Those People

by Louise Candlish

  SOUTH LONDON PRESS

  “I said something similar to the police myself,” she told Finn, “about pursuing the issue. Who d’you think gave this interview?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea, but whoever it is sounds very confident.”

  “Could it be Ralph? He could have spoken to them on the phone from Devon. Or even Naomi? They don’t say if it’s a man or a woman.”

  Finn’s gaze narrowed. “That phrase, ‘practical experience.’ It’s almost like they’re hinting to the reporter to dig in that direction.”

  Following the hot words exchanged after Booth’s release, relations between Tess and her sister-in-law were strained once more. Even Naomi’s suspension of Play Out Sunday had bothered Tess. It had been so unilateral, as if she’d forgotten that Tess was her cofounder and equal (they’d met the mayor together, for goodness’ sake!).

  “Maybe not Naomi,” she told Finn. “She’s the one who’s been warning us about the press, unless that’s some sort of double bluff.”

  Before leaving for Devon, Naomi had posted a new caution on the residents’ Facebook page (she was enviably adept at running separate comms for the wider group of residents on Facebook and for their select group on WhatsApp):

  Please be aware that there are reporters on the street. The police have advised residents against giving media interviews and want to remind us that this is a live investigation.

  Thanks, Naomi, good advice, Sara Boulter had commented. We are definitely not the kind of people who want to be splashed all over MailOnline.

  The police, you could not dodge for long, but Tess had so far managed to avoid any face-to-face contact with reporters. A couple of business cards had been waiting on the doormat when she’d come home from errands or picking the kids up from camp. I’d be so interested in hearing your story! one had scrawled on the back.

  “You need to be extra careful today,” Finn advised her. “Booth’s sure to be looking at the news as well and he won’t like this. Ralph thinks it’s only a matter of time before he retaliates properly.”

  “Properly?” Tess said. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s the point. We’ll have no idea until he does it.”

  * * *

  —

  It was only when she opened her door later that day and saw Jodie standing there that Tess realized the other woman had never before walked down the front path to her door, never been invited in. In light of that exchange with Finn, her arrival felt like a threat. It felt as if the rules were changing.

  “Jodie. Is this about the report in the South London Press?”

  “What report?”

  Bugger. Tess couldn’t believe her own schoolgirl error. She eyed her visitor with caution, noting the clenched jaw, the eyes glowing with outrage. “How can I help?”

  “I’ve just been talking to the police.”

  “Oh yes.” Somehow, in this unholy tangle that was neighborly relations at their end of the street, she had been knotted with Jodie. Why was that? Had Jodie targeted her or did she somehow believe Tess had targeted her?

  “Just wanted you to know that I know it was you who left that dog shit by our door that night.”

  “What? What night? What dog shit?”

  “Don’t make out like you don’t know. I stepped in it as well. I should of made you clean my fucking shoes.”

  Tess felt faint shame for noticing and disliking that “should of.” “If you’ve been finding dog shit on your doorstep, then maybe it’s because the local dogs think it’s an appropriate place to relieve themselves? I can’t think why.”

  Jodie’s fists closed, the bones of her knuckles sharp under the skin. “You mess with the scaffolding while you were at it?”

  “What?”

  “I reckon it was the same person. I reckon it was you—I’ve told the police that, an’ all. Almost forgot, didn’t I, what with everything going on. But when I spoke to them again, I remembered it was the same night.”

  “I assume you mean the same night before an innocent woman was killed thanks to your husband’s criminal negligence?” Tess said coldly. What kind of a twisted mind dredged up some grievance about dog mess when a woman had been crushed to death on the same spot?

  Jodie’s face lit with inspiration. “We could get it tested, yeah? It’s still on my shoe. I could get the forensic people onto it.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Tess couldn’t believe she was engaging in this nonsense. She had the most awful impulse to step forward and grab a fistful of Jodie’s hair, twist it hard. “Look, good luck to you and your forensics people, but I really don’t have the time to get involved. I’ve got things to do.”

  Jodie took a pace forward and craned her neck, as if peering into Tess’s life. “Like what? Scrounging off your husband? What d’you do all day, eh?”

  Like she was a cabinet minister herself! She set up test drives for an illegal used-car business! Something was wrong with the world when mothers were considered wastrels, while known nuisances enjoyed the protection of the police.

  “I spend my time caring for my children. I walk my dog. I feed the swans in the park—do you even know we have cygnets at the end of the road?” Attuned to her rising emotions, Tuppy arrived at Tess’s feet and she placed a hand on his collar. “No, I don’t suppose you do. You don’t care about anything but yourself. You moved to a nice, happy street and behaved as if no one exists but yourselves. A woman is dead, Jodie—do you and your husband really not care about that? If not, that would make you sociopaths. A great match with each other, but not with us. Not with us at all.” Tess stopped. She’d grown more vindictive than she’d intended—than she ever did, frankly—and inkblots of pink had crept across Jodie’s face.

