The Killer Next Door (5 page)

There’s a new tenant in Nikki’s room. Barely time for her sheets to get cold. Thin and nervous-looking, creamy skin – Scottish blood, perhaps? Or Irish? – thick fair curls pulled to the back of her head with a rubber band and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She doesn’t look as if she belongs here. But then, he wonders, which one of us
does
look like we belong here? Maybe that’s what all the people who live in houses like this have in common: that we all look like we’re just passing through. And, of course, most of us are.

I’ll have to get to know her, he thinks. Find out her story. She looks… interesting. Like she might have a tale or two to tell. Like she might be one of those strangers who could one day become a friend.

He thinks about her as he makes his preparations. Marianne, with her long dark hair and her scarlet manicure, watches him silently from the armchair. Today, she is dressed in an olive-green silk shift dress, size ten from the Monsoon sale. It hangs off her in folds, far too large, but it’s a good colour and an elegant cut, and he can always take it in; he’s become handy at many skills, over the years. He picked it based on the labels in the clothes she was wearing when they met, but of course she has lost weight since then, gone down to the level of emaciation you generally only see in famine zones, or Hollywood. He needs to remember this, for the future. His lovely friends are thin. Fashionably thin, and then some.

He has bought a new set of plastic sheeting from the builder’s merchant off the Balham High Road. The Lover doesn’t like to attract attention to himself by buying his supplies too close to home, or too many from the same source. It’s time-consuming, but he knows it’s worth it. He could, for instance, have bought the bicarb at £29.99 for twenty-five kilos on eBay, the washing soda at the cash and carry, but he doesn’t want to do anything that will cause remark. So every day, he goes into each supermarket he passes and drops a single pack into his Bag For Life, carries it home bit by bit to store in his cupboards. The bicarb he buys from the craft shop, two, three, kilos at a time, along with bottles of essential oils, which work wonders for smells. The nice, home-knit ladies behind the counter believe he has a hobby business making bath bombs which he sells on Etsy. It’s an unorthodox pastime for a man, but in this increasingly metrosexual age, not odd enough to attract attention.

He rolls out his plastic sheet. It is heavy – the heaviest gauge he could buy – and transparent, so the faded flower pattern on the carpet shows eerily through from beneath. As he crawls across the floor, he brushes Marianne’s shin with his elbow.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, my darling,’ he says. ‘Excuse me.’

The skin on her legs looks dry, today, her hair low in lustre, her make-up faded.

‘I’ve been neglecting you,’ he apologises. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been busy… you know how it is. I hope you won’t hold it against me.’ He needs to pay her a bit of attention once he’s finished his ministrations for Nikki. It’s not fair to give someone else all the love, when Marianne has been with him so long, been so pleasing. Tonight, when Nikki is safely stowed, they can watch
Big Brother
together. He’ll maybe paint her nails and brush her hair through. He bought a bottle of spray-in shiner at Sally Hair and Beauty when he was up in Soho the other day. Hopefully it will make all the difference.

He’s judged the size of the sheeting wrong, and has to fold it under itself when he reaches the bed. No matter, really, and definitely preferable to leaving a gap. This part of the process is always messy. There are always spillages, however careful one is. He smooths the plastic out, tucks it in, and goes to get the rest of his tools from the kitchenette. There’s a bucket under the sink, and a trowel inside it: he’s learned through trial and error that, for this particular job, a trowel is the best possible equipment, and a wire brush for the fine work. It will be hot work, but the air-conditioner is turned up full and the flat is blissfully cool and dry, despite the heat. The heat has been a problem for him. He had only a few lovely hours with Nikki in her soft, pliable state before he was forced to go to work.

The Lover pulls on his pink Marigolds and returns to the bed. He’s proud of the bed, of his ingenuity in spotting its potential and buying it. To the casual observer, it’s a dull old divan in muddy brown, the faded duvet cover and sagging pillows giving no indication that it is, in fact, the seat of his heart.

The Lover bends down, takes hold of the two woven tabs that protrude from the side of the bed, and lifts. With a hiss, the top of the bed, mattress and all, rises into the air, propelled by a gas hinge within. Inside, two compartments, each the width of the bed and half its length. In one, half a dozen humidifiers, each in need of emptying. The other is filled with white crystals. No, crystals that were once white, but have become tinged, over the past two weeks, with brown.

