A Face in the Crowd: An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller

by Kerry Wilkinson

  ‘Trouble with any other tenants? People coming and going? I’m not sure.’

  ‘It’s a bit noisy sometimes,’ Karen says. ‘Music through the floors, that sort of thing. That’s about it, though. Normal things.’

  ‘What’s it like to live here?’ he presses.

  ‘It’s cheap,’ Karen replies. ‘Nobody’s going out of their way to live here otherwise.’

  The officers nod along and I have little to add.

  ‘Did Ms Johansson ever talk to either of you about money?’ he asks. ‘Or any other kind of problem she might have found herself in?’

  Karen and I each shake our heads, but I catch myself glancing off towards the drawer underneath the television at the very mention of money. It’s a protective reflex.

  He turns to me. ‘How long have you lived here, Miss Denman?’

  ‘Four years.’ I fire back the answer immediately, the number burned into me. It somehow feels like a long time and no time. If I close my eyes, it was yesterday that I was wandering into the flat with barely a bag to my name. I scrubbed the sealant around the window because it had gone a browny-black with age and neglect. There was a bang from the street overnight and I jumped up, panicking, even though it was only a bin being knocked over.

  So much of my life wasted in this little space.

  If there’s an edge to my tone, then Beaman doesn’t mention it. He turns to Karen: ‘And you?’

  ‘Almost two years,’ she replies.

  The officers check a couple of other things, largely to do with timings and when we last saw Jade. When we’re done, they leave a business card each, thank us for our time, say goodbye to Billy – who is still avoiding them – and then continue along the corridor to knock on Nick’s door.

  After seeing them out, I turn to see Karen still on my sofa. She’s blank and staring aimlessly towards me. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ she says airily.

  I’m not sure what to say, so offer a consolatory shrug instead.

  ‘That poor girl,’ she adds. ‘I thought she’d done a runner on her rent. That’s what Lauren was saying. I didn’t think it’d be anything like this…’ She glances towards her own flat and sighs. ‘I’ll have to keep the boys inside. No letting them out by themselves after this.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Karen cranes her neck slightly and stares at me as if I’m stupid. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ she says.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘They said they’d found a body and wouldn’t give any other details. It can only mean one thing.’ She pauses for breath and then adds: ‘Someone round here killed her.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tuesday

  I seem to spend much of my life fretting over the amount of space I have on public transport. I’ve caught myself dreaming about the number 24 bus in the past, where I’ve got on and found it empty. Then I’ve realised there’s no driver and that I’m naked. If I were to seek out a therapist, I’m sure it would be a signal for some sort of mental anxiety – that’s what dreams always seem to be. I wake up panicked and confused, before cursing myself for being so stupid. It’s only a bus.

  On the train this morning, I have a double seat to myself. There’s someone talking far too loudly on his phone across the aisle, but there’s always one. He’s telling someone that he’s not going to be effing walked all over by that effing slag and her effing husband. The woman in the seat in front of him catches my eye and we share a silent moment of knowing. I remember Ben having shouting fits like this when he’d had a bad day at work.

  I worried about this journey for so long. The price of train tickets seems to be harder to figure out than quantum mechanics. Apparently, they are cheapest exactly twelve weeks before a travel date, so I poached them online for the lowest price as soon as they went live. It seems so silly now, with all those thousands of pounds in that envelope.

  The train chunters into a tunnel, thrusting the carriage into darkness as the rattling of the rails thunders up a gear. The sound eclipses the bellowing of the man, who has probably lost phone signal anyway. I close my eyes and listen to the bounding thump of the wheels rushing across the rails. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on a train since what happened to Ben. I wondered if it would be hard, if I’d break down and demand to be let off at the nearest station, but it wasn’t like that at all.

  I felt nothing. I wasn’t scared, or emotional. I didn’t associate being on a train with what killed him.

  There’s a rush of air and then I open my eyes into the blinding light as the train rumbles out of the tunnel. The man across the aisle is staring angrily at his phone but doesn’t try to make the call again.

