Bad Men, page 25
“I could tell the police, as soon as you left.”
“That would imply that you gave a shit about my well-being, which you do not. Also, if you do, I will kill you. Have you found it?”
“No.”
I want to scream with frustration. I want to strangle my sister’s boyfriend. I want to make the whole world stop, right now, and hunt down whoever has got Jon. Failing all that, I want to get an advanced degree in online security systems, so I can stop relying on this idiot.
“Do you even have a general area?” I’ll do a house-to-house search if I need to. I start planning the equipment I’ll need to bring, the detours I’ll have to take to pick up the necessaries.
“Well, I’ve narrowed it down to the UK,” Finlay says. “Or possibly the Netherlands.”
“Have I mentioned to you that this whole thing is life or death?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He chews on his lip, and clicks a few more things, and types a little more. Then he sits back and laughs.
“What? This isn’t funny.”
“You think whoever sent this photo is the person you’re looking for?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then I might have good news for you.”
“What?”
He turns the laptop so I can see the screen. It’s the photo of Amy in the cafe, sitting in that same seat in front of the window. As I watch, Finlay zooms in on the image at a spot beyond Amy’s right shoulder. In the window. Where there’s a reflection of a man holding a phone.
“I’ll make it a little clearer,” he says, and clicks a couple more things, and the image gets sharper.
“Do you know who that is?” he asks. In an instant, I go from desperation to relief. I know exactly who that is: the man holding the phone, taking a photograph of Jon’s ex-wife.
“Shit,” I say. “I thought he only killed pets.”
I was wrong. Simon Simons, pronounced “Simon Simmons,” is apparently a very bad man.
40
“Do you really like them?” Simon glanced at his stuffed cats. “I did them myself.”
“I can tell.”
Jon knew Simon. His superfan. The one who came to all of his readings and collected multiple copies of signed books. The one who always wanted to chat after public appearances. The totally harmless geeky guy, slight Simon with his weedy shoulders and his little belly, with his glasses and his balding head and the deeply unfashionable sweaters, who’d been writing actual letters to him via his agent as if it were 1955.
“Did you burn down Edie’s house?” Jon asked.
Simon nodded. “It wasn’t my primary intention, of course. I needed your details. I noticed she had cats, too. Did she live?”
“Yes. But she could have been killed. She almost was.”
Simon shrugged, as if this information were irrelevant. “It’s good to see you again, Jonathan.”
“Why did you drug me? Why am I tied to a chair?”
“You’re a difficult man to pin down.” Simon came further into the room. He went to one of the cats on a plinth, a ginger one with one small eye and one big one, and stroked imaginary dust off its fur. “I like the cats better like this. Don’t you? They’re so noisy and smelly when they’re alive. I told you about my neighbor with all of his cats, didn’t I?”
“You asked if I thought he could be a serial killer.”
“Ah.” Simon giggled. Actually giggled, hand to mouth. “That was a little bit of misdirection. Was it clever? Did it fool you?”
“Did you poison Amy?”
“Now. That was clever. You’ve got to admit it, Jonathan. You fell right into that trap.”
Jon bit his lip to stop from yelling. To have a moment to think.
He had never thought of Simon as any sort of a threat. He was a little obsessive, that was all. Even Edie had asked him to reply to Simon’s letters. But the fire, the poison, the drugs, the duct tape . . . the cats. Simon, who had always seemed ill at ease with normal social interaction, seemed utterly comfortable with all of this.
No, not comfortable. Elated.
Up till now, Jon had felt more annoyed than frightened. Angry. Simon wasn’t a frightening man; he was a nerd. But this elation made Jon . . . uneasy.
Simon stepped a little closer. He squatted down so he could be face to face with Jon, though in fact this made him a little shorter than Jon. He said, quietly, “You can tell me. I won’t tell a soul, absolutely no one. It’s between you and me. Did you know it was me all along? Have you been playing a game of cat and mouse with me?”
