Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  “How can you live like this?” I asked. “It’s a building site.”

  She sighed, and I saw then how exhausted she was. It was really getting to her and she said she’d taken to spending most of the day in coffee shops and was thinking about renting an office space.

  I didn’t stay long. I’d planned on spending a couple of hours with her, but the dust, and yes, that same disturbing feeling that I was being watched was nagging at me, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  On my way out, I poked my head into the dining room; it was stacked with brand-new furniture, although there was nothing wrong with the stuff Mal had bought when she left Vile Gerry and moved into the rented duplex. She said Robin wanted to start from scratch and buy new things that were just ‘theirs’. I asked her if she could afford it, and she shrugged. There was something else bothering her. I pressed her, and she said he’d “got a bit upset” when all the ex-owner’s furniture had been cleared out.

  “Why? If he wanted a fresh start?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. There wasn’t anything we would have wanted to keep.”

  I didn’t see much of her for the next while. I was busy with Meera. Saira was offered a promotion and had to work longer hours, and time just slipped away.

  The next time we were in contact was when Nikesh and I were invited to that bloody awful house warming.

  The Dinner Guest

  HELENA HAD SPOKEN of little else but Mal’s new place for weeks, and I was curious to see it and meet Robin, the new man in her life. The invitation to the house warming had been formal, and extremely odd: Please come to a small dinner to celebrate the completion of phase 1 of the renovation. Corporate speak. Mal has never been what you would term effusive or warm, but I couldn’t see her writing something like that. It amused me. It was the sort of pompous language Gerry, Mal’s ex, would have used. Perhaps, I thought, Robin was merely a younger version of Gerry. I prayed he wasn’t. Her marriage to Gerry had been volatile. More volatile than Helena knew. I wasn’t close to him, but he’d told me on several occasions that Mal had lost her temper with him. Personally, I wasn’t surprised. It was a miracle she stayed married to him for so long. I didn’t believe everything he said about her when he was in court, but some of it had the ring of truth to it, and I am almost certain that it was his testimony that convinced the jury to convict her.

  That night, Helena and I were just about to walk out the door when Saira arrived. She’s a social worker and had been called back into work, and her babysitter had let her down again. Helena and I decided we’d take Meera along with us instead of cancelling. As I said, I was curious, and Helena didn’t want to let Mal down.

  We were the last to arrive. I could see straight away that Mal was nervous, shaking slightly as if she was suffering from a low-grade infection.

  There were only two other guests, both of whom were perched awkwardly on a crisp new sofa. The whole flat stank of paint and paint stripper. It was cloying. Let’s see, there was Steve, who looked exactly what he was, a fitness instructor, and who, in my opinion, showed signs of steroid abuse, and Kelly, who was pretty in a hard-eyed way and didn’t seem to trust Mal. I wondered if Mal had done something to offend her.

  When I shook hands with Robin his fingers were freezing cold. I never got the chance to know him well enough to form a solid opinion about him, but he seemed like a reasonable enough chap. He was very young, of course, and quite downbeat, possibly depressed. I asked him to show me around the flat. Helena finds this unusual, but I have an interest in interior design, and personally enjoy those makeover shows. I find them relaxing after hours of dealing with my patients’ real – and sometimes imagined – problems.

  To me, the schemes he’d chosen were predictable and rather unimaginative. White in the kitchen, which included a rather ineptly done tiled splash-back, egg-shell blue in the lounge, and sage green in the dining room.

  “Helena says you are doing all the work yourself,” I said.

  He sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Are you enjoying it?”

  I can’t remember what he said then, but he didn’t seem to be that enthusiastic.

  I asked him more questions about what he planned to do in the bedrooms, but like Mal, he was coming across as both nervous and exhausted. I wondered if they had been fighting. There was an awkward atmosphere in the place, a tension, like you get in unhappy households.

  Helena is good at putting people at ease, and she kept up a steady stream of small talk, asking Kelly and Steve about themselves while Mal and Robin clattered around in the kitchen.

  But Meera wouldn’t settle. She’s usually a good little girl. Not at all like her mother was at that age. I gave her the iPad to play with, which Helena doesn’t approve of, but even this didn’t distract her. I sat her in my lap at the dinner table, and she buried her head in my chest.

  Mal and Robin entered the dining room with bowls of broccoli soup. I’m a vegetarian, and I appreciated that they had catered for me. Their body language was stiff. Again I had the feeling they had been fighting. We all ate in silence for longer than was comfortable.

  “The place looks wonderful, Robin,” Helena said to break the awkwardness.

  “It’s still not right,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Not this again, Robin,” Mal sighed. She really did look wiped out. I knew she had problems with insomnia.

  Kelly gave her a dark look.

  “Looks great, mate,” Steve said. “Now I’m here I can see why you’ve been skiving off work.” He was trying to lighten the atmosphere, but Mal frowned.

  “You’ve been skipping your classes, Robin?” she said.

  “Just a few. Got to finish up here.”

  “I told you we could get someone in.”

