Free The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

had a suitcase, but from the way he hefted it one-handed up the stairs, she doesn’t think it was full.
    ‘It feels a bit like moving into someone else’s grave, though,’ says Collette, suddenly. ‘What happened to this Nikki? Where did she go?’
    ‘I wish I knew.’ This much is true. Cher’s had few friends in her brief life, and has felt the loss of Nikki surprisingly strongly. Nikki was kind to her, let her watch the telly, used to make her fry-ups on Saturday mornings, the two of them nursing their come-downs in companionable silence. ‘She just – I mean, I know she was bothered about making the rent, but it’s not like he could just have thrown her out on the street or anything.’
    ‘What was she like?’
    Cher remembers. What do you say? Bright orange hair and a ginger complexion; a tendency to eczema on her ankles, and an embarrassing passion for Johnny Depp… ‘Scottish,’ she says, eventually. ‘She came from Glasgow. I guess maybe she went back there.’
    ‘Mmm,’ says Collette.
    ‘She didn’t even say goodbye,’ says Cher, mournfully.

Chapter Ten
    The Landlord doesn’t suit the heat. Or the heat doesn’t suit him. Either way, on a day like this, he would usually spend most of it in his flat, the curtains drawn. On a day like today, he likes to lie beached on his leather sofa, naked, watching his DVDs with a fan playing over his flesh, drinking Diet Coke from the bottle and occasionally lifting up his belly to let the air get to the crevices beneath.
    But today is rent day, and rent day gives him purpose. He is out on the street by eleven o’ clock, shuffling up Beulah Grove in his Birkenstocks, sticking to the shade to keep the sun off his pate. Behind him, he drags a shopping trolley in Cameron tartan. He likes to take this with him when he goes to Beulah Grove, not just because of the convenience, but because no one would ever assume that someone pulling a shopping trolley might also be carrying large amounts of cash. The Landlord is a lot wealthier than most of his neighbours, but they’ll never spot it from the way he looks.
    He pauses at the foot of the steps to take a breather, and surveys his domain. Though he doesn’t have a lot of time for beauty, Roy Preece can see that number twenty-three is a handsome house, in a road of handsome houses. If it were in one of the gentrified boroughs – City-money Wandsworth, perhaps, or Media Putney – it would be worth two, three million, even in its current state, even with the railway running past the bottom of the garden and the old bat in the basement. As it is, with the Farrow & Ball front-door paint going up all over and the front pullins full of SUVs, he’ll have enough to live like a king for the rest of his life when he gets shot of the place. Go somewhere where life is cheap, and buy as much of it as he can.
    The Landlord reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, mops his glistening face and the top of his head, and tucks it back in. The exertion of walking up from the station in the heat has left deep, damp stripes down his shirt. But it’s
clean
sweat, he thinks, and sets off up the steps.
     
    Thomas Dunbar has left an envelope on the hall table, neatly separated from the piles of junk mail, most of it addressed to long-gone residents. He’s the only one of his tenants, as far as he can work out, who is actually gainfully employed. Punctilious, quiet, respectable. He works at the Citizens’ Advice and, since the hours there were cut back, has involved himself in some organisational role with a furniture recycling charity. He has paid his rent on time in every month of the thirty-six he’s been here. Never any trouble, with Thomas. Or, it seems, with Gerard Bright. His envelope’s there next to Dunbar’s, the Landlord’s name in neat block capitals on the front. The Landlord tucks them in his pocket, doesn’t bother to check their contents. He knows that Dunbar’s will contain a cheque for the