by Nicci French
‘What they have in common is you.’
‘Thanks very much. I’m aware of that.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Connor. ‘And the police hinted that you might be in danger, didn’t they?’
‘They said I was in an unsafe place.’
‘Right. But these women are the ones sitting there in Weymouth and Norfolk and wherever else, wondering if they’re next.’
‘Do you think they blame me?’
‘I think they’re confused and scared. Tania was especially scared, and yes, I think she blamed you. She kept looking around the house as if there was a curse on it. She was like a sweet little hunted animal.’
I looked at Connor and didn’t say anything, but I wondered if there was some way he was actually getting off on this. If he was one of those people who slow down as they drive past a car pile-up, just so they can get a proper look. Most relationships don’t get tested like this. But I had things to do, things to think about. I couldn’t distract myself with that now.
‘It’s like a photograph,’ I said.
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘I mean it’s like the way I see photographs. It’s probably to do with being a photographer. Most people, when they see a picture of a starving child or a riot, they just see the events, but I always see what’s not in the photograph, which is the person holding the camera. What effect is the photographer having on the event?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Connor. ‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘This is the opposite. Everybody’s looking at the photographer and not at the photograph.’
‘You’re going to have to explain this to me.’
‘Strip everything away – me, Twitter – and you’re left with three deaths: Michelle Horne, Catherine Calder and Jo. Just look at them and nothing else.’
‘And?’
‘Isn’t there an odd one out?’
‘You mean that you knew Jo?’
‘Michelle Horne. Her death feels different. She was killed in her own home. It was followed by another death.’
‘But if you’re going to play that game, you can see each of them as the odd one out.’ Connor thought for a moment. ‘For example, Catherine Calder was the only one who was married. Your friend Jo was the only one who actually tweeted about herself.’
I thought for a moment.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘So you can see patterns where you want to see patterns.’
‘No, I mean that’s interesting.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be interesting. I was making a point.’
‘Let’s have a look at her tweets again.’
‘If you remember, they weren’t very significant. It was basically “I’ve run out of toothpaste” or “should I have coffee or maybe I should have tea”.’
I gave him a look.
‘OK, OK,’ he said and pulled his laptop across the table and tapped on the keyboard.
‘There we are,’ he said. ‘It’s mainly her cycling. Sample quote: “Biked the Aldham Trail again. Saw two deer.” It’s not exactly Montaigne. Thank God for social media.’
Even read out in his sarcastic voice, Jo’s casual words almost made me cry, but I forced myself to stop. There’d be time for that later.
‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘That’s very significant.’
There was a slightly amused expression on Connor’s face that I didn’t like.
‘If it’s significant, then tell the police. Or better still, leave them to get on with their job.’
‘There’s nothing to tell them,’ I said. ‘Not yet. There’s someone I need to talk to.’
I didn’t need to ask her name. As soon as she opened the door I recognized a face that had been drained and harrowed by grief.
‘Claire? My name’s Lucy Berrington,’ I said.
She was almost unresponsive. She seemed to be on medication.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
She looked startled and confused.
‘Your brother Dan gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind, I wanted to talk to you about Michelle.’
Immediately her eyes became wet and she shook her head.
‘I can’t …’ she began and started to cry. I folded her in my arms and felt her own arms around me. I felt stupidly self-conscious, standing on the doorstep of a house on an estate on the edge of a little Dorset town. She was crying and snuffling into my shoulder, and I could feel the dampness through my clothes. Then she moved back and coughed, took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose.
‘I can hardly imagine how awful it must have been,’ I said again.
‘I still can’t believe it. It doesn’t seem possible, more like some horrible dream,’ she replied.
‘And then, not just losing your sister but also your future brother-in-law.’
‘That made it even stranger,’ she said.
‘I’m sure it must have.’
‘No, it’s not like you think.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Michelle wasn’t going to go through with it. She’d changed her mind; she’d just told me but he never knew. He died not knowing.’
I had the impulse to hug her again, but then I stopped and stepped back. This changed everything.
For several hours I was overwhelmed. I was so angry I was unable to think. But I had to think, and think clearly. I went back to my house, praying that Connor wouldn’t be there. He wasn’t, and I remembered him saying that he was planning to bike to his office and work there for a few hours. I put on my running clothes and pounded the lanes for an hour, then I turned onto the footpath that winds round the fields before heading into the woods. At night you can hear the owls screech and small animals rustle in the undergrowth. I pushed myself on until I could feel my legs ache and my lungs hurt; brambles tore at my skin and I welcomed the pain.
I stopped by the little stream and looked down into the clear, fast-running waters. I thought of Jo. I remembered her face when she was concentrating – fierce, almost scowling, her brow creased and the tip of her tongue on her lip. I remembered her on her beloved bike, bent over, small and strong, full of purpose. I remembered her cackling laugh, so clearly that I could almost hear it beneath the burble of the stream. I remembered our holidays together – her atrocious French accent; the way she burnt easily, her nose red and her freckles blotchy; how she looked when she fell asleep on our train journeys, like a child again – and I could feel my anger gradually harden into resolution.
