by Kate Johnson
“What?”
“Well, they could be here to kill Marc. Or to stop him.”
“You think it’s Marc? He’s seventeen.”
“Hey, I don’t know about you, but I was a vicious little bugger when I was seventeen.” I sighed. “I don’t think it’s Marc.”
“Why not?”
“He’s just too…” I waved my hand, looking for the word and coming up with, “…laconic. Apathetic. That’s the one I wanted.”
“You think he doesn’t care? Have you talked to him?”
“Tried. He’s not a big talker.”
Karen nodded slowly, her eyes serious. “Sophie, did it occur to you that the police might have the right idea?”
I snorted. “Never.”
“About Xander? He could have killed Shapiro.”
“And then Doyle, too? No. He’s been at Angel’s the whole time.”
“Even when she and Harvey are out?” She shook her head. “You said he imagined Shapiro’s body in his apartment because he was stoned. Could he have been stoned enough to have killed Shapiro and not realised?”
“Have you been talking to Luke?”
She smiled. “I know Luke doesn’t like that family much. It’s just a thought.”
“Yeah. But I don’t think Xander did that.”
“Why? Gay men aren’t killers?”
“Not this one. It’d mess up his commission,” I joked.
“Shapiro still owed him money?”
I sighed. “About three thousand, English.” I was proud of myself for working this out.
“Well, that’s a motive.”
“Another person with a motive. I’d lay money it wasn’t Xander.”
Karen stood up and gave me one of her trademark piercing looks. “Because of a personal feeling?”
I nodded.
“Sophie.” She sighed suddenly, and I had a bad feeling about what was coming next. “I know your personal feelings have sometimes been a bonus, hunches often are, but do you remember Docherty? He still bears scars from your last hunch.”
I didn’t need reminding.
“You mustn’t let personal feelings cloud your judgment,” she said, looking straight at me. “Or get in your way.”
Idly I wondered if she was warning me off personal relationships while I was working. Then I straightened. I was in a personal relationship. “Are you talking about Luke?”
“Which is more important to you, Sophie? Your job, or your boyfriend?”
I knew what the professional answer should be. But, hideously, I found myself agreeing with it. “My job,” I said, and I must have sounded surprised, because she broke eye contact and laughed.
“Well done. Luke didn’t sound so convincing last night.”
“He didn’t?” He thought I was more important? But Luke loved his job.
Uh-oh.
A is for Apple
Chapter Eleven
I got back in time for Drama, and didn’t seem to have been missed. The two hour lesson kicked off with some daft games for “warm-up” (trans: no lesson plan) and then we worked through scenes from A Doll’s House. This was mildly amusing, since between the fifteen people in the class there were about five different translations of the text, so that a reading went something like:
Helmer: And what’s in that parcel?
Nora: No.
Helmer. Tell me, my little spendthrift, what do you want for Christmas?
Nora: You know, Torvald, you don’t have to buy me anything for Christmas.
Helmer: Oh, yes, you do. Now tell me, what would you really like?
Nora. It’s not a problem.
Amber was reading Nora, and she read her well—sweet and girlish and petulant and, to my mind, bloody annoying. I fully believed that she could twist her husband into giving her whatever she wanted, and Dr. Rank too, and she’d do it so prettily no one would ever suspect they’d been had.
Frequently there were patches where someone would say, “What do you think, Christine?” And Clara, reading Christine (now spelt Kristin) would look blank and say, “It’s Rank’s line.”
So the first hour passed reasonably quickly, while I wondered if Ibsen made any more sense when it was properly translated. I suspected not.
The unintentional hilarity helped keep my mind off what Karen had said. And off the squirly feeling in my stomach. And off the looming sense of dread that I somehow didn’t think was remotely connected with the case.
When exactly did I start ranking my job above my love life? And when did Luke stop?
The bell went for fourth period and we all stayed where we were, sprawled in a ragged circle on the Drama Studio’s black floor. Uncle Todd (it was catching) went off to get some photocopies done and the class stretched out and started talking amongst themselves. Lucy, Amber and Clara were huddled together like three witches, occasionally shooting terribly unsubtle glances in my direction. Occasionally Clara would put her hand up and whisper behind it while looking right at me. Five-year-old behaviour.
No, that was unfair. More like four-year-old.
I turned to Laurence, who was looking through his book, a bored expression on his skinny face. He wore narrow-framed glasses and he was very thin. If you put him in contacts and white Lycra he’d be a dead ringer for Freddie Mercury.
“Not very subtle, are they?”
“Three witches? Nah. Not very.”
Pleased he’d thought of the same analogy as me, I pressed on. “Were you in a class with them? Before sixth form?”
He nodded. “With Clara. And Marc, in the first year.”
“Were you friends then?”
“Not really. He was a bit of a rich kid, you know? Hung out with his own crowd. I guess I filled his place.”
“But he was friends with Clara?”
Laurence looked at me sharply.
“Lucy said. And you can tell she has the hots for him.”
“What, you mean Lucy?”
