Chapter Six
The sound of his mobile ringing startled Jamie away from the takeaway menu he was perusing. It was Wednesday night and his local Indian had a meal deal on – it had become something of a routine to grab a curry and box set binge. But tonight fate seemed to have a different plan.
"DS Winter." He answered, not looking at the caller as he assumed that it would be a call from work. He wasn't expecting anyone else, most other people would message instead of calling.
"Jamie?" The voice was familiar but the tone wasn't – something that caused a ball of lead to settle in Jamie's stomach.
"Clara? What's up? Are you ok?"
"I… yeah, I guess. Just something happened earlier that… well, it shook me a bit. Can you come over?" The ball of lead dropped further. Clara sounded very unlike herself and despite the limited amount of time that Jamie had known her he could tell something was wrong.
"Sure," Jamie pinned the phone to his ear with his shoulder and started grabbing keys and wallet whilst fumbling around to put his shoes on. "Is there anything I should bring?"
"Just yourself. I don't want to be alone and could use a friend."
Jamie's eyes fell on the takeaway menu. "Have you eaten?"
"No…"
Half an hour later, one hand holding a cheap plastic bag that mouth-watering smells were emitting from, Jamie knocked on the door of Clara's small cottage. She opened it, face pale and drawn with a puffiness around the eyes that suggested she had recently been crying. She was wearing a knee length black skirt with a loose fitting pale green blouse, looking as though she was still dressed for work. Both were crumpled, and completely out of kilter with the long fluffy socks covered in a cow print pattern she was wearing.
"Hey," Jamie greeted her, pulling her into a hug while she sniffled. "I come bearing Indian. I didn't know what you like so I got a bit of everything."
Clara eyed up the bulging bag. "This will feed us for a week… come in, I'll get some plates."
Jamie followed her into her living room, a half-drunk glass of wine next to a television remote on a side table by the sofa suggesting what Clara had been doing before he arrived. Her small kitchen diner was through another low doorway, the day's dishes stacked by the sink. Clara bustled around, pulling plates out of cupboards while Jamie unloaded the meal.
Jamie wisely didn't start quizzing her right away. He managed to hold in all the questions while they ate, long silences drawing out as Clara was obviously lost in her thoughts and Jamie was trying to work out what was wrong. He even managed to wait until they'd done the dishes in an act of simple domesticity, she washing while he dried and stacked tidily for her to put away.
But as Clara reached up to put the last glass into one of the wall mounted cupboards, Jamie could wait no longer.
"What happened today?"
Clara sighed deeply. "I didn't… it was something stupid that shouldn't have affected me so much. I'm sorry."
Jamie didn't say anything, but waited while she gathered her thoughts. Eventually Clara turned around, leaning against the worktop with her gaze directed on the floor.
"Someone said some very unpleasant things to me… someone I hardly knew. It just upset me, you know."
"What kind of things?"
Clara shook her head, dashing a tear away from her eye. "He told me that I was a whore, that I shouldn't be out in public and will ruin my family's name. And that's the pre-watershed version."
Jamie felt a coil of anger surging inside him. "Who said this to you?"
"Just an old man at work." She raised tear filled eyes to him. "One of the older ones who comes in to use the computers. I was just helping him log on when he started whispering things to me. Unkind things, about how I was flaunting myself in public and had no decency. So I tried to leave, but he grabbed my wrist and started shouting at me." She gulped loudly. "It all really escalated. One of my colleagues had to help me get free, then he left. It was horrible."
"You should report it to the police." Jamie told her, clenching his own fists tightly.
"Oh I couldn't. I mean… I think he has dementia, or something. He probably didn't know what he was saying." She blew out an angry breath. "I know that, I know that, so why is it affecting me so much?"
She drummed her fists down into the countertop, causing Jamie to step forwards. He gently took both her hands and held them securely.
"Hey, it's ok. It's ok to feel bad about it, I'm so sorry it happened to you. But you know that you are nothing like that, you've done nothing wrong." He let go of her left hand, instead cradling her cheek and softly wiping a tear away with his thumb. "As you said, it's just the rambling of a confused old man."
She nodded, looking up at him trustingly. Jamie only hesitated a split second before dropping his mouth down to cover hers, trying to put all the reassurance he was trying to give her into the movement. She responded in kind, pouring out her hurt whilst he kissed it away.
Their previous kisses had been consuming and world altering but at the same time really quite chaste. This time, their kiss was nothing like that. It was hard and desperate, she clung to him as though he was her lifeline in a storm while he tried to show all the emotions he felt but couldn't say.
The tension grew between them, their interactions becoming more frenetic as their control lessened. There was a moment when Jamie registered that they had come to a precipice. A precipice where one wrong step would send them hurtling down a route that neither of them had anticipated in their lives before. A moment where he could, and possibly should, have stepped away. But then her hands untucked his shirt from his jeans and started to roam across his back, and then he lifted her up onto her kitchen counter, and his hand started to slide up her thigh underneath her skirt as she nodded her consent, and it was too late.
Neither heard the whirring of the long lens camera, recording their every move from the darkness outside the kitchen window.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
When Jamie awoke, there was a brief moment when he wasn't quite sure where he was. The movement next to him as Clara began to stir reminded him of everything that had passed, and then the persistent ringing of his phone broke into his psyche. Blearily staring at it, he realised that it was the station calling. Darkness outside suggested it was still very early – checking the time he could see it was in the small hours of the morning.
"DS Winters," he answered groggily, Clara rolling over and muttering something unintelligible next to him.
"Sorry to disturb you, sir," came the polite voice of the duty officer. "There's been a house fire in Cooper's Hill – neighbours think that the old gent was still inside at the time. Fire service have only just arrived and it looks as though it's unlikely he got out."
"Right." Jamie rubbed his eyes, trying to become more alert. "I'll head on over there and see what's going on. Has anyone called DCI Barnaby yet?"
"Not yet sir, we thought we'd let you decide if you wanted to disturb him."
"Ok, thanks." Jamie hung up and looked at his phone. With a sigh he started to hunt for his clothing, finding everything bar his shirt and shoes in the bedroom. Clara turned sleepy eyes to him as he moved around.
"Work has called," he told her, giving her a quick kiss. "I have to go – I'll call you later?"
"Please," she murmured, closing her eyes again. Jamie smiled at her, brushing a strand of hair back out of her face.
"Go back to sleep, I'll speak to you later."
He let himself out of her house, nipping back to his only to put on a clean suit before heading over to the small hamlet on the edge of Causton that was known as Cooper's Hill, wondering what he would find this time.