‘Right, my darling,’ says the Lover, ‘let’s get started.’

Out on the landing there’s a cupboard set into the wall, by the stairs up to Thomas Dunbar’s flat. It’s where the Landlord keeps his tools, whatever tools those are, and he keeps it locked. But today she finds the door hanging open, and can’t resist the urge to have a look. And in the back of the cupboard, barely visible in the gloom, she finds the door.

This isn’t right, thinks Cher. That’s an outside wall, I’m sure it is. lf I open it, I’ll just step through to three storeys of thin air.

But she steps inside anyway, and closes the door behind her so no one can see what she’s doing. Aside from the door, the cupboard contains nothing much beyond a broken vacuum cleaner and a collection of rags, which hang from nails hammered into the risers of the stairs above her head. There’s no one out on the landing, and the house sounds quiet, but she feels uncomfortable, as though the silence is a sign that someone is hiding nearby, listening. In the stifling darkness, she feels her way over the back wall with her fingers until she finds the latch, lifts and pushes. The door resists for a moment, as though it’s not been opened in many years, then it scrapes back over dusty floorboards and her world is once again filled with light.

It’s a grey light, a dead sort of light. A light that bleaches the colour from the world, makes everything dusty. Cher steps over the threshold and finds herself in an attic room, all sloping rafters and thick cross-beams, the light seeping in through a single skylight ten feet from where she stands. This is not right, she thinks, even as she steps in. It shouldn’t be here. But here it is: a jumble of beds and bassinets, all scratched and broken and covered in dust.

She jumps as she sees a figure move into view from behind a curtain; breathes again when she sees that it is just herself, blurred by a haze of crackled silvering in a console mirror half-covered by an old sheet. A miniature rocking horse, skewbald, its mane missing in hanks, sways back and forth on its rockers, as though its infant rider had leapt from its back and fled at the sound of her arrival.

It’s not right, she thinks again, and walks out to where thin air should be. But, oh, look, it’s three times the size of my room. Four times. It just goes on and on. Look at that big pile of velvet curtains. I could have those for my window, not be woken up at dawn every day, and that tapestry cover would look great on my bed. I could come back tonight, when nobody’s looking. Imagine: all this space, and nobody knows it’s here.

Except
him
, says a small voice by her shoulder.
He
knows it’s here. And he knows
you’re
here, too.

She starts awake, paralysed for a few seconds beneath the sheet by the force of her dream. Her limbs are pinned to the mattress, her muscles prickling as though pierced by a thousand red-hot needles. Her eyelids open before she is able to move, and she is briefly confused to see the same old dingy bedsit, the scuffed flat-pack wardrobe with the peeling laminate, the brave little splashes of colour she has tried to add by Blu-tacking photos of models and pretty rooms, carefully cut from the pages of glossy magazines, to the faded flowered wallpaper. Psycho the cat sits near her on the bed, and purrs with pleasure to see that she’s awake. He’s not been as cuddly, lately. Until the heatwave hit he would have inserted himself into her arms as she dozed, and slept along with her, but he prefers just to be nearby at the moment, to submit to the briefest of hugs and extend his chin for rubbing.

She pulls him into her arms and feels him settle against her chest. Kisses his satin forehead, speaks low, soft words of love into his twitching ear. My first love, she thinks, and it’s a cat. How sad is that? Then: where is it? Where did it go? The dream-room behind the stairs was so real – its smell, its dry air still somewhere inside her so that she can barely comprehend that she isn’t there. It was a dream, Cher, she scolds herself, but a bit of her wants to go right out on to the landing and jemmy that cupboard door open, just to check.

She stretches out and checks the time on her phone. Gone half past six. She’s slept the afternoon away again. She sits up in her frowsty bed. She’s fallen asleep with the window closed, and the room is like an oven. She is sticky with sweat, her hair glued to her scalp. No wonder I’m having mad dreams, she thinks. My brain’s boiling.

She slides out of bed and pulls her dressing-gown – satin, kimono-style, £16.99 in TK Maxx, or it would have been if she’d bought it – over her pyjamas, goes over to the window and throws it wide. Psycho drops down from the bed and pads across the floor, jumps up on the windowsill in search of coolness. The heat hasn’t even started to leave the day and, though the shadows are changing in the garden below her, there’s no sign of an evening breeze. A fan, she thinks. I’ll probably have to buy one of those: too damn bulky to slip under my coat. But it would be so good, being able to just lie in bed with the air running over me like water.

