Bad Men, page 19
Of course, I grew up and realized that the suburbs are just as full of bigotry, misogyny, addiction, avarice, narcissism, and misery as anywhere else. Maybe even worse. Only everyone wears department store clothes and their houses are plastered with slogans like LIVE LAUGH LOVE.
Fatima Fanducci’s house looks almost exactly like every other house on her street. It’s semi-detached, and while the house attached to it has succumbed to the baffling trend of gray uPVC windows, gray pebbledash, and fake grass on the lawn, the Fanduccis’ sports real grass, white double glazing, and the original 1960s brickwork. It has a magnolia tree in front and some bedding plants blooming along the path. There’s a child’s scooter outside the front door and a Chelsea Football Club sticker in one of the upper windows.
There’s also a police cruiser parked right in front of it, with two bored-looking police officers. The news about Francesco’s death hasn’t hit the papers yet, so there’s no media presence, but there will be. With the police keeping a watchful eye on the property, I can’t even pretend to be a friendly neighborhood Avon lady. So I’m reduced to good old-fashioned stalking.
The thing is that, believe it or not, Fatima Fanducci has absolutely zero online presence. How has she managed that in this day and age? Has her husband actually confined her to the house?
Susie texts me. When do I get my car back?
When I’ve finished my intel-gathering mission.
OMG you are so fucking lame. Send me a selfie in my car.
I do.
What are those things on your face?
Accessorize, £15.99
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I’m undercover.
You’re enjoying this way too much, she types. I’d be worried about you if I didn’t know you were literally the most boring person alive.
Thanks, Sis. Then again, it’s exactly what I want her to think, right? Did you message me just to insult me?
Nooo, F and I are going to Goa this afternoon.
This afternoon? You didn’t tell me?
We just decided, spur of the moment! So romantic <3
It’s your birthday tomorrow! I made plans!
I knoooooooow Saffy-saff but Finlay wanted to give me this amazing cleansing retreat.
Who’s paying for it?
She doesn’t reply for a few minutes. That’s all the answer I need.
Susie and I have spent every single one of her birthdays together, since the day she was born. One year when we were at different schools I had to fake an appendectomy just so I could drive from New York to New England, stopping on the way to pick up her favorite chocolate cake from a bakery in Boston. We have rituals and private jokes and no matter what, even if I’m in the middle of something really important, I plan my week so that I can wake her up, first thing on her birthday morning, with a bowl of ice cream with sparklers stuck into the extra whipped cream on top. Susie’s birthdays are my normal. They are my special. They are my suburbia.
I’ll make it up to you, she messages finally.
Of course! I reply. It’s your birthday, you should do what you want and have fun! Please wear sunscreen.
I hope Finlay gets third-degree sunburn. I hope he chokes on a vegan curry.
It’s just as I’m imagining Finlay’s face turning a satisfying color of blue that the door to the Fanducci house opens and a woman comes out. From here I have a pretty good view of her: she’s a slight woman, probably about five feet tall if that, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. She has dark circles under her eyes and her hair is lank, though her outfit is cute in a mumsy way: a pretty A-line skirt and a lace-edged blouse. She’s got a young child with her, holding a fluffy stuffed bunny. A toddler and a preschooler hold on to her skirt, and a baby car seat dangles from each hand. The poor woman has five children under the age of seven, two of them infants. I lift my phone and take pictures of her as she makes her burdened way to the minivan that’s parked on the driveway. It takes her an eternity to strap everyone into the back of the van and hoist the car seats into place. Before she climbs into the driver’s seat she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, exhausted.
Imagine doing all of that every time you need a pint of milk! I feel like giving this woman the password to my grocery delivery account.
Well, that explains it, I think as she drives off. No wonder the police aren’t holding her on suspicion of her husband’s murder, even if she is the beneficiary of a large insurance policy. It would be a heroic undertaking just to get a babysitter for that lot for the length of a quick cut and blow-dry, let alone for long enough to kill a large man, dismember and decapitate him, and plant his remains somewhere across the city. Plus—how old were those babies? Only a few months at most, which means that when Francesco was meeting his death, the tiny Fatima was wobbling around pregnant to the brim with twins.
That said, in my opinion, a woman who can squeeze five whole human beings out of her vagina is capable of just about anything. Killing is much easier and less painful than giving birth, and a woman who’s had that many babies is guaranteed to be strong, resilient, and resourceful.
The Met might think that Fatima Fanducci couldn’t be guilty of murdering her husband. Me, I think she’d do just fine. If she had a babysitter.
I wonder if she knows that he was fucking around on her. She definitely knew that he spent all his spare time at a lousy nightclub instead of at home with her, helping her with enough kids to make up half a football team. He probably only spent enough time at home to impregnate her, and then he was off to fuck any other poor girl he could find. What an asshole. Now there’s a guy who deserved to die: not for any major villainy, not because he was a serial killer or a warmonger. Just your average run-of-the-mill entitled foot soldier of the patriarchy.
