#Youdunnit

by Nicci French

  Nicci French

  Tim Weaver

  Alastair Gunn

  #YOUDUNNIT

  Contents

  The Brief

  The Case Files

  The Following

  Nicci French

  Disconnection

  Tim Weaver

  Hashtag, Bodybag

  Alastair Gunn

  Follow Penguin

  The Brief

  When Penguin and Specsavers decided to ask crime fans in the twitter community to contribute plot devices for a crime thriller story, what would the results be? Candlesticks and libraries, clichés more suited to a boardgame than a short story? Or would the ideas be far more obscure and imaginative?

  And how would three very different crime authors interpret this framework? Would they inevitably write the same tale, or would the stories hanging around these plot markers be inventive and intriguing, personal to each author?

  To answer these questions, we approached Nicci French, Tim Weaver and Alastair Gunn, hoping they would participate in the #Youdunnit experiment: take these crowdsourced plot points and prompts and use them to write a short story.

  How could they say no?

  ‘We’re looking forward to seeing ideas from crime readers for the #Youdunnit experiment. To have much of the plotting taken out of our hands could be a blessing or a curse – time will tell!’

  Nicci French

  #Youdunnit began, and we were thrilled by the response from readers. Over a thousand tweets and 675 ideas contributed to the debate, choosing not just the plot, but even the titles and cover design. A week later, we distilled all the proposals down to a single framework to pass to these ever-more-anxious authors. To keep those creative juices flowing we asked that the authors used the crowdsourced ideas wherever possible. Whilst not compulsory to use them all, we were keen that the key details were incorporated when the opportunity arose. Oh, and we gave them just ten days …

  We think the results are fantastic: three rich, intricate and unique stories. But it’s you, the crime-reading public, who chose the barebones of them, so we’d love to know what you think of the results.

  We hope you enjoy the pages that follow. Let us know what you think, using #Youdunnit.

  The Case Files

  The Murder

  MURDER TYPE: The followers of one twitter account are murdered, one by one.

  MURDER LOCATION: Disused railway station

  ITEM LEFT ON SCENE: Bicycle chain

  VICTIM NAME: Jo

  VICTIM DETAILS: 27 y/o old female University student

  SETTING: Small town in autumn. The town is surrounded by industry and there’s a lake on the road out of town.

  The Hero

  HERO NAME: Lucinda Berrington

  AGE: 28 y/o female

  JOB: Travel photographer

  NATIONALITY: UK, Dorset

  MARITAL STATUS: Recently fallen in love in a neurotic and distracting way

  FASHION STYLE: quirky/python-skin cowboy boots

  FASHION ITEM: Specs

  BODY TYPE: 5ft10

  INTERESTS: Art deco / break dance /Progressive rock from seventies

  PERSONALITY TRAITS: Sleeps badly

  PAST JOBS: IT geek that had own company providing IT support

  LIFE EVENT: She won a spelling bee aged 11

  EDUCATION: Left school after A levels

  OTHER CHARACTERISTICS: Border collie for company.

  The Appearance

  FRONT COVER ITEM: A discarded bicycle

  FRONT COVER COLOURS: Black and red

  The Following

  NICCI FRENCH

  @FrenchNicci

  Idea for murder victim: person who thought of #Youdunnit short story crimescene. Idea for suspects: @TimWeaverBooks, @alastair_gunn and us.

  It had been four weeks and three days now, but sometimes I forgot that she was dead. A thought would flit through my head and I’d want to share it with her. I would read something in the papers that made me angry and wonder what she would make of it. I would take a photograph and ask myself what Jo would think. I would overhear a conversation and tuck it away to repeat to her later. Several times a week, I would feel like calling her to say, I’ve seen a dress that would look great on you; there’s a film we’ve got to go to together; you’ll never guess who I met; I’m down; I’m happy; I’ve fallen in love and what shall I do? Her number was still on my mobile. She was in my old address book, a patchwork of different flats where she’d lived over the years, scrawlings and crossings out. Her face was stored in my camera and on my computer and in my memory. But she was gone. We wouldn’t grow old knowing each other: partners, jobs, babies, wrinkles, grey hairs. We wouldn’t be batty ninety-year-olds tottering towards the end together, as we’d always promised each other, laughing as we said it because who in their twenties can imagine being ninety?

  It wasn’t just that Jo had died; she had been killed. Perhaps that was why I caught myself believing that she was alive and that when I turned a corner she would be there, small and strong and wry-faced, or that it was her looking out of the window of a bus as it lumbered past. Because it was simply inconceivable: someone had murdered my dear, stubborn, buoyant and rather grumpy friend.

  She was a cyclist. She cycled to work and for exercise and for fun; carelessly, recklessly, in electric colours and no helmet. I thought she risked being hit by a van. But she had been on the cycle path, far from any traffic. It was a converted railway line. She was ambushed, dragged into one of the abandoned old stations. Strangled. Her body was still in the morgue. One of the papers – and for a couple of weeks she had been in every paper, at first on the front page with her face across four columns, using a photo I’d taken last summer; then inside, the headlines shrinking – had mentioned something about a bicycle chain. I tried not to imagine it, but I couldn’t stop it: the thought of her struggling, suffering, knowing what was happening to her.

