Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense (34 page)

eighty-seven

“The police think Chris
was my stalker.”

Andy's eyes widened in disbelief. “You're joking. That's impossible.”

“Yes, it is, for all sorts of chronological reasons.”

“Poor Kim.” His face was a picture of pity. “But what about that guy you were telling me about?”

“I was wrong. It landed me in a heap of trouble, but that's another tale.” Feeling gutsy, the way in which my dad had trained and hardened me, I leant dangerously towards Andy. “Don't you see, the guy stalking me is the same person who killed Chris.”

Rock solid, Andy didn't move a muscle. “Makes sense.”

“I've often wondered about him, what he's like, whether he's some pathetic creep, no friends, a loner, you know the type. I thought there was a fair possibility that he was mentally ill, but lately I've come to feel quite differently about him. He's sophisticated, manipulative, and smart. Systematic in his approach, he has what you'd call a methodical and logical mind.”

Andy's eyes glistened. “I'd guess you'd know.”

I waited, watched his hands. Hands that might kill. “I also think he's done it before.”

He wore an expression of pure shock. His shiny knuckles told a different tale.

“A woman in Bristol disappeared two years ago,” I continued. “Her name was Gaynor Lassiter. She'd been stalked. Vile, isn't it?”

“Christ, Kim, you don't …”

“She had a raised birthmark on her cheek, quite visible. An odd similarity with me, don't you think?”

He took a drink by way of a reply.

“When I went to your place yesterday, it was in a terrible state.”

“You know how it is, a guy on his own,” he grunted. “Jen says I ought to get a cleaner.”

“Don't apologise. It was quite telling, really.”

Andy's eyebrows furrowed. “I don't understand.”

“The thing about mess is that it makes it easy to pick out the bit that's tidy. You had a pretty neat patch near your computer.”

Andy threw an indulgent smile my way. “That's because it's crucial to my work, duh!”

“And why I noticed two piles of newspapers.”

The smile stretched wider, the teeth whiter than white. I should have been terrified. Instead, I felt triumph, vindication, justice all rolled into one.

“I didn't spot it at first,” I continued. “My eyes focused on the headline in the
Gazette
. You know how it is when you see something from the corner of your eye?” I said, daring him. “I didn't know you read the
Cheltenham Standard
.”

Initially, Andy's face was blank, then puzzled, then annoyed. “For God's sake, Kim, are you implying what I think?”

“You tell me. Before you get too cocky, it was open at the piece on me and Ellerslie Lodge.”

“Because I know you,
idiot-brain
,” he protested, flaring the fingers of one hand. “Fair enough, I'm guilty of ghoulish curiosity, and I'm not particularly proud of it, but how could you think that?”

“Think what?” Say it, you creep, you ghoul.

He shook his head in disbelief. “To be honest, I'm hurt,” he blustered, snatching at his drink. “You're cracked.”

“Isn't that the point?”

He gave me a slow, sideways look. “It's a good job we're mates otherwise I'd do you for slander, or defamation of character, or something. I pick up the local rag because I have clients in Cheltenham.”

“What sort of clients?”

“Agricultural machinery specialists. I'm putting a digital programme together for them.”

“You must have to visit,” I said, cool and neutral.

“Nope. Like many budding industrialists, the main man has a holiday home here in Devon, which is how I managed to get the business in the first place. I'm cheaper than other outfits upcountry and, if you don't believe me, I can give you the name of the managing director. Now if you've finished grilling me, perhaps we could think about dinner. I'm quite peckish.”

Andy appeared to have a convincing answer for everything. A hard pebble of doubt lodged in my throat. I did my best to gulp it down. Cunning and manipulative, he was playing me. I jumped to my feet and went back inside, giving him every impression that he was off the hook. Andy followed and watched as I took fresh lamb, red peppers, and tomatoes out of the fridge and laid them out on two chopping boards.

