Victoria Selman read History at Oxford University and holds diplomas in criminal profiling and criminal psychology. She is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Truly Darkly Deeply and the critically acclaimed Ziba MacKenzie series. She has been shortlisted for the CWA Debut and Short Story Daggers and is a host on the popular Crime Time FM podcast.
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Sophie—
There’s so much to tell you, I don’t know where to start. The kite, maybe. It’s not the beginning exactly, but I suppose it’s as good a place as any.
You watched it transfixed, your nose pressed up to the glass as it circled, a black shadow creeping across the lawn. Flying on the spot, you said. The way you liked to dance.
There are kites in Massachusetts, but you’d never seen one before. Or maybe you just didn’t remember, you were so small when you moved to London. Certainly you never expected to see one here. They get pigeons in the capital; sparrows, the occasional robin. Birds of prey, not so much.
‘What’s it doing?’ your mother mused. ‘Lost maybe. Poor thing.’
‘It’s hunting,’ you said. And you were right.
The sparrow was hopping about in the fallen leaves on the trampoline, didn’t see it coming. Didn’t stand a chance. The kite didn’t swoop so much as drop out of the sky, snaring its victim, pulling it apart right where you practised your tuck jumps.
Your awe turned to horror, gripping you the way the kite gripped its prey.
Sated, the killer returned to the clouds, leaving behind only the sparrow’s legs spat out and discarded on the muddy, leaf strewn canvas. An avian crime scene.
I think of it often. An omen for the darkness readying to descend into our lives. For the wreckage that would follow. For the incomprehensibility of it all.
You cried; nose running, choking on your tears. ‘It’ll be okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ your mother told you.
She lied, Sophie. You had every reason to be afraid.
And it was not all going to be okay.
ONE
You think you know this story. I think I do. But how much do any of us really know?
I’d like to think I always had a feeling. That a part of me always suspected something was amiss. Though the truth is I didn’t suspect anything. Of course, there are things I look back on now which make me think, Was that a clue, a sign? But if so, it’s only because of what I learned later. Back then, it wasn’t a clue. It wasn’t an anything.
That’s the problem with hindsight. It distorts memory, superimposes warning flags where before there were none. Makes you question yourself. Turns the past into a series of whys and recriminations.
Why didn’t I see what was happening? Why didn’t I realise sooner?
I know the answer. It doesn’t help though. If anything, it makes it worse—
No one saw. No one realised. I wasn’t the only one who was fooled.
*
The letter lands on the doormat with a soft plmp as I’m tying my Merrells; steeling myself to take the dog out and brave the biting rain. Wishing I’d drunk a little less last night. Fighting a hangover. Same old, same old.
I pause, hunched over my shoes, laces looped around my fingers, eyes snared by the flat Manila rectangle. By the name I know it contains.
The air has gone still. I’m conscious of my breathing; of a dull ringing in my ears, the drumbeat of my heart.
BATTLEMOUTH PRISON
The words are stamped in bold red lettering across the top of the envelope the way a farmer might brand a lamb.
My stomach knots. I bite down on my tongue, taste the backwash of acid mixed with my morning coffee. Smell the alcohol-stained sweat breaking out over my skin.
He broke out too, escaped his cell just six months after his incarceration. Another of his smoke-and-mirrors tricks.
I run my thumbnail under the flap, pull out the letter. Under- lined at the top:
Re: Matthew Melgren
‘Matthew’, even though everyone always calls him ‘Matty’. Us, the press, the true crime shows. All the channels have run them.
Matty fascinates people; his apparent normalness, his charming smile. Handsome and educated. A killer who doesn’t fit the stereotype. He wasn’t a loner, wasn’t socially awkward, held down a good job.
He had a girlfriend too, so no markers in that direction either. There was one of those straight-to-DVD movies made recently about his relationship with my mother. The producers got some stick for using such a handsome actor. It was all over Twitter; how they were playing up Matty’s golden good looks. How it was an affront to his victims.
They missed the point though, those up-in-armers. Never mind that he still has more than his fair share of female fans sending him panties and porn, playing down his attractive- ness would have been the real insult to the women he killed. Revisionist history. After all, if Matty had been some socially awkward troll, he’d hardly have been able to lure his prey, to get them to trust him. I should know.
Re: Matthew Melgren
My eyes move down the page, the air thickening in my gullet. I speak to my mother as I reach the end; head pounding, mouth dry. At first, I deflect.
‘I broke up with Tom,’ I tell her, steeling myself for what I need to say, gathering my thoughts.
‘Oh, Soph, I’m sorry. What happened? He seemed nice.’
I scoff.
‘Everyone’s nice at the beginning.’
The words hang between us, conjuring the same face in both our heads.
‘Did he hurt you?’
I laugh – it’s hollow.
‘He told me I should wear skirts more.’ ‘Oh Soph,’ she says again.
It’d sound stupid to anyone else, but I knew she’d get it, just like I’d know she’d been knocking back the pills long before the slur hit her words.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
She could always see through me too. No point covering it up, not now.
‘I got a letter. From Battlemouth.’
‘Matty . . .’
I hear it in her whisper. It’s still there after all these years, after everything that’s happened. The yearning, the questioning, the love that won’t leave. Straight away I think of the pearl-handled penknife I keep in my dresser drawer, the relief that comes from exorcising the guilt. God, I really am Pavlov’s bitch.
Buster, my dodgy hipped German Shepherd rescue, has Pavlovian reactions too. Whenever he hears a man shouting, an unexpected bang or thump.
He senses my mood, stumbles over nosing at my thigh. I rub his ears. Good dog.
‘Matty’s dying,’ I tell my mother. Not gleeful, but not sorry either. ‘Pancreatic cancer.’
‘How long?’
I shrug.
‘Couple of weeks? Possibly less.’ I take a breath, let it out slowly. ‘They say he wants to talk. To meet.’
‘A confession?’
I hear the hope in her tone, the desperate need for closure.
My skin prickles. I need that too. And yet . . .
‘Maybe a confession,’ I say. ‘Though who knows with him? Last I heard, he was still saying they got the wrong man.’
‘Will you go?’
‘I’m not sure.’
A yearning for answers. The fear of getting them. I glance down. My hand is trembling.
In it, the letter trembles too.
(C) Victoria Selman 2022