The Psychopath: A Maitland Noir Thriller #1, page 9
“It’s so hard to know where to start. The house is just full of her stuff. Everywhere I turn I see her. It’s heartbreaking, really.”
Now what?
I think for a minute.
Not sure what to say.
It occurs to me that maybe I should put my arm around her and say, “There, there.” I saw one of the assistants in the annexe do that to Ainsley once when he was stuttering and sobbing over something and nothing about his watery cabbage and it worked a treat with him.
Of course, she had to move on eventually because he wouldn’t leave her alone after that, if you know what I mean. But Julia’s back and shoulders are right up against the back of the bench and I think that to put my arm around her I’d have to push my arm in there quite hard and that might seem a little bit odd.
So I sit here for a moment or two not really knowing what to do or say.
“What about you?” she then says. “What happened to your wife?”
“She died,” I answer. “She was killed in a road accident. Run over, right in front of me, she was.”
(I can say that matter-of-factly, you know, because it’s how I always start talking at a review – to show I am calm and in control and all of that politically correct shit. I never say about me chasing Katie or anything else that happened just before that, obviously. None of that.)
I can see her sitting motionless now, not knowing what to say either. I can sense, without even turning towards her, that she has a look of shock and horror on her face.
“She was only thirty-two, no age at all.”
And still she sits, just looking at me. What’s she thinking? How does she feel? Is she horrified to the point she wants to get up and walk? Or is she wavering, feeling sorry for me?
“She was coming up to three months pregnant at the time. She . . .” And then, incredibly, the emotion cuts in and I really, truly can’t finish the sentence properly. “ . . . lost . . .”
I drop my head down into my hands as the feelings well up inside of me. I can’t believe it, can’t believe it still gets to me after all this time. It’s the tablets, you see. The ones they give me – gave me – back in the annexe. I think they kept me steady. On an even keel. Steadier than this anyhow. I’m all over the place.
I sit, bent over with my head in my hands, for what seems like minutes, sniffing and twitching and breathing heavily. I’m desperately trying to catch hold of my breath, stop myself crying, start talking normally again. I need to calm down, breathe slowly and deeply, like they taught us in those classes back in the big house. I daren’t even turn to look at her in case she gets up to go.
And then I feel it. Her hand, soft and gentle, just touching me ever so lightly on my back between my shoulder blades.
And that’s just about going to tip me over the edge, I can tell you.
It’s a kind touch and I’ve not had many of those recently. Fact is, I’ve not had any at all. It’s all I can do to stop myself breaking down and sobbing my heart out. How I’ve lost everything. My wife. The baby. My freedom. All I have left now is little William. He’s all I’ve got in the world.
And I’ve got to be strong for him, haven’t I? I have to pull myself together and sit up straight and – hard though it is – I’ve got to get away from this woman and find another quiet place to wait for the Veitchs to go by with the little ’un. It’s got to be done. I’ll be alright. Just give me a minute. It’s not like me, all this. Not like me at all.
I have to be tough. And hard. For William’s sake, because that’s what’s important. That’s what matters. Really matters.
William. My little boy.
That’s all.
Nothing else.
“Would you like to come back with us and have a cup of tea?” is what she says next.
And I look up at her, my eyes still full of tears. And she smiles at me. And I smile at her. And, unexpectedly, I find myself nodding and saying, “Yes, yes please, that would be really nice.”
And you know what? As we get up together, it suddenly occurs to me straight out of the blue that she – Julia – almost certainly has a car and money and just about anything else I could want to get William away from here nice and safely.
Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
Safe? Of course she’s safe. What do you mean, safe? What the fuck do you think I’m going to do next?
18
5.00pm, SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER
“How long do you let him sleep?” asks the old man, sipping his cup of tea.
“Usually for about an hour or so after his lunch. It’s a bit hit and miss today, though,” Nat replies from across the room. “But if he doesn’t have a nap now, he’ll get tired and edgy at the fair and we’ll pay for it later. He’ll fight going to sleep tonight.”
“It can’t be an easy life,” replies the man. He turns and listens for the old woman and Rick who have gone through the kitchen into the back garden. In a quieter voice, he adds soothingly, “She doesn’t mean it . . . what she says . . . Will was too young to understand how to play anyway. That’s all. It’s just the way it comes out.”
Nat thinks for a few moments as she packs the snakes and ladders game away for him. She has always liked the old man, thinking he has a softness about him that balances the sharpness of the old woman. She can talk to him. She debates whether she should share some of her thoughts.
“Are you coming to the funfair with us?” she asks eventually.
“We’ll see,” he answers. “We’ll see what she wants to do. I struggle after a while, what with the standing about. I had to sit down for ages this morning when I went to the shops. Old age, I’m afraid. I’d hold everyone up. And the crowds . . .” He sighs.
“You’re not so old,” she smiles at him. “And you could walk with Will. See who’s quickest.”
He smiles back. “She changed so much when Roger died and then his Laura took the girlies back to her parents. New Zealand. We’ve not seen them since. Just cards. It’s made her . . .” He searches for the right word.
