Synopsis

After a decades-long stint in prison, former serial killer Carol is looking to kick back and relax in her new retirement home…until a fellow resident drops dead and Carol has to prove she actually didn’t do it this time….

Carol is delighted to be leaving her tiny prison cell behind to take her place in a luxury retirement home. She’s hoping her past as a serial killer won’t come to light so she can make a few friends and find some murder-free hobbies. But it’s not long before a fellow resident—who happens to be a former police commissioner—drops dead, and Carol’s true identity is leaked—making catching up over daily activities of bingo and baking rather awkward.

Just her luck, Carol soon realizes that the victim wasn’t the only former law enforcement officer at Sheldon Oaks—it’s filled to the brim with former cops, barristers, and government representatives, her newfound friends included. And everyone thinks Carol’s guilt is a no-brainer, but she is ready to prove them dead wrong…without killing anyone, for once.

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Excerpt

SEVEN WAS CAROL’S number. Not a big number. Pathetic, really, stopped before she got started, but it was enough to call her a serial killer. Enough to make her point.

Or was it more? Convicted for seven anyway. Perhaps there were a few others—it all got a bit hazy toward the end there. Har‑ old Shipman had got through hundreds, but that was easy. A doc‑ tor killing patients, old ladies who walked into his surgery. They were sitting ducks, hardly worth the effort. Tap‑ins. Now, picking seven (or whatever her number was) moving targets, young healthy people going about their business, and murdering them, that took skill. That took guts.

Of course, this was all in the past. Now Carol could hardly be bothered to get up and find the TV remote, let alone chase down a man, knock him to the ground, stab him in the neck, drag him into the van, take him for a drive, bury him in the woods, clean up, and leave a clue for the police to make it interesting. Carol was retired now. Which was why she was heading to Sheldon Oaks to be with the rest of the retirees, the rest of the sitting ducks.

Want to know how to knock a few decades off your sentence? Tell them where the bodies are buried. Carol’s choice was a popular one—Epping Forest. The only problem was finding a patch of ground without a body already in it. You’d think the difficulty would be getting the corpse out of the van and dragging it deep enough into the woods, but things were different back then. After dark, there’d always be someone else with their own body to ditch. Usually, the other killer would be a professional, a gangster, something like that—not a simple hobbyist like Carol. You’d help them to carry theirs, they’d help you with yours—a real sense of community. People were friendlier in the old days, not like it is now.

Carol noticed the sound of tires on gravel, a noise she hadn’t heard in years, as the taxi slowly pulled into the driveway. She braced herself for a new beginning, her new placid existence. The driver, who hadn’t said a word on the journey, took her luggage from the boot as Carol looked at her new home. The frontage was big and rectangular. Carol hadn’t a clue of the history, but to her it looked like a converted grand hotel, at least a hundred years old. Downton Abbey, but every character is Maggie Smith’s age. Shel‑ don Oaks was in Hampstead, a wealthy part of North London, its pretty grounds bordering Hampstead Heath. This was the sort of place the rich came to die.

Carol walked into the plush lobby area.

“Oh dear. Ms. Quinn. Welcome. I’m terribly sorry but I don’t think your removals people have arrived.” Elisa, the concierge, had dark hair, expensive glasses, and was well put‑together but currently fretting. She spoke in a European accent. Everything here had class, thought Carol, like a five‑star hotel that accepted guests only over the age of sixty‑five. Elisa walked over to her from behind the reception desk.

“That’s all right. I didn’t use a removals service,” said Carol. “Oh, I see. You have some family helping you? Are they here?

Let me get you a seat.”

Carol remained standing. “No. Just me. I have this but that will be all.” She nodded down to her wheelie case, small enough to qualify as hand luggage for the overhead locker on most flights.

“So the rest of your things will be arriving another day?” “No, no. This is it. Thank you. If my apartment is ready, I’d like

to move in, please.”

Elisa failed to disguise her shock. This was not a normal arrival, clearly. Most new residents, Carol supposed, came to Sheldon Oaks having gone through months of packing, organizing possessions accumulated over a lifetime. Many arrived trauma‑ tized, no doubt, after taking the contents of a four‑floor house and downsizing enough to fit them into a one‑room apartment, their adult children standing over them, lecturing them about how this was for the best, assuring them that the urgency with which they were moving them into a home had absolutely nothing to do with a desire to sell the family’s biggest asset at the top of the housing market.

Here was Carol Quinn, seventy‑five, short and scrappy, with shoulder‑length gray hair and a small visor cap, arriving in a cab straight from prison.

“Ms. Quinn!” Giles Temple, the owner, emerged from a back room. “Let me take that for you. Journey okay?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Carol recognized Giles from the brochures. In photographs he’d been smartly suited and airbrushed. In person, you got a sense of who the real Giles Temple was. Fortyish and out of shape, with blue eyes and chaotic blond hair, wearing an old‑fashioned rugby shirt and tattered aqua‑blue shorts. It was the sort of outfit that only a man with an expensive education could get away with. Giles lowered his voice. “And did you come straight from . . . ?”

“Prison, yes.”

About the Author

As well as an author, Fergus is a multi-award-winning actor, comedian and writer for television. I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home is his third novel. He lives in London.