What a dick. I hope Fatima’s life insurance payout is enormous.
Even London traffic can’t soothe me. I’m still fuming as I pull up outside my mews house, thinking about loyalty. You can call me many things, many of them punishable by life imprisonment and/or death: I am a killer, a stalker, a blackmailer, a desecrator of corpses, a burglar, a thief, a liar, a narcissist, and a sociopath, and I have a low-key shopping addiction that is harmful to Planet Earth, but I have never in my life done two things: dyed my hair out of a box, or been disloyal. If I am on your side, I’m on your side. One hundred percent. Would kill or die for you without a moment’s thought.
That is, when it comes to Susie, I would. She’s the only one who’s proven good enough for my complete loyalty. But now she’s spending her birthday on a beach with that waste of moisturizer.
It’s men again. Men like Finlay and Francesco who just take whatever they want, with no thought about the feelings of women. It’s not only entitlement, it’s a lack of loyalty or values. They think that just because they’ve got a dick between their legs they can do anything.
I’m actually muttering under my breath when I get out of the car, so before I walk to my front door, I stop, close my eyes, and breathe. I think of green, perfectly mown lawns. I think of clouds scudding across a blue sky. I think of myself, age twelve, neatly eliminating Harold from our lives.
I think of the sexy man waiting for me in my house.
And when I open my eyes again, my fists are unclenched, my eyes are clear, my face is frown-free. People are disloyal sometimes, sure. Yes. But if there is one thing that I’ve proven, it’s that I can handle it.
I knock briefly on the door before I use my key to open it a little and call, “Hi, honey, I’m home!”
Nobody answers, and my smile slips a little, but that’s OK. I have time for a coffee and a freshen-up, and maybe even enough time to change my underwear just in case he’s come to his senses and he’s ready to forget about his ex. I go in and call again, “Jon?”
“I’m in the kitchen,” he says, and I frown. Why didn’t he answer me before?
“Well,” I say as I head for the kitchen, “I can see why the police haven’t arrested Fatima Fanducci. She was massively pregnant when her husband was killed. I guess she could have hired someone, though. What do you know about contract kil—”
I stop. Jon’s sitting at the kitchen island, facing the door. Girl’s at his feet, pressed up against his legs, eyeing me. He has several empty coffee cups at his elbow, he hasn’t shaved or possibly slept, and in front of him on the island is something that I really, really didn’t want him to see. Right there, in black and white and red.
“Oh,” I say.
“Yes. Oh.”
I thought he looked tired, but now I can see that he’s poised to move. Instinctively I trace the path between where I stand and the knife block next to the stove. I do it without looking, from memory. Not that I’m planning to stab Jon, not that I want to. But . . . it always pays to be safe.
“Saffy,” he says. “I think you owe me an explanation.”
30
It was his own book, Without Mercy, in hardcover. As Saffy watched, he opened the cover to reveal the dedication that they both knew was there:
To Seraphina:
Happy clue-hunting!
Best wishes,
Jonathan Desrosiers
“Who’s Seraphina?” he asked.
“Me,” said Saffy. “It’s my real name. I hate it.”
“I always date the books I sign. You were at my last reading. The one on the night that this all started. Or did someone else get the book for you?”
“I was there.” Her voice was quiet.
“You lied to me. You pretended not to know who I was or what I did for a living. You acted surprised when I told you.”
“Well, I didn’t want it to be weird.”
He stared at her. “You think it’s less weird to lie to me than to tell me the truth?”
“In some ways, yes. It’s . . . easier.”
After the initial surprise, she was acting her usual breezy self. But there had been that split second of surprise. That single “Oh” that told Jon that Saffy knew she had something to feel guilty about.
“Did you recognize me?” he asked her. “When we first met, up in Scotland?”
“Well. You’d changed quite a bit since your book signing. No offense.”
“Did you follow me up to Scotland?”
“What? Why would I do that? Do you want some more coffee?” She went to the machine.
“No. I’m just trying to figure out the timeline here. So you came to my book signing. And then totally by chance, your path crossed mine in the depths of the Highlands.”
“I know, isn’t it crazy?”
“And you didn’t recognize me, even though I told you my name.”
“You told me your first name, and not even Jonathan but Jon, which is the most generic name you can get. And also, you didn’t recognize me either, so maybe I should be the one taking offense. I thought I was pretty memorable.”
Her flippant tone made him grind his teeth.
“When did you figure it out?”
“When I saw you again on the train, I knew. But by then we were talking, and I didn’t want to be a fangirl or anything, and you didn’t want to discuss it, so I just . . .”
“. . . Lied.”
“I kept it on the down-low. I played it cool.” She snapped a canister into the machine and pressed the button. Even the scent of the coffee made him tense.
“You didn’t play it cool when I explained my job to you, days later. You got all excited, as if it were new information.”
“Well, I mean, that is playing it cool for me.”
“Had you listened to my podcast?”
