Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  ‘Old enough to be feeling discontented with the way your life’s going but young enough to still think you might want to shag the people you were at school with?’

  ‘Something like that, yes.’

  ‘It’d be interesting to do the research.’

  Angie Tatum had joined Friends Reunited and despite the fact that she was dead her entry remained on the list. The message of a dead girl who had posted it in the hope of being remembered made uncomfortable reading.

  ‘You’d think they’d have removed it,’ Newson said. ‘Nobody’s asked them to take it off, I suppose.’

  Remember me? Of course you do. Everybody does, don’t they? I was ‘it’ for a few years back then wasn’t I? So there’s no point me writing what I’ve been up to since I left like the rest of you have all done because you know all about me. Let’s face it I was already modelling and getting in the papers in my last year wasn’t I? I remember some of you girls calling me a slag and a slapper because you were jealous and had fried eggs for knockers. But some of you were really supportive about my dream which I will never forget. And of course the boys didn’t mind did they? I didn’t get any 0 levels of course but who cares I had a couple of excellent Double D’s so I didn’t need any exams did I? Anyway just to say contrary to what has been said in the press I’m not thick and what’s more I’m really proud of what I did and the fact that I used what I had to follow my dream and make a success of myself. I am strong, in control, and I have no regrets.

  ‘Written late and pissed, if you ask me,’ said Natasha.

  After reading a number of innocent messages from other people who had been in Angie Tatum’s class, Natasha and Newson found what they were looking for.

  Hello. My name is Katie Saunders. I wonder If any of you remember me? I expect some of you do. Well actually I doubt that you remember ME as in a person. I doubt that you remember somebody who, like you, had a heart and a soul. Somebody who needed friendship and felt the pain of isolation. No, I doubt anybody remembers that. Perhaps you don’t even remember my name. You certainly never used it, not to me in my memory anyway. ‘What some of you will remember is that somewhere lurking on the edge of your school days there was a small, skinny, ungainly, ugly girl with a harelip.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Newson.

  Yes. I was born pretty much without a thing going for me physically. They tried to correct my lip a couple of times but made a mess of it. I looked awful and I sounded worse. I had the classic harelip speech impediment. Not that you’d have heard it much since I scarcely ever said a word at school unless I absolutely had to. What you may remember hearing quite a lot was Angie Tatum’s impression of me. Funny isn’t it that our class contained both the least and the most fancied girl in the school? Maybe it was that which made you do what you did to me, Angie. You were so cute, weren’t you, such a sweet face, even before you grew those extraordinary breasts. You were the classroom star with that pretty face. And then there was me with my harelip, lost alone in almost complete isolation except for you Angie. I wasn’t isolated from you, was I? Because for five long years you never let one day go by without doing your famous impression of me. The mong. The spaz. The saddo. You were so vain, Angie, so incredibly proud of your teenage beauty, that I think you used me as a way of constantly drawing attention to it. By always being near me and doing your little impressions you were able to keep the focus of the entire class on you, weren’t you? Well we all moved on in the end and you managed to make yourself into a focus of attention for the whole country. I never managed to move on fully from the problem of my face. They never did get it fixed up. Things improved of course. Adults are perhaps not as cruel as kids, or at least they don’t have the same opportunities to practise cruelty that the classroom presents. I’ve made friends, and believe it or not I’ve even had boyfriends, despite the fact that you assured me many times that that could never happen. But I’ve never been able to form a long-term relationship. Something in me pulls away. I don’t feel worthy of it; and I don’t want to be hurt. I have to say that I don’t think I’m overstating the case when I say that your cruelty, and the way that for five years you crushed any spark of hope or confidence that might have grown in me, has burdened me throughout my life and will do so until the day I die.

  Katie Saunders’ entry had been made five months earlier.

  ‘Two weeks before Tatum died,’ Natasha observed.

  Newson took up a pen and paper and created two columns, one headed ‘Victim’, the other ‘Victim’s victim’. In the first column he wrote the names of all those who had been killed, and opposite these he wrote the names of the victims’ victims that they had so far discovered.

  VICTIMVICTIM’S VICTIM

  Adam Bishop William Connolly (compasses) Neil Bradshaw

  Christine Copperfield Helen Smart (tampon)

  Angie Tatum Katie Saunders (harelip)

  Farrah Porter

  Denis Spencer

  ‘God, Katie Saunders must have had a terrible time,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Somebody obviously thought so, and to exact ‘justice’ they thought it necessary to create a harelip on the face of Angie Tatum and glue her eyes open so that she was forced to stare at it for every second that remained of her life.’

  ‘Do you think that Katie Saunders was involved?’

  ‘She’s certainly involved, but what part the victims’ victims played in the murders I can’t say. Did one of them do it? Did they all?’

  ‘Perhaps they clubbed together and hired a hitman.’

  ‘But how would they have found each other? Has somebody been spending their time trawling through the vast Friends Reunited archive?’

  ‘They have ten million members.

  ‘Well, anyway. Let’s — take a look at Farrah Porter. Where was she at school in 1989?’

  ‘1989?’

