The Killer Next Door (12 page)

He levers the remote out from under his left buttock, and presses play. Collette turns round, and shows him her breasts.

As in life, so in death: a woman needs a good moisture routine to maintain her beauty, both inside and out. Even after desiccation, the process of putrefaction continues, albeit more slowly, and a woman exposed to the open air – and the bacteria and fungus spores that float in it – deserves protection.

Once the forty days was done, the
taricheutes
would take the sacred corpse, now a hardened shell, and wash it in palm wine. The Lover has made do with Asda budget vodka. Even at eight quid a bottle, the alcoholic proof must be higher than anything they produced on the banks of the Nile, he guesses. The body was then massaged back to suppleness with scented oils, and the empty torso packed with resin and herbs and sewn up, for scent and verisimilitude. It was then wrapped in resin-soaked bandages before being placed in its ornately painted coffin,
en route
to the hereafter.

But an Egyptian mummy was only destined for the afterlife. Keeping his ladies user-friendly requires, as he has discovered, more regular attention. Once a week, the Lover gives Marianne her ritual ablutions. He only wishes he’d worked out the need before it was too late for Alice. She’s almost beyond salvage, now. The last time he oiled her, he rubbed a little too hard with his home-made strigil and took a strip almost a foot long from her thigh, so that the bone showed through. And he has to admit that, with her abdomen unsealed, the smell coming from her is hard to ignore. Now he leaves her well alone, feels the reproach beaming from her shrivelled breasts as she sits in her chair and watches Marianne receive the attention that should have been her own. The rictus on her face has turned cynical over the past few weeks, as her nose has dried out and turned up. So much for loving me for ever, it says. You’ve barely given me a year. She’s like one of those suburban wives who lets herself go, then sits about in a onesie, complaining about men.

Ah, but Marianne. Not a first wife, but certainly a trophy wife. Renewer of love, restorer of faith; the basis of his new family, harbinger of happiness to come. If anything, Marianne has improved with age. The slightly lumpy chin, the faint pot belly, the chunky thighs that used to irritate him when they were courting, have vanished in the preservation process, and she is as slim as a supermodel, her cheekbones like Audrey Hepburn’s, her nose snipped like Paris Hilton’s, the three-point jawline of Alicia Silverstone. Dressed in hipster jeans and a little broderie anglaise top, she reminds him vaguely of Kate Moss.

He lays her gently out on the plastic sheeting, lights his neroli candles and starts the ritual. He tests the temperature of the oil, warmed gently on the stove, on the tender skin of his inner elbow and, judging it right, pours a drizzle on to her beautiful shoulder. Watches it spread. Inhales the aroma and smiles: sweet almond, white soft paraffin, and essential oils – neroli, sandalwood and vanilla – from the hippy shop in Balham. It’s a ladylike scent, spicy yet clean, and it hides the smell of decay.

Palms flat, he reaches out and helps the oil on it way. Strokes his way over the shoulders, down the arms. Takes each hand and massages it all the way up to the fingertips, one by one. He is proud of his skill, of the fact that he has given her eternal life. Her fingernails, buffed and filed back to evenness, though a little short after her struggle to break free, are still perfect, still flexible and roundly pointed, painted once a month to match her toes. He talks to her as he rubs; makes circles with his fingertips and works the magic potion in. There, my darling. We’ll keep you beautiful. Her skin so cold in the muggy air, so soft, almost papery, beneath his hands. You like that, don’t you, my love? he asks. You know it’s all for you.

He works slowly, methodically. Is determined that no breath of outside will taint his darling, damage her purity. It takes nearly an hour to oil her head-to-toe, then he dresses her, gently, gently: pink silk French knickers and a white lace bra (padded, but only slightly, just to replace what has been lost), and then a chic little black dress from the Trinity Hospice shop: a cast-off, he knows, but as good as new with its short pleated skirt and light crêpe bodice. Two silver bangles on the delicate wrists, a single stone of amber on a pendant between the jutting collarbones, matching droplets in the holes in her ears.

