The Killer Next Door

by Alex Marwood

Genres: Literary Fiction; Mystery; Suspense

Synopsis

The electrifying new thriller from the author of the word-of-mouth best-selling sensation The Wicked Girls, Alex Marwood.

No. 23 has a secret. In this bedsit-riddled south London wreck, lorded over by a lecherous landlord, something waits to be discovered. Yet all six residents have something to hide. Collette and Cher are on the run; Thomas is a reluctant loner; while a gorgeous Iranian asylum seeker and a 'quiet man' nobody sees try to stay hidden. And watching over them all is Vesta—or so she thinks.

In the dead of night, a terrible accident pushes the neighbours into an uneasy alliance. But one of them is a killer, expertly hiding their pastime, all the while closing in on their next victim.... As a cloying heatwave suffocates the city, events build to an electrifying climax in this dark, original, and irresistibly compelling thriller.

Release date: October 28, 2014

Publisher: Penguin Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***

Copyright © 2014 Alex Marwood

Prologue

He checks his watch and downs the last of his coffee. ‘Okay. Miss Cheryl should be done with her fag break. Let’s take you down to her.’

She follows him down to the interview rooms and he surreptitiously checks his reflection in the wired glass of a door as he passes it. DI Cheyne’s a bit older than he usually goes for, but she’s a good-looking woman. Slightly hard-faced, but a life in the Met doesn’t make for a lot of childlike innocence. Doesn’t hurt to keep your options open, anyway. Women who understand your unorthodox working hours are few and far between; attractive ones even fewer.

‘You should probably know,’ he tells her, ‘she’s pretty tired and upset, and we’ve still got a lot to get through, so if you could keep it shortish, that would be good.’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll take that long, anyway. How is she? Cooperative?’

‘Pissed off,’ he says. ‘In the custody of social services, so you can’t blame her. She’s a bit sulky. And she’s not the sharpest tool in the shop. No point asking her to read anything, for a start.’

‘That’s okay. Think she can look at a photo?’

‘Oh. I should think so. We’ll give it a go, anyway.’


Cheryl Farrell is back in the interview room after her cigarette break, right elbow on the table and tear-streaked face resting wearily on her bandaged hand. She’s pale and, DI Cheyne guesses from the dampness of her forehead, still in some degree of pain. The orthopaedic pink of the shoulder brace that holds her collarbone in place does nothing for her complexion. Could be pretty, thinks DI Cheyne, if it wasn’t for the generally sulky demeanour. Golden-brown skin, curly African hair that she’s bleached until it’s a coppery shade of bronze, over-plucked eyebrows, almond-shaped brown eyes that she rolls at the newcomer.

The lawyer looks as if he hasn’t shifted from his seat in a decade. He’s scribbling furiously. The social worker sits, sensible hair and sensible shoes and an air of New Labour sanctimony pouring off her, in the chair next to the girl. ‘All done!’ she says brightly. ‘She’s had her cancer stick.’

‘Oh, fuck off, you.’ The girl gives her a look that would melt ice.

Merri Cheyne is longing for a smoke herself. Those nicotine tabs give her terrible indigestion. She ignores the social worker – best thing to do in most circumstances if you can manage it, she’s found – and takes a seat on the other side of the table, next to Chris Burke. Cheryl turns back to DC Barnard and looks at him sullenly.

‘So what were you on about?’ Her strong Scouse accent is surprising in one who’s been in the south so long.

‘The television,’ says DC Barnard.

‘Oh, yeah.’

There’s a silence. The girl looks like she would be slumping, if the brace would let her. Truly, thinks DI Cheyne, not the sharpest tool in the shop. He did warn me.

DC Barnard clears his throat. ‘So tell us about the television, Cheryl? How did it come to be in your possession?’

‘You what?’

‘How did you get it, Cheryl? Where did it come from?’

‘Oh.’ The girl sniffs heavily and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘He said it was spare,’ she says. ‘Said he’d bought a new one and did I want it?’

‘And you didn’t wonder why he was offering you televisions?’

‘I knew exactly why he was offering it,’ she says, with a glare of defiance.

