The Perfect Neighbours

by Rachel Sargeant

  She waved her hand to bring the light back on. Children’s spades were propped by the back door. The Howard boys must have been using them to build snowmen and, like the tidy children they were, leant them against the wall when they’d finished. She squeezed her arm through the railings and her long swimmer’s fingers reached a handle.

  She was sweating by the time she’d shifted enough snow to open the gate a few more inches, but her hands and feet were blocks of ice. Her dress hooked itself on the gate catch as she pressed through the gap, but her hands were too numb to release it. She felt it rip.

  She banged on the back door with the spade. No response. She formed her hands as far into fists as her numbed nerves would allow and hammered on the glass. As she fell against the door, her arm caught on the handle. To her surprise, the door wasn’t locked and opened into the warmth of Louisa’s laundry room. She stepped inside and let her dead hands and feet soak up the biting, pricking heat.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she called as she closed the door and breathed in the smells of cooking. Entering Louisa’s kitchen usually meant assault by lemon freshness, but approaching it now from the laundry room it smelled like raw meat.

  A stack of used plates at the sink might explain the odour, or the old pans on the turned-off hob. Louisa was at the breakfast bar. Helen smiled to herself. She’d caught top wife bent over, struggling to get her icing perfect. Cherry topping spilled over the edge of the gateau, dripping onto the floor.

  “Hello,” Helen said, “that looks tricky.”

  Louisa didn’t turn round.

  “Do you need any help?” she asked, coming up closer. Her breath stuck in her throat. Louisa’s face was pressed into a cheesecake with cherry sauce spattered on the back of her crisp white collar. Asleep? She gave her shoulder a nudge. Louisa’s body shifted, but her head didn’t. Helen recoiled; it wasn’t cherry sauce but the frayed edges of a bib of blood.

  Something warm and sticky touched Helen’s knee. Blood seeped into her dress where she’d leant against one of the stool legs. Her boot nudged into a pool of it and she left a bloodied print on a fresh part of the floor.

  She coughed up bile. Her heartbeat jerked and jolted in its own panicked rhythm, but she forced back control of her breathing. Deep breath. Gary and Chris must be in the dining room. Deep breath. They would know what to do.

  Someone came in here and did this. But not through the gate because it was stuck. Over the back fence. Like Sascha Jakobsen the night before. But, no, a complete stranger did this, a mad man roaming the streets and knifing women in their kitchens.

  The hall smelled metallic and fleshy. Napoleon lay on his side, paws outstretched. His guts spilled through his downy belly fur which was mottled black and red. Her breathing lost it then. It pummelled her body, shallow and rapid.

  “Gary,” she gasped.

  Silence. Don’t be stupid. She put her hands on her knees, panting, thinking. Gary and Chris must have gone to get more beer from the late-night store. That’s why the lunatic struck when he did. But he’s gone now. Her breathing calmed enough to let her step around the dog and push open the dining room door.

  Gary was slumped over the table with his face turned away from her. She saw the tuft of hair on his neck where he’d missed shaving for a couple of days. She’d meant to tell him. A bloody patch oozed below his left shoulder blade. She let out a breath, perhaps he wasn’t dead. But when she moved round, she saw his open, empty eyes. The room whirled. Sweat burst out of her. She gripped the table edge.

  Trembling, she bent to look underneath in search of another corpse but there was nothing there except Gary’s crossed ankles and a discarded napkin. If Chris wasn’t dead, he must have … He’d flipped. That craziness behind his eyes was always there.

  The music room door was open. Get the hell out! Move! But her legs wouldn’t take her. She listened hard but heard no sound except her own short breaths. She stepped towards the door and saw Chris lying on the floor.

  She could only see his legs, twisted at an odd angle. Toby’s cello lay on its side in a pool of blood. There were splashes all over its varnished body and the sound holes were gunged up. The strings had been cut and had pinged apart, coiling themselves into the blood pool. The neck was snapped and it looked like a wounded animal drinking at a water hole of its own fluids.

