One Night (16 page)

‘How – how do you know the
underwear belonged to Mona?’

‘Two pairs of briefs,’ Cartwright
said. ‘They matched underwear in the cottage. I believe there are these
matching sets,’ he explained, his eyes flicking up to the small window above my
door as though he’d just seen someone hovering there. ‘Lace and colour and
design. Matching bra and panty sets. Too much of a co-incidence to belong to
someone else. But we’ve had them tested. And they were Mona’s.’

‘How would he come to be in possession
of her underwear?’

‘Possibly stole them off the
washing line.’

‘He’d been stalking her!’

‘Looks that way. And perhaps she remonstrated
with him and that’s why her dead body ended up in the cupboard.’

‘But – but he never raped her.’

‘And he may not have killed her.
Except Brent Sedgeworth’s defense that Bunting is the culprit now carries more
credence. We can’t discount the fact that Matthew Bunting may well have attacked
Mona. Apart from his track record, his fingerprints are in the yard along with Sedgeworth’s.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I know Brent did it. I just know.’

‘We may suppose that either of them
did it. But we can’t prove anything either way. Not as yet. And that means
delay to trial continues.’

‘And Brent Sedgeworth stays free.’

‘Yes. But if you ever have any
trouble from him…anything at all, we’ll slap a restraining order on him faster
than you can believe.’

‘But not now.’

‘He’s done nothing, Ms Casey. A
blustering threat doesn’t mean that your life might be in danger. But we will
give him a warning.’

‘So I have to wait until I’m lying
here on the floor with a knife to my throat.’

He gave me a look. ‘You’d have to
get a court order. It’s a process. I should imagine the last thing Sedgeworth
would want to do now, is draw attention to himself. That would be plain stupid.
He strikes me as pretty low life but not stupid.’

‘No, he’s clever. That’s just the
point,’ I said bitterly. ‘He planned this very well. When people get in his
way, he gets rid of them. He put Jake Adler in jail and he murdered Mona. God
knows how many other crimes he’s committed and gotten away with it.’

Cartwright looked a little
exasperated. ‘You’re fairly secure here. What locks do you have?’

For a moment a rill of fright shot
through me. He’d changed tack – or perhaps he was patronizing me to shut me up.
Either way, I was shaken by the serious look in his eyes.

I showed him the front door: a
Yale, a deadlock, a chain and an old mortise (which I never used).

‘This is good security,’ he
commented. ‘And you’re three floors up. Any other external doors?’

I led him to the laundry door off
the kitchen area. It led to a small hanging space vented by a criss-cross of
brickwork. Through the pattern we could see down to the central yard below
where residents hung larger items of washing like sheets.

‘Well, nobody is going to get
through that.’ Cartwright tilted his head as though I might argue this point. ‘I
noted a staircase beside the lift in the main well. Are those the only two
options of getting up here?’

‘There’s a back stair that leads
down to the garage area.’

‘Let’s take a ganders at that.’

I opened the front door and led the
way to the narrow back staircase at the far end of the walkway.

‘Is there a security door at the
base?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

He said cheerfully. ‘These might be
a problem.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, the front main areas are
busy. Plenty people up and down. But these at the back are rather quiet. If a
stalker was to chose, this would be his route. That’s where he would lurk.’

I was furious. ‘You’re scaring me!’

His eyes were empty of emotion. I
realized the kindly look was just a practiced tool of his trade. If he couldn’t
settle my anxiety with rational argument he would just ripen it with some cold
facts.

‘Miss Blaydon, you were the one who
called in with your worries. I need to access your complaint and make a report.
Despite what you think, we do care. If you genuinely believe Brent Sedgeworth
might prove a danger to you, then I must alert you to every possibility. You
will need to watch that stairway when you come to open your door. It’s quite a
distance so you would have time to open up and get inside before anyone could
reach you.’

I felt as though my legs had
buckled but I was still standing.

‘If I’m fast enough,’ I said. My voice
wavered. I thought about how long it took me some evenings just to find my
keys.

He read my mind. ‘I would suggest
you find your keys well before stepping out of the lift. Have them in your hand
as you approach your door.’

