by Alex Marwood
Thomas stands with one hand on the boot lid, looking down at the body as though it were a logic puzzle. Then, with a single, smooth movement, he lays his hands on one corner of sheeting and hauls upwards. Like an extra in The Walking Dead, Roy sits up in his plastic wrapping, turns and flops over the lip of the boot, like a jack-in-a-box. Slowly at first, then faster, as his centre of gravity shifts, he slithers over the lip and on to the tarmac, like a great blue maggot.
They bump him down the steps, each crackle of plastic and scrape of a sole jerking them to a silent stop. We’ve come so far, now, thinks Collette. Please God don’t let us get caught now. There’s nothing we can do but go forward. She wishes they could hurry, but they can’t afford to get careless. Four people and a stinking corpse: there’s no way you can talk yourself out of that one. By the door, Thomas shuttles through the bunch of keys they fished from Roy’s damp pocket, looking for the one that opens it. Collette climbs back up a couple of steps and scans the street. Any moment now it’s going to fill with a posse of torch-bearing householders, she knows it. A light will come on, then another light, then a voice will ask what they’re doing, and…
And then the door is open. Thomas bends and starts to drag Roy through. Collette rushes down the steps and joins the others.
It’s a night of smells. She can feel that they’ve come straight into a room; a stuffy, hard-surfaced room that smells of frying and onions and sweat and stale alcohol, just like the Landlord himself before other, stronger, smells took over. Laminate floor beneath her feet, some sort of storage unit to her right; nothing that soaks up sound anywhere near, just the dull echo of their panicked breathing, the shuffle of their feet.
The weight dragging on her shoulders gets suddenly heavier, and she realises that Thomas has dropped his share of the burden. She does the same, hears the Landlord’s skull crack against the floor. The door closes.
‘Where’s the lights?’ hisses Cher.
‘Hang on.’ He’s speaking normally now, confident that they’re not overheard. She hears him feel his way across the room to the window, and they are plunged in darkness as a blind is drawn down.
A hand slips into hers and squeezes. Over the smell of the room and the smell of the dead man, she catches a slight whiff off the clean, sandalwood scent of Hossein. He doesn’t say a word, but she feels comforted, suddenly safer. She waits, calmer now, as Thomas works his way back to the door and feels around for the light switch.
He hits it, and they are bathed in light so bright that her hands fly to her eyes. When she opens them, she sees her three companions blinking, their features washed out, pale with fear and tiredness, eyes wild as they check out their surroundings. Cher still holds on to her corner of the plastic. Lets go as she realises that she is the only one. She looks around her, at the lair of her tormentor, and voices her judgement.
‘Fucking hell. What a shithole.’
Collette looks around. It’s quite a large room, the width of the building and probably half its depth. Walls that were probably once magnolia, favourite choice of property developers everywhere, but which have started to turn sepia with age, greasy black marks all around the light switches where he’s groped around in the dark and never used a wet wipe.
A featureless, joyless room. She guesses, from the lack of embellishment, that it was converted at the height of the 1980s extra-dry Chardonnay boom, when everyone liked to think that they craved a minimalist lifestyle and forgot that they would need storage to achieve it. It’s a bachelor pad, she thinks: a real one, not the style palaces you’re supposed to imagine when you hear the phrase. A place that’s lived in by a man who’s never bothered to make it attractive, because that’s what women do. He’s just bought things as he’s gone along and dumped the old ones in the corner.
There’s barely a thing in here that a normal person would call furniture. Her small bedsit is opulent by comparison. How long’s he lived here? she wonders. It could be any time at all, but judging by that pile of stereo equipment over where the fireplace must have been once, it’s decades. He’s bought stuff and put it down, and never thought about finding something to put it on.
