Crime Time

by L56895

Summary:

Crime Time – the international true crime podcast sensation – are here with their special anniversary series, all about London's most prolific twenty-first century serial killer: Stéphane Fournier.

Everyone at Truham has their theories. But why is the new kid, Nick Nelson, so moody about it all?

Notes:

• For aprms.

Hello! I know I have multiple WIPs on the go but this one hit me full in the face and I have hyperfocussed on it for the best part of a week.

Aprms, remember how I said I'd ignore you when you said I didn't owe you a belated not-birthday fic? Yeah... I really ignored you. Consider this my attempt to cheer you up... although I don’t know whether that says more about you or me, given the tags. Sorry to your email inbox for the forthcoming!

Everyone, please heed the tags. We kick off straight away with a suicide attempt and I've written actual podcast episodes that will be discussing ritualistic serial killings (not in any great detail, but if you're sensitive to those kinds of things... either skip those chapters or hit backspace now.)

As usual when I'm on my bullshit... keep creator's style turned on because otherwise the police tape transcripts will look a bit boring.

First two chapters are up, the rest will trickle in daily. Chapters will be short, bite-sized bits of true crime drama. Don't forget to hit play on any audio players you see because I've had great fun with text-to-speech with this fic!

Thanks to Phlimsical for beta'ing. I promise I'll get some sleep eventually.

Chapter 1: Prologue

He’s almost grey, when David gets to him.

Their big strong dad, in a heap on the kitchen floor.

Nick’s back hits the counter when David slams his palm against his chest and pushes, hard.

“Fuck, Nick, I think he took some pills!”

Nick isn’t sure what that means. He’s not allowed to take pills because he chokes. Mum always gives him a syringe of that sickly sweet pink stuff that they had as kids whenever he has a headache. The pack says up to twelve years old, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

Still, the little bottle of pills that their mum keeps by the bed for when she can’t sleep is empty. Last week, he and David snuck into their room and tipped them all out onto the bed to count them out. There were twenty six in there. Even if their mum has taken one every day since, there should be nineteen left.

How does someone accidentally take nineteen pills?

There’s a dull, rhythmic thumping as David’s palms – fingers laced together – pump their dad’s chest. A crack – a rib, maybe? – and Nick feels woozy.

Something hits him in the face. David’s hand – palm outstretched – and Nick reaches up to touch his skin where it stings. David’s yelling something. Something about—

“For fuck’s sake, Nick, call an ambulance!”

Nick’s phone is still in his pocket. Neither one of them are meant to be home yet – rugby was cancelled because of unexpected rain – and as Nick jabs a shaky finger against the keypad – nine-nine-ei— fuck, delete, nine – he can’t help but think how he’ll always be grateful that they walked through that kitchen door when they did.

Chapter 2: Crime Time Episode 1: Introduction

Notes:

There is absolutely a way for me to build the player in html so you can click the buttons and at least play the podcast... but that required more brainpower than I currently have so it's a static image instead. Click play on the embedded player underneath instead!

Please, no one get any ideas that this is my voice. I used a text-to-speech app for all the audio files because I very much sound like a chav who should not be hosting a podcast any time soon. You'll meet Gerard and Wendall (Who appear in a billboard in tomorrow's chapter) soon!

 

Click for podcast transcript

Hey everyone, and welcome to a very special edition of our podcast. Today we're heading all the way over to merry old England for the first in a series about Stéphane Fournier, the infamous serial killer who had London in a choke hold!

As you all know, we love all things England here at Crime Time. The scones, Wimbledon, red buses – you name it, we're obsessed! But this case holds a special place in our hearts because we actually watched it all unfold over social media. Long time listeners might remember that our very own Gerard was the first to break the news in the true crime sphere and launched Crime Time as a global podcast.

So, I don’t think it will come as a shock to any of you that we’ve chosen this particular case for our two year anniversary celebration series. We’re going to be talking police reports, social media sleuths and how this infamous serial killer was eventually taken down by the people closest to him. Where are the Fournier family now? No one knows, but we’d like to dedicate this series to his ex-wife and their two kids. Without them, maybe he’d still be out there.

If you’re listening, David and Nicholas, we’d love for you to get in touch. 

The rest of you: tune in for all the gruesome details, the wild speculations that landed in our DMs and the chance to win some awesome merch from our storefront.

And don’t forget to hit subscribe to receive notifications of every episode, and check out our Patreon if you want exclusive clips, sneak peaks and the chance to ask our experts your burning questions.

Chapter 3: Nick

Notes:

We've got some drug use and risky behaviour in this one!

I went a little overboard with podcast branding on Canva...

I don’t want to contemplate the puddle that is currently seeping through the knees of my jeans as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and stare up at him. He’s zipping up his jeans guiltily – Jacob or Jake or something like that – and he runs his hands through my hair. I bat his hand away petulantly. The cubicle is cramped and it stinks to high heaven in here; I just want to get my pill and leave.

It’s not like I was even thinking about him during. I was too busy picturing an aborted kiss in the back of a car with a boy who smelt of sandalwood instead of cigarettes; of a time before everything really went to shit. If I close my eyes and really focus, I can picture the way his lips brushed against mine – the feeling of euphoria at finally knowing a part of myself that I had managed to bury – before my ringtone broke the moment and we pulled away from one another. In another life, I might have leant in for another go, if David’s fractured voice hadn’t greeted me down the line as he sobbed and spluttered:

“Why the fuck does Dad have Nathan’s ring?”

No second kiss for me. Not even a second glance after the news hit. And now we’re in this shitty town where no one knows us and we’re supposed to be grateful for it.

Whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is doesn’t lean in to kiss me when I eventually manage to brace my hands on the cubicle walls to stand up. I’m grateful I don't have to pretend I wanted him to. Instead, he grins and retrieves a little bag from his pocket before pinching out one of the pills and popping it on my tongue.

Then, I don't have to think anymore.

The club is heaving. I swear the crowd has doubled in size in the short while we were in the toilets and I lose Jaco— Jake— whoever he was as soon as we step outside. 

No matter, I’ll hopefully lose myself soon enough.

I step out into the crowd and wait for the bad feelings to go away.

The rush hits me about five songs in, and the rest of the night is a blur. 

Some of it seeps through, as it always does. The bright lights, hands on my chest, muffled voices that I’m sure are offering something. I can’t dance, but I do, I think. Until I’m stumbling down a step and the cool night air hits me and I realise that, at some point, I’ve decided to finally walk home. Or it’s kick-out time. I’m not sure. I’ve managed to sneak a bottle past security, at least, and I wait until I’m out of sight of the bouncers before I take a swig.

It’s well past 4am by the time I can properly walk straight and I don’t think I’ve managed to get very far at all. Someone’s yelling at me to stop fucking laughing; their voice snapping down from one of the flats a few storeys up. I’m not sure what there is to laugh about. I’m pretty sure my knees are bruised and when I reach down my jeans are ripped and my hands hurt, so I guess I must have fallen down on the way.

Probably time for a sit down.

Except, of course, it’s fucking January and the ground is bogged with mud that joins the club-toilet-floor piss that’s currently wrecking my jeans. I’d sit on my jacket, except I must have left it in the club along with my keys. 

Looks like I’m climbing the trellis again. One day the entire thing will come crashing down under the weight of me.

Luckily, I still have my ID and my wallet with me. I don’t exactly want to have to explain to Mum that I need to order another new driving licence a few weeks after we were issued our new ones.

I need some water.

And if I’m truly honest with myself, I need a good cry. I want to be home, in the house I grew up in, crawling over to Nellie so I can sob into her belly. Nellie’s back at the house, but the house isn’t a home yet. And what was it Dad said to me before his trial?

“You always were too soft, Nicholas. Perhaps this will harden you to the world a little.”

Mum never let us visit again, but I can’t help but wonder if he was right.

The ground lurches, and I shove my head between my knees until the spinning sensation passes. I don’t throw up – a blessing I can actually be thankful for – and when I finally sit up straight everything is a little bit clearer again.

So, it’s with a depressingly sober head that I catch sight of the billboard.

They’re fucking everywhere. Some true crime podcast that apparently went viral in the past year and that everyone is listening to. One of my old teammates has already texted me to ask if I’ve listened to the first episode of their latest series, seeing as I get a mention. I blocked him instantly.

The only mercy is apparently someone in this town doesn’t give a shit about what they have to say, because they’ve gone to the effort of vandalising their faces. Or, maybe there really is that little to do in Truham. Regardless, I thank my good aim when my empty beer bottle slices through one of their smug faces and smashes against the fence behind the billboard.

Unlike London, the public transport in this place stops at about eleven, so there’s no late night bus or underground to take me home safely. A great irony, really, that the words underground and safe are still part of my lexicon together. Luckily, this town isn’t very big, so it doesn’t take me long, at a furious pace, to get back to Britannia Road: our new home.

It takes me even less time to navigate the trellis and hoist myself through my bedroom window. Thankfully, I left it on the latch before I snuck out, just in case this happened again. I’ll give it a week and then tell Mum that I left my keys on the school field or something. For now, I can’t worry about that. I’m pretty sure I’ll pass out as soon as my head hits the pillows.

I get a waft of a stench I’d rather not contemplate when I pull off my jeans and my shirt and throw them into the linen basket in the corner. A mix of beer and piss and vomit that tells me I didn’t fare as well as I thought. I grab some clean clothes from my drawers and throw them on top to try and disguise it before collapsing into my bed and tugging the covers up to my chin.

There’s a beat, then the door creaks. A hand grabs my shoulder.

“Nicky?” Mum murmurs. “Time to get up. We need to get you in early for your first day at the new school.”

Fuck.

Notes:

Tomorrow: the first of the Fournier Police Tapes!

Chapter 4: The Fournier Tapes: Part One

Notes:

I had way too much fun with sound effects, different French accents and other nonsense for these.

CW: discussion of murders.

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 1

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – METROPOLITAN POLICE HQ – EVENING]

DCI MARSHALL

This is DCI Andrea Marshall. Interview commencing at 19:04. Interviewee: Stéphane Jean-Baptiste Fournier. Present also is DS Leena Farrow. Mr. Fournier, do you understand that you’re being questioned in relation to multiple homicides?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I do.

DS FARROW

For the record, you are not under duress. You’ve declined legal representation?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Yes. I’m not here to argue.

DCI MARSHALL

We are required to caution you. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Understood?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Understood.

Pause. The sound of pen on paper.

DS FARROW

You’ve been informed of the charges?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Yes. You believe I killed twelve people.

DCI MARSHALL

We don’t “believe,” Mr. Fournier. We have cause. Bodies. Witnesses. A ledger.

Stéphane shifts in his chair, calm. Smiles faintly.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

It’s funny, isn’t it? How the word “cause” can mean proof… or just a reason.

DCI MARSHALL

Let’s stick to facts. You’ve worked as an architect for Manns and Whitlow for sixteen years.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Yes.

DS FARROW

No priors. No complaints. No known aliases. Married. Two sons.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Correct. Everything neat.

DCI MARSHALL

Then how did twelve people end up dead with burn marks, left like messages on the Underground steps?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

People disappear underground every day, Inspector. The real question is… why do some of them come back up?

Pause. DS Farrow leans forward.

DS FARROW

Is that what you think this is? Some message?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I think you’re looking in the wrong tunnels.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 1.

Notes:

Final sound effect was supposed to be a pencil on paper but I forgot to reduce the volume so feel free to imagine DS Farrow with a comically large novelty pencil from the 90s.

 

 

Also... the keen eyed amongst you may notice that I quietly removed the 'enemies to lovers' tag. Nick and Charlie weren't playing ball on that front.

Chapter 5: Charlie

“How are you feeling about going back to school, Charlie?”

I can feel Tori’s eyes on me as I stir my cornflakes. If I keep going, I’m hoping the fucking things will dissolve enough that I can tip them down the sink. There’s a new bandage on my arm that neither of my parents want to acknowledge and I’m pretty sure that Tao will be insufferably and overbearingly overprotective the second I step through the doors. I predict that he will accidentally get himself into a fight by first break.

I don’t say any of that, of course.

Instead, I shrug.

“Fine,” I mutter. “Absolutely no big deal.”

The sarcasm in my voice may be detectable by my sister, but Jane Spring is an entirely different beast. She sips the black coffee that seems to fuel her nowadays and gives Tori a pointed look.

“I think the school’s newly appointed Head Boy has better things to worry about than boy trouble,” she snaps. Boy trouble is a slightly disingenuous way of saying that prick who tried to ruin your life and landed you in a hospital over summer, but who am I to correct her? It’s a bit of a mouthful, to be fair. Besides, I’ve technically been back at school with a fake smile plastered on my face for the better part of two terms now.

Okay, sure, I missed the last week before Christmas. But relapses happen. Geoff has made this very clear.

To me, at least. I think my parents are convinced that I’m doing it to spite them, at this point. Dad stumbled home from his night shift about two hours ago and Mum is packing her bag ready for the day. They think I don’t notice that one of them is always home, nowadays.

Thankfully, Mum has left something upstairs and she wanders off, swearing under her breath, while I’m rinsing my mug under the tap. As soon as we hear her feet on the landing above our heads, Tori throws a torn off piece of toast at my head.

“If anyone gives you any trouble this term—”

“I know, Tori. You’ll kill them.”

“I’ll maim them first.”

I nod towards her phone.

“You need to stop listening to those stupid podcasts.”

As if it heard me, the screen lights up with a notification and, when she swipes her passcode in, I see the pink and blue logo of her current obsession.

“Seriously, Tori, since when did you go along with stupid fads?”

She at least has the good grace to look embarrassed, even though I notice her pop one of her earpods in her ear and surreptitiously press play.

“Blame Michael,” she shrugs. “He’s got a crush on, like, the entire cast.”

“At least admit that Crime Time is a stupid name for a podcast.”

This time, the piece of toast hits me square between the eyes.

Chapter 6: David

Notes:

Thanks for all the comments so far!

And massive thanks to chocolatefreckle for being willing to risk your sanity by delving into the minefield that is this google doc.

The chairs are so uncomfortable that he wonders if he might be better off on the floor. A few months of sofa surfing at random mates’ flats before he eventually plucked up the courage to come home has wreaked havoc on his back. 

God knows what’s on this floor, though. He’s definitely better off on the chair.

A few guards mill about while he waits, a crumpled envelope clutched tight in his hands. It’s been sliced open with a butterknife –  a cosmic piss-take if he does say so himself – and he no longer needs to look to know what it says. The contents have been burned onto his very consciousness. He’s fairly certain that his brother received something almost identical, but he can’t bring himself to ask whether their dad considers either of them important enough to vary the tone. 

A cleared throat breaks him out of his sulk.

“David Nelson?” A woman is standing there with a clipboard when he glances up. She looks nervous. Talking to the son of a serial killer will do that to you, apparently.

“That’s me,” he mutters. She seems polite enough, but he’s well aware of what they must think of him. He takes the offered pen.

“Sign here,” she says, her voice more clipped than before. “Liability waiver.”

“Great, thanks.”

“You’ve been told what you can and can’t take in?”

“Yeah, yeah, some guy explained it at the door.” ‘Some guy’ had been an absolute bear of a man – armed – who’d waved a metal detector up and down his clothes at the entrance. The woman nods perfunctorily. 

“It’ll still be a while. He’s one of our more complicated inmates.”

“Yeah,” David breathes. “I’ll be here.”

Notes:

Had to sneak in a few miserable David chapters, didn't I?

Chapter 7: Crime Time Episode 2: The Blaze

Notes:

So I totally could have made my life easier by having one podcaster for this fic… but I think the existence of this format shows that I’m not interested in making my life easier!

Meet Wendall.

 

Click for podcast transcript

Hey guys, Wendall here. And in this episode of Crime Time I’m going to be taking you through the life and times of Stéphane Fournier. How did this mysterious character from the Loire Valley go from architect of people’s dream homes, to architect of their worst nightmares?

To understand what made the man, we first have to look at his backstory. Normal parents, normal upbringing, as far as we can tell. Stéphane was the middle of four siblings: two older sisters and a younger brother. Sadly, we know that one of Fournier’s formative experiences was the death of his brother in a house fire back in 1982. Newspaper reports from the time – which Magdalena has scoured the archives to find – state that Fournier was first on the scene of the tragedy, and actually tried to rescue his beloved brother from the blaze. He was eventually pulled from the inferno by a young, male firefighter who then went in to try and rescue the boy. Tragically, both the firefighter and Stéphane’s younger brother became victims of a flashover that happened seconds later.

Was this the first moment in a young Stéphane’s life where he started to blame young men for everything wrong with the world? Maybe. Neighbours who remember a teenage Stéphane certainly thought so, with one woman writing in a letter to her sister that she felt that there was something ‘deeply wrong with the Fournier boy’ from that moment on.

Whatever it was that ‘sparked’ Stéphane’s eventually killing spree, we know that this moment remains of the utmost importance, because it later became a big part of the defence’s case. Stéphane wasn’t a man looking for control and fear, they argued, but instead a deeply troubled soul driven to acts of extreme violence in his grief.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Join us next week when we’ll be talking about Stéphane’s move to London and the quiet, ordinary life he built there.

Ciao until next time!

 

 

Chapter 8: Nick

David looks more hungover than I feel. Although, given the fact I haven’t slept, probably means the full force of last night’s mistakes will hit me around lunchtime. I can at least enjoy his misery for now. He winces when I bang one of the cupboard doors after I’ve found my favourite mug. I keep forgetting where we keep everything in this kitchen. 

“Jesus, Nicky, would you keep it the fuck down?” he snaps. I bang the second cupboard door for good measure.

The fun of torturing him only lasts until Mum steps into the kitchen – her face briefly worn out and withdrawn before she remembers to plaster on a smile at the last second. David and I share a glance.

“Fancy a tea, Mum?” I ask softly. David nudges a plate of toast towards her.

“Oh, you boys are good,” she murmurs. The pills she needs to sleep nowadays make her drowsy in the mornings. It’s part of the reason I have to take the bus – at least until we can afford for me to have my own car.

Given the fact that we have been reduced to a single income until David and I can both get jobs doesn't make that likely for the foreseeable. For now, we both feel useless and a little out of sorts while Mum stresses about the mortgage, feeding two massive sons and our new existence as The Nelsons. Thank fuck for maiden names.

I promise myself that I’ll go out looking for something this weekend. It’ll be a bit of a challenge, seeing as I can’t exactly give any references, but I’m sure there’s some shitty cafe or dodgy shop that might be willing to give me a chance.

I’m swirling a teaspoon in Mum’s cup when it happens: a wooziness hits me like a ton of bricks and for a moment everything goes black. When I blink, I’m suddenly on the floor and everything hurts. 

“Nicky! Baby?” Mum falls down next to me and grabs my arm. Even David looks concerned from his seat at the table. “What happened?”

I shake my head and swipe my hand across my face. I desperately need to clean my teeth and I angle my face away from her.

“’S’fine,” I mutter. “Just need something to eat, that’s all.”

She doesn’t look convinced – David, even less so – and I feel their eyes on me as I clamber back to my feet and shove a couple of slices of bread into the toaster.

Chapter 9: The Fournier Tapes: Part Two

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 2

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – METROPOLITAN POLICE HQ – NEXT DAY, MORNING]

DCI MARSHALL

Interview with Stéphane Fournier continues. Time is 08:57. Mr. Fournier, we’re going to start with one name: Nathan Price. Age twenty-six. Found at Holborn Station steps, August 14th. Burn marks on the sternum and inner wrists.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

He wore red shoes. I didn’t like that.

DS FARROW

That detail was never released to the press.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I remember colours. They outlive people. It is part of my job to remember small details.

DCI MARSHALL

You left his body out in the open. Security footage shows a man matching your build exiting the station at 3:41 a.m.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

That part of the city… it never sleeps. Not really.

DS FARROW

Did you know him?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I have no comment.

DCI MARSHALL

I thought you had no more secrets to keep?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

He looked like he used to be loud. You can always tell.

DCI MARSHALL

Tell what?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Which ones have already burned.

[Pause] 

DS FARROW

You’re talking about the burn marks. Why do that?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Because sometimes people carry their fire on the inside too long. I just... let it out.

DCI MARSHALL

Are you confessing?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No. I’m explaining inevitability.

DS FARROW

Twelve victims. All marked. All staged. Some found with notes written in French. One with a matchbook tucked under his tongue.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

People leave offerings for the dead. This is a simple fact of many cultures.

DCI MARSHALL

You want control. This is your game. But we’re not playing. Those notes… our analysts do not believe they were written by a man in control of himself.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

If you believe that, then you’re already losing. 

[Pause]

DS FARROW

What do the burn marks mean?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

They’re reminders.

[Pause]

Of what’s left after everything else goes quiet.

DCI MARSHALL

What’s left, Mr. Fournier? 

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Ashes.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 2.

Chapter 10: Nick

Notes:

Completely forgot to hit post on this one this morning!!

