‘I know, and I’m sorry. How many times do you want me to apologise? But here’s the thing. The cops want to talk to everyone who knew Alexa. I think they’re working their way through a list or something. That means they’ll come to you eventually.’
‘Let them come. I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘Yeah, I know that. All’s I’m saying is that you need to be careful.’
There’s another pause. And then: ‘All right, Toby. I appreciate the call. Let me know if you hear anything else, okay?’
‘Of course. We’re still friends, right?’
‘Yeah, still friends. See you around.’
The call is ended abruptly. Toby stares at his phone, unconvinced that the man he has just called really has nothing to hide.
7
Love is a Stranger
– Eurythmics
Webley is thinking about Alexa Selby again when she gets home that night.
She finds herself making comparisons. As she closes the door on her tired old rust-bucket of a car, with all its squeaks and rattles and a constant smell of something that has gone rotten in the boot, she thinks about Alexa’s brand-new Mercedes. As she walks along the street, she tries to imagine what it must be like to park up on one’s own sweeping paved driveway. When she gets to the front door of her tiny house, she tries to picture it as a grand detached property surrounded by huge striped lawns and flower beds, with a conservatory and a pool and decking and outside furniture, and not a place for which the only outside space is a concreted back yard with barely enough room to contain the wheely bins.
As she steps inside and gathers up the mail and drops it onto a table without looking at it, she wonders where she went wrong. Why does she never have any money? Why doesn’t she have a handsome rich husband or boyfriend or, in fact, any kind of love interest? Why doesn’t she visit fancy restaurants or go skiing or stay in posh hotels on exotic islands?
She puts the kettle on and sighs.
And then she puts things into perspective.
She is alive. Alexa Selby is dead. No amount of money is going to change that.
Webley is reminded of something her dad once said to her, and which she passed on to DCI Blunt earlier today.
A rich person is just a poor person with money.
* * *
Franklin B Goodman wonders how Megan Webley would react if she knew she had just been watched.
He is sitting in his car on Megan’s street, staring at Megan’s house. He arrived here hours ago, unsure as to when she might come home. She works a long day, Megan does. But he imagines that if your job involves dealing with major incidents such as murder, it probably can’t be nine-to-five. If, say, someone has been brutally slain in the middle of the night, then saying you’ll get around to investigating it when you’ve caught up on your shut-eye would probably be frowned upon.
But arrive home she did, eventually. He watched her every move as she got out of her car, locked it up, and walked to her house. Not only watched but recorded. He looks down now at the camera in his lap, its telephoto lens still attached. He clicks through the images showing on the camera screen. Shot after shot of Megan. He thinks she looks very weary in those pictures – dealing with death every day must be exhausting – but he also thinks she appears a little dejected. She must feel lonely in that house, all by herself.
Franklin accepts he is not the best judge of beauty in women, but it seems to him that Megan ticks all the right boxes. He understands why Parker is missing her so much. It saddens him that they are not together. At least, he thinks it saddens him. He’s never entirely convinced that the emptiness he identifies is the same as that experienced by others. He never cries, for example.
It doesn’t bother him that he doesn’t cry. On the contrary, he thinks that weeping is for the weak. What matters is action. If something bothers you, there’s no point wallowing in self-pity. You need to do something to fix the problem.
And clearly, Webley’s situation needs fixing.
* * *
Cody’s thoughts have turned to clowns.
An unusual topic to muse upon for most people but a fixation for Cody. He has good reasons, though, not least of which being that it was clowns who tortured him and killed his undercover police partner by cutting off his face.
To be fair, they weren’t clowns per se. They were men wearing evil clown masks to hide their identities. Cody would hate to tar all clowns with the same brush. He still wants people to enjoy taking their adorable kiddies to circuses. He just doesn’t want to go with them.
Cody is approaching his building now. He lives in a top floor apartment that sits above a dental practice on Rodney Street. It’s a beautiful Georgian building on a road steeped in history and sometimes referred to as the ‘Harley Street of the north.’ He should feel safe here, should be able to get in and put his feet up and relax.
But it’s not that simple.
You see, the clowns haven’t finished playing with him yet. In particular, their leader – the one that Cody nicknamed Waldo for no real reason other than it seemed fitting at the time – appears to have made it his mission to continue persecuting Cody.
Cody gets to his front door. Glossy and black, with a highly polished brass knocker and letterbox. He tilts his face up to the iron balconies outside the windows, then down to the steps leading to the basement.
The clowns have been in this building. They have been in his apartment. They have been in the dental surgeries. They have even attacked Cody in the basement.
They might be in there now, listening out for his footsteps, waiting to descend on him.
The last time they met, Waldo promised Cody that he had become tired of playing with him and would leave him alone for a while. So far, he has kept his word. But of course, Cody knows that he can’t lower his guard. Waldo will return one day.
He has thought about changing address, but he knows that Waldo is clever and resourceful enough to find him. He has proved that much already.
Besides, there’s a part of Cody that wants to get this over with. Maybe he’ll die in the process, but maybe he’ll defeat the clowns. Either way, he believes it will bring an end to his mental suffering – the hallucinations, the insomnia, the loss of self-control.
Few people know how much the trauma has affected his mind. Other than Webley, he has told nobody on the force. He intends to keep it that way.
Gritting his teeth, he inserts his key into the lock and opens the door.
