Cath Staincliffe: Dead Wrong

‘No. Sometimes he’d do two days in a row and then nothing for a few days then he’d turn up again.’

‘No particular pattern?’

She thought for a moment, shook her head.

‘Do you work every day?’

‘No, I do Wednesday, Thursday and Saturdays, sometimes an extra day if one of the girls is sick or there’s stocktaking.’

‘Did you tell anyone at work about it?’

‘Yeah, they all knew. Jean, that’s the manageress, she went and had a word with him a couple of times, asked him to move on. He’d go off but, he’d be there again when I came out, or I’d see him on the way to the bus. It just went on and on.’ Her composure broke. ‘It’s awful,’ she protested, her face crumpling, ‘I keep thinking it must be me, something I’ve said or done. Why is he doing this?’

‘You don’t know him?’

‘No, I’ve no idea who he is.’

‘Does he seem at all familiar? Someone you might have met and forgotten?’

‘No, I’m pretty good with faces. I’ve never seen him, I’m sure.’

‘Has he ever spoken to you, approached you?’

‘Not then but later.’

‘Go on.’

‘About a month after it had all started, I’d had enough. It’s so…’ she paused, finding the right word, running her thumb along the chain and back. ‘It’s creepy, it becomes the most important thing, it gets in the way of everything else.’ She took a breath and exhaled slowly. ‘So, I went up to him, at the bus stop. I told him to leave me alone, to stop following me or I’d report him to the police.’

She swallowed, opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t. She ducked her head. When she did speak, it was a whisper; I strained to catch it. ‘He knew my name.’ She looked up and repeated herself, her voice breaking, high with panic. ‘He knew my name. “Debbie,” he said, that really freaked me out. How did he know my name?’ she cried out.

I waited.

“Don’t be like this,” he said, “you know how much you mean to me.”’ She blushed. ‘It was awful. “I love you,” he said. “You know that.” I couldn’t stand it. I just ran then, to the bus. The next day this letter came, pages and pages of stuff about how much I meant to him and how long he’d waited to find me, on and on.’ She shook her head in disbelief.

‘Have you got the letter?’

‘No, it made me feel dirty. I chucked it. There was no address or anything. It was posted in Manchester.’

‘Was it signed?’

‘Just the initial, G. There’ve been others since. I realised I’d better keep them, for evidence.’ She rose and crossed to a wall cupboard and pulled out a large manila envelope. From inside it she took a bundle of letters. Thick, inky script, closely written. I read two and learned nothing other than that the writer G was obsessed with Debbie, was convinced they would eventually be together and live happily ever after. The language was clichéd and sentimental. I also noticed there was no specific references in them, no mention of other people, of Debbie’s children, no places and nothing that gave any clue to the writer’s identity. It was all generalities like a badly written gift card going on for six pages at a time. The paper and envelopes were cheap – the sort sold at bargain discount outlets.

‘Are they all like this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I keep a couple?’

‘You can have the lot as far as I’m concerned,’ she said bitterly. ‘I can’t stand having them in the house.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I can keep them somewhere safe, they may be useful evidence.’ She passed me the large envelope. ‘Mrs Henderson says he’s been here too.’

‘Yes, just the last three weeks. That’s when I went to the police. They said there was nothing they could do, that there’s no law against it. But they said I could see a lawyer, maybe try getting some evidence of harassment.’

‘When has he been here? Day or night?’

‘Both. The first time, Sunday it was, I was taking the children to church. He was across the road by the alley, leaning on that wall.’

I went over and looked through the nets. Almost directly opposite there was a cobbled alleyway between two terraces leading to the back alleys.

‘I didn’t let on, I didn’t want the children to know. He’d gone when we came back. Then a few days later, the Tuesday it was, my Mum had come round for her tea. I rang for a taxi to take her back, and I kept looking out so we wouldn’t miss it, and he was there. Just staring, watching the house.’ She caught her breath. ‘I asked Mum to stay and I called the police. They sent someone round but he’d gone by the time they arrived.’

‘Was he driving?’

‘I never saw a car.’

‘Describe him to me.’

I made notes as she spoke. Medium height, slim build, dark hair thinning on top, curly round the edges. Clean-shaven. Wears suit, neither flash nor ancient. Slightly out of date, ordinary dark suit, shirt, tie. Carries black umbrella. Age early thirties? Hard to tell.

‘Has he spoken to you again?’

‘Sometimes he calls out after me; sometimes he gets on the bus.’ She chewed on her chain. ‘It’s awful,’ she blurted out, ‘I can’t stand him. I just want him to go away. I’ve never done anything to him – why’s he doing this to me?’

I’d no answers, only more questions. ‘Has he ever threatened you?’

She shook her head. ‘But the whole thing is threatening,’ she complained. ‘It’s as if he’s hunting me, getting closer all the time…’ there was panic in her voice.

Stalking, that’s the word they use. The man pursuing Debbie was a stalker.

‘It must be terrible,’ I agreed quietly, ‘and you’re obviously very frightened. It is a frightening situation. What we need to do now is gather evidence; if we can get some clear proof, it’ll help the police even if it can’t actually go to court. They might be able to scare him off. You’ve already got the letters, now we need to keep a record of everything else, so we can show the level of harassment he’s subjecting you to. The next time you see him, ring me, no matter what time it is. If I can come I will.’ I gave her my card and wrote my home number on the reverse. ‘Try this number if the answerphone’s on or I don’t answer the mobile.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll take photos, maybe even use video, and I’ll follow him – find out where he lives and who he is.’

She saw me to the door. I motioned to the array of locks and bolts. ‘You’ve made the house secure – that’s good. But he’s not likely to hurt you,’ I tried to reassure her. ‘I realise it’s an awful strain but it’s very unlikely he’ll use violence against you.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘that’s what Mrs Henderson told me. But it doesn’t change what it feels like. I’m really scared; he’s hurting me already, it’s messing my life up.’ I could hear that panic again. Then she whispered: ‘I’m so frightened.’

Yeah, so would I be, I thought, and I would take great satisfaction in running the little creep to ground.

‘Mummy,’ Maddie stood in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips. ‘There’s a gigantic slug in the sandpit.’

‘Is there?’ I emptied the washing machine. Too late to peg it all out now but the forecast for the morning looked promising.

‘Come and get it out now.’

‘And slug poo,’ Tom shouted from outside.

‘It’s nearly bedtime,’ I warned them.

I scooped the brown and orange slug onto a trowel. It shrunk to a glistening lump of muscle and I dropped it into one of the beer traps I’d got dotted round the garden. At Tom’s insistence I removed the slug poo too and put that on the soil.