Him

Wednesday 05:55

The race to sleep is beaten by the sound of my phone ringing, rather than the alarm.

It’s Priya, again, and I have to tell her to slow down. My head hurts from the cheap red wine, and she’s speaking too fast for my brain to process what she is saying. I’ve slept in my clothes, lying on top of the bed in the room that was mine as a boy. I am so cold my hands struggle to hold the phone to my ear. I don’t understand at first, but then I can see that the window is open where I had a cigarette late last night. If Zoe finds out I smoked in the house – with my niece sleeping in the room next door – she’ll kill me.

I remember how good it felt at the time, not just the rush from the nicotine, but the natural high from doing something wrong and thinking I’d gotten away with it. I also remember that feeling disappearing when I sensed I was being watched from the street below. It was so dark outside that someone could easily have been staring right up at me from the shadows and I’d never have known. I try to forget about last night, but when I sit up my head hurts even more, and I know I need coffee.

I make Priya repeat her final words, just to be sure I’ve understood them, and she says it again.

‘A second body has been found in Blackdown.’

I try to formulate a response, but nothing comes.

‘Did you hear me, boss?’ she asks, and I realise I still haven’t said anything.

‘Where was the body found?’

My voice sounds strange when I finally remember how to use it.

‘St Hilary’s. The girls’ grammar school,’ she says.

I take a moment to think. I want to smoke, but I only have one cigarette left after last night, and it feels like I should probably save it.

‘Did you say the girls’ school?’

‘Yes, sir.’

My mind races my reactions. Two murders within two days, here, suggests we might be dealing with a serial killer. The bosses will be all over it once they know, like flies on fresh shit.

‘I’m on my way.’

I shower quickly and quietly then head downstairs, trying not to wake anyone. I needn’t have bothered. Zoe is already up, fully dressed for a change, and in the kitchen. She’s watching the BBC Breakfast programme.

‘Want some?’ she asks, sliding a pot of coffee in my direction, without looking away from the screen.

‘No, I’ve got to go.’

‘Random question before you do, have you seen the nail clippers? They seem to have disappeared from the bathroom and I need them,’ she says.

My mind flashes to the Tic Tac box, and I stare at Zoe for a long time without answering.

‘What?’ she asks.

‘Nothing. No, I haven’t seen them. Speaking of missing things, have you seen my Timberland boots?’

‘Yes. They were by the back door yesterday, covered in mud.’

My blood seems to chill in my veins.

‘Well, they’re not there now,’ I reply.

‘And I’m not your mother, find them yourself. Why the rush to leave so early?’

‘Work stuff.’

‘Because they’ve found another body?’

I stare at Zoe again, taking in the fact that she is fully dressed, the way her cheeks look rosy – like they do when she has been for a rare run – and how her car keys are on the kitchen table, as if she has just come back from somewhere. It’s six in the morning, and I can’t think of anywhere in Blackdown that is open at this time of day.

‘How do you know they found another body?’ I ask.

‘Because I’m the murderer.’

She doesn’t smile and neither do I. Zoe has always had a warped sense of humour, but a tiny part of me wonders if that’s all this is. I’ve never known the real reason she fell out with Rachel Hopkins, or the other girls she went to school with.

Finally, a corner of her mouth turns upwards, and she nods in the direction of the TV.

‘Your ex-wife told me.’

This answer isn’t much better than her first, and makes just as little sense, until I see Anna appear on the screen. She’s standing outside the school, and reporting on the second victim, before I’ve even managed to get to the scene of the crime. There haven’t been any press statements yet; the only people who should know anything about a second murder at this stage could be counted on one hand.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I say again, before heading for the hall, and grabbing my jacket from the bannister where I always leave it. Something else I do that irritates my little sister. I reach for my Harry Potter scarf, but then decide to do without it.

‘Jack, wait up.’ Zoe follows me. ‘Be careful today, OK? Just because you used to be married, doesn’t mean that you should trust Anna.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘She’s more of a journalist than she was ever a wife, so watch what you say. And don’t… lose your temper with anyone.’

‘Why would I?’

She shrugs and I open the front door.

‘One more thing,’ she says, and I turn to face her, unable to hide my impatience.

‘What?’

‘Please don’t smoke in the house.’

I get in my car, feeling like a chastised child who has been caught out in more ways than one. I drive to the school I was parked outside only last night and, once again, it would appear that the entire Surrey police force has arrived before me.

