Chapter Fifty-Three
The Troll
A few days later, two female detectives knock at the door of a small terraced house in Leighton Buzzard, England. From where they’re standing, they see the curtain move at the front window, then the light from a TV screen go blank. They look at one another. ‘Gary Blackmore?’ one of them calls, knocking again. ‘We know you’re in there, Gary, we’ve just seen you switch your telly off. Open the door, please.’
There’s no sound from within. ‘Little toe-rag,’ the second detective mutters. They’re very keen to have a word with Gary Blackmore, even if the feeling doesn’t seem to be mutual. A harassment issue with his ex-wife put him on their radar initially, earning him a warning, but from new evidence it now looks as if he has been conducting a widespread campaign of misogynistic attacks, online and in person, on various women he falsely believes to have wronged him. ‘I’ll bloody wrong him in a minute, if he doesn’t answer this door,’ says the second detective. She was once unlucky enough to have an abusive boyfriend herself; she has absolutely zero patience for Gary and his ilk.
The first detective knocks harder on the door, loud enough to get a few neighbours looking out of their windows. ‘Let us in, Gary,’ she shouts through the letter box. ‘Otherwise, the whole street’s going to hear what we’ve got to say to you, and trust me, mate– you don’t want that.’
They hear footsteps, then the door opens. A sullen, piggy-eyed man stands there in tracksuit bottoms and a stained, baggy T-shirt. ‘Gary Blackmore?’ says the first detective with a steely expression. ‘I’m DS Kumar and this is DS McLeish. We’d like a little chat.’