by P. R. Black
‘I was considering it.’
‘Maybe I’ll come along with you.’
‘If I don’t cramp your style.’
She smiled. ‘Look at your shoulders! They go all bunched up when I suggest we do something together. Like a little squirrel. It’s all right. I know you’ve got your little routines. Your training routes. You’re a creature of habit. I understand. I won’t get in your way.’
He closed the lid on the lunchbox, pressing down the edges with a smart crack. ‘Now you sound like your mother.’
*
Her
‘God’s sake, Cecilia. This is the cleanest basement I’ve ever seen.’
No dripping water or dangling bulbs, here; the light had a shade, glass blades that fanned out like an outstretched hand. Cecilia’s basement was a place of stacked boxes which had never known the rough hand of a house move, or the chill effect of damp. Everything was uniform, as tight and well tucked as a hotel bedspread. No bric-a-brac, nothing that hadn’t been carefully stored and tended well. If there was dust, then it was well hidden.
Ditto the spiders.
‘It’s called cleanliness,’ Cecilia sniffed. ‘People used to take pride in it. Your grandmother was a stickler. She used to lift the carpets and scrub the floorboards.’
‘That must have been a big laugh. Unnecessary, much?’
‘Well… she was a little bit mad, in fairness.’
‘Cleaning up is one thing… but this is the first basement I’ve gone into and not sneezed. You could carry out surgery in here. Anyway – what do you mean, “people used to take pride in it”? I run a tight ship at my flat,’ Becky added, a trifle defensively.
‘I’m sure. Just like your old room, upstairs.’
‘Point conceded. Okay. Where do we start?’
Cecilia gave a sad smile. ‘There’s no need to search. I know where it is. It’s in the chest. Here’s the key.’
It looked like a pirate’s key, and it fitted what looked like a pirate’s chest. The lock clicked open, smartly.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Cecilia said. To Becky’s surprise, she turned on her heels and left, but the door to the staircase remained ajar.
Although there was no chill in the air down here, Becky shivered. She felt the hairs prickle on her neck at that gap, and the view of carpeted stairs which issued no protest at the light touch of Cecilia’s footsteps.
She remembered the library.
She closed the door quietly, then knelt down by the chest.
The papers inside were piled high, but folded neatly, and had clearly been gone through in some detail. Unfortunately, Cecilia’s fastidiousness stopped short of a proper filing system; they were in no particular order. Becky passed ancient bank statements over in her hands, MOT invoices for cars she remembered. Even the smallest material connection to the dead, the most superficial link between consumerism and family life, caused melancholy to bloom in her breast.
She shuddered when photos appeared – strictly analogue, a long way away from the selfies age, many of them misfires. Her mother’s hairstyles ranged from the Sheena Easton cropping mistake of the early eighties to full perm horror, then back to her graceful bangs into the early nineties.
Her father’s rotund cheerfulness was a constant all the way through, barely changing. There was Howie, going from a quiet, watchful baby to a reserved little boy, clutching his teddies tight. There was one photo which caused Becky a physical pain in her chest – Howie, Christmas morning, with a shiny robot from a movie or a TV show, borne aloft like a football captain with a trophy, beaming. He had been so happy he had actually cried when he unwrapped it.
She drew a feather-light finger over that face.
‘Howie,’ she said, barely a whisper.
And then came Clara, still in those heavy metal branded shirts, trying to impress some boy out of shot. And young Becky was there of course, looking washed out. She remembered painful stomach cramps around this time, and a general listlessness in the following days. Thin. Wan. Unkissed. Still a little girl in the same way you saw that Clara wasn’t.
The branding of the high street chemist stencilled on the back of the photos bore commentary written in Becky’s mother’s own hand. Dates, occasions. The odd sarky line, her own trademark. One image of Howie, sobbing, face contorted and his lip pooched out far enough to admit a landing helicopter, was captioned ‘season’s greetings’.
Becky traced the thin indentation of the pen strokes with her finger.
