“Have you been outside?” he asked. “I had to run a gauntlet of paparazzi. There must be a dozen. Cameras, microphones. Such ghouls.”
Helen hugged her elbows, imagining the scene outside her front door. She felt besieged.
Damian took a breath. “I came to thank you for what you did: barricading the bedroom doors so the boys wouldn’t see. Louisa trained them as babies to sleep through the night. The hours they used to scream, it ripped me in half hearing it. I wanted to go to them but she said we had to stick to the rules. Children needed consistency: ‘Once in bed, you stay there.’ God, she was a good mother. I see that now. If they’d come downstairs last night and seen …” He swallowed.
“Where are the boys?”
“With an emergency foster family. The parents of one of my sixth formers, so it will be all round school by tomorrow.”
She was surprised at his naivety. What did he think the reporters were outside for? It was headline news.
“Do the boys know what’s happened?” she asked.
“Sabine told them that a bad person killed Louisa and the dog. I was there when she broke it to them. I was supposed to do it, but I couldn’t find the words.” His voice tailed off and he rubbed his nose. “Leo burst into tears and hugged me but I’m sure he was crying for Napoleon more than for his mother. Murdo said, ‘Mummy’. Louisa’s been trying for years to get him to say a proper word. And finally he says one and it’s her name but she’s not around to hear it.” He swallowed again.
“Toby didn’t react at first, then he asked if he could have his cello to practise. How could I tell him the bastard who murdered his mother had mutilated his cello too? I said I’d borrow one from the school music department because the police wouldn’t let me back into the house to get his. He told me to make sure I borrowed a half size one because he’s got his Grade Four exam on Tuesday. I didn’t even know that.” He rubbed his eyes. “I expect that Louisa must have told me, but I never took much notice when she went on about Toby’s music. She had him down as a virtuoso. I wanted him to be normal. I suppose she’s won that argument in the end. Anyone whose first thought is cello practice after they’ve been told their mother is dead, must be a prodigy. And after this he’ll never be a normal child again.”
She put her hand on his. “With the right support, I’m sure the boys will get through this.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “Yesterday I was an average Joe in an average family. Husband, wife, three children and a dog. Now we’re a freak show. Louisa would hate this. Reputation and respect were what mattered to her. This humiliation would have killed her.” He guffawed at his poor joke and balled his fist under her hand. “I keep asking myself why on earth anyone would do this to my family.”
“And mine.” She withdrew her hand.
He carried on speaking as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Sometimes it’s hard for a man like me to be a husband. Louisa chose our friends, remodelled our house, and produced our children at pre-planned two-year intervals. Even when Murdo turned out to be not quite the child she’d ordered she threw her energies into making him special.” He wiped away a tear with his fingertip. He remembered Helen was there and looked at her helplessly. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, never mind my own sons. I adore them.”
“I know you do,” Helen said, touching his hand again. She understood him as he must understand her. Apart from Mel, who else could know what they were going through?
“Louisa wanted to cling onto her perfect world at all costs. She turned a blind eye to my … stupidity for years and lately she’d started to rein in her spending.” He looked down at Helen’s hand on his and then up at her face.
She retrieved her hand. “Have the police interviewed you yet?” she asked.
“I’ve got round two later. They’re meeting me at the Holiday Inn, where I’m staying. They don’t know when I can have the house again but it will be a cold day in hell before I let my kids move back in there. I’ll ask the school bursar to re-house us.”
“You won’t return to England?”
He shook his head. “My parents will offer to put us up but it wouldn’t work. My job is here and I need the money – even with Chris gone.”
“Chris?”
Damian coloured and changed the subject. “Have the police spoken to you?”
“They were here just now. They think the killer is someone connected to our families or to school.”
“That’s complete crap. Who do they suspect: you or me? Or do they think newly slimmed down Mel nipped across the road with a carving knife? Or one of Louisa’s aromatherapy mums lost the plot? Maybe Polly Stephens bludgeoned them with her baby monitor?”
