Those People

by Louise Candlish

  30

  SISSY

  Was it really surprising that her instincts were so savage now, so uncivilized? Grief was fingers at your throat; it choked you of your breath. Your aim was survival and survival alone; honor was a luxury now. She would collude in any crime—commit any—so long as it stopped Pete from finding out about the first.

  In the grand scheme of things, Em had asked little of her. On Thursday night, at eleven o’clock, dressed in pajamas and her dressing gown, she left the house and hurried across the road to number 3. The night air, though temperate, felt pleasurably icy on her burning skin, the young fox that dashed from her path and cast her a fearful look a closer ally than the humans she was about to encounter.

  There was the usual pulse of music from Booth’s house, perhaps a notch quieter in Jodie’s absence. Sissy had lost her ability to judge. Balanced against the wall, below the new window, was the ply used to board it after Ant’s vandalism.

  Reaching the Kendalls’ door, she rapped the knocker loudly, calling their names in an urgent voice.

  Ant opened up, alarmed, innocent. “Sissy! Are you all right?” He was ill too, his voice thickened with a cold, hand clutching a shredded tissue.

  “Oh, you’re in,” she cried. “I’m so glad!”

  “What is it?”

  “I think . . . I thought there was someone trying to break into my house again.”

  “Oh God, how awful. Come in, let’s get straight on to the police!”

  She had no need to fake her agitation at this suggestion, because it was real. “No, please. He’s gone now, whoever he was. . . .”

  Ant’s head inclined to his right, wordlessly communicating that Booth was currently at home. “I’ll come and have a look, just in case,” he said, and he reached for something behind the door. A garden rake, his weapon of choice.

  There was no trace of an intruder in her house, of course, but as they toured the rooms Sissy could tell Ant was noticing the eeriness of the atmosphere. Rooms were not just dark but had the stale odor of neglect, a mood of abandonment that was almost Gothic. No wonder she finds it creepy here, he was probably thinking. No wonder she thinks she hears footsteps. He kept sneezing, apologizing for having a cold, but Sissy thought it might be the dust that was irritating him and she felt ashamed, as well as anxious.

  “I don’t want to be alone here tonight,” she told him truthfully.

  “Would you like to stay at ours for the night?” Ant suggested. “We can make up the sofa bed in the spare room. It’s next to the center wall, but the music’s not that bad tonight. He hasn’t been staying up so late on his own.”

  “Are you sure? Let’s check with Em that that’s OK.”

  Em was waiting for them. Sam was up, silent and disorientated. She’d woken him, Sissy realized. As Ant fussed about the sofa bed not passing muster, Em now made the counterproposal that the two women had prearranged: “Why don’t we come over and stay with you, Sissy? I wouldn’t mind escaping the music for once.”

  “Oh, would you?” Sissy exclaimed. “That would be wonderful.”

  “I’ll go on my own,” Ant told Em. “There’s no need to move Sam.”

  “He won’t mind,” Em said. “We’ll take the travel cot. It’s much quieter at your place, isn’t it, Sissy?”

  “You can hardly hear the music at all at the back,” Sissy agreed. “And it would make me feel better if I wasn’t separating you.”

  “Bring what you need for work in the morning,” Em instructed Ant. How would she have swung this, Sissy wondered, had Booth been out or already in bed asleep? She was a very good actress. It helped that Ant’s default position seemed to be abject cooperation.

  Sissy went ahead and began making up a guest bed. She hoped Em’s scheme might somehow be aborted, but soon after, the doorbell rang and she had no choice but to proceed. Seeing the three of them on her doorstep with everything they needed for Sam was like watching a family of refugees crossing the border, displaced, enveloped by an aura of disaster.

  While she made tea, Ant settled Sam upstairs. Was he the primary carer? That would be of benefit if Em got in trouble with the police.

  Seated at the kitchen table, Em looked exhilarated, her eyes darting about the room before alighting on Sissy. “Well done,” she told Sissy. “You did really well.”

