“I’ve just killed Graham.”
“Right…” Mick began wondering if Rachel was drunk.
“I was having a cigarette, out here, and I saw him twatting Suzanne. Next thing I know, I’m in their house, I’m upstairs, and he’s kicked her to death. I’ve picked summat up, summat heavy, and split his head open. They’re both lay there.” Rachel started sobbing, as quietly as she could. “I’m fucked Mick. I’m going to jail love.” Rachel started crying properly, she let it all go. Mick leaned in again to comfort her, rubbing her shoulder, and trying to compute the information that he had just heard.
“They’re both dead?”
“Yeah!” she said, stopping a sob to say it, wipe away her snot, before continuing. A door clicked closed upstairs, and Mick’s head spun around to look up the stairs. There was nobody there.
“You’re alright love, just settle down a minute.”
“Mick, I’m fucking not alright.” Rachel tried doing a sarcastic laugh but it didn’t work out, she just sounded scared, and slightly crazy. It trailed off into a pathetic, scared sob.
“You’ll be alright in a minute. Have a shower, you stink, really bad. You’re fucking minging Rach. Have a shower love.” Mick was trying his best to comfort her, but he wasn’t doing a great job of it.
“Mick, did you hear what I said? I’ve just killed Graham. I’m a murderer, I’m going to prison, I’ve… I’ve fucked… everything up.” By saying it once again, the gravity of the situation began to hit home, not just to Rachel, but to Mick as well, finally.
Mick stood, and looked down at the shoulders of his best friend in the whole world, shivering and sobbing, her head was tucked away between her knees. In that moment, in that glance down at his pathetic looking partner, their entire history together flashed before his eyes. The flirty looks in school uniforms, the first dates at the roller skating, the birth of Liam, moving into the house on Gameshawe, the birth of Britney, right up to moving into the current, nightmare house that seemed to have cursed them so badly. It all flashed by in a matter of seconds, and then it all started over again, different memories and images, different happy scenes whizzing through his mind.
“Rach, love. You need to sort your head out babe. Go and get a shower, get some fresh clothes on, get your hair washed. Go on, ten minutes love, you’ll feel a lot better.”
“Mick, I don’t know what to do…” She glanced up at him, looking lost. It wasn’t an expression that Mick recognised. He held his hands out.
“Come on, let’s get you washed up,” he said, bending and touching her hands so that she would grip on to his and he could pull her up onto her feet.
“Rach, come on, I’m going to get fucking stressed in a minute. Come on.” Mick’s slightly harsh tone did the trick, and diverted Rachel from whatever distraction she had sidetracked herself with. She put her hands out and Mick lifted her to her feet. “Right, good, now, upstairs, you get all them clothes off and I’ll get them in a bin bag, then, straight in the shower. Come on.” He started pulling her towards the stairs and she followed, her mind not really taking on board what he was saying, but slowly replaying the frightened look on Graham’s face in the millisecond before he was struck by Rachel’s fatal blow. The urge to vomit was incredible, but there was nothing left inside her stomach that could come up. She still retched though, she couldn’t do anything to stop that.
“I really need a shit,” said Rachel, as she reached the top stair.
“Come on, you can have a shit, just keep going love, you’re proper in shock. It’s mad how it makes people feel, you’ll be right in a minute, trust me.” Mick was talking really quietly, mindful that the kids were asleep. The words he said still weren’t being picked out properly by Rachel, but Mick felt he was making progress. As they walked into their bedroom, he knocked the door shut with his heel, and he continued walking her towards the en-suite bathroom.
“Here, give us your top,” he said as he started pulling at the waist band. “Put your arms up you knob,” he was smiling, and desperately wanting to see a smile come back to Rachel’s face. But there was nothing, she just looked like an extra in a cheap horror film. She had a pale, scared looking face, and her sunken eyes were busy, elsewhere. They weren’t connecting with his at all, regardless of how much he wanted them to. Mick managed to get her top over her head, and Rachel stood in her bra.
