Watched: When Road Rage Follows You Home (14 page)

In truth, Charlie didn’t know how to deal with confrontation. At work, he was in a position of authority and people, for the most part, listened to him. Being bullied as an adult was a strange experience – what do you do?

He emerged onto the parallel road, squinting towards the shiny blue car parked underneath the overhanging tree. Thin threads of sunlight sifted through the packed leaves onto the driveway, creating elaborate shadow puppets on the dusty paving slabs.

Charlie knocked on the front door and waited. As he breathed in, he felt the croak at the back of his throat. It was so rare that he was nervous nowadays that he’d almost forgotten what it was like. There was a tingling around his jawline and he suddenly became very aware of his toes being itchy. It reminded him of being fourteen when he’d asked Jodie Harrison out and she’d said ‘no’.

Some things never left you.

He heard a shuffling from inside and then the door was heaved inwards, sticking in the frame before opening with a pop.

Standing in front of him was a pitbull of a man: short and hunched forward with thick shoulders stretching the fabric of his white T-shirt. His eyes were a grey-blue colour and bored through Charlie as if trying to nail him to a wall. He was clearly the same man from the photo in the paper but his demeanour was entirely different – he was angling his body aggressively, ready to go to war.

His shoulders arched up into a shrug, almost exactly as the woman’s had the last time Charlie was at the house: ‘Whatcha want?’

‘Are you Dougie?’

‘Who’s asking?’

Charlie pointed towards the car. ‘I understand you’ve been having a few problems with my wife.’

A smirk flickered momentarily across Dougie’s face before disappearing. Behind him, the woman from before appeared in the hallway, scowl still imprinted on her face. The bruise had now cleared but her face was so gaunt her eyes were in natural shadow anyway.

Before Dougie could reply, she began shouting, prodding a finger towards Charlie. ‘That’s the perv I was telling you about, Doug. Comes round here, trying to look at my tits, going on about summat to do with his missus.’

Dougie thrust an arm across her, pushing her back into the house. She appeared to be wearing the exact same clothes as the last time Charlie had been around: tiny denim shorts and a low-cut top that made it almost impossible to look anywhere other than at her chest. For a moment, Dougie seemed angrier with her than Charlie, his body angled hawkishly before he spun back.

‘Look, mate, what’s the problem?’

Charlie tried to sound assertive: ‘You seem to have a problem with my wife and I’d like it to stop – we’re all adults here and I don’t want things to get out of hand.’

Dougie snorted. ‘Out of hand?’

‘You know what I’m talking about.’

The leer slipped across Dougie’s face again. ‘Aye, right mate. What exactly is it you think’s going on?’

‘Following her, leaving things on our drive – you know…’

The woman grunted in derision, causing Dougie to push an arm across her again. ‘Look, mate, it’s not my fault if your missus has a thing for me. I have that effect on women, don’t I babe?’

Now she had been invited to join in, the woman surged forward again, thrusting a finger in Charlie’s direction. ‘Yeah, you tell your bitch-wife that he’s mine and she can’t have him. If you’re not man enough to keep your woman satisfied, that’s your problem.’

Charlie took a breath, unsure how to respond. He didn’t want to get angry, even though he could feel the frustration simmering. He kept running the lines from the article in his mind. How could Dougie be so well respected if this was how he acted? Was it only him and Esther he was like this with?

‘I just want things to stop – we’re only after a quiet life. I know you’ve got your work with the kids too.’

Dougie fired back: ‘Aye, aye, so you’ve been reading up on me then? Spying on us? You better tell your missus to stop coming onto me. What makes you think I’m following her? I’m driving down the road and there she is. I go to the gym and she’s parked there. She’s obsessed with me – perhaps I should get one of those restraining order things?’ He turned to the side. ‘What do you think, Leah?’

‘You don’t need a restraining order, hon, you’ve got me. If I spot her anywhere near here, I’ll scratch her eyes out.’

