Chapter 23
They’ve stood around in worried silence now for several minutes. Paula’s anxiety is notching up and up and up and up.
‘So, what now?’ she says at last in a low voice.
They all look back the way they’ve come, towards the direction of the one closed door in the single-floored home. It must be Dominic Shipman’s bedroom.
Audrey pulls off a mitten, a strange expression on her face. ‘Now,’ she says, ‘we’re out of options. So you guys get out of here, while I go in that room and smash his head in with a baseball bat.’
Teddy tuts. ‘You’ve seen too many Tarantino films.’
‘What’s a Tarantino?’ Audrey asks innocently. ‘Some kind of spider?’ She makes a face. ‘I don’t like spiders, but I don’t mind a bit of blood and brain splatter.’
Teddy frowns. ‘Audrey, do you think you might be a tiny bit of a sociopath?’
‘More than likely!’ Audrey nods happily.
‘We don’t even have a baseball bat with us!’ Paula hisses desperately, as the older woman makes her way back through the kitchen.
‘I saw a poker in the living room,’ Ivy offers helpfully. ‘Would that work?’
‘That’ll do,’ Audrey says cheerfully.
‘Two sociopaths,’ Teddy murmurs from the back.
‘Hold on.’ Paula clings to Ivy’s arm. ‘You were the one who said we wouldn’t be able to do something like this. You said it would be too violent! That we couldn’t physically or mentally go through with it!’
Ivy nods. ‘I know. But we’ve come this far! And we may not be naturally violent people, but he is . And if we let him continue, he’ll just keep hurting Gemma and her kids, and whoever else he might meet. He has to be stopped. We have to try. If Audrey thinks she can do it, we have to let her try.’
Audrey turns to the group, looking directly at Paula. ‘Please leave,’ she says sincerely. ‘I’m already under suspicion. If this goes wrong, it’ll just be me who goes down. I’ll be out in twenty years and still have a decent couple of decades of my life to live.’
‘We can’t let you go to jail!’ Paula says too loudly. Teddy puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but Paula shakes it off. ‘No!’ she says. ‘It’s not happening.’
Audrey shrugs happily. ‘I don’t think they’d put me in prison anyway. I’m in my eighties! I’ll plead dementia or osteoporosis. One of the old lady things.’
‘No, Audrey,’ Paula says again, standing in her way, shocking herself with her strength. ‘There has to be another way. We’re not letting you sacrifice yourself.’
Audrey stares her down in the dark, but Paula holds her ground, her heart hammering in her chest. She’s accepted that her friend is going to kill this man.
She knows it’s really happening. They’re all going to kill him.
They’re not just accessories to the crime here; they’re fully complicit.
This is really happening. But she’s not going to let Audrey casually volunteer to get caught. Not if she can help it.
After a minute, Audrey sighs, her shoulders sagging a little.
The adrenaline has drained away. ‘OK, my darling.’ Then she brightens.
‘Oooh, how about this then – I’ll suffocate him!
I’ll get a plastic bag and stick it over his head until he dies.
Then I’ll call the police and tell them my lover has died during a sex game gone wrong. ’
Beside her, Paula hears Ivy swallow hard. ‘Your . . . lover?’
Audrey nods, leading the group through to the kitchen. ‘Yes indeed. I’ll say we’ve been casually dating for a while. We met in that godawful pub he frequents every night – what was it called?’
‘The Three Stags,’ Teddy confirms.
Audrey nods. ‘Right, and I’ll say we got experimental and he asked me to suffocate him. Then whoops, we got carried away and he died.’
‘This kind of defence does regularly work for men in rape trials,’ Teddy points out, looking thoughtful.
‘Well, perfect!’ Audrey replies with delight, opening a drawer. It’s full of cutlery. She tuts.
‘What are you looking for?’ Ivy asks as Audrey opens another.
‘A bag.’
Paula peers about the kitchen. ‘Surely the carrier bags inside another carrier bag will be in a cupboard, not a drawer?’
Audrey shakes her head. ‘No, a Tesco bag’s no good! Too big and holey. We need one of those freezer bags. Sturdy but suffocating. That’s the kind of thing they use on TV.’ She roots around in another drawer, yanking out a ziplock bag triumphantly. ‘Here!’
Paula frowns. ‘Do we know what sort of head Dominic has?’
‘Big,’ Ivy says confidently, then scrunches her nose. ‘He has a big forehead at least. Or maybe his hairline is just receding?’
‘This is why everyone should have a fringe,’ Audrey replies, sounding confident. ‘Smallifies the head.’
‘Is smallify a word?’ Ivy asks curiously.
‘Either way,’ Paula tries to retrieve the conversation thread. ‘I’m not sure you’ll be able to get a freezer bag over his head. That barely looks big enough to suffocate an ear.’
Audrey holds the bag up to the moonlight to examine it. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she acknowledges. ‘So we need a bigger, head-sized freezer bag.’
‘I don’t think he has any of those.’ Ivy is peering into the open drawer. It is mostly tinfoil and a collection of wooden spoons.
‘What about one of those on-the-spot delivery services?’ Audrey looks inspired. ‘You can get a Tesco Whoosh delivery, can’t you? We could have head-sized freezer bags here in under twenty minutes.’
