Lady Bag (16 page)

Chapter
27

I See Natalie’s Ghost

I
shrieked.

The undead Natalie Munrow swung quickly away.

The senior cop said, ‘That was
not
supposed to happen.’

Anderson said, ‘I’m sorry sir. She was bursting for a pee.’

I said to Electra, ‘We’ve seen a ghost. I think I’m going to shit myself.’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Electra said. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts who smell of
Rive Gauche
and truffle oil.’

‘Does she?’ I was shocked. ‘You’re dead!’ I shouted to Natalie Munrow. ‘Your brains are scrambled on the Persian rug. The Devil smote you dead.’

‘Shut up,’ Anderson yelled.

‘But that’s Natalie Munrow,’ I said. ‘She’s dead and encorpsed.’

‘Stop screaming,’ Anderson said.

‘Calm down, you’re getting hysterical.’ Electra looked anxious.

‘She isn’t Natalie. She’s a witness.’ Anderson was overheated and undercooked.

Suddenly I understood what was going on. ‘You’re all lying to me,’ I said. ‘Natalie Munrow has never been dead. You tricked me. It’s a conspiracy.’

‘Why would we trick you? Come to the canteen. You said you wanted a nice sweet cup of tea and a bun.’

I shouted at him, ‘I’m homeless and amnesiac but I’m not a child. This is about fraud, isn’t it? It’s a life insurance fraud and you’re all in on it.’

‘Steady on,’ Electra said. ‘Breathe. You’re changing colour.’

‘Pick another fall-gal. I’m buggered if I’ll let you do it to me again,’ I said.

‘Don’t shout,’ Anderson pleaded. ‘I’m sorry sir,’ he called to the retreating senior cop.

‘
Deal
with it, Anderson,’ came floating back down the corridor.

‘You can’t accuse me of murdering someone who isn’t dead. But you can find out who would benefit if she
had
died. I bet the brother’s in on it too. Watch the brother. He breathes anger like a dragon breathes fire. He’s a minion of the Devil.’

‘I don’t understand. You garble everything. But please believe me—you haven’t seen a corpse. Natalie
is
dead. The woman you saw was a friend of hers and she’s very much alive.’

‘That’s what you all want me to believe. That woman is Natalie Munrow. If you want stolen identity, it’s her. She’s taken her friend’s identity
and
the life insurance payout for her lover—the Devil.’

‘Why would the Devil want an insurance payout?’ Anderson asked.

‘Cos that’s how he operates. He offers love for riches. He tempts, then he withdraws love, and when you can’t stand it anymore you give in.’

‘Er, didn’t the Devil tempt Eve with an apple?’

‘You’re not very clever, are you? I’m talking about insurance fraud, not fruit. And I need a pee.’

Anderson caught a passing uniformed cop by the sleeve and said. ‘Can you stay with this lady for a sec while I find out what’s happened to the duty s-h-r-i-n-k?’

The young cop said, ‘Sorry mate, can’t,’ and Electra said, ‘I
told
you. You’ve
got
to start listening to me.’

‘You’re all talking at once,’ I said. I grabbed Electra’s scarf and dragged her at top speed down the emergency stairs. The sound of thundering cop boots chased me all the way but I started shouting, ‘I need a wee, I need a wee,’ at everyone I met and they all stepped aside as if I were a leper.

On the ground floor I changed my shout to, ‘My dog’s got diarrhoea,’ and a cop even held the door open for me.

When I got to the front desk I stuck my face right up close to the glass and said, ‘I want a bed for the night. You can’t just kick me out. My dog needs a pooh.’

‘What do you think this is—a hostel?’ The cop looked disgusted and buzzed me straight out. Electra and I were bounced out onto the pavement. We turned left immediately and scurried into the crowds on Kensington High Street.

‘They’re so predictable,’ I said to Electra. ‘If you’re running away they’ll arrest you, but if you say you want to stay they can’t get rid of you fast enough.’

Electra didn’t reply. She was having a long relieving pee outside a bookshop. When she’d finished she said, ‘All in all you managed pretty well, but in the future I’ll thank you not to use my bodily functions as part of your strategy.’

