The Next to Die, page 6
Better to have no relationships than bad ones: that’s what I tell myself. Which makes it annoying that I’m stuck with Drew. I don’t think I can bring myself to say to my own brother, “I never want to see you again.”
I hear the words “little white book” and my memory swings away from Sarah Durdy and toward the more recent past: a large hall, a bar near the door, a stage; the audience sitting at round tables—my least favorite formation. I much prefer rows. Tables make the performer—or at least this performer—feel excluded before she starts. On either side of the stage, glittery silver stars painted on black walls . . .
A man coming toward me, his hand outstretched . . .
My breath hardens and sticks in my throat as I listen to DS Sam Kombothekra.
“In all four instances so far, the victim has been given one of these little white books. This isn’t one of them—it’s a mock-up, but it’s very similar to the real thing. Billy’s four victims each found a small book like this in his or her home or among his or her possessions several weeks before the murder occurred in each case.”
A close-up shot of the book in Kombothekra’s hands fills the screen. A blank, white cover. The size is exactly the same.
“But no words inside,” I whisper to myself, suddenly lightheaded. If there were no words inside the books given to Billy’s victims, then this has nothing to do with me.
Kombothekra’s next comment demolishes that idea. “In each book—in some cases on one of the inside pages and in others on the front or back cover—there were some handwritten words. One line, usually—from a poem. The lines chosen were macabre ones, some directly referencing death.”
Death in a little white book. Or maybe not in it, but on it, on the front . . .
It’s gone.
Something was in my mind then that seemed to matter. It escaped before I could grab hold of it.
Wherever that stage was with the silver stars painted on black and the bar by the door and the audience at round tables, he was there: Billy. The same night I was.
I threw away the book he gave me. Was that him?
It can’t have been.
It must have been.
I was scared of him—wanted to get away. There was something about his manner that made me feel threatened. But . . . no, he definitely looked kind. You have to look kind and harmless if you’re approaching a stranger.
But Sam Kombothekra said the four victims were dead within several weeks of being given a little white book. The silver stars gig was . . . when was it?
Gabe was with me. And . . .
Christ, it was painful, dragging Gabe around with me everywhere. But he was there, so it must have been last year. My 2014 winter tour; February or March.
A little white book with four words handwritten at the bottom of the inside back page in black ink: “Every bed is narrow.”
Do those words directly reference death? It never occurred to me. I thought it had to be either pretentious whimsy or an unusual pickup line, though I wasn’t sure how he imagined it might work as the latter. I remember trying to work it out, thinking, If a man hands a woman a book containing one line that refers to a bed, it has to be a come-on. My next thought was, But if every bed is narrow, surely that means you’re better off not inviting anyone to share yours—then you’d have more space.
I suppose it could mean a grave, if you really wanted to stretch it: we’re all alone in the grave.
Lovely thought. Thanks for that, mystery man. Looks like I was right to want to run away from you.
“The lines appear to be paired,” DS Kombothekra tells his interviewer. I don’t want to hear any more. This has nothing to do with me. Just because I too was once given a tiny white book. Just because . . .
Liam. You have to ring Liam.
“So, the first and second victims, who were best friends—they each got lines from the same poem,” says Kombothekra. “The same is true of the third and fourth victims: two lines from the same source—again, a literary source.”
Literary? That never occurred to me.
“We’d like to appeal to anyone who has seen a book similar to this one here, or been given one—anyone for whom this is ringing any bells at all—to contact us as a matter of urgency.”
This is crazy. I’m being roped in by a TV policeman. How absurd. Don’t they know my grandmother’s just died?
I tossed the little white book in the nearest bin and hardly thought of it again.
Literary. A quote, then? Perhaps a well-known one. I feel as if I’m trapped in a surreal dream. All the details are clear but impossible.
I force myself to get up, walk to the kitchen, pull my phone out of my bag and tap the Google icon. I type the words “Every bed is narrow” into the search box.
Shit. Oh, shit.