There is only one TV sat truck here for now – Anna’s – but no sign of her or the BBC team, just an empty van. They must be taking a break. I looked up her cameraman on the system last night. It was unprofessional, but I was right to be suspicious. He’s got a record and a past I expect she knows nothing about.

Priya is waiting to meet me in the school reception, and hands me a coffee and a croissant. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail again, but her face looks different.

‘I’m not wearing my glasses,’ she says, as though reading my thoughts.

‘If you didn’t want to see another dead body so soon, you just had to say.’

‘I can see fine, thanks, sir. I thought I’d try contact lenses.’

Seems like an odd time to experiment, but women have always been a mystery to me.

‘Looks good,’ I say and she smiles. I instantly worry that I shouldn’t have said it – concerned that perhaps paying a female colleague a simple compliment somehow constitutes sexual harassment nowadays – so I take it back. ‘I meant the coffee,’ I add and take a sip.

Priya’s smile vanishes and I feel like an arsehole. I try to steer us towards a less personal subject.

‘Where did you find something that tastes this good, at this time, around here?’ I ask, holding up the cup.

‘It’s from Colombia.’

My response skips a beat.

‘That’s a long way to go.’

Her smile returns.

‘I made it for you at home before I left this morning, I thought you might need coffee. I have a whole thermos in the car, but I know how you like it in a paper cup – even though that is a little strange and bad for the environment – so I ordered some online. Paper cups, I mean. I just poured it when I saw you pulling in, so that it would be hot.’

I knew it. She’s in love with me. I might be middle-aged, but I’ve still got it. Not that anything can or will happen. I’ll let her down gently when the time is right. I take a bite of the croissant and it’s good. I decide not to ask where that came from; she probably baked it herself or had it flown in from France.

My phone rings, revealing my boss’s name, and I take longer than I should to answer it.

‘Good morning, sir.’

Kissing arse always leaves an unpleasant taste on my lips.

I listen while the weasel of a man tells me everything he thinks I’ve done wrong with the investigation, and bite my tongue so often I’m surprised it doesn’t have a hole. He’d never say it to my face. Firstly, I doubt he could find his way out of his office to do so, plus it’s hard for him to look down on me in person; I’m considerably taller. The man suffers from stunted growth as well as intellect, but I wait until he has said everything he wants to say, then tell him what he wants to hear. I find this is the fastest approach to get management off my back.

‘Yes, sir. Of course,’ I say, promising to keep him in the loop before hanging up.

Priya looks disappointed.

‘What?’ I ask.

She shrugs, but doesn’t answer. Her eyes judge me even if her words don’t. I think she overheard what the chief said:

‘This is a major fuck-up by the Major Crime Team on your watch.’

Myself and the entire MCT unit all worked eighteen hour-shifts yesterday. They’ve hardly slept, but something about what he said still stings. For some reason, on some level, it does feel as though all of this might be my fault.

‘Shall we?’ I ask Priya.

‘Yes, sir,’ she says, returning to her normal, efficient self. A version I’m much more comfortable with.

Priya leads the way through a warren of corridors. I ignore all the colourful posters on the walls, and focus instead on her lace-up shoes as they squeak along the polished floor. The black brogues – which oddly enough resemble school shoes to me – are considerably cleaner than yesterday in the muddy woods, so much so that I can’t help wondering whether they are a brand-new pair. Her ponytail swings from side to side as it always does, a hair-shaped pendulum, counting down as we get closer to victim number two. I am in no doubt that the murders are linked.

I keep a couple of steps behind Priya all the way, pretending to follow, but this is a building I am already surprisingly familiar with. I used to get dragged here by my parents all the time, to see my sister perform in school plays. Zoe was never top of her class academically – too much competition for that at a school like this – but she was a terrific actress. Still is. Perhaps it runs in the family. I can no longer pretend to myself that I wasn’t here last night, or that I didn’t see the light in the window of the office we are headed towards. If I had behaved differently then, this wouldn’t be happening now.

When we step into the room, the sight that greets us cannot fail to shock. It’s still pitch-black outside, but not in here. The bright police lights make the room seem like a film set, with the victim centre stage.

‘Can we cover up these windows, please, before the press start posting pictures online?’ I say, and several heads turn to stare in my direction.

There are a couple of uniformed officers I know, as well as some I don’t, and I’m pleased to see that Forensics have already arrived. It’s more or less the same target response team as yesterday, and they all seem a little shell-shocked. Looking at the crime scene, I don’t blame them.

‘I thought it was best to wait for you, sir,’ Priya says.

