Miss Webster and Chérif (17 page)

Chérif and Karen were mightily impressed by the subtlety of this revenge. Neither dared to ask what crime the sister had committed. If Miss Webster condemned her to death then she deserved it. Later, outside in the garden, Karen expressed her candid admiration for the eccentric old woman with the interesting vicious streak not usually associated with sober cardigans and clean kitchens.

‘She’s wicked, your landlady.’

‘She used to work as a private detective. Like Miss Marple in Agatha Christie movies,’ explained Chérif, ‘and she may still be armed.’ Karen stared at him and then at Miss Webster’s frail, smoky figure washing up the lunch dishes behind the murky glass of the kitchen windows. They saw her carved into vertical lines by streams of condensation. She appeared illusive, hallucinatory, provisional.

‘No kidding? You sure?’

Chérif nodded. Miss Webster dissolved in steam.

And so a new phase in the evolution of events began that night as they stood upon the damp lawns with the dead leaves sodden underfoot, clutching mugs of mulled wine and dodging the shower of rushing sparks. Miss Webster’s sister caught nicely and was gone in seconds to their united roar of comic approval.

‘You don’t have to worry about her again,’ shouted Karen with delighted sadism, as if they had just executed a heretic. Chérif too was impressed by Miss Webster’s ruthlessness and decided that in the course of her undercover work she had probably killed many men. For Miss Webster had begun to encroach upon his imagination. It was as if she had become more than one person. The instability in her identity troubled him, like a subtle shimmer on the edge of his vision, because he was not used to observing women closely. The veil should be drawn across the eyes of men. He looked down, away, as he had been taught to do. He never stared directly at the women in his family or in the streets. But he belonged to the sex that was celebrated and cherished, not the servant sex. His self-confidence was somewhat shaken by these women who did not wait for him to speak first and had their own opinions, wore better and more expensive clothes than he did, drove their own cars and earned more money in one month than he had in a lifetime. Suddenly the world seemed less simple than it had done. And naturally enough, Karen had made the first move.

‘Nice girl. How did you meet her?’ The old lady began her interrogation as soon as they had waved Karen off down the dark lane and Chérif was forced to acknowledge that he had been wooed and courted and won. He had never so much as lifted a finger in the process.

‘When I wasn’t sure I could stay here I went to the estate agent that had “rooms to let” in the window. Karen works there. Then she fixed up her mobile phone for me. It works on a card. I paid for the card. So that she could let me know if anything suitable came up.’

‘And so that she had a number she could ring.’ Miss Webster grinned. Chérif was unable to follow the sexual plot.

‘Yes. To tell me if she had heard of rooms.’

‘No, you goose. So that she could speak to you.’

Chérif had not even seen the trap.

‘And I bet that she somehow always forgot to take back the phone?’ Miss Webster’s recent liberation from her sister’s malevolence had improved her mood. She crowed with victory. ‘Voilà! You don’t even need to tell me the rest. She told you she had a room for you to see and when you decided you’d stay here she asked you out.’

Chérif gazed at his unpredictable landlady, helpless before her investigative acumen.

‘Well, she’s a very sweet girl. And exceedingly pretty. You can invite her round any time.’

The next invitation came from Karen herself, and was addressed to both of them. Miss Webster had her doubts. She had never been to a rock concert before and wasn’t sure that she could support the necessary level of decibels. Surely the young people would rather go on their own? Karen was obviously put out on the other end of the line.

‘But it’s a sit-down, not a rave. And they’re a really good band.’

Miss Webster had never heard of The Usual Suspects, and said so. Karen was incredulous.

‘Not heard of them! You’re not serious. They’re always on telly and on MTV. Anyway it’s a benefit for the Carmen Campbell Defence Fund. So it’s a really good cause.’

Miss Webster had never heard of Carmen Campbell.

‘But you must have done! She’s really famous. And it was all over the papers. Less than a year ago.’

