Class Murder

by Leigh Russell

  He was disappointed when the policewoman failed to panic, as he had intended. So far as he could tell, she had turned up at the police station in the morning as though nothing had happened. He was afraid her letter hadn’t arrived yet. If she still hadn’t reacted after a few days he would assume her letter had gone astray and come up with something more definite for her. Meanwhile, by now the girl who had caused all of this must have realised who was behind the murders, and understood that anyone she befriended would be eliminated. The people she had been at school with were only the beginning, but removing them might be enough to convince her that he was not prepared to share her with anyone else.

  With hindsight he could see that it had been a mistake to let her continue working, because exposure to other people had made her less dependent on him. The idea of leaving him couldn’t have come from her, which meant that someone else had put her up to it. If he could find out who that person was, he would rip their face to shreds with his bare hands. But they had been happy together before, and would be so again. Only this time, no one else would be allowed to interfere in their lives. Once they were married, she would never leave his house again.

  Leaning back against his pillows, he stared uneasily at the gun. It certainly made the task easy, but it was too quick. One click and a person was dead. He closed his eyes and tried to relive the delicious sense of anticipation he had felt as a child, when he had slammed the lid of his homemade box shut on a quivering mouse. Shooting was altogether different. Cheated of the thrill, he didn’t really feel like he had killed at all because it was the gun, not him, that meted out the sentence.

  Now the gun lay there, black against his pale blue duvet cover. The benefit of such a weapon was to bestow power on whoever held it. With a gun in his hand, any feeble idiot could command instant obedience. It was an efficient but impersonal shortcut that stole the pleasure out of controlling other people. He picked it up and stroked the barrel with the tip of one finger, willing himself to feel an affinity with this uncompromising gadget, but he felt only resentment. The gun meant there was no need for him to even come close to his victims. It stole any intimacy from the act of killing, reducing it to a mere termination of physical function.

  With a cry of rage he flung the gun away from him. It slid across the carpet and came to rest, clattering softly against the skirting board. He didn’t want the wretched thing. It had come his way purely by chance, after he had been watching Bethany and Leah for a few days. Fortunately they had lived together, which had doubled his chances of finding one of them on their own. After only two deaths, the media had already started reporting his activities, throwing out wild claims about the dangers of walking the streets without company. Before long it would become impossible to carry out an attack. So when he had seen Bethany going out alone after dark one Sunday evening, the opportunity had been too good to miss.

  He had followed her down to the canal where, before he had time to draw his knife, he had spotted a gun in her hand. Catching her off guard, it had been pathetically easy to overpower her and wrest the gun from her. But the killing itself had been a bitter disappointment, over in an instant, with an ear splitting explosion that he thought would bring the whole village out. There had been no time to witness her struggle, no observing her features slacken as her eyes grew glassy and her limbs flopped. As she collapsed into the water with a loud splash, he had sprinted away.

  The memory of the incident still made him angry. The gun had spoiled it, removing the exhilaration of the kill. With cold detachment he acknowledged that although it was necessary for him to eliminate his victims, he also relished the thrill of the deed. It was like an addiction. But at least he had removed her, and it had been fast and efficient which was surely a good thing, even if it had been over too quickly for him to enjoy the experience.

  He turned his attention to the immediate question of what to do with the weapon. Although he was keen to get rid of it, he realised that doing so might not serve his overall plan. There could well be an occasion that called for a quick kill. It would do no harm to hang on to the unlooked-for gun for a while. He didn’t have to use it. Resigned, he crossed the room to retrieve it. Pushing it under his mattress, he lay down on the bed again and tried to concentrate on selecting his next victim.

  Robin presented a challenge. Working in an office and living with a wife, he might prove unassailable in the short term. Ned would be easier to attack. Out in the fields he would be working alone, as long as his father wasn’t hanging around. Ned’s parents were annoyingly protective and the hype in the media was bound to make them worry about their son even more than usual. Thinking about Ned and his parents, he regretted having sent out threatening letters. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but had actually served only to make his task more difficult. But not impossible.

  The easiest target was Leah, now living by herself. Before long she would find another flatmate to replace Bethany, or else she would move, so he needed to act quickly. He smiled, imagining her shocked expression and flailing arms.

  Alone with her in her flat, after dark, he would whisper, ‘If you scream, I’ll kill you.’ And then he would kill her anyway.

  To make up for his disappointment by the canal he would use his knife in Leah’s flat, and he would take his time killing her.

  49

  Inside the house a baby was crying. When Robin’s wife opened the door she didn’t look pleased to see Geraldine. Instead of greeting her, she gave a helpless shrug as though to say, ‘You can hear the baby needs attention. What are you doing coming here when he needs feeding?’

  Sure enough, her first words were: ‘The baby’s crying. Can’t you hear him?’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s your husband I need to see.’

  ‘Why? What do you want with him now? He’s already told you everything he knows.’

  ‘Really?’ Geraldine did her best to hide her annoyance. ‘What makes you so sure of that?’

