One by One (3 page)

And then I was being shaken awake by Marla and I had a sudden, vivid memory of that bright, terrible morning all those years ago when Rachel was lying in Luke's bedroom with her head bashed in.

Luke. Luke. Still the most likely suspect to have killed Rachel. Don't forget that.

‘It's 2.30,' said Marla. ‘You were dreaming then, weren't you? You were flapping and shaking about.'

I grunted something and rubbed my eyes, not bothering to give her a proper answer. Crispin was already up and awake, drinking from a glass of water, while Luke had taken his place on the sofa and was trying to get comfortable. I got up and Marla lay down where I'd been.

‘Did anything happen while I was asleep?' I asked her.

‘Nothing. Totally quiet.' She shut her eyes and was out in seconds, which made me think that, when you're that tired, you can sleep through pretty much anything.

Still yawning, I made tea for Crispin and we sat on the floor out of sight of the window and away from the other two. I offered him a cigarette.

‘I shouldn't,' he said, but he took one anyway.

‘I think the long-term health risks are pretty irrelevant right now,' I said, and lit us both up, noticing that my supply was coming to an end. I'd only brought a single pack, as lately I'd cut my intake down to eight a day, but now that there were only four left, I wished I'd brought more, even though they wouldn't survive the drenching in the sea we were planning for a few hours' time.

‘I'm so sorry to hear about what happened to your daughter,' he said, and I could tell from the expression in his eyes that he meant it. That was the thing about Crispin. There was a real kindness about him, and it made me wonder how I could ever have suspected his involvement in this.

I sighed. ‘It was the most horrible thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life. Including this, believe it or not. At the time I genuinely didn't think I could get through it. I just wanted to die. And I felt like that for a long time afterwards, but the thing is, you do get through it. You survive, and you carry on.'

‘I'm sorry about Marla and Luke earlier, too. You know, the fact they didn't believe you about Charlie. I know you were telling the truth.'

‘Is that because you saw what was outside the window?'

He frowned. ‘You looked?'

I nodded.

‘So you saw the heads. I'm glad you didn't say anything to the others. I don't think Marla especially can handle much more of this.' He drew on the cigarette, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. ‘It's funny, isn't it? When we were at uni, I always felt that Luke and Marla were the strong ones. And now look at us.'

‘You're strong, Crispin. I don't know about me.'

‘Jesus, Karen, you've survived everything that life's thrown at you, including being the one to discover the murdered bodies of two of your friends in the last twenty-four hours, and you're still keeping your head. You, my girl, are a strong woman.'

He smiled at me then and, even in the midst of this nightmare, I felt a warm glow.

I took his hand, gripping it hard, and I think I would have tried to kiss him but I saw his smile fade a little at the prospect. Whatever I might have liked to think, Crispin was Marla's man.

I removed my hand and took a sip from the rapidly cooling tea. ‘So, how did you and Marla meet up again?'

I could tell he wasn't keen to talk about it but I wasn't going to let him off the hook that easily now that I had him alone. I needed to know.

‘It was pure coincidence really. I was at a bar in the West End – I can't even remember which one now – with some mates, and Marla walked in with a bunch of her friends. We spotted each other, got talking and stayed in touch afterwards.'

‘How long ago was that?'

He looked at me sadly. ‘A long time. Maybe fifteen years.'

I worked hard to suppress the hurt. ‘And you've kept in contact ever since?'

‘No.' He paused for a moment, presumably wondering how much to tell me. ‘I'll be honest. We hit it off and, even though we were both in relationships, we started seeing each other. I finished with the girl I was with but Marla was married at the time, so it was harder for her.'

‘You had an affair.'

‘Don't judge, Karen. I'm not that kind of man, you know that, but things… things just went out of control, like they did with you and Charlie. Eventually, after about a year, Marla left her husband and we moved in together.'

He waited for me to say something. But I didn't. I let him talk.