The line “Every bed is narrow” comes from a poem. It’s the last line of the first verse. I start to read the poem from the top and get no further than the first line.
No, no, no. Oh God. You have got to be kidding me.
A loud, undignified noise startles me. A fraction of a second later, I realize that I made it.
Death. A little white book. That has to mean . . .
Leaving the TV on, I stuff my phone back in my bag and run to the front door. On the other side of it, I fumble with the keys. Can’t leave the place unlocked, not if a killer might be after me. I need to talk to the police, but first I must go back to my least favorite place in the world: Ward 10 of the Rawndesley General Infirmary.
4
1/6/2015
They were all staring. Anyone’d think they’d never seen a man walk back into a room after making a phone call before. Proust’s jibe rang in Simon’s ears: You have the attention you crave. The floor is yours.
The words would stick in Simon’s mind for too long. Speaking in public, never easy for him, had just gotten harder.
“Any joy?” James Wing asked.
“She didn’t pick up. I’ll try again later.” Simon stuffed his phone back in his pocket.
“Why is Sergeant Zailer with Sandra Halliday, Waterhouse? Has marriage to you driven her to seek out the nation’s foremost misandrist?” The Snowman chuckled.
“I asked Charlie to have a word. Didn’t trust myself to do it without losing my rag.”
“Because you hate women?” Neil Dunning asked neutrally.
Twat.
“You might as well ask Waterhouse if he hates stilt-legged llamas, DS Dunning.”
And another one.
“No, I hate people who prefer their stupid biased beliefs to the truth,” Simon answered Dunning’s question. “Halliday might be talking shit but she’s making herself heard, and it’s not helpful.”
“No one with a flicker of brain activity would listen to her,” said Proust.
“You’d be surprised,” said Kerensa Moore.
“I wouldn’t,” Simon told her. “Anything you don’t have to be clear-sighted and intelligent in order to agree with is going to attract a lot of agreement. As a general principle.”
“Spot on,” said James Wing. Simon flinched. He could do without Wing’s endorsements.
“Halliday’s writing about Billy all over the place and she’s winning people over,” Wing went on. “I’ve also checked out her Twitter feed. Yesterday and the day before, the hashtag #FuckYouBillyDeadWomen was trending. She started that. People are lapping up her bullshit. Dunderheads, yes, but there are plenty of them. What I’m wondering is: Is Halliday as obtuse as she seems, or does she have a particular reason for wanting to shove Josh Norbury’s murder to one side and direct us all to disregard it?”
Keen to expand on his clever-clogs theory, Wing turned to Kerensa Moore. “You said it yourself: in her various outpourings on the subject, Halliday’s made no attempt to explain why Josh Norbury was killed if Billy’s motivated by a hatred of women.”
“He was a gay man,” said Neil Dunning.
Everyone stared at him.
“Gay men aren’t women,” Simon told him.
“I know that. I just meant—”
“He wasn’t camp; he wasn’t effeminate.”
“I meant I can imagine a woman-hater who might also hate gay men,” said Dunning.
“You can imagine him, or you are him?” Simon enjoyed asking. He noticed a small smile from Grace Woolston, and his mood improved still further.
“So now we’re playing Pin the Prejudice on the Serial Killer,” Proust snapped. “Sandra Halliday’s made him a misogynist, and now Dunning’s made him a homophobe. Is it my turn? I’m going to say that he’s a terrible racist. All of his victims so far are white, aren’t they?”
“Sondra Halliday might be deliberately creating a smokescreen,” said Wing. “The desired victim—the only victim who matters—might be Josh Norbury, and the three women could have been murdered first to send us up the garden path. A false flag operation, if you like. Then along comes Halliday to interpret things in a way that casts Norbury aside as irrelevant. If we believe her take, we barely give him a thought. We consider only, or mainly, the three female victims.”
