The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(25)
Had Lloyd’s stalker been an obsessive fan? A jealous rival? Leo had requested details of Lloyd’s harassment complaint from the Metropolitan Police, and the file came through first thing this morning. Rhys Lloyd had been receiving abusive messages on social media for almost a year before he’d reported it to police, some six months before he died. Was there a connection? Leo reads the statement, handwritten by an officer attending an incident at the Lloyds’ house in Highgate, London.
My Twitter address is @RhysLloydSings. I use the account to let fans know about tours and album releases, but otherwise am not active on the platform. Mostly the tweets directed at me are enthusiastic, but occasionally I receive negative comments about my appearance, voice or politics. These generally amount to one or two tweets, which I ignore. Around twelve months ago I noticed I was receiving frequent messages from an account called @RhysLloyd1000, and also from @RhysLloyd2000. Later, accounts were set up with the suffixes 3000 and 4000. The messages began as relatively harmless, criticising my dress sense or my decision to take a particular role. They escalated to (unfounded) accusations of nepotism and deception, and began to take on a threatening tone. I did not make a report of harassment at this stage, as I was not concerned by the messages and considered it an unfortunate side-effect of being in the public eye.
On the evening of 28th April this year I was having a drink at my club in Soho. I returned home to find my wife, Yasmin, in a state of distress, having received a visit from a stranger she described as a ‘madwoman’. The woman had referred to our children, Tabitha and Felicia, by name, and made threats which gave Yasmin – and therefore me – grave concerns for our safety.
The door buzzer sounds. Leo ignores it. It’ll be another package for the people in the flat upstairs, who go away for weeks at a time then act as though it’s a terrible inconvenience when Leo schlepps up with whatever they’ve had delivered in their absence.
He opens Yasmin’s statement.
The woman was white, with blonde hair in a ponytail. She was around five foot six, and wore black jeans, a brown leather jacket and a baseball cap with writing on the front. She was very threatening and the whole experience left me shaken and terrified.
Did Lloyd’s London stalker follow him to The Shore to kill him? Or had she hoped for some kind of reconciliation, and instead ended up in a confrontation which led to Lloyd’s death?
The buzzer rings again, more insistently this time. Reluctantly, Leo crosses the room and presses the intercom. ‘Hello?’
‘We need to talk.’
Leo used to find it endearing, the way Allie skipped conversational preambles and got straight to the main event. I was thinking about next summer, she’d announce when she met him for dinner, before launching into an idea for a holiday. Her enthusiasm had been infectious.
But then, so is smallpox, Leo thinks, as he presses the door-release button. He glances around, trying to see the flat through his ex-wife’s eyes. The narrow hallway has a bathroom immediately opposite the front door, and two doorways on either side. On the right are the lounge and kitchen; on the left his own room, and what he had na?vely imagined would be Harris’s, but which has instead become a dumping ground for boxes, Leo’s weights, and anything else that doesn’t fit in the tiny hallway cupboard. The walls are cream; the carpet a beige fleck which hides the dirt. It’s the sort of flat which manages to be perfectly inoffensive yet completely awful all at the same time.
‘Allie?’ The stairwell is quiet. Grabbing his keys, Leo runs down the stairs. He needs to leave for the post-mortem soon – he doesn’t have time for another of her dramas.
His ex-wife is pacing the path, her breath clouding in the cold air.
‘Why didn’t you come up?’
Allie points to the car, parked in the disabled bay adjacent to the block of flats. ‘Unlike some people, I take responsibility for my son.’
‘You could have brought him up.’ Leo takes a step towards the car, a grin spreading across his face as Harris smooshes his own smile across the window.
Allie puts out a hand, firm against Leo’s chest. ‘I don’t want him hearing this.’
Leo sighs. ‘What have I done this time?’ He isn’t sure how much more of this he can take. A few months ago, he’d nipped to Tesco for a sandwich, only to be served three days later with a notice knocked up by Allie’s solicitor friend, threatening legal action if Leo ‘continues to harass our client or her partner’. Leo hadn’t even seen Dominic in the supermarket, let alone given him the ‘threatening look’ referred to in the letter, but Allie always did take a liberal approach to the facts.
Before she can answer, the car door opens, and Harris barrels out. ‘Daddy!’
Leo crouches as Harris flies into his arms, then stands and spins around, Harris’s arms tight around his neck. ‘Hey, little man! How’s it hanging?’
‘I told you to stay in the car,’ Allie snaps.
Leo’s chest is tight. He got to be a dad for a single year. One year of bedtimes and bathtimes, of getting Harris dressed and deciding what to do with their weekends. Now he’s doled out dad-time in the same practical, unemotional manner he’s allocated shifts at work. It feels like a bereavement.
‘Can I have a snack?’
‘Back in the car, Harris. I need to talk to your dad.’ Allie pulls him from Leo, who has to resist the urge to pull back. Parenting isn’t a tug of war.