“No,” said Jon, and seeing the little burst of hurt cross Simon’s face, he added, “Why would I play a game with you? Do you think I wanted my ex-wife to be poisoned? Do you think I like being drugged and tied to a chair?”
“Is Amy still alive? I didn’t mean to kill her, but if it had to happen, the ends were worth the means. I had to get hold of you somehow, and I didn’t know where you were staying.”
He’d never given Saffy’s address to Edie, just the police. “Were you the person who called me from the hospital?”
“Yes! Worked like a charm. And here you are.” Once again, Simon was wreathed in smiles.
“Why am I here, Simon?”
He clapped his hands. “I thought you’d never ask. I have a special project for us!” He went to the black suitcase that he’d brought with him, kneeled on the floor, and opened it, his back to Jon. He took out a laptop and a microphone and carefully set them up on the table in the center of the room, then looked at Jon expectantly. The soundproofing made even more sense, now: it wasn’t just to keep Jon from being heard, but it was to make the room more acoustically sound.
“You want me to record a podcast?”
“Not just any podcast. A special edition.” Simon said the words with relish. He reached into the suitcase again and took out a fat stack of papers. “I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t want to suggest that you weren’t capable, but I’ve written a script.”
“About you.”
“About my career.”
Killing cats and poison chocolates? “And you want me to release this podcast? Wouldn’t that be problematic, seeing as you have me tied up in your basement?”
“No. I want it for myself. A very special edition, for an audience of one. Then, the real work will begin.”
“The real work?”
“Your book! About me.” Simon raised his eyes to the ceiling in ecstasy. “I always dreamed I would be in one of your books. And now it’s going to happen! This is so amazing. I’m so happy!” He raised himself on his tiptoes and did a little dance.
That was too much.
“No,” said Jon. “I am not going to record a podcast about you. I am not going to write a book about you. I’m not a cat that you can steal and stuff for your own amusement. Your game is over. You’ve had my attention. Now let me go.”
Simon stopped dancing. Slowly, he sank down off his tiptoes. His hands hung beside him, limp. His face, which had been so gleeful, sobered.
“Oh dear,” he said.
“When you let me go, we can pretend this never happened,” Jon lied. “No one’s been seriously injured yet. But you need to stop now, before this goes too far.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” Simon said. Instead of moving toward Jon to unfasten him from the wheelchair, he turned away from him and went back to the open suitcase instead. He kneeled again, this time by the side of the suitcase so that Jon could see him in profile, and could see what he took out of it, object by object, one by one, as he lined them up on the floor, like a surgeon laying out his instruments.
A bottle of water.
A roll of silver tape.
A small packet of pills.
A plastic squirt bottle containing a dark liquid.
A long object wrapped in cloth.
A large package of bandages.
A sledgehammer.
A pistol.
Jon felt all of the blood drain from his face. His hands and feet went cold.
“You’re just trying to scare me,” he said through numb lips.
“Sadly not,” said Simon. “I’ve given all of this a lot of thought.”
He stood and picked up the sledgehammer. That was, Jon realized, what had made the clank when he’d first set the suitcase down. The head of it was green and shiny. It looked as if it had never been used.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Simon. “In fact, I almost always know what you think, Jonathan. I’ve listened to your podcasts over and over and over. Same with your books. And the audiobooks, too. You read those beautifully, by the way. I like to think that I catch things that others would miss. I really feel as if I know you.” He hefted the sledgehammer in his hands. “That’s how I know that you’re thinking of Misery right now. That was a great film, wasn’t it? I know you think that the book was even better. I agree with you, of course. There are a lot of parallels with the situation we’re in now. You’re a writer, and I’m your biggest fan.” Simon giggled. He was looking elated again. “But in the book, Annie uses an axe to cut off Paul’s foot. In the film, she uses a sledgehammer to shatter it. I approve of that choice. I think it’s less gory, and at the same time even more brutal. It’s literally blunter.”
