by Heide Goody
They had been silently looking at each other for several seconds.
“Well, I’m off to yoga,” said Alison and waved her resident’s card. “Or you are,” she added with a conspiratorial wink.
“Yes. Yes. Have a good…”
Alison moved on. It had been a fleeting moment, but it stayed with Polly far longer than it should.
She continued, thoughtfully, to the north lounge and, seeing Margaret sitting alone with a book, approached her.
“Good morning, Polly,” said Margaret without looking up.
“Can I join you?”
“I would have thought it best to stick to our usual routines on a day such as this,” said Margaret, only then lifting her gaze from the book. She closed it: Principles of Criminology by Edwin Sutherland.
Polly tittered.
“Second thoughts?” said Margaret, in a tone clearly disapproving of the possibility.
“No.” said Polly. “I have questions. Only two questions.”
“Glad to hear you’ve thought about it,” said Margaret.
Polly sat in front of Margaret. “Why me?”
Margaret sat up. She had a long neck and sharp watchful eyes, like a heron in the shallows of a lake, waiting for a fish to swim by. “Why do you think we picked you?”
“Well, there’s the flattering answer and the not-so flattering answer,” said Polly, who had truly thought about it. “Maybe you think I’m resourceful and determined and clever, or maybe you think I’m a pliable fool who’ll do anything to gain the approval of others.”
“And which do you believe?”
Polly shook her head. “I suppose I’m more concerned as to why you think I would do this. Most people would say no, wouldn’t they?”
“Not in my experience,” said Margaret. “There is a general fallacy most people hold to be true: that murderers and criminals are different to the rest of us. Look at the newspaper headlines. Scumbags, monsters, devils. The media, and we too, wish to paint those who break society’s rules as something other. It’s one of the reasons we are generally fascinated with murder, serial killers especially. We want to point. Look at that, look at that. Isn’t it horrible? Isn’t it disgusting? Burn the witch.” She put the book to one side and joined her hands in her lap. “No, murderers and criminals are people just like you and I. Give them the right incentive, a little push in the right direction, and everyday folk will commit all manner of atrocities.” She looked at Polly. “No, you’re not committing an atrocity, just a little light killing.”
A little light killing. Margaret spoke of it with an ease that was chilling.
“Murder serves a valuable function in society, you know,” she went on. “It’s akin to… Back in the days before television and radio, our ancestors had to make their own entertainment, sitting around the fire and telling stories. Tales of dragons, of ogres. Little Red Riding Hood. Hansel and Gretel. They weren’t just stories to entertain. They unified the little community sitting around that fire. They were a way of codifying behaviour. This is who you should hate. This is what constitutes anti-social behaviour. If you do X then Y will happen. Little girls who disobey grandma will get eaten. We tell stories so people can go on believing they are normal and that, out there, are the monsters.”
“And I’m to be a monster?” said Polly, not sure she followed the analogy.
“No, Polly Gilpin. You’re the storyteller. When James Huntley’s body is found and reported in the press, it won’t say specifically why he died, but people will know. They will read the unspoken clues and know this man deserved everything that happened to him. What’s the other?”
“Pardon?”
“You said you had two questions.”
“Oh. Yes. Why you?”
“Why am I encouraging you to do this? Why would I even suggest the idea in the first place? Don’t you think James Huntley deserves to die?”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Polly, guessing Margaret already knew this.
Margaret nodded, an understanding between them. “There are no good people and there are no monsters. But there are people who have a net positive effect on the world. No, not me. I might flatter myself to imagine I’m in that group, but I’m probably not. Simply by living in a wealthy, wasteful country, I’m probably in the bad half. But there are people – kind people, clever people, industrious people – who by simply doing what they do, are making the world a marginally better place than it would be if they didn’t exist. And I don’t mean Mother Teresa-type idiots who slap a bandage on someone dying of a curable illness while perpetuating the old, bad ways. I mean truly good people.”
“Okay,” said Polly. “I suppose so…”
“And by the same logic, there are people who— Well, the world would simply be a better place if they didn’t exist.”
“Absolutely.”
“If I could snap my fingers and those net detractors, ourselves included, could simply vanish from the world…” She clicked her fingers, and a visible shudder ran through her as if this was a genuine and fervent wish. “But I can’t.”
She smiled. Polly saw it was a tiny smile of embarrassment, because Polly had momentarily been allowed to see through to the real Margaret below the composed manner.
“I realised, as I reached retirement, that I had achieved nothing truly good in life. Donations to charity, kindness to neighbours – these were nothing against the waste and harm my sixty years of mere existence has caused. I decided to use whatever time I have left to make the world a better place, not by injecting good into it, but by deleting the bad.”
“Murder.”
“Murder.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Eighteen times. This will be number nineteen.” She tilted her head. “Some less significant than others.”
Polly thought. “Strawb and Jacob…”
Margaret nodded. “None of us would ask anyone to do something we hadn’t already done ourselves. That’s one of our rules. No one person ends more than one life. I admit I had to break that recently when a man betrayed our trust. You now have his apartment, by the way.”