‘Fine, well I’m here now.’

The school office is more like a miniature library. Bookshelves line the back wall, and there is a huge framed map of the world on another. I see a glass cabinet full of trophies, and a large mahogany desk in the middle of the room. The headmistress is still sitting in her chair behind it, but her throat has been cut and her mouth is stretched into a scream.

Even from the doorway, I can see the foreign object inside her mouth. Just like with Rachel, there is a red-and-white friendship bracelet tied around the victim’s tongue. Her head has fallen to one side, her black Cleopatra-style bob revealing grey hinges. Her hair hides half her face, but I still know who she is. I expect everyone here does. The head of the girls’ grammar school is both well-respected and a little feared in the local community.

Helen Wang used to attend St Hilary’s herself as a pupil, and was in the same year as Zoe, Anna, and Rachel. She went from being head girl as a teenager to being headmistress before she was thirty. A high-flying academic with an oversized IQ, and very little patience for people who didn’t share her view of the world. I know that she and Rachel were still friends, and it’s possible that Helen might have known about our affair. If she did, at least she can’t tell anyone about it now.

I don’t need a pathologist to tell me that a knife was used to slit her throat, that much is obvious, but those aren’t the only visible injuries on the body. The victim’s blouse has been undone all the way down to her waist, and the word LIAR has been written across her chest, just above her bra. The letters appear to have been made using a staple gun. There must be over a hundred tiny slivers of silver stuck in her white flesh, spelling the word like metal stitches.

I already feel out of my depth, but nobody else on this team can swim any better. One murder in Blackdown would have been unusual, but two is unprecedented. Even in London, I only worked on an active serial killer case once before. I look around the room, and get the impression that we’re all just trying to tread water, waiting for someone to rescue us. But they won’t. This is it.

I take a step closer and see the white powder on the tip of the victim’s nose.

‘Are we really supposed to believe that the headmistress was a coke head?’ I say.

‘The substance is being tested,’ Priya replies.

When my initial examination of the scene is complete, I step outside, walk back along the corridor, and find the exit that leads to the school playing fields. My hands shake a little as I search inside my coat pocket to find my final cigarette. I think I deserve it now.

I was here when it happened.

I must have been.

I feel almost drunk with tiredness, and everything about the last couple of days seems unreal to me, as though it might be nothing more than a bad dream I can’t wake up from. When I’m done smoking, I head back inside, and walk straight into Priya. It’s as though she must have been standing there, behind the glass door, watching me. I want to know why, but the sound of a school bell drowns out my question before I can ask it.

‘What is that noise?’ I say when it stops.

‘It’s a bell, sir.’

‘Yes, I’m aware of that. Why is it ringing?’ She stares at me as though I might be dangerously stupid, and I feel a shot of bile climb up my throat. ‘The school is closed, isn’t it?’

‘I think so, sir. I expect people will know by now not to come in, having seen it on the news.’

‘You think so? Are you telling me parents haven’t been told not to bring their children here today? What did I tell you, only yesterday, about securing crime scenes?’

She looks down at the floor. I know how badly she wants to impress me, and how upset she feels whenever she gets something wrong, but I can’t always let things go.

‘It’s OK. Just go to the school secretary’s office now, and make sure they tell parents and all staff to stay away until further notice – not everybody watches the news – and put a couple of uniforms on the front gates, just in case. Also, if you see that BBC team, ask them to leave the car park. They shouldn’t be on school property without our say so. I don’t know how they got here so fast, but they can bloody well report from the street like everyone else.’

‘Sir, I should probably—’

‘Can you please just do as I’ve asked?’

She nods and retreats down the corridor. I step back outside for a moment, I need some more air before I can face going back into that room. Everyone expects me to know what to do, but this is new even for me. Things can get a little dark when the blind lead the blind.

I stare at the school playing fields, which slope down to the woods below. As the crow flies, we are probably less than a mile from the spot where Rachel was killed. When I hear footsteps approaching on the path behind me, I presume it is Priya again.

‘Did you get it done?’ I ask.

‘What do you mean?’

I turn and see Anna. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Your sidekick sent me around this way to find you.’

‘Priya? Why would she do that? And how did you get here so fast? There have been no statements to the press as far as I know, and I would know because it would be me making them.’

Anna doesn’t answer. I glance over my shoulder to check that we are alone and can’t be overheard.

‘Why were you wearing that cotton bracelet yesterday?’ I whisper.

She looks as though she might laugh.

