by Nicci French
‘Sorry to disturb you. I just wanted to ask you something.’
‘I’m Heidi.’
‘Well – Heidi – I – it’s difficult to explain but -’
‘You’re a shy one, aren’t you? Thirty quid for a blow-job.’
‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Talk?’ He could feel her indifferent glance and his face flamed. ‘We can talk, if that’s what you want. It’ll still cost you thirty quid.’
‘It’s just about -’
‘Thirty quid.’
‘I’m not sure if I’ve got that much on me.’
‘Stopped me on a whim, did you? There’s a cash machine up the road.’ She pointed. ‘And then you can come and see me if you still want to talk. I live at forty-one B. Top bell.’
‘But I don’t think you understand.’
She shrugged. ‘Thirty quid and then I’ll understand as much as you want.’
Jack watched her as she crossed the road. For a moment he thought of simply going home, as fast as he could. He felt obscurely ashamed of himself. But he couldn’t go, now that he’d found her. He went to the cash machine and took out forty pounds, then made his way to 41B. It was above a shop that had once been a halal butcher’s, according to the sign, but was now closed down. There was graffiti all over its metal shutters. Jack took a deep breath. He felt that everyone who passed must be looking at him, grinning to themselves, as he pressed the top bell. Heidi buzzed him up.
She was wearing a low-cut, lime green top. Alan had said she smelt of yeast, but now she had clearly sprayed herself with perfume. She had applied fresh lipstick and brushed her hair.
‘Come in, then.’
Jack stepped over the threshold into a small sitting room that was dimly lit and oppressively hot. Thin purple curtains were pulled across the window. On the wall opposite, above the large low sofa, was a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. There were china ornaments on every spare surface.
‘I should tell you at once that I’m not what you think.’ His voice came out too loudly. ‘I’m a doctor.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘I want to ask you something.’
Her smile disappeared. Her eyes were watchful and suspicious. ‘You’re not a punter?’
‘No.’
‘A doctor? I’m clean, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Jack felt slightly desperate. ‘You know this man,’ he said. ‘With grey hair, stocky.’
Heidi let herself down on to the sofa. Jack saw how tired she was. She picked up a bottle of sweet Dubonnet that was at her feet and filled a small glass to the brim, tipped it down her throat in one swallow that made her throat work. A small thick dribble worked its way down her chin. Then she took a cigarette from the packet on the table, put it in her mouth, lit it and inhaled hungrily. The smoke hung in the heavy air.
‘You kissed him the other day.’
‘You don’t say.’
Jack was forcing himself to speak. An acute physical discomfort was making him squirm in his seat. He saw himself the way that this woman, Heidi, must be seeing him: prurient, puritanical, smutty, an awkward young man who had not grown out of his adolescent anxieties about women in spite of his age and his profession. He could feel the sweat on his brows. His clothes itched on him.
‘I mean, you came up to him in the street and kissed him. Just near the café and the shop with the owl in the window.’
‘Is this your idea of a sick joke?’
‘No.’
‘Who’s set you up to it?’
‘No, honestly, you’ve got me wrong – but my friend, he was surprised, and I just wanted to find out if -’
‘Dirty dog.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your friend. Strange company you keep, I must say. At least he pays, though. He likes paying. It gives him the right to treat us as dirty as he wants.’
‘Alan?’
‘What’s that?’
‘He’s called Alan.’
‘No, he isn’t.’
‘What’s his name with you?’
Heidi poured herself another brimming glass of Dubonnet and drank it down.
‘Please,’ he said.
He took the money from his back pocket, removed a ten-pound note, and passed the rest over.
‘Dean Reeve. And if you tell him I told you, I’ll make you sorry. I swear.’
‘I won’t tell. Do you happen to know where he lives?’
‘I’ve been there once, when his wife was away.’
Jack rummaged in his pocket and found a pen and an old receipt. He handed them across and she wrote on the back of it and returned them.
‘What’s he done?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Jack.
As he left he handed over the last ten-pound note. He wanted to apologize, though he didn’t know what for.
Jack sat opposite a man with a bald head and a waxed moustache who was reading a magazine about guns. When he had told Frieda he had actually found Alan’s mystery woman, she had insisted on meeting him at his place. Jack had feebly protested: he didn’t want her to see where he lived, particularly not in the state it had been in when he’d left this morning. He worried about which of his housemates would be there and what they might say. To make matters worse, the train back got delayed in a tunnel – passenger under a train, the announcement said. He was fumbling with his key in the lock when he saw her coming up the road. It was getting dark and she was wrapped up against the cold, but he would have recognized her anywhere, just from the way she walked, swift and upright. She was so purposeful, he thought, and a wave of exultation passed through him, because he had been successful and had something to give her.
She reached him as he was pushing open the door. The hall was full of junk mail and shoes; there was a bicycle leaning against the wall that they had to squeeze past. Loud music was coming from upstairs.
‘It might be a bit messy,’ he said.
‘That’s all right.’
‘I don’t know if there’s any milk.’
‘I don’t need milk.’
‘The boiler’s not completely working.’
‘I’m wearing warm clothes.’
