Those People

by Louise Candlish

  For goodness’ sake, would it never end?

  She was about to move on, when Becky Wallace surprised her. “No, now’s good,” she said, smiling. “Sean can hang on. A coffee would be really nice.”

  CHAPTER

  37

  SISSY

  Pete was with her when the police came a final time. It was the Monday morning after her ill-conceived visit to the station and he had taken a day off work to help her make a start with the packing. The sale price had only just been agreed to and the solicitors instructed, but it would take weeks to empty a three-thousand-square-foot house of over thirty years’ worth of possessions.

  She remembered when she and Colin had arrived on the street, when she’d been pregnant with Pete. Jean had brought over a cherry cake for them, warm from the oven. Sissy still remembered the springy sweetness of it in her mouth, the pickled sourness of the fruit. They’d thought Jean ancient at fifty-five, a potential babysitter with no life of her own. “It’s not exactly party town, is it?” Colin had said. Lowland Way had felt more ordinary then. The mania for renovating houses had not yet taken hold of society and houses still had values that felt fair and affordable, nothing like the fabulous prices of today. Once everyone was paid off, she’d be fine. Fine or in prison, one of the two.

  She had, at least, disposed of the cigarettes Em had given her, which she’d found, to her horror, in the pocket of the jacket she’d worn to the police station. Was that why Em had used gas instead of fire? Finding herself without her murder weapon, she’d had to improvise?

  Pete arrived on the Sunday in good time for lunch. Roast lamb, the first proper meal Sissy had cooked since Amy died. It was his suggestion, not hers, that he should help with the packing. She would never have subjected him to such an emotional wringer, but his therapist had said it might be a positive part of his bid to move forward, a dry run for the process of packing Amy’s things, still untouched in their flat.

  “It’s all experimental now,” he told her as they worked. “It’s all provisional.” And she didn’t disagree.

  All afternoon and into the night, they filled the packing boxes, one for every bin liner of discarded items. Sissy thought Pete’s therapist very clever when she caught glimpses of the man he would be in a year’s time. His spirit had been paralyzed, but not destroyed. He would recover; he would renew.

  “Is that the post?” he said, in the morning, when the doorbell rang. It was a little before eight a.m. and, inspired by those thoughts of Jean, Sissy had made cherry muffins for breakfast.

  “Or a reporter,” she said dismally. “I’ll get rid of them.”

  But, on the doorstep, she found DC Forrester. In the corner of her mouth she had a small stain of white that Sissy supposed was toothpaste. A male colleague Sissy hadn’t met before waited on the path behind her.

  “This is my colleague DC Nardini,” the detective said, with the lack of preamble of a close friend. “With your permission, I’d like him to search the room upstairs at the front. Would that be all right?”

  Pete strode forward to stand abreast of Sissy. “What’s going on? What exactly are you looking for?”

  “I’ll explain while he works, if that’s OK?” DC Forrester scrupulously awaited Sissy’s nod, then released her colleague up the stairs and accepted Sissy’s offer of coffee and muffins.

  This must be it, Sissy thought. The other detective was searching for clothing, fibers to match those found in the scaffolding. Or on the tools she’d used, perhaps. It was remarkable how unafraid she felt, sitting at the kitchen table with Pete by her side. As it was, DC Forrester disarmed her by complimenting her on her baking, before smilingly detonating her bomb: “We can now tell you that it was Darren Booth who broke into your house on August the twenty-third.”

  Sissy’s heart pumped with brutal force. “I knew it was him! I told the officers who came, and they went to speak to him, but they insisted he had nothing to do with it.”

  “It’s likely they were looking for evidence of theft, but Darren Booth entered your house with the purpose of leaving something, not removing it. He was installing a camera.”

  “What? You mean . . .” Sissy stumbled, horrified. “He was watching me?”

  “Not you. He was watching his own house. From what we can judge from the material we have, the camera is in an upstairs window.”

  “The material you have?” Sissy repeated, over the continued smacking of her own heartbeat.

