The Killer You Know Read online

  Adeline crosses the lounge and takes it. The same sentence is written four times in four different hands: Dear Mr. Strachan, Please stop leaving your dog tied up. It’s cruel.

  “Yeah, probably.” Adeline looks over at the others. “No offence if these are yours.”

  “I’m offended,” Rupesh says from his position lying on his stomach on the floor in front of the TV.

  “Offence!” Will says and raises both arms in the air.

  “I’m offended,” Jen says. “I still don’t see what’s wrong with mine.”

  Steve ignores her. Adeline writes down the sentence beneath the others’ and shows Steve. He compares them all.

  “You were right about Hampton station,” Adeline says to Rupesh.

  “It’s miles, isn’t it?” he says, without looking up.

  Yes, it is. She had lost an entire sweaty day for just half an hour in Birmingham city centre. It had been getting dark when she walked home through the fields. Full of hate and frustration, she’d carved COUNTRY PUNKS into a wooden footbridge with a scrap of metal she found.

  Steve nods, then gets up and leads Adeline outside. They stand together at the end of his drive and he points to the house with the mad dog.

  “It’s so bad for them being chained up like that all day,” Steve says. “They’re pack animals, they need friends. It’s going insane there, just walking around and around. Even when it’s raining he leaves it there. I think it was Mr. Strachan’s ex-wife’s so that’s his revenge.”

  She explains that the dog nearly got her killed the day she first met Steve. He nods.

  “That dog bit Obi,” Steve says, “about a year ago when we were on a walk. Bloke never apologised to me or anything, just walked off shaking his head. It messed Obi up. The bite got all infected and he wasn’t as friendly any more. Like Strachan’s dog passed his nastiness on to him. He never used to wander off on his own before that.”

  “Well, fuck Strachan then,” Adeline says, and Steve grins. His teeth are perfect. She’s not in the habit of noticing teeth.

  “I think us doing something for that dog will restore the balance in the universe,” he says.

  “You some sort of Jedi then?” Adeline says, not meaning for it to sound quite as sarcastic as it comes out.

  He smiles. “No, actually I just sort of like Aristotle and—” He cuts himself off, looking away a little bit embarrassed. “I just like philosophy,” he says in a low mutter.

  She moves the conversation on, enjoying the moment of power, even though really she likes the fact he is a bit of a geek. “What is your plan, though?”

  Inside, Steve lays it all out: to avoid detection they will all meet up at midnight inside the entrance to the alley to Hampton, which Steve calls Dead Man’s Alley. Then they’ll leave a note written by Adeline on the windscreen of Mr. Strachan’s van. The note will make it sound like a group of local residents is fed up of his cruelty, and written in Adeline’s neat handwriting he’ll have no reason to suspect it’s not true. Paranoid he’s bothering everyone, he’ll bow to peer pressure and look after his dog better.

  Rupesh wants them to just phone the RSPCA, and Will thinks they should slash Mr. Strachan’s tyres. Steve, with weariness that sounds like it isn’t the first time they’ve discussed these ideas, explains that the RSPCA have no real powers and that they don’t want to end up in prison.

  They draw straws to decide who will do the most dangerous part: putting the note on the van while the rest of them keep a lookout.

  “Adeline is new to the group,” Steve says, “it’s unfair to make her do this bit.”

  “No way,” Adeline says, trying not to show how thrilled she is that he considers her part of the group already. “I’m in.”

  Her self-sacrifice is rewarded with another Steve smile.

  The closest thing to straws Jen can find in the kitchen is chopsticks, which Steve snaps into pieces and holds in his fist, the visible ends all level. Rupesh is last to choose a broken chopstick. He takes one look at his, one look at everyone else’s, then throws his piece to the floor.

  “Cockflaps,” he says. “Just typical. I knew it. How am I even supposed to get out my house at midnight, Steve? You lot are all right, you live this end. I’ve got to walk all the way here from the main road without being seen. And my dad locks the gate.”

  “I’ve got to come that way too,” Will says. “I’ll come and get you. The gate’ll be easy.”

