A Tapping at My Door: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller (The DS Nathan Cody Series) (2 page)

She moves closer to the back door, her pupils hungrily dilated. Like the kitchen cupboards, the door is cheap and thin, and inspires little confidence in its ability to fulfil its transit prevention role. The upper half contains a panel of frosted glass that could easily be broken and perhaps even used as an entry point by someone small and limber enough.

She should have replaced this door ages ago. But then she should have done many things to make this house more secure. She knows this. Has known it ever since she moved in.

She lives in a small residential area of Liverpool called Stoneycroft, close to the busy dual carriageway that is Queens Drive – one of the city’s main arteries. When she explains to people where she lives, they say, ‘Oh, you mean Old Swan,’ and she says, ‘No, it’s called Stoneycroft,’ because she thinks it sounds posher.

It’s not posh, though.

The way she sees things, she has her foot on the first rung of the property ladder. It’s not the nicest house in the world, the area has its problems, but at least it’s hers. In a few years she’ll sell it and move up to something better – maybe in Allerton or Woolton or even over on the Wirral. For now, this will do.

The estate agent described the house as a quasi semi-detached, which was a bullshit way of describing a house that is joined to one of its neighbours on the upper floor but not the lower. Between the two front doors, a brick tunnel runs straight through to the rear of the properties. Some of the houses in this road have lockable iron gates on their passageways. Terri’s doesn’t, which means that anyone can go for a stroll down it. What’s more, her wooden door at the other end of the tunnel doesn’t have a lock either. And even if it did, there’s another way into her rear garden because it backs onto a small park that anyone can enter and then scale her panel fencing unseen.

All in all, this house is not exactly Fort Knox.

These thoughts have reared up in Terri’s head many times. On each occasion she has made a mental note to do something about the situation, and on each occasion she has immediately lost the note in the untidy recesses of her memory.

The reason these thoughts are rushing and cramming into her mind like peak hour traffic right now, though, is because of what she sees. Or rather, because of what she doesn’t see.

There is no wayward clematis on the other side of the glass panel of her door.

Although the glass is translucent, and although it is undeniably in dire need of cleaning, the diffused light of the moon makes the absence of leafy matter apparent.

And what that means is that something else has been causing the noise. The noise that goes . . .

Tap . . . Tap . . . Scratch . . .

As the sound starts up again, Terri takes a step back into the shadows. As if their dark embrace is more comforting than whatever denizen of the night might be outside.

It is busily working away on the bottom section of the door. Ground level. Something small, and yet fiercely determined to bore its way into her house. Why? What can it want?

Her first thought is that it’s Shit Sue. The yappy little mongrel from across the road. Which, as it happens, is not a Shih Tzu at all. Terri calls it that because, instead of taking it for a walk, its irresponsible owner simply shoos it out of his front door, at which point the mischievous little bitch runs across the street, threads its way through the bars of Terri’s front gate, traverses her moss- and weed-infested driveway, scampers up the side passage and then takes a dump that seems almost equivalent in mass to that of the dog itself.

That’s Terri’s first thought.

Three problems with that. One: inconsiderate prick though he is, Shit Sue’s owner never usually lets his excrement generator loose this late at night. Two: even though the wooden door at the rear end of the passage has no lock, it does at least close. And when it’s closed, which she is sure it was the last time she looked, even the irrepressible turd machine cannot slide its way under to reach her patio. And three: this doesn’t sound like Shit Sue. It doesn’t sound like a dog of any kind. The scratching is from feet much smaller than those of a canine. And there’s the additional tapping sound, intermixed with the scrabbling. A dog just wouldn’t create those noises.

So, what then?

A cat? Possibly, she thinks. Cats scratch at things, don’t they? And – yes! – I had tuna for my tea, didn’t I? Cats love tuna. It can smell the fish, and it wants some. It—

No. Don’t be stupid. Listen to it. Hear that tapping again? Well, cats don’t tap, do they? They just don’t.

Fuck.