  I push back into my seat and turn to look out the window. The blur of green flashes past, with only the hint of a distant village on the horizon. The sky is a wash of greys.

  With everything the police told us about Jade, I’d almost forgotten about the money stashed away in Karen’s drawer. There was a mix of ten- and twenty-pound notes. It could be her own savings… but would she really have it in cash? In a drawer?

  It doesn’t feel right. If she’d won it in some lottery or bingo, she’d have surely said something when I told her about my own invented scratch-card win? She must have a reason to keep it to herself – and I’m hardly one to talk, given I’ve been hiding my own haul for days. We’re two people with very little to our name. She’s never quite got into what happened between her and her former partner, other than that he left her for someone else. I get the sense they were both left with debts.

  My phone starts to buzz and I fish around the envelope of money in my bag to dig it out. I’m expecting to see ‘Unknown’, but there’s a local phone number flashing. I answer and there’s an enthusiastic-sounding woman on the other end. I’m always a little suspicious of people who show a great deal of gusto for their work. She’s from one of the job agencies with which I signed up and talks me through a questionnaire that goes over much of the same ground I covered when I filled in their online form. It’s almost a relief when the line starts to crackle as the signal gets close to cutting out. She says she’ll be in contact if they find anything that suits and finishes with a cheery ‘Ciao’ and then she’s gone.

  Ciao?

  I wonder if this is who the man opposite was having a conversation with because, if so, I can somewhat understand his tone.

  The rest of the journey passes uneventfully and by the time we slide into Reading, the carriage is almost empty. I head out of the station and past the row of taxis until I spot a familiar face leaning on a wall at the edge of the car park. She’s typing on her phone but looks up as I get near.

  ‘’Ello stranger,’ I say.

  Annie beams and then promptly bursts into tears. She almost throws herself at me, tucking her head onto my shoulder. Her entire body shakes as she sobs tears onto my neck. There’s little else I can do other than pat her on the back gently.

  I think I can make out a series of ‘I’m sorry’ grunts through the snuffles, but it’s not easy to tell. When she pulls away after a minute or so, her face is a smeary mess of drizzled mascara and her reddened hair is so tangled that it looks like she’s been walking in a hurricane.

  ‘How are you?’ she manages.

  The fact that she’s a tear-stained wreck and I’m a slightly bemused onlooker is not lost on either of us as, from nowhere, we each start to laugh.

  ‘I’ve had warmer welcomes,’ I say.

  She coughs another laugh and then fishes a tissue from her pocket and blows her nose long and loud.

  ‘Sorry,’ she repeats. I tell her it’s fine and then she uses her phone’s camera to help clear herself up. ‘I told myself I wouldn’t cry,’ she says.

  ‘How long did you last after that?’

  ‘That was when I pulled into the car park, so roughly seven minutes.’

  It’s hard not to laugh at that and, all of a sudden, the mood has lifted.

  Annie’s husband and son were on th
e same train as Ben and Ben’s brother, Alex. They were on their way to a football match and her son was the only child to die. They had gone early, to try to make a day of it. If they’d gone closer to kick-off, they’d be here now. It’s hard to comprehend the enormity of how the world turns on such small decisions.

  We get into Annie’s car and she sets off away from the station, out of the town, heading west towards the M4.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ she says.

  ‘Of course I was going to come,’ I reply, even though it’s not entirely true. The only reason I still attend these memorial events is for people like Annie. It’s five years since the crash and, in the immediate aftermath, before my life fell apart completely, it was hard not to be drawn to other people who had also lost someone. It’s easy to say, ‘I know what you’re going through’, but there was a group of us who genuinely knew.

  In the time that’s passed, we’ve all come to the annual ceremonies, plus there’s a secret Facebook group. Some of us are closer than others and we send intermittent messages back and forth to see how people are.

  ‘How have you been?’ Annie asks.

  ‘Great,’ I lie.