  “What are we going to write in the note exactly?” Jen says. “Just: please be nicer to your dog?”

  “Threaten him,” Will says. “Got to be tough.”

  “What about this?” Adeline gestures for the pen. She writes something down, then shows Steve.

  “Love it,” he says. The others murmur their approval, except for Rupesh who is lying on his stomach watching Scooby Doo again.

  Dear Mr. Strachan,

  Please can you refrain from leaving your dog tied up in the front garden. It is cruel, and it is causing your dog to be stressed and bark all the time. Your lack of consideration has been noted and will no longer be tolerated. If you cannot be humane enough to consider your dog’s wellbeing, and consider our wishes, then the next time you hear from us will not be in the form of a note.

  Regards, The Neighbourhood

  “The Neighbourhood,” Jen says. “Nice touch.”

  “Brilliant,” Steve says, almost whispering.

  That night Adeline listens to her music through headphones and reads, looking up Aristotle in an encyclopedia from Dad’s study. Occasionally she sticks her head out of the window to have the night air slap her awake.

  At twenty to midnight, she puts on her dressing gown to hide that she is still fully clothed and sneaks out. Thanks to Mum’s love of old houses, almost every step caws beneath her feet. In the kitchen she discards the dressing gown in the tumble dryer and leaves the house.

  It isn’t scary, despite the quiet and the darkness. This street, so dull and adult during the daylight, is suddenly hers—suddenly theirs. She can’t see the dog, but all Mr. Strachan’s lights are off.

  “You came,” Steve says, a whisper from the shadows inside the alley.

  “Of course I did.” She joins him, off the pavement and out of sight. They are close enough that she can smell the soap on his skin, which she relishes over what else the alley has to offer.

  From behind them she hears footsteps, and when she turns Jen bustles past her into the alley. Jen’s trying to control her laughter and failing. When she gets a grip of herself she says, “I got all the way to the door, then Sparky started following me and meowing.”

  “Sparky’s her cat,” Steve says to Adeline.

  “Really?” Adeline is straight-faced.

  “Sarcasm’s the lowest form of humour, Adeline,” Steve says.

  “I am as low as it gets.”

  Will is ten minutes late. They watch his distinctive outline approach beneath the streetlight. He’s wearing an oversized T-shirt with the Countdown gameshow logo on it. Rupesh isn’t with him.

  “I waited for ages,” Will says on his arrival. “I even jumped over the gate to look up at his bedroom and the lights were off. I think he’s asleep.”

  Steve sighs. “Guess we know where he stands.” He sounds sad.

  “He did say it might be difficult,” Jen says, though she lacks conviction.

  “Well, we can’t leave the note at the front of the house because of the dog,” Steve says, “so I’m going to go in through the back garden and put it on Strachan’s van that way. There’s a big shed there I can hide behind. The van’s pulled right up by the house, and the dog won’t see me if I can get there. Hopefully.”

  They follow him deeper into the alley, then once in the field they head left, into woodland that runs behind Mr. Strachan’s and, eventually, Adeline’s house. At Mr. Strachan’s fence, Will gives Steve a boost up with his cupped hands so that Steve straddles the top.

  “Wait here,” Steve says. “But if anything go
es wrong meet me back at mine if you can. Otherwise, we’ll catch up tomorrow.”

  With that he carefully lowers himself down, and his feet gently thud on the other side.

  Will’s hand brushes against hers and she flinches. Had he done it deliberately? The touch had been too long to have just been an accident.

  “Sorry,” he says. “It’s so dark. You need hunting eyes to see anything.”

  Hunting eyes. Why would he say that? Adeline shivers.

  For a while they stand without saying anything. She chews on her ragged thumbnail. He is right, though, the dark is different here, so impenetrable that Adeline might be alone now and she wouldn’t know.

  Then a noise disturbs the silence, making her jump.

  Wouah, wouah, wouah, wouah, wouah. Mr. Strachan’s dog.

  “He’s been rumbled,” Will says.

  “What do we do?” Jen says.

  “Wait,” Adeline says. “Just wait. It might be nothing.”