As Leah looped her arm around Dougie’s waist, Charlie glimpsed towards her, seeing that the real fury was coming from her. Dougie was almost leaning back, puffing his chest out cockily. She was the one thrusting her body ahead.

Charlie opened his arms, trying to relax his body language, not wanting an argument. ‘What can I say?’

‘About what?’ Dougie replied.

‘Can we leave everything here?’

‘Aye, pal. You tell your missus to stop coming onto me and I’ll see what I can do.’

The edges of Dougie’s lips curled upwards again, wanting Charlie to dispute it and defend his wife’s honour. Instead, he took a step backwards knowing it had been a bad idea to come here. Esther had been right: you couldn’t reason with some people and all he’d achieved was letting Dougie know that he’d got to them.

Charlie turned to walk away but Leah spat a send-off, the venom in her voice resonating across the otherwise silent street. ‘You tell that bitch-wife of yours that if she ever comes near my man, then I’ll rip her fuckin’ ears off.’

SEVENTEEN: CHARLIE

Charlie leaned back into his office chair and scrolled backwards through the security camera footage, before pressing play and watching it for the fourth time. He thought he’d been getting somewhere at work with hotel staff beginning to understand what was expected and steadily improving their performances.

That had all come crashing down when he’d arrived that morning.

Roughly at the same time as he’d been trying to reason with Dougie the previous evening, two men had walked into the hotel, taken the large television from the wall in the bar, and walked out with no-one thinking to question them. The theft was so simple that even watching the footage of it seemed like a spoof. An estate car had pulled up outside the front entrance with two men in matching overalls and white flat caps climbing out. They walked through reception into the bar, heading straight for the sixty-inch television pinned to the wall. With a person at either end, they lifted it away, returning to the car and shunting it onto the back seat. As one of them got into the driver’s seat, the other went back to the bar, scooped the power cable and remote control from the floor, offered a cheery wave to the barman and then left.

The barman’s only explanation for not challenging them was, ‘They had overalls on’, which hardly marked them down as expert criminals or masters of disguise. After calling the police first thing, Charlie was still waiting for an officer to arrive, his list of things to do that day long since fallen to the wayside.

After checking the clock and realising he’d already wasted four hours, Charlie turned back to the computer staring at the search window, knowing he should resist temptation.

Esther had barely spoken a word to him the previous evening. They watched television for an hour or so but neither of them was particularly interested. After he’d gone to bed, he listened to her moving around the ground floor checking the doors and windows before doing the same upstairs. As he’d lain on his side pretending to sleep, she’d even played with the window in their room before finally slipping into bed.

It was at the point where he couldn’t say anything because she was so edgy and self-conscious that he’d make things worse.

The empty search box continued to stare out at him from the screen until Charlie eventually caved, typing in ‘Dougie’ and the name of their estate. He skim read the top few sites but nothing seemed to fit the person he was looking for. Next he tried ‘Leah’, which threw up three newspaper articles.

The first was a short court report from eight months previous:

Leah Makerfield, 27, of Green Tree Road was yesterday fined £65 after pleading guilty to being drunk and disorderly outside of the Pear Tree public house on 4 November last year.

Charlie moved onto the second piece:

A woman was yesterday ordered to do 40 hours of unpaid work and pay £100 compensation after pleading guilty to assaulting a stranger inside The Pink Heart nightclub last June.

Leah Makerfield, 27, of Green Tree Road, was caught on CCTV cameras hitting Kimberly Davidson in the back of the head with a high-heeled shoe in the early hours of 12 June last year.

Ms Davidson, 30, sustained bleeding and bruising to her head but was otherwise unharmed in the attack. The incident happened after the assailant took exception to Ms Davidson speaking to her boyfriend at the bar. Camera images show Ms Makerfield removing her shoe, then running at the victim and striking her three times before security guards intervened.

The third piece was from two years previous and even more enlightening:

A couple who broke into an empty house were yesterday found guilty on six counts of theft.

Douglas Jamieson, 26 and girlfriend Leah Makerfield, 25, from Green Tree Road, smashed a window of a house in the Fetherington area of the town and stripped out valuable metal.

