by A J Waines
‘How come you didn’t hear him?’ said Karen. ‘He must have made one hell of a crash when he fell.’
I shook my head. ‘I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t even hear him come in…’
‘He must have tripped over the mat and hit his head on the corner of the bedstead.’ We both honed our gaze onto the solid iron balls on the top of the bedframe. I tried to remember. There was something about what Karen was saying that sounded familiar, but it was like a dream I’d once had where only fragments remained, floating around in the wrong order.
‘Maybe it was so quick he didn’t make a sound,’ I suggested. ‘But – what was he doing here – in my room?’
I stared in astonishment at the weight of him, the size of him, unable to see how it could be true. ‘How could I not have heard him?’ I muttered.
Karen walked over to my bedside cabinet and held up the bottle of sleeping tablets, rattling them. ‘I think these might have something to do with that.’
I reached over to reclaim them. ‘I hardly ever use them,’ I protested.
She put the bottle back. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she said.
‘We should call the police.’ I grabbed my phone from the pocket of my bathrobe and punched in 999. Nothing happened. I looked down at it, then pressed it to my ear. There was no tone. I checked the bars on the screen. Of course, no signal.
‘We’re out of range,’ said Karen. ‘I’ll get changed and go down the lane – see if I can get a connection. I’ll drive if I have to. You stay with Mel.’
‘We should roll him back to how we found him.’
Karen leant down and gave his shoulder a push so he slumped back against the floor.
I grabbed a bundle of clothes – I had to get out of the room as quickly as possible – and stumbled into the bathroom. I got to the toilet just in time. Three surges of vomit spattered against the sides. I sat on the floor holding the bowl, shaking. What the hell had happened?
Edging my way out, I dropped my clothes and patted the wall beside me as if I was blind. I gripped the windowsill on the landing and made myself focus. Outside, Karen was running along the track, stopping, then waving her phone around. Then she held it to her face and I saw her lips move. Thank God, she’d got through. I rested my head against the wall and breathed heavily.
I reached out with both hands and grabbed on to the bannister. I don’t know how I got down the stairs without falling. My legs were like sticks of cooked spaghetti and there was a snowstorm behind my eyes.
Karen came inside and sat with me at the bottom of the stairs. ‘They’re coming,’ she said, ‘but it could be a while.’
‘Who is he?’ I said.
‘I told you. I’ve no idea.’
‘Why would he turn up like this? How did he get in?’
She grabbed my hand and we went from room to room together, checking for any signs of intrusion. We spotted it straight away; the kitchen window was open. Blasts of cold air were bursting through. Karen reached out to shut it, but I caught her arm.
‘We mustn’t touch anything,’ I said.
‘It’s freezing,’ she said, nudging it almost closed with her elbow.
I pointed to a single wet boot-print on the window ledge. ‘That’s his,’ I said stupidly, my mouth hanging open.
‘Looks like he was on his own,’ said Karen.
‘Was he trying to rob us? Is this connected to Mark – and all that money I found?’ I was chuntering on, mostly to myself, trying to fill the space with words so I could block out the dead man’s image.
I went through to the fireplace and resorted to pacing back and forth. My heart was thudding away under my ribcage, my palms sweating even though I was shivering at the same time. The hand on the clock face shifted to quarter-past, then half-past.
‘Where are the police?’ I said, taking hold of the bookshelf for balance.
‘I told you. They might take a while.’ Her hand was shaking as she took my arm. She was more perturbed than she sounded. ‘Why don’t you get dressed? You’re freezing.’
The thought of the man lying at the foot of my bed kept me rooted to the spot. I’d had my clothes in my hand a minute ago, where were they now? Seeing the stupefied look on my face, Karen went upstairs. She came back with my jeans and jumper. I pulled them on over my pyjamas without thinking.
‘I’ll light the fire,’ she said. ‘It’ll give me something to do.’ Her face was puckered into a confused frown, her shoulders sagging. ‘How’s your head been, by the way?’