Miss Webster had been in hospital, semi-conscious and sinking without trace into a pond of terrible despair when Carmen Campbell’s desperate fate had hit the headlines.

‘She’s a great singer. Really amazing. I have all her CDs. She’s as good as Joan Armatrading, Diana Ross, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith ...’ Karen tried digging up every black jazz and blues singer she had ever heard or read about in an attempt to reach into the empty crevasse of Miss Webster’s knowledge concerning popular music. Miss Webster had heard of Bessie Smith. ‘... And anyway, she disappeared early last year. She had this lover who tried to kill her. He was working for the Special Services. You know, like MI6. So it may all have been a plot. He followed her to Spain where she was singing at a concert in Barcelona. Did you really never read about it? It was all over the front pages for weeks. And he tried to stab her in a bar. There were witnesses who saw it happen. He did stab her. A crime of passion! But she knew he meant it when he said he was going to kill her, so she was prepared. She pulled out a gun and shot him. It was self-defence!’

Karen chuckled, triumphant. Point proved. Carmen Campbell is innocent.

‘Calm down, my dear. You’re beginning to sound like a
News of the World
exclusive.’

A somewhat sulky silence uncoiled at the other end of the phone. Chérif came into the red and green sitting room and stoked up her stove. They were still burning the wood that he had cut for the bonfire. He mouthed questions at her in French.
Est-ce que c’est Karen au bout du fil?

‘Chérif’s just come in. I’ll pass him over.’

‘Oh Miss Webster, please come.’

But Miss Webster remained non-committal.

And so it was with some surprise that Karen saw her, squired by Chérif, approaching the theatre on the following night. It was Saturday 30 November and Miss Webster had known Chérif for precisely two months. It was indeed the anniversary of his arrival upon her windy doorstep. Karen bounded towards them, brandishing the tickets.

‘We’ve got great seats. I knew you’d come.’

Miss Webster seated herself like a chaperone on the edge of the row, so that she could stretch out her knees. She looked round at the gathering public and noticed that she wasn’t the only person present who had advanced to the stage of white hair and a large home-knitted cardigan. She had not, however, set foot in the theatre for years. It still glowed crimson, an Edwardian gem which had acquired a new layer of red velour, fresh gilt and cheeky little lampshades topping out the house lights. Balconies and boxes perched like pigeon lofts all round the edges and the seating in the circle and the upper balcony stacked up straight, like a supermarket shelf, so that everyone was near the stage. There was a famous acoustic. The slightest whisper uttered near the backdrop could be heard in every stall of the ladies’ lavatory. This made the middlebrow murder mysteries, popular all year round, in which the butler had always done it with the help of the lady of the house, exceedingly thrilling. Any form of amplification was entirely unnecessary. Yet the stage was littered with huge black boxes, destined to magnify electric sound, and a fearsome array of speakers, one set five feet tall, trailing wires, and men in grimy white T-shirts sporting headphones. This conventional theatre presented itself as an utterly incongruous and unsuitable venue for loud bangs and unexpected explosions.

‘Would you both like a drink in the interval?’

Miss Webster insisted on providing the drinks so that she could stroll up to the bar and inspect the premises. She didn’t ask either of the young people what they wanted. The bar, usually a hushed mutter of middle-class conversation and the odd plume from an isolated cigarette, vibrated with pounding hard rock. Behind the elegant ebony counter, once decorated with free peanuts and olives, men with death’s heads plastered across their chests sauntered to and fro, issuing Bacardi breezers to teenagers who were clearly too young to be drinking anything other than fizzy orange pop with straws. Miss Webster ordered a gin and tonic and two Cokes for the interval. This entailed a good deal of shouting on both sides. Turning down the volume was clearly out of the question. Part of the point of her withdrawal was to give the young people time alone to talk. Miss Webster did not misunderstand this situation, which was well within her experience. The canny observation of youthful courtship at a distance emerged as one of her fields of expertise. Chérif was being reeled gently in; the hook wasn’t yet locked in his gullet, nor had he swallowed the worm. Karen had not yet officially declared herself on the hunt; this evening established the continuation of her investigative prowl. Miss Webster liked girls who took their time.

