by Peter May
David Lloyd George had lived here once, in Routh Road. At number three. These were substantial detached and semi-detached town houses built in red-brick on three floors, nestling darkly behind walls and railings, and screened from the street by trees and hedges in gardens which had taken more than a century to mature. The kerbs were lined with BMWs and Volvos and Mercedes.
MacNeil parked on Trinity Road and walked down to the address on the slip of paper. It stood in darkness behind a black wrought-iron railing. There were no lights in any of the houses, but this one bore an air of sad neglect. The small front garden was overgrown and uncared for. Empty bins lay spilled on their side. Curtains or blinds were drawn on most of the windows. It was in stark contrast to the manicured gardens and well-kept facades of the other properties in the street. In daylight it would have stood out like a sore thumb, a single bad tooth in a dazzling smile.
The house was detached on its left side, but brick bomb shelters built between it and its neighbour during the Second World War meant that there was no way round to the back, except through the house. MacNeil stood in a pool of yellow light beneath a lamp post and looked at it appraisingly. It did not look inhabited. The gate protested loudly in the dark as he opened it and walked the few paces to the steps which led up to the front door. He could see now that this was an original door, recently restored to its former glory. Stained glass panels all around it would splash the hall beyond in coloured light on sunny days. The house itself was not as neglected as the garden. There was no nameplate on the door. There was a bell push to the left of it, and MacNeil pressed it and held it for a long time. He heard an old-fashioned bell ring distantly from somewhere deep within the house. But it elicited no response. He rattled the flap of the brass letter box, and then crouched down to lift the lid and peer inside. Apart from the faint light that seeped through the stained glass from the street lights beyond the trees, it was almost pitch-dark and MacNeil could see very little. There was an unlived-in smell that breathed out through the letter box from the interior of the house, damp and fusty, like bad breath, confirming MacNeil’s earlier impression that the place was empty.
He went back down the steps and walked along the front of the house. The neighbours appeared to have converted their half of the bomb shelter into a walk-through shed with a blue-painted door at the front end. MacNeil reached over the fence and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. But suddenly the garden was flooded with light, a bright, blinding halogen light. MacNeil’s movement had triggered the neighbour’s security lamp. He took an involuntary step back and tripped over a shrub, landing in the long grass, exposed to the full glare of the halogen. A window on the first floor of the neighbouring house flew up, and an elderly, balding man in a pale blue nightshirt leaned out with a shotgun raised to his shoulder. He pointed it directly at MacNeil. ‘Get out of the garden!’ he shouted. ‘Go!’
MacNeil stood up, brushing the mud from his coat, and shaded his eyes against the light. ‘Or you’ll what, shoot me?’
‘I’m warning you.’
‘Do you have a licence for that thing?’
‘I’ll call the police.’
‘Too late. They’re already here.’
The man let the shotgun slip a little from his shoulder, and he peered down through the leafless branches of a mountain ash at the figure in the adjoining garden. ‘You’re a police officer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me see some identification.’
‘You’re hardly likely to be able to read it from there, sir.’
‘Climb over the fence and approach the front door. There’s a security camera there. Hold it up to the camera.’
MacNeil did as he was told, snagging his coat as he climbed over the fence. He heard it tear behind him. He approached the security camera which was set just out of reach above one of the twin columns supporting the archway above an open porch. He held his warrant card open towards the lens. The man with the gun had disappeared from the window, but now his voice came from a speaker set somewhere in the porch. ‘Okay, Inspector. Why are you creeping around my house at one o’clock in the morning?’
‘It’s the house next door I’m interested in, Mr Le Saux.’ The name was on a plate on the door.
‘It’s empty.’
‘So I gather. Who was last in it?’
He heard Le Saux’s frustration. ‘It’s a letting concern. There’ve been a succession of people over the years.’
‘But most recently?’
‘A foreign couple. Although I never saw much of her. They were only here about six months, and let the garden go to wrack and ruin. A short-term contract, he said. Setting up a new production line somewhere. But I’ve no idea what business he was in. He wasn’t very talkative.’
It felt odd conducting an interview on a doorstep with a disembodied voice. ‘When did they leave?’
‘Well, that’s the odd thing. There were comings and goings up until just a day or so ago. Although that might have been the agents. The house seems to be empty now, but I don’t know where they would have gone. Not back home, certainly, because no one can leave London right now.’
‘Where was home?’
‘I’m not sure. They might have been French. But his English was so good it was hard to tell.’
‘And the wife?’
‘Never spoke to her. She never seemed to leave the house. They had a young adopted daughter who started at the local school in September.’
MacNeil frowned. ‘How do you know she was adopted? Did they tell you that?’
‘Didn’t have to, Inspector. She was Chinese, and they weren’t. And after the child caught the flu, there was no further contact. Although neither of the parents seemed to catch it.’
‘Did she survive?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ There was a pause. ‘She was a poor soul, though.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘She had a terrible facial deformity, Inspector MacNeil. The ugliest harelip I’ve ever seen.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I.
