The Suspects

by Katharine Johnson

  “Look what I found.”

  I was coming up the stairs to the shower when I saw her holding something that made my blood freeze.

  She was standing in the doorway of Xanthe’s room. The backpack in her arms was horribly familiar. The ink stain and the smily face logo jumped out at me. I saw Xanthe at the party jerking her head back to avoid being hit in the face by the same backpack as the man we came to think of as Bob swung round. I heard him ask where Fitz was.

  I could only watch as Imogen opened the bag. I couldn’t say anything. I just kept thinking about her fingerprints that were getting all over it. We drew in a collective breath as we glimpsed the contents. It was an obscene amount of money. I watched in horrified silence as Imogen took out handfuls of notes and laid them out very slowly in piles around the room. This couldn’t be happening.

  “There must be thousands of pounds here,” she murmured.

  The stairs shook as someone bounded up them. Imogen tried to stuff the money back into the bag and slide the backpack under the bed, but she was too late. The next thing, Xanthe was in the doorway.

  Her eyes looked all green and glittery. They darted from the money to Imogen and then to me.

  Imogen held up a stack of notes in each hand. “Where the hell did you get this?”

  I could see the panic in Xanthe’s face, but I was still trying to work out how she could have the backpack and not have mentioned it to us in all this time. “Please,” she said, “please don’t tell anyone. Put it back. Don’t touch it.”

  Imogen ignored her. “Did you steal it?”

  Xanthe seemed to have lost the power of speech.

  “Did someone give it to you? Did you earn it? And if so, how?” Xanthe made a couple of attempts to say something and failed. At last, seeing she wasn’t going to get an answer, Imogen said, “Fine, I’m taking it to the police.”

  She started stuffing the notes back into the bag. Xanthe’s eyes were twice their usual size.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t do that. Put it down.”

  “No?” Imogen looked from one to the other of us. Her expression changed to one of incredulity. “Emily, do you know something about this?”

  I found myself as lost for words as Xanthe. So many questions crowded my head, but I couldn’t ask them in front of Imogen.

  “Why are you defending her? She’s going to get us all into trouble.”

  “Not nearly as much as you’ll get us into if you do this,” I said. “Much, much worse than you can ever imagine.” My voice was wavering. I felt like someone was stamping on my chest.

  Imogen looked disgusted. “Did you have something to do with this?” She looked from me to Xanthe and back again and whispered, “What have you done?”

  She was on the verge of exploding. “For God’s sake you two, just tell me.”

  We couldn’t look at each other. In the end Xanthe mumbled, “It’s not ours.”

  Imogen threw her hands up. “I know it’s not bloody yours. You’re always whinging that you don’t have enough money to pay the bills and suddenly it looks as if you’ve won the pools. So, what is it – a present? A legacy from some long lost relative? A sugar daddy?”

  Xanthe looked at the floor and mumbled, “I found it.”

  Imogen looked so disgusted she didn’t even answer, just waited for a more plausible explanation. A look of recognition crossed her face and she started nodding. “Of course. I get it. It’s his, isn’t it?”

  Xanthe looked at me and said, “Whose?”

  My heart was jabbering. How could Imogen know about Bob? How on earth could she have worked it out? And if she had who else might have?

  She rolled her eyes. “Zak’s. You’re covering for him. He’s been dealing, hasn’t he? I always suspected. Those disappearances, the late-night flits, the weird friends. So, did you just find it, or did you know it was here?”

  I caught Xanthe’s eye. There was a chance we could get away with this. We could leave her thinking Zak was running a drugs business and tell her we’d persuade him to stop if she just backed off. At least it would buy us some time.

  “Stuart’s going to kill Zak for this, you know that?” she said.

  “Why’s that?” Zak’s quiet voice made us all jump. He was standing there in the room behind us. His eyebrows shot up when he saw the money. His expression froze as he recognised the backpack. “Where did you find that?”

  Xanthe was shaking her head, trying to communicate by telepathy that Imogen wasn’t aware of the connection, but he swung back to me. “How the fuck did you get hold of it? And since when has she known?” He nodded his head at Imogen. “I thought we had an agreement not to tell anyone unless we all approved it. We agreed it was too much of a risk.”

  “She doesn’t know,” said Xanthe waving her arms but he wasn’t listening.

  “I’m not doing this. I’m not taking the rap for everyone. I said that at the start.”

  Imogen’s eyes narrowed. “How I know doesn’t really matter does it? It’s what you’ve done that’s important. I can just about believe you’d be stupid enough to do it – but involve the rest of us? Expect us all to keep quiet about it? Put us all at risk? That’s something else.”

  I was trying to signal to Zak to leave it. “I’ll explain later,” I mouthed but I could tell he was furious and frightened. His nostrils were flaring, and his eyes were filled with a strange energy.

  “You think I did it on my own? Then you’re thicker than I thought. How do you think I carried him to the car by myself? And who do you think cleared up the mess?”

  “Eh?”

  I thought I was having a heart attack.

  “Shut up!” screamed Xanthe.