“You’re over there, in the corner.” 

My new form teacher – a bored-looking, middle-aged guy with a jazzy tie – points to one of the only empty tables in the room. Somewhere else in the building, mum is in a meeting with the safeguarding team about some of the security concerns she has. No one knows we’re here, in theory, but it only takes one sleuth with a camera to break our cover. Given the fact that I’m eighteen now, there’s not a lot that can be done to stop the vultures outside of the school grounds, but at least in here there’s some degree of privacy if it all goes tits-up.

The teacher – Mr Lange – has at least referred to me as Nick Nelson as he scans the new fire register that was handed to him as I stood awkwardly in front of his desk. There’s not a flicker of recognition on his face, so clearly he’s not a true crime aficionado. Then again, there’s not a flicker of anything other than bland curiosity on the faces of any of the boys in his room. It’s the same blank look a cow might give a passing Volvo.

No one knows who I am, and I feel the tension headache that has been stabbing my temple since breakfast lessen slightly. I’m still hungover as shit, but at least I’m not fielding questions from nosey classmates who are desperate for a voice slot on that fucking podcast.

It’s also a bit of a relief to see that I’m sitting at a table on my own. I can get my bearings a little without having to make small talk. Particularly because this form seems to be made up of boys from different year groups. Not all of them are wearing the Sixth Form uniform and some of them even look like they’re barely out of primary school.

I’ve only got a few months left until my A Levels are over and if I can scrape decent enough grades I can move away for uni and never look back. Maybe I’ll even go as far as Scotland: being that close to David when he eventually goes back to university will be worth it if it gets me further away from all of this.

Although – who am I kidding? There isn’t anyone in the whole of this island who hasn’t heard of Dad, at this point.

I’m settling into the uncomfortable plastic chair and organising the new notebook Mum bought me – for the fresh start, she said – when a slightly harried voice breaks the quiet.

“Sorry I’m late, Sir,” a boy pants by Mr Lange’s desk. “Had to go pick up this thing.”

Whatever it is, it’s small enough to hold in the palm of his hand because Mr Lange is looking at the boy’s outstretched palm with a frown.

“Ah, yes,” he says after a beat. “I suppose congratulations are in order. Now, go take a seat.”

Uh oh.

There’s only one available seat, and it’s right next to mine.

When the boy turns around, he’s too busy fixing something to the lapel of his blazer to really notice me. It gives me a chance to look at him properly before he notices me staring.

He has curls. And dimples. And full lips that he’s drawn into a pout as he concentrates on fiddling with the backing. His is the kind of face that, in another life, I might have let myself enjoy looking at.

I let my eyes flit down from his face as he pulls his hand away from his lapel and I see the pin badge he’s been busy affixing to the fabric:

Head boy.

Best not to get too close, then. Last thing I need is to attract the attention of the popular kids.

Still, when he sits down next to me and reaches up to brush a curl from his face, my stomach flips a little.

“Hi,” he murmurs. I feel my lips twitch into a smile.

“Hi.”

Damnit.

Chapter 11: Crime Time Episode 3: London Calling

Click for podcast transcript

Hey guys! Magdalena here, ready to bring you all the juiciest gossip for our special anniversary series all about Stéphane Fournier. Last week, Wendall told you all about the tragedy that many people believe was the catalyst for all of his awful crimes. This week, we’re skipping forward to his arrival in London, the seemingly normal life he built with his family and how he managed to fool everyone around him.

So we know that Stéphane moved to London at some point in the late 1990s. Records are a bit hazy from that time, but the move came at a pinnacle time in his career. Stéphane graduated from Université de Lorraine in 1995 and was described by his professors as a dedicated student with a bright future ahead of him. After graduation, he bounced between Paris and the Loire Valley for a few years before eventually moving to London to chase his career. 

Gerard: That’s where he met his wife.

Yes! That’s where he met the future Mrs Fournier, one Sarah [redacted]. Now, her maiden name has never been released to the press, so there’s very little to go on, but we know that she and Stéphane met at a charity event that was being hosted at the hospital in which she worked. Stéphane – by all accounts very handsome and suave – convinced her to take a chance on dating him, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Gerard: They ended up having two sons.

David and Nicholas who, again, have been shielded from a lot of the press surrounding this case. Now, if you’re subscribed to our Patreon you’ll be able to see the only known image of the boys: a courtroom sketch that our researchers have managed to get their hands on. If you’re not a member, now’s the time to subscribe, because we have a whole host of goodies for you Crime Time fans to enjoy.

But first, let’s get on with the story.

Stéphane and Sarah settled in London with their two boys and, by all accounts, the boys had a fairly normal upbringing.

Wendall: if you ignore the serial killing dad and what happened in June 2021.

Yep, and we’ll absolutely get to all of that.

But for all intents and purposes, until their dad’s arrest… the boys didn’t really know anything weird was going on. Their dad sometimes worked away – back in Paris, where there’s speculation that he might have even more victims – and their mum worked hard to provide them with a stable, loving home. Again, there’s not a lot to go on with what the boys experienced, but neighbours report that the boys were happy, healthy and polite, all the way up to when they packed up and disappeared in the night after Stéphane’s arrest.

Those same neighbours talk with absolute horror about having no idea what was going on with Stéphane even as they joined the family for dinner parties and other social events. They describe Stéphane as charismatic and welcoming, with the picture perfect family.

So how exactly did this perfect family fall apart almost overnight? Tune in next week when Gerard will be talking us through Stéphane’s first known killings in Paris.

Chapter 12: Charlie

Notes:

A note about the podcasts: I’m very much using them as a vehicle for plot. I don’t for one second think that there are any true crime podcasting fanatics out there who would actually have a court drawing of two boys as a Patreon incentive! At least… I hope not.

“Who’s the new guy?”

I glance up from where I’ve been picking at the crusts of my sandwich and follow Tao’s gaze. He’s staring directly at my new seatmate – Nick Nelson – who has plonked himself down on a picnic bench alone and is working his way through a bag of crisps with a frown.

“Nick. He sits next to me in form.” Tao and Isaac look at me expectantly. “I guess we haven’t had much of a chance to talk. He seems okay.”

Isaac cranes his neck to get a better look at Nick. When I kick him in the shins, it doesn’t seem to put him off.

“He looks like he should be a wrestler,” he says, when he has apparently got a good enough look.

“I think he plays rugby. He asked me whether the school has a team, at least.”

This is already the final straw for Tao, who rolls his eyes dramatically. Isaac and I exchange a look.

“I swear you better not end up with a straight-boy crush on a rugby lout.” He shudders dramatically.

“Lout?” Issac laughs. “You’re such an old woman.”

To my horror, when I glance up, Nick is looking at us. There’s something in his expression that I can’t quite read; it’s either interest or confusion.

More likely the latter, considering the way my friends are carrying on.

“He does give off very straight vibes,” Isaac says thoughtfully. “But then again, we’ve been wrong before.”

I kick him in the shin again.

“This is a stupid conversation, because I’ve barely spoken to him. I don’t just develop a crush on any boy who sits next to me, you know.”

They give me a shared look which tells me that they don’t quite agree with this analysis, but I’m in no mood to argue.

Nick is cute.

But he’s also a little moody and standoffish. I’ve tried to strike up a conversation these past few weeks and every time it’s been peanuts in response. Yesterday, I even settled for asking him if he was also hooked on that stupid podcast like everyone else and he looked at me like I’d just stabbed a dog in front of him. Suffice to say, I didn’t try again.

So, definitely no major crush developing anytime soon. Doesn’t mean I can’t sneak a glance every now and then when we’re sitting together during form time, though. 

A couple of times, I swear I’ve even caught him looking back.

“Charlie!” Tao snaps, clicking his fingers in front of my face and bringing me out of my daydream. To my horror, I realise that I’ve still been staring at Nick, who has definitely noticed.

“What?” I snap back. Across the quad, Nick goes back to his packet of crisps.

“I said, are you coming to our film night on Friday?”

I stutter in response. He’ll kill me if I say no. Our weekly film nights have been reduced to monthly ones now that Elle’s at Lambert. Unfortunately, this weekend is the only one that my favourite bouncer is due to work for a while, and if I’m going to enjoy a night out I need to strike while the iron’s hot. Fortunately, Isaac comes to my rescue.

“Actually, Tao, can we make it next week instead?” he says casually. “It’s my nan’s birthday Saturday and Mum has planned dinner that night.”

He winks at me. Even Tao won’t argue with family dinners.

Thank you, I mouth. 

When I glance back up, Nick is looking at me again.

Chapter 13: The Fournier Tapes: Part Three

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 3

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – METROPOLITAN POLICE HQ – EVENING]

DS FARROW

Twelve victims. Each left on the steps of a different Underground station, both here and in Paris. Our detectives could find no link between them; no overlapping lines, no obvious pattern. So we have to ask: Why the Tube?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

London’s blood runs in those tunnels. They’re part of the city’s true body.

DCI MARSHALL

That sounds rehearsed.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Not at all. There’s a difference between rehearsed and practiced.

DCI MARSHALL

Will we find those words buried in a notebook somewhere once we search your house?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Who can say. Perhaps this entire endeavour will end up fruitless for you.

DS FARROW

You placed them where people would find them.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Not find. Discover. There’s a difference.

DS FARROW

Was that part of the thrill? To know that you’d ruin more lives with the way you left them? Did you ever stop to think about the impact of your actions on everyone involved?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Do you think about the consequences of every action you take? Do you think of the impact of the coffee you buy or the petrol you consume? We are all preoccupied with the here and the now; the stone dropped in the pond. None of us have time to think of the ripples that expand even after we’ve turned our backs.

DCI MARSHALL

Enough. Let’s move on to the burn marks. Matchbooks. French phrases written near two of the bodies. Notes found on the others. What might drive someone to do all that?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

If you’ll indulge me in conjecture: Burning purifies. The matchbooks are for whoever wants to finish the job. And the French? That’s just habit. It’s been too long since I was able to speak it. My sons barely bother and my wife is not fluent.

DS FARROW

You said ‘whoever wants to finish the job’. Do you think you’re some kind of myth? Someone worth emulating?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No. Just a man who knows what people truly want.

DCI MARSHALL

So what were they? Messages?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No. Warnings.

Pause.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

We bury our dead under cities, you know. The Underground is just the mouth.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 3.

Notes:

Yes, I changed the police tapes from Truham Police to Metropolitan police because I realised it made no sense. No, I am not sleeping well, why do you ask?

Chapter 14: Nick

Notes:

I said in a comment on the previous chapter that I've been very much enjoying writing the police tape chapters and trying to hit that fine line between Stéphane clearly thinking he's a genius... and him actually talking utter bullshit. I feel like if I were interviewing a serial killer I'd be DCI Marshall – completely done with his crap.

Friday night is apparently student night, which means that the entire vibe is a major shift from the last time I was here. There aren’t any older guys who are willing to be persuaded to share whatever pills are in their pockets. Instead, they’ve been replaced by a bunch of scantily clad girls around my age and the polo-shirt-wearing guys who are chasing them. Once or twice in the crowd, I swear I spot someone that I recognise from the school gates and so I turn and leave before anyone can drag me into their jumping rendition of a classic Avicii song. The cheap shots aren’t quite enough to risk getting close to anyone that I have to see every day.

I’m stepping out onto the pavement by eleven, which is far too early for me to try and sneak home. Mum will have just gone to bed; the sleeping pills won’t have kicked in enough for me to get up the trellis without waking her and I still haven’t owned up to having lost my key. As far as she’s aware, I’ve been staying after school to work on my homework and just happen to get home the same time she does every day. It’s been nearly three weeks and she’s clearly proud enough of me for my attitude that I don’t have the heart to let her know the truth.

So, time to kill before I go home, I guess.

I wander away from the club – in the opposite direction to home. There are a few older guys hanging around outside an off licence on the corner when I reach a turn and, beyond that, there’s a small queue. When I get closer, it’s clearly another club.

Except this one hasn’t got the massive jeering crowd outside waiting for cheap drinks. There’s a pride flag on the fence outside and the entrance seems to be down in a cellar; as the bouncer waves people through, their heads descend rapidly down some steep steps.

It’s worth a look, at least. Especially when I pull my phone out to google the name and realise that it’s open until five in the morning.

At the entrance, I’m waved in before a gaggle of women who are giggling by the top of the stairs. One of them winks at me as I walk past. The bouncer rolls his eyes.

There’s no signal when I reach the bottom of the steps and slip inside, so I pocket my phone and head to the bar. Mum has never realised that I’ve been gone before – and besides, I'm eighteen now – but it still makes me a little nervous to be completely out of reach just in case she does happen to make a late night trip to check on me and David. A double vodka does the trick in making those particular nerves disappear.

This place isn’t as busy as the other club, although it’s small enough that it feels just as packed in and I have to barge past a few people to really assess what’s going on. I don’t feel like dancing, and this place doesn’t seem to have an outside smoking area, so I’m genuinely considering downing my drink and ordering another one when I spot someone familiar in the crowd.

At least, he’s vaguely familiar. Usually, when he’s sitting next to me in the mornings he’s not wearing eyeliner, or glitter on his collarbones. And that cropped band t-shirt is definitely not part of the sixth-form dress code.

Turns out, the polite head boy that I have found myself glancing over at whenever I get the opportunity has a dark side.

“Charlie?”

He whips round, while the guy who’s been dancing up against him glares at me.

“Problem, mate?” the guy snaps – his voice muffled by the thumping music around us. I shrug.

“No problem, I—”

I’m cut off by Charlie launching himself at me. He throws his arms around my shoulders and buries his face in my neck.

“Just go with it,” he hisses against my ear, before he pointedly nips at my earlobe. It takes me a moment to recover from the shock of feeling that courses through me enough to realise that the other guy has wandered off in a huff.

“Charlie— I— what the fuck?”

“Sorry.” He drops me like it burns to touch me. Weirdly, I miss the feel of him instantly. It’s been ages since anyone other than my mum wanted to go anywhere near me. “That guy wasn’t exactly taking no for an answer.”

“What are you doing here?”

He shrugs.

“Same as you, I guess.” The flicker of interest on his face doesn’t escape my notice. “Not that I’m assuming anything.”

“I—” I clam up as soon as I start. What exactly is there to say? I thought I liked a guy and then my life fell apart? I think you’re really pretty too? I still like girls though?

Instead, I say nothing of any real use and glance at the entrance instead.

“How did you get in here, anyways?” I ask. “Aren’t you in year twelve?”

Charlie glares at me. I’ve had to raise my voice above the pulsing music and it’s clearly pissed him off.

“Would you shut the fuck up?” he snaps at me, grabbing my arm and dragging me away from the edge of the dance floor. As we walk, his hand slips down into mine and holds on tight, and he doesn’t let go until we push through what I originally thought was an emergency exit but turns out to be the doors to a dingy corridor.

“One of the bouncers never checks my ID because I hooked up with him once,” Charlie says when he has dragged me far enough down the corridor that the music is a low ringing in our ears instead of a pounding din. “That is, so long as your big fucking mouth doesn’t get me caught.”

“S-Sorry,” I stammer. Honestly? I think I’m a little taken aback at the mouth on the person I had so far assumed was a fairly boring and squeaky-clean – albeit easy on the eyes – head boy. I scramble for something else to say. “I didn’t realise you were—”

“Gay?”

“Yeah.”

Almost instantly, Charlie’s face softens into something that almost seems like amusement. He screws his lips up before he grins at me.

“You haven’t spoken to many people at Truham yet, have you?”

At last count? I think I’ve managed to get by speaking to about six people, teachers included. I’m waiting on a trial for the rugby team, after I introduced myself to the coach, and I’ve never ignored Charlie when he says hello to me in the mornings. Everyone else, though? I may as well not exist to them.

“I’ve been trying to keep myself to myself,” I say quietly. Charlie nods like he understands, but doesn’t say anything else.

“Well…” he says slowly, his fingers reaching out to touch mine. “Maybe we should start over?”

Chapter 15: David

The phone buzzing in his pocket is hard to ignore. The acoustics in this tiny, concrete room make it even worse; rather than a light buzz it's a dull droning that seems to rebound around his skull. David wonders, briefly, if the whisky he had at a pub nearby to calm his nerves might already be causing a hangover. But the more pressing matter is who is on the other end of the line. It’s midday – time for his lunchtime catch up – and if he doesn’t answer he knows she’s going to worry.

“Hey, Mum, what’s up?”

Her voice crackles slightly on the reply. Signal in here is shockingly bad. 

“H— sweet— Are —ou on lunch?”

David winces.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m in the staffroom,” he lies. “Think my phone is playing up a bit. I can’t hear you very well. Can I call you back?”

The comment clearly passes her by because she carries on chatting away like he has asked about her day. It makes him feel like even more of a bad son; the question didn’t even occur to him to ask.

“How’s Nicky doing?” he asks, his voice loud and obnoxious down the line; the clipped yell of someone trying to bridge the language barrier in a foreign bar by speaking louder and slower. It seems to do the trick, at least, because he hears her sigh down the line.

“Better, I think. He left his room this weekend… met a friend. Feels like I’ve got my baby back, a bit.”

David grunts bitterly. Nothing like being reminded that you were the favourite son of the parent who left.

Does it count as leaving if the police dragged you away? Or, is it all just a sign that the dad he knew never existed in the first place?

Suddenly, the door to the room swings open and a different woman with a clipboard frowns at him. She’s stocky, with hair tied back into a bun that gives her the severe look of a headteacher who has been confronted with a child who has started a fight. David has the extreme urge to try and justify why they shouldn’t call his mum.

“David Nelson? Here to visit inmate ME1704?”

He sucks in his breath. This feels even worse than them calling his mum on him; an insidious lie exposed.

“David?” His mum’s voice is quiet now and, somehow, suddenly perfectly clear. “Where are you?”

Notes:

Will I tie everything together in the planned 47 chapters? Time will tell.

Chapter 16: Crime Time Episode 4: The Bells of Notre Dame

Notes:

Meet the final member of the Crime Time team!

Click for podcast transcript

Hi guys, Gerard here to take you through this week’s very special episode of Crime Time. Last week. Magdalena set the stage for this quiet, unassuming family that would be ripped apart by the arrest of Stéphane Fournier. This week, I’m taking you even further back, to Stéphane’s time in Paris, and those initial killings that went unsolved for so long.

If there’s one thing we know about this case, it’s that there’s always going to be more to discover. Stéphane Fournier never intended to admit the full extent of his crimes – with some commentators speculating that he only ever intended to confess fully to his own sons. The notebook that was eventually his downfall – detailing a bunch of crimes that police could confirm as well as the fantasies of a psychopath – had pages missing from the very beginning. So it’s difficult to really know the full extent of what went on before he moved to London. 

All we do know is that Maxime Renaud is, officially, his first kill.

Maxime was a twenty year old student from Calais who was living in Paris while completing his bachelors degree in music. A bit of a player, Maxime was also a model student despite his love of partying. 

He died with his throat slit on the steps of Cité Station, while the bells of Notre Dame chimed. Burn marks on his clothes implied that Stéphane’s original intention had been to destroy all evidence of his crime but, when that failed, he used some sort of implement to brand the boy’s skin instead.

When a passerby discovered the body and called the police, they found a note on the ground nearby that was almost indecipherable. Fournier’s defence attorney eventually would use this as evidence that his client was not of sound mind for any of the killings: an argument that was rendered moot by Stéphane’s own insistence that every crime had been committed with the utmost precision.

Still, after his eventual arrest, officers in London managed to link Stéphane to this particular cold case and it became the bedrock of a case that had two judicial systems tied up for weeks.

Why were the authorities so obsessed with this first killing? Why are they so convinced he was the first? The key may be in the victim himself, Maxime Renaud.

We understand that, after the arrest of their only remaining son, Monsieur and Madame Fournier destroyed any photographs of the two boys that they considered gone forever: one dead, one dead to them. However, our research has uncovered school photographs of the boys from their days at boarding school in Lyon. While we went looking for more information about Stéphane as a boy, it was actually the discovery of an image of his brother – Jean-Luc Fournier – that was particularly interesting in that he bears more than a passing resemblance to Stéphane’s first victim.

So, what are we to believe? That Stéphane was driven so mad with grief that he had no choice but to go down this grisly path? Or, was he simply finishing a job he felt was unfinished? Who set the fire that killed Jean-Luc? Or is this all one terrible coincidence?

Tune in next week when Magdalena will be taking us on a journey of the rituals from Stéphane’s first killings in Paris, all the way to his gruesome signature in London.

Chapter 17: Charlie

Notes:

I’m not sure how happy I am with this chapter, but here it is anyway.

It takes longer than it should before I finally let myself admit that I’m a little bit obsessed with Nick’s mouth. For starters, it quirks up on one side when he’s smiling at the face I pull when I down a particularly disgusting shot, and it gives just enough when I lean forward to kiss him in response. But it's not just that.

I am obsessed when he cups my face on the dance floor and parts my lips with his own.