When he’s done, he sits her in a chair and slowly, delicately, cleans her face with Clarin’s cream cleanser, massages it with oil, pressing in above the jaw to encourage the plumpness back upwards, and replaces her make-up. Marianne needs little work. Black liquid eyeliner and a set of eyelashes, a couple of coats of mascara to bind them to the fading originals. Some blush to emphasise her spectacular angles and a touch of burgundy to thicken her slightly thinning lips.

He steps back to admire his handiwork, Alice glaring balefully, neglected, from the corner. I really must get rid of you, he thinks, spitefully. I hate the way you make me feel so bad. It’s not her fault she came out better than you did. It’s not her fault she’s beautiful. He snatches up a tea towel from the draining board and throws it over her face. If she can’t be good, she must live with the consequences.

Marianne sits, poised and graceful, in her chair, her green glass eyes gazing in rapture at the light fitting. Just one more duty, one more gesture of care, and they’re done. He opens one of his fold-up chairs and puts it behind her, fetches the bowl of almond oil and dips into it the soft bristles of a Mason Pearson hairbrush. One hundred strokes for beauty; it’s in every manual from the Romans to the Victorians. One hundred strokes for beauty.

He counts out loud as he brushes, enjoys the feeling of her hair running through his fingers. You like that, don’t you, my darling? You like it that I make you lovely. Her hair is long and dark, and lustrous because of the oil, though every week a few more strands come away on the bristles of the brush.

The trick is to know the territory better than the punter does, and to look so out of it that he’s off his guard. And not to let him see your face, much. Not that most of them are looking. They don’t look at your face much, when they’re thinking with their dicks.

She may have the reading age of an eleven-year-old, but Cher knows what makes the blood rush away from the brain. There are things you learn in school, and things you learn in Britain’s better care homes. You need to look young, you need to look dirty and you need to look desperate. She’s good at that. She’s had a lot of practice.

On Brad Street, there’s a house with a broken side gate where no lights have shown for months. She rings on the doorbell, waits for a response and, when none comes, slips into the dark little cave of the side-return and organises herself.

She is already wearing her wig, with the fringe brushed forward over her face so that her brows and eyes are partly covered. Squatting over her bag, she pulls off her fake Uggs and pulls on a pair of peep-toe mules – easy to kick off when the need arises. She sheds her denim jacket and pulls her knee-length dress over her head. Tucks it all away into the bag, but leaves it open, ready for action.

I hate him, she thinks, but I have no choice. I can’t go back to sleeping rough again. It nearly killed me, last winter, before I found him. I need this room. He knows I need it. And shoplifting’s all very well for your daily essentials, but you never get more than a tenner for anything. What am I meant to do?

She stands up in hot pants and tube top, and steps back out into the street. It’s all quiet, down here. You’d never know you were two hundred yards from streets of bars and restaurants, the Old Vic theatre and a busy tube station tipping tipsy office workers who’ve stayed too long at Happy Hour on to their suburban trains. London is such a city of contrasts: one of those places where you can turn a corner and drop off the edge of the world. Where the IMAX cinema now stands used to be a subway full of the homeless known as Cardboard City. Back then the South Bank trendies would take mile-long detours to stay above ground.

These Dickensian mazes are perfect for her purpose. Rows of heavily restored black-brick cottages that sell for close on a million pounds, whose inhabitants come in and out by cab after dark, to avoid the dripping shadows under the railway arch. It’s dinky in the day, all potters and delicatessens and artisan bread, but once the wooden shutters close, it echoes. A significant advantage for her, for someone giving chase in shoes will drown out the sound of someone fleeing barefoot.

Two corners away from her bag, someone from some council past has planted a bench by a stunted tree: a sad little gesture towards recreational facilities for the echoing maze of the Peabody Estate behind. Cher once tried sleeping there for a few nights, which is how she knows that these roads are a shortcut for drunken men staggering through to the Embankment from the bars of Waterloo. She sits down, arranges her long legs, lights a cigarette and waits.

It doesn’t take long. He’s old – must be nearly thirty – and sweating slightly in his unbuttoned pinstripe suit. The tail end of a tie sticks out from a pocket, and he walks as though he’s trying to avoid the cracks in the pavement. Cher shifts around so he catches a good look at the lean length of her thigh, then looks up at the streetlight as he stops and looks again.

