Good samaritans, p.20
Good Samaritans, page 20
I step through the front door after a completely unproductive day in the office, and these are the things I am thinking of.
Hadley, you were taken too soon. I think of you every day. RIP.
Seven likes. Fifteen sad faces. Eight crying eyes.
To the guy who posted photographs of my husband carrying a dead body from the boot of his car to our house, you should mind your own damn business.
‘Everything okay, hun?’
When you arrive home from work and your husband is already at the house but was supposed to be in the office until later and he’s obviously taken the day off or only went in until lunch. And he’s cooked you dinner and rinsed down the dead body you have been anxious about with more cold water and wrapped her in plastic ready to dispose of after you’ve eaten your salad and black bean taquitos. That.
117
Seth and Maeve Beauman wear gloves to handle the body. She smells of bleach and death and plastic and she fits easily into the boot of Seth’s car. Straight. Lengthways. Diagonally. A spare tyre under her arse and a reflective breakdown triangle by her swaddled right arm.
She is wrapped tightly so that no fibres from the car can get past the plastic and onto her skin.
Maeve is overly cautious about all the details. She is the reason that they haven’t been caught. She thinks of everything. She drives the car because she is less likely to be pulled over by the police. Not that she speeds, or forgets to signal when she changes lanes.
They listen to a modern song that neither of them knows, and Seth changes the station and says, ‘Ah, that’s better. Who doesn’t like Elton John?’
Maeve concentrates on the road ahead and signals left to exit the roundabout and pull onto the motorway. She feels the body roll a little and shudders quietly to herself. She hates that Hadley is in there.
Seth starts singing under his breath.
‘Really, Seth?’
‘What?’
It was irritating her that he was suddenly so calm and cool. He was unflustered because she had planned everything out. His job was making the calls and going for drinks and murdering the people who formed a connection with him. Everything else was Maeve. What a team.
Trees were tied together with police tape where the second girl, Theresa Palmer, had been found. Forensic testing was going on as the Beaumans made their way up the M40. Nothing would be found that could connect them to the victim. Detective Pace was back in London, waiting on results. Once again, he was three counties away from the action.
But Hadley wasn’t going to that field. Too risky. The Beaumans just wanted to get into Warwickshire, find somewhere quiet, and drop the package off. This time, they didn’t care when it was found. The sooner the better.
If the police thought it was some kind of killing spree, like a pattern might even exist, they would want to close it down as quickly as possible. They would want the public’s faith intact. They would step up their efforts, maybe increase their resources.
And that is exactly what Maeve wanted.
118
Detective Sergeant Pace is going nowhere.
Detective Sergeant Pace is a ghost.
He has discovered from the phone records that several late-night calls were made to both Daisy and Theresa in the days leading up to their deaths, each from completely different mobile phone numbers that he has investigated and found to be on pay-as-you-go contracts that were no longer in use.
They had been burned.
These women had been deliberately groomed and the killer was covering their tracks.
If he worked backwards even further, he would notice the correlation between the phone numbers that started both relationships. He would have the Beaumans’ home phone number. He would have an address. But he was focused on the days that led up to the murders.
Detective Sergeant Pace is closer than he thinks.
The smog and degradation of the city is starting to weigh down upon him. At first he loved it. He absorbed it. He hid in it. And he shone in it. Success in cases meant that he put his old life behind him. He had escaped that small-town existence he had always felt too big for.
But now, that small Berkshire village of Hinton Hollow seems to be pulling him back. The quaint train station and independent bookshop, the corrupt local councillors and the matriarchal figure of Mrs Beaufort. The voice in the woods and the black flames. His old home could now be his escape. The pressure of London is making him feel smaller and smaller.
He lays face down on his bed, his stubble growing into the start of a beard, his long leather jacket draped over him like a blanket, like furled wings. Around the bed he imagines a vortex of dark clouds, waiting to swallow him whole.
He thinks about Daisy, wrapped in plastic.
And Theresa, wrapped in plastic.
If he could just empty his mind for a few hours, get some sleep, the morning would bring him something else to think about.
119
‘Samaritans. How can I help?’
He doesn’t mean it. Not tonight.
Ant does not care that his first caller feels alone. That he has nobody to talk to. His wife never asks him about his day anymore, she seems uninterested. She’s always on her phone. He is suspicious of her. She could be talking to anyone. She’s started exercising more. She’s on a diet. He talks to his kids a lot but he craves some adult interaction. He loves them, of course, but conversation is limited.
Ant wants to hang up. He wants to tell this guy to grow a pair of balls and talk to his wife. She’s the one he should be saying this shit to. If you’re worried she’s sleeping around, confront her. If you don’t care, find a way to live with it. Have a go yourself. Just stop complaining. Act.
Ant feels stronger. Like he is gaining more control.
The next woman was burnt out. Contracted to work thirty-five hours per week, she often went above and beyond those numbers. Sometimes doubling it for very little reward. It was expected in her company. That’s how she justified it. If you just did your contracted hours then you weren’t really doing your job. If you left the office at five, that wasn’t seen as good time management, it was seen as shirking your responsibilities. Typical corporate bullshit. Zero regard for physical or mental health if it got in the way of turning a profit.