I’m obsessed when he plants his elbows either side of my head against the toilet cubicle wall and pants hotly against my cheek as I trail my hand down.

I’m obsessed when he presses open-mouthed kisses against my throat as I tip my head back to down another shot.

And I’m obsessed when he pulls me into the last cubicle in the banged-up toilets and sinks down to his knees. 

But it’s not until we’ve stumbled up the stairs and out onto the pavement, a bouncer hot on our tails and Nick’s hand clasped in mine, that I let myself really admit it to myself: I can't take my eyes off of him.

Neither of us want to go home, so I let him lead me in the wrong direction and we amble aimlessly through the streets. Elsewhere, Tao will be complaining that Elle has fallen asleep during the third – and in his eyes most important – film of the night, while Isaac will be pretending not to read his book on his phone. I should be missing them, really, but it’s hard to feel like I’m missing out when Nick is murmuring softly by my side.

Eventually, we come across a park that someone had failed to lock up for the night, and we ease the squeaking gate open and sneak inside. When I glance at my phone, it’s nearly 4am and I realise…

This Nick Nelson – the one I have discovered over a few hours in a dingy club – does not stop talking.

Once he gets going, it’s as if he needs to get out every thought that has ever occurred to him. He tells me about how close he is to his mum; how his dickhead brother is barely home; his dog, Nellie; his new bedroom and the way it's bigger than his old one; the house he grew up in and even the neighbour across the road whose curtain won’t stop twitching. He tells me how weird it’s been to start a new school this close to the end, and how determined he thought he was to just keep himself to himself.

I have to laugh, at that.

He doesn't mention his dad, and when I ask about his parents he's very careful to just talk about his mum, as if his dad doesn't exist. I don't want to ask if he's dead or just a waste of space. Nick segues the conversation to the rest of his family in any case; he's got an aunt and an uncle who live in Truham, apparently, and Nick's little family moved here to be closer to them. When I mention how close I am to Tori, he almost seems a little sad.

By the time we're crossed the park and dropped down onto a pair of swings that creak and squeal at the weight of us, it feels like there couldn’t possibly be anything more to learn about him.

I know the feel of his hair between my fingers and the way his eyes water as he swirls his tongue around my cock and stares up at me. I know that he loves the rain, and the sound that it made on the tiny, rickety old conservatory at his old house in London. I know that he’s worried that it’ll never sound the same here. I know that he’s not been kissed a lot; I can feel it in the way his lips seek mine out with more nerves than when he put his mouth on me, his hands cupping the back of my thighs. I know that he’s like me; using sex as a way to desperately grasp as a connection.

I also know that there’s a big chance he doesn’t even realise that’s what he’s doing.

By the time he lets up and tips his head back to stare at the stars, I know that he’s a mountain of contradictions in one incredibly fit package, and I know that I’m desperate for more.

Still, there’s something that he’s holding back. I can tell by the way his eyes widen in panic whenever I ask him a question – like he’s searching for a safe answer. It’s not like I can blame him. He’s learnt the shape of me in his hand as he palmed me over my boxers while I reached inside his and stroked him in another dingy cubicle. He’s learnt the way I take charge during kisses – his clumsiness no match for the way I know it’s something I'm good at. He’s learnt that things between my mum and I are strained; the way they have been since last summer. He’s learnt that there aren’t many people in the world that I trust.

He doesn’t know about the eating disorder, or the compulsions, or the way they still threaten to consume me every single day.

So, I guess we’re both keeping something back.

He’s staring beyond the trees that line the park – the swing gently creaking back and forth where he’s rocking on the balls of his feet – and I follow his gaze into the distance. I think he’s staring at a billboard – one of the ones that has been put up for that viral podcast – but I don’t exactly want to bring that up again. Instead, I break the silence by clearing my throat.

“You could hang out with my friends on Monday,” I whisper after a beat, reaching out to hook my pinky finger in his. It feels a little scary, to touch him in the quiet, despite everything we’ve done tonight. His eyes widen as soon as my fingertip brushes against his knuckle.

“I— Well—” he stammers. I snap my hand back and shove it in my lap.

“Forget it, you don’t have to.”

My cheeks flame with embarrassment, until Nick reaches out and takes my hand in his.

“I want to,” he says quietly. When I glance up at him, his eyes are shining. “It’s just… Been a while since I’ve had friends to hang out with.”

“We don’t bite, I promise.” I don’t add, unless you want me too . Personal growth, I think.

Chapter 18: The Fournier Tapes: Part Four

Notes:

Thanks for the lovely comments on the previous chapter!

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 4

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – NEXT DAY, MID-MORNING]

DCI MARSHALL

Let’s talk about Paris. March 1998. Maxime Renaud. Burned. Abandoned near Cité Station near Notre Dame. French police could never work out what the symbol on his wrist was meant to be.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

He wore brass rings.

DS FARROW

Again, that detail wasn’t made public.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Then perhaps I was there. Perhaps their inscription stayed on my skin for days after the struggle.

DCI MARSHALL

We know you were there. Flight records place you in Paris that week. We know you took a flight from Limoges airport to Charles de Gaul. You arrived on the Tuesday, Maxime was killed some time in the early hours of Wednesday and then you departed for home on the Thursday morning. Was his body even cold before you boarded your flight?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

He called himself Max. He smiled like he didn’t mean it. I saw him with his girlfriends outside of a club. He lit a cigarette each for them all. I remember seeing the flame in the dark.

DS FARROW

Mr Fournier, your attempts at distraction won’t work. Was he your first?

Pause.

DCI MARSHALL

Mr Fournier, you’ve already told us that you knew him – that you were there.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I believe that, when you play the tape back, that I used the word ‘perhaps’. Is there some difficulty in understanding the meaning of that word? Should I have used another? English is a clumsy language in comparison to French.

DCI MARSHALL

Regardless, Mr Fournier, we can drop the charade. Everyone in this room knows that you did it – your family knows that you did it. There’s nothing further to gain from distraction tactics. I’m giving you an opportunity to tell your side of the story, not to continue to waste our time under the delusion that it might gain you some advantage. This is it. This is the end.

Pause

So, we ask you again: Was he your first?

Pause

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No. He was just the first I didn’t dream about afterward. I was younger, then. Sloppier. Things had not fallen into place for me.

DS FARROW

You mean personally? You hadn’t met your wife? Had your sons?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Amongst other things. I hadn’t yet figured out my purpose in life. I had no direction. Life in France was too much the same as it had always been, and when I moved to London… things clicked into place. That symbol… it came to me in a dream in Paris. Its rightful form did not reveal itself to me until much later, long after I moved to London.

DCI MARSHALL

Did you regret it at all?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I don’t remember regret feeling like that.

DS FARROW

Like what?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Like relief.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 4.

Chapter 19: Nick

Notes:

Oops, a slightly late update today!

Monday morning feels like it takes an age to arrive, even with me losing a chunk of Saturday to a well-earnt hangover. Charlie and I forgot to exchange numbers when we finally said goodbye – delirious in the early hours of the morning with lips numb from kisses and brains foggy from vodka – so it felt like an endless stretch of wondering. 

Did he wake up thinking about me? 

Has he spent the rest of the weekend, like me, checking his phone even though he knows a message won’t appear?

Or, were we just a bit of fun in a moment?

Either way, I get to school early enough that I’ve run through every single possible awkward scenario before any of my classmates have even walked through the door.

I don’t look at any of them. I’m too busy waiting for Charlie. Today is, apparently, the first day of the term so far when he’s been late.

Then, he’s there: his uniform pristine, his curls spiralling across his forehead and looking far more put together than the boy who came in my mouth a little over forty-eight hours ago. He stops to talk to Mr Lange on the way in, his fingers wrapped around the strap of his bag as he smiles politely and nods to some comment that I might be able to hear if the blood wasn’t pounding in my ears. I tighten my fists in my lap and wait for the moment that he turns round and I can read his face properly.

When he winks at me, I feel like the breath has been punched out of me, in the very best way.

“Hi,” he murmurs when he sits down next to me. His hand finds mine under the table – I tug it into my lap and press the pad of my thumb into the space between his knuckles. “I missed you.”

“Yeah,” I breathe. “Yeah I missed you too.”

This is a slight understatement, all things considered. I feel like I’ve been going mad this weekend, but I’m not about to admit that. Not least because everyone’s conversations are starting to naturally lull around us as people realise the room is filling up and Mr Lange is about to take the register. I feel the resistance in Charlie’s hand where it’s sandwiched between my thighs and let him go reluctantly. When he sits on his hands, I feel a flutter of something in my gut at the idea that he still wants to touch me. The room falls quiet as Mr Lange starts to drone our names, until Charlie leans in close enough that I can feel his breath on my ear.

“You still want to eat lunch with us?”

“Y-yeah,” I stutter back. He smells of sandalwood. I recognise the scent from the day David and I spent hours in a shopping centre trying to find a new aftershave for him to wear: one that didn’t remind him of Dad. I liked the sandalwood, David went with something citrusy. Right now, I couldn’t be more glad. I can’t think of anything worse than the guy I fancy smelling like my brother.

I mean, I obviously can, but it’s not like I want to think about that right now.

“We eat on the field, usually. The picnic benches round the back?” Charlie says casually, as if I haven’t just taken a deep inhale with my face suspiciously close to his hair. I nod mutely.

I’ve seen Charlie’s mates around the school: a quiet boy who always has his nose in a book and their tall, angry friend. I have no idea how they’ll cope with an outsider suddenly appearing at lunchtime, but I guess there’s only one way to find out.

🍃🍃🍃

It turns out, they cope by either pretending I’ve always been there, or that I’m not there at all. It’s difficult to tell either way. The quiet one – Isaac, apparently – spends most of his time with his headphones on and his nose buried in a book. Every so often, he gasps as if he’s read something shocking, before he turns a page and frowns. Next to me on the picnic table, Tao is ranting about a film they all watched at the weekend that apparently Charlie missed. When he mutters something about Charlie clearly having better plans, I feel the tip of Charlie’s school shoe graze my calf and tremble slightly.

It’s nice, sitting here with them. Neither Isaac nor Tao made a fuss when I crept over and waved my packaged sandwich as if it were an offering. Charlie’s face lit up as soon as he saw me and I clocked the look that his friends gave one another.

He’s definitely mentioned me. The thought of it gave me a little thrill as I offered round the off-brand crisps that Mum bought on her last trip to Aldi. 

I’m too busy enjoying the feel of Charlie touching me – the toe of his shoe against my leg; his fingertip trailing the inside of my wrist as he steals a crisp; his knee bumping against mine – to be paying much attention to the conversation. It feels floaty, and safe, and everything that life hasn’t been recently.

Eventually, Isaac tugs his headphones free from his ears and whacks Charlie lightly on the arm.

“Seriously, Charlie, I need someone to talk to about this week’s episode of Crime Time. Have you really not started listening yet? You’ve got like a month to catch up on.”

I don’t hear Charlie’s reply. 

I don’t think it’s possible to hear anything with the way the blood is pounding in my ears.

There’s some bickering between them all, before Tao makes some comment, but I’m already pushing myself up from the bench and tripping over it in my haste to get away.

“Nick—” Charlie starts, but I’m already gone; my bag dangling from my fist and dragging across the grass as I stumble away from them.

It’s so stupid.

I know everyone is listening to that stupid podcast. I have to listen to people in the corridors loudly debating whether my dad was a genius or a maniac at least once a week. I walk past three bus stop adverts on my way home from school. I begged mum to sign us up for a family Spotify plan just so it would stop cutting to their adverts every half an hour when I can’t sleep and I’m pacing around the block. It’s everywhere, and that wouldn’t change no matter where we had moved to.

But the whiplash of feeling the truth suddenly closing in when I had let my guard down is painful, and I can’t get out of there quick enough.

“Nick! Wait!” Charlie’s voice rings in my ear. I pretend not to hear him until he’s right there, darting around me and clutching my arm with a hurt expression on his face. He’s quick, it turns out. 

“Char— I’m sorry, I—”

Charlie squeezes my arm.

“Nick, just breathe. What—”

“I need to go home,” I snap, before he can ask me what’s wrong. “I don’t— I’m not well, I don’t think. I-I just need to go, I’m sorry.”

I don’t look back – I can’t look back – as I storm away and leave him there.

Chapter 20: Crime Time Episode 5: Rituals

Notes:

Thank you for all the comments and speculations so far!

I was very excited to realise that yesterday's update tipped me over 200,000 words posted on AO3 in 2025, according to my spreadsheet!

Click for podcast transcript

Hey Crime Time fans! Magdalena here, ready to hold your hand through all the grizzly details of Stéphane Fournier’s killing spree. If you’re not up to date with this special anniversary series of the podcast, make sure to look back at our previous episodes where we’ve been walking you through the case so far.

Last week Gerard walked you through Stéphane’s first official killing back in Paris. We’ve heard all about how he attempted to burn the body of Maxime Renaud on the steps of Cité Station, an attempt that failed and led to the first known symbol that became his signature. 

Now, Stéphane claims that this symbol that he eventually started burning into the skin of his victims came to him in a dream but a lot of experts think that this is something he simply made up to add to the mystique. The burn mark found on his first victim, Maxime Renaud, didn’t particularly resemble what would later become his signature, and French detectives argue that this is because he never intended for this to become part of his whole deal. When it suited him, they say, he retroactively gave meaning to something that was actually one big accident as part of the struggle.

Still, we’re all obsessed with this thing. Some people think the symbol looks satanic, others think it looks like a stylised bonfire. Check out our artist’s rendition of all the marks on our Patreon, and let us know in the comments what you think!

Now, moving on to the next part of the story. We know that Stéphane moved to London at the turn of the Millenium and met his wife, Sarah. We also know that there were two killings around that time that Stéphane was never convicted for, but which bear a striking resemblance to his later kills. Two men, found with their throats slashed near Tube stop entrances. However, in these two cases police believe that the men were able to escape Stéphane before he burnt them, eventually succumbing to their injuries after fleeing. Families of the men have been fighting for a conviction since his original arrest, however prosecutors have argued that there’s not enough evidence tying Stéphane to the crimes to secure a conviction.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that the pattern that started to emerge after that time was a sinister one. We think that Stéphane, concerned that his first two kills in London hadn’t gone to plan, laid low for a couple of years before resuming killing. There’s some speculation that on his return visits to France, he may have honed his skills, but police in either country have never been able to comprehensively prove this.

The first confirmed killing in London does go some way to supporting this theory. As our UK listeners will know: it’s pretty damn difficult to go anywhere in London without being spotted on CCTV. Long time listeners may remember that last year, when Crime Time was on our European tour, Gerard and Wendall were dared by our Patreon subscribers to get caught on as many London cameras in compromising positions. Who can forget the image of the two of them pretending to take a snake on the Underground?

But this obviously posed a problem for Stéphane. And for a long time police in London could not work out how this menacing figure was avoiding his face ever being caught on camera. Eventually, hundreds of volunteers were employed to watch hours of Underground CCTV footage to try and spot any regular faces scouting out the area, with no success.

We now know that it was Stéphane’s connections to the London architecture world that gave him this hall pass to the surveillance system. Who would have ever guessed that this respected member of one of London’s biggest firms would be using those connections for such evil?

Hard to believe, and yet it was these connections that allowed a killing spree that spanned nearly two decades to continue.

Chapter 21: Charlie

 

This is probably a bad idea, I realise, as I stand in front of what I hope is Nick’s front door. He ran out of school so quickly that, by the time I made it back to the bench where Tao and Isaac were furiously whispering, they’d already come up with about five conspiracy theories about him. They talked me through them, at length, until I got annoyed and told them to stop being stupid.

Tao’s theory, which was promptly shut down by Isaac for logistical reasons, is that Nick is secretly the serial killer in question and the police got the wrong guy. The fact that most of these particular murders occured before Nick was even born was apparently not enough to dissuade Tao, so Nick might also be a ghost.

Isaac’s theory: he knows one of the victims that that stupid podcast has been talking about. When Isaac asked me the name of Nick’s brother, I realised that I couldn’t remember. Or, he never told me. Which prompted about five minutes discussion over which victim of Stéphane Whatshisface is most likely related to Nick.

Elle’s theory, once Tao had her on speakerphone, was that we’re all idiots. She pointed out how hard it is to make friends in a new school and that our little close-knit group of misfits are probably a bit intimidating.

And me? I’ve got nothing. 

I know that there’s something going on with Nick that goes beyond a socially awkward panic attack. And I know that for some reason he really hates that podcast.

I'm just not as dramatic as my friends. So I’ve got visions of an ex who was obsessed with true crime media that Nick just can’t get over. Which would be sad for me, because I very much want to get under him.

I knock, finally.

There’s some muttering and swearing behind the door before Nick finally opens it, and when he sees me standing there his eyes widen.

“Charlie! What are you—”

“You ran away,” I shrug. “I guess I wanted to check that you were okay.”

“How did you know where I lived?”

I raise an eyebrow at him.

“There are perks to being head boy, you know. No one really bats an eyelid when you wander into the office and ask to use a computer quickly.”

“Well… shouldn’t they?”

That’s a conversation for another day, and when Nick is over the shock of me being here he steps aside and gestures for me to come in. I let myself have a moment to look around his hallway. His house is incredibly ordinary – like a showroom: no photos, no knick knacks, no real personality. There’s nothing that might tell me who he is . He glances around awkwardly.

“You want to go to my room?”

Very much so, but probably not for the same reason he’s thinking. He waves towards one of the back rooms.

“My mum’s having a nap on the sofa. I’m not trying anything. It’s just… she gets tired.”

He doesn’t need to explain, and when I slip my hand into his and nod towards the stairs he leads the way quietly.

In his room, he lets go of my hand and sighs.

“I’m sorry… for running out of there. I—”

I reach up to touch his lip with the pads of my fingers.

“Nick, it’s fine. Seriously. Like… I get that you’re hiding something… like there’s something you don’t want to tell me. But that’s fine.”

Nick exhales slowly.

“Just… tell me when you’re ready, okay?”

He nods, and it’s enough for now. 

We seem to go from upright and awkward to horizontal and kissing quite quickly after that. Nick pulls me close and parts my lips and then there’s a lot of tumbling and clinging to one another and, once again, we’re using touch instead of words. It’s like the club all over again, except this time there isn’t the thrill of getting caught or the fuzz of alcohol in our veins. It’s just us, feeling out every inch of one another above our clothes and panting headily in the quiet.

I want him… so much.

“Can I use your shower?” I whisper suddenly, and Nick’s eyes go wide. He nods without saying anything – a strange, quiet, choked sound in the back of his throat – and points to a towel that is neatly folded on top of his chest of drawers.

I guess I’ll go find it myself, then.

Luckily, it’s fairly obvious where the bathroom is – it’s the only room where the door has been left open – and I lock it behind me. There are various shower gels and shampoos lined up around the edge – far more than a family of three needs – and they’re all nearly full and different scents and brands, like someone has decided to try a bunch of them out. I reach for the one that I think will make me smell most like Nick, and get to work prepping myself for what I hope is about to happen.

When I wander back into Nick’s bedroom – my clothes bundled in my arms and the towel tucked around my hips – I have to catch my breath at the sight of him. His school trousers and boxers are gone; his shirt splayed open. At some point he must have reached up to tug at his own hair because it’s mussed up and sticking out in every direction. 

More pertinently, he’s got this look of bliss on his face as he strokes himself slowly that makes be want to bite him. Eyes closed, lips parted. My name, somewhere on the tip of his tongue, as he breathes. It’s there on the exhale; the whistle of air as his hand stalls and his eyes flutter open.

Next time, I think, I’m going to let myself undress him. I’ll kiss every inch of pale skin as I unbutton his shirt.

Next time.

He looks at me wantonly when I drop the towel at the edge of the bed and clamber into his lap. Both his hands come up to squeeze at my waist. He doesn’t take his eyes off of me when he leans in to kiss me: everything goes fuzzy where we’re desperately trying to maintain some degree of eye contact, like we’re afraid the other one might disappear if we dare to blink.

I tease the head of his cock with my rim, grinding down on him and delighting in the way he gasps, and he pulls back.

“I’ve never done that before,” he whispers. “I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it.”

I press a kiss to the tip of his nose.

“It’s okay, I’ll look after you.”

His eyes flutter closed and he kisses me lazily while my brain trips over itself a little.

“Actually…” I say after a beat, when he pulls back for air. “That does slightly depend on whether you have lube and condoms.”

Nick’s eyes widen again – this is about to be an education, clearly – and he scrambles around in a draw by his bedside.

“Y-yeah, I do, hang on.”

He fumbles with the condom while I decant the lube and finish getting myself ready. It takes three attempts – and two condoms – for him to manage to roll one onto himself. He’s too busy watching me with wide eyes.

Then, I straddle him again, and I have him exactly where I want him.

The stretch stings, but it’s worth it to see the moment play out on Nick’s face. The mask slips, his lip trembles, and he reaches up to cup my face.

