Where There's Smoke

He grinned. “So,” he went on, in a brisker tone, “what are the police doing about this character?”

Clive’s revelation had made Kate temporarily forget her problems. Now the weight of them settled on her again. “I don’t know. They say they’re keeping an eye on my flat and the agency, but all that amounts to is a patrol car going past every now and again. Other than that...” She let the sentence go unfinished.

Clive frowned down at his empty coffee cup. “Perhaps you should keep away from your flat until this all blows over,” he said, slowly. “All right, he probably won’t do anything else, but I think you should still consider it. You’re welcome to stay at my place. There’s a sofa bed going empty.”

Kate had already thought about retreating to the safety of a hotel, putting a buffer of anonymity between her and an incendiary madness. But she had dismissed the temptation. She wasn’t going to run away.

She reached across the table and squeezed Clive’s hand. “I appreciate the offer, but it’s okay. I’ll be all right.” She stood up. “Come on. We’d better get back.”

They had security bars fitted on all the downstairs windows at the agency. A burglar alarm was installed, and Kate had the letter-box sealed and replaced with an American-style mailbox. She also bought one of these for her flat, since the mesh cage on the new door provided only token protection at best. The filing cabinets were lined with fire-proof foam sheets, and what records they had on computer were copied and the discs kept at Clive’s flat. Extra fire extinguishers were bought — powder-filled ones, this time, because they were more effective against petrol fires than water — and Kate took one home with her, as well.

Short of installing a sprinkler system at the office, which they couldn’t afford, they had done as much as they could, she felt. The fact of doing something other than passively sitting back and waiting, made her feel better. Even so, Kate found herself tensing for the sight of charred window-frames and scorched bricks whenever she approached the agency.

Each time there wasn’t, her relief was accompanied with a growing hope that the fire at her flat could be an end, not a beginning. For the first time, she began to feel, if not actual optimism, at least that one day life might return to normal.

The feeling was reinforced when she went to the office one morning and saw that demolition work had begun on the burned-out warehouse. She would be glad to see it go, she thought, as the wrecking ball crumpled another section of wall and blackened timbers into a pile of dust and rubble.

She reached the agency’s street, relaxing a little when there were no fire engines parked in the road. As she searched in her bag for the keys she noted distractedly that the bill posters had been active again. The abundance of boarded up buildings provided a canvas for bands, clubs and political fringe groups to advertise. The constantly changing display was so much a part of the scenery that Kate rarely noticed it, and when she pulled out the keys and looked up, her first thought was that she had stopped in front of the wrong building. Then she looked again, and shock drained the use from her limbs.

The posters completely covered the ground floor, not just of the agency but also the buildings on either side. They were pasted on haphazardly, overlapping each other and crookedly running over windows and doors. Every one was the same, so that the entire terrace front was a jumbled collage of a single repeated image.

Kate stared at it. Suddenly, she twisted away, clutching at a street lamp as she doubled up and vomited. She heard footsteps running towards her, and recognised Clive’s voice.

“Kate? Kate, are you all right?”

She didn’t answer. She clung to the lamp post until the spasm of retching had passed. Clive hovered beside her. She heard him say, “Oh Christ.”

Shakily, she straightened. Clive’s face was shocked as he turned to her. “Don’t,” he said, but she needed to see again.

She looked past him. The posters were A3 size and full colour. They showed a naked woman, squatting with her legs spread wide. The woman was fat, with what looked like cigarette burns on breasts that spilled loosely over her stomach, and bruises on her flabby upper thighs. Her crotch was hairless, and she was pulling apart her labia to reveal the livid wetness of her vagina. Below it, a penis was buried in her anus. Topping the obese body was Kate’s own face. Her head had been grafted on in place of the woman’s, clumsily but no less effective for that. She was laughing and happy, grotesquely indifferent to both the sodomy and the message blazoned in bold red letters across the poster’s base.

KATE POWELL IS A MURDERING WHORE.

Kate turned away and was sick again.

Chapter 19