‘What the fuck are you doing?’
The sudden, angry voice made him jump and he turned around sharply to see his landlord standing in the doorway.
‘Looking for rice.’
‘I told you we were low on things in here.’
‘But we’re not.’ He indicated the piles of food. ‘I’m sure that there’s rice in here somewhere. Remember the last time we were at Tesco and you said—’
‘Anyway, it’s not safe in here. The roof could fall in,’ Adam muttered.
Really? But the hole in the roof was at the other side of the garage.
‘I thought that you’d fixed it?’
‘Just a patch-up job. Some of these tiles are unstable.’ Adam almost leaped into the building and began to toss the groceries back into the freezer, rather than stacking them neatly in place.
John swallowed hard. He’d been having such a nice day yet suddenly he was in the doghouse and he didn’t understand why. He and Adam had arranged to do a bulk shop once a month and split the cost, so at least half of the food in here was his. And, until recently, it hadn’t been a no-go area: in fact, quite the reverse.
‘I’ve got six guests to feed,’ he explained. ‘And I’m making them a chilli. I just wanted some of that white-and-wild rice mix that we’ve used before.’
‘Right, you go back to your mates and I’ll see what I can do,’ his landlord muttered. ‘D’you want a few cans of lager as well?’
‘Better not – half of them are trying to diet and one of the guys has a dodgy gut so anything which ferments will make it worse. I’ll just give them black tea.’
‘Redbush for you, I presume?’
‘Thanks, Adam.’ John nodded and smiled, glad that the therapist was back to his usual, easy-going self.
Fifteen minutes later, he served the meal, complete with the rice which Adam had found in the freezer. His landlord joined them but only had the chilli, explaining that he wasn’t hungry enough for both.
‘So, is this meal protein or carbs?’ Louise asked.
‘Both, as beans are made up of the two,’ John admitted, pretending to look shamefaced and everyone laughed. ‘Hey, I never said that I actually practised food combining,’ he added good-naturedly, ‘just said that it was an option to give your digestive system a break.’
‘Apparently chillies are mildly addictive,’ Adam cut in, ‘which explains why so many of us crave a weekly curry or get hooked on Mexican food.’
‘But this is much lower calorie?’ Louise asked, looking at John for clarification.
‘Definitely – it’s very low in fat.’
‘You can move into my kitchen and cook for me anytime,’ she added, spearing another kidney bean.
In the fullness of time, John thought happily, he might get to do just that.
TWENTY-EIGHT
F uck it – last night he’d murdered his nephew and today he’d have to move Kylie’s body. Adam continued to smile and chat to John’s guests but his mind was racing and forming a plan. He daren’t risk John uncovering the girl’s corpse the next time that he fancied a bowl of Häagan Dazs. It was unfortunate as, until now, she was still merely being regarded as a missing person, whereas as soon as her body turned up, police would start treating it as a murder case. But, what with marauding cats and unexpected visits from the boys in blue, it was getting too dangerous to keep her on the premises.
He’d have to drug his lodger to make sure that he didn’t get up whilst he was removing the frozen corpse from the garage or ferrying it through the garden and out of the side gate to his car. She’d be incredibly difficult to manoeuvre but he couldn’t wait around until she thawed out. Earlier in the month, he’d had a heart-stopping moment when a nearby housing area had had a power cut thanks to a lightning strike. That would be all he needed, the smell of Kylie decomposing amidst the thawed legs of lamb. He’d been pleased that he’d literally weathered the storm, had thought that nothing else could happen to thwart him, but today he could have had seven people suddenly staring down at her icy flesh . . .
He had to act normally for the rest of the evening so that John forgot how oddly he’d behaved in the garage. Then, when everyone left, he’d give his lodger some Rohypnol by slipping it into his lager or tea. It would play havoc with his memory, he’d feel groggy when he awoke and would probably spend the next few hours in a hung-over limbo, making the incident with the freezer the last thing on his mind. His memory loss was important as the police pathologist would know that the body had been frozen, might well go public with the news.
