Chapter Ten
Ten
Americans were so over-the-top. Just kill people and be done with it. Why all the hullabaloo?
Since leaving prison, Carol had found herself enjoying true crime documentaries.
She was beginning to realize she had become a serial killer without really knowing anything of the genre.
She was entirely self-taught. Carol wasn’t one for letting her gender prevent her from doing what she wanted, but perhaps if she had known just how male-dominated the sport was, she’d have paused before trying it.
Sex. So many of the other practitioners were obsessed with sex!
For Carol, sex and murder just didn’t go together.
Like orange juice after brushing your teeth.
Yuck. But it seemed that nearly everyone else who’d ever dabbled in a bit of multiple murder was killing and shagging like it was sausage and mash, which, she supposed, well, the way they did it, it was.
One channel, somewhere in the mid-hundreds, showed episode after episode of one of those trashy American true crime documentaries—Women Who Kill.
“WOMEN WHO…KILL!” the bass-y, over-the-top, American narrator would say every five minutes or so.
Then they’d tell the story of some lady in Kansas who’d finally lost it with her husband and shot him with his own Colt .45. You’d watch the police interrogations with the women and they’d be crying, saying sorry, saying they loved him, saying they’d lost their mind.
Own it, thought Carol. These men had all beaten the shit out of their wives or cheated on them or stolen their money. The bastards deserved it. Own it.
One time Carol had been sitting in a train carriage, with only a disgusting slob for company.
He had belched loudly and proudly. Scratched his arse, farted the most awful farts.
He had been proud of it. He’d known she was behind him.
This was an intentional assault on her person.
He’d done it because he’d enjoyed it, because it had made him feel big and because he’d known he could get away with it.
At least, he’d thought he could.
Carol had seen the station approach and slowed her breathing, slotting herself into the appropriate state. She’d taken a newly sharpened flick-knife from her coat pocket, released the blade, and pushed it into the back of his neck.
By the time the train had arrived at the platform, Carol was standing by the doors, looking directly into the man’s eyes, his life already leaving him.
He was pleading with her. What have you just done?
“Don’t burp in front of ladies,” she’d said, in a motherly tone. “It’s rude.”
—
Carol heard a knock and went to her front door to find Geoffrey, Catherine, and Margaret staring at her. They each had a defensive weapon in hand. Geoffrey held a cricket bat, Catherine a sock with a snooker ball in it, and Margaret a large cookery book.
“WOMEN WHO…KILL!” came booming from the living room.
“Oh, hello,” said Carol.
A flustered Margaret spoke first. “Oh, hello, Carol. I’ve got…I just remembered that I’ve got this lovely big Mary Berry book and I wondered, well, I was wondering if you might like to go through a few of the recipes with me. You know, to see if we’d like to try one out this Tuesday.”
“I see. And why are you here, Geoffrey? To practice your batting? Would you like me to bowl you a few deliveries?”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” said Catherine.
“You’ve formed a murder club, haven’t you?”
No one spoke.
“Don’t be shy! You’ve formed a murder club!
I’m pleased for you.” Carol had heard about them popping up all over the place.
In retirement homes, pub quiz teams. Apparently there was even one in Marlow.
CCTV was bad enough. Sticking a knife into a man’s neck on a train without anyone seeing would be a right faff nowadays.
Time was when a murderer only had to worry about the police.
Now everyone with a minute to spare was an amateur sleuth, watching your every move.
“Well, please, come in. Would you like me to take your snooker ball in a sock for you, Catherine, or do you want to keep hold of it, you know, for safety?”
“Um…I’ll just put it in my handbag, if that’s okay.”
“Lovely. Tea? Coffee?”
—
The four of them sat around Carol’s kitchen table sipping tea. No one had said much since the business at the door.
“So, I’m guessing you’ve all realized I used to be a serial killer and now you think I killed Desmond. Is that right?”
Catherine cleared her throat. “We don’t know what we think. Desmond may simply have fallen.”
“Or it could have been suicide,” said Margaret.
“Did Desmond look to you like a man who was about to kill himself?” asked Carol. “He was always in a good mood.”
“True,” said Geoffrey.
“People can be very good at hiding their true mental state,” said Margaret. “There was a program about it on Radio 4 the other morning but I had to switch back to music because I didn’t like the presenter’s voice.”
“Desmond didn’t kill himself,” said Carol.
