“You’re not recording a podcast about any of this, are you?” PC Massey asked.
“No. No, not at all. I do podcasts about old films.”
“Right,” PC Massey said. “Well, just wanted to check. I know these true-crime things are quite big at the moment.” She gave PC Clarke a look and he grunted his assent.
“Look,” PC Clarke said, “being honest with you, we’re limited in what we can do when a crime hasn’t actually been committed.”
“But what we’re saying is that a crime has been committed,” Steve said, gesturing to the clipboard on PC Clarke’s leg, finally showing some frustration.
“Yes, we understand that. But because more than one force would need to be involved it will take time to speak with them.”
“What about the break-in?” Steve said.
“Well, your friend is free to report that, of course,” she said.
“Can you do anything?” I said. “At all. I mean, what if he’s coming for us?”
“I would suggest you remain vigilant, but no, at the moment I don’t think so.” PC Massey held my gaze. “I understand why you’re all reacting as you are, given the things you’ve found and talked about. But this could be coincidence. That’s the reality of it and what we would struggle with. Your friend might be avoiding your reunion because he doesn’t want to see you. I know that might be something you don’t want to think about, but it’s also something we have to consider. And we see a lot of suicides in our work, lots of unwell people who unfortunately take their lives in all sorts of imaginative ways. There are even websites we’ve seen dedicated to such things, extremely sad. We’ll do our best given what you’ve told us. But without any more evidence…” She trailed off and looked at PC Clarke.
“So that’s it?” Steve said.
“Thank you for sharing this information with us.” PC Massey stood up and held out a hand. “If you’ve nothing else to add, then I think we’ll process what you’ve told us and be in touch if we need to. And let us know if you can think of anything else that might be helpful, anything more… specific. I’d probably lay off the Scooby Doo stuff, though, especially with regards to the victims’ families.”
I cringed. Steve gave me a look that I knew meant mentioning Strachan wouldn’t help our cause right now.
“Isn’t it possible one of your mates is just winding you up?” PC Clarke said. He was fighting a smile, the bastard.
The glare Steve gave him would have caused others to at least react. PC Clarke didn’t flinch.
Walking back to the car, Steve said, “They weren’t even taking us seriously. I don’t know why I ever expected they would. The stuff he was coming out with. I know why, too.”
Specifically he?
Before I could delve into the gender politics of Steve’s remarks we’d reached the car. Once inside Steve started the engine before I’d had time to put on my seatbelt, and by the time I’d done that we were almost out of the car park.
“That policeman, Clarke,” Steve said. “I knew him at school. His dad was a copper, I remember he’d always be making up wild stories about what his dad had got up to. He was the one that told me about all these other supposed kidnappings going on around the Midlands, do you remember?” I didn’t. “We used to take the piss out of him a bit. Wind him up and let him go, your dad ever shot anyone? That sort of thing. He recognised me, I could tell. He really didn’t like me much back then.”
“I thought you seemed a bit edgy in there.”
“I wasn’t edgy. I felt like an idiot. I knew I could have said anything in there and he’d have been against us.” He struck the steering wheel with his palm. “I bet he saw my name and knew it was me before we came in. Thought he’d get a bit of revenge.”
“Come on, that was a long time ago,” I said. “I doubt he remembered you.” It was a weak thing to say given everything we’d already been through in relation to our own past.
“You don’t know him,” he said and sighed. “Will you tell the others what happened?”
I nodded and took out my phone.
When I picked up Jen from her parents’ giant mock Tudor in Marlstone that afternoon she’d been hitting the coffee hard. Or maybe the coke. She gesticulated like a conductor, fired off words like a prom-night teenager.
“We have to get more evidence then,” she kept saying once she’d shown me the location of this car part on the map. “Rupesh is going to think he’s right now, and that I’m just completely mad. He never sees the danger. He’s too innocent, that’s always been his way. I think it was his mum, he just got into the habit of having to believe things would be okay because the chance was one day she would kill herself, you know? It’s so sad, but when you love the guy it’s hard to try and get that through to him. You know?”
Did I know? Perhaps. What I hadn’t realised fully before was how Jen seemed as bothered about Rupesh’s reaction to her as she was about the murders, if not more so. The reason for this became a little clearer later in the journey, when she confessed: “You know we slept together? Yeah, the morning you came over and I was already there. Felt weird. But good weird. Weird, though.”
Not knowing what else to say to this really, I told her about Steve and me.
“Shut the farmer’s market,” she said. “Well, that shouldn’t surprise anyone really. You could tell when he walked in the other day that you two are soulmates.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Well, you don’t see it from the outside. Like iron filings and a magnet, you two. It was always like that.”
“It is quite comforting in a way, isn’t it?” I said. “To know that some things don’t change.”
Jen contemplated this. “It is. But it also sort of makes me feel like a made-up person. Like if we all just fancy the same people we did when we were fourteen it’s obviously out of our hands, isn’t it? We think we choose all these little things that make us who we are but it’s all decided really. Will just probably knew all along he was going to be a serial killer. You know, you think you can change things, you try really hard, but maybe you can’t.”