‘Why do you keep asking me about that?’

‘Where did it come from?’

‘It’s none of your—’

‘I’m telling you this because I still…’ love you. That’s what I was about to say. While I know it’s true, I also know I can’t tell her that. Sometimes love is keeping your feelings to yourself. ‘I still worry about you,’ is what I settle on. She smiles, but my irritation levels have already exceeded the recommended daily limit. ‘I’m serious, Anna.’

‘You’re always serious. It’s one of your many flaws.’

‘I mean it. If you repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone else, or dare to report it—’

‘OK, calm down, I’m listening.’

‘Good, I hope you are. Both dead women were found with friendship bracelets, just like the one you were wearing, but inside their mouths. Tied around their tongues.’

She turns visibly pale, and I’m glad the information has caused some kind of emotional response. I would have been deeply troubled if it hadn’t. I don’t like feeling as though I didn’t really know the woman I was married to for all those years.

‘So why do you have one?’ I ask, hoping to get an answer this time.

‘I don’t, I’ve lost it.’ It sounds like a lie, but she looks like she is telling the truth. ‘You sent me a text in the middle of the night saying you wanted to talk, was that why—’

I’d forgotten I had drunk texted her.

‘It was early this morning – hardly the middle of the night – and this really doesn’t seem like the time or place. You haven’t answered my questions. Any of them—’

‘Why did you text me, Jack?’

She looks towards the doors leading inside the school – still thinking about the story first, I see – and I steer her away.

‘I really don’t have time for this right now, in case you can’t tell. I just wanted to say that I wouldn’t get too close to your colleague if I were you.’

She stares at me, her mouth forming a perfect little O.

‘Just so I understand this, you’re dealing with a double murder, but what you’re really worried about is me sleeping with my cameraman?’

‘I don’t care who you sleep with, but he has a criminal record and I thought you should know—’

‘You had no right to look Richard up. It’s completely unethical. And if I were sleeping with him, which I’m not, then I really wouldn’t care if he had an unpaid speeding ticket, or whatever other trivial nonsense you’ve managed to dig up—’

‘It wasn’t trivial. He was arrested and charged with GBH.’

‘Grievous bodily harm? Richard assaulted someone?’

‘Yes. Now, I have work to do, and you need to go back the way you came and remove yourself, and your team, from school property.’

Priya walks through the doors towards us then, blocking my escape route.

‘The school is officially closed,’ she says.

‘Great, and you thought it would be a good idea to let a member of the press back here because?’

Priya looks from me to Anna then back again, confusion drawn all over her face in a series of lines that don’t belong there.

‘Well, I thought you’d want to see her.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Because Ms Andrews was the one who found the body.’

Like most things in life, the more you do something, the easier it gets. The same rules apply to killing people, and the second murder was far less tricky than the first. All I had to do was be patient, and that’s something I’m rather good at.

Helen Wang loved power more than people, and that was her downfall. She was a smart cookie, but a lonely one too, often working late at the school when the rest of the teachers had long since departed for the day. I slipped into her office when she popped out, hid behind the curtains, and waited. My feet were sticking out underneath, but she didn’t notice. Some people use a filter on life as well as photos, which allows them to only see what they want to. When Helen walked back in, she sat down at her desk, and stared at her screen as though looking at a lover.

I presumed she was working on school matters, but was amused to see over her shoulder that she was trying to write a novel. After I slit her throat, I read the opening chapter while stroking her hair – sadly the words were less satisfying. Helen’s writing was disappointingly mediocre, so I deleted the whole thing and replaced it with some lines of my own:

Helen should not tell lies.

Helen should not tell lies.

Helen should not tell lies.

I used an antibacterial wipe from her desk to clean the keyboard when I was done. Then I put the drugs up her nose as well as in her drawer, to be sure nobody would miss them. I wanted everyone to know that the good headmistress was really a bad role model for young girls. Addicted to power, illegal substances, and secrets.

Her tailored suit looked expensive, so it was a little disappointing to unwrap her, and find a cheap tatty supermarket bra hidden beneath her blouse. The staple gun was not part of the plan, but I’d seen it on her desk, and it looked too tempting not to have a go. The letters made of staples on her skin were not as symmetrical as I might have liked, but it was easy enough to see that they spelled the word LIAR.

I tied the friendship bracelet around her tongue, before standing back to admire my own work; it was rather impressive. Then I borrowed a pen from the pot on the desk, to write a note on the back of my hand. A reminder to myself that I needed to make a quick call.