The Family Next Door

by Fiona Cummins

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

For Sale: Lovely family home, ready for your updates. Friendly neighborhood setting close to park; secluded.

If not for the bodies discovered in the woods behind their new home, Garrick and Olivia Lockwood couldn't have afforded to buy number 25 The Avenue. It's the fresh start they and their two children badly need. Soon, these terrible crimes will be solved, they tell themselves, and once Garrick has remodeled, he's confident they'll sell the house for a profit.

But the darkest secrets can reside on quiet, ordinary streets like this—behind the doors of well-kept houses and neighbors' friendly faces. Secrets that can destroy a family, or savagely end a life, and will surface just when they're least expected . . .

Release date: January 28, 2020

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

Now

Every killing has a taste of its own. I expect you didn’t know that.

Young women are sweetened with hope, less astringent than their older selves, who reek of experience, bitter as sorrel leaves.

The boys—yes, they remain boys until they have earned the right to be called men—are seasoned with bravado, but lack piquancy. As the life ebbs from them, they taste of metal and shyness and tears.

The older generation are oversalted with loss and grief. They have absorbed the hurts of lives that have been lived, storm-battered but surviving. They do not accept death. They fight against the injustice of a thief like me.

As their airways constrict, as each pull of breath grows ragged and reluctant, their faces are sketched with panic, the dusty tapestries of their histories unfurling as the darkness takes hold. Their flavorings are persistence and regret.

I am telling you this now because I still possess the faintest of hopes that somewhere you can hear me as I hear the police sirens lacerating the silence. The sound makes my teeth itch, like a blade being honed on a steel.

As the reckoning approaches, I suppose there is a need to unburden myself, to seek absolution for the sins I have committed. I am not sorry for what I have done. The remorse I feel is not for the lives I have taken, but for what each act of murder has cost me.

The power to take a life is a gift not many possess. I have always understood this. I do not have many talents and I am grateful for it.

But the world is not so forgiving.

Some will call me a monster, deserving of a death sentence myself. It is fair, I suppose. But I am not a monster. I have never been a monster.

I am a keeper of secrets.

And I am not alone.

The greengrocer’s boy stuffing shiny apples into paper bags and pound coins into his pockets; the piano teacher who makes house calls, sneaking glimpses at his pupils’ bare knees; the exhausted mother who fantasizes about shoving the pram she is pushing into oncoming traffic; the families who move in—and out of—The Avenue, as ceaseless as time.

We all hide secrets, dark and ugly.

You.

Me.

And every one of us on this dirt-filled earth.

This is the last time I will feel the sun on my face or hear the greetings of the blackbirds or inhale the scent of damask roses. Perhaps I deserve to spend the rest of my days in a cage, condemned to a life without freedom, as I have condemned others. Hush, now. Listen. Can you hear, as I do, the thunder of the funeral drums?

The police are almost upon me.

And so I’ll begin. Because the time has come to finish it. Because the only way to start this story is at its end.

Sunday 29th July 2018, 3:31 P.M.

The Avenue

The moving van packed with the furniture and hopes of the Lockwood family brushed against the rhododendron bushes that surrounded The Avenue, breaking off one of the blooms.

That flower floated to the pavement, petals torn and mangled. The van driver, intent on finding the right house, did not notice the damage he had caused. Neither did the Lockwoods.

But as heat trembled in the air around them, this family had no idea of how they would come to pray that 25 The Avenue had remained a blurry photograph on the real estate agent’s website, and no idea that by the end of the summer, their lives would be as scarred as the stem bleeding sap onto the concrete.

Music drifted across the sun-withered afternoon, touching leaves so dry the swell of notes might shake them free, and through the open windows of several nearby houses.

Those houses, grouped like guardians in this modest street on the edge of a small town near the Essex coast, had been standing there for many years and borne witness to it all.

From behind the curtains of one of those houses, someone watched the Lockwood family crawl into the driveway behind the moving truck, snap off the radio and emerge from the silver shell of their car, unfolding legs and shaking out arms cramped by hours of travel.

An older woman, attractive, wearing crumpled linen trousers, shielded her eyes and squeezed the hand of a man, who did not squeeze it back. A boy, eight or nine, bounced around, tugging at his mother’s arm. A teenage girl, languid limbed and insouciant, brushed her thumb across the screen of her mobile phone and did not look up at the house at all.

That someone watched this family, shiny with promise, and wondered which of them would break first. Because nobody came to The Avenue without death seeping through the gaps in their walls.

Some new families handled the proximity to murder better than others. Two or three had left within weeks, wearing the financial pain of a quick sale. But which details of the killings had the real estate agent shared with the latest arrivals? How much should be shared, and when?

