The Killer You Know Read online

  “So why are you here?” I said, amused, not sure if he was making a sly comment about my job or was completely unaware of the podcast. He had a point, though.

  “I honestly have nothing better to do.”

  I laughed. “Join the club.”

  “Plus it’s winter,” Rupesh said. “Research suggests we’re more likely to be nostalgic when it’s cold because it warms us up.”

  A waitress brought my red wine. I thanked her and took a gulp, a little spilling on the white tablecloth.

  “I’m also curious about you all,” Rupesh said, lowering his voice and leaning forward. “I mean, Steve for example. What does he do now? He was like this golden child, wasn’t he? I always saw him going into some high-flying city job. Or maybe something political. That brain, the attitude. When I look on his Facebook profile I can’t make head nor tail of what he’s doing nowadays.”

  I shrugged. Yet another club we could join.

  “He was very… compelling,” Rupesh said. “That was my abiding memory of him—would have made a good barrister.”

  At first I had dismissed the idea, but there was a definite undercurrent here. Almost like he was trying to bait me into slagging Steve off. “Maybe he is one, who knows?”

  When Jen walked in she squealed, and instinctively I got up and met her halfway across the table for a dramatic hug. She kissed me once on each cheek. Her red hair was lighter, and a liberal application of face powder concealed any freckles she might still have. With no such commitment to cosmetics beyond eyeliner—who had the time outside of weddings and funerals?—I felt naked. She looked good. Flustered but good.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “My car’s been playing up the whole journey here. Christmas bloody Eve. Typical. I only got in from London half an hour ago, and the bloody taxi was late then.”

  “Are you back at your parents’?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “God, do I need wine.”

  “Let me go and get you one.” Rupesh rose from his chair.

  Jen faced him and after a brief pause to absorb one another, they embraced at the same time.

  “So good to see you,” Jen said. She stepped back and placed a flat palm against his chest like she wanted to check he was real. His hand went to hers just as it retreated, which they engineered into a clumsy hand-hold to avoid embarrassment. This in turn became an even clumsier handshake which they instantly laughed off. “You haven’t bloody changed.”

  “Neither have—”

  “Shush,” Jen said. “I’ll need a drink before we start any of that BS.”

  When Rupesh returned with a round, the conversation flowed more naturally than before. Jen was still acting here and there around teaching drama at secondary school—although it was quite tiring and the kids weren’t like we used to be. And being a GP was as thankless as it sounded these days, Rupesh confirmed, more so out here in the country compared with the city. I almost forgot about what was causing the crawling sensation in my belly when the man himself, Steve Litt, entered the dining room. We all fell silent.

  “Hi, Adeline.” I was the nearest to him and he leaned down so we could hug. I pressed my face to his cheek and breathed him in. Remarkably, he smelled the same. Exactly the same. How was it even possible to remember a smell? Where had that information been hiding? Steve moved off around the table to greet the others, but my disappointment didn’t last long. When he finished he sat down next to me.

  He gave us each a Christmas card and we all thanked him. That the rest of us hadn’t got him one went unmentioned. But then he’d always had a thing about taking such things seriously.

  His hair was shorter than I’d ever seen it, making his forehead look high. His shoulders were broader, and he’d grown stubble, trimmed in a line just beneath his cheekbones—the same style Rich wore.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said to the table. “So it’s been a while. Where were we?”

  We drank and talked, waiting for Will to arrive before finally giving up and ordering food. He could catch up.

  All the while I felt alive and alert in a way that I hadn’t in some time, a pleasurable tension in my chest. I couldn’t quite get into the conversation, though, and my gaze kept gravitating towards Steve. His hair was pushed up from the sides so it was thicker in the middle. Maybe he was going bald? He caught me staring and self-consciously reached up to check if it was all still in place, a gesture that made me feel surprising tenderness towards him. He was quieter than I’d anticipated, and wore a semi-permanent grin these days that came across as shy. When he laughed, though, his smile was just the same as ever. I could really get used to the way that smile made me feel.

