by Sarah Dunant
“Well, yes, you could do that. Though I have to say that given what you’ve told us there’d be no guarantee that something might not happen when you got back.”
“What else can I do?” And her voice sounded decidedly shaky.
He left a beat of a pause. Maybe at the really tense moments everything seems like TV drama anyway. “You could stay here and let us protect you.” And he kept on looking at her as the impact of what he had said sank in.
She counted to twenty. When that didn’t feel long enough she counted on to sixty. Then she said quietly, “If I do that, can you promise me you’ll get to him before he gets to me?”
“You have our word.” He smiled. “That’s our job.”
Twenty minutes later she walked with them to the front gate. It was night again and the streetlights were throwing a dirty sodium glare on the ruined snow. In the garbage the black bag had potato chip bags and someone’s discarded hamburger wrapper littering the top. The package was gone. She smiled to herself.
Inside the house the telephone was ringing. The text had not included an RSVP. If he had something to say, did she want to hear it? Maybe he needed more encouragement. She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
The man on the other end of the line was kind but efficient. But, then, it was after five on Christmas Eve and no one likes to be left with a dead animal on their hands over the holidays.
“I’m sorry to break it to you like this. I tried to get you earlier, but your phone was engaged.”
“But I thought you said there was no—”
“I said I didn’t think there was any internal damage. But it’s always very hard to tell. As soon as we realized it was a pulmonary edema we drained her chest and gave her steroids for the shock, but cats can react very badly to shock. In the end it was just too much for her, and her heart stopped beating. I’m sorry.”
“I see.” Although she didn’t. Didn’t see and didn’t feel. The silence grew. You have to say something to him, she thought. “Was she in pain?”
“No. There would have been no pain. I’m sure of that. She died very peacefully.”
He made her sound like a Victorian grandmother, sliding away amid bed silks and loving relatives. And I didn’t even say good-bye, she thought.
Millie, the bird killer, the warm weight at the end of the bed, the deep-throated purr, the garden adventurer who could no longer go out for fear of the blackness in the shadows. You should have fought back, girl, I told you. You should have laid your own traps, like I’ve laid mine.
On the other end of the line his sympathy was stretched by the hands of the clock.
“Listen, I’m sorry but I have to ask. What would you like us to do with the body? We could dispose of it here, or if you want we could keep it till after the holidays. I’m just about to close up the surgery now.”
Now? She couldn’t possibly go now. The locks were off the doors and there were still things she had to do. Millie would forgive her. “Er, thank you. I’ll pick her up in a few days.”
“The twenty-eighth. We open again for a morning surgery. And listen, if you really think that she was hurt by someone, then you ought to report him. Chances are if he’s done this once he will do it again.”
In the kitchen, she picked up Millie’s bowl, washed it, then filled it anew with cat pellets. Downstairs, from the box where she kept the gardening implements, she extracted a tin of weed killer. She poured a hefty slug of it into the bowl. The dry food would absorb it quickly, pumping up the little pellets till they were juicy and moist. She laid the bowl carefully next to the water on Millie’s tray. Every good house offers its visitors refreshments at Christmas.
Out through the cat flap she threw a handful of undoctored pellets onto the frozen snow. They scattered like brown dice over a white carpet. Luck be a lady tonight.
From the cellar she brought the stepladder and carefully unnailed the sheet from the window, then switched on the patio lights. The frozen snow glowed and sparkled under its beam. She lifted up the lock and opened the doors onto the garden.
A wall of freezing air hit her, so cold it hurt to breathe. She thought how long it had been since the summer and the music of possibilities. She exchanged Dvo(breve)rák for a Bob Seger compilation bought in that first autumn raid on the New York record store. Weird things, compilations—mixing up emotional memories into a new order, disconcerting to listen to until you had learned their alternative rhythm. But she knew exactly what she was looking for. She had always had time for Bob Seger, the kind of old rock ’n’ roller who was not afraid to show how he felt . . . or sing what he wanted. His voice cruised out into the snowy darkness, making whoopee with a badlands love song by Frankie Miller. . . .
Well I’m looking for a woman
About five foot six
Who ain’t into glamour
She’s just into kicks
Just a sweet fashion lady
Stepping dynamite
Who’s gonna take me for granted
In the heat of the night
She stood in the doorway and sang along with the words, her breath sending smoke signals out into the night. Not exactly Donne or Yeats. But it said what had to be said.
Come on baby
Don’t run away
Look here in my face
Be it night or day
I ain’t got no money
But I sure got a whole lotta love
Across the gardens a light shone like the Christmas star from one particular first-floor window. Was it her imagination or was that his silhouette against the frame?
twenty-five
They came just before eight o’clock, and given that it was Christmas Eve and they would have had better things to do with their time, they were impressively enthusiastic. But, then, to be on duty the night you caught the Holloway Hammer would be the stuff that reputations were made of.