Back at home, I had a shower and made myself a large, strong cup of coffee. There were a couple of messages on my answering machine about work, but that could wait.
I heard the key scrape and turn in the lock. When had I given Connor a key? Since when had he decided he could simply come and go as he pleased? He pushed his bike through the door and leant it against the wall, looking full of energy and mischief.
‘So, what are your plans for the day?’ he asked.
‘I thought I could go to the place where Jo died. I haven’t been yet.’
He looked surprised.
‘Like visiting a shrine?’
‘You could call it that.’
‘Will you put flowers at the spot?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like me to come with you, Luce? I will if it would help.’
‘I don’t think that would be such a good idea.’
I went alone. A disused railway track that ran through a corridor of trees whose leaves were turning yellow and gold in this beautiful autumn that Jo would not see. An abandoned railway station where her body had been dragged and dumped. I stood in the damp little building that had once housed a ticket office and a waiting room. It smelt of piss and decay. The walls were stained; the windows were broken; there was a mouldy, disintegrating blanket on the floor and a dead pigeon rotting in one corner.
My friend, I thought. Always my friend. It didn’t take long.
Later that day, Tania called me, sobbing an
d hysterical. I told her she wasn’t in danger. I said I couldn’t explain it right now, but that soon I would.
After another night of insomnia and crazy dreams, I showered vigorously, put on black jeans, my leather jacket and walking boots. Filby could see I was going for a walk, but I couldn’t take him with me today, however beseechingly he looked at me.
‘You look dangerous,’ said Connor approvingly, lying back in bed. He was letting his stubble grow into a beard and it made him look faintly sinister himself.
‘Do I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘Where are you off to?’
I didn’t answer.
I arrived in good time. After so much turbulence, I felt calm. I had chosen this spot because it was away from the house, but also because Jo and I used to come here sometimes. I had taken several photos of the place, so English and so restful. You could see the landscape stretching away for miles in either direction: a bright patchwork of fields, streams, copses, villages with their small grey churches. I could see smoke coming from some of the chimneys; the year was turning and winter would soon be here.
At last I saw a figure in the distance, approaching me. I waited, not moving until he came fully into view. A nice-looking man, that was what I had thought when I’d first met him. A kind face, lived-in, worn by time and grief.
‘Hello, Lucy.’ He smiled at me and held out his hand, but I didn’t take it, and after a while he dropped his hand and the friendly expression on his face died away, though the smile remained.
‘When the police first came to see me,’ I said, ‘they said something about haystacks. Looking for a needle in a haystack. And I said that needles were easy to find. The thing to hide in a haystack was a piece of straw.’
He looked puzzled.
‘What is this? I thought you had something to tell me.’
‘My friend Jo,’ I said, ‘she had lots of plans for her life. She was very resolute. She’d get beaten down by things, but she always got back on her feet. She was valiant and she was kind. She’d recently gone to university to study psychology. Neither of us had gone to university and she had always regretted it and she did something about it. She said it was never too late. She thought that she might be a social worker after that. She had a tabby cat that her step-mother now has. She planned to keep hens. She loved baking bread and cycling. Well, you know about the cycling, of course.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Jo was your red herring,’ I said. ‘You killed her to throw the police off the scent. She died because it was … convenient.’
Bobby Calder’s expression didn’t change. He held out his hands, palms upwards. ‘You’re not making any sense,’ he said. ‘Your mind’s been disturbed by grief. I can understand that.’
‘I know what happened.’
‘What did happen?’
‘I visited Claire, the sister of Michelle. The first woman who died. She told me what no one knew: that Michelle was about to break off with her fiancé. She must have told him and so he killed her and then killed himself. Not grief but guilt. Once I knew that, I saw.’
I looked at him closely. I wanted to see his reaction.
‘You know,’ I said. ‘You of all people know that the person who killed Michelle Horne isn’t the same person who killed Jo and your wife.’
He didn’t reply, but I saw a flicker in his eyes. Where was this going?
‘Your bookshop is failing,’ I said. ‘I went and talked to your staff. You thought that if Catherine died, you would be free of a wife you no longer loved and at the same time be able to get back on your feet financially.’
He smiled. It took a visible effort, but he smiled.
‘If you need to tell this ridiculous, offensive fantasy, then tell it to the police.’
‘I want to tell it to you,’ I said. ‘I want you to hear it from me and I wanted to see your face.’
He shrugged.
‘I’ve been thinking’, I said, ‘about what it must be like to be you. It was something like this, wasn’t it? You were sick of your wife. Bloody Catherine.’
‘Cath.’
‘Bloody Cath. You’d like to be rid of her. Then she tells you that a woman has been murdered. A woman who, like her, follows the same woman on Twitter. And you get an idea. Two women is a coincidence, but three is a pattern. If your wife is suddenly murdered, the police will look very hard at the husband. But if she’s the third victim of the bicycle-chain killer, then you’re in the clear. You hide a straw in a haystack: a murder in a series of murders. You just needed one more victim.’
