Dark Corners: A Novel

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said the concierge. ‘It may take a few days.’

  Mrs Weatherspoon phoned Lizzie and asked her to vacate the flat on the following day, as her daughter would be moving in and the lock would be changed. Lizzie put up a weak defence that she was here at Gervaise’s invitation, and Yvonne told her not to be silly. It was five in the afternoon and Lizzie had just returned from playschool. She poured herself a large vodka and orange – the first of a new bottle – and decided that there was nothing for it but to get out the next day.

  Swithin Campbell, her phone said, ringing musically. ‘Come out with me tonight, Liz?’ he said. ‘I’ll call for you at seven.’

  It gave her very little time to get ready, but five minutes would have been enough. She rushed into the bedroom and got into a bright red bra and pants and Stacey’s black dress with the white lace panel down the front. Jo Malone’s Pomegranate Noir was sprayed down her cleavage. She slid her feet into Stacey’s most uncomfortable shoes, the red ones with the four-inch heels. By the time she was sitting down again, finishing off the vodka, the doorbell was ringing.

  It wasn’t Swithin. The man at the door told Lizzie he was Mr Newman’s driver, sent to fetch her. Mr Newman was waiting outside in the car.

  Swithin wasn’t called Newman but Campbell, but Lizzie didn’t think this important. Newman was probably his business partner or something.

  He stepped inside, and Lizzie felt something rammed into her spine and let out a shriek that there was no one around to hear. He showed her the gun, then replaced it on her spine and said, ‘We’re going to walk downstairs, you first.’

  Of course she did, trembling by now. The gun wasn’t real. It was a toy that the driver had borrowed from his five-year-old nephew, but Lizzie didn’t know that. It felt and looked like a gun. They walked past the concierge’s office and out into Primrose Hill Road. A car was there, but the man in it was someone Lizzie had never seen before, a big redhead in a leather coat and ragged jeans. The driver bundled her into the back.

  Lizzie was so frightened she couldn’t speak. She tried to, stammering and hesitating and gasping, but no real words came out. She wanted to ask her abductors where they were taking her, but it was useless to try. The redhead held her hands behind her back and put what felt like handcuffs on her wrists while the other man told her to bite on something he held across her mouth. She had seen this done on TV but had never thought how horrible it must feel, the bandage or scarf or whatever it was tied so tightly that it felt as if it must split her lips. The driver gave her a great shove so that she fell across the back seat with no hands free to struggle or defend herself.

  The red-headed man took the gun from the driver, thrust it into her ribs and they were off. Few people were about, but even if the street had been crowded, Lizzie realised that people didn’t look into parked cars, or moving cars for that matter. Not being able to use her hands made her into a disabled creature. It was the worst part of it. The gag was horrible, but only because it hurt, not because it made it impossible to utter a sound. She hadn’t been able to speak before it went on and somehow she knew she wouldn’t be able to speak now, even if they took it off. Would they remove the gag and the handcuffs when they got her to where they were taking her? If they didn’t, the time might come when she wouldn’t be able to go on breathing just through her nose. The thought of this made her give a little whimper, and the redhead hissed at her, ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  Like most Londoners, the only part of London Lizzie really knew was the bit round where she lived, in her case the area between Willesden and the Marylebone Road. They seemed quickly to have left that behind. Swithin would be ringing her doorbell now. Would he raise the alarm? Unlikely. A kind of fog spread across Lizzie’s brain, although she was fully conscious, and she began to cry, tears falling down her cheeks on to the stretchy cotton stuff of the gag.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘I KNOW WHAT you’re going to say,’ said Carl. ‘I know it by heart. So don’t bother. I could recite it. You don’t have to say it.’

  They were in Carl’s bedroom on a Sunday afternoon, and Nicola had brought them two mugs of tea. Hers was half drunk, his untouched. Down below the window Sybil Soames was chopping down stinging nettles with shears while Dermot sat in one of the deckchairs reading what Nicola thought might be the parish magazine.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to ask me to buy a lawnmower.’

  ‘You have only to say no.’

