by James Goss
But at least she didn’t have to drink any more of this terrible wine.
Someone killed Danielle. Well, that’s what I think. And a few of her friends think so. And they’re ordinary people. Ordinary people don’t have conspiracy theories. I’ve just had to sit through two hours with her parents. They cried a lot on their DFS sofa. They must miss her. She must have meant something to them, even though she managed to do so little with her life.
Perhaps, like Philip Glass, she’d have been a late developer. As any cabbie will tell you, he was a taxi driver until the age of 43 when he suddenly discovered that if you took all the tunes out of music, what you had left was plinkety-plonk and a fortune. I asked Danielle’s father if she played any musical instruments, and he just shrugged sadly. Ah well, she may have one day. There would have been time.
It’s Danielle’s ex-boyfriend who believes she was killed. I say ex—he only left her because she herself left this mortal coil. Everything about her suggests that she’s not the sort of woman to leave a man. Especially not a nice normal man. Like Guy, who is so very normal and so very grieving. He’s run charity marathons for her.
Initially, the coroner reported her death as a tragic accident. Like many spoiled children of the 80s, she had a peanut allergy. One that, science has shown, she could easily have overcome if she’d only shown a little effort. But, like learning the recorder, she just didn’t put the time in, and then, one evening, she ate a peanut in this bar and died.
People always call this kind of death a tragedy. But it isn’t. King Lear is a tragedy. My last marriage is a tragedy (one of epic proportions that could only be sung by fat Germans for nine hours). But Danielle Audley? Not really. She just died.
The bar owners protest that they are careful to ensure no cross-contamination of their drinks (God knows, their wine is contaminated enough already). This backs up Guy’s theory that his girlfriend’s death, at least, has something interesting about it. There is CCTV in the bar which shows her talking to a stranger—but this may just have been a friend. A witness has also reported seeing someone help her to the toilets. But no-one has come forward. That, at least, is a mystery.
And there are other mysteries. Other similar deaths happening to ordinary people. Everything about them seems to make sense. And yet, as with ley-lines and the Kennedy assassination, something is clinging to them, as sticky as the surface of this table in this sad little bar. Perhaps someone is killing these pointless people.
Has being dull and tawdry become a crime? If so, then we could wipe out a lot of people in this country (including, thank God, my ex-husband). I could put together a fairly good list for someone to have a crack at. Mostly the people who will, with a grinding of the single gear they have in their heads, lurch forward to comment beneath this article. Go on, do it. You’re just putting yourself on a list. A list of the drab who, just perhaps, deserve to die.
Jackie Aspley, The Daily Post
I’D ALREADY READ the article, but I wasn’t surprised when I received a message on MySpace alerting me to it.
The mysterious Duster was worried.
So, of all the people to join the dots, it was Jackie ‘Hitler’ Aspley who was the first person to suspect that it wasn’t a series of accidents and suicides, but actual murders. Everyone knows about Jackie Aspley. No one likes her. No one feels sorry for her—apart from her ex-husband, who once said, “I kind of pity her” before bursting into laughter on The One Show after the people of the village she’d decamped to burnt her in an effigy made out of cow dung on Bonfire Night.
The odd thing about Jackie is that, for someone who manipulates the internet, she doesn’t really use it. She proudly writes that she has an ancient laptop that’s in black and white and still uses a dial-up modem. She once tried to look at the newspaper website that publishes her articles (alongside long lens pictures of topless teenagers and thought pieces about why women over forty have fat thighs). And yet, for someone who isn’t on Twitter and never uses a website, she’s single-handedly responsible for making the internet a worse place.
About two or three times a week she writes a column. It’s always deliberately-provocative linkbait. Jackie Aspley has a genius for rambling insensitivity. Within moments of going live, each piece is being blarted out across the world:
Jackie Aspley latest! I CAN’T EVEN. Someone please kill her. Or me, I don’t care #EyesBleeding.
Hate linking to this stuff, but LOOK at what she’s done #TrollQueen.
