Plastic (19 page)

I pocketed it and was changing my sweatshirt when I heard something fall in the kitchen, a metal spoon on tiles. It rocked to a stop and I held my breath as I stepped into the hall. Someone was standing in the kitchen.

‘June?’

‘God, Lou, I completely forgot you were coming.’

‘I couldn’t find you. I’ve been wandering around upstairs for the last half hour. I left your address at home.’

Lou had pinned her hair up with chopsticks, something she only did when she was very hungover. Sometimes she couldn’t find them and used a pair of forks she’d stolen from the Bollywood Nights Curry House. It was the furthest she’d ventured with ethnic fashion. ‘I caught a train to Waterloo. I was too wasted to drive. You phoned me last night making no sense whatsoever, then I come round and find all the doors wide open. I’ve been ringing doorbells but they don’t work. I thought you’d been murdered.’

‘Not me,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know who. After all that, didn’t I lock the door? Actually, I’m not sure the keys fully work by themselves. I warned you, the electricity’s off, nothing seems to work properly.’

‘You really didn’t dream this whole thing?’

‘The girl collapsed in the bedroom. I tried to help her, but for all I know I might have killed her.’

‘What on earth did you do? Dear God, don’t tell me someone pegged out in here.’

‘When I came back with some help, she’d disappeared.’

Lou breathed a sigh of relief. ‘So she couldn’t have been dead, that’s something.’

‘No, I think she was dead.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She’d stopped breathing, Lou.’

‘Shit. Would you recognise her again? How did she look?’

‘Like a model. Very slim and beautiful, weirdly so, almost too perfect.’

‘The way men like them, you mean, idealised. I think about guys like that all the time, especially when I look at Darren slumped on the sofa picking his feet. I don’t know what I’m going to do about my family. We’re not like any family you see on TV, neighbours popping around to sort each other’s problems out, everyone bonding and
relating
. We’re just alone together.’ She sighed and studied me anxiously. ‘You’re
absolutely
sure you didn’t imagine this episode of yours? How much did you drink?’

‘Not a lot. But later I had a joint and some kind of pill.’

‘I don’t believe you. You used to moan if I gave you caffeinated coffee.’

‘And I took that diet pill you gave me.’

‘I gave you that over a year ago. God, this is too weird.’

I opened the balcony doors and we sat outside at the steel breakfast table. The air was warm but laden with moisture. Gulls spiralled above us, flying ahead of distant stormclouds, working their way inland. I sat with my hands against my forehead, fighting a headache.

‘You said there were no lights, so how could you remember what she looked like?’

‘I’d borrowed a lamp from a neighbour.’ I thought about skipping the part where I nearly burned the place down, but decided to come clean. ‘I promise you, she was dead. Somebody took the body away while I was out and quickly cleaned the place up. The man who killed her.’

‘How long were you gone?’

‘I’m not sure. Forty minutes, three quarters of an hour.’

‘And this policeman who wasn’t a policeman…’

‘Retired. Very old but kind.’

‘Your mind could be playing tricks. Think about it. It’s the first time you’ve been away from home in years.’ Lou looked back at the lounge, still set about with the white emergency candles I had found bundled in a drawer beneath the sink. ‘I knew Malcolm was making a packet but I didn’t think he was this rich. He has better taste that I’d imagined.’

‘How much do you know about him?’

‘Let’s see.’ Lou thought for a minute. ‘He’s around forty-seven, looks good for his age, a workaholic, a serial womaniser, takes tablets for his cholesterol and has got Julie on a string. He has these things – what do you call them.’ She waggled her fingers at the sides of her head and made a face.

‘Hearing aids.’

‘Sideburns.’

‘There aren’t any photographs of him, or anyone else.’

‘There wouldn’t be. I think his wife uses the place occasionally. He doesn’t like to leave any incriminating evidence.’

‘He’s not involved in anything illegal, is he?’

‘Not as far as I know. He’s a bit murky about his sidelines, though.’

‘What sort of sidelines?’

‘He runs another company. Medical products, I think.’

‘It must be successful if he can afford to collect abstract art.’