“Mel’s in hospital. All the police are saying is that she’s comfortable. I hope they’ll let me visit her tomorrow.”
“I’m bound to be chief suspect; they’ll dig around, find out about my dodgy marriage and my dodgy alibi. I’ll fit the frame nicely.”
“Alibi?”
He rubbed his neck. “I wasn’t at the head teachers’ conference. I’d arranged to …” His neck needed another rub. “To do something else.”
With Sweetheart? It all became clear. Damian’s regular conferences in the UK were covers for him to meet Shelly the babysitter or some other girl. Were Louisa’s New York trips with her friends a cover story for her own infidelity? Were the Howards as bad as each other? And now one of them was dead.
“Why don’t you tell the police where you were?” she asked.
Damian pulled at his collar. “I wasn’t … she … left early. I stayed in a hotel room alone. No witnesses. I’ll call her later, see if I can persuade her to say I was with her.”
Should he be telling her this while Jutta was out of earshot in the kitchen? Did it make her an accessory? Only if he’d committed a crime.
“Don’t look at me like that, Helen, it wasn’t me,” he snapped. “The most likely culprit is that stalker.”
She voiced the argument she’d been rehearsing in her head, the one she’d been trying to ignore. “Why would Sascha Jakobsen go from gate-crashing your party to mass murder overnight?”
“He’s been building up to this for months. He trashed our garden, stalked us, burgled our houses and now this. He was fixated on destroying us and, boy, did he get his way.”
“We can’t be sure he committed the burglaries.”
Damian’s skin reddened and he balled his fists. “Of course it was him. He’s demented. If the German police don’t nail him, I will.”
“How do you know Sascha? Why does he hate you?”
He shrugged his shoulders, looking away. “He’s just a local nutter. I didn’t even know his name until you told me.” He stood up. “I’d better get to the hotel.”
He opened the front door and turned back to her. “Steer clear of him. He did this, I’m sure of it.”
“But why would Sascha kill Gary? He didn’t have anything against him.” Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t jealous of Gary; he used her to antagonize the Howards. But that was all, wasn’t it? He didn’t want her for himself, did he? Was she the reason Gary was murdered?
“Maybe Gary got caught in the crossfire,” Damian said. “Or what if all your cosy little swims wound him up? In his tiny, depraved mind he hated all of us. It could have been you that sent him over the edge.”
She flopped onto the sofa after he’d gone, grabbed a cushion to her chest, and then hurled it onto the floor. Sascha had said Damian was dangerous; was it the other way around? He’d snarled at her at the Christmas market and admitted he’d stalked them all. Should she have listened when the others said Sascha was a threat? Did she bring this hell down on them?
The phone in the hall rang. She went to it expecting to speak to her brother.
“Is that Helen?”
She sighed, recognizing the voice. “Hello, Jean.” Gary’s mother.
“We were wondering when the police are going to release … Gary. For the funeral.”
Helen heard her swallow a sob.
“They haven’t said,” she replied. Should she mention the post-mortem?
“We’ve spoken to the vicar but we can’t do anything until we know,” Jean said.
A bubble of indignation rose in Helen’s chest. Didn’t she get a say in her husband’s funeral? But she said: “I’m sorry.”
“Well, I won’t keep you. I’m sure you must have lots to do – with the police and everything. You will tell us when they release … him, won’t you?”
She went back to the sofa, picked up the cushion and curled her body into it. Hearing the suspicion in Jean’s voice made her almost ready to cry.
Fiona
MISSING GIRL PHONES HOME
Missing student Fiona Connors has finally contacted her parents. Paul Connors (59) confirmed to the Herald that he and his wife Cathy (51) received a brief phone call from Fiona late on Monday night.
“It was definitely Fiona although she sounded tired,” said Mr Connors. “She told me she was enjoying a new life in France and that we mustn’t worry.”
