Keep your friends close, p.19
Keep Your Friends Close, page 19
This is all going through my mind as I spoon coffee into a mug in the staff kitchen and I think, yet again, that I don’t know why I tolerated her for so long. I assumed that all her seriousness and worthiness about current debates made her somehow better than me, but I’ve been proven so wrong, it’s laughable. She was a worse person than I am because at least I was loyal to her until she crossed me. I finish eating my lunch – a falafel salad because I’ve gone right off smoothies for obvious reasons – and put her out of my mind. I only allow myself to think about her for short periods of time because I don’t want to dwell on the past; what’s done is done and I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. Luckily, once someone has crossed me, I can never manage to think of anything good about them again. I’m not in the least sentimental. Only the bad things that they’ve done stick in my mind, so I don’t have to waste time feeling any sadness about what’s happened. As for Marco, he rarely crosses my mind and truthfully, a few more months and we’d have been done, anyway. I’m staring at the kettle, willing it to boil, when Tally appears in the kitchen doorway.
‘Mia?’ she asks, as if there is someone else in the room besides me when it’s obviously empty. It suddenly hits me that I won’t miss coming here at all because I won’t have to put up with her boring me to death. And her breath smells and she insists on getting so close when she talks. I stifle a sigh; I suppose I’ll have to offer to make her a coffee as she can see I’m making one for myself. Which means she’ll hang around and start yapping when all I really wanted to do was to scroll through my phone for new bedroom furniture. There’s a particularly nice upholstered chair that I had my eye on and now I’ll have to leave it until later. I swallow down my irritation and turn around and smile.
‘Coffee?’ I hold up a cup.
‘Um. No. You’d better come with me, Mia; there’s someone here to see you.’
‘Me?’
She nods, uncharacteristically reticent.
I put down the cup, turn the kettle off and follow behind her but instead of going into reception, she stops outside Sebastian’s office and knocks on the door. He calls out, ‘Come in’ and she pushes open the door, indicates with a nod of her head for me to go in and pulls the door closed behind me the minute I’m inside. Sebastian is sitting behind his desk and a man and woman are standing in front of his desk. They turn to look at me as I walk in.
‘Miss Enderby?’ the man asks.
Sebastian jumps up out of his seat and comes around the desk to me, throwing a glare at the man as he does so. He puts his arm around me and grips my hand tightly as I look in puzzlement at him and then at the man and woman.
‘Mia, this is Sergeant Crossland and Constable Stevens. They’re here to talk to you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. I think you’d better sit down.’
Sebastian manoeuvres me to a chair and lowers me into it, elderly-relative style, and then perches on the arm of the chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the police officers sit themselves down.
‘Miss Enderby, I understand a Miss Carrie Jones used to live with you.’ Sergeant Crossland asks, leaning towards me.
‘Yes, she did. She moved out a few weeks ago to move in with her boyfriend. Is there something wrong?’
‘And when was the last time you saw her?’ he asks, ignoring my question.
‘The night she moved out. Just over three weeks ago. I’ve messaged her but she’s not responded. I’ve messaged her quite a few times, actually. We had a bit of a falling out before she left, you see, and I think she’s still cross with me, even though I tried to apologise.’ I realise I’m volunteering far too much information so I clamp my lips together to stop myself gabbling.
There’s an awkward pause and then Sergeant Crossland clears his throat and utters the words I’ve been expecting from the minute I stepped into the room.
‘I see. I’m very sorry to have to inform you, Miss Enderby, that Miss Jones is dead.’
Sebastian is holding a glass of water to my lips and I take a tiny sip. He has his arm around my shoulders and is holding me upright in the chair. I fight down the urge to push his arm away; I know he’s concerned but it’s suffocating and annoying and I wish he’d leave me the hell alone.
Besides, I didn’t really faint; I was faking it.
It’s very useful, fainting, because you can opt out for a little while to get yourself in order: recover yourself, give yourself a bit of breathing space to make sure you present the right image and say the right thing. Fainting wasn’t in my plans; even though I’d rehearsed what I was going to do in my head many times, when it came to it, I wanted to laugh. Badly. The faint was a way of preventing that because I couldn’t trust myself to speak. I suppose I could have passed it off as being hysterical but whichever way you look at it, laughing when you’ve just been told your best friend is dead is not a good look.
‘Do you feel able to continue now, Miss Enderby?’
I nod. ‘It’s such a shock. How can she be dead?’
A glance passes between the officers and Sergeant Crossland clears his throat again before continuing.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Miss Jones and her boyfriend Marco Henderson were both found dead several days ago. From the evidence we’ve found so far, it appears to have happened soon after you last saw her.’
I stare at him in shock. ‘You mean, all these weeks I’ve been messaging her, she was dead?’
‘It would appear so.’
‘But how?’ I stare at him, wide-eyed in shock. ‘What happened? Has there been some sort of accident?’
He coughs and then clears his throat and I think that maybe he should stop doing that, because it’s extremely irritating.
