The Neighbour

by Fiona Cummins

  He dug around inside his rucksack until he found what he was looking for. He’d promised his cousin he would bring it with him for her to play with, but the truth was, he’d come to rely on its predictions.

  Although his mum was out of hospital, he couldn’t help but worry about her. But with the countryside speeding past, the exuberant sounds of his family and the knowledge that his aunt was on her way to look after his mother, the boy felt himself begin to relax.

  He gave the Magic 8 Ball an enthusiastic shake.

  Is everything going to be OK now?

  He crossed his fingers, but when he saw its answer, his heart crashed against his ribs.

  My reply is no.

  108

  Wednesday, 29 August 2018

  Sutton Road Crematorium and Cemetery – 2.37 p.m.

  Clots of friends and family dressed in black moved across the cemetery like scattered fragments of darkness.

  For appearance’s sake, Wildeve Stanton stared at the messages tucked into the carpet of flowers until most of the mourners had left, but she did not read them. That was for another time. Instead, she was counting her breaths.

  A breath in. One. A breath out. Two. A breath in. Three. A breath out. Four.

  A rock to cling to in a sea of desperation.

  Grief was a complex emotion. Possible to laugh, she had discovered, to go to work, to eat at the same time as waves crashed against her, threatening to dash her against the cliffs and overwhelm her.

  When Wildeve was certain that everyone had left for the pub down the road, she glanced at the order of service. A black and white image of her husband. The dates of his birth and death, stark and irrefutable.

  ‘I’m sorry this had to happen to you.’ She traced her finger across his photograph. ‘To us.’

  Now that Adam’s killer had been caught, she had agreed with Roger Sampson to take some leave from work. An old friend owned a lighthouse on Skye and she would spend a couple of weeks there, walking amongst the salt marshes and the sedge.

  Her mobile phone vibrated in her pocket.

  Ahead of her, she could see Simon and Emily Quick, Mac and his wife Peggy, Adam’s university friends, Sampson, even DC French. She raised a hand to show them she was coming. Her phone vibrated again.

  She might have ignored it. Most widows saying goodbye to their husbands would have done so. But it occurred to Wildeve that everyone she knew was at the funeral so it was either extremely important or not important at all. Either way, she would decide.

  The number was familiar, a vague memory tugged at her.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Sergeant Stanton? It’s Mrs Hardcastle. I’m so sorry it’s taken me a while to call you back, but it’s the summer holidays and I’ve been in France. Today’s the first time I’ve been back in school to pick up messages.’

  It took a moment to register. Mrs Hardcastle. Headteacher of Croft Lane County Primary School. She considered explaining about her husband’s funeral and the death of Cooper Clifton, but instead she said, ‘Thank you for calling me back.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ said Mrs Hardcastle. ‘Now, you were asking about the admission records for Adam Stanton, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wildeve, although she was already tuning out because it no longer mattered.

  The headteacher lowered her voice. ‘Strictly speaking, under data protection rules, we’re not supposed to hold any such records.’

  ‘I won’t tell if you won’t,’ said Wildeve.

  ‘In which case,’ said Mrs Hardcastle, sounding relieved, ‘we do appear to have some old files that I’ve found in storage. Your hunch was right. Adam Stanton did join our school in 1980.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Wildeve, although she could no longer remember why it had seemed so important to confirm the dates her husband had attended primary school.

  The headteacher sounded uncomfortable. ‘I’m so sorry to hear what happened to him. I wasn’t here when he was a pupil, of course. But my mother’s brother-in-law was headmaster at the time and followed his police career closely. We were proud of him.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Wildeve could see the others beckoning to her, the door to the pub opening, animated faces, glasses in hand, filled with all the friends and colleagues whose lives Adam had brushed up against. Drinking and laughing. Remembering.

  ‘Of course, it’s such a tragedy, isn’t it? Two boys from the same class and both killed by the same man.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Wildeve, her senses sharpening.

  ‘Adam and his friend Joby Clifton.’

