The Next to Die, page 9
“Ahmed said Linzi never mentioned this altercation to him,” Simon said, cutting in again with another detail at risk of being omitted, one that had bothered him a bit. “She’d been attacked unreasonably by the owner of the café across the road—why wouldn’t she tell her fiancé?”
“Because it’s a boring-as-shite story?” Grace Woolston suggested.
Probably. Simon made the concession silently.
“After Linzi’s death, fingerprints were found in her flat, as they were at all the murder scenes,” said Dunning. “But different unidentifiable fingerprints in each case, suggesting Billy either wore gloves or wiped away all traces of his or her presence at the crime scenes. I don’t think the latter option’s practical, personally . . .”
“Me neither,” said James Wing. “We’d have found a few of Billy’s prints at all four scenes, enough to tell us it was the same person. We know that anyway from the little books, but that’s circumstantial.”
“Which means we don’t know it,” said Simon. “We mustn’t ever forget that we’re assuming the same person killed all four, because of the books and the other similarities. Doesn’t make it true.”
“Of course it’s the same killer,” said Proust impatiently. “Can we please not waste time?”
“The gloves thing bothers me,” said Grace Woolston. “You’re in someone’s house chatting away, and you haven’t taken off your gloves? Wouldn’t they be suspicious?”
“They might if they had reason to fear you,” said Sam, “but the victims invited Billy into their homes, which suggests trust, not fear. In which case, you’d simply think, ‘Funny he—or she—hasn’t taken the gloves off.’”
“Happens all the time,” said Dunning. “Visitors come around and sit there in their coats, even when you’ve got the heating up, saying, ‘I’ll take it off in a sec, just let me warm up first.’”
Simon imagined that anyone visiting Dunning might keep their coat on to effect a quick getaway when things became unbearable.
“Gloves are slightly different,” said Proust. “I think DC Woolston has a point. No one walks into a heated building and leaves their gloves on.”
“You’re all right, I think,” said Kerensa Moore, playing the role of diplomatic parent. “No one does that, true—or very few people—but if someone you trusted enough to invite into your home and make tea for happened to do it, what would you do? Sergeant Kombothekra: What would you do?”
“Oh!” Sam looked pleased to be chosen. “Well, if it was someone I knew well, I might say, ‘Aren’t you going to take off your gloves?’ in a lighthearted way. I wouldn’t want to upset them or make them feel awkward.”
“Sergeant Kombothekra would find his own woolliest gloves and put them on, lest his guest should feel alone and misunderstood,” Proust told Moore.
“But if it was someone I wasn’t close to—and there are plenty I trust in that category—I wouldn’t say anything. I’d just think, ‘That’s unusual’—but people are, aren’t they?”
“Right.” Kerensa Moore nodded. “The very answer I wanted. I think we can assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that Billy figured he could keep his gloves on and no one was likely to query it because of basic politeness.” No one disagreed with this.
“He wore gloves but left DNA from his mouth on the crockery,” said Proust. “Is he a moron?”
“I’d say not,” said Moore. “I think the gloves might have been as much about avoiding skin contact with the gun as anything else. Symbolic distance from the act.”
“I’m done with Linzi Birrell,” said Dunning. “Who wants to take Angela McCabe?”
“I will,” said Simon. “Angela McCabe, forty-seven years old, address 7 Bradby Avenue, Chiswick. Happily married, two children, ten and eight. Killed November 11, 2014. And with his third murder, Billy moves to a different socio-economic bracket. Angela McCabe was upper middle class and so was Joshua Norbury, whereas Linzi Birrell and Rhian Douglas both came from working-class backgrounds and led working-class lives. Angela and Josh had been best friends—like particularly close siblings, we’re told—for nearly fifteen years, since they met on a”—Simon cleared his throat—“holistic holiday in Crete, where they were on the same creative writing course.”
“Yet I keep hearing that they weren’t hippies,” Proust said. “When in fact only a hippie or someone of that persuasion could hear the word ‘holistic’ without gagging.”
