The Killer Next Door (19 page)

As they come down the front steps, Cher lets out a hiss of pain, and Collette, remembering, grabs her by the arm. ‘How are you feeling?’ she whispers.

Cher hops her way down the steps with a grimace and, when she reaches the bottom, whispers, ‘Like I’ve been beaten up, thankth for athking.’

She’s deliberately lisping to stop the sound from carrying on the still night air. It’s an old trick that passed from kid to kid in the care homes, along with skills like lock picking and uses for aerosols. But they both glance nervously to their left, up at the front windows, as though they expect to see that the man who didn’t come to his door when they were shouting outside Vesta’s will be looking out from between his curtains. But Gerard Bright’s sashes are down and the glass is dark. He must be out. There’s been no music from his flat all day, now Collette thinks of it. Maybe he’s away. Perhaps the universe is cutting them a break after all.

Beulah Grove is dark. Despite the open windows that show on all the upper floors in the street it seems that Vesta’s cries for help have gone unheeded beyond number twenty-three. But everyone knows that, in London, only the threat of theft will fling a householder from their sleep.

‘I can do thith by mythelf,’ whispers Collette. Cher glances at her sideways.

‘No,’ she replies. ‘It’s easier with two of us, and I know where they are. You don’t want to be blundering around there in the dark.’

‘Okay. Thanks.’

Cher’s ankle is really hurting, now. Lying in her bed, she’d begun to think that it was improving, but now she’s limping along the street it feels loose and hot and unsteady, as though something’s ripped inside. I won’t be running for a while, that’s for sure, she thinks, and feels a little moment of relief at the thought that her rinsing days are over. It’s a stupid way to make a living, actually more dangerous than straight honest whoring. As she’s found to her cost, an angry, ripped-off client is the worst client of all. Each step she takes jars through her body from foot to neck. Can’t afford to make a fuss, she thinks, and grits her aching teeth. Got to just get on with it.

‘Are you feeling any better?’ asks Collette. ‘Are the antibiotics doing their stuff?’

‘Hope so,’ she replies grimly, blanks out the worst-case scenarios. Even Cher knows that antibiotics don’t work against viruses. There’s an ache low in her tummy, but she doesn’t mind that; assumes it’s evidence that the Levonelle morning-after pill Collette got from the chemist’s yesterday morning is working. ‘Headache’s gone, anyway. So that’s good.’

‘Good,’ says Collette.

‘Sorry I didn’t tell you,’ says Cher. ‘You just… you don’t know who you can trust, around here.’

‘I know. It’s okay. I’ve not exactly been shouting my own business from the rooftops, have I?’

They reach the scruffy front garden of number twenty-seven. It’s full of rubble, the stump of the tree that used to lever up the slabs of the pavement in front raw where it’s been cut off and painted over with poison. The windows gape, glassless, at them, still framed by scaffolding. The new owners seem to have knocked out every wall on the upper ground floor. Cher doesn’t know much about how these things are done, but it seems to her that the whole place must be ready to fall down.

She leads the way into the side-return, stepping carefully round discarded cement buckets and piles of old bricks. At the far end, bright blue even in the darkness, a folded length of damp-proof membrane lies propped against the closed door. Cher noticed it a few days ago as she was passing, remembered it because she was surprised some pikey hadn’t been past and lifted it. Maybe it’s just leftovers and the builders don’t care, but it’s perfect for their purpose.

She points. Collette nods and goes to scoop it up. ‘Gosh, it’s heavy,’ she whispers.

‘Gonna need to be,’ replies Cher. ‘The Landlord’s no Tinkerbell.’

She grabs one end as they emerge from the alley, and they start to make their way back. ‘I still don’t understand about the T-shirt,’ says Cher.

‘Ugh,’ says Collette. ‘Carbon monoxide.’

‘You what?’

‘Gas.’

‘From the boiler? She’d’ve smelled that, wouldn’t she?’

‘No. It’s a by-product of burning stuff. That’s why those sorts of things are always on an outside wall. So they can have a vent to let it out. You know there’s always a British family that dies in a holiday rental in Cyprus every year? It’s that. You can’t smell it, you can’t see it. And if you don’t let it out, it builds up and kills you. But you’re asleep by that point, because it knocks you out. You never know anything about it. You know. Like those people with the cars and the hosepipes.’

‘So he was…?’

‘Yes. Looks like it. Hard to think he was doing anything else. Another old lady dead in her bath.’

