The Killer You Know

by S. R. Masters

  They look at him with incomprehension.

  “I don’t think the bees are trapped,” Adeline says.

  “They come in and out as they please,” Jen says.

  “Bad idea too,” Adeline says, “I’m allergic to them.”

  “How bad?” Will says.

  “Think My Girl,” Adeline says. “Mum used to scream when they came near me as a kid so I assume it’s bad. Don’t really want that, thanks.”

  “We could go looking for Sparky,” Jen says. “He didn’t come home last night or the night before.”

  “Cats do that,” Will says. “He’ll come home when he’s ready. I heard one cat walked a thousand miles to get back to his old house. In fact, I think that’s what that Proclaimers song was about.” He starts to sing in a high voice with a bad Scottish accent.

  “This place is a bit of a Bermuda triangle for animals,” Adeline says. “Mum says Mr. Strachan thinks someone’s kidnapping animals. Well, he said gypsies are, to be precise, although I think he’s just a bit racist. A couple have gone missing in the village.”

  “Don’t say that,” Jen says. “Sparky’ll come back.”

  “Yeah. Of course,” Will says. “Pointless looking, though. If he doesn’t want to be found he won’t be.”

  Spying an entrance point for himself, and eager to join in, Steve stands and says: “Maybe Strachan’s the one doing the kidnapping.”

  They all look over, shocked. He can see on Adeline’s face that she is wondering how long he’s been standing there, how much he heard.

  “Good news,” he says. “Dad’s back to work. I have no idea if things will be as free and easy as last year. He might decide to pop back home a bit more often now, but my place is your place again. And once Rupesh is back we can get started.” He sits down between Will and Adeline.

  “Started on what?” Will says, playing with the laces on the red Converse he wears all the time.

  “My big plan for the summer. But don’t worry about that for now, I’ll get to that when we’re all here. Listen, I’m serious about Strachan, by the way.” He throws a stone and knocks the bottle over first time. “Not the animals, but did any of you get an assembly about a man going around in a silver van trying to pick up kids?”

  “Yeah,” Jen says, “we had a couple, didn’t we?”

  Adeline nods. “Someone from our school said she’d been approached by a guy in a van who’d told her that if she came with him he had a load of perfumes in a warehouse. She was a bit of an attention seeker, though, and it happened right after that first attack so…”

  “A few kids at my school said they’d been asked stuff by a bloke in a silver van after our assembly,” Will says. “Like one kid said he’d been asked for directions, but he’d put his map on the passenger seat and asked him to get close to show him.”

  “You think it’s Mr. Strachan?” Adeline says.

  “Well, you know who else has a silver van?” Steve says. “And think about it. First one happened in between Marlstone and Solihull, near Catherine-de-Barnes, right? The second one in Balsall Common. There’s a lad at school whose dad’s a copper and he says there’s loads of stories they’re keeping quiet about so people don’t panic. One over at Hatton, he said. One in Marston Green. All on country roads, kids walking home. Offered things, asked for directions.” He nods at Will. “Knowle. And my assembly said the guy had a moustache.”

  “Ours was a beard. And, to be fair, people could be chatting poppins,” Will says.

  “Even if half of them are made up,” Steve says, “you draw these sightings on a map and they form a perfect circle around Blythe. This kid showed me.”

  Adeline laughs. “What?” he says. “I’m serious. And when he gets kids in there they don’t even tell, they’re too ashamed.”

  “He’s not the spider in Arachnophobia,” Adeline says. The others appreciate the reference.

  “You all laugh if you want,” he says. “Silver van, living in the middle of all the sightings, barely ever in, often out at night, I’ve watched.”

  “Cruel to animals,” Jen says.

  “Exactly. I’m just saying I’d watch yourselves out in the fields is all. Shit, I’m wasted here.”

  “So what you got in store for us?” Jen says. “Is it in the fields? Is it busting Mr. Strachan?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” he says. “You’ll have to be patient.”