“I can promise you they weren’t hippies or anything like that—really,” said Grace Woolston. “Angela McCabe was trying to write a screenplay and went on many creative writing courses—this one was in the sun, by a beach, so she thought, ‘Why not?’ She had reservations about the holistic stuff, but she thought she could just ignore it.”
“And what was Joshua Norbury’s excuse?” Proust asked.
“The crime we’re here to investigate is murder,” Simon told him. “Not going on the kind of holiday you disapprove of. Norbury was young, gay and single and wanted to meet someone in the same situation—hopefully the love of his life. He’d been told by a mate that those holistic holidays were the place to go. Josh didn’t meet a romantic partner, but he did make a best friend for life: Angela McCabe.”
Simon stood up, walked over to the window and looked out at the blocks of flats opposite. He found it easier to speak in a group situation when he wasn’t looking at the people he was talking to. “Angela and her husband, Russell, owned a four-story townhouse in Chiswick with a large outbuilding in their back garden, from which they ran their business: a small kung fu school. That’s a martial art. They didn’t make a fortune from it, but they didn’t need to. Both Angela and Russell had inherited an eye-watering amount of family money, so the school was more of a hobby than a necessity.”
“Not fair, that,” said Grace Woolston. “It was a proper business: professionally run and the classes were popular. Just because the McCabes had money doesn’t make them dilettantes.”
“All right, fine,” said Simon. “Crime scene: kitchen of the McCabe home. Same as the previous two victims: cups with remains of drinks found—one tea for Billy, coffee for Angela. Angela, like Rhian Douglas, was shot in her kitchen, but—key difference—Angela was the only one of the four not to be shot in the back of the head. She was shot here.” Simon pointed to the spot between his eyebrows. “By her body, on the floor, was a biscuit tin and biscuits scattered everywhere. Theory: Billy was preparing to shoot her in the back of the head while she was facing the kitchen worktop, mugs, kettle, et cetera, but then she turned around, biscuit tin in hand, to offer him a biscuit—so he shot her face-to-face.”
“I think Billy’s conflict-averse,” said Kerensa Moore. “He likes—maybe even needs—everything to be friendly.”
“Then he ought to consider not murdering people,” said Proust.
“I’m not saying he’s a great guy who should be let off,” Moore clarified. “Only that his preferred MO—cups of tea first, then shot to the back of the head while unobserved—suggests he might be uncomfortable with overt hostility. He wants people to like him—right up until the moment he shoots them dead.”
“That’s . . . not a given.” Simon changed course to end his sentence more tactfully than he’d first intended. “He might just be efficient, or risk-averse. Why allow your target to see you produce a gun and aim it at them when you can wait till their back’s turned and surprise them? If they’ve got even a split second’s advance warning, they might duck out of the way and then you’ve lost control of your kill.”
“Wow. Spoken like a true scary murderer!” Kerensa Moore laughed.
“How do you think I catch these people year after year?”
“Fair point, DC Waterhouse. You’re right: your analysis of Billy’s character is as likely as mine to be correct. It’s good to air as many as we can come up with. There might be other equally plausible possibilities. Let’s hear as many as we can.”
“Yeah, let’s—later,” said Simon, whose tolerance for Moore’s isn’t-it-all-jolly tone was fast evaporating. “I’m in the middle of recapping Angela McCabe. Like Linzi and Rhian before her, Angela also found a small white homemade-looking book, stapled in the middle, with no more than one word on each page. Together, the words added up to a line from a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, an American poet: ‘Somebody’s baby was buried to-day.’ Angela found the book in her handbag. Her husband said it was her favorite bag; she always had it with her. Anyone could have followed her and slipped it in at some point. After dropping her kids off at school, Angela was in the habit of going for a coffee at the Whole Foods Center on Magnier Road in—”
“Whole Foods Center!” Proust pounced on it. “And we’re expected to believe she’s not a hippie.”
“The point is, it would have been easy for Billy to learn that Angela could be found there most mornings,” said Simon. “At the Whole Foods Center. Easy for him to be there too one day and slip the booklet into her bag.”
“Also worth mentioning that Angela got a line from the same poem that Josh Norbury did, in his little white book,” said Grace Woolston.