The duo, likened by the prosecution in court to a ‘modern-day Bonnie and Clyde’, were spotted exiting the rear of the house by a neighbour, who called the police.

Police apprehended the pair on a canal path and, when challenged about the contents of their backpacks, they claimed to have found the metal underneath a bush and were on their way to hand it in at the local police station.

Magistrates threw out the defence and imposed a six-month curfew on the pair.

Charlie printed off the final article, reading it three times before folding it into his jacket pocket. The second piece was something he wouldn’t tell Esther about – there was no point in scaring her, especially as Leah seemed to think she had a thing for Dougie.

Charlie visited the Land Registry’s website and searched for the address instead. A short time later, for a small fee, he had the name of the homeowner – and it wasn’t Dougie or Leah.

Another search revealed that the proprietor, Aaron Staniforth, was a builder. From what Charlie could see, Staniforth bought houses at auction, did them up, and then either sold them on or rented them out. He was also easy to contact, with an address and phone number listed on his company’s website.

With everything written down, Charlie spent a few minutes staring at the phone on his desk trying to think of reasons why he shouldn’t call. Leah was clearly a thug and Dougie a bully. Then the thought struck him that the landlord could be just as bad.

Before he could do anything else, the police turned up. Charlie took them on the tour, watched the staff interviews, gave his own statement, and then handed over the security footage. With all of that done and the entire day written off, he told the night manager he was leaving early as he’d worked through lunch and then drove to Staniforth’s office.

The industrial estate was a couple of miles out of town: a mix of huge warehouses and factories, with smaller U-shaped red-brick complexes that had large car parks in the centre. Each of the buildings were divided into individual offices, with large signs at the front displaying the list of occupying companies.

Staniforth Buildings And Properties had an office on the end of a rank with a simple red and white banner over the top of the door. Charlie knocked, peering through the glass at a blonde secretary who pressed a button to unlock the office.

Inside, the walls were decorated with large photographs of houses in various states of repair alongside rows of framed certificates. Charlie barely had time to take in the surroundings before the secretary coughed to get his attention: She was sitting behind a desk, wearing a smart blouse, her long hair tied into a ponytail.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked frostily.

‘I was hoping to speak to Mr Staniforth.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘Not exactly… ’

She peered up from the desk over a set of thick-rimmed glasses at him. ‘That’s a “no” then.’

‘Right.’

The secretary turned back to her computer, tapping at the keyboard. ‘What is it in relation to?’

‘It’s a little delicate. I’d rather talk to him directly.’

‘Are you one of his tenants?’

‘No.’

She tutted in annoyance. ‘I’m afraid all appointments have to be made in advance. He’s a very busy person. You’re lucky to have caught him in.’

Charlie glanced towards the two closed doors at the back of the office. ‘So he is in then?’

The secretary realised her mistake, tutting again, this time at herself. ‘Regardless, he’s unavailable. If you want to tell me what it’s about, I can make you an appointment for later in the week.’

Charlie reached around for the soft blue seat behind him and made a point of looking at the clock on the wall – it was twenty-to-five. ‘I’ll probably just wait.’

She started to stand. ‘Er, you can’t wait there, Sir. This is private property.’

‘I’ll happily wait outside.’

‘No you won’t.’

Charlie turned towards the front of the office. ‘I don’t think it’s private property out there. Honestly, I only need five minutes of his time.’

The secretary was hovering by the edge of her desk, eyebrows arched in annoyance. She picked up the desk phone and turned away, cupping her hand around the receiver and speaking too quietly for Charlie to hear. As she put it down, a door at the back opened and a man in jeans and a polo shirt strode out. He was a little over six foot, around the same height as Charlie, with greying dark hair and a distinct lack of a builder’s tan. He might have done the manual labour at some point but certainly didn’t seem to now.

Charlie held his hand out to shake but the man didn’t respond.

‘Sorry Mr Staniforth,’ the secretary said.