Hi,

I wanted to tell you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.

It’s a story I’ve wanted to tell for ages, in a variety of forms. It’s been a podcast series in my head, and sketched out as a much more detailed piece than what you’ll read today.

The main issue I have is that my friend, Gary (not his real name), is reluctant to have me tell it. And I get it. The story I want to tell weaves Gary into the narrative, because I got sucked into that narrative along with him.

Telling it in too much detail hauls up a lot of dark stuff for him — and by the time you get to the end of this particular telling, you’ll probably understand why Gary doesn’t want to be placed in the middle of it. Again.

And so today on Webworm, a short, and very basic version of the story that happened nearly a decade ago. Why? I was on a long long drive and it all flooded back to me, as it tends to do every now and then. But this time when I got home it all just spilled out at the keyboard.

I wrote it, I ran it by Gary, and he’s OK with this slightly vague version. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have clicked “send” right now. 

So here it is.

See you in the comments.

David.

To those who choose to subscribe to Webworm — thank you.

Gary

My friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour. I don’t really know how else to say it, because that’s what happened.

I’d gotten to know Gary through work. Gary was incredibly reliable and never let anyone down. He was also gentle, quiet and shy, and deeply funny in a way I haven’t really encountered since. Little quips and observations, and a mean appetite for ice cream at unusual hours of the day. That’s why we became friends.

If I was bored in the office I’d wander over to Gary just to see what was on his mind. I’d usually laugh, and always leave feeling better for the interaction. Plus sometimes he’d share his ice cream.

Gary was an unusual fish. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that. And I think it was partly for that reason he found himself living with a random assortment of housemates in a quiet suburb in the city. 

It was a house of oddballs, and Gary fitted right in.

One night, at around 12.30am, one of Gary’s housemates, Dan, came home through the back door. That wasn’t particularly unusual; people came and went all the time. What was a little unusual is that Dan headed straight into the bathroom and decided to shave his beard off, before putting a big load of clothes through the washing machine. In a little while, there were sirens and flashing lights as police arrived next door.

I said things were “a little unusual”, but you have to remember I’m writing this with the benefit of hindsight. Gary did not have hindsight back then, so things weren’t particularly unusual at all.

For one thing — that quiet suburb I mentioned earlier? Sure, it was a quieter part of a very busy city. But Gary’s neighbours liked to party on Friday and Saturday nights. This was a regular occurrence, the doof doof of bass and loud drunken conversations penetrating the walls of the house. 

And so the police turning up? It wasn’t all that weird. There’d often be the odd scuffle, or neighbours would simply end up calling police over the excessive noise. As for the beard? When is the right time to shave off a beard? I couldn’t tell you. Midnight is as good a time as any, I suppose. And I’ve put washing on at all hours of the day and night, at much wilder hours than 1am.

The next day, it became clear that something serious had happened. More specifically, someone had slit the neighbour’s throat, and tried to stab someone else. The neighbour was dead, and another man was in critical condition in the hospital.

As the week went on, the police would knock on Gary’s door and talk to everyone at the flat. Bright yellow crime scene tape wound around the neighbour’s house as statements were taken and evidence gathered.

That week Gary and his housemate Dan just did their usual thing. They hung out, watching TV and playing Grand Theft Auto when they were both off work.

Life was, by-and-large, fairly normal.

Gary told me some of this as it happened.

That week I didn’t even think about asking Gary for any ice cream. I was too glued to the murder investigation happening at his neighbour’s house. There had been a few lines in the paper, but nothing more.

I guess most people would be worried — wondering if the killer was going to come back; maybe to Gary’s house this time. But Gary didn’t really think like that. The killer was faraway, somewhere. Life went on.

Then a week after it had happened — maybe it was two weeks — Gary told me the police had arrested his flatmate, Dan. 

Yes, I know you saw this coming. Dan had kept living with my friend as the police did their thing, cool as a cucumber.

When they hadn’t been playing Grand Theft Auto, Gary had joined Dan to watch reruns of The Walking Dead and Dexter.

Since Dan got arrested, Gary had spent a lot more time with the police himself. Understandably so; he’d lived with a killer. Suddenly the details about the beard shaving and clothes washing had become much more important.

Of course the neighbours now knew the man who’d slit their family member’s throat had been living next door. A few nights after Dan’s arrest, someone kicked Gary’s door in. There were screams outside. They were screams of anger. 

Gary called me that night and asked me to come over and help him pack up. He’d been left alone in the house. His other flatmates had left, and Dan was in police custody.

Most people would have left already — gotten the fuck out of that house — but remember I said Gary was reliable. So as everyone left, he’d stayed — helping them pack their belongings, tidying up, and trying to come up with a plan to get his deposit back before he moved out.

Then the door got kicked in and Gary realised it wasn’t safe for him to stay any longer. He called me at around 10pm, and me and another friend went over to help him get his stuff into my car and get the hell out of there.

Gary had all the lights off so the neighbours didn’t know anyone was there. Glass still littered the hallway. We worked by torchlight, getting all of Gary’s personal stuff into boxes. We worked with the assumption none of us would ever return. “Fuck that!” Gary whispered.