  I think it’s a lie lots of people tell. What are we supposed to say? That life is terrible and that each decision made seems to make it that little bit worse?

  She tells me about a new relationship she’s in, insisting it’s early days but that there’s definitely a spark. I tell her I’m pleased – and I am – but the reason I’m on the fringes of this group is because there’s a part of me deep down that’s jealous of people like Annie. She has a conclusion to what happened. There was life insurance and joint accounts.

  None of that is worth the two people she lost, of course – but her life can still go on. Like it or not, money matters. It’s why those with it have longer life expectancies than those without.

  It’s good to hear Annie’s voice and I let her talk. As well as the new boyfriend, she’s up for a promotion at work and her life seems to be coming together. When she asks about me, I fudge things in the way I do. Work’s going great, my boss loves me, I’m acting up as assistant manager, it looks like it might be a permanent thing, my university course is cracking along… and so on. Lie after lie. When does it become too much to continue thinking of myself as an honest person?

  Annie gets off the motorway and follows a series of winding country lanes with ease. ‘I can’t remember if I told you,’ she says, ‘but I have to leave more or less after the service. I’m supposed to be interviewing at work and I’d rather stay on top of it. There’s a buffet somewhere after, but, if you want to leave with me, I can drop you back at the station.’

  ‘I’m not much of a hanger-arounder,’ I assure her.

  The roads narrow as the hedges soar and it’s not long before we’re surrounded by green. All Saints Church is the same venue as the past four years. A beautiful steeple soars high above the surrounding countryside, topping a blooming patch of emerald that will always be quintessentially British.

  Cars are parked nose-to-tail along both sides of the road and Annie pulls in at the back of the line. She checks herself over in the mirror and straightens her hair before we set off along the crumbling tarmac.

  By the time we reach the gates, there are so many people in black that it could be either a funeral or a goth convention. Many are close to tears, but I feel a distance from their emotion. There are faces I recognise and we offer the standard mini waves and grim smiles. I stick close to Annie because she’s probably the only person from this group I’ve ever been close to. We’ve always been able to laugh at one another and some of the absurd situations in which we find ourselves.

  When everyone else starts to traipse into the church, we get into line and follow. It’s not easy to admit, but, with all things like this, there is a pecking order with grief. When everything happened, there were those who stepped forward to become the face of the bereaved. Perhaps it was coincidence, though I doubt it: the media decided the faces of our loss had to be the most attractive among us. Presumably because of this, Elaine gets a spot on the front row. She’s a pristine lawyer who lost her husband – also a lawyer – in the crash. She wears a suit like a lamb wears its wool, as if it’s a part of her.

  She’s sitting next to James, a silver fox who was once a local television personality in the south-east. His grown-up daughter was on the train and it was he who set up the Facebook group and organises this memorial each year. He emails relentlessly upbeat messages every three months, as if we’ve signed up to a mailing list from which we cannot escape. It’s like he thinks he’s our counsellor, peppering each note with lines like, ‘Hope our spirits are still high’ and ‘You’ve all been in my prayers’. He starts each mail with something along the lines of, ‘Hey, guys. It’s me again’. There’s no unsubscribe button at the bottom and I’m not brave enough to reply and say I wish he’d leave me off. I should probably just block him.

  The truth is that it’s only the crash that connects us as a group. We’re a collection of individuals who were unlucky enough to be thrown together as one. Apart from Annie, I feel no affinity for anyone.

  Melancholic organ music sets the tone as Annie and I slot into a row two-thirds of the way back. It’s a stunning building, with stained-glass windows lining both sides, wooden benches in perfect parallel symmetry and echoing stone floors. It’s as we’re taking our seats that I spot Melanie sitting on the opposite side of the church. She’s wearing a net veil and a black dress, while staring unmovingly towards the front of the church. If she can sense me, then she doesn’t shift. I’ve seen her three times in a week now.

  As the music stops and the rector begins to speak, Annie takes my hand. She links her fingers into mine and squeezes gently. I don’t say anything, but I feel like a fraud. I’m not in mourning.