The evening passed slowly but, by nine p.m., John’s guests started to murmur that they really must go home.
Go, he thought. I’ve a corpse to dispose of.
‘We must do this again next month. A meal and DVD, I mean – and no charge!’ John said, looking both flushed and high.
‘Or you could all come to me,’ the chunky one – Louise or something similar – said.
‘It’s a date,’ John murmured.
Adam cringed inwardly. Hadn’t the youth heard about acting cool?
After a dozen goodbyes, two mañanas and promises to become friends on Facebook, the troop departed.
‘I’ll make you another redbush,’ Adam said.
‘Thanks, I could use one.’ John flopped down on the settee. ‘That was a marathon with everyone here for eleven hours.’
‘Looks like it was a big success.’
‘It was – but I’m knackered now,’ John admitted. ‘Probably too wired to sleep tonight.’
Trust me, Adam thought, you’re heading towards unconsciousness.
He made the tea, added one of the little white pills and stirred it repeatedly. ‘There you go.’
John took the mug and drank deeply.
‘Pal for life.’
‘You put your feet up whilst I load the dishwasher.’
He cleaned up the kitchen for fifteen minutes then tiptoed back to the lounge. As he’d anticipated, his lodger was already in a deeply-drugged sleep.
Within the hour, darkness descended and Adam hurried out to the garage, tossed out the layers of frozen foods and, with great difficulty, levered Kylie’s chilled, sheet-wrapped corpse out of the chest and onto the concrete. Putting everything back, he shut the freezer and dragged the cadaver out into the back garden before locking the garage door. Shivering, he half carried and half dragged her down the path, stopping each time that he heard a noise in either of the adjacent gardens. He also froze (and was aware of how ironic the word was) when the McLellan’s security light came on, then he reminded himself that it was activated by movement on his path as well as theirs. They invariably went to bed after News at Ten, would be in Dreamland by now.
He sidestepped a clearly lonely Tilly – why couldn’t they keep the bloody pest indoors at night? – and continued to pull the leaden, sheet-wrapped corpse towards the side gate. It was like manoeuvring a giant ice pole, a frozen juice treat that he’d often enjoyed in childhood. He could use the energy rush now, was having to get by on sheer adrenaline. He’d had to stay up late last night in order to murder Tim, and the lack of sleep was catching up with him. Determined to see the project through, he manhandled her out of the gate and towards his car.
She couldn’t go in the boot as she was unfoldable in her current condition, so he laid her on the floor of the back seat, still mummified in the icy cotton. If a traffic cop stopped him and peered into the vehicle, it would be game over but luck had been on his side all his life.
Driving carefully, Adam set off towards a wooded area in Bristol; after all, it was the ice queen’s home town. If he dumped the body there, they hopefully wouldn’t connect it to Hannah who had been found in Weston-super-Mare.
Almost, almost . . . Finding a quiet, shadowy area in the woods, he manhandled his grisly cargo from the vehicle and tried to remove the sheet but it had stuck to her body. Damn it. With effort, he rolled her down the slope, neatly sheathed in white cotton, and watched her disappear between
the trees. She’d probably be found in the morning but by then he’d be in his study, counselling some other confused and desperate bitch.
Keen to get out of Bristol as quickly as possible, he drove home, poured himself a whisky in the kitchen and threw himself down next to John on the settee.
‘Alright, mate?’ The younger man was still unconscious, his eyes shut, his tongue lolling, his . . . Oh Jesus. He took his pulse to make sure, but it only confirmed that he was dead.
How could it have happened a second time? He’d thought that Kylie must have been allergic to the drug but now he realized that it must be a bad batch if it had also killed his lodger. They’d had a spate of deaths in Bristol a couple of years ago when a particularly potent brand of upper had been going the rounds, and a similar number of deaths when a stronger than usual batch of heroin made it to the south west, but why would John take a drug when he was on his own in the house and had showed no previous interest in narcotics? How the hell was he going to explain this to the police?