“Demanding? Controlling?”
“No, no . . . not intentionally anyway . . . losing Roger nearly destroyed her. And she thinks the two girls were taken away from her and it has made her bitter. She wants everything to be just so. Perfect. She can’t handle toddler tantrums. We never had any of that when ours were small.”
He pauses, looking at Nat for her encouragement to say more. “It’s the way it comes out. She doesn’t mean to be nasty. It’s not so much demanding as . . . disappointed. Everything just seems to disappoint her these days. Everyone . . . it’s not about you or Will.”
“And Rick disappoints her? Because he’s not as perfect as Roger was?” she answers back, a touch of anger in her voice.
“No, I didn’t mean that either, Natalie, not like that. I meant losing her son. Either son. She’d have been the same if it had been Richard. That’s what I meant.”
Nat just shakes her head, “She wanted a perfect grandson. Rick’s son.”
He shrugs. “No, not exactly. I mean, you know . . . we know things haven’t been easy for you . . . for you both. What you did was wonderful, really. Marvellous. The poor lamb. He’s a good little lad really. She just doesn’t cope well with anything that’s not just so. And this diabetes thing and all that goes with it unsettles her. Hypo-this and hyper-that. She doesn’t know what to say or do. She doesn’t know what to talk to you about. She feels helpless.”
Nat looks sceptical but tries not to show it. She remembers glances and looks and the casual words of hurt from the old woman over the years. From way back, well before Roger had died. It is true, she thinks, that the old woman has got worse since then, but the sense of superiority, the controlling nature and the nastiness when everyone and everything wasn’t as she wanted, has always been there, she thinks.
“Rick doesn’t stand up to her, that’s the problem,” she responds at last.
“No, well no. That’s not it really. No, that’s not fair. It’s not a matter of being hard with her, she needs sympathy. That’s the thing to do. It’s not always easy, I know. I find it . . . a challenge at times. There are moments when I could just . . . but she needs to be jollied along, not have some sort of confrontation.” He shakes his head, not sure whether this conversation has gone as he had hoped; to calm a tense atmosphere, to soothe things over. He hesitates for a moment or two.
“If you don’t mind me saying, Natalie, I don’t think you . . .” the old man starts to say something else and then stops as the back door opens and he hears the old woman and then Rick coming back into the kitchen.
The little boy calls out from upstairs, “Mama?”
“Here we go again,” says Nat, brushing past the old woman on her way to the staircase.
19
5.12pm, SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER
You know what I’ve got? Right now?
Options, that’s what.
Big fat fucking options.
They told us all about options in the annexe, those of us with a chance of getting out of there, that is. How option one could take us one way (and not a very nice way if I remember) and how option two could take us to happy ever after.
Mind you, working in a supermarket and living in a bedsit for the rest of your life seemed to be the basis of option two, which isn’t my idea of happy ever after, I can tell you.
They wouldn’t tell me what option three was and got quite pissy when I began asking about it, but there you go – that’s counsellors for you. Mad as bollocks the lot of them.
Of course, the nutters – the Sprakes and the Ainsleys of this world – don’t have options. No fucking options at all; neither one, two or a non-existent three. They’ll just spend the rest of their lives in the annexe, twitching and jerking and biting each other when Spink isn’t looking.
But the rest of us – the normal, ordinary Joes who shouldn’t really be there – do have options. And I am making the most of mine right now. I’m about to start exercising my very own option three – having a fucking good rest of my life.
I’m sitting here in the mother’s house – Julia’s house now, I guess – like a pig in shit. Well, in one of those recliner chairs, as a matter of fact. (Not that I have reclined it, that would be rather rude, wouldn’t it?) I’ve a cup of tea in one hand and a shortbread finger in the other.
She’s now doing something in the kitchen, feeding the dog and tidying around by the sound of it. I think she’s got herself all embarrassed. She was alright on the seafront but walking back she went quiet as it got darker, like she might just be regretting inviting me. As though she were having second thoughts. Can’t blame her, really. I’m a normal guy, your regular man about town, but I’m still a stranger to her, aren’t I?
So I started talking, to cover her embarrassment. I said I’d come up for the day (I didn’t say where from, well you can’t, can you?) and that I was seeing my little boy William later (that took a bit of explaining because she thought I didn’t have any children, but I managed to talk myself around that alright).
I talked on and on, much more than I’d normally do, quite chatty really, and she smiled and nodded and made the right comments at the right times and I said – to reassure her, like – how I’d just stop for a cup of tea and be on my way as I had to go to fetch William from his auntie’s at six o’clock.
And that seemed to make her feel easier, but she’s still given me tea and a biscuit and then shut herself away in the kitchen with the dog, tidying and straightening up and I don’t know what to do now.
So I’ve been sitting here, nice and calm (as I always am), just thinking about my options and what I’m going to do next. I was going to snatch the little man from the seafront when it was really dark and crowded, make a dash for the car at the other end of the beach and then drive to Thurrock and blag my way on to a family coach trip to Disneyland in Paris.
