See How They Run

F
or Niki
, Graham, Neil, Pauline & Luke, in memory of Jackie Spencer.

A
ny noise
in the night could wake him now. Eight weeks since the birth of his daughter and Harry barely remembered how it felt to sleep for seven hours straight and wake naturally, refreshed and ready for a new day. All the warnings from their friends about the misery of sleep deprivation had turned out to be spot on.

The sound had come and gone by the time he registered he was awake, eyes glued shut, heart beating fast. Not the baby, he was sure of that. It must have been something outside, perhaps in the alley along the back where urban foxes prowled.

Harry waited, trying to recreate the feeling he’d had, the sense of a dream interrupted by a … a thud, a scrape: a surreptitious noise, as though something –
someone
– was trying to go unheard.

Or maybe it had just been part of the dream itself. Either way, now he was awake he ought to take a look out of the window; check on Evie and see how much time there was before her next feed …

Harry knew he should do these things but he couldn’t. He was frozen in place, eyes tightly shut, not even daring to breathe.

There was an intruder in their home.

I
t wasn’t
a rowdy neighbourhood by any means, their tidy terraced street. Although modest in size, the houses were highly valued for their proximity to the railway station, to good schools and friendly corner shops and vibrant pubs, to all the pleasures that Brighton had to offer. Not quite in the heart of the city but close to one of its main arteries, the Port Hall district between Dyke Road and Stanford Road was arty, upmarket and conservatively bohemian – so letterboxes bore stickers refusing junk mail on environmental grounds, even while the parking bays were choked with 4x4s.

A lot of young families lived here, Harry and Alice’s being one of the youngest. There weren’t too many people coming home in the early hours, although a woman over the road worked shifts at the hospital. In the city beyond there was always the drone of traffic: sirens, car horns, slamming doors and screeching tyres, and sometimes the distant, deep rumble of trains leaving Brighton station. Depending on the season, there was birdsong to a greater or lesser degree, most of it charming and rarely disruptive, the exception being the caustic screech of the seagulls – or the
bloody
seagulls, as they were known round here.

All these things contributed to the soundtrack of Harry’s sleeping hours; all were familiar and expected and unthreatening. What he’d just heard was of a different nature altogether.

But no one could have broken into the house without waking him, could they? Even if they had, they’d be satisfied with stealing what was on offer in the living room: the Blu-ray player and the PS4. Some cash, maybe a phone or an iPad. Harry couldn’t recall precisely what was lying around, but he was sure of one thing: thieves were opportunists. There was no way they’d risk climbing the stairs or waking the occupants of the house.

So why, then, did Harry feel there was somebody right here, in their room?

S
lowly
, very slowly, he let out the breath that had caught in his lungs. He opened his eyes, remembering how next door’s cat had given him a few scares in the past: that kettle drum
boom
when it leapt on to the dustbin; and its plaintive wail, like the cry of a tortured child. Harry willed it to make a noise now, to break the illusion of danger.

Nothing.

Because it wasn’t an illusion
.

His focus switched to the space around him. Alice was sleeping heavily and so, for once, was the baby. When the time was right they planned to move Evie to the nursery next door. For now she slept in a Moses basket on a fold-out stand, positioned close enough to Alice’s side of the bed that she could reach out and soothe her back to sleep at the first hint of a restless murmur.

Evie had her own breathing pattern, a rate so rapid it brought to mind someone panting to complete a race, and a distinctive snore that managed to sound enchanting even on the nights when Harry was so tired he wanted to claw out his eyes and fill the sockets with concrete.

There was always a smell of milk in the room, Evie’s signature fragrance, but now Harry realised it was competing with something else: a sour top note of male sweat and stale clothing that had no place in here.

And other breathing. Was he imagining that?

He locked up every muscle, devoted his full attention to listening, listening …

And then the voice of a stranger spoke from the shadows.

‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’

A
lice reacted
with an urgent flailing of limbs. She probably thought she’d overslept and missed a feed. Harry tried to speak, wanting to find a way to keep her silent and still, because it had occurred to him that Alice’s best hope of safety – of
survival
– was if the intruder believed Harry was alone in the room. But the words wouldn’t come, and his rational mind knew it was a ludicrous idea. The street light filtering through the curtains was more than sufficient to see how many people were present.

Three
.

And that thought – the knowledge that his baby daughter was here too – made him sit up in a panic, his mind racing. The bed trembled and Alice groaned and stretched, turning towards the Moses basket.

‘Harry …’

‘Ssshh.’

He rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense of a shadow, a shape, just to the right of the door. It took a step towards the bed as Alice, twisting in his direction, said, ‘She’s sound asleep. Why—?’

‘Look.’ Harry lifted his arm to point, wondering vaguely if he was hallucinating from sleep deprivation.
Oh yes, please: to hear Alice laugh and say there’s no one here but us
.

