The Suspects

by Katharine Johnson

  Zak looked as if he was about to make a comment, but she stopped him with a look.

  “The radio was playing Only You by the Flying Bloody Pickets when the doorbell went. I opened it. She was standing there staring at me. A girl I’d never seen before. I kept thinking she looked a little bit familiar, but I couldn’t think how I knew her. Anyway, I thought she must be a friend of my sister.

  She just said, “Is my dad there?”

  “I said no, it was only us. But then my dad came out, pushed past me and marched her away. I could hear them arguing down the road. She called him Dad too.”

  “He had a secret love child?” asked Xanthe.

  Imogen gave a short laugh. “He had a whole secret family. They believed just like we did that his work took him away for a week here and a week there.

  “My mum came out and stood in the street watching them disappear down the road. I suppose she must have had her suspicions, and this was the final confirmation. She went to pieces. I followed them to the girl’s home. It was only a few roads away and a carbon copy of ours – except they had a beagle instead of two Labradors. They even had the same car. I thought honestly, why bother?

  “But in that moment everything we had became worthless.”

  “You never told us,” said Xanthe.

  Imogen waved her arm. “I’m over it. I learned from it not to judge my worth by other people. I’d never put myself in that position of depending on someone else for my survival. Dad thought Mum wouldn’t throw him out because she had us and no income. She was his secretary, you see, so she’d have to lose her job as well as him.

  “But she did anyway. And in the end, although the first year was hell, I think it’s made us stronger. My sisters and my mum and I are always there for each other. We thought we needed him to complete everything, but it turned out we didn’t. It was a struggle for my mum to find a job, but she did it. And I know from watching her that I can too.

  “I didn’t see my dad for three years, but he suddenly popped up again when I was a student, wanting to be friends. He tries to make it up to me by buying me stuff – so you see I’m not quite as privileged as you seem to think. And you lot are holding up my life.”

  She left the room in disgust. Rick followed her, giving us a parting glare.

  “Wasn’t expecting that,” said Zak at last.

  But it was obvious the matter of Rick joining us in the house wasn’t over. Neither were our money worries going to go away.

  “Perhaps I should join my sister in the convent,” said Xanthe, throwing her head back against the sofa.

  I laughed at that. “Sorry but I can’t see you as a nun.”

  She grinned. “It would take a bit of getting used to but at least I wouldn’t starve.”

  “And me?” I couldn’t help asking.

  She touched my arm. “You’ll find something. You don’t need to worry, Em.”

  If only that were true. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing else, I could do if I moved away. Besides, I was increasingly beginning to suspect another problem was about to present itself.

  But oddly enough the next monthly payment went through without any nasty letters and so did the next. Xanthe had reduced her diet to one tin of soup and a couple of apples a day but insisted on paying her share of the bills. I suspected Stuart was still helping her out even though he said he wasn’t. After all, it was in all of our interests to keep the house with its secret inside it.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was a Thursday night and we had half an eye on the television during a game of Scruples. Imogen had drawn a question along the lines of if you saw your best friend’s partner cheating on them would you tell them, and the debate was getting quite heated. And suddenly there was Bob’s face on the screen, staring right out at us.

  You could almost feel the air being sucked out of the room. My heart crashed against my ribs. Xanthe’s arm jerked involuntarily and her drink spilled over the board.

  “Watch out, look what you’re doing!” said Imogen.

  “Ssshhh!”

  “Don’t shush me.”

  It was a holiday snap – some boys backpacking in the Greek Islands. The face could only have only been on the screen for seconds, but it seemed like forever. It must have been taken a few years before our New Year’s Eve party. He was a bit fuller in the face and his hair was longer. He was wearing a black t-shirt with tour dates, holding a can of something and standing in front of a taverna. You couldn’t see his crooked teeth because he was smiling with his mouth shut. His expression was heart breaking – so happy, so unaware. He must have thought he had a whole life ahead of him. But how in the world had the police identified him?

  Imogen crunched her crisps throughout the report. I wanted to grab them off her, but I took the remote instead and turned up the sound, ignoring a glare from Stuart.

  “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with your ears?” said Imogen between crunches. “It’s like an old people’s home in here.”

  They showed a reconstruction. Someone who looked a bit like Bob was shown working behind a bar in Leeds. An interview with his mother cut in, saying what a lovely son he’d been, and the ex-girlfriend talked about how he’d been through a rough time when his parents divorced but he seemed to have got over it. She got tearful, recounting how they’d split up a few months before he disappeared. He’d lost his way, got into drugs and hooked up with some bad people. His name was Oskar Bramley. He was twenty-four.

  Xanthe gave a whimper. Stuart stiffened. Imogen looked at her strangely, then went back to crunching her crisps.

  There was no mention of getting a train to Bristol or any connection with Stuart’s car. The police were concentrating their investigation on Cornwall and Leeds. Perhaps we’d be all right after all.

  But the problem now was that we had details. Bob now had a real name, an age. Parents, a brother. An ex-girlfriend. He was a human being.