And here’s the rub, anytime she was successful, her immediate boss and her CEO took the credit. Anytime something went wrong, she took the blame. And they loved to blame.
Her morale was low. They had drained her. They had eked every ounce of effort from her body and mind and reaped the benefits for themselves. And now she was scared that they had chewed her up and would spit her out but she didn’t want to continue in the cycle that had become habit for her.
Ant wants to hang up again. He wants to tell this woman to check the company handbook, to get some legal advice. He wants to tell her to stand up for herself, to treat it like a job and not like a career. Go in, do your work, remain focused but prioritise yourself over the company. Otherwise they will break you. And they won’t care about putting you back together. Because it will all be your fault.
Then a young caller. Petrified about upcoming exams and late-night cramming. And two more with the same concerns. Worried that failure will harm their futures.
Losing weight. Putting on weight. Not eating enough. Eating too much. Unable to sleep. Drinking to get to sleep.
Every caller, every lonely, isolated individual, who has a legitimate concern or anxiety, finds the courage they need to speak to a complete stranger. To offload. To ease some pressure – whether self-inflicted or not. Tonight, a couple of handfuls of these people in need are greeted by Ant and his apathy.
They don’t know that. They don’t realise. They think he is quiet because he is listening to them without judgement. He is their sounding board. He doesn’t necessarily need to speak or offer advice or another point of view. They just want to share.
So, somehow, despite his absence from the conversations and wayward thoughts of killing another human being, his restlessness at the slow passing of time and his impatience for today to be tomorrow, Ant provides a great service. He helps more people than he hurts.
120
‘Here. This is the spot.’
Maeve pulled the car over on Seth’s command.
‘You think?’ She thought it was a good spot, too, but wanted him to justify it for her own peace of mind.
‘Look,’ he pointed into the distance, ‘the farmhouse is miles away from this gate and there are no lights on. They get up early, they’re probably as asleep as our friend in the boot.’
She’s no friend of mine, Maeve tells herself. She kills the engine and switches off the lights.
‘I haven’t seen a car for fifteen minutes,’ Seth adds. His wife nods.
They speak for another minute in the almost pitch-black about the best place to leave her.
Right there by the gate means that she can be discovered by the farmer or anyone who works on that farm, but can also be seen from the road in the daylight. Or they could lift her over the wall, but there was always the danger that the farmer was monitoring their property with cameras, and there was the added possibility that she wouldn’t be found for a while. There were acres of land to cover. She needed to be found, not left to decompose next to a dry-stone wall for another week.
‘Get her out. The grass is long by the wall next to the gate. I’ll back up a bit and you can drag her straight in.’
‘Don’t worry, you’re close enough.’
Seth opens his door and steps out. He looks down the road and then up the other way. No lights. No sound. There’s nobody around. The only people who come along that road are the family that live and work on that farm. And they’re all asleep. He looks over at the house again. The only thing moving is the long blades of grass in the nighttime breeze. He can’t even hear noise from livestock.
He clicks the lock to the boot open as slowly and softly as he possibly can. Maeve waits at the wheel, looking in the rear-view mirror at her husband. He disappears for a moment as he ducks inside the back of the car and pulls out Hadley Serf’s legs. It wobbles the vehicle from side to side. Every small movement is exaggerated in this situation.
Now Maeve is the one seeing things in close-up. She sees her reflection in the mirror. Her large brown eyes, every individual eyelash, she blinks and it seems it’s in slow motion. Just get her out, Seth. Let’s get going.
With one hand under her neck and one beneath the small of her back, Seth heaves her out, takes two steps backwards and drops her behind the long grass, next to the wall. Part of the plastic catches a sharp stone and rips. He checks the floor to make sure that the ground is not soft and leaving a footprint.
The body will be visible in the morning, but, for now, she is safe.
She’s dumped.
She is gone.
Seth tells himself that it’s over. And he shuts the boot down until each side of the lock touches the other. Then he rests his weight against it until it clicks shut.
Five minutes later, they’re a couple of miles away, heading back along the winding road. There are still no other cars. The car feels lighter, as does Seth’s conscience.
Maeve isn’t as naïve. Neither is she hungry for this to happen again.
There is a lot left to do. Possible storms to weather. She wants to get home as fast as she can and drink a cold glass of wine and be close to her husband.
He wants to pick up the phone and start again.
Seth flicks the radio back on once they are well out of range of the dead girl. He doesn’t know the lyrics to this one but he hums along to the tune.
Maeve looks at the speedometer; she won’t go over the limit, even though she just wants to floor it all the way back to London. She glances in the rear-view mirror. Nothing behind them. Her eyelashes are no longer in close-up.
It’s all back to normal.
121
They would need a flash on the camera, it was so dark on those roads. There are streetlights here outside the house but I don’t see a car parked across the street or any figures lurking in the bushes. I’m just being paranoid, I know that.