She had been waiting for them, sitting by the front window in the glow of the tree lights, watching the street, the inner kitchen door firmly locked from the inside, the key in her pocket. She saw them drive past, then go a little farther so their unmarked car wouldn’t stand out on the street. As they got out they checked to see that no one was watching. This time she scored a set rather than a pair: the weary one of the two with a woman, both dressed casually, she in jeans and a down jacket, he in suit trousers with a sweater and an anorak. A man and a woman. Would they sleep in separate dorms? Would they sleep at all?
As they crossed the road the woman slipped slightly on the ice and he put out a hand to support her as she righted herself. She was younger than he was, not unattractive, though a little solidly built. Were they lovers? Friends? Compatriots in crime? Or was it like the movies, professional coolness masking the thinly veiled dynamic of sexual politics, women muscling in on what men saw as their territory? Presumably in a situation like this there had to be a woman—no doubt there was some regulation about it—in case they didn’t get to her in time and some one was needed to mop up the distress.
Not this time. Not this night. Tonight she could smell victory. Promotions for all.
As social challenges go, having two police officers staying the night on Christmas Eve was tougher than most. Luckily, all three of them seemed cut from similar cloth: quiet, more interested in work than chatter. There was one thing they did want to talk about though: him. She rationed her answers, feeling almost jealous of their interest. Mistaking her reticence for fear they didn’t push it, but concentrated instead on the house, checking all the windows and the locks, anticipating his movements, planning his entry. They had a special place in their hearts for the kitchen. Aware of the windows on the other side of the gardens, they were careful, turning the light off before they went in so that he couldn’t see them. They checked the lock and the cat flap, then the man—Detective Inspector McCormick but she could call him David—moved upstairs, while the woman, Veronica (she had forgotten her second name as soon as she was told it), stayed behind to help her make the te
a. The talk was so small it hardly registered, though she did get around to asking about the cat. She told her that Millie was a wanderer; sometimes you saw her, sometimes you didn’t. So, did that explain the pellets scattered in the garden?
“An incentive to find her way home. Sometimes she needs it.”
But it had been more of a cat lover’s question than a professional inquiry and the chat petered out quickly afterward.
Along with the tea she heated up some mince pies and they ate them in the living room, sitting away from the windows. She glanced around the place, trying to see it through their eyes—the gap where the chaise longue had been, the one solitary present under the tree. It looked rather sad. But it was none of their business, her life. They were just there to save it.
Eight o’clock turned to nine. They made it clear that the best thing would be if she could act normally, do whatever she would have done at this time of night. But the word normal seemed to have gone from her vocabulary. She spent some time upstairs sorting out her study, moving bits of paper from one side of the desk to the other, but the walls throbbed with the leftover ketchup stains and the lights across the gardens burned brighter than any she could put on.
When she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she went downstairs to make herself a hot drink. It was after ten and they had already taken up their positions: the man in the back room (nearest to the kitchen), the woman in the front, lights off, everything silent. Their knowledge of previous cases would no doubt have told them what time he went stalking, alerted them to any kind of pattern. She was aware of the intense irony of the situation. There they were with their theories and reports and suspicions, all obviously considered too confidential to disclose to a potential victim. There she was, not only knowing the man they were searching for but having had him in her bed, even having written him love letters.
It made her realize that at some point she would have to tell them about the book extracts. Not yet, though. Until they found them in his apartment how could she know that he’d been collecting them? No reason for her to know who was going through her rubbish.
It also meant she would have to send Charles a version of that final sex scene, to prove its authenticity. Poor Charlie. He’d think she’d gone mad, unless she braved it out and pretended that it was faithful to the original. After all, he wanted a bestseller, so why be squeamish about how he got it? Maybe she’d find herself writing bodice rippers after this, becoming rich and famous, until, at last, she wrote a book about a woman persecuted by a stalker. . . .
She offered them more tea but they turned it down. They were working now and needed to be alone. As she cleared up the kitchen she could feel them in their separate rooms, getting ready for the night. The tension of their presence filled the bottom floor of the house, like a low mist hovering over a landscape.
She made herself a drink and went out of the kitchen, deliberately leaving the door ajar behind her. She looked back into the darkness. Come on, she thought, something for everyone: food and entertainment. Come and get it.
“I’m going to bed now.” She put her head around the back door to where the man was sitting in the shadows. “I’ve left on the central heating. It makes the odd noise, creaking, that kind of thing. Just in case you think . . .” She trailed off.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Yes.”
Next door Veronica was tucked into an armchair behind the door, sitting very still, hands resting in her lap, like someone who practiced yoga.
They exchanged good-nights, but she couldn’t quite leave it there. She sat herself on the edge of the sofa. After a while she said, “I don’t know if I’ll sleep.”
The policewoman nodded sympathetically. “Have you got anything you can take?”
She shook her head. She looked over at the tree, all bright lights and trimmings. “It’s a weird way to spend Christmas Eve, eh?”
The woman smiled. “I can think of nicer.”
“But not as exciting, I bet.” She hesitated. “Do you get frightened?”
“Not really. In this kind of case the waiting is more boring than frightening.”
“And what if something happens?”
“If something happens then you’re too busy to be scared.”
