The Resident

by Francis Cottam

  Max liked mornings in the music room. That had been turned into a study by the time Juliet Devereau rented the apartment. But back then, in the O’Donnell era, it was a music room where Patricia O’Donnell taught her students.

  Kate was a gifted musician, at least to Max’s inexpert eyes and ears. She would come into the music room in the mornings before school, still in her nightgown with her hair blowsy and sleep smudging the corners of her eyes. And she would play songs for her secret audience of one, lurking silent and still, watching her from behind the interior wall.

  She would play tunes by Elton John and Fleetwood Mac that Max would recognise on radios left on windowsills or fire escapes throughout the neighbourhood on summer nights.

  She would sing with the gift of her father’s perfect pitch and Max would listen, knowing in his heart that the performance was just for him and naturally thrilled at the fact, as any eight-year-old boy thus privileged would be. Best of all, though, he had liked her bath times, until that pleasure had been ruined by August.

  Max could not forget his grandfather’s brutal grip on his neck, or the stink of shit that had followed them as August had hauled him through the passages, trailing dust and humiliation, to a punishment that had left him bruised and aching for a week.

  Now, he looked at the nailed panel that accessed his secret world. August had grown feeble in the thirty years since the event Max so vividly and shamefully recalled. And then he had died.

  Max would require his claw hammer to grip the nail heads and pry them from the wood. He needed to reopen his access to Juliet’s world so he could approach her afresh.

  It was ironic, just how strongly she resembled the fourteen-year-old girl he had loved all those years ago. Maybe he was destined to have someone who looked exactly like that in his life. Working with his hammer, using the strength he had acquired since his far-off, puny childhood, he thought that was it; it was fate that had led him to Juliet. He did not really believe in coincidence.

  It had not been a coincidence that they had encountered one another at the hospital. There had been nothing coincidental about the timing of the failure of her marriage and her need for an apartment. The fact that she looked the mirror-image of his first infatuation was either a doubly implausible lightning strike or it was destiny. Ripping out the last of the nails, re-opening the route to his future, Max was pretty confident it was the latter.

  Twenty-four

  JULIET WAS JUST finishing her shift when one of the nurses stuck her head round the door.

  ‘Hey, Juliet, Holstrom wants to see you in his office before you go.’

  Juliet glanced round in surprise. ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s not usually good news.’ The nurse grinned. ‘Just joking, I’m sure it’s fine. No one’s died on you recently, have they?’

  ‘OK, thanks. I guess.’

  Despite the reassurance, Juliet was nervous when she knocked on Holstrom’s door. She wasn’t due a promotion or a pay rise so this summons could only mean bad news. It confirmed, she thought with a sinking heart, her feeling that she was being watched, had undergone some sort of probationary spell to see if her disrupted home life was affecting the quality and consistency of her work.

  But since she’d found the apartment and had Max as her custodian-cum-sentinel watching over and taking care of her, she was sure she’d been back to her best. Her decision making had been confident, her energy levels were restored, and her concentration was back on song. She missed Jack as she imagined an amputee might miss a severed limb, but she was over the shock of his departure from her life. Physically, she was finally getting some quality rest. She entered Holstrom’s office tentatively.

  ‘Sit down,’ Holstrom said.

  Holstrom had placed his visitor’s chair to one side of his desk. He deliberately avoided the formality of a face-to-face with a desk between him and the person to whom he was speaking. She looked at the pictures on his desk that proudly showed off his family and felt a familiar stab of envy at the stability of Holstrom’s contented home life.

  He opened a desk drawer and took a letter from it and pushed it across the desk towards her. It had some kind of official stamp on the face of the envelope, which was slit open, so obviously the letter had already been read.

  ‘I apologise for having opened what it transpired was personal mail intended for your eyes only,’ Holstrom said. ‘But I will say two things in mitigation. The first is that it was not addressed to you by name. The second is that I have a duty of care to all of my staff and you are no exception.’

  Juliet opened the letter. It had been handwritten across two pages of flimsy paper. The writing was laboured, but it was clear that whoever had written it had put a lot of effort into the task. She smoothed and steadied the pages and read what they had to say.

  Dear Pretty Doctor,

  I suppose I should really thank you for saving my life. That’s your job and all, and you must be awful good at it because everyone on the ward tells me either of the bullets you took out of me could have done for me if it hadn’t been for what you did back there on the operating table.

  I’ll take that as Gospel, doc, but forgive me if I don’t fall down before you and weep like my mother tells me she did with gratitude. It’s all a question of perspective, you see. There’s yours, there’s hers and there’s mine. And then there’s the law’s perspective on a cop killer. For reasons you will no doubt understand, the view taken by the New York State Prosecutor on this particular matter is a very dim one.

  There’s no point denying I did what I did. I would if I could, but I can’t. There were witnesses. The forensic evidence would have nailed me even if there weren’t. It wasn’t exactly self-defence and it wasn’t exactly cold-blooded execution. It was somewhere between the two. But I loaded the gun, took it into the store, held the place up and shot back when those two cops gave chase and shot at me. And one of them is dead.

