Those People

by Louise Candlish

  They were going for the attempted murder charge, Harriet said, which was “a bit of a stretch” even by police standards.

  “They’ve got the wrong man,” Ant told her. It was funny how people reached for clichés when finding themselves in terrible jeopardy. Perhaps it was a survival thing, the limitation of vocabulary, to preserve brainpower for life-or-death thinking.

  Harriet had been able to view the postmortem results and confirm that there were not harmful amounts of gas from the hob in Booth’s lung tissue or blood.

  “So if Booth definitely died of this alcohol-related thing, why are they bothering with the gas?” Ant asked.

  “Attempted murder involves the intention to kill, even if the attempt fails,” she explained. “The police will have to prove you believed the gas could kill and that you intended it to kill him. They’ll also be trying to find a medical expert who says the gas might have been a contributing factor. The slightest possibility, if it’s credible, is bad news for us.”

  The problem Ant had—well, there were several problems, but the chief ones appeared to be: the video of his break-in, recorded by a camera hidden in Sissy’s bedroom; his Google search about the workings of gas hobs; and his (witnessed) destruction of the Booths’ security camera, the only one of which he and the other neighbors had actually been aware.

  But there was reasonable doubt, Harriet said. There was Tess’s testimony about the unattended gas ring and there were multiple other accounts of the deceased’s carelessness. Crucially, Em and Sissy would confirm Ant’s having had a heavy cold, which meant the gas could already have been flowing when he entered the house.

  “They’ve got a case, but it’s not the strongest I’ve seen,” she concluded.

  “They’ve got the wrong man,” Ant repeated.

  “Who’s the right man, do you think?” Harriet asked, but he could tell she didn’t really expect an answer.

  CHAPTER

  39

  RALPH

  He’d been circling the streets of the Rushmoor Estate for so long he worried he might get picked up for curb crawling. Not that there were any prostitutes here; it was pretty decent in that respect, as far as he knew. Drugs, yes. Those spoons lying around—they hadn’t been used for stirring sugar into cups of Earl Grey, oh no. And that couple, trailing along the sidewalk toward the shop by the Star, pupils massive—they were totally clean, right.

  Cars—some of them pretty pricey models—were parked bumper to bumper; there was nowhere to pull over if he wanted to.

  The previous morning on Lowland Way, Jodie had been out front directing two guys in overalls as they systematically removed the last of Booth’s cars from the street. Evidently, she was off-loading them as a job lot to some other salesman, or else selling them for scrap. The RV would have to be dealt with separately, she’d told Tess, its battery now flat, surprise, surprise. She seemed to regard Tess, discoverer of her husband’s body, as the only neighbor above suspicion. Even so, Tess had not raised with her the subject of Darren’s postmortem (they weren’t getting on that well) and the extraordinary new information that had originated from Sissy regarding his cause of death.

  At last, Ralph spotted the girl he’d come looking for. She was with her baby and a couple of mates, plus a bunch of preschoolers, at a miserable little square with swings and a climbing frame. Quite apart from the fact that it was after seven and kids this age should be heading to bed by now, what were they doing here when they could have walked ten minutes to a beautiful park with a landscaped kids’ zone and hundreds of trees?

  He pulled over in the “No Parking” zone by the gate and lowered the window. “Hey, you in the silver jacket? Can I have a word?”

  The group ignored him.

  He turned off the engine, unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. Never in all his previous drives through the estate had he actually left the car. On foot, he’d never come as deep as this, only as far as the Star, sprinting distance from Lowland Gardens. The sky was cold, the air close and granular; it was like the atmosphere of a different planet after the sealed neutrality of his BMW.

  Locking the car, he strolled over to the group and stood in front of the girl in the silver jacket. The others cast sidelong glances at their friend, who stuck her chin out and glared up at him. “You probably don’t even remember me. We had an argument a couple of streets over, back in July.” He’d remembered her as diabolical from their fight, but she was actually quite sweet-looking. Smooth-skinned and comically skinny, just a kid really.

  “Oh yeah. He’s the one who almost ran me over,” she told her friends.

  “I should have slowed down, I admit, but you shouldn’t have been walking in the middle of the road like that. It’s not in the best interests of your kid, is it?”

  She screwed up her face as if he’d addressed her in Cantonese.

  “Also, it’s not good to show that kind of anger in front of your kid.” He gestured to the buggy, as if she might have forgotten which child was hers. “You don’t want to pass aggressive behavior down to the next gen, do you?”

  The group snickered at “next gen.” He felt as ancient and ridiculous as he knew they perceived him to be.

  “What d’you want?” she asked him, and her friends looked at him in voiceless echo. What do you want? What do you want?

  What did he want? It was like being asked the meaning of life.

  Becoming aware of peripheral characters approaching like zombies, perhaps sensing the only working brain in range, he held the girl’s gaze. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” He offered her a business card, unsure whether she and her mates even knew information could come in printed form. “If you ever need anything, maybe work experience or a job, phone me. I’d like to help.”