“Nice piece of furniture,” Andy remarked, eyeing up a small cupboard I'd bought ages ago in the Suffolks.

“Yeah,” I said, taking a chopping knife from the block, flexing the blade, poised.
He's almost part of the furniture,
Chris had said. Always there,
always had been
. He'd been Chris's friend long before mine. I straightened up, turned to face him, resting the small of my back against the work surface. “The day Chris was killed you were teaching.”

Andy pulled up a chair, rolled his eyes, and helped himself to another can from the fridge. “So?” He pulled back the
ring-pull
. It gave a small hiss.

“How many kids in your class?”

“
Thirty-three
. Boys outnumber girls.”

“Is that the way you like it?”

“It's the way it is,” he said with cold delivery.

“So
thirty-three
alibis.”

“Precisely.”

“A damn sight better than poor me.” I twitched a smile. “My only alibi's a passing motorist who failed to notice I was there.” Andy laughed. I let him finish. “What time do lessons begin?”

“Surely you know,” Andy said,
straight-faced
.

“My mind's gone blank.”

He smiled without amusement. “Twenty after nine. Are you going to put down that knife, or are you going to keep waving it around?”

I looked at the blade in my hand, placed it near the meat, somewhere close, somewhere I could easily reach it.

“The call from Chris came through at seven fifty,” I said. “If you were passing through the office, you could have overheard.”

Andy's eyes were like chisels. “You must be joking. One: I never roll into school at that ungodly hour. Two: I don't go in the office. It's full of women.”

“But you like women, Andy. You're secretly fascinated by them, isn't that right?” Especially if they have defects. “None of it matters, of course, because you might as easily have been lying in wait, stalking prey.”

“Know what? You're starting to piss me off.”

The air throbbed. The kitchen clock ticked then chimed. The sun, charged, gave off a deep umber glow. This was my home, my territory. Knives to the left. Meat cleaver to the right. The place teemed with domestic weaponry and, if provoked, I would have no hesitation in using it.

Andy let out a sudden sigh, his expression softening. The hard note in his voice melted away like snow in sunshine. “C'mon, Kim, this is all bollocks and you know it. We don't want to fight. We're both stressed out to the eyeballs. I know you have to examine all possibilities. I understand that, really I do. But, even if I knew about Chris's call, how long do you think it takes to get from school to Goodshelter and back again? Oh, and fit in a murder?” He hooted with derision.

“Too long.”

“There you are then.” He drained the can.

“Except that day wasn't normal. It was an intensive IT session that started first thing and didn't finish until the bell went for lunch.” At least, that's what Jo Sharpe had told me.

“I still have to be there, you clown.”

“That's the point, you don't,” I said. “Today's kids have a high level of proficiency born out of endless hours on Game Boys, PlayStations, and computers. You can set reams of stuff for pupils to be getting on with in your absence. How long did it take, Andy? How long did it take for you to play the sympathetic friend, suggest a spin in Chris's new car to take his mind off his
personal
problems—an idea you'd already floated—and then, under the guise of ‘blokes being blokes,' to coin your phrase, you ask to take a peek at his shiny new engine and stove his head in?” I was breathless. My chest hurt. So did my face and neck. I hadn't even got started on the forged letter, the anonymous messages, the porn. His stupefied reaction suggested that I'd confessed to a monstrous crime. The rap on the door made us both jump.

Andy cocked an eyebrow. “Are you expecting anyone?”

“No.”

“We'll continue this later.” He spoke in the way a teacher speaks to a recalcitrant teenager. He definitely didn't seem bothered. “You stay there. I'll go.”

I snatched up my phone to call Fiona and was surprised to see I'd received a text from Josh Brodie. It read:
Camper van linked to two abductions.
Startled, I looked towards the sitting room, taken aback by the sound of male voices—one Andy's, the other hauntingly familiar. Next footsteps, deliberate and slow, then a face appeared. In a
split-second
, two worlds crashed
head-on
and I was squashed in the middle.

eighty-eight

“What the fuck?” I
choked.

