The Killer You Know

by S. R. Masters

  Of course, Rupesh discovered there was one family photo at the Oswalds.’ He came across it when searching through an ancient pile of old Beanos stacked up in the corner of their dusty dining room. In it three yellow-haired children smiled out, one clearly Will, one obviously his brother, and a third, a girl with pigtails who looked a lot older.

  “I didn’t know you had a sister?” Rupesh had joked, based on the assumption the girl was a cousin or a friend with a likeness—his family have a ton of such pictures. Will hadn’t laughed, though. Instead, he’d walked over and snatched it from him. He’d looked at the picture then, and after a while said, “I thought I’d lost that.” Then, he left Rupesh on his own for a long time, came back with a red face, and asked Rupesh not to mention the photo again.

  Will told him a month later about his sister, Liz: a hit-and-run outside a nightclub. She’d been fifteen. No arrests. He’d listened and nodded, and once more agreed not to mention it ever again.

  “I’m getting cold,” Adeline says. She looks back in the direction they came from. “I’m not that fussed about seeing her, though. I’m happy not to speak to her ever again.”

  “I’m sorry it happened,” Rupesh says.

  They both stand, and when Rupesh looks up after brushing off his trousers Adeline is coming towards him with her arms out. She hugs him, and it is lovely, the smell of vanilla and leather all around him. He rests his head on her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  When Rupesh emerges from Dead Man’s Alley Jen is out on her drive washing her dad’s car. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. Then Jen notices Adeline behind him, and her smile falters. He waves, but Jen is already turning away, getting back to her work.

  “Do you get the feeling she doesn’t like the two of us hanging out on our own?” Adeline says, winks, then wanders off.

  His hopes rise as he thinks about what that statement might mean. Then, as usual, concern edges in too. How will Jen react to seeing them? He should go over. Make it better.

  He might make it worse.

  Instead, he allows himself to savour the moment of hope Adeline gave him, just in case he never gets the chance to feel this hopeful again.

  Winter, 2015

  A fleeting panic crossed Mum’s face before she decided on her plan of attack. It would mark the very first time we’d broached the subject of her affair, at least directly, since it happened.

  “Bill, our old neighbour, you mean?” she said.

  In no mood to mess around, the memory of it riling me again, I said, “The man next door. The one I walked in on you—”

  “Why are you thinking about him?” She stopped and listened. “Where’s your dad?”

  “Downstairs, clearing Christmas.”

  Since that day I’d been her accomplice by omission. I’d never told Dad what I’d seen, not out of loyalty to Mum, but because I couldn’t see any good coming from it for Dad. He was such a simple man that he’d stay with her anyway. The information was useless; it had only the power to upset him. The times I’d wanted to tell him, in the heat of arguments just to spite her, had been numerous over the years. I’d always resisted—a thankless restraint.

  “Something has happened, with the friends I was seeing, and it’s connected back to that time. His name came up and I wanted to know if it’s possible he might have been involved.”

  She shrugged and turned a page in her magazine. “If he’s still around he’d be very old, Adeline. He was older than me and your dad. He’d be in his late seventies now, if not his eighties.”

  “Do you know how long he was in prison? Do you know when he got out?”

  “Adeline, it was a long time ago now. He used to have a lovely magnolia tree in his back garden, you know, and the new lot just ripped it up. Something about the roots.”

  “Have you heard from him since then?”

  She paused and sipped her tea, gaze fixed on the magazine in her lap. “Do you think he’s like his mum or his dad?”

  “Who?”

  “George,” she said, gesturing to the two open pages of royal baby photos.

  Years ago I might have lost it with her completely, and I had sympathy for that younger version of myself. Nothing to be gained by that approach now; I told her I didn’t know and went to my room to mellow out. Let her stew and I would try again later.

  Out came my tablet, which I prodded for information on Mr. Strachan. Like Oswald, it was a real googlut—irrelevant William and Bill Strachans clamouring for my attention. Strachan Blythe, Strachan Prison, Strachan Midlands: nothing useful at all. I was scraping at the bottom of this barrel when a soft tapping was followed by Mum opening the door and stepping inside. I’d not seen her vertical since I’d been there.

  “What is it you think he’s done?” she said, pressing her back up against the now closed door like it might provide additional sound proofing.

  “It’s nothing, Mum,” I said, grasping for a lie that did the necessary job. Then it came: “We got some anonymous messages online, stuff not many people from outside Blythe would have known.”

  She shook her head while keeping her eyes down, like she was disagreeing with the carpet. “He wrote me letters.”

  “When? Do you still have them?”

  “I didn’t keep them,” she said. “I didn’t want anything to do with him, that man. Started off friendly enough, a couple of months after he went to prison. I had a feeling he was up to something, so when I wrote back he—” She began to cough.

  “You wrote back?” I said, wanting to get up and stroke her back or something. But it passed on its own.

