The Magpies A Psychological Thriller

Twenty-four


Jamie awoke with a start. He had been dreaming again: dreaming this time that there was a baby crying in the flat. It had been so real he could still hear it.

‘Jamie.’ Kirsty woke up and gripped his arm.

He blinked in the darkness. The loud, shrill cries of a hungry, attention-seeking baby were still audible. But why? Why could he still hear it?

Kirsty sat upright. Her breathing was heavy and quick. She threw the quilt aside and jumped out of bed, flicking the light on, looking around the room wildly. She ran out of the bedroom and into the nursery. Jamie got out of bed and followed her. It was freezing in the flat but he barely noticed. He could still hear the baby. What the hell was going on?

Kirsty was standing in the nursery (spare bedroom, spare bedroom – that’s all it is, Jamie reminded himself, until he could persuade Kirsty to try again) staring into the empty cot. Above the cot, a mobile rotated. Farmyard animals – a pig, a chicken, a cow – spun slowly left then right, then left again. The room was lit by moonlight, and the animals cast lifesized shadows on the walls. Jamie switched on the light.

Kirsty turned to look at him. ‘Jamie, can you hear it too?’

‘Yes.’

She clamped her hands over her ears. ‘I thought it was in my head. But you can hear it too? You promise?’

‘ I promise. Come on, let’s get out of here.’ He took her hand and led her back to the bedroom.

The baby’s cries were so clear. Short bursts of treble-heavy crying, followed by long wails that seemed to get louder and louder before suddenly falling silent. For ten seconds, the crying stopped altogether, and Jamie and Kirsty stood in their bedroom, clutching each other, just the sound of their chests beating in the darkness. Then it started again, even louder than before.

Kirsty fell onto her hands and knees. ‘It’s coming from downstairs.’

Jamie had known that already. Had known the moment this started.

‘They’ve got a baby down there,’ Kirsty said in a hushed tone, her eyes wide. ‘Jamie, they’ve got a baby – Lucy and Chris – they’ve got a baby.’

Jamie knelt beside her, leant forward and put his ear to the floor. He tried to think: how long was it since he had seen Lucy? Had she had a bump? Could she have been pregnant?

No – it didn’t make sense.

‘It’s a recording,’ he said. ‘That’s what it is. It’s a f*cking recording.’

‘No!’ Even now, after all this time, Kirsty acted as if she was shocked by the lengths Lucy and Chris would go to. She pummelled the carpet with her fists, weak blows which would have been barely audible downstairs, especially over the cries of the baby. She punched and punched, until she collapsed on her front and lay still.

The recording stopped. Halfway through a cry of distress, the baby was hushed. Jamie pressed his ear to the floor again. His whole body was tense, like a spring, waiting for the crying to begin again.

He didn’t know how long he knelt in that position for. Eventually, he became aware of a pain in his neck – a muscular spasm – and he sat up and rubbed it, tried to ease the ache. Kirsty was still lying on the carpet, her face turned away from him. He stroked her hair, pressed his face against the back of her head, whispered in her ear, ‘It’s alright.’

She didn’t move. He leant over so he could see her face. She was just lying there, staring into space, unblinking. She looked lifeless, like a mannequin. It scared him.

‘Kirsty.’ He touched her cheek. ‘Kirsty, talk to me.’

For a horrible, irrational moment, he thought she was dead – for the second time in twenty-four hours. But then she stirred. She blinked and looked up at him. But she still she didn’t speak.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you back into bed. Come on, sweetheart.’

She allowed herself to be helped up. He walked her over to the bed and she crawled beneath the covers, burying her head beneath the quilt. He got in behind her and lay with his arm over her, holding her hand. They lay like that all night, neither of them falling fully into sleep. At one point Jamie heard a bird cry outside, and he felt Kirsty flinch. He shushed her and kissed her. The pain and hatred swelled up in him.