I told you that, didn’t I?
Remember?
Easy-peasy.
But I’d be driving that woman’s car, wouldn’t I? The one in the kitchen back in that house in Nottingham? And maybe, just maybe, the cops would be on to it by now.
And possibly, just possibly, I might not actually get very far.
If I’m honest, really honest, it might all turn a bit nasty, with me and the little chap being chased across fields.
I can’t have that, can I?
It’s all a bit chancy, isn’t it?
Not so pissing easy, in fact, when I really give it some thought.
And I haven’t got any money. Not much anyway, only the loose change I snatched from that woman’s house. It would probably be enough to get me and the little one on the train from Ipswich station, but it would hardly get us far or give us enough to go all the way to a new life in the south of France. And I can’t really be doing with hanging about a railway station, not with CCTV and all they have.
You can’t get far without proper folding money in your back pocket and that’s a fact.
So this is where my option three comes in, see? This woman, Julia, has a car – one of those Japanese cars – parked out front. I can see it now, from where I’m sitting. A nice little car – nondescript you’d call it. No one would know I’d be driving that, now would they? No one would look twice or think of stopping me. And she’d not be too out of sorts if I took it – she’d have insurance and stuff like that, for sure.
And money – I reckon Julia won’t be short of a bob or two. Not if her mother has just died. So she’ll have a purse full of cash. And if there isn’t enough in that, well, she’ll have a card. Put one of them in a machine, with the right number, of course, and I could be looking at maybe £250 in tenners; even more depending on the limit she has on it. £500 would see me off to a good start, very nice indeed.
I’d probably have enough money to get to the south of France and maybe rent a place while I got myself a job. In fact, maybe she’d have a lot of money in the account and I could just keep dipping into it as and when we needed it. Maybe, if she is really shitbag rich, she’d not notice it and even if she did, well, the bank would probably repay her anyway. All in all, I don’t think it would be a big deal for her at all, any of this car and money malarkey.
But it would make a massive difference to me.
And William.
And little William is all that matters to me.
But I’ve been thinking. Because she’s a very nice lady and I don’t want to let her down, I’ve been thinking of different ways of doing this. It’s not easy, is it? After all, you can’t just take someone’s car and their cash card and all that without them noticing and you can’t really say I’m on the run with my little boy, so do you mind awfully but can I borrow your car to make a getaway? And by the way, can I have your cash card at the same time?
No, you can’t say that.
You can’t say that at all, nor anything like it.
No way.
I can’t just take them. It’s not right, especially as she’s been so kind to me. The thought has occurred to me, if I’m honest with you. A half-hour or so’s chat and then, just as I’m leaving, I say excuse me while I pop to the loo. That’s alright in someone’s house, so long as you’re just in there for a few moments. You can’t go in for the other, obviously. That wouldn’t be nice. Not when you’re a guest.
And then, let’s say, I simply find her handbag in the bedroom while she’s standing there waiting for me in the hall. I lift out her keys and her purse and I’m away. But I reckon maybe you’re up to speed with me here. Say she goes to her bag for something or other the moment after I’ve gone, notices, and reports it to the police straightaway. I might be stopped in the car before I got out of town.
I need a car to get away safely – and one that’s not been reported as stolen.
And I need money, proper money, to help me and the little man to start over. And I can’t have that reported either.
So, unless you have a better idea and you won’t because I’ve been sitting here thinking it all through like Albert fucking Einstein, I don’t know what I’m going to do – I need Julia’s car and I need Julia’s money, and I can’t have Julia running to the cops two minutes later. That would fuck me and the little fellow straight off.
So you tell me – what do I do?
Can you think?
Are you thinking of something I might do?
20
5.20pm, SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER
“We need to leave, Rick, this is too much,” Nat hisses to him under her breath.
“We can’t,” he whispers back. “It’ll upset them, my mother especially.”
She raises her eyebrows.
The little boy, sat between them, pulls away from his mama every time she tries to take a prick of blood from a finger.
“No, Mama, no.”
She stops, feeling increasingly flustered as she can hear the old woman and the man in the kitchen, preparing tea, neither of them speaking and making hardly any noise. She knows they are standing there listening to what is happening, and can hear everything.
“Let me try . . . William, look at me . . . listen to me, listen to Papa.”
The little boy turns away from Rick and tries to hug his mama. She pushes him back upright, holding his hand firmly and offering it up to his papa. The boy clenches his fist and opens it flat, fingers splayed, and then clenches it again, this time harder, an intense look of concentration on his face.
Once more and his mama and papa both burst out laughing. Rick just says, “That’s just how he used to look when he was doing a poo when he was a baby.” She nods back as the little boy stops and looks curiously from one to the other.
They both wipe their eyes. He smiles at them, now turning from one to the other, suddenly peaceful.
“Will,” says Rick. “We need to do the tickle on your finger. Be a good boy now and we can go to the funfair. Come on, sit up straight.”
The little boy sits up. “Fair?” he asks, as his papa pricks the side of one of his fingers.