  But that morning, the morning it all began, I hadn’t been dreaming that Jo was being killed. I had been dreaming that she was still alive. She was holding a wicker basket of plum tomatoes and wearing ballet shoes. She didn’t look like Jo at all, but with the logic of dreams I knew that it was her. She asked if I wasn’t glad to see her, but before I could reply, before I could hug her, I woke. The sun was shining through the half-opened curtains and I could hear birds singing outside and a tractor in the distance. It was autumn, a time of stubble fields and misty dawns. For a moment I couldn’t remember where I was, nor who it was lying next to me, one arm flung across my body, a shock of dark hair, a beaky nose, unshaven, his mouth slightly open, his chest rising and falling with his sleeping breath. I stared at him, at the room, the flung clothes and the empty bottle of wine beside the bed. I had met Connor the day before Jo died. I couldn’t seem to disentangle the two events in my mind.

  There was a scratching at the door, which opened, and I saw a wet black nose, two brown sad eyes, a hopeful wagging tail. Filby’s claws clattered over the bare boards towards me. He was carrying one of my socks. My phone rang on the bedside table. Connor stirred, muttered something, groaned. It was only just after seven. I reached my hand across him, found the phone and brought it to my ear.

  ‘Is that Lucinda Berrington?’

  For a moment the name took me by surprise. Only teachers, my mother when she was cross, and people inspecting my passport ever called me Lucinda. Lucy, Luce, Lu.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘My name is Detective Inspector McMahon. West Dorset.’

  Suddenly I was awake. What had I done? What was I guilty of?

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Fuck it, Lucy, your knees are bizarrely sharp,’ Connor announced loudly, distinctly.

  ‘Sorry?’ sai
d the detective.

  ‘Nothing. What’s this about?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Why?’ My mind raced. Had I been speeding? But a detective wouldn’t ring me at seven in the morning if I’d simply been speeding. Had Filby been chasing sheep? No; he was a border collie but he was terrified of sheep.

  ‘Is someone dead? My brother?’ I asked. I saw Jo’s face, eyebrows raised. Connor sat up and put his hand on the small of my back.

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Or my mother?’

  ‘Nothing like that. It would be best if I came and talked to you. How about this morning?’

  ‘This morning?’ I repeated stupidly.

  ‘Nine o’clock.’

  I knew I hadn’t been speeding because I never speed. I don’t use my mobile phone while driving. I didn’t steal from sweetshops when I was a girl. I’ve almost never taken illegal drugs. I’m not a particularly moral person. I’m a person who’s particularly unnerved by the idea of being caught. So when the two detectives arrived – the man on the phone had brought a female colleague – my entire house took on a guilty atmosphere, a den of crime where stolen goods were stored, fire regulations violated and conspiracies planned. And then I realized.

  ‘Is this about Jo?’

  DI McMahon turned round. He had been looking at a photograph on the wall, one of mine. It was a wrecked ship on the skeleton coast in Namibia. He had a faintly suspicious expression, as if the picture had been obtained through dubious means.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘She was my friend. She was murdered. Is it about her?’

  ‘In a way,’ said McMahon.

  The other detective was also looking at the pictures on the wall, as if she were in a gallery. The two detectives looked like different generations. He was suited and brushed like the manager of a supermarket. She was younger, with dark, curly hair. She looked like she wasn’t long out of university. She stopped in front of a photograph of an Icelandic glacier.

  ‘Is this yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you do this for a living?’

  It sounded like an accusation.

  ‘Yes.’

  McMahon pulled an LP out of the shelves. The gatefold sleeve opened out like a concertina.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘That’s what they’re called.’

  ‘Is this a double?’ he said.

  ‘A triple,’ I replied. ‘Live.’

  ‘Bloody hell. You listen to this?’

  It sounded like an aggravating offence.

  ‘Sometimes. Late at night.’

  The woman was staring at another photograph.

  ‘You must get to travel a lot.’

  ‘Well, you don’t find glaciers and sand dunes in Dorset.’

  ‘My boyfriend takes photographs.’

  My heart sank. It was going to be one of those discussions.

  ‘I think almost everyone in the world takes photographs,’ I said.

  ‘He’s good at it.’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘I haven’t introduced my colleague,’ said McMahon. ‘Detective Constable Webster. She has some questions for you.’

  ‘About Jo?’

  ‘Can we take this one step at a time?’

  We arranged ourselves awkwardly in my small living room: me in an armchair, DC Webster in the other armchair, McMahon on an uncomfortable wooden chair. He placed it so he was facing me, with Webster to one side. Filby tried to lick his hand and he made a grimace of distaste and moved away. He nodded at Webster.

  ‘This is about Jo Goodman,’ she said.