  “Did Will definitely say he was coming?” Rupesh said.

  “Well… sort of,” Jen said. “When I first sent the group email he emailed back to confirm.”

  “I saw his first reply,” Steve said. “But that was last December. He’s not been in touch with you other than that?”

  “He hasn’t actually replied to anything else, no—not since I booked the room. But you remember what he was like. And he said in his email he doesn’t use the internet much. I just assumed… You don’t think he’s forgotten?”

  “Has anyone got a contact number?” Steve said, unable to hide his bafflement. Why would Jen assume he was coming if it had been a year since they had been in contact? Unless, like me, she’d not been that keen to see him—extending the invitation only out of politeness.

  When no one spoke, Jen said, “I’m sure he’ll show up.”

  I felt partially responsible. When Jen asked for our numbers so she could add us to a WhatsApp group I told her I’d lost my phone to avoid cluttering it with group messages. Will’s lack of contact might have been spotted earlier if we’d been messaging more regularly off email.

  Jen finished her current glass of wine. “He used to be on all the social media sites years ago, but when he didn’t get back to me I checked for Facebook and stuff. I couldn’t find him, though. I emailed him privately, but he never got back. I did try.” She topped up her glass from the bottle on the table. “I never imagined he wouldn’t show up. That’s the whole reason I arranged this so far in advance, so we’d all be able to make it.”

  The starters arrived, and I made a plan to try to speak to Steve one-to-one, growing increasingly anxious when I couldn’t. Conversation bounced superficially from work to relationships to property. Steve was single—as we all were it transpired, Rupesh having recently divorced—and he had a job in health management that he liked because it was flexible and he could work from home. I needed more, though.

  Once the podcast came up, though, that was all they wanted to talk about. Rupesh and Steve both said they had listened to and enjoyed it. Jen had heard one or two episodes, she said, but had some practical questions: “Sorry if this is blunt, but how can you make money that way?”

  It was an uncomfortable subject, not least because that very issue was causing some friction at Nostalgia Crush HQ that I wanted to put to the back of my mind. I told her about the ethical companies we plugged on air, and the money we received from patrons, happening to mention that a Premier League footballer gave regular sizeable donations. I wished I hadn’t. Jen and Steve both gasped using the same note.

  “We’re really, ridiculously lucky,” I said. “I mean, stupidly. Jonathan Ross mentioned us just the once, and, boom, it blew up.”

  “Jonathan Ross?” Jen said, looking almost hurt before widening her open mouth into an aggressive smile. “And it’s your job? Like, full time.”

  “Only the last two years,” I said, worried everything was now coming out like a humblebrag. “But before then, Jesus, if you’d have seen me you’d have wanted to stage an intervention.” They all laughed at this. “Seriously, doing a crappy hobby podcast in my friend’s basement, three unrelated temp jobs to pay off my billion credit cards.”

  “Not now,” Jen said, wagging her finger. “Now you’re living the dream.”

  “It’
s not a very useful job in the scheme of things,” I said, “not like working for the health service or being a teacher. Mum can’t understand how I get paid for sitting around watching films. But there’s not exactly much work for qualified philosophers any more, apparently. And it won’t last for ever, I know that. I don’t even have a pension or anything.” It might not even last into next year the way Jon and Xan had parted company last.

  “I don’t know,” Steve said. “I was reading this article the other day, and it made the point that so much of our real life is conducted online these days, podcasts have become surrogate friendship groups for people of our age.”

  “The cohort that came of age under rampant individualistic capitalism,” Rupesh said.

  “Of course, none of us suffer from such crippling loneliness,” Steve said.

  We were all laughing a bit too hard at this when the waiter interrupted to ask if our fifth guest would still be attending.

  From the others’ expressions I could tell we were all thinking the same thing: the reunion of the entire gang might have to wait for another time. I didn’t know about them, but I was enjoying myself in the present company, and Will’s appearance risked unsettling the balance.

