Trail of destruction, p.15
Trail of Destruction, page 15
Ellie made her promise to herself: no more drama.
Chapter 17
WELCOME TO THE FG ALTERNATIVE COMMUNITY GROUP
Wednesday 28th July
5 p.m.
Andrea Simpson
Why oh why can’t people keep their firework parties to 5th November? My poor darling cats were terrified by the fireworks last night. Why is every single little opportunity an excuse to let off those godawful things?
Rebecca Feine
It was for Nero’s fiftieth birthday. We could see them from the bedroom window, I bet the kids loved it.
Meghan Mileham
Yes, it was, and a lovely party it was too!
Kitty Fletcher
Yes, fabulous party for a lovely couple (though I do worry about the carbon footprint of fireworks).
Graham Cane
Andrea is right. The things should be bloody banned!
Nero Patel
Says the man who shoots his guns off at every opportunity! And yes, I did post about it, warning people, a few weeks back.
Andrew Blake
You don’t have to apologise, mate. My hounds are fine with fireworks. Your dogs can probably sense your paranoia, Andrea.
Lucy Cronin
It was just a couple of fireworks, turn your TV up!
Pauline Sharpe
It’s not a case of simply turning the telly up, Lucy! It sounded like WW3 had begun last night, our cats were hiding under the sofa and trembling. They need to ban the sale of fireworks at any time other than the first week of November.
Andrea Simpson
Completely agree! Actually, why not ban them all together? A simple bonfire will suffice on bonfire night . . . I mean, isn’t that why it’s called that?
Rebecca Feine
Oh, so kids miss out on seeing fireworks? Don’t be silly, Andrea. You do know it’s perfectly fine to let them off during legal hours, which was when last night’s display was.
Myra Young
Uh-oh. Be careful, you guys, the Facebook Vigilante might be reading this . . .
Andrea Simpson
I don’t care about the Facebook Vigilante. I have a right to express my views!
Andrew Blake
Famous last words . . .
Chapter 18
Thursday 29th July
2 a.m.
Ellie was having the same dream she had been having most nights ever since she found the poison pen letters addressed to her mother, of her mother at her dressing table, the letters scattered around her, her hair shorn off. This time was different though. There was the sound of sirens in the distance.
Then Ellie realised the sirens were actually real, piercing the usually silent night.
She sat up in bed, heart thumping.
‘Mum?’
Ellie looked towards her door. Tyler was standing there, his pale face lit up in the dark by the phone he was holding. She looked at her clock. Just past 2 a.m.
‘What’s up? Is everything okay?’ she asked.
‘Carter’s mum’s house is on fire! I can see it from my room.’
Andrea! She thought of Andrea’s post in the Facebook group the day before.
No, surely not . . .
She jumped out of bed, her heart thumping as she went to the window. She opened the curtains and saw orange flames leaping into the night sky in the distance.
Ellie felt panic flutter inside. What if it was an act of arson? People would surely think this was the Facebook Vigilante at work.
‘They’ll think it’s the Facebook Vigilante,’ Tyler said quietly, as though reading her thoughts.
‘It wasn’t me,’ she whispered back.
‘Not me either.’
Ellie sighed. What a situation she’d dragged him into. ‘I know you’d never do something like that. Get back to bed, okay, darling?’ she said. ‘I’m sure Carter will be okay, the fire engines are there. Can’t you hear them?’
Tyler nodded and walked out, his eyes on his phone. Ellie grabbed her own phone and sat at the end of her bed, hesitating for a moment before quickly typing a message to Adrian: I can see flames from Andrea’s house. I hope they’re okay.
She waited for a reply, but there was none.
She walked to the window again, seeing an arc of water appear over Andrea’s house. It didn’t look like such a big fire; it seemed to be at the front of the house. The flames jumped and danced at first, but were eventually beaten back until all that remained of the blaze were small, orange sparks rising up into the coal-black night sky.
The smell of smoke seeped through her window and Ellie banged it shut, leaning against the wall as panic began to overwhelm her. If it was anything but an easily explained accident, this could be really bad for her.
She went on to Facebook and found Tommy’s group. There were no posts about the fire . . . but Andrea had made a post about fireworks. Panic rose inside Ellie. If there was any evidence this fire was related to Andrea’s post, Adrian would naturally assume Ellie had done it, wouldn’t he?
And also . . . if it was connected to Andrea’s Facebook post, who on earth was responsible if it wasn’t her or Tyler?
She sat on her bed for an hour, thoughts whirring through her mind. When her phone buzzed, she jumped in surprise. It was Adrian calling. She put her phone to her ear. ‘Adrian, I—’
‘I’m outside your house.’
She frowned, looking at the time. Three in the morning!
She got up and put her dressing gown on, quietly going downstairs and opening the front door to find Adrian standing beneath the lamp light. His face was grey with ash, his hair thick with cinders.
‘Is everyone okay?’ she asked quickly.
‘How could you do this?’ he asked, his brown eyes wild with anger.
‘Adrian, I swear to you, I did not do it!’
‘Carter was in there. You could have killed my son!’