‘Oh, they’re inherited. That’s why they’re in the mother’s name. They had to be registered in order to maintain provenance, and that means taxes.’ She looked back at the lounge. ‘Speaking of which, where are these famous watercolours?’

I had assumed they were stored away. The pictures on the walls were oils. ‘He wouldn’t keep them out in the open, would he?’ I thought of the Da Vinci cartoon cocooned in its gloomy home at the National Portrait Gallery. ‘Don’t watercolours fade in bright light?’

‘So where are they? That’s the whole point of you looking after the place, June. Please don’t tell me someone just walked in here and took them. The lobby door downstairs was ajar and you left the front door open, Jesus.’

‘They must be here somewhere.’

‘You mean you haven’t seen them the whole time you’ve been here?’

‘No, there are only these great ugly canvases. He must have the rest locked away.’

‘Just how much did you drink last night?’

‘Before it happened? A couple of gins. I can’t really remember..’

‘Before you saw this dead girl.’

‘Yes but I know how much I have to drink before I start seeing things.’

‘Unless there was something wrong with the drinks. Men are capable of anything when it comes to sex.’

‘I thought Julie said he was a nice guy.’

‘She’s desperate. Right now she’d date Hannibal Lecter.’ Lou returned to the lounge and began pulling bottles out of the cocktail cabinet, opening them and sniffing their contents. ‘If you’re sure you didn’t imagine it, that’s a different matter. But this is not gin, I promise you. Is this what you drank from?’ She held up an empty decanter.

‘Yes, that’s the one.’

‘Couldn’t you smell the difference? How will I ever make a decent alcoholic of you? This is too sweet, it smells like nail polish. Didn’t you notice it was too dark when you poured it out?’

‘I told you, there’s no electricity. I had to mix them by candlelight. What is it?’

‘You’ve been drinking absinthe, baby, favoured tipple of the French decadents. If you used it in the amounts I mix your gins in, you probably suffered psychoactive hallucinations. This stuff contains wormwood, it’s the speedball of liquor, messes with your nervous system.’

‘But I haven’t felt hungover.’

‘That’s because there’s very little alcohol in the good brands. There’s this stuff called thujone that stays in your system and accumulates, causing all sorts of weird shit.’

‘How come you know so much about it?’

She stuck her hands on her hips and looked at me. ‘What do you think I do at home, cooking and cleaning?’

‘But the fire I caused was real.’

‘Yeah, so you set the bed alight when you dropped the lamp. You’re in a different environment, away from home, everything’s new and strange. What other explanation could there be? You honestly think some half-naked supermodel walked in off the street and was tied up before choosing to drop dead in your presence, only to disappear without a trace?’

‘I know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined, Lou.’

‘You’ve obviously never been on a dating site.’ Lou studied me appraisingly. ‘Where the hell are the paintings?’

‘He must have put them away somewhere. When I arrived at the building the concierge was still on duty. There’s no way anyone would have got past her.’

‘All right, if you’re sure. But remember, you’re the one who went out and spent £4,000 on everything from abdomenizers to angle-grinders and then didn’t remember what she’d done.’

‘That was different.’

‘I don’t see how. You’ve never exactly been in touch with reality.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ I demanded indignantly.

‘I mean, darling, that everyone in the neighbourhood knew your husband was plugging the transit-tramp next door, even you, only you ‘forgot’ it, just like you forgot your little shopping sprees.’ Lou reached out a consoling hand. ‘I came here today because I was worried about you. I brought you some cash.’

I bristled. ‘I don’t want to be reminded of what I used to do. And I don’t want a handout from you.’

‘Come on, June, I’m your best friend, I can say things no-one else is allowed to. It’s only fifty quid, that’s all I have on me but it should keep you going. Don’t do a number on me. Unless you really want to bite the bullet and come back. I could put up Hadrian’s old bed in the box-room. You have to tell me now, though, because we’re taking a ball-hedge up to Darren’s deranged parents in Aldershot tomorrow and we’ll be staying over because he doesn’t like driving on motorways at night and I’ll be too spazzed to see straight.’

‘No, it’s okay, I’m going to stay here. I have to get everything sorted out in my head. I’ll go to my mother’s on Monday morning, after I’ve returned the key.’

