The Next to Die, page 17
I go through the details one by one: long black stage, about two feet high, with steps down on both sides, also black. Very scuffed wooden floor, pale wood with a herringbone pattern. A huge room that was a perfect square shape with an additional bit added on that was sort of funnel-shaped. All the audience sitting at round tables, about ten people at each one. There was a bar area to the left of the stage, in the funnel part of the room. To leave the hall you had to walk past the bar. Once you’d passed it, the room narrowed. This was the neck of the funnel, and it led to a single door: navy blue with a square glass panel at the top. On the wall farthest from the blue door there was a purple velvet curtain, half pulled, with a black net curtain behind it, partially covering a white wall. The purple wasn’t lilac or mauve or pink; it was livid purple.
“Kim.”
“What? Have you remembered?”
“No. I’m not going to. Sorry. I don’t know what livid purple is, and I don’t remember the color of any curtain I’ve ever seen, I’m afraid. Couldn’t tell you what the curtains look like in our house, for example.”
My house. I’ll have to buy Gabe’s share so that I can think that legitimately. He’s not quite as out of my life as I need him to be.
My phone is buzzing. “Pray for me,” I tell Gabe as I reach into my pocket to pull it out. “With any luck, this’ll be a detective, phoning to say they’ve arrested Billy and I can have my life back.”
That’s what I want, isn’t it?
Please don’t leave me alone with my life, Billy.
“Hello?”
“Kim, is that you?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Fiona.”
The name is familiar, and the voice, but I can’t place her.
“From the hospital.”
“Oh. Right.” The nurse with the tiny Rapunzel braid. “Look, I’m sorry about the other day. I just needed to get that little book to the police as soon as—”
“I’m not calling about that.”
“Then what?”
“You need to come down here now.”
“Where? To . . . to the hospital?”
“Yes. Ward Ten.”
“Ward Ten’s a cancer ward,” I say sharply. “Far as I know, I don’t have cancer. Unless you tested me on the sly while I was visiting.” This is crazy. I shouldn’t panic like this at a phone call.
“Just come,” says Fiona. I hear a click and then nothing.
* * *
I brace myself as I turn the corner, eyes down, watching my feet on the mottled-blue hospital lino as if it’s the only way to keep track of where they’re going. They might as well belong to a puppet whose movements I can’t control. The self-consciousness I feel inside the RGI turns me numb every time.
This is the last time, I say to myself. I’m not coming back here again, no matter what.
I look up when I can no longer avoid it, expecting to see the double doors to Ward 10. Instead, I see Fiona leaning against the wall outside the ward, looking anything but relaxed. Her eyes are red from crying.
Then I see movement through the glass panel—a dark-haired man with his back to me. He turns slightly, and surprise jolts through me before I’ve worked out why. Wait, is that . . . ?
It is. It’s DC Gibbs.
“Yeah,” breathes Fiona. “The police are here.”
That’s to be expected, right? I asked them to check Faith Kendell was safe. This is nothing to panic about.
“I overheard them talking about whether to ring you, when to ring you, how to handle it . . .” Fiona shrugs. “Thought I’d take the decision out of their hands. I knew you’d want to know sooner than they’d want you to. I’m so sorry, Kim.” She starts to cry. “I just can’t believe it.”
“Believe what? What’s going on?” Hearing my own question, I realize there’s only one thing it can be. Oh no. My throat tightens. “Is it Faith Kendell? Is she dead?”
“What?” Fiona sounds surprised. “No.”
“No?” I need to check. It would be my fault if Faith were dead; I’m not sure how, but it would be.
“No. Kim, that’s not it.”
I touch the wall with the palm of my left hand: a solid surface. “Thank God,” I mutter.
The double doors swing open, and a hulk of a man in an ill-fitting suit appears on the corridor. “Kim Tribbeck? I’m DC Simon Waterhouse. What are you doing here?”
“I . . . um . . .” I don’t want to land Fiona in any trouble.
