by June Taylor
Karin flinched as Mel ran her knife under the gap, slitting the envelope across the top and making a jagged tear. Mel checked again to see whether Karin wished to take over, but she didn’t, so Mel proceeded to remove the note, handling it with her fingertips like it was contaminated.
‘What does it say?’ asked Karin, impatient all of a sudden. She must have seen that Mel’s fingers were trembling.
‘Shit,’ said Mel.
Karin snatched it from her and read it for herself.
I KNOW YOU DID IT
PAY £ 950,000
CALL: 07733 737598
YOU HAVE 48 HOURS
‘When did this come? What day? What day, Mel?’
‘Okay, okay, just let me think. Might have been Friday. Thursday was the art thing, wasn’t it? So yes, Friday. It was there when I got in from work, sitting on the doormat. No stamp on it this time. I didn’t know whether to call you, but you’ve got such a lot going on at the moment, so I just stuffed it under that lot – partly so it wouldn’t terrify the life out of me either. Maybe I should have opened it. But what does it mean? What did you do?’
‘She’s still playing games. I don’t believe it.’
‘This is freaking me out, Karin. It’s got to stop.’
‘You think I don’t want that too?’
Karin began rubbing her forehead.
‘Should I call that number, see what happens?’
Mel did it anyway, without giving Karin time to answer. It was a distorted voice recording.
‘What’s it saying?’ asked Karin.
‘It gives payment details. Bank account. A name I don’t recognize. This is serious shit.’
Karin considered it for a moment.
‘Has anyone been to the house while I’ve been staying over at Aaron’s? Think, Mel. Think. Anyone at all.’
‘I’m trying to!’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’ Mel gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Well Aaron, obviously. Doing the fence.’
Karin appeared to be rubbing away a thought she didn’t want to be having. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Not that I know of. I mean Will knows where we live obviously. He could still be out there. As well as Louie. I can’t take much more of this. It’s time to get the police involved.’
‘No!’
‘We have to.’
Karin screwed up her face, trying to make it go away.
‘Why not? Stop protecting her, or whatever it is you’re doing. Pay up or call the bloody police, Karin. This is killing me! Wait, what are you doing?’
Karin was ripping up the note. ‘She’ll get tired of her stupid games soon enough.’
A heavy pounding on the front door gave them both a start. They looked at one another.
‘You expecting anyone?’ asked Mel.
Karin shook her head, gathering up the shreds of paper, sliding them back into the envelope which she shoved into her pocket, tucking it down making sure it wasn’t visible.
‘Do you think it could be Louie?’ whispered Mel, following behind Karin who was tiptoeing into the hallway. ‘Or maybe it’s Will?’
The letterbox pushed slowly inwards and Karin flattened Mel against the wall. They were motionless, not daring to breathe. Then the letterbox snapped shut, the spring too quick to allow anyone to peer in.
‘I don’t know,’ said Karin, panting as if she had run a marathon in those last few seconds, her hand pressing against her heart.
The banging grew more insistent.
‘What if it is Louie?’ said Mel. ‘What if she smashes the door in?’
‘She won’t.’
Karin was edging along the wall, getting closer to the door. More movement outside meant they could now see a dark outline through the stained glass.
‘Bloody hell, Karin. I think it could be the police.’
Karin tried to make a dash for it, but Mel caught her in time, pulling her back.
‘Where are you going? We don’t even know what this is regarding yet.’
‘Please, Mel. Please don’t say anything about the notes. Or Louie. I promise I will sort this.’ She was forcing her frown lines together so hard it formed a deep gash in her forehead. ‘I thought I already had sorted it.’
‘Just keep your cool. Let’s see what they want first.’
Mel moved towards the front door, holding onto Karin’s arm so she couldn’t shoot off. Letting go of it slowly, with her other hand on the latch, she turned to Karin and said: ‘Ready?’
Karin nodded, and Mel opened the door.
‘Ms Rhodes?’
The police officer flashed up her ID, introducing first herself, followed by her male colleague.
‘No, I’m Melanie. This is Miss Rhodes.’
Karin looked like she was about to crumple. She gave them a nod that instantly made her look both guilty and terrified. She really needed to pull herself together.
‘May we come in?’ asked the police officer, already halfway over the threshold.
32
Karin
The female officer took a seat in their kitchen. It was another surreal scene: notebook resting on the table, open and eager. The sight of it made Karin think of her mother’s letters upstairs and she wished she had already destroyed them. She still hadn’t, because she had decided to read them all again first.
What if they searched her room and found them? But then why would they do that? On what grounds? Unless someone had said something. Like Louie. Was she really so set on revenge? Even now, when she had all her money? Had she been to the police and turned Karin in anyway? It seemed so out of character, but then so were a lot of things Louie had done recently.
The only other person who knew what Karin had done was Will.
It couldn’t be Will. He wouldn’t betray her. Would he?
Or was it her mother? Was she having second thoughts about the money and this was her way of getting it back? Get justice at the same time. She must feel like it was long overdue. Karin’s mind wouldn’t stop galloping. She was sweating and chewing her nails.
