Death in Disguise (45 page)

At the terminus Janet dismounted, leaving the bus station, turning right as per her instructions, then right again. She had reached the traffic lights when her eye was caught by an exquisite little Georgian bay window—a jewel in its own right—fronting a jewellery boutique. She crossed over for a closer look.

The window was nearly empty, as is the way when the price is immaterial. Just a fold or two of ivory velour, some stunning earrings in thinly beaten bronze and a scarf. This lay as if casually abandoned, a glowing pool of lustrous, iridescent green and shining turquoise. There was a white ticket turned blank side up. Hardly aware that she was doing so, Janet went inside for a closer look.

The scarf was a thirty-six inch square of pure silk, marvellously fine and slippy. The sort of stuff people used to say could be drawn through a wedding ring. Janet imagined it thrown over Trixie's fair curls, casting a verdant shadow on her creamy complexion. It cost a hundred and twenty pounds.

Janet bought it, trying to recall the final figure of her most recent bank statement whilst writing out the cheque. They wrapped it beautifully in a flat black-and-white striped box lined with scarlet tissue and tied with scarlet silk ribbon. The shop's name, XERXES, was stamped across the top in gold.

Walking away, thrilled by her purchase, imagining Trixie's face as she excitedly removed the ribbon…the lid… the tissue and, finally, the lovely scarf, Janet felt briefly, uncomplicatedly happy. Then doubts started to rise.

When had she ever seen Trixie wear such colours? Trixie liked pastels: cream, rose, pale blue. Come to think of it, thought Janet, when have I ever seen her in a scarf? She had some, crammed into her underwear drawer, but hardly ever brought out and worn. Oh—Janet stopped dead on the pavement, causing a man to bump into her and curse. How foolish a thing to do. Stupid, wasteful. Idiotic.

What Trixie would need, what she always needed, was money. There was never a time when she wasn't short. She would look at the ravishing useless present and think: God—what I could have done with all that cash. For she would know the cost to within five pounds. Somehow she always did.

Janet stood hesitating as people surged about her and car horns blared and her lungs choked on exhaust fumes. Should she take the scarf back? Would the shop accept it? But that meant she'd turn up at Seventeen Waterhouse empty-handed and she did so want to take a present. What I should have done, Janet reflected with tardy sadness, is buy something that would be of real use. Some food. Or something to drink.

On the other side of the road there was a Marks and Spencer. With the same unheeding impetuosity with which she had entered Xerxes, Janet now dived after a group of pedestrians crossing and, a moment later, found herself in the food department.

It was a long time since she had shopped at Marks and Sparks and the shelves were a revelation. She bent over the freezer cabinet, loving the blast of cold air on her burning cheeks and picked up a box glittering with icy crystals: American Fudge Pie. She added a tub of Lemon Ice Cream. Then she turned to the made-up dishes, selecting crispy Peking Duck, Prawns Won Ton, Fillet Steak with Green Peppercorns and Salmon in Pastry Parcels. Into the trolley went real coffee, some double cream, a herby round cheese wrapped in vine leaves and wild strawberry conserve. A big box of Belgian chocolates. Bread of course (plaited Italian ciabatta), unsalted butter, asparagus. On the fruit counter she found two mangoes, a wonderfully scented Ogen melon and some Muscat grapes. Then she saw a cauliflower: snow-white curds tightly packed, leaves immaculately fresh. Recalling Arno's poor weevily offerings, she simply had to have it. Just as she had to have the champagne.

It was while piling these things on to the rolling checkout belt that Janet realised it might have been wiser to use a basket. There seemed to be an awful lot of stuff, some of it rather heavy. It was possible to buy carriers larger and tougher than those freely offered so she picked up a couple, adding them to her bill (fifty-four pounds and seventeen pence.)

Stepping out of the air-conditioned store was a shock. Janet stood on the baking pavement and put her bags down, trying to ignore the honking traffic. She studied her map to regain her bearings then stopped a woman with a pushchair and showed her the address.

‘Straight down and turn at Caley Street.' She eyed Janet's shopping. ‘It's quite a walk.'

‘Oh—is it?'

‘A good twenty minutes. I should get on a bus.' She nodded at a longish queue nearby. ‘Fifty-seven.'

Janet had to stand on the fifty-seven but was able to put her shopping in the space behind the platform. She kept the black and white box, gripping it with one hand, hanging on to the rail above her head with the other. At the fourth stop, the bus half emptied and the conductor called, ‘Here you go,' dragging her bags out.

Janet climbed down and stared around her in some bewilderment. She turned and called, ‘Are you sure this is right?' but the bus was already moving off.

She was facing a large patch of scrubby ground littered with rubbish, around which reared six great cinder-coloured tower blocks. A boy clattered by on a skateboard and she caught his arm saying, ‘Waterhouse?'

He shouted ‘Carncha read?' and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

A wooden board with orange and white lettering, much of it peeling off, and dotted lines to indicate covered walkways, gave the layout of the estate. Waterhouse seemed to be the furthest block away. She picked up her bags and trudged off.

Within a couple of minutes the busy sounds of the street were muted and she became aware of a quite different atmosphere. Oppressive, enclosed and curiously empty: curious because she must be surrounded by hundreds of people—a few feet away on the ground or stacked high into the clouds. Janet tipped back her head and craned her eyes upwards. No sign of human life. In spite of the glorious weather, not a soul sat out on their balcony, perhaps because there was no room amongst all the washing. No one looked down from a window either. Janet recalled how quickly the other passengers had melted away. It was really quite uncanny.

She passed two metal bins, taller than she was, smelling most unpleasant and humming with flies, and entered a walkway. She moved along quietly, anxious not to attract attention. The enclosure was covered with spray-on graffiti. It was all pretty uninventive, confining itself mainly to indicating where the observer should next go and what he should do when he got there. Janet, sweaty and nervous, was glad when she came to the other end.

