“Why?”
“He told me to do it. To say it. He threatened me with my job. I need my job, Marcus. If I don't have my job then I could lose everything I love, including my family. It wasn't what he said, but the way he said it. I know he wasn't just talking about my job.”
“Who did?” I ask. “Who made you say it?”
Richard takes a deep intake of air and then blows it out from his puffed cheeks.
“My boss did,” he says.
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN 27TH JUNE 2018
It is no surprise that his mother opens the front door. It is a surprise, however, that she breaks into a smile when she sees me standing at her doorstep.
"You two youngsters must really be getting on like a house on fire," she says. "I've never known one of Simon's friends come back for a second visit. Even I think he is peculiar, and I'm his mum. He's in the garden, love. Just go through the house. Don't worry about taking your shoes off. The back door is open."
Has she been popping the Prozac? And what is up with Simon? Admittedly, it is yet another scorching June day, yet I still expected the pasty streak of piss to be holed up in the darkness of his basement, the only light emitting from the flashing computer screens. Pushing open the back door, though, I find him sat on the patio, shoulder blades thrust close together, hunched over his laptop. I wish I'd brought my sunglasses, for he even has his shades on, seemingly soaking up the rays. I'm Mr Popular today; even Simon bares his teeth when he sees me.
Standing up, he moves to pull out a chair, but with a flick of my finger I tell him to sit down. He does so without blinking. Shutting the laptop cover, he slides it across the round garden table. I feel my body tense as I think the laptop might topple over the edge, but it stops dead just in the nick of time. Creases spread from the corners of Simon's eyes: he knows he is in trouble.
"You killed him, didn't you?"
I sit down close and wait for him to act the fool. I'm already prepared with a list of counters. I've been rehearsing on the way here. Who? What you going on about? You crazy?
"I did, yes..."
My body deflates. I'd geared myself up for a battle, a boxer psyched before entering the ring. I imagine DCI Baldwin giving me a subtle, impressed nod of the head. Maybe I was a natural at forcing out a confession? Simon momentarily sinks his head in his hands, and when he removes them, his face is flushed crimson. He blows out air, then shakes his head.
"God, it felt good to get that off my chest," he says. "Thanks for forcing it out of me."
I puff out my chest. It does feel like I've achieved something, though I'm fully aware that, really, I did fuck all. Simon glances around. Is he looking for his mother, hiding in the clothes line?
"Nobody else knows. You can't tell anybody. I'll be in serious shit."
"You normally are in shit when you kill somebody, Simon. This isn't stealing from a sweet shop, you know. You need to tell me what happened. Now. Before I tell somebody else and they make up their own mind. And no bullshit. I need to know who or what I'm working with. I need to know whether you're somebody I want on my side...”
There is no need to tell me the motive. The motive is clear. But I do want to know how he did it: the nuts and bolts. I know the outcome. The gory details are freely available on the internet. But I have a compulsion to know the build up, how his brain ticked.
Simon bounces his trainers off the patio slabs, brushes his hand across the garden table. "The case had gone cold. Their idea of time was different from my idea of time. Months had passed since his last murder. Robert Price had gone quiet. Intelligence was that he was unlikely to kill again. The initial thrill of the case had disappeared. He was yesterday's news. He'd only killed three people, and they were all taxi drivers. Who really gives a fuck about tax drivers? Price wasn't perceived to be a risk to the general public, either by the police or by the general public themselves. It is a natural human instinct: so long as it doesn't happen to me, then I don't really care. Not really. Price didn't cause mass hysteria. Not like Spartacus. Remember I told you about the different categories of killers?"
"Organised and disorganised?"
"Right. You listened. Well, Price was your typical disorganised killer. The police didn't know his identity, of course, but it was fair to say he was likely to be a loner, a loser, somebody who didn't have too much going on up top. A simpleton. They were looking for a weirdo..."
"And he wasn't a weirdo?"
"Oh, he was a weirdo alright!" Simon snaps. "This guy was the stereotypical monster at the bottom of your bed. His motive was simple, and it was deprived. Price had a fixed routine that worked. So far. No reason to change it. No brains to change it. How did he do it? He jumped in a taxi and gave an address that was in the middle of nowhere, that led to a dead end. The driver invariably got lost, because the address led nowhere, and that was when he struck. Leaned forward from the rear seat, used wire to strangle the tax driver. The driver struggled, lost consciousness, crashed the car..."
"Didn't he get hurt, too, when the cab crashed? Wasn't this a risk?"
Simon twirls his finger by his temple. "Probably minor injuries, sure. The