‘What makes you Lady Muck?’ I said. ‘I didn’t notice you clamouring to go back to Battersea Dogs Home. It’s where they’ll send you if I get sectioned.’

‘Stay here and quarrel if you like,’ she said, ‘but isn’t that Natalie Munrow over there on the other side of the road?’

Natalie, in her beautifully cut linen suit, her ankle-slimming pumps, her carefully styled hair, was talking into an iPhone which would’ve made Smister drool. It was the woman Gram Lucifer Attwood touched. His lips kissed her cheek, his lovely hand held her elbow and stroked the small of her deceitful back. His perfect tailoring was her gift. I waited outside a theatre to warn her, but she sent me packing. I was already too late—I was warning a dead woman.

What did she say to the cops when she sat watching me on CCTV in the next door interview room? ‘She’s the nut job who was stalking me that night’? Because of course there was a CCTV camera. She could see me, but I couldn’t see her. They were all in league against me.

She stood at the corner of Kensington High Street and Phillimore Gardens, talking on her phone. She knew that Gram Lucifer Ashmodai was a murderer but no one was chasing her. Or him. Why not?

No one believed me. No one understood what I was saying. And
I
was the one who left bodily fluids at a murder scene even though I didn’t know there had been a murder.

The cops had my DNA, but how can I trust them with complicated science when they can’t get my name right?

The Devil lured me there to take the blame. Ask yourself, why did he turn up and show himself to me just before a murder? He found me and led me to the scene. There was malice in his forethought.

‘Are you going to stand here all afternoon muttering?’ Electra asked. ‘You’re barely a hundred yards from the police station, and you’re letting Natalie get away.’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Well, follow her, dip wad,’ she said, giving herself a shake. ‘And while you’re at it, get as far away from the Earls Court Road as you can. I’m pretty sure you were going to be arrested and formally charged.’ She gave me a pitying look and set off east along the High Street.

Natalie stayed on her side of the road and we stayed on ours. She was in no hurry, but she walked purposefully. Her posture was terrific—confidence oozed from every pore. I walked like that once; before I started carrying my home on my back and a dirty great void where my heart should be.

‘Look at her,’ I said. ‘She’s got everything.’

‘She’s meeting someone. She’s checking her watch every thirty seconds.’

‘It’s a diamond watch. I bought Gram a Rolex so I couldn’t afford anything like that for myself.’

‘He’s gone up in the world since then.’

‘It’s not like you to be cruel.’

‘It’s not cruelty,’ Electra said. ‘It’s reality.’

Just before Kensington Gardens there’s a stone and glass swank house called Kensington Palace Hotel. Natalie walked up to the entrance and a man in white gloves and a top hat held the door open for her.

We stopped.

‘We need Smister,’ Electra said. ‘He could go in. We can’t.’

‘We dumped Smister.’

‘What do you mean, “We”?’

‘Anyway, he’ll have gone off with his best friend Pierre. He doesn’t need us. We don’t belong in the same world.’

‘You’re an idiot. What do you want to do? Hang around till Natalie comes out? There’s nowhere to wait.’

‘We could sit in the park.’

‘Good idea,’ Electra said, and we wove our way through screeching, honking traffic to Kensington Gardens. Electra had a lovely roam on the grass and I had a lie down on a bench. But I couldn’t see the hotel entrance so it was a waste of time. It was getting dark and I needed to witness Gram with Natalie once more so that I could remember my hatred and rage.

Without rage I would never be able to contemplate revenge.

‘Anger never goes unpunished,’ Electra warned, nosing round my bench. ‘Well,
yours
doesn’t. Give it up. Go and find Smister.’

But I didn’t listen. I trailed up and down outside the hotel until she stopped talking to me and my back started to ache like a rotten tooth. I didn’t see Gram Attwood, or Natalie Munrow again, but I did see a matching pair of cops striding purposefully in our direction.

‘Oh fuck,’ I said and we took off at top speed. I thought I was heading back to the squat, but somewhere along the way night fell and we got lost. Did I mention that Electra has a very poor sense of direction?

We ended up hidden behind some rubbish skips. I wrapped us both in the blankets I’d swiped from the squat. It started to rain again but we were protected by some overhanging planks and polythene so we should have been quite comfortable. Electra sighed a lot. When did she get too good for this life? She should know better than to get used to a bed.

