Land of the Living (18 page)

Twelve

As long as I had things to do, I was all right. I just had to keep busy, keep myself from thinking, from remembering, for then memories engulfed me like icy waters and I was back in the dark, and eyes were staring at me, fingers touching. No. I mustn’t go there.

I tackled the fridge first, throwing out all the old food and wiping down the shelves. Then, of course, I had to do a shop to refill it. I walked to Camden high street, where I went to the bank and withdrew £250 from my account, which was shrinking rapidly with no immediate prospect of being replenished. Then I bought satsumas, apples, salad stuff, cheese, coffee and tea, milk, bread, butter, eggs, yoghurt, honey, two bottles of wine, one red and one white, six bottles of wheat beer, some crisps and olives. I didn’t get any meat, because maybe Jo was a vegetarian. I got washing powder as well, and toilet paper. Even though I felt precarious and strange in Jo’s flat, I was making myself at home there — lying in the bath, washing my clothes, adjusting the central heating, cooking myself comforting meals, lighting candles as the dark closed in. But I was always waiting for a key to turn in the lock and for Jo to walk through the door. And I was always fearing that she wouldn’t. She was like a ghost in her own home and she haunted me.

I staggered back there now, weighed down by plastic bags that bit into my gloveless fingers. I had to stop every now and then to rest and get a firmer grip. At one point, a man came up and offered to help me as I stood bent over the bags, getting my breath back.

‘I’m fine,’ I snapped, and watched the benign expression on his face fade.

Back in the flat, I took three envelopes from Jo’s desk, and put fifteen pounds into one, for Terry, fifty-five into another, for Sheila and Guy, and a further ninety into the third, for Sam. Later, I promised myself, I’d make a pilgrimage, paying off my debts and saying thank you.

It occurred to me that I should report my mobile phone missing; I should have done it immediately. I started to dial a number, but another thought clamped itself round my guts and I banged down the phone hurriedly, as if it might bite me.

I went outside again and walked up Maynard Street, then down another road, until I came to a public phone box that was working. Inside, it smelt of piss and the booth was covered with cards offering massages and very strict French lessons. I inserted twenty pence and dialled. It rang three times, and was picked up.

‘Hello?’ I said.

There was no answer, but I could hear breathing at the other end.

‘Hello, who is this, please? Hello. Hello.’

The breathing went on. I thought about wheezy laughter in the darkness, a hood, hands lifting me off a ledge on to a bucket. Suddenly, the realization of what I was doing winded me. I managed to stutter out, ‘Can I speak to Abbie, please?’

The voice at the other end — a voice I didn’t know whether or not I recognized — replied, ‘She isn’t here now.’ Sweat trickled down my forehead and the receiver felt slippery in my hand. The voice continued, ‘I can say you called. Who’s speaking?’

‘Jo,’ I heard myself say. I was going to be sick. Bile rose in my throat.

The line went dead. I stood for a few seconds, holding the phone in my hand. A man on crutches stopped outside the booth and tapped on the glass with the end of one of them. I put the receiver down, pushed open the door and ran back to the flat as if someone was chasing me. I’d put the bag of stuff I’d taken with me when I left the hospital — the clothes I’d been found in, and the few odds and ends I’d picked up while I was there — inside the wardrobe. I rummaged through it now, and to my relief found the card that Inspector Cross had given me. I dialled the number and he answered immediately.

It wasn’t much fun talking to Cross again. He had been embarrassed and quite sympathetic at our last meeting at the hospital. Or perhaps compassionate is the right word — but it was a compassion that had made me feel ill with rage and shame and terror then, and even now gave me a queasy feeling. I said I had something urgent to tell him, but that there was no way I could set foot in the police station, and could he come to me. He said that it was probably better anyway for him to see me when he was off-duty, which made me feel that I was illicit business. We arranged for him to come to the flat shortly after five in the afternoon.

The conversation lasted for about one gruff minute and when I put the phone down I felt so strange that I took two pills, drank a tumbler of water then went into my room and lay on the bed for a few moments, face down and eyes shut.

Had I spoken to him? I didn’t know, but the sensation that I’d felt in the phone booth — the kind of feeling you have in a nightmare just before you jerk awake, a sensation of falling, of wheeling through the darkness — had been so strong that even now I felt dizzy and appalled.

