivering. She wanted Jamie to come to bed with her, to lay close behind her, keep her safe. But he didn’t follow her into the room. She heard him moving around the living room, checking shelves and drawers, trying to prove to himself that his instincts were right, even though he wanted them to be wrong.

Night descended and Jamie went to bed. Kirsty had by now fallen asleep, and he kissed the back of her neck and put his arm around her, feeling the slight curve of her belly with his palm. He went to sleep in that position. Earlier, Kirsty had rung her parents and told them about the wedding. They had been not furious but disappointed, which was worse, and Jamie had listened to the brightness fade from Kirsty’s voice as she’d tried to justify why they’d done it. The conversation had exhausted her.

Jamie was woken up by a creaking sound. He opened his eyes, a shot of adrenaline making him feel fully awake. The noise sounded close, almost as if it was coming from the next room. Jamie had a clear, horrible thought: What if there really had been someone in the flat – and what if they were still here?

No way, he told himself. We searched the whole flat and there was nobody in here.

But what if the intruder had been hiding somewhere they hadn’t looked?

He felt a tremor of fear and sickness run through him. Beside him, Kirsty slept on, oblivious to the drama and tension that held Jamie in its grip. The sounds of footfall continued. Jamie checked the bedside clock. It was three a.m.

He slipped out of bed as quietly as he could and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt which lay on the floor beside the bed. He realised he wouldn’t want to face an intruder barefoot – it would make him too vulnerable – so he groped around in the darkness until he found his trainers. He pulled them on and laced them up.

With his heartbeat booming in his ears, he gently pushed the bedroom door open, wincing and tensing his neck muscles as it squeaked – the squeak sounding as loud as an aeroplane taking off in the night-silence of the flat. He paused in the hallway beside the front door. The door’s squeak had actually helped tear open the wall of silence and now the creaking didn’t sound so loud. But it was still there. He could still hear it.

The fuse box was beside the front door and next to that was a heavy-duty rubber torch. Jamie kept it there in case of a power cut. He picked it up and felt reassured by its weight. He didn’t plan to use it for casting light but as a weapon.

Holding the torch over his shoulder, ready to strike anyone who stood in his way, he shoved the living room door open and flicked the light switch. The room flooded with light and Jamie shut his eyes tight for a second then opened them, blobs of light appearing in his vision – but that was all. There was nobody in the room. It was as empty as he had left it when he went to bed.

‘Jamie?’

He turned and saw Kirsty in the doorway, squinting against the light, her hair sticking up all over the place.

‘What are you doing?’

He went over and put his arm around her. She felt cold.

‘I heard a noise. I thought maybe someone was in the flat.’

‘There’s nobody here.’

‘I know.’

‘You must have imagined it. You probably dreamt it.’ She yawned loudly. ‘God, Jamie, I’m so tired. And you’re going to have to get a grip of yourself. You’re letting your mind play tricks on you, and it isn’t good for either of us.’

He knew she was right – but he had heard the creaking so distinctly, even when he had got up and stood right outside the room. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep now. He would lie there for the rest of the night, trying to work out if he was losing his mind.

Kirsty went back to bed and Jamie went into the bathroom. He felt too lazy to stand up so he sat down and peed. Just as he finished he saw a fat spider scuttle across the carpet. He jumped up, grabbed it and threw it into the toilet, flushing it away. He quickly decided that he wouldn’t tell Kirsty about it. He knew she would imagine it clinging to the pipes, resisting the flush, then crawling back up while she was sitting there.

Yes, best not to tell her.

Jamie woke up feeling relieved that he didn’t have to go to work; pleased that he had booked an extra day’s leave. He had, to his surprise, fallen asleep quite quickly after returning to bed, but only into a shallow sleep. He lay just beneath the surface of consciousness, jagged thoughts and dark music looping inside his head, preventing him from sinking into deeper sleep, where he wanted, and needed, to be.

As he lay in the light of morning, his eyes shut, trying to re-enter sleep, he felt Kirsty get out of bed and go into the bathroom. He heard the toilet flush, then the sound of her cleaning her teeth. He knew she had been sick, as she was most mornings. She came back to bed and went back to sleep.

Jamie left her in the bed. He needed to get out, to get some air to clear his head. His body felt like a boxer’s the day after a big fight. He felt like somebody had squirted a tube of glue through his ear into his brain, and his thoughts were sticking, sluggish and clogged. He dressed and went out for a walk.

There was a small park nearby. He bought a newspaper and a coffee in a polystyrene cup and sat on a bench. He flicked through the newspaper, not really taking any of it in, and listened to the children in the distance, playing on the swings and slide, scaring themselves giddy on the roundabout. Mothers wandered by with pushchairs and prams. Jamie imagined himself and Kirsty coming to the park in a few years with their own child, sitting on a bench and watching him or her joining in with the other children. He wondered if he and Kirsty would hold hands as they sat watching. Would they still be in love? His own parents merely tolerated each other, staying together ‘for the sake of the children’. Now those children had grown up and left home, they stayed together out of habit and fear. Whenever he spoke to his dad he complained about his mum; his mum did nothing but slag off his dad.