But Alice didn’t laugh. She sucked in a breath as if to scream, then choked it off, probably acting on the same instinct that had driven Harry’s response: to keep Evie asleep, to protect her, no matter what else happened.

And still the figure waited at the end of the bed. It was a man, tall and broad, but there were no features apparent, nothing visible in the silhouette.

‘Get out of here.’ Harry barely recognised his own voice. He was ashamed of the tremor in it, as if such a weak command could send a burglar packing.

In response the man turned slightly, checking over his shoulder. There was another trickle of laughter. That was when Harry knew this wasn’t a burglary at all.

It was something much, much worse.

I
n what seemed
like an act of dark sorcery, the bedroom door swung open. The overhead light snapped on, a cold dose of reality on a bleak November morning. Both of them jumped at the shock, and Alice just managed to stifle a shriek.

A second man entered the room. He was shorter and thinner than the first, but otherwise looked the same. They were dressed in black overalls, along with thin leather gloves, and latex masks – a clown face on the first man, and Freddy Krueger on the second.

Their footwear was covered with plastic bags, secured around the ankles with rubber bands. When he saw that, Harry’s terror jumped to a whole new level. The fact that they’d covered not just their hands and faces but their
shoes
, their entire bodies wrapped up to avoid leaving traces of DNA: these men weren’t amateurs. They knew exactly what they were doing.

M
aybe Alice had picked
up on that; maybe she was choosing to ignore it. ‘J-jewellery box,’ she stuttered. ‘On the dressing table. T-take it, and go.’

The second man snorted, the noise muffled by the mask into a weak impression of Darth Vader. In her crib Evie gave a snuffle, and slowly the man turned his head in her direction.

Harry tensed, ready to throw himself across the bed if either of the intruders took a step towards his daughter.

The first man said, ‘Where is he?’

Silence.

Harry cleared his throat. ‘What?’

‘Renshaw. Where is he?’

Alice shook her head, perplexed. ‘Who?’

‘Renshaw. Edward Renshaw.’

The tone was impatient, but not particularly nervous. And quite well-spoken, rather than the gruff Estuary accent that Harry had instinctively expected.

He and Alice stared at the two men, then exchanged a baffled glance. It flashed through Harry’s mind that years from now this event might form the basis of a humorous anecdote. They’d make new friends on holiday, and in the course of a boozy evening Alice would say, ‘Tell them about the time those thugs invaded our house in the middle of the night, and it turned out they’d got the wrong address!’

Surfing a wave of relief, he said, ‘We don’t know anyone of that name,’ and Alice overlapped with: ‘Never heard of him.’

The first man looked at each of them in turn. His eyes were barely visible behind the mask but the intensity of his gaze was unmistakable.

‘Edward Renshaw. Early sixties, Middle Eastern. Dark skin, dark hair.’

‘And he’s a fat fucker.’ The second man’s voice was coarser than his partner’s. He held his hand up at shoulder height. ‘About this tall.’

‘He uses other names. Grainger. Miller. And he might call himself Doctor, not Mister.’

‘We don’t know him.’ Harry felt sick with the desire to be believed. ‘This is a mistake.’

‘How long’ve you lived here?’ the second man demanded.

‘Two years, next February.’ Alice sounded so confident that it gave Harry extra strength.

He added: ‘Before us, it was a woman in her eighties. She had to go into a home. Mrs …’

‘Stevens,’ Alice finished for him. ‘Beryl Stevens.’

Harry nodded vigorously. He felt sure they were coming across as honest, genuine people, doing their utmost to be co-operative in extremely stressful circumstances.

Alice was saying, ‘Beryl was a spinster. She lived alone—’

The first man cut her off: ‘You had a parcel.’

H
arry felt
Alice flinch at the interruption, her knee jerking against his leg. He glanced at her, worried that in desperation she’d invent a lot of nonsense to send them away. She was staring rigidly at the man in the Freddy Krueger mask, who had taken something from the pocket of his overalls.

A knife.

‘Some time this week,’ the first man said. ‘The parcel was addressed to Mr E Grainger.’

Evie was stirring, kicking at her blankets. The bright light and the noise must have woken her. In any case, she was due a feed pretty soon: according to the bedside clock, it was a little after three a.m.

‘Why would we get a parcel for this Grainger, or Renshaw?’ Harry tried to sound defiant rather than angry. ‘He doesn’t live here. We have no idea who he is.’

‘It came to this address. 34 Lavinia Street.’

Alice raised her hand, as if in a classroom. ‘You realise there’s also a Lavinia
Drive
in Brighton? And a Lavinia Crescent. The post can get mixed up. We’ve had junk mail for 34 Lavinia Crescent before now.’

The first man sighed, as though she and Harry were testing his patience. ‘I don’t think you appreciate how serious this is.’

His partner nodded. ‘They need a lesson.’

For a moment Harry didn’t understand: in the shock, his brain had seized up. It wasn’t until the second man took a step towards the Moses basket that he got it.

Hurting Evie: that was the lesson.