The generator was running now, and the lights hummed inside the house. Gizmo, tethered to the front desk, barked and growled, but she cooed to him and continued hefting the body up the stairs. Her arms were tired, her back sore. But this was important. This had to be done before she could finish the diary she planned to leave for the police. Because eventually the police would come, and she wasn’t going to be here to explain everything when they did. The diary would have to suffice.
She dragged Lorna to the room with all the rest. Sat her on the pink sofa between Hollis and Maeve. She stood back and examined the picture she had taken off Hollis’s body, the one she’d accidentally dropped down the sofa cushions. A stupid mistake, but one that had given her an idea. Her brother had loved photographs, and what better way to document all that she had done for him than one last group picture of the residents of 215 Caldwell Street?
Pp. 122–123
Hollis told me last night that the end of the world is different for different people. He was right. It could be a reformed alcoholic giving in to a drink on a lonely New Year’s Eve. Or wrecking your parents’ Rolls-Royce when you weren’t even supposed to be out. The loss of a job. A spouse discovering your lover. Failing an audition. A pet’s death. A parent’s rejection. A loved one moving out of the country. Shop security finding that pinched lipstick in your bag.
When I was five, the end of the world was not getting this final Happy Meal toy I needed to make the complete set. It was the thing I wanted most in the world, but it was also something that was denied me, for no reason I could see. I don’t remember what that toy was, and if I had it now, it would only be packed in the basement or the attic of Wolfheather House with all of the other detritus from my and Callum’s childhood. But I remember the feeling of how much I wanted it and how much it hurt not to have it.
But our end of the world changes as we age. In spring 1995, I didn’t care about Happy Meal toys anymore. I was most afraid of becoming a disappointment. Disappointing myself and disappointing my parents. I know it was the same for Callum. We were twins, after all. And the same was true for the others. This is why I don’t hate them for what they did, despite what you might think. Like most teens who grew up with school as the source of their biggest dreams and biggest fears—who were taught by society that if they failed school, they would fail life—failure was the end of the world. They had the tunnel vision that comes with adolescence. The belief that nothing in life would ever be more important than what they were experiencing right at that moment. Not even life itself.
So I don’t want you to think it was stupid of them to let Callum die over something we adults view as silly as cheating on a few exams. Because to them it was what mattered most.
But that doesn’t mean I was going to let them get away with it.
ONE MONTH LATER
12
Linda
Linda Drummond finished reading and slid the photocopied pages of the diary back across the table to DS Khan.
“I want to see the photo,” she said.
“Linda, I don’t think—”
“The detective from Scotland told me about the photo, so I want to see it. They said they sent you a copy.”
“You don’t want to see your father that way.”
Linda could see how easy it was for DS Khan, with his calm, measured voice and deep brown eyes, to comfort victims. But Linda didn’t want to be comforted. She didn’t deserve it.
“I want to know what this psycho”—she shoved the pages again—“decided was a suitable punishment for a mistake my father made when he was nineteen. Show me the photo they found with the diary.” She straightened her shoulders and stared DS Khan in the eye until he sagged and sighed.
“Wait here.”
He returned two minutes later with a manila folder and took his seat across from her, but he didn’t open the folder right away. He kept both hands on top as if preventing monsters from leaping out.
“The picture shows the bodies in the upstairs bedroom in the same positions the local police found them, but she had taken it days before the discovery, based on . . .”
Linda crossed her arms. “Based on?”
“The state of decomposition.” He hesitated, then pushed the folder forward.
Before DS Khan could warn her again, Linda opened the folder. At first glance, nothing seemed wrong. It was a normal Polaroid picture of a group of old friends gathered on a sofa. But then she noticed that the man on the end had no face. It had been crushed in. The others’ eyes stared not at the camera but vacantly at blank space. Their skin varied in shades of gray, their mouths agape as if they forgot how to say “cheese.” Blood in various patterns streaked their clothes.
Linda forced herself to look at her father. Dried blood covered most of the wound to his head, but she could see a concave shape to his skull where it should have been round. She closed the folder and slid it back to DS Khan.
“Do they have any idea where she is?”
He shook his head. “They’re not even sure what she looks like. The fake Facebook page she created has been deactivated. They’re working on getting a warrant to release the data. All the Caskie and remaining McAllister families had were some childhood pictures, nothing of her older than eight or nine years of age. It seems she managed to take any recent pictures they had of her out of the house weeks before the murders. She purposely left us that diary, but we have no idea how much of what she wrote is even accurate and how much was fabricated for the police’s benefit. She could be anywhere. And, based on what she was able to pull off, she could be anyone.”
Linda grabbed her old messenger bag off the floor and paused as she looked at the badges her dad had once helped her sew on. Then she threw the bag strap over her shoulder.
“I know who she is. She’s the woman who murdered my father.”
She left the interview room without saying goodbye and navigated the familiar halls of the Greater Manchester Police Headquarters alone, unsure where to go next even as she got on a bus to the city center. She thought this visit would help in some way. Assuage more of her guilt for not raising the alarm sooner when her father hadn’t responded to her calls or texts. Make her feel like less of a fool for falling for that woman’s stupid tricks in the first place. She felt none of this, though. Only a confused knot of guilt that she had done something she didn’t know how to fix.
She hopped off the bus a half hour later, no less confused than before. As she waited to cross the street, a dog on a lead barked and snarled at her, the woman on the other end doing nothing to quiet it. When the light changed, the woman yanked on the dog’s lead, dragging it across street and kicking its belly when it refused to walk. Linda watched the woman and reluctant dog until they were out of sight.
Linda changed direction.
Using the National Rail app on her phone, she bought a one-way ticket to Edinburgh. Then she scrolled through her contacts, found the number the police said they couldn’t trace. The number of the woman who said she’d been a friend of her father’s. Linda had read the diary cover to cover, had read her stupid ghost story, and asked herself the very question Jennifer McAllister had posed at the end of the obituary. Which one are you?