Three days earlier
I park up in the same nearby street as on my last visit, then weave a path through the filthy back alleys, past the fly-tipped mattresses, abandoned fridges, and the holdall with the broken zipper. I know which garden wall to climb over, but if I didn’t, the soundtrack of the protestors on the other side of the house would have told me.
The bin is where I left it, up against the wall, so I clamber up and over, knock on Connor’s back door, and stand well back. This time, he doesn’t try to take my head off with his cricket bat, but quickly opens up and ushers me inside.
‘Thought I’d come and see how you’re getting on,’ I tell him. ‘Maybe say hi to your nan, if she’s awake.’
We move through to the living room, which has been redecorated like the rest of the house, but looks dark and gloomy with the curtains drawn. On the coffee table, an ashtray is overflowing with cigarette butts, alongside a pyramid of empty beer cans. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and alcohol, like a pub from the nineties.
Connor is unshaven, his hair unwashed, his normally bright blue eyes dull and tired.
‘Are you doing OK?’ I ask him. ‘Do you need anything?’
‘More beer wouldn’t go amiss,’ he says, glumly.
‘I was thinking food,’ I say. Assuming he hasn’t jumped over the back wall himself to go on a secret shopping mission, they might be getting low on supplies.
‘We’ve got enough in, for now,’ he says. ‘Nan likes to keep the freezer well stocked.’
‘OK. Let me know if you start running low. Don’t starve because of those idiots outside.’
He nods his thanks, then says, ‘How about you?’
‘Me?’ I say. ‘I’m fine.’ A little shaken following my run-in with Elaine, perhaps, but this morning’s revelation about Peter Rand – or Alexander Grantham – has fired up the engine of curiosity inside me. It feels good to have a fresh mystery to solve.
‘I meant after last night,’ says Connor. ‘That trouble with Dalton, in the park?’
It was crowded and dark at the vigil, but if Connor was there, even if he was keeping to the shadows, he’s lucky not to have been spotted. Lucky to have got out of there in one piece.
‘You were there?’ I say.
‘Course not,’ he laughs. ‘I overheard the neighbours talking about it while I was out in the garden earlier. Sounds like he really had a go at you.’
‘He did,’ I tell him. ‘He’s angry, looking for someone to blame, understandably.’
‘I suppose,’ Connor says. ‘Thanks for having my back though.’
‘Always,’ I say, and he smiles at that. Which reminds me …
‘Do you remember a kid called Alexander Grantham, at school? Red hair, short, big smile?’ I take the printout of the school photograph from my back pocket, show it to him and point to Alexander on the second row. He squints at the picture, turns his head this way and that.
‘Hmm, maybe,’ he says, then he nods. ‘Actually, yeah. I mean, I think I remember him. I wouldn’t say I knew him exactly …’ He gives me a sheepish look.
Of course, the little tubby boy with the red hair and glasses isn’t the sort of kid Connor would have hung around with at school, but he is the sort Connor might have teased, maybe even bullied.
I tut, and shake my head at him.
‘I know,’ he says, holding up his hands. ‘I’m sorry. I was a little shit, I get it.’ He looks down as a darkness passes behind his eyes. ‘Yeah, I think I remember giving him some hassle, calling him a few names,’ he says. ‘I was just … you know.’
I know.
He was a troubled young man, who terrorised his neighbours, his teachers and his schoolmates. He caused chaos, never missing an opportunity to disrupt a class, to sling abuse at an authority figure, or to kick out at the world. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that much of the anger inside him probably came from his losing both of his parents when he was just a boy. Only the hardest of hearts could fail to have some sympathy for him. But the fact remains, he caused damage, to property and people. If he could have his time again, do things differently, I’m sure that he would. Wouldn’t we all?
‘What happened to him, anyway?’ he asks now. ‘Did he move away?’
‘Not sure yet,’ I tell him. ‘That’s what I want to find out.’ I reach out to take the printout back from him, but he keeps hold of it, scanning the kids’ faces.