“You wouldn’t—” Jon’s voice came out hoarse; he cleared his throat and tried to make himself sound rational. “You wouldn’t do that to me, Simon. That’s not your style.”
“You’re right! It’s not. Good call, Jonathan. I’m much subtler than that. For example, the people I’ve chosen to kill. No one has even realized they’ve been murdered!”
“What . . . what do you mean?”
Simon still held the sledgehammer. “The trick is to choose victims who are expected to die. It’s how Harold Shipman got away with his murders for so long, right? Old people, sick people. When I killed my mum, she’d been living with cancer for five years. People even said it was a blessing that she’d passed. Her funeral was so much fun. Everyone thought I was sad.”
“You . . . murdered your mother?”
“Every great career starts at home, doesn’t it? You recorded all your early podcasts from your attic, didn’t you?”
Jon struggled to get control of this situation. Simon adored him. He could talk his way out of this, couldn’t he? Create empathy?
“Your mother was abusive to you?” he tried.
“Oh no. She was fine. We were very close. But then she got older, and she kept on needing attention.” He wrinkled his nose. “Also, she smelled.”
“How many other people have you killed, Simon?”
Simon nodded at the script he’d written. It was, Jon noticed, quite a thick script.
“Oh, it’s all in there. They were mostly old people, but not all. Old people are horrible. Like cats.” He put down the sledgehammer, which was a small relief. “Anyway, as I said: I’m subtle. And subtlety is wonderful if you want to get away with murder, but it means that for someone who’s an aficionado, like me—like both of us, Jonathan—you feel . . . lonely. There’s no one to discuss your hobbies with. Your podcast made me feel seen. It gave me a community.”
“A community of killers.”
“Exactly. There’s a family, almost. We’re all connected with each other. You helped me see that. None of us who have taken even a single human life are alone. And that’s why I loved it so much. And why I was so desperately sad when you ended it. You don’t have the right to take that away from us, Jonathan.”
“Are you monologuing at me, Simon? That’s a very villainous thing to do. Do you see yourself as the villain?”
Simon laughed. “I prefer the word ‘protagonist.’ Because villains and heroes are one and the same sometimes, aren’t they? If I am monologuing, it’s because I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long! But you’d never go for a drink with me, or meet me in private. You ignored all of my letters and my messages and my emails. You even ignored me when I took a photograph of your wife. We could have settled this in a more civilized way, if you’d only deigned to notice me.”
“You’re crazy.” He knew he shouldn’t antagonize Simon, but he couldn’t help it.
“Well, that will remain to be seen. Once you’ve recorded my podcast and written my book. Shall we get started?”
“No. I’m not going to follow some script to glamorize the fact that you’ve killed people.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to refuse me, Jonathan?”
“You won’t kill me. That’s too blunt for you. And if you did, you would never get your podcast.”
“No, I won’t kill you. Not unless it’s necessary. But you forget . . . I’ve given this whole thing a lot of thought.” Simon picked up the bottle of water and the box of tablets and brought them over to Jon. “You’re going to want to take one of these.”
“Are you drugging me?”
“What? No. This is co-codamol this time. Plain old acetaminophen with codeine. I imagine you have a headache after what I gave you earlier. Also, you’re going to be glad of the painkiller.” Simon smiled. “See how much I’ve thought about your comfort, Jonathan?” He cracked open the seal of the bottle and Jon swallowed, his throat dry.
“How did you kill the old people?” he asked. “Was it poison? Like you poisoned Amy?”
“I just gave Amy a whiff of it. It’s not my fault if she’s a pig and ate a whole box of chocolates at once. But yes. Poison, mostly. I like it. It’s clever. The details are all in the script I wrote for you. You’re going to love it; it’s a good read. If I do say so myself.” He opened the box, took out a blister pack, and popped out a pill. “I think you’re going to need two of these, actually. They might make you drowsy for a little while, but I’m not in a hurry for you to do any recording. I want you to be at your tip-top best. Open up.”
