Chapter Twenty #2
Sam squeezes Charlotte’s little netball keyring as she steps out into the dark corridor.
Something that had once been a pressure-laden reminder of a murdered child now soothes her and gives her confidence in her abilities and conviction.
The air is stale and her shoes cling slightly to the floor as she lifts them, implying a stickiness to the carpet that she doesn’t want to consider.
As she walks, the lights behind her turn off and those ahead flicker to life.
Arriving at room 1408, she knocks and a male voice invites her to come in.
This is it, she thinks.
The dragon’s den.
Julius Windsor, as he is known now, sits behind his desk and doesn’t bother to stand when Sam steps into the room and closes the door behind her.
She’s immediately struck by how tiny the space is.
She had pictured the lawyer’s office as resembling Charles Dickens’s study: giant bookshelves, a mahogany desk, a fountain pen.
Instead, Windsor sits behind a faux-oak desk that’s uncomfortably small for an adult and accommodates only his laptop, his legs clearly visible beneath it.
He looks like a man at a primary school parents’ evening, crammed into a child’s chair.
The seat for guests is a foldable yellow plastic thing and Sam notes the creak it gives as she tentatively sits down.
There’s a small table to the side of Windsor’s desk with a browning pot plant, two used blue china cups and a teapot covered with a floral cozy.
Sam heats up as she recognizes Betty’s precious collection.
In contrast to his grim surroundings, Julius Windsor gleams in his tailored new suit and brogues that are polished to a high shine. The man is average height, with sandy hair and pale skin. He’s slightly built and hides a paunch beneath a patterned shirt and garish tie. The tie.
He waits patiently as Sam plonks down her bag and removes her beige trench coat. She’s gone over and over what she’ll say to him, but as he sits smiling pleasantly, she finds that she’s lost for words.
“Good morning, DI Hansen, how lovely to see you again,” he says.
“Good morning, Denver Brady,” Sam counters.
He simply raises an eyebrow slightly. “Hansen,” he says, as if musing. “Like that dreadful long-haired boy band from the nineties? ‘MMMBop,’ wasn’t it? You must get that a lot.” He gives her a jovial grin.
“Not really,” Sam says. “I quite liked that song, actually, and the band’s name is spelled with an O not an E.
Speaking of names: Julius Windsor is pretentious as fuck.
Especially given that you chose it yourself.
It’s a bit of a leap from Barry Brown. I guess you needed something posh-sounding for your big-city law firm.
A firm you set up with your ill-gotten inheritance.
” There’s more emotion in her voice than she intended and she focuses on slowing her breathing.
“I don’t deny changing my name,” he says carefully, “and moving to London to set up a law firm with the inheritance from my Aunt Elizabeth. Bettering oneself is hardly illegal.” His accent is pure RP—Received Pronunciation—with perfectly formed vowels and no dropped t’s.
He even pronounces the word “aunt” like the word “aren’t,” rather than “ant” as a northerner would.
He must have taken elocution lessons to finally rid himself of his Geordie twang.
“Let’s talk about How to Get Away with Murder,” commands Sam, redirecting the conversation.
“Ahh. Catchy title, wouldn’t you say? A solid four and a half out of five on Goodreads, you know.” He winks.
Sam takes a deep breath. This conversation isn’t going how she expected. She’d imagined it feeling like a police interview, her pressing and him defending, but he’s cracking jokes.
“You murdered your Auntie Betty,” she accuses.
“Dreadful Yorkshire puddings.” Denver/Brown/Windsor chuckles, sitting back in his tatty chair.
Sam feels her cheeks flushing so she takes her eyes from him and lets them roam the small room as she tries to collect her thoughts.
There’s a dusty mouse trap in the corner.
She notices a pile of jiffy bags and imagines the man kneeling down and packing up copies of How to Get Away with Murder for posting.
She casts her gaze about for surgical gloves, a hairnet, or any of the protective clothing that he no doubt wore as he stuffed the books into the waiting envelopes.
She wishes she had a warrant to search this place properly.
Taking a deep breath, Sam begins again. “Your motive was financial, but you also tortured Betty. I’m guessing that she’d tried to disinherit you.
She saw you for what you really are. Perhaps you tortured her so she’d tell you where she’d hidden her will, or maybe you’re just sick.
Probably both. You killed her and used her money to set up this firm—Windsor, Forbes and Knight.
But there is no Forbes or Knight. It’s just you, isn’t it? ”
“This practice is highly rated. Feel free to read our client reviews.” He yawns, stretching his arms high above his head.
Then, one by one, he bends back each of his fingers until it gives a little pop.
He makes a satisfied moan, cracks his neck to one side and then begins to twiddle his thumbs.
Sam swallows, sits up straight and clears her throat, deciding to begin at the beginning.
“Jono drowned accidentally in a quarry—you read about that tragedy in the newspaper and even kept a clipping hidden in your aunt’s scrapbook. Sarah killed herself—you heard about it and noticed the carving on the oak tree that her best friend made in her memory. Sean Lister isn’t dead—”
“Shame.” He shrugs. “Homophobic loser.”
“You put him in your book as payback,” she says.
