Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Lilly Philipps: Tuesday, 8th December, 2015

"Hello? Is anybody home? We'd like to speak to Neil! We know you're in here, we saw you through the curtains!"

It was a rather ominous thing to say and probably not the best way of getting someone to let you into their house, but it was clear to Lilly as she watched Clara banging on the door of the taxi driver, so seemingly incognizant to the role he played in everything, that how the gesture was coming across wasn't her concern. Everyone, aside from Alice who wasn't going home for the Christmas holidays citing the need to work on her dissertation (and the fact that Tim Robbins along with a still glacial Sasha Evans was staying at St.Edmunds as well), was desirous of the comfort of home which they believed would bring the absence of the Supplier. After their last lecture of the term that morning, it seemed that Clara and Gemma couldn't wait to pack their stuff up and make the journey home. Lilly was more ambivalent than those two, however; for one, after missing her dad's wedding, she'd managed to convince herself quite thoroughly that both he and Jasmine abhorred her. And that wasn't all: her due date was looming and she'd still yet to tell him she was pregnant. It was all, quite frankly, a bit of a shitshow. So whilst the thought of a few weeks unencumbered by the enigma of Cleo's death and everything that had brought with it sounded enticing, the fact that Neil the taxi driver was taking an aberrantly long time to answer his front door wasn't necessarily a bad thing for Lilly. By the time he actually answered, his long, unknowingly gawky face appearing from behind it, exceptionally hairy legs poking out from underneath a dogeared dressing gown, she secretly felt almost disappointed.

"Can we come in?" Asked Clara, her tone quite belligerent, a flustered Neil taking a step back with his hand still firmly on the door.

"Uh, why?" He asked, scrabbling with the latch but ultimately sighing and using his weight instead, to keep them out.

"We're friends of Cleo King's. The student from St.Edmunds who was murdered. We're not police or anything we just want to talk to you, you gave us a lift with her a few months ago. We're trying to find out what happened to her." Neil's forehead crumpled, almost as if the sight of the four of them made him sad, and then, surprisingly, he held the door open and gestured for them to come in.

"Sit down..." He said, waving a nervous hand over to the sofas visible through the first door on their right. "I'm just going to get changed. Please, just, uh, sit down and don't...uh, touch anything." However, the second he had disappeared, Alice was already off, scrutinising every corner of the room, like a property surveyor without the clipboard. Finally satisfied that there was nothing unusual to be found in the living room, she took a seat in between Lilly and Gemma, Clara already sat in the armchair opposite them lighting up a cigarette.

"Want one?" She said casually to Gemma, Alice looking scandalised.

"No, I'm trying not to with the race at the end of the month and everything but-"

"Clara! Put that out! You don't just smoke in other people's houses without even asking. It's like the antithesis of house guest etiquette..." She interrupted shrilly, gradually trailing off as Neil came bounding down the stairs and Clara stubbed the cigarette out on her pale arm, grimacing. Convinced it'd gone out, she threw it behind the arm chair, just in time for Neil to walk into the room, much to Alice's silent but visible dismay.

"So...you've come to ask me about your friend Cleo, yeah?" He asked, pulling over an office chair from the other end of the room and lighting up a cigarette of his own. At this, Clara threw a pointed look in Alice's direction whilst mouthing "house-guest-etiquette", to which Alice responded with a subtle raise of her middle finger, her chin resting on her fist.

"Yeah." Gemma answered, scowling at the both of them. "You remember us?"

"I remember all of you. And her. Shit, that was an eventful night." He said, almost wistfully. "Dropped you lot off near the cove, didn't I?"

"You remember that?" Said Alice, Clara, again, smirking triumphantly in her direction. After all, she'd been so sure that he wouldn't, making some comment about him being too busy ogling Cleo's physique to remember anything else about the job. "Did you tell the police?"

"The police?" Neil raised an eyebrow, before tapping the ash from his cigarette into the tray that sat on the side table next to him. "So you lot followed them down here the other day? I was going to ask how you knew where to find me. Specifically told everyone down at Speedy not to go giving my information out to anyone. I knew somebody would find out, come looking eventually." He held off giving an answer to Alice's question, clearly relishing the panic in all of their faces.

"Did you tell the police about us?" She repeated.

"No..." He replied, with a chuckle, all four of them deflating, the tension that had been holding their bodies abnormally upright seconds before relenting. "No, I haven't told them police a thing."

"Why not?"

"Because, I want them to stay away from me. Told them I'd never given any Cleo a lift in my life. I'm telling you, you say one thing wrong to them and next, they're taking you down into the station for questioning and you're all over the local paper. I can't have that. 90% of my earnings come from students, who's going to be getting into a taxi with the potential murderer of someone they go to uni with? I'd never get another fare." He explained, reclining back in his chair.

"You say you remember dropping us off at the cove but you gave Cleo another lift later, didn't you?" Clara pressed on. The conversation was going at a particularly lackadaisical pace, considering Neil had described the night as eventful.

"Yeah, I did. Picked her up from outside the Little Chef right by Ellisbury cliff top."

"Where did you take her?" Asked Gemma.

"Back to her house. About a 45 minute drive it was, she tipped me and everything. I was going to give her that ride for free as well but she insisted. Said she felt bad about not paying earlier." Lilly almost spluttered; Cleo had taken a lot of things from her without giving anything in return and not once had she bothered with so much as an apologetic smile. Even Clara had cocked a dubious eyebrow. She probably wouldn't admit it aloud, but Cleo's behaviour had never constituted of much more than take, take, take and take again. "What?" Said Neil defensively, widened eyes sweeping across all four of them. "Don't believe me?"

"Her body was found by St.Edmunds, not her house." Alice reminded him, another reason for Lilly's skepticism. How could any of them forget? They watched her rotting body get pulled out of the very same river that ran around the back of the St.Edmunds campus.

"Well, I took her to her house. Do you want to know what happened after I dropped her off or not?" Neil growled at them, moving forward in his chair and rubbing two hands together. His posture was evocative of your typical, crotchety, old grandpa attempting to gather the attention of his recalcitrant grandchildren, to tell them a tale of how he butchered some German in the Second World War.

"Yes, we do. Sorry. Carry on." Said Alice, still watching him with that especial air of dubiety as he dove into his memories.