But then, stepping into the open once again, she got a shock. Facing her was a group of youths straddling motorcycles. The nearest machine, powerful shiny black with a towering windshield, was so huge and threatening that it looked more like a weapon of war than a means of transport. All the bikes had tall masts on the back with pennants attached.

Janet stopped dead and her heart leapt. The boys stared, hard-eyed. Then one of them gave a wolf whistle and the others gave raucous shouts of encouragement. Janet thought of asking where Waterhouse was out of sheer cravenness but then decided simply to walk on. It wasn't as if they were blocking her way. She had only gone a few steps when a tremendous revving roar of sound ripped the air. Janet nearly jumped out of her skin, dropping the black and white box. The lads nearly fell off their saddles laughing.

Finally reaching her objective, she stepped beneath the concrete overhang and put down her bags. Around her were several shabby doors numbered one to four. So if there were four flats on each level, V's would be on the fifth. Janet pressed the button marked FT and waited. She pressed it several more times and was starting to get impatient when there was a bumping and thumping to her right. A young girl appeared wearing skin-tight jeans and white winkle-pickers, dragging a baby in a pushchair down a flight of steps. A toddler followed scrambling backwards, tearful at the prospect of being left behind. The girl spoke to Janet.

‘You'll stand there till Christmas.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Not working is it?'

She dragged at the little boy, wrenching his arm, hoisting him down the final two steps. ‘Come on…' She sounded as irritated as if they had just come back from a morning's shopping instead of just starting out. ‘Shift yourself for Christ's sake…'

She was walking away. Janet called: ‘Do you know if the people in Seventeen are in?' The little boy started crying in earnest. The girl did not reply.

Janet walked to the base of the steps and looked up. There were eight, then a square to turn, then eight doubling back. It shouldn't be too difficult. Not as if she were in a hurry. Thank heavens she hadn't walked here from the town. As it was she felt reasonably fresh. Janet started to climb.

At the first ‘platform', she had to stop to rearrange her shopping. The champagne bottle kept cracking against the side of her knee. She turned the bag round, took several deep breaths and fought her way up another two flights. Half way the sole of her open sandal caught just under the edge of the step and she nearly fell. She was careful after that, lifting her feet higher than was strictly necessary, putting extra strain on the muscles of her calves.

Resting for the second time, panting, aware of a hard, gathered pain between her shoulder blades, Janet noticed a damp stain was spreading over the black-and-white gift-wrapping on her beautiful box. She snatched it out of the carrier bag where it had been lying on top of the ice cream. Unable to face rearranging the shopping yet again, Janet wedged the box under her arm before striving and struggling on.

Next time she stopped she had a pain in her side which was more than a match for the one in her back. Her shoulders were rigid and achingly tender, as if newly beaten and the backs of her legs trembled. Her upper arm throbbed with the effort of gripping the box close to her side, and sweat ran into her eyes.

She was about to rest her bags when she noticed a foul mess by her feet. Squashed chips, greasy paper, a chicken rib-cage crawling with flies, a pile of excrement. Somehow she dragged herself up eight more steps, sitting down on the final one, resting her aching head on her knees, struggling not to cry.

She sat there for a long time knowing that she could climb no further, at least if accompanied by the bags. Perhaps she could stash them in a corner somewhere and carry on alone. Then, after greeting each other, Janet would tell Trixie all about the delicious things she had brought and they would come down together and collect them. This idea led Janet to recognise how the certainty that Trixie would be present at Number Seventeen—with or without the mysterious ‘V'—had been growing in her mind. Now she saw all three of them laughing and eating Prawns Won Ton, champagne foaming down the side of slender glasses. She looked around for a hiding place.

The front doors of the four flats to her left opened on to a single narrow frontage which some three-foot-high brickwork transformed into a balcony. Janet took the bags to the far end, putting her other parcel on the wall whilst she stowed them away in the corner. Suddenly, at the window only inches away, a German Shepherd dog appeared snarling and snapping furiously. Alarmed, Janet jumped sideways and knocked the box off the edge.

Crying out, grabbing at space, her fingers brushed the ribbon then the box was gone. It fell slowly and lightly, turning over in the air. Alerted by her exclamation, the boys she'd encountered earlier looked up. She watched them move, walking towards where the object might land. Foreshortened beneath their brightly coloured caps, squat bodies and spindly legs sidling across the ground, they resembled a swarm of preying insects.

Janet turned away and began once more to ascend, grateful that at last she was able to make use of the handrail. Before she reached level four all her carrier bags had vanished. By level five the boys had kick-started their machines and were zooming between the bollards, churning up the pathetic barren earth. Tied to their aerials, along with the mock-fur tails and pennants threatening mega-death and destruction, were fluttering strips of blue-green silk.

Trixie snuggled down into the narrow bed, pressing herself against the thin knobbly ridge of her sweetheart's backbone. They had made love and slept, made love and slept. She exhilarated with pleasure, he thankful, happy but still nervous in case it was all a dream. In case his wife returned.

She had caught them once before six months ago. Had locked Victor in the bathroom and worked Trixie over. Then, after pushing her, bruised and bleeding, out of the front door, she'd retrieved Victor and made mincemeat out of him. She was a big girl was Hedda.

Trixie had fled overnight to her sister in Hornchurch, then, seeing a poster in a book shop, to the Golden Windhorse. Her job in a separates boutique had been no great loss but Victor was something else. Ringing frequently, hanging up if Hedda answered; she eventually found him alone. She had told him her location and he had rented an accommodation address. They exchanged letters and sometimes anguished telephone calls. She never reproached him for lack of courage, recognising the same omission in her own character.