The Killer Next Door (27 page)

His love is forged in tears. They spring from his eyes as they struggle for that one final breath, pour down his cheeks while his hands are still about their necks. As he watches the light die out, the surprise, the fear, the pain melt away into nothingness, he feels his chest tighten as though his heart will break. For a moment, as the tears flood down, he will find it hard to swallow. He will take his hands from them and press them to his face, bend double and let the sorrow out.

‘I’m sorry,’ he tells her. ‘I’m sorry, oh, I’m so sorry.’

I’m out of control, he thinks. I no longer have any control over it – over this – this love. It’s got too much for me, now. The loneliness is too extreme. I thought my ladies would heal me. That it would stop this longing, this ache, this empty hole in me if they could never leave.

But it’s all backwards, this love of his. It starts the right way, every time. The way it starts for everyone. A chance meeting, a flash of attraction. The thinking about her when she’s not there, the slow build of intrigue, the fire of passion. But after that it’s all wrong. After the passion comes the mourning, and then the contentment, the relationship, the moments of easy intimacy. And then, creeping over him, day by day, the indifference. He feels nothing for Marianne now. He looks at her and he can barely remember the devotion that filled him just a few weeks ago. She’s just another withered, wizened disappointment, and him with the gnawing emptiness that grows and grows each day.

He looks at the God Girl and feels another rush of sorrow. My God, he thinks, I never even found out what your name was. I’m out of control. I am. If I’m going to do this, if I’m going to make these…
sacrifices
for love, the very least I owe them, the very least I owe
myself
, is the tenderness of anticipation. I’ve never been one of those people, going out to discotheques in search of thrills, collecting and throwing women away as though they were last night’s garbage. When I mate, I want it to be for life. I always have. And now look.

She struggled, far more than Marianne or Nikki did. Not a surprise, really, for his girls before have known him. Have at least known him well enough to have let their guard down, sit down in a chair, be relaxed and unready. The God Girl was torn between the need to evangelise and the awareness that she had come to a flat alone with a stranger. She didn’t sit, didn’t turn her back on him, but stood against the draining board, her Bible in her hand, and talked about Jesus until he wanted to howl at the moon. In the end he had to ask her to draw a map of where her church was, just to get her to take his eye off him for a moment and turn her back. And when he pounced, she was bending over the table, just feet between her and the door, and she fought and fought. Got off a scream, as well. First time anyone’s managed that.

Like riding a bucking bronco, he thinks, remembering her strength. Surprisingly strong, for one so slight. With a plastic bag over her head and both his hands clamped tight to hold it shut, she threw him from side to side as though she were made of springs.

Never gentle, he thinks. It’s never gentle. I wish it were. I wish there were some way to help them quietly off to sleep. That their transformation was a moment of quiet blue peace.

Her mouth is open. Thomas wipes his eyes and peels the bag away, gazes into the bloodshot eyes. Hazel, he thinks. That’s the colour they should have been, not this gooseberry green that goes so badly with the red of petechial haemorrhaging. Her blue veins, already so close to the surface, have bulged upwards, arterial roadmaps scrawled across her lovely features. Her nose, already a little overlarge for his particular taste, is, he realises, broken.

She’s spoiled. Quite spoiled. All that suffering, all that sadness, and he’s come out with nothing, just a useless ugly thing, a bonfire Guy, no good to any man.

He drops her to the floor and sits down heavily in his chair, next to her powder-blue leatherette handbag with its spill of spectacles and prayer pamphlets. Puts his face in his hands and begins to sob.

This time, she doesn’t see him until they’re halfway home.

They’re strap-hanging on the tube, face-to-face, and Hossein’s presence lulls her. More than lulls her. Now she’s trusted him with her safety, she feels opened-up to him. She knows it’s foolish, knows it’s almost wrong, but she wants to look at him all the time and has to drag her gaze away, is intensely aware of his presence, the scent of him nearby. They’re bending their heads close together to hear each other’s voice over the rattle of the carriage, when the train jerks as it passes over some signals, throwing her back for a moment as the man standing in the doorway to the next carriage slips briefly into the light of the window.

It’s Malik. Definitely, really, Malik. No mistakes, no imagining.

Her mouth falls open mid-laugh and the blood drains from her face. She ducks back, out of sight and doesn’t know why she does so, for there can be only one reason why he is on this train.

‘What?’

She turns her back to the doorway. ‘Don’t look,’ she says.

He frowns. ‘At what?’

‘He’s here. In the next carriage.’

Instinctively he starts to turn, then stops himself. ‘Are you sure?’

‘No, I’m making it up.’

‘Don’t…’

She leans her back against the glass barrier. Feels him stand closer, the heat coming off his body. They glance up and down the carriage, look to see who else is with them. Mid-afternoon, this far down the Northern Line, there are only a couple of other passengers: solitary readers, no use in trouble.

‘We mustn’t get off,’ she says. They’re almost at Balham, where they should change for the overland. Long, empty outer-suburb platforms and a slow escalator ride to the High Road.

He nods, his eyes wide. Puts a hand out as the train begins to brake and holds on to her arm, protectively. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Just breathe.’