In front of her stands a sofa. Tubular legs and black leather, the chrome chipped and smeared and the cushions sagging deep in the middle, the imprint of ten thousand nights watching one or other of the three televisions that sit opposite, wired up, it seems, to a DVD player, a video player and a Sky box. Why a man would need more than one telly, she’ll never know, but she’s not a man. Between them, with just a foot-wide gap from the sofa so that no one on it would have to stretch to reach it, there’s a black-painted MDF coffee table with a smoked glass surface. Yes, the 1980s, she thinks. He bought the flat off the developer, went to MFI and got some man-stuff, and hasn’t done a thing since. The walls are lined with a hotchpotch of storage: metal shelves of the sort you find in a garage and those dark-veneer dressers that were all the rage before IKEA invaded with its palette of birch. A few cushions that he’s used for comfort rather than decoration on the sofa, and a polyester blanket, also in black. In the gaping space where a table should be, an exercise bike and what looks like it might once have been a rowing machine; souvenirs of moments long ago when Roy Preece thought he’d get fit and find a wife, but has long since adapted into laundry storage. On the shelving, row upon row of media. Videos, furthest away, then piles and piles of DVDs, no pretence of order or caring how they look. Most of the cases are blank, but she can see from the glimpsed covers of the few pre-printed ones that the Landlord hasn’t been watching chick-flicks as he’s lain on that sofa. She can see cocks and breasts and buttocks from where she stands. Mostly breasts.
Hossein takes them in with a look of elegant disgust. Looks down at the coffee table. It’s strewn with the litter of a bachelor’s neglectful existence: aluminium takeaway cartons with traces of curry still clinging to the sides, a half-eaten kebab in its polystyrene box, screwed-up chip paper, a scatter of cardboard boxes, a collection of remote controls, an Android tablet in silver chrome, a bottle of baby lotion, a box of Kleenex. Poking out from beneath, she sees a bin liner, half-full with more of the same. He looks politely away, as though doing so will somehow spare the dead man his shame.
Cher voices what they’re all thinking. ‘Eugh,’ she says. She looks down at the shrouded form at her feet and pulls a face. Don’t, thinks Collette. Don’t say it. We’re all thinking about it already. We don’t need to talk about it.
‘Three tellies,’ Cher says. ‘What the hell did he want with three tellies?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Collette.
‘You don’t think he used to watch ’em all at once, do you? Eugh, God.’
‘That’s enough, Cher,’ she says, firmly. She really doesn’t want to think about it.
Cher looks thoughtful. ‘I don’t suppose…’ she begins.
Collette knows where this is going. ‘No. We’re not taking anything.’
‘But I need a telly,’ says Cher. ‘You know I need a telly.’
‘I said no,’ Collette says, and she suddenly thinks, oh, God, I sound like her mum. She’ll be telling me she’s sorry she was born in a minute.
‘But —’
‘No, Cher,’ says Hossein. ‘I’m sorry. No. It’s not going to happen.’
Cher looks thunderous. Looking at her now, Collette can totally believe that she’s fifteen. Her veneer of worldliness is paper-thin when it comes down to it. She’s in the middle of committing a crime, and she’s practically thinking about nail varnish and mascara. ‘Right,’ she says, in that you’ll-be-sorry voice she remember from her own teens. She chucks her chin in the air and pulls a face. ‘Come on, then. We haven’t got all night.’
Before anyone else can move, she strides over to the body and yanks on the loose end of the plastic wrapper. The Landlord rolls out like a genie from a carpet, bumps up on his side against the wall, comes to rest staring at their feet. His eyes have clouded over and his skin, scrubbed clean with the power jet b
efore they put him in the car, has begun to turn grey.
Cher starts to fold up the plastic, all business now she’s starting to feel safe. ‘Come on, then,’ she says, and starts towards the door.
‘Hang on,’ says Thomas.
Cher stops. ‘What?’
‘We can’t leave him like that,’ he says.
Cher puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s a bit late to come over all respect-for-the-dead,’ she says. ‘We had to squash him down to get him into that boot.’
‘No,’ says Thomas, ‘it’s not that. Look at him.’
For a moment, they all look. A blubbering whale of a man lying against a skirting board, his eight chins dipping into the neck of the green T-shirt Thomas had gone and bought him. A swollen tongue protrudes from slack white lips and his feet and shins are covered in rough, flaking skin where his circulation had begun to fail.
‘What?’ asks Cher.
