Running Scared (9 page)

There was something more than rotten in the state of Denmark here. But he had already flicked open the notebook and produced a gold pencil. He began to walk round the room. ‘Is anything here yours? This little table? No?’ He scribbled industriously. ‘I see the carpet appears to be new. No marks or stains.’ Scribble. ‘Now, how about the kitchen? Pots and pans? These mugs?’

‘Those are mine!’ I snarled.

He crossed them out reluctantly. ‘Now what about the bedroom?’

He was sidling towards the door which led into the little windowless bedroom beneath the pavement, formed from a Victorian coal cellar. I didn’t follow but stayed where I was in the living room. He hesitated.

‘Perhaps you ought to come too, dear. I don’t want to list any personal items . . .’ He was breathing, I fancied, rather more heavily than he’d been doing earlier. I was beginning to get the drift of this. I mean, I’m not that thick.

More interested to see how far he’d commit himself than anything else, I followed him into the bedroom. After all, if it came to fumble and grapple, I could take care of Charlie with one hand – or a knee in the groin.

He was standing by the bed and there wasn’t much room for more than one person. He wrote something in his notebook and then leered at me, eyes bulging. ‘My brother and I were a little concerned when Aunt Daphne took you in.’

‘She didn’t take me in. I rent the flat,’ I said.

‘I don’t somehow think you pay the full rent,’ he retorted silkily.

‘What I pay’s between me and Daphne. Ask her.’

He moved up against me, his face as red as beetroot. I hoped the build-up of lust in his creaking loins wasn’t going to lead to some kind of seizure. If he keeled over on my bed, it wouldn’t be a good situation at all.

‘Things may change,’ he wheezed, sweating profusely. He had open pores all over his nose. It looked like a pumice stone.

‘I’m going to meet a friend of mine in fifteen minutes,’ I said. ‘Have you listed everything?’

‘Now, then,’ he said. ‘Not so fast, eh? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, my brother and I take over control of this house, including this flat. We might want to reconsider your position.’ I said nothing and he went on, ‘You are aware of your legal position with regard to fully furnished accommodation?’

‘Get on with it!’ I said crossly.

Unfortunately, the silly old goat misunderstood.

‘I knew you’d see reason!’ he yelped, dropped the notebook on the bed, and threw his pudgy arms round me.

My knee came up in automatic reaction. He let out a shriek, a gasp, and tottered back, doubled over. I scooped up his notebook and then I grabbed him by his collar. He spluttered and coughed and looked terrified.

‘Look, Charlie boy,’ I said, ‘no fun and games. No deals. Got that? Now take your notebook and go back upstairs. And if I see you down here again, or if you try anything silly now, you’re going to come off very much the worse, got it?’

‘You little cow!’ he gurgled. ‘You assaulted me!’

‘No, you assaulted me, and if you try anything like that again, I’ll scream blue murder and make sure the whole street knows. Now get out!’

He staggered as far as the front door where he turned, straightened up as much as he could, and spat, ‘Street is where you belong and I’ll see you back out there before you can say knife, you – you trollop!’

Then he bolted before I could reply.

I slammed the door after him. Trollop? I didn’t know whether to be angry or laugh. Perhaps I ought to be worried. I thought Daphne would resist their bright idea that she make over the house to the twins. But she was elderly, there were two of them to her one, and blood was notoriously thicker than water.

No time to brood over it now. Thanks to Charlie, I was running late. I pulled on my jacket and dashed out of the house.

‘You choose,’ said Ganesh. ‘Indian or Chinese?’

‘Greek,’ I said. ‘That nice new taverna. The shop’s paying, isn’t it?’

The taverna was busy and we were lucky to get a table without booking. What they call the chattering classes were well represented in the crowded room, together with well-heeled City types. The general atmosphere was just that bit noisier, the customers just that bit more jovial, more slap-happy, because Christmas was coming. They all felt they had a licence to go out and make merry, even an obligation to. After all, that’s what Gan and I were doing there. The Greek staff were taking it in their stride. It was all good business. But since their Christmas wasn’t due until January, they were keeping their heads about it.

‘Why do people do it?’ I asked Ganesh, as I looked around the crowded room. ‘I mean, years ago, I suppose people didn’t take many holidays or go out for a good blow-out so often and once a year was special. But this lot – half of them are on expense-account lunches all the year round and eat pretty well even when they aren’t. They party all year. They take holidays, sailing round the Caribbean or skiing or pretending to be Tuscan peasants or what-have-you. But just look at them. You’d think they’d been let out of the workhouse for a binge.’

‘It’s truce time,’ said Gan. ‘You know, bury the hatchet in the ground and not in each other. It doesn’t happen often. It’s like the old Greeks. They used to call a halt to their wars during the period of the Olympic Games. I read that in a Sunday supplement.’

I had noticed, that since working at the newsagent’s, Gan had become a mine of odd information gleaned from a variety of magazines. He could tell you the top restaurants, the season’s fashion colour, how much it would cost you to go camel-trekking across the Gobi desert, the world’s ten best-dressed men and the best-kept secrets of the stars. None of this was of the slightest use to him, but he just liked knowing it and, if the opportunity offered, telling me.

Over the meal, I told him about Charlie’s visit and his grotesque advances. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing,’ I said. ‘Did he honestly think—’

‘Course he did,’ said Ganesh indistinctly, chewing.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I demanded.

He swallowed. ‘Keep your hair on.’ This struck him as funny and he fell about giggling for a bit. When he’d calmed down, he went on, ‘He doesn’t know you. He thought he’d try his luck.’