“Yeah, sometimes. You know. I enjoyed it. So I went to your talk and bought a book, got it signed.”
“And then you totally by chance bumped into me in Scotland. You had no idea I was there, or who I was.”
She frowned at him, prettily. “You keep on repeating this fact, as if it’s unbelievable.”
“Because it is.”
“It seems plausible to me. Why would I follow you up to Scotland?”
“You tell me.” He folded his arms.
“I have a flat in Edinburgh. Usually I rent it out, but it was empty, so I went up and used it as a base for hiking.”
“Edinburgh is hours away from my cottage.”
“I was staying in a hotel for a few nights. Do you want to see the receipts?”
Her voice, for the first time, was testy. And she could be telling the truth, but from Jon’s experience, good liars often believed their own words so much that they got angry when they were challenged.
“It’s quite a coincidence.”
“Coincidences happen. But in my defense, this year I also went to book signings by Stephen Fry, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ali Smith, and I never ran into them in the Highlands.”
“Did you also hide their books in the back of your closet?”
“Is that where it was?” She narrowed her eyes. “Why were you in the back of my closet, by the way?”
“Girl got loose while I was out.” She looked between him and Girl.
“She didn’t damage any of your stuff. I checked it all over. But if she did, I’ll pay for it. Anyway, that’s not really the point.”
“I think it is the point. You’re a guest and you snooped.”
“No, the larger point is that you hid my book, and not any of the other books that you happened to have signed this year.”
“So your ego is hurt because I don’t have you in pride of place on my shelf?”
“No. But I would like to know why you hid my book. Nothing else, just my book.”
She shrugged. “I must have misplaced it.”
“In the back of your closet? Saffy, I’ve been in that closet. Your shoes are arranged according to style and color. I don’t know enough about clothes to understand, but I’d be willing to bet that they’re stored according to a strict and elaborate system.”
“Alphabetically by designer,” she admitted, reluctantly.
“The sweaters in that box were folded up in tissue paper. You pretend to be a little ditzy, but you are in fact one of the most organized people I’ve ever met. You didn’t misplace that book. You deliberately hid it in a place where I would be the least likely to look.”
“Again: why would I do that? I didn’t know you were going to be staying in my house until I invited you, on the spur of the moment.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t on your shelves when I got here. Which means you hid it before you went to Scotland. Which makes it at least possible that you hid it because you knew you were going to be meeting me, and you didn’t want me or anyone else to know that you were familiar with my work.”
“Maybe I just didn’t want anyone to know that I like true crime. It’s a weird thing to like, when you look at it objectively. No offense.”
“Along with being one of the most organized people I’ve ever met, you’re also hands down the most confident. Why would you care whether people know what you read?”
“You obviously have no idea what it’s like to be a woman, do you?” She abandoned her coffee and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to check my shoes for tooth marks!”
Against his better instincts, he followed her. Girl followed him, but he stopped and told her to stay, and wouldn’t leave her until she’d lain down on the kitchen mat. No point throwing gas on a fire.
When he got to her room, Saffy was in the closet already. He heard her moving around, muttering under her breath. He stood in the doorway and watched as she picked up individual shoes and examined them minutely.
“You’ve completely messed up my system,” she said. “Apart from anything else.”
“I’m sorry about that. I should have got a dog-sitter.”
She ignored him, rearranging the pairs of shoes and placing them precisely on the shelves. Then she started on the scarves.
“You’re angry, aren’t you?” he asked, finally.
“I’m tempted not to say anything,” she said, not looking at him. “Because I like you, and you’re a man, and we all know what straight men want. They want laid-back women, women who are cool, who are fun, who are low-maintenance, who never get angry or annoyed or bored, who never nag, and who love to listen to men and forgive them for everything. Straight girls learn this practically as soon as we’re born and every relationship we have only makes us learn it more.”
“I don’t—”
“So really if I like you, I should pretend to be OK with this. Being angry with you is liable to do me zero favors. You might decide that even though I’m hot, I’m too much work. It’s in my interest to be breezy and sexy, and hide how I really feel and who I really am.”
“I don’t want you to—”
“And yes, you might say that you don’t want me to hide my true self, but believe me, all men say that. They think they can handle it, until it gets too hard, and then they can’t. And I get it, I really do, we all want an easy life where we have lots of fun without any consequences, but the point is, Jonathan, is loyalty.”
“I’m not—”
She’d moved on to the clothes on the rails, and she held up a red dress. “There’s a tear in the hem of this one.”
“I’m so sorry. I’ll replace the dress.”
“It’s vintage Valentino.”
“Can . . . I buy vintage Valentino somewhere? eBay?”
Her look was so withering that he couldn’t help stepping back. She replaced the dress on the rail and sighed.
“It’s not about the dress,” she said. “It’s not about material things, or your dog, who’s only a dog. It’s about hypocrisy. You’ve made up this entire nutjob theory about me hiding things from you and following you around, when the ironic thing is, you are actually hiding things from me. You have been since the moment we met.”
