The Killer Next Door (14 page)

‘Carry your bag, miss?’

She swims out of her fugue and sees Hossein standing in front of her. She’s not seen him coming, not noticed anything, really, about the street around her. For all she knows, she’s passed Tony, pulling faces, and is none the wiser. Visiting Janine wears her out. When she comes home after her daily hour, she’s so drained that even the walk home from the station is enough to make her long for a nap.

She blinks and forces a smile on to her face. ‘No, don’t worry, it’s not heavy. I’m fine, thanks.’

Hossein tuts. ‘You Englishwomen are so independent it hurts. Come on. Letting me carry a bag for you doesn’t mean I’ll take away your right to vote.’

He holds out a hand and smiles, and suddenly she’s relieved to hand the weight over. She finally stopped into Asda on the way to Sunnyvale and bought some bedclothes, and she’s surprised how heavy they seem. The bag is a big woman’s shopper in pink leatherette, but he swings it unselfconsciously over his shoulder and grins as he sets off towards Beulah Grove. She falls into step beside him.

‘So how are you getting along?’ he asks. ‘You’ve been to visit your mother?’

She nods.

‘And how is she?’

Collette sighs. ‘Fairly much the same.’

‘Does she remember you yet?’

‘No. Most of the time, she doesn’t even remember I came yesterday. She doesn’t mind the chocolates, though. She eats a box a day, but she never seems to put on any weight.’

‘It’s hard,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ she says, and they carry on in silence to the High Street. I need to find a change of subject, she thinks. We can’t just walk all the way home without saying anything. It’s embarrassing.

As they turn the corner, she says: ‘So you’re Iranian, then?’

‘Yep,’ says Hossein.

‘That’s Persia, right?’

‘Sort of.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Lovely,’ he says. ‘It’s a lovely country. It’s not Syria, you know.’

‘So why did you leave?’

‘Because it’s ruled by arseholes,’ he says, ‘and I kept saying it out loud.’

‘You’re a politician?’ She’s surprised by the distaste she hears in her own voice. She’s never met a politician before. Hadn’t ever thought she would want to.

‘I taught economics. And I did some journalism, wrote a blog. These things don’t go so well with the powers that be when your students start joining in.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. Did you… were you…?’

‘It’s what happens,’ says Hossein. ‘I wasn’t exactly the only one. Anyway, I’m here now. And soon –’ he hams up his accent and curls his spare arm so that a lean, hard muscle pops ‘– I weel be beeg, beeg Englishman,
inshallah
. So it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?’

Collette looks around her as if she’s seeing it for the first time. The heat has been heavy for the past few days, but a breeze, she notices, has got up and the air is surprisingly pleasant. ‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it?’

They reach the corner of Bracken Gardens and turn down it. ‘It’s swimming pool weather,’ says Hossein. ‘Have you ever been to the Serpentine?’

‘What? The river?’

‘The Lido.’ He pronounces it Lee-do, like an Italian, not Lie-doh, the way she’s used to, and it takes her a moment. ‘I was thinking maybe I’d go tomorrow. In the afternoon.’

‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘I can’t think of anything worse. Right in the middle of the city. All that duck shit.’

‘I bet you swim in the sea.’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘You know they have fish and seagulls in the sea, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, that’s… oh, whatever.’

‘So I’m going to go,’ he says. ‘It’s fun; old ladies with no tops on on one side of the river and old ladies in burqas on the other. An ice cream and some clear water to swim in. What could be nicer?’

‘Not dying of salmonella poisoning?’

‘You just don’t want to get your hair wet,’ he teases.

‘Well, fair enough, Hossein. I look like a dandelion without the proper product.’

‘Dandelion?’

‘Never mind. It’s a sort of flower.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘No, it – oh, never mind.’

‘So are you going to come? We could take Cher, maybe.’

‘Do you think Cher can swim?’

‘She can swim like a porpoise, as long as she takes her shoes off.’

She’s embarrassed, faintly uneasy. Is he asking her on a date or just being friendly? ‘I’ll have to see,’ she hedges. ‘Depends when I get back tomorrow.’

Hossein sighs and gives her the big brown eyes. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I know what that means.’

‘Oh, no, I —’

He laughs. ‘You’re very easy to embarrass,’ he says.