Either party could draw back at any point. Therefore Miss Webster’s role as safety device on the erotic pressure cooker proved essential – manifestly so – or she would not have been invited with such lunatic insistence. The old woman perched on a window ledge halfway down the staircase and added up what she knew about Chérif.

Not much, in fact.

He comes from a tiny sandy village on the brink of the Sahara. He has no father now and may never have known his father. His mother has a good job managing a hotel in a town four hours’ drive away from that village. She has a job no other woman has. He is clever and silent. He eats enough for six. His cousin is called Moha and he treasures a photograph, which he keeps under his pillow, of said desert, another young man, who may or may not be Moha, and a woman’s shadow. He is extremely gifted with electronics. He has set up my DVD and is responsible for my purchasing a sinister black parabolic dish and, on a monthly basis, thirty-eight channels of hot and cold flowing burble from the TV. He is obsessed by news. We watch at least two bloody hours of news every night. He is not particularly interested in films, but will watch one with me if it doesn’t interfere with the news. He has mended the car’s rear door, which was sticking fast, and changed the oil. He loves doing the shopping and has dug the garden. Twice. He watches the birds. His English is better. He asks intelligent questions. He makes me laugh. He works very hard at his studies. He receives no letters or phone calls – or at least not at my house. He loves rain. He is good company because he never intrudes. He has the trick of vanishing.

But what did one ever know about young people anyway? They lead their own dark lives. And it would be a mistake to imagine that whatever thoughts roared through their brains were of more than passing significance. Except that, without much reflection, they are inclined to make that dreadful leap across the abyss from thought to act. The lurking act, which flicked incessantly into her mind, happened to be murder – mass murder, privatised murder, sexual murder, self-murder.

The French courts were still trying to make up their minds concerning a shocking case of a young boy who had murdered his playmate, a girl of thirteen. He had taken her into the garden to play, then proceeded to dress up as
The Scream
, complete with white horror mask and butcher’s knife. He stabbed her fifty-two times, but could give no reason why. He must have had a reason, even if it could never be spoken. Another adolescent murdered his parents wearing the same costume, which you can buy in novelty shops in every high street, Europe-wide. They were becoming known as ‘the Scream Killings’. Elizabeth Webster pondered the past. Had she wanted to kill her parents? Most certainly so. Of course she had. Everybody wants to do that. And had she not burnt her loathed sister in effigy, not a fortnight since? We are all perfectly capable of becoming
The Scream
.

The vicar thinks Chérif is a terrorist. She had seen it in his eyes. Here was a young Arab, aflame with the love of Allah, but keeping it well hidden, hell-bent on sending the Houses of Parliament and all that therein is, straight to eternity. Or perhaps a suicide plane, bristling with armed explosives, cutting through the lawns at Balmoral. Maybe it’s the end for the university, which had once harboured Saddam Hussein’s ravishing Lady of Death, the only woman in his government. Is Chérif following in her footsteps and genning up on poison gases? Are his tutors teaching him to tinker with weapons of mass destruction? We must take responsibility for this, she thought. We’ve trained them all. Even the Americans taught their own 9/11 bombers how to fly jet planes into buildings. You can do anything in America, pay up front and no questions asked.

What puzzled her most was the fact that terrorism was impersonal. You need not hate those that you kill. You need not even know who they are. I know that I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above. Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love. Terrorism is therefore exactly like an act of war, and just as self-indulgent, dissolute, corrupt. Elizabeth Webster did not believe in just wars. Murder should be personal and passionate, whether planned or spontaneous. An act so momentous and decisive as the ending of a life should be executed with verve, panache and a deliberate, responsible devotion to the consequences. You murder the one you know well, the one who is close enough to do you harm. You murder the one you love.