The 21-year-old disappeared from her halls of residence at Southampton University in December. She called her parents the previous week to say that she had been offered a trainee journalist post in Marseilles but they hadn’t heard from her since. Extensive police enquiries at several French newspaper offices failed to establish her whereabouts.
Mr Connors said he was relieved to know Fiona was safe, but urged her to ring again. Anyone with information about Fiona can contact our news desk.
A police spokesman confirmed that they were no longer pursuing the matter as it’s clear that the final year French and Business undergraduate left of her own accord. “We have no concerns for her welfare at this time.”
(Regional Herald, 16 April)
36
Saturday, 4 December
The sound of computer keys clicking in the spare room drew Helen from her sleep.
Gary. She leapt out of bed, her foot catching in the bottom of the bedclothes. She stumbled but kept moving, on her knees by the time she reached the spare room. When she saw inside the dark empty space she fell on her belly.
In the next moment the light was on and Jutta was standing over her. “Mrs Taylor?”
“I thought I heard … It was a dream.”
She went back to her room and climbed into bed. It hit her: she’d never hear the keys clicking in the spare room again. The loneliness crashed in on her and she came close to calling Jutta back upstairs.
She dreamt again. Bloodstained cello, computer keys, Napoleon’s innards, bloodberry cheesecake.
***
When she got up later, Jutta had gone off duty. Her replacement was a bear of a man whose neck overhung his collar.
“I’m Meyer, Timo. I’m here until four, or later if Jutta can’t get back through the snow.”
Helen took his outstretched hand but was too knackered and headachy to speak to him.
Timo told her Simons would be round later. “Can I make you some ham and eggs? Or something else?”
Helen shook her head. How long would it be before Simons got fed up of making house calls and summoned her to the police station for questioning?
“Is there anywhere you need to go? The roads aren’t fit for driving but we could walk to Aldi if you need groceries. There’s been an explosion in the Ruhr so the journalists and TV people have left the street. You’re lucky; you won’t get followed if you step out,” Timo said.
Yeah, so lucky. She said she’d like to visit Mel in hospital. The effort of speaking intensified her headache.
Timo walked to the patio window. The bottom of the garden was scarcely visible through the deluge of falling snow. “It’s a good ten miles drive to the hospital and in this weather … I’ll have to clear it with Simons.” He put on his coat and with some reluctance stepped out into the garden.
The blast of air made Helen shiver. She pushed the door to and watched him wade his way over what had once been the lawn, his mobile to his ear. He walked back in, depositing snowy footprints on the carpet.
“Sorry about that,” he said. He lumbered down on one knee, scooped up the snow with his bare hands and chucked it back into the garden. Helen blinked away a memory – the last time she’d seen Louisa alive she was getting towels to mop snow off her doormat. When Timo tried to undo his coat, he couldn’t get his fingers to work so he shoved his hands in his pockets to warm them up.
“I’m afraid Simons can’t permit you to visit Mrs Mowar at the moment.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
“Routine procedure until the detectives have finished questioning you and Mrs Mowar.”
Helen stared at him. The police thought they’d done it together. She and Mel must have burst into Number Ten, stabbed their husbands to death and taken out Louisa too.
“Can you at least tell me how Mel is?”
Timo hesitated, picking his words. “She’s in a stable condition.”
God, her head hurt. They must think Mel was in danger, that Helen had killed her own husband, two of her neighbours, and now she was after Mel. She seethed but made a superhuman effort not to show it.
She switched on the television and stared her way through back-to-back reruns of Frasier, the audience’s laughter drilling more pain into her skull. Timo watched with her, snorting whenever he understood a gag in the rapid-fire American English.
***
She was still angry when Simons arrived with more questions. “Can’t you check your DNA database or something? The psycho that did this must have been arrested before. You don’t go from a law-abiding citizen to a homicidal maniac overnight.”
