Watch Over Me by Jane Renshaw

Author:Jane Renshaw [Renshaw, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkubator Books
Published: 2020-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

‘Oh, hi, Ruth!’ Neil’s sister Pippa’s voice across nine thousand miles sounded unbearably cheerful. In the background there were other happy voices – she was probably in a bar somewhere. ‘I was just thinking about you! How’re you all doing?’

Where to start?

‘Not great.’ Flora was standing in the garden in the rain, the landline handset pressed to her ear, watching a man in an orange jacket up a ladder, positioning one of the tiny hidden CCTV cameras under the eaves. The glass doors had been replaced that morning and the glaziers had swept up the broken fragments of glass. She could see a few tiny mosaic-sized pieces, though, along the edges of the paving. She pushed at them with the toe of her shoe.

‘The Johnsons have found us.’

‘Oh – fuck!’

‘Yep. They’ve been harassing us, and I’m terrified they’re going to do something… Try to take Beckie.’ She told Pippa everything that had happened.

‘Fuck, Ruth! Fuck! Surely the police can do something?’

‘The problem is, the Johnsons are wise to all the dodges. They’ve set up alibis for the times the incidents happened – quite honestly, the police don’t seem to have a clue. We’re getting CCTV put up around the house, but… It’s just not safe to stay here now. I’m going to try to persuade Alec to leave, to disappear again, but he’s saying we should stand and fight. Which is ridiculous, obviously – I mean, they’re a family of hardened criminals, murderers…’

‘But there are much stricter laws now, aren’t there, about harassment? The police will have to do something once you have evidence. CCTV is a great idea. Once you get them on that…’

‘They’ll probably just get given another caution. And there are so many of them – even if one of them did get convicted and locked up, that would still leave half a dozen more…’

‘But, Ruth… Say, worst-case scenario, they did take Beckie… they’d have to give her back. There’s no way they’re coming out of this the winners. If they keep harassing you, they’re going to get into trouble, and the police will have to stop them somehow – tag them and stuff like that to stop them coming anywhere near you. They can put electronic detectors on people’s houses now so that if the tagged person comes anywhere near it an alarm goes off…’

Fleetingly, it occurred to Flora to wonder how Pippa knew all this. Some of the men she’d hooked up with in the past had seemed a bit dodgy, to put it mildly. And she suspected that Pippa herself might have had a few brushes with the law.

‘But what if they attacked us in the street again, not at the house?’

‘They can probably put the detector on a person as well as on a house. And why would they attack you? That’s not going to get them anywhere.’

‘I don’t know if they’re that rational.’

‘If they’re setting up alibis for themselves, they sound pretty rational to me.’

Flora puffed out a sigh.

‘Much as I hate to say it, I think Alec’s right.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.