The Killer Next Door (3 page)

She looks round her new home. Yellowing magnolia walls, thin polyester curtains in a pattern of geometric colour blocks on a field of blue that she recognises from several one-star hotels she’s stayed in over the years, the unmade bed, the armchair, the small Formica table below the window. The previous tenant’s hairbrush lying on the windowsill, a few red hairs caught in the bristles. What sort of person moves on without even taking their hairbrush? she wonders.

Someone like you
, she replies. She remembers her last room, in Barcelona: the clothes she will never see again, her make-up scattered across the top of the chest of drawers, her books, the necklaces hanging from panel-pins knocked into the back of the bedroom door, the sounds of café life in the street below. At least, thank God, she’d put the bag in a locker at the station, because once she’d seen Malik in the street outside she could never risk going in there again. She feels tears prick the back of her eyes. Someone will come along, eventually, when the rent runs out, and throw it all away. No one will wonder where she’s gone, why she left in such careless haste. She feels a certain fellow feeling with the vanished tenant. She’s part of the easy-come, easy-go world now and only Tony Stott wants to know where she is.

Collette goes over to the bed and pulls back the bedclothes. They smell of someone else. She saw a big Asda nearby from the window of the train. She’ll head there and buy a couple of sets when she’s had a rest; maybe even treat herself to a new duvet and pillows, too.

You mustn’t spend it all, she thinks, automatically, the way she has each time she’s started again. Don’t go blowing it. It’s all you have, Collette.

She fetches the bag from under the chair. Sits on the bed and checks, as she’s checked every hour since she fled for the station, that the contents are still there, pulls out the small stash of emergency belongings she stored in there and lays them out to mark her territory. A couple of summer dresses, a cardigan, flip-flops, a couple of pairs of knickers, a sponge bag with a toothbrush, a tube of face cream and a small collection of eyeliners from her handbag. All she’s salvaged, this time. Not much to show for nearly forty years, but it’s better than no life at all.

She sits, then lies, on this stranger’s bottom sheet. It’s mercifully free of stains, at least. She can’t face the thin, sad-looking pillows, though. Uses the bag and what remains inside as a rest for her head instead. It’s firm, unyielding. Who’d’ve thought? she wonders, that you could be this uncomfortable lying on a hundred thousand pounds?

The signs are everywhere that Northbourne is coming up in the world, though it still has a way to go. There are new businesses springing up: a deli that sells sun-dried tomatoes and the sort of cheese that smells of armpit, an estate agent with a one-syllable name that hands out free cappuccino if you look smart and old enough, a dedicated greengrocer and a café with pavement tables and extra-wide aisles to accommodate the buggies. But most of all, Cher has noticed that there are new signs. One has appeared on the lamp-post on the corner of Station Road and the High Street since she passed by this morning. She stops to read her way slowly through it, her lips moving as she does so.

She raises her eyebrows. A sure sign, if ever there was one, that there are people living here now who have something worth stealing. Cher instinctively checks the breast pocket of her denim jacket, where her money is stored. Feels the slight bulge and smiles. It’s been a good week. She’s got the rent, and cash left over, and three days until it’s due. She might even take a couple of days off, do her roots, give herself a manicure. There’s a new range of glitter varnishes in the chemist on the High Street. She might pop in, buy some emery boards and treat herself to one of those while she’s there.

She hoists her floral backpack to her shoulder and turns on to the High Street. It’s the tail end of lunchtime, and the street is relatively busy, filled with savoury scents from the food outlets scattered among the charity shops: curry, fried chicken, Greggs’ sausage rolls, the smell of chips from the greasy spoon.

Cher dawdles along the pavement: no rush to be anywhere; no rush, ever. But her eyes, behind her Primark sunglasses, are watchful, take in everything around her in the search for opportunities. Life can’t be just about making the rent. There needs to be more. It’s hard to remember on a day like today, but winter will be coming – the long dark nights, the days spent mostly sleeping because it’s too cold to get out of bed. She needs to start saving to top up her meter card – there are some things you just can’t get for free.