Polly felt horrified disgust swelling within her. The need to know what Margaret had done with the man – Bob, wasn’t it? – but the reaction was almost immediately replaced by the knowledge that Polly herself was about to carry out an act of murder.
“And that’s it?” said Polly, not sure if she was surprised or not. “You chose to set up this … this murder club because you decided the world would be a better place without certain people in it.”
“And a turkey.”
“What?”
Margaret frowned irritably, but it was irritation at herself – at the non-human blip in her grand plan. “There was much wheedling and whining, but one of ours members practically begged.”
“Bernard.”
“Yes. The blasted creature was apparently ruining his lie-ins with its warbling.” Margaret saw the look in Polly’s eye. “Not our proudest moment, I assure you. Although I’m convinced all sublime works have some note of the ridiculous in them. I hope so.” She reached for her book. “Was that everything?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Polly.
“Good. Then you perhaps need to be on your way.”
54
When Rich arrived unannounced at the DefCon4 offices, Sam felt an irrational urge to tidy up, immediately feeling deeply angry with herself. The office was tidy. This was not some bedsit apartment which a prospective boyfriend had just entered. And he was definitely not her boyfriend. Her conscious mind had been quite clear on that point for many months; clear and without equivocation. Her subconscious mind seemed to have occasional lapses.
“Ah,” said Rich, clapping his hands expressively as he strode about the office. “This is where the hi-tech hi-security magic happens, eh?”
Sam wasn’t sure if there was anything notably hi-tech or hi-security about this place. There were four desks: hers, Doug Junior’s, and two empty des
ks which she tried and failed to avoid using as dumping space for parcels and paperwork. There was a bank of filing cabinets and a kitchen area with a kettle and a cafetière with a knitted cosy. There were various posters and brochures, many of which were starting to look faded and dog-eared.
“Can I help you?” said Sam.
“Quick and to the point,” said Rich. “Can’t I just pop in and see how my newest … er, not employee…”
“Contracted service provider.”
“Indeed. Can’t I see how my … that thing you said, is getting on?”
“Not when I’m busy.” She knew she was being quick with him, grumpy even. That was standard operating procedure with Rich, but on top of that, she was hungry. When she’d gone down to Cat’s café that morning to pick up a sandwich, the smell of cooking sausages had instantly reminded her of the smell of Greg Mandyke simmering in his hot tub. The stink had filled her nostrils and her throat. She had to leave immediately or throw up.
“Got a lot of work today,” she said.
“Do tell.”
She groaned. He simply wasn’t going to take a hint. “I’ve got fire extinguisher servicing to do at the public swimming pool…”
“Do they have many fires at the swimming pool?”
“I’ve got to give the fairground management company a quote for an improved security system. Because someone managed to hide a dead body in the ghost train for several days…”
“Ideal place.”
“And I’m busy transferring data from your Ice Age park drill.” She pointed at one of the desks where a score of bodycams clustered around a work laptop.
The bodycam footage had been of a superb quality. This, however, made for large file sizes and slow transfer rates. Whether it was the cameras or (as she suspected) the DefCon4-tweaked operating system the laptop was using, it was taking nearly an hour for each camera to upload its data.
“Oh, superb,” said Rich.
“It should be, when it’s done,” she said. “The software should sync the timestamps, which means we’ll be able to get a sort of compound view of the various bits of video. A good few hours of it.”
“We can watch it like a Christmas movie while we’re recovering from Peninsula’s superior Christmas pud.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh.” He grinned sheepishly and dipped into his designer jacket pocket to produce an envelope. “Merry Christmas!”
Sam looked at the envelope but did not touch it.
“It’s two tickets for an all-expenses paid trip out to the Valhalla gas platform, soon to be the world’s premier hotel slash casino slash resort experience.”
“It’s what?” She took the envelope cautiously.
“Helicopter transport. Christmas day, Boxing day. The finest cooking you’ll find anywhere in the North Sea.”
Sam opened the envelope. Inside were two tickets and a brochure. The brochure cover, showing a drilling platform above a moonlit sea, somehow made the place look moderately attractive. Yes, it did look a bit like Castle Dracula had gone through an industrial upgrade, but it did have an inviting air. The inside pictures showed an interior transformed – bedrooms and suites like luxury cruise cabins, a wide casino and club lounge in warm pinks and peaches where the glitterati played roulette and blackjack, a stunning restaurant with what looked like panoramic views of a mist-dusted sea at sunset.
“Looks impressive.”
“When the first paying guests arrive, they will have their socks knocked off, I tell you,” said Rich.
The two tickets were simply strips of plain paper on which someone had written ‘Ticket for Christmas’ in biro. The words were framed by amateurish drawings of a gas platform on one side and a picture of Father Christmas on the other. In the same biro, a loopy border had been drawn round it.
“You made these tickets?” said Sam.
“You don’t actually need proper tickets to come visit my rig yet.”
They looked like they had been drawn by a six-year-old. That was Rich; the soul of a six-year-old.
“Two tickets?” said Sam.
“You’ll bring your dad, right?” he grinned. “No one’s leaving Marvin alone at Christmas.”