  “Look, Em, I’ll do it,” Sissy said abruptly. She hadn’t known she was going to make the offer until she did, but her thoughts were suddenly clear and logical.

  “Do what?” Em frowned, not understanding.

  “Whatever you’re planning tonight, I’ll do it for you. I’m the one who’s already caused a death.” She couldn’t say “killed someone”; the distinction meant something to her. “You said you were going to break in, but you’ve got keys, haven’t you? How did you get them?”

  Em hesitated, then, aware of Ant’s footsteps overhead, answered in a low, rapid flow: “It was the day of the accident, when I went in to find Jodie. They were in the kitchen door, just hanging there, so I took them.”

  Sissy gaped. While Amy had been dying, this self-absorbed woman had been scheming.

  “It was opportunistic,” Em said, “a split-second thing, an impulse. I just had a feeling I might be able to use them in the future. And now I can.”

  Overhead, pipes groaned; a fan thrummed. Ant was in the bathroom. Sissy could hear him coughing, blowing his nose.

  “Surely Jodie would have noticed they were missing and changed the locks?”

  “No, the house was open the whole weekend, police going in and out, Health and Safety, endless personnel. I knew they’d accept it in the mayhem of it all, maybe not even notice. And they’d have other sets anyway, wouldn’t they?”

  “Clever,” Sissy said, thinking, Crazy. Em didn’t even know if the locks had been changed. Her keys might be useless. “So, what’s the plan for tonight? Quickly, tell me before Ant comes back down.”

  At last, it came out. Once satisfied that Booth had gone to bed, Em was going to let herself into his house and bury a lit cigarette down the side of the sofa, where it would smolder and catch fire. At the very least, there’d be bad enough damage for Booth to have to move out. “Tess says the sofa’s really old. Nylon and foam, totally flammable.”

  So it was arson. Sissy tried not to show how appalled she was. “Fires can get out of control a lot more quickly than you expect.” Hence the family’s decamping, she supposed. If the sofa ignited, both numbers 1 and 3 could be incinerated.

  “We’re insured,” Em said.

  “He definitely hasn’t replaced the security camera?”

  “No. I checked earlier. There isn’t one at the back either.”

  “What about an alarm?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  This was amateur hour. Not only could Sissy not allow this deranged creature to go ahead with her plan tonight, or any other night, but she could not, as she’d claimed, do it for her. Her brain worked quickly, constructing an alternative narrative. She’d leave the house and keep herself out of sight for a few minutes, then come back and tell Em she’d done it. When the house failed to go up in flames, it could be put down to the cigarette end burning out before it caught, and Sissy would have a window in which to decide what to do next. Speak to Ant, certainly.

  “Where are the keys?”

  Em passed them to her, along with a pack of cigarettes. “I think that’s his brand.” (She thought?) “Remember, you’ll have to wait till the music stops, then give him a few minutes to fall asleep. Do you want to take a knife or something in case he hears a noise and comes down?”

  “A knife?” Breaking in while armed with a deadly weapon, Sissy thought. That alone would carry a prison sentence, even before the arson. Thank God Em had agreed to let her act for her.

  Thank God she was in a position to put a stop to this. “I’ll take my chan
ces,” she said. “The video clip, Em. Before I go, I need to see you delete it. I’ve already done what you asked me to originally.”

  She watched, breathless, as Em turned on her screen, located the file, and hit the “Delete Video” button. “A deal’s a deal,” Em said, with what seemed like genuine integrity.

  Really, it was impossible to tell if she was sane or insane.

  * * *

  —

  It was two in the morning when Sissy left her house for the second time and slipped across the street. For a disorientating moment, she thought she was having a flashback, some sort of PTSD episode, but this was real; this was right now. This state of being, this fragment of time, was entirely unconnected to her and yet wholly her own.

