Page 48 of The Psychopath Next Door

She would really rather not have to kill thatentirefamily.

16

‘The records are all in the spare room upstairs,’ Iris said, inviting me in to her house. ‘Lovely that you’ve brought Rose with you. Teaching her the trade, are you?’

‘Something like that.’

Rose hadn’t wanted to come with me to Iris’s house, but Emma had taken Dylan to a football match and I didn’t want Rose to stay in the house on her own, even on a bright summer evening like this. After the revelation earlier in the week about her witnessing the death of that lawyer, I wanted to spend more time with her. Keep an eye on her, to make sure she wasn’t showing any signs of trauma. So far, she seemed absolutely fine. Quiet and thoughtful – I kept catching her staring into space, miles away – but apparently okay.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Iris said. ‘Rose, would you like a cold drink? Lemonade?’

‘Yes please.’

Iris said she’d bring the drinks up and that the records were in the first room on the right at the top of the stairs.

Iris’s late husband, Alan, had been born in 1946, which meant he was the perfect age to have been into the Beatles and the Stones and all the other great bands of the sixties, but experience had taught me to be sceptical, so I wasn’t excited as I knelt on the carpetbeside the bed in Iris’s spare room and started digging through the crates of old albums and 45s.

‘It smells of dust in here,’ Rose complained, sitting on the bed, where I had placed one of the crates for her to look through.

I wasn’t really listening. I was too busy pulling out records from the crate I was kneeling in front of and turning them over in my hands, slowly getting that most wonderful sensation in my belly, the one that told me my scepticism might have been misplaced. This crate was full of Bob Dylan records, all in excellent condition. There were also albums by Marvin Gaye, the Small Faces, Nina Simone, Etta James ...

‘Bloody hell, Alan had good taste.’

I found a copy ofThe Velvet Underground & Nicoand held my breath. If this was an original American pressing, with the peelable banana, it could be worth thousands. I exhaled; it wasn’t that edition, but it was still highly collectable and could fetch a few hundred pounds. I set it aside carefully as Iris appeared in the doorway holding a mug of tea and a glass of lemonade.

‘Hold on,’ I said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t bring those in here. You don’t want to risk spilling anything on these records.’

I held up one of the albums,The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. ‘This is a first pressing. It’s worth about two hundred pounds in this condition. And this Velvet Underground LP, there are dozens of different editions, and I could bore you about the differences between the photos on the back and the bananas on the front, but I think this is a pretty rare one. There’s lots of other good stuff in here too, and I’m only on the first crate.’

‘Goodness.’ Iris left the drinks on a side table outside the door and came into the room.

‘Whoa, look at this,’ said Rose from the bed. ‘So gross and so cool.’

The album Rose was holding showed the Beatles in white lab coats, holding decapitated baby dolls and joints of meat.Yesterday and Today. It was still shrink-wrapped. I gasped, springing to my feet and carefully taking the album from Rose.

I examined it, my heart pounding. My mouth had gone dry.

‘Holy shit,’ I said. ‘Excuse my French.’

‘I hate that record,’ Iris said. ‘The cover is so ghastly that I would never allow Alan to take it out and play it.’

‘I ought to be wearing gloves, really,’ I said, laying the album gently on the bed. ‘I’m going to go home and get a protective sleeve for it.’ I grinned at Iris. ‘This is the original butcher cover that was withdrawn from sale almost immediately then re-released with a new cover pasted over the original. It was only on sale for one day. It’s the stereo version too, which makes it even rarer. And it’s unplayed.’

‘How rare?’ Iris asked.

Rose, sensing my excitement, ears pricking up at the word ‘rare’, suddenly seemed fascinated too.

‘I think if we find the right collector you could get thirty thousand pounds for this. Maybe even more.’

‘Thirtythousand?’ Iris put her hand to her forehead. ‘I need to sit down.’

‘That’ssick,’ said Rose, reaching out a hand towards the record. Instinctively, worried she was going to damage it even though it was shrink-wrapped, I pushed her hand away – gently but firmly – and she reeled, an expression of absolute fury transforming her face. I was taken aback. I hadn’t seen her look at me like that in a long time, and I was suddenly, forcefully, thrown back in time to when she was a toddler, screaming outside the newsagent’s because I wouldn’t buy her the green drink she wanted, bucking her body and looking not unlike the girl inThe Exorcist. Iris looked shocked too, though she might simply have been reeling from the news about the record.

‘Why don’t you go downstairs, Rose,’ I said. ‘I’m going to pop home to get some gloves and some protective sleeves before I look through the rest. Who knows what else is in here?’

‘I can’t believe this,’ Iris said. ‘Alan always said some of these would be worth money one day, but he had his heart attack before he ever had the chance to get them valued. Oh, I’ve gone all peculiar.’

‘Come downstairs,’ I said. We all went down and I left her with Rose while I went back to my house to collect the gloves and protectors. I was trembling with excitement, but not because of the money, which would be Iris’s, not mine. It was the thrill of being close to history like that. It struck me how lucky Iris was to have asked me to look at them, rather than some unscrupulous dealer who would tell her they were worthless before buying them for peanuts and making his fortune.

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