The Magpies: A Psychological Thriller by Mark Edwards
We came home in a state of shock. At the time, I believed Chris’s story. I went into a period of mourning for my best friend. I didn’t see Chris or Lucy for a while. The next time we had contact with them was when the hoaxes and threats started.
You see, that’s what they do. They hurt – or kill – someone you care for in order to make you weak. And then they move in for the kill. Your friend was lucky that he didn’t die. I imagine Chris and Lucy were rather upset by that. But you were still worried about him, and therefore you weren’t at full strength. You were still vulnerable enough for them to attack you.
Over the next year they waged a campaign of hatred against us. The letters and hoaxes I could put up with (in fact, as with yourselves, the hoaxes had begun before that trip to the beach – taxis turning up all hours of the day, which led to us being blacklisted by a lot of firms, and endless parcels). It was the other stuff that eventually drove us out.
They played recordings. Every night, almost all night long, they played these awful recordings of people whispering or screaming, talking or shouting. God, I can hear them now. On and on and on they went, getting inside your head until you thought the voices were actually originating inside your head. You could never quite make out what the voices were saying. Sometimes you could make out a line of dialogue, but because the volume was just too low, you started to make things up yourself. I thought I could hear Angela talking to me, asking me to help her, telling me she was still under the sea, drowning. Sometimes the voices sounded foreign, or they would let out ear-piercing screams in the dead of night. It was indescribably awful. Chris and Lucy had devised a way of torturing us, and it worked. In the end, we had to wear headphones in bed and listen to music. By then, though, it was too late. The damage had been done.
I went to the police and showed them the letters. I told them about the recordings. I asked them to come round in the night to listen to what we had to endure, but they never did. They thought I was making it up – especially when I accused Chris of murdering my friend. I saw bulbs light up above their heads. This mad woman – who spoke in a whisper – was upset with her neighbour because he had been involved in an accident with her best friend, and she blamed him. It was an easy conclusion to reach.
Jamie paused. Why were the police so useless? When he had complained about the Newtons, shouldn’t the police have looked them up in their records and seen that other people had complained before? Dodds had seemed sympathetic, but he hadn’t done his work properly, had he? It was a joke.
He read on.
Eventually, after months of torment, I couldn’t bear it any more. I was having violent dreams in which I attempted to kill Lucy and Chris and always failed. My psychiatrist told me I should move. I think one of the worst things was knowing that Chris was free, even though I was sure he was a murderer. I saw him nearly every day. He was a constant reminder of my loss.
I guess I have gone on at length, after all. I suppose I should be feeling some sort of catharsis now, but I don’t. In fact, I feel worse.
I really wish I could help you in some way, but I’m simply not strong enough to come down there. You could show this letter to the police to back up your story, but I don’t want to talk to them again about it. All I want is to forget.
In answer to your question – no, we didn’t ever give a key to the flat to Lucy and Chris. I thank God we didn’t.
Please don’t write back to me. Like I said, I want to forget. It’s going to take a long time, but I hope I might get there in the end. We both, however, wish you luck. My advice is to get out, go far away. But if you find a way of making Lucy and Chris pay for what they’ve done, I’ll be cheering you all the way – even if I do have to remain invisible in the background.
With very best wishes
Letitia and David
Jamie put the letter down. Thoughts refused to knit together properly in his head. Somehow, though, he knew, all this could have been avoided. If only.
It was too late for if only.
Suddenly, he had to get out of the flat. The rooms felt haunted. He put his coat on and ran out into the hallway. He collided with Mary and knocked her backwards, almost forcing her to lose her balance.
‘Jamie, mind where you’re… Hey, are you alright?’
He couldn’t speak. He just stood there, staring at her, mute.
‘Jamie, what’s happened? What’s wrong?’
He still couldn’t speak or move. He seemed to have gone into some sort of catatonic state.
‘Jamie? Wake up?’
He blinked at her, and she slowly came into focus. ‘Mary,’ he whispered.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s get you back in your flat.’
‘No! I don’t want to.’
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
He shook his head.
‘OK, come on. Let’s get you upstairs.’
She led him up the stairs. He was in a trance, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on Mary’s sofa, beside Lennon, who was purring steadily. Mary bent over him and offered him a mug of hot, steaming liquid. Jamie sniffed it. Some kind of herbal tea. Ugh.
‘What’s the matter, Jamie?’ she said.
‘It’s…everything.’
‘Has something happened to Kirsty?’
He shook his head. ‘She’s gone. She left me.’
She nodded. He guessed she had probably figured that out already. After all, Kirsty hadn’t been around for a while.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she said.