He held a pill up to Jon’s mouth. Jon shook his head.
“Come on, Jonathan. You can see what these are, it’s written on the foil. The seal hasn’t been broken. And it’s a brand-new bottle of water, too. Not tampered with at all. Have I ever lied to you?”
“You never mentioned that you were a serial killer.” He said it with his teeth clenched, in case Simon tried to shove the pill down his throat.
“Omission isn’t the same as a blatant lie. I promise you, I swear on my mother’s grave: this is just a painkiller and a bottle of water.”
“Not the best thing to swear on.”
“You haven’t seen my mother’s grave. I spared no expense. OK, I’ll swear on Without Mercy. It’s my favorite of your books. I have twelve copies upstairs, and you signed seven of them. They’re my most treasured possessions. I can’t believe you asked me that time if I was selling them on eBay. As if! Though I guess I can imitate your signature well enough by now that even your wife can’t tell the difference.”
Jon shook his head again, lips clamped shut.
“All right, your choice. If you change your mind, just let me know. Anyway, you’re going to need to eat and drink eventually, so you’re going to have to trust me. It makes sense to do it sooner.” Simon laid the bottle on the table with the pills next to it, and went back to his array of tools. Including the gun.
He wasn’t having any luck persuading Simon to let him go. What should he do? Record the podcast, write the book? Hope that while he was doing it, someone would find him or he’d have a chance to escape? That was probably his best bet.
But what if no one came? What if he couldn’t escape?
After he’d written the manuscript, Simon would have no further use for him. Then it would be poison. Or the gun. The best thing he could do would be to hold out, delay recording and writing, and hope that Simon wouldn’t get frustrated. He would stall for time. Maybe Simon would get careless.
“I’d hoped not to have to do this,” Simon said, stooping down. When he stood again, he was holding the object wrapped in cloth. As Jon watched, he unwrapped it. It was a bolt cutter.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Jon said quickly. “You can let me go. If you hurt me, the police will find you—all those messages you left me—the photograph of Amy—”
“Maybe,” said Simon. “I left clues for you to find. I don’t think you contacted the police about me, though.”
“How confident are you of that?” He didn’t want to look scared. But he couldn’t look away from the bolt cutter. That, too, was new-looking, a two-handed model with cruel shiny pincers and cheerful yellow handles.
“Fairly. Like I said, I know you pretty well. You didn’t contact the police when you went looking for Cyril Walker, for example.”
“I might have learned my lesson.”
“Mm. I don’t think so.” To Jon’s surprise, Simon kneeled in front of the wheelchair. For a split second, Jon thought he might be unfastening his ankles, but instead, Simon untied Jon’s left shoe and pulled it off.
“What are you doing?” Jon asked. Though he knew now. He felt sick.
“I considered taking one of your fingers,” said Simon, placing Jon’s shoe neatly to one side. “But then I realized, that might make it difficult for you to type. Are you a touch-typist, Jonathan?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Fortunately, while you’re with me, though you are required to type, you’re not required to walk. Forgive me, this is a little intimate, but it’ll be over in a second.” He rolled down Jon’s sock and pulled it off. As Jon’s ankles were still secured with tape, Simon must have intentionally made his sock accessible while he was tying him up. Simon carefully folded the sock and put it into Jon’s shoe.
“Now. You’ll be glad to know that I’ve done some research about this. Your big toe does between thirty to sixty percent of the work, depending on whether you’re standing, walking, running, et cetera, and the percentage decreases as you go down the foot. So really, to cause the least damage, I should take the little toe of your left foot. You’re right-footed, aren’t you, Jon? I don’t want you to be unable to kick a football.”
“You don’t have to do this. Don’t do this. I’ll do the podcast.”
Simon rocked back on his heels. “Here’s the thing. We’ve been going through a process, here. I abducted you and brought you to a locked room, and you refused to do what I wanted. I showed you I had a gun, and you refused. Then I showed you a sledgehammer and talked about Misery. And you still refused. I don’t think you take me seriously.”
