He tried to recall what had caused him to drink two—OK, maybe three—bottles of wine: that phone call with DC Forrester? It hadn’t been that bad, had it?
Then he remembered: Darren and Jodie. Who else?
“Are you finally awake?” Em was in the room, snapping open the blinds and subjecting his retinas to an onslaught of blinding light, as if they lived on Mercury, not Earth. “Can you please get up? I need you to keep an eye on Sam, if that’s not too much trouble.”
Ant tried to lubricate his throat. “What’s up?”
“We’ve got a cleanup operation going, bagging up all the rubbish from the party. It was windy earlier and it’s blown all over the place. It looks disgusting, like there’s been a festival or something. Tess is worried one of the pets might eat something poisonous.”
“When did the party finish?” Ant asked.
“About three thirty a.m. You passed out at two.” Her tone reinforced the message already understood that this had been an unforgivable error on his part. He’d fallen short by ninety minutes, failed to see the ordeal through to the bitter end.
“Did Sam sleep?”
“Eventually, yes.”
Like a child who lives next to an airport runway, the poor creature was learning how to sleep through the end of the world.
“It only stopped because the police broke it up,” Em added. “Otherwise, they’d have gone on all night.”
“Really? The police weren’t interested when I phoned.”
“I know, but I remembered what you said about the drugs tip-off and that’s what I did. You were right as well—the drugs squad came straightaway and then they called the uniforms for backup. A completely different story from usual. I said to them, ‘Lucky no one was killed this time, eh?’ Like they care.”
Ant groaned. “Drugs? I was saving that!”
Em’s eyes flared with irritation. “Saving it? What for? These people are actively feuding with us, Ant. They’re damaging our mental health! How much worse does it have to be?”
Disgusted with him, she departed.
One eye on Sam, Ant dragged himself to the window to see how bad the aftermath was. Tess, Sara and another woman he didn’t know were moving about with black bin liners. Naomi and Ralph were on holiday, due back that day—he was pleased one of their families had been spared this latest atrocity. The drive looked as if a couple of nightclub bins had capsized on it, all lager cans and bottles and cigarette ends, even soaked items of clothing, flattened like roadkill.
He was in the kitchen preparing ingredients for a fry-up when Em returned. His guts were sore with hunger, making him impatient as the ignition for the hob stuttered, needing three tries to light. Sam was at his feet, playing with his mechanical pig.
Her face was thunderous. “You won’t believe the stuff we’ve found. Broken glass, ends of joints, those popper canisters. Even a syringe! So much for the drugs squad—imagine if Sam or one of the other kids picked something up and put it in their mouth. Tess is going to get onto the police about it.” She grimaced. “Not that we hold out much hope that last night’s crew will exchange notes with the ones investigating us. That would be far too sensible.”
As she ranted, Ant threw chopped mushrooms and tomatoes into a pan. “They must have a central file they all use?” he said, trying to be helpful, but Em glared, as if he’d missed the point entirely.
“What are you doing?”
“Cooking breakfast. Have you had any?”
“Two hours ago, yes. Did you not hear what I said about the syringe?”
“I did hear. Sit down. At least have a coffee.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ant, this is important!” But at the sight of Sam’s alarmed expression, she poured herself a coffee and took a seat at the table.
Ant cracked eggs into the pan and mixed everything together in a gray mush. When he noticed the flame had gone out again, this time it reignited instantly with an alarming whoosh.
“Ant, that’s really dangerous!”
“I know. The hob’s on the blink. I’ll see if I can fix it, but we might need a new one.”
“No, I don’t want to buy anything new,” Em said. “I’m not throwing good money after bad.”
“What are you talking about? Look, forget the party.” He felt very keenly that he needed to defuse her rage, redirect her energy. “We can’t let it destroy our whole weekend. How about we go out for the day? Drive down to the coast?”
He plated the half-cooked food and found some bread, breaking off a piece for Sam. “Em? What d’you think?”
She raised her gaze, an expression of fresh resolution in her eyes. “I think we need to move, Ant. We’re living next door to a very dangerous individual who obviously wants revenge. Sooner or later, he’s going to do something that really harms us. Harms Sam.”
“Because of the party?”
“No, not just the party! Because he’s murdered a defenseless animal and broken into one of our houses—not to mention the fact that a woman’s been killed! We need to move out,” she repeated.
Mouth full, Ant took his time swallowing. In a way, it was extraordinary that it had taken so long for them to reach this point. “I thought you said you weren’t going to be driven out by him?” he said finally.
“That was before I realized we were still in danger.”
“The thing is, I don’t think we can sell. One quick search of the address and Amy’s death will come up. Plus he’s not exactly hiding the fact that he’s a neighbor from hell.”
“We’ll rent it out, then,” Em said. “Someone must be desperate enough.”
Ant forked more food into his mouth. The stringy egg white made him gag. “Desperate people wouldn’t be able to afford the rent we need to cover the mortgage. Then we’d have to find the rent for a new place.”