  Her visitor’s voice rose in anger: “Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to me like that?”

  “I think I’m someone who’s on her way out.” Tight-chested with the need to escape, Tess dipped inside for Tuppy’s lead and dodged past Jodie to her gate. “Do not follow me,” she hissed. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Fuck you,” Jodie shouted after her, as if the whole street needed to hear.

  Tess wished she’d brought a jacket, because the air was cool as she walked down Lowland Way toward the park, the summer smog thinning. Overhead, trees stirred and swayed, released from the heat of July and the first half of August. That skirmish with Jodie was a very troubling redrafting of battle lines, especially in light of the fight Ralph had had with Booth. Why had she mentioned the kids? Dex was about to start school. Would he be safe away from Tess?

  She would make sure she arrived early to collect Isla and him from sports camp that day, make sure there was no way a “friendly neighbor” could get there first and whisk them into a waiting van. Jodie had been seen on occasion to clean up pretty well, and she certainly had the wherewithal to pass herself off as a civilized middle-class mother.

  Listen to yourself, Tess thought, appalled. What a horrible snob. Catching the eye of a mum from the estate whom she’d seen a few times before, she beamed, overcompensating for her thoughts. Why did she even feel the need to label this woman an “estate mum”? Was it her brood of kids? She might be a childminder or, like Tess herself, frequently saddled with extras. Perhaps it was no bad thing that the police knew better than to automatically believe the well-heeled neighbor over the down-market one. Perhaps their default was in fact the other way around.

  She dug out her phone. It was days since she’d shared any photos of the cygnets on Facebook. They were too independent now for her to be able to get all six together in a single shot, so she took some individual portraits: one with his head plunged underwater, another with his neck elegantly twisted to groom tail feathers with his beak.

  As they drifted away, attracted by someone on the opposite side scattering a bag of the specially formulated food sold at the coffee
hut, Tess had a weird sensation she was being watched. But when she spun around, there was no one there.

  * * *

  —

  Determined not to allow the neighborhood troubles to defeat her, she had by the following morning shunted Jodie from her mind. Finn said good-bye amid the breakfast chaos of Dex still struggling into his sports kit while Tuppy pulled off his socks in a tug-of-war and Isla complained repeatedly that her toast was too “untoasted” and the jam had “bits” in it.

  “Tess?” Finn was summoning her from the front door in a tone she knew meant “alone.”

  “What?” She shut Tuppy in with the kids and joined her husband.

  “Look. On the path.”

  She followed his gaze, struggling at first to comprehend what she saw. Just inside the gate lay a shallow cardboard box with a bird in it. A very large dead bird.

  “It’s a cygnet,” she cried. One of the park ones, surely. She stumbled forward and fell to her knees next to it, sliding the box out of sight of any passersby. How heavy it was! There was no visible mutilation; it was whole and beautiful, its neck curled, as if it had died there quite peacefully. She touched the feathers, juvenile gray but flecked with adult white, her tears already flowing. The pen and the cob must know they’d lost him; they must be frantic. “Oh, you poor baby. I’m so sorry. How did you get here?” Then she saw the red circle at the base of the neck, the bullet hole of an execution.

  “Is that a bite wound?” Finn asked, squatting next to her.

  “A gunshot wound, I think,” Tess said, gulping.

  “You mean some kind of illegal hunting? Why’s it here? I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I.” But the way it had been left in the middle of her path, as though displayed, was not just puzzling but perverse.

  “What should we do with it?” Finn said.

  “I . . . We need to call the swan protection people. They work with the police. Swan Rescue, they’re called. There’s a number in my phone contacts.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  She did not protest when he emerged a few minutes later to cover the box with a blanket, but remained on the doorstep as if guarding it. Time hovered; she wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, only half-aware of Isla and Dex passing by with their kit bags and lunch boxes, of Finn telling her he’d drop them at their camp and go into work late. It was only when the gate squeaked and a police officer arrived that she at last struggled to her feet.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” she told him.

  “Swan Rescue had a report last night of someone trying to shoot the cygnets in Lowland Gardens. Any idea what it’s doing here?”

  “None at all.” An image flickered in Tess’s mind then, too fragile to catch. “But I am part of Cygnetwatch. We’re a local Facebook group; we post photos and share news about them. Maybe someone knew me from that.”

  Would she need to post about this? She didn’t think she could face it. She thought of the poor officers who had to break terrible news every day, like the ones who’d gone to Amy’s parents’ house.

  That was when the image returned to her, sharpened into something distinct: Jodie standing where this man now stood, Tess haranguing her.

  “Do you even know we have cygnets at the end of the road?”

  And what had Ralph said? “It’s only a matter of time before he retaliates properly. . . .”

  No, it was too fantastic, too macabre, surely? And yet, a woman had died by the Booths’ hands, so why not a bird too?