  ‘Look, the rent was due weeks ago, but it didn’t come, and it won’t. It won’t come at all, will it? It will never come. At least he pays his gas and electricity bills, but he soon won’t, you’ll see. He’ll ask me a favour, and the favour will be that I take on those bills.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to drink your tea?’

  ‘No, I’m fucking not going to drink my tea.’ He rolled over and put his arms round her. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk to you like that.’

  It was a beautiful day. They walked across to Regent’s Park, where it seemed the whole of London – except for those in Hyde, St James’s and Green Park among others – was gathered, lying on the grass, playing ball games, eating and drinking, admiring the rose garden. The sun was hot, the leaves were green. Nature proclaimed that the winter had been mild and wet and the spring and summer warmer than usual.

  ‘Suppose he starts rearranging my private life?’ said Carl. ‘What if he tells me that if you continue to live with me, he’ll have to tell the Weatherspoon woman what I did? If he asks for the other bedroom, the one next to mine? What do I do then? I can’t say no, can I?’

  Nicola sighed. ‘Carl, you know what I’ll say to that.’

  Even for a local weekly paper, the Paddington Express had a small circulation. But the current issue was selling better than any had for years. It led with the photograph of Stacey Warren that had previously appeared in the Evening Standard and various other dailies. The text surrounding it told of the dinitrophenol that had been obtained by Stacey not online but by buying it from ‘an unknown source’.

  Dermot was given a copy of the newspaper by Sybil, who knew nothing of the DNP story but wanted Dermot to see an ad for a second-hand bed to replace the broken-down one that had been Carl’s father’s. Carl’s tenant, if such he still was, carefully left the newspaper on the table that was the only piece of furniture in the hallway of Falcon Mews.

  The account in the Paddington Express didn’t really say anything new. But Carl, who found the newspaper where Dermot intended him to find it, lead story headline uppermost, read everything into it that wasn’t in fact there. He felt as though he was about to faint, though he had never fainted in his life. There was nowhere to sit down. He staggered dizzily into the living room and subsided into an armchair. Nicola had gone to work, as had Dermot.

  Reason was disappearing. Carl was past the stage of looking calmly at the situation; long past. The sanity he clung to was that he knew he was being irrational. He knew that what Nicola said was true and that a rational person would do what she kept telling him to do. But with his increasing disgust at Dermot had come fear, and fear was now changing into terror. He was beginning to imagine horrible actions Dermot might take against him. This newspaper account was the beginning of them, for he had no doubt Dermot had fed the story to the Paddington Express. Probably even now he was passing the insinuations on to the Evening Standard or tomorrow’s Mail. No imagining was needed for the takeover of his garden, the dropping and noisy shifting of pieces of furniture, the banging of doors and the spurts of music that gushed out for five minutes at a time when the front door to the top-floor flat was opened.

  Carl found that going out and walking, especially in green places and under the heavy-hanging foliage of trees, was somehow remedial. He could tell himself that whatever happened at home, however much Dermot tightened the screw and in so doing deprived him of every penny of his income, he would still have his health and strength and these green trees to walk under and
lawns to look at. His walk this morning took him across Maida Vale and a little way down Lisson Grove in the direction of Rossmore Road. If he continued along Rossmore Road he would come out on to Park Road and from there on to the Outer Circle of Regent’s Park. Plenty of greenery in there, great trees densely in leaf and shrubs in pink and white flower.

  As he walked along Rossmore Road, a sign pointing to Jerome Crescent reminded him of something. Of course – Dermot’s girlfriend Sybil Soames lived there with her parents. He turned into Jerome Crescent, where trees grew on a triangle of green grass, and decided to sit down there and wait for Sybil. She would come; she would be bound to come this way on her way home for her lunch. Somehow he knew she was the kind of girl – an only child sheltered and protected by her working-class parents – who would go shopping arm in arm with her mother on Saturday mornings, and on weekdays always go home for her lunch, which she would call dinner. Dermot, with his quaint outdated morality, would have had no difficulty in persuading her to go along with his wish for a chaste relationship. Carl asked himself why he wanted to talk to her – why he wanted to see her even – but came up with no answer.