‘It sounds very clever,’ said Bobby Calder. ‘A clever story.’
‘Doesn’t it just? You picked on Jo – it could have been anyone – because of all my followers she was the only one who gave away her whereabouts. She often wrote about cycling the Aldham Trail. It was perfect. You just had to wait.’
He smiled again.
‘So why haven’t the police suspected that Michelle Horne was killed by her fiancé?’
‘I wondered about that and then I realized. He gave you an alibi and you gave him an alibi. Once another murder had been committed using the same method, the fiancé stopped being a suspect.’
‘That’s funny, Lucy,’ he said.
‘My name’s Lucinda. And it isn’t funny.’
‘Whatever. I’ve got to go and open the shop in a minute so, fun as it’s been, I need to go now.’
He turned and started to make his way down the slope towards Horsted.
‘I’ll walk with you,’ I said.
‘As you wish.’
‘Because I haven’t finished. You waited there, by the railway tracks, and you saw her cycling towards you. Perhaps she was singing – she often sang when she was on her bike. And you stepped out and knocked her about and then you throttled her with her fucking bike chain, and you threw her body into the old station where it would be found soon enough. You didn’t even have to concoct a false alibi, because what was there to connect you to her death? She was killed by the Bike Chain Strangler. I bet you can’t say where you were on the day she died, can you?’
‘As you point out, I don’t have to.’
‘Then you just had to wait a week or so before killing your wife as well. Jo was simply an instrument, a bit of camouflage. To kill someone in a fit of jealousy or anger, that’s terrible enough. To kill someone because they happen to fit into your plan, like a piece in a board game, that’s—’ I stopped. I didn’t have the words. I only had the picture: the picture of Jo smiling her sweet, dry smile.
We came out onto the small road that led into Horsted and Calder stopped.
‘This is where our roads part,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘Look.’ His tone was almost kind. ‘Don’t you see. There’s absolutely no proof. I’ve got away with it. If you went to the police with this wild accusation, they would laugh at you.’
We rounded the corner and I saw, as I knew I would, two police cars, lights flashing.
Bobby Calder remained impressively calm. He didn’t show any dismay as he approached them, or as he listened to what McMahon had to say. Yes, his business had problems. Yes, there had been certain tensions in his marriage. He admitted that. But he was right. It was a weak case they had against him. It was true, but it was hopelessly weak.
‘Where were you on August twenty-third, Mr Calder?’
‘I have no idea. Just because she’, he gestured towards me, ‘has managed to drag you into her paranoid fantasy, doesn’t mean that I have to take it seriously too.’
‘It would be as well for you if you do take it seriously.’
‘Why?’
‘We went back to the place where Jo Goodman was murdered.’
McMahon put out his hand and, as if by prior arrangement, Detective Constable Webster handed him a plastic evidence bag. He held it up. Inside was a pair of brown-framed reading glasses. I saw Bobby Cald
er’s mouth open. He looked at them and then at me.
‘They’re not …’
‘We have your prescription, and the reference number to the frames,’ said McMahon. ‘That was very careless. You made it easy for us.’
I saw illumination break over Bobby Calder’s features. It was like seeing the tide rolling across the beach, washing into every pool and corner. He turned towards me and took me by the forearm, his fingers pinching into my flesh through the leather jacket.
‘You’d better not be around when I get out,’ he said.
I walked all the way home. It took two hours, along the footpaths and the hedgerows speckled with blackberries. It was a beautiful evening and the sky turned red as the sun went down. I had a feeling that somewhere, behind it all, Jo was shaking her head in disapproval, and for once I didn’t care what she thought. My beloved friend.
Disconnection
TIM WEAVER
@TimWeaverBooks
Reading through the crowdsourced framework for the @Specsavers #Youdunnit short story compo. Never been more terrified.
#SouthAfrica#2007
#Monday_21_May_2007
There was a boy who used to stand next to the freeway off ramp, about two minutes away from the police station. When he first started to appear, it was to sell flowerpots; tiny terracotta vases, decorated in crude approximations of wild animals. Zill remembered the boy had painted a zebra on one, its black and white body too long, the colours not covering the whole animal. Where the white paint had thinned out, the red of the terracotta had seeped through, so it looked like blood had smeared against the monochrome of its coat.
The boy stopped selling flowerpots after a year and moved on to watermelons, stolen from the fields beyond the city and carried into town in green gauze bags removed from the fruitpacking factories. Shortly after that he abandoned the watermelons and took up selling golf balls, plucked out of the lakes and off the fairways of a nearby country club.
When the boy first started coming to the off ramp, he must have been about eight years old. He used to wear an old football top, too big for him, and a pair of black shorts that almost came down to his knees. Some days he had shoes, some days he didn’t. Some days he used to work his way down through the cars queued up at the traffic lights, one after the other, pressing whatever he was selling to the windscreens of the vehicles. Some days, mostly summer days, he’d just stand under the shade of the nearest tree and watch as each car left the highway, a sombre, distant look in the dark of his eyes.