‘Christ,’ says Cher. They pause at the edge of the pavement and look up and down the road. They only have to cover a short distance, but being spotted now could be their undoing. The street remains quiet. Not a light in a window, not a curtain moving. Three o’clock, the dead zone. They set off for number twenty-three. ‘Fucker,’ she says. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’

Collette doesn’t speak. She’s not so sure, but then, she doesn’t have as much history with the Landlord as the rest of them. Cher’s injuries are still fresh, on her body and in her mind, and it’s clear that she sees Vesta as some sort of granny figure. She’s entitled to feel some rage.

They hurry past number twenty-five and into their own alleyway. Once they get behind the gate, they let go of the plastic and take a moment to breathe. ‘So how long were you in care?’ asks Cher.

‘Oh, on and off, you know. Just a few weeks at a time. The longest was maybe a couple of months. My mum wasn’t a great coper, you know? Sometimes it just all got too much and she’d check me in,’

‘Yeah, I know,’ says Cher, but she feels disappointed. She’s never known a living adult who’s had her experiences. Had hoped that she’d finally found one.

‘It’s shit, though, isn’t it? I was scared stupid all the time. How about you?’

‘Since I was twelve.’

‘Wow,’ says Collette. ‘How about your family?’

‘My mum’s dead,’ says Cher. ‘When I was nine. I lived with my nanna and that was okay. She was nice.’

‘And your dad?’

The sort of question Vesta asks. Cher doesn’t mind it from her. She comes from a world where people know their dads. She reminds Cher of Nanna, all kindness and cake and the confusion of the honest. Collette has seemed like she’s from a wider world. Maybe not. Cher shrugs. ‘Who knows?’

Collette gives her a sympathetic look. She had so many dads and uncles growing up that she forgets that some people have none at all. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, lamely. ‘It’s tough.’

Cher feels a surprising surge of rage. Great, she thinks. Fucking sympathy. That’s all I need. She picks up her end of the sheeting. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

In the area outside Vesta’s kitchen, Hossein has done what he can with a broom to clear away the worst of the slurry. He and Thomas stand in the doorway, looking out for their arrival, and wait as they manhandle their burden down the steps and dump it on the concrete. ‘Oh, that’s good,’ says Thomas. ‘Very good.’

‘Damp proofing,’ says Collette.

So it won’t be permeable, then.

They unfold it and lay it out. Even doubled over, it covers most of the flagstones. Collette checks her watch. It’s taken less than an hour for them all to turn from victims and rescuers into conspirators. ‘I’ve got the shed open,’ says Hossein. ‘That lock didn’t take more than a couple of bashes with a brick. It must’ve been there for decades.’

‘It has,’ says Thomas. ‘Vesta says she doesn’t remember it ever being open.’

‘What’s in there?’

‘Nothing much. A rusted up old lawnmower and some plant pots. And an armchair that looks like it’s been mouse metropolis for many generations. With an ashtray.’

‘Where
is
Vesta?’ asks Collette.

‘Sitting down.’

‘I’ll go and check on her.’

The men stand around the plastic sheeting, hands on hips. ‘Right,’ says Thomas, ‘we’d better get on with it, then.’

While the women have been on their foraging mission, they have levered the Landlord into the bath and washed him down with the shower hose. The operation has only been a partial success, as the bath is draining so slowly that he wallows in four inches of filthy water, but his face and torso, stripped of its covering, are relatively clean. He gapes at the ceiling, his arm flopping down the side as though it’s been stripped of its bones. He’s pale, like a mushroom grown in a cellar, the skin below his collar line near-white and spongy. A bluebottle, awoken from its slumbers, buzzes lazily over his head, looking for an orifice to enter. Hossein bats it away.

From the front room, Cher can hear the murmur of voices. She follows the sound. Some part of her feels that moving the body is somehow man’s work. She’s surprised by how sanguine everyone seems to be now the decision is made. The Landlord is no longer the Landlord: already he’s a bulky object that needs moving, a problem that needs to be got under control before the dawn brings out the neighbours, what passed for his soul long passed from his body. But she no more wants to lay hands on that mozzarella flesh in death than she did in life, and the sight of it makes her skin crawl.

In her front room, surrounded by the piled-up mementos of her life, Vesta sits on the edge of her settee, stiff and pale. One hand holds a glass of brandy, the other sits loosely in Collette’s as she stares at the air. Collette is speaking, and Cher pauses in the doorway, unsure if she should interrupt.