She scans the road. Wherever there’s a crowd, there’s an opportunity. Today she’s done a circuit of the redemption stores of Tooting, Streatham and Norbury – no need for any great stealth, just confidence and an air of shame, a talent for playing the embarrassed, cash-strapped student who’s spent their loan on tech and run out of food. She rarely works her home patch, though, apart from the occasional foray into the Co-op when she’s forgotten to get cat food for Psycho. The West End, where people are distracted and careless with their tech, and she’s just one of thousands of girls in short skirts, is a richer and safer place in which to work. Only junkies and other people too wasted or desperate or tired to get themselves further afield work their own home patch. But her eye roams, automatically, and logs the chances available.

In front of the Brasserie Julien – one of the new arrivals, all brass and wood and marble table tops – a group of Yummy Mummies has gathered. The new breed of Northbourneite, driven further out by the rising prices of Clapham and Wandsworth and Balham in search of period fixer-uppers with room for a conservatory kitchen extension in the side-return. They’re drinking cappuccinos in the shade of the canopy, designer sunglasses perched on heads like hairbands, a couple of toddlers strapped into jogging buggies beside them, talking loudly about what a joy it is to live in such a multicultural area. Their handbags sit carefully between their feet, but a bag from the White Company hangs from the back of a buggy and all three have lined their iPhones up on the table like badges of identity. That’s £200, right there, she thinks. Just trip over one of their kids, and I’d have all their Apple products before they’d retrieved the organic low-fat apple snacks. Though their prices are going down as they get commoner and commoner, Apple products still have a greater resale value than any other tech because people still think they make them look rich. That’s why she specialises in scrumping.

She walks on, past the dusty display of dead pensioners’ unwanted knick-knacks in the window of the Help the Aged shop, the shuttered Citizens’ Advice, the Asian grocer that only seems to sell cumin and evaporated milk. She pauses at the window of Funky Uncles and sees that the eternity ring she sold there six weeks ago has gone on sale for three times what they gave her for it. It’s a mug’s game, this, she thinks. When I’m older I’ll have a pawnshop of my own. It’s a licence to print money.

Outside the new deli, a woman her mum’s age – well, the age her mum would have been – pauses and delves in her shoulder bag at the sound of a ringtone. Snatches the phone out, turns away from the street and starts to talk, the flap left hanging, unsecured. It’s like they’re tempting me, thinks Cher, as if they’ve heard my thoughts.

An old lady, auburn wig faded to rusty lilac, drags a wheelie bag past her, a leather wallet bulging from the pocket of the tweed overcoat she wears despite the heat. A sitting duck, thinks Cher; thinks of her nanna, tumbling to the floor in Toxteth, the hip that never really healed, and reaches out to touch her sleeve.

‘’Scuse me, love,’ she says.

The old woman regards her with half-vacant, faded blue eyes. Hairs like fuse wire sprout from her upper lip and chin. Cher smiles, encouragingly. ‘You don’t want to be leaving that sticking out like that,’ she says. ‘Someone’ll have it off you.’

She sees the woman struggle to interpret her accent. Fuck’s sake, she thinks, I’m only a Scouser. It’s not like I’m from Newcastle or something.

She points towards the purse, waits as the woman looks down, sees understanding dawn as she fumbles with knotted old knuckles to ram it deeper into the pocket. I don’t want to get old, thinks Cher. There’s nothing in the world will make me live like that, smelling of piss and my tits round my knees and not even able to keep warm on a day like this.

The woman looks up at her and bestows her with a snaggled smile. ‘Thanks, darling,’ she says, the tones of London almost as impenetrable and jarring to Cher’s ear as those of the Mersey were to her. ‘That was nice of you.’

‘That’s all right,’ says Cher.

‘Not many young people bother, these days,’ she says, and Cher realises, too late, that she’s befriended a talker. ‘You’re all in such a rush. I’m surprised you bothered to stop – young people are so selfish.’

