33
33
Wednesday morning and Rebel Records was heaving, the aisles crammed with the usual mix of middle-aged men purchasing deluxe reissues of albums they’d loved when they were young, and the new generation of record buyers, many of whom were buying classics too. Fleetwood Mac, The Cure, Marvin Gaye. It was the busiest we’d been since Record Store Day in the spring, almost as if everyone was doing their Christmas shopping three months early.
It didn’t matter that business was booming, though. My insides were still twisted with anxiety after our encounter with Tommy the night before. This morning I’d woken up to find that Emma was already in her sports kit and on her way out for a run. I’d asked her if we could talk and she said, ‘Tonight.’ Her tone was ominous, like it was going to be a serious conversation. Before I could say anything more, she headed out and I watched her run up the road, towards the footpath where Albie had come off his bike, and the fields beyond. Watching her go, I felt a surge of emotion. I had been convinced I was going to lose her, had done something stupid then compounded that mistake by not being honest about it. This evening, I decided, I would tell her everything.
As she’d vanished from sight, I had looked across the street to Iris’s place. She’d be on her way to Canada now, to see her son and grandchildren. I was happy for her; it was just a shame she’d gone before remembering where she knew Fiona from.
I had just sold a copy of the new Madonna box set when I heard a male voice say, ‘Dad.’
The customer stepped out of the way and I saw my son standing there.
‘Dylan. I didn’t know you were in town.’
He wasn’t smiling. ‘I need to talk to you. I’ve been texting and calling you but you didn’t answer, so I came here.’
My phone was charging in the back office. ‘What is it?’
A customer was watching us, which made Dylan say, ‘Can we go somewhere quieter?’
‘Of course.’
I led him into the back room. What was going on? Dylan had never come into the shop like this before. I could hardly remember ever seeing him look so agitated.
He ran his hands through his hair. ‘The estate is full of cops, parked outside Iris’s house. I went over to try to see what’s going on but the police are making everyone stay away. They’ve strung up crime scene tape all around the house. All the neighbours are going crazy and I heard one guy say that Iris had been murdered.’
It didn’t sink in for a second. ‘ Murdered? ’
‘Yeah. He said he’d spoken to one of the cops and they’d told him it looked like a burglary, but Iris must have disturbed them and they ... they killed her.’
‘She can’t be dead.’ What he was saying didn’t make sense. ‘She’s meant to be in Canada.’
Dylan opened his mouth to say something but I interrupted him.
‘Where’s your mum? Why have you come here on your own?’
‘If you’d read the texts I sent you ... She and Rose have gone out.’
‘Gone out? Where?’
‘I don’t know!’ He was raking his fingers almost maniacally through his hair now. I wanted to grab his wrists, make him stop. ‘You’re not allowing me to speak.’
‘Okay. I’m sorry. Go ahead.’
Iris. Murdered? It still wouldn’t sink in. I’d stood with her in her house less than twenty-four hours ago. She was meant to be on a plane.
Dylan sat down in a chair that was surrounded by piles of boxes, gathering himself before he spoke. He looked like someone who was about to confess some terrible crime.
‘Last night, when you were out, I was in my room chatting with Keira on Discord, and I don’t know what Fiona and Rose were doing but at about ten someone knocked on the front door. I was going to go down but Rose answered it. I could hear her talking to someone. A woman. Ten minutes after that, I heard the front door close again and ... You know how you can tell when you’re suddenly on your own?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, it was like that. I went into your room and peeked out and I saw them.’
He stopped.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Rose and Fiona. They were outside Iris’s house. Fiona was kind of standing to the side, like she was planning to jump out and say “Boo!” – and when Iris opened the door, that’s exactly what she did.’
‘She jumped out and said boo?’
He huffed. ‘I couldn’t hear her, and it was too dark and too far across the street for me to see Iris’s face, but I got the impression she was freaked out. And then they all went inside.’
‘And then what happened?’
‘I don’t know. Keira was messaging, asking where I was, so I went back to talk to her and got distracted. A bit later I realised I wasn’t on my own anymore, that Rose and Fiona were back in the house. And I didn’t think anything more about it until all the police turned up this morning.’ He blinked at me. ‘Dad, you don’t think ...’