‘And you accepted it?’

‘If you’re asking if I shagged him to get a second-hand telly, no I didn’t. But there’s no law against letting a fella give you a present because he thinks it might get you to, is there?’

‘Fair point.’

‘Anyway, I needed a telly. D’you know how bloody boring it is if you’ve got no money and no telly? I wasn’t going to give him a . . . ’ she sneaks a look at the social worker to see if she’s going to get a rise, ‘ . . . blow job, but I wasn’t going to tell him to fuck off either, was I?’

‘Well, I can see that there might have been some chance that things could get a bit unpleasant when he realised—’

‘Whatever,’ Cheryl interrupts. Most of your lot –’ she narrows her eyes at her minder again ‘– think they can get a feel for a bag of crisps and a Fanta. At least I wanted a telly.’

The social worker stiffens beside her, offended. Amazing, thinks DI Cheyne. Even after a deluge of scandals, they’re still blanking suggestions that their own might not be perfect.

‘And when was this . . . ?’

‘Don’t know. Two, three weeks? Ages before the weather broke. It was still boiling bloody hot and he kept looking at my tits cause I was wearing a vest. I just thought he was another dirty old bloke. C’mon. Nobody else thought he was up to anything, either. D’you think I’d’ve stayed in that house, if I did?’

‘So you don’t think any of your neighbours had any suspicions, either?’

‘No! I’ve told you! Place smelled like shit, but it’s not exactly the first time I’ve been somewhere that smelled like shit. Anyway, they all had their own stuff to worry about, I should think. We hardly talked to each other, until it happened. It wasn’t a flatshare or anything. We weren’t friends.’

DI Burke opens the cardboard folder that DI Cheyne gave him earlier. On the top, an A4 photo of a woman: short, caramel-streaked blonde hair, low-cut white minidress, white slingbacks, white handbag, Versace jacket, oversized sunglasses perched on the top of her head. As unmistakeably Essex as Stansted crotch crystals. She’s looking away from the camera, holding a half-drunk glass of champagne. It looks like a picture taken at a public event of some sort, the races, perhaps. He studies it for a few seconds. Wonders if this will be the picture the papers go with. Clears his throat pointedly, and DC Barnard stops and turns.

‘Sorry, Bob,’ he says. ‘Cheryl, this is DI Cheyne. She’s from Scotland Yard.’

The same bovine unresponsiveness. Cheryl pouts and rolls her eyes again.

‘The Metropolitan Police Headquarters?’

‘Organised Crime Squad,’ interjects DI Cheyne. ‘You can call me Merri, if you like.’

Usually, announcing this will produce some signs of interest, but the girl just gives a don’t-care shrug of her good shoulder.

‘DI Cheyne’s not working on this case,’ he says, ‘but we think there might be a connection with something else she’s working on.’

‘Right,’ says Cheryl, suspiciously.

DI Cheyne smiles at him and takes the folder. Lays it on the table in front of the girl. ‘Cheryl,’ she asks, ‘does the name Lisa Dunne mean anything to you?’

Cheryl shakes her head, her face a mask. Cheyne opens the folder and slides the picture across the table so she can see it.

‘Well, can I ask you, Cheryl? Do you recognise this woman?’

The girl slides the photo towards her, mouth turned down. Looks up, her spidery eyebrows arched. ‘That’s Collette!’ she says. ‘I thought you said Lisa something.’

DI Cheyne and DI Burke exchange a look. Damn, it says. It really was her, then. ‘Collette?’

‘She lived in number two. Didn’t look like this when she was there, but it’s her. Where did you get this?’

‘Collette?’

‘Collette. She moved in in, ooh, early June. After Nikki went . . . ’ she suddenly looks sick again, and her eyes fill with tears, ‘ . . . went missing.’

‘And have you seen her lately?’

‘No.’

‘What sort of no? Can you be a bit more specific?’

The girl looks blank. DI Cheyne simplifies. ‘Can you remember when you last saw her?’