  She did come, but took a long time about it. He saw recognition and something that might have been fear in her eyes. She would have avoided him, turned off the path across the green, but for his saying, ‘Sybil.’

  On his feet now, he stood in front of her. ‘Sybil, I’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘Is something wrong? Is he ill?’

  You know what he’s doing to me, don’t you? Carl wanted to say. You know he’s stopped paying me rent, he’s taking over the house, he’ll force me into one room and then out altogether. But confronted by Sybil, poor ignorant creature that she was, he couldn’t do it. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I just went for a walk and then I remembered you lived down here.’ In a low, weak voice, quite wrong for such a cheerful remark, ‘It’s a beautiful day.’

  ‘I’d better get on home,’ she said. ‘My mum’ll be worrying.’

  He watched her cross the road and turn into a doorway. Slowly making his way back up Lisson Grove, leaving behind all these pastel-painted blocks of flats and their green gardens, he realised again what he dreaded most in Dermot’s threats. It wasn’t the loss of income. It was the humiliation he feared. He couldn’t live with the shame.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AT LEAST SHE could see. They had deprived her of speech and to a great extent of movement, but neither of the men who had abducted Lizzie had blindfolded her, so she was able to lift her head high enough to see some street signs.

  When – if – someone came to rescue her, they would want those sorts of clues to where she was. The car had gone over one of the river bridges and, for a moment, had drawn alongside a number 36 bus going north in the opposite direction. Lizzie thought fleetingly of her dad: could he be on the bus on his way back to Mamhead Drive? What would happen if he chanced to look over at the car and saw her – his only daughter – on the back seat, bound and gagged? But the traffic lights changed, and the bus moved on, and there was no help for her, no possibility of rescue. As her eyes filled once more with tears, she struggled to read the names of the places she was passing before, finally, the driver turned into an alley.

  It occurred to Lizzie that these two men weren’t very good criminals. They had the right sort of language and did the right sort of things, like putting on the gag and the handcuffs. But professional kidnappers, real criminals, wouldn’t have left her eyes uncovered, they wouldn’t have left her able to see everywhere they were taking her. Like the lane off Abbotswood Road where they were now, and the alley with its row of lock-up garages.

  The driver must have used a remote, for the door of number 5 went up. Inside, the garage was empty and she could see there was no other way in or out of it. Lizzie thought they might speak to her now, but they didn’t. They got out of the car, the driver first, then the redhead. It was then that she remembered a film she had seen of someone dying from being left in a car in a garage with carbon monoxide exuding from somewhere and poisoning them. Crying out or just crying was no use. She watched them moving out of the garage, leaving her inside the car, noting the height and size of them, their hair. And she thought of Swithin.

  The garage door went down and closed, and deep darkness descended. When thinking about what to expect, Lizzie had forgotten darkness. She had forgotten air, too. But they must not want her to die, because the driver had left his door open a little way and the engine was turned off.

  They would be back. They must be back.

  Upstairs on the number 36 bus, heading north, Tom was thinking about his daughter. He’d long hoped for a change in her lifestyle and character, and now he clung to small steps towards improvement. She needed to find a nice young man with a job. Not a good job, not yet, that would be too much to ask in this day and age, but a man with a job in an office nine till five, and preferably Lizzie at home cooking his dinner. These flights of fancy continued until the bus reached Queen’s Park and Tom got off to wait for one to take him to Willesden.

  When the bus had dropped him at the end of Mamhead Drive and he was in the house, he learned from Dot that Lizzie was expected to supper. Also coming, though not exactly invited, was Eddy Burton from next door. His parents had moved in a month ago, and his mother was going out for the evening and had asked Dorothy if she would be kind enough to give him dinner. Tom thought feeding a man of twenty-eight who wasn’t disabled or with learning difficulties was taking spoiling to an absurd extent. Surely Dot couldn’t be matchmaking? Tom felt rather cross. He wanted to see his daughter on her own.

