The murder house

Robbie doesn’t want to buy the murder house. He liked it enough in the first place, it was him who sent me the listing. Three bedrooms, decent sized garden out the back, bit of a fixer upper, all for a price I couldn’t believe. In all the pictures it was snowing and looked so bonnie. I fell in love with the idea of living there right away. The viewing went well and all. It was everything we needed, a bit more space for us, somewhere to sit in the summer. A decent place to raise kids too, if he ever got round to proposing. I think he’s having second thoughts and it’s just another of his excuses.

‘I dinnae want to talk about it any more,’ he said. ‘It’s fuckin weird, I couldnae live there no matter how cheap it is and that’s the end of it. Everyone knows about that place. It’ll be someone from somewhere else who gets it. Someone moving to the town. And they’ll find out the hard way.’

‘What do you mean find out the hard way? You mean ghosts in the walls spooking them? Grow up.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘You know what I mean. Folk will talk.’

‘So what? Since when do you care?’

‘Folk won’t want to come over. Imagine having kids in that house and everyone finding out, they’d get ripped out in the playground. You know what kids are like.’

‘Well slim fucking chance of us having kids at this rate.’

‘Come on, Shiv.’

It was a brutal murder but was there such thing as a non brutal murder? Was there a nice murder? No there wasn’t. It was the same any which way you looked at it.

At the viewing I did my usual questions, going through my mental checklists, checking for damp, noseying the cupboard space, and then asked if there was much interest in it.

‘Loads of interest, yeah,’ the agent said, but he looked like he was on another planet, half playing with his phone, and I didn’t believe him at all. Mind you estate agents were all freaks anyway. I’ll tell you a thing about estate agents. Do you know a sound one? Do you even know one? You don’t do you. Just weird people.

When we got back to my mum’s we were talking about putting an offer in, and it felt like it was finally happening after waiting forever.

After the viewing we had Old El Paso as a wee treat for tea, then went to the Bull to meet Andrew and Kat.

‘So,’ she says to me. How was the viewing?’ The boys were at the jukebox arguing about whether Definitely Maybe or Morning Glory was the better Oasis album. They did this every time we were out, picked a wee fight with each other about indie music. Anything to avoid talking about their feelings.

‘It was gorgeous,’ I said. ‘Well I mean it could be. Needs a whole bunch of work done. Like all the walls and carpets are needing fixed. Could do up the kitchen too. And the bathroom needs totally done from scratch.’

‘But you can see yourself there? They say that’s the test.’

‘Aye absolutely.’

I took my phone out and showed her the pictures off the listing, our winter wonderland, poking at the ice cubes in my G and T with the straw, clinking them against the side of the glass.

The boys came back over.

‘Another Guinness?’ Robbie said.

Andrew handed him his empty glass and solemnly clasped his hands in prayer.

‘Yous good?’ he said to us.

‘Aye I’ll take another,’ I said. ‘Just showing Kat the listing.’

‘It’s class,’ she said. ‘Finger’s crossed for yous. And yeah I’ll have another.’

Andrew sat down and put his arm round her, squeezing her tightly and kissing her forehead.

‘How you doing hen.’

‘Look at this,’ she said, showing him the listing.

He glanced at it and his gaze shifted in an instant, from the irritated look he gave when he was ever forced to show interest in anything, to amusement.

‘That’s the murder house,’ he said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘The murder house. From last summer. Remember? Was fucking horrible.’

‘Shut up.’

‘What murder?’ said Kat.

‘The one where that young lad chopped his mum’s hands off, or she chopped her own hands off, cannae mind, and then he killed his Dad and then did himself in too. Wrote a suicide note in his blood on the bathroom walls. Something like that anyway. Was fucking horrible. You mind?’

She was shaking her head, playing with the wedge of lime in her drink. ‘I remember’, she said. ‘It was tragic. Terrible.’

‘How the fuck do you know that’s the same place?’ I said incredulously.

‘Ballater Drive? Everyone knows that’s the place. Google it.’

I did. Took back my phone and looked it up straight away. A bunch of headlines about a murder. Fuck sake.

He continued. ‘I bet it was missing carpets and I bet the bathroom was shite, totally stripped. Aye?’

It was. It had been.

‘So fucking what’, I said. ‘I don’t care. Someone has to live in it.’

‘Mate. Robbie will not be fucking having that and you know it.’

‘It’s not just up to him. I’m putting most of the money down, remember that.’

‘Fair enough but I think he gets to veto living in a murder suicide gaff for the rest of his life. Here, Robbie?’

Robbie was walking back with the gins.

‘Yous talking about me?’

‘Would you live in a gaff if you knew someone had been murdered in it pure brutally?’’

‘No fucking way,’ he said, and went back for the pints.

‘Told you.’

I folded my arms and looked at Kat who raised her eyebrows.

‘Why you asking that?,’ Robbie said, placing the pints gently on the table with a packet of those posh cheese and onion crisps.

‘That house you went to see earlier? That was the murder suicide place from last year.’

‘It fucking isn’t.’

‘Sorry to break it to you.’

‘You’re fucking with me pal.’

‘I’m not.’

‘He’s not,’ I said. ‘But why does it matter? Someone has to live there and they’re already dead, it’s not like they can fucking die again or come back to life. It’s already happened. The deed is done so to speak.’

‘I’m no living there. I wouldn’t even spend the night there.’ He shuddered. ‘Do you not know what happened?’

‘Aye. I read all about it at the time.’

‘So how could you live there, knowing that?’

‘I’d do it,’ Andrew said. ‘A bargain’s a bargain.’

‘You fucking would not!’ Robbie said, ‘you’re shit scared of everything, you wouldn’t even watch fuckin… Saw 3 with us that time’.

‘‘That’s actually got nothing to do with me being scared, he said. ‘I just prefer to do better things with my time than watch fuckin wee guys in clown make up screaming for two hours with a knife or whatever. But stuff like this? Mind over matter. You’ve to be rational about these things, Robbie. Fuck it, I’d stay there tonight, for twenty quid.’

‘Couldn’t pay me anything to stay there, Robbie said. No fuckin way.’

‘I’d move there tonight’, I said. Anything to have my own space.’

Well you’ll need to wait a bit longer because we’ll no be living there.’

I gave him my sternest look.

‘We’ll talk about it.’

‘You can try all you want but that’s me decided.’

‘Maybe we should put an offer on it?’ Kat said, throwing a loving gaze at her man.

‘If you even think about doing that there’ll be another murder in that house, a triple murder this time.’

And the three of them all laughed but you know what? Looking back I was serious. Deadly fucking serious.