  Poor Toby, how could someone do this to a child’s cello? Oh God, the kids. Upstairs, asleep, or … She stubbed her toe on something heavy. When she saw what it was, her bladder gave way. Warm pee ran down her thighs and soaked into her tights. She ran through the house, retching. She’d tripped over Chris’s severed head.

  From the foot of the stairs she could see Gary’s body at the dining table. She wanted to fall on the bottom step and weep but she had to check on the children first. She reached the top but had no notion of where she found the strength to make the climb. Outside the first door on the landing she halted. The fear of what she might find hit her. Her body stiffened; some things should remain unseen. But what if they were hurt, still alive? She held her breath as she opened the door and switched on the light, bracing herself for new carnage.

  The mound in the bed moved and Murdo sat up. “Heh,” he said sleepily and rubbed his eyes in the harsh glare. She’d forgotten how it felt to meet a living, breathing human being. The shock made her heartbeat rocket. The colour drained from Murdo’s face as he made out her blood-soaked dress.

  “It’s okay. I spilled some wine. Go back to sleep,” she whispered. Her voice sounded splintered.

  He lay down, and she waited until he’d closed his eyes. She grabbed a chair from his room, switched off the light and closed the door. She wedged the chair under Murdo’s door handle. She couldn’t do anything about Louisa, or the dog, or the severed … or Gary – but she could stop these children from going downstairs.

  There was another chair on the landing. She wedged it under the next door. She’d never been upstairs in Louisa’s house before and had no idea if one of the other boys was asleep inside. She couldn’t open any more doors to check in case she disturbed them. If she acted quickly they could sleep on until she fetched help.

  Three times, she told herself afterwards, three times she went downstairs into the dining room. Three times she walked past her dead husband. Three times she carried one of Louisa’s heavy dining chairs upstairs to wedge it under the remaining doors on the landing. When she tried to prop up the last one, the door crept open. She held her breath but gasped with relief when it turned out to be the empty bathroom, still smelling jasmine-fresh.

  Now get out, get help. She threw herself down the stairs and out of the front door. She heaved up her guts on the snowy lawn, aware of the cold air assaulting her. She felt faintness coming on and wanted to curl up in the snow until the nightmare ended. But the children. She sprinted to the street and collided with Manfred Scholz. She clung to him and didn’t let go.

  31

  Gisela Jakobsen lolled against the residents’ mailboxes in the foyer. She wasn’t sure it was her own apartment building but at this time of night she didn’t give a damn. Es ist mir völlig Wurscht. Ich will pennen (I want a kip). She sank to the floor ready to sleep. She thought of the angry man’s voice on the intercom as he let her in. Too tired to stand outside and fumble with her door key while a polar wind snatched at her backside, she’d pressed the buzzer to every apartment. The man who answered said he’d set his dog on her.

  She hauled herself to her feet and put her hands out to stop the foyer from spinning. Wo wohne ich? She laughed out loud as she wondered where the hell she lived. She caught sight of a fern wreath on the door in the corner. It was a Christmas present from one of the neighbours. The Saviour’s birth. She hadn’t bothered to tell the silly woman they didn’t decorate anymore.

  She staggered over to her front door. Purse, fags and other entrails fell out of her handbag when she unzipped it. Her head thumped as she squatted down to retrieve her bunch of keys. Scheiße, how was she supposed to know w
hich stupid key to use? She’d sleep on it. She closed her eyes.

  ***

  She came to with her face pressed against the Christmas wreath. She pulled away and rubbed her dimpled skin. How long had she blacked out for? She blinked hard, trying to kick-start her brain but she couldn’t remember how she’d got back to her flat. It was the second part of the evening that had gone missing.

  She knew she’d been thrown out of Gasthaus Holtmühle because the landlord had called her besoffen (plastered). He ordered her a taxi to take her home but she told the driver to take her to another bar. She accused him of clocking up an extortionate fare so he pulled up outside a bar near the international school and ordered her out of his taxi. She screamed at him that she wasn’t drinking with no British lowlifes but he drove off. Had she gone into the bar? She had no memory of what the hell she did until she found herself drinking schnapps in Dortmannhausen Christmas market at midnight.