  “I think I might know him.” Imogen was pointing her crisp packet at the screen.

  I felt something die inside me. I caught Xanthe’s eye. She made a play of looking out of the window before asking, “How?”

  Imogen was frowning. “Don’t know. He just looks a bit familiar. I feel like I know him from somewhere. I wonder if Rick’s watching this. He might know who he is.”

  Eyes flicked round the room. We were all thinking the same thing – hoping to God Rick had found something better to do that evening than sit around watching Crimewatch. The last thing we needed was a lawyer poking his nose in, especially one whose father was a High Court judge and who’d made it pretty clear he didn’t like us and would prefer to have us out of the house altogether.

  My stomach squeezed so hard I thought I might be sick. How long would it take her to recall the party and the man who’d been looking for Fitz? As wrapped up in each other as Rick and Imogen had been, there was every chance he’d come up to them and asked them the same question.

  “Does he look familiar to you?” she asked, looking round.

  We all shrugged.

  “He looks like lots of people,” said Zak after a while.

  “Hmm.” She was still staring at the screen, running through the different ways she might have come across him. “I wonder if he went to my university.”

  We tried to deflect her by talking about all the people we barely knew at university. It had surprised me on the day of our graduation photograph to see a number of students I hadn’t known existed who must have been holed up in their rooms for the three years.

  “I never spoke to the chap who lived next door to me,” said Stuart. “I only knew he was there because he’d play that dreadful Jennifer Rush song over and over again. I’d thump on the wall and he’d turn it down but twenty minutes later he’d start again.”

  “There’s something about that guy though,” Imogen said, tossing the crisp packet into the bin.

  “She knows,” said Xanthe after Imogen had gone.

  I wasn’t so sure. “If she d
oes why doesn’t she come out and say so?”

  “She’s testing us, waiting for us to say something.”

  “Unless,” said Zak, “she’s the one with something to hide and she’s testing to see what we know. Perhaps the reason she and Rick are so keen for us to take over the house is that they want the chance to get away without having to put the house up for sale. What if one of them killed Bob?”

  I laughed. Zak didn’t.

  “What, you’re serious?”

  “Think about it. Imogen wasn’t there when we found the body but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it. She’s like Macavity the cat, isn’t she? Never at the scene of the crime.”

  “Look, I know you don’t like Imogen but…”

  “I’m not that petty, it’s more than that – there’s something about her. She’s so cold, it’s unnatural. I still think she’s capable of something very bad. I can’t stand living here with her, and if Rick’s going to be here on a semi-permanent basis I plan to spend as little time here as I can.”

  It sank in that of course he’d be able to move in with Chiara. His living costs would be halved, and he’d be away from this mess. But where did that leave the rest of us?

  “It’s all right for you,” I couldn’t help saying. “Some of us don’t have a choice. I can hardly afford the mortgage for my share, let alone the rent on somewhere else.”

  He looked apologetic. “Something will turn up.”

  But that was just it – I wasn’t sure that it would. I began to think about swallowing my pride and going back home to Scotland and camping out in my old bedroom again until this nightmare was over. My parents would be appalled at the mess I’d made of my life, but I didn’t think they’d turn me away. There had to be an end to this, had to be some way to feel safe again.

  March

  In March we went to a fair on the Downs. It was the best evening I’d had in ages. We walked up there after work as it was starting to get dark. The barrel organ music, the bright, gilded paintwork and the smell of hot dogs and candyfloss filled me with nostalgic excitement. We’d proved ourselves rotten shots with a rifle, laughed ourselves silly in the ghost train and had a go on several rides. But seeing the sign in front of the gravity ride, I hesitated.

  Zak turned back to me with an incredulous smile. “What’s up? Are you chicken?”

  “No, I’m…”

  “What?”

  He looked so lovely I almost didn’t want to say because I knew it would bring everything crashing down for him. But in the end, he guessed anyway.

  “Oh shit.” He brought his hand up to his face.

  The music, the colours, the laughter, everything seemed to freeze.

  “And I’m afraid it’s...”

  He was nodding. “Yes, I got that.” He was quiet for a really long time. Then he just said, “Wow.”

  At least he didn’t say the usual insulting things men are supposed to say on these occasions like “Are you sure?” or worse “Are you sure it’s mine?” He just said, “Chiara’s going to kill me” which was probably close to the truth although under the circumstances not a good choice of words.

  “Sorry.”

  Xanthe called to us from the queue but he waved at the others to go on ahead.

  “No, don’t be daft – it’s as much my fault as yours. But shit.”

  “To be fair, it happened before you met Chiara.”

  He leant back against a tree. “No, I know – it’s just, she’s bloody intuitive and well she’s quite insecure.”

  “Is she? She doesn’t seem it.” I couldn’t imagine her having anything to feel insecure about.

  “About you.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, us – sharing the house. She thinks we spend too much time with each other as it is.”

  I smiled at the irony and he shook his head and said, “Yeh, I know.”

  After a while he said “Wow” again and then regaining control he said, “How long have you known about this?”

