Girl on the Landing

by Paul Torday

  For years I have known, been warned by some instinct, that the day might come when I would need hiding places: bank accounts under different names, cash in the accounts, a bolthole somewhere. Long ago I prepared for flight and hiding. Now I live in an anonymous block of flats in the southern suburbs of Glasgow. They will not find me, not for the time being at least. Since Stephen Gunnerton, I have not killed, at least not as far as I can remember. There are gaps in my life I cannot account for: moments when I rediscover myself, miles from the flat where I live, covered in mud and bits of branches, as if I have been hunting in the hills and woods. I’m not always clear about these gaps. But, so far, I haven’t found myself covered in anyone’s blood; the blood on me has not been human, as far as I know.

  I don’t know what the future holds for me. There is no future, only the present; a dark, flowing river. I am content to go wherever it takes me.

  I have not seen, or tried to see, Elizabeth. She has my child now. It would have been born in August. I know it is a boy. He carries my DNA, and Elizabeth’s too. It will be interesting to see which of us he takes after.

  One day I will go and see him; perhaps I will take him away with me when he is old enough.

  If what I am is evil, is it really all a matter of brain chemistry, as Stephen Gunnerton and Alex Grant once believed? How comfortable that idea is: that everything wrong with the human race is the result of some malfunction, some microscopic chemical change in our brains, some evolutionary wrong turning in our genetic code. The Gunnerton view of the world was that all the evil that exists is already within us, locked inside in our skulls, and can be cured by finding the right pill. Perhaps that is more acceptable than any alternative: for example, that good and evil are principles in a Manichaean universe, locked in an eternal struggle in which the entire human race only has a walk-on part.

  I prefer another view: that evil - and good, for that matter - can also come from beyond ourselves, hurtling in at random from some outside darkness, like meteorites from distant galaxies with spores and viruses locked inside them, bringing life itself to our dead planet. In that view, the Lamia is no delusion, but a creature of the night. In that view, my life changed when she entered my world.

  I cannot afford these speculations. All I want to do now is survive. There should be room for no other thought in my mind.

  And yet my mind will not do as it is told. Over and over again it recurs to an image, distant yet sharp and clear, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. I am in Ireland again, and I am standing in front of the house Elizabeth and I once stayed in. I can feel the soft air stirring as a breeze bends the tops of the trees, I can see their colours turning from green to russet, the horse chestnuts already a vivid red, the limes turning yellow and brown. I can feel the gravel under the thin soles of my shoes, and I look up at the house in front of me. Its creeper-covered walls make the house look as though the woods around it are embracing it, taking it back into themselves. Its windows are dark and unlit. I am inside the house now, moving soundlessly up the great staircase. I walk towards the bedroom we shared, in that last year when Elizabeth and I shared a life together. I see the pictures on the wall. I bend down and I see a smaller picture. It is just as I remember it. There is a figure there, shadowed but distinct. It is no blemish in the canvas, no accident of the painter’s brush. It is a picture of a girl, on a landing.

  Epilogue

  A year has gone by since that dark night at Beinn Caorrun.

  There are two schools of thought about Mikey. There is my school of thought, which is that he is alive and out there, somewhere. There is the official school of thought, subscribed to by the police and the family solicitor, that Mikey is probably dead, at the bottom of a gully somewhere in the hills around Glen Gala. They still haven’t found his body - nor that of Alex Grant. On the other hand, the police haven’t said they’ve closed the file. They haven’t said much to me at all. They want to interview Mikey in connection with the murder of his father, of Stephen Gunnerton (bled out and gralloched like a stag, in the wine cellar at Grouchers, as Peter Robinson kindly told me), and in connection with the disappearance of Alex Grant. I suspect there are other incidents they want to talk to Mikey about as well, but I don’t really know, and don’t want to know.

  The months went past after that night and no one saw any sign of Mikey. There were no cash withdrawals from his account, no traces that he still existed anywhere in this world. The family solicitor, who was also Michael’s trustee and executor, wrote to me asking whether I wanted to start the long process of having Mikey declared legally dead. I wrote back saying that I thought it was too soon. The solicitor makes me an allowance from the estate which is quite generous and, even though I am unemployed and probably unemployable, I am not badly off. My wants are few. I might start doing some freelancing, more for the interest than the money, just to prove to myself that I am still alive. But not just yet.

  What do I really think about Mikey? I think that he is a very clever man, much cleverer than I had ever realised. I think that if he wanted to disappear he could, and has done so. I think that if he wanted to create a new identity he could. I think that if he wanted to set up new bank accounts in another name he probably did so. When his solicitor and I went through the inventories for Beinn Caorrun all his mother’s jewellery had disappeared. I had never actually seen it apart from my engagement ring, and a diamond necklace which I still have, but as far as I could see from the inventory, it was a very substantial collection. Mikey’s pair of Holland & Holland shotguns had also disappeared, and so had a collection of first editions belonging to his father. I suspect Mikey has turned all these things into cash.