I asked her what her thoughts were about Mr. Strachan, but I could have guessed her response.
“Do you not just feel it, Adeline?” she said. “It’s Will. It just is.”
Forty minutes later we entered a village not unlike Blythe, positioned right in the middle of dense countryside at the outskirts of a big city. It was slightly larger, but like Blythe there was neither a train station nor any obvious bus stops, and all the cottages were red-brick semis that probably once housed staff for the large mansion we’d passed at the village boundary. Jen directed me in between her jets of chat.
“I really do think that this would make a great podcast,” she said. “Us tracking down Will, him being dead, then not. The police not believing us because one of them has a grudge against Steve—stay straight here. Not to mention your Strachan stuff, that’s a whole episode right there. You know? And then me finding all those clues.”
“I suppose,” I said. I couldn’t imagine it being anything but a chore. The podcast was where I vented, where I let loose. Less than an hour in the car with Jen and I was shattered.
“I know Nostalgia Crush is successful,” she said, “left here, but this could be a big deal, like internationally. Maybe it’s even a documentary or something.”
“Not a feature film? You could play yourself.”
“Ha, fat chance. Some actress I am. One paid role in ten years. My agent dropped me, that’s what I didn’t tell you in front of the others. I’m too fucking old now.”
“You know, Laura Linney was thirty-four when she got her first big acting role.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “But who? I mean, I know the name… Anyway, it’s the next right here. One thing I’ve realised is that being an actress… that’s a fourteen-year-old’s dream. Why am I still chasing a fourteen-year-old’s dream? Because I once made a promise to myself to see it through. So I’m keep
ing a child’s promise. Funny, when you think about it. You inherit all these childish beliefs and promises, and you have to really be on it to keep them in their place. No, I’m done. If I’m going to make it it’s not as an actress.”
I didn’t ask about what “making it” consisted of, and how that coexisted with putting aside childish things.
“We’re practically here. Find somewhere down this road to park. Of course, we need to find Will really. To make the ending work. Preferably before he harms anyone else or us. That’s important, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but what else can we do?”
“I have some more ideas. But it is important, Adeline, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “We’ll be okay here, pull over.”
We’d pulled off the main road opposite a farm, and were parked on a tributary inside a housing estate. Lots of the houses we’d passed had looked posh; the ones here, however, were run-down and shabby, I guessed council or ex-council.
My first awareness that something was wrong was when Jen insisted I come with her without giving a reason. When we were still walking two minutes later, and Jen kept consulting her phone for further directions, my unease began to swell. Why hadn’t we parked outside the place?
We finally entered a gate to a pebbledash maisonette with a rusting fridge on the front lawn and music pumping from an open upper window.
When she said, “You trust me, don’t you?” my breath caught.
“Jen, what are we—”
“Don’t worry. Remember, this is important. And follow my lead.”
She knocked on the door and before I could move—run for the hills from whatever insanity I’d stumbled into—a young man of about nineteen, acne still on his cheeks and around his mouth, answered the door in an England football top.
“Hi, are you Chris?” Jen said, her voice eerily professional all of a sudden. “Chris Kuzmenski?”
The man smiled after appraising us and apparently deciding it might be his lucky day. “Yeah.”
Kuzmenski. Fuck, the name of the Loch Ness girl.
I couldn’t move or think or breathe. She’d hunted down the family. She’d hunted down the family and dragged me with her. What did I do now?
“My friend and I are doing a podcast—”
Fuck. Fuck.
“—about a man we think might have been a serial killer. My friend here is actually already quite a famous podcaster, and—”
“Wait up,” he said, his smile shifting, reforming into something more reflective of the fact it wasn’t his lucky day at all. “You’re that fucking nutter from Facebook,” he said.
“Listen, Chris, this is really important. We need to know something about the body of your sister. Lives might be at stake here and—”
“You fucking are, too. You look older than your picture.”
Even given the circumstances Jen took this like a slap to the face. Regaining her composure, she said, “That was just a standard journalistic approach.”
“I’m giving you five seconds, no three, to fuck off now. Get off our drive or I’m calling the fucking Bill.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, but he was already closing the door. And despite his bravado he actually had fear in his eyes.
“Please, Chris, help us,” Jen said. The door slammed, but Jen wasn’t done. She pounded with her fists.
I grabbed her arm and spun her towards me. “What the fuck are you doing, Jen?”
“He has to tell us, Adeline,” she said. “If the police won’t help us it’s the decent thing to do.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Stupid fucking question. I did the only thing I could think of, and walked away. She called after me, but there was no way in hell I was taking part in any more of this.
I went the wrong way. Got lost. Panicked when I thought of all that was at stake if the police arrested us here having done what we’d just done. It was nearly ten minutes later than I came across the car finally. Jen was sitting on the bonnet. She was crying.
“I’m sorry, Adeline,” she said.
I got in the car, and wanted badly to drive away without her. But she got in with me without a word, and we drove off, all the while my eyes alert for flashing blue lights.