Well said, our Jackie! Sometimes she’s a lone voice of reason #HasToBeSaid.
Unrepentant (unless she could get a column out of it); clearly troubled (no-one could forget her article on how Princess Diana deserved to die based solely on the scatter cushions she would now buy)—the shameless inventor of wasp nest soup.
True to form, her latest column was now pinging into my inbox. Amber’s message was typical. (‘My god have you seen this? Guy MUST NEVER SEE IT. I’ll tell him not to look.’)
Jackie Aspley. Such an obvious target. I sat back in my chair. I was winded, excited, scared and just a little bit hungry.
When I went into the kitchen I went in there an angry man. I felt personally attacked by Jackie, I felt defensive of my friends, and I felt scared. The cat weaved its way around my legs, making another first stab at an invisible wicker basket that it never got around to progressing with. I just stood there. The quote ‘Someone please kill her’ flashed through my mind like a challenge. It would be so easy. It would be what she deserved. What she needed. I would be doing a public service.
But in the time it took the kettle to boil, I’d calmed down. Actually, no, that’s not true. But I had a plan.
THEY HATE ANIMALS IN THE COUNTRY
Jackie Aspley on our countryside’s hate-hate relationship with pets
IF YOU WANT to see animal cruelty, you won’t find it on YouTube, you’ll find it in the Home Counties. It’s the bit of England that protests so loudly about how much it loves animals. It calls dogs ‘man’s best friend,’ it makes much of the sheep dotted around the rolling hills, and it gives prizes to inbred girls for combing the hair of ponies.
But the countryside’s cruelty to animals really is unspeakable. Look at badgers. Everyone here behaves like they’d gleefully whack one on the head with a spade if only ‘they’ weren’t looking. Ever since the government admitted they’d made a statistical error and that badgers didn’t actually spread TB I have been loudly telling people I meet on the street about it. “Well, I dare say,” they’ll bleat at me like the sheep they enjoy slaughtering for Sunday roasts, “But all the same, there’s something about badgers, isn’t there?”
“NONSENSE,” I will shout at them. “Badgers. Do. Not. Spread. Plague.” And then, if the village shop photocopier is working (they tell me it’s quite often broken when I go in at the moment) I will press a photocopy of the article that proves it into their hands, and wish them a curt good morning. “Good morning, badger killer!” I will declaim.
Of course, naturally, this forthright approach hasn’t won me any more friends. Someone left a dead badger on my drive the other day. I don’t know where they’d found it from, but I was needless to say horrified and hugged it to me, crying for two hours before I remembered to feed the chickens. Naturally, I phoned the police and demanded something be done, but they simply offered to help me pop it in a bin bag. I told them I was the victim of assault, that this creature had been murdered because of me and almost begged them to arrest me as an accessory before the fact. Instead they insisted with clop-headed mendacity that the poor thing had been run over while crossing the road and had just died there. What are the chances of that happening? I demanded.
All they could do was shrug and tell me, “This is the countryside. It happens all the time.”
I felt sick. Vindicated, but sick. This is the countryside, where creatures come to die. All the time.
At least in Oriental countries they’re honest about it—if it moves and isn’t necessarily
granny, then kill it and eat it and make some shoes out of the leftovers. It explains why their children are so bright—not a shred of conscience and no time wasted lying to themselves and others. At least they’re honest. They hate animals but love to devour them.
We just hate animals. When I went into the local pet sanctuary to adopt another cat I was ACTUALLY derided for it. “Hello! Not you again,” they said as a greeting. “Not after another one?”
“I only have 12 cats,” I told them. “That’s not many. And I assure you that they possess more love, affection and humanity than any of you.”
With a resigned shrug they gestured me towards the cruel cages they keep the cats in, like they’re battery hens that refuse to lay eggs. So many adorable fuzz babies, all staring at me hoping for a happy home. How could I refuse?
