Carol sat atthe desk pushed up against the wall in her living room, poured herself a Bacardi and Coke, and switched on her computer. She already knew what her first search would be: “Shep Newsom Companies House.” Carol took pride in how confident she was with computers for a woman her age. In prison, in preparation for her return to civilized society, she’d been made to go through a series of courses, turning her into a productive citizen. This amounted to learning how to make a CV and putting it on LinkedIn. Carol pictured prospective employers looking at the seventy-five-year-old lady in front of them: “There’s a thirty-five-year gap on your CV. Can you explain that for me?”
“Oh, that? Funny story, actually.”
When fiddling around in the prison computer room, she’d discovered Companies House as a fun place to snoop on people online. Any company who’d ever been registered with HMRC was on there, and you could take a look at their basic accounts. “Shep Newsom” got no results. She then searched “Shep Newsom” onGoogle. Can’t be many Shep Newsoms, can there? Only one, in fact, had made any kind of impact on the internet. Her Shep Newsom, most likely the only Shep Newsom to have ever lived.
But that couldn’t be his real name, could it? The upper classes, as mad as they were, were not bonkers enough to name a human “Shep” surely. Carol had had minimal contact with the very upper echelons of society, but she wasn’t completely ignorant of their ways. Every now and then a wayward society girl with a coke habit would pass through the prison service. They all had ridiculous nicknames—Filly, Tilly, Scratch, Muffin, Piggy. “Shep” had to be a nickname. She scrolled through his Facebook page. Not much action in recent years, but there were some old posts. One picture he’d been tagged in by someone else caught her eye. He was sixteen, maybe? In some Edwardian-looking school uniform, his head bent back in entitled arrogance. Big, curly, center-parted hair. Well, that explained the nickname. He looked like a dog. Looking through the comments, one caught her attention: “That’s my Dom.”
Dominic Henry Maximilian Newsom, she discovered, had been the director of forty-something companies in his time, all of which had apparently collapsed.
The snowboarding business: dissolved. The tuna jerky business: dissolved. Six different microbreweries (what was it with talentless private-school boys and microbreweries?): all dissolved.
Shep was a man with a large online presence, a record of failure. Various websites and YouTube videos with thirty views suggested he’d tried his hand at everything. He had, for a month, attempted being a left-wing talking head, opining on why bakingshows were a tool of Western imperialism. Then, when that hadn’t worked, he’d switched to being a right-wing headbanger, yelling about how Britain’s rainy climate was the fault of Muslims. That had, to be fair, earned him a brief stint as a GB News contributor.
The overall picture was of a man who desperately wanted to be seen as a success, in direct contrast to his actual ability to become one. At one stage, he had set up an online course in which he taught midwifery. Five hundred pounds for six weeks. No takers. Well, now he had money. Carol figured that with a track record like his, it wouldn’t last long. She dreaded to think of the plans he had for it: A fashion label? An action movie? His own nuclear power station?
So, he had a clear motive. Shep and Hannah had stood to gain from Desmond’s death, and they had already done so. The money surely hadn’t come through yet, but they had certainly started spending it. Shep had also been in the building when Desmond had died. But how had Shep got onto the roof?
Another question: If the inheritance was theirs, why hadn’t they just waited for Desmond to die? He was eighty. It might not have arrived as quickly as they would have wanted, but it was surely in the post. Des was a fit-looking eighty-year-old, though. Perhaps they couldn’t wait. Carol could only imagine the debts a man like Shep would have accumulated.
Carol’s sofa was calling her. Dinnertime was approaching but she didn’t feel like eating. Her own sigh surprised her. Was this depression? She was certainly glum. She felt she’d made a couple of breakthroughs in the case—the left-handed theory, the will recipients—but she had no one to share them with. Margaret,Catherine, even Geoffrey, she genuinely liked them. As a younger woman, she’d allowed herself to be consumed by disappointment with the people the world was offering up. Yes, she’d eliminated some of the worst examples, but then she’d gone to prison, a place where terrible people seemed to seep out of the walls. In those three, she thought she’d found her first chance for real friends since school. She thought herself a good judge of character and theirs, to her, seemed true. They offered her the chance to be a normal person, doing normal things, which only now did she realize was something she wanted to try on for size.
Her computer had gone into sleep mode and she wasn’t far off herself.
Maybe this was it. She was destined never to have friends. They all thought she’d killed someone, and they were all investigators, trusted members of society. Maybe Shep did it, maybe Jim, maybe Tyler, maybe Giles, maybe Elisa or Belinda or Polly for all she knew, but Carol was a convicted serial killer, for heaven’s sake. People’s minds were sure to settle on her. What chance did she have swimming against that tide?
In recent days she’d found herself visualizing murder again. In the first person. She recognized that itch and she knew how to scratch it. Was she really thinking about returning to the field of play?
If she was headed back to prison anyway, why not do what she was good at one last time? Do what you love. There is no greater tragedy than a wasted talent. Why rob the world of her gift? Killing was what Carol Quinn was good at. A victim wouldn’t be hard to find. She was in a city of ten million. The deserving were everywhere.
A fork in the road. Investigate? Or add to the total?
Maybe she could do both.
She was still. In an old but familiar reverie.
Yes, Carol would kill again.
She jumped. A knock at the door. She stood up to answer it, her fists still clenched, nails digging into her palms.
Twenty
“Hi, Carol.” Elisa,standing at Carol’s door with a smile.
“Hello, Elisa.” Carol wondered if her face betrayed the violent fantasies she’d just been going through in her head.
“I just thought I’d check in to see if you were joining us in the ballroom this evening?”
“The ballroom?”
“Yes, perhaps you’ve seen the posters? We’ve hired some entertainment for you all.”
Ah, yes. The Vera Lynn tribute act. Britain hadn’t quite yet caught up with the age of its pensioners. Carol and many of the other residents were younger than Paul McCartney, and yet much of the country still saw old people as Second World War veterans. She had, in fact, heard Tyler ask Geoffrey the other day if he’d fought in the Battle of the Somme. Geoffrey had had to explain that that would make him something like 120 years old, to which Tyler had responded, “Oh, right, and you’re younger than that, yeah?” Geoffrey hadn’t been offended and had taken theopportunity to go into a twenty-minute lecture on why the First World War had started, as Tyler picked up a mallet and banged in a new fence post, not listening to a word.
“Oh, yes, the entertainment,” said Carol. “I’m a little tired, I’ll see how I feel.”
“Well, I do hope you manage to make it. I’ve noticed you looking a little down these last few days. I know some fingers have been pointed at you.” Elisa put a hand on Carol’s shoulder. “It must be difficult for you.”
“Thank you, Elisa. I’m sure I’ll pop down for a bit.”