‘… look after you, Vesta. It wasn’t your fault. You’ll be okay, I swear. We’re going to clear this up and nobody will be any the wiser.’

‘You’re very kind,’ says Vesta, distantly, like the Queen receiving her thirtieth bunch of daffs of the day. ‘You’re all very kind.’

Are we, though, thinks Cher. Is it really because we care about Vesta, or because we don’t want people up in our own business? The only person here I can think of who doesn’t have a reason to cover this up is Thomas, and God knows what
he’s
hiding while he plays good neighbour. I love Vesta. She’s been like a nan to me, but if I thought she was going to get me taken back into care I’d drop her and run in a heartbeat. And that one, there: the fact that she’s on the run from someone, somewhere, that she’s hiding – it couldn’t be more obvious, now I see it, than if she was wearing an orange jumpsuit. And Hossein’s still months off getting his asylum application waved through, and God knows the
Daily
Mail
’s on the hunt for foreign troublemakers. We’re all out to protect ourselves, in the end. None of it’s really about Vesta.

Vesta buries her nose in her drink and swallows an inch down in a single go. Behind her, Cher can hear grunts of exertion. ‘Go left,’ says Hossein. ‘No, my left. It’s caught on the cooker. No, no, go back, then
lift
it.’ She steps into the room.

Vesta and Collette look up like kids caught stealing sweets. Their faces relax when they see that it’s her. ‘How are you doing, Vesta?’ she asks.

Vesta pulls a face that’s somewhere between tears and laughter. ‘Oh, you know, dear, I’ve been better.’

‘They’re moving him now,’ she says. ‘He’ll be out of here in no time.’

‘You’re so kind,’ says Vesta, automatically. ‘You’re all so kind. I should be helping, really. I shouldn’t leave other people to clean up my mess.’

‘It’s okay, Vesta,’ says Collette. ‘They’re big strong boys.’

‘But really,’ says Vesta, and makes a move as if to stand up. ‘I’ve never asked anyone to do my dirty work in my life. I’m not starting now.’

Collette puts a strong arm on her shoulder, and holds her down. This is so weird, thinks Cher. Tomorrow – later today – I’ll wake up and I’ll think it’s all been a dream. Roy Preece dead on the bathroom floor. It feels like a dream already.

‘Maybe you should come up and stay in mine, tonight,’ says Collette.

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t,’ says Vesta, still talking on autopilot, clinging to an independence that has vanished. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude.’

Collette looks sharply up at Cher and gestures her away with her free hand. Leave me to it, the look says. You’re not helping. It’s all I can do to keep her under control.

‘It’s not an intrusion, Vesta,’ she says as Cher goes back to the men.

They’ve got him out on to the plastic. He lies on his side, blubber spreading across the ground like melted candlewax. Sweat drips from their faces and their shirts cling to their chests. Somewhere out in the dark, over near the railway, a fox barks. Out on the road, the sound of a car engine. There are people, thinks Cher. In London there are people all the time, even in the dead of night. Maybe that man in Flat One is lying there, listening to his heartbeat, wondering what we were doing breaking down Vesta’s door. Maybe he isn’t out at all, maybe he’s just too scared to admit that he’s in. She glances at the old sunburst clock on the kitchen wall, a spidery hand ticking off the seconds. Nearly half past three. An hour, maybe less, until daylight. At this time of year people get up to get in a morning’s fishing at the pond on Northbourne Common before they start their day’s work. Children, overheated in their stuffy bedrooms, will catch sight of the dawn and want attention.

Beyond the stink of the sewage, the hot scent of masculine sweat, she can smell the familiar honk of Landlord. That mix of fungus and must and three-day-old curry, the cheesy tang of desultory washing that has filled her room, and her worries, for months on end. I thought that was the worst smell in the world, she thinks, but he’ll soon smell a whole lot worse than that, and has to bite back a bark of hysterical laughter. My God, I’m fifteen, she thinks. I’m meant to be rowing with my mam and saving up for One Direction tickets. I’m meant to be choosing my GCSEs.

Thomas looks up at the sky. He looks curiously vital in his tinted specs, as though he’s on the adventure of a lifetime. But thank God for him, thinks Cher. He’s the only person who seems prepared to take charge around here. ‘Come on,’ he says, like a general urging his troops over the top. ‘One last push, and we’re done. Cher, do you think you can manage a corner?’