OxCrimes

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Rhiannon says he thinks – inexplicably – that he’s God’s gift. He was at this school in the Forest of Dean before, so Rhiannon’s put his name into the system for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Facebook. It’s mostly old people on there now, but she found some former students, and Mahonie’s famous for shagging a dinner lady. She sponged soup from his trousers after he broke up a fight in the sixth-form restaurant. Something like that. He was married at the time.’

  ‘She was the other woman?’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘Sorry. Talking to myself.’ Merrily was staring through the scullery window at the glittery lichen on the churchyard wall. ‘Thank you, flower. Good of you to take the time. Everything OK?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s interesting …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Bit of a shoestring operation. They might have to wind up before Christmas. Could even be back in a few weeks.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry. Though it’ll be good to … have you home.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet,’ Jane said.

  Several times that day, Merrily rang Zoe, getting the voicemail. As an early autumn evening dimmed the scullery and she was thinking about maybe driving over there, Sophie called.

  ‘Merrily, you might want to turn on your computer. I’ve sent you a link. Call me back when you’ve read it.’

  The Facebook picture was very like the wedding photo, with Zoe looking slim and tanning-centre gorgeous. She listed her favourite singer as Adele and her fave TV shows as Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor, EastEnders and Celebrity Big Brother. Her latest posting said, in reply to a Facebook friend called Lou:

  I was very dissapointed. She didn’t even look like a proper priest. She said o yes it was definately an evil spirit but she wasnt up to exercising it on her own. She said I shouldnt be alone here at night. She said I should go to the church and lock myself in. I said I was frightened of churches but she didnt get it. I dont know what to do. Im fucking shitting myself.

  Lou: Wish I hadnt told u about her now. Vicars dont believe in anything these days. U want to try one of these ghostbusting groups. Still get out of there tonite, tho.

  Zoe: Nowhere to go have I? Im trying sleeping pills.

  Merrily called Sophie back. ‘Who told you about this?’

  ‘Somebody told Grace Lulham Mrs Mahonie was making a big thing about Susan’s house, on the Internet. One of her friends, as you know, put your phone number online for her and they they were all demanding she call you. As they would. To find out what you’d do.’

  ‘She was supposed to be keeping it quiet so it didn’t get back to her husband. Doesn’t make sense, Sophie. Also, I didn’t say any of that stuff. Evil spirits?’

  Silence. Who would know she hadn’t said that? Who in the wide world? She’d been given a part in a reality show.

  ‘I think it’s accepted that social networking sites are largely held together by lies and fantasy,’ Sophie said eventually. Sophie who didn’t gossip, Sophie who worked for the Cathedral. ‘I hate all this. Hate the way if people have a problem they type it into their computers, and scream it out to the world and wait for the world to give them stupid, dangerous advice.’

  ‘I’m going to see her.’

  ‘I think that would be very stupid,’ Sophie said.

  ‘What’s the alternative?’

  ‘To do absolutely nothing except write out a report, email it to me, and I’ll copy it to the Bishop.’

  ‘Just cover my back.’

  ‘Just accept that your initial feelings might not have been so far from the truth,’ Sophie said. ‘And that you don’t have to do penance for them.’

  A sporadic rain misting the ornamental conifers. A few early lights visible on the executive estate, the flickering of wall-mounted TVs.

  No lights in the house of Susan Lulham, its angles stabbing a caramel sky.

  Merrily parked her old black Freelander just past the last house on the estate to which Zoe’s home was almost attached, its porch jutting below the line of small, square windows.

  A white Mini Cooper was parked on the rising drive, but no-one answered the doorbell. Merrily stood in the fine rain, looking up, thinking she saw a curtain move in an upstairs room. Backed away, down the steep drive, so that Zoe, if she was up there, could see who it was. Or maybe Zoe already knew who it was, and that was why she wasn’t opening the door.

  ‘You’re not helping her, you know.’

  Merrily spun around in the road. A car had pulled in behind the Freelander. She saw a slender, dark-haired woman, about her own age, in an open, seagreen jacket, off-white silk scarf. Car keys in one hand.

