Who it led to.
He could feel his laptop pulsing in the corner of the bedroom, calling out to him. Open me, open me. Come on, just take a look . . . It won’t do any harm.
It was impossible to resist. Like a smoker promising himself that one cigarette wouldn’t be the end of the world, he grabbed the laptop and brought it into bed. The glow from the screen illuminated his face as his fingers hovered over the keys. This was his last chance to stop himself but, of course, it was already too late.
Moments later he found himself on a website he had sworn never to visit again.
TheDarkAngelMurders.org.
The site was set up around the time of Lucy’s first trial, and detailed the evidence against her, as well as paying tribute to her eighteen victims. It had been created by Michelle Wilkins, the great-niece of one of those victims, Cedric Jenkins, and the editorial pages on the site were very much anti-Lucy. Every so often, the site was updated to spell out the latest development, though nothing had happened since Lucy won her appeal and it was made clear she wouldn’t be tried again. Michelle appeared to have lost enthusiasm for the site, though she still paid for its hosting.
All the action now happened in the site’s forum, which had been a quiet place initially, everyone agreeing that there needed to be justice for the ‘Orchard House Eighteen’. But around the time of the first trial, the forum was discovered by a group who became known as the ‘Newtonites’ (Jamie could think of many darker names for them), who were convinced Lucy was innocent, that she’d been set up. Suddenly, the forum had sprung to life, with endless arguments between the Newtonites and the ‘justice seekers’.
At first, Jamie had only watched this battle play out, but before long he couldn’t stop himself. He had to join in. Calling himself KITT, he became one of the forum’s heaviest users, weighing in to many of the arguments, discussing the evidence against Lucy, refuting the Newtonites’ claims that she was a victim of misogyny and a scapegoat for failings in the care system. Of course, he didn’t reveal his true identity and found himself on numerous occasions in the bizarre position of having to defend himself, ‘that loser Jamie Knight’, as Lucy’s fans accused him of lying about her, calling him a murderer for burning down the Newtons’ flat and killing Chris.
It became an addiction, an obsession. He found himself thinking about Lucy all the time and was unable to stop himself checking the forum at every opportunity. In the queue at the supermarket, he’d be on his phone, tapping away. He stayed up till the early hours, eyes throbbing as he stared at the screen. When he woke up he’d go online before he cleaned his teeth. He trawled legal sites and read books about DNA so he could back up his arguments with laws and science he barely understood.
When Lucy was convicted, he was exultant. He had been tempted to attend the hearing, wanting to see her face when she was sentenced. In the end, he stayed away because he knew the reporters and photographers outside would spot him and he didn’t want to be in the news again.
As Lucy started her prison term his obsession with her subsided, even though her fans squawked with protest about the terrible miscarriage of justice. There was one user in particular, MR MAGPIE, who was seemingly as obsessed as Jamie had been, writing post after post about how Jamie was a liar and the police and so-called forensic experts were corrupt. Jamie wanted to reach through the screen and throttle the deluded idiot. Because Jamie knew. She had to be guilty. He only wished they lived in a country where prisons were less cushy; a place where convicts really suffered. He even fantasised about her going to the electric chair. In reality he bet Lucy was having a great time, charming the prison officers and tormenting her fellow inmates. But he managed to put it from his mind while he concentrated on building up his new business.
And then came the appeal, and the floodgates of Jamie’s obsession reopened. Lucy’s lawyers worked hard to discredit one of the key witnesses: another member of staff at Orchard House who, it came to light, had a personal grudge against Lucy. More importantly, Lucy and her lawyers claimed the conviction was unsafe because the only concrete scientific evidence against her – DNA found on the personal effects of one of the victims; a patient who Lucy shouldn’t have had contact with – had been contaminated in the lab.
Again, Jamie didn’t attend the appeal. But as it dragged on, the media reporting it each day in great detail, his nerves became increasingly frayed. He knew Lucy would try to charm the judge. She was attractive, well-spoken. Like many psychopaths, she had learned to conceal her true nature. In court, she came across as meek and emotional, a woman who felt deeply for her former patients, arguing that she had devoted her life to their care. She was a widow, a victim herself.
When the verdict came in and Lucy’s conviction was overturned, Jamie found it hard to deal with his anger. He went on a twenty-four-hour bender, holed up in his bedsit, drinking and engaging with furious exchanges on the forum, typing IN BLOCK CAPITALS until his fingers were sore and a moderator PM’d him to say if he didn’t calm down he’d be barred.
After that, he drank half a bottle of whisky and passed out.
He had woken up with a terrible hangover and a determination to move on. He’d found himself a therapist who taught him various coping strategies, ways to divert his thoughts when he found Lucy creeping into his mind, threatening to reignite the flames of his fury. He had thrown himself into work. And then, when even that didn’t work, he moved here, to Australia.
He didn’t want to live in the same country as Lucy Newton. A country that would allow her to walk free.
And he’d hardly been on the forum since. He looked at it occasionally but didn’t post. Gradually, his obsession with Lucy dimmed.
Except it hadn’t gone away, had it? It had been hiding.
Waiting.
As he expected, the forum was quiet. Most of the users had lost interest in the case since Lucy won her appeal. Jamie imagined most of them would have moved on to other cases, other forums. The forum showed which users were currently looking at the site. He was the only one.
He skim-read the page. There had been a flurry of new posts when Lucy’s book was published, a mixture of outrage, condemning the publisher, and rave reviews from the Newtonites. Somebody had posted a video of herself burning the book in her garden. Someone else had posted a rumour that a well-known Hollywood director was making a film about Lucy’s life.
Then there was speculation about where Lucy was living now. Someone claimed to have seen her in Tesco in Nuneaton. One user claimed his mum had spotted her driving through Wolverhampton. Another person claimed to have seen her in Ibiza wearing a kaftan, her hair in dreadlocks. Others had combed the internet looking for clues, but Lucy had no social media presence. She had been given a big advance for her book, and it had been a bestseller, so she didn’t need a job. She had vanished, like a bug crawling under a rock.
Imagine, Jamie thought, if she was in Australia. If one day she moved in next door to him. The thought, ridiculous as it was, made him catch his breath, a prickle of cold sweat rushing over his skin. Because although it was far-fetched, he could imagine it happening. Lucy and him: they were linked forever. She had ruined his life. He had killed her husband. Did she think about him as much as he thought about her? Did she lie awake at night, happily recalling the torment she and Chris put him and Kirsty through? Did she picture herself in the ground-floor flat in Mount Pleasant Street, like on that DVD he’d found in the Newtons’ flat? Once seen, the image was impossible to unsee: Lucy, on his and Kirsty’s sofa, skirt hitched up, hands between her legs.