“Kiss me?” he breathes. He sounds strangely nervous to ask, given the position we’re in, but I oblige willingly. His lips are as clumsy as ever – his hips even more so – stuttering against me as he tries to seek out a rhythm that he’s clearly not practised with. It takes everything in me not to let out a laugh at his strange, innocent eagerness.

Eventually, though, he lets me lead; my hands on his shoulders, my hips swirling against his. I’m desperately trying to find the right angle to make up for the fact that he’s not touching me when he does – wraps his hand around me and times his strokes to the movement of my hips. It’s still a little clumsy, but it works, and when we lock eyes I realise:

I’m in a very good kind of trouble, here.

Chapter 22: The Fournier Tapes: Part Five

Notes:

I hope everyone has been paying attention to these tapes and podcasts because it’s about to pay off in some plot finally tomorrow 🤣

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 5

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – DIM LIGHT, LATE NIGHT]

DCI MARSHALL

Resuming interview with Stéphane Fournier. Mr Fournier, tell us about the burns.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Liminal spaces are fascinating, are they not? These moments in time when change can occur whether we are ready for it or not. Have you ever stood alone on a platform at 3 a.m.?

DS FARROW

Answer the question, Stéphane. Why the burns?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

You feel something breathing behind you. But there’s nothing. Or no one you can see.

DCI MARSHALL

We’re not here for ghost stories, Mr Fournier. The families of your victims aren’t interested in them either. They want answers, and they deserve those answers. Now, I ask you again: why did you burn them?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

He was nine. My brother. I left the candle burning.

DS FARROW

You’re talking about the house fire. The one in Lyon in 1982? You’re saying that you caused that?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

He never screamed. I still wonder why. None of those men screamed either, but I suppose by that point they were not able to. I kept expecting them to, every time. But none of them ever made a sound. They just continued to stare at nothing, as if they could see something I could not.

DCI MARSHALL

They were dead, Mr Fournier. We know that you understand that. They couldn’t have made a sound because you killed them.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Yes, well, I suppose they were all disappointments in their way. The ones who fought back, they were much more interesting. Some of them even managed to escape the flames.

DCI MARSHALL

You’re saying that there are more victims out there? Ones we haven’t found yet?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I see my brother down there, you know. Every time. He never blinks. Never screams. Just stares and waits for me to take action. I never quite understood what he expected me to do.

DS FARROW

You’re saying he haunts you?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No. He watches. Because he knows I still owe him something.

DCI MARSHALL

Stéphane, we want to know about the burn marks. Is this your explanation?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

It’s what happens to things that are already doomed.

DCI MARSHALL

That’s very poetic, Mr Fournier. Almost rehearsed.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Like I said. Never rehearsed. Only practiced.

DCI MARSHALL

Mr Fournier, we are talking about murder, here.

Pause.

Why does that word make you smile?

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 5.

Chapter 23: Nick

Charlie stays far later than I expect him to. I’m half-bracing myself for him to make his excuses and leave the second our breathing has evened out and we’ve cleaned ourselves up. Instead, he cups my face and kisses me before tucking himself against my side.

My room feels a little less cold with him here.

At some point, I hear Mum start to stir downstairs: the telltale sounds of her opening the kitchen cupboards as she tries to remember where we keep the mugs and the teabags now. The kettle rumbles, a teaspoon tip taps against ceramic and I turn to whisper to Charlie that she’ll be confused if she catches us like this, when I realise he’s fallen asleep.

I put something mindless on the television, while I listen to the soft sound of him breathing against my collarbone.

Eventually, he stirs, and I lean down to kiss him. I like kissing him – I’ve realised I like kissing full stop – and there’s something about the way he smooths his palm across my chest before scrunching his fingers like he’s trying to hold on that drives me wild.

“You’re really good at that,” I whisper when he pulls back. His lips ghost against mine before he smiles.

“Oh yeah? I’ve had some practice.”

“Is that what I am? More practice?” I murmur, before I freeze. I’m not sure where that thought came from, or how it slipped past my lips without ever engaging my brain, but here we are. Charlie doesn’t seem to notice my panic, or if he does he chooses to ignore it. Instead, he presses four kisses along my jaw, each one a little more open-mouthed than the last.

“Do you want to be?” he whispers. I beg my mouth to say the word no, but it gets caught in my throat. Instead, I stammer:

“I-I’ve kissed someone else, before.”

Great, more words that seem to bypass any coherent thoughts. Charlie looks at me softly, like I’m a child doing something amusing. No one has looked at me like that in ages; like I’m not deliberately hiding something. 

“Yeah?” he whispers. “Tell me about them?”

I really don’t want to. But something about the way Charlie’s looking at me – coupled by the fact that he said them instead of just assuming – loosens my mouth even more than the sex has, apparently.

“I—” I swallow heavily. “There was someone… back home in London. His brother was best mates with my brother so the two of us ended up hanging out over the summer. I was nearly seventeen, but it was London, so no one bothered to drive except Ethan. I remember thinking that was really weird, but kind of cool. He kissed me one day, in his car, but—”

I bite my lip and think of that moment where my phone rang; the absolute fear that somehow David had caught me kissing a boy and he was calling me up to yell at me. The way Ethan made me put it on speakerphone so that he could stand up for me.

Then, worse, the moment where we both realised that Dad had done something bad.

“Why the fuck does dad have Nathan’s ring?”

The split second that things somehow made sense and fell apart all at once. 

Charlie must mistake the way I’ve gone quiet for a different kind of reminiscing, because he squeezes my hand. I swear he arches his back a little; a brief flash of something that might be jealousy appearing across his face. It breaks me out of my funk, just enough.

“So… would you still be kissing this guy… if you hadn’t moved?” Something that sounds like nerves flickers across Charlie’s voice and I shake my head violently.

No way Ethan is ever talking to me again. For the first time, that feels okay.

“No, I— We— He stopped talking to me long before we moved.”

“Oh?”

I test out the words in my head this time. None of them sound like the whole truth, but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances.

“His brother died.”

The room goes quiet.

Great, I’ve killed the mood. There’s a joke in there somewhere. Charlie recovers quicker than I do.

“You want to talk about it?” he whispers, and I know that he actually means it. He actually wants to listen.

Problem is, I don’t ever want to talk about it. I’m afraid that if I do, every sordid detail will come pouring out and I’ll be alone forever. But I guess here we are: naked in a room I don’t feel at home in, talking about someone I’ve tried to force myself to forget.

Charlie seems to sense my discomfort, because he slips his hand back into mine and squeezes gently.

“You don’t have to, you know, Just… if it’ll help.”

Maybe it will. People throughout Dad’s trial kept begging us to get some therapy. We tried it, as a family, but none of us could get through a session without breaking down. Maybe this is the next best thing. 

I breathe, and try to clear my head of everything except that moment I can’t let go of: sat in Ethan’s car and listening to him sob before he reached for me and kissed me. Those few seconds where everything felt right, everything made sense, before my phone rang and David shattered everything.

“His brother… he should still be here. It shouldn’t’ve happened the way it did. At first… I guess it was comforting to be around me… my brother was hurting too so I knew how much he’d meant to everyone. But then Ethan – his name was Ethan – he needed someone to blame. And he blamed me, because that made sense in his head. And I let him because… because if his brother had never met me and David… maybe he’d still be here.”

Charlie’s brow furrows, and for a moment I’m afraid that I’ve said too much. Then he throws his arms around my shoulders and holds me tight.

“How could anything like that possibly be your fault, Nick?” he whispers into the crook of my neck. I cling to him back, even though he has no idea. “I know people grieve in different ways but – fuck – Nick, that’s too much to hold over yourself.”

He doesn’t let me go. Even when the hug goes on for so long that it feels awkward. He just carries on holding me close until it starts feeling right again and we sink back down against the mattress together.

“Do you…” I trail a fingertip down his chest, as far as I can reach before our bodies become a bit too entangled under the covers to be able to go any further. “Do you want to have sex again?”

I want to get my mouth on him. I want to be inside him again. Hell, I want him to teach me how to take him too. Maybe we can stay in this bedroom forever; or at least until it starts feeling like home. I think, with him here, that wouldn’t take long. Charlie raises an eyebrow at me and hooks his leg over my hip, grinding against me.

“I—”

Bzzz!

Fuck.

The sound of his phone suddenly coming to life makes my chest hurt. 

Not again.

Not—

Charlie frowns, presses a button and the phone goes quiet.

“Sorry,” he whispers, while my heart is still pounding. “Alarm. I need to go.”

I don’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I just nod and wait for my breathing to even back out as he busies himself with slinking out of bed and getting dressed. I almost forget to be disappointed when he pulls his boxers up and over his arse, until the sight of him bending over to pick up his jeans has me in a different sort of chokehold.

“I wish you could stay,” I whisper. He looks at me kindly.

“Maybe when it’s not a Monday night?” he says gently. “My parents aren’t exactly keen on weekday sleepovers with friends, let alone someone they think I might be sleeping with.”

Oh, right.

“I’m not… out or anything.”

Something changes on Charlie’s face and he nods perfunctorily.

“Right. Gotcha.”

“I don’t mean—”

“It’s okay, Nick. We can keep this quiet.”

I feel a little like I’ve ruined something. When I jump out of bed and tug on my joggers, he’s very deliberately not looking at me.

“Char…” I murmur, cupping his face in my hands. He finally looks at me. “It’s not that I don’t want to be. I just— Things have been complicated. Can we… Can we take things slow?”

It’s a laughable question, all things considered, but Charlie nods kindly. I kiss him in a way that I hope shows him that I don’t want this to be casual. 

Things seem to switch after that. Charlie stops finding any excuse to touch me as he gets dressed and morphs back into the boy who sits silently next to me at school. Maybe it’s a form of self-preservation. I know that game, after all. His uniform is almost pristine again by the time he hooks his satchel over his shoulder and turns back to me. His tie is a little askew and one of his buttons is undone, but he could almost be leaving school at the end of the day.

Probably a good thing, because the second we reach the bottom of the stairs, Mum wanders out from the kitchen.

“Oh!” she says softly at the sight of us. Me, with my dishevelled hair and joggers, Charlie looking every bit the head boy he is. I tug at the hem of my T-shirt awkwardly. Mum raises an eyebrow at me. “Feeling better, Nicky?”

“Yeah, er— Charlie—”

“I came over to see how Nick was feeling,” Charlie says quickly, before I can fumble the lie. Mum smiles at him kindly.

“Anyways, I should…” Charlie glances over at me nervously. “I should go home, okay?”

“’Kay.”

“Bye, Mrs—” His eyes widen as he realises – to my horror – that I’ve never mentioned Dad in any capacity at all. “Ms Nelson,” he corrects politely. She gives him a warm smile.

“Nice to meet you, Charlie.”

When the door shuts behind him, Mum turns and gives me a look.

“You made a friend.”

I shove my hands into my pockets.

“Yeah, his name’s Charlie.”

“I gathered.”

“He sits next to me in form.”

“Well, maybe Charlie would like to come over for dinner one evening?”

Maybe. I still can’t gauge how casual he wants this entire thing to be; whether dinner with the mum of the guy you’re occasionally shagging is a bit weird or if this is something more. Maybe he’ll be pissed off if I don’t ask.

I’m so lost in my mini spiral that I almost don’t notice the way Mum is looking at me. Her face has switched from curious to concerned, and instantly my back is up again.

“What’s up?”

She looks back towards the kitchen, her face drawn in the way I guess I’m going to have to get used to. My heart pounds.

Eventually, she sighs and scrapes her hair back from her face.

“Your father sent you a letter.”

Notes:

👀👀

Chapter 24: David

Grey isn’t his colour. That’s the first thought that hits David when he’s sitting down on the uncomfortable metal chairs and staring at his dad for the first time in months. Stéphane is dressed in some weakly-coloured jumper and joggers set that washes him out and makes him look ill. There’s a little part of David that wonders if it might be for the best, if he were. He’s read enough blogs and watched enough YouTube discussions of his dad’s crimes to have heard every lament that the UK doesn’t have the death penalty. There’s a lot of people who would be grateful to see him dead.

There’s also, however, an equal number of people who want to watch him grow old and suffer in these four walls. So no matter what, dead or alive, people will be disappointed.

“Has Nicholas had any thoughts about university?” He’s been rambling for a few minutes, but now Stéphane’s voice is clear.

David shifts, an ache creeping up his back. There’s the natural temptation to shift the seat until he’s comfortable, but it seems to be screwed into the concrete floor. Instead, he ends up with one leg bent and propped on the other, his knee painfully squished against the edge of the table. He fixes a stoic look at his dad.

“I don’t think so. I think he feels a bit lost, all things considered.”

Stéphane lowers his gaze.

“Ah, this is not what I wished for him. A father should leave his son a legacy that prepares him for the reality of this world. Nicholas will not be able to be coddled by your mother forever.”

 David wonders how quick the prison guard response would be if he simply punched the man in the face. He decides not to try and find out.

“And your mother? Is she keeping well?”

Oh, she’s doing great, David thinks bitterly. Absolutely peachy. She can’t sleep without pills and she’s barely holding it together in front of Nicky. Sometimes I’m scared that we’ll lose her from stress alone. And you – you – want to ask if she’s keeping well.

He says none of that. Instead he shrugs and glances towards the door – where he can see the back of the head of one of the guards through the little glass viewing window.

“She’s doing as well as you might expect.”

“This is good to hear. She’s a good woman raising good sons.”

David thinks of the phone conversation he just had – the lies that tripped off his tongue as easily as his father’s. Good sons, indeed.

Chapter 25: Crime Time Episode 6: The Day He Chose to Die

Notes:

TW: discussion of a suicide attempt

Click for podcast transcript

Hey all, Magdalena here with this week’s episode of our special anniversary series all about Stéphane Fournier, London’s most prolific serial killer of the twenty-first century.

First, a warning to all our listeners that this week’ episode contains content that some people may find distressing. Here at Crime Time, we never shy away from discussing the gruesome parts of a case, but this week we’ll be delving into the suicide attempt that nearly put a stop to Stéphane himself.

Look after your mental health, y’all!

Okay, with that out of the way, we’re going to be taking you back to June 2021. If you caught our third episode of this series you’ll remember Wendall mentioning that this was a defining point in Stéphane’s son’s lives. And this is because they were actually the ones who saved their dad that day.

Neither Nicholas or David have ever responded to our request for comment, but we’ve managed to piece together a lot of what went on that day from reports in the media because this has actually been the subject of big debate within the true crime community. We know that Stéphane took a bunch of his wife’s sleeping pills while she was at work and the boys were supposed to be at their rugby club. However, for whatever reason, the boys came home early. David, the oldest, gave CPR while Nicholas called for an ambulance and the boys actually ended up saving their dad.

Now this was obviously a really difficult time for the Fournier family. Stéphane may have survived, but his attempt actually put him in hospital for weeks and the boys and their mum spent most of that time either at school, work or the hospital. We spoke to one of Nicholas’ old teachers, who told us that Nicholas went from a ‘happy, friendly kid’ to ‘withdrawn and sullen’ almost overnight. David, the oldest, was actually due to leave the family home to go to university the following September, but he ended up deferring for a year in order to be there for his parents.

Now, why is this tragic moment in this family’s lives so important?

Well, we now know that at the point he attempted suicide, Stéphane had yet to kill his final four victims. It’s difficult to know whether Stéphane would have survived without the intervention of his sons: we can assume not, but without access to his medical records we have no way of knowing. So if the boys hadn’t come home, would Alfie Trivett, Zachary Walton, Harper Douglass and Nathan Price still be alive? Were there other victims that we don’t know about?

And, more importantly, was this a sincere attempt to stop the monster inside? Did Stéphane feel a level of remorse that he never showed during his trial?

Or was it, as some true crime fans believe, an attempt to revisit those sinister dreams that Stéphane later told police about, that he blamed for all his actions?

We’ll never know for sure, but I think there’s one thing we can all agree on:

Living with that guilt? David and Nicholas, you have our deepest sympathies.

Okay all, tune in next week when we'll be talking about Nathan Price – Stéphane's final victim and best friend of his oldest son – before moving on to talking about his trial.

Notes:

Yes, I have watched Happy Face recently!

Chapter 26: Charlie

So, my mum said you should come round for dinner sometime.

If you want to, I mean.

you don’t have to.

I’d like you to, though.

if you’re interested?

The messages light up my phone one by one – a thirty second gap of presumable panic in between each of them. Tori glances over from where she’s been scribbling notes in the margin of her book; apparently body-doubling is the only way she’s getting through this particular English text and Michael is unavailable. I’ve seen her eyes flickering in my direction every time my phone buzzes against the kitchen table and finally she bursts.

“Are you going to answer whoever that is?”

I give her a coy look and shrug.

“I’ll leave him hanging for a little bit.”

I won’t, I’m already crafting a response in my head, but it’s fun to pretend, at least. Tori sees right through me and rolls her eyes.

“Not Tao, then, I take it,” she says knowingly. I notice that her book is now suspiciously closed.

“No, definitely not Tao.” I glance at the kitchen door. Mum and Dad are somewhere upstairs watching some programme they’ve become obsessed with recently, so I reckon I’m fairly safe. “I met a guy.”

“Oh? What’s he like?”

I pick my pen back up and bite my lip. The essay I’m supposed to be drafting is painfully unfinished in front of me, but I’ve been sitting here thinking of Nick this entire time.

The Nick from school, who was standoffish and quiet.

The Nick from the club, who was handsy and desperate.

The Nick from his bedroom, who was soft and eager.

All the parts of him fit together in some way, but I haven’t quite figured the configuration out yet.

Tori raises an eyebrow at me and, when I look down, I realise I’ve been doodling his name in my notebook.

“So… Nick, ay?”

“Yeah… he’s— Nick’s— he’s nice.”

“Just nice?”

“And fit, and he seems to like spending time with me. He almost put up with an entire lunchtime with Tao ranting about that stupid podcast you’re all listening to before he ran off.”

“Not a true crime fan?”

I shake my head, but it’s more than that. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but he’s not not listening out of bored stubbornness, like me. There’s something else and I don’t think a couple of nights spent together and a few mornings spent sitting in silence give me the right to ask, yet.

“He— I don’t know. He’s weird, sometimes.”

I clock the look my sister gives me.

“Don’t panic, he’s not, like, a weirdo. I’ve met his mum and she seems nice. His brother is a bit of an arse, apparently. But Sarah invited me round for dinner so I don’t think he’s hiding like… a secret boyfriend or anything.”

Or girlfriend. Not like Ben.

“He just moved here from London, and I don’t think it was something he wanted, so he’s finding his feet a bit.”

Tori frowns.

“Why did they move?”

I should have asked that, at some point. Shouldn’t I?

I think of what Nick has told me so far. The brother who died, the one Nick kissed. The way he and David were somehow to blame, even if they weren’t. I remember talk of a car, but I realise that the specifics are still a little bit vague. What did he say? Ethan was always driving them around?

“I—” What would make it make sense? “I think there was a car accident. His brother’s friend died. I think Nick and his brother sort of blamed themselves. I don’t know if that’s why they moved, but that would probably do it for me in the same situation.”

Suddenly, I want to call Nick. I don’t want him sitting at home and wondering why I’m not replying, not when he’s lost enough. I know how intrusive thoughts can be. I gather up the pens and notebook that are strewn across the kitchen table and about them into a teetering pile in my arms. Tori watches me go with a strange look on her face.

“Charles, what was Nick’s brother’s name?”

“David, why?”

Something flickers across her face and she glances at her phone.

“No reason. You should invite Nick over one day.”

Chapter 27: The Fournier Tapes: Part Six

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 6

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – MORNING]

DCI MARSHALL

Stéphane. Your wife and sons turned you in. Did you know that?

Pause.

They found the notebook. The photos. The matches. Your oldest son was grieving his best friend. Did you ever stop to think about how he would feel when you killed Nathan Price?

How do you think he felt when he found the trophies you kept?

Pause.

Did you not realise we’d found them, too? The trophies? Your entire collection is being looked through by forensics experts as we speak.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Did they hesitate?

DCI MARSHALL

Your wife called first. The boys followed. I imagine that it was difficult for them, despite everything.

Pause

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

They saved me once, you know. When I tried… the pills. They dragged me back from the abyss.

DS FARROW

And then you killed four more people after that.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I didn’t want to. I needed to.

Pause

Do you think they regret saving me now? I bet it’s hard for them. David is more pragmatic about these things but Nicholas… he is too soft. Maybe this will toughen him up a little, make him stronger. A father should prepare his sons for how cruel the world can be.

DS FARROW

I met both your sons. They came to the station and I was the one who interviewed them, before we realised what they were telling us. They seem like good boys. Nicholas… he was the brave one, in the moment. Your oldest son could barely hold himself together so Nicholas spoke for them both. If I were their parent, I would be exceptionally proud of them.

Pause.