‘I have to tell you that they both died of bullet wounds but we’re not looking for anyone else in connection with their deaths.’
I stare at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Bullet wounds? You mean they were shot? I don’t understand.’
‘There was a note. Left by Marco Henderson. We’re investigating but so far have concluded that it was a murder-suicide and as I said, we’re not anticipating looking for anyone else in connection with their deaths. Marco Henderson was in possession of a gun and he shot Miss Jones at point-blank range before turning the gun on himself. Unfortunately, their bodies weren’t found for several weeks and it was only when the landlord arrived for a property inspection that they were discovered.’
‘Oh my God.’ I look up at Sebastian and he tightens his grip on my shoulders. ‘How can this be happening, Sebastian? How can Carrie be dead?’ I begin to cry and he rubs my back gently.
I hear murmurings from the police officers and the scrape of chairs as they stand up. Sebastian thanks them and I force myself to look at them, wiping the tears from my face.
‘Is that it?’ I ask. ‘She’s dead and that’s it? He’s got away with it? You say there was a note, what did it say?’
‘I’m very sorry, Miss Enderby, but as Marco Henderson is dead, we’ve closed our investigation. The, er, next of kin have possession of the note so you’d have to speak to them about that.’
‘Next of kin?’
‘Yes. Miss Jones’s family have been contacted. I understand her sister is organising the funeral. I’ll arrange for someone to give you the details of the solicitor dealing with her estate if you wish to liaise with the family.’
I keep the surprise from my face; Carrie will hate her family having control of her funeral, as she had nothing to do with any of them. I don’t think she was lying about that. They’ll get any money she had, of course, because she won’t have made a will, and that’ll be the only thing they care about.
‘Thank you.’ Not that I’ll be going. Or sending flowers. Or contacting the solicitor. If anyone should ask, I’ll tell them that it’s all too upsetting and I’d rather remember Carrie in my own way.
The police hover around for a moment and then Sebastian ushers them out of the office and several minutes later, he’s back.
‘How are you, darling?’
‘In shock,’ I whisper. ‘Total shock.’
He pulls me to him and holds me tightly.
‘You said that he was controlling, her boyfriend,’ he murmurs as he strokes my back. ‘If only she’d listened to you.’
If only she hadn’t crossed me.
If only they hadn’t underestimated me.
Killed with the gun that they made me believe I’d killed Marco with.
There’s something poetic about that, isn’t there?
27
The text arrived today. No message, just the details for ten different bank accounts.
I’ve been expecting it because both funerals are over; Carrie’s was last week and Marco’s was yesterday. They were both cremated and that means that there is now no evidence left.
Not that the police were looking.
The matter is now closed, I think is the correct way of putting it. I didn’t go to either of their funerals, although I knew when and where they both were. I was tempted to attend Carrie’s just to get a look at her awful family and hear what they had to say about her, but I managed to talk myself out of it. It would have been a bit risky because I didn’t know if I could keep the heartbroken best friend act up for more than ten minutes.
Anyway, I have to send a total of one hundred thousand pounds to the different accounts by close of play today. Very clever, when you think about it, because sending the whole amount to one account would require a trip to the bank to ask them to process it whereas I can do it all online. I might still get a call from the bank, or maybe not, because I have a lot of money with them in various accounts and investments – millions, not hundreds of thousands – and they don’t like to question me too much in case they upset me. I’ll mix the payments up slightly, make them uneven amounts to make it look as if I’m paying for goods or a service. Which is true, in a way.
So, it’s done. Not that I got my hands dirty. No, someone else did the dirty work, someone we’ll call the professional, someone who doesn’t make mistakes and made sure that Carrie and Marco’s deaths could never be traced back to me. Or anyone, actually. There was no need to worry about evidence because there wouldn’t have been any; it was a murder-suicide without a shadow of a doubt. The professional who dealt with them was so confident of his capabilities (I assume it was a man) to have Carrie and Marco’s deaths declared a murder-suicide that he demands payment only when the deed is done, the police case closed, and there is absolutely no possibility of any of it leading back to my door.
Murder on credit.
There is no risk at all that I won’t pay because who would be stupid enough to cross someone like that?
Someone from the dark web.
It’s ironic really, when you think about it. Carrie thought she was so clever; I clearly remember her derision at me for being so gullible for believing that someone from the dark web had disposed of Marco’s body. But I wasn’t gullible at all; the reason I believed her so easily was because the dark web wasn’t new to me. I knew what it could be used for. I’d used it myself, many years ago, so I knew it definitely existed and wasn’t just a myth.
I knew what Carrie told me was perfectly possible.
The first time I made contact with the dark web was through an ex-boyfriend of mine, Zee Zee. A strange name, I’ll grant you, and I never did find out what his real name was. And he was strange, too, no doubt about it: monosyllabic and brooding but absolutely mega-hot. His air of danger was what attracted me to him and when he did talk, it was of death and revenge and teardrop tattoos and dark deeds in unheard of places. When I asked him for a contact to help me get rid of a problem, he never even asked me why, and once he’d given me the number, we never spoke of it again.
