Those People

by Louise Candlish

  No, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. The house was Darren’s, not mine. We’re not married or nothing. It made me laugh when the neighbors called me Mrs. Booth. That’s how miserable they are—never even bothered to find out my name!

  One hundred percent sure. He only owned it for a few months, anyway. I’ve got no claim. No such thing as common-law rights in the UK, apparently. The only thing in my name is the car I drove here in. And you know what else? He didn’t have no will. The solicitor said he should get one sorted after he inherited the house, but he hadn’t got round to it.

  He did have a brother, but he died years ago. It’ll be his nephew who gets it. Liam, he’s called. Lives on the Rushmoor Estate, not far from us. From me. He’s Darren’s next of kin. I spoke to him yesterday, asked him if he knew Darren had accepted an offer on the place but he says the lawyer reckons he’s better off tax-wise if he lives in it for a bit. Tax-wise! Like he’s ever paid a penny of tax in his life! I probably shouldn’t say that, but he’s a character, is Liam. You probably know him, actually—he’s had a couple of run-ins with the law. Did six months inside a few years ago. Assault, it was. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Liam—that’s all I’ll say. His new girlfriend gives as good as she gets, mind you. She’s got a serious mouth on her, has Leesha. Got a baby, as well. I don’t know how Liam’ll cope with that—he’s not exactly paternal.

  Why am I laughing? I’m laughing because I just thought: if the people on this street didn’t like us, they definitely won’t like them. They won’t like them at all.

  MS. JODIE RAYNOR, 1 LOWLAND WAY, INTERVIEWED BY DC SHAH AND DC FORRESTER AT MILKWOOD LANE POLICE STATION, SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

  She would have liked to have seen Ant Kendall for herself before she left the police station. Looked him in the eye and asked him why in hell’s name he should want to steal their key and let himself into their house. Attempt to kill an innocent man, a next-door neighbor! What kind of a psycho had that level of hate in them? But he’d been moved to a remand facility, DC Shah said, somewhere down near Woolwich.

  “Thank you for coming in,” he said to her, as they exited the interview room. “I can assure you you’re under no suspicion whatsoever and we’re here to support you.”

  That was a laugh—he couldn’t get rid of her fast enough once he knew she wasn’t inheriting anything and had no motive to harm Darren. It had taken a while for her to realize they were interviewing her about the scaffolding—apparently they hadn’t been able to pin that on Ant Kendall. A right cheek to act like it might have been her!

  “So, you’ll keep going with this?” she asked him as he escorted her through the corridors to the reception area. “With what happened to the girl? The family’ll want closure, yeah?” She cared for Sissy Watkins’s sake, if no one else’s. Much as she found the woman annoying, Jodie respected her grief. Weren’t they in the same boat now? Sissy had as much of a right to know who’d hurt her loved one as Jodie did hers.

  She had not seen Amy Pope alive, only dead (it sounded weird to say it like that: only dead). Darren had been the last person to see her alive and now he was gone as well.

  “We’ll keep going until we find the person responsible,” DC Shah said. “I’m about to talk to another potential witness now, in fact.”

  Just before reception there was a windowless waiting area and he pulled up there to say something to another member of the staff. Jodie’s eye was caught by a seated male figure whose body language expressed exactly the same reluctance and mistrust of his surroundings that Jodie felt. Now that she thought about it, his face was half-familiar. She couldn’t place him, but in the split second of eye contact between them, she got the feeling he recognized her too.

  “Are you DC Shah?” he said, his attention switching to the detective. His voice was not familiar, a Midlands accent. “I told you on the phone—this is a total waste of time. I’ve got nothing to say.”

  “I’ll be with you in two minutes,” DC Shah said, and ushered Jodie on.

  “Who was that?” she asked, but of course he wouldn’t tell her. He was interested only in asking the questions, not answering them.

  It was as she buckled into the old Toyota—the last of their cars; even the RV Darren had loved so much was gone now—that it came to her.

  Darren had been smoking out of their bedroom window one night, about a week before the scaffolding collapsed.

  “Jodes, come and see this!” He was drunk, a bit unsteady, leaning right out the window and snickering. “I told you she needed a good shag, didn’t I?”

  “Who?”

  “Sissy Spacek. ’Cross the road.”

  Jodie joined him, had a cigarette herself while she was at it. It took away the horrible smell of the scaffolding, which she made a point of never touching in case she caught something. Upstairs at number 2, there was an old guy at the bedroom window. Naked, by the looks of it.

