We tend to refer to murders as whodunnits, says DCI Gareth Morgan, but he believes a better term for the extremely odd case that unfurled under his watch in south Wales during 2015 would be a “who-is-it?”. When a heinous, seeping package – a decaying corpse half-preserved in more than 40 layers of wrapping – is discovered in the village of Beddau, a woman named Leigh Ann Sabine – who recently died of brain cancer – quickly becomes the prime suspect. The problem is, police cannot work out who it is she has killed.
Ultimately, The Body Next Door is not really a who-is-it or even a howdunnit; it is – far more compellingly – a how-could-she-do-it? We first encounter Sabine through the eyes of her neighbours in Beddau (whose pronunciation seems to be a local bone of contention, but the residents featured here insist on “beh-tha” rather than “beh-thai”). They understood her to be a narcissistic fantasist with an obscure past, an affected accent and a penchant for fishnets well into middle age, but reminisce about her eccentricities fondly. By the time this series is over, however, their affection is hard to stomach. For beneath the dense layers of this breathlessly twisty investigation lies a more resounding mystery, as we are forced to reckon with a character whose actions range from heartless to inexplicably vile.