‘Okay, you’re sure as hell not missing anything in Hamingwell. But don’t drink anything else you find in the cupboards. And call me if you have any more trouble. Promise?’

I forced a smile. ‘I promise.’ I told Lou not to leave the money, but she did anyway, slipping the notes onto the table in the hall, and I was secretly grateful. After she had gone, I edged a chair-back under the front door handle.

Back on the balcony, I studied the brick face carefully. There were no handholds, no cables, nothing connecting the apartments. They were large and separate, isolated from each other in the sky; it was their key selling point. If the people I saw were really there, they must have come in through the front entrance, and I had failed to hear them moving about because of the absinthe.

I leaned as far as I dared and tried to see into the corner penthouse, but grey blinds were drawn across the double doors of its balcony. Had they been drawn this morning? Perhaps Fragrance had closed them.

As I absently watched, the far blind twitched slightly, as if an observer had seen me and quickly withdrawn.

It’s no good,
I told myself finally.
I have to do it. There’s someone still in there. Maybe he’s waiting to get rid of the body.
I’m partly responsible, I have to know.
It couldn’t be Stitch-Head, because I’d seen him prowling the streets, and Stefan had seen no-one come in. That meant there was a third person involved.

The hall was in permanent gloom, and required some fortitude to traverse. The building was so silent that even a low breeze could be heard mumbling around its corners. Unable to find a bell, I knocked hard on the corner penthouse door. The sound was sharp and shocking. I waited, fidgeting, for a full minute, but nobody came. A faint noise came from inside, a clearing of the throat, the scrape of a chair.

‘Hello?’ I knocked again.

A deeper silence descended. I pressed the side of my head flat against the wood and discerned a regular movement of air, soft shallow breathing. There was someone in the flat, a man on the other side of the door, but he wasn’t planning to reveal himself.

He was inside, inches away, I could almost feel him. My fingers spread across the warm wood, sensing the presence of another human being alone in the shadows.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Balcony

E
LLIOT ANSWERED THE
door of his apartment in a creepily short blue towelling robe. He looked liverish and guilty. His skin as slick and breath as shallow as if he’d been running or having a marathon bout of afternoon sex, and his hair was sticking up on one side like a duck wing. For a moment he didn’t seem to remember me.

‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘I need to talk to you. Can I come in?’ I had changed into a skirt and high-heeled shoes in order to make myself feel more normal, but it was normal for Hamingwell, not here, and with Elliot in a state of undress, exposing my legs no longer seemed such a good idea.

He seemed reluctant to admit me, not quite standing far enough aside to allow me by. ‘All right,’ he decided, smoothing his hair into place, ‘but I’m expecting someone very shortly.’

‘This will only take a minute.’ Something in his attitude stopped me from telling him too much. ‘You said you know the man whose apartment I’m looking after.’

‘That’s right, and you don’t, do you?’

As I passed his bedroom door I caught a glimpse of several leather straps attached with rings and buckles, laid out on the duvet in a fetishistic order that reminded me of Mr. Ashe and his pairs of pliers. He led the way into the kitchen, scratching, and poured himself orange juice.
Big evening ahead?
I wondered.

‘No. I lied to you. I didn’t want you to think... the truth is, I’m here because I have no choice.’

‘Everyone has a choice, June.’ He seemed bored by me and walked away, so that I was forced to follow him.

‘How much do you know about Malcolm Phillimore?’

‘Oh, is that his name?’

‘You haven’t spoken to him?’

‘I thought I told you, nobody knows anyone here. I saw him in the hall a couple of times. Actually, I had an argument with him.’

‘What kind of argument?’

Elliot dropped onto the sofa opposite, his robe falling open at an uncomfortably high level. Either he hadn’t noticed or was unalarmed by the notion of displaying his genitals to virtual strangers. ‘I really don’t remember. Something... wait.’ He glanced over at the eviscerated dummy standing against the bare wall. ‘He was complaining about a delivery, something that went astray in the mail room. He thought I’d taken it. The Funes woman, she gets everything wrong. She told him I’d signed for his package but I’d done no such thing. It was just an embarrassing confusion. He was apologetic afterwards. Seemed pleasant enough. Isn’t he something to do with plastic surgery?’