Chapter
28

I Become An Ambulance Driver

I
n the morning I couldn’t quite shift the crust gluing my eyelids closed. I fed Electra and let her drink from a puddle. My back was the shape of a coat hanger and my chest squealed like a nest of rats. I set off to find a caff. I knew I’d recover once I got warm and fed. A café owner can be surprisingly generous when he wants you to move away from his door so I had a day-old sausage roll and a cardboard cup of weak tea for breakfast.

Even so it took me nearly two hours to find Cadmus Road. I was cold and wet when I arrived but I still circled the area keeping my eyes peeled for cops or cowboys. The road was busy with people leaving for work and reluctant school-aged kids weighed down, like me, by their backpacks. No one seemed to notice Electra and me sliding stealthily into the squat.

The musty old basement smelled of shower gel, body lotion and hairspray. Smister was alone, curled on his side with one hand under his cheek. He looked so young and smelled so clean that I couldn’t bear to wake him. Electra jumped onto one of the broke-back beds. I lay beside her and within two minutes we were asleep.

‘Where’ve you been?’ His voice was high with indignation, but he handed me a mug of hot coffee. ‘You’ve been sleeping in a garbage bin. Admit it. I won’t
speak
to you till you’ve had a shower.’ He stormed back to the kitchen, his heels chattering like angry jackdaws, leaving a trail of perfume so strong it was visible. Electra sneezed and jumped off the bed to follow him, her tail waving gently.

I sat up to drink my coffee. Smister had made it strong, with milk and five sugars—just the way I like it. My back was being stabbed by rusty knives, my hips felt bruised and my neck sounded like broken glass. Pavement isn’t the world’s softest bed but it never hurt me like this before. Maybe I’d twisted into a weird position. Or maybe I needed a proper bedroll instead of a couple of thin blankets.

‘Or
maybe
at your age, you need to sleep on a mattress, dim-wattage,’ Smister said. ‘Or maybe you need to stop bingeing and falling down instead of falling asleep. But while you’re clean I’ll cut your hair. Pierre’s right—you look like a total lunatic.’

I was headachy and surly. ‘I saved your scrawny little neck yesterday only you were too dumb to notice. The cops took me in.’

‘They never!’

‘They did. And it was all because I was leading them away from you.’ I avoided Electra’s reproachful eyes.

‘Did they hurt you? Was it… the same ones? Were they looking for me?’ He turned so pale his lips looked blue.

I relented. ‘It’s not all about you. This was about who killed Natalie Munrow. Oh crap!’ Because I suddenly remembered the cops were setting me up for Natalie’s murder. I was the easiest target within a hundred miles. No wonder they didn’t want to believe she was still alive. If they’d believed me, they would have to re-identify the body they had in their morgue. They might have to do a little work, instead of extracting the confession of a bag lady to do the job for them.

‘You’re paranoid,’ Smister said, snipping away at my wet hair.

‘I’m serious. I’m in a lot of trouble and I’m scared. If they catch me, will you adopt Electra? I couldn’t stand it if she was locked up too.’

‘They’re not going to catch you.’

‘They were in this street. They took me to Earls Court nick. They’re trying to pin Natalie’s death on me. And they found me not fifty yards from our front door. You’d just come home and Pierre turned up in an ambulance.’

‘Oh
crap
,’ he said.

‘Smister?’

‘What?’

‘I fell off the wagon yesterday.’

‘You didn’t fall—you jumped from a great height—with enthusiasm.’

‘But you were… ’

‘Taking risks? Stealing? Get over it. You kept me alive the last two weeks. You stole and begged to feed me. But I don’t care how hard you try you’ll never make enough to buy an ambulance.’

‘You bought an ambulance?’

‘It’s got beds and cupboards, and there’s a water tank and heater the hippies put in. It won’t go above 27mph but it’s got four months left on the road tax. And Pierre threw in a new battery.’

‘But where will you go?’

‘We, you soppy old fruit bat. I can’t drive. And don’t start snivelling again. Hold still. If you’re going to drive you’ll have to look less like a soak or you’ll be breath-tested every two minutes. The point is
not
to attract attention.’

That’s how I became an ambulance driver.