  We apologised to the waiter and told him it was probably unlikely now. He left us alone.

  “I’ve bumped into him a few times over the years and we always talked about Elm Close,” Steve said. “He remembered everything.”

  “Fondly?” Rupesh said.

  Steve shrugged and looked away. I hadn’t considered that Will might actually want to avoid us. Understandably he wouldn’t have entirely positive memories about how that final summer ended, given what that man did to him, but we’d all parted on good terms before then, hadn’t we?

  “What Mr. Strachan did to Will wasn’t anything to do with us,” I said. “Strachan was just a horrible man, do you remember? He always had it in for us.”

  “That was his name,” Rupesh said, clapping his hands together.

  “Strachan,” Steve said. “Yeah, though Will probably wouldn’t have even met the bloke if we hadn’t gotten involved with him. I suppose Will might hold it against us—well, against me maybe—for egging us all on.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to say it specifically,” Rupesh said, “but that was what I was getting at. Will was in the hospital for months afterwards. He started college a year later than all of us.” Steve looked pained. “I just don’t ever think we knew how disturbed Mr. Strachan was when we got into all that.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Steve said.

  I knew Mr. Strachan’s attack on Will had been vicious, but I don’t think I’d known about Will’s delayed college start. Perhaps because none of us had really seen much of him after that summer, having all gone our separate ways, I’d never dwelled upon the extent of the attack and its aftermath. After all, none of us saw it happen, we only heard about it later. And we all assumed at the time, knowing Will and his ways, that he’d said or done something to bring it about.

  Still, I just didn’t believe he held that incident against the rest of us. Something shifted in my mind, and a memory surfaced like a bubble in a rock pool.

  “Hey,” I said, “maybe he’s gone on his murder spree?”

  Steve and Jen both laughed.

  Rupesh, face paused mid-smile, said, “Rings a bell, what was that?”

  “Come on, you remember. We were all sitting around a big campfire and he said he was going to vanish one year and commit all these terrible murders,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Rupesh grinned. “How many was it—three, four?”

  “Three murders exactly,” I said.

  “Specifically three so he’d count as a serial killer,” Jen said.

  “Didn’t he talk about drugging someone?” Steve said.

  “Yeah,” Jen said, “then leaving them in Loch Ness to make it look like a suicide?” She scrunched her face with distaste.

  “He used to say some weird shit.” Rupesh was laughing now. “Hanging someone from a fence at a festival, too.”

  “Yes,” Steve said, pointing at him.

  “He said he’d hang them with a guy rope from a tent,” I said.

  “Is that even possible?” Rupesh said.

  “Man, that boy,” Jen said, looking around her to make sure he wasn’t walking in. Her gaze fell to the table. “He used to frighten me sometimes.” When she looked up at me I nodded to let her know she wasn’t alone.

  “Why was that?” Rupesh said.

  Jen looked to me, then to Rupesh. “Other than him telling us he wanted to be a serial killer? Oh, I don’t know. It was a feeling, things he said. I’m sure if I rack my brain I can give you specifics.”

  “I know what she means,” I said, but like her I couldn’t draw up a single specific event that second.

  “Good old Will,” Steve said, trying to lighten the mood. “He certainly was… different.”

  “Sounds like a toast.” Rupesh held up his nearly empty tumbler. “To absent friends.”

  After we clinked glasses, Steve said, “Do you remember he wanted to start a campaign to bring back the Roman gods?”

  We did, and our laughter filled the little room, drowning out the Christmas Eve revelries in the main bar.

  A waiter took away the last of our dessert plates while we talked about all the old films we used to pass the time with when we were kids.

  “Of course, they’re putting out all these inferior remakes nowadays,” Rupesh said, to me mostly. “Sorry, reboots.”

  “A bit like tonight’s shindig?” I said, and the others laughed.