She realises, when he says it, that she has stopped breathing altogether. Takes a huge gasp in and hears it jitter out again. Pull yourself together, Collette. You won’t get out of this by stuffing your fists in your mouth and screaming.

‘Did you notice what sort of train it was?’

She shakes her head. The branch of the Northern Line the train would take through the centre of town was irrelevant while they were staying south; neither of them looked when they ran on to the platform and threw themselves in through the doors. ‘How did we not notice him?’ she asks, but she knows why. Hossein has never seen Malik in his life, and she, stupid woman, has been gazing at Hossein.

‘It doesn’t matter. We know now.’

The train pulls in and he pokes his head out through the open door. ‘Western branch,’ he says. ‘We’ll stay on and get off at Waterloo.’

They ride in silence, hold tight to the hanging straps. Collette stares down the carriage, her back rigid as she imagines Malik’s eye boring into her shoulders. She hates the readers. Hates them for their absorption, their open body postures, their bags sitting casually on the seat beside them to reserve the space until the carriage fills up. Hates them for the fact that when they get off the train the worst that can happen is a quick and easy mugging.

Hossein’s eyes have narrowed, the pupils so wide they look flat and lustreless. He doesn’t look afraid, she thinks impatiently. He looks as calm as if this were some awkward social encounter. They pull in to Clapham South, stand aside to let the trickle of passengers on. A couple of backpacks, a tricycle buggy, an art portfolio. She takes the opportunity to turn casually and glance at the door between the carriages. No sign of Malik. Of course not. He’s waiting on the platform edge, in case they make a run for it.

The doors close and they move off. The rhythms of the London underground: shrill beeps, a brief flicker of the lights as they pass out of the station, something incomprehensible on the tannoy. The new passengers fan out and settle themselves into the corner seats. Everyone likes a corner seat, where only one person can crowd in next to them.

Clapham Common. A narrow platform between two tracks, nerve-wracking when two trains come in at once. A rush of Hipsters: woollen beanie hats in the height of summer, scraggy stubble, iPads, iPods, iPhones, old document bags that used to hang off newspaper sellers, now sold for fifty pounds in retro clothing stores. Checked shirts, biker boots, cotton dresses over leggings. Strap-hangers, hoping to burn off calories by tensing their abs.

Clapham North. The racial mix begins to change. London likes to think of itself as integrated in a way that American cities are not, but you can still tell the district you’re passing beneath by the skin tones that get on the trains. Now the carriage is half-and-half black and white, everyone tensing themselves for when the atmosphere gets harder at Stockwell. Stockwell, Oval, Kennington, Elephant: they’ve never recovered from their reputation for steaming gangs in the eighties. Houses there long since passed into the millions, but still the people passing beneath edge their bags closer in to their bodies as they leave Clapham, and check that their wallets are in their inside pockets.

I could do with a steaming gang right now, she thinks. A big row of scary teenagers piling through the carriage, causing chaos, making a pitch for Malik’s Rolex and distracting him as he takes them down.

They don’t come. The train pauses at Kennington and the carriage fills with commuters who tipped off the last train as it headed up towards Bank. She looks at Hossein and sees that he has moved towards the door, ready for the off. She stays where she is. Doesn’t want to alert their pursuer that they’re ready to move.

‘Brown line,’ says Hossein, and she nods. North, into the centre of town, where the crowds are. Easier to lose someone in a crowd, to dodge behind a placard, slip into a doorway.

The train pulls in, and they force their way off through a great whaling press of people, out-of-towners in from the country with no comprehension of the etiquette of mass transport, trying to push their way on before those on board have got off, a problem at all the mainline stations. Her bag catches on someone’s walking stick and they curse her as she wrenches herself free, catches a momentary glimpse of Malik, a head’s height above the crowd, but agile and charismatic enough that they part before him. I used to enjoy that, she thinks. I used to like the way I could use him as a battering ram in the club. How stupid am I? Then she’s away from the snag and hurrying in Hossein’s wake.

The crowd goes all the way back into the tunnel. They jostle their way forward, Collette fighting to breathe against the rising panic. If I shouted fire, she thinks, half these people would die in the stampede. They reach the escalator hall, hurry across grey, pitted tiles to the Bakerloo. A train is coming in and they step up their pace, run down the platform to a vacant space and throw themselves through the doors just as they close.

Did he catch us? Did he see where we went? The carriage is rammed; the good people of Surrey heading up to Oxford Street for a bit of lunch and shopping. A French family sits in a neat row, legs crossed at the ankles, and stares at the rumpled scruffiness of their English cousins. Some Japanese throw broad, nodding smiles at everyone who brushes against them. Collette and Hossein are forced down the carriage as the doors open at Embankment and the Charing Cross brigade force themselves on board. They’re miles from the doors. They’ll be the last off at Oxford Circus.

She catches Hossein’s eye and he jerks his chin to his left. He’s with us, the look says. He’s still here. She tips forward beneath the arm of an American frat boy in an ironic Cambridge University T-shirt and verifies the truth. There he is, two doors up, one hand holding the metal bar above his head, a circle of space a foot wide all around him. She swears, inside. Go away, Malik. It’s been so long, now. Aren’t you tired of it? Don’t you wonder if it’s time that Tony let it go?