But I don’t think you’re capable of that, are you? How sad for them, to have that missing from their lives.

DCI MARSHALL

Did you love them? Your sons? Your wife? Do you think you’re capable of loving anyone?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I loved them more than anything. That’s why the idea of being like this hurt more than the thought of dying.

Perhaps that is the truth. Perhaps the man who loved them ceased to exist one day. Perhaps I killed him after all.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 6.

Chapter 28: Nick

Notes:

A late in the day update... but when I opened this draft to post this morning and realised that I'd written the entire thing in third person for no obvious reason. Which is apparently what happens when you're juggling a billion different WIPs depending on how the mood strikes.

 “What time is Charlie getting here, darling?”

I glance up from where I’ve been teasing at the adhesive on the back of the envelope that apparently contains Dad’s letter. A week later, and I still can’t open it. There’s been no pressure from Mum – no mention of it since she handed it over after Charlie left – but it’s haunted me ever since.

Silently, I wonder if David got the same. I wonder if Mum got the same. How many collective hours have the three of us spent battling with the idea of letting him in again?

I slip the envelope under a pile of books on my desk and swivel my chair round to face Mum where she’s stood in the doorway.

“He said he'd get here for seven, and I get the feeling that he’s pretty punctual.”

She flicks her wrist to look at her watch. It’s a gesture my dad used to do, when we were running late for school. I wonder if she realises that there are things about him that still linger.

I'm so fucking sick of wondering. Just once, I’d love to be sure of something.

Then, the doorbell rings – Nellie’s bark piping up like clockwork – and I can’t help but smile at the idea that Charlie is something to be sure of. He may have called me a dick at least three times in the past week, but there’s still no denying how much I like him. 

How much I think he likes me.

Nellie barks again and I launch myself out of my chair. The momentum keeps it spinning and I hear Mum chuckle to herself as the armrest hits my desk and sends all the knickknacks careening onto the floor. I don’t care, I’m already halfway down the stairs when I hear them hit the carpet.

I pause at the bottom of the landing and scrub at my face with the palm of my hand. There’s a little mirror on the sideboard next to the front door and I grimace at my own reflection. At some point between Dad’s trial and our eventual escape from the glares and the whispers in London, I think I stopped caring about what I looked like and it’s weird to suddenly be self-conscious of that fact. I know Charlie fancies me – I’ve had some pretty solid evidence of that – but it’s kind of hard to see why when I look in the mirror. I don’t have the colour in my cheeks that I used to, and my hair needs a good comb, but it’ll have to do.

Charlie’s grinning at me when I swing the door open; his cheeks are pink from the cold and his hair is perfectly swirled against his forehead. He’s the very opposite of me: put together and fit in a way that makes me feel a little self-conscious. He still presses forward to kiss me, though, and I part my lips and breathe him in before I hear Mum coming down the stairs.

We break apart – soft, secret smiles on our faces – as she calls out to tell us dinner won’t be long.

Charlie fixes a cheeky look on me and winks when the kitchen door closes behind her. 

“So… no time to go to your room then?”

“Probably not… but there’s always after dinner.”

There’s a dessert joke in there somewhere, but my brain goes offline when Charlie reaches up to tug off his beanie and I realise that he’s had a hair cut. Nothing drastic, but it makes his curls more defined and highlights the nape of his neck in a way that makes me think that maybe I could be into doggy style.

Then he looks up at me, and I remember how much I like his eyes.

Fuck, I like him so much.

🤍🤍

I think this is the first time we’ve eaten dinner at this kitchen table since we moved here. It might even be the first home cooked meal we’ve had in weeks. Back in London, we’d eat as a family almost every night; and when Dad got home late from work or David was hanging out with his mates we’d all sit around and have a cup of tea and a biscuit together. Anything to show that we were a family. I think that, maybe, Mum sensed something was wrong even before everything blew up in our faces. 

What I wouldn't give for Dad to have copped off with a woman from work and left us to go back to France, instead of the reality.

This is nice, though.

Mum has made some sort of cheesy garlic pasta – the cheese pulls when I lift a fork to my mouth and once or twice Charlie has giggled as I try and pick it off of my chin. I’m useless at small talk, but Mum manages to keep Charlie engaged in conversation while I inhale what has turned out to be the nicest thing I’ve eaten since before Dad got arrested. I think she made the pasta from scratch – there was a bunch of flour on the kitchen counter when I came down earlier for a drink – and I’m about to thank her when I glance over at Charlie’s plate.

He’s been twirling the same piece of tagliatelle for the past five minutes. When Mum excuses herself to go to the loo, I lean in closer.

“Do you not like it?” I say softly. “I can get you some toast later, if you like?”

“Nick, it’s fine. I’m just not very hungry.”

“It’s okay, just tip it onto mine and I’ll eat it. She’ll never know. I’ll make you something else.”

When I grab the edge of his plate, he bristles.

“Nick, would you fucking stop, please?”

The plates rattle against the wood when he slams his hand down on the table. I drop mine in shock.

The kitchen is silent, for a moment. I swear even the stupid little clock that my mum inherited from Grandpa stops ticking.

“What the fuck, Charlie?”

Something snaps between us and Charlie pushes himself up and out of his chair without saying a word. The legs scrape against the kitchen floor and then he’s backing away – away from me, away from whatever the fuck just happened – and heading for the door.

He has his shoes on and the door open before I’ve even had time to react. His beanie is still on the sideboard when I make it to the hallway and I brace the door with my hand as he steps quietly down the driveway.

“Charlie, wait!”

At some point in the evening, it’s started snowing, so I have to scramble to get my shoes on before I can follow him. It slows him down enough that he has barely made it to the end of the road before I slam the front door behind me to chase after him. My feet make a quiet crunching noise against the ground as I do a half-run half-skid in his direction. He doesn’t look back, even when I call out, and I think that maybe my voice is lost in the snow.

I don’t want to let myself believe that he’s done with me, without explanation.

I stumble twice on my way, but he’s being careful enough to go slowly and I manage to catch up. I don’t want to touch him – I don’t want to see him recoil if I do – but I can tell in the set of his shoulders that he knows that I’m there.

“Charlie, seriously, would you just talk to me? Tell me what’s wrong, please?”

He turns, slowly, and fixes a look on me that I don’t recognise. It’s not sad – just blank. It’s probably the same one that people have seen on my face for the last few months.

“Why should I tell you? It’s not like you're honest about everything!”

Everything recedes – down to a point that’s laser focussed on Charlie – and all I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears. The snow doesn’t help: it softens and mutes everything around us and the lack of ambient noise makes everything seem strange and numbing.

“Wha— What are you talking about?” I stammer. Something that might be regret flickers across Charlie's face almost instantly, but the words are already out there.

“You… I just know you’re keeping something from me, okay? And that’s your right, I get it, but why should I trust you when you don’t trust me?”

It feels like one of those crossroads where things will either change completely or break down for good. Charlie stares at me and waits – for me to tell him to piss off, probably, knowing the way his brain tries to hurt him sometimes – while I try and make myself say something. Anything will do, at this point. I’d even settle for blurting out the truth without any regard for the consequences.

Hey, so, my dad killed a bunch of people without giving a fuck and I wish I’d let him die on our kitchen floor.

Well, the last time I let someone in his brother was murdered and he definitely thinks it’s my fault.

My serial killer dad wrote me a letter that’s up in my bedroom and I’m scared that if I open it I’ll read something that makes me feel sorry for him.

I don’t say any of that. Instead, humiliatingly, I burst into tears.

They don’t quite hit me all at once: it starts off as an ache in my chest and a stinging behind my eyes that bubbles out until I’m making an inhuman sort of spluttering, wailing noise and Charlie looks panicked. 

I think, if he didn’t dart forward and wrap his arms around me, I would have hit the pavement like a sack of shit.

Maybe I’m mixing idioms there.

Charlie feels nice, pressed against me with his fingertips digging into my back. I spread both my hands out across his shoulders – my arms draped around him  – and pull him even closer.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I promise you that I trust you.”

He holds me even tighter.

“I want to talk, I just— I don’t know how.” I don’t know what else to say, so I press a kiss to the sharp curve of his cheekbone and sigh. There’s a beat of silence between us, and I let myself relish in the feel of him pressed up against me before I open my mouth and risk losing it all again. The wind beats across my bare arms and makes my skin sting. A car pulls slowly across the slurry next to us. Somewhere far away, someone is having a snowball fight; I can hear their screams and laughing and the dull thud of snow hitting a fence.

None of it matters compared to Charlie still being here.

“Are you angry with me?” I whisper eventually. He shakes his head against my shoulder.

“No, I— it’s not you, I promise.”

“’Kay.” 

I squeeze his shoulder again and he sighs.

“I have an eating disorder, okay?” he whispers into the crook of my neck. I pull back to look at him properly. “It put me in hospital over the summer… along with some other stuff. I’m doing better than I was back then, but sometimes I get in my head – or there’s something stressing me out – and it sets me back, a bit.”

“Was it me— Did I set you back, do you mean?”

“No!” He shakes his head furiously. “No, of course not. I-I had a row with my mum before I left. She doesn’t like me eating out because she can’t keep track of things. Some friends are okay, like Tao and Elle, because she knows them and their parents… but it was a whole big thing before I left the house. I should have warned you, or not come, or—”

“Hey!” I cup his face to kiss him. “I’m glad you came. Even— Even if things got weird, or whatever, I’m glad I know now. I’m glad you told me.”

“Just don’t be weird about it, okay? I don’t need you treating me like I’m fragile like everyone else does.”

“Okay, promise.” I don’t tell him that he’s so much stronger than me, even though it’s true. Instead, I kiss him again, until our lips get clumsy and my face is numb from the cold.

Charlie’s breath warms my lips when he pulls back, but the loss of body heat makes me wrap my arms around myself. Charlie looks at me sympathetically and pulls his gloves off – tossing them to me before shoving his hands into his pockets. They do a little to stave off the frostbite when I tug them on.

Charlie kicks at the snow at our feet.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. I know you—” He purses his lips and I watch his eyes flickering back and forth between my shoes and his as he tries to think of what to say. “I do know that you trust me.”

“I do.”

“And you know that you can tell me anything, right?”

I don’t hesitate before I launch myself back at him and nearly send him off balance.

Chapter 29: Crime Time Episode 7: Connections

Click for podcast transcript

Hey guys, you’re listening to Wendall and I’m gonna be taking you through this week’s episode of our special anniversary series all about Stéphane Fournier.

Last week, we heard all about the suicide attempt that nearly put a stop to Stéphane’s murderous spree. This week, we’re looking at the events that eventually caused everything to come crashing down around him.

We’ve all heard the name Nathan Price in relation to this case, but why was he such an important part of finally bringing Stéphane down?

Well, reports from the time – as well as the only known interview with Stéphane’s oldest son – tell us that Nathan Price was the only victim with a connection to Stéphane himself, although commentators are unsure as to whether he was specifically targeted for that reason. We know he was a mature student living in London but originally from Glasgow, where Stephane’s oldest son went to university. There’s been some speculation that David and Nathan were planning on getting a flat together in Scotland after they graduated – that they wanted to continue living that student life even when they were both in their respective industries. But is this enough of an explanation as to why Stéphane broke his pattern? Why go after a man who could be linked back to him in such a vicious way?

The killing of Nathan Price is significant because it became the first time that police were made aware that whoever was responsible for these killings was actually taking trophies away from the scene of the crime. Previous victims, we now know, had small items taken from them by Stéphane, but they were never anything that was missed. A Nando’s receipt from Kieran Jordan, Stéphane’s sixth victim, and a supermarket loyalty card from his eighth victim, Eddie Cunningham, were amongst the items found in Stéphane’s possession once police eventually linked him to the crimes. But these were never items that were missed during the original investigation. Of course, we now know that police were able to link Stéphane to almost all of his victims through careful tracking of card numbers, membership numbers and, in one case, the specific initials of the victim’s ex-fiancé on a stolen bracelet.

But none of the trophies Stéphane took up until Nathan had any real value. Even the bracelet taken from victim number ten – Zachary Walton – had little monetary value. So, we have to ask ourselves, why did Stéphane switch to taking something as important as a family heirloom – in the form of Nathan’s signet ring – when he knew that police were already closely investigating his crimes?

Whatever the answer, we know that the discovery of his best friend’s ring in his father’s possession was the moment that David – Stéphane’s oldest son – realised that something was very, very wrong. The police who originally interviewed Stéphane, who have both declined to comment, made reference to the moment that his wife, and later both his sons, called the police to report Stéphane in their initial interviews.

Did the family suspect something before they found the treasure trove of trophies buried in the back of Stéphane’s study? How long did they wait before they turned in the man who raised them?

We may never know.

 All we do know, is that this discovery was the missing piece in the puzzle and we should be eternally grateful to the Fournier family for their bravery.

Okay guys, tune in next time where we’ll be talking about the trial of century and the media furore surrounding Stéphane’s appearances in court!

Chapter 30: Charlie

“No Nick today?”

Isaac asks it carefully, in that tone of voice that tells me that it’s okay if I want to talk about it. He thinks that Nick is ignoring me – has been ignoring me all week – and I can sense that he’s about to burst about asking what happened. 

Nothing happened. We argued; Nick led me by the hand back to his house; we cleaned up dinner while his mum looked on, confused; and then he took me upstairs and blew me so hard I think I blacked out. One minute I remember staring up at the ceiling and wondering where the fuck Nick came from, the next I was shoving the corner of his duvet in my mouth and praying that his mum had taken Nellie out for a snowy evening walk.

Afterwards, he mapped out every ridge of me with his fingertips: across my ribcage, along my spine. His fingers tripping over every sharp edge and smoothing me down until I was a heap in the bed.

Eventually, my alarm went off to signal it was time to go home. I was still in no fit state to think, so Nick helped me to put my clothes back on before he wrapped me up in one of his hoodies and walked me to my house, his hand tucked in mine.

Then, later, when I was tucked up in bed, my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with messages from him.

I miss you already.

I wish you could have stayed.

I can’t wait to kiss you again.

On and on, until I got hot with embarrassment and called him an idiot. I got a winky face in reply.

I’m still no closer to any answers, but the mystery stopped feeling quite so bad after that.

Still, in school, Nick’s radio silent. We talk during form, obviously, but when I see him around the school he has his head down and his eyes trained on the floor. I don’t think he’s ignoring me, but it’s a little hard not to feel the whiplash of the way he is in private versus the way he is when other people are looking.

It’s not like it was with Ben, but I can’t deny the part of my brain that is honing in on the similarities.

Under the table, Isaac nudges me gently with his foot. 

“Charlie?”

I jolt violently enough that I dislodge a piece of kimchi from Tao’s sandwich. It drips sadly onto the surface of the wooden picnic bench.

“He’s probably with his rugby mates,” I lie. Isaac blatantly sees through me while Tao rolls his eyes.

“I warned you about crushes on straight guys, Charlie,” he hisses. I roll my eyes. If only he could see the texts that Nick sent me last night.

🤍🤍

By the end of the day, Nick still hasn’t made eye contact with me. Even when we sat down for afternoon registration, he only glanced sidelong as me – his gaze resting somewhere around my lips – and barely spoke. I noticed it before, of course I did, but now that Isaac has brought it up it feels like a wound I can’t stop picking at.

I glance at my phone: he hasn’t replied to my most recent text, but I know he has rugby practice during his final period of the day on a Friday, so it’s not like I’m expecting him to be checking his messages. It does mean, though, that I know where he is.

And as much as I hate it, it looks like that’s where I’m heading too. 

As I approach, a small group of boys are leaving. They blank me completely as they pass.

“She totally fancies him, you know. He’s got that moody vibe she loves.”

“Come off it, there’s no way Imogen is going for Nick Nelson.”

“I heard he’s totally into him too. Did you not see him checking his phone the whole time we were getting changed? I’m telling you, I’m calling it now.”

My cheeks flame. I don’t even know who they are: the tall, slightly dopey-looking one is the one who is ringing the Nick and Imogen bell.

And who the fuck is Imogen anyway?

The sports corridor is thankfully fairly empty when I slip inside before the tears can sting my eyes. There isn’t the bustle of noise coming from the changing rooms that you might expect if the entire team were still getting dressed. Instead it has that weird, empty feeling of a place suspended in the wrong time. It’s too quiet; I can hear my footsteps crunching against the duty blank concrete that makes up the floor. I’m sure once upon a time the school had grand ideas for laminating the corridor, but that plan has clearly been long forgotten in the way of all budget-restrained school improvement projects.

I’ve managed to convince myself that Nick has already headed home by the time I make it to the changing rooms. That is, until I press my palm against the door and push it open slowly – ready to let it slam shut at the first sign of Harry Green’s pale arse.

Nick is here. And he’s alone.

I let the door swing shut behind me and stare at him; slumped forward on the bench with his face in his hands. Either he hasn’t heard me or he doesn’t think that anyone important is coming to check on him because he doesn’t move, even when the door hits the little fuzzy buffer that runs along the inner door frame and whispers shut.

He’s such a sorry sight, that a big part of me wants to rush forward and hug him. 

The bigger part of me, unfortunately, seems to be running on the adrenaline of being here – in this space that made me miserable – and the sight of his phone sitting next to him on the bench, apparently containing the flirty messages of some girl, makes the sting of being abandoned even worse.

How many times am I going to sit around and let a boy pretend to be my boyfriend in private and then act like I don’t exist in public before I get a grip?

Before I can think it through, I slam the heel of my foot back against the door. It rattles enough to make Nick jump.

“Charlie, what are you—”

“No, you don’t get to ask questions when you’re ignored me all week.”

“What are you talking—”

He glances at the phone in his hand.

“No, not via text. I mean you’ve ignored me. You won’t look at me, you barely speak to me when other people are around. Do you have any idea how shitty that makes me feel?”

Hurt flashes across his face. For a moment, I genuinely think he might cry again. This time, I swear it won’t work.

“Charlie, I—”

The door swings open behind me and smacks into my shoulder, jolting me forward. Nick darts forward to grab me before I can fall.

“Wha—”

I’m interrupted by a slow, deep laugh. One I recognise.

Harry, Truham’s resident dickhead, and a couple of his cronies are standing in the doorway when I look around. I used to see them hanging around with Ben by the school gates, back when he and I were sneaking around, and thanks to some snide comments on Ben’s part, I know exactly what they think of me.

“Oi, oi, what’s this?” Harry grins as his eyes dart between me and Nick. His mates snigger. Nick’s grip tightens on my elbows. “I know he’s fit, mate, but there’s no need to sneak in for a peek.” 

If only he knew.

I shake Nick’s hands off of me. 

“Piss off, Harry,” I spit. It only makes the three of them laugh harder. I can feel Nick reaching out for me and it only pisses me off more. Even though, if I stop and let myself think about it, it’s exactly what I want.

“Do you fancy Nick, then?” Harry is undeterred. “Doesn’t seem like your usual type. Weren’t you chasing after Ben last year?”

Nick's eyes flicker towards me. Harry carries on as if either of us care what he has to say.

“To be honest mate you’re coming across like a pathetic little fa—”

Before he can even finish the word, Nick pounces. When his fist collides with Harry’s face, the blood that explodes from his nose spurts out against the wall.

 

Chapter 31: The Fournier Tapes: Part Seven

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 7

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – SAME DAY, LATER]

DCI MARSHALL

For the purposes of the tape, Dr Montgomery, would you please introduce yourself.

DR MONTGOMERY

Yes, of course, my name Dr Sean Montgomery and I’ve been appointed as an independent psychiatric advisor in this case. I’ll be making notes during these interviews for the court. My role here is to be an observer, but I will interject when I feel it is necessary for the line of questioning.

DCI MARSHALL

Thank you, Dr Montgomery. Interview with Stéphane Fournier continues.

DS FARROW

Mr Fournier… Walk us through the overdose. We know that you took your wife’s sleeping pills. We know that no one else was supposed to be home. What was going through your mind in the moment?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

It wasn’t meant to be poetic. Just quiet. I thought there would be less mess for my family to clean up that way. Obviously, that was not the case. I regret the pain that I caused my boys.

DCI MARSHALL

Your sons saved you. And yet you continued to kill. You didn’t think that they would be hurt by that? You didn’t think of the guilt they’d have to live with?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I thought it might stop the burning. It didn’t.

DS FARROW

What burning?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

The kind that doesn’t show up on skin.

DCI MARSHALL

Were you hoping to be stopped?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Yes. But not like that. I do not believe that I was meant to die that day, now. I believe that my boys saved me for a higher purpose. That they must live with that, well, that is down to them and not me.

DS FARROW

It’s interesting to me that you used the word ‘regret’, earlier. You don’t feel guilt, do you?