No, he and Kirsty would never be like that. They would be together forever. And stay happy. He stroked his wedding ring, rotating it on his finger. Kirsty might be up by now. He ought to be getting back.

Heading up the road towards the flat, he saw Chris and Lucy in their car.. He stopped dead and watched as they parked outside the flat and got out. Lucy was in her nursing uniform. Chris was wearing a smart suit. They loitered beside the car for a few moments, apparently in no hurry to go inside. Jamie saw Chris looking at his car and he had a sudden vision of Chris taking out his keys and scratching it, or bending down and slashing the tyres.

He felt a surge of anger – as if Chris had actually done it – and he broke into a run. Within a split second he stopped himself running, lurching to a halt before he had taken a full step. He felt foolish, his heart pounding, his cheeks full of colour. Had the Newtons seen him? No, he didn’t think so. They were going inside now, Chris dragging his hand along the top of the wall. Lennon sat there and Lucy paused to stroke him, the cat pushing his head hard against Lucy’s fingers.

The image had been so real. He had actually seen Chris scratch the car, slash the tyres. He had seen an evil grin on his face, a dark malevolent glint in his eyes. He shook his head to clear the mental imprint of the image and waited until he heard the Newtons close their front door before walking on.

Before going inside he checked his car. Not a mark on it and the tyres were fine. Shit, he was starting to get really paranoid. He needed to snap out of it. What he really wanted was a drink, but it was only eleven o’clock. He licked his lips, felt thirsty. He saw the picture again: Chris taking out his keys, smiling cruelly, etching a deep line in the paintwork from bonnet to boot. He would be able to have a drink at twelve. With lunch. That would be okay: socially acceptable. He licked his lips again.

‘Are you up?’ he called as he went inside.

‘I’m in the bath.’

He went in and said hello. She looked tired, dark bags under her eyes, lines spreading out from the corners. Had they been there before? These signs of ageing only sprang to attention once in a while, like the horrible moments when he noticed that his hairline had retreated a little more, that the lines at the side of his mouth didn’t disappear when he stopped smiling.

‘What are you staring at?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

The lines actually made her look more attractive, he thought. When they had first got together she had been a girl. Now she was a woman. He had watched that transformation, had shared in it – had helped it happen, even. No-one else could say that. No-one else knew Kirsty like he did. They were a partnership, a team. All the moments of ecstasy and misery were moments they shared. One day they would be old, and he would be able to look at every line on Kirsty’s face and see a story there, a moment from their life together. More than anything in the world, he wanted that. He wanted them to be together always.

‘You were staring at me,’ she said. ‘What is it? What’s wrong with me?’

He knelt beside the bath and submerged his hands beneath the warm, soapy water, stroking her belly.

‘I was thinking how beautiful you are.’

‘Yeah, right.’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Oh no.’

‘Don’t answer it.’

‘Why?’

‘It might be them,’ she said. ‘Lucy and Chris. Complaining about the noise we’re making.’

He blinked at her, surprised. What had happened to the optimistic Kirsty: the one who was trying to cast the Newtons from her mind? He said, ‘We’re not making any noise.’

‘So? That won’t stop them.’

Jamie stood up. ‘I hope it is them. I really f*cking hope it is.’ He dried his hands, marching off towards the door, his courage and fury deserting him the second he opened it. He didn’t know what he would do if it was Chris. He had a vision of himself pulling a gun out of his back pocket, blowing a hole in Chris’s chest, laughing as he slumped to the floor, pumping more bullets into his slack body, pieces of bone and brain splattering against the clean white paintwork…

Jesus Christ, what was going on?

He opened the door. It was Brian.

‘Hello, Jamie, I was – hey, are you alright?’

‘What?’

‘You look a bit…stressed.’

‘No. I’m fine. I’m fine.’ He blinked hard to clear the image of Chris’s gunned-down body. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Well, it’s my computer. The whole system seems to have gone kaput.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It keeps crashing, and I can’t open any of my files. I was wondering if you’d have a look at it for me.’

He really couldn’t concentrate on what Brian was saying. He watched his mouth move, heard something about a computer, things going wrong.

He nodded. ‘Sure. Wait there a second.’

He told Kirsty where he was going and followed his neighbour up the stairs. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Brian for ages. Their paths seldom crossed.

Brian opened the door of his study and Jamie was once again struck by how spooky the room was, with its horror paraphernalia and dark walls. He sat down at the desk and switched the computer on.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Brian said. ‘Do you want a coffee?’