I remember sending the text: the feeling of excitement and fear. It almost felt unreal as all contact was via messages and I never met, or had any idea who was on the other end of the phone. As the days went by, I remember thinking that Zee Zee was stringing me along; he was laughing at me, playing a joke on me. Although he wasn’t the jolly type and he didn’t make jokes so this gave me hope that it was real, and they’d do as I asked.
Because I was desperate.
I understood these things took time to arrange but I was nervous; I’d impressed the importance of swift action being required. It had to happen soon because Gramma had arranged a meeting with the solicitor for the following week and it was imperative that she was never able to attend that meeting.
I was already back at my apartment by this time, staying at Gramma’s for one night only, as that was as long as I could bear. Also, I knew I had to be as far away from her as possible when it happened. And then it was done and Gramma was dead. And it worked very well, too. I was far, far, away in the company of lots of other people when she died and there was absolutely no suspicion at all about her death. She had a weak heart and I told them she’d been getting a bit confused and the coroner decided that she’d mistakenly taken too many sleeping pills before she went to bed.
The downside was that I had a breakdown. I’d like to say it was because of the guilt about what I’d done but it wasn’t; it was the absolute terror of getting caught. I couldn’t actually believe that I’d got away with murder and I was petrified that I’d be arrested. I was just waiting for the knock on the door and for my life to be over. I kept having visions of being locked up for the rest of my days and it overwhelmed me.
In my defence, I was very young, not even twenty-years old, so I think I can be forgiven for my inability to cope. Carrie obviously had no idea what I’d done because I’ve never told a soul. Like everyone else, she assumed that I was weak, flaky and mentally unstable.
That’s where the trouble started; my family doctor totally overreacted and before I knew it, I’d been sectioned for my own good. That’s another drawback with private medicine; there’s always a vacancy for you, no waiting around for months on an NHS waiting list to get you a bed somewhere. I soon got over my mini-breakdown but by then, I’d been marked as unstable and it’s very difficult to change the medical profession’s minds once they’ve made a diagnosis. If I’ve learned one thing from the experience, it’s to be very careful about letting anyone know anything about you, even if they tell you they’re trying to help.
Unlike Carrie and Marco, killing Gramma wasn’t about revenge for what she’d done to me, although she’d been vile to me for as long as I could remember. No, it was because she was about to extend her rigid control over me for even longer and I couldn’t allow her to do that because she was ruining my life.
My parents left me extremely well provided for but until I reached the age of twenty-one, Gramma had complete control over my finances because all of the money was in trust. I was counting down the days until then; Gramma was domineering and controlling and I couldn’t so much as breathe without her knowing about it. She even tried to tell me what to wear; said I looked like a tart when all I was doing was dressing in the same way as any other girl of my age. I was living a carefree life at university where I could behave like a normal nineteen-year-old and thoroughly enjoy myself without her knowing about it. I never wanted to go back home to Gramma where I was expected to behave as if I was living in Victorian England.
But she had spies everywhere.
No matter how careful I thought I’d been, she always found out about the unsuitable boyfriends, the occasional drug use, the classes I’d missed, the trouble that seemed to follow me around. Everything that I didn’t want her to know about, she found out.
And she wasn’t happy about it at all.
I was summoned home at the end of term, and I had no choice but to go, despite my protests that I’d been invited to France for the summer by one of my friends. She threatened to cut off my allowance if I didn’t do as she said.
I can remember that train journey even now; how full of rage I was that although I was an adult, I had to do what she said. I hated her with a passion. Gramma never loved me; I see that clearly now. Her precious son had died and left her with me and she never forgave me for being alive when he was dead. I was the image of my mother, too, which didn’t help, as Gramma had hated her for taking her boy away. I sat on that train and sobbed and raged to myself and by the time I arrived at Gramma’s house, I’d decided that I’d had enough; I was going to tell her that I was responsible for my own life. I was an adult now and she could no longer control me and I was going to live how I wanted and there was nothing she could do about it. In less than two years’ time, I would have full access to my money and I’d never have to see her again. She could make life difficult for me in the meantime of course; under the rules of the trust, she had no choice but to pay my university fees and my living costs, I knew she would question every penny extra that I asked for. But she did that already so it wouldn’t make any difference; I didn’t care, I would get by somehow. My earlier rage had been replaced by confidence and I felt calm and resolved when I entered Gramma’s house.
I wasted no time in telling her of my decision and I remember she was calm and even smiled at me. When I’d finished, she said that I obviously had everything figured out and it was up to me if I wanted to behave like a trollop, but I wouldn’t be gaining access to my inheritance at age twenty-one. She’d called me back home to tell me that she was going to have the terms of the trust changed and I wouldn’t be able to access any money without her permission until I reached the age of thirty. Or maybe thirty-five; she hadn’t quite decided yet. She’d already made an appointment with the solicitor to change it but felt it only right to inform me first. I laughed and told her that she couldn’t do that; my parents had set up the trust and she couldn’t alter it.