They got up as soon as it was light. Kirsty had a bath and Jamie made breakfast. They sat on the sofa and ate, although neither of them had an appetite. Upstairs, Mary had her radio on, and every so often a muffled snatch of recognisable music would break through. The volume must have been up loud.

‘How long do you think it will be before we can move out?’ Kirsty asked. ‘What did the estate agent say?’

‘He said he was sure he could get a quick sale.’ He felt sick. He hated lying to her, even when it was necessary. Actually, he only lied to her when it was necessary.

‘Good. Because I don’t care about the price. I just want to get out.’

‘They’ll have to come round to do a valuation.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know He said it could take a week – or two.’

‘Jamie, that’s not good enough. I’ll call them today, tell them they’ve got to make it sooner.’

He felt a flutter of panic in his gut. ‘No – I’ll do it. Don’t you worry.’

‘Don’t forget.’

He put down his coffee before she could see his hand was shaking.

‘Are you going in to work today?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I think I’d better. Just to show my face. What about you?’

‘I’m not staying here on my own in the flat. Not with them downstairs.’

‘Well, I could call in sick again and stay at home with you.’

‘No. No, it’s better if we both go to work. We can’t hide away. We have to get on with our lives, Jamie.’ She shook her head. ‘God, I feel so pitiful. I hadn’t even had the baby. Every day I see people whose children are ill. Some of them are dying; some of them do die. Those people have given birth; they’ve seen their children grow, seen them speak and walk.’

‘But you’ve had a miscarriage. That’s like…’ He couldn’t say it.

‘It’s not exactly the same, Jamie. My whole life with this baby was imagined. It was something in the future. A promise – a promise that has been broken.’ She looked up at him. ‘We can have another baby, can’t we? Can’t we? And this time we’ll be somewhere safe.’

She pressed her face against his shoulder.

‘Yes. We will.’

I’m going to make this place safe, he thought. And then we’ll try again.

He drove Kirsty to the hospital, then on to work. His knuckles were white where he gripped the steering wheel so tightly. He had the radio up loud. The people outside the car – walking along the streets, coming out of shops, getting off buses – seemed like phantoms, blurs of pink and brown, colours running into one another, like rain on a chalk pavement drawing. The music was loud but he couldn’t hear the tune; the lyrics were a babble. It was just noise.

He strode into the building, into the lift, up to the fourth floor. He looked at himself in the lift’s mirror. His face was the colour of undercooked fish; his hair was sticking up in tufts; his tie was crooked, his shirt only half tucked in. He ran a hand through his hair, tried to straighten his tie. It was a half-hearted attempt, and a second later the lift chimed to announce its arrival at his floor. He stood there for a second, looking out. Everyone seemed very busy, moving around in fast-motion, industrious worker bees droning among the humming computers. Above the hum, Jamie could hear the cries of the baby from last night, a sound buried at the back of his brain, pulsing beneath the surface of his skull. How could they have done it? How could anyone be that sick, that cruel? He felt anger boil up inside him again. He breathed deeply.

There was Mike, sitting at his desk, sorting through his in-tray. Jamie strode over to him.

‘Mike.’

He looked up. ‘Jamie, hi. I didn’t think you’d be in today. Are you alright?’

‘I’m fine.’

Mike didn’t let him speak. ‘It’s all been going on around here. The takeover’s been finalised. It’s happened already. The new manager’s been brought in and George Banks has been given the push, with a nice pay-off I expect. After all that rumour and build-up, it practically happened overnight, like some sort of military coup. Still, they say we won’t be affected much.’

Jamie had lost the thread of his thoughts. He opened his mouth to speak but his brain couldn’t formulate a sentence.

Mike continued: ‘Hey you know I thought it would be Software Logistics who took over? I was wrong. It’s actually Scion.’

‘Mike, have you…’ he stopped, suddenly realising what Mike had said. He stared at him. ‘Did you say Scion?’