“And how do you know that?” asked Catherine.
“Because he was murdered.”
The air thickened.
“Not by me, but I’m guessing my saying that won’t be enough to persuade you, what with my history. It’s sad, really. There are some things that people just really struggle to get past. Do stop shaking, Margaret. Would you be more comfortable if I kept my hands on the table at all times? Like this?”
“How do you know he was murdered?” asked Geoffrey. “What makes you so sure?”
“My apartment is directly below where he fell. I was sitting on the balcony. Immediately after his tumble—which I happened to see, by the way—I heard someone running on the roof. I’m not a professional investigator like yourself, Geoffrey, and I’m not a part of any murder clubs like you, Margaret and Catherine, but that, to me, seemed awfully like it was the murderer.
What we need to find out is how Desmond got onto the roof and why Desmond got onto the roof.
Was he led there? If so, by who…” Geoffrey shuffled. “Sorry, Geoffrey, by whom.”
The room was still.
Carol broke the silence. “Of course, you’ll want to eliminate me from your inquiries, I’m sure.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, that would be nice. Do you have a…what’s the word?”
“Alibi? No. Afraid not. I was sitting on the balcony, but you’d have to take me at my word for that, and I’m getting the impression that my word isn’t quite enough right now.”
“We’re very sorry,” said Catherine. “It’s just…”
“I know, I know. Isn’t it always ‘just’? Nothing’s ever easy. This is how I see it. The only way I’m going to get off the hook here is if I can find the murderer and clear my name.”
“That’s the long and the short of it, I suppose, yes,” said Geoffrey.
“Very well. Then I guess it is what it is. I’d better get cracking.
We’d probably work better as a team, but I’m getting the sense you don’t want me in your club just yet.
It’s a shame because I think we could be phenomenal.
A former detective, a former home secretary, a former doctor, and me, someone with a bit of practical experience.
If we could stay friends, somehow, I’d appreciate it. ”
“Of course!” said Margaret, surprising both Geoffrey and Catherine a little.
“I promise not to murder any of you. Not unless you get on my wrong side, that is.”
The new murder club laughed awkwardly.
“Boo!”
Margaret nearly fell off her chair.
“Sorry,” Carol said, holding up her hands. “Really, I promise. My murdering days are over. To tell you the truth, I just don’t have the energy anymore.”
“All right. Well, I think we ought to…” Geoffrey stood up.
“I understand, Detective Chief Inspector. You have a lot of work to do.”
He blushed at being called what he hadn’t been called in a long time. They all gathered their things and headed toward Carol’s front door.
“Couple of things you might want to think about,” said Carol.
“Oh, yes?”
“Well, I managed to get a glimpse of Desmond’s face before they took his body away.
There was an indentation on his forehead that didn’t look, to me, like it came from the fall.
He looked like he’d been hit by something distinctive that left an imprinted circle.
” She looked at Geoffrey. “Not a cricket bat, for example, so you’re out of the picture, Geoffrey. Something else.”
“Thank you,” said Catherine. “That’s, uh, very useful.”
“Catherine, you were a doctor, weren’t you?”
“Pathologist, actually, but, well, yes,” said Catherine.
“Hang on,” said Carol, pointing at each of them in turn. “Detective, home secretary, pathologist. This is absurd. How is this place so full of criminal investigators?”
Catherine, Margaret, and Geoffrey looked at one another. Catherine offered a possible reason. “Word of mouth?”
“I think it’s just one of those funny things,” said Margaret. “You could say that having an ex-murderer here at least balances the place out a bit.”
Carol gave a polite laugh, then picked up her train of thought. She pointed at Catherine. “What’s your view on poison?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if, say, you had put some arsenic in each of your friends’ tea, how long should you expect to have to wait before they all stop breathing?”
Margaret immediately started wheezing and held on to the back of a chair for support. Geoffrey’s arm slowly rose in horror, his finger directing itself at Carol, who laughed.
“Joke! It’s a joke!”
Margaret’s relief turned to laughter. “Oh, deary. Oh, deary me.”
“If I was going to get back to it, I wouldn’t be fooling around with poison. Poison is boring. Much better to crack an ax into someone’s skull.”
Margaret broke the silence. “Well, thank you for the chat. It’s been lovely to see you.”
“You too. Be safe out there,” said Carol. “There’s a murderer about.”