His good side inclined towards me, Kyle Stannard arched a quizzical eyebrow. “I was going to ask you the same.”

“Don't get clever.”

He spread his hands out. “
You
wanted to talk.”

I felt as if I had fog in my brain. Then it cleared as I remembered Brodie's message.

“Where do you park the camper van?”

“Are you one crazy bitch?” Stannard said. “Do I look like the kind of guy who drives one of those aberrations?”

“Watch your mouth,” Andy snarled.

Stannard ignored him. “Your brother phoned me this morning, Kim. He said you wanted to straighten things out.”

“What things?” Andy stood squat and belligerent, chest straining underneath his shirt.

“Who are you, her minder?” Stannard sneered.

I saw Andy's fist ball. Confusion gripped me. Stannard's bellicose stance remained. He glared at Andy. “He said Kim wanted a meeting here at the cottage. As we left on”—Stannard glanced at me—“dubious terms, I believed him.”

“Luke wouldn't do something like that,” I said.

“Luke? It wasn't Luke. It was Guy.”

“Guy?” I felt as if all the air had been sucked out of my body.

“It was definitely Guy who called.”

Had someone put a gun to my temple, I couldn't have been more shocked. “You fucking bastard, my God, you've done your homework.” So this was it. Stannard
was
my stalker. I made a face at Andy in apology.

“You're dead, mate.” Andy lunged. There was a loud crunch of bone as two bodies collided and crashed onto the tiled floor. Fists flew. Chairs overturned. Drawers wrenched out. Cutlery cascaded. A lamp smashed, shattering into jagged pieces, both men rolling in the broken shards, the air full of grunts and moans. Blood spattered a cupboard. Bigger and heavier, Andy had the advantage. Transfixed, my knuckles pressed to my mouth, I remembered my brothers' fight and my rotten decision. Got to get help, I thought, scrabbling for my mobile.

“Kim,” Andy shouted breathlessly, “fetch a rope, or something we can tie him up with.”

I ran into the small utility, grabbed a length of thick twine, a leftover from my father's sailing days, and handed it to Andy. He looked spent. His left eye ballooned. His lip was split and there was a nasty cut above his right eyebrow. Panting, he stood over Stannard, dripping sweat. Stannard, meanwhile, was barely conscious as Andy hauled him onto a chair. Blood gushed from his nose. His lip, too, was swollen. The two sides of his face seemed less distinguishable. A low moan burbled up from his stomach and tangled in his throat.

Andy roughly pulled Stannard's hands back and tied them together. “I need something to cut through the twine,” he said. “There's a
pen-knife
in my jacket pocket.”

I sprinted out to the sitting room. “We should phone the police,” I called over to him. “Let them deal with it.”

Andy's jacket was slung across a chair. There seemed to be hundreds of pockets. I patted them, tried to find the telltale shape. I yanked out a handkerchief, a cheque card, coins, matches, and a cheap lighter. My hands flew inside to a zipped up section that seemed promising. I wrenched it open, fingers sliding inside, connecting with something slippery and shiny. I snatched it out.

Hat pulled down. Sunshine lit my face. Sea in the distance, I looked beautiful that day …

Slipping the photograph into my back pocket, I returned to the kitchen with a frozen smile and buccaneering swagger. “Couldn't find it.”

“Never mind.” Andy let the twine trail onto the floor.

“You can't leave him like that.”

“Why not?”

“He might choke or something with all that blood.”

“After what he's done, I wouldn't worry.”

Stannard let out another groan. “I've done nothing.”

“I'll wipe away the mess,” I said, swooping up a tea towel, plunging it under the cold tap, thinking and thinking what my next move should be.

“Leave it, Kim.” Andy's voice was Siberian.

eighty-nine

I turned slowly. Every
trace of geniality gone, his face a picture of hostility, a cruel light glittered in Andy's eyes. A glance at Stannard extinguished all possibility of help. He was too much out of it.