  I also think Mikey has the ability to become whoever he wants to become. He has no identity, perhaps no humanity, left that we would recognise. He was changing so fast when I last saw him. When I remember the voice of the girl on the landing outside my bedroom door, I still shudder at the perfect quality of Mikey’s mimicry. If I had not known it was only Mikey out there, I would have been utterly convinced by that strange, cold voice.

  I don’t know whether I want to see Mikey again. I still love them, both Michael and Mikey. The last few weeks we had together, right up to the day when Mikey left home for ever, were among the happiest of my life. That happiness still warms me, although now it is only the glow from the embers of a fire that was all too brief. I don’t know that I would understand, or even recognise, Mikey if I saw him again. I don’t believe that I will see him again. I don’t believe so, but of course, I can’t be certain.

  And I have John, my new baby, who is only a few months old. I was pregnant the time I last saw Mikey. How he knew that, I can’t say: but he was right. John is named after Mikey’s father: a gesture that Mikey would probably not appreciate. I couldn’t think of any other name. John is the consolation in all of this, the one person who gives me hope and a reason to go on. My mother quite likes him, I’m pleased to say, as long as she doesn’t have to change him or feed him.

  We’ve decided to let Beinn Caorrun. It is managed by a sporting agency that tries to rent out the house with the fishing and the stalking. So far they have not had many takers, but we hope that things will pick up. The house has been smartened up with a lick of paint and new carpets, and we’ve put central heating in. Mrs McLeish has come back to her cottage and still looks after the lodge and keeps the books for the holiday lets. I rang her to get her to pack up various things of mine and send them down to London, and I tried to talk to her about Mikey. She just kept repeating that she didn’t know; that there was no saying.

  I have never been back to Beinn Caorrun since that dreadful night a year ago, and I have locked the door on the flat at Helmsdale Mansions for the time being. I’m living with my mother and baby John and the chihuahua called Ned, at Stanton St Mary. We fight like cat and dog, of course, but my mother is lonely and needs the company. I have decided that, even if I drive her mad, she likes having me at home. It is understood that the
arrangement is just for a while. We sit and drink a lot of white wine together in the evenings and I have started smoking again. Ned the chihuahua sits on my mother’s lap: he doesn’t trust me, the little sod. Baby John is as good as gold: he lies in his cot, or in my arms, his dark grey eyes taking it all in. There is something so calm about him. He rarely cries.

  So my mother and I puff on our cigarettes and chat and sip away, almost every night. We talk about my father, about Charlie Summers, about village gossip in and around Stanton St Mary. We never talk about Mikey.

  Sometimes, if I can get a babysitter, we go down to the Stanton Arms on quiz nights. My mother thinks it is very democratic of her to mix with the people from the village. In fact, it helps with the loneliness, and she can enjoy a gin and tonic, even if they won’t let her smoke her cigarettes inside the pub any more. I rather enjoy these evenings. They are good fun, and we can forget our troubles for a while. The vicar, the Reverend Simon Porter, is the ace in the pack in the village quiz team. His knowledge is encyclopedic. He can answer questions on almost any subject: football, celebs, classical antiquity or modern politics. One evening, after a particularly resounding victory over the team from a neighbouring village, it occurred to me to ask him something that might really test his knowledge. It just popped into my head, when my mother and I were sitting at the same table as him after the quiz had finished. I said, ‘Simon, does the word Lamia mean anything to you? Is it a country, or a disease, or a person?’

  ‘Lamia? Nothing at all, I’m afraid,’ he said. Then he scratched his ear and said, ‘No, I’m forgetting my education.’

  The vicar rarely missed an opportunity to remind us that he was a Wykehamist. ‘Lamia,’ he repeated. ‘It’s a classical Greek word: it means “greedy”. The ancient Greeks believed that there was a female demon called Lamia. It was part woman, part serpent, and drank the blood of men, if it got the chance. It’s mentioned somewhere in the Old Testament too, howling in the ruins of Babylon. And Keats wrote a poem by that name; not one of my favourites, I’m afraid. What on earth made you ask about that?’

  ‘I must have heard it somewhere,’ I said. ‘How clever of you to know the answer, Simon. I was really having a bet with myself that I couldn’t ask a question you wouldn’t know the answer to.’

  He smiled complacently, then stood up and said, ‘Mrs Bently? Elizabeth? One last drink before they close?’

  I saw my mother surreptitiously slip a folded ten-pound note into his hand.

  Soon it was time to go home. That night I thought, as I did most nights: poor Mikey. What nightmares did he have; what imagined horrors did he share his mind with? I could never begin to imagine the darkness he must have lived with. Maybe, after all, any medication, no matter how grim, was better than that.

  I looked up ‘Lamia’ on the Internet and downloaded the Keats poem from a virtual library. It was an illustrated edition: there was a picture of a woman in a long green dress, a suggestion of the vampire in her dark eyes and full red lips. The illustration was Pre-Raphaelite in intention, if not in execution. I read:She seemed at once, some penanced lady elf,

  Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.