“Come on, lets get these keks off as well,” he started pulling them down, he was on his knees as he pulled her sock off her foot and then pulled the jogging bottoms off her left foot, before repeating the process on the right leg. Rachel was stood in just her bra and knickers, shivering, and looking ready to cry again.
“Do you still need a dump?”
“Yeah,” she managed to say. Her lips were trembling. Mick led her across to the lavatory and sat her down on the seat, taking her knickers off her feet as she went about her business. He unclipped her bra and pulled the straps off her arms, before throwing it onto the pile of stinking clothes that he had taken from her.
“Right, jump in the shower when you’ve finished shitting, I’m going to sort these out.” Mick turned the shower on, bent down, scooped the pile of dirty, stinking clothes up and headed out of the bathroom, and then out of the bedroom before disappearing down the stairs. Rachel was just staring aimlessly, but feeling relieved to be on the toilet and relaxing her bowels. She pushed the toilet door closed as she realised how vulnerable she was.
Mick stuck the dirty clothes straight into the washing machine and filled the compartments with soap powder. He selected the dosser wash as they called it, the all forgiving ninety degree cycle that ruined more items of clothing than it cleaned. After setting the machine off, making Rachel a cup of sweet tea, and nipping into the children’s bedrooms to try and figure out who had been on the landing when Rachel had arrived home, he went back to see how she was getting on.
Rachel was still on the toilet when he went back into the bedroom. His presence startled her, and reminded her that she was sat naked on a toilet, stinking and trembling after killing her neighbour ten minutes earlier.
“Where are the boys?” he asked. “And why aren’t you in the shower? Come on love, get your self together.” The question about the boys seemed to bring Rachel round a bit, her mind switched to her domestic obligations and it was almost as though a light had come on when she replied.
“The boys are at mums. I told you they were staying over again. Britney came in, pissed up and went straight to bed. Shania was in bed at nine, she didn’t even watch the end of X factor.”
Mick realised that he had distracted Rachel by mentioning the kids.
“So, was she proper pissed or just a bit merry?” Mick was aiming to keep Rachel focused. She finished her business and went to the sink to wash her hands.
“She was really tired she said,” Rachel had a flicker of a tiny smile, but it lasted only a tenth of a second. “She just went straight up.”
“So, did Shania have her tablet in bed?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Why?”
“Nowt, its just it’s still warm, that all, I just wondered how long she’s been on it for. Here, jump in this shower and get yourself washed up.”
“Then what. What am I doing after my shower? Are we phoning the police?” Rachel looked confused and lost. It scared Mick to see her looking so vulnerable. So fragile.
“We’re going to go over the road and sort everything out.”
*****
“You’re not going to prison, love.” Mick said it as he held Rachel’s face in his hands. “No fucking deal.”
Twenty five minutes had elapsed between Rachel arriving home from Graham and Suzanne’s house, to setting off back there, this time with Mick.
It was almost one o’clock in the morning, and Mick had told Rachel that they weren’t to creep, or hide in the shadows, but they had to walk confidently and normally across the road, talking as they went, they had to appear perfectly normal. And that was precisely what
they did, just in case any of the neighbours were still up and about. They talked quietly as they closed their own front door, and continued chatting as they crossed the road, and reached the gate at the side of the house. Rachel and Mick had strolled across the road as though they didn’t have a care in the world. If there had been a casual observer, Mick hoped that the couple would just look like they were popping across to their friend’s house.
Once beyond the gate, and out of public view, both of them felt scared and panicky about what they were about to do.
The plan, that Mick had made up on the spot as Rachel slowly dressed after her shower was very simple. They were going to remove the metal thing that had killed Graham and then phone the police and ambulance, and leave it for the police to try and work out how the husband and wife ended up dead, with Rachel explaining that she saw them fighting, but was scared to get involved after the hassle that went with it all last time. It was going to be okay.