  Would you have struggled so hard to save me if you’d known I just offed a cop? A guy with a wife and two young kids? A guy with ten years on the force and two bravery citations to his name? Maybe you would. I think in all fairness that you probably would have done your best because saving lives is your reason for doing what you do.

  But I have to tell you that you should have failed, lady. It would have been an outcome better for all concerned. Lockdown in solitary will be my sentence and it will end when I eventually die in a cell. I’ve got a girlfriend who has already consigned me to history and a kid with her I will likely never see again. I got a mother too old to travel the distance to where they will probably put me for prison visits.

  If that doesn’t sound like much of a future, that’s because however you stack it, it doesn’t add up as much of one. Even a moron could see that I would be better off dead.

  It would have given the dead cop’s widow some consolation as I’m sure you can appreciate. It would probably have helped his kids accept the loss of their father more easily when they get older and start to give what they’ve been deprived of some serious thought.

  Everything’s perspective, pretty doctor, like I said. Everyone’s is different. It’s your job to save lives and nobody, including me, could hold that against you. They tell me you performed a kind of miracle in saving me in surgery that night. Maybe you did. But the miracle wasn’t welcome and it turns out, didn’t do nobody any good.

  Sincerely,

  Carlos Leon

  When Juliet had finished reading Holstrom said, ‘Written from the hospital bed where he’s recovering under armed guard.’

  ‘I read his notes before I operated,’ Juliet said. ‘He’s eighteen. He’s a child. He can’t buy a drink in a bar.’

  ‘He can pull a trigger and because he chose to do so, a cop is dead.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done anything differently.’

  ‘I would sincerely hope not.’

  ‘He has a point about perspective.’

  ‘He does,’ Holstrom sai
d. ‘He seems to have an instinct for philosophy. It’s unschooled, but he will have plenty of time, where he’s going, to catch up on his reading.’

  Juliet nodded.

  ‘How are matters looking from your point of view?’ Holstrom said.

  ‘My situation is much improved. It’s more secure than it’s been over recent weeks.’

  ‘That’s good. I’m very happy to hear it. You are well thought of, Juliet. The work you do here is invaluable.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was a slightly awkward silence before he said, ‘Do you have any plans for tonight?’

  For an insane moment, Juliet thought he might be coming on to her. No, it was too ridiculous. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because a letter like the one you have just been obliged to read could cast a cloud on your evening. That’s all.’

  My evening, she thought. Carlos Leon’s life. She said, ‘I’m planning to relax by myself. I’ll listen to some music or read a magazine in the peace and quiet of my new apartment. Believe it or not, being able to do that is a luxury for me.’

  ‘It sounds about perfect,’ Holstrom said. ‘It also sounds therapeutic.’

  She laughed. ‘Do you ever switch off, Dr Holstrom?’

  ‘Like I said, I have a duty of care to my staff,’ he said. ‘I can’t switch off. I can, however, reduce the glare of the light, a little.’

  ‘I don’t understand that remark.’

  ‘I think you do.’

  And then she did. They had been keeping an eye on her. Her hunch had been right. And he thought it was no longer necessary for them to do so. That was the meaning of his oblique little metaphor.

  She got up and walked out of her boss’s office and strode the familiar corridors on her route out of the hospital. She was glad he’d waited until the end of her shift before calling her in to show her the letter. If she’d had this on her mind while she worked, she could have started doubting herself. Carlos’s words had shaken her. She had been moved and saddened by what he had said. He painted a bleak future for himself and for the family of the dead cop, but she had told Holstrom the truth. She wouldn’t have done anything differently. She still believed absolutely in her healing vocation. The moral case for choosing one life over another could be persuasively made, but it was not her job to make it. That was one of the two reasons her powers were not godlike. She did not sit in judgement. She tried her best to save the life of every patient confronted by the threat of death.

  The other reason she was not godlike, was that whatever skill she possessed, and despite what people like the young cop killer’s mother chose to believe, she was not capable of miracles. She relied on what she had learned and the knowledge she had accrued and her nerve. Carlos had survived because she was good and he had been young and strong.

  She got off the subway two stops short of her destination, needing time to think about things, and stopped for coffee at the first café she came to. The letter had made her think about Jack, and that word perspective was bothering her. She wondered about how events might have looked from his perspective in the period of the disintegration of their marriage. If she had thought to ask at the time, their marriage might not have disintegrated at all.

  She knew that she had been very absorbed by her work, pretty much from the day she secured her job at the hospital. But she couldn’t blame the break-up of her marriage on her job. Most doctors showed the same dedication that she did, so how did they manage to keep their relationships going? What did Sydney or Holstrom do that she hadn’t?

  If she was really honest with herself, she had taken Jack for granted a little. At the outset, it had been that old cliché, the attraction of opposites. But she had never taken the interest she might have in his ambitions and aspirations. He had been passionate about his writing and she had been: what?

