The Killer You Know

by S. R. Masters

  “What about you, Rup,” Steve said. “Any thoughts?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Take me home please.”

  After dropping Rupesh back, an awkward moment passed in the car when it felt like Steve was working up to inviting me back to his hotel. As much as I wanted to, I hadn’t been sleeping well in the hotel, and really I needed a good night’s rest after all that had happened. We needed our wits about us.

  But did I want to be alone tonight? Really?

  In spite of my exhaustion I got a taxi home early the following morning.

  The house was quiet and still dark. I crept upstairs and tried to catch up on sleep. My mind was feeling around for mental purchase still when I saw the envelope marked ADELINE at the end of my bed.

  Inside was a single sheet of paper with the smiley face drawn in thick black marker pen.

  I went back downstairs and found Dad reading in his office.

  He said he’d found the note in the black letterbox attached to the outside wall, which meant it could have been dropped there any time after the previous morning when it was last checked. Or at any time during the night.

  It was the following afternoon when we could all finally meet at Rupesh’s. I spent the morning awaiting the appearance of the police at my door for one of the three or so crimes I’d been involved in the previous day. Steve met me at my parents’ and we walked over the road. I told him about the note.

  Jen’s car was already on the drive, apparently fixed now if it had ever been broken in the first place. Maybe she’d even gone over and stayed the night.

  I told Rupesh and Jen what I’d told Steve but neither appeared that interested. Jen held herself with the air of a cowed child. Rupesh looked like he’d been up all night.

  “Jen and I have been talking about all this,” he said, “and think that we need to take a step back.” He glanced at Jen.

  She nodded. Steve turned to me.

  “I know how you feel, Rupesh,” I said. “I want to go the police with all this; I’m terrified, frankly. But they’re just as likely to arrest us if Will’s put in a complaint about last night. Especially if it’s that same cop.”

  “Only problem is we might not get this step-back option if Will comes after us now,” Steve said, and I murmured my agreement.

  “I think I’ve seen enough,” Rupesh said.

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  “I know how this sounds, but the chemistry in this group…” Jen said. “I think we’re a bad influence on each other.”

  “Maybe we are,” I said. I pulled out the picture from my pocket and held it up. “But bad chemistry doesn’t explain this, which is a problem.”

  “Listen, at this point no one has directly threatened us yet,” Rupesh said.

  “Well, Will did cut me last night,” Steve said.

  “Fine, you know what I mean, though. That could have been unrelated to all the things we’ve had in our head, just speaking objectively. Someone is playing some sort of game here, that’s certain, but if I’m perfectly honest I’m not sure it was that bloke we saw last night. If anything… if anything at this stage I feel like it’s more likely to be one of us than him.”

  “I left this note myself?” I said.

  “Look, that doesn’t mean I actually think it’s any of you,” Rupesh said. “I just didn’t see what I expected last night. I need time. My feeling is that for now we stay vigilant, like the police said. But I’m a little bit scared of us when we’re together now, of myself around you, at least as much as I am of whoever might be doing this. I feel like I can’t think straight.”

  “Okay,” Steve said. “That sounds… I mean, whatever everyone wants to do I’m happy with. But again, I had a knife put to my throat last night, so forgive me if I feel like there’s some safety in numbers. Adeline, what do you think?”

  “I’m confused, too,” I said. “And tired. But my instinct is not to scatter right now. Seems crazy.”

  “Maybe we just go our separate ways for now,” Jen said, looking at the floor. “And wait. Just in case the police show up to ask us anything, maybe it’s best we are all in different places.”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Rupesh said, so softly it was almost a whisper.

  We got the message: the two of them had made up their minds long before we’d arrived.

  “Yeah. Okay,” Steve said, looking at me when he spoke. “But if anything else happens we need to meet up.”

  “Let’s see,” Rupesh said, and the room fell quiet.

  I lay on his chest in bed after a short, intense fuck that was over before we’d even considered using a condom. It was stupid, but I was too pissed to really care. This was a celebration of our relationship continuing beyond the nightmare of the last few days. Steve had bought a bottle of wine from the hotel bar when we couldn’t take any more of the mini-bar rubbish. I ended up drinking most of it, and the bitter taste hadn’t been much of an improvement. Until my second glass I’d considered sending it back.

  Steve was quiet, staring up at the ceiling while I stroked the hair on his chest, sleep already lurking nearby. His smile, usually close to the surface even when not present, was buried deep now.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  He thought about this. “I can’t work them out. We should be banding together now.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I think Rupesh wants to just pull Jen out of the firing line, though.”

  “Yeah, you could be right. Makes me wonder, though, all this stuff, about the past. About memory. Maybe our gang wasn’t what I remember it as. Maybe it was only ever you and me really. When it came down to it. They’re so… messed up. Locked in their own little thing. I sometimes think I just projected what I felt about you onto them.”

  “Well,” I said, and closed my eyes, “it’s you and me now.”

