‘Hi, darling. I’ve just come back from the funeral directors. I spent some time with Phillip and then thought I’d come to talk to you. How are you doing?’ she asked – flat, but with a touch more empathy than when I last saw her.
‘Great,’ I said, feigning a kind of fake hyper-energetic enthusiasm, though I couldn’t help but wonder what she had asked Uncle Phil, and how he had reacted. Was she getting closer to finding out I was involved? ‘Really, really great,’ I repeated. I could see from the way her eyes inspected me this was probably a little too much energy from me. I hadn’t quite mastered that yet. I don’t think I was a very good criminal.
God, poor Uncle Phil. What had she asked him, how much pressure had she put him under? Why was she here waiting for me? Had something he said incriminated me, or worse, had he incriminated himself and she was here to say he’d been arrested, to tell me as a friend? God, I hated this spiral of overthinking. My heart felt as if it couldn’t stand another minute above 180 bpm, yet it kept on hammering against my chest like the drummer for Metallica was locked inside my ribs.
‘I think I’m going to head up,’ Bill said politely as he pushed himself out of the armchair, collected his mug, offered Detective Carlota a curt – but polite for him – goodbye and trundled his way upstairs.
‘How is he?’ I called after Bill before he ascended out of view.
‘He’s okay,’ Bill replied, though his flat and dismissive tone confirmed Ben had clearly not had a good day.
Neither Detective Carlota nor I spoke a word for a little while, a deeply uncomfortable silence between us until we heard Bill’s footsteps patter on the landing before hearing the bedroom door click shut, as if we were both waiting for him to be out of earshot.
‘So, Ruth darling,’ she said, awfully calm and measured, as if she was considering each word she spoke. ‘I’m going to hazard a guess and say that I think you may have something to tell me?’
She knew? How the hell did she find out I was involved? Uncle Phil, what did he say?
It was too much. In that moment, it was all way too much. The hearts, Greta, the TellTale Killer slinking into my messages; I felt like I was completely and utterly spiralling. Lying had become an exhausting full-time job, and I was realising I simply wasn’t cut out for it. How did people do it? How did they lie without being completely emotionally drained to a point where their brain resembled the remains of lumpy mashed potato.
‘I did it, all right?’ The words exploded out of me, far louder than I’d meant. ‘Both hearts – yes, those bloody hearts – the one that turned up Saturday before last and the one I posted to you on the Friday after. They were from me.Me!I nicked them from the corpses in the morgue. One was Mrs Lambert – lovely skin, very soft – and the other was that Justin chap who had his eyes eaten by fish. I didn’t kill anyone, though. I only wanted to give the investigation a bit of a kick up the arse, get you lot to actually catch the TellTale Killer. Only now – now, the real TellTale Killer is messaging me, he’s already killed at least two more people, and I think this is all my fault and I’m absolutely losing it. I haven’t slept in days, I’m constantly vibrating from raw terror, and for what it’s worth, I haven’t had a decent poo in four days because my intestines are clenching my whole body like a fucking fist. Not even bloody Senokot can help me. Do you know how many Senokot I’ve taken over the past few days? Too many! Way too many! But I need to catch him, Cis, I need to catch him before he hurts anyone else.’
Detective Carlota, usually the picture of composure, stared at me. Her expression slid from mild confusion to severe shock.
‘Ruth, no… I was about to ask you about your promotion.’
Fuck.
PART FOUR
TWENTY-SIX
‘So, is this the moment you arrest me?’ I asked after there had been yet another deeply uneasy silence between us, my eyes finding their way to the barely drunk, now cold, cup of tea that Bill had got her surely well over an hour ago. I realised Bill must have been quite fond of Detective Carlota, given he’d let her use his cherished Mr Happy mug to drink from.
‘Honestly, Ruth… I haven’t decided,’ Detective Carlota replied. She still looked a bit faint and dazed after my confession; a little broken, in all honesty. ‘I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.’
At least she hadn’t said yes, told me to stay put and nipped out to her car to fetch a pair of handcuffs. I considered offering her a fresh cup of tea, but even I, with my limited social skills, could tell it wasn’t quite the moment. I don’t think it would come across quite how I intended.
‘On one hand, what you’ve done is spectacularly illegal, proper go-to-prison stuff,’ Detective Carlota said tersely. ‘On the other, if your arrest became public, I dread to think what it might do to the case. And you now have a direct line to the actual TellTale Killer. That’s a bigger lead than I ever managed.’ She paused after shesaid that, as though an internal processing error message had just flashed worryingly behind her eyes.
See, I think I knew Detective Carlota better than most. I knew she’d tortured herself every day for failing to catch the TellTale Killer and worse, that she hadn’t been allowed near the case – or really any important case – since he’d become inactive two years ago. The police blamed her. She blamed herself. And now I was in touching distance of the killer… What on earth was going through her mind right now?
‘So, Justin, at the funeral, the open chest… sinking in on itself… that was…?’ she asked tentatively, recovering only slightly from whatever had pained her.
‘Look,’ I interrupted, hoping to clarify, ‘that wasn’t intentional. Obviously. He took a bit of a tumble on the way to the service and, well, something inside him went very wrong.’ I tapped my own breastbone for emphasis rather than explain in any detail the specifics of the slightly traumatic event. ‘And I do want to take this particular opportunity to apologise to you, because I know I sent the heart directly to you and that wasn’t cool and I…’
Carlota interrupted me with a groan, long and low, while I still sat there like a child waking Mum at four in the morning to announce I had thrown up on the cat.
‘It’s fine,’ she muttered. ‘The moment I opened it, it was snatched off me and I was told it was for the case lead to handle. They let me investigate the funeral directors to throw me a bone, but trust me, I am still very much in the doghouse.’
Goodness me, whoever was helming the TellTale Killer case now clearly couldn’t find their own arse with two hands and a map.
‘When did you start suspecting me?’ I asked, genuinely curious.
‘Ruth, are you kidding me?’ she asked, flicking her hands up, incensed, and her face rankling with red. ‘From the moment a heart appeared at the police station’s doorstep. You were so obviously involved.’
‘What?’ I said, a little bewildered. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because I care about you, Ruth,’ Carlota said, raising her voice and emitting a sound that was like a snort and a sigh simultaneously. ‘I tell you the case goes cold, and then – magically – the TellTale Killer returns. Of course, the only person mad enough to do that is the person who once tried to fax me a supposed clue when I didn’t answer my emails or my mobile. You really think it could have beenanyoneelse?’