  “Stored on one of his phones,” DC Forrester said. “Our downloaders have now been able to collect all the video—he set it up so he could look at it remotely.”

  “How could someone do that?” Sissy’s technological skills were rudimentary; she knew enough to check that her bills were correct and to supply the Internet password to her customers. “Wouldn’t he need my Internet details?”

  The detective nodded. “We’ve been able to discover that he used the password he found on a sticker on your router.”

  Pete took over the explanation. “You know when you access the Internet, Mum, different networks are listed? They’re the networks in range, neighbors’ providers. With the password in his possession, this guy would have been able to access yours whenever he liked.”

  “Thank you,” said DC Forrester, who’d finished her muffin, including the crumbs.

  She’d “been able to discover” what she had from Jodie, Sissy presumed. “Did Jodie tell you why he felt the need to do this? He already had a camera of his own to protect his premises.”

  “His aim was to improve his security following the scaffolding collapse. He wanted to record any further attempts on his life. He expected his own camera to be a target for vandalism and he was proved right. As you may know, it was disabled by one of the neighbors the weekend before his death.”

  “Yes.” Sissy felt nausea choke her airways. One thought dominated all others: whether or not the camera was found, the police now had video of the night Booth died.

  DC Forrester awaited her gaze, speaking again only when she had it. “It looks as though you did leave your house a second time that night.”

  “What night? Mum?” Pete didn’t understand and she wished with all her heart he was not present for where this discussion might lead them. She had the unearthly sensation of having been hypnotized, which she knew could not be right. It was important to order her thoughts, plan the course ahead, with all its possible obstacles.

  “Yes. I went across to the Kendalls’—or, at least, I got halfway. Em asked me to get Sam’s toy, a giraffe he sleeps with. They’ve been having a lot of problems with his sleeping.”

  “I know all about that,” DC Forrester said, with a small smile.

  “You have a baby?”

  “She’s three now. But she was a terrible sleeper the first year.”

  Was she saying this to humanize herself, to lull Sissy into a false sense of security? Unsure, Sissy stayed silent, so DC Forrester resumed her questioning: “Why did Em not get the toy herself? Or ask her husband to go?”

  “I suppose because I was still up. I offered. But Ant came after me and he went to get it and I came back home.”

  Exactly as it would be on the video.

  “You dropped something, I think?”

  Sissy thought back, thankful that her heart was working less violently now. “Yes, that’s right. Just Em’s keys. I gave them to Ant.”

  Would the police be able to lip-read her conversation with him? Surely not; the video was hardly likely to have MI5 levels of clarity.

  There was a call from the top of the stairs—“Eithne!”—and DC Forrester led the little group to the master bedroom, where Sissy and Pete were allowed to see the small, flat camera found attached to the back of the chest of drawers and now being bagged as evidence.

  “It’s a shame it wasn’t set up for the night before Amy died,” Pete remarked.


  “Not every crime is so conveniently recorded,” DC Forrester told him.

  Oh, Em, Sissy thought.

  She and Pete stayed in the room after the detectives left, he at the window and she in the armchair by the bed, exhausted by the combination of raid and reprieve. The bedclothes were crumpled, the pillows flattened. When Pete had said he was going to stay the night, Sissy had wondered if he’d choose the bedroom in which Amy had spent her last hours, but instead he’d suggested this one. Seeing him at the window, she understood now that he’d chosen it in order to be able to study the scene of Amy’s death. To imagine it and then to extinguish what he’d imagined.

  “They’re heading across the road now,” he reported. “The woman who was just here and the guy I’ve met before. DC Shah. He must have been waiting in the car.”

  “Really? I didn’t think Em was home.” She hadn’t bolted, then—the idea seemed preposterous now. More likely the police had demanded she return, threatened her with an arrest at her parents’ house, in front of their community. Should Sissy warn her on WhatsApp? Where was her phone? In the kitchen, charging. She’d told the group about Booth’s postmortem results the morning after she’d learned of them herself, but this was different. This could be construed as tipping off the guilty party, conspiring to evade capture or something of that kind.