Em spoke in a different voice then. “Forcefully calm” was the best way he could describe it, the strain of controlling her emotions making her mean. “When I say we need to move, I’m not asking. Not as far as Sam and I are concerned.”
“What?” Ant paused his wolfing to look at her. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“I’m saying, if you won’t move, we’ll do it anyway. We’ll go and live with my parents. I noticed a really nice nursery when I was there at the weekend, and I bet there’s not the same waiting lists as here. There’re bound to be schools as good as Lowland Primary. I could get a job in Cheltenham. London is full of lunatics, Ant. We could have this same problem wherever we go!”
He stared, aghast, as his most feared thoughts were spoken to him. “Does this mean you want to split up?”
She shook her head, the emphatic motion of it making him fear that the person she needed to convince was herself. “It means I want those people out of our life. And if you’re not willing to do something about them, then I will.”
CHAPTER
23
RALPH
Alone in the hotel room—the rest of the family were at the beach—Ralph was on and off the phone with his logistics manager, Ben, in London, when the notification popped up that he’d missed a call from Eithne Forrester.
Well, she’d have to wait.
Ben had just made the inconvenient last-minute discovery that the building next door to their warehouse had been earmarked—and approved by the police—as the assembly point for a “substantial” group of LGBT protesters intending to march along the river and into the City. He didn’t know what their issue was—something to do with a lack of diversity in careers that allowed you to ride roughshod over regulations and steal from pensioners—but he knew what his was: the highly inconvenient prevention of access to three delivery trucks, two of which were already on the road.
“Do you know the Russian proverb ‘Don’t buy the house; buy the neighborhood’?” one supplier asked, when Ralph called with alternative plans.
“I’m not sure I know any Russian proverbs,” he said, “but that sounds like a very good one.” As he spoke, he ran his fingers over his left cheek. The skin still felt tender, though the marks themselves had faded, and he had a rather humbling thought: some things caused bruises that lasted longer than those from punches.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“How could you have been so stupid?”
“Like some two-bit thug.”
The words still burned. They burned because they were true and they burned because they were Naomi’s. A line had been crossed between them, a balance of power disrupted. Of course, he understood that his wife’s fear of the “consequences” of his assault on Booth was not related to her own personal safety, let alone his, but to their children’s. Booth had plenty of targets in the Morgan household besides the one who’d given it its name.
According to Finn, all hell had broken loose on the street in their absence: a dead cygnet, a prowler at Sissy’s and a wild party at number 1, to which the drugs squad had been called (surprise, surprise—there’d been no arrests). He wasn’t so egotistical as to imagine he could have prevented any of these misdeeds, but, Jesus, it was quite a coincidence, wasn’t it? While the cat was away, the mouse was staging some sort of coup d’état.
Finished with his work calls, he pulled open the terrace doors. Though July’s drought had prevented the lush green valley of flowers promised by the hotel’s website, Ralph quite liked the colors he saw instead: straw and sand and pale lemon, everything tinted yellow and a bit 1970s. For a moment he wished he and his family could stay hidden here forever.
Only when he could put it off no longer did he dial the number for the police and, as expected, reach the refrigerated tones of DC Forrester.
“You didn’t mention a babysitter when we spoke, Mr. Morgan, and I’m wondering why.”
Ralph exhaled, already irritated. “Daisy? What about her? You might be better off talking to my wife. She handles all those arrangements.”
A pause. “Did your wife also walk her home on the evening of the tenth?”
Ah. OK. Take the initiative. No point lying. “No, it’s always my brother or me who walks her home. We wouldn’t let a teenage girl go off alone in the middle of the night.”
“Which one of you was it that night?”
“I don’t remember off the top of my head, but since you’ve taken the trouble to phone me on holiday, I’m guessing someone’s decided it was me?”
“Exactly. Any particular reason why you lied about this before?”
As an ache started up in his bruised cheek, Ralph felt his temper slipping from him. “Oh, for God’s sake, there’s a difference between lying and forgetting, isn’t there? Is this really your idea of a murder investigation?”
“Mr. Morgan, did you walk past number 1 that night, on the way to or from Daisy’s house on Portsmouth Avenue?”
Ralph sighed. “Both, yes. That’s the most direct route.”
“And on the way back, did you approach the door of number 1?”
“No, and I didn’t touch the damn scaffolding either.”
There was a pause, a new tension. “I hear you got into a fight with Mr. Booth before you left last weekend.”
Here we go. “More of a skirmish, I’d say.”
“A skirmish, right. He’s still injured from the scaffolding accident, so I wouldn’t have thought he’d be able to put up much of a defense.”
“Well, you’d be wrong there, because he’s hard as nails, that man. If anything, I came off worse.” Once more, Ralph stroked his bruised cheek.
“I’ll take your word for it, Mr. Morgan.”
Mr. Morgan. The most infuriating thing about her, about that emotionless delivery, was that he couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to provoke him.