He sipped the tea. He was beginning to feel a little calmer, but his mind was still racing, remembering what he had read in Letitia’s letter. ‘You remember I asked you for the address of Letitia and David? I received a letter from them today.’
Mary shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. What’s that got to do with Kirsty?’
‘No. It’s not Kirsty – it’s Lucy and Chris.’
‘What about them?’
He sighed. And then he told Mary everything, right from the beginning: from the first hoax, when the fire brigade turned up at his party, through the dead rats (‘I’m embarrassed to admit that I suspected Lennon at first,’ he said) and the letters and Paul’s supposed accident and the spiders and Kirsty’s miscarriage, all the way through to the second incident with the fire brigade. The only bit he left out was the part about the men he had given the money to. He was too ashamed to tell her about that.
After he had finished telling her she was silent for a while. Eventually she said, ‘My God, Jamie. I had no idea. I knew you were having some sort of problems, but I thought maybe it was just the worry of starting a family. I’ve never liked Lucy and Chris. I always thought there was something a bit nasty about them, but I really didn’t think–’ She shrugged. ‘Well, who would? It’s not the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen in real life, is it?’
‘I know.’
‘Poor Kirsty. Poor you.’
‘And Letitia and David too. The letter I got from them today explained that they’d been through pretty much the same as us.’
‘I always thought something had happened to them. They were so happy when they moved in. I remember Letitia coming up here and telling me how excited they were to have found the flat. I knew about Letitia’s friend dying, and I thought that was what made them want to move away. I feel so stupid. Maybe if I’d known, I could have helped.’
At that moment, Lennon walked into the room, sparking a memory in Jamie’s head. ‘You know when Lennon went missing and you were really worried about him? I saw him with Lucy. In fact, I’m sure she was keeping him in their flat.’
Mary’s mouth dropped open.
‘I expect she knew how worried you’d be and got a kick out of it.’
On cue, the cat jumped onto Mary’s lap and she wrapped her arms around him.
‘Perhaps you could help me now,’ Jamie said.
‘Of course. Anything.’
He put down his drink. He had only drunk half of it
‘Isn’t that enough? Surely if you remind the police about Letitia’s friend…’
‘No, because there’s no evidence. It would never stand up in court. It wouldn’t even get to court. I need something more. I’m certain that if I get into their flat I’ll find it.’
Mary nodded. ‘So what can I do?’
‘I need them out of the way for an hour or so. Maybe you could ask them to dinner or something.’
‘But, Jamie, they don’t like me.’
‘I know. Lucy says you’re a witch.’
Mary raised an eyebrow. ‘Does she indeed. I wish I was. I’d turn her into a mouse and let Lennon play with her.’
Jamie laughed.
Mary said, ‘I’ve got an idea. Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.’
She left Jamie on his own and left the flat. She was gone for over half an hour, leaving him twiddling his thumbs, wishing he had his cigarettes with him. He chewed his fingernails, trying to work out another way to get into the flat if Mary couldn’t help him. What was she doing? He had a sudden horrible feeling that she had gone to tell Lucy and Chris what he planned to do; that she was colluding with them. A minute later she came back, and he realised he was being paranoid and ridiculous. She had Brian with her.
Jamie stood up and Brian said, ‘Mary’s just explained everything to me. I just feel sorry that I didn’t know about it before.’
Jamie shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You should have told us, Jamie. We might have been able to help.’
‘I didn’t know you well enough, and anyway, nobody I told ever believed me. Apart from a friend at work.’ Yes, and his attempts to help had ended disastrously.
Brian nodded. ‘We’re here to help you now. We don’t want people like that living in these flats. It makes me feel ill. I quite understand your need to gather evidence, so’ – he looked at the ceiling – ‘as much as it will pain me to have those people eating from our plates and drinking from our cups, Linda and I will invite them to dinner. We’ve always got on alright with them. Obviously, we’re lucky that we don’t live in the flat directly above them.’
Jamie took hold of Brian’s hand and shook it. ‘Thank you so much.’
Mary said, ‘How will you get into the flat?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t break in because I don’t want them to know I’ve been in there.’
‘I think we can help on that score too,’ Brian said. ‘An elderly couple used to live in the basement flat.’
‘Mr and Mrs Chambers,’ said Mary.
‘Yes, and Linda and I were very good friends with them. It was very sad: Mr Chambers died and Mrs Chambers ended up in a home. Anyway, they were quite forgetful – a bit of a scatty old couple, actually. They locked themselves out a couple of times. In the end, they gave me a key in case they did it again. I’ve still got it. I know I should have given it back when they moved out, but I forgot. Luckily.’