‘That Fiona and Rose had something to do with Iris’s death? Of course not. Rose? Don’t be silly.’
‘But . . .’
I waited.
‘Rose has been acting weird, and I told you what I think of Fiona.’
She’s a psycho , said Tommy’s voice in my head. At the same time, I wondered at my reaction to what Dylan had said. Of course I had immediately rejected the idea that Rose had done Iris harm – she was my daughter, my little girl – but my gut hadn’t done the same with Fiona.
‘Keira says that her mum said that Rose shows all the signs of having the dark triad of personality traits. After what she did to Henry.’
Dark triad? ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Do you not remember what happened at laser tag?’
‘We don’t know what happened. He told us he jumped out of the crow’s nest and fell down the ramp.’
‘Yeah, but only because of all the things Rose was saying to him. Keira heard all of it, and she told her parents, and her mum almost made her stop talking to me. Henry is still having bad dreams, apparently, and has started wetting the bed. He’s convinced Rose is going to turn up at their house and kill him.’
I flashed to an image of another incident I hadn’t witnessed. A four-year-old Rose pushing that kid off the tower at nursery. Then: her face when Albie had his accident. That I had seen. And the fear on Henry’s face when they’d been using the hot tub.
I still felt the need to defend her.
‘But that’s crazy. Maybe she said something mean to him – kids do that all the time – but he must have overreacted.’
Dylan shook his head. ‘I knew you’d be like this. You think Rose is all sweetness and light—’
Except I didn’t, did I?
‘—but she’s always been a bit weird. More than a bit, if we’re honest. You know she’s never had any proper friends? It’s because she’s horrible to anyone who tries to get close to her. Like that friend she had at school. Jasmine. Her brother told me Rose really bullied her, made her life hell until Jasmine finally got the guts to tell her to eff off.’
‘You never told us that.’
‘I tried, but you didn’t listen.’
Was that true? I had no memory of it.
‘She’s been much worse recently. I see her and Fiona all the time, whispering. Also, she barely even reacted when that guy died from eating those cookies. I’d be traumatised if I saw something like that. Just about anyone would. But Rose acts like it was something she saw on telly.’
‘But ...’ I couldn’t think of an excuse. Last night it had been me arguing that Rose’s behaviour was down to more than growing pains. Now my instinct was to defend her, to argue the other way.
‘Keira says you’re in denial. Parents of kids with psychological issues often are. Rose always used to put on this act at home, pretending to be an angel. It’s only the last few weeks that she’s stopped acting. Keira says it will be because her hormones are surging, making it harder for her to keep everything under control.’
‘But ... that’s normal, though. It’s called growing up.’
‘No, it’s more than that. Keira says—’
‘Oh my God. Keira. She’s filling your head with nonsense.’
‘Yeah, she also said you’d say that. You’re in denial. I was in denial too, for ages.’
I leaned against the wall. There was a churning sensation in my guts and my heart was pounding. Dylan sounded so mature, as if there had been this grown man living in my house all this time and I’d never noticed. And I could feel myself splitting in two: the part of me that refused to believe my precious daughter could ever do anything awful, and the part of me that had suspected something was wrong. That she had changed.
But she couldn’t have hurt Iris. No way. She was a twelve-year-old girl. She wasn’t capable of being involved in murder .
‘I need to talk to your mum,’ I said, crossing the office to where my phone was plugged in. As I picked it up I saw all the missed calls from Dylan and, among them, a text from Emma, who was still off work.
Hey. Rose and I are going out for the day with Fiona. Be back around dinner time.
With Fiona?
‘What is it?’ Dylan said, seeing my reaction.
I showed him.
‘Shit. I mean . . . Sorry.’
‘You swearing is the least of my worries right now,’ I said, lifting the phone to my ear and calling Emma.
It went straight to voicemail. I tapped out a text: Where have you gone? I need to talk to you urgently.
The status quickly displayed as ‘delivered’ but didn’t change to ‘read’.
I texted Rose, who always saw her messages and responded to them quickly. Hi Rose, can you ask Mum to call me ASAP?
This time the status didn’t even change to delivered.
Dylan was on his phone too. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Telling Keira what’s happening.’
I didn’t know what to do, except that I needed to head home. I grabbed my car key off the desk and said, ‘Come with me.’