Adrenaline still roiling after he hung up, he watched from the terrace as Libby made her way up the path from the hotel’s private cove. At twelve, she’d been allowed more independence over the long break than previous years. Did Naomi and he need to reassess that? You only had to look at the news on any given day to know how easily a young person could be intercepted and harmed. What if Booth beckoned her over when he saw her in the street . . . ? Kept her prisoner in the house, the house the police had turned back to him without a care?
As soon as they got home, he’d suggest to Naomi they sync their phones and begin tracking their daughter’s every move. Creepy in normal circumstances, but these were far from normal.
* * *
—
Naomi had had a call too. She told him after they’d dropped Libby and Charlie at her parents’ place in Somerset, where they were staying till the following weekend (he didn’t say it often enough: his in-laws were a fucking dream). The A road to London was miraculously clear, which meant he’d be back well in time to go out for a drink with Finn. If it weren’t for the police—and Booth—he’d be in a fantastic mood.
“I didn’t want to tell you in front of the kids,” she said, and Ralph felt his pulse accelerate.
“Eithne bloody Forrester, was it? Checking my alibi—this business with walking Daisy home?”
“Actually, she wanted to double-check something from the morning of the accident,” Naomi said, squinting at her phone in the passenger seat. Ralph wondered if he should be concerned that the single time they’d had sex on the holiday, she had submitted to it rather than sought it. Not disengaged exactly, but not crazy into it either.
“What did she want to know?” he prompted.
“Who it was who went into the house and woke Jodie up.”
“Really? Who was it? You?”
“No, it was Em. I stayed out front and waited for the emergency services.” Naomi shuddered as she remembered, dropped her phone to her lap and squeezed her upper arms with her fingers.
“You think they suspect Em of something?” Ralph asked.
She glanced up, curious. “I hadn’t thought of that. I thought Jodie, maybe.”
Ralph’s eyes widened. Ahead, traffic looked heavier, a string of red taillights winding east. “Jodie? Wow.”
“Well, it was peculiar that she stayed in her bedroom, wasn’t it? If you’d been lying in the rubble of collapsed scaffolding, I think I’d have got out of bed and gone to have a look.”
“Pleased to hear it,” Ralph said. She was finally thawing, he thought. Hallelujah. He wondered if Finn would be up for the Star that evening, instead of the Fox. No need to analyze why. He was like a teenager coming home from holiday and hoping to see the girl he wanted to get off with—except he was in fact a middle-aged man coming home from holiday and hoping to see the neighbor he wanted to kill.
How had it got this surreal?
How had it got this bleak?
* * *
—
They went to the Fox—Finn was unusually insistent—and it annoyed Ralph from the moment they arrived and found they couldn’t get a table. It was the warm, overripe odor, the tanned post-holiday faces. People like us, except they didn’t have a feud going with a psycho a few doors down. No, they had what Ralph had allowed himself to believe he would always have and yet had lost in what seemed like a heartbeat: smugness.
He swatted away Finn’s questions about the holiday, redirecting them to the topic of Booth. They’d finally got served and found space at the end of the bar. “Nay’s not convinced this break-in of Sissy’s was even Booth. She says it’s too devious. Too sinister.”
“She doesn’t think killing a bird is sinister?”
“Sure it is. It’s just that the other things have been short, violent acts—plus the party, but that was par for the course. Can’t believe they haven’t had one before, frankly. But with Sissy’s, nothing was damaged, not even in a minor way. It’s not the same MO.”
“The MO is to screw with us, whatever it takes,” Finn said.
Ralph agreed. He far preferred discussing Booth with his brother than with his wife. “That’s exactly what I told her. He’s not looking to establish some signature style, like a serial killer. He’s not that interesting. What does Tess think?”
“I’m a bit worried about her, to be honest,” Finn said. “She’s obsessed with the swans. She was just over at the shop on the estate today having a go at them about letting kids take stale bread to feed them. It’s not good for them, she says. Threatened to call the police if they don’t stop.”
“Right.” How deluded was she? Ralph thought. If the police didn’t care about a wild man wreaking revenge on an entire street, they weren’t going to care about a bit of expiry-date Mother’s Pride being fed to a mute swan. “We’ve had the police on the phone again. Have you?” He pulled a pained face as he was jostled backward by a clutch of new arrivals. “Picking holes in our ‘recollection of events.’ By the way, thanks to you, I’m now a prime suspect.” He’d meant it as a throwaway, but it came out with an edge, like he was really pissed off, and Finn’s reaction was to glower at him over the top of his pint.
“Why thanks to me?”
“Because they’re fixated on the fact that I walked Daisy home that night, presumably messing with the scaffolding on my way back. I didn’t even remember that myself and they didn’t ask Nay, so it must have been you or Tess who told them.”
“Not me,” Finn said, tone short.
“Well, it must have been Tess, then. Tell her she needs to remember whose side she’s on here, will you?”
Finn tensed, predictably defensive. “What’re you talking about, mate? What other side is there?”
But such was Ralph’s mood, Finn’s resistance only made him push harder. “She wants to land us in it after what Naomi said to her that night about not working—is that it?”
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