‘Piss off,’ she replies.

‘Ah, now I
know
you like me,’ says Hossein. ‘English people only tell their friends to piss off. It’s a cultural rule.’

He stops on the corner of Beulah Grove and takes the bag off his shoulder. Holds it out to her. ‘Okay,’ he says, and there’s a sweet twinkle in his eyes. ‘Have a nice day.’

‘Aren’t you coming home?’

‘Oh, no. I was going to the station.’

She gawps. ‘You…?’

‘Oh, hush,’ says Hossein, and lopes off up Bracken Gardens.

She stands on the corner and watches him go, feels odd emotions course through her. Confusion, pleasure. And then fear. She’s had three years of avoiding involvements. I mustn’t, she thinks. He turns on the far corner and gives her a wave, and she’s waved back before she’s thought about it. He’s lovely, she thinks as she crosses the road and climbs the steps of number twenty-three, but I mustn’t. I can’t afford friends, and I can’t afford lovers. Not when I might have to go at a minute’s notice. It’s bad enough when you’re alone, but if there are people to leave…

Her phone rings in her bag. She gets it out and looks at it, surprised. She’s only given the new number to the care home. No one else knows it. No one. It’s a withheld number. It must be Sunnyvale. She picks up as she comes in to the hall.

It’s a woman. ‘Lisa?’

She almost says yes, but something stops her. The fact that she’s called her by her first name – and not just her first name, but her nickname. She’s always been an Elizabeth in all her dealings with Sunnyvale, and they’re quite scrupulous about calling her Ms Dunne; some gesture of respect to the bill-payer. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘you’ve got the wrong number.’

She’s about to hang up when the woman says: ‘Lisa, it’s Merri here. Merri Cheyne. Please don’t hang up.’

Collette’s heart jolts. She thinks about doing it anyway, for a second. Then thinks: she’ll just call again. She’s found me already and she knows it’s me. I’m not going to put her off by not talking to her. ‘Detective Inspector Cheyne,’ she says. ‘How did you get this number?’

She uses the rank with a faint note of insult attached, to emphasise the distance, walks up the corridor, clutching the phone so hard that the tips of her fingers go white.

She hears that her tone has hit home, for the voice that replies is changed, more formal, less pally. ‘We’re better at this stuff than you seem to think, Lisa. We’ve known you were back in the country since you caught the Santander ferry. Computers don’t just go to plugs in the wall, these days.’

She unlocks the mortise on the door to her room, turns the Yale, throws the door wide and checks the interior before she enters, as she always does. It’s stuffy and hot and smells of the washing-up she didn’t bother to do last night, but it’s empty. She steps inside, closes and locks the door, shoots the bolt and throws open the window.

‘So what do you want?’

She doesn’t really know why she’s bothered to ask, because she already knows the answer. The calls from DI Cheyne began just weeks after she ran from the club.

‘Same as I ever wanted, Lisa. You know that. I just wanted to reiterate our offer.’

‘No, thanks,’ she says.

‘Think about it, Lisa,’ says Merri. ‘It’s really your best choice.’

‘It really isn’t,’ she says bitterly. ‘Thanks all the same.’

‘Well, you may think that…’

‘I
know
that,’ she snaps.

A sigh. ‘Okay. Well, look, just so you know, the offer’s still open. We still want you as a witness. We’ll still protect you and you can sort this whole thing out, now. Tell us where you are, and I can come and pick you up and put you somewhere safe in the time it takes you to pack. Get Tony Stott behind bars and your problems are over.’

They don’t know where she is. That’s one hit in her favour. ‘You know that’s not true,’ she says. ‘They’ll never be over. Tony doesn’t exist in a vacuum. They’ll always be after me.’

Merri laughs, and the laugh has a nasty edge. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Lisa, but they’re after you now.’

Collette gasps.

The policewoman carries on, presses her point home, ‘And Lisa? Remember. We have plenty enough evidence to prosecute you too, you know. It doesn’t look good, from where I’m standing; we know Stott’s using that place to launder money, and when we bring him down, every single person who handled money in that place will be going down with him. So then it won’t just be Tony Stott who’s looking for you. It’ll be Interpol, too. Your shout, Lisa.’

You bitch. You
bitch
.