On the way out, I told my assistant there was an emergency and that she’d have to run the shop for a little while.
I drove us home on autopilot, waiting for my phone to ping to tell me Emma or Rose had responded. Dylan attempted to contact them too, but with no joy. I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting, that even if Iris had been murdered – and this still seemed too outlandish to believe – that I didn’t need to worry about my family. It must have been a burglary gone wrong, just as the police had said. Sickening, but nothing to do with Rose.
I entered the estate to find the road blocked by police cars and rubberneckers who had come to look at the crime scene. A BBC news van idled by the kerb. As Dylan had said, police tape was strung up around Iris’s house and there were half a dozen cops standing on her front lawn.
I parked as close as I could to our house and hurried up the street. As we neared Iris’s, a CSI came out wearing all the gear, just like on TV. This was surreal. Un real. I had to say ‘Excuse me’ to numerous onlookers, a mix of neighbours and strangers, to get to my house. As I reached the drive, I saw Tommy and Nicola standing outside their house, watching the comings and goings next door.
I crossed the road to them, Dylan at my heels.
‘Tommy,’ I said.
He looked startled to see me, and as I got close I caught a whiff of him. He still smelled of alcohol. Inside his house, his dogs were going crazy, barking in tandem. I realised Eric and Albie, who looked a lot better than when I’d last seen him, were in the back of their car.
‘Do you know what’s going on?’ I asked, a little breathless. ‘Did you see or hear anything?’
‘She’s dead,’ said Nicola. ‘That cop over there said her head was bashed in, and the place looks like it’s been ransacked.’
‘Oh Jesus.’
‘We thought this was going to be a nice neighbourhood but we’ve had enough. We’re going to put our place on the market. You should too.’
They both went to move towards their car but I stopped Tommy and gestured for him to accompany me out of Dylan’s earshot. Speaking quietly, I said, ‘There’s nothing going on between me and Fiona.’
‘None of my business, mate.’
‘It was just a hug. But I want to ask you about the other stuff you said last night. What were you talking about? Have you seen Fiona do something?’
He flicked a glance at Nicola, who was squinting in our direction. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘You said not to try to take a photo of Fiona, and that she’s a psycho.’
His face contorted. ‘I was wasted last night. I don’t even remember seeing you. But it’s not safe round here anymore.’
‘Because of Fiona?’
He shook his head, wincing in pain. ‘Albie’s going to be all right, but we’re not staying here and risking something else happening to him or Eric. Not while that lunatic is around.’
With that, he pushed past me and they both got into their car, Tommy sounding his horn until the police let him past.
Should I go and talk to the police? Tell them what Dylan had seen last night?
After forcing myself to calm down, think it through, I decided I couldn’t. My first instinct was to protect my daughter, and that meant I didn’t want to do anything until I’d spoken to her and Emma. I wanted to talk to Fiona too. Find out why she’d been at Iris’s yesterday night, confident I would know if she was lying. Only then, if I thought I knew what was going on, would I talk to the police. Despite the whispering voice in my head, I was sure Rose and Fiona must have gone to wish Iris a good trip, that was all. A coincidence. They’d probably had a lucky escape, getting out before the violent intruder turned up.
I tried ringing Emma again as we walked over to the house but, again, it went to voicemail. I tried Rose too, and got the same result.
We entered the house and Lola ran up to us, tail wagging furiously.
‘Did they not give you an indication where they were going?’ I asked Dylan.
‘No. Mum just said they were going out. That was it.’
‘What time was this?’
‘I don’t know. I was still in bed. She spoke to me through my bedroom door and then I went back to sleep.’
This was what he did pretty much every day in the school holidays. I’d been the same when I was his age. A nocturnal animal.
I paced around helplessly.
‘Don’t you have us all on that family location app?’ he said.
‘Oh my God. Of course.’
When we’d bought Dylan and Rose their phones, I had installed an app that meant Emma and I could see where they were. All the parents I knew were the same. It was one of the positive things about teenagers and phones; we parents didn’t have to rely on them letting us know their whereabouts. Emma and I both had the app, which meant we could also both tell where the other was. I had very rarely used it to locate Emma, even at the darkest points of my paranoia about Mike, because it told the other person if you’d checked up on them. Now, though, I had good reason to look.