Jamie waited for the computer to boot up. There was no doubt about it – something had gone wrong. The hard drive whirred and made awful crunching noises as the system started up. Several worrying error messages flashed up before the desktop finally appeared. Jamie set about checking the system, trying to open Brian’s Word files. As soon as he did this the system crashed and he had to reboot.

Brian came into the room with the coffee.

‘Any joy?’

Jamie shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look good. What have you done to it?’

‘Nothing. I haven’t done anything different at all. I only use it for word-processing and the internet. I never fiddle around with it.’

‘You’d better give me half-an-hour. I find it difficult to work with someone looking over my shoulder.’

Brian hesitated. ‘I’m really worried. I’ve got my new book saved on there. It’s almost finished.’

‘You’ve got it all backed up though, of course?’

‘Well…’

‘Do you use Dropbox or anything?’

Brian looked blank. ‘No. It’s just saved on the hard drive.’

Jamie sighed. ‘OK. I’ll do what I can.’

Thirty minutes later Brian came back into the study, looking anxious. ‘Have you found out what’s wrong with it.’

Jamie swivelled round on the chair. ‘You’ve got a virus. You probably got it from an email or downloading some dodgy program. It looks like the virus you’ve got is a brand new one. There might not even be an antidote for it yet. It’s a bad one as well. It’s running through your system eating the files on your hard disk. Have you got a virus checker on your system?’

‘No.’

‘OK. I’ve got the software downstairs. I can install it for you. First, let’s try and find out where you caught it from.’

He doubled clicked on the email program, Outlook. The screen flickered and Jamie thought the system might crash again. Eventually, though, the inbox appeared, with a list of all the emails Brian had received.

Near the top of the screen, in the list of people who had sent emails to Brian, Jamie saw his own name.

‘What the hell?’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘There’s an email here from me.’

‘I know. You sent it to me on Saturday. What was it meant to be, by the way? I opened the attachment and it just brought up an empty Word document.’

Jamie stared at the screen, the mouse pointer hovering over his name. ‘I couldn’t have sent you an email on Saturday. I was in Scotland. I didn’t send any emails over the weekend.’

‘What?’

‘I was in Scotland!’

‘But that’s definitely come from your email address?’

‘Yes.’

Jamie knew he hadn’t sent anything from his smartphone. Somebody’s been in the flat.

With a trembling hand, he clicked on his name. There was no message, just a paper clip to say there was a file attached. He clicked the paper clip to bring up the name of the file. It was called Honeymoon.

He stood up and ran out of the room, down the stairs, into his own flat. He rushed over and turned the computer on.

‘What’s going on?’ Kirsty asked.

He didn’t reply. The PC was making the same grinding noises that Brian’s computer had made. The desktop appeared and, one by one, Jamie tried to open his files. Nothing worked. He couldn’t even open Outlook to check when emails had been sent from his account. After a few seconds, the computer crashed.

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Jamie, what is it?’

‘My PC – someone’s put a virus on it.’

‘What? How?’

He turned and faced her, his eyes wild. ‘Someone has been in here. I was right. Someone’s been in here and loaded a virus onto my computer and then sent emails to – God, to who knows how many people – and they’re all going to think it was me!’

‘Jamie, sit down. You’re babbling.’

Brian appeared in the doorway. ‘Jamie, what’s happening?’

He looked up, panic bleaching his skin. ‘I’ve been sabotaged. Somebody’s been in here.’

Kirsty went over and closed the door, saying to Brian, ‘You’d better call back later.’

‘But my computer…’

‘Later.’

She sat and held Jamie as he shook, his face buried against her chest. Eventually, he looked up and said, ‘I’ve got some phone calls to make.’

It wasn’t just that the computer was knackered. He had been violated, and his name was attached to the virus, which might have been sent to dozens, hundreds or thousands of people. God yes, he had been violated.

Somebody had been in the flat.

And he knew who.

Somebody had violated him.

Oh yes, he knew who it was.

But what are you going to do about it?

He stood up and looked at the monitor. As he stood there, a shaft of sunlight illuminated the screen. The dust on the screen twinkled and, horrified, Jamie saw a word etched in the dust, drawn with somebody’s fingertip. A single word:

danger

He spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone to Norton Anti-Virus.. He had been right – the virus was brand new, so his own virus checker software, and the virus checkers of anyone else who might have downloaded it, wouldn’t have detected the virus. He was going to have to rebuild his hard drive, and any work saved on the system was lost.

Still, that was the least of his worries.

He drove into work with dread in his heart. As soon as he walked into the office he knew his fears weren’t unfounded. People looked at him then looked away quickly, their gazes burning his back as he walked to his desk. He sat down opposite Mike.

‘I hate to say this, Jamie, but you’re in deep shit. George Banks wants to see you.’