Soon she got to the letters. These were bound with string, the paper all the same delicate lilac shade. There were piles of them; mostly in her mother’s hand, some in her father’s. Love letters. Dated before any of their children arrived, before they were married. Tender. Erotic. Embarrassing beyond description. ‘You are my sun and my ocean,’ her father had written, in fat, thick letters which blundered through the blue lines of his notepaper, in an indecent hurry to spill across the page.
Then her mother, nearer the mark, curt: ‘I’m writing this in bed with my legs propped up, and wishing you were between them.’
The decorated their letters – hearts that flew away to form distant flocks, murmurations of kisses, half-moon faces tipping jaunty winks. Then caricatures, her father’s far better than her mother’s; Grandma Bessie, wielding a two-headed battleaxe, and then – achingly accurate – Cecilia, in a long black cloak, scythe in hand.
Then the other letters appeared. There were no words crossed out, no parts underlined. There was a faint scent to them, a hint of something you rarely saw or smelled any more, Kouros or Aramis. Maybe something sweeter – a scent a teenager would buy for themselves.
After a time, Cecilia knocked gently. She passed a steaming mug of tea to Becky. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Yes,’ Becky said. She made no effort to hide the fact she’d been crying.
‘There are some things which it’s maybe best not to know. Do you understand why I didn’t want you to have them? Your mother was writing to another man. I know it’s hard for you to take, but there it is. Do you see why I wanted to protect you from this?’
‘You had no right to keep them from me,’ Becky said.
‘I had every right!’ Cecilia’s voice swelled, bouncing off every surface. ‘You know how hard it was, seeing those letters, reading that stuff, after having that happen to her? It’s as if it wasn’t enough that she was killed. I had to have her shamed, as well. Her memory sullied. As if it wasn’t enough that she was murdered! My sister!’
Becky allowed silence to return, then said, ‘I understand why you did it. But you’re mistaken.’
Cecilia frowned. ‘Say again?’
‘You’re worried about these? The letters from the French boy? The ones addressed to the American girl? Dad must have roared laughing at them.’
‘I don’t think so. In fact, I think he would have been enraged. Your mother was… beautiful. There’s no doubting it. She was modest with it, but men adored her. I accepted it; I was never jealous. That wasn’t something I ever wanted for myself, and it wasn’t something I wanted to deny her, either. It’s pointless feeling bad about something you can’t change. I was proud of her, in a funny way. But I think these letters tell you something. Had your dad found out… something horrible might have happened between them. I thank god he died in ignorance.’
‘He knew all about them, Cecilia. The whole thing was a joke. I got what I came for.’ Becky waved invoices at her, plus a stack of printouts from an ancient dot matrix printer, the perforated edges running ragged in places. ‘The letters confirmed what I already knew, beyond a doubt. It’s the business stuff I was here for. I need to take it all away.’
‘Well, they are all yours, after all.’
‘They are. I’ll take some of the letters… Hey, French letters. I just got that!’ Becky giggled. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave the others, but I’ll be back for them, in time. Once this is all cleared up. And I promise to explain everything.’ Becky even
kissed her goodbye, though she stopped short of skipping up the flagstones or patting the waving fronds and lolling tongues of the plants.
*
Something in the contact with her loved ones had energised her. It had been sad, the blow of seeing their faces had been painful, but as time crept on there was something life-affirming in it, too. If she hadn’t exactly high-fived their ghosts, she felt a little closer to them, a little more supported. It was only at those times when she felt the presence of them, as opposed to their terrible absence, that she realised how much support she needed in life. That she still walked on unsteady legs, like a new-born foal.
There were three names to work with, now, from the legal paperwork. Partners in her father’s house-building business. One was LaFleur, and the other was Tullington. All connected to a plot of land in France.
The place they’d gone on holiday. The place they died.
The third name was Nico Arkanescu. The one she was looking for. She felt sure of it.
He was the ‘who’. But she’d never thought there was a ‘why’, until now. A reason beyond the unreasoning lust of a madman.