  ‘Or yourself, I’d guess,’ the woman said. ‘But you’d know best, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m sorry –?’

  ‘Forgive me.’ Hands waving dismissively, car keys jingling. ‘I don’t know you. I know about you. A little. Enough to suggest that you really ought to know better than to frighten a woman like Zoe Mahonie.’

  Merrily took a step back. Was the entire estate on bloody Facebook?

  ‘Look, take no notice of me.’ The woman looked annoyed, perhaps with herself. ‘I’ve had a fraught day.’

  ‘Is she in? Is that her car? The Cooper?’

  ‘She doesn’t drive,’ the woman said.

  ‘I thought a curtain moved.’

  The woman smiled crookedly.

  ‘Perhaps it was Suze,’ she said.

  Her name was Anita Wells. Evidently the neighbour who’d finally told Zoe why the house had been so cheap. A calmly attractive, soft-voiced divorcee working, she said, for Herefordshire Council. In an executive role, Merrily guessed when it came out that she’d served on a committee with Sian, the Archdeacon.

  They were on tall stools in opposite bays of the island unit, in the warm dimness of an opulent Smallbone fitted kitchen, green and blue pilot lights like distant night-shipping in the shadows.

  ‘Not my place,’ Anita Wells said smoothly, ‘to subject the poor woman to analysis. I will say things were rather more peaceful when Susan Lulham was living here. Despite the parties.’

  She’d admitted to Google-imaging Merrily after a neighbour had shown her Zoe’s Facebook entries amidst inevitable gossip about an exorcism on the estate. So Anita Wells had recognised her out there, made a move – indicating there was something she needed to know.

  She smiled.

  ‘I do rather admire you. Can’t be easy.’

  ‘Holding down a medieval job in a secular society?’

  Was that a small, amused noise or the coffee pot? Merrily lifted both hands, backing off.

  ‘Sorry. What’s the husband like?’

  ‘Jonathan … spends as much time as he can away from home. Berating himself for his stupidity in falling for a … much younger woman.’

  ‘Younger,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Without a thought,’ Anita said, ‘for what they’d have to say to one another outside the bedroom.’

  ‘Is that his car in the drive?’

  ‘I … didn’t see him arrive. I’ve been at work.’

  Nearly dark now, but Anita Wells didn’t switch on lights. Through a window, you could see part of Zoe’s house, a concrete elbow jabbed into the brown sky.

  ‘Awful eyesore,’ Anita Wells said. ‘There used to be more trees in front and a high hedge. Zoe was so proud of it she had to have it all cleared.’

  ‘The house of Susan Lulham.’

  ‘Perhaps proud of that, too,’ Anita said. ‘The awful glamour? I don’t know. What do you think? Does she find it perversely exciting?’

  ‘Do you know why she isn’t answering her door? Why, if her husband’s in there, neither of them are?’

  ‘I … no.’

  ‘You were here when Susan Lulham was?’

  ‘Only for about six months before she died. She’d come round sometimes, to unload. Either manically happy or terminally distraught. Giving up men – again. All bastards. Always
shit on you in the end. Never thinking she might be the kind of woman who attracted bastards.’

  ‘You were here the night she died?’

  ‘I’m glad to say I was on holiday.’

  ‘Erm … am I right in thinking it was you who told Zoe whose house she was living in?’

  Anita shrugged.

  ‘She’d have found out soon enough. At least I could explain it to her in a sensible way. I promise you, if I’d thought it was going to make her completely delusional –’

  ‘That’s what you think?’

  ‘And you – I mean despite your … calling – don’t think that? Lipstick on the mirror? The ghost of Susan Lulham on the steps? Good heavens, Mrs Watkins, I don’t know why you didn’t walk away as soon as you saw the bookshelves.’

  ‘Oddly enough,’ Merrily said, ‘Richard Dawkins doesn’t scare me.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Books about why God doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Jonathan’s books, yes. No –’ Anita Wells flapping the air with an exasperated hand. ‘– I meant the others.’