Before these questions could be answered, the decision was made.

A wail first. High-pitched. Insistent. Joined by another, and another, rising in rhythm and intensity. A concerto; the solo instruments of police sirens, a rolling bass line of distant traffic and the alto voices of the birds that nestled in this tree-lined avenue and the woods beyond.

The woods beyond.

The neighbor glanced down the street to the archway of branches and brambles that crowned one of five public entrances to Blatches Woods. Thirty-seven acres of greenery tucked into this pocket of suburbia, crisscrossed with footpaths and bridleways. A place to get lost in. Thirty-seven acres that had come to dominate the newspaper headlines and breakfast tables; that had lowered property prices; that had cast a pall across this most ordinary of places.

The word rolled around the neighbor’s mouth. Pall. A cloth used for spreading over a coffin.

The Avenue filled with noise and blue light as the police cars—two, three, four of them—swerved into the curb in front of the footpath that led to the southeast corner of the woodland. A van—FORENSIC SERVICES imprinted across its side—followed a minute later.

Officers—some uniformed, some not—gathered in a knot, waiting for the white suits to ready themselves. One—his hand on the collar of a dog—was being sick. Even from behind the safety of the window, their sense of urgency was palpable. A need to cut through the decaying strings of vines that crept across the carpet moss and bracken, to trample deeper into the dense wall of trees, to interrogate the dog walker or jogger or whoever had found it this time.

From downstairs, the click of the back door and the sounds of the kettle being filled. A dozen butterflies took flight in the neighbor’s stomach. A glance at the clock. Around fifteen minutes before the door-knockings and questions would begin again.

The Lockwoods were watching this scene unfold with the frozen expressions of comic-book characters: eyes widened; mouths, slack and loose; splayed fingers pressed to cheeks. Their bodies were angled toward the police cars in the way that plants are pulled toward the sun. Not a flicker of movement between them, mesmerized by the sight of Mrs. Lockwood’s favorite television crime dramas seemingly brought to life opposite their new home, a bruise on the surface of their fresh start.

All except the girl, who was taking photographs with her phone.

Three hours later, when the moving men had left and the sun was dipping below the horizon, but the air was still ripe with heat, they brought out the body.

A single-use sheet covered the fifth victim’s face, but the detective inspector on the scene—white-faced and trembling—was more concerned with accelerated decomposition in the hot weather than contaminants, and the cadaver was hurried into the mortuary van.

There was no wind to lift the sheet and expose this unfortunate soul to the journalists and photographers, the TV anchors and camera crews who filled The Avenue with their noise and coffee cups and cars that parked at awkward angles. But there was no need.

Everybody knew what lay beneath because it was always the same.

A body, fully clothed. A painted face, subtle blush across the cheekbones; lips, berry-colored; lashes lengthened, dark and thick; a light foundation to disguise pallor mortis. As if the victim were not dead, but waiting to be played with, to be kissed back to life by a parent, a lover, a child.

Shoes removed. Hair brushed. Each eye gouged from its bloodied socket with a scalpel and replaced with a miniature glass replica.

The handiwork of a killer the newspapers had named The Doll Maker.

And the face at the window knew who that killer was.

Sunday 29th July 2018, 7:36 P.M.

25 The Avenue

“I still can’t believe how cheap this place was.”

Garrick Lockwood ran his hand along the oak banister, admiring its sturdiness. His architect’s eye ignored the damp patches, the hallway that felt too small, the cheap laminate floorboards that ran the length of the house. All he could see was potential.

His wife, Olivia, who was in the kitchen, stopped rummaging in a cardboard box for glasses and the bottle of prosecco she had bought for the occasion. “Are you being serious?”

“Deadly.”

It was an unfortunate turn of phrase.

“That’s not funny, Garrick.”

He chuckled, a low rumble of amusement. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. But it’s true. By the time I’ve finished here, it’s going to be stunning. They’ll be queuing up to take it off our hands.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said, the quiet voice of reason, trying not to remember all the occasions his grand plans had come to nothing. It wasn’t like they’d had a choice this time, though. This house—one of several postwar semis set on the outskirts of a nondescript Essex town—was all they could afford.

His reply was muffled, his head buried in the cupboard under the stairs. The volume lifted as he withdrew, wandered down the hallway and pulled on the iron ring of a square door embedded in the floor. “I’d forgotten how big the cellar is. We could dig it out. Move the kitchen to the basement. Stick an extension on the side.”

Olivia placed two glasses on the worktop and closed her eyes.

The thud of a hatch shutting. Footsteps. And then Garrick was filling the kitchen doorway, head bent, already tapping numbers into the calculator function of his mobile phone.