  They get bored of the train tracks and walk back to Elm Close for teatime. Steve walks Adeline to her back door after the others disperse.

  “So can you tell me about your master plan?” she says.

  “I don’t want to spoil it. It’s odd too. I’m not sure everyone’ll be up for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might have some strange…” He considers his words, which appear to be floating above him. “Terms and conditions.”

  “Does it involve sex?” she says.

  Steve jams a hand into his pocket to conceal the rush of blood to his knob. “Well, it doesn’t at the moment.” He grins, and for just a second he holds her gaze, then looks down.

  “What does it involve then?”

  “No, I need to tell you all together. At once,” Steve says. “You might think it’s bad, then I’ll lose my enthusiasm.”

  “I don’t think I have that effect on you,” she says. “And I can keep an open mind.”

  “Okay, and if it does involve sex?”

  Adeline shrugs. “Depends who it’s with.”

  Steve nods. “Well, it doesn’t,” he says, “although that’s good to know. I’ll tell you this, though. It’s a game.”

  When he walks away he counts to five in his head. He’s about to look back when he sees that Strachan is heading over the stile at the end of Elm Close with that ugly dog of his.

  He’s carrying what looks like a trowel. It’s probably just for picking up after the dog, but he’s not seen Strachan with it before. Curious, is he up to something? Burying evidence. With nothing better to do, tea being another frozen pizza or lasagne he’ll only need to microwave, Steve follows Strachan for a while. He’s not entirely sure about this whole him-being-a-kidnapper thing. Given all the evidence it isn’t out of the question either. And worth being vigilant about.

  He follows him for ten minutes or so, not sure what he’ll see. Then Strachan vanishes in the middle of the maize. Steve checks up ahead and the footpath is clear. It’s getting cold anyway, and he should probably eat before the others come over to watch films. He turns back to go home and after just a few steps Strachan steps out from the crops in front of him with the dog at his feet. Steve jumps but manages to stop himself from crying out.

  “Something I can help you with?” Strachan says. And like the dog is an extension of him, it growls too.

  “No.”

  “You following me?”

  “You wish,” Steve says, screwing up his face to look hard.

  Strachan considers this. “You better watch yourself this summer,” he says eventually. “I know you’re the little ringleader. I see them all following you around, fuck knows why.” The combination of Strachan’s swear word in front of him—out here alone man to man—and the diminishing of Steve’s authority rocks him.

  “You should watch yourself, too,” he says. It’s weak, a crêpe-paper threat.

  “I’ve done younger’n you,” he said, his face so calm that it had to be true. Steve is taller than Strachan but feels much shorter. “You understand?”

  Steve is still trying to get control of his thoughts when Strachan shakes his head and walks by him.

  At home Steve tries to watch a film to calm down. He can’t concentrate, though.

  Watch yourself. An idle threat it might have been, though it doesn’t quite have that feel, not after how last summer ended.

  What if Strachan isn’t done with them yet? Perhaps he has more in store for them this summer. Things that might ruin everything Steve’s been planning, daydreams that got him through boring lessons and lo
ng, lonely evenings all last year.

  Watch yourself.

  Of course Strachan doesn’t see things as fair and even, how can Steve have been stupid enough to believe that? It’s obvious. Hadn’t he seen that look Strachan gave Adeline and him?

  Strachan’s been out talking to Adeline’s mum too, on the charm offensive. Then the other day there had been Will. Steve saw them talking over the fence briefly before Will shuffled off. Will who is vulnerable to manipulation, easily distracted and loyal. These are Strachan’s war games, building up to something more substantial.

  Steve’s feelings about things like this are often right. Just look at Dad and that garden. That’s what the others perhaps haven’t worked out about him yet. He thinks about these things more than other people, worries about them. It means his instincts are more finely tuned to the world.

  And what he now knows is that taking Strachan lightly is a mistake they can’t afford to make.