  Katie scowled. ‘Well, I know my husband, and I know he’s keen to help you. But I need to see to the baby before he works himself up into a state.’

  Geraldine suspected she was too late to prevent that.

  Katie’s voice wavered, her anger overwhelmed by concern for her husband. ‘You’ll want to come in then?’

  There was no need for an answer. Katie led Geraldine along the hallway to the kitchen where Robin was sitting, red in the face, trying to feed the baby with a spoon. The highchair and floor were splattered with dollops of mustard-coloured mush, which was smeared over the baby’s face. Katie darted forward and grabbed the plastic spoon from the baby who instantly began wailing loudly again.

  ‘Welcome to our haven of domestic bliss,’ Robin said as he stood up, smiling miserably at his wife.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she replied with a tired smile. ‘You don’t have to put up with this all day every day, and just look at the mess you’ve made.’

  As the baby’s screeching intensified, Robin ushered Geraldine back along the narrow hall to the living room, muttering about teething. They sat down, with the door closed to muffle the noise from the kitchen.

  ‘Well? Have you got to the bottom of this yet?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re following several leads. We think the killer was someone you knew at school. Think carefully, Robin. Can you remember anyone there who might have held a grudge against other members of the class? Perhaps someone with mental problems? Or someone involved with drugs?’

  Robin smiled uneasily. He understood from her questions that the police were casting around, with no idea who had killed his former classmates.

  ‘Robin, is there anything you’re not telling me?’

  For an instant, Geraldine held her breath, thinking he was about to offer her a new lead. But instead he shook his head.

  ‘What about bullying? Can you remember much of that going on when you were at school?
’

  ‘Nope,’ he said after a brief pause. ‘I can’t say there was. Nothing more than the usual, kids having a lark. I haven’t got the foggiest idea why you’re asking me about that. Can’t you tell me what’s happening now? You must have found out something. Have you got the gun?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Robin pulled a face. ‘Don’t you think your time would be better spent trying to find out who’s got it?’

  Before Geraldine could respond, they heard his wife calling him.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’m supposed to be on duty this evening.’ He jerked his head towards the kitchen with a grimace.

  Geraldine urged him to contact her directly if he remembered anything that might help them. Geraldine’s next visit was to Ashley who was still living with her neighbour.

  ‘I think Gloria’s getting a bit fed up with me,’ she confessed to Geraldine as they took their seats in the living room. ‘But I don’t think I can bear to move back into the flat where – where it happened. I know it’s been cleaned up but I couldn’t go in the kitchen and cook, as though nothing had happened.’

  Geraldine gave a sympathetic response, before going through the series of questions she had just asked Robin.

  ‘Ned was the weird one…’ Ashley said.

  ‘Was he badly bullied for it?’

  Ashley stared at the floor without answering.

  ‘Who bullied him, Ashley?’

  Again Ashley sat silent.

  ‘You don’t seem to appreciate what a serious offence it is to withhold information from the police in a murder enquiry,’ Geraldine said, with a twinge of guilt about the letter she had concealed, even though nothing useful had so far been discovered from it. ‘You could face a custodial sentence, apart from which the killer might strike again unless you tell me everything you know about Ned.’

  ‘Is he the killer?’ Ashley whispered.

  At last, after some further persuasion, she began to speak. ‘I understand. The thing is, when we were kids, at school, Ned struggled to keep up with the rest of us because he was hearing impaired, you know? He had a special teacher for a while but then he had cochlear implants put in, kind of hearing aids that connected to his brain. They worked, but his speech wasn’t great even then.’ She paused again. ‘So yes, he used to get bullied, quite a lot in fact.’

  Geraldine nodded. She had suspected as much.

  ‘How is that relevant to your investigation?’ Ashley asked.

  ‘Tell me more about the bullying.’

  ‘Some of the boys used to leave messages about him on the whiteboards. They never mentioned him by name, but we all knew who they meant. They’d write insults, “N is a dummy” and things like that, only some of them were far worse and quite obscene. The teachers never understood what the messages meant, or at least they pretended not to. Perhaps their hands were tied and they needed evidence before they could do anything.’

  Geraldine nodded. She knew how that felt.

  ‘Anyway,’ Ashley went on, ‘the teachers carried out this massive investigation that went on for a whole term, but no one exposed the bullies. There were probably too many of them.’ She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘We all thought it was funny, because the teachers didn’t understand what was going on. We assumed they didn’t know who N was, and we did. I guess they must have realised, but we all thought it was our secret. And the teachers were desperate to know who was writing the messages and they couldn’t find out what we all knew. We were only children, and anyway Ned didn’t seem to care so it wasn’t like we were hurting anyone. That’s what we told ourselves anyway. It went on for ages. Everyone knew that N meant Ned, and eventually just about all of us were joining in, writing rude messages on the white boards.’ She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘It seemed like fun at the time.’

  Geraldine asked her who had been responsible for starting the trend for writing the messages on the board, but Ashley insisted she didn’t know.