“Never mind. Now you’re here, we should talk.” He turns to Fiona. “Where can we go for privacy?”
“I’ll show you.” Her voice is efficient, despite the tears streaming down her face.
I’m third in line as we walk along the main ward corridor. Chris Gibbs is sitting with his head in his hands beyond the reception area. Like someone who’s lost someone, or losing them. He looks up when he sees us coming and lurches to his feet.
Fiona ushers us into the always-dark TV room. She turns on the lights to reveal a ribbed maroon carpet, pale yellow walls and turquoise curtains, pulled closed. There are two yellow-upholstered armchairs and a long, thin walnut-veneer table covered in magazines. All the bright colors in the room are screaming, “Don’t look at death! Look at me!”
I sit down.
Gibbs turned away when I looked at him and tried to say hello a minute ago, but now, when he thinks I’m looking at Waterhouse, he’s watching me. I can feel his stare.
“Can I bring anybody a drink?” Fiona asks.
“No, thanks.” I need to know what the hell’s going on here. No milky drink is going to delay that by even a second.
There’s no protest from Waterhouse or Gibbs. Fiona withdraws, closing the door behind her.
“What the fuck’s going on?” I blurt out. “Fiona said Faith Kendell’s not dead—is that true?”
“Faith Kendell’s not the person we need to worry about,” says Waterhouse.
“Then who? Tell me.”
“When we came here today, it was Faith we were primarily concerned with—on your tip, because you speculated about Billy maybe thinking the two of you were friends and giving Faith one of his white books for that reason.”
“We asked the ward staff about the book—how it ended up on the board,” Gibbs says.
I’m nodding so hard, it’s making my head throb. “And?”
“It was found in Marion’s room. In her bed.”
“In her . . . her bed?” The connection between my brain and my words has stretched too thin. Every bed is narrow, I think to myself. Narrow, narrow, narrow.
“One of the nurses found it a couple of days before Marion died, tucked underneath the mattress with one corner sticking out,” says Waterhouse.
“And no one thought to tell Drew or me? They find a weird thing like that in a patient’s bed and say nothing, just stick it up on the noticeboard?”
“From what I can gather, they were busy, confused . . . they didn’t want to add to your or Drew’s distress, so they put it up on the board because it looked vaguely as if it might belong there. They had no reason to think it was connected to anything untoward.”
“So the book wasn’t meant for Faith,” I say, trying to make my brain work faster. It was . . .” I stand up and try to walk, but there’s a wall everywhere I look. “But that’s not right, is it? I mean, Marion’s not my best friend. I didn’t even like her! And Billy didn’t shoot her. She died of cancer.”
“You’ll feel better if you sit down and try to stay calm,” Waterhouse tells me.
“No.”
“Yes. Do it.”
I sit.
“Kim. Listen. Marion had terminal cancer. She would have died of it very soon. A day or two later, the doctors think.”
“Would have? She did die of it.”
“No, she didn’t,” says Waterhouse. “Kim, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s looking very much as if Marion was murdered.”
January 11, 2015
Dear Mrs. Halliday,
Last time I wrote, I promised I would send you one of the stories from Lane’s collection. Here it is: “The Two Sisters.” I’ve also sent you another novel: Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Apart from nonnatural death, these latest two offerings do not have a lot in common. They are, in some ways, diametrical opposites. You might want to think about that.
Your Secret Detractor
* * *
The Two Sisters
from Stories of Enlightenment
An elderly couple was found murdered at home. They’d been shot while asleep in bed in the middle of the night. When the police set about investigating this heinous crime, they found that no one had entered the house by force, so they spoke to the couple’s two daughters, both of whom had keys to the family home.
The elder daughter was a frivolous, party-loving hedonist who spent all her spare time having fun. She spent her money on luxuries like fine wine, perfume and beautiful jewelry. The idea of saving for a rainy day was alien to her.