George Banks was the manager of Jamie’s section. Jamie had never been called in to see him before. As he walked towards Mr Banks’s office he felt like a Death Row prisoner walking towards the electric chair. His colleagues stared at him; he thought he could hear them whispering as he passed by.

He’s going to get the sack. He’s going to get the sack.

‘Jamie.’ George Banks leaned forward across the desk. He was in his late forties but, with his bald head and bloodshot eyes, looked older: a good advert, Jamie had thought before, for staying below managerial level. ‘Do you know what I like to do on Saturday afternoons?’

Jamie shook his head.

‘I like to play golf. Every weekend a couple of friends and I drive down into Kent and play a round. It’s about the only relaxation I get these days.’ He took a deep breath. ‘This Saturday I only made it to the sixth hole when I got a phone call. I guess that’ll teach me for taking my mobile onto the course, but the call told me my game was over. I had to come to the office. The entire computer system had gone down. Files were disappearing into a black hole. Thousands of pounds worth of damage was being done every minute. Do you know why?’

Jamie swallowed hard. ‘The virus.’

‘That’s right. A virus that we traced back to an email sent by you and opened by one of your colleagues working overtime.’

‘But I didn’t send it.’

‘What?’ He spoke sharply.

‘I wasn’t anywhere near my computer on Saturday. I didn’t send any emails that day. It was…’

‘Jamie, we’ve ascertained that this virus wasn’t even created until Saturday. I spoke to a chap at Norton this morning who told me that every reported case of this virus they’ve received came from the same source. An email titled Honeymoon. An email that came from your email address.’

‘But…’

‘Do you know how much damage this virus has done to us? How much it’s cost? An amount not dissimilar to your annual salary. It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t noticed it so quickly.’

‘It wasn’t me! With respect, sir, I know how these things work. If I did, for whatever sick reason, want to send a virus to everyone in my address book, I sure as hell wouldn’t be stupid enough to send it from my own email account!’

George Banks sighed and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes. He appeared to slump in his seat. ‘We’re all under a lot of pressure here at the moment, Jamie, what with the takeover.’

‘Is that definitely going ahead?’

‘We think so. And our prospective new bosses certainly weren’t too happy when they heard about this episode. We install software, for God’s sake. If it got out that we had a deadly virus on our systems we’d lose all our customers overnight.’

George was clearly anxious about the takeover himself, like the rest of the staff. Nobody below management level even knew the identity of the company who were going to take over. People were worried about their jobs.

‘Are you going to fire me?’ Jamie said, his voice cracking a little. He pictured himself going home, having to tell Kirsty – his new wife, his pregnant wife – that he was unemployed. ‘I swear, it was nothing to do with me.’

George Banks shook his head. ‘I’m going to leave that decision to our new masters. I’m willing to accept that this was a mistake, that maybe you forwarded this virus by accident. Your record has been impeccable up to now. Everyone tells me what a good worker you are – how bright and reliable you’ve always been. I understand you’ve just got married and have a child on the way. Personally, I can’t see what you could gain from sabotaging your own employer. But for God’s sake, Jamie, you’ve got to be careful.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Maybe you’d better take a few more days’ leave. Some of your colleagues lost a lot of files and are – understandably or not – unhappy with you.’

‘OK.’

Jamie stood up and George Banks opened the door. Before Jamie left the office, George said, ‘It goes without saying that if I find out that you did do this on purpose, you’ll be out of here so fast you’ll catch fire.’

‘Yes sir,’ Jamie said bleakly. ‘But I didn’t.’

He walked through the office with his head down, ignoring the whispers and stares. He picked his bag up from his desk and walked towards the exit. Mike followed him to the lift.

‘What happened?’ he asked, eager for gossip.

‘He told me to take a few days off.’

‘He didn’t sack you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you do it on purpose? Striking a blow for the workers and all that?’

Jamie hissed, ‘Of course I didn’t do it. But I know who did.’

‘You do? Who?’

‘My neighbours.’

Mike looked surprised. ‘How could they have?’

The lift reached the ground floor. ‘They broke into my flat and put the virus onto my PC then emailed it from there. Chris works in computing too so he’d know how to do it.’

‘F*cking hell.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s just…unbelievable.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Jamie strode off, leaving Mike behind. For a second there, as the lift doors pinged open, he had been on the verge of asking Mike to contact his thug friends. Only a mixture of fear and willpower had stopped him from doing so.

He walked out to his car, taking his keys out of his pocket and rattling them in the palm of his hand. As he went to unlock the door he caught his breath. There was a long, deep scratch along the side of the car. He felt his heart fly up into his mouth. He rubbed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked again the scratch had gone.

He had been so certain he had seen it. It had been there, right before his eyes, a thick silver line etched deep in the blue paintwork.

Jesus. The noises in the flat. And now this.

He drove home, convinced he was going mad.