The Killer You Know

by S. R. Masters

  “Well, maybe Will can do his murders, that would certainly bring us together,” Adeline said.

  His snort of amusement tickled her back but barely made a sound. The room is quiet for the longest time. Then Steve said, “Yeah, that would probably do it.”

  Later

  It starts with rumours, concerned comments in passing of the not-sure-if-you’d-heard-this type from the few friends and family members that knew about what happened.

  And she’s able to dismiss them at first.

  She doesn’t search message boards and forums where similar rumours will also be spreading. She doesn’t call and worry anyone. No, such rumours are too ridiculous, too awful, to give any thought to.

  Only then, a year from when she first heard the rumours, Jon tells Adeline that they were true. It is a Friday in the run-up to Christmas, another afternoon recording at the BBC done.

  “I didn’t want you finding out by accident,” he says.

  Fragments of what she has tried so hard not to think about all these years glimmer beneath the erratic light of her attention during an otherwise numb tube journey home that she will never remember.

  Once home she asks her boyfriend for space, then lies on her bed with her phone, and finds the podcast everyone has been trying to tell her about.

  For a long time she stares at the ceiling before eventually pressing play.

  The first voice she recognises belongs to Xan. In the years that have gone by since she last saw him his podcast has raised significant doubts about two separate men’s murder convictions, with retrials on the cards. Those first two seasons have gained two million and three million downloads respectively, although this is the first time Adeline has listened. Xan himself showed no interest in keeping in touch with her once Nostalgia Crush was done.

  Xan’s familiar voice, that once comforted her, dredges up all the details of the case for nearly half an hour, and for the most part he gets things right. How his new subject has only been convicted of the murder of Will Oswald, but how rumours surround a host of other crimes that haven’t been brought to trial: two women who supposedly killed themselves; a man named Bill Strachan who was found burned in his house in what was suspected to have been an accident; the subject’s own mother and father.

  “You can call me Steve if you want,” he says, and though Adeline has been expecting to hear his voice, it breaks over her like a wave in a winter sea. “Steven reminds me of my mum. Can I call you Xan?”

  No, it’s an actor, surely—doing an impression that sounds just like Steve Litt.

  Oh, how unfair that he’s allowed a voice in this way, how fucking unfair that no process is in place to stop him reaching the ears of millions. Or perhaps Xan has simply bent the rules somehow to allow this, high on his own success.

  And when Xan brings up her name for the first time, she hears in his voice that this isn’t all about justice for him.

  “My own interest in this has a personal dimension,” Xan says, “I worked quite closely with one of the individuals that testified against Steve Litt, and she was part of the events that occurred in Blythe on the night of Will Oswald’s death.”

  Adeline tries to keep calm, tries to focus on the light fixture above her, concentrate on the implications of everything she hears. But it’s hard. She hates Xan for this—far more than anything that she feels about Steve Litt.

  “So, do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?” Xan says.

  “Just like that?” Steve says, apprehensive. “Okay, fuck. This all feels so intense. It’s a little bit Dead Man Walking.”

  Xan comments alongside the interview that Steve is charming, and how Dead Man Walking is his favourite film, and that Steve’s uncanny empathy might be evidence both for his guilt or for his innocence.

  Adeline wants to scream then—that no, this isn’t fucking empathy. Steve will have looked it up, listened to the old podcasts and heard Xan say this. Steve Litt will have done his research so that he can charm—no, flirt—with Xan to win him over.

  But she needs to keep things in perspective: no matter what Xan uncovers this series, there’s surely no way that Steve can challenge his conviction. On the other hand, this is episode one of eight—what is still to come?

  Perhaps she will receive a phone call from Xan, asking for her side of things at some point. Maybe he will have already called Jen and Rupesh; if not, she’ll need to warn them.

  Steve reiterates to Xan a lot of what the courts have already heard: that he was with someone the nights he’d have had to pull off all the things he was supposed to have pulled off, and that the timelines for him doing everything don’t make sense.

