Dead Like You

by Peter James

  Jessie had had a complex about her nose throughout her childhood. In her view, it wasn’t so much a nose as a beak. In her teens she was forever glancing sideways to catch her reflection in mirrors or shop windows. She had been determined that one day she would have a nose job.

  But that was then, in her life before Benedict. Now, at twenty-five, she didn’t care about it any more. Benedict told her he loved her nose, that he would not hear of her changing it and that he hoped their children would inherit that same shape. She was less happy about that thought, about putting them through the same years of misery she had been through.

  They would have nose jobs, she promised herself silently.

  The irony was that neither of her parents had that nose, nor did her grandparents. It was her great-grandfather’s, she had been told by her mother, who had a framed and fading sepia photograph of him. The damned hooked-nose gene had managed to vault two generations and fetch up in her DNA strand.

  Thanks a lot, great-grandpa!

  ‘You know something, I love your nose more every day,’ Benedict said, holding up the spoon she had just licked clean and handing it to her.

  ‘Is it just my nose?’ she teased.

  He shrugged and looked pensive for a moment. ‘Other bits too, I suppose!’

  She gave him a playful kick under the table. ‘Which other bits?’

  Benedict had a serious, studious face and neat brown hair. When she had first met him, he had reminded her of those clean-cut, almost impossibly perfect-looking boy-next-door actors who seemed to star in every US television mini series. She felt so good with him. He made her feel safe and secure, and she missed him every single second that they were apart. She looked forward with intense happiness to a life with him.

  But there was an elephant in the room.

  It stood beside their table now. Casting its own massive shadow over them.

  ‘So, did you tell them, last night?’ he asked.

  Friday night. The Shabbat. The ritual Friday night with her mother and father, her brother, her sister-in-law, her grandmother, that she never missed. The prayers and the meal. The gefilte fish that her mother’s appalling cooking made taste like cat food. The cremated chicken and shrivelled sweetcorn. The candles. The grim wine her father bought that tasted like boiled tarmac – as if drinking alcohol on a Friday night was a mortal sin, so he had to ensure that the stuff tasted like a penance.

  Her brother, Marcus, was the big success of the family. He was a lawyer, married to a good Jewish girl, Rochelle, who was now irritatingly pregnant, and they were both irritatingly smug about that.

  She had fully intended breaking the news, the same way she had intended breaking it for the past four Friday nights. That she was in love with and intended to marry a goy. And a poor goy to boot. But she had funked it yet again.

  She shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I – I was going to – but – it just wasn’t the right moment. I think they should meet you first. Then they’ll see what a lovely person you are.’

  He frowned.

  She put down the spoon, reached across the table and took his hand. ‘I’ve told you – they’re not easy people.’

  He put his free hand over hers and stared into her eyes. ‘Does that mean you’re having doubts?’

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘None. Absolutely none. I love you, Benedict, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t have one shred of doubt.’

  And she didn’t.

  But she had a problem. Not only was Benedict not Jewish or wealthy, but he wasn’t ambitious in the sense that her parents could – or would ever – understand: the monetary sense. He did have big ambitions in a different direction. He worked for a local charity, helping homeless people. He wanted to improve the plight of underprivileged people throughout his city. He dreamed of the day when no one would ever have to sleep on the streets of this rich city again. She loved and admired him for that.

  Her mother had dreamed of her becoming a doctor, which had once been Jessie’s dream too. When, with lower sights, she’d opted instead to go for a nursing degree at Southampton University, her parents had accepted it, her mother with less good grace than her father. But when she graduated she decided that she wanted to do something to help the underprivileged, and she got a job that was low-paid but she loved, as a nurse/counsellor at a drug addict drop-in centre at the Old Steine in central Brighton.

  A job with no prospects. Not something either of her parents could easily get their heads around. But they admired her dedication, no question of that. They were proud of her. And they were looking forward to a son-in-law, one day, they would be equally proud of. It was a natural assumption that he would be a big earner, a provider, to keep Jessie in the manner to which she was accustomed.

  Which was a problem with Benedict.

  ‘I’m happy to meet them any time. You know that.’

  She nodded and gripped his hand. ‘You’re going to meet them next week at the ball. You’ll charm them then, I’m sure.’

  Her father was chair of a large local charity that raised money for Jewish causes around the world. He had booked a table at a fund-raising ball at the Metropole Hotel to which she had been invited to bring a friend.

  She’d already bought her outfit and what she needed now was a pair of shoes to go with it. All she had to do was ask her father for the money, which she knew would please him no end. But she just could not bring herself to do that. She’d spotted some Anya Hindmarch shoes earlier today, in the January sale at a local store, Marielle Shoes. They were dead sexy but classy at the same time. Black patent leather, five-inch heels, ankle straps and open toe. But at £250 they were still a lot of money. She hoped that perhaps, if she waited, there might be a further reduction on them. If someone else bought them in the interim, well, too bad. She’d find something else. Brighton had no shortage of shoe shops. She’d find something!

  The Shoe Man agreed with her.