  ‘ ‘Love And Kisses’, remember. Dannii Minogue’s first single. The Ozzie nanny heard it playing in the Onslow Gardens flat.’

  Newson was right about Who’s Who. A quick glance revealed that before going to Cambridge University Farrah Porter had boarded at one of the most expensive girls’ schools in the country. Armed with this information, it did not take long to find the entry on the school site of one Annabel Shannon. Annabel had been a housemate of Farrah Porter, a fact which appeared to have condemned her to a school life of abject misery.

  You were so beautiful, weren’t you? You still are, of course, and don’t you milk it? I feel sick every time I put on the news and see you there preening yourself as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. I want to scream LIAR LIAR LIAR at the screen. Because I know you, Farrah. I know you for the evil, cruel, racist shit that you are. You made my life and the life of any other girl who was poor or foreign or stood out in any way a complete and utter misery, didn’t you? I was poor and foreign in so much as I was a scholarship girl from the Irish Republic, and I curse the day my parents ever thought it would be a blessing to send me anywhere I would find myself at the tender mercies of the likes of you. What chance did I have? A pale, white, freckly potato head from the bogs of Ireland? And you with your blond hair and Caribbean tan? You made my ginger hair and freckles the joke of the whole school, didn’t you? All the girls had to be in on it or they knew you would cut them adrift too. I’ll never forget as long as I live the misery of my accursed colouring. White skin and orange hair. You actually made ME hate it! As if it was my fault! I wanted to scrape off my freckles with sandpaper and shave my head! I tried tanning in the holidays, but of course all that happened was that I got burnt and blistered. Shower time was the worst; and getting ready for bed. When I had to reveal my body to your ridicule! You stole my nightie nearly every night I remember standing alone, naked and helpless at the centre of your pack, while you all taunted me. And of course it was my flame-red pubic hair that seemed to enrage and delight you most; wasn’t it, Farrah? How you loved your favourite joke of pretending to find strands of
it on the soap and taunting me, throwing the soap at my head, pretending to be sick at the sight of what I was.

  I hope you die, Farrah Porter. I hope you die a slow and horrible death. But in the meantime I’ll do anything I can to harm your career. I’ve tried on a number of occasions to interest journalists in stories of what you were like at school, but so far they’ve declined to risk the wrath of your lawyers. That’s why I’ve decided to put this letter on the Friends Reunited site. Perhaps someone of influence will read it. Perhaps some of the other girls who have achieved positions of authority may read it and remember. Remember in shame their failure to stop you. They did not speak out against your appalling bullying then, so perhaps they will now. Speak and denounce you for the evil devil that you are. Speak out and save the people of Fulham from electing the most poisonous viper that ever destroyed another person’s life.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Natasha, when they had both read Annabel Shannon’s letter. ‘So now we know what that pubic hair on the soap in Porter’s shower was about.’

  ‘Yes, we do. A little extra detail. Our killer seems fond of them.’

  ‘Reading that almost makes you feel the woman deserved it,’ Natasha added.

  ‘Nobody deserves to be bleached in acid, however awful they were at school.’ Newson took out his pen and added ‘Annabel Shannon (ginger’) to his ‘victim’s victim’ column opposite Farrah Porter’s name.

  It was late, and Newson and Natasha decided that they had achieved all they could for the day. They would track down Warrant Officer Spencer’s and Neil Bradshaw’s records in the morning.

  ‘I suppose you’ll need to be rushing back,’ said Newson. ‘Please apologize to Lance for intruding on his Lance time.’

  ‘He’s dumped me,’ Natasha replied. ‘When you called me back in for the Copperfield murder he told me that I wasn’t to go. He said that I wasn’t obliged to.’

  ‘Which is true.’

  ‘And that if I loved him I’d tell you to shove it.’

  ‘Ah. And you didn’t.’

  ‘No, I came into work and he said I was a dysfunctional workaholic and that there was no point our being together if it was all going to be about me, so we should split up and I said fine.’

  ‘Since you didn’t tell him to shove it, does it mean that you don’t love him?’

  ‘Of course I love him. He’s my boyfriend.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘No, that’s right.’

  ‘He’ll be back.’

  ‘He won’t. But if he does, of course I’ll have him back. I broke our agreement. We’d just decided that we’d both work harder at making what we have special and the first thing I do is spend the entire weekend at work.’

  ‘We’re on the track of a serial killer.’

  ‘That’s not Lance’s business. I’ve let him down.’

  Natasha’s phone rang. It was Lance.

  ‘Of course I’ll try harder,’ she said into the phone. ‘I promise…OK, what do you want? Chinese? Indian? All right, I’ll pick up an Indian. See you. Love you.’ She put the phone back and turned to Newson. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I think we owe it to each other to work at our relationship.’

  ‘Is that what he said?’

  ‘Basically, yes.’ Natasha got up to leave and paused halfway. ‘Ed? That thing about your using my name as your password? That’s a nice thing, isn’t it? I mean, that’s how It was meant? Sort of like a compliment?’

  ‘Yes, you could put it like that. Although of course you weren’t supposed to know.’

  ‘Right. OK. Bye, then.’