  ‘Education? Psychology?’

  ‘The DVDs.’

  ‘I didn’t see any DVDs.’

  ‘What, no lurid films? No Exorcist. No Amityville Horror? No complete set of Most Haunted? You’re saying she’d removed them from the shelves before you arrived?’

  Merrily’s stool wobbled. She leaned over the island counter.

  ‘All right, look, the mirror and the rest, did you get all that stuff from Facebook?’

  ‘I don’t use Facebook.’

  ‘Who told you, then?’

  Silence. A glimmering in the wide, low window of the house of Susan Lulham. The reflection of car-lights, street lamp, an early moon?

  Merrily said, ‘Please …’

  ‘Jonathan,’ Anita Wells said. ‘Jonathan told me.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Merrily closing her eyes. ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

  The darker it grew, the more illuminating the evening became, and not in a good way, Anita disclosing that she knew Jonathan much better than she knew Zoe, and there was only one likely explanation for that.

  ‘You’re in the education department?’

  ‘I’m an assistant director,’ Anita said. ‘Before local government, I was a teacher. So Zoe told you she was keeping it all from Jonathan, did she?’

  ‘Did you see a light flicker just then? In that house?’

  ‘That house,’ Anita said. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’d still hate to live there.’

  ‘She told Jonathan? Zoe told him all about the phenomena?’

  ‘She told him lies. Because he said he couldn’t stand it any more. Because he was going to leave her.’

  ‘And you know that because?’

  Anita Wells sighed.

  ‘Look. It was years ago. Before his marriage. Before his first marriage.’

  Oh.

  Take this slowly.

  ‘But you’re still … friends?’ Merrily said. ‘Did he know whose house this had been? Why it was so cheap? And that … that you’d be his nearest neighbour? Did he know all that before they came?’

  Silence. Anita seemed to be shrinking back into the shadows between the pilot lights.

  ‘Are they both in there now, Anita? Zoe and Jonno?’

  ‘Don’t call him that. She calls him that, not –’

  A sudden caffeine rush had brought Merrily to her feet.

  ‘Shall we go and find out, then? Both of us?’

  The sky was gutter-brown, and there was no moon and the spiky house was dark, except for the reflection of a street-lamp, from the estate, in the living-room window. Anita led Merrily up the drive, past the Cooper and then down towards a flat-roofed double garage, with a door at the side, hanging open, accessing a side door of the house.

  ‘Usually unlocked. Until nightfall, anyway.’ Anita shaking the door. ‘Locked. Jonathan! Jonathan …’

  They came out of the garage and stood on the steep drive next to the car.

  Merrily whispered, ‘Did she know? About you and Jonathan?’

  ‘Couldn’t have. Sometimes she went to stay with her mother. Only then … only ever then. Look, she was driving him out of his mind with her inane …’

  Of course she knew, Merrily thought. Neighbours told her. Or Facebook. Social media that used to be for kids. She walked up the drive to the low, wide living-room window. Peered in, saw nothing clearly. But it was a white room. And the sky wasn’t quite dark. She should be able to see in.

  She backed sharply away from the glass.

  Anita said, ‘What?’

  Merrily moved to another part of the window and saw the white room, muted to grey but most of it visible now: the squashy sofa, the bookcase, half-empty. When she looked back along the glass she saw, in the light of the streetlamp over the road, where the view had been obscured by dark spots and two smeared handprints.

  Oh, dear God.

  Heard Anita saying, ‘Please, what is it?’ as she turned away, feeling for her mobile, standing on the patio at the top of the steps, where Zoe had said she’d seen the woman with the short red leather jacket. Calling Zoe’s number and hearing the white phone ringing in the living room. The room where Susan Lulham had been talking into a different phone with the expensive Bismark razor opened up and ready.

  Answering machine. Man’s voice. Merrily walked over to Anita, holding up the phone.

  ‘That’s Jonathan?’

  Anita nodded. Merrily spoke to the machine.

  ‘Zoe, if you can hear me … if you thought I didn’t believe you, you were wrong. Are you getting this?’