He crosses the road and sits himself down at the other end of the bench. It’s not a very long bench. She can smell the beer on him from where she sits. It’s a smell she remembers well.

He stretches one arm along the seat back in a parody of the casual, like a sixth-former in the cinema, and digs the other fist into his trouser pocket. She hears him breathe through blocked-up nostrils and feels him looking clumsily from the side of his eye.

He takes in a big whoosh of air and turns jerkily towards her as though he has only just spotted her. ‘Nice night,’ he says.

Cher shrugs, sucks on her fag and turns to look at him. She tends to keep the talking to a minimum during these transactions. He looks straight at her tits, then down at the imagined treasure between her thighs. ‘You all alone, then?’

It’s the sort of voice that puts her teeth on edge. A fat voice, full of plums and promising that its owner will soon be having to trade his suit up for a larger size. A voice that’s never had to struggle, that’s only slept outdoors on Officer Training Corps weekends. Cher pouts her frosted pink lips and shrugs again.

‘Are you, er… looking for company?’

Would it make any difference if I wasn’t? she wonders. And replies: ‘Sure.’

He almost starts dribbling. Christ, men. Are there any out there that don’t drool at the prospect of a feel? That don’t want to be at you with their poky fingers, to hump at you like a bull terrier? None that Cher’s met, anyway. The ones that are meant to take care of you are the worst, though. At least there’s an honesty to a transaction of this sort. At least he’s not telling her he loves her and talking about Little Secrets.

‘Have you got a place?’

What do you think this is, Shepherd Market? ‘No,’ she says. Nods over at the path that runs up the side of a language school. ‘That over there turns a corner round the back. Into a yard. We can be private there.’

She sees him look at the signage, conclude that a private education establishment can’t possibly be a trap. He turns back, blearily.

‘How much?’

‘What for?’ she asks. He doesn’t look like he’ll be up to anything much, but Cher is counting on that.

He runs through the vocabulary he’s heard in films. He’s not a habitual buyer of pussy. He’s practically congratulating himself on his audaciousness. ‘How much for French?’

‘French?’ She can’t resist taunting him, taking the piss out of his attempts at sounding like he knows what he’s doing. ‘What’s that?’

‘I, er…’ His sweaty fatboy face falls as he realises he’s going to have to be more graphic; grapple with vocabulary he usually only uses with other men. ‘You know. Blowjob.’

‘Oh, riiiiight. Why didn’t you say so?’

‘I…’

‘Never mind. That’ll be sixty.’

‘Sixty?’

‘Oh, Christ. You’re not going to start haggling, are you?’ Cher shifts, deliberately; flashes a bit more cleavage, slightly, ever so slightly, parts her thighs.

His eyes glaze. ‘No. No, all right.’

She sits and looks at him; starts to slip off her shoes. It takes him a moment to work out why she’s gone quiet, then he reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out a fat, card-filled leather wallet. She waits silently as he counts out three twenties: one, two, three. Even in this light she can see there are quite a few more in there. He hands them over, fanned out like they’re a prize. Fat drunk rich boy wants me to suck his cock. Just like the fat old Landlord thinks he can get me to do, when I can’t come up with the rent. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

His phone rings and she takes her chance while he’s distracted. Waits until he’s got it out of his pocket and is looking at the screen – it’s an iPhone, of course it is, but it’s probably not worth her while to try to get that too – then bats it lightly out of his hand, so quickly he barely registers the blow. It skitters away across the pavement, lands up in the gutter. Fatboy looks up at her, lower lip quivering, cross and confused. She smiles. ‘Oops. Sorry.’

‘Ssss,’ he says. Wobbles to his feet, wallet carelessly in his hand, and walks over to the kerb. Silently, on bare feet, shoes in hand, she creeps up behind. As he bends and stretches, Cher snatches her moment. Runs forward and, with all her might, shoves at the unstable backside.

Fatboy goes ‘oof’, and goes down flat on his face. Change and keys and fountain pens jingle out of his pockets and the wallet flies from his fingers, lands on the tarmac four feet away.