  She had tolerated it. She had treated it the way someone might their partner’s hobby. Except that it had not been model ship-making or stamp collecting, had it? Over the course of their marriage his writing had proven to be a lucrative career and he had a growing reputation and readership. He had gained the respect of his peers and been shortlisted for a couple of literary prizes and because she had been disengaged from it, she had inevitably become disengaged from him.

  But the other night it had been Jack’s arms she had wanted around her not Max’s, however sweet and handsome her landlord was. She was not over Jack, she could admit that to herself now.

  Her libido wasn’t over Jack either. Which was disappointing, she mused, draining her cup and watching people idle by in the autumnal sunshine outside. She wanted to hold on to Jack and have him hold on to her as they walked through the park kicking their way through the piles of leaves. She wanted the familiar scent and weight of him and the delicious way his breath hitched in his chest when he made love to her.

  Were those experiences gone for ever? Could she ever forgive him for what he’d done? Shouldn’t she take her share of the blame for their failure to make a real go of things together? And if he really was remorseful and she still refused to forgive him, did she actually spite herself by stubbornly allowing her wounded pride to take precedence over her deeper feelings for Jack?

  She rose to go. ‘Retail therapy, Juliet,’ she said to herself on the way out of the café door. It was her little joke. She intended to buy groceries. She needed bleach and detergent and kitchen towels. And something to eat. She looked up at the sky. Her walk home had begun in sunshine, but it had grown overcast now and rain was starting to fall in the large, sporadic drops that suggested a mighty downpour to come.

  Twenty-five

  MAX STOOD AND watched her sleeping. He was content, for the time being, simply to watch and listen to the noises she made as she slept. It was an intimacy he enjoyed because he was the only person who could see and hear her at that particular moment. And he could smell her smell of perfumed slumber, which was a deliciously private sensation.

  But the urge to touch her was growing in him. He did not think he would be able to resist it for very much longer. Her skin was so luminous and smooth in the moonlight and would be silky and warm against his fingertips.

  His right hand descended. It had a weight and will of its own. It hovered an inch above the succulent swell of her breast. He could feel himself salivating and had to resist the instinct to swallow. He would likely gulp and was scared the sound might wake her. The blood was pounding in his brain and he was only able to control his respiration, keeping it silent, because he had trained himself through long practice.

  His reaching hand was the thickness of a cigarette paper from her flesh when Juliet stirred in sleep and mumbled something. ‘Jack,’ she said. She stretched her limbs and turned onto her side and her head rose blindly from her pillow.

  Max quickly retreated on noiseless feet, out of the bedroom and down the hall, into the kitchen where escape awaited in the dark maw beyond the wine closet. But in his haste, he hit a metal serving bowl sitting on the counter with his hip and sent it clattering to the floor where it landed with a loud and resounding clank.

  He caught it on the bounce, then froze on his haunches and waited. He listened, straining his ears for the sound of springs shifting within the mattress and the thump of drowsy feet across the wooden floor.

  In the bedroom, Juliet’s eyes opened. Again, she had the feeling that she was not entirely alone. It was a curious, disorientating sensation, unlike the ghostly presentiment she had felt in the haunted apartment. It was nothing to do with the supernatural. It was more a wary instinct that something was slightly and deliberately out of kilter in her home.

  She sat up. All was silent. But something had woken her, hadn’t it? Something or, more likely, someone. Rodents and roaches did not make the sort of noise that would wake a sleeping person. Anyway, Max was far too solicitous a landlord, she knew, to allow vermin to encroach on her living space. He was the thorough sort who would deal with pests decisively.

  Max heard the telltale
sigh of bedsprings as Juliet sat up. He slid through the door that accessed the wine closet. Then he opened the passage door, skilfully concealed as a piece of panelling. He groped for and found the light that would illuminate the section of passage he was in. Then, secure once more and concealed, he went to one of his peepholes to discover what Juliet was doing, awake and apparently suspicious.

  Juliet turned her head and saw a weird seepage of light in the hallway and when she climbed off the bed and went into the hall, she saw that the light was coming from the kitchen. Had she left the refrigerator door open? She couldn’t have. It would be making more noise. And anyway the shade of the light was wrong for the fridge. The fridge light was yellow. This was a sort of electric blue.

  Driven as much by curiosity as fear, she entered the kitchen. She wanted this problem solved. She was sick of feeling weird in her apartment, she wanted to get the thought of intruders or spectres or any of that sort of shit out of her mind, and the only way to do that was to find a logical explanation.

  The light was coming from a doorway she had barely noticed; a doorway that she had thought led to nowhere because it had been painted over and lacked a doorknob to open it with. It lay opposite the fridge and from its top edge, against the wall above the fridge in the kitchen darkness, it now projected a thin strip of electric blue light.

  Max watched her walk into the kitchen. Then he caught his breath in terror as he saw what she saw. He had left open the doorway to the passage! He had left it open only a chink, but the passage light had leaked through the wine closet door and she was seeing it!

  Juliet extended a trembling hand towards the door. She was very nervous about what she might find beyond it. But she needed this mystery solved, and she had to be brave.