The younger daughter, by contrast, lived frugally. How, she wondered, could anyone care about jewelry in a world full of poverty and injustice? The younger daughter spent all her time fighting for causes she believed in, she told the police. She battled against those who sought to deprive the needy; she wrote letters condemning politicians who neglected the disabled or demonized immigrants in pursuit of election success. She lived within her means and never ran up debts of any kind.
“My older sister must have done this,” she told the police. “She and I are the only ones with keys to the house. She’s been spending money on designer handbags recently, and she took out a loan to buy a yacht she couldn’t afford. She might be my sister, but she’s a totally reprehensible person.”
The police questioned the older daughter, who protested her innocence. Like her sister, she was aware that only the two of them had house keys, and so she said, “If I didn’t do it, she must have, or there must be some other explanation.”
“Like what?” asked the police.
“I don’t know!” The older daughter looked bewildered. She was clearly not enjoying being interviewed. “I don’t want to think about it. Can I go now? I’m going to a movie premiere that’s bound to be huge fun.”
Neither sister had an alibi for the time of the murders. Their parents’ house was searched for fingerprints, and none belonging to any strangers were found. The elderly couple had become very reclusive in their old age and had made a will that divided their estate equally between their two daughters, who both earned good salaries. Despite this, the elder daughter, who loved shopping and partying, was in considerable debt, while the younger sister had accumulated significant savings.
A week after the murders, the police reviewed their notes on the case. They had no leads and could prove nothing. Reluctant to give up, one of the detectives had an idea. “It’s got to be one of the daughters,” he said. “No one else benefited from these deaths.”
His colleagues agreed the killer was likely to be one of the two daughters.
“I’ve got an idea, then,” said the detective. “Let’s tell each sister that we have incontrovertible proof that she’s the killer. Continue to claim innocence, we’ll say, and that will count against you when it comes to sentencing. But admit to your crime, and you’ll be treated more leniently. We say this to both of them and see if either one breaks down and tells us the truth.”
One detective objected. “We should only say all that to the one who killed her parents,” she said. “Only one of those two sisters could conceivably be guilty of murder.”
Everyone agreed she had a point. “All the same,” said one officer, “I’d be happier if we dangled the bait before both sisters. I mean, I agree it’s super unlikely that the younger sister suddenly decided to become a murderer—”
The detective who’d intervened held up her hand. “Did you think I was referring to the older sister when I mentioned the only one who could conceivably be guilty?”
All the detectives in the room nodded.
“Hell, no,” she said. “The opposite. The elder sister is selfish and hedonistic, but she can’t bear to spend a second of her life not having fun. She’s almost allergic to the absence of pleasure. Now, you’re going to say that she was in debt and needed her inheritance, whereas the younger sister didn’t, but the older sister didn’t care about debt. I doubt she ever gave a thought to how much she owed. She’ll have buried her head in the sand and pretended everything was fine, because she could only bear to exist in a world that contained happy, fun things and no depressing realities.”
“Whereas the younger sister—” one detective began, as light started to dawn.
“Yes. The younger sister worries about money even though she’s comfortably off. That’s why she saves: too much. A single woman, earning what she earns, with disproportionately large savings—that’s someone who worries about money.”
“If the older sister went to the chair for murder, wouldn’t the younger sister inherit her share of the estate, too?” one detective asked.
“Wait,” another officer said. “Everything about the younger sister’s life tells us she’s a good person.”
“Stop thinking about good and bad,” said the female detective who strongly suspected the younger sister. “Take the judgment out of it. Think in terms of happy and unhappy. The older sister likes to surround herself with happy experiences. Now think what we know of the younger sister. She fights injustice, condemns inequality, disapproves of spending money on fun, wants to destroy capitalism. All those things she’s putting her energy into are negative actions.”
“But she does it all for noble reasons,” somebody said. “To make the world a better place.”
