Chapter 19
NINETEEN
My reflection in the mirror was quite a sorry sight: heavy, darkened eyes sunk into the sockets of a pallid, puffy face, and skin that looked devoid of any kind of life.
In a way, I’m glad I looked as terrible as I felt, it would have been strange if a runway model was looking back at me in the mirror after the day I’d had.
I spent most of Sunday in the hospital with Ben, doing my best to ignore the continuing headlines from the TV in the room.
When I told Bill and Ben I was heading home, they both seemed to assume, judging by the ghastly pallor on my face, that I was still reeling from Ben telling me about his diagnosis.
And I certainly still was. But I was also frantically trying to untangle the very messy consequences of my own, frankly idiotic, decisions.
I’d been too reckless the night before, so desperate to shake the police out of their apparent indifference that I’d acted on impulse. Had that somehow worked in my favour? Made me seem more authentic as the TellTale Killer?
But I suppose the combined impact of Chestgate and my note had led the press to pressure the police into releasing a statement, which they did on Sunday evening.
The police were likely afraid that if they were wrong – and it was the real TellTale Killer – they’d be in a whole new world of trouble.
If it came out they knew about the notes and didn’t warn the public, it would come back to bite them in the posterior in the most colossal way.
They must have decided it had become a matter of public importance to tell people they had received evidence of what they believed to be the TellTale Killer’s return.
DarkCell, naturally, was going wild.
I told you, CerealKillerCornflakes had messaged me privately at least half a dozen times. I told you he’d come back.
No one likes a know it all, especially when they’re technically wrong.
I don’t remember you saying that, I said to him, purposefully just to wind him up.
I did! he messaged back.
Ah must have missed it, I tend to tune you out when you’re being smug.
Meanwhile, the more macabre side of the website had been trying to predict what kind of victim he would target next.
After lying on my bed in the shed for a while, I pulled open the drawer and reached for the ripped piece of emerald-green cloth from Greta’s jacket, gently caressing it in my hand for a moment.
I think some people, at this point, would have paused – wrestled with themselves, asking: Is this what Greta would have wanted me to do?
Greta would have told me to come to my senses, to go to the authorities and hand over everything to them. She was sensible like that.
She would have tried to be the voice of reason, as she so often was, the one telling the bartender to ignore my request for a chocolate milk vodka, or that getting a Justin Bieber tattoo at the height of his popularity fifteen-odd years ago was a terrible idea.
But I didn’t have her to stop me from going astray anymore.
I was on my own. No one to save me from my horrible, ridiculous stupidity.
I stayed awake most of Sunday night and watched the clock tick over to 7 a.m. Monday morning.
I wasn’t entirely sure if I was expected at work or not after Chestgate.
But knowing that staying home in the shed would likely result in me curling up into a ball of anxious panic for the rest of the day, I decided it was probably best to get out of the house.
On my commute, I tried not to dwell on the fact that my imitation of a serial killer had made the homepage of nearly every website I’d checked.
I mean, I had got what I wanted, hadn’t I?
The police were investigating. But how long – if they hadn’t already – until they discovered it was just little old me?
And more disturbingly, how was the real TellTale Killer taking this development?
What was he thinking? Was he on TikTok, liking all the various conspiracy theories about himself.
I was lost in the swirling black hole of my thoughts as I walked up the street, a hundred or so metres towards the funeral directors at the very end of the road.
I was vaguely hoping to find some semblance of mindfulness in the sound of the flowing water from the small creek running to my left until a voice, vaguely familiar, suddenly yanked me back into reality.
‘Hi,’ she said, just as what I assumed was her hand closed around my arm. I turned towards the source of her voice and found a woman with a smile unnaturally fixed to her face, the sort of smile that influencers use when they’re trying to sell you their diarrhoea tea.
‘Ruth, hi,’ she said again, clearly clocking that I still hadn’t recognised her. ‘It’s Tasha.’
It was Tasha? As in the Tasha I used to work with back at the paper?
That Tasha? She looked different somehow.
It took me a moment to place it, the dullness in her eyes, the lost lustre in her skin.
She looked diminished, though I swallowed that thought back before I could verbalise it.
I lingered there, frozen in the lane as the cold morning wrapped around me, before realising I should probably speak.
‘Tasha, oh?’ I said, startled. ‘Wow. How are you?’
‘I’m good, thanks. How are you?’ she replied, not so subtly angling her body in front of mine in a way that suggested this conversation wasn’t going to be brief or succinct in the slightest, an ever-so-subtle conversational trap.
I hadn’t seen or heard from her in years. She had been wonderfully supportive when Greta first died, but I suppose fourteen days was her limit on compassion, then she had work to get to.
‘I’m well, Ruth, I’m well. Look, while I’ve got you, I wanted to start by saying I’m sorry. About everything that happened when you left the paper. I’ve thought about reaching out a few times but… What they did to you was really, really shitty. It wasn’t fair, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’
‘Eh, it happens,’ I replied with a dismissive wave. I had no interest in dredging up those particular humiliations again; I’d watched that reel enough times in the private screening room of my head.
‘Fancy seeing you here, though,’ she continued. ‘How have you been? I heard you’re working at a funeral directors now, is that right? How’s that going?’
I wanted to point out to her that I was about fifty feet away from my workplace when the penny dropped with a very loud clang.
How na?ve of me to think this might be a genuine, serendipitous run-in with an old friend.
Clearly, she was the first harbinger of the press storm that was about to descend upon Camborne and Sons.
From here, I could make out two police cars parked outside the office, both in their signature reflective Battenberg blue and yellow, alongside what I recognised as Detective Carlota’s vehicle.
Of course. Tasha had been waiting for me, realised that she had an in with one of the staff already that she could manipulate.
Oh, Tasha, you’re so much better than this.
‘You want to know about the incident yesterday, don’t you?’ I asked, cutting straight to it. Journalists hated preamble. Deadlines didn’t wait for anyone.
‘I mean…’ she hesitated, the fake niceties slipping fast, ‘if you could give me any details, that would be great. This is the TellTale Killer back again; anything you can tell me, anything at all…’
Tasha had changed since I’d known her. She used to be more laid-back and quite happy with delivering the bare minimum.
Now she was clearly ambitious, chasing a scoop.
I was sure if old golden boy, Jago Jones, still worked at the paper, she was itching to steal his crown.
Probably dreaming of media traffic stats and those glitzy, douchebag awards they handed out at the end of the year along with a trip to Barbados.
I realised that if everything with Greta hadn’t happened, I’d probably have been like this too: hungry, restless, my neurones constantly firing, thinking of ways to make my big break. It was strange, in that moment, to feel as though I were looking at a past version of myself.
‘Sure, sure,’ I said brightly. ‘Okay, do you have a pen or something handy?’
In response, she keenly yanked out her phone and held it between us, I couldn’t help but notice it had been recording for at least thirty seconds already. Snake.
‘Ready when you are?’ she said eagerly.
‘Okay, get ready, because I’m only going to say this once, so listen carefully,’ I said purposefully.
‘Absolutely,’ she replied, her eye contact unbreaking with mine. Her mouth practically frothing and bubbling at what I was about to say.
And then, without another word, I snatched her phone and hurled it into the creek. I heard it land with a very satisfying plop.
‘Piss off,’ I murmured as I barged past her as she clambered into the ditch to snatch her phone from the watery depths.
‘It’s the latest model!’ she yelled at me.
‘Pens tend to work better,’ I said.