Chapter 29
“We should go to the police,” Jess says. “This is harassment.”
She’s still in her work clothes—a pale taupe jacket and trousers with a white blouse—as she studies the messages on my phone, index finger scrolling up and down the screen.
As soon as she’d walked in the front door, Callum and Daisy had told her in solemn detail about the story of the pigeon and its burial in the back garden.
Now Leah plays a game of Hungry Hippos with her two younger siblings in the lounge while Jess and I sit at the kitchen table, our heads close together, talking in low voices.
She hands the phone back to me. “It’s obviously a threat.”
“I’ve already left a message with the detective I spoke to before, DC Rubin.”
“Feels like we need to do more than that.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s just that…”
“What?”
“Whoever sent the text doesn’t actually admit to leaving the pigeon, and even if they did, I don’t know if that’s something the police would act on. I mean, for all anyone can say, that bird might have flown into the window or been killed by a cat.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“You don’t really think it was a coincidence, do you? Obviously, it was put there for a reason, hence the texts. A dead bird—it’s disgusting.”
“I agree,” I say. “Just thinking of what the police will probably say.”
“But we could get a restraining order, or something?”
“Against who?”
“There must be something more we can do.” She blows out a heavy breath. “Can they trace the phone number, find out who it is? And what about the evidence—did you take a picture of it?”
“A picture?”
“Of the pigeon.”
I open my mouth to reply, close it again. In between talking to the children about the poor creature, answering their questions about death, and digging a makeshift grave in the flowerbed, I have to admit it hadn’t occurred to me to take a picture.
“I guess I could dig it up again,” I say. “But like I said, whether we have a picture or not, it doesn’t necessarily prove anything. Unless there is a witness who saw someone on the drive today.”
She gives me a bewildered look, her face lined with worry.
“How can you be so calm? This week is just getting more and more weird, like someone is playing with us, toying with us, and any moment they might decide to do something bad. I don’t like it at all.”
“Believe me, I’m as wound up as you are,” I say. “But I also want to figure out the best way to put all of this behind us.”
My wife traces a line on the grooved surface of the old oak kitchen table, the fingertips of her right hand going back and forth, back and forth. She’s silent for a moment, and when she speaks again she won’t look at me.
“What if we just… gave them what they wanted?”
“Hand everything over, you mean?”
“You know me,” she says. “I hate bullies. Hate them. And I hate the fact that they left a dead animal at our front door when they knew our kids would probably be the first to see it coming home from school. But what if we just…” She gives a shrug of resignation.
“What if we let them have what they want? Then do you think they’d go away? Leave us alone?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to confess.
To admit that’s not an option—because the little collection from the hidden room is now in three different locations.
Getting the collar and the key back from Maxine shouldn’t be a problem but I can’t tell her I sold the watch for cash at a jeweler’s shop; can’t tell her about the redundancy without piling more worries on her and opening up a whole new can of worms. I can’t explain the sense of purpose I’ve found these last few days, the chance to right a wrong, to do something good.
Instead, I take the easy way out, a burn of shame at the base of my throat.
“I think if we give in now, they’ll probably be back next week asking for something else.” I put my hand over hers. “For something more.”
I hate lying to my wife. But I can’t tell her the whole truth just yet.
Instead, I tell her that I’ll keep trying DC Rubin until I get through to her, that I’ll look into getting a doorbell camera to capture any more visitors to the house, that I’ll find out who’s behind the threats, and make sure the police act on that information.
Above all else, I promise that I will keep our family safe. Keep our children safe.
“I’m not going to let anything happen,” I say quietly. “I promise.”
It’s not until the younger children are tucked up in bed that I get a chance to have a look at the website Charlie Parish recommended.
I download the photo of Shaun to my laptop and type in the web address for DiscoverImage365 into the browser.
The site advertises itself as the “premium free search service using the latest AI technology to get the results you want.” Charlie had told me it was one of many such sites that would search the internet for images that match the one I’d taken of Shaun in my kitchen, but it occurs to me that this won’t work if Shaun is the kind of person who keeps a low profile, if he’s one of those rare people who’s managed to keep their face off the internet, despite all the different ways it could turn up there.
Still, I guessed people like that were in a small minority nowadays.
The website has a fairly simple interface with a search bar in the top left.
I click on it and a prompt box opens asking me to drag an image into it.
I select the image I’d snapped of Shaun in my kitchen and click “Search.” An egg timer appears very briefly before the page fills with results, my original picture on the left side of the screen and a rack of lookalike pictures on the right, all good-looking dark-haired guys who bear a strong resemblance to the man who turned up at my house yesterday.
The caption says “DiscoverImage365 searched over 67.5 billion images in 0.8 seconds for your selected image.”
The results page shows row after row of pictures, mostly head-and-shoulders shots of generically handsome men in their late twenties to mid-forties, all of them looking as if they’ve emerged from the same corner of the gene pool.
There are many, many pictures of Henry Cavill, the Superman actor, along with a selection of other men who share Shaun’s strong jaw and short dark hair.
I roll down the page quickly. There are hundreds of results.
I take it slowly, row by row and checking each picture in turn.
There are other actors featured, plus lots of professional headshots from business websites, thumbnails from LinkedIn, blogs and articles in languages I don’t understand.
As I scroll down the page, it keeps on refreshing: there is no end to the results.
A few are very close matches, but it’s not until I’m a couple of hundred images in before I recognize him.
There.
Half a dozen pictures side by side. Professional shots that look as if they’ve been taken in a studio.
In a couple of them he’s smiling with the same confident grin he’d used on the doorstep of my house, and I feel a thrum of adrenaline, of success at finding this particular needle in the digital haystack.
At the same time there is a quiet pulse of alarm, that feeling you get when you’re in unknown waters with your toes stretched toward the bottom, unsure whether you’re already out of your depth.
I click on the link and it takes me to a website called PortfolioPro, which describes itself as a website for actors and models of all levels looking for professional work.
Got you.
There are more images of him here, including a moody black-and-white one in a T-shirt that clearly shows off the cobra tattoo on the inside of his right wrist. His name is listed as Shaun Rutherford and he describes himself as a semi-professional model and aspiring actor, available for work on an hourly, half-day, or daily rate.
There is a short bio: “I am relaxed, easy to get on with, and very genuine. I have modeled on and off for 5+ years and am willing to consider all kinds of acting/photographic/advertising work.”
He wasn’t related to anyone who had lived in my house. He was an actor, a fake, a cut-out so that someone else could stay in the shadows.
He had been hired to do a job. All I had to do was find out who hired him.
I move the cursor to the button marked “Book an introductory chat” and begin to type.