  “Not for long,” she said. “He was after something, I could tell. He kept asking, every letter, about all you kids. Why was he asking about you kids? How you were, what you were doing. Nothing about me, really. I sent him less and less. To be polite. I hoped he’d get the message. And then he started on about that boy, Will was it, the one he beat up? Oh, he regretted what he’d done, and they’d been good friends, and that he wanted to make sure he was all right. All this about how he never lied, pleaded guilty to do right by the boy. I knew what he was up to, though. I wasn’t born yesterday. Keeping track of the one that put him away. So I just stopped writing.”

  “How long did this go on for?”

  “Oh, on and off, a few years, I don’t know.”

  “And you stopped because he wanted to know too much about Will and us?”

  “Something was off about it,” she said. “Your dad never liked him much, but I’d never really seen what he meant. Until then.”

  Much like with Will, nothing she’d said about Strachan meant much in isolation. Yet when you’d braced yourself for nothing yet found something, the effect was powerful.

  “He came to the house once,” she said. “It was funny him turning up one of the few times your dad wasn’t in. I wondered if maybe he’d been watching us.”

  “When was this?” I said.

  “Five years,” she said. “Ten. Your dad had sold the shop by then. I didn’t want to be in the house with him so I went to The Centurion. He wasn’t in a good way, Adeline. He had this burn on his cheek he said someone give him in prison—stank too, like mothballs. He told me he was struggling to find work and I told him about that fruit-picking place—they always want help there.”

  “What did he want?”

  “To see me, he said. But he was on about you all again, about Will.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  She tutted. “Nothing. I told you, I knew what he was up to. He was after his address.”

  “Did he seem dangerous to you? Like he might harm Will if he found him.”

  “You wouldn’t know it, not obviously. But then you never can tell, can you? It was obviously all under there before waiting to come out, his criminal side. Do you think he’ll cause you trouble?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said, not entirely sure if her concern was genuine or whether she was relishing being at the centre of the
drama. “It’s just a bit of a mystery—but maybe you’re right, if he’s got an old grudge he could just be using the internet to mess with us from afar.”

  She stared at me for a long time, taking in my face, looking thoughtful. Then she pointed to her own right nostril and said: “Do they let you wear that at work?”

  I laughed; how could I not?

  I touched my nose stud, and said, “I’m sort of the boss.”

  “That’s something,” she said, then very quietly added, “It was an accident.”

  The change in tone meant I didn’t really need to ask what she meant.

  “He’d come over to share cuttings. Your dad was so busy then.”

  I waited for more but that was it. She wasn’t blaming Dad, I knew that, though I could have swallowed that remark whole were she explicitly apologising. It stung, Dad ignorant and unassuming through it all—peacefully unaware of the apology due to him.

  “Well, that is the downside of living somewhere beautiful,” I said. Mum was still coming to grips with the reality I’d discovered five minutes after arriving in Blythe. “It’s lonely.”

  “It was one bad moment, Adeline,” she said, opening the door to leave. “But I don’t suppose you’ve ever had one of those.”

  I napped that afternoon, the lack of sleep from the last two days finally catching up with me. By the time I woke up, it was teatime. Retrieving my phone, I trawled through messages: Steve, Jen, and over twenty on the group chat. Jen asked if she could call me, Steve what I was up to that night. This was now moot: the others had already agreed to meet at Rupesh’s at 8 p.m. Half an hour’s time. Jen had something incredibly important she needed to share with us—again.

  I grabbed another bite of cheese and bread—all I could find—before heading back.

  Again, I was early, only this time Jen wasn’t there. Rupesh and I sat in the gloomy lounge waiting for the others.

  “Do you know what she wants to tell us?” I said.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said.

  “I have some news of my own too,” I said, and repeated to him what I’d learned from Mum.

  “Well,” he said, “another odd coincidence, certainly. I still wouldn’t go to the police based on that. And I don’t personally remember Mr. Strachan being there the night Will told us, if I’m being honest.” He reached into his trouser pocket, then handed me a piece of paper. Written on it in his doctor’s handwriting was an email address. “Listen, more importantly, my friend contacted me. He said you should get in touch with him. Like I said, he’s not promising anything but it’s worth a go.”

  I thanked him, but now I was somewhat taken aback by his lack of enthusiasm for what I’d told him. And what did that mean? If Will really was dead, and Rupesh didn’t think it was Mr. Strachan, did he think it was someone in the group?

  Clocking the daft Nessie figurine again, and aware of a brewing awkward silence, I asked, “When did it happen? Your dad.”

  “It was only last year, actually. At the start. About six months later my marriage collapsed. Roll on New Year already.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” I said, gesturing to the model.

  “What is?”

  “Well, that body being at Loch Ness and your dad having a cabin there.”

  “Not really.” Rupesh frowned, then shrugged. “Coincidences don’t really interest me. Real life is full of them.”

  Once again I was stumped by his total disinterest.

  The doorbell rang and he went to answer it. He returned with Jen, and not long after Steve arrived. While Rupesh was at the door dealing with him, I asked Jen about her earlier message.

  “I need to tell you about what I’ve found,” she said. “It’s better I show you all anyway. But also I need a favour. My car needs a new EGR valve and I’ve managed to find one cheap, but it’s over in Derby—I’d go myself but I still don’t trust the car—I’m keeping Knowle Cars in business this Christmas, I tell you.”