‘Is that the same as Sainsbury’s Chop Chop service?’ Ivy asks as Paula blinks at them both in confusion.
‘Hold on!’ Something has dawned on Paula and horror creeps up her spine. ‘Er, where is Teddy?’ Audrey spins on her heels, scanning the room in a panic. No sign of Teddy. She turns back and the three of them all stare at each other with fear.
‘She wouldn’t?’ Ivy breathes in a low voice. ‘She can’t have gone in there on her own? She wouldn’t do it without us . . .’
They move as one, in a blur, Audrey still clinging on to the too-small freezer bag.
It’s dark as they run through rooms, trying to find the bedroom.
Paula quickly loses her way. She spins around, trying to work out where she is and where Ivy and Audrey have gone.
She can hear noises around her. A loud thump.
Someone nearby is groaning. Her heart is banging loudly in her chest now as she turns one direction, then another.
Terror makes her fast but confused, and she finds herself circling an unfamiliar space.
Her knee hits something soft. A sofa! She’s in the living room.
Where is everyone else? The groaning gets louder.
Who is that? Teddy? Audrey? Ivy? Could it be .
. . Dominic? Where is he ? He must’ve heard them by now.
Has he got one of her friends? Is he hurting them?
Is he calling the police? Should they call the police?
Paula swallows hard, her heartbeat pounding out of her chest. Retracing her steps, she finds the groaner. It’s Ivy. She’s on the ground in the hallway, bathed in dim moonlight.
‘I tripped,’ she says simply.
‘Are you all right?’ Paula’s voice is high and scared. ‘We have to find the others. We have to get out of here!’ She reaches for Ivy’s hand, and the younger woman winces.
‘I think I’ve sprained my ankle.’
‘Can you walk at all?’ Paula asks, looping an arm under Ivy’s to take her weight.
‘I think so. But where are the others?’
‘I don’t know,’ Paula whispers back, her heart beating faster again.
Suddenly, the overhead light floods on.
‘There you both are!’ Teddy calls out down the hallway in a loud voice. Ivy and Paula stare at her, frozen. Audrey appears at Teddy’s shoulder, looking dazed.
‘What’s happening?’ She looks up at Teddy. ‘Did you leave us? Did you put the light on? Is he dead?’
‘Nope,’ Teddy says and Paula wonders which question she’s answering. She blinks around her at the suddenly bright space. Audrey approaches, noticing Ivy’s injury. ‘Oh my darling! Are you OK?’
‘I slipped on a step,’ Ivy replies. ‘It was my fault.’
‘What is a bungalow doing with a bloody step anyway?’ Teddy mutters. ‘The whole point is that they don’t have steps, surely.’
Audrey frowns, pulling off her own booties. ‘It’s not your fault, Ivy! Nothing is your fault. It’s these bloody shoe things! Do you think I can return them to Amazon? They’re a hazard! I will be leaving a strongly-worded three-star review.’
‘Three stars?’ Ivy smiles through her pain.
‘Well, I don’t want to damage anyone’s reputation,’ Audrey explains.
‘You hear so much about cancel culture these days, don’t you?
I wouldn’t want to be part of anyone getting a cancellation.
’ She considers this. ‘So maybe I should give them four stars? Maybe four and a half? What do you all think?’
Teddy shakes her head. ‘So you have no problem bashing someone’s head in and getting brain matter on yourself, but you don’t want an online bootie company to be at risk of getting cancelled ? An internet term that is mostly made up and never really happens?’
‘Humans are complicated,’ Audrey shrugs. ‘And I will certainly flag how absurdly slippery the boots are in the comment section.’ She pauses, remembering where they are and why they’re here. ‘Hold on, what’s going on? Shouldn’t we be making a run for it?’
It is Teddy’s turn to shrug. ‘Nah. He’s not here.’
‘ Not here? ’ Ivy bleats, sounding upset. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘Well,’ Teddy begins slowly, ‘my first clue was when you lot all started shouting at each other about freezer bags and the size of Dominic Shipman’s head.
There was absolutely no chance anyone would sleep through that – not even an unconscious drunk – so I made an educated guess and went to have a look in the bedroom.
No sign of the Evil Bastard. Bed hasn’t been slept in.
So I thought it might be easier to just put the light on, since we’ve made such a hash of things here anyway. ’
‘Where is he then?’ Ivy asks, frustration in her voice. ‘We followed him back here from the pub, didn’t we? Where is he? Is he hiding in the basement or something?’
‘I’m pretty sure bungalows don’t have basements,’ Teddy observes dryly. ‘Would sort of defeat its purpose, wouldn’t it?’
‘It had a step,’ Ivy points out with a hint of defensiveness.
Paula gasps. ‘Oh my goodness, I know what’s happened! We parked down the road and came around to the back garden. We must be in the wrong house!’
Teddy wanders towards the front door, looking out of its small window pane.
‘Nope,’ she says again, tiredness in her voice.
‘It’s not the wrong house. Right house. But he’s not here.
’ She takes a deep breath, gesturing at the door.
‘He’s still in the car,’ she continues, rolling her eyes.
‘I can see him out there. He parked up in the drive, like we saw. Then – it would seem – the drunken idiot passed out on his own bloody steering wheel.’