  The friends cackled with derision. “Phone him, Leesha—he’d like to help!”

  “He wants to get in your knickers, Leesh! What’s your new boyfriend gonna say about that?”

  The girl reared, angry. “Don’t say my name, you idiots!”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  Unexpectedly, she brushed off her crowd and looked at Ralph as if he and she were the only two present. Was it too much to hope for a moment of connection in this, his first ever attempt at community outreach beyond his own street? Something profound that would have a lasting effect on both of them? It seemed to him she was wavering, until she smirked at her mates and aimed a kick in his direction. “Fuck off, perv.”

  But she took the card. Slipped it in her pocket, eyes averted.

  Ralph grinned and made for his car, now the object of attention of a trio of teens. “Off!” he barked in his best parental tone, and they abused him in return with a vocabulary he might once have understood but now did not.

  He was just pulling into Lowland Way when Naomi phoned, her voice coming through the speakers and filling the leather-and-chrome interior with its low, buttery tones: “I’ve just got back from work and heard the most incredible news from Tess. Ant Kendall has been charged with attempted murder!”

  Ralph’s right foot made involuntary contact with the brake pedal, causing him to lurch forward. “Are you serious? Booth’s or Amy’s?”

  “Booth’s.”

  Of course—“attempted.”

  “I think they’ve given up on Amy,” Naomi said. “Not that I would say that to Sissy, but it’s been over a month now. Unless someone confesses, I don’t see what more they can do.”

  Ralph was inclined to agree. “Ant, though? Poor bastard. That can’t be right.” In a summer of shocks, none astounded him more than this. “Listen, I’m just pulling up, babe, so I’ll see you in a second.”

  In spite of the awful news, the agonized discussions that awaited him, both with Naomi and the other neighbors, his mouth curved into a smile as he spied the empty space outside his house. At last, the RV was gone and
he was able to park the BMW by his own gate, back where it belonged.

  CHAPTER

  40

  ANT

  He had been charged. He had been charged and remanded in custody until a later, unspecified date when his trial would take place. Though the facility in which he was held was modern and well run, his future resembled the abyss itself, lightless and unknowable.

  He had at last been allowed to phone Em, and she’d promised to leave Sam with her parents and dash back to London. “Just keep on telling the truth,” she urged. “You didn’t do anything.”

  Ant imagined a courtroom, with Em and Sissy and the Morgans sitting in a line, watching him. Not a single one of them was religious, but they would pray for him and talk together about keeping the faith. They would agree it was a blessing that Sam was too young to understand what was happening to his father. He’ll be found not guilty, they’d tell Em, but even if the worst happens, Sam’s got you and that will be enough.

  Ant agreed with this fictitious platitude. No matter how many times the police interviewed him, no matter how skillful the prosecuting barrister, he would never implicate Em. Sam needed his mother and that was all there was to it.

  Gradually, however, as one blank day blurred into the next, the irony of his predicament sharpened, and it was this, not his many deprivations, that tempted him to beat his fists against the cell door as he’d heard other inmates do. If the gas had killed Booth, either through suffocation or by deadly blast, the risk might have been worth it. But it had not and now he might be sentenced for intention alone.

  Even if he didn’t know himself what his intention had been.

  * * *

  —

  That night shadows of their living room had been heartbreakingly familiar from countless nights up with Sam, the light from the streetlamp on the corner of Portsmouth Avenue making a monster of the high-backed armchair in the corner, black pools of blood of the shade at the foot of the curtains. Em’s angry face at the window belonged not to his wife but to some vengeful spirit who’d taken possession of her.

  He opened the door and her fury preceded her, chasing him into the depths of the hallway, cornering him.

  “I know Sissy told you. I know she gave you the keys. I want them back. You might have stopped her, but you’re not stopping me.”

  He’d stared at her, uncomprehending. “Why is Sissy helping you? I know you must have set it up that she would come over and persuade us to sleep there. Why would she go along with something so dangerous?”

  Em paused and there was an illusion of thoughtfulness before she spewed her words: “Why d’you think? Because she’s not a fucking coward like you! No one’s asking you to do anything, Ant. Just give me the keys and go.”

  “No.”

  “Give me them or tomorrow I find a solicitor and start divorce proceedings.”

  Though Ant felt heat rising to his face, he was not scared of her. She was unidentifiable as herself, but she was still Em, the mother of his son. She was a good mother. “I’m not giving you the keys, Em. Go back over. Forget this nonsense.”

  “Fine. Then we’re no longer married.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  Though her eyes glowed as if bewitched, her words were cruelly human: “You have a choice. Give me the keys and stay married, or stand here and do nothing and in the morning Sam and I will be gone. For good. Your choice.”

  “I’m not giving you the keys,” Ant said.

  “That’s it, then. That’s it.” She kicked out then, making contact with the wall, and then her small clenched fist smashed into his shoulder. It took all his strength to battle her furious body toward the door.