  “What’re you on about? He’ll just be one of her guests. She probably sleeps at the back,” she told Darren.

  “No, no, she’s in there as well. I just saw her. You wait.”

  He was right. The guy was turning and talking to someone in the room, and suddenly Sissy popped up right by his side, smiling. It was funny seeing her in a couple like that.

  “I think it’s nice,” she said. “Everyone gets a bit lonely sometimes, don’t they?”

  And Darren had put his arm around her then, kept it there while they finished their cigarettes.

  Sitting there, in the Toyota, she felt tears coming, as they always did when she thought about Darren and all his contradictions. He’d say something mean like that thing about Sissy needing a shag, and then he’d do something nice.

  Blinking, she turned the ignition on and thought again of the face of the man she’d seen at the station. Yes, Sissy’s friend. It was definitely him. It beat Jodie why he should have been summoned here to be questioned about Darren’s scaffolding, but whatever he’d done, whatever he’d seen, she had a feeling DC Shah would get it out of him.

  With a greater sense of resolution than she’d felt in some time, she indicated right and set off for Lowland Way.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Firstly, I would like to thank Jo Dickinson of Simon & Schuster and Danielle Perez of Berkley, to whom this book is dedicated. Your contributions have been transformative and are immensely appreciated, even—maybe especially—when they involved urging me to “lose fifteen thousand words from the middle.”

  The teams at Simon & Schuster and Berkley are both magnificent and I hope I’m not missing anyone when I thank, at Berkley: Fareeda Bullert, Loren Jaggers, Jenn Snyder, Eileen Chetti, Ivan Held, Christine Ball, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Craig Burke, Claire Zion; and at S&S: Sara-Jade Virtue, Jess Barratt, Hayley McMullan, Laura Hough, Dom Brendon, Joe Roche, Maddie Allan, Gill Richardson, Emma Capron, Alice Rodgers, Susan Opie, Saxon Bullock.

  Thank you to designers Katie Anderson (US) and Pip Watkins (UK) for their exceptional covers.

  My grateful thanks also and as ever to Sheila Crowley, Deborah Schneider, Luke Speed, Abbie Greaves, Ciara Finan, Sophia Macaskill, Claire Nozieres, Katie McGowan, Callum Mollison, Alice Lutyens—what a team!

  I am indebted to Lisa Cutts for her police expertise—and generosity in sharing it. Any mistakes are of course my own and would certainly not be found in Lisa’s own brilliant novels.

  There is an army of retailers, journalists and fellow authors on both sides of the Atlantic who have championed my work over the past year or two and who continue to do so. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, everyone! Without you I would be my only reader.

  I raise a glass once more to my family and chums, including Nips, Greta, Mats ’n’ Jo.

  Finally, my apologies to Metallica, Motörhead, et al. While I would be happy to have your music booming through my walls from the house next door, I have worked on the as
sumption that there are those in our more tranquil communities who would not.

  THOSE PEOPLE

  LOUISE CANDLISH

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Family life on Lowland Way has been carefully curated and protected by the residents. How justified is their opposition to Darren and Jodie, whose unwillingness to cooperate is clear from the outset?

  2. There is a class war raging on the street; which characters are aware of this? Do any of them recognize their own snobbery?

  3. The central relationships are between the Morgan brothers—Ralph and Finn—and their wives, Naomi and Tess. How do rivalries and concerns about status complicate their predicament?

  4. Ant and Em Kendall are particularly troubled by loud music and the nuisance of building work. How understandable is it that, instead of supporting each other, they turn against each other?

  5. Ralph Morgan describes the mood of the street to the police as “the Wild West.” How quickly do communities break down, even for those who consider themselves highly civilized, when authorities do not intervene?

  6. Were you surprised by the identity of the perpetrator of the first death on the street? Does he or she atone sufficiently?

  7. Surveillance is a key issue in the book. Are we ever truly free of others’ eyes? What does privacy mean to you? Does it even exist in our society now?

  8. How does the presence of the two detectives unsettle the residents? Does the threat of arrest cement alliances or cause new fractures?

  9. How do you think the police investigation will progress in light of the events of the final chapters? Is there further justice to be done?

  10. Have you ever experienced a “bad neighbor” problem? If so, how did you resolve the issue?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Louise Candlish attended University College London and worked as an editor in art publishing and as a copywriter before becoming a novelist. She lives with her husband and daughter.

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