“Norbury’s line was ‘And a shadow seemed drawn o’er the sun’s golden track,’” said Sam.
“Yes, this is crucial,” said Kerensa Moore. “Sorry, DC Waterhouse—I know you’re keen to go on, but we need to state at every opportunity: this is Billy’s way of telling us that it’s about pairs of best friends, in case we were too slow to work it out. Rhian and Linzi got lines from the same poem. So did Angela and Joshua.”
“The pairs thing was frustrating in the case of Angela,” Simon went on. “The unmissable link to Linzi and Rhian via the little white book, I mean—because if that hadn’t been there, telling us it had to be the same killer, there’d have been an obvious suspect for Angela’s murder: thirty-six-year-old Gisela Bloor, the receptionist at a car showroom in Ealing. Bloor has been semi-stalking Angela’s husband, Russell, for years, making a nuisance of herself in the guise of being a dedicated kung fu student. Russell McCabe wasn’t interested in her and nothing ever happened between them, but Gisela told everybody, including Angela and Russell, that she and Russell were destined to be together. It’s what the universe wants, apparently, she told anyone who would listen—and it would happen eventually whether Russell accepted his predetermined fate or not.”
“Another unhinged hippie,” said Proust.
“She’s the most selfish individual I’ve ever met,” said Neil Dunning. “She left her husband and son to pursue Russell, to be available for when he finally saw the light, which he insists he never will. Now that Angela’s dead, he seems even more determined. Can’t say I blame him. Gisela’d make anyone’s skin crawl, but she’s not a murderer. She was stroking shiny hatchbacks in the showroom the day Angela was murdered. No payments to hitmen, either—not that we can find any trace of. Also, if you’d met her, you’d know she’d never put herself out to find a gun and learn how to use it—the universe is expected to do all the work and bring her what she wants without her having to make an effort.”
“Gisela could be Billy,” Simon insisted. “Somehow, some way—even if it looks, for the moment, like she couldn’t.”
“Then so could Sondra Halliday,” said James Wing. “Just as likely, given her obsession with the Billy killings—and we don’t know she has alibis.”
“What’s Gisela’s motive for killing Rhian and Linzi?” asked Neil Dunning. “Big fat nothing.”
Simon ignored him. “Another suspect for Angela, initially, was the obvious: husband Russell McCabe. Her death meant the debt on their house being paid off in full by Zurich Insurance—they had a £485,000 interest-only mortgage on it. At the same time, they had nearly two million quid in various savings accounts and investment portfolios, and they owned outright a six-bedroom holiday home in Burnham Market in Norfolk. So, did Russell McCabe murder his wife to get his mortgage paid off? We think not, because he was teaching kung fu classes all afternoon. Also, one of the kung fu pupils claims she looked out the window at one point and saw Angela with someone else in the kitchen of the house. We think that someone else must have been Billy. As far as Russell McCabe knew, or as far as he’s told us, his wife wasn’t expecting any visitors that afternoon. And that’s our one and only sighting of Billy, folks—by a witness who happened to glance out a window and see someone about eighty feet away, for a few seconds. We got nothing more from that sighting than ‘a person,’ and even that was qualified by ‘not sure, might have imagined it.’”
“If you’re done, I’ll do Josh Norbury,” said James Wing.
Simon nodded and returned to his chair. He wanted it to be Gisela Bloor, but he didn’t believe it was, not deep down.
“Joshua Norbury, forty-five, single,” said Wing. “Gay. Had a flat in the old Corn Exchange building in Spilling. He worked as a manager at a chemical waste plant between Rawndesley and Combingham. Murdered—shot to the back of the head—on December 17, 2014. Like Rhian and Angela, killed in his kitchen. Josh was found by his cleaner, Andras Nagy, two days after his death. There were mugs on the kitchen counter, but they were clean. Empty. Billy was getting impatient, perhaps, on his fourth killing expedition—couldn’t be bothered to do the cup-of-tea-and-friendly-chat part of his routine, so he shot Norbury before the first drink was made.” Wing rolled his eyes. “I mean, you can see his point. Why waste time socializing with someone who’ll be dead within the next half hour?”
