I See You(92)

Sorry haven’t been in touch. Quick update – I’ll try and call later. We believe offender has administered the website from a café called Espress Oh near Leicester Square – enquiries ongoing. Luke Harris still on bail – I’ll let you know what the CPS say. Sounds like working from home is a good move. Take care of yourself.





I read the message twice. Then I pick up the file of miscellaneous paperwork from the table and retrieve the receipt for Espress Oh! I look at the number scribbled on the back, then search for the date. The ink at the bottom is smudged and I can’t make it out. How long has it been here? It’s not cold in the house, but I’m shaking and the receipt flutters in my hand. I walk into the kitchen.

‘Katie?’

‘Mmm?’

She’s buttering bread on the counter without using a plate. She brushes the crumbs into her hand and shakes them into the sink. ‘Sorry.’ She sees my face. ‘It’s only a few crumbs, Mum.’

I hand her the receipt. ‘Have you ever been to this place?’ I feel light-headed, as though I’ve come up for air too fast. I can feel my pulse ticking, and I count each beat in an effort to slow it down.

Katie screws up her nose. ‘Don’t think so. Where is it?’

‘Near Leicester Square.’ When you face danger your body is supposed to go into one of two modes: fight or flight. But mine isn’t doing either. It’s frozen, wanting to run but unable to move.

‘Oh, I know it! At least, I think so. I’ve not been there, but I’ve walked past it. Why do you want to know?’

I don’t want to panic Katie. I tell her about PC Swift’s email, but calmly, as though it’s nothing of great importance. The buzzing in my ears grows louder. It’s not a coincidence. I know it.

‘It’s just a receipt. It doesn’t have to belong to the person behind the website. Does it?’ Her eyes flicker across my face, trying to read me; trying to gauge how worried I am.

Yes.

‘No, of course not.’

‘It could have come from anyone; a coat pocket, an old plastic bag, anything.’ We’re both pretending it’s something innocuous. A lone sock. A stray cat. Anything but a receipt that somehow links a maniac to our house. ‘I leave receipts in bags all the time.’

I want her to be right. I think of all the times I’ve grabbed a carrier bag from the dozens stuffed into the cupboard under the sink, and found abandoned receipts from previous shopping trips.

I want her to be right, but I know from the prickle of fear across my neck that she isn’t. That the only reason that receipt is in our house is because someone brought it in.

‘Bit of a coincidence, though, don’t you think?’ I try to smile but it falls apart, morphing into something quite different.

Fear.

There’s a voice in my head I won’t listen to; a creeping sense of dread telling me the answer is staring me in the face.

‘We need to think rationally about it,’ Katie is saying. ‘Who’s been in the house recently?’

‘You, me, Justin and Simon,’ I say, ‘obviously. And Melissa and Neil. The pile of paperwork I put on the table last night – the receipts and the invoices – that belongs to Graham Hallow.’

‘Could it be his?’

‘Maybe.’ I think of the pile of Gazettes on Graham’s desk, and remember his perfectly plausible explanation for them. ‘But he’s been really supportive lately – he’s given me time off work. I can’t see him doing something like this.’ A thought enters my head. The police might not have found any evidence against Isaac, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any to find. ‘We cleared the table before Sunday lunch last month. Isaac was here.’

Katie’s mouth opens. ‘What are you suggesting?’

I shrug, but it’s unconvincing, even to me. ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m simply listing the people who have been in the house recently.’

‘You can’t think Isaac has anything to do with this? Mum, I hadn’t even met him when this all started – you said yourself the ads have been running since September.’

‘He took a picture of you, Katie. Without you knowing. Don’t you think that’s creepy?’

‘To send to another cast member! Not to use on a website.’ She’s yelling at me, defensive and angry.

‘How do you know?’ I shout back.

There’s a silence between us as we both take stock of ourselves. ‘It could be anyone’s,’ Katie says stubbornly.

‘Then we should search the house,’ I say. She nods.

‘Justin’s room first.’

‘Justin? You can’t think …’ I see her face. ‘Fine.’

Even as a toddler Justin loved computers above books. I used to worry I’d done something wrong – let him watch too much television – but when Katie came along and became such a bookworm, I realised they were just two different children. We didn’t even have a computer at home when they were young, but ICT was about the only subject Justin would turn up for at school. He begged Matt and me for his own computer and when we couldn’t afford it he saved his pocket money and bought the parts, each one arriving in a Jiffy bag to the house, to be stored under his bed with his Meccano sets and Lego figures. He built that first computer himself, with instructions he’d printed at the library, and as time went on he added more memory, a bigger hard disk, a better graphics card. At twelve, Justin knew more about computers and the Internet than I did at thirty.