  “Oh my God, they’ve got their cuffs out!” Pete exclaimed, and Sissy rose to her feet as if having been read her rights herself. She would be next—that much was certain—for she and Em were joined, their two fates sealed as one. She felt not fear now, but sorrow, the most tremendous sorrow. For Em, for Sam, for all of them.

  “Poor Em. This is terrible. Really terrible.”

  “No, it’s not a woman they’ve got,” Pete said. “It’s a man.”

  “Let me see!” But by the time Sissy got to the window, Ant Kendall was already in the back of the squad car, head bowed low as if in prayer, as the vehicle pulled away.

  CHAPTER

  38

  ANT

  Anthony Kendall, 3 Lowland Way, Lowland Gardens. Yes, I understand this interview is being taped.

  What do I know about natural gas? That’s your first question? I know it didn’t kill Darren Booth, even though that’s what the papers said.

  No, I don’t mean I thought it could kill. I mean I assumed from the press that it did kill him, but I learned from a neighbor that it was in fact this binge-drinking syndrome. Well, I can vouch for the heavy drinking, if that helps.

  I did Google “gas hobs,” yes. Ours was broken and I wanted to find out how to fix it and if it was dangerous to carry on using it.

  If you say so, yes, I was online for forty minutes—there was a lot to find out.

  No, I decided I’d call a gas engineer. I didn’t want to risk doing anything myself, not with a baby in the house.

  No, I haven’t made that call yet. I haven’t got around to it.

  What? I told you why I smashed his camera. I was upset about Sam’s hearing problems. It was nothing to do with this.

  No, I wasn’t trying to disable it in advance. I didn’t even plan what I was going to hit. I just saw red and started wrecking things. It was a one-off.

  What the hell . . . ? That video image is of me, yes. Oh my God. Where did this come from? Who took this?

  Yes, that’s me. Oh God.

  I’m crossing the road from my neighbor Sissy Watkins’s house toward my own and I’m putting a hand on her shoulder.

  The date and time read the seventh of September, two oh nine.

  I was asking her what she was doing and she said she was fetching Sam’s toy giraffe for Em. I said I’d go in and get it and she should go back. Which she did.

  I wouldn’t call it a long discussion, no.

  I’m taking the keys to my house, that’s all. The ones Em had given Sissy. I went into the house and I went upstairs to get the giraffe.

  No, I didn’t come straight out. It’s on your video, I guess. I sat in the living room—I don’t know—just thinking.

  Not particularly unusual, no. We’re up a lot in the night, because of noise issues from next door.

  Yes, that’s my wife. She’s crossing the road and knocking at the window. Like I said, I had her keys. I went to the door and let her in.

  The time is two twenty a.m.

  We talked for a few minutes, yes. She just wanted to know why I’d followed Sissy over. She said Sam was asleep.

  That’s her returning to Sissy’s place. Look, before we go any further, can I just state clearly that neither Sissy nor Em knew what I was going to do next? They didn’t know anything. I mean, I didn’t know myself!

  Yes, that’s me—I’m approaching the door of number 1. The time is two forty-six a.m.

  I’d had the keys since the day of the scaffolding collapse. I saw them on the ground and I grabbed them.

  No, no one else knew I had them.

  No, I swear I didn’t have a plan. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just tempted to go in and look around. I suppose I wasn’t feeling normal feelings—like, I should have been scared, shouldn’t I? He’s done aggressive things to us in the past and I could have been attacked if he heard me. All I can say is it was like it wasn’t me. It was like I was watching myself do it, a weird, out-of-body feeling.

  I closed the door behind me and waited in the hallway. I couldn’t hear anything and I assumed he was upstairs in bed. I knew Jodie was out of town and was going to be away all week. I crept a few steps toward the living room door and I got the shock of my life, because he was right there! Asleep on the sofa.