“Daisy, you simply lifted from the newspapers and twisted. Amy is a university professor, a wealthy, beautiful woman who rejected you so you wrote some disturbing revenge porn about her. I daresay Basil doesn’t even exist—you simply needed to create a narrative for why you wrote the book. ”
Windsor’s lips twist and he silently, slowly claps his hands together in sarcastic applause. “That dreadful fellow wouldn’t let it drop,” he says. “No wonder police officers are all in therapy and popping sertraline like Smarties. You lot can’t let anything go.”
She smiles. “You’re talking about DI Duggan, I presume?” He nods. “He had you rattled,” she says. “Reopening Betty’s case would have been a disaster for you. That’s the real reason you wrote How to Get Away with Murder in the first place.”
“I’m thinking about book two”—he licks his lips—“although one has to take great care with any sequel. I suppose Die Hard and Star Wars managed it. Even Home Alone 2 was all right. Are you a connoisseur of—”
“But Richie Scott killed his girlfriend, Melanie, not you and not Andrei,” Sam snaps. “I don’t understand why you wanted to free Richie. Did you need him just so you could create a convincing serial-killer character to cover up your one murder—Betty Brown?”
“I wonder who will play Denver in the film version of How to Get Away with Murder,” he ponders out loud, his eyes glistening.
“I’m thinking Henry Cavill or Hugh Grant?
Be nice to have a Brit. I suppose Efron is out because he did Bundy, and even Zac can’t do more than one serial killer in a career.
God, I hope they don’t go with Toby Jones; he’s an odd-looking—”
“But you’re not a serial killer!” she spits. “You’re just another average loser who killed one woman he knew for the most watery of reasons. You’re ten a penny. Common. Literally, a daily occurrence.”
“Ouch!” He slaps a hand to his chest and chuckles. “Maybe Christian Bale could play me—”
“Play you? Denver Brady is a character you created; you’re nothing like him!
You’re not Christian Bale in the shower.
You’re not even Chris Martin. You’re a regular man.
Squidgy around the edges. Dull. Boring. Like all the serial killers before you.
Bigged-up into an idea of something more.
Flawed and weak. You are simply the most disappointing Denver I could ever have imagined.
” Sam pants slightly in the airless room.
“And yet, the world can’t get enough of me. Of us. Serial killers.”
“You planted the evidence at Andrei’s home,” Sam pushes on.
He sighs, rolls his eyes and begins to fiddle with a paper clip on his desk, bending it one way then the other, as if he’s bored.
“You had Betty’s sapphire ring yourself and I’m guessing Richie told you where he’d hidden Mel’s earrings, didn’t he? You put them with your laptop and hid them at Andrei’s house.”
“Serial killers get more fan mail than Harry Styles, and nearly as much pussy,” he says, without bothering to look up at her. “Andrei has no idea how lucky he—”
“Andrei Albescu is your victim, too,” she says, her voice ripe with hatred.
“It’s easy to exploit illegal immigrants, isn’t it?
The narrative is always reversed in the press.
They exploit us, right? I guess he came here, to this very office, for legal advice.
You probably offered to pay him to use his bank account, then paid him to burn down Swinton’s.
Then induced him to confess to writing How to Get Away with Murder.
Did he know you’d be framing him for murder?
Nadja knew you were up to no good. She tried to tell me.
She had your business card right there in her hand—”
“Immigration,” he says in a schoolmaster’s tone, “is destroying this great nation. Do you know that in fifty years, half of the UK will be Muslim? Doesn’t that scare you?
It should. It scares me. Even Brexit can’t save us now, because they’re already here and they’re at it like rabbits.
You should be thanking me for—” As he nears the end of his sentence, Denver slips into a Geordie accent that seems to surprise him more than Sam, bringing him to an abrupt stop.
He takes a deep breath, and twists the paper clip hard.
“What about Bobby?” Sam whispers. “Did you kill him, too? Push him into the Tyne the night of his graduation because he started to suspect something wasn’t right with you?”
Something flickers, then. Genuine emotion, perhaps, a hint of remorse. It lasts barely a second and then he gives his head a shake, as if to rebury his humanity.
“It feels to me like your boss,” he hisses, snapping the paper clip in half, “DCI Blakelaw, has decided to close the book on Denver Brady. See what I did there? Close the book?” She ignores his question.
“My genius is wasted on you,” he says. The echo of words from the book in this man’s mouth makes Sam’s fists clench in her lap.
“The police will—”
“Samantha, you’re on your own with this theory of yours.
I’m guessing you tried to tell your superiors but you’ve been told to let it go, haven’t you?
Your boss landed himself a serial killer and that man who killed his niece on the same day.
Do you think he’ll let you drag this up again?
Of course he won’t. Some two-bit copper, probably crippled by daddy issues and up to her eyeballs on antidepressants? You’re just—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Sam snarls, her skin burning with anger.
He smiles, snakelike. “Our time’s up, Samantha. I’m a very busy man.”
“I still have questions to—”
“This isn’t a children’s fairy tale or a cozy crime novel. Not every thread will be tied up, and there is no dramatic third-act happy ending coming your way. How to Get Away with Murder is finished. Over.” He grins at her, his lips parting to reveal sharp white teeth.
“We’ll see about that,” Sam spits.
“No, we won’t,” he sighs. “By now, you should have somehow realized that you’re a minor character in my story.”
Sam stands, and turns towards the door; this time she’s the one with a smug smile on her face.
“What could you possibly have to smile about?” Denver asks. “You think you’re going to be the one that brings me down?”
Sam gives him one final, contemptuous look. “You’re not the only one who loves a good plot twist.”