  Winter, 2015

  We took Steve’s car, setting off to Manchester from Rupesh’s just after 4 p.m. into an uneven downpour. Our conversation barely grew beyond small talk when it wasn’t about Will. I did manage to find out about his big break-up by simply asking him outright.

  “It’s not very interesting,” he said. “Her name was Emily and she was in the year below me at Cardiff. We met when I was twenty-two and we broke up when I was twenty-nine. Seven years of what was mostly a good thing.”

  “Were you in love? Don’t answer that if you don’t want to, by the way, I’m just being—”

  “What can I say? It was easy. We both fell into it after a night out and neither of us had any reason to end it.”

  “A fine old British tradition.”

  “Well, when I met her I was just done with all that fiery teenage intensity. Everything was just like, whoosh, covered in napalm, do you know what I mean? It was exhausting.”

  I nodded, though I’d never stuck around in a relationship once the crackling and smoking stopped. In fact, I’d not been in any relationship much longer than a year.

  “Honestly, at the point we met I wanted a friend,” Steve said, “not, like, a sparring partner, which had been my type. Too much manic pixie dream girl nonsense on my part. Emily was younger than me, very easy going, quietly ambitious.”

  “Am I included in that?” I said, immediately hating how self-obsessed it sounded. Steve didn’t appear to mind.

  “Not at all,” he said with a laugh. “I think you set too high a standard. Nothing ever lived up to it.”

  “Good save,” I said.

  “I’m serious.”

  It was a good thing Steve was looking at the road because I could feel my cheeks burning. “We were just children, really,” I said.

  “Some days we were children,” he said. “Some days we weren’t.”

  I took a second to compose myself, wanting to tell him that I felt the same way. Instead, I asked: “So what went wrong with Emily?”

  He thought about this. “She decided she liked the smell of napalm in the morning. She got this job at a London advertising firm and was out pretty much every night after a few months there. I thought I was being a really cool boyfriend, Mr. Twenty-First Century, just ignoring how upsetting it was that I never saw her. And she was asking all these questions. Have you ever done coke? What are your thoughts on threesomes? Just randomly throwing them in like we did this sort of theoretical stuff all the time.”

  He sounded so conservative. What on earth would he make of the last ten years of my life?

  “I can see your face, Adie,” he said, “but you have to understand Emily to understand why those things were odd. She didn’t drink more than two glasses of wine at the weekend. She’d never been to a festival or taken drugs. She’d had sex with one person before me. And I was sort of in a place where I’d done all my experimenting—do you know what I mean? I already felt like I’d lived a good few lives.”

  I did sort of know what he meant. I’d had no real interest in the childish drinking societies I’d been invited to join at Cambridge, already having experienced drinking and all the fun that came with it both at sixth form and before then, with the gang.

  “In the end,” he said, “she cheated on me with a bloke from her office. In her office. Literally fucked him in a supply cupboard. Honesty is often the worst policy.”

  It wasn’t an entirely conscious decision to put my hand on his leg, but I couldn’t help myself around him.

  “I’m sorry she cheated on you.”

  After some time had passed, he said, “At least it was final, I suppose. Unlike us, drifting apart.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. His smirk was meant to let me know he was being playful, but fuck that. “You moved away.”

  “And you never kept in touch.”

  “Bullshit, Steve. I was besotted with you.”

  “Besotted?” If he was taking the piss I couldn’t tell. “That’s how you felt?”

  “You seriously want to go here? You stopped writing to me,” I said, shoving his shoulder playfully but not really playing at all. Apparently I harboured a little bit of anger after all that time, funny.

  “That’s not true, you stopped writing to me.”

  I was about to launch into another protest, then restrained myself. Perhaps it had been my fault. It had been so long ago. And maybe sixth form had distracted me from Steve.

  “Well, how will we ever know for sure?” I said.

  “Do you still have those letters I wrote to you?”