  “I wasn’t sure for a while. I’ve never been very regular, and I had my mind on other things. Then I thought it might just be stress that was sending things haywire. But I know now. I’ve taken a test.”

  He frowned. “A home test? They’re not that accurate though, are they?”

  I couldn’t blame him for clutching at straws but I had to break it to him that the latest ones were highly accurate. Besides there was the sickness and the hardness I felt at the pit of my stomach that for a while I’d told myself was nerves. There was no doubt.

  “It doesn’t show.”

  I hadn’t been eating much and the weight gain had been easy to conceal under a loose cardigan. But with the weather getting warmer it would soon become more obvious.

  He was obviously working up to ask something but didn’t know how. At last he came out with,

  “And what do you want to do about it?”

  I watched a family with two small children fighting over a shared candyfloss and it all seemed so surreal. “I don’t know.”

  “Only the thing is I think you’re going to need to make up your mind pretty quickly, aren’t you? It’s been a few weeks now and, I mean, if you decided to have an abortion I think there are different types and an earlier one is a bit less traumatic.”

  I closed my eyes. “I suppose so. I know people have them every day, but I -”

  I’d been reading up about it and it seemed there were two types of termination, one that could be performed in the first few months and a surgical option done later. The thought of either filled me with revulsion and guilt.

  He put his arm round my shoulders and I wished he wouldn’t because at that moment the warmth and familiarity were unbearable. It wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for. I could hear his heart thumping against me.

  But he lifted my face up gently. “Look, if you don’t want to do it, don’t. Whatever you want to do, you get my support, okay? You don’t have to do this on your own.”

  “No, it’s fine. You don’t have to be involved either way. I just thought you had a right to know.”

  He frowned. “I am involved though, aren’t I? Either way.”

  He managed a brave smile, but I could tell he was terrified. A baby certainly wouldn’t fit with his free-spirit lifestyle. Perhaps he felt a little bit proud too that he’d proved he’d be capable of making it happen when the right time came along but he was wise enough not to say that. I felt tears pricking the back of my eyes and blinked them away.

  He rubbed his free hand over his face and I knew he was thinking about Chiara, how he’d have to tell her and how she’d react to knowing he’d fathered my baby. He’d tell her of course it was a moment of madness, a drunken grope that went too far after one of our silly evenings and that it hadn’t meant a thing. After all he could hardly explain the real circumstances – but even so it hurt.

  Not that it was any of Chiara’s business – it had happened well before she was on the scene. But it would make things awkward in the house with her questioning if there really had been more to it and whether any of that feeling still lingered, especially now Zak and I had a shared interest.

  She’d be even more suspicious of him sharing the house with me and he wouldn’t be able to set her mind at rest by telling her the truth – that I was safely out of temptation’s way since I was as much a reminder of death as a horned owl.

  But I didn’t think she’d take kindly to him giving me emotional support when I needed it or to an ongoing involvement in our baby’s life.

  Our baby. It sounded so strange. Me and Zak who barely even spoke to each other these days except to discuss forensics. What sort of life could we offer a child? The likelihood was we’d both end up Inside, I’d be giving birth in chains and the child seized before I’d even had a chance to hold him or her and put into care – and from Xanthe’s stories we all knew what that meant: rejections from a string of would-be foster parents, violence, abuse…

  How could it be right to give anyone t
hat start in life? And would the child ever want to find me when they were older if they knew what I’d been in prison for? I’d explain that it was a miscarriage of justice but surely most criminals say that?

  It was a stark choice. Everything in my religious upbringing screamed at me an abortion was wrong. And I balked at the idea of getting rid of a healthy baby, of doing something so violent to something so innocent and dependent, especially after the circumstances of the conception.

  That I was even considering it made me think seriously about whether I was developing a callous attitude to life – becoming more and more like the person who’d killed Bob. Or Oskar as we now had to think of him.

  And yet what chance would I have to move on from this ghastly mess if I had the baby? I hadn’t been at the company long enough to be entitled to maternity leave and I couldn’t pay the mortgage if I didn’t have a job, which could mean we’d all lose the house.

  And then there were other, bigger questions. Was I mature enough to bring up a child? My track record with keeping plants alive was woeful. And neither of us had any money and I knew Stuart would go ballistic to find there was yet another complication in the way of meeting the mortgage payments.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to expect much involvement from Zak. He was sincere in what he said, and I could see him being a doting dad for a few weeks or even months but what if things got serious with Chiara? She wasn’t going to want him fussing over a child he’d fathered with someone else.

  And yet at the same time I couldn’t help a little fantasy of me and a tiny person united against the world. About all of us housemates sharing the childcare so that people on the outside didn’t even know whose child it was. And I couldn’t stop thinking that it would be the one good thing that had come out of that whole awful experience – that in some way, however hard it was, it would be a way of atoning for what we’d done.

  I began to think about names like Hope or Phoenix. But then I had a horrible vision of Zak picking up the baby’s lifeless body and sticking it out on the street just like he’d done with Rufus and it all felt horribly wrong and irresponsible.