‘Yes. Apparently they’re a really good firm to–’

‘Scion?’

‘Christ, Jamie, that’s what I said. Hey look there’s our new manager now.’

He nodded towards the far side of the room and Jamie turned and followed his gaze. He watched Chris come out of the manager’s office and look around, a proprietary smile on his face.

Jamie’s knees buckled. He sat down.

Oh. Jesus.

Almost before he had touched the seat, he was up again. He grabbed Mike’s upper arm. ‘I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you now.’

‘Alright. Calm down, Jamie. I’ll go into the gents, you follow. OK? Count to ten before you follow. I don’t want people to think we’re going in together.’

Jamie watched Mike push open the door of the gents. He was trembling. He couldn’t bear to look back over at Chris, though he knew Chris was looking at him: he could feel his stare drilling into him. He started to count to ten, but got lost around six. He hurried over to the gents, aware of Chris’s gaze following him. It felt like a laser, burning the back of his head. He could almost smell the smoke and the singed hair.

Mike was standing by the washbasins, inspecting his hair in the mirror.

‘Jamie, you look like you’ve seen a ghost, mate.’

Jamie didn’t speak.

‘It’s OK. I’ve checked the cubicles, there’s no-one in there. We’re alright to talk. I know what you want to talk to me about. I haven’t been able to get hold of my mates, though I left a message saying I had a job for them. I’ll try again tonight.’

‘That’s him.’

‘Who? What are you talking about?’

‘The new manager. It’s him. Chris Newton. My neighbour.’

‘Chris?’ His jaw dropped. ‘You’re joking.’

‘No. He works for Scion. I bet – he must be behind the whole takeover.’

‘Jesus.’

Mike walked over and put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder. ‘In that case, I’m going to have to call my friends off.’

‘What? You can’t.’

‘I can. And I’m going to have to. For 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 f*ck’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 f*ck 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 f*cking 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.

He put his wallet away and drove home.

He spent the afternoon sitting outside a small cafe on the high street. Driving away from the office, he had been overcome by an overwhelming urge for a cigarette. He hadn’t had one since he was at college. He hated smoking. The smell and the taste of it made him feel sick. But here, now, he felt the most awful craving: his bloodstream calling out for nicotine. His fingers and lips needed something to keep themselves occupied, and nothing else would do.

He watched himself unwrap the white and gold cigarette packet he’d just bought in a newsagents with a sense of horrified, guilty wonder.

He sucked smoke into his lungs. He coughed. The old woman at the next table smiled. He took another deep drag and a moment later felt the rush of nicotine, making him dizzy. He drank his coffee and smoked the cigarette, then another. He felt sick, but he also felt calmer.

The afternoon went by quickly. He went inside, ate lunch, drank three more cups of coffee, ate a Danish pastry, then came outside and smoked more cigarettes. He watched people go into the cafe then come out again. He was aware that the waitresses were talking about him, wondering what he was doing, but they were happy enough to take his money. Eventually, at half-four, he paid, leaving a £10 tip on the table and walked off into the late afternoon light. He drove to St Thomas’s to pick Kirsty up.

‘Have you been smoking?’ Kirsty asked, sniffing the air as she got into the car beside him.

‘No. I was talking to Mike at work, outside the office, and he was smoking.’ He sniffed his own sleeve. ‘I didn’t realise how badly it would cling to my clothes.’

‘You stink. I’ll have to wash everything you’re wearing when we get home.’

‘Sorry.’

The rest of the journey passed in silence. When they got home, Jamie undressed and put his clothes in the washing machine. It was so cold in the flat. He wrapped up in a thick jumper with two T-shirts underneath.

‘Cup of tea?’

‘Hmm.’ Kirsty was sorting through the desk, examining paperwork. She wore a puzzled expression. ‘Jamie, which estate agent did you register us with?’

He felt his blood go chilly. ‘The same one we bought it from. Anderson and Son.’