‘Not for a few days,’ says Cheryl. ‘But I didn’t really think about it. She was never going to be here long, though. I think she only took the flat for a bit, while she did some . . . business or something. Something to do with her mum. I don’t know, really. She wasn’t friendly, exactly. Sort of person who wouldn’t recognise you if you passed her in the street, if you see what I mean. We said hello on the stairs a few times, that sort of thing. Why?’

Chris Burke puts his prepare-yourself face on. ‘Cheryl, I’m afraid that there were some body parts in the flat that didn’t match up with the known victims. The ones in the flat, I mean. There was more in the surrounding area. Down on the railway embankment. In the old bonfire at the end of the garden.’

Cheryl looks as if she’s been socked in the face. Grips the table as though she’s about to faint.

‘Are you okay, Cheryl?’ asks the social worker. ‘We can take another break, if you need.’

‘Are you saying there were more?’

‘Um . . . We’ve not established it as fact. But yes. Things are pointing that way, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, God,’ she says.

‘And there were . . . among the remains . . . you know he was keeping stuff in the freezer compartment of his fridge, right? Well, there were a couple of fingers in there. So we took prints, and ran them, and, well, they matched up with this woman. Lisa Dunne. She’s been missing for a while. Three years, as a matter of fact. We’ve been looking for her.’

‘Why? What’s she done?’

‘Doesn’t matter, now. She was a witness to something – you don’t need to know the details. But . . . well, we just need to confirm if this is her.’

‘Oh, God,’ she says again. She’s visibly shaken, her brown skin gone grey and her eyes as big as soup plates. ‘Oh, no. He can’t have. She was in Nikki’s room. It’s like he was . . . ’

The police wait while the news sinks in. Well, thinks DI Cheyne. That’s one avenue shut off, and we were days off tracking her down. All that work, and Tony Stott’s still scot-free.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I know it’s a shock. But we need you to tell us what you remember about her.’

‘What do you want to know? Oh, God. I can’t take this in.’

‘I’m sure,’ says DI Cheyne gently. ‘It must be a terrible shock. But we need you to concentrate, Cheryl. For Lisa’s sake.’

Cher Farrell swipes an arm across her eyes and clears her nose. Glares at the police, the lawyer, the social worker. ‘Collette,’ she insists. ‘Her name was Collette.’

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

Three Years Ago

She wakes up with a stiff neck, slumped across her desk. The heating’s gone off and her circulation has slowed, and the cold has woken her. If it hadn’t, she’d probably have slept through until lunchtime. Wouldn’t be the first time . . .

She sits up, her head fogged and her mouth dry. Checks her watch and sees that it’s very nearly six. She’s tired. She’s always tired, these days. Night work really only suits the very young, and Lisa’s thirty-four – no spring chicken, in clubland. As of her last birthday, some of the girls who work here are literally young enough to be her daughter, and she’s feeling it. She used to get through the cashing-up by four-thirty on a Saturday morning, but tonight even the quadruple espresso she took up to the office hasn’t kept her awake.

She pushes herself up from the chair and stretches. At least she’s finished. She remembers, now, deciding that maybe she’d take ten minutes just to close her eyes before she took the cash to the safe, to try and ensure she wouldn’t crash the car on the way home. I’ve got to leave this job, she thinks. I don’t want to spend my nights seeing men at their worst, all slavering with lust and googly-eyed from whatever they’ve been at in the toilets, and I’m too old for these hours. These hours and the stress and the worrying I might end up in jail.

None of it adds up. It never does. She knows how many bottles of champagne are left in the cellar, and how many there would be if they’d sold them in the numbers the bar tabs add up to. It’s the same every week. Two hundred people in the club on a good night, and though sometimes they’re footballers or the modern robber barons of the City, slumming it among the tarts and the yobs, or silly young actors who think their stint in the soap they’re in will last for ever, £998 for a bottle of champagne is still steep enough to make them think about the choice between drink and dance; and most of them opt for a bottle of Absolut at four hundred and fifty pounds and a bunch of private dances at fifty pounds (plus tip) a pop. But every Saturday, according to the bar tabs, they sell a hundred, hundred and fifty bottles of fizz. And all of it paid for in cash.