  I saw it pass over his face, the look of confusion and then the horrible realisation that Imogen hadn’t known after all. But she would now.

  “What are you talking about?” Imogen asked slowly.

  “The dog,” I said. “He’s talking about Xanthe’s dog.”

  She looked incredulous. “What’s the dog got to do with this money?”

  Xanthe started crying. I wasn’t sure if she was doing it on purpose or whether the mention of poor Rufus had upset her.

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  Imogen made towards the door. Zak jumped in front of her, and barred her way, gripping her by the elbows.

  “You can’t go to the police. You can’t tell anybody.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that. Get off me.”

  She kneed him in the groin and wriggled free leaving him slouched in the corner. For the first time I saw fear cross her face.

  “What’s this all about?”

  “Please just trust us,” I begged. “If you go to the police you’ll ruin all our lives.”

  “Does Stuart know about it?”

  We nodded. A look of hurt and anger overtook her.

  “I see. So, it’s just me who’s been kept in the dark then. I’ll ask him. I should have known I wouldn’t get any sense out of you lot.”

  She was gone before we could stop her, leaving a silent scream in her wake. Zak sank onto his knees cradling his head. “I thought she knew,” he kept saying. “God, I thought she knew. I’m so sorry.”

  There was no point shouting at him now. The damage was done.

  “What’s the backpack doing here?” I asked Xanthe.

  But before she could answer Stuart’s voice penetrated the air. “House meeting. Now.”

  It was the sort of command that usually resulted in a rude response from Zak but on this occasion, he cleared his throat and said, “Coming.”

  ***

  Down in the kitchen Stuart was standing at the sink looking out of the window, his hands clasped behind his back. I expected him to be in one of his rages where only a tranquiliser dart would have stopped him, but he was frighteningly calm. Turning, he demanded to know how the backpack came into Xanthe’s possession.

  Xanthe slumped into a chair and drew her knees up, pulling her skirt ove
r them like a small child. We all sat around the table, Imogen’s ice blue eyes were filled with confusion and shock.

  “I found it in my room under the bed. I’ve no idea how it got there.”

  “When was this?”

  She shrugged. “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “But we looked,” said Stuart. “We looked everywhere that night. Don’t you see? If someone put it there they did it as a trap.”

  I looked hopefully at Imogen, but she said, “I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked Xanthe.

  She looked desperate. “I didn’t know what to do. I was going to burn it. But then I was fired, and I needed the money.”

  “Have you been spending it?” Stuart asked. “How much have you used?”

  She looked up at the ceiling and then down at her knees. She started picking at a loose thread. “Only small amounts. Nothing that would draw attention. I used some to buy a train ticket to Brighton and some that night we went to the fair on the Downs. I bought some clothes to wear to the trade show in Milan. And I put some in my bank account to pay the mortgage until my money from the DHSS comes in.”

  Zak was staring at her, his face frozen in shock. “You stupid…”

  “I want a list,” said Stuart. “Everything you’ve used it for. The police might be able to trace the notes.”

  “How could they trace them back to Xanthe now she’s already spent them?” I started to ask but he cut across me.

  “We need to think. We need to come up with an explanation as to how that money came into our hands. And to answer your question Emily it depends where she spent the money and how many times she visited the same place.”

  “Can’t we just say we found it after the party?” Xanthe said miserably.

  He laughed. “And kept it? That’s a crime in itself. But do you think the police will accept that and move on? It will lead them straight to the body. It’s one thing to move a body, quite another to move a body and be found in possession of thousands of pounds that belonged to the victim. Because that suggests a motive for murder.”

  Imogen who’d been listening white-faced clasped her hands over her cropped hair. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” She looked terrified. “You killed someone?”

  “No, not that,” I said. After a pause I added, “We didn’t kill him. We only moved him.”

  Her face was screwed up in confusion.

  “Who?”

  Stuart recounted the evening we’d found Bob. Imogen stared around us white-faced and wild-eyed. “This is a wind-up isn’t it?” When she saw that it wasn’t her features screwed up in revulsion and horror. “You treated him with less respect than you’d give a dead animal. Like a piece of rubbish.”

  “Calm down, please, for God’s sake,” said Stuart. “We didn’t want to do it, but we couldn’t risk the police thinking we’d killed him.”

  “But don’t you see?” Her eyes flickered with tension. “What you did made things so much worse.”

  “Not helping,” murmured Zak.

  “And you didn’t tell me? All this time you’ve been keeping it from me. Why the fuck…?”

  “You weren’t here,” I said. “And after, well, we thought it was better for you, not knowing. We wanted to protect you.”

  She was looking at me as if she no longer knew who I was. It had sounded better in my head.

  “Don’t. Don’t ever say that again. You did it to save your own skins. Because you didn’t trust me. I liked you, Emily. I actually thought you were okay but…”

  “The fact is, whether it was the right or wrong decision, it’s the one we made,” said Stuart. “It’s where we are now. And now you know, I’m afraid you’re part of it. For all we know you did it – or Rick did.”