‘We lived together for about a year. It might even have been longer. We were going to get married, too, once her divorce came through, but I suppose it wasn't meant to be because things didn't work out and we finally split up. We stayed friends, but I moved to France after that so we hardly saw each other. Last night was the first I'd seen of her in a couple of years.'

‘But the spark's still there, eh?'

He shrugged.

‘And did you… did you ever sleep together while we were seeing each other?' I asked, wondering why I always had to be so masochistic.

‘Of course I didn't,' he said, but I spotted the lie in his eyes. He had.

The bitch. I hated Marla then. Always thinking she could get any man. Messing with people's feelings. Just like Rachel had when she was alive. What was it about these bloody women?

We talked some more – mainly about him and his travels; a little about my life too – and smoked the rest of the cigarettes. But to be honest I'd lost the appetite for the conversation. Too much water had passed under the bridge between us. We were no longer two former lovers reminiscing. We were just two individuals trying to take our minds off the bloody reality of our situation.

And at some point during the night I made a terrible mistake.

I closed my eyes.

I opened my eyes slowly and the first thing I noticed was daylight behind the drawn curtains.

I frowned. Our plan was to get ready half an hour before dawn at 5.30 a.m. I looked at my watch. It was now almost 7.30.

I'd fallen asleep sitting against a wall and my body was at an uncomfortable angle, so I propped myself up and looked around. Luke and Marla were still asleep on opposite sofas but there was no sign of Crispin and I couldn't hear him anywhere.

I noticed something else too.

My knife was gone.

Slowly I got to my feet and checked on Luke and Marla. Luke was snoring lightly so there was nothing wrong with him, and Marla was breathing softly, a peaceful expression on her face. I couldn't see their knives either.

I thought about waking them up but instead I crept into the hallway, listening out for Crispin. I wasn't unduly worried. No one could get in the house and, even if by some mischance they'd managed to, they would have killed us by now. We were safe. We were fine. We'd just overslept.

But where was Crispin? The house was totally silent, the doors still locked. Nothing moved. There was no sign of him.

Yawning, I realized I needed to pee. I needed coffee as well if I was going to function, but peeing came first.

As soon as I started to open the downstairs toilet door, the odour hit me like a slap. My heart leaped and I began shaking as the full realization of what lay beyond the door dawned on me. I didn't want to look. Oh God, I didn't want to look. But it was as if my body was operating independently of my brain and, almost in spite of myself, I put my head round the door, inch by bitter inch.

The killer had sat Crispin on the toilet in a final act of humiliation, with his head propped back against the windowsill. A clear plastic bag had been forced over his head, sticking to his face like a second skin as he'd sucked the air out of it, and his mouth was wide open, as were his eyes, in a classic expression of desperation. It was debatable whether asphyxiation had killed him, though, because his throat had been torn right open along its entire length, emptying its contents all over his shirt, which was now almost entirely crimson. Protruding from his groin, like a thin metallic dick, was my knife.

My poor, poor Crispin. Ruined and mutilated. Gone for ever.

I cried out then and backed into the hallway, a hand covering my mouth as I tried to work out the logic of what I'd just seen. Someone had taken and killed Crispin without him having a chance to make a sound, then come into the lounge and stolen each of our knives, yet without making any attempt to kill any of us. It didn't make sense. None of it did. And how on earth had the killer got in here?

A hand grabbed me roughly on the shoulder and I swung round fast.

It was Marla, looking concerned and alert. ‘What's going on?' she demanded. ‘Where's Crispin?'

She saw the look on my face and her eyes widened. ‘He's not…'

I nodded slowly. ‘He's… He's dead. In the toilet. Someone stabbed him.'

She took a step back, breathing rapidly. Then her expression changed, and she hurried past me, put her head round the toilet door, ignoring my protestations, and let out an ear-piercing scream, before racing back out into the hallway.

‘I don't know what happened,' I explained. ‘I must have fallen asleep.'

But Marla wasn't listening. She walked around me, keeping as far away as possible, never once taking her eyes off mine. ‘You killed him, didn't you?'