  He’d stood right behind her at the counter of Deja Shoes in Kensington Gardens earlier today. He’d listened to her telling the shop assistant that she wanted something classy and sexy to wear for her fiancé at an important function next week. Then he’d stood behind her at Marielle Shoes, just along the road.

  And he had to admit she looked really sexy in those strapped black patent shoes she had tried on but not bought. So very sexy.

  Much too sexy for them to be wasted on her fiancé.

  He sincerely hoped she would return and buy them.

  Then she could wear them for him!

  50

  Saturday 10 January

  The words on the data unit’s screen in Yac’s taxi read:

  China Garden rest. Preston St. 2 Pass. Starling. Dest. Roedean Cresc.

  It was 11.20 p.m. He had been parked up for some minutes now and had started the meter running. The man who owned the taxi said he should only wait for five minutes and then start the meter. Yac wasn’t sure how accurate his watch was and he wanted to be fair to his passengers. So he always allowed twenty seconds’ grace.

  Starling. Roedean Crescent.

  He had picked these people up before. He never forgot a passenger and especially not these people. The address: 67 Roedean Crescent. He had memorized that. She wore Shalimar perfume. The same perfume as his mother. He had memorized that too. She had been wearing Bruno Magli shoes. Size four. His mother’s size.

  He wondered what shoes she would be wearing tonight.

  Excitement rose inside him as the restaurant door opened and he saw the couple emerge. The man was holding on to the woman and looked unsteady. She helped him negotiate the step down to the pavement, then he still clung to her as they walked the short distance, through the blustery wind, over to Yac.

  But Yac wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at the woman’s shoes. They were nice. Tall heels. Straps. His kind of shoes.

  Mr Starling peered in through the window, which Yac had opened.

  ‘Taaxish for Roedean Chresshent? Shtarling?�
��

  He sounded as drunk as he looked.

  The man who owned the taxi said he did not have to take drunk passengers, especially ones who might be likely to throw up. It cost a lot of money to clear vomit out of the taxi, because it went everywhere, into the vents, down the windows into the electric motors, into the cracks down the sides of the seats. People didn’t like getting into a taxi that smelt of stale sick. It wasn’t nice to drive one either.

  But it had been a quiet night. The man who owned the taxi would be angry with the poor takings. He had already complained about how little Yac had taken since New Year and he’d told Yac that he’d never known any taxi driver take so little on New Year’s Eve itself.

  He needed all the fares he could get, because he didn’t want to risk the man who owned the taxi firing him and having someone else drive. So he decided to take a risk.

  And he wanted to smell her perfume. Wanted those shoes in the taxi with him!

  The Starlings climbed into the back and he drove off. He adjusted the mirror so he could see Mrs Starling’s face, then he said, ‘Nice shoes! Alberta Ferretti, I’ll bet those are!’

  ‘You a fucking pervert or shomething?’ she said, sounding almost as sloshed as her husband. ‘I think you drove us before, didn’t you, quite recently? Last week? Yesh?’

  ‘You were wearing Bruno Maglis.’

  ‘You’re too fucking pershonal! None of your damned fucking business what shoes I’m wearing.’

  ‘Into shoes, are you?’ Yac asked.

  ‘Yesh, she is into fucking shoes,’ Garry Starling butted in. ‘Spends all my money on them. Every penny I make ends up on her sodding feet!’

  ‘That’s because, my darling, you can only get it up when – ouch!’ she cried out loudly.

  Yac looked at her again in the mirror. Her face was contorted in pain. She’d been rude to him last time she had been in his taxi.

  He liked seeing that pain.

  1998

  51

  Saturday 10 January

  He’d spent the whole of the past few days thinking about Rachael Ryan lying in his chest freezer in his lock-up. It was hard to avoid her. Her face stared out at him from every damned newspaper. Her tearful parents spoke to him personally, and to him alone, from every damned television news broadcast.

  ‘Please, whoever you are, if you have taken our daughter, give her back to us. She’s a sweet, innocent girl and we love her. Please don’t harm her.’

  ‘It was your daughter’s damned fault!’ he whispered back at them. ‘If she hadn’t taken my mask off she’d be fine. Fine and dandy! She’d still be your loving daughter and not my damned problem.’

  Slowly, steadily, the idea he had last night took hold more and more inside him. It could just be the perfect solution! He risk-assessed it over and over again. It stood up to each problem he tested it against. It would be riskier to delay than to act.

  In almost every paper the white van was mentioned. It was referred to in big headlines on the front page of the Argus: DID ANYONE SEE THIS VAN? The caption beneath read: Similar to the one seen in Eastern Terrace.

  The police said they had been overwhelmed with calls. How many of those calls were about white vans?

  About his white van?

  White Transit vans were a dime a dozen. But the police were not stupid. It was only a matter of time before a phone call led them to his lock-up. He had to get the girl out of there. And he had to do something about the van – they were getting smart with forensics these days. But deal with one problem at a time.

  Outside, the rain was torrenting down. It was now 11 p.m. on Saturday. Party night in this city. But not so many people as usual would be out and about in this dreadful weather.

  He made his decision and left the house, hurrying out to his old Ford Sierra runabout.

