AllFreeNovel
Share Us
THIRTY-NINE
I was walking back from South End Green, the smell of hot fries and battered cod wafting out of the carrier bag swinging in my hand.
My mother was working late at the office, some last-minute accountancy crisis, whatever that meant. She’d left a note to say she wouldn’t be home for supper, told me to help myself to some cash from the drawer in her nightstand: Get yourself apizza or fish and fries. A KitKat too if you like xx
The mention of KitKats straight away made me think of Matty. He’d been in Ireland two weeks already. Like last time, he hadn’t called once.
‘The lines are probably down again,’ Linda told my mother, who was kibbitzing on about his lack of contact, his failure to commit.
‘In September?’
‘I don’t know, Am.’
She was a good friend, but everyone’s patience wears thin eventually.
I took the long way home, avoiding the park. I’d been giving it a wide berth ever since Gemma Nicholls’ body had been found by the running track. I don’t suppose I was the only one doing that.
‘Why take risks?’ Matty always said. ‘Better safe than sorry.’ And other times more darkly, ‘Predators aren’t Disney villains. You can’t spot them by their horns.’
I was feeling particularly skittish that evening. Detective Inspector Connor had been on television again. We’d been allowed to watch the news during Form Time on the basis it was important to ‘be informed and have views on current affairs’.
‘We’ve been charting the abduction and body disposal sites in order to identify where the killer is likely to be based,’ the DI had said. ‘This is predicated on the theory that an offender’s early crimes are committed in areas they’re familiar with. In this case, we believe the perpetrator may reside in or near to Camden.’
A killer targeting women who looked like my mother. And who lived in our district. Neither fact was particularly comforting.
‘The police are managing us,’ Bea said as we’d walked home together after school, the sky already darkening. ‘Feeding us titbits to make it look like they know what they’re doing. Like they’re on top of things. Nine women are dead though. How on top of it can they really be?’
Her father was a journalist with one of the nationals. She said he knew about these things, that he wasn’t fooled by what he called the police’s ‘party tricks’.
‘It’s not just about managing the public though. They’re sending a message to the perpetrator too. We’re coming for you.’
She threw around words like ‘perpetrator’ a lot, ‘MO’ and ‘signature’ too. Showing off, I thought at the time whilst also being a little in awe of her insider knowledge.
Looking back though, I suspect she picked up most of the lingo off Cagney and Lacey. Probably knew as little as the rest of us. Strange to think now, it was me not her with the insider knowledge. That the killer was someone I played Ludo with, someone who dragged all the way to Golders Green just to buy me Rocky Road.
‘Our net is closing in,’ DI Connor told the cameras.
‘He would say that,’ Bea said with maddening nose-in-the-air superiority. ‘Just think, we might know him,’ she added. ‘The butcher. The postman. The neighbour who comes round to borrow sugar. You never know what secrets people are hiding. . .’
I kicked a stone into the road.
‘I think I’d be able to tell if it was someone I knew.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’
Her parting shot.
I rounded the corner onto our street, the smell of hot chips rising from the carrier bag. Unable to resist, I dug inside, pulled out a hot handful.
‘Hullo, Sophie.’
Des Banister materialised out of nowhere, made me jump. The fries fell into a puddle.
‘Jesus, you scared me.’
‘Haven’t seen Matty about for a bit. Him and your mother broke up, have they?’
A normal person would have apologised.