Thankfully Mel was much calmer. She offered the two officers some tea, which they both declined. However the female officer told her to make one for Karin as she had become rather pale. The male officer stood by the window looking out at the garden, generally being observant.
Karin was berating herself now for cancelling on Aaron. The thought of the two of them at the cinema was far preferable to this. Her tiredness hadn’t been the only reason she didn’t want to see him tonight though. She had been avoiding him as much as possible since transferring the money over to Louie on Friday. Although she had spent the last few nights at his place, she used the excuse of working long hours for going straight to bed after dinner. Aaron hadn’t brought up the subject of money again. Maybe he was giving her a cooling off period about buying one of his properties. But Karin knew it would come up again at some point, especially as her initial enthusiasm had been so great.
Karin continued to turn out all sorts of other possibilities as to why there were two police officers sitting in their kitchen. Was it the bank transfer? Had the bank found some irregularity in the payment to Louie?
But it would always come back to her mother. Any moment now they would start firing questions at her: Did you kill your stepfather, Ms Rhodes? Did you accuse him? Did you or did you not kick the steps from under his feet, making his legs swing and his neck snap? Did you intend to kill your stepfather when you kicked the steps away? I’m afraid it cannot be both, Ms Rhodes. It’s either a yes or a no. So which is it?
‘Yes.’
‘Miss Rhodes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m afraid we found Will Langham’s body in the River Aire this afternoon.’
‘What?’
‘Did you hear me, Miss Rhodes?’
Karin eyed the police officer but her words were not registering. They were floating around the kitchen in a meaningless dance, random letters bouncing off the walls and popping like
bubbles mid-air. Her survival instinct suddenly kicked in, telling her to say something at least. All she could manage was: ‘Yes.’
‘He was living here on the Room for a Night scheme, I understand. Is that right? Miss Rhodes?’
Karin wanted to give in to the sensation that was making her tilt heavily to one side. She may well have passed out, if she hadn’t been sitting down. ‘Erm. That’s right,’ she said, forcing herself to sit upright. ‘And then we let him stay on a bit longer, as a friend.’ She looked to Mel for back up, relieved to see that Mel was nodding.
‘I’m sorry. It must be a terrible shock,’ said the officer.
Mel handed Karin some kitchen roll in anticipation that she was going to need it. But tears were a long way off yet. Karin screwed the kitchen roll into a ball and put it to one side, afterwards thinking this might have seemed like a peculiar thing to do. She wrapped her fingers tightly around her wrist, taking some deep breaths. Until, at last, she felt able to say something that might make some sense. ‘We’ve been working on a charitable housing project on Ashby Road,’ she began. ‘And Will – Will is, was, supposed to be moving in there next weekend. He’d been working so hard on it too, but then suddenly said he’d changed his mind and would find it difficult to fit in. He doesn’t have a mobile phone so it’s not easy to keep tabs on him. I just don’t—’
Mel placed her hand on Karin’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. Tighter than it should have been, as a kind of warning. Karin appreciated the reminder. Her stomach was cramping as she spoke.
‘Don’t what, Miss Rhodes?’
‘I just can’t understand it.’
‘So when did you last see him?’
‘Erm.’
Karin had a flashback of saying goodbye to him on Woodhouse Ridge last Tuesday, late afternoon. She was about to say this. That she had watched him heading into town with his rucksack laden down with hefty books, his sleeping bag dangling off the end, a roll of £20 notes stuffed into his jeans pocket and the rainbow keyring she had given him too.
For friendship.
Some friend.
Suddenly Mel stepped in because Karin wasn’t answering. ‘Tuesday morning, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘You haven’t seen him since then, have you, Karin? I know I haven’t.’
Karin shook her head. She wasn’t sure what she was meant to say.
‘He had his own key though, I take it?’ asked the officer.
Mel carried on answering. ‘Yes. But he left it behind, I suppose, when he left on Tuesday morning. It was out in the hall, I do remember seeing it now.’ Mel paused, waiting for Karin to verify, but when she didn’t she carried on. ‘He was a lovely guy, never any trouble. Interesting, too. Read a lot of books, clever books. He kept himself to himself pretty much. Do you think it was an accident?’
Karin avoided Mel, absently tearing the piece of kitchen roll into tiny shreds, becoming aware of how insane that must seem. Another silence had descended. Karin stared down at the mess of torn paper on the table in front of her then looked up at the police officer. Wanting, not wanting, to hear the answer to Mel’s question.
‘Well we have witnesses who say they saw him walking along the river in the centre of Leeds in a very inebriated state on Thursday night.’
‘Thursday night?’ Karin instantly felt the heat from having repeated that, because in so doing she made it seem significant. Which it was. They were very near to the river on Thursday night. She could have saved him. If only she hadn’t been such a coward.
‘That’s right. Around eleven thirty. It’s likely he drowned either later that night or possibly after, but his body wasn’t spotted until this afternoon, due to the rucksack he was carrying on his back weighing it down. I’m sorry, Miss Rhodes. Were you close?’
The officer paused for a moment then tried again. ‘You were a friend of Will’s, you said.’
Karin shifted about in her chair. ‘Yes. Yes, we were good friends. I used to be homeless too, you see.’
