Chapter 30
Thirty
ROMAN
What he is doing does not qualify as stalking.
To Roman, stalking is about heavy breathing and a notebook full of routines and nicking women’s underwear off the washing line. The kind of thing creepy old Ron Windsor probably gets up to in his spare time. Besides, everyone stalks. They just call it ‘having a look’ on Facebook or Instagram.
No, this is observation. Pattern recognition. There’s a formal quality to it, and it’s what you do when someone moves into your street wearing an identity that doesn’t belong to them like an invisibility cloak.
Roman sits at his desk with the blind half lowered, the slats angled so the glass shows him a narrow strip of Orchard Lane.
It’s about twelve thirty when, across the road, Oliver Sharpe moves restlessly through the Coach House kitchen. He walks. Stops. Picks up his phone. Puts it down again with too much force. Walks again.
Roman watches, still as a statue. He saw Emily go off in an Uber a while ago and, since then, Oliver has been pacing like a caged lion.
He presses the phone to his ear. Roman can’t hear the words, of course, but he can read his movements.
A sharp burst of talking. A pause while he listens.
Another burst, running his hand constantly through his hair.
Through the binoculars—OK, binoculars. But it’s still not stalking. Roman sees the way Oliver’s body tightens. He glances at the phone, then turns it face down like he’s just seen something obscene.
It looks to Roman like someone is pulling Oliver along by the lead. Like a dog.
Oliver snatches the phone up again, jabs at it, then—oddly—just lets the lit screen ring. Finally, he walks away from it and picks up his keys from the counter.
Roman shifts quickly, the wheels of his office chair squeaking.
Oliver shrugs on a jacket and checks his reflection in the black glass of the microwave door. He forces his shoulders back, pulls himself up to full height. The whole performance clicks into place before Roman’s eyes.
Then he leaves the house, cutting across Orchard Lane with purpose, head down. Roman leans slightly forward, keeping him in that thin strip of vision between slats.
Oliver doesn’t walk down the street or get into his silver Audi. He heads straight for the Walker-Dents’ house next door to his own.
That makes Roman sit up and rush to the open window.
Oliver knocks and waits. Knocks again, sharper this time.
The front door opens, but only a sliver. From Roman’s angle he can’t see Lara’s face properly, just the edge of her hand on the doorframe.
Oliver shifts closer. His palms are out, in that hear me out way people do when they’re trying to be heard.
He points once, a short gesture over Lara’s shoulder, as if asking to come in or to see someone inside.
But the door doesn’t open any wider.
Lara’s hand moves, and Oliver’s posture changes. His shoulders tighten. One hand drops to his side in a sharp, irritated movement.
Whatever she’s said, it isn’t what he wanted to hear. And she isn’t letting him inside.
Roman curses. He needs to get down there so he can saunter past and hopefully pick up some of their conversation. He pushes his feet into his trainers, dashes downstairs and out of the door.
He loiters next to the tall beech hedge that separates the two gardens and through it he can see enough to catch Lara’s stance—weight on one hip and not moving aside. She folds her arms and doesn’t invite Oliver in.
Oliver half turns, throws back his head and laughs. It’s the kind of laugh that people do when they’re trying to cover up the fact they’re feeling scared.
Oliver says something else, but Lara doesn’t budge. She looks really fed up with him.
Finally she closes the door in his face.
Oliver stands there for a beat, then he turns and walks back across the road.
Roman’s pulse gallops faster, not with fear but with interest. This is the sort of detail that GRN_Dor might be interested in. He dashes downstairs and out of the front door just in time to see Oliver slip through the side gate into the garden of Vanessa Lambert’s house.
Roman thinks of the obituary photo he’d found of a grainy, dead-eyed man. The real Oliver Sharpe. Not the man who he has just witnessed acting so weirdly.
A car passes, and Oliver flinches. He looks up and down the street and then he dashes down the shortcut that takes him on the track at the back of the houses.
Roman’s scalp tingles. Through a gap in the hedge at the bottom of the garden, he has a good view of Vanessa’s lounge with her floor-to-ceiling windows and no curtains.
She walks across the room with two glasses of wine, and Oliver steps into view.
Roman has no choice now: he has to watch and work out exactly what’s happening.
Because if Oliver is finally cracking . . . Roman wants to be there to watch him fall.