  It escalated quickly. Robin looked like he was on the verge of tears. I remember him yelling something along the lines of, “You know how important this is to me, Mal. Why don’t you support me instead of going on at me all the time?”

  “Support you? I do nothing but support you,” she retorted.

  I can’t remember exactly what else was said, but they went on for quite a while, as if they were oblivious to the rest of us. It was extremely uncomfortable. Helena tried to intervene, but it was Meera who shut them up and snapped them out of it.

  “Nani,” she said loudly to me. “Don’t like it. I have to go pee-pee.”

  She was three at the time, and still needed help in the bathroom. Helena offered to take her, but I went, eager to get away from the frosty room.

  They hadn’t yet got around to doing the bathroom. The old tiles were only partially smashed off, and a new bath was crushed against the wall, which did not leave much room to manoeuvre. That’s when Meera said. “Nani! Who is the funny man? I don’t like him.”

  Assuming she meant Steve or Robin I said, “That’s not very nice, Meera. They’re Auntie Mally’s friends.”

  “The man in the bath, Nani,” she said. “I don’t like the man in the bath.”

  And then she started screaming.

  I jumped and turned to look, half-expecting to see an intruder lurking there. But of course there was no one.

  I tried to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. I picked her up. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I felt a powerful urge to leave.

  Listen. I am a doctor, my mother was a doctor, my father was a consultant and my brother is a chemical engineer. What I’m saying is that I am a rationalist. I don’t believe in ghosts. But something had upset Meera to the point of hysteria, and I can’t deny that I had also picked up something untoward in the air.

  By now Helena and Mal had heard Meera’s screams and were calling out to us. I stumbled into the hallway.

  Meera reached for Helena, sobbing, “Want to go home, Nana.”

  I’ve never seen her like that, before or since. We left.

  That’s all I have to say.

  No. I don’t want to talk about discovering t
he body. No. I don’t want to talk about the effect this had on me. I’m only talking to you now because Helena asked me to. You asked about the night of the house warming, and I have told you about it. I will not comment on anything else. Besides, it’s all in the court transcripts.

  The Co-Worker

  THE KID KEPT yelling that there was a ‘man in the bath’. The Indian guy – he was okay, I suppose – said the room was empty, but me and Robin checked it out anyway.

  I could see Robin was still shaken from the fight he’d had earlier with her, and he looked genuinely frightened. “It’s alright, mate,” I said. “Kids say weird shit all the time.”

  I clapped him on the back, and he cried out as if I’d hurt him.

  The kid and her grandparents had left by the time we made it back to the dining room, and Kelly and her were sitting in stony silence. “Maybe we should go as well,” Kelly said. And The Butcher said, cold as you like. “That would be best.”

  I was worried about him after that, both me and Kelly were. You always hear about men abusing women, but you don’t often hear about it happening the other way around. Course, we didn’t know that was going on as it only came out in the trial.

  Couple of days after the house warming, Robin came into the gym for the last time. I was working with one of my ladies, but I kept an eye on him. He barely cracked a smile, and kept staring into the distance. And he wore a long-sleeved T-shirt the whole time he was taking his client through her cross-fit work and lunges, though the air-con was on the blink again and the bloody place was like a sauna.

  When I was done with my client, I went to find Robin in the staff changing room, meaning to have a word. I caught him as he was stepping out of the shower. “Fuck me,” I said. His body was a mess. Covered in bruises and these barely healed cuts. Most of them looked like road rash – like bikers get when they wipe out.

  “Jesus, mate, what the fuck’s happened to you?” I said.

  “Fell off my bike,” he said, but you could see he was lying.

  “What bike?”

  “My mountain bike.”

  “Oh yeah? When did you take that up?”

  He shrugged as if he didn’t care if I believed him or not. Then he went in to see Ryan and quit.

  It was the last time I saw him.

  Kelly and I talk about it all the time. We couldn’t get over how much he’d changed since he was with her. You could see she was one of those control freaks. “I knew she was doing something to him,” Kelly said when it hit the papers. I should have said something when I saw those bruises. Put two and two together.

  I’m glad she got done for it. I’ll stand up anytime they want me to go back to court. Ghosts didn’t do that shit. That bitch was torturing him.

  The Best Friend

  AFTER THAT AWFUL night, I wasn’t invited to the flat again. Mal and I continued to meet occasionally, but only in coffee shops or restaurants. Each time I saw her, she looked more and more worn down. She’d lost weight, and her nails were bloody stumps. The last time I’d seen her looking so bad was when she was in the midst of dealing with one of Vile Gerry’s messes.

  I kept asking her what was wrong, but she insisted that everything was going well, and the renovation was almost complete. I wittered on to fill the silences, telling her about Saira and Zane and Meera and Nikesh. I could have done more. I could have pushed her harder. Guilt. I’m full of that now. It can gnaw away at you; wake you up at three am in a cold sweat.

  She didn’t mention any of the difficulties she was having with Robin, or that he was self-harming. I should have done more. I know I should have done more. When I was called to give evidence, that swine for the Crown implied that either I didn’t give a shit what was going on between them, or I was silently condoning it by not getting involved. I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. But I honestly never knew the extent of the trouble. And Mal didn’t tell me – not then, anyway – that she’d been looking into the flat’s background.