  Ten minutes later, he pulled down the garage door behind the dripping-wet car, closing it with a quiet metallic clang, then switched on his torch, not wanting to risk putting on the overhead lights.

  Inside the freezer, the young woman was completely frosted over, her face translucent in the harsh beam of light.

  ‘We’re going to take a little drive, Rachael. Hope you’re cool with that?’

  Then he smirked at his joke. Yeah. Cool. He felt OK. This was going to work. He just had to stay cool too. How did that saying go that he had read somewhere: If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs . . .

  He pulled out his packet of cigarettes and tried to light one. But his damned hand was shaking so much, first he couldn’t strike the wheel of the lighter, then he couldn’t get the flame near the tip of the cigarette. Cold sweat was pouring down his neck as if it was coming from a busted tap.

  *

  At a few minutes to midnight, with his toolkit clipped to his belt, he drove around the Lewes Road gyratory system, past the entrance to the Brighton and Hove Borough Mortuary, wipers clunk-clunking away the rain, and then turned left on to the hard driveway of his destination, J. Bund and Sons, funeral directors.

  He was shaking, all knotted up inside and perspiring heavily. Stupid woman, stupid bloody Rachael, why the hell did you have to take my mask off?

  Up on the wall, above the curtained shop window of the premises, he clocked the burglar alarm box. Sussex Security Systems. Not a problem, he thought, pulling up in front of the padlocked steel gates. The lock was also not a problem.

  Directly across the road was a closed estate agent’s, with flats on the two storeys above. There was a light on in one of them. But they would be used to seeing vehicles come and go at a funeral parlour around the clock.

  He switched the lights off, then climbed out of the Sierra into the rain to deal with the padlock. A trickle of cars and taxis drove past along the road. One of them was a police patrol car, its blue lights flashing and siren wailing. He held his breath, but its crew paid him no attention, just swishing straight past to some emergency or other. Moments later he drove through into the rear yard and parked between two hearses and a van. Then he hurried back through the rain and closed the gates, pulling the chain around them, but leaving the padlock dangling open. So long as no one came, all would be fine.

  It took him less than a minute to pick the Chubb on the double rear receiving doors, then he entered the dark entrance hallway, wrinkling his nose at the smells of embalming fluid and disinfectant. The alarm was beeping. Just the internal warning signal. He had sixty precious seconds before the external bells would kick off. It took him less than thirty to remove the front casing of the alarm panel. Another fifteen and it fell silent.

  Too silent.

  He closed the door behind him. And now it was even more silent. The faint click-whirr of a fridge. A steady tick-tick-tick of a clock or a meter.

  These places gave him the creeps. He remembered the last time he had been in here; he had been alone then, and shit-scared. They were dead, all of the people in here, dead like Rachael Ryan. They couldn’t hurt you, or tell tales on you.

  Couldn’t leap out at you.

  But that didn’t make it any better.

  He flashed his torch beam along the corridor ahead, trying to orient himself. He saw a row of framed Health and Safety notices, a fire extinguisher and a drinking-water dispenser.

  Then he took a few steps forward, his trainers silent on the tiled floor, listening intently for any new sounds inside or out. There was a staircase up to his right. He remembered it led to the individual rooms – or Chapels of Rest – where friends and relatives could visit and mourn their loved ones in privacy. Each room contained a body laid out on a bed, men in pyjamas, women in nightgowns, their heads poking out from beneath the sheets, hair tidy, faces all rosy from embalming fluid. They looked like they were checked into some tacky hotel for the night.

  But for sure they wouldn’t be doing a runner without paying their bills in the morning, he thought, and grinned despite his unease.

  Then, flashing his torch through an open doorway to his left, he
saw a prostrate white marble statue. Except, as he took a closer look, he saw it wasn’t a statue. It was a dead man on a slab. Two handwritten tags hung from his right foot. An old man, he lay with his mouth open like a landed fish, embalming-fluid lines cannulated into his body, his penis lying uselessly against his thigh.

  Close to him was a row of coffins, open and empty, just one of them with its lid closed. There was a brass plaque on the lid, engraved with the name of its occupant.

  He stopped for a moment, listening. But all he could hear was the thudding of his own heart and the blood coursing through his veins louder than the roar of a river in flood. He could not hear the traffic outside. All that entered here from the world beyond the walls was a faint, eerie orange glow leaking in from a street light on the pavement.

  ‘Hi, everyone!’ he said, feeling very uncomfortable as he swung the beam around until it struck what he was looking for. The row of duplicated white A4 forms hanging on hooks from the wall.

  Eagerly, he walked over to them. These were the registration forms for each of the bodies in here. All the information was on them: name, date of death, place of death, funeral instructions, and a whole row of optional disbursement boxes to be ticked – organist’s fee, cemetery fee, churchyard burial fee, clergy’s fee, church fee, doctor’s fee, removal of pacemaker fee, cremation fee, gravedigger’s fee, printed service sheets fees, flowers, memorial cards, obituary notices, coffin, casket for remains.

  He read quickly through the first sheet. No good: the Embalming box had been ticked. The same applied to the next four. His heart began to sink. They were embalmed and their funerals were not until later in the week.

  But on the fifth it looked like he might have struck gold: