“What’s the point of keeping all that stress hidden away?” I ask.

“We’re supposed to be manly,” Ian replies. “We’re not supposed to get upset. We’re supposed to be the breadwinners and the providers, especially in our children’s eyes. We’re supposed to do miracles.”

As I sit in Ian’s kitchen, it suddenly makes sense to me that Chris Foster would choose to shoot Jill and Kirstie in the back of their heads. It was as if he was too ashamed to look at them. Maybe the murders were a type of honor killing, as if Foster simply couldn’t bear the idea of losing their respect and the respect of his friends. I ask Ian if he thinks Foster planned his night of mayhem or if it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. “Oh, he was meticulous that night,” Ian says. “That’s weeks of planning, isn’t it?”

“When do you think he did the planning?” I ask.

“Probably in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep. That’s when people’s brains start thinking about that kind of thing, isn’t it?”

•   •   •

A FEW WEEKS LATER, I drive to Hodnet, near Maesbrook, to the West Midlands Shooting Ground, where I’m due to meet Graham Evans, an old friend and shooting partner of Foster’s. Clay-pigeon shooting was one of Foster’s great hobbies. He used to come to Hodnet every Tuesday night. It was, in fact, how he spent his last day on earth: clay-pigeon shooting at his neighbor’s barbecue.

On the way, it starts to rain, and so, by the time I arrive, Graham Evans and the other shooters are crammed into the bar, passing the time until they can shoot by telling incredibly offensive jokes.

“What’s the difference between a prostitute and crack cocaine?” says Bill (not his real name). “A prostitute can clean her crack and resell it.”

Everyone laughs. There are an awful lot of tasteless jokes floating around here today. In fact, the minute I arrived at the club—practically before I was out of the car—someone asked if I knew the one about the black woman in the sauna. Then there was the sign on the gate of the pretty wisteria-covered farm next door to the shooting range: “Every third traveler [meaning ‘Gypsy’] is shot. The second has just left.” In the old days, I think, jokes such as these were intended to display superiority, but now they seem to do the opposite. Although this is a lovely, rustic, and quite posh shooting club, the men here seem a bit sad and ground down.

“I’m sure there are jokes we can do about Fossie,” says a club member called Simon (not his real name). “Let’s see. Did you hear the one about the barbecue that ran out of Fosters . . . ?” Everyone looks at Simon.

“Um . . .” he says. He falls silent. “That doesn’t really work,” he says.

“I can understand why Fossie might want to kill himself,” Bill says. “I’ve thought about doing myself in loads of times. . . .”

Nobody seems at all surprised by this blunt admission, so casually made. Who knows: Maybe Bill is always going on about killing himself. Or maybe lots of the men here have considered the option. There are racks of rifles for sale all over the place—Berettas and Winchesters and so on. Perhaps being in proximity to so much weaponry invariably turns a man’s mind to thoughts of suicide.

“I even know the place where I’d do it,” Bill continues. “There’s a lovely spot up over there on that hill near the satellite dish.”

There are a few murmurs along the lines of “That is a nice spot.”

“But to shoot your own daughter . . .” Bill says. He trails off.

“Anyway,” Graham Evans says. “The rain’s stopped. Do you want a go at shooting?”

“OK,” I say.

We head outside. Graham hands me a shotgun. I aim, shout “Pull!” and proceed effortlessly to blow to pieces every clay pigeon that has the misfortune to fly past my magnificence. I’m a natural at this, and clay-pigeon shooting turns out to be an incredibly exciting thing to do.

Suddenly, lots of the other shooters start yelling, “Whoa! Whoa! Jon! Steady on!”

“What?” I say, perplexed.

“You’re doing this,” says Graham. He does an impersonation of a crazed person waving a gun terrifyingly around.

“I am not,” I say.

“You are,” half a dozen shooters say in unison.

Graham says it’s great to see me so invigorated, and adds that if I want even more excitement, I should try shooting pheasants. “Pheasants have minds of their own,” he says, “so that’s rewarding. The best time to shoot them is at the end of October, a few weeks into the season, because they’ve already been shot at and survived. So they’re wise then, you see?”

And then it starts raining again, so we rush back indoors and pass the time window-shopping the guns for sale. The conversation returns to Foster. Graham says he was a really impressive sight, turning up in his Porsche every Tuesday night. He says everyone knew he was loaded, “but around here people aren’t prejudiced against that sort of thing. Fossie was a good guy. A good shot. He called me El Supremo.” Graham pauses sadly. “He loved guns,” he says. “He had hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of them. He was a real collector.”

On my way home, I drive once more through posh little Maesbrook. All the talk on the radio is of the credit crunch. They’re interviewing Oliver Letwin and Harriet Harman. Both admit, quite sheepishly, that they have no savings, only overdrafts.

“I wish it weren’t so,” Letwin says, “and incidentally I wish people in Britain were all saving more. I know I ought to, but my wife and I are too extravagant and we should cut back.”

The police followed me out of the village last time I was here, in part because I seemed too scruffy for these exclusive, nouveau-riche surroundings; but it dawns on me that perhaps—like Letwin—the people of Maesbrook actually have nothing but overdrafts and all these fancy cars and mansions are just an illusion. Maybe, with my meager savings, I’m the richest man in town.

•   •   •

LESS THAN A MONTH after the murders at Maesbrook, yet another father wiped out his family, this time in Southampton. His name was David Cass. He smothered his two daughters, telephoned his estranged partner, Kerrie Hughes, told her that the children had “gone to sleep forever,” hung up, and hanged himself. They were apparently going through a messy breakup. In the U.S., according to the Department of Justice, a parent—usually a man—wipes out his family, and then himself, about once every week.

It’s startling to hear Foster’s friends talk about how they empathize with his actions. I wouldn’t have guessed how on the edge people in this Shropshire enclave can be, and how easy it is for the whole thing just to unravel.

PART FOUR

STEPPING OVER THE LINE

“I know it’s bitter. Just keep drinking. Put your finger over your nose and chugalug it all down.”

—George Exoo

Blood Sacrifice

On a Friday afternoon in January 2002, Susan Ellis sneaks past the security staff at Guy’s Hospital, London. She’s pretending to be a patient, although nobody asks. She catches the lift to the fourth floor, finds the kidney-dialysis waiting room, and whispers to me, “It’s perfect.”

And, for her purposes, it is. It’s easily accessible from the corridor and security is not tight. It’s almost empty of patients and staff. Most crucially, there’s a table full of magazines. Susan pretends to read them. Nobody notices as she slips business cards inside the pages. She hopes patients will leaf through the magazines and see her card, which reads: “Need a kidney transplant? I can donate a kidney to you for free. Contact me at: [email protected]. This is a genuine free offer.”