DR MONTGOMERY

That’s a complicated question, Detective Sergeant. We generally understand guilt to be an emotion that stems from failing our own moral standard. Do you believe that Mr Fournier’s moral compass is lacking, or do you believe him capable of feeling guilt? Unfortunately, we cannot have both. You may wish to rethink your line of questioning.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

It is fine. I have nothing I wish to hide anymore. I don’t believe that it’s guilt that I feel. I feel the memories. It’s worse. The burning has never made that stop.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 7.

Notes:

We will meet Dr Montgomery again...

Chapter 32: Nick

Technically, I’m grounded.

I say technically, because when you’re eighteen and over six feet tall the concept of being grounded is a little bit moot.

I still sneak quietly out of the front door when Mum is busy watching Bake Off reruns, though. Just because I’m legally an adult and my dad killed a dozen people doesn’t mean that pissing off my mum isn’t the thing I’m secretly most afraid of.

I saw the way she went for Dad before the police managed to drag him away. 

Once I'm outside, I have to scroll back through my text-chain with Charlie to figure out where he lives. I find it – a location pin hidden in a joke about how I should turn up at his door sometime – and tug my hood over my head before setting off in his direction. I can only hope that turning up is enough, now.

My phone buzzes in my pocket a couple of times as I'm walking; a couple of the rugby lads messaging me to tell me that they’ve heard that I’ve been excluded. Otis tells me that he wishes he’d decked Harry a long time ago. Liam calls me a gay prick.

So, I guess it won’t be long until the cat’s out of the bag.

Not that I care – not really. I’ve been living in fear for weeks that someone might figure me out. So the fact that they seem to have figured out one of the few things that I actually like about myself, instead of the thing I hate, isn’t exactly bad.

Maybe, if I explained myself to Mum properly, she wouldn’t have been so angry. But I guess I can’t blame her for panicking at the idea that I might have a violent streak. This afternoon has been part two of her worst nightmare: being called into school, only to be confronted by my bruised face and Mr Barnes angrily sharing the news that I broke Harry’s nose. Charlie’s parents had already come and whisked him away – his mum glaring at me as I sat in the hallway with an ice pack against my face – so by the time Mum arrived I looked like the lonely, sullen perpetrator.

I try to shake off the memory of Jane Spring’s furious face when I finally reach Charlie’s door. Their stained-glass front door makes a shoddy mirror, but I can see the way the bruise is blooming across my battered face when I tug my hood down and reach up to ring their doorbell. Behind the glass, the shadows flicker and move as someone makes their way to the answer it. From the way they’re walking, I can already tell it’s not Charlie.

Jane’s face greets me seconds later.

“Oh.” She wrinkles her nose at the sight of me. “It’s you.”

“Hi, Mrs Spring, is Char—”

“No, I don’t think so,” she snaps. It’s unclear whether she’s referring to Charlie being home, or my very existence in her doorway.

“I-I just want to—”

She holds up her hand.

“Can you explain to me why I was called to say that my son had been involved in a fight? Something that has never, ever happened before.”

I press my lips together.

“I don’t know where you came from, Nick, but I think you should leave.”

Charlie’s somewhere upstairs, I know. If I called him, he’d appear and I’d be able to tell if he hates me as much as his mum currently seems to. She’s already closing the door in my face, though, and I don't have the energy left in me to try and stop it from shutting properly. It clicks abruptly in my face.

That’s that, then.

Somehow, it feels a little colder as I start to trudge home. The wind whips against my face where I’m facing it now, and I have to shove my hands into my pockets to try and stave off a little of the chill. 

Then, as if today couldn’t get any more depressing, it starts pissing it down.

Thick, cold droplets hit the ground and the spray stings my face as I tug my hood tighter against my cheeks and press forward. If I’d been in any fit state of mind when I left the house earlier, I would have checked the weather. Instead, here I am: miserable, cold and soaking right through to my bones.

Something splashes, loudly, behind me – a jogger trying to get home sooner, maybe – and I dodge to the edge of the pavement and press myself against someone’s garden wall to let them pass. I’m expecting a gruff thank you, or to be completely ignored.

I’m not expecting a pair of arms to fling themselves around my waist.

“Nick!” 

Charlie’s voice, muffled against my back. I could cry, again. I swear he must think it’s all I do.

Instead, I spin around so I can look at him. His face is blotchy from the cold and his lips are quivering, even when I press mine against them and warm him with my breath. He kisses me back hungrily and, for once, everything feels right with the world.

Until I realise that his teeth are chattering and he pulls back with a laugh.

“My turn to chase you down, this time,” he murmurs when he’s flung his arms around my shoulders. He feels so cold – the rain soaking through the flimsy t-shirt he’s wearing – and all I want to do is wrap myself around him and keep him warm.

“I’m just so, so sorry, Char,” I whisper when I’ve buried my face into the crook of his neck. “I never meant to make you feel like— like I wanted to keep you a secret.”

Charlie doesn’t say anything – doesn’t tell me that it’s okay, because it’s not – but I feel him relax a little against me. 

“Just… shut up for a bit, okay?” he breathes as he sways us gently in place. I can’t get any closer – as much as I want to – so I reach up to press my palm against his bicep. His skin is covered in goosebumps. I run my lips across the curve of muscle there and sigh.

“You should get back before you freeze,” I whisper, although the idea of him leaving me hurts.

Charlie draws back and pouts.

“Come back to mine?”

“I think your mum, like, properly hates me, now.”

Charlie glances over his shoulder, back towards his house, before he shrugs.

“Maybe, but when I tell her you were only protecting me I reckon she’ll warm to you.”

Chapter 33: David

Notes:

Oops! I forgot to post this chapter in the right place, so I'm hoping that retroactively going back and adding it in won't cause problems!!

“You have not considered returning to university?” Stéphane punctuates the strange silence that has fallen between them. “You had one more year to complete, yes?”

“Yeah, well, things kind of got in the way of that,” David replies sarcastically. He’s ended up slouched back in the uncomfortable chairs – one calf balanced on the other knee in some twisted parody of the way he and his dad used to lounge about on those rare evenings they’d stay up late together. David has an image that will not leave him: his mother poking her head nervously around the door to ask them to keep it down as they laughed raucously; Nick, padding downstairs in his pyjamas to say he had a test in the morning. David remembers the way Stéphane’s eyebrows had wiggled conspiratorially in his direction after they both left, as if they were being the unreasonable killjoys of the evening.

He hates himself a little more.

“Ah, well, Nicholas, you must make something of yourself in this life.”

It’s an easy slip – one their mum has been making since they were small. It was always a running joke amongst their teachers: how can two boys who look so much alike be so different?

So why does it sting so much, coming from Stéphane now?

“David.”

The calmness in his voice surprises even David. He doesn’t feel calm. He feels frayed and fractured and like a stiff wind might make him disappear. Stéphane frowns at the interruption; he clearly intended to build up to something.

“Pardon?”

David thumps himself on the chest – open palmed – and feels the way his heart is beating.

“I’m David.”

“Ah, yes, my mistake. A slip of the tongue.”

Stéphane waves his hand vaguely, as if had simply forgotten something unimportant. Not the son who worshipped him; or the one who eventually broke his own heart by turning him in.

Maybe the past tense isn’t accurate there. Maybe, if those feelings were truly in the past, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

“I so badly wanted to be like you, you know?” he spits. “My dad. I could never understand why Nick didn’t suck up to you the same way I did. I believed you when you said he was the weaker one. But— but he just saw it, didn’t he? He saw that one day you’d let us down. Like the fucking worthless prick you are.”

“David, do not speak to your father like that.” Stéphane’s voice is a warning in an empty room; David can feel the rage simmering under the surface. For the first time ever, he can picture it: Nathan’s last moment. The way the lip curls, the eyes narrow. For the first time, he can picture his dad killing.

The fact that there are guards on the other side of the door doesn’t change the fact that, right now, Stéphane wants to do it again.

Before his dad can react, David slams his hand down on the table between them. The shock of it breaks the tension – Stéphane’s eyes widen and he jerks back – and, for a moment, David thinks: For Nathan.

“Who the fuck am I now?”

Somewhere, an alarm starts going off. Keys jangle in the door.

“Answer me!” He points a shaky finger in his dad’s face. “Who the fuck am I when the person I wanted to be turned out to be a lie?”

Stéphane doesn’t answer him. He never, David realises, had any answers. Just some prick who mistook himself for a genius because the world kept stroking his ego.

David shoves his chair back to stand.

“I know, I know,” he snaps at the guard who bursts into the room. “I’m fucking going.”

Stéphane’s eyes are still wide when David looks back at him.

“It’s not like I’m ever coming back.”

Chapter 34: Crime Time Episode 8: A Trial of Two Nations

Click for podcast transcript

Good evening Crime Time fans! Gerard here ready to take you through the latest in our special anniversary series all about Stéphane Fournier, one of London and Paris’ most prolific serial killers. Today we’re going to be talking all about the trial of a century: one that captured the attention of Europe.

Now, we know that Stéphane was arrested shortly after the killing of Nathan Price, that took place in August twenty twenty three. His family’s suspicions were raised by the discovery of trophies found in Stéphane’s possession and they made the initial call to the police. His arrest came fairly swiftly after that, although reports tell us that the police initially were lacking in evidence that wasn’t circumstantial.

So, when the trial came around, the world was holding its breath. We’d seen a lot of speculation play out on social media – and we’ll be talking about some of the groupies who started conspiracy theory podcasts next week – but no one really knew which way it was going to go. The trial itself was heavily locked down; Crime Time attempted to get a press pass but were denied, as were several other podcast hosts that we know. Even the mainstream media struggled to get access to what was shaping up to be a tense trial. So, we only have public records to go on, as well as some of the interviews conducted by jury members much later on.

One of the jurors described the photographic evidence – dating back nearly twenty years – as ‘stomach churning’, while several other jurors described the cold and detached way that Stéphane himself didn’t even flinch when confronted with evidence of his crimes.

In the end, it seems that much of the evidence wasn’t necessary. After a brief period where Fournier’s defence team attempted to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, he eventually changed his plea to guilty after weeks of victim statements.

In fact, there has been some speculation that that was his intention all along; the police tapes we have been able to get a hold of do not paint a picture of a man hoping to argue his innocence. Rather, we believe that Stéphane intended to allow the trial to re-traumatise his victims’ loved ones before eventually pleading guilty to the crimes he could not possibly deny. In our final episode, we’ll be talking to some of the people most affected.

But, we cannot end an episode about the trial without speaking about Stéphane’s family, who took the stand to bravely expose their patriarch’s pattern of killing. His oldest son, David, gave evidence via a statement read out to the court. While his youngest, Nicholas, chose instead to join his mother in being questioned via video link. To all of them, we salute you for your bravery.

In the end, though, Stéphane’s guilty plea brought the trial to an early close and he was eventually sentenced to life in prison under a whole life order.

Breathe a sigh of relief, London. Stéphane Fournier will never be free!

Okay all, that’s it from me!

Next week, Wendall will be going behind the mask of the man and seeing what effect the strange cult of personality had in the social media storm surrounding the trial. He’ll be joined by a Dr Montgomery, who is going to bring his unique insight into Stéphane, his fans, and the people who truly believe that he is innocent.

It’s going to be a fantastic episode, so make sure you tune in next week for all the details.

Au revoir for now!

Chapter 35: Charlie

Nick is heavy on my chest where he’s dozing. Technically, he’s sleeping on the mattress that Isaac and Tao share when they stay over – a completely platonic state of affairs. I think my parents fully believe that Nick is just a friend. Very much an ally, in their eyes, after we got back and I explained that Nick had only punched Harry after some of the lads cornered me in the changing rooms and spat a slur in my face.

It might be a slightly blurring of events in our favour, but not enough to feel like we were outwardly lying.

That came later, when Mum had chucked one of Dad’s old shirts at Nick and called up Sarah to thank her for raising a boy who would stand up for his friends and insisted that Nick stay for dinner, at least until his clothes were dry. Even later, when Nick snuck his hand into mine under the dinner table while Dad tried to make small talk over a bland pasta bake that he plucked – and slightly butchered – from my meal plan. A few bites in, Mum and I made eye contact across the table before she winked at me; a silent promise that tomorrow we’ll be the ones cooking.

Once we’d eaten – Mum almost deliriously happy with the way that I cleared my plate as Nick and I chatted – it didn’t take much convincing to let him stay over. Another call to Sarah, with Nick hovering awkwardly in the hallway – half his heart clearly already convinced he’d be kicked out any moment – and it was agreed.

He fell asleep almost instantly. After we pulled his t-shirt and hoodie from the tumble dryer and made ourselves halfway ready for bed. The pyjama bottoms I handed him strained comically against his arse and swung well above his ankles, so instead he settled for boxers and his retrieved t-shirt. I didn’t complain.

Nor did Tori ask any questions when she poked her head around the door to ask me something and found Nick asleep on my chest. I watched her eyes flicker towards my empty bed and the two of us in a heap on the mattress on the floor, but thankfully she said nothing. Just told me that news of our fight with Harry was all over Higgs. As if to demonstrate, her phone pinged in her pocket and Nick stirred, slightly, before wrapping his arm tighter around my waist.

Now, I’m just listening to the quiet sound of his breaths as I stare at the ceiling. I never turned off the MUSIC light behind my bed, so my room has a glow I’m not used to. It doesn’t seem to bother Nick – when he wakes up I want to teasingly ask him if he’s afraid of the dark – but it’s keeping me awake.

That, and wondering.

I can retrieve my phone from my bed if I stretch my right arm out far enough and I pluck at the edge of it with my fingertips until I gain some purchase. Nick still doesn’t stir.

When I’ve got the screen open, finally, I frown at my homepage. I know what I want to do… but it feels wrong.

I do it anyway.

I type Nick’s name into Google slowly, as if moving too fast might get me caught out. My eyes flit back and forth between his face and the screen as I type:

N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S N-E-L-S-O-N

Nothing appears. Nothing obvious, in any case, except for a few old news articles. Unless Nick is secretly a Dorset pensioner who grew a foot long courgette in 2007 then I doubt he’s the same person.

There’s a Nicholas Nelson in Bristol who recently raised a bunch of money running a marathon for stray dogs. Sounds on brand for Nick, but the photo in the article is definitely not the same person. Not unless Nick has packed on about three stone worth of muscle in a year.

Everything else is just wishy washy. I scroll past an article about a murder in Paris twenty years ago that seems to have no relevance whatsoever, and eventually land on a page about the meaning of different surnames.

Pointless. I’m still none the wiser.

“What’s your secret?” I whisper against Nick’s hair, my hands bunched up in his shirt. “Please just fucking tell me, Nick.”

He doesn’t stir. Just parts his lips and sighs as he nestles even closer. I feel a little flip in my belly at the feel of him.

I ghost my fingertip over the curve of his cheek. 

It’s strange, I think, to feel myself falling for someone while barely knowing them at all.

Chapter 36: The Fournier Tapes: Part Eight

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 8

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – METROPOLITAN POLICE HQ – EVENING]

DCI MARSHALL

Mr Fournier, as you’re aware, we found them. The trophies you kept of your victims. You know that we also found your notebook. Pages of names, dates, locations. We’ve had the time to go through them now.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Did I spell them right?

DS FARROW

Some names are crossed out. Some underlined. We asked you before if we needed to search for more bodies, but we’ll ask you again now. Are there more we don’t know about?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

That would depend on which ones you already know about. If you could jog my memory with a list, perhaps?

DCI MARSHALL

You know we won’t do that, Stéphane. Now, are all the names bodies?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I changed my mind sometimes. It didn’t help. Those were my failures.

DCI MARSHALL

Why did you write them down?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

To remember they were real. Not just dreams.

DS FARROW

There are seventeen names. Twelve bodies. Five missing.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Some were ideas. Not all ideas become actions. Some names I forgot, or never knew. Some did not carry identification, nor were their deaths reported in the news. How would you have me know their names in these circumstances?

DCI MARSHALL

So we do need to search for more bodies? That’s what you’re telling us?

Pause

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

That’s up to you. I am not a [pause] Detective Chief Inspector. It is not my job to find the truth. I believe that is what you are paid to do.

Pause.

You know, I think it may be time for me to speak to a solicitor, don’t you?

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 8.

Chapter 37: Nick

Notes:

Apologies for the lack of update yesterday. I coped very poorly with the heat!

Things feel a little different when we get back to school. The bruise on my face hasn’t faded and, if anything, the one on Harry’s has only spread. We each spent a day excluded at home, then separately in isolation, so by the time I’m able to sit with Charlie at lunchtime the rumour mill has apparently gone into overdrive.

On my way to the picnic benches I’ve heard:

Harry caught Charlie and I going at it in the changing rooms and punched me in the face.

Charlie and I are secretly planning on running away together and Harry was only worried about the team’s chances next match.

The three of us are some sort of thrupple gone wrong.

And, my favourite, we both simply walked into opposite sides of the same door like some sort of 90s sitcom skit.

“Afternoon, Romeo,” Tao quips when I lower myself onto the picnic bench. “Fallen into any duels today?”

“Shut up, Tao.” Charlie is clearly a little bit antsy, because he eyes me carefully to gauge my reaction. I squeeze his hand under the table.

“’S’fine,” I shrug. And it is, really. It’s more attention than I ever planned on drawing to myself, but somehow it’s easy to not think of that when I see Charlie's face break into a smile. 

It’s easy not to think of anything else, to be honest.

I’m not sure at what point Charlie went from someone I was clinging to for all the wrong reasons, to someone who makes everything feel better. 

Now, here he is, grinning at me and making my stomach flip with something good, for once. The dread and the regret that plagued me before I met him is still there, obviously, but more and more I’m finding I’m able to push it down until it barely registers when I’m around him. Dulled like a throbbing pain that once was enough to stop me in my tracks but has now faded to a sort of background nuisance.

His fingers curl around mine properly and I take a beat, my heart pounding, before I lift both our hands up onto the table.

“Have you told your mum yet?” he whispers, as if Tao and Isaac aren’t there. I shake my head and he smiles sadly.

“Not yet. I-I’m going to. I just have to find the right time.”

“Do you think your parents will be okay with it?” Isaac asks nervously. I ignore the twinge of panic in my chest.

“Mum will. I know she will. My Dad— He— I don’t care what he thinks. He’s not around. I haven’t spoken to him in ages.”

That earns me a sympathetic look from Tao, which surprises me. 

The mood has turned a little bit sombre, and Isaac looks between us all awkwardly before he suddenly reanimates and grabs his phone.

“Tao! Please tell me you’ve listened to the most recent episode of Crime Time?”

🤍🤍

The science corridor is relatively quiet; a couple of younger boys are walking past me on their way back out again and I can hear music coming from one of the classrooms as a teacher enjoys their lunch. 

I just needed a place to go.

As soon as Isaac brought up that fucking podcast I made my excuses and left. Charlie thinks I have homework I need to print and gave me a kiss before he told me not to risk facing the wrath of Mr Farouk. Ironically, if Mr Farouk does catch me wandering his science corridor unattended then I might just face his wrath anyway. 

I press on regardless, hoping to find a classroom that’s empty enough for me to just exist in my own misery before I have to put in a straight face again.

Right at the end of the corridor, I find what I’m looking for: One of the classrooms has the lights switched off and the computer logged off. I don’t bother turning on the lights when I wander in and slam my bag down on one of the bench desks before I rest my head on my folded arms. It’s quiet enough that I can hear myself think, but the clock ticking is irritating enough to not let me sink down into my own misery and dwell.

Fact number one: Charlie is going to figure me out eventually.

Fact number two: He’s going to be much more pissed off to hear about Dad from someone else.

Fact number three: I have absolutely no idea how to even bring it up.

How do you suddenly drop into conversation, Hey, my dad’s a serial killer. Maybe you saw him on the news? 

What the fuck is he going to think of me?

More worryingly, what are his parents going to think? What tenuous good favour I’ve earnt with Jane Spring is surely going to go out of the window the second she gets into her head that I have murder genes.

I don’t think I do.

I still take bugs outside when I find them in the house. I feel a little bit guilty whenever I eat a ham sandwich. I don’t think that there’s a shred of my dad in me. But that doesn’t mean other people will agree.

I groan, loudly, and someone clears their throat.

“Nicholas Nelson, aren’t you in enough trouble without getting caught skulking around the science block?”

I jerk upright. Mr Farouk is leaning against the doorway, a forkful of noodles poised above a Tupperware container.

“S-sorry, Sir. I-I just needed somewhere to—”

“Rules are rules, Nick. Don’t let me catch you in here again.”

I bend down to pick up my bag and he clears his throat.

“But as you’re already here, I have some marking to do. You sit there quietly and I won’t say anything about you staying.”

He dumps his Tupperware on the desk at the front and drags a pile of loose paper towards him. It gives me an idea. 

“Er… Sir? Do you have a piece of paper I could borrow, please?”

Chapter 38: Crime Time Episode 9: Behind the Mask

Click for podcast transcript

Hey y’all, Wendall here and I’m joined by some very special guests for this week’s special anniversary episode of Crime Time.