She slaps herself about the face a couple of times to try to wake herself up. Come on, Lisa. Sooner you get this finished, the sooner your day off begins. You can think about this when you’ve slept. Think about handing in your notice before there’s police swarming all over this place. The Adidas bag is back by the desk, where Malik always drops it after he’s been to the bank in the morning. She picks it up and starts counting the bundles of notes into it, one by one. For God’s sake, she thinks – some of them are still in their wrappers. He’s not even trying to make the notes look used any more.

Of course she knows what Tony’s up to. Basildon lads with no obvious source of capital don’t end up owning nightclubs by twenty-six, with no investors. But a place like Nefertiti’s – yeah, get the pun; great name for a lap-dancing establishment, all flash and splash and paps on the door – is a licence to print money. Or if not print it, at least wash it greyish clean. That’s why he makes sure they’re always in the papers, why he bribes the grabby whoremongers of sport and pop and TV to come here with free drinks and girls all night in the VIP lounge. Get a reputation for being where the high rollers go, and nobody will question what you claim they spend, because everyone reads about such crazy profligacy every day in The Sun and everybody knows that footballers are stupid. Those clubs in town, the big ones, can take half a million easy on a Saturday night, on maybe twenty grand’s worth of booze, though they probably actually hand over some goods in exchange for the money, of course.

And here it is: she finishes counting and confirms what she already knows. The bag contains a hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds, give or take a few hundred, in fifties and twenties. And on Monday morning it will go into the bank, and from the bank it will go into the white economy.

She does a last check round the office. Now all she has to do is take the cash down to the safe that’s sunk in concrete in the basement store cupboard, do a last visual round the bar, and then she can lock up and leave it to the cleaners. She quite likes this time of night, despite the smell of spilled drink and sweat and poppers, the lonely smell of spooge from the back rooms. She likes it when the lights are fully up and she can see how this place the punters think is fairyland is made of smoke and mirrors. Velvet benches in pure, liquid-shrugging nylon; the light-up dance floor that’s black with sticky muck, the ornate Louis XV- style mirrors whose frames are made from purest polystyrene. Even Nefertiti herself, presiding over the entrance lobby with her black bangs and her golden crook, titties out for the lads, was cast in stone-effect resin in a factory in Guiyang. She turns out the office lights, turns the key in the door and walks down the stairs.

The bars are based along a white-painted brick corridor lined with curtains in more velvet, royal blue trimmed with gold fringes this time, all hanging from long poles that allow the staff to pull them across and cut off rooms for privacy or move the VIP area around to suit the crowd that’s in, and even close off sections altogether. The reputation of all nightclubs rests on the punters having felt that they were in a crowd, and in Nefertiti’s they can make a crowd of a couple of dozen people if they have to. She walks along the corridor, checking each room as she passes it, making sure no strays have stayed, or passed out unnoticed behind a couch, turning off the lights as she goes. It’s only when she’s halfway to the end that she realises that she’s not alone.

Something’s going on in the Luxor Lounge. Something physical, repetitive and energetic. Sex? Is someone shagging in there? Who is it? Someone left behind? Her own staff, doing the worker’s fuck-you to the bosses?

She slows her pace, quietens the sound of her steps. The corridor is thickly carpeted in black with a gold border and little gold stars. Just a small amount of pattern will hide a multitude of sins. As she approaches, she becomes less sure that it’s sex she’s hearing. There are grunts, and sighs, but also, she’s sure, the sound of groans; and, behind it all, low laughs and chat, as though whoever’s making the sounds is providing the entertainment for a corporate shindig. As she nears the curtain that’s pulled across the entrance, she slows her walk down to a creep, positions herself against the wall and peeps in through a crack in the cloth.

The Luxor Lounge is black and red, dark colours that don’t show the dirt. A good thing, because what’s coming out of the mouth of the man on the floor will never scrub away.