“That sounds unlikely in the extreme,” said Kerensa Moore. “Sorry, DC Wing. The first-three-victims-as-cover-for-the-fourth theory is ingeniously baroque, but sadly this is real life. And Halliday might see the world through a warped lens, but I don’t think she’s dumb. She knows the police won’t neglect to investigate Joshua Norbury’s murder on the grounds of gender or because of anything she wrote in Lifeworld.”
“Have you read her blog?” Wing asked.
Moore nodded. “I think I’ve read every word she’s published, for my sins.”
“I think we all have by now,” said Sam Kombothekra.
“That’s three words, then,” said Neil Dunning. “‘I,’ ‘hate’ and ‘men.’”
Proust smiled. Sam looked stricken. Simon could read his mind: he was wondering if it was okay to laugh at Sondra Halliday or if that would make him guilty, as all men must be of all crimes. Of everyone in the room, only Sam was fretting, thanks to Halliday, about what kind of reprehensible misogynist he was and what he ought to do about it.
That was why Simon had sent Charlie to tackle Halliday, because of doormats like Sam who were too easily persuaded. Tell men every day, endlessly, that they hate women whether they realize it or not, and some will believe you. Some will start to hate, at the very least, the women accusing them unfairly; others might lump all females together and decide to act on their newly discovered contempt for half the population. Every time Halliday put fingers to keyboard, she rammed home the message that there was violent hatred in the air all around, and that was dangerous. Simon didn’t think it was possible to release that much boiling resentment without putting lives at risk.
Not that Charlie would succeed in talking her around. Zealots like Halliday listened only to acolytes who echoed their own fantasies and prejudices.
James Wing stood up. He said, “On Halliday’s blog, though she doesn’t go into detail, she refers to two sexual assaults in her past. What if one of the men involved was Joshua Norbury?”
“He’s gay. Was, I mean.” Neil Dunning looked surprised to be having to make the point again.
“Gay men don’t rape women,” said Kerensa Moore.
“All right, forget that theory.” Wing was starting to sound desperate. “Halliday could have hated him for any number of reasons. She wants revenge, so she kills him—after killing three women first, as a decoy. Then she pops up as a commentator on the Billy murders, saying, ‘Notice the dead women, not the dead man!’ Come on, we’re all familiar with criminals who can’t keep away from the scene of the crime—Halliday’s failing to keep away by setting herself up as primary media voice on the issue. Think what a buzz that’d give her.”
“I agree we need to rule her out, but I don’t believe she’s Billy,” said Simon. “Her schtick’s convincing. She means every word of it, from the heart. Wing, what did you mean about the blond woman lead going up in smoke? I know we were going to go over the four in date order, but maybe we can do Rhian Douglas first if there’s been a development?”
“Yes, let’s hear it,” Proust decreed.
“I’d like to suggest something,” said Kerensa Moore. “Apart from this new breakthrough, whatever it is—”
“It’s the opposite of a breakthrough.” Wing rolled his eyes. He hadn’t done it at all while accusing Sondra Halliday of murder, Simon realized. Did that mean something?
“Well, we’ll hear about the negative breakthrough in a minute,” Moore said, “but otherwise, you’re all up to speed on all four, aren’t you?”
“We are,” said Sam.
“Then instead of each team, or a team representative, presenting their own, why not do one another’s? I promise you, when you listen to someone else talking about your investigation, however well informed they are, you’ll find yourself thinking, ‘They forgot X or Y.’ Or sometimes they’ll pick up on things you mentioned in passing but didn’t spot as significant.” Moore circulated an encouraging smile around the room—the facial expression equivalent of handing out copies of a useful pamphlet. “Shall we try it?”
“I think it’s a very sensible approach,” said Sam.
No one protested. Simon thought it might throw up some interesting results, though there was a parlor game aspect to the idea that made him want to reject it out of hand.
“DC Woolston, do you want to start with Rhian, since she’s not yours?” Kerensa Moore asked. “That way DC Wing can get us all up to speed sooner.”