In this instance, thought Simon, the eye roll was at odds with the sense of what Wing was saying. Why hadn’t someone close to him had a word, tried to make him quit the habit? Wing had mentioned a “partner.”
“Josh Norbury was well liked, lots of friends, nothing dodgy or dangerous in his personal or professional life. No one saw or heard anything—no leads, nothing to go on apart from a little white book with a line from a poem: ‘And a shadow seemed drawn o’er the sun’s golden track.’ Ella Wheeler Wilcox.”
“Norbury shouldn’t have died,” said Simon with feeling. “Soon as Angela McCabe was murdered, Norbury, as her best friend, should have had around-the-clock protection. It’s bullshit to say no one was sure it was pairs of best friends Billy was going for when Linzi and Rhian—”
“Don’t harp on, Waterhouse,” Proust snapped. “What’s done is done. What wasn’t done—well, there’s not much that can be done about it now. Billy was not, at that point, known as Billy. The friends pattern only revealed itself after Norbury was killed.”
“No, it didn’t. To anyone who had their eyes open—”
“Let it go, mate.” Wing patted Simon’s knee. Simon swung his leg away.
“So where does all this get us?” Proust asked. “Anywhere at all? We had two decent motives for Angela McCabe, none for anyone else, unless you count vague suggestions of racism for Linzi Birrell, which I don’t. But since all the Culver Valley racists, in any case, have alibis, as does Russell McCabe, as does Gisela Bloor, we have . . . nothing. We’re up a well-known creek, it seems to me.”
“The Culver Valley has to be significant,” said Simon.
Everyone looked at him.
“Pairs of best friends—fine, maybe Billy’s motive is friendship-related, but there are pairs of best friends all over the country. Two, one in each pair, from our patch—that can’t be a coincidence.”
“With only two pairs, it can, I think,” said Neil Dunning. “Course, if there were to be a fifth and sixth victim—”
“Let’s hope and pray that doesn’t happen,” said Sam. “Even if we never catch Billy, that’s a price worth paying to avoid more murders.”
“No.” Simon said. “We don’t make deals like that, even in our minds. We hold out for both—no more murders, and Billy behind bars.” Or Billy dead, he added silently.
5
from Origami by Kim Tribbeck
Shall I tell you the least disappointing thing Liam ever did? He bought me a brilliant birthday present, the best thing anyone’s ever given me.
Big deal, you’re probably thinking. Isn’t that what lovers do—give gifts that you treasure forever, or at least until you decide you’d rather wrap your thighs around somebody else?
Well, no. If those lovers are Liam, then that is categorically not what they do. That’s why I said “least disappointing.” Liam, I’m sorry to say, is a disappointing man. Let’s put it this way: he would never be asked to stand in for Cyrano de Bergerac. If there was ever a conversation along the lines of: “Cyrano’s gone AWOL—can anyone think of a man who’s equally able to convey romantic passion with eloquent brilliance?” I guarantee no one would pipe up with, “Yes, of course! There’s Liam Sturridge from Rawndesley!”
Romance wasn’t Liam’s thing. Compliments weren’t either, though he did once whisper, “That’s amazing,” while I was giving him a blow job. That was the only time in two years that he used a top-tier enthusiastic adjective. (I don’t include “favorite,” from that first email he sent me, in which he told me I was his favorite comedian.)
On our first date, at the Hourglass in Rawndesley, we each bought our own drinks: a red wine for him and a brandy for me. There were royal blue upholstered booths along two walls. Liam pointed to a free one and said, “Let’s sit there,” when he saw me heading for one of the round tables near the window. From this, I gathered that he wanted privacy.
He sat next to me in the booth instead of opposite as I’d expected him to. I opened my mouth to start chatting at the exact moment that I felt his hand on my thigh. I ran through all the obvious checks in my mind: Is it definitely his hand? Could it be there by accident? How do I feel about this?
It was, without a doubt, the least annoying thing he’d done since writing to introduce himself. His fingers on my skin were an interesting proposition, until he pressed them in harder, like someone testing an avocado for ripeness. Without lowering his voice, he asked, “Is this okay?”
