I wove through the swathes of tourists and lunged between the closing Tube doors as my phone buzzed in my pocket: an unknown number. I was in no mood for another wretched call about car warranties or mobile phone networks, but I reluctantly picked up anyway, just in case it was Bill or Ben calling from a different phone in case of an emergency.
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Ruth!’ a voice said. The audio seemed to crack and fizzle through the line but I had just enough signal to hear the voice; the tinniness bouncing around my ear delayed my recognition of the caller. ‘Just asked for your mobile from Tasha, and I thought I’d give you a ring. It was lovely to see you earlier, I truly appreciated you dropping by.’
My pulse lurched into my throat as I gripped the handset, willing my fingers to hold steady.Tasha, you absolute imbecile. I wished that the water from the creek had actually completely wrecked her phone, then maybe she wouldn’t have had access to my number. But beyond my anger, I felt a bone-deep fear. It was that voice again, the one that had haunted my thoughts, neverleaving me for more than a heartbeat. And now, after two years, we were talking again on the phone.
‘My pleasure,’ I said, keeping both of our façades intact for the time being. I’d be damned if he could detect any nervousness or anxiety in my voice. ‘It’s always good to revisit the old stomping ground. I know how frantic things are for you at the moment, though.’
If I’d had any real courage, I would’ve gone back and killed him on the spot; found a knife, any rusty old thing, and driven it straight into his chest to puncture his heart. Hell, I heard someone died after being hit with a can of baked beans, I could have popped into Tesco on my way there and tried that. But something made me hesitate, made me feel like I was playing chess against someone multiple moves ahead. Besides, if anything went wrong with that plan, I’d just be crazy Ruth who, in an act of envy, tried to kill an award-winning journalist.
He chuckled, letting a mild, fake amusement linger between us.
‘You bet. But you’re welcome any time, you know that. I’m calling because I valued your…’
He paused, thinking of the exact right word to say to me within the hundreds of thousands that existed in the English language.
‘… Your discretion, I guess, back in the day. I trust you haven’t mislaid that particular tendency, despite having left us. As you know we’re part of a media conglomerate that has standards and, when people can’t keep matters to themselves,’ he gave a cantankerousharrumph, ‘well, it seldom ends well for them.’
The fucker was threatening me. He was actually threatening me. Thing was, I was finding him weirdly charming as he was telling me he would kill me if he had to. I guess it made sense right? Monsters weren’t monsters twenty-four hours a day?
‘Totally see your point, Jago, I do. But some stories aren’t meant to stay buried, I feel,’ I replied as coolly as I could while I trudged down the carriage and sat down on a spare seat as far away fromeveryone else as possible. ‘Sooner or later, they all deserve a bit of daylight. Don’t you think? Thatisjournalism.’
To cope, I curled my hand tightly around the handle of the seat, rocking back and forth, hoping the motion might offer some scrap of comfort. All I wanted, in that moment, was for him to be a little morsel afraid of me, for me to feel like I had at least a small chance of bringing him down. For all he knew, I was a killer too.
‘I don’t disagree. Look, I remember all the work you did proofing my articles back in the day. I know you always looked up to me,’ he said smarmily.
‘Why?’ I asked, the mask in my voice ever so slightly slipping. It was rage, fear or something I couldn’t describe that was floating to the surface. ‘Why are you doing this?’
He gave a hollow bellow down the phone as if I was a toddler who had asked him to give me back my nose.
‘That’s a fake laugh,’ I murmured, mostly to myself. ‘A really bad one. You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Tell me, why are you doing this?’
‘Ruth, you don’t know why you’re asking me this,’ he hissed as with a slow, clunky jolt, the Tube began to leave the station. ‘In some ways, I always felt we were a little bit alike. Even back then, your writing was always sharp, unsentimental, you looked straight at things others refused to see. You cut through everyone else’s nonsense. We’re both chasing the truth. The only difference is… I never stopped when it turned ugly.’
‘Greta,’ I blurted out, the name tumbling out before I’d even realised I’d spoken. ‘Do you remember Greta?’
He paused again, just for a beat, but it was the kind of pause that felt like he was mentally rifling through a catalogue of his own crimes, as if he was perusing his fucked-up murder rolodex.
‘I do. I remember Greta. God, so sad what happened to her, I really do miss her,’ he said, his tone almost wistful. ‘I think, the amount of notes I wrote her; she became fluent in the Jago Jones calligraphy brand.’
Oh! Well, that made sense. In her notes, the scribbles that werenow in Detective Carlota’s possession had mentioned ‘handwriting’. And Greta had been inundated with those passive, and sometimes outright aggressive messages he used to leave on her desk whenever he wanted her to make edits on the website. I bet she recognised his handwriting from all the notes he had left her.
‘Her only mistake was figuring out too much.’ I almost heard him give a smirk as he realised he had said more than he intended. ‘Look, Ruth, I wasn’t going to tell you this, I didn’t want to upset you. But I wonder… if the Telltale Killer might’ve come for you, too. Just imagine, if he saw you both in that café that night, and convinced himself she’d told you everything. I wonder why you were left in peace then? I think she begged. Over and over. Begged him to spare your life, promising the killer you had absolutely no idea. Even when she was dying, I wonder if she pleaded for me to leave you alone.’
There aren’t words for how I felt in that moment, so I won’t try to even begin to describe them. But I was sure, with heart-obliterating clarity, that he was telling me the truth.
My mind had never once entertained the thought that Greta had been trying to save me on that night. I’d thought, for the longest time, that she’d spent her last moments hating me, wishing I had died instead of her. He didn’t mean to do it, but the TellTale Killer had given me a very small mercy.
‘So, what’s next for you?’ I asked casually, hoping he’d answer with something I could use to track him down. Was I worried he might say my name in response? Fairly. But I was determined enough that, if the price of his justice was my life, I was mostly willing to pay it.
‘Next?’ he responded, almost amused. ‘I guess there’s always been one person I’ve wanted to properly interview, that I’d be keen to reach out to… but that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’
Yikes, was he talking about me?
I could feel him holding his urges down, biting back the words he so desperately wanted to spill. He thought he’d found someone enthralled by him, obsessed, like some devoted K-pop fan stanningover this idol, and he wanted to tell me everything he was going to do. But, in the end, his instinct for self-preservation just about won out. I just wondered who on God’s green earth he was talking about…
‘Well, delightful catching up,’ he said at last, blithe as ever. ‘Must dash.’ The line went dead.
