Chapter 32 #2
See, after Bill had seen the photos of Greta on my phone and also witnessed the absolute emotional state I was in, I realised three things.
One, there was no magical, IQ 5000 lie I could conjure that would explain away why I had pictures of my dead friend on my phone.
Two, I was utterly exhausted with lying.
And three, I was scared, really, truly scared.
At that point, it just made sense to come completely clean to Bill, and Ben too.
I mean, at this rate everyone in the UK would know what I had been up to by their Saturday night dinner.
That brief moment of reconciliation Bill and I had shared was instantly shattered and he’d awoken Ben and told him to get ready for the craziest story he’d ever heard.
See, I know why Jago sent it: he wanted to scare me.
Sure, maybe he still thought I was a budding serial killer, but he definitely knew that I knew his identity, and he didn’t want me blabbing.
I also imagine he was still mad at what I had said in the note and wanted to try and terrify me into submission.
And it should have. The photos should have destroyed me, should have absolutely obliterated me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I was…
almost okay. Seeing Greta like that was horrifying, yes, but he’d unknowingly given me a bleak realisation: my mind had finally accepted that she was dead.
Gone. He had completely crushed all hope of seeing Greta alive ever again and I had to be at least a little bit thankful to him for that.
Nothing that I could do now would bring Greta back.
‘So, that heart of the man that they found at the nightclub, that was… you?’ Ben asked, still trying to make sense of this.
‘No, that was Charlie Young, that wasn’t me,’ I said. ‘I haven’t… actually killed anyone, I do want to make that clear.’
Ben made a small grunt as I watched him assume his stern thinking face.
‘And my food container going missing,’ Bill burst back in, now holding a mightily large glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in another. ‘Were you behind that too?’
I rolled my eyes. Was that really the thing Bill was most interested in right now? You know what, it was probably worth getting everything out in the open at this point.
‘Yes, Bill, I did use your food container,’ I said on the exhale of a sigh. ‘I really don’t think you want it back.’
Bill gagged as he desperately tried to hold his gulp of red wine in his mouth without dribbling it on his very expensive flooring. God, that felt good. That’s weird of me to say, isn’t it?
‘And you’ve been communicating with the killer?’ Ben asked, ignoring Bill darting to the sink to retch. ‘The actual TellTale Killer?’
‘Yeah, it’s a guy called Jago Jones, who works at the paper.’
Ben’s face flashed with a small glimmer of recognition. He remembered that name back from when I worked there. I had moaned to Ben several times about how much I despised him.
‘A journalist?’ Ben asked. ‘Moonlighting as a serial killer?’
‘I guess all serial killers are moonlighting as something,’ I responded. ‘It’s not really a full-time career path.’
‘And who else knows?’ Ben asked, remaining impressively stoic throughout the proceedings.
‘You two, and Detective Carlota,’ I explained.
‘About me, not about Jago Jones. I guess it would be safe to say that I am currently awaiting arrest from her. She told me to “sit tight”, but I ran out of the police station instead. I couldn’t let him get away again, Ben.
I just have to figure out some way to catch him. ’
‘Great, so you’re on the run from the law too?’ Ben said. He seemed to have given up sounding surprised at least. It really had been quite a day.
‘Sort of,’ I said, tilting my palm back and forth. ‘Think of it as a kind of scenic detour from authority in the midst of some bad life choices.’
Ben gave a long groan.
‘And so what’s your plan, Ruth, to even try and catch him? You’re barely five feet tall,’ Bill interjected, returning from the loo with his trademark condescension, guzzling the last of his red wine as he finished his sentence.
‘Bill, you know what? You’re not helping at all,’ I replied spitefully before Ben could try and defuse the situation. ‘So, you can just leave and have a wank to different types of paint swatches or whatever gets you off.’
He looked frankly appalled that I said that.
‘I’m not helping? You’re the one who just invited a serial killer into our lives,’ Bill exploded. ‘He could have found out where we lived and be on his way to kill us all right now.’
‘Let’s all just calm down, okay?’ Ben said again, trying to be the voice of reason between two very tense people but I could tell he found my paint swatches remark a little funny. ‘We’re not going to come up with a solution if we’re all biting each others’ heads off.’
‘There is only one solution,’ Bill chimed in. ‘And that’s to go to the police, the proper police, and tell them everything, right now.’ His voice climbed higher and higher in pitch and became more chipmunk as he repeated, ‘It’s the only option, the only option.’