Since my vile ex-husband left me, collecting cats has become something of a hobby. At first, I got cats because they reminded me of him (fat, lazy and greedy) but then I started to see the true love that these adorable things possessed.
I stood there at the so-called sanctuary, for a moment possessed by the urge to fling open all their cages and cry, “Be free! Be free!” But I restrained myself and said aloud, “One can’t have too many cats, you know.”
Amazingly, the other person in there, (even more amazingly A Man), agreed. He nodded his head. I’m not used to a man agreeing with me, but there we go. Miracles can happen.
“How many cats do you have?” he asked.
“Twelve,” I told him.
“And where do you live? How much land to you have?”
I told him about the four boggy acres and the miserable scrub of woodland nearby.
“Perfect,” he said, taking me seriously. The last person to take me seriously was my divorce lawyer. “Cats require at the minimum ten cubic metres of space and are more than capable of sharing territory on a rota basis caused by a variation in their sleeping cycles and their territorial roaming patterns. You can get plenty more. If you so wish.”
“Are you here to get a cat?”
He looked troubled. For a moment I thought he was going to cry. “It’s Scuffles...” He halted. “She’s in for a check-up, and she’s an old girl and I’m worried, so I took just a moment to... you know...” He patted a cage, which mewed. “Just to see that life goes on.” He then turned around and looked me in the eye. “You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I assured him and immediately vowed to throw up breakfast. I didn’t want to be too fat for this man. I had finally met someone in this God-forsaken county who understands animals (or, at least, has a fraction of the sympathy for them that I do).
Idiotically, I invited him around for dinner there and then (I wouldn’t eat it of course, but I’d like to watch him). And he accepted. I may have left the animal sanctuary without another fuzz baby today, but I have found something almost as useful. A friend. One who understands how vile the people of the countryside are about animals.
And don’t get me started on how they treat their dogs.
Jackie Aspley, The Daily Post
YOU SEE, I had decided on a new approach. Jackie Aspley was a woman who thrived on death threats. “If people hate me, then I know I’m popular,” she’d once told an increasingly despairing interviewer. So, I used the KillFund to hire a tiny cottage on the outskirts of the village and hung around the local shop and the cat sanctuary. And, soon enough, bingo.
DUSTER: What the hell are you doing?
ME: Having dinner with her, actually.
DINNER AT JACKIE’S was a very odd occurrence. She had a beautiful recently-converted barn that shone with money and cat hair. There were cats on the stainless steel worktops, on every club chair and snuggled among the ancient wooden beams. All of them watching me territorially. The only place lacking a cat was the cat basket.
Jackie herself stood at a brushed metal hob that cost more than my annual income, trying desperately to heat some kind of stew. It was a large pot into which she was sweeping things from cupboards while swearing. Frequently she’d pour some wine—either into the pot or into herself. She was stirring the stew like a cake mix, her jewellery jangling as she worked. Perspiration was on her forehead, making its way around her make-up.
“I would come over and give you a hug, but I daren’t leave this in case it sets,” she called. “Stroke a cat, would you? It’s like a hug.”
I sat down on a sofa in between two purring things which eyed me resentfully. One hissed. “Oh, don’t mind the fluffballs!” she called. “Want some wine?” She made to pour me a glass, but the bottle was empty. She blinked at it in surprise, then shoved it into recycling.
We made odd small talk (“Wonder what happened to Harry Paperboy?” “Do you think Sodobus are taking over the country?” and, oddly, women’s football) and then she served the food.
It was basically porridge into which an Ocado delivery had fallen. But it was very nice. I ate two bowls, while Jackie poked away at her tiny portion on a tiny plate with a child’s fork. At regular intervals she’d drown it with heaps of leaves which she’d munch away at. She was working very hard at creating the impression of eating without actually eating. I started to feel absurdly self-conscious, especially as she started asking me questions. Despite all the appearance of chaos, Jackie was a highly trained journalist and experienced celebrity interviewer. People opened up to her. Worse than that, people had a terrible habit of saying to her, “Now, you won’t print this bit, will you, but...?” before telling her some awful personal secret. Jackie would nod solemnly, and then print it anyway.