  The dog’s barks start to lose power, becoming more spaced out until eventually they halt after what feels like an age. They wait a while longer, but when Steve doesn’t return Will suggests they go back to Steve’s. He must have run out though the front. It would explain the dog.

  Back in the alley’s mouth, they survey the road. Everything appears as it was.

  “You wait here,” Adeline says. “I’m going to check Mr. Strachan’s before we all go past. Just in case he followed Steve out.”

  Not waiting for any objections, she crosses the road, then turns to look back and survey Mr. Strachan’s. The dog is now lying near the house, head resting on its paws facing away from her. Whatever the issue had been, it isn’t bothered any more. She walks out into the middle of the road to get a closer look, trying to see if the note is visible on the van’s window.

  Something moves, a shadow between the van and the left of the house. Her chest freezes for an instant, then she realises it’s Steve. He’s waving. Up in the house a light is on. She points at the window trying to let Steve know, then wanting to be out of sight in case Mr. Strachan looks out, she approaches the fence as quietly as she can and ducks down behind it.

  When nothing happens, she slowly rises to peer over the fence. Steve is leaning over the van. Then something catches her attention, and when she looks up at the house the curtains of the lit bedroom are swaying.

  She wants to yell to Steve, to warn him.

  The van’s headlights come on, illuminating her and the entire drive. Adeline squints and brings a hand to her eyes. They go off, then come back on again.

  Hooooonk, Hooooonk, Hooooonk.

  The van’s alarm. Steve’s set the fucking alarm off.

  He’s running down the drive then, a big smile on his face, and the dog sees him. It charges, snarling, but the lead pulls it back when it reaches the drive. The force is so strong it yelps and ends up on its back.

  “My house,” Steve says, shooting by her.

  He’s already halfway across the distance between Mr. Strachan’s and his place when she starts running. The others are behind, four soles clapping against the road.

  “Did you leave it?” Adeline says when they are all inside.

  “No problem,” he says. “But that dog is psychic. It was yapping before I got near it.”

  Upstairs, in Steve’s dad’s bedroom, they watch the street from behind net curtains with the lights off. Mr. Strachan is out on his drive, patrolling in his dressing gown. His alarm has stopped and the dog’s not barking. He goes in without seeing the note.

  Even if Mr. Strachan had seen them running away, he wouldn’t be able to identify Adeline from behind, not so that she wouldn’t be able to deny it was her. They will be okay; their first mission has been a success.

  The house is freezing. Steve gets them all musty blankets and starts an open fire using wood he brings in from the outside shed. He gets it going with squirts from a fucking petrol can—the loon. They watch a pirated film called Grosse Pointe Blank and Will tries passing around a porno mag he brought down from Steve’s dad’s bedroom. The film is good, it keeps her awake and distracts her from worrying about getting back home and being caught.

  She’s on a sofa with Jen and Will. Steve sits alone on his favourite leather swivel chair. Every now and then she checks him out, confident the darkness conceals her secret glances. He looks like the actor in the film. Only Steve is even more handsome. Once or twice she looks over and he is looking right back at her, although there’s no way he can see what her eyes are doing from over there.

  Adeline spends most days at Steve’s. Letting herself into the farmhouse becomes as natural as entering her own home. Mostly the others are around in some combination; occasionally it’s just the two of them, which even though she sort of wants, she also dreads, because the thing happening between them makes talking difficult and awkward.

  Frightening natural chemistry is what Minnie Driver said in the film the other night. That’s a good way to think of it. Makes it seem sciencey, out of her control, like her pathetic behaviour—waking up every morning with him in her head, wearing a specific deodorant because he’d said she smelled nice one day—isn’t entirely her fault.

  Rupesh had been right: they watch a lot of films. The others all know so much about them that it can be intimidating. They can name all the actors in bit parts, as well as the stars. Steve points out a bunch of actors who all show up in the same films, like they’re part of a secret club that hang out together off set, which he just thinks is the coolest thing in the world. Will says something about not wanting to be in any club with himself as a member, which Adeline later realises is actually quite funny.