  Like it had been me that made his first claim, he said, “No, we needed the others for context. Other people are context, aren’t they? And you need context. You can’t just be in a bubble on your own. I feel we’ve all been through so much, we should all be together at the moment. When I was a kid I always wanted a gang, you know? Like the kids in all those films we watched. It makes me sad thinking of that now. Feel a little pathetic.” He gave a laugh that was close to being a sigh.

  “We all feel a little pathetic once we hit out thirties and see the dreams of our youth for what they are,” I said. “It’s like seeing the handwriting you had as a kid.”

  “You’re right,” he said. I could smell the wine on his words, not unpleasant and, mixed with his aftershave, heady. “You lot were the best, though, my tribe, my pack. I’d have thought at the time we could have knocked at the devil’s door together.”

  “Everyone’s just a bit scared, Steve, I think. I’m scared.” I nuzzled his cheek.

  “I just feel that Rupesh is still acting odd towards me,” he said. “Don’t you think? Like right from the start, like he’s holding on to to some grudge. I’ve been trying with him, I really have. Backing him up even when I didn’t necessarily agree with him. If he saw how I remembered him then maybe he’d chill out. But you can’t force that kind of thing, can you? Force someone into seeing what you mean to them. This is so Rupesh, too, wanting to drive us apart at a time like this.” He paused, then added, “I can almost believe what you were saying before about him.”

  “I understand,” I said, although now, hopelessly inebriated on his scent and the drink, I wasn’t sure I did. “You know, permanence isn’t the same thing as importance.” This was something I’d said on the podcast once, and it felt right now. “What happened then was still important, then. If he remembers it wrongly, so what? We remember it right.”

  It worked because he kissed my head and went quiet. I reached up and caressed his cheek, feeling my exhaustion in the increased weight of my arm. In some complicated way that I wanted to unpick when sober, he’d been hurt over the last few days. Perhaps like we had done with Will, we still believed Steve was a version of h
imself that perhaps wasn’t real any more, invincible and strong. But this was a Steve Litt with his edges knocked off, who burned in the sun and shivered when it got cold like the rest of us.

  “Sorry, I’m killing the vibe, aren’t I?” he said. “You know, I just wish he could see who I am not what I was.”

  “Well, I can see it.”

  I kissed him softly, then sat up and pulled his head onto my lap. I ran my fingers through his hair, the style unable to withstand my exploration, giving way to reveal the widows peak he tried so hard to cover. I leaned down, neck muscles straining, and kissed the thin patch on his crown. And that was where I fell asleep.

  I awoke sharply to the sound of knocking at the door. It took me a moment to understand where I was.

  “Still in here,” Steve shouted.

  His voice made me wince. I raised my head from Steve’s chest and waited for my body’s first indication as to how bad the hangover was going to be. Incredibly, I’d slept through the entire night uninterrupted. That probably meant something, perhaps that I was home, finally. Yes, wouldn’t that be nice? Home in this beautiful man’s arms. But today was going to be a write-off, I could already tell from the way my brain wasn’t quite keeping up with where I wanted to look.

  “Sorry,” someone said through the door.

  The bedside clock had been unplugged, so I rolled over and reached for my phone. My head ached with the suddenness of the movement. When the screensaver cleared I saw ten missed calls. Immediately my insides began to coil. It was Mum’s mobile, she’d tried calling during the night, starting at 4 a.m.

  Dad. It had to be Dad. I pictured him at the top of the stairs, head in hands, breathing heavily. Something had happened to him, why else would she be phoning? She never phon—

  The pain in my head swelled and the room started moving independently of me.

  “Everything okay?” Steve said.

  “No,” I said.

  I threw back the covers and ran to the toilet. I got the lid up in time and vomited mostly wine into the bowl. It took ten minutes for the nausea to pass, during which time Steve had come to check on me and I’d demanded he leave me alone, not wanting him to see me this way.

  I felt no better once it was over, if it actually was over. I called Mum, but a male voice answered.

  “Hello, darling.” It was Dad.

  “Dad? Thank God, I saw Mum’s number and thought something had happened.”

  “Well, I’m afraid it has, my love, it’s just your mum’s phone had all the charge. She’s had a fall, Adeline. It’s quite a bad one, on the stairs, and she’s hit her head.”

  “Oh God, Dad. My phone was on silent. I’m so sorry. Where is she?”

  “We’re at the hospital, in Marlstone. I don’t want you to worry about it, she’s in the best place now.”

  “Is it serious?” I said. But the answer to this was obvious. I didn’t need to hear Dad’s response. So I asked something else. “How did it happen, Dad?”

  “She said she thought she heard someone in the house. She’s always hearing people in the house. She must have missed the top step, I’ve done it myself. I just heard her shout and—” His voice cut out and sorrow stabbed my heart.

  “I’m coming now,” I said, and when I hung up Steve was already dressed.

  Part III

  Time is frightening when you notice it.