  “She’ll come to you if she needs you,” Nikesh kept saying. But it was years before she told me about Gerry and his cheating and money squandering. She was ashamed, you see. Mal didn’t like to fail.

  On the night that Robin... on the night Robin died, Nikesh and I were sitting in the lounge watching the Bake-Off final. The kids were all out, and we were enjoying the peace. Then my mobile beeped. I almost let it ring out, but then I saw it was Mal. We hadn’t seen each other for weeks, and I’d been feeling guilty for neglecting her.

  When I answered, all I could hear at first was breathing. Then she whispered, “Helena? Can you come?”

  I was instantly flooded with the same cold, sick feeling I’d had when Saira called us at two am saying that someone had put something in her drink and she didn’t know where she was. That turned out all right, but I knew in my gut that this wouldn’t. “Where are you, Mal?”

  Picking up on the panic in my voice, Nikesh stood up and turned the telly off.

  There was a long pause and then she said, “Irongrove Lodge.” Not ‘home’ or ‘in the flat’ but the name of the building. It chilled me.

  The line went dead.

  I tried calling her back but she didn’t answer. All I knew was that I had to go round there. Nikesh insisted on coming with me. When I was on the stand I was asked why I didn’t just call the police straightaway. I wish more than anything that I had. But she hadn’t told me what was wrong. She didn’t tell me that he was dead. I thought maybe they’d had a fight and he’d stormed out or something.

  It was raining when we arrived at the house. The front door was open. Either she’d buzzed it from inside the flat in the expectation of our arrival or one of her mystery neighbours had left it ajar.

  We crept up the stairs, our footsteps sounding too loud.

  When she opened the door, the first thing I noticed was that her eyes were dead. Then I thought, She’s covered in mud. Why is she covered in mud? But it wasn’t mud. It was blood.

  And then the smell hit me. It took me right back to working at Firkin & Son’s. The shop always smelled rank late in the afternoon, just before we cleared out the meat display trays.

  Then she said, “Helena. He’s dead. Robin’s dead. It’s my fault.”

  I wish I could lie about that. But that’s what she said.

  “Where is he, Mal?” Nikesh asked.

  “In the bedroom.” And then she giggled – shock I suppose. “Most of him, anyway.”

  “Stay here with her, Helena,” Nikesh said. He was calm the whole time. As he made his way into the bedroom, he was already calling the police on his mobile.

  I led Mal over to the couch. It was gloomy in there, but I noticed that it was almost a carbon copy of the awful pink one that had been in the lounge when they’d first bought the flat. Rivulets of deep blue paint were dried on its arms.

  “What happened, Mal?” I asked, wondering if I should go and find some brandy or if that was only what they gave people for shock in books. I don’t know what I thought might have happened; maybe I assumed that he’d had some kind of accident doing his D.I.Y. Fallen off a ladder or something. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  I put my arm around her. She was shaking. I switched on the side lamp. There was a lump above her lip. The beginnings of a hematoma. They’d had a fight, I thought. He’d hit her. Someone had hit her.

  “Mal...”

  “I don’t want to talk now, Helena,” she whispered. “It’s all my fault.”

  She said the exact same thing to the police in her first interview.

  “Don’t come in here!” Nikesh yelled from the bedroom, making me jump.

  The police arrived within minutes, and Nikesh ran down to show them up, warning me again not to go into the bedroom.

  Two of them showed up. They were young. The same age as Saira. Nikesh warned them that they should prepare themselves before they went into the bedroom, but they both got sick anyway.

  The Cleaner

  I HAVE BEEN in bad places lik
e The Butcher’s house many times. It is part of my job. I do this work because it is specialised and the hourly rate is three times what it would be for normal cleaning. The job is not as bad as people think. You get used to it. We have suits and breathing equipment, which protects you from much of the bad smells. The scene that is most common for us is cleaning a place after old people have died and they have been left for many months because no one comes in to check on them. Very very sad. This happened once to a man who lived near my mother’s home in Sibiu. She did not forgive herself for not going to see that he was fine, even though she knew that he was very old and sick.

  Two of our team did not want to do the job when they heard where it was. The police had been to collect the evidence, but there was still much to do. In the end it was only me and my supervisor Karen who would do it. Karen is a tough woman. Very hard. I have never seen her worried or nervous.

  When we first went inside, I think, okay, this is not so bad. We had our masks on, so we could not smell anything but our own breath, and the police had taken away many items for evidence.

  Karen says to me, “Milosz, you start in the kitchen, and I will do the bedroom.” The bedroom is where he died, I think. Karen said she had been told we would have to remove the light fittings in the bedroom and bleach these as well. Whatever had happened must have been very violent, but blood can get everywhere, and we often find it in places people might not think to look. Once we found pieces of broken teeth on the top of a ceiling fan when we were cleaning the house of a suicide victim. It was good of Karen to take the difficult work. There are some in the company who are lazy and get us to do the hard jobs, but not Karen. She is fair.