“Clara.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He relaxed. Someone fancies Lucy, I thought. “They hung out loads. They knew each other from primary school. And then last year he came back from boarding school early and met up with Amber in town and they all got friendly.”
“With Amber? She was friends with him before?”
“No—well, sort of. Clara and Luce and Amber have always been in a sort of clique. They live near each other, or used to, anyway…”
I was really confused now. “But they met up with Marc last year?”
“Yeah. Well, last school year. After he got chucked out. Amber probably wasn’t that bothered, but then he said his dad was living in New York and we could all go out there and see him… I didn’t think anything would come of it, but the girls got really excited and got some last minute cheap flights and all went out there.”
Woah.
“When was this?” I asked, as casually as I could, and got another sharp look. “It’s just, I was in New York this summer. With my dad. On business.”
“Wish my dad took me on business trips with him,” Laurence said bitterly. “It was August, I think.”
“Oh. I wasn’t there then. Did you go?”
He shook his head. “Even a cheap flight’s expensive.”
Uncle Todd came back in the room then, so I turned away from Laurence and pretended to be reading the play.
Clara and Marc used to be friends, way back. Now Clara fancied Marc, but he wasn’t interested. Maybe he was interested in Amber, seeing as how he met up with her in the summer…and then he invited them all out to New York. That wasn’t something you do for someone you hardly know.
What was going on here?
I hardly paid any attention during the rest of the lesson, and when the bell went I automatically went after Marc, but Amber called me back.
“Clara saw your car yesterday,” she said.
“That’s nice.” I tried to keep my eye on Marc, but he was already gone.
“At the murder scene.”
Tha
t got my attention. “What?”
“I was on my way past,” Clara explained, “and I’m sure I saw your car.”
Past where, I wondered. Green Roding wasn’t on the way to anywhere.
“Unless it was one like it,” she went on. “But I’m good with number plates.” And she reeled mine off.
Shit, shit shit.
Bollocks.
“I—have a friend who lives round there,” I said carefully.
“Did you see the body?”
“No. They wouldn’t let me near.”
“Isn’t that an old folks’ home, up that road?” Amber said.
Double bollocks.
“It’s—well, yeah, she was visiting her granny. Got Alzheimer’s. Very sad.” I started walking. They fell back, apparently having run out of things to say, and I rushed up to the car park. Marc’s Corsa wasn’t there.
Annoyed, I got in Ted and pointed him homewards. I drove too fast, and eventually spotted the Corsa in the distance ahead of me. I followed it to Green Roding, watched it turn into Mont House, then did a sloppy three-pointer in the pub car park and went home.
I opened my gate, wondering how it had got closed, since the wood swelled and I usually left it open for Tammy, and then I saw the heap of black plastic by my door, and realised.
I kept my eyes on it while I got out my phone and speed-dialed Luke.
“Where are you?”
“Angel’s. Why?”
“I need you to come over. Now.”
“Why, what’s up? Another spider?”
Okay, so maybe once or twice I've got him to kill spiders for me. But they were really big ones. And I always rewarded him.
“No,” I said, “not a spider. Not unless we have six foot spiders in this country. Wrapped up in black plastic. Smelling like dead bodies.”
That did it. The phone went dead and Luke’s car tore into the car park four minutes later. I was impressed. I didn’t think Vectras handled that well.
He came into the courtyard and almost walked into me. We stood for a while, looking at the lump of black plastic.
“Have you touched it?”
“No.”
Luke got out his phone and snapped a picture of the body—for I was pretty sure by now that it was a body. And I didn’t have to make my little blonde brain work too hard to figure out whose it was.
Luke leaned over the body and fitted his key into my front door. He went in, and came back with two pairs of rubber gloves, which I knew I’d have to destroy later. I get through so many gloves this way.
We peeled back the black plastic, and there it was. Gangster Number Two. His face matched that of Maretti’s file photo, and I was pretty sure he’d been the guy driving when Doyle tried to shoot me.
“Okay,” I said. “So I guess we know the killer’s not Mario Maretti. Unless it was a suicide attack.”
I was trembling. You’d think I’d have got used to seeing dead bodies by now, but I hadn’t. I didn’t think I ever would. Maybe if they were all clinical and set out in clean morgues…maybe not, but definitely not right outside my home. Not bloody and smelly and wrapped in sordid black plastic.
Luke put his arms around me and I rested my head on his shoulder. Thank God I had him.
“I’m okay,” I said. “It’s just—why do they keep turning up at my house?”
“You’re a magnet,” Luke said.
“Whoever it is knows I live here.”
“You’ve got to get yourself unlisted.”
“Yep.” I pulled back. “I’ll call Karen.”
Karen, aside from being our boss and a qualified doctor, also doubled as a useful pathologist. She came to collect the body, borrowing my car to drive it up to the lab under the office. Luke followed in her car (I was not to be trusted with a Saab), and came back twenty minutes later with Ted.
“Remind me to clean him out again,” I said.
Luke stood and looked at me. I’d got in the shower and got changed and my clothes were swishing around in the washing machine. I’d even taken off my nail polish.
“You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded.
“Are you sufficiently disinfected yet?”