  Wildeve frowned, trying to absorb this revelation. Trying to fit the puzzle together, to work out what the pieces meant.

  ‘They were at school together?’

  ‘That’s right. Thick as thieves, my mother’s brother-in-law said. He remembers them because they both wanted to be policemen. Knocked at his office after school one afternoon, asking if they were too young to sign up, wanting to right the wrongs of the world.’ An indulgent chuckle. ‘Joby left soon afterwards. That was the last the school heard of him until now.’

  Two ten-year-old boys, trying to make a teacher notice them. Trying to make themselves heard.

  I’d like to connect with old friends, Wild. That’s what Adam had said. That’s why he’d gone back to The Avenue. Trying to trace his old friend, Joby. Trying to find out where he was now. He just hadn’t mentioned his name.

  When Joby had failed to materialize at the school reunion, Adam had searched the electoral roll and run credit checks, but Joby had disappeared off the face of the earth. And when the trail went cold, where else would he try but Joby’s family home, his last known address?

  Adam must have remembered that his friend’s parents had run that toy shop. The disappearances of Joby and Bridget Sawyer had triggered his suspicion of Cooper Clifton.

  Across the road, Mac loosened his black tie. She watched him say something to Peggy, and start back towards her.

  Something was niggling at her.

  What had Audrina Clifton said? That she had recognized Adam Stanton only because he had been investigating the murders in the woods.

  But if Joby and Adam had been best friends, she should have known exactly who he was.

  She would have known.

  But why bother to keep the boys’ shared history a secret? Why not mention it? Wildeve stilled, phone in her hand. Perhaps the old lady thought it didn’t matter. Perhaps it didn’t.

  Unless she had a secret of her own to hide.

  Adam’s voice was a whisper in her mind, and his logic chilled her.

  And then Mathilda Hudson’s number was flashing up, her words tumbling down the phone. Wildeve’s mouth dried, and she was shouting to Mac, running across cemetery grass, the smell of freshly turned earth in the air and the breath of a ghost on her neck.

  109

  Wednesday, 29 August 2018

  Bonchurch Park, Essex – 2.37 p.m.

  Mathilda Hudson had been pushing her two-year-old daughter on the swings in the park near her home when her mobile phone had pinged with an email.

  The pathologist had ignored it. She was on a rare day off and had promised herself that work could wait until tomorrow. But when she’d sneaked a glance, she had noticed it was about the Doll Maker case. Childcare issues had meant she’d been unable to go to Adam Stanton’s funeral, but she could honour him in this way instead.

  She had settled her daughter at the cafe table with an ice cream and opened the attachment. It was the long-awaited toxicology report on the samples of the stomach contents, and the brown speck from Adam’s tooth she had sent off a few weeks ago. Specialist testing often took months, so the quick turnaround was a stroke of luck, even if she already knew what it was going to say.

  But as her eyes scanned the report, a bucket of ice water drenched her.

  The stomach contents of the five most recent victims had been analysed. As expected, each contained the alkaloid aconitine, a neurotoxin.
But it had not come from the seeds of the Monkshood plant, as she had anticipated. There were no signs of seeds at all.

  The toxin had come from the root of the plant. It had been ground down and used to cook with.

  The conclusion of the report had been simple. Every one of the victims’ stomachs had contained a slice of home-made fruit cake, its raisins laced with a promise of death.

  110

  Now

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head, chip chop, chip chop, the last one’s dead.

  My name is Audrina May Clifton.

  I was a daughter and a wife and mother.

  I am a killer.

  But you know that already, don’t you?

  The sound of your screaming still plays in my dreams, Joby. Sometimes, when I’m on the cusp of sleep, I hear you calling for me, reaching out with your hands, tugging at my clothing the way Cooper tugged your dead body from the treehouse when I told him what I had done. But I do not fold your cold fingers into my own warmth. I stamp on them until you cry out and the accusation in your eyes haunts me.

  You haunt me.