  No, not snoring or making any noise, just lying there, with his right arm over his face. You don’t think . . . You don’t think he might already have been dead?

  Well, I just stood there, completely frozen, thinking he would wake up and see me, but then I saw there were cans everywhere. He’d obviously drunk a hell of a lot and was down for the count.

  I knew I had to leave, that I shouldn’t be there. I tried to leave, but I couldn’t get the front door open again. It had some funny mechanism that I couldn’t work out in the dark and I didn’t want to risk putting a light on. I had no choice but to sneak past him through the living room to the kitchen and use the back door.

  There was no smell of gas, no, not that I remember, but I had a bad cold, so I might not have smelled it. Em and Sissy will tell you that, or the people I work with.

  I didn’t look at the hob, no, so I couldn’t have seen if one of the knobs was turned.

  I opened the back door and when I closed it behind me it locked automatically. I dropped the keys by the fence and kicked a bit of soil over them. Then I came around the side of the house—there’s a gate with a bolt and it was easy to open.

  Yes, that’s me. The time is two fifty a.m. I was on the premises for four minutes. Wait—you’d have fingerprints on the hob, wouldn’t you, if I’d turned it on? And you don’t, do you? Other than this video, what’s your evidence?

  Of course, I see it looks bad that I went into his house in the middle of the night. But he went into Sissy’s, didn’t he? No one arrested him for that. People do weird, illegal things, but that’s not the same as trying to kill someone.

  No, I wasn’t thinking that he’d be dead by morning. Why would I? I didn’t touch the gas! You have to believe me—when I heard the news, I was as shocked as everyone else. Anyway, if the gas didn’t kill him, what does it matter? I don’t know why I’m here, why we need to discuss this.

  Fine. Yes, I went back to Sissy’s house and went to bed. Em had left the door on the latch. She and Sam were both asleep and they were still asleep when I got up and went to work. Talk to my colleagues—ask them if they think a murderer came into work that morning!

  No, that’s not right. I was the last person to see him alive—that m
ight be true—but I didn’t do anything to harm him. I swear.

  I disagree with that. You’re putting two and two together and making five. D’you know what? All along you’ve been looking for some kind of clever plot, but maybe the reality is that they were the bad guys, not us? They’ve been the bad guys all along.

  No, no comment from now on. This is harassment. What’s the process from here? I’d like to talk privately with my solicitor. I’d like to phone my wife. When will I be allowed to see my son?

  RECORDED INTERVIEW WITH MR. ANTHONY MORGAN, 3 LOWLAND WAY, BY DC SHAH AND DC FORRESTER AT MILKWOOD LANE POLICE STATION, SEPTEMBER 17, 2018

  They’d come for him at eight thirty, when he was about to leave for the train, and had reached the police station at about the time he would have been halfway to Victoria, watching an episode of something on his phone or reading the morning briefing on the Guardian website. He was taken through the backyard and through a metal gate and then booked into custody. It happened as if to someone else, in front of his eyes, and only later was he able to remember all the component pieces: he’d been searched and had his possessions removed, except for his wedding ring; given the opportunity to see a nurse (he’d said no, he was fit and well, though hungover, and the custody sergeant had chuckled at that); asked if he had his own solicitor or if one should be provided from the duty scheme (he’d been grateful to accept the latter); he’d had photographs, fingerprints and DNA taken.

  It must have taken almost five hours in all.

  Then the interview, with his assigned solicitor by his side, a woman called Harriet who he hadn’t known existed until today but who now appeared to be the only person on deck to have noticed him in the water, drowning.

  * * *

  —

  After the interview, he was taken to a cell while the detectives sought to persuade the CPS that they should go ahead and charge him. The cell had a narrow bench with a mattress, a high frosted window far from reach, a metallic toilet bowl. The temperature was OK, the atmosphere actually less bleak than he might have expected, but he felt naked and helpless without his phone. Extraordinary to think that this morning he’d planned to go to work, that the clothes he wore had been selected for a day at White Willow Foods & Drinks, not prison.