‘Oh,’ I instinctively put my hand up to the bump. It was the last thing on my mind right now. ‘It comes and goes.’
‘I can’t see anything missing. We should have a check around.’
‘Is Mel okay?’
‘She’s fine. Still asleep.’
I didn’t like the idea of the baby being so close to the man in my bedroom, but he wasn’t going to do anything, he wasn’t going to hurt her. Not now.
I watched Karen get the fire started, feeling I should be doing something, but my brain was too busy firing questions like ping-pong balls in every direction. I got up and stood by the window in the hall so I could see the track, while Karen went around checking for signs of disturbance. I just wanted the police to come and take the body away.
No sign of them. It looked like it had rained and re-frozen overnight; everything was covered in shards of glass. The roads would be treacherous.
‘Come back to the fire, Alice,’ Karen called to me, ‘there’s nothing we can do.’
I stared at the flames, then the clock, then the window in turn as the minutes ticked by. Just before 10am, a sharp rap of the knocker made me jump and Karen leapt to answer the door. At last – the police. I felt too wobbly to get up – by that stage my headache was scorching a hole through my temple.
After a few seconds, I turned to listen, expecting Karen to show them through at any moment. I could hear low voices, but they weren’t getting any closer. Then there was nothing. Karen came back in on her own.
‘Just Mrs Ellington,’ she said. ‘Wanting to know if we had enough blankets.’
‘Did you tell her?’ My eyes were wide in a frantic stare.
‘Of course not!’
I was taken aback. ‘Why ever not?’
‘She would only have panicked – why upset her like that? The police will deal with it.’
‘But where are they?’ I sank back down again gripping the chair arm, watching the clock on the mantelpiece like it was a bomb about to go off.
‘The police aren’t coming, are they? We need to ring again.’ My phone was in my bedroom and I wasn’t going to retrieve it unless it was a last resort.
‘You’re right,’ said Karen, backing out of the room. ‘I’ll try again.’
Chapter 20
It was lunchtime and still the police hadn’t arrived. Karen fed Mel and ate a sandwich herself, but I couldn’t touch anything.
‘They should have been here by now,’ I said confused.
‘Maybe I didn’t get through properly,’ she said simply.
‘I thought you spoke to someone.’
‘I did…it was a very bad line…maybe I was cut off…’
‘I’m worried someone will come looking for him,’ I said, plucking at the skin under my chin.
‘Stop fussing,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll put Mel down for a nap and try them again – see what’s going on.’
It was snowing heavily when Karen enveloped herself in her thickest coat to brace the elements again. I lost her in the blizzard as I watched from the hall window. White flakes had stuck to the fur around her hood and she shook them off when she got back inside.
‘No good,’ she said, shuddering with the cold. ‘I reckon the atmospherics are playing havoc with the signal. It’s dreadful underfoot, too – I don’t fancy driving unless I have to. I’ll try later.’
I stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I can’t bear this.’ I stamped my foot on the verge of hysteria.
‘Okay – come on.’ She took my hand and put her foot on the first stair, but I pulled away.
‘Come on – where?’ I said, backing off.
‘We should find out who he is. It might tell us why he came here.’
‘No – I don’t…I can’t…’
‘Let’s just see if there’s anything in his pockets.’
I let her open my bedroom door. I tried not to breathe in; there was already a bad smell, a cross between Mel’s nappy and cat food that had gone off. I noticed a dark stain in the seat of his jeans this time and put my hand over my mouth.
Karen was already beside him on the floor. She felt his pockets and pulled out a wallet from the inside of his bomber jacket. She began fingering through it. My body was stiff with terror.
‘Okay – it says here he’s called Charles Smith and he’s twenty-three years old.’
‘Smith?’
‘You don’t think that’s his real name?’ She pulled out a piece of card. ‘There’s a train ticket – for tomorrow – from Glasgow to London.’
‘What else?’
‘Looks like there’s also an open train ticket to Europe.’ She sank back on her heels. ‘It’s okay, he’s a backpacker.’