‘Problem solved,’ said Mary.
‘Assuming the Newtons accept our dinner invitation.’
Jamie waited while Brian went upstairs and looked for the key. A few minutes later he returned and handed it to Jamie. ‘I just hope they haven’t changed the locks. If you go back to your flat now, I’ll call you and let you know if they’ve accepted the invitation.’
‘OK.’
Before he left, Mary hugged him. ‘We’ll sort this out for you, Jamie. Don’t you worry.’
Later that evening, the phone rang. It was Brian.
‘It’s all set,’ he said. ‘They were delighted to accept. I told them we’d planned a dinner party, even bought all the ingredients, and then our friends had dropped out. They didn’t seem to mind that they were last minute replacements.’
‘So when is it?’
‘Tomorrow night. Seven-thirty.’
Twenty-eight
They had worked out a series of signs. When Lucy and Chris arrived at the top flat, Linda would stamp twice on the kitchen floor. Hearing this, Mary would then ring Jamie, letting the phone ring twice before hanging up. That was his cue.
He sat beside the phone, every muscle in his body tense.
The phone rang. Once, twice. Went dead.
He picked up the key that Brian had given him. His arms felt weak. But there was no way he was going to back out. This had to be done. Chris was a murderer; Lucy his accomplice. Jamie was the only person who could do something about it. He wasn’t really thinking about justice, or the greater good. He wasn’t even thinking about revenge. He merely wanted his life back.
He had decided to wait five minutes before going downstairs. He could imagine Lucy and Chris getting up there then realising they had forgotten something: a bottle of red wine perhaps.. He’d be in the flat and they would come down and find him. He shuddered at the thought.
He watched the clock for five minutes, counting every second, part of him hoping Lucy or Chris would come down the stairs so he wouldn’t have to go through with this. He forced himself to get a grip.
The five minutes were up. He walked out into the hallway, closing the flat door quietly behind him. He opened the front door, gripping the basement flat key firmly in his sweaty palm. It was dark. He had thought about this: it would be OK to turn the lights on in the flat. Lucy and Chris were well out of the way. Unless they leaned out of Brian and Linda’s front window and peered down, they would never see that their lights were on.
He went down the steps to the basement. Now was the first moment of truth. Had they changed the locks since they had moved in? At first he thought the key wasn’t going to fit, but it was because his hand was trembling. It slid into the lock, he turned it and the door opened.
He stepped inside.
He stood in the hallway, thinking that they must surely be able to hear his heart beating from the top flat. There was a strange smell in the air; a smell that had once wafted up to his and Kirsty’s nostrils. He still couldn’t identify it, but it made him feel ill.
The layout of the flat was the same as those above it: living room and kitchen at the front; bedrooms and bathroom at the back. He opened the door to what he knew must be the main bedroom and squinted into the semi-darkness. This bedroom had patio doors which led into the garden. There was something odd about the room. The curtains were open and the moon shone in, creating a little light. It took him a second, while his eyes adjusted, to realise that the room contained only a single bed.
He must have got it wrong - this must be the spare room. And yet when he opened the other bedroom door he saw that this bedroom too only had a single bed in it. Hanging above the bed were pictures of Chris: huge, blown-up pictures. There were tins of men’s deodorant on the bedside table. Mansize tissues; computer magazines. It was clearly Chris’s bedroom.
He closed the door and looked back into the other bedroom. The walls were blank, painted magnolia, no pictures or posters. There were women’s perfumes, make-up on a dressing table, a hi-fi with large speakers. Lucy’s care assistant uniform hung on the front of the wardrobe.
Separate rooms.
He could imagine Lucy lying alone in this bedroom with her phone, recording him and Kirsty making love. Did she get a thrill out of it? Maybe she masturbated while she did it. Was Chris in the room too? Did they play the recordings back for their own private titillation? He felt angry, all of a sudden.
He pulled the door to, a little too firmly. The door banged and he froze, his heart booming.
Jamie noticed another strange thing: there were two televisions. One looked like a normal TV – almost the same as Jamie’s, in fact, with a DVD player underneath it – but the other was in one of those old-fashioned wooden television cabinets, with the doors closed. He could see flickering light around the edges of these closed cabinet doors. Weird. He opened the doors of the cabinet.
It wasn’t an ordinary television. The picture was in black and white, grainy and unclear. The present date and time were displayed in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Jamie realised he was looking at a CCTV monitor which was displaying a live picture of somebody’s living room.