‘Look at his colour.’
They look. Grey-white on the front and then, they notice, red on the back. From what they can see of his skin, where cloth has rucked up and flesh has burst out, Roy’s gone two-tone. He’s turned into a Battenberg: all spongy-pale on one side and pinky-purple on the other. He looks like someone’s stood over him with a rolling pin and tenderised him from top to bottom.
Cher shakes her head and frowns. ‘What the fuck is that?’
Hossein clears his throat. ‘Livor mortis,’ he says.
‘Liver what?’
‘Livor mortis,’ he says. ‘It’s when the blood settles after death. It doesn’t stay in the veins, it… comes out. It makes the flesh turn that colour, where it settles.’
‘Christ,’ says Cher, ‘how the fuck do you know a word like that?’
‘It’s Latin,’ says Hossein. ‘It’s the same in any language.’
‘Okay,’ says Cher. ‘So what do you want me to do? Get out my make-up?’
Hossein shakes his head. ‘Thomas’s right. We can’t leave him like that.’
‘Go on then, professor. Why not?’
‘When they find him —’
‘If they find him.’
‘They will find him eventually, Cher,’ he says. ‘And when they do, they’ll know he’s been moved.’
‘How?’
‘Blood follows gravity,’ he says.
‘You’re in Britain now,’ she says. She always gets rude when she’s feeling ignorant. It’s a defence system she learned long ago. ‘Speak English.’
‘Wherever is the lowest bit, that’s where the blood goes. When you die. It doesn’t just stay where it was.’
‘Oh,’ she says.
‘So they’re going to know he was on his back,’ he says. ‘So they’ll know someone moved him.’
‘So what? They’re not going to be thinking it was a heart attack with that dent in his head, are they?’
‘No, they’re right,’ says Collette. ‘If we leave him like that, they’ll know it wasn’t a burglar. They’ll know he didn’t die here.’
‘They’ll know he didn’t die here anyway, won’t they?’
‘Why?’ asks Thomas.
‘Doh. No blood.’
‘Skin’s not broken on his head,’ says Thomas. ‘Did you notice him bleeding at Vesta’s?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then.’
‘Come on, then,’ says Collette. ‘Let’s roll him over.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sunday. Vesta has always liked Sundays. She likes the way the road is quiet, the way the house tends to start its life and noise mid-morning. Her Sunday routine is always the same: a lie-in till nine o’clock, a nice breakfast of poached eggs on Marmite toast followed by Sung Eucharist at All Saints church on Norwood Road, a glass of sherry at the social in the vestry, then a quick diversion into Morrisons on the way home to see what’s in the reduced fridge. By two o’clock, they’ve often decided that the Sunday-lunch crowd has passed and have reduced the few remaining joints to half price. It’s one of the nice things about nowadays – that joints come in all sizes, including spinster-size. She likes to spend Sunday afternoons pottering about the kitchen, doing a bit of baking, making sure everything’s in shape for the coming week and looking forward to her dinner.
This Sunday, she wakes at six and smells the drains – Hossein has cleared them, but it will take time before the lingering aroma disperses – and it all comes crashing down on her head. Two nights ago, I killed a man, she thinks. I can’t go to church in a state of sin. I can’t mix with those good people, take the host, laugh over the cheese straws any more. It’s all over. Everything I knew before has gone.
She lies on her back in her single bed and stares dry-eyed at the ceiling. This ceiling, the cracks slowly growing across it, has been the first sight to greet her each day for the best part of the last thirty years. It has been her safety and her contentment. Not a big life, but a good one, with all the never marrying and the no kids and the moments of loneliness. It’s been a better life than many, and I’ve lived it as well as I could. And now it’s gone. For ever.
I shall never feel happy here again, she thinks. I’ve lived here all my life, and now my home is gone.
She sits up and pulls on her dressing gown. Might as well get up, she thinks. No point lying here. That’s not going to get any parsnips buttered.
