‘How doeswhatfeel?’ Dominic said.
‘To have killed those women and got away with it.’
Dominic could feel a flush heating the skin of his face. Those months seared onto his memory, the accusations that had followed him ever since: a household name for all the wrong reasons. Arrested and held for four days straight, questioned over and over again. Returning to a house half-emptied by police forensic officers, besieged by journalists camped on his front lawn. Months on bail as work dried up, months of headlines, evidence mounting day by day, the police a whisker away from charging him but never actually crossing that threshold.
And now this. Limbo. A grey half-life where the unconvicted guilty live. Only one way out.
There was no good answer to the kid’s question. Instead, Dominic swung the mobile into the edge of the concrete pillar, shattering the screen, smashing it again and again and again until shards of plastic and metal fell from his hand onto the floor at their feet. Ignoring the teenager’s cries of protest, he grabbed the lapels of his jacket, lifting the younger man onto his tiptoes up against the Nissan.
‘Psycho! Let go of me!’
The other teenaged lad was scrambling out of the passenger side of the Nissan, his hands up in supplication –hey hey hey come on now mate– but Dominic could barely hear the reedy voice. The anger was churning and boiling up at the back of his throat, threatening to choke him.
‘You want to know how it feels, do you?’ he growled into the teenager’s face. ‘How it feels when your life turns into a fucking hashtag?’
‘You’re a nutter, you’re—’
Dominic reached up to his own cheek and tore the plaster away, pointing to the mass of black and purple bruising beneath, the ugly, jagged wound crudely stitched.
‘That’show it feels,’ he said, pointing to his cheek. ‘Every. Fucking. Day.’
He pinned the flinching teenager a moment longer before dropping him back to the asphalt.
One of the girls in the car began to scream.
Dominic got into his car and gunned the engine, her cries ringing in his ears as he drove away.
36
I call in sick again at work. There is a twinge of guilt as I dial the number, but I’ve been ground down by Tara’s insistence that I take at least one more day off. The ache in my neck has subsided and the cuts above my eye and in my right foot are healing OK, but when I tell my boss what happened yesterday she tells me totake as long as I need, her voice full of concern. So instead of getting the Tube to Bond Street, I help Tara get the boys ready for nursery and school, helping them dress and filling bowls with cereal. Lucas and Charlie currently have two days a week at nursery as Tara tries to pick up some freelance feature writing. Her plan is that when the youngest is three and the other two are in primary school, she’ll go back to journalism part-time.
In a tearful moment a few months ago, she drunkenly confessed to me that sometimes – most recently when the boys were in a state of near-constant warfare and she was zombified with exhaustion– she’s felt a fierce flash of hatred for her husband Dave when he walks out of the door for work in the morning. When hewaltzes off down the drive to his car and escapes, was how she described it. She told me how jealous she felt, how she loved her boys more than life itself but still sometimes yearned to be back at work.
‘To be out there, on deadline, just myself and the story to worry about,’ she’d said to me as we tucked into a second bottle of Friday evening wine. ‘Even the worst possible assignment. Even a midnight deathknock on the dodgiest council estate in England. Sometimes I’d kill for that.’
She had immediately apologised to me, but I waved it away. She was just being honest. And I understood – I would kill for what she had, too.
With the boys dropped off at nursery and school we find ourselves back at her house, in her kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, low autumn sun slanting through the windows. The house is strangely quiet without her boys and it feels unnatural, almost unreal, without their constant noise and chatter, the burble of the TV, their high voices raised in play or protest.
After Gilbourne left last night I had googled Leon Markovitz and found a link to his podcast series,Inside the Killing Mind, reading the accompanying text with a rising sense of unease:We delve deeper into the psychopathic brain than you’ve ever been before. Remember, you’re never more than a stone’s throw away from a psychopath.Scrolling throughdozens of episodes over the past few years, each one focusing on a different UK murder with a particular interest in psychopaths, serial killers, spree killers and gangland murderers. Fred and Rose West. Michael Ryan, who shot sixteen people in a single afternoon in Hungerford. Dr Harold Shipman, the UK’s most prolific serial killer. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. Angus Sinclair, the World’s End murderer. Robert Black. John Christie. And on, and on, and on.
‘So how are you doing, Ellen?’ Tara takes two mugs from the cupboard and spoons in instant coffee. ‘And don’t just say “OK” because I’m not letting you get away with that.’
‘I’m all right, I suppose.’
‘How are youreally?’
‘Well.’ I blow out a heavy breath. ‘I’ve had better weeks, if I’m honest.’
‘Come here.’ She pulls me into a hug and I’m enveloped in the smell of her almond shampoo and the musky perfume she always wears, even on a school-run day. I feel my defences start to falter and suddenly I’m on the verge of tears. I try to wipe them away before she can see but it’s too late.
Tara gives my back a gentle rub. ‘I’m worried about you, Ellen.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Tell me what I can do to help.’
The kettle clicks off and she releases me to make the drinks, stirring milk into both mugs and handing me one. I follow her into the conservatory and she asks me for a full update on my conversation with Gilbourne.