I had two hours before he came. Two hours is a long time when you feel ill with dread and loneliness. I poured myself a glass of wine, then poured it down the sink before I could drink it. I made myself a piece of toast and spread it with Marmite. When I’d finished that, I spooned yoghurt into a bowl and stirred in some honey. It was soothing. I finished off with a large cup of tea. I decided to change my clothes. I should wear something understated and respectable — something that would make me look rational and sane, not a woman who’d go around making up stories about being grabbed and held underground by a murderer. I picked out some beige trousers and a cashmere V-necked sweater — the outfit I used to put on for meetings with the financial department.

The trouble is, I wasn’t the same person any more. My clothes still hung off me, making me look a bit like a child dressing up in adult things. My haircut was emphatically spiky and short, and neither its colour nor its style went with cashmere and smartly creased beige. I stared at myself in the mirror, nervously dissatisfied. In the end, I put on an old pair of jeans, with a belt to keep them up, and a red flannel T-shirt that I’d found hanging in the cupboard, though I had no recollection of buying it.

I wondered about my mobile phone. Should I cancel it, or should I leave it, knowing that perhaps the person who now had it was him? I couldn’t decide. In my mind, it was an invisible thread stretching between us. I could snap it or I could try to follow it — but was I following it out of the labyrinth, or back in again?

I examined the pieces of paper that I had stuck to the wall. At the very earliest, I had been grabbed on Wednesday late afternoon or evening. Where did that get me? Nowhere. I called Sadie, just to say hello, really, just to hear a friendly voice from a life that seemed to have gone, but she was out and I left no message. I thought about calling Sam, or Sheila and Guy, but didn’t. Tomorrow; I’d do it tomorrow. I went to the window and stood there for a few minutes, just gazing out idly at the people who walked by. Perhaps he knew where I was, because perhaps this was just where I’d been before. Was I hiding in the only place he knew to look?

I didn’t know what to do with myself until Cross arrived. I needed to keep busy, to keep on the move, to give myself urgent tasks and unmissable deadlines, to persuade myself that I was one step ahead of him. I wandered into Jo’s room. It was very well ordered. I opened her chest of drawers and everything was folded neatly. Even her knickers were laid out, one pair on top of another. I opened the square leather box on her chest of drawers and looked at the few pairs of earrings, the thin gold necklace, the brooch in the shape of a fish. There was a square piece of white card as well; when I turned it over it had a four-leafed clover sellotaped to it. I looked at the books on her bedside table. There was a Thai cookbook, a novel by a man I’d never heard of, and an anthology of 101
Happy Poems
.

There was a video as well, with a blank label. I went back into the living room and inserted it into the video-machine. Nothing, just a blank. I pressed the fast-forward button. A blurred shoulder appeared, then the camera jerked to a leg. It was obviously a home video made by a first-timer. I leant forward and waited.

I saw Jo’s face, half smiling. It gave me the most peculiar sensation. Then the camera moved backwards and she was standing in the kitchen, by the oven, stirring something, looking back at the camera and making a face at whoever was behind it. She was wearing the dressing-gown that was hanging on the back of her bedroom door, and her moccasin slippers. Maybe it was morning, or late in the evening, it wasn’t possible to tell. The screen went blank again, then fuzzy. A few lines ran down it, and then, suddenly, I was looking at me. Me before it happened. I was sitting cross-legged on the armchair, and had a glass of wine in my hand. I was in a pair of sweatpants, wearing no makeup, and my hair — my old, long hair — was piled up on top of my head. I was grinning. I raised my glass in a toast and blew a kiss. The camera moved towards me until my face went out of focus.

The screen was blank for a few minutes, and then I was watching a black-and-white film, with a woman in a plumed hat riding a horse side-saddle. I reeled fast forward, but the film just went on until the credits. I rewound and stared once more at Jo’s smiling face. Then at mine again. I looked happier than I could remember having been for a long time. I put my fingers up to my cheek and found that I was crying.