There were no paparazzo waiting for Becky as she returned to her flat. The checks she carried out were routine, now – a quick glance at the security cameras, to make sure they were working; a thorough check of the stairwells, to be sure no one lurked in dark places; then a check of cameras and sensors, video footage she’d recorded herself while she was out. There was nothing; all clear.
Not long after she’d had a cup of tea and began composing an email to Bernard on her secure computer, a wave of tiredness stole over her. The travelling, the stress, had finally caught up with her. She barely finished the mug of tea, leaving it lying on the kitchen counter. With light still showing through her pale blue curtains, Becky pulled on a top and snatched up her silky pyjama bottoms – a mismatched pair, but they combined to make her most comfortable jim-jams – and threw back the covers. She stumbled comically while trying to put her legs into the pyjama bottoms; she wrestled with them on the bedspread, head spinning. She wasn’t even aware of putting her head on the pillow before she was spark out.
Then came the familiar dream, the familiar setting.
She lay back in bed in the dark blue of the night. A pale moon slit the scene through her fine curtains, washing the white walls with silver.
The door clicked open and then he was there, padding softly into the room. He had on his mask, of course, with the glittering black eyes beneath. The white gown he wore was an ethereal presence in the moonlight, an illustration of a ghost in a child’s book. He stood at his customary position at the bottom of the bed, breathing softly, hands held loosely by his sides, the knife glinting in one of them.
Staring. Hardly moving.
Becky’s breath was shrill in her throat. She tried to speak in the gluey fashion of dreams. ‘Nuh, nuh, nuh. Nuh!’
Her heart was out of control, a prize mare in full flight, her limbs twitching. She tried to sit up. She could not move, frozen. Awareness began to flood in. She wanted it to be over, to be awake, for the knife under her mattress to be in her hand, to begin the performance of the traumatised stagger towards the kitchen sink for a glass of water.
He was positioned a little further back than usual, so that Becky could see his feet. His footwear was obscured; he was wearing plastic coverlets over the top of them, of the type she’d seen the forensic officers wearing at her family’s graveside.
That’s when she knew she was fully awake. And that he was standing at the foot of her bed, for real.
49
For a whole minute or more, there was nothing but his breathing, and hers. She opened her mouth to shriek but couldn’t do it. She might as well have been underwater, chained to the bottom. Her head pulsed, with a slightly sour taste in the back of her throat, like an awful vodka hangover.
The moonlight and inky shadows enhanced the eerie effulgence of his white gown; his eyes caught twin points of light like the surface of an oil slick. They seemed to dance as they took in her wide-eyed fear.
She could hardly move her hands beneath the covers. Drugged, surely, she thought. Even the effect of her pulse was muffled. A dull throb radiating out from her chest was the only confirmation that her body had gone into stress overload.
All she could do was snatch thin, reedy breaths, fluttering her nostrils like the gills of a fish.
With a supreme effort, neck cords straining, she lifted her head. ‘Nuh… No,’ she croaked.
He started forward, with the fluid grace of nightmares. His hand reached out, and the tip of one finger traced the path of a tear down her cheek, tickling the corner of her mouth.
‘Please,’ he rasped, ‘don’t try to talk. You’ll need your strength. We have the whole night to get through.’
He sidled round to the edge of Becky’s quilt and felt underneath it, round the edges of the mattress. All too soon, his fingers found the handle. He brought the blade up into the light; she could tell from the changed cast of his eyes that he was grinning.
‘Is this a present? For me?’ He stretched forward, the tip of the machete tapping Becky’s nose. ‘We’ll put this to good use. I wonder if you imagined using it on me? Cutting my throat?’ He traced a deathly soft line under Becky’s chin with the tip of the blade, barely touching her skin. ‘Or perhaps putting it through my heart?’ The blade lowered. He used it to draw the quilt back over her shoulders, and then her chest. Finally, he cast it to the floor.
Becky felt the sudden chill of exposure across her arms and lower legs; her knees were bent slightly, but no more than that. She was utterly helpless.