“So, tell me about yourself...”
I trotted out my careful little story. My name was Richard. I’d just split up with a long-term girlfriend and was ‘finding myself’ in the country. Luckily, the whole idea sounded so ludicrous to her that she started barking her own opinions at me immediately. “The only thing you’ll find here is a lot of Edwardian bigotry. Even the plumbing’s inbred.” She slumped forward, helping herself to another glass of wine. “God, I hate it here. Hate it. I turned up at the shop the other day and they wouldn’t serve me.”
“Oh, why not?”
“They were closed,” Jackie screwed up her face. “Seriously. Like at five o’clock on the dot. They stay open later in Wales.” She drank some more of the expensive Norwegian sparkling water she’d put on the table and then slugged back another glass of wine. “I was banging on the door demanding they let me in. ‘I am not one of your nineteen-fifties housewives!’ I screamed at them, but they wouldn’t let me in. I could see them inside, tutting at me. So now I get everything delivered by a van. And they all hate me for it. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.”
“Perhaps...” I began, but noticed her eyes had thinned warningly.
“Do go on,” she said, her voice flat. I noticed the cat which had been rubbing against my leg beating a hasty retreat.
“Well,” I pressed on. “The country isn’t like London. It’s not even like Primrose Hill. They’re different here. You know, perhaps if you don’t treat everyone like they’re a Starbucks barista, it might work better.”
“I see,” she said. She clearly didn’t. “It’s like being surrounded by a load of stupid interns you can’t fire. At least when I worked on a magazine they’d burst into tears when I was frightful, but they don’t do that here. They’re so hard to read. And they’re so placidly friendly. What’s all that ridiculous nodding about? You know, you can’t walk past one in the street without a nod. If I did that in Piccadilly I’d be locked up. There’s a column in that, I’m sure of it.”
“Oh,” I said. Clearly she’d never read a self-help book. “Have you ever read Desmond Morris?”
“Catwatching.”
“Ah. Well, it’s a bit like... well, you know how cats show other cats that they are not a threat when they meet them? I think that’s what the Country Hello is. We simply meet strangers and nod to them to reassure them that we’re not a threat and we don’t view them as a thre
at. It’s an empty road and there could be highwaymen about. And we don’t do it in town because the streets are always full. Unless it’s three am and you’re on an empty road in which case you may well nod at people to show that you’re friendly. If you’re not running the other way.”
There was silence, apart from a distant purring. I braced myself for an outburst. As far as I could tell, she had drunk nearly two bottles of wine on a stomach lined only with rocket. She seemed fine, but could turn at any moment.
“That... is... fascinating...” she said eventually. “Brilliant. I am so doing a column on that. Tomorrow. I am going to walk the shitty little lanes nodding at people and see what happens. Wonderful.” She stood up with a scrape of chair. “And now I’m going to make you pudding.”
“You’re having some?”
She narrowed her eyes. “No, of course not, and it’s rude of you to even ask.”
She doled out the desert, cutting me a huge slice of cheesecake out of a box, a full quarter-of-an-hour, and then giving herself the smallest tick. She took half of it on a teaspoon and pronounced it delicious. Personally, I found it hard going. To her it was delicious because it was forbidden food. To me it just tasted like over-sugared supermarket cheesecake. But we both stared at each other, smiling and pretending that this was a perfect dessert.
“Do you ever eat?” I asked her.
“Of course I eat. I just don’t eat eat.” Her voice was bored. “Years ago, I decided that food bored me. I was eating most of my meals wrong—a bowl of porridge while drying my hair in the morning, queuing for frozen sushi from outside the office and then cramming a sandwich into my mouth while running to get to the theatre in the rain. And I just thought to myself, Why do you do this? Why do you spend all of your time memorising the calorie content of these things, none of which have any flavour? It’s no fun, so why not just stop eating? So I did.”