  “Hey, the night’s only just begun,” Jen said. “Steve, you were the one that used to get us into scrapes. Can you keep us out of Adeline’s crusher?”

  “Sorry, I’m retired,” he said, smiling. “But, can I just say, I’m really glad one of us ended up doing something like that for an actual living.” Steve raised his beer a little as if toasting me.

  “Like what?” Rupesh said.

  I took the opportunity to down some wine, trying to catch up with the others.

  “You know, something creative.”

  Rupesh straightened up in his chair. “Ah, the C word. Sorry, pet peeve of mine. You know I feel pretty creative after seeing five patients in a row who all want antibiotics prescribed for a cold, thank you.”

  “Oh yeah, I just meant we all watched a lot of films, you know?” Steve said. “It’s great one of us ended up making a career out of them so all that time wasn’t wasted.” He looked to one side. “I was talking about myself really.”

  “I’m still doing my best,” Jen said in a small voice.

  “Oh yeah,” Steve said. “Of course. I… Don’t listen to me.” He held up his pint glass, pointed to it and rolled his eyes.

  Rupesh finished his drink and ordered another; I ordered water. What was that now, Rupesh’s sixth drink? Seventh?

  “How are your parents these days?” Jen said. “I remember them so well, they were always so kind to me.”

  Rupesh’s face fell. “They both passed away,” he said.

  “God, sorry,” Jen said, touching his hand now.

  “Dad was just over a year ago now. I remember it wasn’t long before you got in touch, Jen. My mum died not long after that last summer we had here.”

  “Mate,” Steve said. He nodded, like he understood. “So we’re both orphans now.”

  Rupesh studied Steve’s expression. I looked at Steve but he wouldn’t look back. Had he mentioned that anywhere online in the past? Fuck. This is what you got for trying to avoid the internet: sanity and awkwardness. Not wanting to overwhelm Steve I resisted the desire to touch him too.

  “You lost your parents?” Rupesh said. “Sorry, mate. I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t know about yours either.”

  “God, Steve,” I said, echoing Jen, “I’m so sorry. And you too, Rupesh. Fuck.”

  Rupesh uttered a bitter laugh. “The information age, eh,” he said.
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  They asked about Jen’s parents, a line of enquiry she quickly deflected. “They’re both fine. The same. Totally the same.”

  When the question naturally turned to my parents, I mentioned Mum’s condition but laughed it off with a joke about her making sure Dad was in the ground before she went. We were a sad bunch for sure, but I didn’t want to soak up any of Rupesh and Steve’s sympathy—particularly as they were bonding over it.

  Eventually the ripples of awkwardness from Jen’s misplaced foot diminished, and Steve said, “I suppose it’s safe to assume Will’s a no-show now?”

  Jen, who was looking down at her phone, said, “I’m looking up his murders now.” That brought some much-needed levity. “Seriously, I am.”

  Though her blank expression was more than likely just a comedic deadpan, honed at one of the many acting classes she’d told us about attending, I could see a part of her was wondering if there had been something more to Will’s words. It was ridiculous, of course. But then why was no one saying anything? And why was I so tense now?

  “What would you do—” I started to say before Jen gasped, making us all jump. A surge of irritation coursed up my back and into my shoulders. Such a drama queen.

  “No way.” Jen brought her hand to her face to cover an open-mouthed grin. “No fucking way, pardon my French.” She finished reading, then gave the phone to Steve.

  His eyes moved from right to left, his smile morphing into a look of amused intrigue. After taking in what was on the screen, he shook his head.

  “What?” Rupesh said.

  “I just put in suicide and festival,” Jen said to Steve.

  Steve began summarising passages aloud softly: “Festival in Northumberland called Manifest… twenty-one-year-old girl, Ellie Kidd. Police officers are treating as unexplained but not suspicious… Mobile phone video taken by a festival goer was briefly posted on some dodgy message boards before being removed, showed the girl hanged herself from a chain-link fence in a secluded part of a camping area. Found early in the morning. Something about drugs, too.”