Alex Barclay - The Caller

Anna had taken it well. She was so touched by the effort Joe had made, she hadn’t made a fuss. But over the months that followed, Joe would hear random shouts from around the house when things broke or handles came off or heads were banged against surprise corners.

‘It’s only me,’ said Joe, always reassuring her every time he came home. ‘Hey,’ he said, kissing her on the lips. ‘How you doing? You look cute.’ Anna was small, with sallow skin and pale green eyes. She was barefoot and dressed in jeans and a black tank. She shrugged. ‘I’m OK.’ She ran her hand over the back of her hair, trying to flatten the tangles.

‘Did you call Chloe in the end?’ he said.

‘You are not going to believe my luck,’ she said.

‘Luck?’

‘Yes. The photographer from yesterday has a new girlfriend, who is, maybe, twenty-two. Anyway, she styled the whole thing. He offered her as a solution to Chloe, which she had to accept, because she had inconvenienced him. And I’m not fired.’

‘You are kidding me.’

‘You thought I’d be fired?’ She smiled.

‘No. But Chloe is…’

‘I know. But she’s schizophrenic. We’ve agreed she pushed me into the shoot, so for now I can just stay working from home.’

‘That’s… wonderful.’

‘I know.’

‘Honey,’ said Joe. ‘I just want you to know… I love you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I love you too.’

‘And I feel…’

‘You feel?’

‘Just…’ He shrugged. ‘I guess I feel…’

They could hear keys in the front door and voices in the hallway.

‘He’s back early,’ said Anna, leaning out towards the sound.

Shaun walked into the kitchen, throwing his book bag on the floor.

‘Mom, Dad, this is Tara.’

It almost killed Joe not to flash a look at Anna. Tara was about seventeen, blonde, five foot nine, painfully thin and in very low cut jeans and a skinny yellow T-shirt. An oversized pink bag hung on her forearm.

‘Hey,’ said Tara. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘You too,’ said Joe.

‘Yes,’ Anna managed.

‘I’d shake hands but I, like, just got these,’ said Tara, wiggling her fingers and a new set of sparkling acrylic nails.

‘They’re very pretty,’ said Anna.

‘ I thought so,’ said Tara. ‘My dad is, like, having a pool party tonight. I live with my dad. So I so had to do something outrageous. There’s some, like, TV guy friend of his coming. And that’s what I want to do – TV. So we were, like, in the city earlier.’ Every statement sounded like a question. She smiled at Shaun. ‘We were bikini shopping.’

Shaun tried to smile back. ‘I got some CDs.’

‘Did you find anything, Tara?’ said Anna.

‘I did,’ she said, swinging a miniature paper bag from its white rope handles. She started by pulling out a red string that turned into a bikini top, then dug in again and pulled out a small pair of red hipster shorts.

‘Wow,’ said Anna.

‘Yeah,’ said Joe, turning quickly towards the fridge.

‘Oh and check this out,’ said Tara, rubbing a hand up her tanned arm. ‘This is this new fake stuff? Instant but waterproof. SplashBronze. You should try it.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Anna.

‘We’re going to my room,’ said Shaun.

‘OK, bye,’ said Tara, with a little wave.

‘Would you like to stay for supper?’ said Anna.

Tara glanced at the cubed beef. ‘Ew, no thank you!’ she said. ‘I mean, you know, I don’t do red meat. Just white. Or fish. Some fish. Red Snapper and stuff that doesn’t taste very fishy.’ She shrugged and followed Shaun into the hallway, about to slip her hand into his jeans’ pocket until she remembered her new nails.

Joe walked back to Anna, drinking from a carton of juice.

‘What do you, like, think and stuff?’ said Joe.

Anna shook her head, smiling. ‘Hooker.’

‘How do you really feel?’

She shrugged. ‘What can I say?’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s weird. He looks so unhappy and it’s like she doesn’t even notice.’

‘Or care.’

‘Hey, she could be a hooker with a heart.’

Anna laughed. ‘I want him to be happy again. His poor sad eyes.’ She shook her head. ‘To her, he’s just this handsome-’

‘Poor kid.’

Anna laughed. ‘She’s going to try that bikini on for him up there.’

‘Want me to go break it up?’

Anna laughed as he grabbed her from behind and kissed her cheek.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘she’s not my type.’

‘She’s not Shaun’s type either.’

‘Teenage boys don’t have types. That’s their mothers’ job.’

‘I would never expect him to go for anyone I’d like.’

They both went quiet, thinking of Shaun’s girlfriend Katie. She was a girl the whole family had fallen in love with.

Joe and Danny sat in the hot, cramped back room of the post office where the letter had been mailed. A small television screen ran black and white video footage of the mailboxes inside the building. An over-excited manager hovered around behind them.

After a quarter of an hour, Joe turned around to him.

‘Hey… Simon, if you want to leave us here doing our thing, we’ll call you if we see anything we need your help with.’

‘Sure,’ said Simon. ‘Absolutely. No problem. I’ll be right outside.’

‘Yeah, thanks,’ said Danny.

‘God bless him,’ said Joe.

‘I fucking hate this shit,’ said Danny pointing to the screen. ‘I have nightmares about video tapes. Watching the same thing over and over and over until I lose my mind, I’m in a fucking straitjacket.’

They watched in silence for ten minutes.

‘We’re looking for someone mailing a single small envelope between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. OK – here’s one guy,’ said Joe. ‘Let’s still that. Go bring Simon back.’

Simon rushed in ahead of Danny. ‘You got something?’

‘Do you know this guy?’ said Joe.

Simon put his face within three inches of the screen, then shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sorry. No. Do you want me to bring any of the others in?’

‘Yeah, that would be great,’ said Joe.

No-one recognized the man. Or the nine other men and five women who mailed letters around the same time. Danny wrote down all the relevant frames on the footage and they took the tape with them. TARU – the Technical Assistance Response Unit – had sent equipment to Manhattan North, so they could transfer the tape to DVD and print stills when they got back to the office.

‘OK,’ said Danny. ‘We still doing Chelsea?’

‘Yup.’

Dawg On It Pet Accessories was a long, skinny building between a closed tapas bar and a men’s T-shirt store on Eighth Avenue.

‘We’re too early,’ said Danny, pointing at the poodle-shaped hours of business sign and wandering into the T-shirt store instead. Joe followed him in. It was small and crammed with free-standing circular rails, wall-mounted rails and shelves of T-shirts. A hanging metal rack behind the counter was stuffed full of greetings cards. A three-foot long CD rack filled with hundreds of CDs behind glass was mounted like a shelf behind the counter with a sticker that said, In Emergency Break Glass. Resting on top, was an iPod hi-fi.

Danny pushed hard through the rails on the wall and pulled out a navy T-shirt.

‘Kind of cool,’ he said to Joe. ‘I need something for the weekend.’

He went to the counter and took out his wallet.

‘I’m going out on a limb here,’ said the guy behind the counter. ‘But would I be right in saying you two are not, like, together?’

‘That would be right,’ said Joe.

‘And you never would be.’

‘He’s not my type,’ said Danny.