Her tone has changed from the brief flash of gratitude to one of reproach. Oh, God, thinks Cher, never a good deed goes unpunished.

‘In my day, we respected old people,’ the old lady says, ‘and we got a clip round the ear if we didn’t.’

The urge to roll her eyes is almost overwhelming. ‘You’re not allowed to do that any more. It’s against the law.’

The old woman purses her lips like a cat’s arse. Not a sweet little old lady at all. Not her nanna. She’s always wondered how people manage to believe that old age automatically bestows some sort of saintliness when they are so convinced – if the platitudes she’s heard mouthed at funerals are anything to go by – that only the good die young. ‘And more’s the pity,’ she says.

Cher considers tipping her wheelie bag over, but settles for saying. ‘Never mind, you’re
welcome
,’ pointedly, and walks on shaking her head. You can’t win if you’re young these days. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. She helps herself to an apple from the display outside the Knossos minimart, turns the corner on to Beechcroft Road and takes off her jacket. It really is hot today. Too hot. She’d like to ditch the wig as well, but she’s too careful for that. Nowhere in England is built for this sort of heat. It’s stupid, having to walk all this way to get back to pretty much where she started. If she could get over that chain link at the station, she’d be home in less than a minute. There’s even a gap in the garden fence that leads straight on to the embankment.

Beechcroft Road is full of skips. There are four along its hundred-yard length, their bricks and laminate-kitchen-cabinet contents bearing witness to the arrival of the home improvers. Cher scans them as she passes for usable gear, but it’s all builders’ rubble and some hideous patterned carpet. She once saw a beautiful Persian rug in a skip off Kensington High Street, but she had no way of getting it home.

A telly, she thinks. That’s what I could really do with. If I had a telly, I wouldn’t need to go out so much. It’s going out that costs the most. You can’t do anything for free in this town, unless you’re ready to pay in other ways.

She crosses over on to the opposite pavement to turn into Beulah Grove. This side of the street basks in full sun, and it’s like stepping into an oven. She hurries round the corner, crosses over into the shade, suddenly aware that her mouth is parched. One of the Poshes’ kids – Celia, Delia, Amelia, whatever – has dumped a pink bicycle at the foot of the steps up to number twenty-one. I could have that, thinks Cher. Probably get twenty quid for it in the Royal Oak. Some people don’t know they’re born. Some people deserve to get ripped off.

She passes by, pauses at the bottom of her steps to find her keys, and glances down to see if the net curtains covering the basement window move. If Vesta is back from her holidays, she’ll be looking out: she’s always looking out, constantly on the watch for life passing by her window. But nothing moves. Cher shrugs. She’ll be back soon, she’s sure. She runs up the steps to the front door.

She smells the Landlord before she hears him. Knows for a fact that he’s been in today, from the aroma he’s left behind: Old Spice and Febreze and, below all that, something cheesy, old and rotten. It’s got worse, lately. The smell of him seems to hang around in the communal parts of the house even when she’s seen no sign of him all day. Bugger, she thinks, and closes the door as quietly as she can. Her rent’s not due till the end of the week, but that’s never stopped him from popping in to ‘check up’ on her, breathing and snuffling and trying to see her nipples.

She hears his voice, and the boards on the upstairs landing creak beneath his weight. He’s talking to Hossein, walking towards the stairs. He’ll corner her by the front door, subject her to his leery flirting, his innuendo, his knowing smirk. Cher looks back towards the front door. She’s almost at the bottom of the stairs, and it’ll take too long to get there and get it open from here. She can see the toes of his trainers on the top step. He’ll see her from halfway down and she won’t be able to get away.

She glances down at her hand and sees that Nikki’s key is still on her keyring. The door to her bedsit is three steps away. Cher tiptoes to it, scrabbles the key into the lock and slips inside the room.