  In case Em was watching from the window, she intended getting as close to Booth’s door as was practical before dipping behind a car or van. She didn’t like the hot, tempting feeling of his keys in her hand and decided to slip them into her pocket, but her fingers were numb with nerves and, just as she reached the bottom of the drive, she let go of them and they dropped to the ground with a musical clatter. Crouching to find them in the dark, she became aware of Tuppy barking in Finn and Tess’s house, faint at first, but growing gruffer, closer. If she didn’t move quickly, he’d wake the whole Morgan clan and she’d have one of them peering over the wall. Oh God, was that the sound of a door closing? “If anyone sees you crossing, just say you’ve gone to get a toy for Sam for me,” Em had said. “Say his giraffe—he normally sleeps with that.” Sissy rehearsed the lie as she continued to fumble for the keys. There, she had them again!

  Even before she straightened, before she heard the shuffle of footsteps, the rough rubbing sound of clothing not her own, she knew she wasn’t alone. Em must have had second thoughts, decided she couldn’t trust Sissy, after all.

  “Em?”

  As a hand landed on her shoulder, she heard herself shriek.

  CHAPTER

  31

  TESS

  Smartphones had made sleuths of them all, Tess thought, double-checking that hers was fully powered and ready for the imminent sting. Jodie, she would say, I know it was you who killed the cygnet. There’s a webcam in the park and it caught the whole thing from start to finish.

  There was no webcam and likely Jodie would call her bluff, but she would extend the interrogation for as long as it took to provoke the admission of guilt. Then she’d be straight on the phone to the police.

  At least she hadn’t seen Finn that morning to hear any more warnings, or any cryptic denials of his and Ralph’s conspiracies. She’d already fallen asleep when he came home from the pub, and then, in the morning, he’d slept while she got the kids ready for school. When she’d returned from drop-off, he’d left for work, the steam from his shower still in the air. Ships passing, which suited her just fine. If they weren’t going to be a team, sharing information, forgoing secret keeping, then they might as well be ships.

  The Kendalls’ house was silent. She’d seen little of Em since her talk of deleting evidence against Tess from an old iPhone; a mutual withdrawal. They used to text regularly, trade complaints, but there’d been no contact all week. Another relationship compromised thanks to them.

  She tiptoed up the Kendalls’ side of the drive and arrived at the door of number 1 feeling jumpy and nervous. Though Jodie was known to be a late riser, she was usually in evidence by this time, and Booth would normally have been up and working since eight. But there was no sign of either having started their day. On the wall above the door was the bracket for the vandalized security camera; its destruction, like that of the window, had been Ant’s doing, if Sissy was to be believed. The window had been replaced, its installation managed without disturbing the neighbors, thanks to the use of a professional.

  The audio function was prepped on her phone and she hit “Record” before knocking sharply. No response. She moved to the window. There was a broad gap between the curtains and she peered in. As her eyes adjusted to the contrast between exterior and interior light, her gaze came to rest on a figure outstretched on the sofa: Booth, clothed and sleeping, obviously having not made it up to bed the night before. He was on his back, his right arm raised over his face, exactly the same position he’d lain in that time she’d sneaked up the stairs. She remembered the feeling she’d had as she’d watched the rise and fall of his chest: I could kill him. It had been just some primal reflex, of course; she’d had no weapon. But if she had, or if she’d smothered him perhaps and somehow got away with it, what might she have spared them all?

  What might she have spared herself?

  Determined to wake him and raise Jodie, to confront the bird killer exactly as she planned and prove Finn wrong, she returned to the door and crouched at the letter slot, ready to yell their names.

  She sprang back at once, letting the flap bang shut. Gas. She’d smelled gas.

  Back at the window, she hammered on the glass. “Darren! Darren! Wake up!”

  But there was no reaction, not a twitch. She could not see his chest moving.

  She fumbled with her phone, turned off the recording function and dialed 999. “I’m at 1 Lowland Way in Lowland Gardens and there’s a really strong smell of gas. There’s at least one person in there—I can see him through the window—and I think there’s a woman upstairs too. Should I break a window?” Ridiculous, but she thought what a shame it would be to have to smash a brand-new window.

