Page 37 of Not That Complicated

“What I’m going to do, Ray, is this. I’ll refund you the deposit and we’ll call it square. And I’m the one getting the raw end of this deal, what with me having wasted a whole day hard at work and getting nothing out of it.”

He’d got a packet of Hobnobs out of it, which is not bad going for the actual hour and ten minutes of work they squeezed into the five hours they were here. Also, “My bedroom is unusable. I assure you I have the raw end of the deal here.”

“I dunno what else to tell you, Ray. I’m refunding you the money. And because I’m a good guy—and your review, if you leave one, should definitely mention this—I’ll give you the number of a buddy of mine. Mason will do anything for a couple of hundred.”

With that somewhat unsettling recommendation, he read out a number I scrambled to jot down and hung up.

I wanted to be angrier than I was, but Craig hadn’t signed up for discovering a body any more than I had. Unlike me, he could walk away.

I rang Craig’s buddy, Mason. He showed up the very next day at eight a.m. and resurrected my faith in all contractors.

He was a complete dick who glared at me like I’d insulted his mother. He made a hell of a noise, used the bathroom eight times and only flushed once, and made me genuinely uncomfortable. But he packed up at the end of the day with the job done.

Most importantly, he got it done without throwing up.

And he didn’t find a dead body.

“All right?” he grunted at me, having commanded me to come upstairs and check before he left.

I was impressed.

It was perfect. There wasn’t a single ripple in the carpet. It flowed from one side of the room to the other, melding with the skirting boards without a gap to be seen, and he’d even hoovered it. He was a magician.

“It’s great,” I said. “Thank you so much!”

My big smile withered under his unrelenting glare, and I trailed him awkwardly out of the room and down the stairs.

When I said I’d call him with any other jobs that cropped up, he grimly instructed me not to, he didn’t like murder houses any more than poor old Craig did, and that was that.

I soon realised why Craighadn’t been too bothered at the idea of me leaving a shitty review. He’d got ahead of the problem by leaving me one first.

Sort of.

I was in the newsagents opposite The Chipped Cup Coffee Shop to buy some batteries, some chewing gum, and a Cadbury Creme Egg because I was worth it, damn it. I stood in the queue behind a woman I didn’t know but often saw cycling her two kids to school in the morning, and my eye fell upon the local paper.

I was not a reader of theChipping Fairford Inquirer, and had politely declined when a nervous and enthusiastic-sounding reporter had called to ask for an interview. It was pure luck that I even saw it.

But there they were in a large front-page photo: Craig and Kevin, doing their best to look suitably haunted by their trauma but both clearly loving the attention.

Above it was a poorly worded headline: LOCAL HANDYMEN DISCOVER BODY IN LOCAL MURDER HOUSE by J.C. Connolly.

Against my better judgment, I grabbed a copy, and stood outside the newsagents scanning it while I ate my Creme Egg.

The article was histrionic, inaccurate, and full of grammatical errors. A good seventy-five percent of it was dedicated to a long, drawn-out play-by-play of The Gruesome Discovery, as it was referred to over and over again.

It seemed that Craig’s experience and mine were somewhat different.

The way I remembered it, Craig had knocked me out of the way and was out of the house and burning rubber under a minute after he’d thrown up everywhere.

The way Craig told it, I had a fit of hysterics, leaving him to take charge of the scene. He gallantly escorted me to a safe place, where I continued to be hysterical while Craig called the police and was all-round heroic and pragmatic about things.

I pondered whether or not it was legal for the paper to print such inaccuracies. Since I was only briefly mentioned, and the bulk of the story was about how stoic Craig and—to a significantly lesser degree—Kevin were, I decided to let it go.

I worried for a while that the story would get picked up and printed in the Oxford papers. I hated the idea of being talked about. The real worry was whether or not it made it to the national papers, and hence into the orbit of my parents.

I’d made the executive decision not to tell them about the whole nightmare. Dad would say,I told you not to buy that house, Ray.Giselle, would rush down here to burn sage and throw crystals around or some such nonsense. I didn’t feel up to it.

In the end, it must not have been important or exciting enough to get picked up nationally. This wasn’t a surprise. It was a cold case, and there was more than enough present-day crime happening to keep people entertained. I’d have preferred it if no one at all knew, but thanks to the ridiculous article, I ended up fielding a few calls from anyone who saw the local paper.

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