“That would imply that you gave a shit about my well-being, which you do not. Also, if you do, I will kill you. Have you found it?”
“No.”
I want to scream with frustration. I want to strangle my sister’s boyfriend. I want to make the whole world stop, right now, and hunt down whoever has got Jon. Failing all that, I want to get an advanced degree in online security systems, so I can stop relying on this idiot.
“Do you even have a general area?” I’ll do a house-to-house search if I need to. I start planning the equipment I’ll need to bring, the detours I’ll have to take to pick up the necessaries.
“Well, I’ve narrowed it down to the UK,” Finlay says. “Or possibly the Netherlands.”
“Have I mentioned to you that this whole thing is life or death?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He chews on his lip, and clicks a few more things, and types a little more. Then he sits back and laughs.
“What? This isn’t funny.”
“You think whoever sent this photo is the person you’re looking for?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then I might have good news for you.”
“What?”
He turns the laptop so I can see the screen. It’s the photo of Amy in the cafe, sitting in that same seat in front of the window. As I watch, Finlay zooms in on the image at a spot beyond Amy’s right shoulder. In the window. Where there’s a reflection of a man holding a phone.
“I’ll make it a little clearer,” he says, and clicks a couple more things, and the image gets sharper.
“Do you know who that is?” he asks. In an instant, I go from desperation to relief. I know exactly who that is: the man holding the phone, taking a photograph of Jon’s ex-wife.
“Shit,” I say. “I thought he only killed pets.”
I was wrong. Simon Simons, pronounced “Simon Simmons,” is apparently a very bad man.
40
“Do you really like them?” Simon glanced at his stuffed cats. “I did them myself.”
“I can tell.”
Jon knew Simon. His superfan. The one who came to all of his readings and collected multiple copies of signed books. The one who always wanted to chat after public appearances. The totally harmless geeky guy, slight Simon with his weedy shoulders and his little belly, with his glasses and his balding head and the deeply unfashionable sweaters, who’d been writing actual letters to him via his agent as if it were 1955.
“Did you burn down Edie’s house?” Jon asked.
Simon nodded. “It wasn’t my primary intention, of course. I needed your details. I noticed she had cats, too. Did she live?”
“Yes. But she could have been killed. She almost was.”
Simon shrugged, as if this information were irrelevant. “It’s good to see you again, Jonathan.”
“Why did you drug me? Why am I tied to a chair?”
“You’re a difficult man to pin down.” Simon came further into the room. He went to one of the cats on a plinth, a ginger one with one small eye and one big one, and stroked imaginary dust off its fur. “I like the cats better like this. Don’t you? They’re so noisy and smelly when they’re alive. I told you about my neighbor with all of his cats, didn’t I?”
“You asked if I thought he could be a serial killer.”
“Ah.” Simon giggled. Actually giggled, hand to mouth. “That was a little bit of misdirection. Was it clever? Did it fool you?”
“Did you poison Amy?”
“Now. That was clever. You’ve got to admit it, Jonathan. You fell right into that trap.”
Jon bit his lip to stop from yelling. To have a moment to think.
He had never thought of Simon as any sort of a threat. He was a little obsessive, that was all. Even Edie had asked him to reply to Simon’s letters. But the fire, the poison, the drugs, the duct tape . . . the cats. Simon, who had always seemed ill at ease with normal social interaction, seemed utterly comfortable with all of this.
No, not comfortable. Elated.
Up till now, Jon had felt more annoyed than frightened. Angry. Simon wasn’t a frightening man; he was a nerd. But this elation made Jon . . . uneasy.
Simon stepped a little closer. He squatted down so he could be face to face with Jon, though in fact this made him a little shorter than Jon. He said, quietly, “You can tell me. I won’t tell a soul, absolutely no one. It’s between you and me. Did you know it was me all along? Have you been playing a game of cat and mouse with me?”