Mick explained that it was perfect that Rachel had been to the council, she had told them about Suzanne being beaten up by Graham. It was easy, Mick said. They just needed to clean the place up and get rid of the murder weapon.
As they reached the back of the house, and the back door that was still wide open following Rachel’s speedy exit, the couple stopped.
“Right, here we go.” Whispered Mick, as he crept in through the back door.
“I don’t want to, I want to go home…” Rachel’s tone of voice demonstrated how scared she was. Her bowels wanted more time on the toilet, and her guts were spinning as though there was zero gravity.
“Sshhh, come on.” Mick pushed her into the house, and followed closely behind. There were two empty wine bottles on the side, near the door, and two glasses, one empty and the other a quarter filled with red wine.
“They were pissed,” said Mick. “That’s good.”
“Why?” asked Rachel, also taking in the scene – and noticing another empty bottle on the dining table.
“Drunken chaos. The police can’t work out what pissed up people have been doing, because it’s always so mental. They don’t try as hard to figure everything out. I saw something about it on Channel Five. Come on, we just need to get the weapon. Where is it?”
“It’s upstairs, in the bedroom, I think. I don’t remember putting it down.” Rachel was trembling, and her teeth were chattering.
“Come on, listen right, we need to get the story straight right. You’ve come here, a few minutes ago, then seen them two lay there, then you’ve run over to the house, and fetched me, and then we’ve burst in here. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So touch the banister and door frames and that, you don’t need to worry about leaving prints.”
“Right.”
“Listen to me. I know you’ve had a shock, but concentrate. You need to know this shit love, so concentrate really hard. It’s five to one now. You came here five minutes ago, it was about ten to one. Yeah?”
“Ten to one, right, Mick, I’ve got it.”
“Right, show me where you dumped the bodies.” Mick was smiling, trying to make light of the situation, but the joke missed by a mile and Rachel just walked past Mick.
“This way.” She started walking up the stairs. She was walking very slowly, almost creeping up the stairs when they heard a noise.
Rachel froze. Mick was following just behind her and he heard it too. It sounded like a toilet seat dropping shut.
“Shit.” Said Mick. “I thought you said they were dead.”
“They are.”
“Well who the fuck is in the loo?”
As the couple stood there trembling, staring at each other, mouths hanging open and wondering what was happening, the toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened right before them.
Chapter 18
“There’s something going on over the road you know,” said Tania to Kev, as she stood in the dark at her bedroom window. Kev was in bed, trying to get to sleep.
“Shud up will yoh?” he said, slurring slightly.
“I don’t know what’s happening, but there’s something very fucking weird going on between them lot. I bet they’re swingers.”
This comment caught Kev’s attention. “Eh? Who are you on about?” he asked.
“Them over there, that Graham and Suzanne. Mick and Rachel are over there now, all the lights are on, it’s nearly one in the morning!”
“Doesn’t mean they’re swinging, does it? God, you’re a proper shit-stirrer you.”
“They’ve just gone there now. And I seen Rachel coming out of there about half an hour ago, looking all upset.”
“You’re puddled you love. Is that all you do, watch what everyone else is up to? You need to stop being such a nosey bitch!” said Kev, somewhat disappointed that the swinging theory had been such a short lived and poorly researched suggestion.
“Well, if I can get some shit on them, I won’t have to keep worrying all the time that we’re going to get booted out, will I? So you just carry on doing what you always do Kev, fuck all.” Tania was raising her voice slightly and had to remind herself that the window was open, and that she was supposed to be spying on what was going on over the road.
“Like I’ve said, you’re a proper loon Tan, you need sectioning. Now shut your big wobbly face and let me go to sleep.”
Tania ignored him. She stood and watched for a while longer, but there was nothing happening. Kev was snoring blissfully when she finally gave up waiting to see what time Mick and Rachel were going to leave the house. Tania got into bed beside her husband.