‘You don’t think he was watching us again tonight?’ I ask Seth as we pull into the driveway.
He tells me not to worry and that we don’t need to talk about him. He shuts it down. Then he shuts the door behind us and locks it. And I’m shutting the fridge after pouring a huge glass of Chardonnay.
I’m tired.
Seth is wired.
It’s been exhausting. Being careful is hard work. Frivolity and recklessness is surprisingly invigorating. The rough, unprotected sex we’ve been having has energised me. But going over every detail, covering every track as we dispose of another body, has wiped me out. And this wine will knock me out within minutes.
I have to go in to work again tomorrow. I don’t know about Seth. I don’t want to ask him. I’m scared of his reaction. He leans against the worktop, sipping a glass of water, opening the top drawer and pulling out two breadsticks at a time. I gulp my wine.
We don’t talk. But it’s not uncomfortable.
We’re handling it. This is what we do.
Dysfunction to function.
‘I should clean out that bath,’ I say, eventually.
‘Leave it. That’s not important right now. She’s gone.’
Then I’m shutting my eyes in bed.
And I’m alone. And isolated. With nobody to talk to.
122
‘Fuck off, freak.’
Nathan Miller. Twelve miles north of the Beauman’s home.
‘You know what time it is?’
Mrs Taft. Sixty-one. Widow.
‘I can’t sleep. Want to talk?’
Seth Beauman. Hungry. Desperate for connection. Searching for number four.
He falls straight back into the role he has cultivated for himself. The perpetually tired insomniac with the buzzing late-night mind and the close-up vision. His innocent phone voice perfected in its tone to encourage sympathy from the listener.
Tonight is about quantity. Getting in as many calls as possible and hoping something sticks. There’s no time for his usual solo debrief after each call. He can’t sit back and examine his mistakes or dwell on the words of a stranger. He just has to call, ask the question, cross off the name, move on to the next.
Mr A will be expecting a potential victim tomorrow night, or at least something in the pipeline. Hadley will probably be found in the next day or so, too. He needs to get a move on. It’s not over yet.
‘Hi. It’s Seth. I can’t sleep. Want to talk?’
Suzannah Hyde. Single mother of two. Health and safety officer. Food blogger.
‘No. I do not. I want to be left alone. I don’t want my kids woken up, either. Why don’t you call the Samaritans or something, eh?’ She hangs up.
Seth laughs to himself at that.
He turns everything off and walks upstairs. He can smell the bleach as he reaches the top landing. The bath does need to be cleaned. Maeve was right. She always is.
WEDNESDAY
123
I was mesmerised. The detective emerged from the side of the screen, looking like Death. Dark hair and stubble, a long, black leather coat hanging like a cloak. A reporter stood in the foreground talking about another body being found in Warwickshire. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the figure in the background. He moved like fire. Black flames dancing around the crime scene.
The farmhouse could be seen in the background and a blue tractor was parked behind the gate. Whoever was driving it that morning must have spotted Hadley. There were cows peering over the wall. Maybe fifteen or twenty of them. Had they been there last night with us?
The public will start to forget about Palmer as soon as the tabloids can exploit Hadley’s pretty little face over their front pages.
And they’ve disregarded the first victim, Daisy Pickersgill. It was so long ago. Seth had only just started out. He wasn’t as eager back then. There was a long silence between the first and the second. Police would undoubtedly be looking for someone who may have been in prison for a while. Perhaps they had killed the first woman then been picked up on a less serious crime and served some time. Then re-emerged to kill again.
I watch Detective Pace move in the background and instruct and delegate. And he seems in control. He seems focused. But he’s so far away from the truth. And the bureaucracy over police jurisdiction is undoubtedly thwarting his investigation.
What is a London cop doing there? What is he running away from?
Seth is still in bed. I doubt he’ll go in to work today. I’m not going to push him. Maybe he’ll make himself useful around the house again. Clean the bath out. Mop the tiled floors. Dispose of the ashes.
I make myself a coffee and pour it into my flask to take with me on my journey to the office. Before I leave, I go upstairs and nudge my alleged insomniac husband who appears to be in a coma.
‘Seth.’ I prod him. ‘Seth,’ I repeat.
‘What? I’m getting ready. I’ll just be late. Don’t worry about it.’
‘It’s not that; I don’t care if you’re late.’
‘What is it, then?’ He rolls over, his eyes opening into a narrow slit.
‘They’ve found her.’
‘Already?’ He tries to open his eyes wider but they seem stuck together.
‘Yes. It’s all over the news.’
‘Shit. Well, that’s what we wanted, isn’t it?’
I like that he said we. We’re together. It’s something we are doing as a couple, a team.
‘It’s exactly what we want.’ And I kiss him goodbye.
124
He had already lied to his boss about the marks on his face. To some of his co-workers, Charlie Sanders had said he was drunk and dropped his kebab on the floor. As he went to catch it, he scraped his face against a wall.