  She selected a key at random and stabbed at the door lock. Verdammt, zu klein (too small). She switched to a bigger key but couldn’t get within five centimetres of the lock because of the tremor in her hand. She slid down to the floor. It was pointless knocking; Sascha wouldn’t hear her. She doubted he was even there. He’d set out about seven with a grim look on his face. It frightened her when he set his jaw like that, spoiling for a fight.

  She found herself on her feet again. This time the key hit the target and the door let her in. She felt her way through the darkness to her bedroom. Ich muß mal (I need a wee). But when she reached the bathroom, she heard running water and saw the light on under the door. What was Sascha doing in there at this time of night? She tried to see the hands on her watch but the darkness and the drink stopped her focusing. Why couldn’t he wait until morning before taking a shower?

  32

  “I think you need hospital. Perhaps I fetch your husband?” Manfred said.

  Helen gripped him tighter, feeling dazed. “Phone the police.” The effort to speak exhausted her and she didn’t reply when he asked her what had happened.

  He stepped back and tried to give her his coat but she refused it. “I’m covered in blood.” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

  “We can call from my house.”

  Manfred’s hall was barren – a worn carpet and a telephone resting on an upturned vegetable crate – but after Number Ten, it was the cosiest place on Earth. She sat at the foot of the stairs while he made the call and talked to the operator in German. He sounded calm and authoritative. Afterwards she asked him what he had said.

  “That perhaps an accident has occurred at Dickensweg, number 10. They will send a policeman to check.”

  “Did you tell them about the boys?”

  Manfred looked baffled.

  “Police sirens will wake them up. We have to go back. They mustn’t see the bodies.”

  Manfred narrowed his eyes as if weighing up how to respond. “If you won’t take my coat, you must have my hat and scarf.”

  He lifted his felt hat from his head and put it on hers. It was warm from his body heat. When he put his scarf around her shoulders, it smelled of tobacco. In normal circumstances such intimate contact with her elderly neighbour would have repulsed her, now it was the nearest thing to fatherly love.

  As they reached the Howards’ garden path, a police vehicle pulled up behind them. Two young men got out and adjusted their caps.

  Manfred approached them and spoke in German. He pointed at Helen. In the light from the street lamps, Helen saw both officers alter their posture. They’d seen her dress.

  One said something to the other and went to the front door. He was moving in and out of focus as if Helen were watching him from the end of a long telescope. He disappeared inside. A million miles away she heard Manfred give his name and address to the other officer. The policeman moved on to her and spoke in English. On autopilot she gave her date of birth. A buzzing noise rushed through her head.

  “Catch her,” she heard him say and in the next moment she was in the passenger seat of the police car wrapped in a foil blanket. The officer squatted in front of her, the bottom of his jacket trailing in the snow. There were traces of acne at his temples. She wondered if he was old enough for this. He asked her to describe what happened. She rambled about children’s spades and cherry sauce.

  She looked up at Number Ten and stopped speaking. Snowy roof, climbing trellises around the door, Christmas lanterns in the window. “Chocolate box,” she mouthed. The only sign of any disturbance was a dark patch on the snow-covered path where she’d vomited.

  “You were telling me what happened in the kitchen,” the man prompted but, before she could reply, his colleague reappeared at the Howards’ door.

  He shouted something and stood there for a moment, taking deep, steadying breaths, before going back in.

  The other officer abandoned his questioning and spoke to Manfred. Apparently following his instructions, Manfred helped Helen out of the car while the policeman got on his radio.

  More German police cars arrived and a civilian van. For a while, Helen and Manfred waited there, ignored, while officers set up floodlights and taped a police cordon around the house. Others donned plastic coveralls and entered through the front door. A female officer stepped out of the house and under the police tape. She was small but with an air of command about her. She strode over to them and spoke to Manfred. Then she talked into her radio.

  A few minutes later another female officer came out carrying Murdo. Leo walked between her and Toby, holding their hands. They were wearing wellington boots and coats but Helen could see their pyjama trousers too.