‘And yet you didn’t report him missing?’
‘Well no. Technically he wasn’t. I-I saw him out in the hallway on Tuesday.’ She paused because this was her moment to correct Mel and say that she had in fact seen him in the afternoon as well, on the Ridge. But that wasn’t what she heard herself say. ‘Morning. Tuesday morning.’
She didn’t need to look at Mel, could just feel the heat coming off her. Karin had to continue with this now. ‘That’s when I tried to talk him round,’ she went on. ‘But Will’s a determined guy. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop him, his mind was set on leaving. Well he’s very much his own man. I had hoped he would change his mind, turn up for work at some point. I’ve kept on hoping that, but he hasn’t. He erm – he told me to give his room to someone else. Which we haven’t done, obviously. I mean everyone would welcome him back with open arms.’ Her voice tailed off, clogged with tears.
‘And you didn’t try to find him yourself, Miss Rhodes?’
Karin shook her head.
‘Might you have known where to look, if you had wanted to? You said you lived on the streets, together?’
‘Leeds is a pretty massive city,’ said Mel. She handed Karin another sheet of kitchen roll when she saw Karin’s tears were flowing. Then Mel took it upon herself to pick up where Karin had left off.
Once again, Karin was grateful for the rescue.
‘He’d come and go all the time,’ she heard Mel explain. ‘So I mean it wasn’t like he led a regular life or anything, even when he was staying here. And he didn’t have a mobile phone, as Karin mentioned, so we could never get hold of him to check where he was. Must have had his troubles, I suppose. Living on the streets can’t be easy, can it? Especially when you’re deaf.’
‘Did you know he had a drink problem?’
Karin hesitated. She ought to have known they would ask that question and could have prepared something.
‘Will was known to us, Miss Rhodes. We were aware he was an alcoholic.’
‘He never drank while he was here,’ said Karin. ‘I did know about his drink problem, yes. When we lived on the streets we’d share a bottle of cheap cider or whisky just to keep warm.’
The officer turned to Mel to see if she had anything to add. Mel shrugged. ‘So you think he got drunk, stumbled into the river and drowned?’
‘The post-mortem will tell us more. But if you think of anything else, either of you, which might be relevant, then please get in touch. Anything at all. This is my contact. So, would it be possible to take a look at his room?’
Karin nodded, letting out a sigh of relief when Mel offered to show them. They were back down again in no time, as there wasn’t really anything to see. Will had packed up his belongings and the room was as if he had never been in it at all.
Karin heard them out in the hallway, Mel opening the front door saying goodbye. The sound of the door closing again sent a shockwave through her. Like it was the door to her prison cell. Heavy and echoey.
What had she just done? She knew so many things about Will. Relevant things. She knew his friends; his enemies out there on the streets, because they were her enemies too; she knew his haunts, his bedroom down on the towpath. The extent of her betrayal began to weigh heavily and she had no idea why she had failed to tell them that she had said goodbye to him on Woodhouse Ridge. That she had last seen him on Tuesday afternoon. Not morning. Why didn’t she correct Mel? And why hadn’t she told them that Will had seemed afraid, told her to watch her back too?
The worst thing of all was that Will had said she was a good person. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
The news hadn’t properly sunk in yet that he was gone. Even now she still half expected him to come bursting through the back door into the kitchen dressed in his decorating overalls, paint-spattered boots stomping across the floor. Or turn up at Ashby Road, tomorrow or the next day, saying that he had changed his mind. Karin couldn’t bear the finality of it. In Will she had lost one of her closest friends and it broke her hear
t that she never got to save him in the end. Will would never get to live that better life she had always promised him, even when it was at his fingertips. It still didn’t make any sense that he would throw it all away.
What a waste.
Where was the rainbow keyring now? she wondered. At the bottom of the River Aire? Or maybe displayed on a steel trolley in the morgue, along with his clothing and other belongings from his rucksack. Books. Cheap bottles of whisky. She shuddered at the thought of Will’s naked body, white and bloated, laid out on the slab ready for the pathologist’s knife.
By the time Mel came back into the kitchen, Karin was on her feet. ‘I need to go and tell them I saw Will on the Ridge last Tuesday afternoon,’ she said. ‘Tell them what he said to me. It could be important.’
Mel shook her head.
‘Think about it, Karin.’
‘I have and it’s the right thing to do.’
‘What did that note say? “I know you did it”. Did what, Karin?’
Karin almost choked in her hurry to get an answer out. ‘I didn’t kill him. Not Will.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Why would you kill one of your best friends? But what if someone saw you on Woodhouse Ridge, like you described it to me? The two of you signing at each other, it might have looked like you were angry with him. You told me you had to stop him from walking off and that you found cheap bottles of whisky stuffed into his pockets. To anyone else it might have seemed like you were giving those to him. All I’m saying is, think about it first before you go rushing out there.’
Karin swallowed hard, lowering her body back down into the chair. She could feel her frown deepening, the cramps in her stomach tightening. A bruising headache was not far away.
‘Did you go down to the river after I left you on Thursday night?’ asked Mel. She sat across from her at the table. ‘At least be straight with me on that.’