Page 83 of We Chase Shadows

‘Thank you,’ says Felicity. ‘I shall check both.’

‘Good luck with your search,’ says the desk sergeant. ‘Don’t forget we’re always here if you want to actually report a crime. Although we are closed Wednesdays and Fridays.’

Felicity leaves the station and heads down towards the harbour. She reaches the top end of the alley where Tony was attacked. She hasn’t been back since that night. Looking down the steep passage, Felicity feels her fear rise again, and then she feels her anger rise, which overcomes the fear very nicely. To think that Tony might have been taken away from her. The damage that violent men can inflict on the world. Perhaps it might be fun to be a violent woman?

At first Felicity had told Tony he had to report the attack. Steve is all well and good, but you must let the police find the man with the blond hair. There was no persuading him, however, and Felicity is now glad of that.

Felicity is glad because, now she really thinks about it, she doesn’t want the police to catch the man with the blond hair. She doesn’t even want Steve to catch the man with the blond hair. Felicity wants to catch the man herself.

What she might do if she does catch him she couldn’t yet say. But she knows it will be worse than whatever the police would do. By the time Felicity is finished with him, the man will be praying for a nice, cosy prison cell.

She finds, however, that thought only makes her happy for a few seconds at a time.

A young mother pushing a pram walks by. Felicity looks into the pram, ready to smile, ready to let a rare ray of innocence brighten her day a little. The pram is full of cigarettes, still with their security tags on. Shoplifting is becoming a real problem in Lymington.

Felicity knows that the response to violence shouldn’t be more violence. That’s the type of thinking that tips the whole world into the abyss. But she will never forget the image of Tony slumped against the wall of this alley, blood dripping on to his torn shirt.

Opposite the entrance of the alley there is a small cottage, and Felicity notes that this small cottage has a video doorbell. Anyone who entered at the top of the alleyway that night would have to have walked past this door. The man with the blond hair would have been captured on that very camera.

As for Jakob Eriksson, the man behind it all, Felicity will have to rely on Steve, Amy and Rosie to catch him. That’s going to take more than a Ring doorbell on a Lymington cottage. But Felicity hopes she will get the chance to meet him too, and to see what her response is. She has decided it is probably best to keep that information from Steve, Amy and Rosie for now. She’s paid to be an office manager, not a vigilante.

Felicity rings the doorbell.

42

Job done.

He would like to have stayed longer in Palm Springs, but that’s the way it goes. That’s the job.

There are two queues through security, both short. ‘Jakob Eriksson’ and his deep-burgundy Swedish passport join the ‘Trusted Traveller’ queue. It’s a scheme that speeds you through airports all over the world. ‘Trusted Traveller’ always makes him laugh. If only they knew, eh?

The US Customs and Border Protection officer asks Jakob to look into the camera, and the camera is happy with what it sees. ‘Thank you, Mr Eriksson.’

Trundling his little bag once again, he heads to the First Class lounge. This case has been around the world with him. He looks at the travel stickers plastered over it: Helsinki, Bratislava, Minsk. The things he’s seen. What memories.

It was weird without Korbin. Not that they ever spoke, but it was nice knowing he was there. A layer of protection.

What next? That’s the big question. Hopefully he can spend a bit of time at home now, get on with a few projects.

Entering the lounge, he looks around. There are seven or eight people already seated. A woman on a laptop, two men in baseball caps looking at their phones. An older couple trying to figure out the coffee machine.

He wonders what everyone here does. To afford to be in here. What sort of business do you have to be in to be rich and yet still wear a baseball cap, for example? Tech or entertainment, he supposes. Or actual baseball, of course. He would like to ask, but knows he won’t. There are times he needs to draw attention to himself and times he mustn’t.

What must they think he does? This Jakob Eriksson? This tall, bald man in beige slacks and a tan jacket? What must he look like to them? The lady in the older couple smiles at him as he walks past her, and Jakob Eriksson bows his head to her.

He finds a seat. On the far wall of the lounge a large man is having a conversation on speakerphone. Perhaps the man is hard of hearing and doesn’t realize the whole lounge can hear his asinine conversation about whether Terry had included Dan on the email chain, or whether Susan was lying about the whole thing? Hearing what other people think is important at any given time is a very good lesson in perspective.

The older couple take the table next to him. They’re American, he can hear that. Even quiet Americans have a way of making themselves known. They are talking about their daughter. They don’t see her enough, that’s the husband’s view. But she has a life of her own, and she has to be allowed to live it, that’s the wife talking.

‘Where ya travelling?’

It would be nice to share his travels with someone else every now and again. And not Korbin, that didn’t count.

‘Buddy, where ya travelling?’

He realizes that the man at the next table is talking to him.

‘Oh, LA,’ he says. His voice seems very high, and he realizes that he hasn’t had a single proper conversation in three days. What has there been to talk about? Who has there been to talk to? ‘LA and then back home.’