‘Why don’t you just fucking arrest
him!’ I screeched. ‘Just get it over!’

I stormed back to my flat and
stopped just short of slamming the door in his face. He followed in behind me. Reasonably,
he asked, ‘Don’t you have someone who could come and stay with you? Or
somewhere else you can go?’

I fumed silently on this idea. Of
course there were places I could go. And probably he was right. If I could go
elsewhere during this investigation and trial, why would they need to put a
guard on my flat? I knew I couldn’t expect the police to spend money where they
didn’t see a necessity. Stephen loomed like a hologram in the room. He hadn’t
offered to stay. I couldn’t ask.

I said eventually, ‘I can go to my
mother.’

‘Good.’ Cartwright evinced an air of
satisfaction and vindication. ‘That would be wise.’

I looked at him. Wisdom seemed to
be something I’d lost along with a sense of security and a large chunk of
innocence. I felt rather silly – like a squirrel running in front of an
oncoming car, pausing in blinding headlights to check the distance between
safety and death.

Stephen came round for the chicken. I’d done it in a sticky apricot syrup with
roast potatoes and vegetables, to be followed by a pudding I’d bought resembling
Italian Kisses with some sort of creamy biscuit base. In honour of the occasion
I’d also given Sticky a new chew stick which kept him busy for most of the
evening. Stephen had brought a bottle of wine and flowers of my favourite
colour, shocking pink.

Stephen looked a little odd. He’d
brushed his hair differently and left the dark-gold fuzz of an almost-beard on
his chin. His eyes seemed to seek out mine too intently.

‘This is very nice, Casey.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Okay, well, your nothing is pretty
good.’

‘Thank you.’

There was a little awkward silence.
Stephen could read me like a newspaper headline. ‘What’s the matter?’

I told him that I would have to be
moving to my mother’s.

He was silent a moment. ‘What’s
happening with Sticky?’

‘Well, he will be going too.’

There was another silence. The
evening had been punctuated with them. I hadn’t expected things to be difficult
and possibly they weren’t – it was me who had the problem. Memories of Witch’s
Wood kept dragging into place as though somebody was rearranging furniture in
my head; I couldn’t hear properly for the noise and the pictures which kept
crackling into sight.

‘How are you, Casey? I mean really.
Are you alright?’

What was I supposed to say? Of
course I was alright. I was physically over the damages of that night. I was
back at work and people had gradually forgotten about my celebrity status. Mr
Marse kept me busy, assuming busyness would make me better quicker. He wasn’t
far wrong. But in any day there are pauses – moments when your mind slides and
memories surge at you. I had two or three of those moments every day. Bigger
than anxiety, fear makes death seem imminent. Soon you’re not exactly sure how
that death will come: a plunging lift, a car bomb, a red-alert email, a dropped
pen. Late home on the bus was a nightmare.

I stared at him in a kind of
miserable defiance. If he could stay, keep me warm…

But then, perhaps that wouldn’t
matter if he couldn’t fix my head.

‘I’m doing okay. What’s the old
cliché? I’m taking one day at a time.’

His eyes glistened. ‘It must have
been awful for you. All alone with those maniacs running around.’

His words made me shiver. I
imagined how different things would have been if he had been there, beside me.

‘I tried to call you. Well, I mean
I was going to and then I changed my mind.’

He was incredulous. ‘You were going
to call me? To come up and be with you?’

‘Yes. Alice Petting, the woman in
the shop, had scared me a bit when she’d gone on about Matthew Bunting. I
thought I could do with some company.’

‘Why didn’t you call? Why
didn’t
you?’ He was insistent.

‘I felt stupid. I knew you had
another girlfriend. You’d moved on. You’d hardly want a whining call from an
old one.’

‘I would have come like a shot.’

We stared at each other, aware of
how different things might have been if he’d been there. We couldn’t have saved
Mona but we might have saved Galina, not to mention the Bunting brothers and
their dog.

‘You would have hurtled all the way
up there? On a Saturday night? You’re kidding.’