‘What do you mean, It’s okay? It’s hardly okay, is it? He’s dead.’
‘He’s a free spirit.’
‘But won’t someone come looking for him? Wouldn’t he have told someone where he was going?’
She flipped through the rest of his wallet; I saw a few notes, but no credit cards.
‘There are no photos of a girlfriend – no photos of kids. I reckon he was on his own.’ She peered up and down the body. ‘Look at him – he’s been living rough, he’s a drifter. He was about to leave the country. No one’s going to miss him.’
I sent my eyes across the floor, everywhere but the spot where his body lay. ‘If he’s a backpacker where’s his rucksack?’
‘Let’s look outside,’ she suggested. I followed – any excuse to get away.
We stuffed our feet into our boots at the front door and hurried out. Karen checked the hedges at the front and I followed the wall round the cottage to the back.
‘Got it,’ I called out. A tall rucksack had been left under the same window where the intruder had let himself in. Karen joined me.
‘He obviously wasn’t planning on staying long,’ she said. ‘Quick in and out – then he was heading off to Europe with his rich pickings.’
‘Just an opportunist thief, you think?’ I asked her. ‘Trying his luck with the holiday cottages?’
‘Maybe.’ She pointed to the window. ‘It was pretty easy to break in – he probably just levered it open with a penknife.’
She was unzipping his rucksack before I could stop her. ‘Not much here,’ she said. ‘A paperback, a few maps – oh, look – a passport,’ she said, flipping it open. ‘Yeah – Charles Smith.’ She started putting things back.
‘Shall we bring it inside?’
‘No – better leave it here. The police need to know where we found it.’
I looked down at her bare hands. ‘You’ve touched things, Karen. Your fingerprints are going to be all over his wallet, his bag, his clothes...’
She straightened up, shrugging me off and we went inside. ‘At least we know,’ she said, blowing into her hands in the hall.
It did little to set my mind at rest. All we really knew was that our cottage was exceedingly easy to break into and we’d contaminated a murder scene. We didn’t know how he’d died and we didn’t know why he’d broken in.
‘Why don’t you have a bath? You look frozen,’ suggested Karen. ‘I’ll try the police again. If I can’t get through, I’ll risk the drive to the village and find a public phone.’
‘There’s one in the pub,’ I replied. ‘And there’s a phone box on the village green.’
‘There you are – I’ll go once you’ve had your bath if I can’t get a signal.’
As soon as I stepped onto the bathmat, I knew I had a problem. I felt the floor sliding away from me. Oh, no. Not here. Not now. I buried my face in the towel, hoping I could wipe this crazy seizure away. It’s okay. Breathe. In. Out. Steady. But it wasn’t okay. Another earthquake was coming on inside my head, just like the other time.
As I tried to make my thoughts follow a straight line, my vision began to go patchy; large white holes started appearing where the floor should have been, where the door should have been. It was back; the same terrifying episode I’d had in London after I’d been mugged. I thought I’d left it behind.
I couldn’t get my brain to work at all; an intense vertigo had claimed me. Next thing, I was lying in a heap on the wet lino holding the base of the sink, blinking slowly in big pronounced swipes but seeing only fractured shapes. I could feel the panic hissing behind my teeth. I kept seeing the man’s body as if he was right next to me – feel his skin, his hair brushing my naked leg, his cold stiff hand on my arm. Get him off me! Someone – take him away!
I couldn’t think straight, whatever was taking over felt loud and angry and was heading straight towards me. I lay there, my mouth hanging open, waiting for whatever this was to pass.
There was a loud rapping on the bathroom door and when there was no reply, someone came in.
‘What the—?’ cried Karen, cradling my head. ‘Speak to me, Ally. What happened?’
She must have heard me. I didn’t know I’d cried out.
More than anything, I was ashamed. I was better than this. I’d done a lot of work on myself in the last six years. I’d stopped being weak, stopped giving in to negativity, but what happened three months ago – and now this dead body – had done more damage than I could handle.