I’m going to die here. There’ll be no fight. No payback. Only this grim conclusion.
They’ll never find my body. I won’t be buried alongside my family.
He laid the machete down on the bedside table, then snatched up the mug Becky had left there. He sniffed at the cup, then disappeared. She heard the ludicrously prosaic sound of someone washing up in the kitchen. She strained with everything she had to lift her hand and grasp the knife handle that lay inches from her head, but it was no use. One more piece of torture. When he returned to the room she exhaled hoarsely and gave in.
He chuckled, deeply, and waggled a finger at her. ‘You’ve been a very clever girl, setting all those cameras up. It might even have saved you, if I wasn’t a clever boy.’ He crouched down beside her. The bone mask filled her whole field of vision, the eyes unblinking.
‘The relay with the phone was clever, too. Someone helped you do that, I think. Another hacker, probably. I’ll get to him, soon. It’ll be your fault, when I do – just like the last one. Except I won’t be quick, this time. I’ll take days to finish him. He’ll plead with me to end it. Take a moment to think about that.’
She tried to spit. There wasn’t enough moisture in her mouth, not enough power in her lips.
‘Though you must be insane to think I would make the same mistake twice. Especially when you insist on coming back here. You may be clever, and you may know some clever people. But no one’s as clever as me. Isn’t that right?’
He straightened up, took a deep breath, and gazed at her body. She felt totally exposed, although she still wore her night clothes. ‘And haven’t you grown,’ he said. The lust apparent in the low register of his voice stirred Becky’s first feelings of despair, a level beneath panic and fear. ‘Yes… you filled out very well. Very well indeed. But I need to know more than this. I want to see right inside you. As deep as you go. It will be a pleasure to see your bones shine. I want to hold your heart in my hand while it still quivers. Like a little sparrow.’ His formed a fluttering bird shape with his hands, then leaned closer, chuckling.
With a thrill of hope, Becky saw his head was perfectly placed for a knee to the temple; even a blow at half-force would put him out, perhaps for good, bone mask or not. She would have the supreme satisfaction of seeing his eyes roll up in that mask, even if she faded and died here in the a
ftermath.
But she did not even have half-force; she did not have a fraction of what she needed. Her leg quivered uselessly as she arched it a slight angle – then sagged, exhausted. It was worse than having the knife close to hand.
‘Bastard,’ she wheezed, stumbling over the hard consonants.
He chuckled. ‘I got your dose just right. I have an eye for girls’ weight. They might make a chemist of me, yet. Or a dressmaker.’
The tea, of course. He’d been in the flat. He’d done something to the tea bags – which meant he knew that she took a cup later in the day than she should. He’d also tampered with her camera, the computer feeds – and most likely the security cameras dotted around the building. She remembered someone – either Rupert or Bernard – telling her how easy it was to loop old footage through camera systems to make it look as if nothing had happened. All you had to do was match up the numbers.
He might have been here for days.
‘Turn round, my darling,’ he said, voice hitched low in his throat. ‘Let me see…’
He gripped her right shoulder and buttock, turning her onto her side. She whimpered, uselessly.
‘You know what I want. There. That’s it. Oh.’ His voice quivered with excitement, now, as his hands caressed her shoulder in a long, slow slalom down to the small of her back, finishing just above her buttock. Becky could not turn her head to see it, but she knew he was tracing his fingers along the length of the scar. It tingled at the touch. She had just enough strength to grit her teeth.
‘That’s it. Where I marked you. Know that whatever happens to you, I’m going to keep this part. I’ll cut it out, preserve it, and keep it safe. Like a flower pressed in a book. It will live forever. That’s one part of you that will escape the earth. And the worms.’
He allowed her to slump back onto the pillow, head lolling. His breathing became harsh, the eyes darting over her body with some urgency.
‘Now we begin,’ he said. ‘Now we’re together.’
Then he took up the knife. If she had one wish, it would be that she could scream, just once.