  After Natasha had left Newson sat and thought for a while. One aspect of the case disturbed and intrigued him more than any other. It was the astonishing development that he knew the killer. Once more he replayed the message that Christine had left on his mobile phone at a time that could have been only minutes before her death. ‘Oh, hang on, that’s the doorbell…Ju-ust checking through my little spyhole…Well, well, well! This is a surprise…Wow, Ed, will I have something to tell you. You’ll have to come round now! Gotta go…Byeee.’

  Newson knew the man he was hunting.

  Could he have saved her somehow? If he were a better detective might he not have guessed what was about to occur and shouted into the phone, ‘Do not open that door!!’ Except it had only been a message anyway. There was no one to shout to; by the time Newson had heard her message Christine was dead and long past saving. And how could he have known? It had only been Christine’s death and the manner of it that had revealed to him the truth. Without the coincidence of the killer’s choosing Helen’s note to provoke his latest murder Newson would still be entirely in the dark. Was that a positive thing? Was there some way in which Newson could use that thought to give some meaning to her death?

  No. Try as he might, he could not. An old friend was dead, killed by the very man Newson had been hunting. Christine Copperfield, who never stopped talking, had finally stopped. Stopped scarcely a handful of words after those that Newson now knew off by heart and which he would never fully expunge from his mind.

  Byeeeeee.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The following morning Newson was at work by eight o’clock. He urgently wished to track down Annabel Shannon, and he needed to get his team on to the school records of the two remaining victims on his list:

  Warrant Officer Spencer and Neil Bradshaw. He was uncomfortably aware of his fast-approaching meeting with the chief superintendent, which was scheduled for ten that morning, and he needed as much information as possible to prove to his commander that progress was being made. Above all, Newson did not want to be taken off the case. Of all the cases he had tackled in his ten years dealing with murders, this one, for him personally, most required a result.

  It proved easy to trace Annabel Shannon. The school she and Farrah Porter had attended kept excellent records and was proud of its: old-girl network. They responded immediately to a police request for information, guessing correctly that it was to do with the Porter murder.

  ‘You don’t. think that one of our girls was involved, surely, Inspector?’ a very refined and extremely concerned secretary had enquired. ‘We’ve never had any sort of scandal here, not even drugs.’

  Newson thought about saying that the real scandal was that they had allowed appalling bullying to happen to girls in their care without seeming to notice it. However, he confined himself to assuring the secretary that his enquiries were routine.

  Annabel Shannon, or Annabel Ahern as she had been known since her marriage, was a farmer’s wife in County Kildare. Newson had hoped that Natasha would call Annabel Shannon. Natasha was an excellent conversationalist, she relished gossip and her sympathetic ear and chatty style had produced results from witnesses that Newson could never have hoped to open up. But Natasha was late, and, there being only junior women constables available to him, he decided to call Annabel Shannon himself.

  A thickly accented voice answered the phone. ‘Annabel Ahern speaking.’

  ‘Ah. Mrs Ahern? I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Newson and I am a detective inspector with the London Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘A British police officer?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Of course, I don’t have any jurisdiction at all with you, Mrs Ahern, but if you are amenable I’d like to ask you one or two questions.’

  ‘I don’t think my husband would approve of my talking to you, Inspector. If I’m honest, I’d have to say that he doesn’t approve of the British in general and their police force in particular. Nor do I.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs Ahern. Of course I can speak to you via the Garda if you wish. We have excellent, mutually co-operative relations with the Irish Police, and they would without doubt put my questions to you if you would prefer it that way.’

  ‘You’re calling about Farrah Porter, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am. How astute of you, Mrs Ahern.’

  ‘Hardly. I’ve had a number of responses from o
ld girls to the letter I left on the Friends Reunited site. Not on the whole very enthusiastic responses, sad to say. I don’t think it’s the done thing to denigrate one’s old school after one has slunk away, so to speak Did one of them call you?’

  ‘No, no. I looked you up on the site myself.’

  ‘That was clever of you.’

  ‘Oh, just a hunch.’

  ‘It was a very good hunch, Inspector. I’ve been expecting your call, of course.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Well, after the papers got hold of the details of her death I guessed it wouldn’t be too long before somebody made a link with what I’d written about what she did to me.’

  ‘Really? D’you think it’s that obvious, Mrs Ahern?’

  ‘Well, clearly you do, Inspector, or we would not be having this conversation.’

  Newson wished that it was Natasha who was having the conversation. She would have made friends with this woman by now, whereas the interview he was conducting was getting colder by the minute.

  ‘You suffered greatly at Ms Porter’s hands.’

  ‘Yes, I did. And of course I killed her.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Ahern?’

  ‘I said that I killed her.’

  ‘Would you elaborate on that?’

  ‘There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I killed her. I’ve always believed strongly in the power of prayer, you see. It was that which sustained me through the terrible unhappiness I suffered at that dreadful school and it has sustained me ever since in dealing with the memories. Not a single day has passed in these last fifteen years or so when I have not prayed for Farrah Porter’s death, not one single day. That’s an awful lot of prayers, Inspector. You’d think that it might eventually bear fruit, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, possibly.’