Pull yourself together, she tells herself. This is what you get for living on your own. It’s what you wanted. You didn’t want to stay in a flat with your mates, and you certainly had no intention of moving in with a bloke again any time soon. You wanted your own space. Well, you’ve got it. You’re a grown-up, so start acting like one.

She takes a deep breath. Covers the distance to the door in one stride. Reaches for the door handle.

You can do this, she thinks. It’s not a rapist on the other side of the door. Rapists don’t scratch and tap at your door in such a pathetic way. They leap out from bushes and poorly lit doorways. They run up behind you and—

Okay, enough of that. Open the bloody door. It’s a squirrel banging its nuts. Or a hedgehog trying to mate with the boot-scraper. Or something else that your pathetic imagination just hasn’t conceived of. When you open the door, it’ll be more scared of you than you are of it, and it’ll almost burst with the shock of seeing you standing there, and its tiny beady eyes will water as it craps itself and scurries away as fast as its stumpy little legs will take it.

She starts to turn the handle.

Tap . . . Scratch . . .

Turns it as far as it will go.

Scrape . . . Tap . . .

And . . . pull!

She yanks on the handle. The door rattles in the frame but doesn’t swing open.

Bollocks, she thinks. It’s locked. Of course it’s locked. I always lock it when I’m alone at night. Why should tonight be any—

Listen!

The noise. It’s stopped.

She pictures the timid little animal, scared witless by the clatter of the door, its marble-sized heart fluttering frantically in its chest.

She considers going for the key, unlocking the door, checking that it’s all clear out there. Decides against it.

It’s gone. Back to its lair. And if it hasn’t gone, then she doesn’t want to know about it. If it’s still at her door, rolling up its furry sleeves in preparation for a renewed and more vigorous assault, then it’s not the kind of foe she wants to face, thank you very much.

She shakes her head. Expels a mirthless laugh. Goes back to the living room, where Tom Hanks awaits.

She sits, crosses her legs, stares at the television without taking in what it’s showing her. It’s all just pictures and noise. She’s not comfortable, either physically or mentally.

She reaches for her wine glass and drains it, then empties the bottle into it and takes another swig. Okay, that’s better. Now she can unwind.

She swings her legs onto the sofa. Commands herself to relax and enjoy the film. The kid, the one with the backpack, is in the Empire State Building. This is a good bit. It’s getting near the end now. Time to get the Kleenex ready. This is going to be—

Shit!

The scrabbling is loud now. More frantic.

Terri spills wine down the front of her dressing gown. She turns again to look into the adjoining room. The thing – whatever it is – sounds closer. As if it’s in there, inside the house, inside her kitchen.

But no, it can’t be. That’s impossible. She tried the door herself just a moment ago, didn’t she? It’s locked. The windows are locked, too.

She stands. Grabs the remote and mutes the sound of the television. Stares through the doorway as she listens to that awful racket. The tapping and the scraping and the scratching. But it’s different now. Why is it different?

She retraces her steps into the kitchen, accepting that she’s moving more slowly now, more cautiously. Like wading through treacle.

She gets through the door. Holds her breath. Eyes darting as she waits.

There it is!

Not at the door now, but at the window.

Not the picture window over the sink – the one through which that moon still beams its skewed, pitying smile at her – but the other window, the one next to the door. The one with the curtains closed over it.

The window is a good three feet off the ground. How did the thing get up that high? No dog or squirrel or hedgehog or whatever could get up there – not unless it’s on a pogo stick. A cat, maybe. A cat could leap onto the sill. But hasn’t she already discounted the cat theory? Hasn’t she already established that cats, while excelling in the scratching department, are somewhat less adept when it comes to tapping skills?

She suddenly finds herself breathing again. But it’s fast, ragged breathing. Panicky breathing. It shouldn’t be like that. Stop it, she thinks. There’s nothing to be afraid of. All the precarious situations you’ve been in, and you’re frightened of a little woodland creature?

Woodland? Where are we now – in a fairy tale? This is Stoneycroft. Which, despite its rustic and idyllic name, is right next to Old Swan. There are no Seven Dwarfs here.

She tells herself that if there is in fact a dwarf or a diminutive person of any kind on the other side of that window, she will shit herself.