She stood up and waved a letter at him. It bore Anderson and Son’s letterhead. It was the letter the estate agent had sent them to confirm the acceptance of their offer on the flat. Jamie had once suggested framing it, but they never got round to it.

‘So how come when I called them today to ask them if they could hurry up the valuation, they didn’t know what I was talking about?’

He swallowed. ‘Did you call the right branch?’

‘I called the branch that we bought it from. And they called both their other offices. They had no record that you’d been in to put the flat on the market.’

‘They’re so incompetent.’

‘Don’t lie to me!’ She threw the letter to the floor. ‘I know you haven’t put the flat on the market. So don’t make things worse for yourself by trying to lie.’

‘Kirsty, I’m–’

She folded her arms. ‘You’re an idiot, Jamie. A f*cking idiot.’

She marched out of the room into the bedroom. Jamie followed her, feeling as if all the blood had drained out of him. I’m bloodless, he thought. A husk. Kirsty stood on a chair and took the suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. She threw it on the bed and unzipped it.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going, Jamie.’ She opened the top drawer of her chest of drawers and pulled out a handful of knickers and socks, tights and lacy things that she rarely wore. Jamie stood helplessly by the bed, watching her.

She turned to him. ‘I can’t live here anymore, Jamie. I know you think it’s giving in. I’m not stupid. I know you haven’t put the flat up for sale because you see it as quitting. And – I don’t know – maybe it is. Maybe I’m a coward. But you have to understand, if I stay here one more day I’m going to go mad. I keep bursting into tears at work – and not just because of the baby. I dread coming home. I actually feel afraid to come into my own flat – and shouldn’t your home be your sanctuary? We’ve lost that.’

She opened the wardrobe and removed shirts and dresses, putting some back but placing the others in the suitcase, very calm and methodical. Jamie sat on the bed beside the suitcase. A husk.

‘It makes me feel so sad doing this,’ she said, speaking evenly but wiping away a tear that had fallen onto her cheek. ‘We were going to be so happy here, weren’t we? It was our little paradise. We were going to be a family here.’ She smiled. ‘Whatever’s happened since, we’ll always have those early weeks. It was really good then.’

‘Don’t go,’ Jamie croaked. ‘It can be good again.’

She lay her palm against his cheek. Her hand was warm. She looked down at him and her face was so full of sadness he wanted to die.

‘It can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Not here.’ She held her hand against his cheek for a few more moments, then resumed her packing.

‘Are you going to come with me?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I’m going to go to my parents’. I’ve already ordered a taxi to take me to the station. I want you to come too.’

He put his face in his hands. He so wanted to go with her. He knew what she said was right, that it was the most sensible thing to do. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t give in and let Lucy and Chris get away with it. He had to stay – at least until after they had been dealt with. And then Kirsty would come back. Yes, that’s what would happen. He would punish Lucy and Chris – drive them away! – and then Kirsty would come back to him and they would reclaim their paradise. Yes.

‘I can’t.’

She looked away, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the tears, and carried on with her packing.

A car horn sounded in the street outside. It was Kirsty’s taxi. Jamie felt a shiver of panic. He could still change his mind.

‘Will you carry my case out for me?’

‘Of course.’

He carried the case outside. The taxi driver tried to take it from him but he kept hold of it, putting it into the back of the cab himself. Kirsty opened the door of the taxi and got in.

‘Come with me, Jamie,’ she pleaded.

He couldn’t look at her. ‘I can’t. I have to stay and fight.’

‘You’re being an idiot.’

‘I’ll call you,’ Jamie said. ‘I love you.’

She didn’t reply.

The taxi driver looked back at Kirsty. ‘Where to, my love?’

‘Charing Cross.’

She closed the door of the taxi and looked away. Jamie watched the cab disappear into the night, its engine still audible after it had vanished from sight. He stood on that spot for a long time before turning round and going back into the flat.

Alone.