The accusation was like a physical blow. ‘No. No. Of course I didn't. Why would I do that?'

‘Because you're the killer. It's you and Charlie. You're working together. And now you've murdered Crispin, you bitch. But don't try it with me, because if you do, I will fucking kill you.'

As she backed away towards the lounge, Luke appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. ‘What the hell's going on?'

Marla pointed at me. ‘Crispin's dead. She killed him.'

‘I didn't,' I said desperately. ‘I just found him now. I fell asleep… I… Someone must have broken in.' The words were falling out of my mouth in a desperate blur but I could see that neither of them believed me. They stood together, mistrust pouring off them. And anger too.

‘You killed Cris?' said Luke, aghast.

‘No. I didn't.'

‘She did. She fucking did. It's her knife sticking out of him. It's her and Charlie. They planned this whole thing to get rid of us.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about. I'm nothing to do with this. And Charlie's dead, remember? If you don't believe me, take a look outside. The killer put his head on a pole next to Louise's.'

Doubt appeared – at least on Luke's face.

‘Go on!' I shouted. ‘Look!'

Marla ran past me into the kitchen and pulled the curtains open. ‘Where?' she demanded, staring out. ‘Where are these heads meant to be?'

‘On the back lawn. Right in front of you.' But even before she closed the curtains with an angry flourish, I knew that the heads had been moved. Because whoever was behind this was deliberately trying to taunt me, and no one else.

Just me.

‘They were there, I swear it.' But I could hear the doubt in my own voice.

As I was speaking, Luke put his head round the toilet door and let out a low keening sound, not dissimilar to a wounded animal, and when he turned back to look at me, his face was a mask of fury.

‘What have you done?' he yelled, his voice reverberating round the whole house.

‘I haven't done anything. Why would I kill Crispin? Or anyone?'

Marla pointed an accusing finger at me. ‘The two of you are doing it to get rid of everyone else involved in Rachel's death. That way it's only you guys left.'

‘Bullshit.' I pointed at Luke. ‘He's got more of a motive than me. He was the one who hotwired Corridge's car and helped bury Rachel's body. And it was his room she died in. I was just in the wrong bloody place at the wrong bloody time. And Jesus, I've paid for it since.'

Marla snorted. ‘Oh, yeah. Poor little innocent Karen. You think I don't know about your dirty little secret?'

‘What secret?' demanded Luke.

‘Why don't you tell him, Karen?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘You were just as implicated as Luke. Maybe even more so. Because you were sleeping with her, weren't you?' A cruel grin twisted across her lips. ‘Crispin told me. He said you were obsessed with her, and that the two of you almost broke up over it.'

‘That's a lie!' I yelled.

‘So you're a lesbian?' said Luke, more surprised than angry, it seemed, by this sudden revelation.

‘Are you saying you never slept with her? Is that what you're saying, Karen?'

I hesitated. It was enough.

‘You killed Rachel, didn't you? Didn't you, you fucking whore?'

‘No!' I screamed, lunging forward and striking her hard round the face.

Which was when Luke punched me in the side of the head, knocking me down.

I cried out, hoping it would stop him from hurting me any more, but he pulled me to my feet by my hair and twisted an arm up behind my back.

At the same time Marla rushed into the kitchen, pulling open drawers until she found what she was looking for – a serrated chopping knife. She marched up to me and held the blade close to my face.

I tried to struggle free of Luke's grip but he pushed my arm even higher up my back, making me wail with the pain.

‘Admit you killed Crispin,' hissed Marla. ‘Admit it now, or I will cut you into fucking pieces.'

‘I didn't. I swear I didn't.'

She pressed the blade against my cheek and behind me I heard Luke's sharp intake of breath. I thought he was going to say something – tell her to calm down or something – but he didn't.

‘Please…' I was weeping now, unable to quite understand what was happening to me.

Marla stood there breathing heavily, her eyes full of rage, and I wondered whether or not she had it in her to carry out her threat. I wondered too whether she was actually the killer and was trying to put the blame on me, but that didn't make sense either.