  I hear your voice in the whisper of the wind and the cry of the migrating birds and the sucking earth of your home-made grave. I see your eyes in the eyes of the young boy from next door, your hair curling at his neck. It’s you. I know it is. You’ve come back to me. For years, I’ve been waiting for my punishment. The moment of reckoning. And it is now.

  I have lied and lied again to protect myself, but it is time to lay out the truth.

  On our wedding day, your father made a vow to love and protect me. Forsaking all others. He kept that promise all his life. And at the end, when the police found their way to us, he urged me to feign ignorance and sacrificed his freedom to preserve mine.

  He was a loyal and honourable man.

  Birdie was killed because I had begged him to kill her. The scars on my wrist and between my shoulder blades were enough to convince him. But she was still alive as my fingers pushed pellets of rat poison between her lips. Mine was the last face she saw.

  We were certain we could forget about what we had done, that we could parcel it up and put it behind us. That hiding her in plain sight was a way to maintain our control.

  But you were more observant than I’d realized. On the day of the Grand Reopening, when Natalie Tiernan discovered Birdie’s body in the shop, you discovered the truth about my mother. You had walked past her photograph in our hallway a thousand times and you recognized the watch on her withered wrist.

  Do you have questions, my love? I will do my best to answer them. Forgive me for what you are about to hear.

  You begged us to go to the police, but how could we do that? I was forced to make a choice. Sacrifice my husband or my son? I chose to save Cooper. Turns out I was more like Birdie than I had realized.

  The sirens are crying. They are closing in now, pulling into the driveway. Three cars. Four of them. When I open the door, the police will be here.

  Our future was promised. The simple pleasures of our garden and the sun warming our old skins. But Mr Lovell began to threaten us, bombarding us with telephone calls. He told us we had blood on our hands. We knew it was him, though. The distinctive rhythm of the old ceiling fan in the shop gave him away.

  We dared not kill him because we could not be certain who he might have told. Because we had lost the element of surprise. Because he had a gun.

  But it forced us to think. If he did tell the police about the blood on the walls, they might follow the trail back to the day of the puppet show. To the discovery of Birdie’s body.

  But there would be no trail if no one was left to remember.

  And who better to frame than a loner who makes dolls, an old man with a skeleton in his closet who we wanted out of our lives?

  Cooper had spent his life surrounded by plants and flowers, and I absorbed this knowledge without trying to. The Poison Garden, it was called. A book with photographs so glossy they might have been painted.

  Page 311. A plant with the most beautiful purple flowers I had ever seen, like the cowl of a monk’s hood. The most toxic plant in the garden.

  The Northumberland estate where Cooper had worked the summer we got married had a wall of these plants at the far end by the manor house. I was curious about the way their helmets danced in the breeze, the disconnect between beauty and brutality.

  When we returned home, I read everything I could. That knowledge stayed with me all my life.

  The trick was to overcome the bitterness and disguise the taste. To experiment. Last year, I bought a kitten, ground the root into her meat and jelly, and she ate the lot. When I found her in the laundry basket, hidden amongst the tumble of dirty clothes, she was dead.

  Cooper grew the plants and I used them in the cakes that I prepared. Depressed a syringe filled with poison into the raisins. Sugar to sweeten the taste. As a Neighbourhood Watch coordinator, he had a ready-made alibi. Once we had traced our victims and established they were at home by themselves, we posed as fundraisers selling Dundee cakes for charity. Who could refuse an old lady in a wheelchair? On the doorstep, I faked a dizzy spell and we were invited in. If they declined the cake, we forced it into them. The paralysis that followed allowed us to lift their bodies into my wheelchair, heads slumped, tucked under a blanket. By the time we got home, they were usually dead. We removed the eyes, painted the face and later, when the dark came, Cooper pushed my wheelchair into the woods, except it wasn’t me sitting in it.