  Imogen was still shaking her head. “No. Not me. I am nothing to do with this. Don’t involve me. I wasn’t even there.”

  But you could see it sinking in. She was involved now whether she wanted to be or not. She’d have a hard job convincing the police we’d acted without her or at least without her knowledge, that she’d lived with us all this time and known nothing about it. And her alibi for the weekend wasn’t much stronger than Zak’s and mine.

  You could see it catching up with her – all the thoughts that had gone through our heads, how even if she wasn’t sent down her job would be on the line and her chance of a perfect family home would be further away than ever.

  She swore she wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Rick or her father. Perhaps I was naïve, but I believed her. In a way it was a relief now that she’d found out. She was a strategist and she was normal, and she was convincing. I began to hope she might have a brilliant idea that could see us through this nightmare.

  But she clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk about strategies just yet.

  “When I first met you in the training room,” she said, “I thought you were all a bit odd. I sat there asking myself if I was ever likely to be friends with you. But I never, not for a moment, thought you’d do something as fucked-up as this.”

  She made a sudden decision, sprang out of her chair and raced for the door. A bolt of fear shot through me. I jumped up too, but Stuart pushed past and threw himself against the door.

  “Get back.”

  Something gleamed in his hand. He’d grabbed the kitchen knife off the worktop.

  “You’re not going to the police, Imogen. We’re not going to let you.”

  She looked round at us, disbelieving. We stared back. We had to make her understand.

  “You’re not going to stop him, are you?” she said weakly.

  As though we’d rehearsed it we shook our heads, never taking our eyes off her face. I’ve often gone back over that moment in my head. I like to think I was convinced Stuart would never have pushed that knife in and that’s why I didn’t intervene. But I have to live with the fact that if he had we’d all share some of the blame.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In some ways it was easier once Imogen knew about Bob. She at least stopped accusing us of being strange and secretive all the time. To tell the truth I think she was scared of all of us. The way she’d looked at me that evening when Stuart was brandishing the knife at her played on my conscience. I replayed it in my head, tried to see it in some different light but it was hard to get away from the fact that we’d all made her feel threatened and she now obviously thought she was living with four psychos instead of four weirdoes.

  Chiara had become more watchful of me too. I tried to make it clear she had no need to be but perhaps that made things worse. She was possessive of Zak, sitting up close to him and holding his hand. She also ruffled his hair quite a lot which I knew he hated, and I sometimes thought he looked a bit hunted when someone told him she was on the phone.

  Once or twice when he laughed at something I said, or we exchanged a look about something I noticed Chiara’s eyes resting on me, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  Finding the backpack with the money inside had added a new slant to the Bob story. We had no idea if the money inside the bag had been brought by Oskar to give Fitz or whether he’d received it from Fitz. We’d been thinking of Oskar as the victim but what if he’d really been the aggressor? I hoped the money was a blackmail payment or perhaps a hitman payout – in which case Oskar wasn’t such an innocent victim after all. Not that it counted as justification for what we did, and it was hardly something we could use to explain our actions without getting us into a load more trouble.

  ***

  June

  By the beginning of June it was impossible to conceal the pregnancy any longer. As predicted Stuart went ballistic when I confirmed it. I think he’d had his suspicions for a while but on a lazy Sunday morning when we were all sitting around in the kitchen drinking coffee, listening to music and reading the papers I took off my jumper without thinking. I saw his eyes fix on my stomach.

  “You know this affects all of us
?” he said. “How are we going to manage when you stop working? You will have to stop, you realise that, don’t you?”

  “Only for a few weeks,” I assured him. “There’s a woman on The Designer who had a baby at Christmas and was back by the middle of January.”

  “Yes, but she probably has a nanny or a house-husband or helpful parents around the corner – or all those things.”

  I told him it was all under control. I’d be off work for such a short time it would only be like taking holiday leave. Zak said he’d take time off after me and we’d sort out childcare and split the cost.

  He shook his head. “You make it sound easy. But babies cry a lot. They keep you up all night. They can’t be left on their own, ever.”

  “We do know what babies are, thanks,” said Zak but he looked a bit green.

  “And what does your girlfriend think about this? You have told her, I assume?”

  Zak looked a bit embarrassed. “I’m working on it.”

  “Well you’d better hurry up.”

  It turned out Stuart was right about the difficulties. When I started researching it, childcare turned out to be horribly expensive and quite hard to arrange. Nurseries had long waiting lists and childminders were very picky about taking newborn babies.

  Xanthe came to the rescue. “I’m great with babies,” she assured us. “And it will fit with working freelance from home.”

  “Are you sure you know how much work it involves?” Zak asked but he got a very sour reply about her making a better job of looking after his child than he had of caring for her dog.

  Stuart still wasn’t happy because the situation would leave three people struggling to pay the spiralling mortgage, but we didn’t have much alternative.

  “I don’t know,” said Zak after she’d left the room. “Are you sure we can trust her?”

  “She’ll be fine,” I said, largely to convince myself. “She’s not as scatty as she seems – not when it’s something important.”