Chapter Thirty-Eight
Haze
Reggie had only been asleep for twenty minutes when the doorbell started ringing. Sausage did her duty of furiously barking at the intrusion. I shushed her and picked her up before she could wake Reggie and ruin the quiet hour I had planned for myself.
I opened the door to find Alain Drake staring at me. The man from Interpol was here. In England. On my doorstep. I ignored my creeping heart rate and smiled back at him.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we? In Ivrea?”
Drake was wearing another well-cut suit. This time in charcoal gray. “Correct, Mrs. Cabot. Can I come in?”
“Of course!” I opened the door wide and ushered him in. “It’s been a long time! I’ve had a baby. A whole new baby since we last saw each other.”
“Congratulations,” he said flatly.
“You’re French, right? But I heard you speaking Italian at the hospital?”
“I’m French and Belgian. And I speak five languages.”
My bet had been seven.
I led him through to the kitchen.
I knew the house was clean. Not actually clean, but clean of evidence.
There was nothing here that would give us away.
No wall with pinned-up photos of targets.
No cabinet displaying our extensive knife collection.
No trophy cabinet of mementos from victims. Nothing that gave us away as anything other than a normal suburban family with two kids and a dog.
Yet everything in me was screaming that him being here was a threat.
“Is your daughter here?”
“No, she’s at school. And the baby’s asleep upstairs.” I motioned to the baby monitor on the kitchen table. “Would you like a tea or coffee?”
Drake ignored the question. He wrinkled his nose as he lifted a damp baby toy from a chair and sat down at the table. “We’ve had intelligence that suggests the man who was behind your kidnapping is in England.”
I gasped. Perhaps a little over the top. “That’s terrible! Do we need to be worried?” I sat down opposite him and leaned forward. “Do you think he’ll come after us again?”
“We have no evidence that he’s after you or your husband, but I thought it was only fair to let you know to be vigilant.”
“We always are. We take our safety very seriously.”
“You’d think this was a safe area.” Drake looked around our marble-topped kitchen. “But it doesn’t seem to be.”
“It is safe! Nothing ever—”
Drake cut me off. “The Backpacking Butcher.”
“Ah.” Remain calm. Of course Drake knew about him.
The Butcher had put this area on the map.
International true-crime podcasts had all done special episodes on his killing spree—the highlight being hosts pronouncing Slough, Berkshire, with varying degrees of success.
I wasn’t worried about him linking the Butcher to us.
We had tied up everything ever so neatly.
“It was your car that he died in. Correct?”
So maybe not that neatly.
“Yes. That was very…unfortunate. I’m friends with his ex, and she’d borrowed my car to—”
Drake held up a hand. “I’ve read the police reports. Interpol were investigating the Butcher for many years.”
The Backpacking Butcher had killed men all over Europe.
The occasional clue of a rail ticket or hostel stub had led Interpol to believe that he was backpacking around Europe, killing rich men he happened to come across.
We were quite proud of how good we were at hiding our crimes—and even prouder of having pinned them on a dead Bill Grundy.
“It was a very upsetting experience.” I had loved that Range Rover.
“It never felt quite right to me. That man, Bill. He was too sloppy for me. I’d pictured the Butcher as someone with more sophistication.”
I shrugged. “Killers are killers. A mysterious breed.”
“They’re human. Just a little more flawed than the average person.” Drake took a silver cigarette case out of his jacket pocket. “What’s interesting is that the Butcher’s victims were all of questionable moral fiber.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Nothing proven, but they’d all had allegations of various sorts made against them.” Drake plucked a cigarette out of the case.
“Maybe Bill, being a former police officer, would’ve known about that and thought he was doing good by killing them.”
“A violent killer with morals? A ridiculous notion, don’t you think?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I had plenty to say on that subject. “It’s not really my area of expertise.”
Drake tapped his unlit cigarette on the table and stood up. “It’s funny that you’re this nice couple living in the suburbs, never been in trouble with the law. Yet you have this brush with a serial killer last year, and then this year you’re kidnapped by men with ties to violent European gangs.”
“We’ve certainly had bad luck!”
Drake kept staring at me.
“I just count our blessings. Two beautiful, healthy children. This lovely house.”