‘Oh God, is he hurt?’
‘No, but Michael has been taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.’
‘W–what happened? How did the fire start?’
Adrian took in a breath, eyes closing. When he opened them again, they were cold and hard. ‘It started because you put a firework through the letterbox, Ellie. And all because Andrea posted a complaint about fireworks in the Facebook group,’ Adrian continued. ‘You could have killed my son!’ he said again.
Ellie took a breath. She was crying now, tears running down her face; confused and terrified about what this might mean for her . . . for the kids.
She needed to be careful how she handled this. ‘I completely get why you’d think it was me,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘It was my first thought – that you would think that. But I swear to you, on my children’s lives, I had nothing – nothing – to do with this! Look at the stuff I did before,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘This is in a totally different league!’
He didn’t look convinced.
She raked her fingers through her hair, wracking her brains about how she could prove it. ‘I’ve been here all night, with the kids. I haven’t left the house. You have to believe me.’
‘I’m finding that very, very difficult, considering you’re my only suspect.’
‘But I’m not responsible for this!’ Ellie cried, not caring now if the neighbours heard. ‘You have to catch who’s doing this.’
‘You did this, Ellie. I know you did. Why lie to me?’ He put his phone to his ear. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie, I really am. You clearly need help. I have to report this.’
Ellie leaned against the wall, her face in her hands. She couldn’t blame him. And anyway, maybe this was all her fault in some way. She’d started this, after all.
Then something occurred to her. She grabbed his arm, making him almost drop his phone.
‘You mustn’t get involved,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll go to the station first thing in the morning.’
He paused.
‘Think about it, Adrian, you didn’t report me to the police, did you? That would get you in trouble, right? If I go to the station in the morning and just tell them everything – minus the bit about telling you – then it’s all laid out on the table.’
He blinked, obviously torn. ‘I can’t lie.’
‘You don’t have to. It’s not like anyone’s going to ask if you knew. You know it makes sense,’ she pushed. ‘You can’t risk your career for this.’
He considered it for a moment then nodded. ‘If I don’t hear you’ve gone in by ten, then I’ll report you myself.’
Ellie let out a breath of relief. She really didn’t want him to get into trouble. She watched as he walked away, then looked in the direction of Ashbridge, where the police station was.
It was time to confess . . . officially.
Chapter 19
Ellie sat in Ashbridge Police Station, trying her best to hold herself together. She had passed the large concrete building hundreds of times, whenever she drove into town for shopping or to pick the kids up from some club or another, but she had never been inside before.
She folded her hands into her lap, clenching them to stop them from shaking. She felt cold, despite the heat outside, the hairs on her arms standing up. She’d thought carefully about what to wear that morning and had eventually decided on jeans with a blouse and blazer, all navy. There was nothing to be done about her skin, which had taken on an ashen appearance.
‘Fear,’ she’d said to herself as she applied her make-up. ‘That colour is your fear.’
And she was scared. Terrified, to be more accurate, of talking to the police and the consequences. But she knew she had to do it. It had all finally caught up with her. How foolish she’d been to think she’d get away with it. The irony was that it was someone else’s actions that had brought her here . . . and put a man in hospital.
‘Mrs Mileham?’ a voice said. Ellie looked up to see a young, slim, dark woman watching her with a stern expression.
‘Yes, that’s me,’ Ellie said in a shaky voice as she stood up. ‘Well, I’m actually Miss Nash now, if that’s okay? My husband and I are no longer together.’
‘Fine. I’m Detective Powell,’ the woman said in clipped tones. ‘Come through.’
Ellie followed her down a long corridor until they got to a small room with a table and several chairs around it.
‘Please sit,’ the detective said, gesturing to a chair.
Ellie sat down as the detective took the seat across from her.
‘So you have some information about the fire in Forest Grove?’ the detective said, looking down at her notepad.
‘Not specifically the fire itself. But I have . . . I have some background.’ She paused for a moment to compose herself. ‘You see, I’ve made some mistakes lately and I think they might have led to what happened last night.’
The detective peered up, dark eyes intrigued. ‘Okay. Tell me more.’
Ellie took a deep breath, tears filling her eyes.
Hold it together, Ellie, she told herself.
‘I guess you could call them pranks,’ she said, repeating what she’d practised in front of the mirror that morning. She didn’t want to refer to them as ‘vigilante acts’ or ‘vandalism’, as that made them sound illegal. ‘Pranks’ felt more . . . innocent. Even ridiculous.
‘What kind of pranks?’ the detective asked.
‘A local man scared people in the retirement village by shooting his guns in his garden so I – I found the guns in his garden and hid them in the forest.’
‘What is this man’s name?’
‘Graham Cane. I put the guns back though!’ Ellie said, leaning forward and watching as the detective wrote his name in her book. ‘Then I put dog poo in a bag through the letterbox of a resident called Belinda Bell who complained about someone not picking up their dog’s mess on the local Facebook group.’
Ellie felt so embarrassed as she said it.
The detective sighed. ‘I see.’