“I hope you die in your sleep you big fat ugly bastard. A brain haemorrhage would be ideal.” She lay down and turned her back on him. Tania had gone past being tired now, she was wide awake, her head buzzing with thoughts that never normally troubled her during the day. Kev’s snoring and farting was stressing her out further, and after fifteen minutes of tossing and turning, trying to get comfy, and trying her best to feel as tired as she had done when she’d come upstairs in the first place, she gave up.
Tania got out of bed, grabbed her dressing gown off the drawers and put it on. She checked that her cigarettes were in the dressing gown pocket, kicked on her slippers and headed downstairs, undecided whether to make a cup of tea or pour a glass of wine. By the time she’d got downstairs, and saw that Kev had finished her wine, she decided to have a cup of tea instead.
“Drinks all his fucking cans then has to finish my bastard wine. God, I fucking hate that man.” She filled the kettle. Tears began to well up in her eyes, as she realised just how miserable she was. This move to a completely new area was supposed to be a fresh start. Wipe the slate clean. A new beginning. Instead, it had just been a load of aggro, right from the very first night.
Tania made her cup of tea and tried to stop feeling sorry for herself. She remembered that she’d been noseying on the neighbours over the road, and decided to go and have another look while she had her fag. She went outside with her brew and lit her cigarette. All the lights at the weirdo’s house were still on.
“It’s lit up like Blackpool bleeding illuminations!” said Tania under her breath as she watched the house. She was still really intrigued as to why Mick and Rachel were over there. She couldn’t believe that they’d find anything in common with that nowty old dickhead and his bimbo, fake-as-fuck wife. She still thought it plausible that they were all swingers. Why else would a pretty young woman be shacked up with a sweaty, fat old man like that if they weren’t a bit kinky, she thought as she stood and sipped her cup of tea and smoked the cigarette.
It was a still, calm night, and a lovely evening to be outdoors. Tania glanced at her watch, it was getting on for three o’clock in the morning, and it would be starting to get light soon, she thought. Her attention had been averted from her miserable marriage and the disastrous new start on Haughton Park by the goings-on across the road. She knew that she shouldn’t, but she decided to go across the road and try and see what was going on.
If they were swinging, she wanted to get a photo of them at it, on her phone.
Tania went into her house, put her cup in the kitchen, grabbed her phone off the side where it was charging, and then swapped her slippers for her trainers. Her heart beat was racing, she felt quite excited by the prospect of sneaking across the road and spying on the neighbours. It was easily justified in her mind, they’d tried to get her family kicked out on the very first night.
“Fuck ‘em.” She said, as she opened her front door, stepped out into the street and closed her door quietly. She crept as silently as she could, her phone was in her hand, already set on camera mode.
Tania couldn’t see anything through the windows at the front, there was nobody about. She walked silently around the side, through the gate that was wide open, deciding that if she was caught, she’d just say she was looking for her cat. As she stepped closer to the back of the house, she could hear crying, and arguing. Her adrenaline was going full pelt now, and she was getting quite a thrill from this unexpected adventure in the dead of the night. The lights at the back of the house were all off, and Tania was struggling to see exactly what was going on inside.
She was crouching down by the back door to the property, which was open slightly. She stayed there and listened. Watching through the gap at the back door, she could see three people carrying something quite big. They were struggling to get it around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. In the dim light, it looked like a big roll of carpet. Or was it a mattress? They were shouting at each other, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying, or even who the three people were. Her heart was beating rapidly, high up in her chest, and her palms were sweating. She grabbed the phone and held it up at the glass. It was shaking quite badly in her hands. There didn’t seem to be much of a picture on the screen, she thought. She pressed the red button on the screen. She had no idea that the phone would do a big bright flash that lit up the whole kitchen, startling the three scared, angry looking faces that were holding the object.
Neighbours From Hell : DCI Miller 2: The gripping Manchester thriller with a killer twist Page 13