  ‘What’s she doing?’ Anita Wells had her back to the window. ‘Should we call the police?’

  ‘I think probably we should, yes.’

  And an ambulance.

  ‘She’s lying,’ Anita said. ‘She lies all the time. She lies to herself. She’s not like Susan, not remotely. She’d never do anything to hers – never do anything like that.’

  ‘No,’ Merrily said drably. ‘She probably wouldn’t.’

  Not to herself.

  Anita stared at her. Merrily took a breath and called Zoe’s number again and, when the machine cut in, she kept her voice low.

  ‘Anyone there …?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Are you there … Susan?’

  It wasn’t dead, this phone.

  ‘Suze?’

  Anita Wells stifled a cry, turned to the window. She had to be directly in front of the smears and the blotches and the hand prints, probably too close to see them. Merrily walked to the end of the terrace. Between the trees, across the new estate with its flickery wall-mounted TVs, the umber sky lay like oily sacking over the city.

  ‘Suze. Listen to me. Just for a minute. Talk to Zoe for me. Tell her we can sort this out.’

  Gasping breaths from behind. Anita was bent forward, hands on hips. She’d seen the mess on the glass.

  And she was right, of course. Zoe wasn’t delusional in the expected way. This was Zoe proving she wasn’t as thick as Jonno thought, that she was actually quite clever. And had support. A friend.

  In the phone, there was a rush of laughter, like a gas-jet. In Merrily’s head, a flash image of another phone slicked with fresh blood, Susan Lulham on her knees, pulsing and spouting. And then another woman – Zoe Mahonie – looking down at someone, holding an open razor branded Bismark.

  ‘Suze, is Zoe with you?’

  No reply. In the background, she could hear TV voices. Anita Wells had turned to the window, was beating on the toughened glass with the heals of both fists and sobbing.

  ‘And Jonno?’ Merrily said. ‘Is Jonno there?’

  ‘Yesssss.’

  This sudden reply, swollen with satisfaction, throwing Merrily back.

  ‘Can I … could I speak to him, please?’

  Zoe giggled, and you could hear her moving around with the cordless, and … snap, snap, snap in the phone … as inside the house of Susan Lulha
m lights came on, one after the other, and those familiar visceral thuds introduced the theme tune from EastEnders.

  Heart jumping like a toad, Merrily looked up at the house and saw that the handprints in the now-illuminated living-room window were dark red and too big for a woman’s. As she backed away, the house seemed to shiver in her vision and then re-form, and the line of symmetrical windows above the conservatory was full of white light, like a row of perfect, crowned teeth, and the hardwood sills were deep gums the colour of raw liver.

  MARK BILLINGHAM started out as an actor and stand-up comedian before turning to crime writing with Sleepyhead (2001). This introduced his hero, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, who has now featured in a dozen novels, the most recent of which is The Bones Beneath (2014). He has twice won Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year, among many awards. He was born in Birmingham in 1961 and now lives in North London with his wife and two children.

  Underneath the Mistletoe Last Night

  Mark Billingham

  Jack knew all about ‘being good for goodness sake’, he’d heard it in that song, but he didn’t think opening his presents a few hours early would count as being bad. Besides, he had been asleep and even if it was still dark outside, it was already Christmas Day, so it wasn’t really cheating, was it?

  He lay awake a few minutes longer, wondering if it was snowing outside; if Rudolph shared that carrot they had left for him with all the other reindeer; and if the elves were already working on the toys for next year. He tried thinking about all sorts of things, but he couldn’t keep his mind off those shiny parcels under the tree downstairs.

  He climbed out of bed. He decided that bare feet would be quieter, so ignoring the Sam-7 slippers at the foot of his bed, he crept slowly out of his room and downstairs. He took one step at a time, wincing at every creak. The door to the living room was open, so he could see the tree before he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  What was lying underneath it. Who …

  The red of his coat and the white of his thick beard. The shiny black belt and boots. Not as fat as Jack had been expecting, but maybe he was on a diet.