  ‘It was all so long ago,’ she apologised. ‘I really can’t remember that much about it all, but I do remember seeing the messages on the board. I remember there were lots of rumours flying around, but we never found out who started the messages, at least I never did. We used to find it hilarious.’ She paused. ‘I never knew if Ned understood what was going on but as a child I didn’t care and I don’t think anyone else did either. It was just a joke.’

  She seemed to be talking a lot. Driving away from Ashley, Geraldine pondered the significance of her nervous chatter, rather than what she had actually said. She suspected that Ashley had been lying to her when she had claimed not to know who had bullied Ned at school. That suggested the bully was now a friend of hers, whom she was keen to protect. The fact that she had not received one of the threatening letters seemed to bear out that suspicion. It was hard not to think about the deaf boy who had been bullied at school and wonder whether he had been pushed too far. He seemed harmless enough, but it was all very inconclusive.

  50

  After her frustrating conversation with Ashley, Geraldine drove straight to her next visit. It was growing late by the time she arrived, but Leah opened the door at once without even asking who was there and they went and sat in the living room.

  ‘They were here going through everything,’ Leah said as Geraldine reached for her phone. ‘What’s going on? I don’t understand. I’m a victim, you know. It was my flatmate who was killed, and I’ve been questioned and questioned about where I was that night, when I told you right from the beginning that I was here, on my own, and as if that wasn’t enough, you had to lock me up in a cell overnight! It’s disgusting the way I’ve been treated, as if I was the guilty one, when I’m a potential murder victim! And now I’ve got to sleep here, in the flat where she was living before it happened.’ She burst into tears.

  Geraldine considered pointing out that Leah was lucky Bethany hadn’t been killed at home, like Stephanie. Ashley hadn’t been allowed back into her flat for days while it had been processed as a crime scene, and she still didn’t want to return there. At least Leah had been able to stay put. But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she went through her prepared questions once again. Unlike Ashley, Leah was ready to answer at once.

  ‘Bullying? I should say there was. As soon as we hit puberty it all kicked off. Although I used to get bullied even before that, because they sense weakness, don’t they, the bullies? Not that I was weak, but I’ve always been sensitive, and bullies pick on that, don’t they? Yes, I was badly bullied at school, especially as an adolescent, because I was a bit overweight back then. Lots of girls are,’ she added as though defending herself for putting on weight. ‘It was just puppy fat. Anyway, no one ever did anything about it. So what are you doing, coming here again? You’ve got some front, after all you’ve put me through. Have you done anything to catch this killer? Look what he sent me while I was banged up.’

  Still crying, she stood up and left the room, returning a moment later clutching a grubby envelope.

  Geraldine recognised it at once. ‘Basildon Bond,’ she muttered.

  ‘Who? Don’t tell me you know who the killer is, finally?’

  ‘I’m talking about the envelope.’

  Slipping on a latex glove, Geraldine held out her hand and removed the letter from the envelope. She knew what was written on it without looking: YOU COULD BE NEXT.

  Leah stared at Geraldine, her eyes inflamed and glistening with unshed tears.

  ‘What does it mean?’ she whispered, her aggression overshadowed by fear. ‘Am I going to be killed?’

  Either Leah was a first-rate actress, or she was genuinely scared by the letter. Geraldine studied the envelope. The postmark was indistinct, and in any case, if Leah was the author of the threatening letters, she could have asked someone else to post them while she was in police custody, in an attempt to provide herself with an alibi. The dat
e of postage established nothing, just as Leah receiving a letter didn’t prove she hadn’t sent the letters out herself.

  ‘What are you doing with it?’ Leah asked as Geraldine put the letter in an evidence bag and slipped it into her bag.

  ‘I need to take it away for forensic examination. Why didn’t you call us straight away?’

  Leah shrugged. Geraldine explained that similar letters had been sent to Ned and Robin.

  ‘But not to Ashley, of course,’ Leah replied sourly.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  It was Leah’s tone rather than her words that interested Geraldine.

  ‘Oh, no reason, really. It’s just that everyone always loved Ashley.’

  ‘The boys, you mean?’

  ‘She was so pretty, and blond, and delicate, you know.’

  Geraldine contemplated dumpy Leah with her face blotchy from crying, and wondered how far jealousy might have driven her. But that wouldn’t account for her killing three other members of their class at school, and leaving Ashley untouched. She wondered if Leah herself had been infatuated with Ashley and had wanted to eliminate her friends. The idea was ridiculous, especially after so long a gap, but not impossible.

  She returned to her questioning. ‘Do you remember someone in your class called Ned?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He’s hearing impaired.’

  ‘Yes, I know. The deaf boy who lived on a farm.’

  ‘Were you close to him at school?’

  ‘I knew who he was, we all did, but we weren’t exactly friends. I never really spoke to him. He was probably a perfectly nice guy, but I used to think he was weird, because of the way he spoke. Don’t tell me he’s the killer!’

  ‘Would that surprise you?’

  ‘Well, he seemed pretty harmless, but I suppose he did live on a farm so they must have guns and things.’ At the mention of guns, she reddened.

  ‘What about Robin?’