Thing’ll sound a little bit different for our final two episodes, as we’re delving into the impact that Stéphane Fournier had on both the people around him, as well as the cultural storm that was coverage of his trial on TikTok. First of all, I’d like to welcome my very special guests, Dr Sean Montgomery, court psychiatrist who has written extensively about his time in the interview room with Stéphane, and Annabelle Edwards, whose original TikTok of Stéphane’s arrival in court went viral. Thanks so much for being here, guys.

SM: It’s great to be here, Wendall.

AE: Thanks so much for having us.

Now, Sean, our listeners are dying to hear a little bit about your time in the interview room with Stéphane. When we announced you were going to be on the podcast our inboxes exploded with excitement. What can you tell us about the man himself?

SM: Well, as you know I was brought in after the detectives interviewing Stéphane felt they needed an expert to discuss his suicide attempt. In the end, I was kept on in order to provide independent testimony on his defence team’s attempts to have him acquitted by reasons of insanity.

You don’t think he’s insane?

SM: That’s a difficult question. I don’t think that anyone in their right frame of mind could do what he did. We know the impact that killing from a distance has on soldiers, firing squads and such. To have killed so many people in such an intimate way – slitting their throats and watching them bleed out – should have had an impact on the most hardened criminals. Stéphane never seemed to care. 

Do I think that means that he should have had his mental capacity used as a reason to lessen his sentence? Absolutely not. He knew what he was doing, he just didn’t care. Maybe that makes him insane… maybe that doesn’t matter.

Your book delves into that a bit further, doesn’t it?

SM: Yes. It’s not just about Stéphane, of course, although he is the common thread that runs through it. I later went to visit him in prison to get his side of the story and the results were… fascinating.

Anything you can share with our listeners?

SM: All I can say is… the book is available right now.

Thanks Sean, we’ll pop the link into our Amazon storefront. And, for our Patreons, Sean had agreed to share an excerpt of the book, so check that out tomorrow!Anabelle, tell us a bit about the viral storm you experienced after you posted your TikTok?

AE: It was unbelievable, honestly. I happened to catch him being led into the court – I don’t know why on this one day they decided to take him through the front entrance – and suddenly I was being inundated by messages from people thirsting over this brooding creep.

You were invited to join his fanclub, weren't you?

AE: Yes! I couldn’t believe that it exists. I mean… I knew that there were always people who are attracted to serial killers, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes before. One woman was convinced that I knew him personally and asked me to forward her letters to him because the prison was rejecting them. 

Is this the same woman who sent him a sachet of baby powder in the hope of him escaping during a lockdown?

AE: Unbelievable, isn’t it? The logic of people!

I have to ask, is it true that you managed to get footage of his sons too? Did you speak to them?

AE: No, they were actually pretty pissed with me about that. The older one spotted me and chucked his jacket over his brother’s head before I could get a good image. Honestly, I think they’re heroes and they deserve to know how much the world appreciates what they did. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for them to turn in their own dad.

So our listeners can’t expect to see that footage anytime soon?

AE: Sorry, no. Even if I had anything usable, there were some legal technicalities that mean I can’t post it.

If you want to hear more from these guys, Dr Montgomery’s book – Looking Into the Flames – is available on Amazon and you can follow Annabelle on her TikTok at @CrimeConversations.

Until next week, that’s all from us! Catch you all soon!

Notes:

Okay, I think we can safely assume that any court appointed psychologist in their right mind is not going on a true crime podcast a year after their serial killer subject was found guilty. But we can pretend, right?

Chapter 39: Charlie

“I honestly wonder where they can go from here—” 

Michael has been nattering the entire walk home from the bus stop while Tori is more stonily silent than usual. I’ve managed to catch snippets of their fairly one sided conversation – he’s still going on about that stupid podcast, which is apparently approaching their final episode of the series – but I have no idea why my sister is suddenly in a mood.

“— because, seriously, this one has been so close to home that I’m not sure it’ll be as interesting if they go back to their old style—”

Tori glances over at me. Seriously, what the fuck is up with her?

“— I think the only way they can top it is if one of them turns out to be a serial killer. Or if it turned out someone we knew was—”

Tori stops dead still on the pavement and Michael lets out a little oof when he walks straight into her.

“Michael can you please shut up about that stupid podcast, please? Charlie’s right, it’s idiotic.”

“I’m not sure that’s what I said,” I start, before she turns and glares at me too.

“Well, it was implied.”

“Seriously, Tori, what’s up with you?” I hiss. Michael genuinely looks a bit hurt when I glance over at him. “You were all over this thing a few weeks ago.”

“Yeah, well, I realised that I didn’t want to listen to something so close to home anymore.” Her face flushes red. “I looked up the trial. It was a year ago. People died - recently – and they’re acting like all the details of these people’s lives are up for grabs.”

I don’t know what’s got into her, but I’ve not seen my sister this weirdly animated in ages. Michael and I exchange a look and seem to both agree not to push it. Her expression leaves no room for doubt that we’d regret it if we did.

“Okay,” Michael says softly. “No more listening. If that’s what you want.”

“Do what you want,” she snaps, before I see the regret flash across her face and she reaches out to take his hand. “Thanks,” she finishes softly.

Unknown crisis averted, we carry on walking.

The two of them hang back a little and I hear their mumbled voices as Tori actually starts talking instead of snapping. I can’t make out what she’s saying, but I speed up a little to give them their privacy.

Fortunately, Mum and Dad are out until late tonight so they’ll be able to hang out in the living room making up for whatever weird tiff they’re in. I, meanwhile, intend to sit in my room and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist until I’ve managed to recover from what has shaped up to be a pretty weird week so far. 

That is, until I round the corner of our path and see who’s sitting on our front step.

“Nick?”

He looks like he’s aged since I saw him at lunchtime. His hair is all mussed up like it is when I’ve run my fingers through; his eyes are rommed with darker circles than usual and his hands are trembling where he’s holding a piece of paper so tightly in them. He waves it at me sadly just as Tori and Michael catch up.

“Can we talk?” he says softly. Michael makes a strange sort of strangled noise in the back of his throat while Tori donkey kicks him directly in the shins. I ignore them both and step closer to Nick.

“That sounds ominous.” I try to make it sound like a joke, but my voice falters at the last second and it comes out sounding a bit needy and pathetic. Nick’s eyes widen and he pushes himself to his feet.

“No! It’s not. I mean… it is. But it’s not to do with us. I just—” He bites his lip and looks down at the page in his hand. “I need someone to talk to and— And I want to talk to you.”

He reaches out to touch the back of my hand and for a moment I almost forget that Tori and Michael are skulking around behind us. Until Michael clears his throat.

“Sounds like we should order pizza. You guys need pizza, right?”

🩶🩶

It turns out, Nick very much needed pizza. He’s polished off over half of our shared one – one leg propped up and the other stretched out in front of him on my bed – and is licking the grease from the tips of his fingers before I manage to pluck up the courage to bring up what brought him to my doorstep in the first place.

That piece of paper he had crumpled in his hand is face down on the duvet. I wish I had x-ray vision to know what’s on the other side.

Instead, I clear my throat and stretch my palm out against his ankle.

“Nick?” I whisper. “You wanted to talk?”

He doesn’t look at me, not at first. His face pales, and he seems suddenly very interested in the napkin that Michael dropped onto the top of the pizza box when he delivered it to my room earlier. Back then, we’d been cuddling in silence as I listened to the absence of anything except Nick brooding and thinking in my arms.

Now, the silence feels ominous again.

“I need to tell you something,” he says quietly. “And— And if you never want to speak to me again afterwards I promise I’ll understand.”

I don’t tell I won’t – it doesn’t feel like the kind of promise I can make in the face of the unknown. I grip his ankle a little tighter and give him a smile that I hope he interprets as what little promise I can give.

“I— I fucking hate that podcast, you know,” he says quietly. It’s definitely not what I was expecting him to say.

“The true crime one? Why?”

Nick laughs bitterly. 

“That’s the one.”

“Why?”

He reaches up to swipe at the corner of his eye with the pad of his thumb.

“My Dad…” he says finally. “He— he hurt people. Lots of people, actually. He’s in prison. He’s never coming out. Not like… he got life in prison and it doesn’t mean that. He actually got life in prison. A whole life order, they call it. And— And I don’t know how to deal with it on my own, let alone with everyone around me listening to every detail like it’s some sordid soap opera instead of the worst fucking thing that ever happened to any of us.”

It takes me a moment before I can really absorb what he’s saying.

“Are you— Is that— Are you telling me that that podcast is about your dad?”

Notes:

Probably won’t be a chapter tomorrow as I’m off to Pride and I haven’t uploaded the audio files yet!

Chapter 40: The Fournier Tapes: Part Nine

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 9

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – EVENING]

DS FARROW

Why burn them? The way you did it… it did nothing to erase their identities or hide your crimes. In fact it made it easier to link them all together. So why do it?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Because it’s irreversible. Fire doesn’t ask forgiveness.

DCI MARSHALL

We believe that you needed control. That’s what all of this was about. Did you like seeing the way your crimes were reported in the news? Did it make you feel powerful to see the panic it brought in people?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Control and power are an illusion. And I wanted the opposite of chaos. I just wanted quiet.

DCI MARSHALL

You staged your victims like theatre. Passers by found them. They’ll always be haunted by that. That’s not quiet. You talk like you wanted to calm your own mind… erase some sort of nightmare for yourself… but you brought the nightmare to other people instead. You just kept ruining lives.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

I needed them to see what was in my head. I made them listen. It’s not my fault that they didn’t want to hear it. Do you think everyone always wants to listen to you? Your subordinates? No. But you insist on making them listen because you have the power to do that.

DCI MARSHALL

So you do think this makes you powerful? You don’t need the flaw in the metaphor? Taking lives… ruining others. Did you ever stop to think of the families that you were destroying? You took someone they loved from each of them without even a second thought.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No. It makes me honest, not powerful. I am not the only person out there who wants to watch things burn. Many people do not have the courage to act on these thoughts. They lie to their loved ones, act like they care about others. They wear a mask that they will never let slip. That is not honesty.

DCI MARSHALL

And do you think you were honest with your family? Your wife and sons? Your mother and father? Do you not think that you were wearing the mask of a good husband and father all these years? The mask has slipped for them now, hasn’t it?

Pause.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

My mask did not slip. It caught fire. And something new will rise from the ashes for all of them.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 9.

Chapter 41: Nick

Notes:

We're so close to the end now! Tomorrow is the last David chapter and then we have the final podcast!

Once I start, it turns out I can’t stop. The piece of paper that I wrote everything down on is forgotten on the bed – my thoughts about as organised as an overspilling drawer without it – and I pace back and forth across Charlie’s room as he sits with his back propped up against the wall and just listens. He doesn’t say a word – doesn’t interrupt or gasp or make any sort of comment at all – just lets me ramble until I don’t even know what I’m angriest about anymore. 

I tell him about the fear in London – the way we’d huddle up and watch the news when another body was found and feel Dad’s heavy hand on our shoulders as he told us to stay safe. I tell him about the day David found his best friend’s ring in a drawer when he was rummaging around for a charger and realised – with a sort of sick certainty that he still can’t explain to me – how he just knew. I tell him about the day Dad was arrested – the cool, quiet way he just surrendered and smiled at us all in a way that made me realise that I never knew him. I tell him about the trial, the crowds of people shoving cameras in our faces, the way the world went quiet afterwards as everyone around us cut them off.

I don’t tell him about the afternoon we brought Dad back from the dead. The day we revived a monster and just let him loose on the world again.

I don’t know if he’ll ever look at me the same way again if I do.

“—did you know there are people writing to him?” I ask him like he hasn’t just learnt of the existence of Dad and has somehow found the time to Google and learn about his correspondence. In reality, Charlie has barely moved since I started, and I’m beginning to think I’ve overwhelmed him to the point that he’s stopped functioning.

He jumps when I slap the back of one hand down against the other palm.

“Like, they actually consider themselves fans of his like he’s some absolute fucking genius—”

Another slap.

“—instead of what he actually is. Just a shit dad and a shit human who hurt people for no reason. Everyone thinks that there’s got to be a reason why he did what he did. They all think there’s got to be some meaning but there’s nothing. Nothing justifies what he did—”

Charlie shuffles forward on the bed until his knees are hooked over the edge. I sweep my hair back from my face. The pressure is building in my throat and I feel like I might explode if I don’t let it all out.

“—he never cared about anything – about any of us – and then he left in this massive way and everyone expected us to fall apart like there was a void we needed to fill—”

“Nick.” Charlie reaches for my waist.

“—I don’t think if he’d just upped and left I would have ever missed him. But now I’m trapped feeling like there's a big part of my life that’s been a lie and it’s not fair when he never made any effort to be important enough for me to be sad about him .”

“Nick!”

I feel myself being tugged forward as Charlie wraps his arms around my waist and presses his cheek to my abdomen. I flex, almost instinctively, as if he hasn’t proven already that he’s here to stay no matter the state of me. As if I haven’t just cracked myself open and shown him every imperfect part of myself and found him still here with me.

I wind my arms around his shoulders and bury my face in his hair.

“Do you need me to stop?” I whisper into his curls. He shakes his head – his nose dragging across my bottom chest.

“No,” he murmurs. “I just need you to breathe.”

So, I do.

Charlie tugs me gently and I clamber back onto the bed next to him. We have to rearrange our bodies to fit in the narrow space, but once we’re settled I rest my head on his chest and drape my arm across his waist. His fingers draw patterns against my scalp and I wait for the tremble in my own hands to calm down before I speak again.

“I haven’t told you the worst part,” I whisper eventually. Charlie tugs my hair gently and makes me look at him.

“The serial killing dad isn’t the worst part?”

He says it lightly, and I know he’s trying to make me feel better, but the reality of confessing everything still fills me with dread. There’s a difference between knowing that someone related to me is responsible for all those deaths. It’s another thing entirely to realise that some of them are my fault too.

“I—” My throat feels dry. Charlie holds me a little tighter. “I’m scared you’ll hate me.”

Charlie kisses my head.

“I could never hate you. It’s not like you killed anyone.”

He feels me stiffen in his arms and his voice goes quiet.

“Nick?”

“I didn’t— I—” I cling to him. If he hates me after this, I at least need to know that I held on for as long as I could. “Years ago… David and I— If we’d known we wouldn’t have—”

Charlie hushes me gently, and I feel myself relax as much as I can against him while he runs his hand up and down my back.

“Take your time,” he whispers. “It’s okay. I’m still going to be here.”

“We saved him. He tried to end it all and we brought him back and— and I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for that.”

“He was your dad,” Charlie says softly. “And how could you have known what he was doing?”

I take a deep breath and push myself up so I can face him properly. I owe him that, at least.

“He killed four people after that. Four. How do I live with that? How do I live with the fact that those people would still be alive if it weren't for me? How does my brother live with the fact that saving our dad meant that his best friend died in the most horrible way?”

“Nick, you can’t blame yourself for that.”

“But if I hadn’t— If we’d just come home later— All those people – Nathan – they’d all be alive. And everyone knows that. Everyone in London knew because they’d called us heroes at the time. That’s why Mum moved us. People might have felt sorry for us if Dad was just living this double life. But they all knew we had a chance to stop him and we didn’t.”

“Nick.” Charlie cups both my cheeks in his hands. “It wasn’t your fault, okay? None of it. Your dad did what he did and none of you could have had any idea. It’s not your fault. And I’ll keep saying it if you need me to. If you can’t believe it yourself then let me believe it for the both of us.”

He takes a deep breath as I hold mine.

“You’ve got to forgive yourself, Nick. It’s too heavy to carry on your own. You need to let yourself let it go.”

I don’t know how to do that, but the tears that escape me feel like a good enough start.

Chapter 42: David

His exit from the prison is swift – neither he nor the guards want him there anymore. There’s a gruff moment where he nearly kicks off at the man who gripped his shoulder and led him out of the visitor room, until he realises how much explaining it would take if he got arrested. He’s got to face his mum eventually, and he’d rather do it with a relatively clear conscience.

As clear as his conscience gets, nowadays.

The lanyard and pass they handed him when he arrived are unceremoniously ripped from his neck at the reception desk, but they let him keep the printed sticker on his lapel. Apparently, one bit of identification wasn’t enough.

It feels tacky and cloying against his fingers when he peels it from his clothes and tosses it into the gutter.

The letter follows it – that fucking letter that brought him here in the first place. Mum and Nick received identical ones. David knows, because he steamed open all three when they dropped down onto the doormat not long after they first moved. Mum had still been asleep upstairs and Nick had been god knows where doing god knows what at the time. It had felt safer – more in keeping with protecting that family in a way that had suddenly fallen to him – to know what the man had wanted to say to them all. 

In the end, it had been three words with a simple signature – the handwriting chaotic and messy and not at all like the neat script David was used to – and each one had seemed like even more of a bitter disappointment than the last.

You never visit.

The fact that he thought that an explanation might be forthcoming is making him feel like a fool now. There is nothing, and there will be nothing. Just wondering and wishing and waiting for something to make sense.

Nothing makes sense.

He plucks his phone from his pocket – fresh from the property locker he had to store his belongings in when he entered – and scrolls through his most recent messages. There’s nothing from anyone, there never is anymore. Mum calls, and Nick hasn’t texted him gibberish since he started to make friends at school. David thinks, with a sort of lilting hope, that maybe his brother’s days of spiralling are over. That might be one bit of good news in an otherwise shitty existence.

Most of his old mates have blocked him, he’s sure. There were a few undelivered messages that bounced back before he gave up entirely.

With a shaky breath, David scrolls down to the last time a human wanted to actually spend time with him. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to open Nathan’s last message – he’d already passed out after two too many vodka Red Bulls before Nathan sent it – and by the time he realised back then that he’d missed a message, his body had already been found.

He takes a deep breath, and clicks the one unread message in his inbox.

Hey, man, I’m on my way. Meet me at Holborn station at ten?

 

 

Notes:

Originally, I had a different ending for David envisioned… one where he emails his university to ask about coming back and finishing his degree. Feel free to imagine he does that after. In the end, though, I was feeling mean.

Chapter 43: Crime Time Episode 10: We Remember

Click for podcast transcript

Hey Crime Time fans, and a big welcome to our final episode in this special anniversary series all about London’s most infamous serial killer of the twenty first century. If you’ve joined us for this entire series, you’ll have heard all about how Stéphane Fournier terrorised Paris and London over two decades. We’ve talked about his childhood, his move to London, the fire that killed his brother and the suicide attempt that nearly ended it all. It’s been quite the rollercoaster for all of us at Crime Time, and we hope you’ve enjoyed being along for the ride!

Now, sadly, it’s time for our final episode before we’re back to our regular program. 

We’ve focussed on the man. Today, we’re going to focus on the people he impacted the most. His family, his neighbours and, ultimately, the families of the men he killed.

We’re joined by Joyce Bailey, the neighbour of Zachary Walton – Stéphane’s tenth victim – and Malcolm Adams – a science teacher at Nicholas’ former school. 

Joyce, can you tell us about the time after Zachary’s death?

JB: Of course, Magdalena. Thank you for having me, I’m a massive fan of your show.

We’re so glad you’ve been listening! Tell us about Zachary.

JB: Oh he was such a sweet lad. A little bit too fond of the drink, if you asked his mother, but always ready to lend a helpful hand on the street for a bob or two. He’d walk my dogs for me of an evening, fetch my shopping for me. He was out shopping for my dinner when he was killed.

Oh my goodness! 

JB: The guilt, it stays with you, you know. His mother never accepted it when I apologised. Of course, it wasn’t my fault. That man must have stalked him again and again to find him on his own like that. Still, you do have to wonder how things might have been different if I’d just asked him to go earlier in the day. 

You can’t blame yourself, Joyce. I’m sure all of our listeners will agree.

JB: You’re very kind, dear. Thank you.

You’re so welcome! Now, Malcolm, you taught Nicholas before he moved schools, correct?

MA: That’s correct. I was his science teacher from year eight onwards, and briefly his form tutor before he had to leave us. 

So you knew him through all of the trauma? Saving his dad and eventually realising that he was a serial killer?

MA: Yes, he was unfortunately the constant topic of conversation in the staffroom. Some of my colleagues remembered his brother, too. David was angrier – surly, I think you’d say – but Nicholas was kinder. His father described him as a little soft on the one parents evening he attended.

You met Stéphane?

MA: Certainly. Only once or twice. He always struck me as odd. Nicholas would sort of shrink when he was around, but I could never quite put my finger on why. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I think, deep down, Nicholas knew that his father would disappoint him one day. His brother was more optimistic, I’ve been led to believe. I wonder which attitude is serving them better now.

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for your insight.

Joyce, can you tell us a little bit more about the impact Zachary’s death had on your community?

JB: His mother never recovered, of course. She moved away a long time ago with her younger sons. I often think of those boys and how much they needed people to rally around them. But I understand that she couldn’t handle the scrutiny. People talk, you know? They don’t think about the impact their nosiness has on the family. Journalists would show up at their doors at ungodly hours trying to ask questions. It was difficult for the entire street.