  Since leaving the note—which seems to have done the job as Strachan’s dog hasn’t been seen since—Rupesh himself hasn’t been around at all. She’d seen him out at the bus stop on the corner of Elm Close one afternoon and he’d told her he felt like he let them all down so was suffering a self-imposed exile. She’d told him to stop being ridiculous.

  Her birthday falls on a Thursday, the twenty-first of August. Her parents are both at work, Dad at his toy shop in Marlstone, Mum at the church in Coventry where she administrates part time. Not that she particularly wants their company. When she finally gets out of bed she finds a cupcake topped with a sugar paper fairy on the dining-room table. There is a card with her name on too, and when she opens the envelope a black object falls on the floor. Adeline crouches to retrieve it. It’s a voucher for Mizzle. All at once she is struck by a feeling of emptiness, perhaps sensing the chasm between herself and who they think she is. How little they know about her is so sad, despite their best intentions to get it right.

  The doorbell rings. She is still in her underwear and dressing gown. The overhang above the front door prevents her from seeing who is outside from the upstairs window. Once dressed, hair dry, she goes down. A clumsily wrapped package with a card taped to the top has been left on the doorstep. Her name is written on the envelope in dreadful handwriting, a question mark at the end presumably because whoever had written it wasn’t sure of the spelling, although they needn’t have worried.

  She tears the paper. It’s a Green Day bootleg called Noize Boyz. She presses it to her chest with both hands for just a moment before sitting down to read the card. It is signed: The Neighbourhood. Adeline smiles at the joke.

  That afternoon they go to the fields. They only get as far as the farmhouse entrance before coming to a stop. Their collective attention honed on Mr. Strachan’s house, they stand in a line in the afternoon heat like a posse awaiting a shootout. The dog is staring back at them from the edge of the drive, a lead around its neck trailing off in the direction of the lawn—now much shorter than before.

  Adeline turns to Steve, who is standing in the middle of them all.

  “That fucker,” he says.

  “Oh dear,” Jen says.

  “That’s a declaration of war,” Will says.

  Rupesh, perhaps in an attempt to show his commitment now he
is back in the fold, steps forward. “Shall I just go to the phone box and call the RSPCA now?”

  “I can’t believe it,” Steve says.

  “Let’s just keep moving,” Jen says. “He’ll see us staring.”

  “It’s a declaration of war,” Will says again.

  Winter, 2015

  The next morning my phone buzzed from inside my handbag until I couldn’t ignore it any more. It was half ten already, and check-out was midday. My head felt heavy, but when I raised it there was no pain or nausea. It was going to be fine. Nothing a glass of water and a paracetamol wouldn’t fix.

  I surveyed the room. God this really was the life, wasn’t it? Christmas Day in a fucking Travel Inn. On the plus side, it didn’t even rank in the top five of my terrible Christmas mornings.

  My bag was on a chair next to the television. I got out of bed, counting up what I’d put away the night before. Not an insignificant amount, although my alcohol tolerance was probably at its highest since uni. There were barely any reasons to stay sober on weeknights now I didn’t have an office job; the first, second and third rules of Nostalgia Crush were that we never recorded before late afternoon.

  On my phone a message from Steve read:

  Are you still up?

  The time on that message meant Steve sent it only ten minutes after we had all said goodnight in the bar. I went to sleep almost as soon as I fell onto the bed, which I now regretted. Maybe Steve had wanted a coffee after all. I began composing a reply, then stopped myself and went back to check the other messages.

  Another from Steve read:

  Obviously not… Maybe we should check on Rupesh tomorrow morning? His car wasn’t on his drive?? Probably nothing though. Was good seeing you again tonight. X

  He’d obviously sent the first text from his taxi. So he hadn’t been after a nightcap. Still, he’d managed to manufacture an excuse to see me again, which was something. Rupesh had probably pulled over to sober up once he’d realised how wibbly all the road lines appeared. He’d be fine. But why not check? It was a kind thing to do, and it was Christmas morning. As far as excuses to see each other went it was much less of a headfuck than the Will’s-a-serial-killer discovery we’d made last night.