I opened the app.
‘What the hell?’ Dylan and I were listed as part of our family group, but Emma and Rose were missing. I handed my phone to Dylan, deferring to his teenage technological superiority. ‘Does this mean they’re offline?’
He scrutinised it. ‘No, it means they’ve deleted themselves.’
‘But Rose can’t delete hers without the password, can she?’
He shook his head. ‘Mum could do both, though.’
Dylan handed the phone back and I stared at the screen. ‘Why would she?’
‘I don’t know.’
I thought I might be sick. Maybe now was the time to go out and talk to the police. I was still reluctant, though, just in case Rose was involved with something criminal. I needed to do more to figure out what was going on first. Also, I felt certain the police wouldn’t take it seriously yet, not unless I told them I thought Fiona and Rose might know something about Iris’s death.
I took deep breaths to try to calm myself down, then went to the tap in the kitchen to fill a glass of water, taking it into the living room. From there I could see Iris’s house, the cops swarming around. The space where I’d stood talking to Tommy and Nicola.
What exactly had he said about Fiona last night? Don’t ever try to take her photo. She’ll freak right out.
Emma had speculated this was because Tommy was a creep who’d tried to spy on his female neighbour, a perv taking pics over the fence. But what if it was something else? I remembered my own attempts to research Fiona Smith online and my efforts to jog Iris’s memory.
‘She doesn’t want anyone to know who she is.’
‘What?’ Dylan said.
I hadn’t realised I’d spoken out loud, but now that I’d said it a terrible notion struck me. Had Iris remembered who Fiona was? And revealed this to Fiona?
Had Fiona murdered her to keep her real identity secret?
Still unable to believe this might actually be the case, I said, ‘If you wanted to find out who someone was, how would you do it? Apart from searching for their name, I mean?’
Because I was almost certain now that Fiona Smith was a fake name.
I didn’t need to wait for the answer. Tommy had provided it already. I said it aloud: ‘You’d take their photo. Show it around, maybe put it on social media ...’
‘No, you wouldn’t need to do all that, Dad. You’d just have to put it into reverse image search.’
Of course.
‘Except we don’t have any photos of Fiona.’
‘Rose might.’
I immediately headed upstairs to Rose’s room, with Dylan following. Rose might have her phone with her, but her laptop, which she used mostly for homework or to play Roblox, automatically synced with her phone, so all her photos would be on there.
‘Do you know the password?’ I asked.
‘It always used to be Lola123. Capital L.’ Dylan had helped her set the laptop up when she’d first got it. ‘I told her to change it to something harder to guess, but don’t know if she did.’
I tried it and thanked the gods Rose had never got round to updating it. I was in, and navigated straight to her photos app.
There were very few photos taken in the last few months. Ninety per cent of them were of the dog – which, to be honest, wasn’t dissimilar to my own photo reel. A few landscape pictures she’d taken on holiday. My eyes were immediately drawn to some pictures taken at what I recognised as the Horniman Museum. Dog and wolf heads mounted on a wall. A gigantic stuffed walrus. There were some pictures of Rose taken on this trip. A few of her in a park too.
But no photos of Fiona.
‘Fiona must have some photos of herself,’ Dylan said. ‘In her house, I mean.’
I looked towards the wall. Fiona’s house was on the other side. If only I could walk through it.
‘I can’t break in to her house,’ I said. There was nothing else for it. I was going to have to talk to the police.
‘We don’t have to,’ Dylan said.
‘Go to the police?’ I was losing track of what I’d merely thought and what I’d said aloud.
‘No, Dad.’ My fifteen-year-old son was looking at me like he was worried I’d lost my mind. ‘Break into her house.’
He went over to Rose’s bedside drawer, opened it and rifled around inside. I was about to say something about his sister’s privacy when he turned around, proudly brandishing a key. ‘Rose told me Fiona gave her a key so she could go in and feed the cat when Fiona was away that time.’
‘Of course.’
We headed downstairs. Leaving the house, I heard Tommy’s voice in my head again, calling Fiona a psycho. I braced myself, terrified of what we might find next door. Increasingly scared that I was going to find something in there that would prove Dylan was right.
That not only did we live next door to a psychopath, but that my daughter was one too.