Alex Marwood
The Killer Next Door
Copyright © Alex Marwood 2013
For Cathy Fleming
A wonderful sister and a brilliant friend
Acknowledgements
All writers have many, many people to thank by the time a book finally reaches the world. I’m always terrified that, in the rush to thank, I will forget someone crucial. If this is so, please forgive me.
Laetitia Rutherford and her colleagues at Mulcahy Associates for their inspiring, supportive and generally above-and-beyond agenting. I feel immensely lucky to have stumbled into their offices.
The hugely talented team at Sphere: particularly Catherine Burke, my editor, Thalia Proctor, Kirsteen Astor and Emma Williams. It’s such a pleasure to work with such professional, imaginative and thorough people.
Hannah Wood, whose cover designs make me almost dizzy with joy.
Dad and Patricia, Mum and Bunny, Will, Cathy, Ali and David. And Elinor and Tora and Archie and Geordie, who make me very happy about the future of the world.
The Board, for over a decade of support, friendship and back-room cackling.
Those enabling bitches, the FLs, who not only make me laugh daily but are usually awake when the Brits are asleep, which is damn useful for an insomniac. Prostitution whores, the lot of you.
Off the top of my head: John Lyttle, Chris Manby, Charlie Standing, Brian Donaghey, Helen Smith, Lauren Henderson, Jane Meakin, Angela Collings, Dawn Hamblett, Claire Gervat, Bottomley, Paul Burston, Antonia Willis, India Knight, James O’Brien, Lucy McDonald, Diana Pepper, Merri Cheyne, Stella Duffy, Shelley Silas, Jenny Colgan, Lisa Jewell, Jojo Moyes… oh, Lord, if I haven’t mentioned you here it doesn’t mean I don’t love and value you.
All the brilliant people who lurk on Facebook and Twitter, who make every day a party. Without your help I’d have written at least one more book by now.
And finally, my Sweet Felice, who protected me for many years and whose last book this was, and Bad Baloo, whose first book it is. If it’s good enough for Sam Johnson, it’s good enough for me.
As is your mind
So is your sort of search; you’ll find
What you desire
ROBERT BROWNING
Prologue
He checks his watch and downs the last of his coffee. ‘Okay. Miss Cheryl should be done with her fag break. Let’s take you down to her.’
She follows him down to the interview rooms and he surreptitiously checks his reflection in the wired glass of a door as he passes it. DI Cheyne’s a bit older than he usually goes for, but she’s a good-looking woman. Slightly hard-faced, but a life in the Met doesn’t make for a lot of childlike innocence. Doesn’t hurt to keep your options open, anyway. Women who understand your unorthodox working hours are few and far between; attractive ones even fewer.
‘You should probably know,’ he tells her, ‘she’s pretty tired and upset, and we’ve still got a lot to get through, so if you could keep it shortish, that would be good.’
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll take that long, anyway. How is she? Cooperative?’
‘Pissed off,’ he says. ‘In the custody of social services, so you can’t blame her. She’s a bit sulky. And she’s not the sharpest tool in the shop. No point asking her to read anything, for a start.’
‘That’s okay. Think she can look at a photo?’
‘Oh. I should think so. We’ll give it a go, anyway.’
Cheryl Farrell is back in the interview room after her cigarette break, right elbow on the table and tear-streaked face resting wearily on her bandaged hand. She’s pale and, DI Cheyne guesses from the dampness of her forehead, still in some degree of pain. The orthopaedic pink of the shoulder brace that holds her collarbone in place does nothing for her complexion. Could be pretty, thinks DI Cheyne, if it wasn’t for the generally sulky demeanour. Golden-brown skin, curly African hair that she’s bleached until it’s a coppery shade of bronze, over-plucked eyebrows, almond-shaped brown eyes that she rolls at the newcomer.
The lawyer looks as if he hasn’t shifted from his seat in a decade. He’s scribbling furiously. The social worker sits, sensible hair and sensible shoes and an air of New Labour sanctimony pouring off her, in the chair next to the girl. ‘All done!’ she says brightly. ‘She’s had her cancer stick.’
‘Oh, fuck off, you.’ The girl gives her a look that would melt ice.
Merri Cheyne is longing for a smoke herself. Those nicotine tabs give her terrible indigestion. She ignores the social worker – best thing to do in most circumstances if you can manage it, she’s found – and takes a seat on the other side of the table, next to Chris Burke. Cheryl turns back to DC Barnard and looks at him sullenly.
‘So what were you on about?’ Her strong Scouse accent is surprising in one who’s been in the south so long.
‘The television,’ says DC Barnard.
‘Oh, yeah.’
There’s a silence. The girl looks like she would be slumping, if the brace would let her. Truly, thinks DI Cheyne, not the sharpest tool in the shop. He did warn me.
DC Barnard clears his throat. ‘So tell us about the television, Cheryl? How did it come to be in your possession?’
‘You what?’
‘How did you get it, Cheryl? Where did it come from?’
‘Oh.’ The girl sniffs heavily and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘He said it was spare,’ she says. ‘Said he’d bought a new one and did I want it?’
‘And you didn’t wonder why he was offering you televisions?’
‘I knew exactly why he was offering it,’ she says, with a glare of defiance.
‘And you accepted it?’
‘If you’re asking if I shagged him to get a second-hand telly, no I didn’t. But there’s no law against letting a fella give you a present because he thinks it might get you to, is there?’
‘Fair point.’
‘Anyway, I needed a telly. D’you know how bloody boring it is if you’ve got no money and no telly? I wasn’t going to give him a…’ she sneaks a look at the social worker to see if she’s going to get a rise, ‘… blow job, but I wasn’t going to tell him to fuck off either, was I?’
‘Well, I can see that there might have been some chance that things could get a bit unpleasant when he realised -’
‘Whatever,’ Cheryl interrupts. Most of your lot -’ she narrows her eyes at her minder again ‘- think they can get a feel for a bag of crisps and a Fanta. At least I wanted a telly.’
The social worker stiffens beside her, offended. Amazing, thinks DI Cheyne. Even after a deluge of scandals, they’re still blanking suggestions that their own might not be perfect.
‘And when was this…?’
‘Don’t know. Two, three weeks? Ages before the weather broke. It was still boiling bloody hot and he kept looking at my tits cause I was wearing a vest. I just thought he was another dirty old bloke. C’mon. Nobody else thought he was up to anything, either. D’you think I’d’ve stayed in that house, if I did?’
‘So you don’t think any of your neighbours had any suspicions, either?’
‘No! I’ve told you! Place smelled like shit, but it’s not exactly the first time I’ve been somewhere that smelled like shit. Anyway, they all had their own stuff to worry about, I should think. We hardly talked to each other, until it happened. It wasn’t a flatshare or anything. We weren’t friends.’
DI Burke opens the cardboard folder that DI Cheyne gave him earlier. On the top, an A4 photo of a woman: short, caramel-streaked blonde hair, low-cut white minidress, white slingbacks, white handbag, Versace jacket, oversized sunglasses perched on the top of her head. As unmistakeably Essex as Stansted crotch crystals. She’s looking away from the camera, holding a half-drunk glass of champagne. It looks like a picture taken at a public event of some sort, the races, perhaps. He studies it for a few seconds. Wonders if this will be the picture the papers go with. Clears his throat pointedly, and DC Barnard stops and turns.