Oxford Circus, and the crowd bursts from the carriage like champagne from a shaken bottle. It swirls around them, a rushing flood of humanity, and carries them towards the exit tunnel whether they wanted to go or not. She feels Hossein’s hand slip into hers, gives it a squeeze before a man in a suit barges between them, bellows an excuse-me as though it’s a reproach. It’s slow. So bloody slow. He could be coming up behind me but I
must not look
she tells herself. The only advantage we’ve got is that he might not know that we know he’s there. She’s certain she can hear his heel segs scraping over the floor, knows it’s her imagination, but hears it anyway, drowning out a hundred other footfalls.

Tunnel, steps, tunnel, escalator. The stairs on the tube are just steep enough to snatch your breath, not steep enough to take you upwards fast enough. A scrum at the bottom of the escalator, people sighing, checking their watches, edging past each other in the hope of gaining a second’s advantage. Practising the London Air Stare that lets them push past strangers by pretending they don’t see them. She’s got in front of Hossein, steps on to the stairwell, knows from his familiar feel that he’s right behind. They tuck in to the right, let the hurriers march past. No point attracting attention by joining them, puffing themselves out now when they might need to run later. She can’t stop herself; looks below her.

He’s not there. Good God in heaven, he’s not there! She feels the tension leave her neck, a rush of painful heat as her muscles relax. Then another as they tighten up again when she spots him ten steps down on the parallel stairs.

Up to the top, Oyster cards out as they approach, a rush through the barriers. For a moment, she’s lost, confused, doesn’t know which of the hundred exits to head for, then Hossein touches her arm and they hurry, dodging their way round knots of tourists who’ve stopped to check their guide books, for the nearest. Run up the stairs and turn left towards the Circus.

Even when she lived in London, she rarely came to Oxford Street. It scares her. Whenever she’s in these huge, distracted crowds, all she can think of is suicide bombers. It’s like that every time. Her mind fills with images of the men in front of them throwing their coats open with a bellowed
allahu akbar
, of light and smoke and body parts. Whenever she’s here, she wants to wrap her arms around her head and protect her face from flying glass. They weave their way into the funnels behind the crowd barriers and march smartly down Regent Street.

Again, he takes her hand, and pulls her along like a child. Here, the pavements are wide and the crowds are thinner, but their progress is still painfully slow. Where do we go now? Into Soho? Those mazes of streets where a single turn can leave you suddenly marooned, alone, unseen? The self-regarding streets of Mayfair, where every frontage is a gallery with a ring-and-wait sign on its locked front door? She glances behind her as they pass the old Dickens and Jones building, sees Malik reach the corner of Little Argyle Street. He must know we know, she thinks. Why doesn’t he give up? He can’t think he’s going to do anything here, and we’re hardly going to lead him home.

They reach Great Marlborough Street and wheel in, past the florid Tudorbethan frontage of Liberty on the other side of the road. No, this is nuts, she thinks. The road is the one the Londoners take to avoid the tourists on Oxford Street. It’s almost empty: a traffic warden and a wino, a skinny lad smoking outside an office three hundred yards away. Crazy. We should stay where the crowds are. She starts to tug him back but Hossein pulls her on. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I know.’

‘But —’ She’s out of breath from hurrying. She’s got unfit, living this underground life, hiding indoors.

‘It’s
okay
, Collette,’ he says, and pulls her across the road, guides her past the great shop’s doors. Malik must be nearly at the corner now, she thinks. We’re sitting ducks. They turn right into the pub-café-tourist trap of Carnaby Street. Five paces down, and he wheels swiftly and shoves them through a well-hidden door, plain and black and unassuming; one she’s never noticed whenever she’s been up here.

They’re in a bazaar. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the drop in light, as he pulls them on. Carpet and gilt and mirrors. Patterns and peacock feathers. They’re in Liberty. Come in through a back door she never knew existed. Pretty things. All the pretty, shiny things, assistants eying them as they rush through. They don’t look like they belong here. Once, she thinks, they’d have been sidling over with dollar signs for eyes when they saw me coming, but now they’re poised to press the silent alarm if my hands leave my sides for a second.

And then they’re back out in the sun, and running back to Regent Street. She has no idea where Malik is: whether he’s casting round Carnaby or has spotted their U-turn and followed them. They pound up to the main sweep and Hossein sticks a hand in the air for a taxi. Always cabs on Regent Street. But if you’re being followed you don’t want someone to just jump into the one behind. She throws herself on to the back seat and looks wildly around. No sign. No Malik, no other hard-faced men flagging down black cars. She breathes; lets her head drop back against the headrest.

They pant as the cab swings round and turns up Maddox Street. He’s resting his head too, his face drawn, the lines around his beautiful mouth etched deep.

‘Well,’ she sputters, between breaths, ‘for a man who longs for peace and quiet, you certainly like a challenge, don’t you?’

He turns, leans across the space between them, and kisses her.