“No,” said Jon, and seeing the little burst of hurt cross Simon’s face, he added, “Why would I play a game with you? Do you think I wanted my ex-wife to be poisoned? Do you think I like being drugged and tied to a chair?”
“Is Amy still alive? I didn’t mean to kill her, but if it had to happen, the ends were worth the means. I had to get hold of you somehow, and I didn’t know where you were staying.”
He’d never given Saffy’s address to Edie, just the police. “Were you the person who called me from the hospital?”
“Yes! Worked like a charm. And here you are.” Once again, Simon was wreathed in smiles.
“Why am I here, Simon?”
He clapped his hands. “I thought you’d never ask. I have a special project for us!” He went to the black suitcase that he’d brought with him, kneeled on the floor, and opened it, his back to Jon. He took out a laptop and a microphone and carefully set them up on the table in the center of the room, then looked at Jon expectantly. The soundproofing made even more sense, now: it wasn’t just to keep Jon from being heard, but it was to make the room more acoustically sound.
“You want me to record a podcast?”
“Not just any podcast. A special edition.” Simon said the words with relish. He reached into the suitcase again and took out a fat stack of papers. “I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t want to suggest that you weren’t capable, but I’ve written a script.”
“About you.”
“About my career.”
Killing cats and poison chocolates? “And you want me to release this podcast? Wouldn’t that be problematic, seeing as you have me tied up in your basement?”
“No. I want it for myself. A very special edition, for an audience of one. Then, the real work will begin.”
“The real work?”
“Your book! About me.” Simon raised his eyes to the ceiling in ecstasy. “I always dreamed I would be in one of your books. And now it’s going to happen! This is so amazing. I’m so happy!” He raised himself on his tiptoes and did a little dance.
That was too much.
“No,” said Jon. “I am not going to record a podcast about you. I am not going to write a book about you. I’m not a cat that you can steal and stuff for your own amusement. Your game is over. You’ve had my attention. Now let me go.”
Simon stopped dancing. Slowly, he sank down off his tiptoes. His hands hung beside him, limp. His face, which had been so gleeful, sobered.
“Oh dear,” he said.
“When you let me go, we can pretend this never happened,” Jon lied. “No one’s been seriously injured yet. But you need to stop now, before this goes too far.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” Simon said. Instead of moving toward Jon to unfasten him from the wheelchair, he turned away from him and went back to the open suitcase instead. He kneeled again, this time by the side of the suitcase so that Jon could see him in profile, and could see what he took out of it, object by object, one by one, as he lined them up on the floor, like a surgeon laying out his instruments.
A bottle of water.
A roll of silver tape.
A small packet of pills.
A plastic squirt bottle containing a dark liquid.
A long object wrapped in cloth.
A large package of bandages.
A sledgehammer.
A pistol.
Jon felt all of the blood drain from his face. His hands and feet went cold.
“You’re just trying to scare me,” he said through numb lips.
“Sadly not,” said Simon. “I’ve given all of this a lot of thought.”
He stood and picked up the sledgehammer. That was, Jon realized, what had made the clank when he’d first set the suitcase down. The head of it was green and shiny. It looked as if it had never been used.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Simon. “In fact, I almost always know what you think, Jonathan. I’ve listened to your podcasts over and over and over. Same with your books. And the audiobooks, too. You read those beautifully, by the way. I like to think that I catch things that others would miss. I really feel as if I know you.” He hefted the sledgehammer in his hands. “That’s how I know that you’re thinking of Misery right now. That was a great film, wasn’t it? I know you think that the book was even better. I agree with you, of course. There are a lot of parallels with the situation we’re in now. You’re a writer, and I’m your biggest fan.” Simon giggled. He was looking elated again. “But in the book, Annie uses an axe to cut off Paul’s foot. In the film, she uses a sledgehammer to shatter it. I approve of that choice. I think it’s less gory, and at the same time even more brutal. It’s literally blunter.”
