Ollie made one last ditch effort to reach Jaxxon. “Luv, I promise I’ll tell you every single detail, I won’t leave anything out. You don’t need to do this.” He didn’t want her to; there was a big difference between knowing someone had invaded and wrecked your own personal space and seeing that defacement for yourself. Even though he had been prepared for the scene by Lily – who had let herself into Jaxxon’s apartment to leave her some milk and bread and other little bits for when she got back the next morning – the mess had knocked him for six. Hell, it had enraged him and it wasn’t even his apartment. She hadn’t yet spoken another word since he revealed what had happened. A swearing, pissed off Jaxxon he could deal with. But this hard, mute, unreachable version of her he didn’t know how to handle.
Her focus still on confronting this, Jaxxon held her hand out to Ollie for the key of the new lock he had fitted on the door. When he gave it to her with a sigh she unlocked it and gave it a hard shove, making it swing open. The smell hit her first. Cracked eggs and stale milk and other such crap – once contents of her fridge now decorating her carpet. She might have gagged if she hadn’t been prepared for it. Plenty of times she had got back to her old flat to be greeted by foul odours; sometimes it was the smell of the blood of whoever broke inside, cutting themselves on the door or window in the process. Sometimes the sick buggers would even leave her a present by using the middle of her living room carpet as a toilet. So the smells she could overlook. Being no stranger to damaged belongings, she could even overlook the smashed vases and lamps and kitchen ware, could overlook the strewn of clothes that seemed to cover the floor of every room. Could overlook the overturned couch and mattress and could shrug at the rolls of toilet paper that were scattered everywhere like garlands. It was the words smeared repeatedly all over her walls that snagged her attention:
‘Bitch’, ‘Slag’, ‘Slut’, ‘Die Bitch’.
“How do you know it’s not blood?” Warren asked Ollie as he put a gentle, comforting hand on Anna’s shoulder. Warren thought she was more unsettled than even Jaxxon who looked more curious than anything else. Oh she was enraged, there was no denying that. But there was no fear there to be seen on her face.
“Don’t forget I have plenty of scientists and lab technicians working for me. It was easy enough to get them to test it.”
“Why didn’t Lily phone the police?” asked Anna. “You said in the car that the police haven’t seen this yet and that’s why the papers haven’t got hold of it.”
Ollie sighed. “I asked her not to. I don’t think we should get the police involved.”
“What? How can you say that? Look around you. Whoever did this was sick.”
“And cowardly,” muttered Jaxxon.
Anna double-blinked. “Cowardly?”
Jaxxon turned to her. “Did they have the bottle to come and say any of this to my face? No. Did they leave a signature? No. There’s nothing big and bad about breaking into someone’s place, making a mess and then running off so it doesn’t exactly strike fear into my heart. Same as with the letter.”
“Letter?” said Connor, Anna and Ollie.
“Last Sunday someone stuck an envelope under my window-wiper. Inside was a piece of paper that said ‘Die Bitch’.” And in her opinion, it was too much of a confidence for it not to be the same person who did this to her apartment.
“What?” demanded Connor, Anna and Ollie.
“Will you all stop talking at the same time, it’s freaky.”
“You got a threatening letter and didn’t think to say anything?” Connor wanted to throttle her. “Where is it?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘threatening’. Besides, it was just a little note. I binned it straight away. Come on, celebs must get things like that happening all the time.”
“Indeed they do,” confirmed Ollie with a sigh. “So we can assume they also did this.”
Warren nodded. “And that she has a stalker.”
Connor frowned, skeptical. “A stalker who doesn’t make themselves known until she buggers off on holiday?”
“Maybe he missed her.”
“I know stalkers are, normally, stealthy but they do like for their existence to be acknowledged by who they’re stalking. I’m pretty sure Jaxx would have picked up on someone following her around.” The twist of her lips and the way she dropped her eyes bothered him. “Jaxx?”
She scratched her head. “A couple of times I did get this feeling like I was being watched.”
“What?”
“Could have just been the paparazzi,” said Warren.
“I know. But this was different…it didn’t feel right.”
Connor resisted the urge to growl. “Jaxx, when did this happen?”
“Sometimes I’d feel it just as I was going into or leaving my apartment building. Other times it’s been when I was out shopping or walking Bronty.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to tell me?”
“Exactly what could you have done? Besides, it doesn’t have to mean anything. Being glared at and being stalked are two different things. I’m not even saying that if someone was watching me that they had anything to do with this or the stupid note.”
Anna ran a hand through her hair in a movement that screamed ‘stressed out’. “We have to phone the police, they can look for fingerprints and stuff.”
Ollie sighed. “There are plenty of nutcases out there, Anna, and plenty of them fixate on someone, often a celebrity, and do crap like this. What they want is to scare, distress and unsettle that person, to get themselves some attention. It makes them feel good, clever, and powerful. A reaction of any kind only encourages them to continue. The way I like to handle things is to clean up the mess discretely and quickly and then keep quiet about it. The trick is not to give the nutcase what they want.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t see the logic in annoying a nutcase.”
“When they realise they haven’t got themselves a reaction or any attention they’ll get bored and stop.”
“In theory.”
“I’ve seen it happen. Look, it’s uncommon for stalkers of celebs to be violent toward them. Having said that, I still think Jaxxon should stay elsewhere for a while.”
“No one’s scaring me out of my apartment,” Jaxxon insisted sharply.