At some point I went into the room formerly occupied by Gary’s flatmate. I was filled with a combination of curiosity and dread. Items were strewn around the room; police evidence tape wound haphazardly around certain objects. I saw a bunch of vinyl records featuring some metal bands I really loved, and was hit with the sudden realisation I’d met Dan a few years earlier at a movie screening. We talked about our similar taste in music, and seeing those records brought it all back into focus.

I remember Dan: He was tiny and nerdy and I could hardly believe he’d killed the neighbour.

I looked at the records; some expensive imports that I didn’t own. I considered taking them. Dan would be away for a long time — so who cares?

I didn’t take them.

Gary finally took up my offer to stay on my couch. I explained what had happened to the person I lived with, and she was okay with it. Gary looked tired and relieved.

That first night I slept in my room upstairs, leaving Gary to roam the downstairs lounge. We turned the sofa into a bed, and shut the doors into the hallway so he could have some privacy.

The next morning, I opened the doors to Gary’s makeshift room. He practically flew down the hallway to the bathroom. Turns out Gary had gently tried the doors during the night, trying not to make any noise lest he woke us up. Not budging, Gary assumed we’d locked him downstairs. He spent most the early hours desperately needing to piss.

Holding back laughter, but failing miserably, I explained that the door was sticky and that Gary was an idiot and to please text us or yell at us next time. Later, Gary told me he thought we might have suspected he had something to do with the murder, and had locked the doors to the hallway as a precaution. 

He said he didn’t mind. He understood. 

That thing I said about Gary being gentle, quiet and shy? Yeah, that.

A lot of things came out at Dan’s trial.

Over the last two years, he’d become obsessed with the neighbours.

He especially hated their noise, and those loud parties. He’d logged countless calls with the local council and noise control, obsessively watching the neighbour’s house through the window, noting every coming-and-going.

He ordered checks on number plates of cars that would park nearby on the street, analysing who lived there, and who was visiting. He did it all this both obsessively, and quietly.

Dan kept two journals in neatly ruled lecture books. One was about the different teas he’d collected and brewed. The other was about the neighbours.

At some point, Dan started collecting knives, including some switchblades.

Like many of us, he loved social media, and on Twitter he started tweeting about the neighbours, at one point going so far as to say he was feeling provoked to go and do some murder.

Knowing what I knew from Gary, and reading reports of the trial — it was all looking pretty bad for Dan. One man was dead, and another had almost died. Dan had seen to that. 

For years he’d watched, he’d written, and he’d tweeted. And at some point after that he’d wandered next door and used one of his knives.

Stories don’t always end how you expect, and this one is no different.

Dan was found not guilty, and walked free. No murder, no manslaughter, no nothing.

Maybe it’s not so surprising after all. Dan was small and white, and the neighbours were big and brown. As the story went, Dan had gone outside and had felt intimidated by his neighbours, and so he acted in self defense.

One man died, and Dan returned home, shaved off his beard, and put his clothes in the washing machine. He spent the week watching The Walking Dead and Dexter with my friend.

I think about this story a lot, and how small it makes things feel. The family of the victim lives in the town I spent my childhood in. I wonder how often they think about what happened. I imagine a lot.

I’m friends with Dan on Instagram. I think we followed each other back at that movie night, a year before the killing. He pops up on my feed sometimes. He often posts photos of his cat. We’ve talked now and then via DMs — about nothing in particular.

Never about that night. Always in the back of my mind that podcast, or documentary.

I think this story says a lot about the justice system. Hindsight. Race. Obsession. Justice. Fuck. It’s all just the weirdest thing, even years on. 

While I’m all too aware of the killer and his victims, I always end up thinking the most about Gary. Of course I do. Gary’s my friend. But also I think it’s because we’ve all had those flatmate stories; those nightmare situations we end up in when we live with strangers. But it never gets that bad, or that weird.

And I keep thinking about how they sat on the couch that whole week, Gary blissfully unaware of who he was really sitting next to. Watching Dexter chopping up his enemies on screen. Then saying goodnight to his flatmate and heading off to bed for a sound night’s sleep.

I have no doubt Gary (and possibly others involved in this story) will be in the comments, reading, so keep that in mind. Be kind (you always are), and I have little doubt you’ll have (probably less horrific) housemate/flatmate/roommate stories of your own.

Feel free to share them below — or you can always contact me in confidence at [email protected] if this story has brought up anything for you.

I also just wanted to take this opportunity to say thanks for being a paying Webworm member. You keep Webworm alive. You give me the freedom to write, allow me to get support from lawyers from time to time, and let me try things like Big Worm Farm to support journalism!

To show my thanks I do keep certain Webworms just for you — and this is one of them. It’s a story I’ve wanted to tell for about eight years now, and had no idea how I’d tell it. And Webworm was the logical place, sitting in front of me all along.

So — thank you. I love sharing this place with you.

David.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit webworm.substack.com/subscribe