“Please, call me Grace.” Woolston rose to her feet. “Rhian Douglas,” she said. “Billy’s second victim. Twenty-three-year-old nursery worker. She’d worked at Little Chimps day crèche in Poole, Dorset, for six years. Address 17 Nettle Edge, Poole. Rhian was shot in the back of the head on October 21, 2014, between one and three P.M., while her boyfriend, Dolan Todd, a twenty-one-year-old car mechanic, was out at work at Green Fleet Cars, where he’s worked for two years. One neighbor, Samantha Granger of 19 Nettle Edge, might have heard the gunshot. Chances are she did, but she wasn’t sure because she was taking delivery of some shopping at the time, and she thought the loud noise she heard might have been the back of the supermarket’s van slamming shut or another neighbor’s too-loud TV, a neighbor she’s currently involved in a legal noise dispute with.
“The driver of the delivery van was subsequently found and interviewed, and he also remembers hearing a noise that sounded like a gunshot. He assumed it was a gun, but not a real one—he thought it was on the loud TV next door. I’ll come back to the deaf neighbor later.”
“Oh, so will I,” said James Wing ominously.
Grace Woolston said, “The evidence tells us nobody broke into Rhian’s house, so our working assumption is that Rhian invited her killer—Billy—into her home. She made him a cup of tea. Her body was found by her boyfriend on his return from work at six thirty P.M.—she was on the floor close to the sink. The kettle was on the floor beside her. We’re thinking Billy might have said yes to a second cup of tea, then shot Rhian while she was standing at the sink filling the kettle.
“There were two mugs on the kitchen counter near where the kettle usually sat, both containing tea dregs, and two used teabags in an otherwise empty kitchen bin—all this goes toward consolidating our theory that Billy takes the welcome-guest route in.”
“When are you going to mention the little book?” Dunning asked.
“Now. A few weeks before she was murdered—boyfriend Dolan doesn’t remember exactly when, but he says between two and three weeks before—Rhian found something in a cloth tote bag that she’d taken into work with her. She swore that when she took the bag in, all that was in it was a scarf and a copy of the Daily Mail. When she took it home at the end of the day and unpacked it, she found a little handmade book: white folded paper with staples in the middle, about five inches by five inches—stiff card, really, more than paper. Only eight pages in total if you didn’t count the cover; twelve if you did. There was nothing to suggest who’d put the book there or what it meant. Most of the pages were blank, but on one toward the back, someone had handwritten the words ‘I wonder if it hurts to live’ in black ink, cursive writing. Rhian had no idea what this meant, and described the experience of finding it in her bag as ‘creepy.’ More later on these little books, since each of Billy’s victims received one in similar circumstances.”
“Yes, let’s come to the books later,” Kerensa Moore agreed.
“The investigation into Rhian’s death soon established that, unless she was keeping something well hidden, there was no obvious reason for her to get herself killed,” Grace Woolston went on. “No trouble at all at home, in the extended family, friendship circle, at work, with any of the families whose kids she babysat for—nothing. Boyfriend didn’t do it—he was at work surrounded by people all afternoon. He’s got no criminal record, there’s nothing amiss about him as far as we can tell and he’s obviously devastated—DC Wing and his team said that wasn’t an act?”
James Wing nodded his confirmation.
“Billy left his DNA on the mug he drank his tea from. We know it’s his because he did the same at two of the other three crime scenes—Linzi and Angela. Josh Norbury was shot before he got as far as making Billy his first cuppa, so there was nothing there. The DNA profile we’re assuming is Billy’s from three of the four scenes matched none on record, so we’re none the wiser. We’ve taken samples from anyone and everyone connected to all four victims, and there was no match for our Billy DNA. Things were looking bleak. But then, once all obvious avenues of investigation had been covered and had turned up nothing, a stroke of luck occurred.”
James Wing muttered something inaudible, then said, “Only to un-occur a few weeks later. Sorry. Go on, Grace. It’s painful, but I’ll sit it out.”