‘If you had said you were
frightened and needed company – ’ he made a fist ‘ – I would have come. What sort
of chap do you think I am?’

I felt a strange mix of loss,
regret and hope. But it seemed jangled – as though nothing fitted where it
should. I had all the pieces, I just couldn’t make the picture I wanted. I
smiled at him. ‘The good sort,’ I said.

He grinned at me, raised his glass.
‘You look like a pixie.’

When we’d both drunk too much wine, Stephen pronounced, ‘I’d like to keep
seeing you, Casey.’

He was stretched out, shoes kicked
off, nurturing a second cup of coffee. He looked too big for the couch.
Lanky-boned, he seemed to take up more space than necessary. His eyes were
direct. When talking to you, Stephen always gave the impression that for that
moment, you were the most important person in the world. I wanted it to be more
than just a characteristic, I wanted it real – to be truly just me in his mind
and nobody else.

‘That’ll be fine with me, Stephen.
I’m always around.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Lil’ol’ lollabout.’

‘You’re being deliberately
flippant.’

‘You want to start where we left
off?’

‘That might be a bad idea.’

I was shaken but didn’t want him to
see. ‘All right. So we’re just friends.’

He eased forward. ‘Do you want it
more than that, Casey?’

I felt edgy. He was forcing me to
take the first step – if there was one to take. Manipulation made my hair stand
on end. I said after a moment, ‘I want your company, Stephen. Friendship, yes.
But I want to find a better way than before. And if that takes a fresh start,
that’s fine. If there’s no start, that’s also fine. I just like to know you’re
with me in my life, that’s all.’

There. Beautifully put. And as
neutral as hell.

He smiled. ‘I’m glad, Casey. That’s
what I would like as well.’

Ah, so we weren’t going back to where
we had been. No old ground. Just new quicksand. I smiled back. I would have to
be satisfied. This wouldn’t be a relationship that bound me. I would be free to
do as I pleased. It felt as though something sharp had pressed into my heart. I
wanted to weep in his arms:
I love you, Stephen! I’ve missed you! And I’m
afraid.
But I said: ‘How will Cresandra feel about this?’

‘Catherine.’

‘Yes.’

‘I told you. We’re just dating. A
casual thing. Not planning to go anywhere.’

And not planning to break it off
either
, I thought.

For the moment, I felt incredibly
alone. I couldn’t tell him how frightened I was. He was happy I would be with
my mother. I was unhappy he would not be with me. In that horrible little place
in my brain which always worked up wrong in the wrong situations, a kernel of
bloody-mindedness began. I would have to do this myself. There was no-one I
could rely on. It was me, Casey Blaydon against whatever was out there in the
quiet night. It didn’t matter. I’d done it before – in the woods. There’d been
no one to help me there either. I would do it here.

I could kick ass anywhere.

I stayed with my mother three nights before I dredged up the courage to tell
her it wasn’t working.

She said, ‘Is it me?’

‘No, mum, you’ve been great. It’s
me.’

‘You can’t go back there on your
own if you think this man means you harm.’

I chewed this around. ‘I haven’t
seen him since the funeral. I don’t think he’s following me or anything. I’m
thinking
maybe
I’ve been a tad neurotic.’

‘That Cartwright policeman said you
would be safer staying with someone.’

‘I think that was just to appease
my nerves as much as anything else.’

‘Brent Sedgeworth is a murderer.’

‘Yes.’

‘He knows where you live.’

The moment she hit this irrefutable
truth something twisted inside me. I said as mildly as possible, ‘I think DI
Cartwright was right when he said that if Brent is intelligent, he’ll keep away
from me.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t test that
theory.’ My mother looked petulant, teary.

I felt hugely culpable suddenly,
responsible for everything. I had to fight this strange feeling descending that
I needed to make myself very small, to the point of invisibility. Soon I
wouldn’t be able to go out, to take a bus, to walk in the park. Soon I would
huddle in bed, crying into damp tissues. And this picture was almost worse that
any threat offered by Brent Sedgeworth.

Her eyes scanned my packed case.
Sticky was brushed and ready, sporting a green bow. Green for peace, for
tranquility. For the forest…