‘It’s warm in the kitchen.’ But when he saw it, he backed out of it rapidly. ‘I think the living room might be more comfortable,’ he said. ‘I’ll plug in the radiator.’
‘It’s fine, Jack,’ said Frieda. ‘I just want to hear exactly what happened.’
‘It was unbelievable,’ said Jack.
The living room was nearly as bad as the kitchen. He saw it through Frieda’s eyes: the sofa was a horrible leather affair that someone’s parents had given them when they moved in; it had a wide rip along one arm that was disgorging white fluff. The walls were painted a vile green; there were bottles and mugs and plates and strange items of clothing everywhere. Some dead flowers stood on the windowsill. His squash bag was open in front of them, a dirty shirt and a balled pair of socks on the top of it. The anatomically correct skeleton he had had since his first term at university stood in the centre of the room hung with flashing Christmas lights, several hats piled up on its skull and some lacy knickers hanging off its long fingers. He swept the magazines off the table and covered them with a coat that was lying on the sofa. If he was in a session with Frieda, he could have told her about the chaos he lived in and how it made him feel slightly out of control of his own life as well. If it was him who read those magazines (which it wasn’t, though he had glanced surreptitiously at them every so often), he could have told her about that as well. He could have explained that he felt he was living in a limbo state, between his old university life and the world of adulthood, which always seemed to belong to other people and not to him. He could describe the mess of his soul. He just didn’t want her to see it for herself.
‘Have a seat. Sorry, let me move that.’ He took the laptop and the ketchup bottle from the chair. ‘It’s just temporary,’ he said. ‘Some of my housemates are a bit disorganized.�
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‘I’ve been a student,’ Frieda said.
‘We’re not students, though,’ said Jack. ‘I’m a doctor, kind of. Greta’s an accountant, though you wouldn’t believe it.’
‘You found her.’
‘Yes,’ said Jack, brightening. ‘Can you believe it? I’d just about given up, and then suddenly there she was. It was a bit disturbing, though. It doesn’t make sense, really – and she was both the woman Alan told you about and… well, she wasn’t. Not really.’
‘From the beginning,’ Frieda commanded.
Under her concentrated gaze, Jack told her everything that had happened. He repeated the conversation with the woman word for word, as near as he could manage. At the end, there was a silence.
‘Well?’ he said.
The door opened and a face peered in. It saw Frieda and leered expressively, then withdrew. Jack flushed to the roots of his hair.
‘Dirty dog?’
‘That’s what she called Alan, except she said his name was Dean.’
‘Everything Alan said was true.’ Frieda seemed to be talking to herself. ‘All the things we thought might be inside his head were in the outside world all the time. He wasn’t making it up. But the woman – the one he said he’d never seen before – knew him.’
‘Knew this Dean Reeve,’ corrected Jack. ‘At least, that’s what she said.’
‘Why would she lie?’
‘I don’t think she was lying.’
‘She described everything the way he did, except she says it happened to someone else.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he lying to us? If he is, what’s it about?’
‘She wasn’t the glamorous woman I’d been expecting,’ said Jack. He felt awkward talking about Heidi, but he wanted to tell Frieda how he’d felt, standing in the hot, sickly-sweet room, trying not to think about all the men who had trudged up the narrow stairs. He remembered her red-flecked eyes and felt slightly sick, as though it was his fault.
‘I’ve had colleagues who look after sex workers,’ said Frieda. She was looking at him as though she could see his thoughts. ‘Mainly they’re addicted, abused and poor. There’s not much that’s glamorous about it.’
‘So Alan goes to prostitutes under the name of Dean. And then he can’t bring himself to actually confess it straight out, but has to wrap it up in this strange story of his, which takes away his responsibility for it and makes her less damaged. Is that what you think?’
‘There’s one way to find out.’
‘We could go there together.’
‘I think it would be better if it was just me,’ said Frieda. ‘You did really well, Jack. I appreciate it and I’m very grateful to you. Thank you.’
He mumbled something incomprehensible. She couldn’t tell whether he was pleased by her praise or disappointed at being left behind.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Alan’s meeting with Heidi had happened near Victoria Park. The address that Jack had got was for Brewery Road in Poplar, several miles further east. Frieda took the overland train there. She stared out from the platform at the river Lea, grubby and grey, as it twisted its way in the last few curves before it spilled itself into the Thames. She turned away from it and walked past the bus station and under the huge road junction. She could feel the rumble of lorries over her. The underpass led in one direction to a superstore. She looked down at her map and turned to the right, into the residential area on the other side. This had been in the heart of the old East End, which had been flattened during the Blitz by bombs intended for the docks. Every couple of hundred yards, a few surviving houses stood defiantly among the flats and tower blocks that had been built on top of the bomb sites. These new estates were already stained and faded and crumbling. Some had bikes and flowerpots on their narrow balconies, and curtains at their windows. Others were boarded up. In one courtyard, a gang of teenagers huddled round a bonfire made of broken-up furniture.