Sam sighed deeply. Richard bloody Raynor, as thoughtless as a toddler on a sugar high, yet still capable of huge touching gestures. She jiggled her head, which was halfway to a yes. She was sure she’d regret it when she finally agreed.
55
Polly cycled to Beresford Field and chained her bicycle to the fence near the cut-through to Beckett Close. The playing field was deserted. Her bag of props was tied to the pannier. She unstrapped the bungee around the supermarket bag-for-life, slipped off the thin full-length mac she’d worn to cycle over and, bag over arm, walked down the cut-through and to the front door of James Huntley’s red brick bungalow.
“Surprise is on my side. Keep moving forward. Make it my own. Have fun.”
She murmured her personal mantra as she knocked the door. She was out of breath. She didn’t know if it was nerves or the exertion of the cycle ride. She wasn’t as fit as her fake aqua-aerobics attendance suggested she ought to be.
She refused to reflect on the gravity of what she was about to do. She had already mentally squared that away and now it was showtime. She had a plan sketched out in her mind, but a key part of that plan was being able to react to James Huntley’s own behaviour. It required some creative flair and quick thinking. She buzzed not only with nervousness but with excitement.
James Huntley came to the door wearing a polo shirt and crumpled trousers. She recognised him from the Candlebroke Hall trip all right and wondered if he might recognise her in return. His face registered confusion as he took in the sight before him. Polly was currently dressed in the magician’s assistant outfit, complete with a feather headdress. She had added a pair of satin opera length gloves, which conveniently hid the latex gloves she wore underneath. She carried a cake in her hands, which she raised up to show James. It was a supermarket cake decorated with lavish amounts of icing, and dotted with Disney figures from Delia’s shop. Polly smiled as brightly as she could. She’d applied cartoonish quantities of red lipstick and dramatic eye makeup, extending the Disney motif to her own face.
“Ta dah!” she said.
“Pardon?” he said.
“Ta dah! I bet you’re surprised to see me, aren’t you?” she trilled in the strident falsetto belonging to her new, invented persona. She wasn’t expecting any neighbours to hear her, as the houses here were not close together. Families were out at work or school. “I’m here for the biiiig celebration!”
“I think you might have the wrong house,” said James. There was a waver of uncertainty in his voice. That was good. She could work with that.
“Ooh, you’re a cheeky one, aren’t you?” said Polly, dabbing a finger on the end of his nose. It made him take a step backwards, so Polly took a step forward.
“I don’t know which house you want…” he began uncertainly.
“I’m bringing the cake and the party and the whole celebration, so let the festivities begin!” She balanced the cake and hooked a finger into her cleavage, bringing out a kazoo. She tooted a part improvised version of Spanish Flea and danced along with her shoulders and her feet, using the opportunity to expand the space she occupied, nudging slightly further over the threshold.
“Come on, join in!” she said around the kazoo.
“I do think you need to be somewhere else.”
“Remember, life’s what you make it, and today, we’re making magical memories!” She did another round of tooting, this time making a big show of which shoulder wiggles she expected James to perform. Her routine, she realised, owed more than a little to the dance she and her sister used to perform to Tiger Feet by Mud.
“Come on. With me,” she said.
“This is not the right house…”
“You can do it. Give a little shake…”
To her utter delight, he started to join in, simpl
y caving to the pressure. She just needed to ramp it up a little, and she’d be in.
“Oh, good job! Great job!” she said. “Now we’re cooking on gas! Come on, let’s go and put this cake down shall we?” She thrust it forward, hoping he would either take it off her or step back and allow her to pass. He took the cake. This was good. He’d taken possession, which was a step closer, but was hesitating to let her inside.
She had her hands free now, so she gave a series of dainty claps. “What is better than cake? Can you tell me, James?” She used his name deliberately.
He frowned. James had no clue. The panic in his eyes said he was searching for an answer, and coming up empty. “Did someone put you up to this?”
“What’s better than cake?” Polly said, smiling even more widely. “Anyone? It’s easy: cake with friends in your own house! Can you believe that someone would be kind enough to do this for you?”
He looked around as though expecting to see a host of people behind him in the gloomy hallway.
“Cake and friends and celebration,” said Polly. “I’m so excited for you! We’re going to have such a fun time!”
A dawning of comprehension passed over James’ face. “What friends?”
“And what friends they are! Now can you see how precious this is?” She put the kazoo back to her lips and started tooting again.
He stepped back quickly, indicating she should follow him inside. She had the distinct impression he wanted her to stop playing the kazoo, which was disappointing. She thought she held a pretty good tune with it.
“Um, right. I’m not sure anyone else is here yet,” he said. “Who is it that sent you? Was it my brother? Evan?”
She made generic motions of agreeableness without confirming. She picked up the bag from the side of the door and followed him inside.
“Oh this is perfect, just perfect!” said Polly, doing a circuit of James’ lounge. She fussed with some detail, moving a lamp away from the wall, angling it slightly. “Lighting is important for the show, very important. You don’t mind me making some small adjustments, do you?”