She’s leapt over the top of him and snatched it up before he’s even drawn a breath. She is fifteen feet away before she hears his bellow of rage. Cher runs for her life.

No lights show in windows as she flies down Roupell Street, hammers her bare feet along the flagstones and hopes to God she will encounter no broken glass. Thudding footsteps, thumping heart; the wig is starting to slip on her head and she clamps a hand to hold it on. Lets go again, for running one-armed slows her up. If it comes off, it comes off, as long as she’s out of sight before it does. Cher has always been fast on her feet. If she’d been given the chance, she would have run for the county. She’s almost reached the alley that opens to her right before she hears the scrape of his pursuing footsteps, the howling voice. ‘You… fucking…
bitch
!’

She reaches the mouth of the alleyway, skids into it without looking. Hits the dumpster belonging to the Thai restaurant and recovers herself before she can feel the pain. Slaps her way round it and barrels forwards into the dark. Steps in something that squelches, collects something sticky on the sole of her foot. No time to shed it; she can hear him coming towards the mouth of the alley. He’s seen her go up here. She must get out the other end before he sees her go.

The path narrows towards its top end; she has to pull her arms and shoulders in to navigate it, loses the skin on her elbow anyway.

He cannons into the dumpster, as she did. Another ‘oof’, a swear word. He’s puffing like a walrus already. He’ll run out of breath altogether long before she does.

Then she’s out, at the four-way junction on Whittesley Street. Cher turns right again. It’s less than a hundred yards to Theed Street, and if she makes it there, gets round the corner and out of sight, he will have no idea which direction she has taken. He is still sliding about at the foot of the alley. She takes the opportunity to snatch the wig from her head and runs on, dangling it like a designer handbag.

A diet of Chipsticks and Haribo, and still she makes the corner in under fifteen seconds. Rounds it to her right and lets her pace drop slightly. She can hear the train announcer in Waterloo East station as her pulse begins to slow. She turns right again and trots back to Roupell Street, retraces her steps to the foot of the alley. There’s no sign of him now, though she can hear him, cursing and casting about under the Dickensian streetlights, peering through the gloom and realising he’s lost. She hangs a left and returns to Brad Street.

The house is as she left it, the gate still on the latch. Cher glances up and down the road and steps inside. Bends double and lets herself breathe. Drops to her knees, then collapses back against the wall, chest heaving, and holds her hurty elbow. She is dizzy from adrenalin, her night vision impaired by lack of oxygen. She drops the wig on to the top of her bag and closes her eyes, holds the wallet against her stomach like a talisman.

This is shit, she thinks. It’s crazy. I can’t keep on like this. One day someone’ll catch me. I’ll get beaten up for the sake of an iPod. Chucked in YOI because I needed the price of a tin of beans and a pot noodle. Or I’ll start thinking it’s easier just to give them the blowies, and then I’ll want crack or something to block it out, and before I know it I’ll be my mum. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I should just give up and hand myself back.

For a moment she stops breathing altogether. Remembers why she can’t. Remembers Kyra, two years out of care, on a street corner for real, her eyes as dead as dolls’ and track marks on her ankles. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, really, she thinks. But if I’m going to end up a red-veined junkie whore, at least I’m going to do it on my own terms.

She opens her eyes and opens the wallet. Counts the notes: another fifty quid. He’s got six cards. Six. Cher can’t even get a bank account. She leafs through them. They’re not top of the range. There’s no blacks or platinums among them. But they’re cash, they’re credit, they’re all the things she’s not allowed. And tucked into the stamp pocket, a folded piece of paper, a four-figure number scrawled on it. A PIN. Just the one, but it’s a PIN. If she makes it back to Waterloo before midnight and uses the cards one by one she can straddle the witching hour and get herself a few hundred before they get cancelled.

She gets back to her feet. Unpacks the bag, pulls on the dress and a pair of leggings, replaces the Uggs. Unties her hair and frizzes it back into its messy Afro, ties a scarf round the roots. Adds thick-framed specs – one pound fifty from Primark, if she’d paid for them – and a chunky metal cross on a leather thong. Shrugs the jacket back on over the top. By the time she steps back on to Roupell Street, she’s just another office cleaner, coming off her shift.