The sound of the phrase in her head causes her a sudden wrench of sadness. It’s one of her mother’s phrases, the slightly skewed clichés that have slid into her own vocabulary without her even really noticing. Needs must when the devil dances. Where there’s muck there’s muck. Don’t listen to him; he’s the devil’s apricot. Whenever she says them, even in her own head, she hears them in her mother’s voice, and she’s right back, just for a moment, in the room with her. Her lovely mother. Her churchgoing, houseproud, lovely mother, flowered apron and steel-grey hair. She would be so ashamed of me, she thinks. So ashamed of what has happened in her home.
And then the tears come.
Collette can’t sleep. She has to go and see Janine as usual today, keep up the routine, behave, as they have all agreed, exactly as they normally would. And she hopes that one day, if she goes often enough, Janine will remember her. But today will exhaust her. She’s been awake all night, and barely slept yesterday, and she feels as though the calcium has been sucked from her bones; that the slightest jar will make her simply shatter.
I should go, she thinks. I should just pack up and go. It’s not like she even knows who I am, like it makes the slightest difference to her that I’m here. All I’m doing is turning myself into a sitting duck. But, oh, God, if I could talk to her one more time. If I could just see her eyes light up when she sees me, know that she remembers who I am. She wasn’t a bad mum, she really wasn’t. She didn’t mean to be. I’ve spent so much of my life blaming her, but there were good times, too. In between the uncles and the new dads and the ‘he took your lunch money’, there was us, and we loved each other. It’s not her fault that I got ideas above my station, decided to shortcut my way to a decent income. And now I’ve been gone three years. I abandoned her when she really needed me, and I can’t leave her to die alone.
She remembers a good time, back when she was Lisa, and small: when they went to Margate on holiday: one of those cut-price deals from one of the newspapers. Janine went to the library and snipped the coupon every day for three weeks, and they had a chalet in a holiday park. And it was sunburnt shoulders and Janine sitting with the other mums as she went on the slides and the roundabouts, and teaching her to swim in the great big communal pool, and she remembers watching her mum stand up and sing ‘Stand By Your Man’ at the talent competition, and she got every single note bang on, and she looked so golden and glittery and Lisa felt so proud she could have exploded. I can’t leave her, she thinks. I can’t. No one should die alone. And if I’m not going to leave, where would I go other than here? Where else would I find, where nobody wants to know who I am, where nobody’s writing me down and making a record?
But they’ll find you. You’re mad, being in London, even for a short while. If Tony doesn’t find you, DI Cheyne will, and that’s pretty much the same thing, just more circuitous. He wants me because he knows she wants me, and she wants me because she thinks I’m the way to send him down, but either way, I’m fucked. You just have to look at News International to know how leaky the Met is. And once he knows I’ve dobbed him in, no amount of witness protection will keep me safe. I need to leave. I have to. It’s the only way I’ll stay alive.
But Janine, she thinks. I can’t leave her. I can’t leave my mother till she’s gone.
Hossein lies pinned to his bed and weeps for his dead wife. It’s nearly five years since she went out to her women’s group meeting and never came home, and each day, still, he wakes and weeps when he finds she isn’t there. The basic story is no mystery to him: it will have been the Secret Police that took her and the Secret Police that never sent her back. The rest of it he will never know, and the pain of that is often more than he feels he can bear.
He speaks to her, sometimes, in his empty room, as though doing so will somehow bring her back. He says her name: ‘Roshana, Roshana, Roshana’, like a magical incantation. And when the room stays silent, when no soft voice speaks in return, he bends double with pain in his bed, grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes and sobs for the lost past.
I had rather, he says to her ghost, I had rather it had been me. I had rather we went together, that I had followed you. If I’d known how it felt without you, I would have died in your place, my love. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I loved you so much, and I couldn’t protect you. My brave, my beautiful. My Roshana.
It’s been over a year since he moved here from the asylum centre, and it’s better, it’s undoubtedly better, but the room is cheerless and he has never found the will to improve it. He thinks of their flat in Tehran, the family things, the rugs and pottery, the roses she grew on the balcony, high above the trees on Khorasan, and wonders what she would think of these sad cream walls, the dark blue bedclothes, the two pots that constitute his kitchen.