Those People

by Louise Candlish

  According to police, it is now thought that the scaffolding had been tampered with in the hours before the tragedy. Forensic experts found that the bolts used to secure the poles had been loosened and concluded that this was the direct cause of the event that led to the woman’s death. Today, the Metropolitan Police described the crime as an act of “deliberate sabotage.”

  “We believe that someone intentionally weakened the structure, which ultimately resulted in Ms. Pope’s death,” a police spokesman said. “There is no evidence yet that she was specifically targeted and it is possible she was the accidental victim of this appalling act.”

  SOUTH LONDON PRESS

  * * *

  —

  “Seriously, are you really doing this?” Ralph asked at the door. He hated opening it now, thanks to the taunt of the RV, unavoidable in his eyeline and, apparently, semipermanent. “Asking us for alibis! We thought you’d arrested him! Why did you take him to the station yesterday if it wasn’t for that?”

  DC Eithne Forrester—he had an excellent memory for names, had no need for badges or cards—betrayed no surprise at Ralph’s instantly confrontational style. She couldn’t know that he still throbbed with fury from the altercation with Booth the previous evening, that he was still considering—privately, not even with Naomi’s or Finn’s input—whether what he’d experienced had amounted to a declaration of war. And now, that morning, a news item had appeared online confirming the bastard’s harebrained notions!

  “Are you saying you would prefer to go to the station for our conversation, Mr. Morgan?” the detective said, with perfect humorlessness. She at least did not insult him by asking who he meant by “him.”

  “Here’s fine. Come in.” This was plainly more serious than the doorstep informalities of the PC’s visit. And if the residents’ group chat was up-to-date, CID had chosen to call on him first. “You’re lucky I’m working from home this morning. We go on holiday this weekend and I’ve got a lot to sort out before then.”

  Details of his business were noted. Did the police need them? How much of their work was plain old nosiness?

  On the other hand, this woman was the first person ever to enter the Morgan kitchen without commenting on its epic dimensions or glamorous fittings, so she wasn’t that nosy.

  Without asking if she wanted one, Ralph poured two glasses of ice water from the fridge dispenser and selected spots for them at the table, his at the head, hers to his left. “So, someone sabotaged the scaffolding, did they?” He chuckled. “Jesus Christ, I can think of easier ways to get rid of him than that!”

  Behind faintly cat-eyed frames, DC Forrester’s eyes were unblinking as she considered this. “Such as, Mr. Morgan?”

  He threw out his arms. “Such as anything! Come on, loosening scaffolding bolts? Who on earth would think of that? It’s far more likely he didn’t secure them properly in the first place, or he went over the legal weight limit with all those materials and they came loose and gave way.” But as he relaxed into a familiar rant about slapdash practices and escalating hazards, his visitor looked less than fascinated. The clue was in the lack of note-taking, though a pad lay splayed in front of her.

  “So, your own movements, on the night of the tenth?”

  Ralph provided the required information in flat, inattentive tones.

  “You say you saw Darren and Jodie in the Star. Did you say hello to them?”

  He pulled a face—Are you crazy?—but she continued to regard him with an intent, expectant gaze. Clearly, she was not like detectives on TV, with their demons and their combustible moods. She had one temperature: bloody cold.

  “No,” he said finally.

  “So you were home by eleven. Did you get up in the night?”

  Ralph raised his eyebrows. “You mean because of his music? No, we’ve got great double glazing, so we slept through whatever nonsense was going on. Then I was up and out in the morning to play tennis, well before anything happened.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “About eight. The session starts at eight thirty, but I usually pick up a coffee on the way. And before you ask, yes, there were plenty of people at the club that morning who can vouch for me.”

  “That’s useful to know,” DC Forrester said. “It sounds to me as if there might be quite a few people who’d have a reason to want to harm Mr. Booth?”

  This was interesting: her manner had altered very subtly to bring a hint of welcome, as if she’d considered him a fool but had now decided they might be able to collaborate. Clever.

  It worked, but not in the way she was probably hoping: it made Ralph understand this was no time for irreverence. “No,” he said. “We don’t like him. Ideally we’d like him to leave the street, but we don’t want to harm him. Not under any circumstances.”

  If she was disappointed, she didn’t show it. “You’re not missing a wrench, are you, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I’d have to look,” Ralph said calmly, “but I don’t think so.”

  “You said you picked up a coffee on the way to tennis. Where from? Which café?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “There’s only one café open from eight a.m. on the route and that’s Bean2Cup at the station.” She didn’t consult her notes; she just trotted it out.

  Hold your nerve, Ralph thought.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  God, had he said that aloud? “I said, it must’ve been there, then.”

  The meeting was over, a card presented. “If you think of anything else . . .”

  Sure, the moment I notice my wrench is missing and remember what I got up to in that fugue state, you’ll be the first to know.

  He saw her out. On the doorstep, she ruffled the hair at the nape of her neck with her fingertips as if relieved to be back in the fresh air. Then she gave her first half smile of the encounter. “You mentioned a holiday, Mr. Morgan. It would be useful to know where you’ll be and when you expect to be back.”