There are six people in the Luxor Lounge. There’s the man who lies still on the floor, as though he has long since given up protecting his vulnerable parts, whose face is so swollen his mother wouldn’t recognise him; Tony Stott, her boss, the big man, the wunderkind, four years younger than she is and millions of pounds richer, all designer suit and gold cufflinks, clean-shaven even at this time of night, his tight curls cut close to his head; a woman she’s not seen before, low-key in a grey suit that, from its cut, she knows didn’t come from Debenhams; a much older man, late fifties, maybe, who wears a dark wool overcoat as though he’s at a funeral. The three of them stand by the bar with an open bottle of Remy, drinking from snifters, watching Malik Otaran and Burim Sadiraj kick and kick and kick. As she watches, she sees the man’s head snap back on his neck. A spurt of blood arches from his crumpled nose, beautiful in its elegance. Malik stands on one foot, lifts up the other to knee height, and stamps down.

She gasps.

The Luxor Lounge falls quiet. Five heads, smiles freezing on faces, pupils still distended with arousal, turn and look in her direction.

Lisa runs for the exit. Knows that she’s running for her life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

He’s a magnificent cat. Rangy and black and swaggering, with great vampire incisors that extend most of the way to his jawline. Green eyes and a kinked tail that speak of oriental blood, and a scarred left ear that shows that he’s not afraid to fight.

Today he is asserting his mastery of his territory by visiting. He’s been attached to the house for so long that no one remembers who originally brought him here, or if, indeed, anybody did. Some tenants shoo him away with angry hisses, afraid of his panther grace and unblinking stare, some sweep him into their arms with coos and growls of admiration, give him a warm place to sleep, and weep when they, as they all do, have to leave him behind. Twenty-six tenants have passed through the house on Beulah Grove since he took up residence, and he has never gone hungry enough to move on himself. He has had many names and for now it’s Psycho.

He stands in the window – The Lover has thrown it open because the heat inside is so stifling he’s afraid he’ll make the air damp with his sweat – and surveys the space, then leaps on to the back of the chair where the girl sits. He leans forward and sniffs her ginger hair, touches an ear with his fine damp nose. Affronted by her failure to respond he raises his face and looks up at the man. Blinks.

The Lover is weeping. He sits in a folding chair against the far wall, his face buried in his hands, and rocks. The tears come more quickly every time. He used to have a few hours – even a day or two – in which to savour the company, enjoy the romance, before the despair overtook him; to hold the hand and stroke the cheek and take pleasure in togetherness. But each event seems less delightful than the last, seems to pass so quickly that, almost as soon as it’s done, the yearning begins again, the loneliness breaking over his head like a wave.

He’s apologising, as he always does. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and the words catch, salty, in his throat. ‘Oh, Nikki, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.’

She doesn’t reply. Stares, vacant, past his shoulder, her mouth half open, surprised.

‘You just . . . ’ he says. ‘I was afraid you were going to go away again. I can’t bear it, you see. Can’t bear it. I’m so alone.’

He continues to weep. He’s consumed with self-pity, eaten up with the emptiness of his existence. My life is full of busy-work, he thinks. I do and I act and I help and I organise, and at the end of the day it’s always the same. Just me. Me, alone, and the world going on as though I had never existed. They wouldn’t notice – none of them – for months, if I disappeared. Families like mine, no money, fractured marriages, siblings only half-related and homes already full to bursting, we drift apart when someone goes away. I don’t speak to my half-brother or sisters from one year’s end to the next, just bump into them sometimes when I make the trip back at Christmas. Worst of all, my mother always sounds surprised to hear my voice on the phone, though she hears it, regular as clockwork, first Sunday of every month, while Songs of Praise is on. They wouldn’t notice. Nobody would notice. I would vanish in a puff of smoke and make a nasty clearing-up job for someone further down the line.

He raises his eyes and looks at Nikki, the source of his suffering. A pretty girl. Not spectacular, not anything that anyone would say was out of his league, though he supposes that eyebrows might be raised at the difference in their ages. It was all I ever wanted, he thinks. A nice girl. No great ambition, no over-whelming passion like they play out in the movies, no champagne and roses. Just someone to stay with me, someone who wouldn’t go away.