  “I think about this a lot,” he says, sounding lost and vulnerable—committing to his part. “But I decided the jury were convinced by this idea of me being a master manipulator because I have a background in behavioural science. And then, the other thing was the testimony of the others. How can you respond to that, three people that know you? Oh no, they’re basing their idea of me on what I was like as a kid.”

  The way he speaks… oh it’s easy to see why Xan is so taken by his case.

  Xan asks Steve about the post-trial chatter around his other supposed crimes. Steve continues to claim that the Manifest wristband he bought at a market was a tribute to what they had all been through that Christmas, albeit a grim one. And he claims he has never even been to Scotland.

  But Xan plays a role too, that of the impartial host—a somewhat strange task in a show called Beyond Reasonable Doubt, that has a perception of righting miscarriages of justice. What about the police having an alibi for Will Oswald for at least the Manifest death—a prostitute who’d been with Will for many of the weekends that year, and who specifically remembered the Manifest weekend because her sister was there? He also asks about Steve’s DNA on the laptop in Will’s attic, and about the fake email address in Will’s name that traced back to an IP address in Oxford. Not to mention the samples of Rupesh and Will’s hair found in Steve’s car boot.

  There is a silence. Then Steve, resigned, says, “I can’t answer everything. I know how those things look and I can’t say I wouldn’t have convicted me if I’d have been on the jury. I can’t even be angry about it now. I’m just… You just realise so much of what is really important is entirely in your own head. I still miss those guys, too, even though I’m only here because of them.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “No. Sometimes.”

  Oh, Steve sounds so fucking honest, so defeated: the charming young man done wrong by his friends and the system.

  Adeline imagines it then with chilling clarity: Steve duping the world the way he did her. How plausible it seems.

  Only she won’t allow it, she will fight him again. She needs to allow the past to flood back so she can crush him once more.

  There’s so much to remember, though. Likely she’ll need to write it all down before starting.

  Xan asks another question in that fake-journalistic tone: how would Steve go about finding the real culprit then? “I mean, it seems pretty clear it can’t have been Will, so in your mind, who did do it, Steve? It has to be one of the others, right?”

  Adeline can almost hear Steve shaking his head, so troubled, so deeply upset. “I just can’t even think about that, you know. I have to think about how it’s going to be perceived if I just start pointing fingers and getting it wrong. I still think maybe they messed up about Will. I keep coming back to the first night, where it all started. The atmosphere, his face, the way he phrased things. I was scared by him.

  “Maybe it was a completely unknown person. Someone who Will gave orders too. I don’t know. A while back I’d have probably suggested Mr. Strachan, this guy that caused us problems back in Blythe—but they tell me he died.”

  Then he says: “I know that this will sound crazy. I mean—” He cuts himself off, creating a dramatic pause the editors won’t even need to embellish. “I mean, Rupesh had it in for me. But he’d never do i
t. But then, you know, I think to myself, why did he lie about seeing me when he was unconscious? Unless he hallucinated, I suppose. But I wasn’t there, that’s what I can say. And then I’m like, what about his cabin in Loch Ness?”

  “What cabin?” Xan will be hooked. The audience will be hooked. Adeline feels sick.

  “The one where he went to spread his dad’s ashes the same time that girl died. You heard about that, right? I mean, I’d be interested to know what they might find up there. You know, he told me once there’s a safe under the floorboards. What’s in that?”

  And then Steve is asked to tell the story. The whole story as he remembers it. At that point Adeline starts mentally composing hers.

  “Where do you want me to start?” Steve says.

  “Would it be too obvious to say the beginning?” Xan says.

  “Okay. I’ll do my best.”

  Adeline can hear his smile then, can picture him there in prison, still looking every inch the washed-up but gracefully ageing film star.

  She will not let this happen. No, this will not fucking happen. Xan wants justice—it is supposed to always prevail—but he’s looking in the wrong place. Adeline knows where the right place is, though: Sara Kuzmenski, Ellie Kidd, Bill Strachan, Mum.