“Sounds expensive.” Her fingers loosened the wire cage on the cork. She kept her voice light. “Have we got enough money to do that?”

He waved an airy hand. “We’ll be fine.” Gave a sheepish grin. “Actually, I’ve already submitted the plans.”

Decent of him to discuss it with her first. How typically Garrick. She breathed out her frustration. That would explain why he’d been insistent on traveling down to view the house several times while the sale was going through.

The cooler had not fulfilled its promise and she set down the tepid wine bottle with the same controlled care she used to ask her next question. “What about Oakhill? Have any of the flats sold yet?”

Garrick’s expression folded in on itself before he shook his head, confirming her suspicions. Money had been tight since his investment in a “surefire” building development that was proving slow to sell. They’d been forced to downsize to loosen the bank’s stranglehold on their finances.

Olivia had agreed to move on the understanding they would still have a garden and a minimum of three bedrooms. The Avenue had delivered that at a fraction of the price of similar properties. Both of them were banking on Garrick’s skills as an architect to inflate its value and allow them to move on.

But now that they were standing in this house with its tired wallpaper lit by the flash of blue police lights, panic rose in her like the swell of the estuary they had spied in the distance on the car journey to their new life.

“Do you really think someone will buy it? Did you see the police cars? The photographers?” She resisted an urge to sweep the bottle onto the tiles, to watch the glass splinter, the liquid froth and flatten into a puddle. The story of her life.

“We bought it, didn’t we?”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“It’s going to be fine.”

Olivia had lost count of the number of times he had promised her that. In fairness, she had moved here with her eyes open. Most of the neighboring properties had an air of neglect around them, as if they had once been loved but allowed to drift into a state of disrepair. And the brutal history of the place had been impossible to ignore, even if one took only a passing interest in the news. After the third murder, the TV and radio bulletins were filled with talk of serial killers for days and days. The newspapers blazed with lurid headlines. When the fourth murder happened, a few days before the Lockwoods were due to exchange contracts, she had tried to persuade Garrick to pull out, but found herself agreeing with his insistence that some morbid individual would enjoy the cachet of owning a house on this road. The Avenue had become synonymous with Cromwell Street and Rillington Place.

But now that she was here, now that she had seen the police and the sheeted hump of a fifth body, she was convinced they had made a terrible mistake.

“But what if we’re stuck here forever?”

“And whose fault would that be?” Garrick’s tone was cool.

She drew in a breath and counted to five. “Don’t start that again.”

“I didn’t. Remember?”

Olivia clenched her teeth until the outline of her jaw was visible through her skin. Her anger was like the strike of a match, poised to flare into life. She snuffed it out with the cold, hard facts of her guilt. Garrick’s financial incontinence may have forced them to sell their beautiful home in Cheshire, but she was the reason they had moved down south.

Her body loosened. “I know. It’s just—”

“Look, Liv. We both had our parts to play. This is our fresh start. Let’s not spoil it with recriminations, eh?”

She opened her mouth to answer him, but there was nothing to say.

“Let’s open the fizz, shall we?” His tone was placatory. “We’re here now—might as well celebrate.”

The pop of the cork filled the silence in the kitchen. Olivia had already taken her first sip by the time she noticed Garrick’s attempt to clink glasses, and by then it was awkward and too late. She remembered all the times she had felt the tiny bubbles burst against her lips. Weddings, christenings and lunches with friends. Birthday parties. Restaurant meals.

That last, unforgettable night.

Garrick was fiddling with some leaflets the previous owners had left in a drawer. “Shall we order takeout? Indian? Chinese?”

“Sure. Whatever. I’ll go and ask the children.”

As she walked toward the kitchen door, her phone, which she had left charging by the empty fridge, began to vibrate.

Garrick lowered the menu he had been scanning. A blush stained Olivia’s cheeks.

“You can—I mean—I don’t mind,” she said, gesturing toward the handset, its tiny blue light flashing a warning. A trickle of sweat in the hollow between her breasts.

Her husband took a step forward. Fidgeted. Stopped.

“Actually,” he said, “there’s no need for that.” He made a performance of turning over the menu, a study in nonchalance. “I trust you to keep your word.”

She smiled at him then, and the carousel in her stomach began to slow. In as casual a manner as she could muster, Olivia picked up her phone and slid it into her pocket.

In the shadows of the hallway, her eyes scanned the message. Then she deleted it.

Now

As each death has a taste of its own, each body reveals its peculiarities in the moment of dying.

The twitch of an eyelid; a gasp, as if surprised to be inhaling one’s final breath; the futile lifting of a hand to reach out and hold on to life.

I have learned that some slip away without a struggle, but for others, fear leaves its imprint in the stretched-open mouth, the eyes that do not close. That death itself is a burden, weighting down both the human shell and my soul.