  “Actually, I do have an idea who might have done this,” she said, feeling the blood return to her skin. “You might want to share your report with CID, because it’s relevant to a suspicious-death investigation going on here at the moment. Do you want to come in and I’ll find the name of the detective I’m in touch with?”

  And for the second time in a matter of days, she led a police officer into her house.

  CHAPTER

  21

  SISSY

  Though the police’s Family Liaison Unit had phoned to let her know detectives would be calling, Sissy had already heard about their presence on the street from the neighbors. Traveling to and from Amy’s funeral by train, she’d followed their messages on WhatsApp as news was traded:

  NAOMI: Not just us, also Dan and Sara Boulter and their neighbors on the other side. They’re going right down the street.

  RALPH: Asked me where we were going on holiday—WTF, is that allowed?

  TESS: They asked me if I own any wire cutters!

  ANT: They can ask what they like, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s guilty.

  She’d turned away when she read that one.

  Now that the funeral had taken place and she was back home, she couldn’t really refuse the police a proper interview, even if she feared that the grief would explode from her mouth semisolid, like vomit.

  “Thank you for seeing us,” they said in low, respectful voices. “We know it must be very hard for you.”

  There was a pair of them. She didn’t absorb the names. The woman was white, in her thirties, the man Asian, late twenties, and both had smooth, inquiring faces, like children’s. The neighbors had reported just one questioner each; did it mean something that she had two?

  Did anything mean anything now?

  “I would prefer not to go back over it, to be honest, but if you think I can help . . .” She made them tea, laboriously, her hands beset by tremors. She thought she’d made Assam, but the man’s grimace when he took a sip made her think she may have given them chamomile by mistake. It was a side effect of her grief, and not a good one, that she could not taste or smell properly.

  The first questions were about timings, easily answered if she thought of Amy and herself as actors whom she was watching on-screen. The female detective led, the male silent to the point of deference.

  “You and Amy were alone in the house, were you? No visitors that evening?”

  “No, my B and B guests weren’t arriving till the Saturday, so it was just the two of us.”

  They glanced at each other in surprise and then back at Sissy. “I’m not sure our colleagues passed on any information about a B and B business,” they said, and Sissy blinked at them in despair. How was she supposed to account for what they did and didn’t know? They were the detectives. “It might not have come up,” she said.

  “Would you be able to supply records of your recent bookings? Since Mr. Booth moved to the street.”

  Sissy frowned. “Why so far back?”

  “We’re interested in establishing any links with the intended victim.”

  The intended victim? A swell of nausea engulfed her. They cared about protecting him more than they did about honoring Amy. Pete was going to be appalled when he was next brought up to date. Except for one brief visit soon after the accident, when Booth and Jodie were staying elsewhere, he had refused to come back to Lowland Way, and Sissy didn’t blame him. There’d been no arrest, either last Thursday, when Tess had seen Booth at the station, or anytime since. He was back, alive and at liberty, and there was absolutely nothing to stop him from building some other unsafe structure on his property.

  Just get through this, she told herself. Get through this and they’ll go. “I’ll give you the password to the members’ area of the website I use. You can check bookings as far back as you like.”

  “I understand Ralph and Naomi Morgan held a meeting at their house on the nineteenth of July?” the woman said. “To discuss the issue of Darren Booth and his business?”

  “Yes, we agreed which official channels to follow with our complaints.” Futile, the whole thing. It was so obvious now: the only people who cared about official complaints were the kind who didn’t incur them in the first place.

  The man spoke now. Compared with the woman, whose questioning style was conversational, he was more form
al. “Did Amy bring anything with her, other than the overnight bag?”

  This, Sissy knew, had been found with her in the rubble and, after some delay, had been released to Pete. “She didn’t, no.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Why? What are you suggesting? That she brought along scaffolder’s tools? That a happy, newly pregnant woman would stop by a stranger’s house and half dismantle his scaffolding, then go over in the morning in the hope that it would crush her to death?”

  Fractured skull leading to acute epidural hematoma: that had been the official cause of death and, remembering Pete’s devastated expression as he recited the phrases to her, Sissy began sobbing.

  The male detective looked about the room for tissues and, finding a box, brought it to her. The female moved a hand in Sissy’s direction but stopped short of making contact. “Would you like to take a break?”

  She mopped her eyes and nose. “I’m fine. Let’s carry on.”

  “So, Amy didn’t say anything to you when she left about calling on Mr. Booth?”

  “No, but he’d been playing music in the late hours and we’d both had a bad night because of it, so I’m certain that’s why she went over there. To try to help.” The words caught in her throat and she gulped the tea. Of all the thoughts to haunt her, the one that dominated was the conviction that she should never have mentioned Booth to Amy that night, should never have become hysterical the way she had.

  She didn’t think she would ever emerge from under the weight of her regret. As a heaving sensation began to build once more, she struggled to her feet, her hands still full of crumpled tissue. “Look, we’ll have to do this another time, after all. It’s just . . . It’s too upsetting.”