  And we were almost finished. We would have been free to live out the rest of our lives in peace. Until the Lockwoods moved in. I was worried about what their diggers might unearth. Cooper tried to find you in the dead of the night, but the earth had shifted and so had his memory. He couldn’t remember where he had buried you.

  And then Olivia Lockwood, searching for the source of the torchlight in the copse, hit her head on the box containing your remains and damned us all.

  The telephone is ringing, over and over, but I do not let her answer it.

  She is closing her eyes now, tears on her cheeks. I press the cake to her mouth, but her lips are flattened into a tight line and she refuses to swallow my gift.

  Your old stuffed frog is in my pocket, Joby. I have sewn up the seam for you. I’m sorry I split it open with my knitting needle. Anger has always been my flaw.

  And now, there is this.

  The scratch of a key in a lock. The thunder of footsteps. A shout. ‘Liv, it’s me. Are you OK? Evan insisted on coming back to check on you.’

  It is time.

  Every death has a taste of its own. I expect you know that by now. Cooper is waiting for me. And so, I hope, are you, my boy. Joy and acceptance are my seasonings.

  I take a sip of tea. I listen to the ticking of the clock, the slamming of car doors. The shouts of Garrick Lockwood and the police. And for everything I have done, I am still that girl of eleven, standing in the shadow of the woods, poisoned birds laid out at my feet in sacrifice, glorifying in my power over living things.

  The crumbs spill across the plate. Sweet with an underwash of bitterness. I touch them to my lips. I break off a piece of the cake and swallow it down. A mouthful. And another.

  And I wait.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In The Neighbour, Adam Stanton writes a love letter to his wife, Wildeve. The act of writing that scene made me think about what I might include in such a letter of my own.

  For those of you who have read Rattle or The Collector, you will know my acknowledgements have become a place for me to write about the book’s dedication, to offer my own love letter, of sorts. This time, it’s the turn of my parents.

  And then, as I began to write this, I realized that in some ways, each of the books I’ve written has been a love letter to them.

  To my mum, Ann, who instilled in me a love of reading and writing. Regular trips to the library where I was encouraged to choose as many books as I could car
ry; word games at the kitchen table every night after dinner; pinning a poem I’d written to her computer at work; believing that I had it in me to reach for this dream and looking after the children while I tried. Thank you, Mum, for everything.

  As a dyslexic with little support at school, my dad, Chris, never learned to read and write. He gifted me something very different but equally worthwhile: tenacity; the will to work and the importance of a job well done. Dad, who grew up with nothing but made sure his children had everything, showed me that anything is possible. Thank you.

  Books are never written alone. Grateful thanks, as always, to my wonderful agent Sophie Lambert, who is so full of wisdom, and the team at C+W, especially Emma Finn and Alexander Cochran, and to Kari Stuart at ICM.

  Being published by Pan Macmillan continues to be a joy and that is largely down to my editor Trish Jackson, a committed, passionate and dedicated champion of my writing. Thanks also to Rosie Wilson, Jayne Osborne, Neil Lang, Fraser Crichton and the sales and marketing teams who work so hard on behalf of not just me, but all authors.

  It’s important to me to ensure my books are as accurate as I can make them, but I couldn’t do this without the industry experts who share their time and expertise so willingly. Thank you to forensic pathologist Dr Benjamin Swift, who has proved to be so generous and tolerant of my stupidity; Joss Hawthorn, Steve Bliss and Rebecca Bradley for such intelligent insights into police matters, and Anya Lipska for her brilliant post-mortem anecdotes. Any mistakes are my own.

  When I write, it’s mostly at a table in the dining room, on my own. But I’m never alone. Thank you to all my writing friends for their endless support, especially the Ladykillers (you know who you are), and to the bloggers and reviewers who take the time to read and review my books. I haven’t named you all because I’m worried I’ll miss someone out, but I appreciate every review and shout-out. A huge thank you to all the librarians and booksellers who champion and hand-sell my books, especially Fiona Sharp, Rebecca Choudhury and Gemma Allan, and to the readers who listen to them.