  I miss Michael, I miss Mikey. I miss them both dreadfully. I don’t know whether I will ever get over it.

  I think starting to smoke again has helped me lose weight. At least, something has. I’m quite thin now, which is good. There’s a little grey in my hair that has appeared recently, but the local hairdresser keeps that at bay by colouring it every few weeks.

  I’m still in touch with Mary Robinson. We speak on the phone now and again. I’ve promised to run up to London one of these days and have lunch with her. She told me last time we spoke that Grouchers is being wound up. One of the members is a property developer and has made a very generous offer for the site which, in the circumstances, most members feel they ought to accept. The idea is that the present building will be torn down and the site redeveloped as a block of flats. All its morning rooms, and dining rooms, and marbled loos will disappear into the jaws of a JCB. So the club will cease to be, but the members will all get a nice cash dividend from the sale of the leasehold. Mikey’s estate too, I suppose.

  Charlie Summers wrote to my mother the other day. I couldn’t believe it. I never saw the letter itself, but I know my mother turned pink, then white, then pink again when she read it. She laughed, and then became rather tearful. She showed me the enclosure. It read: A unique opportunity to invest in one of the few Dutch vineyards producing premier cru quality wine

  Chateau Kloof is, at present, known only to a small number of connoisseurs of fine wines. Although its output comes from only a few hectares, it produces several thousand bottles a year of an intense beetroot-coloured wine, with an unusual and distinctive aroma that has reminded many who have tried it of a great St Emilion.

  In order to make it available to a wider public, it has been decided to offer the future output of wine to investors. Units can be purchased at £1000 each, and each unit entitles the investor to ...

  I didn’t bother to read any more after this; I got the general idea. Japanese dog food and Dutch wine: Charles Edward Gilbert Summers, Master of Wine (for so he had signed himself at the foot of the prospectus), was nothing if not creative. When I discovered my mother had actually sent Charlie a cheque I became very angry with her.

  ‘But darling,’ she said, ‘he’s had such a run of bad luck. He really deserves to be put back on his feet. Besides, he sent Henry Newark a case of this wine, and Henry said it was unlike anything he’d ever tasted. I’m sure he’ll succeed this time.’

  Then we had one of our little rows, but that is over now and we are speaking to each other once again. I worry that, one of these days, Charlie Summers may turn up here. He’s one of those men who are without shame. Henry Newark did pay off his debts, as I foretold, so he won’t get thrown into debtors’ jail if he comes back to Stanton St Mary. But there are a lot of people who won’t speak to him, if he does return, and I’m one of them. If Charlie comes back to this house, I don’t see myself staying here a day longer.

  It’s cold down here in Gloucestershire in these dark January days. Stanton St Mary lies in a frost hollow and last night we had a fall of snow, although it’s thawing now. This morning, when I went to check on John and drew my curtains, mist was rising off the melting snow. The sky was a gloomy grey. The day looked so cold and unwelcoming, I almost changed my mind and went back to bed.

  Then, with a jolt - as if my heart had stopped beating for a second - I saw that there was a dark-haired girl standing in what my mother calls our ‘park’, a few acres of pasture beyond the garden. She was slim, and stood very upright, and she wore a long dark green dress but no coat. She must have been freezing, standing there, but she stood absolutely still, her arms by her sides. I thought she was looking up at the house. I thought she was looking directly up at me.

  I knocked on the window but either she didn’t hear, or else she took no notice. I decided I had better go and ask her what she wanted. After all, there’s no right of way across that pasture. I pulled on a jersey and a pair of jeans, and went down to the back door where I had left my wellington boots. I went outside to speak to the girl, but she was no longer there. I scrambled across the ha-ha, and into the pasture, to where I thought she had been standing. Snowdrops were poking their way through the thawing snow here and there. I couldn’t find any footprints. Of course, the snow was melting and patches of bleached-looking grass were beginning to appear, so perhaps her footprints had melted too.

  Or perhaps I had just imagined her. I looked around. There was no hurrying figure that I could see in the fields or the woods. Then a warm wind bent the tops of the trees and ruffled my hair, and stroked the side of my cheek. The wind spoke of the coming of spring; of a new year; new hopes, new fears.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - The Picture

  Chapter 2 - T
here Was Something Different about Michael

  Chapter 3 - Mr Patel’s Membership Application

  Chapter 4 - The Hill of the Rowan Trees

  Chapter 5 - Serendipozan

  Chapter 6 - Strangers on a Train

  Chapter 7 - You Think You Know Someone, but You Never Really Do

  Chapter 8 - She Left Her Glass of Wine Untouched

  Chapter 9 - ‘Nothing I can’t handle’

  Chapter 10 - He Shot out into the Street and Disappeared

  Chapter 11 - I Smelled the Blood

  Chapter 12 - Their Brains Are Not Like Ours

  Chapter 13 - Rule Britannia!

  Chapter 14 - While the Cat’s Away

  Chapter 15 - Her Black Gaze Made Me Shudder in My Sleep

  Chapter 16 - He Could Run for Days in Pursuit of His Prey