The Killer Next Door (15 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He is sweaty, as though he’s been exercising in this heat, and his throat and chest are flushed, and his eyes are puffy and red.

She’s too inflamed to stop, now. ‘Sorry? Sorry’s if it’s just once. This is all the time.
All. The. Bloody. Time.’

She stabs a finger through the air to emphasise each word. She had no idea she had this aggression in her. Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have decided running was her best way out of her situation. ‘Do you get it? Turn it down. Turn it the
fuck down
, or I’ll come in and smash your fucking stereo!’

Gerard Bright just stands there and lets her stab uselessly at the air. There’s a big bruise on his upper arm; fingermarks, as though someone’s gripped him there with a vice. ‘I already have,’ he points out.

‘Oh, don’t give me that. You’ll just turn it straight back up again when I’m gone.’

Her voice rises to a shriek. My God. Where’s all this anger coming from? I’m going to hit him in a minute and I won’t be able to stop myself. ‘Do you hear me? You can hear me now, can you, now that you’ve turned that fucking noise off?’

‘We can all hear you, dear,’ says a voice behind her. ‘I should think they can hear you in Brentford.’

Collette whirls round in the narrow corridor. Vesta stands in the door under the stairs that leads to her flat, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

‘What on earth is going on?’ she asks.

Collette’s rage collapses. Suddenly she feels weak and powerless and foolish, yelling out her frustration at this man who doesn’t care. She opens her mouth to speak, and bursts into tears.

If I had a quid for every girl I’ve had in tears on this settee, thinks Vesta, I could probably have bought that caravan. It’s very strange. They’ve all got mums somewhere. I’ve heard enough about them. But it’s always me, in the end, that they come and cry to – and not just the girls, either. It breaks your heart, how sad so many people’s lives are. How many people they miss, how far they feel from home. You’d have thought we’d have organised it all better, somehow.

Collette is crying her eyes out. Upstairs, she hears Gerard Bright’s door go and his footsteps walk along the hall to the front door. She glances up through the window when it closes and sees his legs come down the steps. Such a strange man. In and out with that briefcase every afternoon and every other weekend going off to sit in McDonald’s with his kids, or wherever it is they go these days, and the rest of the time he’s locked up in that room like a hermit. Barely meets your eye if you meet him in the hall, and I could swear that half the time he looks like he’s been crying, though maybe that’s just his colouring. It’s pitiful, really. So much loneliness in the world, and it’s not like most of them started off meaning it to be that way. A few small slips, a moment of forgetfulness, and before they know it they’re all on their own.

She sits quietly on the sofa and waits for Collette to compose herself. Doesn’t know her well enough to give her a hug, feels awkward doing the Dot Cotton arm pat you see on the telly. So she sits, and waits, and hands her a new tissue from time to time. I’ll give her a cup of tea in a bit. Tea always helps, though from the look of her she might prefer a large brandy.

Crying fits never last for long if you let them play out and don’t add fuel to the flames. It’s an unnatural way to be; too much strain to sustain. Collette sobs for three minutes after Vesta’s helped her down the stairs and got her settled, then her breathing slows and she starts to make those tired little ‘oh’ sounds that precede the onset of calm. She sniffs through her blocked nose, blows it on a crumpled Kleenex and dabs at her crimson eyes. ‘Thank God I wasn’t wearing make-up,’ she says. Then: ‘Sorry. Sorry about that. I don’t know where that came from.’

Of course you do, thinks Vesta. What you mean is you want me to
think
you don’t know. ‘I should think you’re worn out,’ she says soothingly. ‘It’s a strain, with your mum and that.’

‘It’s this house. I think it’s this house. Don’t you feel it? It’s – oppressive. Like someone’s listening to you, like they’re watching all the time. Don’t you feel it?’

‘Can’t say I do, but I’ve lived here all my life,’ lies Vesta. ‘If it is, I’ve got so used to it I don’t notice.’