  Absolutely not, she was told. It might not be safe. “Is there anyone at home next door?”

  “I’ll check.” She tried the Kendalls’ doorbell, called Em’s name through the letter slot. “There’s no reply, but no smell of gas either.” Ant would be at work, she reasoned, while Em might be away at her parents’ again. Tess had lost track.

  The fire service would be there any moment, she was advised, and she needed to get herself out of the immediate vicinity in case of a blast. From her own front garden, she tried Em’s phone, but the call went straight through to voice mail. The same for Ant. Naomi didn’t answer, but texted, In a meeting, can’t speak, which meant both that she was safe and that she couldn’t, for once, issue Tess with instructions. At last, someone answered: Ralph, who confirmed that he was also at work and the kids safely at school. He gave her Jodie’s number, which she phoned next, only to be diverted to voice mail.

  Remembering Sissy, she sprinted across to number 2.

  “Tess, what’s wrong?” Sissy, in a drab gray robe, looked terrible, with semicircles of dark shadow under exhausted eyes.

  “Don’t leave the house, Sissy. There’s a risk of an explosion across the road. Stay in here, preferably at the back.”

  “What do you mean, an explosion? Where?”

  “At number 1. There’s a gas leak and they’ll need to evacuate us while they find the source. Booth’s inside. He’s not conscious.”

  What little color there was in Sissy’s cheeks drained from them. “Not conscious? Is he . . . Is he alive?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. I can’t get hold of Em. I assume she’s out of town with Sam, but—”

  “Em’s here,” Sissy said. “They stayed overnight. I asked them to.”

  “Ant as well? You’ve seen him this morning?”

  “Yes, he went to work an hour ago.” At the sound of a siren on Portsmouth Avenue, Sissy looked thunderstruck, as if she hadn’t understood what Tess had been saying until then. “You smelled the gas from your house, did you, Tess?”

  “No, I was at their door and I saw him through the window. I’m pretty sure Jodie must be in there as well. I’ve phoned her number, but there’s no reply.”

  “Jodie’s away. She’s staying with her sister this week, helping with a new baby.”

  “Oh!” If Tess had known this, she wouldn’t have gone anywhere near number 1 and the fire brigade might not have been war
ned for hours yet. “The police will need to tell her not to come back for now.”

  What else would the police need to tell her? From Sissy’s open door, they watched as a fire engine turned into the street. Within seconds, a police car had arrived.

  “What’s going on? Is that the police?” It was Em, pale and birdlike, at the bottom of the stairs, Sam crawling at her feet.

  “I’d better go out and speak to them,” Tess told Sissy. “Can you explain what’s happened, Sissy? And keep Sam away from windows, just in case of a blast, OK?”

  “OK,” Sissy agreed.

  “Oh, and could you phone the others?” Tess added. “They might want to come back home.”

  “Why?” Em was demanding, as Tess departed. “Why do they need to come home?”

  “You tell me,” Sissy said, which was odd, because how could Em know? But Tess didn’t have time to think about it as she marched across to number 1 to make herself known.

  * * *

  —

  He was dead.

  Darren Booth was dead.

  The paramedics told the police and the police told Tess. It was an incontrovertible fact that he was dead.

  Along with the other neighbors, she, Sissy and Em gathered at the police cordon to watch the body being removed. By then, the whole of their end of the street had been evacuated, the crowd thickening with gawkers and partially obscuring their view. But there was no mistaking the lifeless form being stretchered to the open ambulance. The workers were in special full-body suits, as if in need of protection from some terrible contagion.

  Finn, Ralph, Naomi and Ant arrived just in time to catch a glimpse of him.

  “I’ll go and find out what’s going on,” Naomi said, craning over the cordon to identify a leader.

  “No need,” Tess said. “They’ve got my number and they said they’d let me know as soon as it’s safe to go back in.”

  “Tess discovered the body,” Sissy explained to Naomi. “Without her, there might have been an explosion. A lot more serious damage.”