She’d baited him with a glammed-up younger Facebook profile picture. Like some sort of predator on the groom. Sent him a friend request, which he’d accepted, then told him she was an actress looking to build her followers. Only she’d asked too many questions, spooked him, then when she’d continued asking more, he stopped communicating altogether.
“Jen, that’s crazy,” I said. “You have to see that’s like, like stalking. And to bring me in without telling me.”
“I knew what you all thought,” Jen said. “I knew you’d try and shut it down. None of you were taking it seriously enough. I was the only one.” She was crying hard again now. “You’re like Andrea, you all think I live in a fantasy world.”
“Wait, none of us think that,” I said. “But what you just did… fuck.”
“I know. I am off in my own fantasy world, thinking we’ll solve this bloody case and do our own podcast about it or whatever. This is who you’re dealing with, Adeline. What is wrong with me? I’m such a fucking saddo.”
“You’re not,” I said. If the dam was coming down I didn’t want to be under it when it finally happened. “I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing.”
She nodded. “Yes, lives are on the line, Adeline. And Rupesh was being so… so Rupesh. God, that kid’s face tonight. He wasn’t much older than my sixth-formers.”
“I think we need to all maybe take a step back from this,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding calmer now.
“Just think about what we do next.”
We drove in near silence. Time dragged.
When we pulled up at Jen’s parents’ again, Jen hugged me, then kissed my cheek.
“Don’t confuse growing up with giving up, you said to me once,” she said. “Do you remember? It always stuck with me: you thought if we just concentrated hard enough we could stop ourselves from becoming like the grown-ups we knew, with their nine-to-five jobs and mortgages and… At the time it made perfect sense, but now I can’t remember what we were so scared of.”
She left the car and went into the house.
I was taking out my phone from my bag to let the other two know what had just happened, and didn’t notice someone leave the house and come over to the car until I heard a knock at the window. I lowered the glass. It was Andrea; she had older and heavier set versions of all Jen’s distinctive features.
“What happened?” Andrea said.
How to answer that one. The truth. Some of it. None of it.
“She’s crying her eyes out in there.”
“Well, to be honest, I’m a bit stumped,” I said. “She just got very upset and wouldn’t say why to me. I just dropped her home. I’m an old friend.”
“I remember you,” she said. “From Blythe. You were the little Goth. Sorry to grill you, it’s just we’re a bit worried. She’s been locked up in her room most of Christmas, been on her phone the rest of the time.”
“We’ve just been catching up,” I said, then added, “though she’s not seemed herself.”
“Take it you know about what happened to her, right?” Andrea said. “She told you about the school.”
“No.”
“You know her engagement broke off in the summer, and now she’s on gardening leave from the school. They suspended her at the start of term.”
She’d been engaged. Why hadn’t she said anything? I couldn’t help but ask. “They suspended her? God, was it serious?”
“Oh yeah. She held back some kids in after-school detention for doing a play about how great Islamic State were. So she showed them a bunch of videos of actual beheadings she’d found online, other stuff too, apparently, to scare them. Make them see sense. Didn’t work out very well for her.”<
br />
“Fuck me,” I said, and Andrea gave a grim laugh.
“You can say that again,” she said. “Is everything okay, then? There’s no trouble? She won’t tell us anything if we ask her.”
I put her mind at ease, that we were just some old friends who were equally concerned, then I drove back to Blythe. It wasn’t until I got home that I saw Rupesh and Steve had been messaging the group. I phoned them both to fill them in on what happened, then headed over to Rupesh’s.
It was nearly 7 p.m. Rupesh had been working at the out-of-hours centre again, this time to cover the twice rolled-over Boxing Day holiday. He hadn’t even changed out of his work clothes, yet he was already on the whisky. Outside it had begun to rain.
“Now I hope you might understand why I was tempering my enthusiasm for all this somewhat,” Rupesh said, the three of us seated in the lounge following my more detailed version of the Jen fiasco. “Jen and I have been speaking a lot off group and I’ve been getting increasingly worried. Some of the things she’s been saying… I feel stupid, actually, she kept telling me her plan was to find some of the relatives but I kept ignoring it, thinking it was so patently absurd. I thought, well I hoped, she was just working through things. Do any of you know about what happened to her recently?”
I told them what I’d found out from Andrea.
“Exactly,” Rupesh said. “And if she wasn’t in a good way before, this hasn’t helped.”
Steve sighed. “So what do we do now? The police aren’t interested, Jen is on the cusp of getting us all arrested. Presumably none of this changes what we’ve found. What next, we just wait to see if Will kills someone in Blythe or comes banging on our door?”
“It’s not crossed your mind it might actually be Jen doing some of this?” I said. “The smiley faces. I mean, at every stage she’s led the way on this and we’ve followed her enthusiasm.”
Steve looked crestfallen and Rupesh puckered his lips.
“Well, it had. But I don’t think so,” Rupesh said, still apparently weighing it all up. “No, I don’t think so. But hey, I have something to tell you both, and I think it might bring us closer to finishing all this—which I think for Jen’s sake might be a damn good thing.”
The Killer You Know Page 21