  “Can’t you just take it to a garage?” I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help. It seemed like a lot of hassle, though. But then, Jen has always been hands on. And if I was honest, my reaction was just a manifestation of my envy.

  “And pay an extra few hundred pounds for the work? I don’t think so. I’ll pay for the petrol and everything. We can catch up too. We’ll have lots to talk about.”

  She grinned at me and so I nodded. In her hand was a laptop bag I’d not noticed before. She took it over to the table just as Steve walked in. She brought out the laptop and started to type and click, her eyes darting back and forth wildly. While she did this, I told them about Strachan. Rupesh didn’t appear to be listening, his troubled gaze was on Jen.

  Jen’s response to my story was, “Wow, that’s so weird, isn’t it?” She didn’t look up, though. “Just hold on while I find this. Sorry.”

  I turned to Steve, hoping for something more. “In my mind that sort of makes him the prime suspect now, no?”

  “That’s what I thought.” I smiled back at him, relieved.

  “Everyone gather round me and brace yourselves,” Jen said.

  My grip on my mug tightened and the others took their places at the table.

  Jen spun the screen around to face us. “This is a bit shocking, I’ll warn you. It took a while to find but I knew some horrible website would have it somewhere.”

  A video was playing on the screen, shaky mobile phone footage of mud and grass, the sound of muttering.

  “This isn’t—” Steve said.

  But it was. Fuck, it really was. The mobile footage from the Manifest suicide. I wanted to leave the table, but it was impossible to look away.

  The camera rose and was looking up at a huge steel fence from about ten feet away. The muttering continued alongside the crackle of the wind in the phone’s feeble microphone. There was maybe one other person there, or the person with the camera was so excited he had to talk to himself. The camera came around a bend in the fence and for just a second a small crowd and a police car were visible in the distance, before the camera dropped and began to film the ground again.

  It now swung back and forth at the end of an arm, occasionally giving a glimpse of a grey boot. For a blessed moment there was a chance that they’d seen the worst already.

  Now the audio changed, the microphone adjusting as the camera rose again. The screen briefly filled with a section of a police car. Then there was the steel fence once more. Only now, in the middle of the screen, was a hanging girl. She was suspended low on the fence, feet touching the floor, knees bent. As if the angle of the head and the way the hands fell weren’t grotesque enough, the camera started to zoom in towards the face. That close up the camera couldn’t focus, but it didn’t matter, because Jen now paused the video. She scrolled back a few seconds and paused it again.

  “There,” she said, pointing to a specific place on the lapel of the girl’s leather jacket. “That’s a badge, isn’t it? That’s a fucking Nirvana badge. Isn’t it, Steve? It’s the smiley-face logo. Is that good enough for everyone?”

  “Oh, Jen,” I said.

  “I’m going to need something stronger than coffee now. Fuck,” Steve said and got up.

  The video started playing again, but Jen’s demonstration was over. Only I couldn’t stop watching. The girl’s short hair moved in the wind. Something was wrong with her mouth. She didn’t look peaceful or serene or whatever other shit people made up to make death seem better. This girl was inanimate. Fucking dead. And even though the camera quality spared us some detail, the blurry badge on the girl’s lapel was without doubt a Nirvana badge. I knew because it was exactly like one I’d seen just the other day on the shelf at Will’s.

  Only Jen wasn’t done.

  Rupesh brought out his whisky, for which we all were grateful, and Jen held up a photo on her phone.

  “Just in case anyone is still sceptical,” she said. “This is the shower in the en suite of my room last night. Don’t know how l
ong it’s been there, but Mum says I’m the only one that’s used it since I was here in the summer.”

  The image showed the top corner of a shower cubicle door. Jen had to zoom in for us to see the details, but even from the initial shot it was obvious what we were being shown, a small finger-drawing in the grime: the smiley Nirvana logo.

  “Fuck,” Steve said again. “Seriously?”

  “Well, I didn’t put it there,” she said. The hand holding the phone shook. “Someone is fucking with us. Someone who was in my house. Will. Strachan. Whoever. This is real.”

  No one said a thing. Rupesh stood up and held her. He encouraged her to drink from the tumbler of whisky she’d put down by the laptop.

  “Did you call the police?” I said.

  “I wanted to talk to you first,” she said. “I can’t really explain it without you lot, can I? But we need to go now, right? Show them this stuff.”

  With so much to take in it was hard to know what to focus on. That the death was connected to us now was getting harder to deny. Add to that what Jen had seen… someone was definitely fucking with us.

  Rupesh sat back down with a sigh. “Listen, I don’t want us to fall out. Obviously something is going on here, so hear me out first. The badge is unsettling, fine. It’s just…” He sat up straight and put his glass down on the side table. “I work with the police, okay. I work with them a lot. I know them down at Marlstone. I’m on first-name terms with more than one of them. I know how this sounds but, come on, I have a professional reputation to think about. So before we race into anything, I want to just put that on the table.”

  “That’s pretty spineless,” Jen said. “Our lives might be on the line.”

  “Come on now, listen to me. We don’t know that for certain. Your diary is just one source, he might not be coming for us.”