“Mrs Taylor, we believe that the victims knew the killer.”
Helen’s stomach knotted. Gary’s crossed ankles, relaxed below the table. He hadn’t known what hit him.
“You keep saying that but I can’t see how,” she said. “Even if someone loathed Louisa enough to kill her, or someone had a grudge against Chris, no one I know hated all three of them.”
Simons fetched out her notebook. She had tidy fingernails, clipped short, free of polish, and with a white half-moon showing in every nail bed.
“Mrs Taylor, I’d like you to think carefully. Did you move Chris Mowar’s body?” she asked.
The thought of it made her squirm. “I tripped over his … head,” she whispered. “I didn’t see it.” And she tried not to see it again in her memory. Rocking on its back after she kicked it. Unstaring, staring eyes.
“Did you pick it up?” Simons asked.
“Of course not. It was disgusting.”
Bile burned in her throat but she banished the image of a madman swinging Chris’s head triumphantly around the room. Simons must have seen the nausea in her face. She reassured her they were doing everything they could to apprehend the killer.
It dawned on Helen that her tone was different today. Despite Timo’s caution, Simons was treating her as the bereaved widow and not as a suspect. Something had got her off the hook.
“Have you made an arrest?” she asked.
“We have someone in for questioning, but it’s early days yet. We have to work on the forensic evidence. The weather hasn’t helped. We don’t know how the killer approached the house. It could have been over the back fence, from the path at the side, or from across the street. Apart from Jerome Stephens at number 8, who arrived home at seven thirty and noticed Chris Mowar enter number 10, no witnesses saw anyone in the street. There was a snow blizzard between seven thirty and nine. The only footprints near the house were yours, Manfred Scholz’s, and those of the police team that turned up afterwards. Any earlier footprints were covered by fresh snow.”
Helen looked out at the garden. The deep troughs that Timo’s boots had made were partially filled in again. Another hour and they’d be gone too.
Simons stood up to leave.
“Can’t you tell me who you’ve arrested?” she asked but dreaded the answer. What i
f it was someone she knew? Sascha? A neighbour? Someone who worked in school?
“We will let you know if we charge someone.” Simons put away the notebook in her pocket and fastened the button with her neat fingers.
Helen asked when Gary – Gary’s body – could go home; the limbo was destroying his parents.
“We’ve drafted in a specialist multiple victim unit from the city.” Simons walked to the door. “We hope to release the bodies soon and let you travel to the UK for your husband’s funeral. We’d like the families of the victims to stay here for the moment, but we’ll keep you informed.”
***
Helen wasn’t sleepy but bed was the only place to get away from Timo’s bonhomie. She lay down and thought about what Simons had said. “Families of the victims” meant herself, Mel, and Damian.
Families, spouses, suspects.
The police were stuck on the idea of the killer being close to home. Could Mel or Damian have done it? Was Damian the one being interrogated? They must have found out he hadn’t been to the teachers’ conference, and that he had a motive, of sorts. Get rid of Louisa and ride off into the sunset with Shelly Sweetheart. Or he could have found out about Louisa and Chris. Maybe he thought it was fine for him to cheat on his wife but not the other way round. Did he sneak into the house and slit her throat while she prepared dessert for her guests? Helen put the pillow over her head but it didn’t block out the kaleidoscope of redandwhite whipped cream.
Mel then? Was that why Timo wouldn’t let Helen visit? Mel wasn’t in the hospital but in a police cell. Simons wanted to know if Helen had ever heard fighting through the house wall. Was there domestic violence? Had one slap too many from Chris set Mel on a course of revenge? But wouldn’t she have reached for the carving knife in her own kitchen instead of attacking him in someone else’s; and why kill Gary and Louisa?
The phone rang downstairs. “Who’s calling, please?” Timo said then changed his tone. “Hello, Mrs Taylor, I’m sorry for your loss … I’ll see if she’s awake.”
The Perfect Neighbours Page 16