Her thirst is pressing. She wanders over to the sink and fills a pint glass – all her crockery and cutlery comes from the outside tables of pubs and cafés, slipped into her bag, ketchup remains, beer froth and all, as she passed. The water’s lukewarm from the pipes, but, this far up the house, the wait for it to run cold is worse than drinking it that way. She drains it in a single breath, refills it and takes it back to bed. Gets out her hand mirror and starts to repair her face, licking a finger and wiping her eyeliner back into place.

Now she’s awake she can’t stop thinking about the new woman downstairs. That wasn’t a good start. She looked as if she thought she was going to be stabbed in her bed when Cher came in through the door. It doesn’t do to be in bad odour with your neighbours. But aside from that, Cher is a kindly girl. The woman looked like she had lived through a train crash and it’s her first night in a new house. She deserves cheering up – even if she has taken over Nikki’s room.

I should tell her, she thinks. Let her know, before that lady throws all her stuff away. She might want it.

She grabs her phone – a Samsung because she doesn’t believe in iPhones herself – and scrolls through the contacts. It doesn’t take long. Nikki is the third of six numbers the phone contains. She hits the button to send and listens as the phone rings out. No voicemail. Nikki doesn’t do voicemail. Says if anyone really wants to get hold of her they’ll keep trying.

Okay, thinks Cher. Whatevvs. Sod her if that’s her attitude. She tucks the phone into her bra, in case, and jumps from the bed, finds her flip-flops and ties her hair up off her face with a scrunchie. She can’t shake off a feeling of melancholy about Nikki, though. I thought she was my friend, she thinks. I’d’ve at least thought she’d have said goodbye. Then she shrugs the sadness to the back of her mind and starts to clean her face. In Cher’s life, no one lasts for long. If you let it get to you, she tells herself, you’re done for, so let her go. If she doesn’t want to talk to you, then fuck her.

She wonders about putting on more make-up and dismisses the thought. ‘We’re all girls together,’ she tells the cat, who blinks his jade eyes to show that he’s listening. ‘We don’t need slap.’

She heads for the fridge. The supermarkets have become a lot more canny about tagging their branded goods, but the own-brand equivalents don’t seem to matter to them in the same way. Apart from sherry. Sherry, the old tramp’s standby, often has a big black bold alarm strip round its neck. But Cher has yet to develop a taste for the grown-up things: olives and sherry and vermouth and red wine. Her favourite drinks of all are neon blue, but they’re surprisingly hard to nick.

In the fridge, along with the cheese slices and the ketchup, she has a bottle of Sainsbury’s own-brand Irish Cream, just a couple of inches taken off the top. She snatches it up, along with a bar of chocolate and a multi-pack of meat-flavoured Golden Wonder crisps, and heads down the stairs where her knock is greeted by silence. But she feels, as much as hears, that movement has stopped behind the door. She knocks again and listens. Gerard has turned his music off, which must mean that he’s gone out. He never stops with it, from when he gets up in the morning until eleven on the dot each night. The only times there is silence is when he goes out. Weird bugger, thinks Cher. Far too much time locked up in there, if you ask me.

She hears Collette call out to ask who it is. She doesn’t sound friendly. She sounds like she might have had one visitor too many already today.

‘Only me,’ she says. Then, when the announcement is met by silence, adds: ‘Cher. From upstairs.’

‘Oh.’

She hears the sound of the snib being slid off the Yale lock before the knob turns. Not taking any chances, then. I did that to her, thinks Cher, ruefully.

The door cracks open, and Collette peers at her. Cher brandishes her gifts and flashes her a wide smile. ‘Peace offering.’

‘Oh,’ says Collette. ‘Thank you. But really, there’s no need. I’m not offended. Don’t worry.’

‘All right, then,’ says Cher. ‘Housewarming present.’

‘I – no, really, I’m okay. I don’t need anything. You don’t have to…’

‘Oh, come on,’ says Cher, ‘I’m doing my best, here.’

‘I’m really tired,’ says Collette, and her face looks for a moment as though it might crumple into tears. ‘Really. I should just go to bed.’

Cher’s not taking no for an answer. She stopped taking no for an answer when she left the Wirral. ‘It won’t even start to get dark for a couple of hours. Call it a nightcap.’

