‘What’s stopped?’ Gina frowns.
‘The … harassment, I suppose you’d call it. Although I don’t even know if you would call it that. It’s more nuisance stuff and, like I say, it hasn’t happened for a while.’
‘Right.’ Gina Osbourne looks disappointed. ‘The fact it happened to begin with is fascinating and would make a great article. You can tell our readers about your new book too.’ She smiles, lifting her pale eyebrows in a silent plea.
‘I’m not sure,’ she says. The last thing she wants to do is antagonize the person behind it. It might give them a reason to target her again. ‘I’ll need to check with my publishers.’ And the police.
‘Okay. Fine. I’ll give you my card. Please ring me if you do decide to speak about this. Like I say, it could be great publicity for your new book.’
Emilia takes the card with thanks and pockets it. She waits for the journalist to climb back into her car, then heads into town.
That evening, when Wilfie is tucked up in bed, she expresses her concerns to Elliot. Jasmine is staying the night at Nancy’s and it’s just the two of them, relaxing with a glass of wine in front of a drama on the TV that they are only half watching. She has already changed into an ivory silk nightdress that she knows is Elliot’s favourite, and she has her legs on his lap. He’s rubbing her bare calf, making it hard for her to concentrate.
‘Do you think I should speak to this journalist?’
‘Did you ask your publicist?’
‘I spoke to her this morning. She agreed about it being good publicity but said I should only do it if I feel comfortable. But I don’t know how I feel. I keep oscillating. My main worry is pissing off the person behind this.’
‘It might stop them,’ says Elliot, softly, his eyes like liquid chocolate in the half-light. ‘They might have the exposure they wanted. Needed. Maybe you should say the police are involved and that might scare them – I’m sure they’ll be reading any press coverage.’
Emilia takes a large sip of her Chardonnay. Louise had rung her last week and told her she was putting her in touch with a colleague who worked in stalking cases: DC Anthony Haddock. He’d come over to the house yesterday and had sat patiently at her kitchen table while she recounted everything. He was youngish – younger than her anyway – with light brown hair, a freckled, boyish face and very slim wrists. He didn’t look like a detective or strong enough to be able to protect anyone. He hadn’t seemed particularly worried and told her she was doing all the right things by installing cameras and alarms but to let him know immediately if anything else was to happen. She had rung him earlier to ask his advice about the press interview and he didn’t seem to think it would do any harm.
‘True,’ she says now, to Elliot, swirling her wine around in the glass. ‘I’ll say whatever I can to scare them.’
He leans forwards and kisses her lightly on the lips. ‘Come on, let’s have an early night.’ He takes her hand and leads her out of the room. She’s surprised that he’s left the wine glasses on the coffee-table and instructs Alexa to turn off the lights.
They’ve peeled off each other’s clothes and are falling into bed when Elliot’s phone flashes up.
‘Ignore it,’ she murmurs, but he sits up. A shaft of moonlight from the slatted blinds falls onto his body, illuminating his muscular shoulders.
‘I can’t. It’s the Ringcam. There’s an alert that someone is on our driveway.’
The desire she’d been feeling only moments before evaporates and a cold sweat breaks out over her body. She sits up too, her heart pounding. Elliot is staring intently at the screen on his phone. Their bedroom window looks out onto the back garden and Elliot jumps out of bed, naked, grabs his dressing-gown from the back of the door and pulls it on as he rushes from the room. ‘Stay here. I’ll go into Jasmine’s room and look out of her window.’
She stares after his retreating back, too scared to move. Maybe it’s just a neighbouring cat, or some form of wildlife, she tells herself hopefully, but her heart is banging so hard in her chest she’s scared she’ll have a cardiac arrest. She takes a few deep breaths, but when Elliot doesn’t return she can bear it no longer. Picking up her nightdress from where it has been discarded on the floor, she throws it on and creeps out of the bedroom, popping her head around Wilfie’s door where he’s thankfully fast asleep, and into her daughter’s room.
Elliot is standing at the window with the shutters pulled back. The room is dark and his face is in shadow.
‘Is anyone there?’ she whispers, coming up behind him.
‘I’m not sure. I think so …’
Her mouth goes dry. ‘Shall I call the police?’
‘Just wait …’ He looks down at his phone, then back out of the window. ‘Look, can you see? There …’
She steps in front of him, her legs trembling, to get a better look. ‘I don’t know, I …’ And then her heart pounds even harder. Further down the street there is a figure, dressed in black, standing under a tree and looking towards their house. They are too far away for Emilia to make them out clearly. ‘Oh, God, El. Who is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he whispers. ‘I think they must have come onto our driveway. But it was almost like they knew where the camera was because they seemed to avoid it so that only their shoulder was in view.’
‘Do you think they can see us?’
‘Hopefully,’ he says. ‘I’m tempted to go down there and confront them myself.’
He goes to move away but she grabs his arm. ‘No, El. They could be dangerous.’ She’s relieved when the figure turns away and walks off down the street, disappearing around the corner.
‘They’ve gone.’ Elliot exhales and pulls her into him. She buries her face in his chest. ‘Let me look back on the phone,’ he says, taking his arm away and scrolling through the screen on his mobile. ‘Look, there …’ He shows her the grainy footage. It’s dark and raining, making the picture fuzzy, but she can clearly see a figure walking out of their driveway, then standing in the street, hands in pockets, looking back at the house. Whoever it is wears a dark hooded overcoat. ‘Can’t see their face. Just their back and shoulder.’
‘What about going back further, when they first walked in?’ says Emilia. ‘We should be able to see the face then.’
‘Well, that’s the odd thing,’ he says, frowning at the screen. ‘There is no footage of them walking onto the driveway. Just them leaving. I’ve rewound right back. So I don’t know how they came in …’ he looks up and her insides turn to ice when she notices his troubled expression ‘… or when.’
21
I spend the next day holed up in my office at the station going through everything I know about the praying-mantis murders and checking my notes from the last time he had struck – that we know of – in February 2005. I was still on the case back then. Belinda Aberdale was found in her bedroom in a Plymouth suburb, similar to the one where Trisha Banks was recently killed. Her husband and kids had gone on holiday and she’d stayed behind, was due to follow them the next day. She never got the chance. Belinda, like the others, had been stabbed, tied up and the insect marking carved into her ankle.