  ‘It was terrible. I thought you’d find someone straight away.’

  ‘We’re making progress,’ said McMahon.

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘Tell us about your online presence,’ said Webster.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Don’t you understand the words?’

  ‘Yes, I understand the words. My online presence: I’ve got a website, like every other photographer in the world. If you want to buy a print, you can Google me and go there. The prices are very reasonable.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘The usual. Facebook, but I don’t use it much any more.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not fifteen years old.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I think that’s about it.’

  ‘What about Twitter?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You have a Twitter account.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘That’s wasn’t a question,’ said Webster. ‘You have a Twitter account.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about it. I’ve probably got about nine followers.’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘Really? Still, it’s not exactly Stephen Fry, is it?’

  ‘It was twenty-two. It’s twenty-three now because I’m following you.’

  ‘You won’t find it worth your while. I’ve only done one tweet.’

  ‘Two,’ said Webster, looking down at her notes. ‘The first said, “This is a tweet”, and the second said, “The biggest sand dune in the world”. It read like there should be a photo attached, but there wasn’t.’

  ‘I couldn’t work out how to do it. Then I lost interest. As you’ve noticed.’

  ‘So who are your followers?’ asked Webster.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t checked. You can see, can’t you?’

  ‘Your friend Josephine Goodman was one of them.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. I had a sudden memory that felt like a toothache, the sort of toothache that starts in your jaw and then you feel it right through your body. ‘We were having a drink. I mentioned that I was going to set up a Twitter account and I doubted whether anyone would actually follow me. She said that she would follow me if I’d follow her.’

  ‘But you didn’t follow her.’

  ‘No. I didn’t.’ I looked at DC Webster, and Webster and McMahon looked at each other, and neither of them replied. ‘Look,’ I continued, ‘there are a lot of things I didn’t do online. I’ve joined all kinds of social networks and never used them. I’ve created email addresses and forgotten about them.’ There was another silence. ‘Why does this even matter? Why do you care how active I was on bloody Twitter?’

  ‘Your Twitter followers,’ said Webster, ‘were they friends of yours?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I forgot about it almost immediately.’ I stopped and thought for a moment. ‘Lynne. Lynne Wells. She was at my school.’

  Webster looked down at her notes.

  ‘I have a Lynne Grainger.’

  ‘Grainger? Oh yes. She got married and changed her name. I always think of women by their real names.’

  ‘One of those?’ said McMahon.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  I heard a door slamming shut upstairs and then the shower running and Connor singing loudly. McMahon looked at me as if he had discovered a dirty secret.

  ‘Can we get on to what this is about?’ I said.

  ‘What we’re trying to establish’, said Webster, ‘is whether you and your Twitter followers formed some sort of group.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re not a group.’

  ‘Like a fan club.’

  ‘I don’t have fans.’

  ‘People who like your photographs.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘What about enemies?’ said McMahon.

  ‘Enemies?’

  ‘Don’t photographers have enemies?’

  ‘One, I get commissions for travel pieces. I go to beautiful places and try to make them look beautiful, that’s all. Two, if I did have enemies, which I don’t think I do, or not in the way you mean, they wouldn’t just follow me on Twitter and not do anything. And three, Jo and Lynne are – or were – friends of mine. So I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  Webster looked down at her notes again.
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  ‘Michelle Horne,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She’s one of your followers.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her.’

  ‘Take a moment,’ said McMahon. ‘Try to remember.’

  ‘There’s nothing to remember.’

  ‘Catherine Calder,’ said Webster.

  ‘Is this another of my followers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘Her name before she married was Catherine Rigby.’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Have you any idea why either of these women might have decided to follow you?’

  ‘I don’t even know who they are.’

  ‘Is there a particular photograph of yours that’s famous or controversial?’

  ‘I wish. I’d love to have taken one of those iconic pictures that everyone remembers and magazines keep wanting to reproduce, but mainly what I do is unspoilt beaches, which will appear in a magazine and encourage people to go and spoil them.’

  ‘So you’ve no idea?’

  ‘Probably these people saw my credit on a photo somewhere and then wanted to find out more. Then they followed me on Twitter – it must have been a pretty disappointing experience. What is it with these women anyway?’

  Webster looked down at her notes.

  ‘Your friend, Josephine Goodman, died a month ago on the twenty-third of August.’

  ‘Josephine,’ I said. ‘It sounds odd to hear her called that.’

  ‘Michelle Horne lived about thirty miles away in Benfleet. Two weeks earlier, on the twelfth of August, she was found dead at her home. She’d been strangled in a particularly violent assault. She was throttled with a bicycle chain that was left at the scene. Does that sound familiar?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ I said faintly.

  ‘There’s more,’ McMahon continued. ‘Miss Horne was about to be married. A few days later, her fiancé committed suicide. He said he couldn’t live without her. People forget that. When there’s a murder, there’s always more than one victim.’

  ‘What about the other woman?’

  ‘She lives in Horsted, just up the road. Lived. Didn’t you see the papers?’