Collette sees that she’s not going to get away with rejecting her and reluctantly lets the door swing open. Walks ahead of Cher into the room and stands in the middle of the carpet, looking around as if she doesn’t know what to do next. ‘Sorry. It’s a mess.’

She’s clearly been sleeping again – or lying in bed, at least. The duvet is thrown to one side, and there’s a deep indentation in the thin pillows she’s piled on top of each other. On the floor, there’s a small pile of clothes.

‘That’s okay.’ Cher reassures her, ‘you should see mine. And I’ve been here months.’

‘It’s not – it doesn’t help that the place is full of Nikki’s stuff,’ says Collette. ‘I don’t really know where to put anything. I can’t help feeling she might want it all back, some day.’

Cher looks around at her former friend’s familiar belongings. Waste not, want not, she thinks. If Nikki doesn’t want it… ‘Well, anything you want to send my way…’

Collette whirls round, looks shocked. ‘I can’t do that! It’s someone else’s stuff!’

Cher shrugs. ‘It’s not like I’m going anywhere, is it? If she comes back, I’ll give it her.’ She waves a hand at the sweatpants, the emerald green vest top Collette is wearing. ‘And anyway, it’s not like
you
mind helping yourself, is it?’

Collette blushes, looks at the floor. ‘I’ll get them laundered,’ she says. ‘It’s just till – you know. All my clothes are dirty. I’ve been travelling. It’s just till I…’

Cher dismisses the protestations with a cackle. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell if you don’t. So… We having a drink, or what?’

Collette springs into life like a clockwork doll, starts bustling about, pantomiming busyness. ‘Of course. Yes. Let me just…’ She picks the pile of Nikki’s clothes off the single armchair, drops it against the wall behind. ‘I don’t know where the glasses live, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s okay.’ Cher goes straight to the left-hand wall cupboard of the kitchenette, gets down two tumblers. ‘I know my way around. Plates and stuff are down here,’ she pulls open the door by the sink, ‘with the saucepan, and there’s this drawer here, for knives and forks and stuff. Have you got any ice?’

‘Ice?’

‘Nikki always had ice.’ She crouches down in front of the little fridge and opens the freezer compartment. A half bag of frozen peas, and an ice tray. ‘Thought so. You might want to throw that milk away without opening it. It’s probably been here since before she went away.’

She gets out the ice tray and runs it under the tap. Bangs a couple of cubes into each glass and fills them up with Irish cream. Takes a big gulp from one, sighs and tops it up again. ‘There. That hits the spot.’

Collette sits down on the bed. She looks hopeless, tentative. ‘I got crisps as well,’ Cher says, handing her a glass. ‘D’you want me to put them in a bowl?’

Collette takes the glass and looks at it as though she’s never seen the stuff before. ‘Nah,’ Cher answers herself, ‘what’s the point in making washing-up?’ and flings herself into the armchair, hooks a leg over an arm and takes another swig. ‘Trouble with this stuff,’ she says, ‘is it doesn’t really feel like booze at all, does it? And once you start drinking it, it slides down your throat like it’s coming out of a spittoon.’

Collette takes a sip, raises her eyebrows. ‘I’ve never drunk this stuff before. I though you just put it in cocktails, like curaçao.’ She takes another sip. ‘It’s delicious.’

‘Never drunk it? Girl, where’ve you
been
?’

The look Collette gives her is startled, suspicious. It’s like we speak a different language, thinks Cher. ‘Oh, you know, here and there,’ Collette replies, eventually. Then adds: ‘It’s been Cristal champagne for me, 24/7.’

They fall awkwardly silent and sip their drinks, eying each other. She looks like my friend Bonny, thinks Cher, only older. I wonder what happened to Bonny? She was meant to be going back to her dad, but I know she didn’t want to go. Not like
that
matters to social services.

‘So how are you settling in, then?’ she asks, to fill the silence.

Collette shrugs. ‘Oh, you know. Okay. It’s all a bit strange.’

‘Better once you’ve got your stuff.’

‘Yeah,’ says Collette, and looks away again. That can’t be it, wonders Cher. That tiny bag I saw her with earlier? No one moves in somewhere with that little stuff, do they? And then she remembers the duffel bag she’d arrived with herself, seven months ago, and does an internal shrug. Hossein had a suitcase, but from the way he hefted it one-handed up the stairs, she doesn’t think it was full.