Follow Me: The bestselling crime novel terrifying everyone this year. Angela Clarke
Nasreen, still at the crime scene, police helicopter buzzing overhead, the search party combing for evidence, looked at the missed call on her phone: Freddie. She didn’t want to hear her apology, or justification, or whatever it was she wanted. If she could forget the whole thing – focus on the job in hand – then perhaps she’d get away with the security breach that happened this morning. No more Freddie. No more games. Without listening to it, Sergeant Nasreen Cudmore deleted the voicemail message.
06:57
Saturday 31 October
The front door banged behind Freddie, making her jump. She was buzzing. High on adrenaline. She could hear her flatmate Anton getting ready to leave for his job in The City. Freddie found it ironic that someone who worked in HR could be so void of communication skills. Unless you were talking about cycling he wasn’t interested. Least he paid his rent on time, and he’d sourced the new guy, who was apparently a friend of his cousins, when their last flatmate moved out. Anton was dredging his throat of phlegm in the bathroom. A ritual cleansing necessitated by the flat’s wall mould. Freddie had grown accustomed to it. Her snot was no longer grey. Spores and pollution colonised her respiratory system. Emphysema or lung cancer, or some other mincemeat maker of her lungs, would no doubt kill her.
Death felt close. She’d leant over Alun Mardling’s stiffening body. The world had a new intensity. Riffling through her bedding, she located her Mac. Freddie, adrenaline setting the tempo of her heart, her fingers firing Gatling gun words across the page, typed:
The blood-splattered body of a man was discovered in the early hours of this morning in the East End. Bent over a computer, his lifeless hand still gripping the mouse, the victim had been trolling at the time he was slaughtered. A growing number of cases of online abuse, often of a threatening, violent and graphic sexual nature, have been brought to light recently. Social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook, have been criticised for their lack of response to complaints of misogynistic language, threats of rape and violence, and online bullying. Campaigners have called for an end to the rape culture that is prevalent online. As police seem ill-informed, ill-equipped and ill-inclined to deal with this growing epidemic of online abuse, has someone decided to take the law into their own hands? Is there a Troll hunter out there?
Maybe slaughtered was too much? Slayed? Butchered? Exterminated?
Unconfirmed reports suggest the murder suspect has tweeted a photo of the crime scene. As the popularity of social media sites like Twitter grow, and society struggles to fashion new moral structures to keep pace with increasing technology developments, have we reached a threshold: is this the first #murder?
Freddie was finishing editing when her phone rang.
‘Freddie, it’s Neil Sanderson, what have you got? Some It girl have a fight in the coffee shop you work in?’
‘Try trolling, Paige Klinger, revenge and a tweeting murderer.’ Freddie heard the pleasing clunk of Neil’s coffee mug as he put it down on his desk. ‘An Internet troll who was hurling online abuse at the model Paige Klinger has been murdered. And a photo of the dead bloke has turned up on Twitter. It looks like whoever took it was the same sicko who bumped this guy off.’
‘Is this verified? Have you got quotes from witnesses?’
‘Better than that,’ said Freddie. ‘I was there. Saw it with my own eyes. The tweets. The body. The lot.’
Neil exhaled. ‘Attagirl. How long till it’s ready?’
‘Emailing it over now.’
There was a momentary silence in which Freddie guessed (correctly) that Neil impatiently clicked refresh on his inbox. ‘Got it. I’ll call you back.’
Freddie hung up. The flat was silent. Anton and Pete had both left for work, the kitchen tap dripped into a sink of dishes. She thought of Alun Mardling’s blood dripping onto the floor and shuddered. She was back in that room: the rustling of the plastic overalls, the taste of metal and the unnerved look in Nasreen’s eyes. She rubbed at her face. She was stained. She stood under the hot shower until the water ran red from her hair chalk, and then clear. Only then did she feel like she’d washed all the blood off.
She towelled her hair while she read an email from Neil:
Great story. Well done. Will be in touch with edits.
She was going to get paid. Properly. She’d be in print: it might be in the hundreds. She could take a chunk out of her phone bill, the electricity bill – she still owed her flatmates for the council tax. There was a hole in her Converse trainers – she should look for a new pair of those in Oxfam. Anything left over could reduce her overdraft, stop its slow, steady growth. Multiplying with each basic need, as her pitiful two-pound boxes of cereal and forty-nine pence pints of milk fed the overdraft fees. Burgeoning. Would there be enough left for a few drinks? The warning letters, the overdue bills, the exceeded limits, the stopped cards, swam through Freddie’s mind making her feel at once angry and sick. Perhaps she could wring a few more stories out of this? A few more big paydays and the river of debt might slow, subside, trickle.
She tried to relax her shoulders. Her right index finger drummed against her phone. A siren sounded outside and she flinched. She needed a release. Her phone said it was 09:02. Vacate Bar on Kingsland would be serving. She scrolled through her messages: there he was. Ajay, a local Tinder find. Didn’t he work night shifts? They’d messaged enough during the day. Struggling to do up her size 12 skinny jeans, she typed with her thumb:
‘Rough night. Fancy a drink? 15mins in Vacate?’
Freddie pulled the plaid shirt she’d pinched from her dad’s wardrobe over her head and adjusted her glasses. She poked her moon-shaped face. Her skin looked sallow. When was the last time she’d eaten vegetables? Her hair, having dried naturally, was almost spherical, in a brown halo round her head. Scraping the remnants from a tub of hair wax, she attempted to flatten it. Mission unsuccessful. Coat, mobile, wallet, keys.
Her phone beeped. Ajay replied:
‘C u in 20.’
Freddie paused at the top of the stairs, undid one more button on her shirt, reached into her bra and hoisted her breasts up and together. No harm in maximising her best asset. Clattering down the shared stairs and out onto the private pathway that ran alongside the Queen Elizabeth pub, which was under their flat. The Elizabeth’s garden – a concrete square strung with half-broken fairy lights – was empty. It didn’t open till 11am. Freddie punched the code into the security gate at the end of the path and walked the back roads to Vacate.
The wet pavement was pockmarked with chewing gum. Takeaway cartons blew into her shins. Her fellow Londoners walked with their heads down, bent against the weather or looking at their phones. Cyclists streamed past. Everything and everyone was on the move. She passed the industrial Dalston Department Store. The pop-up boutiques and restaurants. The try-hards. The wannabes. The sky was grey and oppressive, like a Tupperware lid pressing down onto the tops of the buildings.
Vacate was mostly empty; there was a group of bearded men and childlike girls in polyester housecoats discussing their latest free-form art installation. Freddie caught snippets of their conversation. ‘I’m really pumped over this.’ ‘Daryl’s PR is sick.’ ‘Is this muesli hand-milled?’ How did they afford to live?
Crossing the stripped floorboards, navigating the reclaimed crates that doubled as chairs, Freddie reached the concrete bar. A man with a beard shaped into a squirrel stood polishing baked-bean cans – which were used for glasses. Freddie rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll have a beer please, mate?’
‘Any particular brand – we’ve got some excellent local-brewed, microbiotic,