‘Hey! There’s you and Amy, on the third row.’ He holds the picture closer to his face to get a better view. ‘Look at you two,’ he says, wistfully. He loses himself for a moment, thinking about the past perhaps, before handing the picture back. ‘Where d’you get this from, anyway?’ he asks, his face open, curious.
‘A friend found it, on Facebook.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘They put stuff like this up there, do they?’
‘Some people do,’ I tell him. He looks surprised, impressed, even, like Dad did when I first showed him how to stream music. You just type in who you want to listen to, and it just … plays? How marvellous.
‘You don’t go online much?’ I say.
‘Me?’ Connor shakes his head. ‘Nah, we don’t have internet. Nan wouldn’t have much use for it, so I figure we’re better off saving the money. I don’t know much about computers, anyway. I’m still getting used to paying for things without having to type in my PIN. Why do you ask?’
‘They reckon Evan met the person who killed him online,’ I tell him. ‘Someone was sending him messages. They lured him up to the woods, on the night he was killed. So don’t go joining Facebook any time soon, OK? Don’t give them any excuses. The police, I mean. Or those bastards outside.’
‘I won’t,’ Connor says. ‘In case you’re forgetting, I’ve been through this before.’
Upstairs, Connor knocks on his grandmother’s bedroom door. ‘Nan? Someone to see you.’ He pushes the door open, then stands aside and motions for me to go on in.
The room is lit only by the glow of a small TV set, perched on top of a chest of drawers, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. Once they do, I make out Flora Starling, lying in bed, propped up into a half-sitting position by a stack of pillows, smoking a cigarette.
‘Can I come in?’ I say, my voice all but drowned out by a burst of applause from some old quiz show. Flora turns to look at me through a haze of blue cigarette smoke, the reflection of the TV filling the lenses of her glasses.
‘It’s me, Jessie,’ I say, and something clicks and she comes to life.
‘Jessie! Oh, it’s you,’ she says, her voice a tar-soaked rumble from deep in her throat. ‘Come in, come in!’ She reaches over and stubs the cigarette out in a saucer on the bedside table, waves the smoke away with her hand, as if it’ll make any difference. The room smells even more like an ashtray than the living room downstairs.
I go to her, kiss her on the cheek and take a seat in an old armchair by the side of the bed, sinking down into a cushion that has long since lost all shape and purpose. Presumably, it’s the same chair Connor fell asleep in on the night Evan Cullen was killed.
Flora takes my hand in hers and squeezes it tight.
When I first started making Born Killer, Flora was reluctant to go on camera. Not that she didn’t want to get justice for Connor – nothing was more important to her than that – but she was wary of what people might think of her,
‘Look at me, then look at her,’ she said, speaking of Elaine. ‘Who do you think people are going to believe?’
I told her it wasn’t about who believed what. All that mattered was getting to the truth, because that would be how we could best help Connor. Though secretly, I thought she might be right.
Elaine was highly educated, well spoken and always immaculately turned out, with an elegance that came across well on camera. I knew after our first interview that viewers would respond positively to her, would want justice for her, and for Amy. Whereas Flora was anything but elegant. Her house was a mess, she didn’t seem to care how she looked, she chain-smoked constantly and could barely get through a sentence without cursing.
I worried people would judge her harshly, that they’d think of her and Connor as those kinds of people – the sort you would dread having as neighbours – and in turn would be more likely to think Connor guilty.
In the end I needn’t have worried. No doubt, people sympathised with Elaine; they cried along with her, felt her pain and loss through the screen. But audiences really connected to Flora. They loved her no-bullshit attitude. Most of all they liked her fierceness.
But there’s nothing fierce about Flora today, sat smoking in bed, watching repeats of forty-year-old TV shows. Now, she looks thin and frail. I picture her in my mind, climbing into bed the very day Connor walked through the door a free man, and staying there, having finally got what she wanted after all those years.