  Ralph frowned. Breathing was suddenly painful. “Do I have to tell you?”

  “Absolutely not. It’s just a polite request.”

  “But why? What’s going on here? Am I some sort of suspect?” Then, thinking it best not to wait for an answer: “We’re going to Devon for a week. I’ll have my mobile, so you can phone me if you need me.”

  “Thank you,” said DC Forrester. “I’m very grateful.”

  * * *

  —

  Naomi said they should read nothing into it. She would phone the police herself with the address of their hotel and all their contact numbers so they’d be seen to be cooperating fully. “Fine, so they’ve found these loosened bolts and they’re investigating more widely, but they can’t discount negligence on his part, can they? I know it isn’t as exciting as the sabotage angle, so it doesn’t get the press headlines, but surely he should have secured the site? And he definitely shouldn’t have been storing materials so close to the front door.”

  Ralph nodded. “You’re right. It’s not such a good headline: ‘South London Twat Decides Not to Bother with Health and Safety.’”

  Naomi smiled and continued brushing makeup into the curved hollows of her eyelids. They were in their shell pink en suite, getting ready to go out for dinner. Finn had cried off the brothers’ Friday night drink with a work crisis (unlike the employees of Morgan Leather Goods, who were all home with their families—just saying) and Naomi had promptly booked Daisy. It was a conscious stab at civilized behavior in uncertain times.

  “When Sissy’s got her mojo back, we need to encourage her to sue him—or get Amy’s family to. If she did, and he was ordered to pay out, he might have to sell the house to raise the cash.” Just voicing this idea ignited an emotion in Ralph remarkably close to hope. Then he noticed his wife had put down her makeup and was dabbing her eyes with the corner of a tissue. “You OK, Nay?�
�

  “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

  She was still more shaken by Amy’s death than by any police interference, had wept daily since the accident. Was that normal? Yes, of course it was horrendous to have had a death virtually on their doorstep, especially a violent one, but they had not known the girl well. Likely, the tears were for Sissy—it had been hard for them all to see her so haunted, roused only by the threat of dead flowers being thrown away. Plus there was the demise of Play Out Sunday, though Naomi had used the word “pause” on Facebook and in a text sent to the street’s parents, “until we can be confident of the full cooperation of all neighbors.”

  “Bloody police,” Ralph grumbled, and he stared glumly at his reflection in the mirror. He could have sworn he’d aged in the last few months—or was it simply the erasure of all previous marks of complacency? “I wonder what he’s going to do next.”

  “Who?” Naomi asked.

  Ralph turned, frowning: You need to ask?

  “Oh. Well, with any luck, he’ll take a long, hard look at his business practices and lifestyle choices and keep a very low profile indeed.” Her eyes were dry again, the eyeshadow turning them huge and persuasive, but Ralph was not persuaded.

  In his opinion it was totally unrealistic to believe that Booth would adjust his behavior, unless it was to make himself even more disagreeable.

  And more dangerous.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, Ralph watched from the living room window as his nemesis approached the RV, a bottle of turpentine and a cloth in hand. Since parking it there all those weeks ago, he’d never so much as glanced in its direction, much less made any attempt to work on it, but now, suddenly, he was here, bandaged wrist and all, setting up the longest cable extension Ralph had ever seen to power a piece of machinery that would doubtless give a pneumatic drill a run for its money. The reason for the turpentine was that overnight someone had painted the word KILLER in bright white on the side of the van, which was all very well if it didn’t look like the RV belonged to the house where it was parked.

  The kids had gone swimming with Finn and their cousins, an attempt to exhaust them before the long drive to Devon that afternoon, and Naomi, already packed for the trip, had popped over to Sissy’s with enough home-cooked food to cover their weeklong absence (she worried Sissy wasn’t cooking for herself). There was no one else on the street, and cars were parked bumper to bumper, this morning a very different beast from Sunday mornings of old.

  If he’d been asked to predict, he’d have said Booth wouldn’t care about the graffiti, but evidently he did, taking pictures of it—to show the police, perhaps, and get even more misjudged sympathy from them than he already had. It was only when he turned his phone toward the Morgan house that Ralph burst out of the front door to confront him.

  “What d’you think you’re doing? You can’t take a photo of my house!”

  Booth pocketed his phone. “Reckon the police might like to know whose place I was parked outside when the latest damage to my property went down.”

  “You mean the paint job? That could have been anyone who knows you,” Ralph said. “Knows what you’ve done.” He should have left it there, gone back inside, but he could not control his anger and let rip. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and move this rancid eyesore back to your own property? And while you’re at it, board the whole dump up so no one else is tempted to set foot in there and get themselves killed.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” As Booth began scrubbing at the paint with his rag, Ralph paced toward him into the street. His heart smashed against his rib cage.

  “I said, move it.”

  Booth held up his strapped wrist, his face a picture of false contrition. “Sorry, can’t drive yet, mate.”

  “But you can use sanders and saws, can you? Where’re the keys? I’ll move it for you!”