  “No,” I said. “I might have burned them in a rage. You?”

  “I keep everything.”

  After queuing in traffic, getting lost in the city centre, then parking a mile from the pub, we hit yet another queue on the stairs down to the venue’s cellar bar. Lots of people wanted to fuck Christmas this Boxing Day, it seemed. From below wafted the smells and sounds of live music: alcohol and body odour, power chords and drums. If the font size on the posters lining the stairwell was anything to go by, The Geppettos were tonight’s second band.

  We were about to descend when my phone began to buzz in the pockets of my jeans.

  Jen.

  I showed Steve the inside of my index finger and left him in the pub to take the call outside.

  “Is he there?” Jen said. “Have you found him, Adeline?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I got my diaries. I found them. And I think he really bloody did this, you know.” Hysteria accompanied everything she said like the crackle on a record.

  “We just got here,” I said, and trying to settle her down added, “You not doing Gamesfest?”

  “Gamestock. Well, I had to be doing something useful, you know, thinking of you two out there on the case. And it’s addictive, this research. Andrea had a big go at me for not being a team player, Jesus, they’re downstairs now. I’m thirty-three and she’s thirty-six and we’re arguing like kids. But listen, this is serious.”

  “What was in the diary?”

  “I detailed the whole night a few days after,” Jen said, “must have been a lot going on. But here are the important bits.” She began to read the entry aloud. “Will went last and said he’d be a serial killer. He told us this thing about being a murderer and making them all look like suicides. WHAT A PSYCHO! It was funny, though. I said he should put badges of bands he likes on each body so we’d know it was definitely him, and he said that was a great idea. Thing is, even though he was joking, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did it. Ha ha.

  “And then hang on, there’s another bit: The scariest thing was Adeline said if he wanted to do one in Blythe then maybe the last victim should be one of us! Will said that was a great idea, said he’d save the method as a surprise! Great, why did she have to go and say that? I’m blaming her if he kills me, which he probably will given his general WILLNESS™.”

  I had no memory of suggesting this to Will, but even so, it wasn’t clear to me what Jen thought this showed.

  “That’s interest
ing,” I said. “Maybe we should meet up and discuss it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t you see? The last place is definitely Blythe like we thought. There haven’t been any suicides around here recently. And Adeline, the last victim might be one of us. What if that’s why he agreed to the reunion and never showed up?”

  I was about to disagree, but something hit me. A single mental image that had been nagging for attention which I’d dismissed again and again. The smiley face on Steve’s car. When I told Jen she gasped.

  “He’s fucking with us,” she says. “You need to be careful. Maybe just come home, we’ll go to the police.”

  Now we were here, in the safety of a crowd, we were surely fine to see it through. She was probably overreacting. Nonetheless, she’d unsettled me. Less of a jolly adventure when it was your head on the block.

  “There’s other stuff in here too,” Jen says. “Things that reminded me why I feel the way I did about him. Like, I’m convinced here he basically murdered Sparky, my old cat that vanished. Isn’t, like, animal murder a total sign of being an actual murderer?”

  I laughed at this, if only to feel better. It was in crime films at least, although that wasn’t proof of anything. But hadn’t I experienced something with Will and animals back then? It came back to me then, on that busy side-street in Manchester. I’d found him burying a fucking rat or something in the fields that day I’d found out Steve had been sent back to school. And when I’d asked him about it, he’d shrugged it off with some nonsense about doing his bit to be helpful or something.

  “Fuck me,” Jen said when I told her.

  “Is there anything about any badges in the articles,” I said.

  “I doubt it, but I’ll check again,” she said, and I could hear a voice yelling in the background. “Literally, can you hear that? That’s Andrea now… I’m coming… We need to meet first thing tomorrow.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “Anything we find I’ll text you about too.”

  “Great, good idea. Hey,” she said, her tone abruptly shifting, confidential now, “can you imagine if we actually stopped someone being killed? You, a famous podcaster.”