‘Where have you been?’ she says. ‘We haven’t seen you in ages.’
‘I live in London now, Flo,’ I tell her. ‘I’m just visiting for a few days, while my daughter is on half-term, and thought I’d call in to say hi.’
‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘Silly of me. Staying at your dad’s, are you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And are you still with that fella … Martin, was it?’
‘Yes, we’re still together. We’ve got a little girl now, remember?’
I take my phone out of my pocket with my free hand, open the gallery and thumb through the pictures. Nearly all of them are of Freya, but I find one of my favourites of her, from last Christmas morning, where she’s still dressed in her pyjamas and has a look of delight on her face as she is presented with her first bike. The picture never fails to make me smile.
I show Flora. ‘She’s five now.’
‘Aww,’ she says. ‘Isn’t she pretty? She looks just like you.’ She smiles and I put the phone away.
‘It’s good you’re here.’ Flora rubs a thumb over my knuckles. ‘Con’s been lost without you. I keep telling him he needs to get out more, make new friends. It’s no good, him being cooped up inside all day.’
Does she know what it’s like for him out there, I wonder – even before these last few days? How people look at him, speak about him? That they cross the street when they see him coming? I’m not sure she does. The idea of him making new friends seems ludicrous.
‘I’ll try to visit more often,’ I tell her, though I think she knows I don’t mean it. Her eyes drift back to the TV, where two contestants dressed almost entirely in shades of brown are trying to win a prize by answering a series of questions and throwing darts at a board.
We fall quiet, and I suppose that’s OK, that just being here, holding her hand, is enough.
The host goes to a break and there’s a moment of silence during which we hear a shout go up from outside: Murdering bastard! One of the protestors, making themselves heard.
Flora looks over to the window. ‘Did you hear that?’ she says. ‘There’s been people outside, shouting things. They’ve been at it for days.’ She looks back at me, as far from the fierce Flora I remember interviewing as I can imagine. She looks scared.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ I tell her, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘They’ll be gone soon.’
Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but as soon as the police find out who killed Evan, the protestors will move on.
‘It’s to do with that lad who was killed, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Do they think our Connor did it? Are the police going to come and take him away?’
What a question.
‘Of course not,’ I tell her. ‘They might want to speak to him again, but if they do, it’ll just be routine. Once he explains he was here with you the night that boy went missing, that’ll be the end of it.’
Flora looks puzzled. ‘He was here, was he?’
My stomach flips. ‘That’s right. You watched TV together, remember?’
‘Oh,’ she says, sounding unsure, then a moment later she looks relieved. ‘Well, that’s OK then.’
Fuck. She doesn’t remember.
Connor only having an alibi from his grandmother is bad enough, but at least it’s something. Now it looks as if he doesn’t even have that.
Another possibility surfaces: the reason she doesn’t remember him being here, is because he wasn’t …
I push the thought away. Connor wouldn’t lie to me, of all people. He spent the evening sitting here, in this old armchair, watching terrible quiz shows from the eighties with his grandmother, and she doesn’t remember because she fell asleep. Or she’s forgotten, because her memory isn’t what it used to be.
Connor says he was here, so that’s where he was.
‘Nineteen sixty-four!’ Flora shouts at the TV, in answer to a question I didn’t hear. A moment later the host confirms that she’s correct and awards one of the teams ten points.
I feel a chill clamber up and down my spine.
She’s old and unwell, and judging from the number of pill bottles on her bedside table, she’s on plenty of medication, but she’s not stupid. Far from it.
‘I’d better be going,’ I tell her. ‘It was lovely to see you.’
‘Oh, are you off, love?’ she sighs. ‘You will look after him, won’t you? He’s all I’ve got.’
‘Of course I will,’ I tell her.
‘Good,’ she says, her eyes narrowing. ‘And make sure those bastards don’t fit him up again.’ Then she squeezes my hand so tightly that it hurts.
Perhaps she hasn’t lost all of her fierceness after all.