I shook my head.
“Want to share a shower?”
I nodded, and Luke pulled me into the bathroom. Job, boyfriend. Sometimes one was useful for the other.
Later, curled together on the sofa watching Buffy kick demon ass, I said to Luke, “Karen thinks it’s Xander.”
Luke didn’t take his eyes off the screen, where Willow and Tara were kissing. “Xander couldn’t kill a spider. He’s more of a girl than you.”
“But she still thinks it’s him.”
“What do you think?”
I sighed. “I was hoping we could pin it on Maretti.”
“Well, you can keep on hoping, but I’m going to have to put you in therapy.”
We were both silent for a while as Buffy got off with Riley.
“He looks like Harvey,” I said.
“You don’t like Americans, right?”
“I like Harvey. And Xander.”
“Wrong answer.”
I grinned. Winding Luke up is one of my favourite past times.
And then I remembered what Karen had said about Luke favouring me above his job, and my smile faded. How did I feel about that?
Uncertain. And that couldn’t be good.
“We need to check out Marc’s car,” I said dispiritedly.
“Why?”
“To see if Maretti was in it. We need to get him away from the car so Karen can, uh, swab it for DNA or something.”
“Did you take Science at school?”
“I have a B in Biology,” I replied, affronted. “I can tell you all about osmosis.”
“Oh, please do.”
“See, if you have a text book full of knowledge, and you stare at it with an empty head, then the knowledge osmosises into your brain. It goes from a large concentration, to a small.”
Luke stared at me.
“How did you pass,” he said, “knowing only the principle of osmosis? And not even knowing that properly.”
“I stared at my text book a lot.”
He rolled his eyes. “You think it was Marc?”
“I can’t get him out of my head. I think, who could have killed Shapiro and Doyle and Maretti, and his name appears. He was there for all three. Doyle’s body was in his garage, for God’s sake.”
“But he has no motive.”
“So? Who cares about motive?”
“Sophie, he’s a seventeen-year-old boy.”
“Your point being?”
“I don’t think he killed anyone.”
I wasn’t in the mood to argue, so I let it drop. But in the back of my mind I thought, I wasn’t watching Marc this morning. I wasn’t at my flat. Who would know where, in a school of seven hundred people, one sixth former was? He was so apathetic, but maybe it was a mask. Maybe he really was a vicious, psychotic killer.
How the hell am I supposed to know?
Next morning I scanned his face carefully for any hint that he might have put a dead body outside my door, but he was as impassive as ever. The girls were talking about going clubbing tonight in Chelmsford, and I was astonished to be invited. I wasn’t sure how to ask if Marc was going without sounding like—well, like Clara, so I agreed to go anyway. If I found out Marc was staying home, then I would, too. I gave Amber my mobile number and promised to use Ted for lift purposes.
Was this the only reason they were inviting me? Big car?
The day passed uneventfully. Harvey, who had heard about Maretti from Karen, tried to catch my eye several times in Art, but I looked away. Harvey reminded me of Xander, and I knew Xander had no alibi for Shapiro’s killing.
I tried to get an angle on Marc’s artwork. After all, it was pretty personal stuff, right? But he was working on a personal study about native American cave art, in which I couldn’t find any useful allegories.
&n
bsp; Although it would give him a useful excuse to make trips to America.
At the end of the lesson, I went up to Harvey on the pretence of asking about lino printing, and when I’d got him to myself, after the bell had rung and before the next class filtered in, I said in a low voice, “Where was Xander yesterday?”
He frowned. “Why?”
I sighed. “Because—” Some kids came in and I stamped my foot. “I’ll text you,” I mouthed. He looked dissatisfied, but nodded me away.
It was the end of the school day, so I dragged my stuff out to my car and put it in gear. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I went up to the office to see how Karen was getting along with Maretti’s body. I found her in her office, as always (didn’t she ever go home? I mean, ever?), looking unruffled.
“Four,” she greeted me (no “Sophie” today). “Any news?”
I shrugged. “I’m going clubbing tonight.”
“This had better be a professional assignment.”
I threw myself at a chair. “I don’t know if he’s going or not. I’ve hardly seen him today. I think he’s avoiding me. Karen, he’s getting suspicious. I think I should lay off.”
“He could be our killer.”
“He could also be a kid whose father is dead and who has had to readjust his whole life.”
She looked at me calmly. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know! My head is too full of Elizabeth Jennings to think about anything important.”
She smiled. “At least you’re learning something.”
“Yeah—I hate Elizabeth Jennings. Did you autopsy Maretti?”
She nodded. “Not a lot to tell. He was hit on the head, then his throat was slit. He was probably killed some time yesterday morning.”
While I wasn’t watching Marc. Shit.
My phone rang and I looked at the display. My parents’ house. “Do you mind if I answer this?”
She gestured to the door and I went into the outer office to take the call.
“Hey, Mum.”
“Hello, love. You were off early yesterday.”
It didn’t take a genius to see where this was going. It had probably taken a whole day for her to work out how to approach the subject.
“Yeah. Like I said. I was doing overtime.”