Frieda walked slowly, trying to get a feel for the area, which had never been more than a name to her. It was a part of the city that had been forgotten and betrayed. Even the way it had been built on felt like a kind of rejection. She passed a defunct petrol station, with pits in the forecourt where pumps had once stood, and the remains of a redbrick building standing jaggedly behind. Then a row of shops, only two of which were still open – a barber’s and a shop selling fishing tackle. A wasteland where nettles grew on the cracked concrete. She passed a series of roads that had been named after western counties – Devon, Somerset, Cornwall – and another after poets: Milton, Cowper, Wordsworth.
At last she reached a stretch of buildings that had escaped the bombs. Frieda looked through the railings of a primary school. In the playground boys were kicking a football. To one side, a group of little girls in headscarves were giggling. She passed a factory that was closed down. A sign on the front announced redevelopment as office spaces and apartments. Then there was a pub with grimy windows and a row of houses. Every single door and window was blocked up with sheet metal, bolted to the walls. Frieda looked at her map again. She crossed the street and turned right into Brewery Road. It curved to the right so that she couldn’t see where it led, but a sign at the turning had marked it as a cul-de-sac. At the corner there were some more shops, all closed down and abandoned. Frieda read the old signs. There had been a cab firm, an electronics shop, a newsagent. There were multiple estate agent boards on the front. Leases for sale. Then there were the houses. Many were abandoned, others divided up into flats, but one of them had scaffolding on the façade. Someone had taken the plunge. After all, it was only a few minutes from the Isle of Dogs. In ten years, they would all have been renovated and there would be a restaurant and a gastropub in the road.
He pushed his face against the glass. Skeletons of snow fell in the lost world. Her hair was black and he couldn’t see her face. He knew she wasn’t real. There weren’t people like that any more. Small and clean like a dancer on a music box who turns and turns if you wind the key. Once there was a woman with long red hair who called him honey-bunch. When he had been Matthew, before he lost her hand.
If she looked up, would she see his face? But it wasn’t his face any more. It was Simon’s face and Simon belonged to someone else.
The dancer disappeared. He heard the bell ringing.
She reached number seventeen, the address on her piece of paper. It had, in its own way, been done up. The front door was painted a dark glossy green. A Georgian-style architrave had been built over it. The window frames on the front of the house were all gleaming new aluminium. The little garden wall had fragments of broken glass cemented along the top, like a warning. What was she going to say? What, really, was she trying to find out? Frieda felt that if she started to think about it, she would just stop and leave. So she didn’t think. She pressed the doorbell and heard the chime inside. She waited and pressed the bell and listened.
Nothing, she said to herself, but immediately it was clear that there was something. She heard a sound inside, which turned into footsteps. The door swung inwards. A woman was standing there, blocking the entrance. She was large and pale and fat, and her fatness was emphasized by the black T-shirt that was too small for her and by the black leggings that reached only halfway down her calves. She had a tattoo, like a purple braid, around her upper left arm and another – a bird, a canary perhaps, Frieda thought – on her forearm. Her blonde hair had dark roots and she had blue makeup around her pouchy eyes, lipstick that was so purple it was almost black, like a bruise. She was smoking a cigarette and she tapped the ash on the doorstep, so that Frieda had to step to one side to avoid it. It made Frieda think of being a girl and going to the fair, the dangerous rickety fair that she remembered from when she was very little and that probably wouldn’t be allowed nowadays. The eight-year-old Frieda had handed her fifty pence to women like her, sitting in glass booths at the entrance to the haunted house or the dodgems.
‘What do you want?’
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��I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said. ‘Does Dean Reeve live here?’
‘Why?’
‘I just wanted to have a quick word.’
‘He’s not here,’ said the woman, not moving.
‘But he lives here?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘I just want a word with him,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s to do with a friend of a friend. It’s not a big deal.’
‘Is this about a job?’ said the woman. ‘Has something gone wrong?’
‘Not at all,’ said Frieda, trying to sound reassuring. ‘I just want a quick word. It’ll only take a minute. Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘He just popped out,’ said the woman.
‘Could I wait for him?’
‘I don’t let strangers in my house.’
‘Just a couple of minutes, please,’ said Frieda, firmly, and stepped up to the woman, almost touching her. She was more than ever aware of her bulk and her hostility. Behind her, the house was dark and smelt with an odd sweetness she couldn’t quite identify.
‘What do you want with Dean?’ The woman sounded angry and also frightened. Her voice rose slightly.
‘I’m a doctor,’ said Frieda, and with that she was into the warmth of the narrow hallway. It was painted a dark red, so that it felt even narrower than it was.
‘What sort of doctor?’
‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Frieda, crisply. ‘Just routine. It won’t take a moment.’ She tried to make herself sound more confident than she felt. The woman pushed the front door and it shut with a click.
She looked around and gave a start. On a small ledge above a doorway to the left, there was a small stuffed bird, some sort of hawk, with its wings outstretched.
‘Dean got it from a shop round the corner. Got it cheap. You can’t give them away now. Gives me the creeps.’
Frieda stepped through the door into the front room. It was dominated by a large-screen television, amplifiers and speakers, joined with a complicated array of wires. DVDs were piled on the floor. The front curtains were closed. The only furniture was a sofa facing the room and, on the far wall, an enormous chest of miniature drawers.