On second thoughts, he just wouldn’t – he couldn’t have them prowling around here and asking questions. It had taken him long enough to convince them that he hadn’t killed his wife. He’d been badly shaken when they turned up unannounced to ask him about Brandon Petrie, though he’d anticipated a visit after he planted the child porn mag at his brother’s house. There was no way that they’d link him to Tim’s death, not when Tim’s own father was under suspicion. And anyway, young children did occasionally die of suffocation or stopped breathing with no discernible cause.
But when a fit young male like John died suddenly, the authorities started asking questions. No, he’d have to take his lodger’s body somewhere and make it look like a suicide. That wouldn’t be so hard to believe as, until recently, the youth had been friendless, underemployed and craving love. Detectives would only have to glance at the number of self-help books in his bedroom to ascertain that he was one of the long-term lost. It was Sod’s Law that he’d blossomed since doing that course in London but he, Adam, could describe it as being a temporary high.
Suicide, after all, was the leading cause of death amongst young men who often felt lonely, misunderstood and pressurized to live up to a macho image, whilst others had doubts about their sexuality.
He’d better dispose of the body now whilst it was still dark. Christ, his muscles were going to ache tomorrow. How many killers had to dispose of two corpses in the one night? He’d go to a different pub – hell, a different city or even a foreign country – for future batches of the date rape drug, wouldn’t risk a third untimely death.
Luckily, John was a lightweight. Adam half carried him out to the car, doubled him into the boot and drove to a wood in nearby Uphill village; John would have been able to walk here from the bungalow. He parked, fetched his ladder from the roof rack, manoeuvred it over the gate and walked into the nearest copse. Stopping for a moment, he chose a sturdy tree with lots of branches, one which a man of John’s age could easily ascend on foot.
Placing his ladder against the trunk, he climbed to a thick branch which was at least six-and-a-half feet off the ground, the perfect hanging scaffold. Working quickly, he took the rope from his pocket and tied it around the bark. Whilst at home, he’d already formed the other end into a noose, making use of the knowledge he’d gained as a boy in the Scouts.
Now, he clambered down and attempted to pull John’s body up the ladder, but the awkwardness of the situation, with the youth’s clothes snagging against the rungs, almost defeated him. Eventually, urged on by near-panic, not something that he often experienced, he managed to get the younger man’s head parallel with the branch and looped the noose around his neck. Then, sweating and shaking with the effort, he descended and looked for a second at the swaying body before taking the ladder back to the roof rack of the car.
Home had never felt so welcoming, though it felt strange not to hear John’s familiar cry of, ‘Hi mate,’ or the strains of Dave or Sky 3 coming from the television and, when he put on the kettle, he automatically put out two of their jokey His and His mugs. What the hell. Tenants were ten a penny – especially in a seaside town like this where cafes and restaurants were always taking on cooks and waiters – and he’d get a new one in a couple of months when the heat had died down.
TWENTY-NINE
‘So now our chief suspect’s nephew has died,’ Bill Winston concluded.
He had to admit that, though harrowing, the weekly briefing of his staff was never dull.
‘And is he in the frame?’
The Detective Superintendent shook his head. ‘We’ve no reason to suspect him. There’s no sign of forced entry and the mother is a very light sleeper who even got up and checked on her son in the middle of the night.’
The intelligence officer raised an eyebrow. ‘Could she or her husband have . . .?’
‘Obviously, if the father had been interfering with the boy, he’d have a motive to silence him, but he seems genuinely distraught. So does the mother and grandfather. The grandmother, thankfully, knows nothing of this as she’s so ill.’
He broke off as a messenger entered the room, carrying what turned out to be the coroner’s report. He scanned it once, then read it more carefully. ‘It looks as if Tim Neave suffocated – his face was found turned into the pillow and he’d got the duvet tucked over his face and under his head.’
‘Makes sense,’ the officer said, doubtless relieved not to have to cope with further complexity. ‘I mean, we’ve never seen any sign that Adam Neave is attracted to kids.’
