‘And who else knows?’ Ben asked, remaining impressively stoic throughout the proceedings.
‘You two, and Detective Carlota,’ I explained. ‘About me, not about Jago Jones. I guess it would be safe to say that I am currently awaiting arrest from her. She told me to “sit tight”, but I ran out of the police station instead. I couldn’t let him get away again, Ben. I just have to figure out some way to catch him.’
‘Great, so you’re on the run from the law too?’ Ben said. Heseemed to have given up sounding surprised at least. It really had been quite a day.
‘Sort of,’ I said, tilting my palm back and forth. ‘Think of it as a kind of scenic detour from authority in the midst of some bad life choices.’
Ben gave a long groan.
‘And so what’s your plan, Ruth, to even try and catch him? You’re barely five feet tall,’ Bill interjected, returning from the loo with his trademark condescension, guzzling the last of his red wine as he finished his sentence.
‘Bill, you know what? You’re not helping at all,’ I replied spitefully before Ben could try and defuse the situation. ‘So, you can just leave and have a wank to different types of paint swatches or whatever gets you off.’
He looked frankly appalled that I said that.
‘I’m not helping? You’re the one who just invited a serial killer into our lives,’ Bill exploded. ‘He could have found out where we lived and be on his way to kill us all right now.’
‘Let’s all just calm down, okay?’ Ben said again, trying to be the voice of reason between two very tense people but I could tell he found my paint swatches remark a little funny. ‘We’re not going to come up with a solution if we’re all biting each others’ heads off.’
‘There is only one solution,’ Bill chimed in. ‘And that’s to go to the police, theproperpolice, and tell them everything, right now.’ His voice climbed higher and higher in pitch and became more chipmunk as he repeated, ‘It’s the only option, the only option.’
Ben nuzzled his head into his hand, as if he found Bill and I as infuriating as each other, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Ben was now considering what Bill had said. Would he try and make me go to the police? Would he think that was the best option?
‘What you did, Ruth, was stupid. Very stupid,’ Ben said, cutting through a silence that had grown heavy and overlong after a few moments. This situation definitely ranked higher on the awkward scale than when I had to tell my dad that ArianaGrande’s ‘side to side’ was about being fucked so hard you couldn’t walk.
Ben had told me that there was a thing called ‘chemo dreams’ where people would have these vivid and disturbing nightmares throughout the whole treatment process, I wondered if he thought he was experiencing one of these currently.
‘I know,’ I replied simply.
‘Just… why? Imitating a serial killer? Did you not think about any of the consequences?’
‘Yes,’ I said with a scorned mumble, which was true. ‘They just didn’t seem as important.’
‘Just… what even goes on in your brain to even make you consider doing something like that?’ Ben asked, his tone laced with a genuine disbelief. Clearly surprised that someone he thought he knew so well could stun him this much.
‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe the same kind of crazy that leads someone to refuse treatment for a brain tumour,’ I replied, hoping that he would feel the same bitterness that I had just received.
Ben’s face lit with anger, though not directed at me; he twisted his head to Bill. ‘You told her?’
‘I needed to tell someone!’ Bill responded with a half squeal, his eyes suddenly flashing at me with betrayal. The chain of anger flowed freely between the three of us like a kind of toxic triangle.
‘And he used up all your mint tea tree shower gel because he likes the way it stings his balls,’ I said. I’d been sitting on that one for three months, ever since I’d overheard him confess it, drunk as a skunk at a dinner party, while Bill was out of the room.
I could tell Ben was just as furious about that as he was about the treatment reveal.
‘Psycho,’ Bill hissed at me.
‘Shut up, flowerpot boy,’ I shot back as I watched his eyes blaze with fury. I knew he’d hate that.
‘Stop,’ Ben groaned, his eyes practically bulging. Oh, he definitely thought he was having some kind of crazy ‘chemodream’ now.
‘What are you even doing, refusing treatment?’ I said, seething, to Ben.
‘We’re not focusing on me right now,’ Ben said, raising his hands to his head. ‘Christ almighty,’ he muttered to himself. He gritted and ground his teeth as he mulled over what to do next and how to extricate us from the precarious situation I had landed us in. At that moment, I realised I had, in my own strange way, made Detective Carlota, and now Bill and Ben, accomplices to my scheme. And I could hardly imagine that any of them were too happy about that.
‘How close do you think you are to being able to bring him in, Ruth?’ Ben asked, in a different tone now, like he was done processing and was finally trying to be pragmatic.
My ex-husband had obviously changed a great deal since we’d first met, and even more so since he and Bill had become a couple. Exhibit A: picking up skiing as a hobby, when he’d always hated the cold. Still, I was confident I could still read his face better than anyone else, and I saw something there. It was as if he, too, loathed and abhorred the TellTale Killer almost as much as I did. And while he probably thought I was crazy, it was like he understood where I was coming from.
