‘Okay. Bye, George,’ said Erika, and she was surprised how sad she was that the cat had gone.
When she came back into the bedroom, the fire was now roaring and crackling in the grate. The wood she had bought from the petrol station sizzled and spat, and she watched as a bright red spark flew out and hit the inflatable mattress.
‘No!’ she cried, realising what was about to happen. There was a hiss as it landed and burned through the thin plastic, leaving a large hole. The mattress began to deflate rapidly, the duvet and pillows sinking down to the level of the old floorboards. ‘Shit.’
Her room was suddenly less cosy. Erika climbed on top of the mattress, which was now flat as a pancake, and tried to get comfortable under the duvet. She was warm, but she could feel every inch of the hard floorboards under her back. After half an hour of tossing and turning, she gave up on trying to sleep and pulled out her phone.
Erika never used the podcast app on her iPhone, but she clicked on it, found the search bar, and tapped in the name ‘Vicky Clarke podcast’。
The podcast graphic came up first in the search results. There was a photo of Vicky standing against a brick wall, wearing a boxy black leather jacket with her arms folded. She was looking into the camera with a grim-set seriousness and above, written in bold red type, was the title: V.A. CLARKE TRUE CRIME DETECTIVE.
It’s a true crime podcast? thought Erika. Why didn’t Tess think to mention this?
There were fifteen episodes uploaded, and each one dealt with a seemingly unsolved crime or series of crimes: arson, vandalism, catfishing. However, one episode caught Erika’s eye and she froze, her mind going back to Charles Wakefield. It read:
THE MYSTERY OF THE CROYDON CAT KILLER.
9
Erika was new to technology – she’d only recently, and reluctantly, bought a smartphone – and it took a moment to work out how to play the podcast. She set the volume, placed her phone on the bedcover, and started to listen.
It began with an eerie echoing tune played on a piano, and as the dying light of the fire played over the ceiling in the small box room, Erika forgot the hard floorboards under her back. Tess had been rather scornful of her sister’s acting abilities during their interview, but Vicky’s spoken introduction surprised her. She commanded the microphone with a strong, engaging broadcast voice.
‘The Croydon Cat Killer is the name given to a mythical figure alleged to have killed, dismembered, and decapitated more than four hundred cats in the United Kingdom. The killing spree began four years ago in Croydon, and has caused fear and terror for the residents of Greater London.
‘In 2014, reports of cats found mutilated in residential areas started to spread out across and around Greater London, and as far north as Manchester. The police immediately launched an investigation, which carried on for several years. Officially, the Met police have stated that the mutilations had not been carried out by a human, and were likely caused by wildlife predation, or scavenging on cats killed in vehicle collisions.
‘However, the killings have continued, and in three cases, a shadowy figure has been caught on CCTV. Many locals, including vets and police officers （who have declined to go publicly on the record）， are still convinced that a sick individual is responsible for these killings. And some worry that this individual might soon transfer their attention to people…’
The sound then cut to an interview with a woman who lived in Shirley, in South London. A spoon rattled in a mug, and a train clacked past on the tracks outside. The audio conjured up the image of a kitchen in small terraced house, the windows looking out over the back garden, perhaps steamed up by the kettle.
‘I’m normally a heavy sleeper,’ said the woman in a broad Kentish accent. ‘But I sat bolt upright when I heard this sound.’
‘What sound did you hear?’ asked Vicky.
‘That awful noise of cats fighting… A terrible curdling yowling. You hear it quite a bit round here… but it stopped, like the sound being cut off. And tha’s what made me think something was wrong… I woke up Des, that’s me ’usband, and I sent him to go and check downstairs. When he opened the door, he found the body of a decapitated cat on the back doorstep. Fresh, it was. He checked the garden with a torch and found fresh muddy footprints, male, sized ten, leading across the lawn to the fence…’
Erika shifted on the mattress, the hard floor bringing her back to the room again. She thought of Charles Wakefield’s bedroom, in his dingy flat. The muddy footprint on his windowsill…