Collette snaps from her sleep at the sound of a key turning in the door lock. She had only meant to lie down for a few minutes, but those minutes plunged her into the deep, black unconsciousness of exhaustion. And now she’s awake again, head fogged and nerves jangling, kicking her way up this strange bed, coming to rest against the headboard with the bag clutched to her chest as though it will shield her against a bullet. Oh God, oh God, oh God, she thinks, as she’s thought every time she has been surprised in the past three years, they’ve found me! They’ve found me and I’m dead.

A slight figure enters the room. A girl: brassy blonde hair, floral backpack with leather-look straps hanging from one shoulder, skin dyed Egyptian mummy brown, closes the door, turns and gawps as she catches sight of her.

‘Oh,’ she says in a Mersey accent and the high tones of someone who’s barely got used to her hormones. ‘What the fuck are
you
doing here?’

Collette can’t find her voice. Her heart is fluttering in her chest and she’s still waiting to breathe.

‘This is Nikki’s room,’ says the girl. ‘Don’t tell me he’s gone and let it already.’

Collette’s heart slows.

‘She’s only been gone two weeks,’ says the girl. ‘Less than that. You’d think he’d have left it a
month
, anyway.’

She starts forwards, and Collette stiffens, tightens her grip on her bag. The girl stops, widens her eyes and holds her hands up in the air, palms toward her.

‘All right, all right,’ she says, ‘keep your hair on.’

Then suddenly, as if she’s reminded herself by saying it, she reaches up and pulls her own hair off. Stands, blonde mop in hand, and releases a mass of loose curls, bleached so the hair has gone an interesting metallic shade, from the confines of a stocking cap. She runs the fingers of her free hand through it, ruffles up the sweaty roots. Not fake tan at all, thinks Collette. She’s mixed race. Amazing how a change of hair can completely change the way you interpret someone. Don’t I just know that?

‘Phwoar,’ she says, ‘that’s better. I thought my head was going to come off, it’s that hot under there.’

Collette finds her voice at last.

‘What are you doing in my room?’

The girl looks surprised, as though this is an odd question. Then she smiles, and shrugs. ‘Oh, yeah, sorry about that. But to be fair, I didn’t know it was your room, did I? Nikki gave me a copy of her key. So I could come in and watch telly when she was out. I really love
Real Housewives.
D’you like that? And
Judge Judy
. Anyway, I heard the Landlord coming down the stairs, and I popped in to get away from him.’

Collette doesn’t say anything, just stares, and waits.

A little frown crosses the girl’s face; the look of someone struggling to make herself understood by a foreigner.

‘You’ve met the Landlord, right?’ She pantomimes waving a hand in front of her face, holding her nose. ‘Yeah, course you have. You’re gorra’ve done, if you rented a room off him. Unless you’re a burglar. Are you a burglar? There’s not much to nick in here, you know. Even the telly’s from a car boot.’

‘No,’ says Collette, ‘I’m not a burglar. Are you?’

The girl bursts out laughing. ‘Only on weekends. You’re all right.’

‘I moved in this morning,’ says Collette.

The girl looks around her, disbelieving. ‘So you’ve just… taken over someone else’s life?’

‘I…’

‘Cause you’ve not exactly put your stamp on the place, have you?’

‘My… my stuff’s coming after… I…’ she stammers, then stops. Hang on, she thinks, what are you doing? It’s not like I’ve done anything wrong, is it? ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I don’t see how it’s any business of yours.’

‘Nikki’s my friend,’ says the girl, ‘I’m looking out for her.’

‘Well, if she comes back, she can have anything she wants,’ says Collette. ‘It’s not like I’m putting it on eBay.’

A silence. They stare each other down. Then the girl drops her bag from her shoulder and says, ‘I’m Cher, anyway. I live upstairs.’

‘Collette,’ says Collette.

Cher puts a finger to her lips and presses her ear against the door. Outside, heavy footfalls plod up the passage and keys jangle in a hand. While the girl’s face is turned away, Collette takes the opportunity to tuck the bag down the side of the bed, get it out of Cher’s sightline. The last thing she wants is for anyone to see its contents.