  Before long, we’re on our feet and miming along to a hymn. The bloke in front is belting out the chorus with the full fire and thunder.

  The service continues in the way that services do. Almost nobody believes in God until there’s a birth or death – and then we want to trust that things have meaning.

  After a while, the rector stands aside and James heads to the front. I’ve not seen him in twelve months, but it’s as if each year of ageing makes him more attractive. Without a word, he demands the attention of everyone present and, from there, he starts to read the list of all the victims. He goes one at a time; slowly and poignantly. Most people would stumble over a name or two – but not James. I suppose it’s his training from when he was a newsreader.

  Sobs spring up from the watching crowd at regular intervals, but he never pauses the cadence, not even when he mentions his own daughter’s name. When he gets to the name of Annie’s son, I rest a hand on her knee. She sits a little straighter, holding her breath as her body tenses, but there’s no hint of a sob this year. As soon as her husband’s name has been read, she slumps a little and lets out a long, low gasp. The torment is over and I wonder for how many more years we’ll do this. There was the original memorial service a couple of weeks after the crash – and then one on the actual anniversary for each of the years leading up to now. Five years is a landmark – but will we come back for six? For seven? Or will there now be a gap until ten years have passed? Where does grieving end and wallowing begin? It’s not quite Princess Di, but will we still be congregating here in twenty years? Twenty-five? Thirty? Is this my life from now on?

  I’m so lost in those thoughts that the name ‘Alex Peterson’ takes me by surprise. Annie touches my knee as reciprocation, but I glance sideways to Melanie in the opposite row. She is sitting stoically, her back straight against the unforgiving wooden bench.

  ‘Benjamin Peterson.’

  Annie squeezes my knee a little tighter. It’s reassuring and yet unnecessary. I feel empty and out of place. I loved Ben once – but, if he loved me, then how could he leave me in such a state? How could he tell so many lies?

  Melanie’s chest rises and
she reaches to pinch the bridge of her nose. She brushes something away from under her veil and then continues to sit rigidly.

  ‘Luce…’

  Annie is whispering my name and I turn to her.

  ‘You’re staring,’ she adds softly.

  It’s only then that I realise James has almost completed the list of names. He reads out the final one and then stands solemnly for a moment before bowing his head and returning to his seat. Somehow a minute, perhaps two, has passed without me noticing.

  There’s no time to reflect because we’re on our feet once more for another hymn. The man in front again launches himself into the chorus, but, this time, I don’t even pretend to mouth the words. I shouldn’t be here.

  The rector talks a little more; Elaine does a reading; there’s another hymn – because everyone likes a good ol’ sing-song at a memorial – and then that’s that for another year. The organ hums as we filter out into the chilled November sun. The grass of the cemetery beyond is covered with a layer of dew that I’d missed before and a breeze has started to skim across the fields beyond, fluttering the evergreens that line the edge of the graveyard.

  There’s always an awkward moment after anything like this in which nobody quite knows what to do. People stand and smile awkwardly at one another, or exchange the most mundane of small talk.

  Lovely service, wasn’t it?

  At least the weather held out.

  How was the journey down?

  Someone I barely recognise and of whom I’m not sure I’ve ever known the name tells me I look lovely, so I say the same to her. Nobody ever strides up to another person at a funeral or memorial and tells them they could’ve made more of an effort.

  It’s as we’re meandering that a woman appears at my side as if she’d materialised there. She’s in a tight black dress with a ridiculously oversized hat. If it wasn’t a dim grey, she could’ve been off to ladies’ day at the races.

  ‘It’s Lucy, isn’t it?’ she says, extending her hand. We shake, but I’m suddenly aware of my chewed fingernails against her manicured talons. She has glossy dark hair to match her dress and, though there is a glimmer of recognition, I definitely don’t know her name. ‘Gloria,’ she says as a prompt – and it’s only now that I remember her phone call. She wanted to talk about money and I’m suddenly clutching my bag tighter, feeling protective over the envelope within.