I started pushing the bin. The street was so quiet the rattle of its wheels across the paving stones was painfully loud. I walked fast, head down, round to Barry’s side door.
I reached for his keys and let myself in. No beeps of an alarm. Did this weaken or strengthen the case that Barry had not come to harm by himself?
I yanked the bin over the step and into the house.
For a man so meticulous when it came to the outsides of all our homes, inside, his was an absolute mess. The kitchen was overflowing with clutter. Piles of junk mail, empty cardboard boxes. The dining table was covered in ceramic vases, one with dead flowers in it.
I walked past a pile of packages and saw one with Haze’s name on it. I picked it up. An Amazon delivery he must’ve signed forand then never bothered dropping off. I couldn’t get too angry about that now.
I needed to work out the best location to leave him. I walked through his house, opening doors.
The study, which overlooked the street, had always seemed like he had the shutters closed. Standing there now, I realized he had just stuck darkened film on the glass. It might look closed up from outside, but he could see out, no problem. The perfect way for a busybody like Barry to spy on everyone. On his desk was a large A4 folder with a sticker on the front marked “Observations.” I opened it up. Scrawled on each page were times and dates, along with a log of whatever infraction he had witnessed.
Our house number, twenty-nine, appeared several times throughout the folder. Most of the comments related to our bin habits. A fitting end.
The sections from the last month were missing.
Had Barry moved those entries to another folder?
Did whoever kill him take it?
What had Barry seen?
How long did I have until the police arrived? I had to get moving.
I walked around the rest of the ground floor and determined that the living room was the best location. I wheeled him in, then jiggled him out onto the floor.
I checked over his body. No stab wounds. No visible head wounds apart from the cut on his forehead, which wouldn’t have been enough to kill him. If it wasn’t electricity, it could’ve been poison, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to run a tox screen.
I could just leave him in an armchair and hope they’d presume it was a heart attack. But it was better to hedge my bets: heart attack and a bit of being electrocuted. I dragged Barry over to the TV and began attempting to set the scene. By the time I’d finished, it was a bit of a mess. But I did, in theory, have a police detective on our side. Jenny’s team would be the ones toinvestigate this, which gave us a little breathing space. No dog-eared, committed do-gooder would be out to make a name for themselves. Just a friendly face, quick to rule it an accident.
That was as long as Jenny wasn’t betraying us.
Chapter Fifty
Haze
I texted Jenny at 6a.m.
Hey hun, come over for breakfast. Need to complain about how much I hate men.
She replied at 6:35 a.m. Lucky her. A lie-in.
Course babe. I’ll be over soon.
I worked out that getting Felix up and out the door to her parents wouldn’t take more than half an hour.
Jenny walked through our front door at 7:01 a.m. She was dressed for work. She insisted on only ever wearing these awful Next navy blue trouser suits that did nothing for her. She’d once laughed for a solid five minutes when I’d asked her what was wrong with a nice business-chic high-waisted trouser and a silk shirt. “I’m dressing for a police station in Slough, not lunch in Sloane Street.”
“How bad is it?”
Fox and I were sitting at the kitchen table, large coffees in front of us, still in our dressing gowns. Bibi and Reggie were, by some miracle, both still asleep upstairs.
Fox cleared his throat. “We found our next-door neighborBarry dead in our garage. Seemingly electrocuted from cutting the wire to my guitar amp.”
Jenny looked between us. “Seemingly?”
“We’re not totally sure that’s what killed him,” I said.