  Will Oswald.

  Time alone will never make things right; justice needs provocation.

  She finds a pen and a pad. She starts to remember.

  Her boyfriend knocks on the door, asks if she’s okay.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “I just need time.”

  On the podcast there is another pause. Then, just before she turns it off, she hears Steve say:

  “All of this started the night Will told us he was going to be a serial killer.”

  Acknowledgements

  Firstly, thank you for reading my book. In a world with so many great novels and authors, I’m grateful you chose to spend some of your reading time here with me and the gang. And if you haven’t read the book, and just like reading acknowledgements sections, I’ll try as hard as possible to make these, at the very least, an adequate set.

  It seems appropriate that following a book all about groups, I should admit that writing a novel is really a group effort—this book in particular—and I feel really lucky to have had an amazing team of generous and kind people guiding The Killer You Know along its way. No acknowledgement section would exist for me to write without my brilliant agent Joanna Swainson and my fantastic editor, Lucy Dauman. Thank you both for your endless patience and wisdom, and your belief in both the book and me. And an extension of that thanks to the brilliant teams at Hardman & Swainson (Thérèse, Lindsey, Caroline, Hannah) and at Sphere and Little, Brown (Ed, Cath, Thalia, Ellen, Kate); thank you all for making me feel so at home in both stables.

  I had some incredible first readers who all contributed so much: David Cox, Helen Brewster, Sarah Fairfield, Anni D, Hilary and Niall, Ann-Marie, Andrea, Tim, Celia, Gilly, Cara, Phoebe, and J. J. DeBenedictis. Thanks for all your hard work. And I asked a lot of questions (plenty silly) and am hugely grateful to those that provided me with answers. For all things medical and veterinarian, Jessie, Steph and Sanjey; for all things police-related, Matthew and Rebecca; for all things legal, Ezra and Helen B; and for a miscellany of random things, Vèronique, Niall Spooner-Harvey, Beasty, and social media friends for various ideas when I needed inspiration. To all of you, thank you so much. They tried their best to help me, and any errors that slipped through are entirely down to my own shortcomings.

  I owe a few people from before this book was written a drink or two, especially those from the world of short fiction and music. Thanks to Rob Redman, Bruce Bethke, my AW forum buddies (Michael Wehunt, Sam, Kristi, Danielle, Fi to name but a few), John Joseph Adams and Daniel H. Wilson, Grundy, Dan, Tom W and Steve W. Thanks to the amazing Doomsday writers, for moral support and daily inspiration. Vicky McKee and Giovanni—gone, but I’m thankful for your influence every day. And thank you to Jack and the HHB crew for nourishment at the start of this journey.

  Mom and Dad, thank you for continuing to put up with and love your baffling first child, and for setting up that caravan on the drive as a makeshift writing studio for me when I was a boy. Thanks to Nanny Bet Bet for too much to mention, but also for typing up ten-year-old me’s stories on a typewriter. Andrew and Toppy, thanks for indulging me as both a kid and as an adult—I really did fall out of a spaceship though. Ade and Helen B, Sarah and Richard, thanks for being the best parents who aren’t actually my parents. And thanks to my amazing childhood friends, who never tried to murder me, not even once: DaN McKee, Sarah T, Craig and Sarah O. And finally thank you so much to my best friend, wife, editor and soulmate, Helen, who convinced me this writing malarkey wasn’t a silly dream—and for being an amazing mother to our son Joe, whom I’d also like to thank for arriving, and keeping me company, during edits. Love you both!

  meet the author

  S. R. MASTERS studied philosophy at Girton College, Cambridge, before working in public health and health behavior for the NHS. He is a regular contributor to UK short fiction anthology series published by The Fiction Desk, having won their Writer’s Award for his short story Just Kids. His story Desert Walk was included in Penguin Random House USA’s Press Start to Play collection, and he continues to have short fiction published in a variety of magazines. He grew up around Birmingham but now lives in Oxford with his wife and son. The Killer You Know is his first novel.

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