Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
BETH
A young PC brings me a cup of tea before leaving me alone once more with DS Sató.
The tea looks watery and unappealing, the milky-brown liquid swirling inside the flimsy white cup.
Just looking at it makes my stomach churn.
I press a hand to my lower back. It’s stiff from sitting in the plastic chair, but I keep myself still, spine straight, hands folded in my lap. And I wait.
I told you it wouldn’t be easy.
The voice has taken on a nagging quality. Whiny and needling. But I never thought it would be easy. Sató asked me if I knew how many people confess to a crime before they’re charged. I wonder how many people confess to a murder they didn’t commit.
DS Sató is smart. Since Jonny’s body was discovered, she’s dug and poked and prodded.
Asked her polite questions. I’ve felt her sharp, constant gaze on all of us.
Sensed her closing in, to the point where it felt like I could barely draw the shallowest breath.
As though every hour – every minute – we were moving closer to the point where one of us in Magnolia Close would be arrested.
Sató’s gaze is on me now. She’s hoping I’ll fill the silence, break down like I’m certain Tasha has or talk without drawing in breath like Georgie. I do neither.
The silence is making you look guilty.
God, how I wish I could silence that voice. Like ironing out the creases in Henry’s polo shirts. They come in packs of five with a non-iron sticker. So many of the mums don’t bother ironing them, even though they really do need it, despite what the sticker says. Lazy.
The detective taps her pen against her notebook. ‘Your knowledge of the murder tells me one of two things,’ she begins like I asked her what she’s thinking. ‘Either you’re telling the truth and you killed Jonny, or you know who did.’
I lift my gaze, schooling my expression into something I hope looks like guilt. ‘I told you. It was me. What more do you want?’
Sató leans back in her chair. ‘What I want is the truth. Which isn’t what I’m getting from anyone right now.
’ She sits forward again, hands resting on the table.
‘See, here’s my problem, Beth. I’ve been in this job for a long time, and in my experience, people who commit murder don’t usually hand themselves in.
So tell me again, why did you kill Jonny? ’
My fingers tighten around the edge of my cardigan.
I picture Henry’s face. Those cheeks that flush red in the cold and the heat.
The sprinkling of freckles I pretend to count every morning when he wakes, convinced another has appeared overnight.
The way he drags out, ‘Mummy,’ in playful exasperation when I smooth down his hair.
Or the way he pretends to dive when I tackle him for the ball when we play football in the garden.
‘Foul,’ he always cries, rolling on the ground like they do on TV until we’re both laughing too hard to play anymore. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Henry.
It’s why I went to Jonny’s house that afternoon nine months ago in January, when the sky felt like it was darkening in the middle of the afternoon and there was frost on the ground.
The coldest January on record. Alistair was in London, not back for hours.
Henry was off school with a fever, his small body burning up against mine despite the Calpol I’d given him.
I’d barely slept for two days, dishing out medicine.
Comforting him when he cried. I was exhausted, strung out.
And then there was Jonny’s music. I could hear the thump, thump of it.
Relentless. Non-stop, rattling through every last frayed nerve.
When Henry finally fell asleep, I slipped out and went to Jonny’s front door.
The music seemed quieter out here. Muffled compared to what I could hear from my own house.
I tried the doorbell first. No answer. Then a hard knock.
Still nothing. Finally, I banged my fist on the door.
When the minutes passed and I was still on that doorstep, the anger took over.
Henry needed sleep and rest. We both did.
We needed quiet. We didn’t need our home invaded with the incessant drumbeats from whatever awful music Jonny was listening to at maximum volume.
I flew back into my house, grabbed the spare key Jonny had given Alistair the last time he went on holiday. If he wasn’t going to let me in, then I’d let myself in. A moment of madness perhaps, but one I’d been driven to by exhaustion and stress and that constant thrumming drumbeat.
The music system was in the living room.
The speakers pushed right up against the back wall nearest to our house.
No wonder it seemed to be only us that heard it.
The number of times I’d raised it at the residents’ association meetings, only to be met by the baffled looks of my neighbours.
Even Cynthia and Phil at number one had said they only heard the occasional noises, and it had never bothered them.