Drake was staring at the laundry I had drying from the designer standing light by the sofa. Three Baby-gros, two of my bras, and one of Fox’s shirts were hanging from its black metal arms.
“We’re doing okay,” I continued. “Although my poor husband has been struggling. He’s in therapy.” Finally, his therapist could be useful. “It was quite an ordeal for him.”
“But not for you?” Drake tilted his head.
“I wasn’t hurt like he was. And you know I had blackouts. Not remembering everything has made it much easier processing it all.”
“If you see anyone you recognize from Ivrea, if you notice anyone new hanging around either of you, then please call me.” He put his card on the table.
“Intelligence shows that the man behind the attack in Ivrea is leaving the business. Whatever he’s here for is our last chance to bring him to justice.
And I’m sure you want him caught so you can go back to your nice, normal life in peace. ”
Drake clearly didn’t believe we were a sweet, innocent couple caught up in something bigger than we understood. But our previous international crimes had been carefully pinned on a dead man. He’d have no reason to look into the past—would he?
I showed him out and closed the front door behind him, then slumped back against it.
The Chameleon. And the Interpol agent. Both far too interested in us.
Drake being here, sniffing around our family, was dangerous.
My phone pinged.
Here’s a poll to mark what dates you can do for dinner at ours!
For fuck’s sake.
Not now, Frederica.
She’d given fourteen options. Was it believable that I’d be busy for all of them?
I ignored her message and texted my group chat with Fox and Jenny.
That Interpol agent Drake came to see me. That awful man behind Ivrea is in England!
We always texted each other as if our phone records could one day be read out in court.
Fox pinged back right away.
Oh honey, are you okay? Do you want me to come home?
Then Jenny:
Babe, that’s so scary. Let’s all have dinner together tonight.
I took a deep breath. It was going to be fine. We had one another. We’d talk it through. We’d find our weaknesses and protect ourselves.
My phone rang as I was gripping it. Hamish from the gallery. I picked up.
“Darling, you’re not going to like this. Not one bit.”
“That’s not a good way to start a call, Hamish.”
“I’ve sent you a video of an interview with Kristoff Klein. He’s a new up-and-coming Algerian artist who’s getting a lot of buzz.”
“I’m not going to be jealous of every bright new thing making their way up. I’m a bigger person than that. I celebrate those—”
“Just watch the video.” Hamish hung up.
Ping, my phone went again.
Class 1RM, Caroline Wilfie Mum Class Rep: Don’t forget it’s International Day tomorrow. As always, homemade costumes preferred!
I gritted my teeth, and forwarded the message to Fox with a series of expletives and question marks. Let him deal with how to fashion an American flag out of colored felt and a glue gun.
Then I clicked on the video link Hamish had sent. Kristoff had spiky blue hair, blue eyeshadow, blue lipstick, and thickset glasses. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-three. He was talking about his process as he walked the interviewer round his loft studio. God, he was so pretentious.
“I am the voice of my generation, chronicling our loves, our hates, our passions. We are messy and unafraid.”
The camera moved past his face to linger on two of his canvases hanging on the back wall.
I zoomed in on them and frowned. They looked near identical to two of my canvases.
My Beat It (2014) and Bite Me (2018) were not as well-known as some of my other works but were still lauded and both had sold for large sums. Kristoff had used the same color palettes for each, and had mimicked my painting style.
There was even a screwed-up rag in the center of the larger canvas.
It was painstakingly clear to me that the four-eyed Smurf had ripped off my work.
I rang Hamish back. “What the actual fuck? What can we do? Kill him? Sue him?”
I was cut off from Hamish’s response by the high-pitched wail of the baby monitor. A hurried goodbye, and I went to get Reggie.
I channeled my rage at the copycat by spending the afternoon finishing my new painting, while imagining the different ways in which I could inflict pain on him. I rocked Reggie’s bouncy chair with my foot and alternated making silly faces at him with each ferocious brushstroke.
My art. My baby. I knew what I needed to feel better. Couldn’t Fox work out the same? To help yourself you needed to know yourself. A serial killer wasn’t ever going to find peace in downward dog and the broken chords of U2’s “With or Without You.” Why couldn’t he see that?