  He didn’t know how many times he had said to Lizzie that punctuality was the politeness of princes, yet still it was never any good expecting her at a specific time. He wondered if Prince Charles was punctual. He must be, with dozens of people fussing around to make sure he was on time for all those engagements. The Milsoms regularly ate at seven, and Lizzie was a Milsom, who knew their ways if anyone did.

  Eddy had arrived early, bringing his pug with him, an uninvited guest, and had already got through a liberal helping of wine, pushing the empty glass into a prominent position where his hostess couldn’t fail to see it. The pug, whose name was Brutus, ran around the room, leaping on to laps and licking faces. Dot refilled Eddy’s glass, and Tom’s. Clicking her tongue, not at all pleased, she phoned Lizzie’s mobile.

  The only answer she got was that the call had been transferred to a number consisting of about fifteen digits.

  ‘She’s forgotten,’ said Tom. ‘Or she’s out with some bloke.’

  Eddy looked embarrassed. He had been giving his hosts his dog’s complicated life history, too complicated considering the animal was only eight months old, and both Tom and Dot were trying not to show their boredom.

  ‘I suppose we’d better eat,’ said Dorothy, and persuaded Eddy to shut the dog in the kitchen.

  The doorbell rang in the middle of the lemon meringue pie course. Tom was sure it must be Lizzie and went to answer it with ‘Lost your key, have you?’ on his lips.

  The roving fishmonger was on the doorstep, asking if Tom wanted some beautiful cod fresh out of the Atlantic that morning.

  Dorothy phoned Lizzie again later, but again the voicemail was transferred to that long number. Both she and Tom thought this meant that Lizzie had either gone home with the man she was no doubt out with, or had turned off her phone. They disliked the idea of her spending the night with a man, but they never said so, not even to each other. It was what girls did these days, and there was nothing to be done about it.

  South of the river, Redhead and the squat little man who had been the driver came into the garage, switched a light on and opened the nearside rear door of the car. Lizzie heard Redhead call the other man Scotty, and thought how stupid he must be to reveal his name to her. Then, with a sob, she understood that he might do this if he didn’t care if she knew his name. He didn’t care because he meant to kill her.

&
nbsp; Redhead got in the driving seat while Scotty got in the back with her. When he undid the gag, Lizzie had a strange feeling in her mouth and throat. It was like a block on her voice so that all she could do, no matter how she tried, was grunt and gasp like an animal.

  ‘Gone loco,’ said Scotty.

  ‘Good. Don’t want her screaming the fucking place down.’

  The clock on the dashboard had showed Lizzie that it was a quarter past three in the morning. Redhead reversed the car out of the garage and into Abbotswood Road. In silence, Lizzie laid her head back against the upholstery.

  Fear of urinating was keeping her silent and tense. She contracted her muscles as if they were fists closing tightly. It was called a sphincter, she thought; this was what kept her bladder holding it in. If her urine leaked out of her in front of them, she thought she would die. Tears trickled from her eyes. If only the water from her eyes would take some of the water that wanted to pour out of her bladder. Was that the way it worked? Redhead was turning the car into a row of marked-out parking places at the foot of a squalid-looking block of social housing. She had no idea where they were. She didn’t care, concentrating only on holding her sphincter tight shut.

  No one was about. Redhead and Scotty took her inside and up a flight of stone stairs, holding her between them. If someone had followed them, he or she would have seen the handcuffs still on Lizzie’s wrists. No one was there to see.

  Let into a flat by Scotty, she said, ‘Toilet,’ and Redhead pushed her through a door, slamming it behind her. The relief was so great, the joy, that for a moment she was almost happy, taking great breaths, indifferent to her cuffed hands, leaning her upper body forward to press on to her knees.

  Scotty was outside the door, but even so she couldn’t have gone anywhere. If your hands were tied behind your back, it was as bad as tying your feet, worse maybe. Scotty walked her into a living room, holding her shoulders. Redhead was in there, talking on his phone. He put it down when he saw her. Had he been talking to her parents?