  When she’d gone, he sat for some minutes, breathing heavily, Booth’s keys clutched in his aching fingers, Em’s words tormenting him:

  “No one’s asking you to do anything.”

  “Fucking coward.”

  All at once, nothing was the same; nothing felt real. Wild thoughts flared, rogue impulses that caused his thigh muscles to spasm. He answered Em soundlessly, angrily, his lips moving:

  I am not a coward.

  Didn’t I smash up his place?

  Maybe I should have smashed him?

  Propelled by instinct, not purpose, he left number 3 and approached number 1. The night was so still he startled at a sound from Portsmouth Avenue—the belch of the night bus—but paused only for a moment, confident that no neighbor would appear around the corner. Any resident of Lowland Way out so late would be shuttled home in a taxi or their own private car.

  Turning the key and stepping inside made him feel so powerful— to be defying Em and challenging Booth in one act! About to prowl around downstairs while the enemy lay feet away in a room above, alone and vulnerable.

  But then he saw him: Booth, right there, dead to the world on his sofa island in a sea of cans and junk food wrappers.

  He waited, completely motionless, as if underwater, lung function suspended. Only when he was confident Booth wasn’t about to wake did he allow himself to inhale. He thought about Em’s plan. It was obvious it would have failed. Different if Booth had been upstairs in bed, but not here, where the smoke and heat would have been so close—and that was if a burning cigarette would have ignited the sofa fabric in the first place.

  He turned back to the front door, intending to leave, but he couldn’t work the lock—it wasn’t a standard design—and he felt his body flood with a fresh tide of adrenaline. Was he trapped? Don’t panic, he thought. He’d leave by the kitchen door.

  It was as he crept, soft-footed, past Booth’s sleeping body and through to the kitchen that the memory had come to him, as if by divine revelation: Tess telling him how she’d found the hob flame unattended. “It could have blown out and gassed the pair of them,” she’d said. Just like his own defective model next door. He drew to a halt. There was a roll of kitchen towel on its side and he took a square from it. Then, covering his fingers with it, he turned the knob for the front left-hand ring. Let the gas flow. He didn’t know how long it would go on for; he didn’t know if it had some sort of safety catch and would cut out automatically after a certain time if left unlit. It was the same hob Old Jean had used for years, so there were probably no safety features.

  He imagined Booth waking in the morning and reaching for his cigarettes. When the lighter sparked, it would ignite the gas in the room and Booth would be no more.

  He liked that phrase: “be no more.” It had a sense of the abstract, a serenity to it.

  He kept the kitchen roll in his fist. He would shred it and flush it down the loo. There’d be no evidence.

  Back at Sissy’s, in their bedroom at the back, Em was asleep, her face turned to the wall. Whatever demon had possessed her had now left her to her rest.

  Sam whimpered and Ant put a soothing hand on his tummy. “Shh, back to sleep.”

  The whimpering faded and for once, in Ant’s world, there was silence.

  * * *

  —

  The prison staff were very fair about access to solicitors, and the space in which his meetings with Harriet took place was private and well ventilated. When she talked him through the process that lay ahead, describing the highly regarded team who would do battle on his behalf, Ant found he could visualize himself as a hero of the trial—a victim, no less! Not guilty, and back in his house on Lowland Way as if nothing had happened. Drinking his wine, checking his phone, listening to the music from next door.

  How long between now and then? Would Jodie still be in residence? He hoped she would be. After his companions in prison, she’d be a welcome neighbor, a consoling presence on the other side of the wall.

  He often thought about the night before his arrest. He’d returned home from the liquor store and opened a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon the moment he closed the door behind him, the glass angled in readiness, not a secon
d to lose. The glug-glug of the liquid filling the glass was comforting, but the evening ahead felt enormous and unfillable. Booth was gone, but so was Em. So was Sam.

  He couldn’t be bothered to search the TV channels for something to hold his ragged attention, but when he heard Jodie turn her TV on next door, he listened to the dialogue as if to a radio drama, straining to hear whenever voices were lowered. It was a soap opera, something to do with a falling-out between a bride and her bridesmaid. He struggled to make the first bottle of wine last longer than an hour.

  When he became aware of Jodie opening her front door and leaving the house, he found himself doing the same. She was standing by her living room window, smoking, the drive and garden vacant now of all cars but Darren’s white van and the decrepit Toyota. The evening air was pleasingly sharp.

  Ant called out to her: “I realize I haven’t offered you my condolences. How are you?”

  Her eye contact was grudging. “How d’you think I am?”

  He stepped closer. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot. If there’s anything I can do . . .” He gave an open-armed shrug, as if his helpfulness had no bounds, and smiled. He had an image of her offering him a cigarette and them smoking together, speechless and exhausted, survivors of the apocalypse returned to civilization.

  But when he met her eye, she was looking at him with abject scorn. “No point being all friendly now,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  41

  JODIE