“I think she might genuinely believe that but, again, look at the words she chose to describe her activities. She could have said she helped the poor and supported the disabled. She didn’t, because she’s full of anger, and therefore much more likely to be the killer.
“The simple truth is this: if we put our energies into anger, fighting, disapproval and condemnation, we’re unlikely to end up making the world a better place. The only way we can do that is by contributing our positive energy—our love, kindness and compassion. Many who are full of anger and hate, many who feel the need to be forever at war, attach themselves to undeniably good causes as a sort of disguise. ‘Look,’ we say to ourselves. ‘That person must be doing it right; she’s spending all her free time attacking . . . whatever the particular appalling thing might be.’ But no; if the impulse is an attack impulse, it can only do harm.”
It was decided that only the younger sister should be confronted in the first instance. Within five minutes of being told about the nonexistent proof that she’d murdered her parents, she admitted to the murders. Despite having more than enough money, she was terrified that some worst-case scenario would befall her for which her savings would prove inadequate. She killed her parents for her inheritance, hoping that would lessen her anxiety, and had no qualms about trying to frame her sister, whom she regarded as a decadent waste of space.
The group of detectives who solved the crime worked differently afterward. As well as thinking about evidence, they tried to be attuned to positive and negative energies in those they interviewed. The result? Unsurprisingly, their solve rate hit a record high and stayed high thereafter.
9
1/12/2015
Natalie. Charlie had a name at last—only a first name, but still, it felt like a big step forward. She celebrated with a sip of ginger beer from the can on her desk. It was warm and flat, left over from the day before, but she was in too good a mood to care. Ginger was a taste that nothing could destroy, especially when you’d just found a short, grainy film on the web of Nikhil Gulati giving a best man’s speech and, in it, referring to his girlfriend as Natalie.
The film was on the YouTube channel of Philip Sier, the groom. Nikhil’s speech had made Charlie laugh twice. It was witty without being attention-seeking; it kept the spotlight firmly on Philip and Emily, whose special day it was. Best of all, it referred to “my better half, Natalie,” who was also present and whose embarrassed face helpfully filled the screen at the exact moment her name was mentioned.
Charlie opened the Liv and Gibbs file on her computer and added the new information—“Nikhil Gulati’s girlfriend’s name: Natalie”—to what she already had. She’d found out quite a bit about Nikhil. No criminal convictions, no history with the police—that was the first thing she’d checked. He wasn’t on Facebook, but she’d found him on Twitter and LinkedIn. He was Associate Marketing Manager for the R & T McElwee Winery in Linton, Cambridgeshire. Before taking that job in 2011, he’d had a similar role at Gallo Wines in Uxbridge. His Twitter feed revealed him to be the doting owner of two pugs—Doug the Pug and Peppa Pug—as well as a member of the Liberal Democrat party and addicted to spicy foods, the hotter the better.
Nikhil had joined Twitter in 2012. There were several references among his tweets to “Her Outdoors,” which had led Charlie to speculate that the girlfriend had a non-office-based career. Her Outdoors wasn’t addicted to Twitter as he was, Nikhil told one of his followers on April 11, 2013; she thought he was crazy to waste so much of his time on it. Charlie, by contrast, was glad he had, because it was his Twitter activity that had led her to Philip Sier, Nikhil’s best friend since university.
And now, thanks to Sier’s YouTube channel, she’d been able to add the name Natalie to her notes. Everything was shaping up nicely.
Charlie felt like doing something to celebrate. She had a sudden urge to be on the move. One minute it presented itself as excitement, the next as anxiety. Everyone was capable of doing something life-ruiningly stupid, but Charlie believed her sister to be more capable of it than most, and they were too close, their lives too intertwined, for Charlie to maintain a safe emotional distance. Not caring—taking no further action—wasn’t an option.
The only way to kill the fear was to find out the truth.
Charlie considered watching Nikhil’s best man speech again in case she’d missed something: a subtle but vital clue. Unlikely. She’d watched it more than ten times already.