But there is, she thinks. There
is
someone watching me, I’m sure of it. That door didn’t get open by itself. Not twice. I don’t feel safe here any more. But I can’t talk about it. I can’t. I can’t even
think
about it too closely. Because I don’t have choices. There’s nowhere else I can go.

‘He just – I’ve been having trouble sleeping at night, and then, you know, I think maybe I can get a nap, and he starts up again and it’s…’

‘I know,’ says Vesta. ‘But at least it’s not that boom-bada-boom-bada stuff the young boys are into these days, eh?’

‘What’s his deal, anyway? What’s he doing, locked up in there all day?’

‘I have no idea,’ says Vesta.

‘You don’t wonder?’

‘One of the tricks to living in a place like this is not wondering too much, unless someone wants to tell you.’

‘Really?’

‘Come on, love,’ she says. ‘We all deserve a bit of privacy. You wouldn’t want everyone asking where you’ve come from, would you?’

Collette looks startled. He eyes widen and she almost jumps off the sofa. Hah, thinks Vesta. Thought so. There’s more to your story than just an ailing mum, isn’t there? Honestly: it’s the House of Secrets, this.

Collette blushes, flusters her way through an apology. ‘No, no, I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s all right,’ Vesta smiles, and finally lays her hand on her arm. ‘I was just joking.’

Suddenly, Collette’s words come out in a rush, as though she’s been storing them up for a very long time. ‘It’s just – I… stress. Yes, that’s what it is. Stress. I just can’t… people just won’t leave you alone, will they? I thought if I left, if I just made myself scarce, they’d all forget about me and I could just get some peace, but it’s like… I don’t know. I feel like I’m under siege. All the time. It’s like the walls are pressing in on me. And this house, where I don’t know anyone, I feel like everyone’s looking at me… like they’re… you know…’

‘I wouldn’t worry about them,’ says Vesta. ‘They’re far too caught up in their own troubles. What was it? You don’t have to tell me, but frankly you look like you want to tell someone. Debt?’

Another laugh, hard, sardonic, and another nose-blow. ‘No. Not debt.’

‘It’s all right, you know, Collette. You’re hardly the first person who’s used this place as a refuge. Probably won’t be the last, either.’

Collette plucks at her tissue, stares round the room. Takes in the old-lady décor, the framed photos faded to sepia, the china dogs Vesta managed to glue back together, the whatnot with the spider plant, the net curtains that block out the light. She’s trying to make a judgement. Decide whether Vesta is trustworthy. Then she sighs and clears her throat.

‘I’m in trouble,’ she says, ‘and I don’t know what to do.’

It’s never occurred to her that she could actually just tell someone. So many things stop you. The fear of shame, the fear that they’ll be a spy, simple force of habit. Right from when she was a kid. Janine drummed it into her. Don’t tell people. Don’t talk to those nosy teachers. Too many do-gooders wanting to take you away. They’ll take you away. You want to get me into trouble, is that it? Janine trained her, and life since then has sunk the training in. But she’s tired. Exhausted by living her life in secret and bearing her burdens alone.

She’s surprised by how easily it comes out. She has no idea why she trusts this woman. She’s not really that different from all the other people she doesn’t trust. Steel grey, sensible, hair and elasticated trousers and wrinkles round the mouth, like she’s been pursing her lips all her life. Like someone’s granny. Though grannies, in Collette’s book, are women who throw their pregnant daughters on to the street.

Vesta’s eyes widen a few times as she talks, but she doesn’t panic, doesn’t throw her out and, most of all, doesn’t disbelieve her.

‘Crikey,’ she says, when her story is finished. ‘I should think you could do with a drink. I know I could!’

She gets up and opens the little cupboard under the television. Brings out a bottle of brandy – the sort Collette used to use for cooking back when she was Lisa on the way up – and two old cut-class snifters. Pours two generous measures and brings them back to the sofa.

Collette waits for her to say something. She’s all talked out. Too tired to try to argue her case, if there’s an argument to be had.

‘And it’s three years?’

She nods.

‘And how do you know they’re still looking for you?’