Pinkie walked quickly between towering warehouses, narrow metal footbridges running at odd angles overhead, cobbles underfoot. Past Maggie Blake’s Cause on his left, and a row of fancy-goods shops all boarded up on his right. The wealthy, in their warehouse conversions, slept safe and sound behind barred windows, no more than gilded cages in this pandemic-stricken city. Once plague-carrying rats had streamed off the boats that docked here. Now the narrow canyon that was Shad Thames was utterly deserted, and deathly quiet, emptied by a different kind of plague.
Pinkie followed it around past Java Wharf until he found the address he was looking for. Butlers and Colonial. He climbed easily up over the electronic gate, straddling the spikes along the top and jumping down into the courtyard beyond. Lights were set in the heads of low posts that led him around into the rear square, and he saw the ramp leading up to Amy’s door. He smiled to himself. It had taken him no time at all to find it.
*
Amy was restless. It was nearly two in the morning, and she didn’t feel the least bit sleepy. She was tired, yes. But she could not have slept. Sam’s final words had left her strangely uneasy. I think that changes everything. What had Sam meant? Try as she might, Amy had been unable to get any further response from her mentor. The window of their conversation remained on her screen, the cursor blinking beyond the end of several failed attempts to re-establish communication. Sam, are you still there? Hello? Sam? Talk to me! Nothing. Clearly Sam was no longer at the computer. Gone to bed, maybe. But why such an abrupt and enigmatic conclusion to their conversation?
Amy had finished the bottle of red wine and felt a little drunk. She had spent nearly half an hour talking to Lyn, telling her all about her brother. Telling her how Lee had resented her success. Her academic prowess and the prizes she had won at school. Acceptance then to med school, graduati
ng top of her year. Her hugely successful practice in forensic odontology, her engagement to David. After a childhood of parental indulgence in which every sacrifice had been made for Lee, and Amy had been forced to fend for herself, it came as a huge blow to his ego that his big sister should be such a success while he was not. He had never had good grades at school, dropping out before A-levels, and ended up working as a sous-chef chopping vegetables in a restaurant in Chinatown. Every little gift Amy’s success had enabled her to buy her parents he had viewed with jealousy and resentment.
And so he had positively glowed in the aftermath of Amy’s accident. Full of kind words and ersatz sympathy. But Amy had sensed his glee. Big sister chopped down to size, confined to a wheelchair. Now he would be the one to take care of the family, buy the gifts, take his rightful place at the head of the table next to his father.
But he had not counted on Amy’s determination to rise above her disability, and when she won her million in damages, he had felt that he deserved a share. That they all did. After all, hadn’t Amy’s success really been down to the sacrifices of her family?
For once in her life Amy had stood up to him. She needed that money to get herself back on her feet, metaphorically if not literally. Did he have the least idea how much it cost a disabled person to try to lead a normal life?
It had created a rift in the family, and Amy had moved away from the Chinese community, to the splendid isolation of her old spice warehouse in Bermondsey. They had been to visit once, the whole family, resentment in everything they saw burning in envious eyes. And they never came again. And so Amy’s splendid isolation had turned into a not-so-splendid loneliness – until Jack MacNeil came into her life.
Poor Jack. She thought of him, out there somewhere in the night, fixated on a murder he was unlikely to solve, trying hard not to think about the son whose affection he had neglected. Something he had realised too late to change, and now never could.
She arched her back to flex muscles and try to change her position in the chair. She had been in it too long. Pressure points had become painful. She needed to lie in her bed and give her body a rest. But she couldn’t face the thought of it while MacNeil was still out there. She wanted to be here for him if he needed her, and around when he clocked off for the very last time at seven. Perhaps a shower, she thought, would relieve some of the pressure and ease the pain. At the very least it would help her stay awake and alert.
*
Pinkie heard the stair lift before he saw her. He had already searched her bedroom, confident that he would have plenty of warning if the stair lift started up. He had heard her voice drifting down from the attic, and at first thought she had company. But as he listened, unable to pick out the words, he came to realise there was only one voice. Perhaps she was speaking to someone on the telephone. He could not have known that she was talking to the little girl whose flesh he had seen stripped from its bones by Mr Smith.
Now, from his vantage point in the coat closet, face pressed against the crack in the door, he had a clear sight of her for the first time. And she almost took his breath away. She was beautiful. Small and delicate, and so vulnerable with her useless, wasted legs. She sat sideways on the stair lift with her eyes closed, hands folded in her lap. There was something in her serenity that drew Pinkie, that forced an ache into his heart. In a quite bizarre way she reminded him of his mother. Her serenity had been her enduring quality. An almost zen fatalism that allowed her to accept all the brickbats that life had tossed her way. And he remembered, too, that night, locked in the cupboard under the stairs, that he heard her scream for the first time. And with the memory came the familiar trembling. And the darkness and claustrophobia of this coat closet started choking him. He had to fight to control his breathing or else Amy would hear him. And he didn’t want to kill her. Not just yet.
He watched her transfer herself to the wheelchair at the foot of the stairs, and listened to the whine of its electric motor as it propelled her towards the bathroom.