Ben nuzzled his head into his hand, as if he found Bill and I as infuriating as each other, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Ben was now considering what Bill had said. Would he try and make me go to the police? Would he think that was the best option?
‘What you did, Ruth, was stupid. Very stupid,’ Ben said, cutting through a silence that had grown heavy and overlong after a few moments.
This situation definitely ranked higher on the awkward scale than when I had to tell my dad that Ariana Grande’s ‘side to side’ was about being fucked so hard you couldn’t walk.
Ben had told me that there was a thing called ‘chemo dreams’ where people would have these vivid and disturbing nightmares throughout the whole treatment process, I wondered if he thought he was experiencing one of these currently.
‘I know,’ I replied simply.
‘Just… why? Imitating a serial killer? Did you not think about any of the consequences?’
‘Yes,’ I said with a scorned mumble, which was true. ‘They just didn’t seem as important.’
‘Just… what even goes on in your brain to even make you consider doing something like that?’ Ben asked, his tone laced with a genuine disbelief. Clearly surprised that someone he thought he knew so well could stun him this much.
‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe the same kind of crazy that leads someone to refuse treatment for a brain tumour,’ I replied, hoping that he would feel the same bitterness that I had just received.
Ben’s face lit with anger, though not directed at me; he twisted his head to Bill. ‘You told her?’
‘I needed to tell someone!’ Bill responded with a half squeal, his eyes suddenly flashing at me with betrayal. The chain of anger flowed freely between the three of us like a kind of toxic triangle.
‘And he used up all your mint tea tree shower gel because he likes the way it stings his balls,’ I said. I’d been sitting on that one for three months, ever since I’d overheard him confess it, drunk as a skunk at a dinner party, while Bill was out of the room.
I could tell Ben was just as furious about that as he was about the treatment reveal.
‘Psycho,’ Bill hissed at me.
‘Shut up, flowerpot boy,’ I shot back as I watched his eyes blaze with fury. I knew he’d hate that.
‘Stop,’ Ben groaned, his eyes practically bulging. Oh, he definitely thought he was having some kind of crazy ‘chemo dream’ now.
‘What are you even doing, refusing treatment?’ I said, seething, to Ben.
‘We’re not focusing on me right now,’ Ben said, raising his hands to his head.
‘Christ almighty,’ he muttered to himself.
He gritted and ground his teeth as he mulled over what to do next and how to extricate us from the precarious situation I had landed us in.
At that moment, I realised I had, in my own strange way, made Detective Carlota, and now Bill and Ben, accomplices to my scheme.
And I could hardly imagine that any of them were too happy about that.
‘How close do you think you are to being able to bring him in, Ruth?’ Ben asked, in a different tone now, like he was done processing and was finally trying to be pragmatic.
My ex-husband had obviously changed a great deal since we’d first met, and even more so since he and Bill had become a couple.
Exhibit A: picking up skiing as a hobby, when he’d always hated the cold.
Still, I was confident I could still read his face better than anyone else, and I saw something there.
It was as if he, too, loathed and abhorred the TellTale Killer almost as much as I did.
And while he probably thought I was crazy, it was like he understood where I was coming from.
He repeated the question, realising I had once again got lost in the deluge of thoughts in my mind.
‘Ruth, do you think you have enough to bring him in?’
‘I think I can do it,’ I said. ‘I have a plan.’
I had absolutely no plan. Not even the tiniest remnants of a plan. Pretty much since the start of this, I had been winging it.
Ben glanced at Bill, clearly bracing for whatever insane reaction was about to come his way.
‘Ruth, if you think you can do it,’ Ben said, steady and serious, ‘then I’m behind you all the way. You just let us know how we can help.’
Before Bill could even open his mouth to scream in protest, my phone buzzed on the table.
I reached for it instinctively, but Ben got there first, probably trying to spare me from another photo of Greta.
It was a phone call, and I tried to make out what the tiny voice was saying as I watched Ben’s face drain to a deathly hue, his features becoming even more pallid than they already were.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly into the phone. ‘I’ll let Ruth know.’
Then Ben turned to me, his throat looking like it was pulsating with a set of repeated nervous swallows.
‘That was the police. Detective Carlota’s gone missing. They said she’s been in contact with you and wanted to know if you knew anything about where she may be?’
In that moment, in a strange, dark way, it seemed my problems had solved themselves; Jago wasn’t coming to kill me, and Carlota wasn’t coming to arrest me. But, of course, that small gift only left room for a far bigger crisis to be dealt with.