‘Because people like that don’t ever stop,’ she says, simply, and knows it’s true. ‘And the phone calls. He’s toying with me. Enjoying it. If I’d put my hands up and taken what was coming to me there and then, there might have been a chance, maybe…’

‘I doubt it,’ says Vesta. ‘When people get caught up in these sorts of things, it doesn’t usually end well for them. I lived through the sixties, love. I know. They’re not cheeky-chappie loves-his-old-mum types, these people, whatever they like to say.’

‘I thought if I… you know, disappeared… you know, when I saw Malik outside my flat… He actually got there before I did. Christ knows how. And it’s not just the witness thing, is it? It’s the money. I can’t believe I took it. I sort of forgot I had it till I suddenly noticed it on the passenger seat of the car. And then it was too late. I wasn’t going to go back, was I?’

‘No, no, I can see that. But yes. And really, the police…?’

Collette shakes her head, vehemently. ‘There were police in that club all the time. Getting free drinks. Backslapping. I know, because I was the one who had to make sure the drinks kept coming. I don’t think I’d last a week, if I handed myself in. I might as well just turn up at Tony’s house direct. That DI Cheyne – she’s no bloody idea.’ Collette drinks a large gulp of brandy. It burns, but it’s good. ‘What I don’t get is how they’ve been getting the numbers. It must be the home. It has to be. I’ve only given it to them. I mean, I always gave it to Janine, in case, you know… but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have.’

‘Well,’ says Vesta, ‘the police have been getting hold of it, and frankly, if the police know something then everyone in the country can find it out for a couple of bob. But that man Stott clearly doesn’t know where you are and nor do the police.’

‘So do you think I should…?’

‘No. Oh, no, no, no!’

She’s surprised. Vesta has struck her as a backbone-of-society type until today. The sort of person who thinks it’s her duty to vote, who always trusts the authorities, no matter how many times they let her down. ‘I’ve seen far too many of my neighbours’ kids get sent down on stop-and-searches to think that,’ she says. ‘The police are just as dodgy as anybody else. Just as many prejudices, same proportion of people only out for themselves, probably more, maybe. It takes a certain type of person to want to be a copper in the first place. You don’t want to be a copper if you don’t want to tell other people what to do, do you? Only they’ve got power. Actual power, not made-up power, and everybody wants to think they’re on the side of the angels, so it’s really hard to persuade them that they’re not. I’d be very careful of the police. The law’s not set up for people like us.’

People like us? Funny how all those years I thought I was working my way up the ladder to be People Like Them. ‘So what should I do?’

Vesta bites the inside of her lip. ‘Search me,’ she says. ‘I could ask Hossein, if you like. He knows everything.’

‘No! God, no! Are you kidding?’

Vesta pats her arm. ‘Okay. It’s okay. It’s just… you know he had to leave home in a hurry himself, don’t you? He knows a lot about a lot of things. He’s been dodging the Iranian secret service for years.’

‘No,’ she says, again. ‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told
you
. It was wrong of me. You don’t need to get caught up in this.’

‘Well, I am, now,’ says Vesta. ‘Not much we can do about that. We’ll have to think. I daresay you’re reasonably safe here for the time being. Presumably he’s got you paying cash so he doesn’t have to make a record, isn’t he?’

Collette is not sure who she means for a moment, then realises that she means the Landlord. She nods. ‘Yes.’

‘Well…’ Vesta sips at her brandy and stares at the door. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing. By your mum. It’s the right thing, poor soul. We’ll see you through that, and then you can decide what happens next.’

Down at the bottom of the garden, there’s a shed. As far as he knows, no one has been in it for thirty years. It’s built of the same concrete sleepers as the railway line – sleepers that were probably originally intended
for
the railway line, for all he knows – strapped together with metal bands, and topped with a roof of corrugated asbestos. He knows it’s asbestos, because someone, a long time ago, if the fading of the letters and the advance of the lichen across it are anything to go by, has printed off and laminated a sign that reads
DANGER
NO
ENTRY
ASBESTOS
and thumbtacked it to the door. It works beautifully. None of the other tenants, not even Vesta, ventures more than halfway down the long garden, as though even looking at the sign will give them fatal lung disease. So only the Lover knows that, behind it, the fence has long since disintegrated and there is a straight path into no man’s land.