“You wouldn’t—” Jon’s voice came out hoarse; he cleared his throat and tried to make himself sound rational. “You wouldn’t do that to me, Simon. That’s not your style.”
“You’re right! It’s not. Good call, Jonathan. I’m much subtler than that. For example, the people I’ve chosen to kill. No one has even realized they’ve been murdered!”
“What . . . what do you mean?”
Simon still held the sledgehammer. “The trick is to choose victims who are expected to die. It’s how Harold Shipman got away with his murders for so long, right? Old people, sick people. When I killed my mum, she’d been living with cancer for five years. People even said it was a blessing that she’d passed. Her funeral was so much fun. Everyone thought I was sad.”
“You . . . murdered your mother?”
“Every great career starts at home, doesn’t it? You recorded all your early podcasts from your attic, didn’t you?”
Jon struggled to get control of this situation. Simon adored him. He could talk his way out of this, couldn’t he? Create empathy?
“Your mother was abusive to you?” he tried.
“Oh no. She was fine. We were very close. But then she got older, and she kept on needing attention.” He wrinkled his nose. “Also, she smelled.”
“How many other people have you killed, Simon?”
Simon nodded at the script he’d written. It was, Jon noticed, quite a thick script.
“Oh, it’s all in there. They were mostly old people, but not all. Old people are horrible. Like cats.” He put down the sledgehammer, which was a small relief. “Anyway, as I said: I’m subtle. And subtlety is wonderful if you want to get away with murder, but it means that for someone who’s an aficionado, like me—like both of us, Jonathan—you feel . . . lonely. There’s no one to discuss your hobbies with. Your podcast made me feel seen. It gave me a community.”
“A community of killers.”
“Exactly. There’s a family, almost. We’re all connected with each other. You helped me see that. None of us who have taken even a single human life are alone. And that’s why I loved it so much. And why I was so desperately sad when you ended it. You don’t have the right to take that away from us, Jonathan.”
“Are you monologuing at me, Simon? That’s a very villainous thing to do. Do you see yourself as the villain?”
Simon laughed. “I prefer the word ‘protagonist.’ Because villains and heroes are one and the same sometimes, aren’t they? If I am monologuing, it’s because I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long! But you’d never go for a drink with me, or meet me in private. You ignored all of my letters and my messages and my emails. You even ignored me when I took a photograph of your wife. We could have settled this in a more civilized way, if you’d only deigned to notice me.”
“You’re crazy.” He knew he shouldn’t antagonize Simon, but he couldn’t help it.
“Well, that will remain to be seen. Once you’ve recorded my podcast and written my book. Shall we get started?”
“No. I’m not going to follow some script to glamorize the fact that you’ve killed people.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to refuse me, Jonathan?”
“You won’t kill me. That’s too blunt for you. And if you did, you would never get your podcast.”
“No, I won’t kill you. Not unless it’s necessary. But you forget . . . I’ve given this whole thing a lot of thought.” Simon picked up the bottle of water and the box of tablets and brought them over to Jon. “You’re going to want to take one of these.”
“Are you drugging me?”
“What? No. This is co-codamol this time. Plain old acetaminophen with codeine. I imagine you have a headache after what I gave you earlier. Also, you’re going to be glad of the painkiller.” Simon smiled. “See how much I’ve thought about your comfort, Jonathan?” He cracked open the seal of the bottle and Jon swallowed, his throat dry.
“How did you kill the old people?” he asked. “Was it poison? Like you poisoned Amy?”
“I just gave Amy a whiff of it. It’s not my fault if she’s a pig and ate a whole box of chocolates at once. But yes. Poison, mostly. I like it. It’s clever. The details are all in the script I wrote for you. You’re going to love it; it’s a good read. If I do say so myself.” He opened the box, took out a blister pack, and popped out a pill. “I think you’re going to need two of these, actually. They might make you drowsy for a little while, but I’m not in a hurry for you to do any recording. I want you to be at your tip-top best. Open up.”
He held a pill up to Jon’s mouth. Jon shook his head.