The cat is standing by the wardrobe now, sniffing at the crack between the doors. The Lover leaps to his feet and shoos it off, claps his hands and hisses so that it tenses; then, with a baleful yowl, it jumps on to the bed and out of the window. He considers closing it to keep the cat out, but in this heat his dwelling space has become stifling, overwhelming, and he’s afraid that the smells it draws out will spread through the house. He wipes his salty face on his sleeve and tries to pull himself together. We can have a nice evening, at least, he thinks, as he looks back at his silent companion. I’ll have a glass of wine, hold her hand. Maybe she’d like to watch a film with me, before we begin.

Her right hand, knocked by the cat’s passing, slips suddenly from the arm of the chair and hangs in mid-air, still and soft. Such a pretty hand, he thinks, the nails always clean and scrupulously shaped. I noticed that about her the first time I saw her; always wanted to take that hand in my own, to press its smooth skin between my palms.

No time like the present. He fetches the fold-up chair and plants it beside the armchair. Funny, he thinks. She looks smaller than she used to. More fragile, more frail. More like someone who needs my protection. He puts the forearm back, along the chair’s arm, and goes to the kitchen drawer to fetch the scissors. Cuts, very slowly, very carefully, through the duck tape around her neck, then lifts the plastic bag it holds there – thick, heavy, transparent from her head, carefully, so as not to mess up her lovely hair. He’ll give her a bath, later. Strip off her stained clothing and run it through the washing machine, shampoo her sweaty locks and comb them down, dust her with baby powder. In heat like this, it’ll all be dry in no time.

‘There,’ he says kindly and plants a loving kiss on her temple, where no pulse beats any more. He takes his seat and lifts the hand, just briefly, to his lips. ‘There,’ he says again, and enfolds it between his own, larger, rougher palms, as he has always imagined.

‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ he asks, rhetorically.

Chapter Three

Despite the cloying heat he wears a cardigan that smells of tobacco, frying, and those dark creases on the body that the air never reaches. His male-pattern baldness is accentuated by a scurfy comb-over, and a pair of smeary spectacles hide his eyes. And he’s fat, front-buttock fat, bulge-over-your-waistband fat. He wheezes as he leads the way slowly up the front steps, his bulk making a flight that was designed as a graceful decoration for a house of substance look narrow and mean as he climbs.

The wheezing, she thinks. It’s not just the weight. There’s something more to it. He’s excited. Feeling pleased with himself. There’s . . . lust in those laboured breaths. I can feel it. The way he looked me up and down on the steps; he wasn’t just deciding if I seemed respectable; he was checking out my tits.

She dismisses the thought, impatiently. Get over yourself, Collette. And so what, anyway? A dirty old man getting a thrill: it’s not like you’re not used to that, is it?

The Landlord stops for a rest on the small landing outside the front door, one hand leaning on the wall, and stares down at her. She shifts the Adidas bag further up her shoulder, giving herself a chance to surreptitiously pull her scarf over the open neck of her shirt. She’s as modestly dressed as the heat of the day will allow, but she’s suddenly uncomfortably aware that her clothes are clinging damply to her skin.

He takes a couple of breaths before he speaks. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone yet, you see,’ he says, clearly believing that he is offering an explanation for something.
She stands and waits, unsure how to respond. The bag is heavy and she wishes he would just move on to their destination, so she can drop it on the floor and shake out her arm.

‘They usually start coming round the next day,’ he says. ‘Or in the evening, anyway. After the advert goes in. Not, like, an hour after. You caught me on the hop.’

‘Sorry,’ she says, not sure why she’s apologising.

He takes a key from his cardigan pocket, whirls it by the tag around his index finger. ‘Luckily I was here anyway,’ he says. ‘Had a bit of admin to deal with downstairs. Thing is, it’s not ready. I was going to get a cleaner in to deal with it, but I thought we had all day.’

‘Oh, that’s okay,’ says Collette. ‘I’m good with a bottle of Flash. There’s a hoover, right? In the house?’

He has wet lips. They smack together, a nasty shade of blueish pink. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘We’ve got one of those. But it’s not that.’

He turns to fit the key into the front door. It’s a heavy door, two panels of glass patterned with etched ivy leaves allowing light into the hallway beyond. A graceful door, made to match the aspirations of a Victorian on the way up, not the security needs of a