‘No, we thought that he was a woman hater,’ Bill Winston murmured then realized that he was speaking in the past tense, that he was having doubts. The man hadn’t put a foot wrong in the time that they’d known him, and now the undercover policewoman’s reports were equally glowing. It was beginning to look as if they might be focusing on the wrong man.
‘Could he have gone to a friend’s?’ Beth asked. She was pleased that Adam had confided in her that his tenant had apparently gone missing but she thought it was too early to phone the police when he wasn’t a juvenile, geriatric or on vital medication. After all, he’d only been gone for thirty-six hours at the most.
‘He doesn’t really have any friends – except me, of course,’ Adam said.
‘What about one of those courses that you mentioned he enjoys? Could he have gone off to one of those at short notice?’
‘That’s just it – he was really disappointed in the latest one. I think he saw it as his last hope, you know, to learn to understand women and get himself a girlfriend, but he somehow couldn’t put the advice into practice. Between you and me, I’m fairly sure that he was . . . is a virgin and he’s at least twenty-four.’
‘One of life’s late developers,’ Beth said, wondering if she could introduce the youth to any of her young widows. She’d better check him out first, make sure that he didn’t have a raging personality disorder: shyness and mild social ineptitude were OK. She realized that Adam was staring at her and wondered if her fringe was sticking up again. Matthew had mentioned it recently.
‘I’m just worried that he may have deliberately hurt himself. He gets so down despite the free counselling I’ve given him. That’s why I thought that I should phone the police.’
He was a lovely man, Beth thought, to care so much about his hapless tenant.
‘Phone them, then,’ she said, ‘even if it’s just to put your mind at rest.’
She sat down as Adam called the local station and gave John’s details. ‘No, I’m not at home at the moment – I’m at the hospital with a colleague. I work as a psychologist.’ He listened. ‘Yes, I can come in now and give you further details. Yes, I’d consider him vulnerable.’
‘Let me know if he turns up,’ Beth said, meaning it. It would be good to have Adam as a friend rather than merely a colleague as he was so bright and so interested in everyone.
‘I’ll phone you – promise.’
She watched him walk th
rough the hospital cafeteria and out through the door.
That evening, as she was getting ready for her date with Matthew – they were going to the local comedy club’s open mic night – the phone rang and it was Adam.
‘Beth? They’ve found John. He’s hanged himself. The police left half an hour ago but I can’t stop pacing about.’
Beth knew that there was a syndrome called widow’s pacing where the newly (and not so newly) bereaved felt the need to keep moving, caused by their shocked bodies producing added adrenalin. Adam must be experiencing something similar now.
‘Can you walk into town? I could meet you at Argos and we’ll walk and talk together.’
They arranged a time, and she hung up then dialled Matthew’s number. He answered on the first ring.
‘Sweetheart? I’m so sorry but I can’t make the comedy club – one of my colleagues has just suffered a bereavement. You can come round later and stay over if you like.’
‘No, it’s OK.’ He sounded apathetic. ‘I’ll just go out with the kids.’ His adult children all lived locally and they often socialized as a family, were more like friends.
‘It’s a crisis,’ Beth said, keen to emphasize that she wasn’t changing their arrangements without good reason. ‘I promise that I’ll make it up to you on Saturday night.’
She could use the vibrator to get him aroused and then go down on him, she thought as she ended the phone call. If she licked him to orgasm, he’d surely be indifferent to her unmanageable hair.
Adam was already waiting when she arrived. On impulse, she gave him a hug and he held her closely.
‘The police came round shortly after I got home from the station. Apparently he’d walked to Uphill Woods – you know how much he loved walking. Some local children found him when they were picking flowers. The poor little creatures must be totally traumatized.’
‘Did he leave a note?’
Adam shook his head. ‘I don’t think so – the police searched his room and didn’t mention anything. I just wish that I’d paid more attention to the clues . . .’
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