  Will, 1998

  Will’s morning wasn’t going to plan at all. First he was late to meet the gang because Mum was in the black wig… again. So he’d sat with her for an hour, his job to listen and not speak, especially when it was about Liz. His job was to tire her out so it was all gone from her system by the time she got drunk. Liz would have been a wonderful mother. Liz would have been a wonderful actress. Liz would have built the first colony on the moon and performed Shakespeare for appreciative astronauts and moon rocks. She was everything and anything to Mum—other than what she was, which was dead.

  Then when he finally got out of the house, and told each one of them his clue, starting at Rup’s house and ending at Jen’s, Steve complained that he hadn’t told them all together. Now Rupesh had an advantage, he said. He had longer to plan. But Rup wasn’t like that, he was as honest as it came—except when it came to copping to that brick through Strachan’s windscreen. Still, he hated being on Steve’s bad side—it was a real ache in the penis.

  The first clue is at the pit before the lake. And you’ll need to think, Countdown.

  None of them asked which pit, they all knew. After the big mansion on Blythe Lane was a spooky, tree-tunnel-covered side road called Raven Way. The pit was just beyond the gate at the very end of Raven Way, close to a footpath back to the fields behind Elm Close.

  And of course, now he was there, he had another problem: the bloody balloon issue.

  He knew they were all scared of that clown in the sewer film, Rupesh in particular—his main rival at the moment. That’s why he’d picked balloons. Except when he’d gone to the shop, they’d only had white ones and now Will thinks they might not be so scary after all.

  And that’s not even the only problem. He wanted to put all his clues on them. Tie up the balloons like they’d been in the film and write the clues on with a marker. Bonus was he wouldn’t have to come up with stupid complicated clues because there wouldn’t be room. He’d do them as anagrams, like the conundrums on Countdown. Steve couldn’t shout at him for that. And he’d be so impressed by the balloons he wouldn’t even mind that his clues weren’t really clues but instructions. He’d even draw on that smiley-faced Nirvana logo as a sort of trademark.

  Only of course the balloons in the film were bloody ghost balloons—real balloons needed helium. It hadn’t even entered his mind until the first one was blown up and tied to a piece of string and the big black marker he had taken from Dad’s workshop was in his hand ready to write Next Clue: I Forgot Bed, which was footbridge, as in the one on the path to Hampton. The one where Adeline left her clue, because it was clever to reuse—

  The pit was actually a shallow indentation in the land the length and width of a school classroom, and like much of the unfinished work around the lake its original purpose was a mystery. For as long as Will could remember it had been here, and from the group Will was the longest Blythe resident by a few years, having been there longer than even Jen’s family. How long that was going to last he didn’t want to think about, because the reality of it was they might be moving soon because Dad thought Mum was depressed because of Liz, and Dad had said one night that they might have to have some time apart or even get a divorce because he wanted to live by the sea where there was air and—

  He tied the balloon to a rusted branch of metal jutting from the ground. When he let go, the balloon fell from his hand and landed on the dry ground where it rolled around in what breeze there was, eventually finding its way over the rim and into the pit where it tugged uselessly on its tether like a frustrated dog.

  Typical he’d forgotten that the balloons wouldn’t just float in mid-air. Why would they? Dad called him absent-minded all the time, often accompanied with a clip around the ear. Although it wasn’t that his mind was absent. His mind was always there, occupied by one thought or the other. Only there were just so many things. Bright and colourful and sometimes frightening. It was like he was juggling them all, a bit like a clown. Only there was only ever time to focus on one, the rest were all up in—

  The mud at the edge of the pit gave way beneath his feet. He lost his balance and pinwheeled his arms for a comic length of time before finally falling the few feet to the floor of the pit, where he landed on his arse.

  “Shit,” he said, then laughed. “Ow.”

  It wasn’t far, it didn’t hurt even. He just hoped no one had seen this rotten cherry on the mouldy cake of his day.

  About to get up, his attention was drawn to a slightly different shade of soil, in the area up where the ground had fallen apart under him. He crawled closer so that the edge of the pit was at
eye-level. Something was buried there, reddish brown.

  From around the object he pulled away soil until it was too firm to move without great force. It was already obvious that this was the edge of some old pot.

  He experienced a rare moment of focus, one of his conversations with Bill coming back to him.

  Will looked at the pot. Then at the balloon. Then at his watch. Then he did the same thing, again and again. There was some time, forty minutes in fact, before they all left, but that wasn’t really enough to get the pot out, get it home to safety, then get the rest of the clues out. His Dedication wasn’t long, but it was spread out. And he couldn’t take the pot with him in case he fell, or he dropped it.

  He could always run back and explain, tell them all what he’d found and hope they thought it was as exciting as he did. But he could imagine their faces if they didn’t understand, their disappointment. Steve’s disappointment. They would think he hadn’t planned anything, was making things up, the way they’d done with Rup, which would really be a shame given how much planning—

  He would come back. That was it. He would lay out the rest of the clues, then come back here. Yes, it would mean the pot was at risk of being found by someone else. But it had lasted this long untouched.

  Will reached over, grabbed the soil from his partial excavation and covered the pot. There. No problem. Taking his bag of balloons and marker pen, he set off to the footbridge on the Hampton footpath.