‘And then a neighbour of mine moaned about the green bins not being collected and criticised the recycling collectors too. So I lined up all the green bins from our street on his lawn.’
‘That must have taken some doing?’
‘I suppose. And then a woman complained about cyclists on paths so I cycled along her path to annoy her. That went wrong and – and after I saw her I rode off so I wasn’t aware she fell over and hurt herself.’
The detective raised an eyebrow. ‘And what did you hope to achieve by doing all this?’
‘My mum received some awful letters. I recently found them. They led to her having a nervous breakdown.’
‘How does this relate to the criminal acts you committed?’
Ellie flinched at her use of that phrase. ‘The people who were the targets of these pranks were exactly the kind of people who might have targeted my mum.’
‘So, what, this was some kind of revenge act? Why so many suspects?’
‘I suppose it all got a bit out of control. It became more about Forest Grove as a whole, I guess.’ She examined the detective’s face. ‘I don’t know whether you know Forest Grove very well.’
‘Unfortunately, I do,’ the detective said with a sigh. ‘I was involved with the Patrick Byatt case.’
‘Oh. Wow, that was . . . well, this is completely different, of course,’ Ellie said with a nervous laugh.
The detective didn’t even raise a smile. ‘I didn’t say it was the same.’
‘Right, of course. So,’ Ellie continued, ‘in many ways, it’s a wonderful place to live. But it can be very claustrophobic too. People like to poke their noses into everyone else’s business. Not just that, they like to judge and gossip. This is amplified in the community Facebook group. So it began to be about teaching certain villagers a lesson. Holding a mirror up to their true selves. But they were all harmless pranks really.’
‘A sprained arm isn’t so harmless though, is it, Miss Nash? Stealing someone’s guns isn’t, either.’
‘I didn’t intend for Pauline to get hurt,’ Ellie replied in a small voice. ‘And I didn’t steal Graham’s guns, they were in an unlocked shed and I did return them after hiding them in my garage!’
The detective sighed, leaning back in her chair as she examined Ellie’s face. Ellie wondered what she saw: a respectable, middle-class woman with a life so pathetic she had resorted to pulling pranks on her neighbours?
Ellie suddenly very much didn’t want this young, stern-looking detective to think that of her.
‘I’m a good person, honestly,’ she said. ‘I went through a horrible divorce and—’
‘That’s irrelevant,’ the detective said quickly. ‘Now, on to the more recent event where Andrea Simpson had a lit firework shoved through her letterbox. Did you want to teach her a lesson too?’ the detective asked, eyes drilling into Ellie’s.
Ellie swallowed uncomfortably. ‘That wasn’t me, I swear to you.’
‘But surely you see there is an escalating pattern of behaviour here, from the more trivial to the more serious?’
‘Of course, I understand how it must look. But there is absolutely no way, no way at all, that I would do anything as dangerous as posting a firework through a letterbox.’
The detective tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowing. ‘Maybe you didn’t think it through properly, like when you caused Pauline Sharpe to fall over when you cycled into her?’ she suggested.
‘But I didn’t know she had!’ Ellie objected.
The detective ignored her. ‘Maybe you didn’t expect the front porch to catch on fire and a man to end up in hospital with smoke inhalation?’
Ellie felt panic tremor through her. The detective clearly thought Ellie was responsible for the firework incident.
She could be arrested for arson! For actual bodily harm, even attempted murder!
‘I didn’t do that. Is – is Michael okay?’
‘He was released this morning, he’ll be fine.’
Ellie let out a sigh of relief.
‘Can you prove where you were last night?’ the detective asked her.
‘I was in bed, sleeping. I have two kids, but they were sleeping too. Can’t you track my phone?’
‘That’s difficult in a rural area like Forest Grove. There are two masts, but if you live in the same mast area as where the fire was . . .’
‘I probably do,’ Ellie said with a sigh. ‘I don’t know what to suggest then, other than my word. I didn’t do it.’
The detective thought about it, then stood up. ‘Wait here a moment.’
Then she left the room.
Ellie sat in the empty room for several minutes, the four walls seeming to press into her.
She was going to be arrested for the fire, she just knew it.
‘The kids,’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, the kids.’
Peter would definitely try to get full custody of them. She’d lose them!
Finally, the door opened again and the detective walked in with a file in her hands. ‘Stand up for a second,’ she said.
Ellie stood on trembling legs. Was this it? Was she about to be arrested?
Detective Powell looked her up and down, then opened the file, staring at whatever was in there, before looking at Ellie again.
‘You’re too slim, a little too short too,’ she said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘We have footage from a doorbell camera across the road from Andrea Simpson’s of the person who put the firework through the letterbox. It’s clearly not you.’
Ellie sunk to the chair, putting her head in her hands as she let out a sigh of relief. The detective sat back down across from her, gesturing to the photo that was now between them. ‘Any thoughts of who it might be?’
Ellie looked at the photo. It was blurry, a fleeting glance of a figure dressed all in black. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Fine. Well, on this occasion, I’m going to give you a caution. No more pranks, okay? Or, as we tend to refer to them, acts of vandalism and theft.’