  “The officer asked if they can shelter at my house for a moment,” Manfred explained.

  The boys and the policewoman trudged through the snow, following Manfred to his house. Their faces looked bewildered but not unhappy. Helen’s throat knotted: when those poor boys find out what’s happened … She turned away so that the floodlights wouldn’t pick out the vivid pattern on her dress, made up of their mother’s blood. She pulled the foil blanket tighter and found herself looking up at house number 8. Jerome Stephens was standing at an upstairs window staring down at her.

  The first female officer, the small, confident one, brought a tall man in jeans and a thick anorak over to her. She introduced him as Detective Zanders of the Kriminalpolizei and she said her name was Simons. “Mrs Taylor, we will interview you formally in due course, but are you well enough to answer a few questions now?”

  Helen nodded but they’d already fetched out their notebooks; it had been a statement of their intent, not a request.

  “Were you a guest at the house?” Zanders asked.

  “I should have been but I was late.”

  “Who let you in?”

  “No one. I went around the back. It was unlocked.”

  “Through the kitchen?”

  She nodded and swallowed hard.

  Simons took over the questioning. “Where was the woman when you entered?”

  “Where she is now.”

  “Tell us exactly where that was, please, Mrs Taylor.”

  “In the cheesecake.” She suppressed an urge to laugh. How long before hysteria got her?

  Her two interrogators looked at each other. Simons said: “You’re saying she was dead when you found her? Did you try to revive her?”

  Her legs were aching now. She was tired of standing and wanted to get back in the police car. “I could see she was dead. If you mean: how did I get the bloodstains, I brushed against blood on the stool. It was hard not to.”

  “What did you do after you realized the woman was dead, Mrs Taylor?”

  “I went to tell Gary, my husband.”

  “You left the house immediately?”

  “No, Gary is at the dining table. I went to tell him, but he wasn’t much help.” She heard a harsh, ugly sound and realized it was her own bitter laughter. The officers made notes on their pads. The harder she laughed, the more they wrote. Be
tween her wild giggles, she heard a car door slam and running footsteps approach. She carried on shrieking and only stopped when someone shouted: “What the hell’s going on, Helen?” Hearing someone call her by her Christian name for the first time in a hundred years, she shut up and turned around to reply. But the newcomer backed away from her. Helen, stinking of sweat and piss and blood, was facing Damian Howard.

  PART TWO

  33

  Friday, 3 December

  Gisela hated Aldi even though it was the cheapest place for Sekt and spirits. She always got the same woman at the checkout who peered at her down her spectacles and said: “Schon wieder?” Gisela would glare back. Why shouldn’t I be here again already? If I don’t buy booze, you’re out of a job.

  She preferred to take the car to the Lidl on the ring road but her head was hammering and she was seeing double so driving was out of the question. She had no option but to walk to Aldi. She’d wanted to stay in bed but sleep had deserted her when a streak of winter sun had bounced off the snow and in through the gap in her blinds. Her mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage and she needed a drink. She’d made contact with a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt from the pile on the floor and pulled them on – slowly because every movement sent a jangling pain through her head.

  Outside the apartment block she wheezed and coughed, the contrast with the centrally heated flat sending shockwaves through her lungs. She went back indoors to get her coat from the bedroom but she saw Sascha’s jacket hanging in the hall and grabbed it instead. He wouldn’t need it; as far as she knew, he was still in bed, more dead than she was.

  She picked her way along the pavement. Law-abiding owners had cleared the snow from the front of their properties but it had fallen again, making the surfaces treacherous. When she turned the corner, she felt the full blast of the December air. She ducked back against the wall and put her hands in the jacket pockets, looking for Sascha’s Marlboros. They weren’t there but she touched a tiny object inside. Key ring? Jewellery? She took it out. An earring. It was a dainty piece – tiny emerald stones and one larger teardrop that would dangle as the wearer moved her head. Has Sascha got a girlfriend? The swimmer he mentioned months ago? She stuffed the earring back in the pocket.