  Booth landed the first punch—from his good hand—on Ralph’s right cheekbone, and the pain caused an eruption of energy inside him, weeks’ worth of frustration at not being free to smack the guy. He struck back, almost expecting to see Booth fly through the air, though he simply reeled slightly before they reconnected and grappled unceremoniously. Booth was muscular and compact, but his grip suffered from the wrist injury and Ralph was getting the better of him, until, with much grunting and a final shove from his good arm, Booth backed off. The greatest pain came from that shove, landing Ralph against the edge of the open RV door, the edge catching his spine.

  All at once, at the sound of his howl, Kit and Cleo bolted into the street—he must have left the front door slightly ajar—springing up at both men, Cleo barking like a demented thing.

  “Get away from me!” Booth roared, and reached for his turpentine— to spray at the dogs!—and Ralph recovered his balance and grabbed them by their collars, pulling them into the front garden and closing the gate on them. His right hand smarted badly. The dogs stood watching him, pumping their tails, ready to rejoin the fray at the first opportunity.

  “One of ’em fucking bit me,” Booth hissed, bandaged hand gripping the bare one. The bottle of turpentine and rag had fallen to the ground.

  “That’s a lie,” Ralph said. “Show me the mark.”

  Sod’s law, Naomi returned from Sissy’s while the humans were still panting and growling at each other and the dogs going berserk. From Finn’s place came the sound of Tuppy joining in, and a couple of doors had now opened, neighbors drawn by the commotion.

  “What’s going on?” Naomi demanded. “Why are the dogs so worked up?” Ignoring Booth, she waved cheerily to Sara Boulter, who had appeared at her gate opposite, and pulled Ralph indoors. He and the dogs followed her into the kitchen, but it was only Kit and Cleo who got fed treats and had their ears scratched. Ralph, she eyed with disdain.

  “What?” He took a bag of frozen beans from the freezer and held it to his face before using his free hand to pet the dogs himself. “Well done, guys. You know the enemy when you smell him, don’t you?”

  “Why were they so excited?” Naomi demanded. “Please tell me you didn’t hit him?”

  Ralph shrugged. “He started it.”

  “But you launched in?”

  “I protected myself. Nothing wrong with that.”

  She groaned. “How do you think this looks, Ralph?”

  He raised his free hand in protest. “No one else was there. It didn’t look like anything.”

  She paced the costly sandblasted floor tiles in rare agitation. “Don’t you realize this will have consequences? And they won’t be what you think they’ll be. It won’t be that he’s scared of you and won’t come near you again. No, he’ll report you, show them the bruises, and you’ll get a police caution. You’ll go up their list of suspects for the suspicious death. Which, by the way, is another way of saying murder.”

  “I told you, he started it. He’s a lunatic. He would have blinded the dogs with turpentine if I hadn’t got them out of his way.”

  “They wouldn’t have been there in the first place if you weren’t! He’s the victim here, Ralph, at least according to the police. How could you have been so stupid?”

  Ralph stared at her, appalled less by what she was saying than by the way she was saying it, with something close to contempt—for him. “Whose side are you on here?” he cried, losing his temper. “He’s a complete cunt—you know that!”

  There was silence. Naomi stopped pacing. “You’re sure no one saw you fighting? Sara wasn’t watching?”

  “No, she only came out after you arrived.” He stared at her, disorientated by her opposition. They always stood united and, until now, that unconditional loyalty had smoothed the instinctive differences in their responses to Booth, which had been there from the beginning. The diplomat and the warrior: that was how he thought of them, but the aggrandizement worked only if they were both in on it.

 
“What next, Ralph?” she said, and for a horrible moment he thought she was talking about them, their marriage. His unvoiced response was shameful: I can’t be the one whose marriage falls apart. That’s other people, people like Ant or even Finn. But not me. Mine is the good marriage, the great one.

  “Seriously, you’re going to arrive at a five-star hotel this evening with a beat-up face? Is that the plan? To look like some two-bit thug? How does this help us?”

  “Who cares what a few hotel waiters think?” He adjusted the bag of frozen beans on his face, brought it over his closed eye. “Come on, Nay. No one else is going to take him on, are they?”

  “No one else should take him on, or at least only through the proper channels. Leave it to the police.”

  “The proper channels are meaningless now. The police are idiots.”

  Naomi sighed. She reached for the car keys to start loading for the trip, but not before adding, very quietly, as if there were a third person in the room she’d prefer not to overhear her: “I thought we said we’d cooperate with them? It’s not like we’ve got something to hide, is it?”

  Ralph removed the bag of frozen beans, screwed up his eye and reopened it, testing the pain. Stars exploded. British weather or not, he’d be in sunglasses all week.

  “Is it?” Naomi repeated.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  19

  ANT

  He had scarcely picked up the WhatsApp message from Ralph—Cops asking for alibis for night before accident, can you believe it?—when a detective had arrived at his door. Bruised and dispirited from Em’s departure, Ant had phoned into the office to say he’d remembered a doctor’s appointment and would be working from home for the day, so DC Shah was lucky to have caught him in. Would he have turned up at Ant’s office if he hadn’t? How serious was this?