“Yes,” she said, thinking back to a man at the bottom of her bed. “I imagine that’s true. Well, let’s hope you get busy tonight.”
The woman seemed to study her in the darkness. “Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “He won’t get anywhere near you. We’ll see to that.”
She sounded so determined, as if there were something personal in it for her. Had she interviewed some of the other women? Seen what he could do? She was torn between wanting to know everything and nothing. “Just in case I miss it all, have fun.”
Upstairs she ran a hot bath, but the idea of lying there naked made her feel too vulnerable and she let the water run away without getting in. In the bedroom she looked out over the gardens and the blaze of windows lit up in the freezing night. Would this view ever be ordinary again? In the back garden next door a squat figure rose up from the middle of an icy lawn, battered hat perched on a snowball-sized head, a scarf ’round its thick neck and what must be a carrot for a nose: a modern snowman trying to look like an illustration from a children’s book. Nobody knows how to do these things for real anymore, she thought. We’re always just copying something we thought we once knew, even if it never really existed.
She moved over to the door and turned on the light, leaving the curtains open, then came back into the room and started undressing. She imagined her silhouette in the window frame seen through the lens of a Peeping Tom, binocular eyes greedy for snapshot lust: a glimpse of inner thigh as the stockings roll off (tights had wreaked havoc with the elegance of fantasy), the line of the breasts as the woman lifts the T-shirt over her head. It was always a good moment, when the top covers the head. Less problem with personality that way. She thought all this as she pulled off her sweater, stepped out of her trousers, and undid her bra, her lack of speed the only concession to a possible voyeur. Would he be watching? If he’d read the letter he’d be undressing her anyway, in his head if not through his eyes. She shivered as she pulled on a nightgown.
When would he come? Did he need her to be asleep? Maybe it didn’t work unless you caught them unawares, wrenched them out of dreams to face the nightmare. Well, tough luck. This time he wouldn’t even get up the stairs.
She got into bed, the sheets cold to the touch. She remembered her blood, and the streaks of his semen running down her legs. She saw his face again as he turned and walked out, like a sullen child. What if he didn’t come back? What if the very act of her wanting him made him resist? Or, even worse, made him smell a trap? Under her pillow she fingered the plastic bag, feeling the shape of the hammer through the covering. She had put it there before the police arrived, protection in case he saw her invitation as an excuse to turn up without a weapon. This way she had both weapon and finger-prints. At some point she would need to plant it downstairs or outside. But not until the coat hanger went through the cat flap and started to scrape at the lock. Would she be able to hear so particular a noise from up here? Why not? She had heard it enough times in her head since.
Not yet though. The digital clock by her bed clicked to 10:56. Christmas Eve. She thought of Catherine Baker, standing by the altar, newly painted walls, reconstructed crib, and a hundred candles flickering in homage to a more medieval festival.
On the radio she cruised through Christmas Muzak, the Beatles, and jazz to what sounded like Radio 3: a man with rounded vowels was talking in church, telling of times when carols were pagan dances, too dangerous for institutionalized religion, but too powerful to leave outside. So the early Church had set about absorbing them, prettying them up, stilling the feet, taming the spirit. But it would still have been bleak midwinter. How did you keep warm if you couldn’t dance?
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sp; She imagined Catherine Baker throwing off her dog collar and gyrating over the altar to the sound of high-energy carols. Then watched as a group of men smashed down the doors outside and came rushing in, pinning her to the altar steps, forcing her cassock up above her waist: the images of exploitation, as copycat and stultifying to the imagination as the carrot for the snowman’s nose.
The commentator stopped talking and the choir began: a multitude of the heavenly host praising God in the highest of keys. Choirboys—nothing like that last sweetness before the testosterone kicks in. But you can’t keep them like that forever. No juice. Not fair. Everybody needs juice.
She lay and listened in the darkness; the readings told of censors and journeys and stable midwifery. Was the birth as immaculate as the conception? Did the cows eat the placenta and lick up the blood, clean up the babe before the swaddling clothes went on, large rough tongues over slimy little limbs? It was not the kind of detail that made it into any gospel. The choir hustled in the shepherds, the Wise Men, and the happy ending. The announcer wished everybody a merry Christmas.
Midnight.
You could almost feel the world sigh as the clock moved.
She turned off the radio and stayed inside the silence. This time last year she and Tom had been lying in a four-poster bed in a fancy hotel in northern France, their bodies curled as far away from each other as it was possible to get. They had come on a morning ferry, winter winds across black seas, sipping brandy to keep their stomachs level. Off the boat they had driven for two and a half hours down the valley to a picturesque little market town, recommended in all the guides, with a ruined fortress, and streets of formal shuttered houses with their echoes of Madame Bovary–type frustration. It was too beautiful a place to be unhappy in and they had started drinking early to blot out the pain: crisp white wines to go with winter oysters, cold and briny like the North Sea, followed by a three-course dinner with selected local reds—Tom knew his wines—and, at the end, a selection of different, richer brandies. The more they drank the less they had to talk to each other. It was a method of noncommunication perfected over the last months.