My mouth wouldn’t work anymore. There was no moisture inside, only grit. But I knew who Karen was. A good sign. I was coming back. She half shook, half cradled me, repeating my name. Eventually, I could feel sensation in my fingers. I could smell her coffee breath over my mouth, feel the hard floor pressing into my bare backside and the pain in my head. I stirred and tried to sit up.
‘Shit, Alice – what the hell happened?’
I tried to form words but they came out sounding nothing like I wanted them to. ‘Imffnnnn…’
‘What?’
‘Imffnnnn…’
She hauled me towards the bath and leant me against it while she grabbed something in the sink. The next thing I knew she was dabbing a cold wet flannel over my face. She squeezed a few drops of it into my gaping mouth. It tasted soapy and I coughed, trying to spit it out.
She wrapped a towel around me and tried to rub sense back into me.
I lost track of what happened next until I could feel my eyes being peeled open with damp fingers. I was lying flat on something soft. I blinked, then kept my eyes open, my vision pulling items back into focus again.
‘Alice – what the hell happened? Are you okay? Have you had a stroke?’
I checked the carpet quickly, wanting to know which room I was in. It was Karen’s.
‘I slipped, that’s all,’ my mouth was dry and clacky. ‘I lost my balance…’
She rolled her tongue over her lips and stared at me. I could tell she didn’t believe me. She held my hand for a second or two, then let it fall on the bedspread. ‘You’d better rest,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring up some tea.’
As she set the mug down beside me I decided to explain everything – the mugging in September, the subsequent panic attack.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ she said.
‘I would have done,’ I insisted, ‘only the others turned up and you were worried about the baby…and …’
‘Getting mugged at knifepoint is a big deal, Alice. No wonder you’ve had panic attacks.’
‘Only one…before this. They’re like seizures,’ I explained, ‘parts of my brain burn themselves out. That’s the only way to describe it. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. I thought I wouldn’t have any more…I don’t have the tablets…�
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She took hold of my hand. ‘You’re going to be fine, Ally. You’ve had one nasty shock after another. Finding someone dead on the floor…can’t have…well…’ She didn’t need to go on.
‘I didn’t want you to think I was a head case,’ I admitted.
‘Don’t be silly. A mugging can happen to anyone. And this…you were in the wrong place at the wrong time – that’s all.’
‘Thanks…’ Everything she said reminded me of why I liked her so much. Attentive, caring, no shred of disapproval.
‘You’re a tough cookie now,’ she said. ‘You’ll get through this.’ She grabbed my shoulders, gripping me firmly. ‘We both will.’
I nipped my lips together, cursing the fact that she’d caught me like this. I was desperate she shouldn’t feel sorry for me. I wanted to be her equal, not the fragile, hopeless one who still needed looking after. ‘What time is it?’ I said, trying to sit up. ‘No sign of the police?’
‘I tried again just now,’ she said. ‘There’s still no signal and the car won’t start. I must have forgotten to top up the anti-freeze – she’s normally incredibly reliable. We’ll wait until the morning. The police will take it in their stride, I’m sure.’
She had more faith in their understanding than I had. Once the police knew how long it had taken us to inform them – and the fact that we’d interfered with the body and his belongings – I was convinced they’d be waving their fists in our faces.
‘One of us should walk to the village,’ I said.
‘Well, you can’t go like this,’ she stated. ‘And Mel isn’t too great – she’s been coughing – so I’m staying put.’
‘Has Stuart been round?’ I asked.
‘No.’ She smoothed out the pillow beside my head. ‘Try to get some sleep.’
A tidal wave of exhaustion claimed me before she left the room.
I woke to cooking smells rising up from downstairs, but they made me feel sick. I kept thinking of what was lying behind my closed bedroom door. What if the others came back?
Karen had brought my clothes back from the bathroom and left them neatly folded on a chair, so I pulled them on, ready to join her. I had to make myself eat something; I was feeling light-headed.