I turned off the television, ejected the video, and put it back in Jo’s room, on her book of happy poems. I saw that on top of her wardrobe there was a video camera, as well as a pair of binoculars and a tape-recorder. In the living room, the phone rang twice, before it was picked up by the answering-machine. After a pause a voice said, ‘Hi, Jo, it’s me. Just checking about tonight. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume it’s still on.’ He didn’t leave a name. Somewhere, someone would be waiting for Jo to turn up; a friend, or a lover. On an impulse, I dialled 1471, but couldn’t find out the caller’s number. He was probably phoning from an office.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again, and I picked it up at once.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Jo?’ said the voice at the other end. Then, before I had time to answer, it gathered in strength and anger. ‘Jo, it’s Claire Benedict. As you probably know, I’ve left dozens of messages by now and you haven’t replied, but —’

‘No, it’s —’

‘You realize that your work should have been sent to the printers by now.’

‘Listen, this isn’t Jo, it’s a friend. Abbie. Sorry.’

‘Oh. Can you tell me where Jo is, then? As you probably gathered, I urgently need to contact her.’

‘I don’t know where she is.’

‘Oh. Well, when you see her can you tell her I called? Claire Benedict of ISP. She’ll know what it’s about.’

‘Yes, but that’s the thing. She seems to have just disappeared. When was she supposed to have delivered her work?’

‘Disappeared?’

‘Well, maybe.’

‘She was due to give us her formatted text by Monday the twenty-first of January, at the latest. She never said she was having a problem finishing it. She just went quiet on us.’

‘Was she usually reliable?’

‘Yes. Very. Look, are you serious about her being missing?’

‘I’ll let you know what happens, OK? Give me your number.’

I scribbled it down on the back of one of the unopened envelopes, and put the phone down.

Then the doorbell rang.

For a startled second, I thought Cross was someone else. I’d only seen him in a suit, with his hair neatly brushed, and an inscrutable air about him. Now he was in worn brown corduroys, a thick jumper, and a padded blue jacket, whose hood was pulled up over his head. He looked as if he should be out in the garden, poking a bonfire. Or playing with his children. Did he have children? But his frown remained the same.

‘Hello,’ I said. I stood back to let him in. ‘I appreciate this.’

‘Abbie?’

‘My new look. Don’t you like it?’

‘It’s certainly bold.’

‘It’s my disguise.’

‘I see,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘You’re looking better anyway. Healthier.’

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘All right.’ He looked around. ‘This is a nice place you’ve got yourself.’

‘I’m not quite sure how I got it.’

Cross looked puzzled but didn’t pursue it. ‘How have you been?’ he asked instead.

‘Scared shitless.’ I poured water over the tea bags, keeping my back to him. ‘Among other things, of course. But that’s not why I asked to see you. I’ve got some new information. Do you take sugar?’

‘One, please.’

‘I should offer you a biscuit but I don’t think there are any. I could make you some toast.’

‘I’m fine. Have you remembered something?’

‘It’s not that.’ I handed him the tea and sat down opposite him, in my armchair. ‘The thing is, well, there are two things, really. First, I think I’ve just talked to him.’

His expression didn’t alter. ‘Him?’ he said politely.

‘The man who grabbed me.
Him
.’

‘You say you talked to him.’

‘On the phone.’

‘He rang you?’

‘No. I rang him — I mean, I rang my mobile phone, because it’s gone, and someone answered. I knew at once. And he knew I knew.’

‘Let me get this straight. You rang the number of your lost mobile phone, and someone answered and you’re now saying that the person who answered is the person who you claim grabbed you.’

‘I don’t
claim,’
I said.

Cross sipped his tea. He looked rather tired. ‘What was his name, the man who answered?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask — well, he wouldn’t have told me, and I felt all of a sudden so very terrified. I thought I was going to keel over. I asked to speak to myself.’

He rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh,’ was all that he managed to say.

‘I didn’t want him to know it was me, but I think he did anyway.’

‘Abbie, mobile phones get stolen all the time. It’s a crime epidemic.’

‘And then he asked me who was calling, and I said, “Jo.”’

‘Jo,’ he repeated.

‘Yes. You see, this flat belongs to someone called Jo. Josephine Hooper. I must have met her, but I can’t remember that. I just know I moved in here when she was here too. In that week, just before I was grabbed and held prisoner.’ I said this last fiercely. He just nodded and looked into his tea. ‘And that’s the second thing: she’s gone missing.’