The Narrow Bed, page 39
‘Water can’t hear,’ Gibbs contributed from the far corner of the room.
‘You’re wrong. Lane’s got a book that proves it can. Maybe it can’t hear in the conventional sense, but … it can understand.’
‘Why the little white books to your victims, with the poetry?’ Charlie asked. Simon heard a pronounced lack of sympathy in her voice.
‘They were clues,’ Isobel directed her answer to Simon. ‘Mysteries need clues. Each little white book contained a line of poetry by an American poet whose given name began with E. My mother was an American poet whose given name began with E. Clue! Right? And … books! The clues were books, and my motive was a love of books. Pages that had lost most of their words – to evil machines. I feel like that sometimes, don’t you? Like a page that’s lost nearly all of its words.’ She sighed.
‘Do you ever feel evil?’ Simon asked her.
‘No! Me, evil?’ Isobel laughed to cover her shock. ‘I played fair with you in every possible way. You can’t accuse me of not playing fair.’
‘There’s nothing fair about killing five innocent people,’ said Simon.
She nodded as if she were about to agree, then said, ‘Liam says I’m tired more than anything else. I think I’ll sleep in prison. I’ve hardly slept since my mother was murdered by the horrible machines.’
‘I’m sorry. About your mother, about Rudolphy’s … I’ll make sure Lane knows you’d like her to keep in touch.’
Isobel didn’t seem to be listening any more. ‘Little white books,’ she murmured to her clasped hands. ‘My little white books.’
From: colin.sellers@spilling.police.org
To: zoemcguinness@endfemicide.co.uk
Cc: Sondra.Halliday@Lifeworldmag.co.uk, Sondra@sondrahalliday.com
Sent: 26 January 2015 14:28:03
Dear Ms McGuinness
It was good to talk on the phone just now, and hopefully we at Culver Valley Police and your organisation will, in the near future, find ways to work together to bring down rates of domestic violence and male violence against women and girls. I’ve passed your contact details on to Sergeant Charlie Zailer, who will be in touch with you shortly to move things along.
Thank you so much for removing as speedily as you did the names and photographs of Linzi Birrell, Rhian Douglas and Angela McCabe from your website’s list of victims of femicide. Your site defines the term as ‘the killing of females by males because they are females’. As I said on the phone, we have now established beyond doubt that the killer of Linzi, Rhian and Angela was not a male; nor were these three women murdered because of anything to do with their sex or gender.
Warmest best wishes,
DC Colin Sellers
Culver Valley Police
26
from Origami by Kim Tribbeck
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
There’s a new email from Liam in my inbox. I’ve just had a boiling hot, lavender-scented bubble bath and I wish I hadn’t pulled the plug. After reading Liam’s words, I know I’ll wish I could climb back in and get clean all over again.
He won’t be able to resist sticking up for his sister. He’ll say she did terrible things, yes, but she’s not a bad person. If he defends her, knowing how close she came to killing me, what’s left of my faith in humanity might break for good.
I should delete his message unread, but I open it – for Simon Waterhouse’s sake, I tell myself. There’s a chance Liam has something important to add, as the person who lived with Isobel. I might learn something useful from the email that I can pass on to the police.
There’s no ‘Dear Kim’. There never was, from Liam. The message reads, ‘Want to meet? Feeling horny. Jerking off twice a day at the moment.’
No reference to his sister having been charged with five murders.
I click the bin symbol at the bottom of the screen to delete it. Keep my finger pressed down hard.
Disappear, disappear, disappear.
There’s nothing he could have said to change my mind. But if there had been, that wasn’t it.
I’m about to close my inbox when another new message pops up. The sender is Niall Greeves. What the hell does he want? I make a mental note to get my website changed so that there’s no way for strangers to contact me directly.
This is a good opportunity to prove to myself that I’ve learned something. There’s nothing Niall Greeves could want to say to me that I’m interested in hearing. If it’s anything important to do with Billy – with Isobel Sturridge, as I must now learn to say – then he can contact the police and leave me alone.
I click on the envelope icon to open the message. Might as well know what I’m punitively deleting.
No ‘Dear Kim’ at the top of this one either. Where are men’s manners these days?
The subject heading of the email is ‘Do you know the woman in this sketch?’
I’m looking for a woman whom I think I might like a lot if I could only get to know her. (Yes, I’m afraid I’m the kind of person who says ‘whom’.) I did once ham-fistedly try to approach her, and ended up, briefly, as a suspect in a serial murder case. As a result, and most inconveniently for me, I now feel unable to consider dating anyone who hasn’t at one time or another become entangled in a nationwide hunt for a serial killer. I’m told I’m too fussy, but I disagree. I don’t think a basic level of shared experience is too much to ask for.
Enclosed is a drawing of the woman I’m looking for, penned by a talented police artist from the Culver Valley, though not an official police sketch artist of the kind that drew me.
Let me explain: I went to Spilling police station in the hope of persuading someone there to pass on my phone number and a message to this woman, since I knew they’d have her contact details. Sadly for me, they weren’t inclined to help me (well, they said they weren’t allowed to, to be fair) but then the strangest thing happened. It would have been enough to make me start believing in fate if I weren’t far too sensible.
As I walked out of the police station, there was a man – a PC in uniform – walking ahead of me, talking on his mobile phone very loudly and confidently. He seemed to be in the middle of a long-distance job interview with a graphic design company. As I listened to him going into great detail about what a design whizz he was, and how brilliant he was at drawing, I had an idea which I could see at once was either totally brilliant or a hideous embarrassment that I’d regret for the rest of my life.