‘And Lisa?’

‘What?’

‘One other thing you need to think about, Lisa. If
we
know you’re back, how long do you think it’ll be before other people do, too?’

Collette hits the off button, hurls the phone at the bed. Lets her tension out in a single roar, stifles it by biting the back of her arm. Leaves a ring of teeth marks in the flesh. Shouts once more and throws herself on to the chair to punch, punch, punch weakly at its padded back. Fuck! I need some exercise. I’m shut up in this damn room all day, or staring at Janine, and – how did she find me? How the hell did she find me? I’ve been so careful. I didn’t even give a name when I bought the SIM. How did she find me?

Well, she found you before. Just like she always has. Her and Tony. All of them, on your arse, catching up every time you run; you’re a sitting duck.

Her head throbs. Outside in the corridor, she hears Gerard Bright’s door open up, hears him pad down the corridor and stand outside her door. He stands there for thirty seconds. He must have heard her shout. She’s starting to hate this house. Hate the way everyone knows everything about each other here.

She gets up and runs a glass of water, pops four ibuprofen from their foil and swallows them down. The room feels like a prison, the walls closing in, the ceiling pressing down on her shoulders. She massages her temples, tries to think. She doesn’t know where I am. She’s just got the phone number. And even if she finds me, she can’t make me
do
anything unless she arrests me. Oh, God, why did I take that job? Why? I could have worked anywhere. I should have
known
that nothing that paid that well was on the up and up. I
did
know. Who am I kidding? I knew, and I stayed there anyway.

A blast of music through the wall makes her jump. Christ. The bloody
Ride of the Valkyries.
He must have the amplifier up to ten. How does someone living in a place like this have speakers that size? It’s crazy. It’s impossible. What sort of person thinks it’s okay to do that to everyone living around him? He’s not bloody fifteen. He’s a full-blown adult. He probably thinks that because it’s classical that everyone’s admiring him for being an intellectual, the bloody arsehole. No problem letting other people know they’re bothering
him.

She tries hammering on the wall. Thumps until her fist hurts, but the music carries on. Her blood pressure has soared since the music started, she can feel it. Her pulse is hammering in her ears and her face is burning. ‘Shut up!’ she shouts. You’re going to bloody kill me, she rages to herself, never mind Tony Stott. ‘Shut up, shut
up
!’

She throws herself down on the bed, grabs the pillow and crams it over her head. Hot and dark and unbearably stuffy, but still she can hear it: trumpets, trumpets, trumpets and squealing violins and the thump, thump, thump of her angry heart.

Collette swings out of bed and grabs her keys. It’s too much. It’s just too bloody much. She unlocks the door and throws it back, and storms up the corridor. Hammers on the door, her heart ready to burst out of her chest. You will not. You
will not
do this to me today.

The music turns down, but no one responds. She guesses he’s listening, not even sure, the noise has been so loud, that he’s really heard her knock. She raises her fist and thumps again. ‘THANK YOU!’ she shouts. ‘And bloody
keep it down
!’ Finds that she’s panting, hear heart still racing.

He cracks the door open and stands in the gap, blocking her view into the room, and she’s shouting before she notices that he’s half-naked. ‘What the FUCK!’ she shouts.

It’s the first time she has heard his voice. It comes out weak and prissy, selfconsciously posh like a man who’s spent too much time explaining grammar to schoolchildren. ‘Can I help you?’ he asks.

‘Seriously? What? Can’t you hear your own fucking music?’

He recoils at the swearword. ‘Excuse me —’

‘Jesus! Have you gone deaf or something? Is that it? Turn it down! Turn it the fuck down! How can you be so fucking selfish?’

He blinks at her.

‘Have you any idea how thin these walls are?’ she demands. ‘Just because you think it’s some kind of
classy
music I have to share every bloody note. Just turn it the fuck
down
!’

He blinks again. Upstairs, she hears the creak of a door, the sound of quiet footsteps creeping along the landing. Someone come to listen, but she knows they won’t join in. Her rage builds. DI Cheyne and Tony Stott and her daft, mad, drunken mother, and that dirty old sod leering at her as he takes her rent and thinking he’s entitled to the deposit because she’s improved his property with a door lock, and everyone wanting, wanting, wanting the money she soon won’t have.