Still, we’d sent a polite letter to Jonny signed by the residents’ association, asking him to be more considerate with the volume. A letter he’d ignored.
The music system was a complex monster of a thing with too many buttons I didn’t understand. In the end, I yanked the plug from the wall, throwing the house into a silence that felt eerie. I swear the pulse of music still pounded in my temples.
‘Jonny?’ I called out, suddenly hesitant. In the silence, it seemed obvious I’d massively overstepped, letting myself into my neighbour’s house to turn off his music. But it was too late to undo it now.
There was no reply. I remember wondering if he’d had an accident.
Wishing even back then that he was dead.
I crept forward, half expecting to find him collapsed on the floor in the kitchen.
A heart attack. A stroke. It happened all the time.
Why not to him? But the downstairs was empty.
I stood by the staircase for a moment, wondering what to do.
Walk out now or search upstairs. ‘Jonny?’
He has to be here, the voice in my head reasoned. Who leaves their music on and goes out?
It turns out Jonny did.
Because I did go upstairs that day. Checking every room as my pulse hammered in my ears as loud as his music had. The house was neater than I’d expected. Clean but bland. Grey walls. Plain furniture. Like a show home, devoid of any real personality. And a house that was most definitely empty.
Until it wasn’t.
I was coming down the stairs when the front door opened and Jonny’s tall frame filled the doorway and then the hall. Dark hair and darker eyes. Attractive from a distance perhaps. Until he showed his repulsive personality.
His eyes narrowed the moment he saw me. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ The question came in an exhale. Annoyance or humour or maybe both. Either way, it caused a fear to ripple through me.
Only my exhaustion and anger kept me from cowering an apology. ‘I was knocking on your door for ten minutes,’ I said. ‘Henry is unwell, and your incessant music meant he couldn’t sleep.’
Jonny smirked. ‘So you broke into my house? Christ, Beth. Didn’t take you for the type.’
‘Turn your music off before you go out and next time I won’t have to.’ I moved towards the door, wanting out, wanting to be home with Henry, but Jonny was still in the hallway, and in one movement he was blocking my path.
‘By all means, feel free to let yourself in any time, Beth,’ he said, voice dripping with an innuendo that made my skin crawl. ‘Maybe I’ll use my spare key and pop over to yours next time.’
My gaze snapped to his. I was already shaking my head as I asked, ‘What spare key?’
Jonny smiled. ‘Didn’t Alistair tell you? We did a swap. You have mine, and I have yours. For emergencies, of course. And for whenever we feel like it too, it seems.’
My blood turned to ice. His tone was still friendly, but I didn’t miss the undercurrent of threat. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said.
‘But it’s OK for you?’ he asked.
‘When you leave your music on, yes.’ I shoved past him, my breath coming too fast as the anger consumed me. Fear too. I was in this man’s house. Alone. And I shouldn’t have been.
‘You’re ruining my life, you know.’ My voice was barely a whisper. ‘Maybe if I wasn’t so stressed with your music and your car engine revving day and night, I’d be pregnant by now.’
Jonny’s laughter followed me out the front door, but then DS Sató’s voice drags me back to the small, stuffy interview room. ‘Beth, why did you kill Jonny?’
I look up, blinking. My heart is still hammering from the memory of standing in Jonny’s house.
You’re too scared to do what needs to be done. You’ve come this far, and now you’re stalling.
I swallow hard, reach into my handbag and pull out the Ziploc bag. Whatever it takes, I remind myself. ‘You want proof,’ I say by way of reply. ‘Here it is.’
Sató’s gaze moves from me to the object in my hand. Inside the clear plastic, the metal of the knife glints under the harsh lights, except for the places where the blood has dried dark red and dull.
Something in Sató’s face changes. Her jaw tightens. ‘I assume you’re showing me the murder weapon?’
‘Yes. I’ve told you how I killed Jonny. I’m showing you the knife I used. His blood and DNA will still be on it.’
‘Will yours?’ The speed of her question nearly knocks me off balance.
I grit my teeth and don’t reply. We had to confess. It had to be this way.