‘Well, his luck ran out.’

Ganesh wiped his mouth with his napkin and pronounced, ‘He and his brother won’t rest till they’ve got you out, Fran.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I muttered.

‘Be careful.’

‘Am I ever anything else?’ At this point, I put my hand in my pocket for my hanky and my fingers encountered the envelope I’d put there earlier and quite forgotten during my encounter with the rampant Charlie.

I pulled it out and put it on the table. Ganesh squinted at it and asked, ‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t know. Someone must have put it through my door and I didn’t see it when I went into the flat. I hadn’t switched on the light and it was pretty gloomy down there. Besides, I was thinking about the twins and how pleased with themselves they looked up there in Daphne’s drawing room. I didn’t see the envelope until I went to let Charlie in.’

‘Well, open it!’ he prompted impatiently. ‘What does it say?’

‘It might be private,’ I pointed out, but my fingers were tearing at the seal.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, torn from a pad, and folded over. On it was scribbled:

You were kind enough to render first aid at the newsagent’s recently. I need to talk to you. I’ll call back tonight at ten, if that isn’t too late.

Yours,

Gray Coverdale

‘Look, look!’ I squeaked, jabbing a finger at the note. ‘You said that reel of film didn’t belong to him! I told you it did. It must do. What else would he want to see me about? I thought someone was following me yesterday. It must’ve been Coverdale spying out where I lived.’

Ganesh looked at his wristwatch. ‘It’s gone half-past nine.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ I jumped to my feet. ‘Ask for the bill!’

We hurried to the flat as fast as we could make it, but it was still going to be after ten by the time we got there. I hoped Coverdale would wait. As we turned into the street I searched the pavements but there was no one about and no strange cars waited at the kerb. The wind whistled chilly round my shaven head and Ganesh hunched his shoulders, sinking his chin into his upturned jacket collar.

‘Looks like he’s been and gone, Fran.’

‘He mightn’t have arrived yet. It can’t be more than ten minutes past. He might be in the basement.’

The front of the house was in darkness. That didn’t mean Daphne was out or in bed, but that she was probably in her preferred sitting room overlooking the back garden. At least Bertie and Charlie would appear to have left.

I began to clatter down the steps to the basement well, Ganesh at my heels, when suddenly his hand gripped my shoulder. ‘Hang on, Fran!’ he said sharply.

On mid steps we both paused and peered down. The well was gloomy, the yellow sulphurous gleam of the streetlamps only touching the far corner. Yet in the near corner, right up by the flat entrance, the darkness seemed oddly different, blacker and thicker. As I stared, I began to make out a shape, huddled against the door. It didn’t move and I tried to tell myself it was only a trick of the shadows.

Ganesh had no such doubts. ‘Someone’s there, Fran.’ His voice breathed the words into my ear. I shivered and leaned over the railing.

‘Mr Coverdale, is that you? It’s Fran Varady, the girl from the newsagent’s. I got your note.’

There was no reply. The shape – I didn’t doubt now Ganesh was right that it was human – didn’t move. There was something horrible about its stillness. Even a sleeping body in a doorway radiates a kind of life. This gave out nothing.

I moved slowly to the bottom of the steps and waited there, unwilling to investigate any further. Uncertainly I said, ‘I’m sorry we’re late.’ I spoke because I wanted to hear a human voice, even my own, not because I expected an answer. None came. The wind rattled the railings and the streetlamp’s yellow pool of light quivered. A few late-falling leaves rustled at my feet.

‘Do you think it’s a drunk or a down-and-out?’ I whispered to Ganesh. ‘You know, just thought he’d found a good place to sleep it off?’

Ganesh squeezed past me and walked up to the huddled form. ‘Hey, mate?’ He stooped. ‘You all right, there? Come on, wake up. Can’t sleep outside the lady’s front door.’

He put his hand on the shape’s shoulder and shook gently. Slowly, with a scrape of clothing against the brick wall, the shape tilted sideways, uncoiled and collapsed. No longer a huddle in the shadows, it became a human being, sprawled across the basement pavement at our feet. The man’s head, previously tucked into his chest, fell into the patch of streetlight. It shone down on a livid but recognisable face.

‘That’s Coverdale!’ I gasped.

Ganesh dropped on his knees and, his long black hair veiling his face as he crouched over the body, put his fingers to Coverdale’s neck. Then he tore at the front of the prone figure’s overcoat, trying to locate the heart.

Suddenly he muttered, jerked back his exploring fingers and raised his hand for my inspection. Even in the gloom, I could see Ganesh’s palm was smeared with streaks which, though they looked black rather than scarlet in this light, I knew were blood.

‘He’s dead, Fran,’ Ganesh said, his voice shaking. ‘Looks like he’s been stabbed.’

Chapter Six

We didn’t panic, Ganesh and I, but the situation did develop rapidly into semi-controlled chaos. I raced up the steps to Daphne’s front door where I rang the bell and shouted through her letter box until she opened up in visible alarm. I was glad to see she hadn’t gone to bed but wore her reading glasses and clutched a rainbow-striped knitted cardigan about her thin frame.

‘Fran? What’s happened?’

Bearing in mind she was elderly, I knew I should break it gently. But a body in the basement isn’t the kind of news which lends itself to being wrapped up in soothing words. I did my best and told her there’d been an accident and I needed to use the phone.

‘An ambulance?’ she cried, snatching off the reading glasses to see me better. ‘Who’s hurt, Fran? Not you? I hope it isn’t that nice young man from the newsagent’s.’