And I have learned, at great cost, that I do not enjoy blood. That spatter is like flicking a loaded paintbrush against the walls and the floor, that scrubbing with a hard brush and soap does not remove the memory of what has gone before.

Did you ever bite the inside of your lip? Place a cut finger in your mouth and suck until the bleeding stopped? Swallow down the metallic heat of a nosebleed?

Blood is rust and old pennies, copper wire and iron. The same, but different.

Like fingerprints and irises.

Like killers.

None of us are identical.

Some prefer to strangle their victims, gifting a necklace of bruises. The split-open-skin-and-bleed-out method of slashers. Stalkers with blunt-headed hammers. Wronged husbands and wives. Opportunistic killers who act in the heat of the moment.

And there is me.

I detest mess. The savagery of murder. I have witnessed it twice and I do not wish to witness it again. I crave order. Control. Social niceties. I watch, I plan and prepare.

And when it is time, I do not turn away from difficult decisions. I seek out those who can no longer be permitted to live.

Here is what else I have learned.

The past is a place I lived in once. I buried its secrets in the dirt of my memory and I left it far behind. But it always catches up with us in the end.

They say knowledge is power, but that is not true. When that little girl opened the chest in that toyshop, she set off a chain of events that would echo down the years, a scream that needed to be silenced. Puppets with cut strings.

Her curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it killed everyone else.

Sunday 29th July 2018, 7:37 P.M.

25 The Avenue

Evan Lockwood lay on his old bed in his new bedroom. His mother had not got around to duvet covers and pillowcases yet, but he didn’t much care. He was nine and didn’t notice whether his bedding was fresh on, three weeks old or nonexistent.

The late-evening sun was splashing golden paint onto the walls, and he was buried inside his quilt, which smelled of home and the dirty-washing basket. The backs of his knees were sticky in the heat.

In his left palm was a shiny black ball the size of a cantaloupe. A white circle with a number 8 in its middle was painted on the top. A birthday present from his cousin.

“It’s a Magic 8 Ball.” The words had bubbled out of her before he’d even had the chance to tear off the wrapping paper. “It foretells the future.”

“Cool,” he’d said, and meant it. His eyes pricked. He would miss her.

Bunching his duvet into the rough shape of a pillow, he shoved it up against the wall and leaned into it. He pursed his lips, thinking, and whispered his first question.

Will we have pizza for tea?

He tipped the ball over and the answer appeared in the triangle of a window.

Most likely.

Evan grinned, his stomach rumbling its approval, and chewed on his lip while he thought of another.

Is the Tooth Fairy real?

He liked to pretend he was almost grown-up, but he was still losing his baby teeth, still clinging on to childish fantasies. Two mornings ago, when he had slid a hand beneath his pillow, there had been no money, just the pearly treasure he had lost while eating an apple the day before. When he’d told his mother, who was packing books into a box, her cheeks had flamed red. But she’d insisted the Tooth Fairy hadn’t forgotten and had just been busy. Evan wasn’t so sure.

Ask again later.

He tutted. Those noncommittal replies were the worst kind. He gazed around the bedroom. It was weird, being in this house. A new start. That’s what his parents kept calling it. Evan didn’t understand it. Like his toys and furniture and the kitchen pots and pans, surely all the shouting and crying and arguments would move with them, too.

He pressed the tatty old bear he’d had since he was a baby to his chest and whispered another question, crossing both sets of his fingers.

Will we be happy here?

He tipped the ball and it slowly revealed its answer.

My reply is no.

Now

My earliest memories come to me not in pictures, but sounds. The frantic pump of a spinning top. The twist of a key in a clockwork mouse. The mechanical winding of a jack-in-the-box crank.

Half a pound of tuppenny rice. Half a pound of treacle. That’s the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.

Birdie would settle me in a corner of our shop and surround me with toys. She would pull them from the shelves, ignoring the price tags, generous with these expensive knickknacks, if not her affections.

The floor was always cold, but it did not matter. My childish fingers would grasp for the top, a crazy, whirring riot of color and motion. I would lurch after the mouse on unsteady legs. But it was always jack-in-the-box that held the most fascination.

Le diable en boîte. A boxed devil, like me.

A prelate once saved a village from a drought by discovering a well with healing powers. He was so holy he caught the devil in a boot. Folklore, of course, but bound in truth.

Like the devil, I was cast out.

My mothers didn’t want me. Not my birth mother, whose name I never knew. Not Bridget, my adoptive mother, besotted by the curled fists and rounded cheeks of a baby—“Come to Birdie, come to Mama”—but who fell out of love as my views and behavi. . .