“This is all very nice and tidy,” Andy grinned. He swiped the wet towel from me and dabbed at his wounds. “Quite a little party.”

My mind flashed to the painting: two men, one woman. “You tricked Stannard.”

“A willing dupe. Swallowed my tale like the proverbial hook, line, and sinker. There's definitely something of the stalker about him. He's clearly obsessed with you.”

“And you're clearly obsessed with disfigurement.”

“Broken beauties.” He shivered, walking slowly towards me. “The ultimate
turn-on
.” He reached out, traced the jagged line of scar tissue. I didn't flinch, didn't move.

“I know about the others, Andy. What did you do to them?”

“What do you think?”

His
matter-of
-factness left me speechless. I thought about Ivan Lassiter, his devastation.

“I'm ravenous,” Andy said through fat lips, “but before you cook dinner, I think you should open your present.”

I glowered at him.

“Don't be so ungrateful. Go on, it won't bite,” he smirked.

I snatched up the box from the kitchen table, ripped off the paper, and attempted and failed to absorb the shock.

“Can't have a party without fireworks, can we?” Andy said. “I
love
rockets, don't you? I thought we'd have a display over the water. After that, we'll have a bonfire. You've got quite a bit of petrol in that old garage of yours. By the time the fire engines turn out and get here, the cottage should be well and truly ablaze. Tell you what,” he said advancing, his alcoholic breath hot on my face. “Stannard can be our Guy Fawkes.”

“You motherfucker.”

The blow split my lip. “You need to learn some manners.”

I put a hand to my face, tasted blood. “Is this how you treat Jen?”

“Stupid bitch,” he sneered. “She's not even a decent shag.”

“You doctored the letters, didn't you? You altered the dates to make it look as if Chris wrote them.”

Andy shrugged. “I nicked his keys, got them cut, let myself in, and off I went. His signature was a doddle to forge. Chris really was right about the
part-time
nature of my job. I've got bags of time to pursue my own interests. It's all about being seen as busy.”

I flared. “Why Chris? He was your friend.”

“There you go,” Andy mocked, “looking for some deep psychological motivation. The truth is I wasn't abused. My childhood was ordinary and painfully dull. I had a secure upbringing in a reasonably
well-off
family, no brothers and sisters to bug me or give me a complex, and my parents, poor suckers, offered pure, unconditional love.”

Andy's moist red lips were almost on my face. I forced myself not to recoil. “Fucks up your
psycho-babble
, I'd say.” His eyes contracted into two straight lines. “But you,” he said, tipping my chin up with the crook of his index finger, “you were always special to me.”

This time I winced.

“I know you better than you think,” he goaded. “You smile for the camera, but it's an act. At heart, you're as false and as bitter and twisted as me.”

My eyes swam with tears. Chill seeped into my bones. I wanted to scream.

“Did you know?” Andy said, entranced. “I saw you once, a long time ago, coming out of the local surgery. I asked my mum who you were. She told me you were the girl who got burnt. Fascinating.”

“You sad fuck,” I burst out. Was I the cradle of his obsession? Had I been the trigger, the start of it all? “And Chris, where did he fit?”

“You don't seriously think I give a shit?” Andy leant in close, pressed his lips onto my face. His fat tongue darted out and licked my ear. “I killed him because he was precious to you. I killed the others because …” His eyes glazed. Unexpectedly, he shot a hand out, groped my crotch. I felt cold, as if death crawled all over me.

Stannard groaned. Blood had congealed under his nose. His chin slumped onto his chest, breathing laboured. It looked as if the chair alone propped him up.

“Enough conversation,” Andy said. “Let's eat.”

“I'm not your servant.”

Andy thrust me a look that would make a rattlesnake recoil. “Cook, or I'll kill him, right here, right now, in front of you.”