Suddenly her mind is racing off in the direction of evil dwarfs. And now all she can think about is
Don’t Look Now
. Which is another of her favourite films but for totally different reasons. Scare-the-pants-off-you reasons.

It’s not a dwarf, she thinks. It’s not a gnome. It’s not a fucking gremlin that tears the wings off planes at 10,000 feet. If you want to know what it is, open the fucking curtain and see.

So she does.

She steps closer to the window, her feet dragging even more than they did before. The noise comes in bursts – sudden energetic flurries punctuated by moments of silent exhaustion. She reaches out a hand. Draws it back when the beating on the window seems almost enough to break the glass. Reaches out again. Takes hold of the thick blue material she spent far too much on in John Lewis. Takes a breath. One . . . two . . .

Three!

She yanks the curtain open just as the noise abates once more. Through the glass she can see nothing. No animals, no dwarfs, nothing.

She leans her face into the window. Moves it so close that her breath starts to fog it up. It becomes difficult to see through the mist. She pulls her hand into the sleeve of her dressing gown and begins to raise it to clear a porthole.

And that’s when the thing makes its appearance.

It shoots up from below, as if thrown at her face. She gets a glimpse of claws and sharpness and malicious intent and shiny blackness as she screams and leaps backwards, banging hard into a chair behind her but unable to take her eyes off this demonic creature that now opens its mouth and starts to issue eerily deep-throated and human-like calls.

She stares in incredulity, but also with a sense of relief. Why didn’t she think of this before?

A bird.

But what a bird. Huge and so very black. Even its beak appears to be fashioned from ebony, and its eyes seem to swallow up the moonlight. Its neck looks muscular and powerful, as if built to help it tear things apart in that vicious mouth. Its wings pound against the glass as it struggles to maintain purchase with its grasping talons. And, every so often, it takes another fierce peck at the glass, threatening to crack it and allow it entry.

A crow, thinks Terri. Something like that. She knows sparrows and pigeons and robins and starlings, and that’s about as far as her avian expertise goes. She has never seen a bird like this in her garden before.

She doesn’t want it here now either. It’s big and it’s freaky and it’s acting weirdly. It’s like something out of that Hitchcock film.
The Birds
. Where they all turn on the humans and rip them to shreds.

It has to go. That much is certain. She can’t go to sleep with a thing like this hammering to come in. What if it follows her up to her bedroom window? Starts its tapping in the middle of the night? How could she sleep with even the prospect of that happening?

So, okay. How do you get rid of a bird like that? Most birds, you just clap your hands and off they go. Even the stupid, chewing-gum eating pigeons have worked that one out. But this bird? This one looks like it’s either insanely malevolent or supremely intelligent. This one looks like it’ll take your face off if you go anywhere near it.

I should call someone, she thinks. I should get in a bird expert. Or someone with a shotgun.

At half past midnight?

Okay, then, the police. No, definitely not the police. The police are the last people I should call unless I want to be made a laughing stock for being a total chicken over a stupid bird.

Chicken, bird. That should be funny, but I’m not laughing.

She lets out a growl of furious acceptance that the only one who can do anything about this ludicrous situation is herself.

It’s a bird. Shoo it away or batter it to death. Either solution is acceptable. Okay, Terri?

First things first. Lights on.

She finds the light switch. Clicks it. Blinks against the brightness.

She decides she needs a weapon. Preferably something that doesn’t require her to come within several feet of the creature.

She deliberates for a few seconds, then goes to the cupboard under the stairs. Comes back with a sweeping brush. Then she takes a key down from a shelf and unlocks the back door.

‘Okay, birdbrain,’ she says. ‘Here I come. You have five seconds to get out of my garden before I sweep you to death.’

She opens the door. Sticks her head out into the night. The bird is resting on the sill, cocking its head as it stares a challenge back at her. It reminds her of something.
The Omen
? Wasn’t there a creepy black bird in that?

There I go again, she thinks. This isn’t the devil in animal form. Not even a dwarf in a costume. It’s just a bird.