“Come on, Jonathan. You can see what these are, it’s written on the foil. The seal hasn’t been broken. And it’s a brand-new bottle of water, too. Not tampered with at all. Have I ever lied to you?”
“You never mentioned that you were a serial killer.” He said it with his teeth clenched, in case Simon tried to shove the pill down his throat.
“Omission isn’t the same as a blatant lie. I promise you, I swear on my mother’s grave: this is just a painkiller and a bottle of water.”
“Not the best thing to swear on.”
“You haven’t seen my mother’s grave. I spared no expense. OK, I’ll swear on Without Mercy. It’s my favorite of your books. I have twelve copies upstairs, and you signed seven of them. They’re my most treasured possessions. I can’t believe you asked me that time if I was selling them on eBay. As if! Though I guess I can imitate your signature well enough by now that even your wife can’t tell the difference.”
Jon shook his head again, lips clamped shut.
“All right, your choice. If you change your mind, just let me know. Anyway, you’re going to need to eat and drink eventually, so you’re going to have to trust me. It makes sense to do it sooner.” Simon laid the bottle on the table with the pills next to it, and went back to his array of tools. Including the gun.
He wasn’t having any luck persuading Simon to let him go. What should he do? Record the podcast, write the book? Hope that while he was doing it, someone would find him or he’d have a chance to escape? That was probably his best bet.
But what if no one came? What if he couldn’t escape?
After he’d written the manuscript, Simon would have no further use for him. Then it would be poison. Or the gun. The best thing he could do would be to hold out, delay recording and writing, and hope that Simon wouldn’t get frustrated. He would stall for time. Maybe Simon would get careless.
“I’d hoped not to have to do this,” Simon said, stooping down. When he stood again, he was holding the object wrapped in cloth. As Jon watched, he unwrapped it. It was a bolt cutter.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Jon said quickly. “You can let me go. If you hurt me, the police will find you—all those messages you left me—the photograph of Amy—”
“Maybe,” said Simon. “I left clues for you to find. I don’t think you contacted the police about me, though.”
“How confident are you of that?” He didn’t want to look scared. But he couldn’t look away from the bolt cutter. That, too, was new-looking, a two-handed model with cruel shiny pincers and cheerful yellow handles.
“Fairly. Like I said, I know you pretty well. You didn’t contact the police when you went looking for Cyril Walker, for example.”
“I might have learned my lesson.”
“Mm. I don’t think so.” To Jon’s surprise, Simon kneeled in front of the wheelchair. For a split second, Jon thought he might be unfastening his ankles, but instead, Simon untied Jon’s left shoe and pulled it off.
“What are you doing?” Jon asked. Though he knew now. He felt sick.
“I considered taking one of your fingers,” said Simon, placing Jon’s shoe neatly to one side. “But then I realized, that might make it difficult for you to type. Are you a touch-typist, Jonathan?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Fortunately, while you’re with me, though you are required to type, you’re not required to walk. Forgive me, this is a little intimate, but it’ll be over in a second.” He rolled down Jon’s sock and pulled it off. As Jon’s ankles were still secured with tape, Simon must have intentionally made his sock accessible while he was tying him up. Simon carefully folded the sock and put it into Jon’s shoe.
“Now. You’ll be glad to know that I’ve done some research about this. Your big toe does between thirty to sixty percent of the work, depending on whether you’re standing, walking, running, et cetera, and the percentage decreases as you go down the foot. So really, to cause the least damage, I should take the little toe of your left foot. You’re right-footed, aren’t you, Jon? I don’t want you to be unable to kick a football.”
“You don’t have to do this. Don’t do this. I’ll do the podcast.”
Simon rocked back on his heels. “Here’s the thing. We’ve been going through a process, here. I abducted you and brought you to a locked room, and you refused to do what I wanted. I showed you I had a gun, and you refused. Then I showed you a sledgehammer and talked about Misery. And you still refused. I don’t think you take me seriously.”