It was his mother’s third or fourth scream that had finally induced the panic that gave him the strength to force the door. Just ten years old, and not a particularly big boy. They were in the kitchen. His mother on her back on the floor, the man on top, his hands around her neck, cursing and telling her to shut up. He punched her, two or three times, splitting her lip, and she had grimaced with pain, white teeth streaked with blood. Her clothes were ripped, her belly exposed, one breast torn free of its bra. Pinkie had no clear idea what was happening, except that this man was hurting his mother. There was no premeditation in what happened next. He reacted instinctively, jumping on the man’s back, tugging wildly at his hair, screaming at him to let his mother go.
The man had been shocked, turning in astonishment to knock the boy from his back. It had come as a surprise to him that they were not alone. Pinkie had fallen, striking his head on the edge of the door, momentarily stunned, bright lights flashing in his eyes. He had heard his mother screaming, frantic now. And the man bellowing and choking off her screams. He saw her legs kicking wildly as she fought for breath, the soles of her naked feet slamming on the floor. And somehow he had got back to his feet, dragging himself up by the worktop. Which is when he’d seen the knife block. Every waking minute since, he’d regretted not acting sooner. That he had not picked himself off the floor thirty seconds earlier. His mother might still have been alive. As it was, by the time he plunged the bread knife deep between the man’s shoulder blades, she was already gone, and his own life was changed irrevocably.
Pinkie slid down the wall in the dark of the closet and folded his arms around his knees, pulling them into his chest. He hated it when he remembered like this. It was something he tried to bury, to hide away, but it always came back to him in the dark. He tried to stop himself sobbing, but still he felt the tears hot on his cheeks. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to leave this dream behind and slip gently back into that parallel world where every night, when it came time for bed, his mother still kissed him gently on the forehead and whispered, sleep tight, little man.
When finally he had gathered himself enough to control his breathing and wipe his face dry, he heard the shower running in the bathroom. He slid back up the wall and took a deep breath. This would be the perfect time, while she was in the shower.
Slowly, he eased the door open and slipped out on to the landing. The bathroom door was ajar, and he could see steam rising in the cold electric light, like fog at dawn on a winter’s morning. He crossed the hall and paused at the door, leaning slowly into the gap so that he could see inside.
She had some kind of contraption to support her in the shower, almost standing. And through the steam, and the water streaming down the glass, he could see that she was quite naked, skin blushing pink under the hot jets of water. He saw the pink-brown circles of her areolae, the black triangle between her legs, and he turned quickly away in embarrassment. He had seen his mother naked once in the shower. He had wandered into the bathroom by accident, and stood unseen for almost a minute, watching her. Until she had caught sight of him and screamed at him for peeping. For being a dirty-minded little boy. It was one of the few times she had ever raised her voice to him, and he had never been able to look at a naked woman since without guilt.
He turned and hurried back across the landing and up the stairs in quick, careful steps. Up into the roof. At the top of the steps he ran his eyes rapidly around the huge attic living room until they fell upon her computer. A screen saver faded from one photograph to another, scenes in cool blue and green of some tropical rainforest, misty and damp. He sat himself at her desk and moved the mouse. The screen saver vanished and revealed the window of dialogue between Amy and Sam. The blinking cursor, Amy’s final appeals. Sam, are you still there? Hello? Sam? Talk to me! Pinkie smiled to himself and spotted the address book icon on the dock at the foot of the screen. He clicked on it, and Amy’s address book opened up in front of him. H
e typed in BENNET. And there, instantly, it appeared. Tom Bennet, Flat 13A, 1 Parfrey Street, Fulham. Lucky for some. But not for Tom. Or Harry.
Pinkie closed down the address book and left the screen the way he had found it, triggering the screen saver so that Amy would never know he’d been.
And then he saw her, watching him from the far side of the room, and all the hairs on his neck stood on end. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered. It was just like her. Uncannily so. Her mouth, repulsive, just as it had been in life. How could they know what she had looked like just from her skull?
For a moment he forgot where he was, and crossed the room to take a closer look. He shook his head, full of new-found admiration for the Chinese dentist in the shower. It couldn’t have been more like the child if she had been working from a photograph. There was only one thing that Amy had got wrong. And it irked him.
*
She had towelled herself dry in the shower and now wheeled herself through to the bedroom. She debated whether just to slip on her dressing gown, or whether to dress in fresh clothes. She decided on the latter, and lay on the bed to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt over clean underwear. Then she manoeuvred herself into a sitting position and leaned over to slip her feet into her sneakers. Dressing was such an effort, but the doctors had said it was good exercise, vital to keep her body functioning.
As the stair lift carried her smoothly up to the attic, she closed her eyes and for the first time felt sleepy. She knew that if she lay down on the settee she would be gone in minutes. As she emerged from the stairwell into the roof space, she had the first premonition of something wrong. It would be hard to say what it was that alerted her. The slightest foreign scent lingering in the air at the top of the house, perhaps. Or just a presence, or the sense of there having been a presence, like a ghost or a spirit. Impossible to know what hidden senses might be at work in the subconscious. Whatever it was, she immediately felt uneasy.