It’s not a big patch of land. Too small to be built on or, property being what it is in London, someone would have slapped in a block of flats at some point and called it Northbourne View or Park Vista, despite the fact that its outlook would be of the railway at the bottom of the embankment, and the line of scrubby sycamores that mark the edge of the common on the other side. There are fifteen feet between the bottom of the garden and the bindweed-twined chain link that demarcates railway property, and this patch of lost land runs the length of Beulah Grove, home to brambles and buddleia and ragwort and a family of urban foxes. It’s his own secret garden, his private domain.

He likes to come here as dawn is breaking and the blackbirds are starting up their greeting to the day. At this time of year, daylight begins in earnest by five o’clock, when his neighbours are still safely tucked up in their beds and he can be fairly certain that he will not be overlooked. So he risks carrying a load that in normal circumstances would be foolhardy: Alice, jointed and stuffed into two tote bags, the longest pieces her femurs, the bulkiest her skull. She chinks as he walks: her bones, stripped bare, ringing out like china in the cool, damp air.

Someone will hear me, he thinks; someone
has
to hear me. They’ve all got their windows open in this heat, and God knows I’ve not been sleeping deeply myself. He puts the bags down to give himself two hands to lift the gate into the side-return. Raises it on its hinges to stop the scraping sound that will give his presence away, and is surprised to find that it has been freshly oiled and opens with the merest whisper. Funny, he thinks. Of all the bits of maintenance that need doing around here, you wouldn’t have thought he would have started with
that
. He picks up the bags again and sets off, on tiptoe, across the grass.

There’s been a heavy dew, and the lawn is wet. It soaks his shoes, weighs down the bottoms of his trousers. Beyond Vesta Collins’s little patch, the grass is long and unkempt and trips him up a couple of times with grasping tentacles. The shed, with its blank windows, overlooks his approach. He wonders occasionally what lives in there, whether even the Landlord knows. From the look of the notice, and the rust on the padlock that holds the painted steel door shut, it’s been closed for decades. There could be anything in there. Junk furniture, a workshop – dead bodies?

His sledgehammer is still there, leaning against the rear wall of the shed, its head shiny with newness. He tucks it awkwardly under his arm, and ducks through the gap in the fence then breathes deep and releases his tension. No one can see him, now. The garden fences are eight feet high, the bindweed so thick that barely a gap shows through. At one end, the blank back wall of the post office, at the other, a small office block that hasn’t been tenanted since the recession hit. For now, he is safe.

There’s a path, of sorts, worn by animals through the middle of the maze of weeds. He turns to his right and walks thirty feet up, to the bottom of the garden of number twenty-seven. The house is empty at the moment, covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting as the new owners – well, their team of Slovak builders – gut and renovate. Four months ago, the builders, like many before them, used the strip as a dump rather than pay for a skip, flinging joists and broken bricks and bits of crazy paving over the fence. It’s perfect for a demolition of his own.

He opens and upends the bags. Alice rattles out, rustles and clatters into a pile on the rubble. The Lover looks down at the bones, and marvels at the way he no longer associates these jigsaw pieces, these bleached lumps of calcium and carbon, with the girl who stirred his passion. She’s just rubbish, now, is Alice. But still identifiable, in her current state, as what once she was – once-human. Foxes and dogs and insects make short work of the soft stuff – the age-old recycling of Mother Nature – but bones are bones are bones, all the marrow boiled out of them.

The skull grins up at him, sightlessly. A few scraps of leather still cling to the cheeks, a lock or two of hair to the fontanelles. Though it’s unlikely that anyone will be along here before the brambles have piled high over the top of them, it’s best, he thinks, to make sure that, if they do, all they’ll see is chunks of something else hard among the scraps of concrete, the brown-and-orange tiles, the avocado bathroom suite.

He raises the sledgehammer above his head and brings it down.