I waited for the policeman to finish his phone call, then approached him and asked him if he’d be willing to do a one-off piece of freelance work for me. It involved drawing, I told him. I should stress that I wouldn’t usually approach an officer of the law in this way – normally I’d assume they were too busy catching criminals – but this man did not (I mean, really did not at all) seem too busy with policing. And as it turned out, he was happy to help me – and I was delighted to discover that he’s every bit as good an artist as he’d boasted he was to the graphic design firm, as you can see from the attached sketch. I felt a bit sorry for him when we said our goodbyes and he asked me rather desperately if I thought I might have some more freelance assignments for him in the future.
But back to the main point of this communication: do you know the woman in the attached sketch, by any chance? If you do, please get in touch. If you could bring her to a restaurant of her choice so that I can buy her dinner, that would be even better. Just don’t forget to tell me which restaurant, when, etc.
Thanks in advance,
Niall Greeves
So that’s what he was doing at the police station the other day. It was nothing to do with Billy Dead Mates. He was there because he wanted to get in touch with me.
In the sketch that he’s scanned into the email, I look wary, unapproachable, lonely. It’s a better likeness than all my official publicity photographs.
Damn Niall Greeves. Damn him to damnation for making me want to put him in his place by proving I’m funnier than he is.
I click on ‘Reply’.
From: inessa.hughes@goochandhughes.com
Sent: 17 July 2016 10.52:13
To: Susan.Nordlein@nordleinvinter.co.uk
Subject: The Billy Dead Books by Kim Tribbeck
Dear Susan
I’m so sorry we’ve ended up where we are. I don’t know what to say. I love the book as much as you do, and am bitterly disappointed. It seems almost a tragedy that no one apart from us will ever get to read the inside story of the Billy Dead Mates investigation, but Kim is adamant. I think it would be unfair to blame Niall. Yes, it’s because of him, but he certainly hasn’t applied any pressure. And there’s the Charlie factor, too: as she and Kim have become closer friends, Kim has wanted to protect her, understandably (if not her appalling sister). Anyway, rest assured: no one has leaned on Kim at all. This is one hundred per cent her decision.
I can sort of understand it. She was willing to put her life and feelings out there for public consumption while she was unhappy and lonely (I almost wonder if the book wasn’t a cry for help, in some ways) but now that she is neither, now that she feels she has something worth preserving, she doesn’t want to be the butt of everyone’s disapproval and derision.
As you might imagine, Charlie Zailer is simultaneously relieved and disappointed. She seems to think Kim will write a different book in the not too distant future – perhaps crime fiction – so we can always keep our fingers crossed for that!
Once again, I’m so very sorry. I wish I could have come back to you with better news. I suppose the only silver lining is that I don’t now have to convey your anxieties about The Billy Dead Books as a title. That would not have gone down well!
Very best wishes,
Inessa
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks as always to the stupendous team at Hodder, especially Carolyn Mays, Ruth Tross and Abby Parsons, who helped knock this book into shape; to Peter Straus and Matthew Turner at Rogers, Coleridge & White; to Dan, Phoebe, Guy and Brewster, to Morgan White, for being the exact person Jermain Defoe and I needed at the exact right time; to Emily Winslow, who provided brilliantly incisive editorial comments; to Adele Geras, who read an early draft and said nice things about it as always; to Dan Mallory for his boundless enthusiasm and faith in my writing; to the lovely and brilliant Al Murray, on whose tour dates Kim’s were based; to Mathew and James Prichard and family, and everyone at Agatha Christie Ltd; to Anne Grey, my source of infinite wisdom; and to Jim Swarz, whose website www.shiningworld.com and whose book The Essence of Enlightenment formed the basis of Lane Baillie’s spiritual outlook! And enormous thanks to my right-hand man Jamie Bernthal, who spotted many plot continuity errors that I missed.
Also, a massive thank you to everyone who supports my books – readers, international publishers, Twitter friends who cheer me up in between bouts of hard writing!
A GAME FOR ALL THE FAMILY
A chilling standalone novel from the queen of psychological crime …
Justine thought she knew who she was, until someone seemed to know better …
After escaping London and a career that nearly destroyed her, Justine plans to spend her days doing as little as possible in her beautiful new home.
But soon after the move, her daughter starts to withdraw when her new best friend, George, is unfairly expelled from school. Justine begs the head teacher to reconsider, only to be told that nobody's been expelled – there is, and was, no George.
Then the anonymous calls start: a stranger, making threats that suggest she and Justine share a guilty secret. And then the caller starts talking about three graves – two big and one small, to fit a child …
Buy now at www.hodder.co.uk
/sophiehannahauthor
@sophiehannahCB1
Have you read all of Sophie Hannah’s books?
LITTLE FACE
It’s every mother’s nightmare …
‘Ingenious’
The Sunday Times
HURTING DISTANCE
Sometimes love must kill before it can die …
‘Superbly creepy’
Guardian
THE POINT OF RESCUE
It began with an affair. And ended in murder.
‘Addictive’
Marie Claire
THE OTHER HALF LIVES
‘Utterly gripping’
The Times
‘Thrilling’
Sunday Telegraph
A ROOM SWEPT WHITE
Murder begins at home …
‘Beautifully written’
Daily Express
LASTING DAMAGE
Don’t go into the other woman’s house …
‘Jaw-droppingly assured’
Daily Express
KIND OF CRUEL
Some secrets are so dark, you keep them even from yourself …
‘Truly hair-raising’
Independent on Sunday
THE CARRIER
He swore he was a killer. The truth was worse.
‘Another gripping triumph’
Heat
THE TELLING ERROR
Knowing the secret will kill you.
‘Fiendishly clever’
Sunday Express
For more information visit:
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Sophie Hannah, The Narrow Bed
