Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(50)

She pulled out her phone and searched through for a number. It rang a few times, and then a bleary voice answered.

‘Hello?’ said Colleen Scanlan, the Met’s media liaison officer.

‘Colleen, this is Erika Foster.’

‘Erika. It’s very late.’

‘I’ve just seen a piece in the Evening Standard about the Max Hastings and Nina Hargreaves case. They’ve printed a picture of me coming out of my house, next to the road sign, and you can see my number plate.’

There was a long pause.

‘I can’t control what they run in the press.’

Erika put her hand over the phone, and took several deep breaths. She loathed Colleen, who was, in her opinion, a lazy jobsworth who did just about enough to keep her job, but never wanted to go that extra mile to help.

‘I know you can’t do anything about the print edition, but what you can do, please, is check if the online edition has this picture, and if so, get it taken down. NOW.’

Colleen sighed. ‘I doubt the office is open, but I can leave a word. I can do that for you,’ she said stiffly.

‘Thank you,’ said Erika and she ended the call.

They rode the rest of the journey in silence. Erika kept checking her phone to see if Colleen had messaged or emailed, but there was nothing. Shortly before midnight, they approached Forest Hill, and the Uber dropped her outside her building.

When Erika got indoors, she flicked on the heating, took a shower and then came back into the living room in her pyjamas. She poured herself a large glass of vodka and settled down on the sofa with her laptop, opening the report she had started writing for Melanie. The floorboards upstairs creaked as Allison, her neighbour, moved around. She clicked on Internet Explorer and opened the Evening Standard website. The same article was online with her photo.

‘Shit,’ she said. She got up and closed her curtains, suddenly feeling paranoid, knowing that information about her and where she lived was online. She told herself not to be ridiculous. It wasn’t as if they had published her full address. She checked her phone, but there was no email from Colleen. She tried calling her again, but it went to voicemail. She took a large gulp of vodka, and started to work on the report.



* * *



Erika woke with a start. Her laptop was upended beside her on the sofa, and the phone was ringing. She turned to the clock in the kitchen. It was shortly before two in the morning. She sat up as the phone continued to ring. She put her laptop on the coffee table and heaved herself up, her first thought being that Colleen was ringing her back. Then the answerphone clicked in. After the recorded message, a breathless, ragged voice said:

‘Erika…’

‘Erika…’

‘Erikaaaaa…’

She stopped in her tracks in the doorway to the hall. Her name faded out into a breath, and then there was a strange scratching sound. The message carried on, with a discordant, ragged breathing.

‘Erikaaaaaa… Erikaaaaaa…’

The voice was hoarse and deep, with a malevolent rumble. There was a distorted sound, a ragged wheeze and an almost inhuman retching which made her cry out with fear.

Erika grabbed at the answerphone machine cord and pulled it out of the wall. Then she did the same with the phone. She hurried to the front door and checked that it was locked, and then worked through the flat, turning on all the lights and checking the windows were locked. She sat back on the sofa, shaking, and tried to control her breathing.

For the first time in her long career, she wished she had a gun.





Thirty-Three





Jason Bates’s alarm woke him at six. Shortly afterwards, there was a soft knock on the door. It was one of the council carers, arriving to take over, so he could go to work.

‘How’s she been?’ asked the kind woman with the lined face. In his bleary state, it took him a moment to remember which one she was… Dawn… Her name was Dawn.

‘She had a good night,’ he said. A good night for his mother meant that he had only been woken three times. Dawn took off her coat and warmed her hands over the radiator, as Jason busied himself making breakfast and getting ready for work.

The plastics factory was a fifteen-minute train journey away. It was still dark when he stepped out of the house. He looked back to where his mother had been put in her chair and wheeled to the window to watch him leave. He waved back at her, and she lifted a hand. The anger and frustration he felt towards her melted away. He wondered if her carers did this every morning, to remind him that she was a person. He could only see this from outside the house, looking in.

The streets were dark with a freezing fog, which made him feel like he was wading through wet sheets. The small coffee shop outside Gipsy Hill train station wasn’t open at such an early hour, and he hurried past, through the open barriers, just making it onto the train as the doors closed. The one good thing about working further out of London was that the morning trains going in the opposite direction from the city were less crowded, even less so between Christmas and New Year. The carriage was almost empty, and he sat in a window seat, the heater by his legs pumping out warm air. He slipped on his headphones and put on an audiobook, which he planned on listening to for the rest of the morning while he drove the forklift – just one headphone, the other ear would be free for safety.