Neil White - Beyond Evil

Why hadn’t he been killed too? Was he nothing more than a deflection?

Charlie pulled out his phone and called the office. If the police were there, he wondered whether it would be answered. It rang out a few times, and then a voice came on, meek and nervous. It was Donia.

‘Don’t react,’ Charlie said, talking low so that no one passing by could hear him. ‘If the police are there, just say that Charlie isn’t in the office at the moment.’

There was a pause, and then she repeated what he had told her, that Charlie wasn’t in the office.

So the police were there already. They had moved fast, had obviously found the body, although he realised that the link with Billy Privett sent the investigation straight there.

‘I was reading Billy Privett’s file last night,’ he said. ‘I need to know if it was taken.’

‘I don’t know if I can help you,’ she said, her voice quiet.

‘I need to know about the file, Donia. Is Linda talking to the police?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice a whisper.

‘Can you go into my room for me? It will be on the desk, or perhaps on the floor.’

Another pause, and then, ‘What do I do?’

He tried to picture the scene, the police everywhere, but he knew they wouldn’t be able to take all the files. They would want Billy’s though.

‘Just find it,’ he said, some desperation creeping into his voice. He knew what he was going to ask her to do, and it was wrong. Donia was just a kid, a wannabe lawyer looking for some work experience, but he couldn’t think about that. ‘Try on the floor in my room, near to my desk. If it’s there, just put other files on top of it, and my dictation machine. They won’t expect it to be there. Bluff it, say that it’s my typing pile.’

There was a pause, and then the phone went quiet. She had hung up.

Fuck!

Charlie paced up and down and gripped his phone, almost threw it into the quarry. He would have to go to the office for the file, if he was going to get it at all. But what alternatives were there? He could just come out of hiding, blame it all on a bad hangover and invite them to prove something against him. But that was too risky, and he wasn’t ready for a prison cell. No, he had to see what was in the file, if it was still there.

Then his phone buzzed in his hand. He looked at the screen. A text.

Got file. Im in weekly rental flat. Marshall Ave. 66. Fl 6. Go there. Donia.

Charlie looked at the screen, unsure what to make of it. It could be a trap. He didn’t know Donia’s number, so how did she know his? The police might be behind it.

He knew one thing though; he had few options.

He texted her back. OK . Then he turned away from the quarry edge and started jogging towards the town.

Chapter Thirty

Sheldon came down the stairs, rubbing his hair dry with a towel, dressed in Ted’s old clothes; jeans that hung low on his hips and a shirt that revealed the bones in his shoulders. They showed how much weight he had lost, but at least they were clean. As he walked along the hall, Ted was standing in front of a microwave oven, and as he got closer, the smell of curry drifted towards him.

‘Emily has gone away to her sister’s,’ Ted said. ‘This is the best I could do at short notice. Jake hasn’t got beyond the microwave with his cooking skills, but I found this in the fridge. Chicken Madras.’

Sheldon smiled. ‘That’s perfect,’ he said. ‘Did I have anything to do with Emily going?’

‘Yes, you did,’ he said, a scowl appearing for a moment. ‘She was expecting more visits from you and couldn’t stand the thought of me being locked up.’ He sighed. ‘It was more than that though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You remember the girl in the car? Well, she believed me about that, or at least she said she did, but there is that small part of her that doubts me, because it sounds implausible, doesn’t it? It sounds like bullshit, but I can’t change what happened, and Emily knows that since Alice died, well, we’ve been pretty quiet in the bedroom.’

‘I don’t need to know this,’ Sheldon said.

‘I know that, but who do I have to talk to?’ Ted said. There was some desperation in his voice, as if he needed to explain himself, his words coming out quickly. ‘Alice being killed affected both of us badly. I dealt with it by becoming more vocal about it, but Emily just retreated. She spends hours in Alice’s room, just lying on her bed, hoping that one day Alice will walk back in. I can’t blame her for not being interested in sex anymore. Hell, I don’t think I’m too bothered. It just wouldn’t seem right to be so carefree, as if we had forgotten about her already. But Emily thinks I’m lying, just to be kind, because I’m a man, and we have urges, right? So there is a small part of Emily that wonders if I was with that girl, because I just needed something, like some closeness, or even just a release. And so I could see it in her eyes, that if I lied about that, perhaps I lied about Billy Privett, and that I did kill him.’

‘So Emily thinks you killed Billy?’

Ted shook his head. ‘No, she doesn’t, because she knows me, but there is a small part of her that is not prepared to rule it out, like with the girl.’

‘I’m sorry if I made it worse,’ Sheldon said. ‘I just haven’t been myself lately.’

‘No need,’ Ted said, and pointed Sheldon through to the dining room, next to the kitchen and separated from the living room by wooden double doors. There was a conservatory behind, filled with cane furniture and potted plants. In the dining room, there was a large mahogany cabinet with glass shelving units. On top there was a framed photograph of the Kenyon family, showing Ted and Emily sitting at the table, beaming proudly with their children behind them, Alice’s arms wrapped around Ted’s neck, and Jake’s around his mother’s.

Ted brought the curry through, and saw Sheldon looking at the photograph.

‘That’s the last picture of us together,’ Ted said. ‘I didn’t donate it to the police for a press release because it would taint it. It would be the picture they splashed on the news when they talked about her. I wanted to remember the afternoon as it was, everyone happy. Alice died the weekend after.’

Sheldon felt a wave of sadness as he thought of his own family. It was still intact then, or at least he thought it was. As he thought more about it though, perhaps it wasn’t. He couldn’t remember a family photograph as happy as that, not since Hannah was a small girl, when all he had to do was be there.

Sheldon turned away from the photograph and thanked Ted for the food. As he sat down to eat it, he became ravenous and realised how much he had neglected himself. Ted watched him eat for a while and then said, ‘If we are sharing information, you tell me: what suspects did you have?’

Sheldon paused as he thought of it. ‘None, other than Billy. We knew who some of his friends were, because we had been up there enough times over party noise before Alice died, but everyone had an alibi that they could prove. And anyway, we believed them, because they all said the same thing, that Billy hadn’t invited them up for a few weeks. It was as if he had got himself new friends.’

‘And you couldn’t find out who they were?’

Sheldon shook his head. ‘There was blood at the scene, but we don’t know whose. Did you find anything out?’

Ted shook his head. ‘I thought people were embarrassed at first, about what had gone on up at Billy’s house, because his money loosened clothes and no one would tell me too much. Except that Billy had new friends, but no one knew who they were. Some people had gone up and Billy wouldn’t let them in, and on the drive were old vans, and there were Goth-type kids, all in black, different to Billy’s usual crowd. Billy’s old friends were from the estate, people with no money helping Billy to spend his.’