MA: We had various media outlets snooping around school too, after the boys. Of course there was an absolute lockdown on communication. We weren’t even allowed to do a proper handover to Nicholas’ new school. I often wonder how he’s getting on in his A Levels now. He had such potential that I can’t help but worry has been squandered.

We think of the boys all the time on this show. We’d love to talk to them one day. Thank you so much, both of you, for sharing with us today.

That’s nearly all from us, folks, but first we would like to make a very special tribute. Here at Crime Time we never forget that our success is built on the tragedy of others. Our focus has been on Stéphane all along, but we can’t forget what he did.

And so, Crime Time fans, we leave you with the most important people in our story. Stéphane’s victims. They remain forever in our hearts, and this series is dedicated to their memory. They are: Maxime Renaud, Aiden Powell, Jack Parker, Samuel Jones, Unnamed John Doe, Kieran Jordan, Reggie Gordon, Eddie Cunningham, Alfie Trivett, Zachary Walton, Harper Douglass and, finally, Nathan Price.

Rest in peace, boys.

Notes:

I thoroughly enjoyed trying to see just how much hypocrisy I could fit into four minutes.

That's all for Crime Time, folks!

Chapter 44: Charlie

I’ve not met this Nick before. The one who isn’t afraid of what might come out of his mouth if he just lets himself go.

Eventually, there’s nothing else to tell me: Nick poured out every fear and dirty secret until I watched his shoulders slump and the frown across his brow loosen as he realised that he was done. He’d told me everything and I was still there. I could still sense it when he finally stopped talking and laid his head down in my lap – he was waiting for me to freak out and send him away forever.

I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not freaking out, but I know for sure that he’s not going anywhere.

Especially not when we hear the front door slam shut and Tori and Michael bickering on the driveway. Being alone right now is good, it’s what we need, and Nick looks at me with a sort of hunger I haven't seen before. When he lets me peel his shirt up and over his head and run my hands across his bare chest, I realise what it is. He’s not clinging to me because he’s afraid of losing me anymore. And there’s nothing I want more in the world right now than to discover what might come out of this new loose-lipped Nick if I press the right buttons.

When there are no more words, he lets out a sob and I swallow it with open mouthed kisses. He clings to me – hands buried in my shirt – as I soothe him with my hands and my lips and my tongue. The rest of his clothes come off easily until he’s down to his boxers – ruched down around his thighs as I press kisses along his hipbone and listen to the little moans and hisses he makes as I drag my lips across his skin.

He’s liquid and silk under me and I can’t believe that he’s real and he’s mine.

He doesn’t seem to care that I keep all of my clothes on; he runs his hands underneath the fabric and looks at me with dopey, hooded eyes as I take care of him. 

“Want to touch you,” he whispers, tugging at the hem of my shirt. I press a kiss to the tip of his nose.

“Later,” I murmur. He screws up his eyes and moans. “Let me take care of you right now.”

And he does.

He stretches his arms up above his head and clings to my headboard as I stroke him before bending at the waist to take him in my mouth. If he’s expecting this to be quick, he’s sorely mistaken. I’ve got him here – completely and unreservedly now – and I intend to savour him completely. I bring him to the edge with my tongue before I stop and crawl up his body to kiss him. I stroke him until his breath stutters and I flatten both palms out against his thighs to bring him back from the brink again. Cruel, maybe, but given the way he’s looking at me I think he’d agree it’s a perfect sort of agony. 

It’s a good thing no one’s home because his voice is unholy when I take him in my mouth again; begging and telling me how good I feel and how much he lo—

He cuts himself off – his tongue not quite limber enough – but I got the gist enough to reach up and stroke his bicep until he readjusts his arms to hold my hand.

It doesn’t take much longer, after that, before he’s scrunching his hands in my hair and coming down my throat.

Still, he doesn’t go quiet.

When he’s recovered enough, he wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me close against him and keeps talking. About how hard it’s all been; about how everything feels strange and frozen in a time he just wants to escape from. I don’t think I’ve ever heard his voice this much and I love it.

In fact, halfway through him telling me how sick with worry he’s been about his mum since it all happened, I realised that I’m more than a little bit in love with him. Not because he’s fit and strong and somehow fragile at the same time, but because the worst thing I could possibly imagine happened, and he still cares more about his mum than anything else. 

Eventually, he starts to slow down a little.

“You can listen, if you want,” he murmurs when he’s draped his arm across my belly and snuggled in close. “I don’t want to hide anything, anymore. Not from you.”

He’s asleep before I can ask him if he’s sure.

Nick has fallen asleep on me a lot since this… thing… between us started. This feels different, though. He’s not got his usual frown, or that little twitch at the corner of his mouth that makes him look like he’s arguing with someone in his sleep. Instead, he looks young – like he should. He looks like an eighteen year old whose biggest worry is uni applications, not whether another body might be uncovered any day now.

Which makes me realise that, although Nick told me everything, he was very light on the specifics. I guess no one wants to have to recount every sordid detail of the worst thing their parents have ever done. I’m not sure I’d want to tell anyone the specifics of the Madrid pub crawl that Dad sometimes references whenever someone implies that he’s old and boring, let alone the finer details of a killing spree that landed my family in the news. I want to know the details though, if only to know that there’s nothing going to jump out from the shadows years down the line.

I manage to tuck the duvet around Nick well enough that if my parents were to wander in they wouldn’t get an eyeful. There’ll be some explaining to do if they do happen to find him half-naked in my bed, but it feels like the least important thing in the world right now. 

He stirs a little, and I press a kiss to his forehead and wait for him to settle again.

When Nick starts snoring gently, I scramble on the bedside table for my phone and type a message, one-thumbed, to Tori.

Hey, can you send me the link to that podcast, please?

…

The dots appear and disappear a few times before Tori’s reply comes through.

You sure?

Didn't think it was your thing…

Which pretty much confirms my suspicions that she’s figured it all out. 

Yeah… Nick and I talked. I—

I let the phone drop down onto my chest and think. 

I want to know.

The link comes through seconds later.

I pop the earbuds in and press play.

Chapter 45: The Fournier Tapes: Part Ten

THE FOURNIER TAPES

These tapes have been provided by the Metropolitan Police Department in connection with the investigation into Stéphane Fournier. Transcripts courtesy of DS Leena Farrow. With thanks to DCI Marshall and the Murder Investigation Team.

The Fournier Tapes – Tape 10

[INT. INTERVIEW ROOM – FINAL SESSION]

DCI MARSHALL

Final interview with Stéphane Fournier. Do you have anything to say?

Silence.

DS FARROW

You killed twelve people. Some just teenagers. We’ve determined your fifth victim to have been seventeen years old at the time he died. Your sons are seventeen and twenty one, yes? None of your victims were older than twenty five. Why did they not deserve to be as safe as your boys?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

They were already halfway gone. I just… finished what life started. I saw something bad in them. I extinguished it.

DCI MARSHALL

That’s your final confession? That you felt like they deserved to die, so you took their lives? You’ll get a trial, a chance to be heard. Which is more than what you gave any of your victims. Do you really think that that’s justice?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No. Not justice. Payback. Fire took something from me a long time ago. Fire has now repaid its debt to me.

DS FARROW

And your family?

Pause.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Tell them I’m glad they did it.

Pause.

I’m proud that they finished what I couldn’t. Even if it was far too late.

DCI MARSHALL

Any last words for the record?

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

Am I right in thinking that, should I plead guilty, there will be no need for a trial?

DCI MARSHALL

Correct. You can spare the families of our victims more pain – you could spare your family more pain. The result will be the same. We have enough evidence. No jury in the world would acquit you with these tapes alone.

STÉPHANE FOURNIER

No, I don't think I will. I think a trial will be a nice way to kill some time, as it were. It would be good to see my sons again. I don’t suppose their mother will let them come and visit me. It is not in her nature to do things that she believes will make life difficult for them. This is a concern for me. I do not want weak sons raised.

Pause.

Yes, a trial would be good. What is the point of all this if I do not get the opportunity to see the impact?

Pause.

You have nothing else to say to me, Detective Chief Inspector?

DCI MARSHALL

Interviews with Stéphane Fournier over. Thank you DS Farrow, that will be all.

Recorder clicks. End of Tape 10.

Notes:

And that's the last of the police tapes! Thank you for joining me on this journey of trying to rip the piss out of pathetic, violent white men who think they're geniuses.

Chapter 46: Charlie

In the morning, there isn’t much debate about where we want to be and we manage to sneak Nick past my parents without either of them noticing that he’s been here all night. Mum happens to wander out into the hallway when Nick has already shoved his feet into his shoes and I’m leaning nonchalantly against the banister like he just arrived. The fact that she doesn’t notice his laces are undone or his shoes have been here all night is a miracle. I try to keep the smirk off of my face as she made polite chitchat with him while I pulled on my Converse.

I suppose I’ll have to tell them about the two of us at some point, but I’m holding off for as long as I can. At least until Nick has had the chance to come out to his mum. After last night, I don’t really want to push him into making any more confessions before he’s ready; I’m sure he’s already a little bit frayed around the edges without being forced into making any more life-changing admissions to people he cares about.

He still holds my hand for the entire walk to his house, though. 

We don’t talk much as we walk. It’s not that Nick has gone quiet and surly again, but more like there isn’t anything we need to say to one another right now. Every so often I catch him glancing at me and grinning like a Cheshire cat as he swings our hands between us. In the night, he woke me up with two fingers against my cheek and kissed me until my lips felt bruised. With everyone else asleep, we had to be quiet, but Nick made good on his promise and touched me until I was biting down on the pillow and clinging to him like I might fall into the abyss if I let go.

We both slept pretty soundly after that. 

When Nick glances at me again and blushes, I know that he’s thinking about the exact same thing I am.

And I know that he’s hoping his house is empty as much as I am.

No such luck. When we arrive, Nick’s mum’s car is in the driveway and the front door is unlocked. Nick squeezes my hand and then drops it as he pushes open the door and calls out to her. There’s no reply.

I feel Nick tense up – like I imagine he has every time he’s come home for years – until we hear soft murmuring coming from the kitchen. Nick’s mum, on the phone and clearly oblivious to Nick’s sudden, muted panic. 

I wrap my arm through his and give him a squeeze.

“’S’okay,” I whisper. “Everything’s okay.”

He doesn’t seem convinced until he’s kicked off his shoes and padded towards the kitchen to see her for himself. She has her back to the kitchen door when we push it open, her mobile tucked under her cheek as she wipes a saucepan at the kitchen sink. She’s methodical – on autopilot – and we watch as she wipes and balances, wipes and balances, until there’s a pile of clean pots and pans on the side. It’s a completely ordinary domestic scene, but Nick leans against the door frame and grins.

That is, until his mum’s shoulder stiffen.

“David?” Her voice sounds a little worried. “Where are you?”

At the mention of his brother’s name, Nick flinches. We hover in the doorway and wait as she paces anxiously back and forth in the kitchen. If she were holding one of those old-fashioned landlines, she’d be twirling the swirl cable between her fingers. Instead, they flutter uselessly in the air at nothing, until she stops dead and swallows heavily.

“Okay, love, sorry, I thought—”

A pause.

“No no, I’ll let you go, love. Talk soon. Okay, bye.”

When she’s hung up, there’s a moment where she clearly doesn’t realise that we’re there. Nick pauses, like he wants her to notice him of her own accord, before he clears his throat gently.

It makes her jump before she spins around.

“Oh, hi darling, didn’t see you there.” Her demeanour instantly changes, and if I hadn’t just watched her curl inwards at whatever conversation she just had myself, I’d never know anything was wrong. I guess the entire family is good at pretending. 

She pulls Nick into a hug first and then me, squeezing me warmly and making a little cooing noise that tells me that she’s pleased to see me. When she pulls back, her eyes are a little damp.

“What are you boys up to today, then? Seeing anyone else from school?”

She says it optimistically, like she thinks Nick might have a horde of popular friends just waiting in the wings instead of the reality; he’s befriended a bunch of outcasts. I don’t think he’d have it any other way. He makes a strange gesture – like he wanted to put his hands in his pockets and thought better of it – and reaches out to stroke a knuckle against the inside of my wrist. It must steady him, somehow, because I feel him straighten up next to me before he clears his throat.

“Actually, I’d rather just hang out with Charlie,” he says softly, his bottom lip quivering slightly as he speaks. “I mean… I’d rather just hang out with my boyfriend.”

🤍🖤

“Honestly, Nick, I can’t believe you just came out like that.”

I drop the noodles that I’ve been trying to navigate towards my mouth with chopsticks alone and dump the entire box back onto the bed. Nick reaches out to ruffle my curls fondly.

“Just… felt right, you know?”

I do know. When I came out to my parents, there was so much talking. Mum wanted to know if I was sure and how I knew and whether I still liked girls. She thought I was too young to be making big decisions about my identity like that. It wasn’t that they weren’t supportive, in the end, but it felt like we needed to get through a whole lot of convincing first.

With Sarah, there was still a lot of talking, but it felt different. She wanted to know when we’d first realised; how we first met; whether we’d been on our first date yet; what little spark had made us both realise that this was it.

We skimmed over a lot of the details, of course, but then Nick had to go and play a blinder by looking at me with big eyes and whispering:

“I guess he just saw me, when no one else did.”

I see him now: bright and limber and at peace in a way that I haven’t had much of a chance to witness before. He’s still my Nick, but it’s as if he’s reached his final form.

He finishes cramming fried rice into his mouth with a wooden spoon and leans back against the pillows.

“You’re staying tonight, right?” he whispers, as if it isn’t barely midday. “I— I’d like you to stay.”

As if I’d go anywhere willingly. I’ll deal with asking my parents later. 

Besides, the promise of an entire night together means that there’s more time to talk when there’s still so much left to say. I nudge the takeaway containers to the foot of the bed and shuffle close enough that I can hold Nick’s hands in mine. His brow furrows as I focus on the shape of his knuckles under my fingertips and try to conjure up the right words.

“I— I care about you so much, Nick. You know that, right?”

Nick nods, but his lips stay clamped shut.

“And it doesn’t matter to me who your dad is. Like, even if it all comes out one day, I won’t ever let anyone drag you away from me.”

“Char…”

I bring his hands to my lips and press a kiss to his palm before he can say anything else. If he interrupts me now, I might never get the momentum again. I breathe out heavily, and let the words flow out of me.

“I’m a little bit in love with you, if I’m honest.”

There’s quiet, and then I feel the wind being knocked out of me as Nick tackles me to the bed. I hear the quiet pop of a container opening and a squelch as our lunch hits his carpet. From her vantage point on the beanbag in the corner, Nellie spots the mess instantly and launches herself forward. I don’t know who’s happier.

Me, obviously.

Nick’s lips are warm and firm against mine as he cups my face and kisses me deeply. His thigh is thrust between my legs and I can feel the full weight of him on top of me. It reminds me of last night. It’s glorious.

It doesn’t last long enough, though, before Nick is propping himself up on his elbows and looking at me with that dopey, warm-eyed look he has when he’s getting sentimental. I can’t help myself; I hold my breath until I hear the words that I know are coming.

“I—” Nick starts, before he drops another kiss on my lips. “I’m a little bit in love with you too. I think I have been for a while.”

When I relax back against the bed and pull him down against me, Nick’s hands are everywhere: my hips, my chest, my face. He holds me like something precious as he presses kisses to every inch of skin that he can reach and whispers I love you, I love you, I love you.

Funny how we’ve gone from a little bit to absolutely in a few brief seconds. I’ve never been more certain of anything, though. Nick too, if the surety of his touch is anything to go by.

That is, until he freezes, his lips ghosting against mine as he comes back to himself.

“I just need to do something else, okay?” Nick whispers, before pushing himself out of the bed and stumbling across the room to his desk. There’s a little drawer at the front that he opens, and pulls an envelope from inside. When he turns to me, his face looks troubled again.

“It’s from my dad,” he whispers. “He wrote to me a while ago and I haven’t been able to bring myself to open it.”

“You want me to be here while you read it?” I ask softly. Nick shakes his head firmly.

“No, I— I want to burn it.”

Notes:

And here we are, only an epilogue to go! We'll be jumping forward in time tomorrow and then this fic is done!

Chapter 47: Epilogue

“What do you want? I’m buying.”

Charlie waves his wallet at me like we’ve not found the cheapest coffee shop in the neighbourhood as our usual. I make a big show of perusing the menu that hasn’t changed in years, while he waits patiently knowing full well what I’m going to choose.

“English breakfast, please and thank you.”

Charlie rolls his eyes at me.

“Coming up, old man.”

Our usual table is tucked around the corner, past a little divider that cuts us off from the people who have wandered in and spend ages deliberating over the menu. Charlie meets me there with a steaming cup of tea and his usual oat latte.

It’s so wonderfully normal.

I can’t believe this is my life now. Having an ordinary drink in an ordinary cafe with my anything-but-ordinary boyfriend. One day, we’ll have an ordinary wedding and an ordinary family and no one will ever give a shit who my dad was because, look at us, how could the Nelson-Springs ever be anything other than normal?

It feels great.

Nearby, someone clears their throat.

“Excuse me, Nicholas? Nicholas Fournier?”

I feel a sort of creeping ache in my shoulders that I haven’t felt in years, while Charlie chokes on his latte across the table. The voice has come from a man leaning across the divider that separates the queue from the tables. I’m half expecting him to have a little notebook in his hands, instead of the phone that is clearly recording. 

Charlie settles his mug down on his saucer and wipes the foam from his lips delicately.

“Who?” he says, innocently. “I don’t know who that is.”

The man clearly panics, his eyes darting between us.

“Oh, no, sorry, I was talking to— you are Nick Fournier, aren’t you?”

Before I’ve even had a chance to work out a plausible denial, Charlie is speaking again, his voice innocent and vaguely amused.

“No, I definitely know my boyfriend’s name and that’s not it. We’ve just signed a tenancy agreement and everything and that’s not the name on the paperwork.”

He smirks at me. We only got the keys to our new flat an hour ago and already he’s causing mischief over it.

The man huffs impatiently. His slightly bumbling demeanor drops instantly when he realises that we’re not playing the game.

“Look, quit the act, okay?” he snaps. “I know who you are and I just need a statement.”

Across the table, I watch Charlie’s face darken protectively. Always looking after me one way or another.

It’s been the same for the past five years. Ever since I finally opened up to him and let every thought that was in my head spill out into a messy heap in front of him. Five years of loving him and being loved in return; of living in one another’s pockets or existing together through one another’s phone screens; of coming together and being apart and finding our way back to one another.

Uni was tough. Charlie went away while I stayed and got my degree online. When we first moved to Truham, I couldn’t imagine staying. But when David came home properly and Mum started opening up again, it started to feel like a proper home.

When David pissed off back to Scotland to finish his degree, I stuck around for Mum. One day I’ll spread my wings a little, but for now this life is what I want.

I want to live with my boyfriend, in the little town where nothing of any note happens. I want to let him take me home later to our pokey little flat and take care of me in the way only he can.

I want him to make me feel things that I used to think I’d have to bury forever. Every bit of ecstasy over having him and every bit of fear over losing him. He makes me feel it all in the very best way.

Charlie’s fingers tighten in mine, and I realise that the guy is still staring at us while I’ve drifted off into my own little world. I shrug at him.

“Fine,” I say finally. “Ask me.”

The reporter visibly deflates, like he had been expecting a fight, and I watch him hit a button on his phone to make sure it’s recording.

“Cheers. Do you have any comment in the reports that your dad’s case is soon to be made into a Netflix show? Have the producers reached out to get your side of the story?”

Charlie reaches out to grasp my hand and I feel the world spin a little as I absorb what he’s saying. 

“N-No,” I stammer. “I-I hadn’t heard.”

The guy’s lips curl into a smirk. This is probably the biggest scoop he’s been able to deliver in his whole miserable career.

“Okay, well, care to comment at all? What are your thoughts?”

If I say nothing, Charlie will explode at the guy in that way he does when he’s feeling over-protective. The Tao-effect, we call it. Our entire friendship group is the same.

I can’t let that happen on the record, though. Charlie doesn’t deserve to be dragged into the forefront of this mess, no matter how much he loves me.

“I—” I stop; take a deep breath. I can do this. I can say what needs to be said. “I think my dad was a pathetic loser whose only achievement was having one foot out the door our whole lives because he was too busy killing people who deserved to live.”

The guy’s face pales.

“Now piss off, okay? He’s not worth my time.”

Charlie’s eyes are glossy with pride when I meet his gaze. He licks his lips hungrily – I’m never usually the assertive one. 

I turn back to the reporter, who is scrambling to press buttons on his phone.

“He was never worth anyone’s time.”

Notes:

And that’s a wrap, folks! Thanks for coming with me on this weird-plot-bunny ride!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of The Parents Fucked Up