The Killer Next Door

by Alex Marwood

  No wonder he was so calm about the Landlord. No wonder he knew so much about what we were doing. He’s been doing it for God knows how long. Up here in the roof, all snuggled up with his corpses. Oh, Jesus, this is so high. How come it doesn’t look this high from the street? Lying on her stomach, she edges along the window frame until there is no more window frame to be had.

  She looks up at Cher. The girl’s face has a peculiar tinge of green to it and the shaking has stopped. She’s going into shock, she thinks. I need to get her inside, get her warmed up. I wonder if that break’s cutting off her circulation? I swear I see a lump on her collarbone. It’s snapped clean in two. She must be in agony.

  ‘Hold on,’ she says. ‘Just… hang on in there, Cher.’

  She puts the ball of a foot down on the tiles to slide herself, and it slips out from under her like it’s skating on ice. Collette grabs at the window again, pants as panic overtakes her. I’ll just… I’ll go back in. I’ll go and find someone. Someone else will know what to do. Someone else will know what to do. Hossein. Christ, bloody Gerard Bright, if it comes to it. Anyone. I’m not brave enough. I can’t. She hangs her head in through the window, sees the thighs of the girl in the chair, so still, so thin. Oh, that poor child, she thinks. He would have done it to her, too, and we’d never have known. All the people in this house, moving on, the waters closing over their heads, we’d have been sad for a couple of days, we’d’ve asked each other where she was, and then… we would have forgotten her. The way everyone who lives here is forgotten, one by one, by the people they’ve shared their space with. The same all over London, the anonymity we all cherish: it’s a sure road to oblivion.

  She pulls herself together. No one has ever missed Cher, or mourned her. She won’t be one of the people who’ve let her down. She puts her foot on the windowsill, uses the slip of the tiles to slide herself upwards. Gets a foot in the hinge and kicks again. Now her head is five feet from the roof’s ridge, her foot a knee-bend from the top of the window frame. She feels her hip shriek with the strain of the angle, flat on her face, all her weight on her torso, and then her foot is there. She steadies, brings her other foot up beside it and bunny-hops to where she can grab the flashing.

  Cher looks as if she’s fallen asleep. Up here, with no shelter from the wind, the rain gusts horizontally, catches her in the face like birdshot. It’s hard to believe that yesterday they were still in a heatwave, for today they are a long way into autumn. Weird little fucked-up island on the edge of the Arctic circle, she thinks, one of the world’s largest economies, and we’re still prioritising bankers’ second houses over kids like this. If she had disappeared, no one apart from us would know, much less care. She’s been disappeared for years.

  She reaches out and touches the girl’s good arm. Cher jumps, opens her eyes and lets out a moan. Now she’s close up, Collette can see the damage she’s done to herself. Her collarbone jags out beneath her skin, and shades of black and brown and khaki spread across her chest, vanish inside her top. Her hand has been ripped open by something sharp, the cut dirty and wide and still bleeding. She’s going to need a hospital, this time. If Collette can get her down off this roof before she dies of the shock, she’s going to have to be sucked back into the system. This is beyond any of their abilities.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. She’s glad that Cher is small and light, at least. If she were even Vesta’s size this would be impossible. ‘This is going to hurt. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to make it not.’

  Cher laughs, weakly. ‘I’ll just have to kill you later.’ Still got her sarcasm, which has to be a good sign. She lets out a cough, freezes, tries to suppress another.

  Collette takes her good hand and helps her inch her way along the flashing. She can hear Cher’s teeth grind together with each bump, makes encouraging small talk of courage and the future. A millennium passes as they move, and yet they hear only a single car. Collette is as wet as the girl, now. Her hands are slippery, and she’s afraid that she will be unable to keep a grip if she starts to teeter.

  Over the window; a few feet that look like a million miles. I can’t do this, thinks Collette. We’ll start to slide and I won’t be able to hold her. A buffet of wind catches them, blows Cher’s dripping hair off her face. The green tinge has gone from her skin, but so has the brown. Cher has turned white.

  ‘Be brave, sweetheart,’ says Collette, and cups her face in her hands. ‘We’re going to go down now, okay?’

  Cher nods, like an automaton. I don’t like how quiet she is, thinks Collette. She should be making noises. And as she thinks it, Cher starts to sway on the roof beam. Back, forth, back, forth. In front of them the open window, behind her, the long drop.

  Collette doesn’t have time to make a decision. She grabs Cher’s legs and pulls. Drags her off the point of the roof just as she slumps and goes limp. Holds her tight in her arms as they slide.

  Her jeans snag on the window frame. Cher is on top of her now, her weight carrying them inexorably forward. Her eyes are open, the pupils staring into Collette’s. I can’t hold her, she thinks. She’s going to carry us over. Whatever happens, I can’t protect her shoulder. The best I can do is —

  They drop through the window and bounce on the bed, and Cher wakes up and starts to scream.

  Chapter Fifty

  They stand over the body, silent in the rain.

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ says Vesta.

  ‘No,’ says Hossein.

  Thomas has landed head first. Vesta imagines him, sliding down the roof like a thrill-seeker in a water park, his hands star-fished out before him in a hopeless bid to slow himself, his mouth wide in a silent scream. And then the long dive through sodden air; the drawn-out second as the crazy paving rushed up to meet him, and then the blackness. Do you feel these things? Her experience of fear has always been that it lasted for ever. That every microsecond drew itself out, each sensation, movement, sight, smell, and sound was etched on her consciousness in a way that she never experienced in any other state. Is there a moment when you feel your skull shatter? she wonders.

  ‘No,’ says Vesta. ‘I don’t know what made us think we’d get away with it the first time.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll think it was him who killed Preece,’ says Hossein. ‘Have you thought of that?’

  ‘They wouldn’t be that stupid. Surely?’

  Hossein gives her a look that tells her all she needs to know of what he thinks of police intelligence. ‘There are three dead women upstairs,’ he says.

  She nods, taking his point, then shakes her head, sorrowfully, and stares down at the broken head. Thomas’s skull hasn’t simply split; it’s shattered. The crazy paving is one vast bibimbap of brains and blood and bone and hair. ‘That’s one big mess,’ she says. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll ever come out. It looks like someone’s dropped an ostrich egg.’

  Hossein looks at her, surprised. ‘You’re taking this very well,’ he says.

  She puffs her cheeks and blows out through the sides of her mouth. ‘You know what? I think you run out of reactions, after a while. I don’t think you could let a bomb off behind me and make me jump.’

  Hossein glances at her sideways.

  ‘Don’t do the Auntie Vesta needs a lie-down look,’ she says. ‘I’m old enough to have changed your nappies, and I’m certainly old enough to give you a clout round the ear. Besides. I’m not seeing you having the vapours.’

  ‘I don’t have anything left to throw up,’ says Hossein. ‘After what I found in that bathroom.’

  ‘How did he always seem so cheerful?’ she asks. ‘I mean. Wouldn’t you, you know, be gibbering if you had a flat full of dead people?’

  ‘I guess that’s why none of us do,’ says Hossein. ‘You have to be a particular sort of person, I guess.’

  She turns and retreats into her flat, runs the hot water to wash her hands. ‘Check your shoes,’ she calls. ‘I don’t want you treading any of that stuff into the carpet.’

  They
go up to Cher’s room together. Music still pours out from behind Gerard Bright’s door. He’s not heard a thing, thinks Vesta. He probably avoids us because he thinks we’re common. Thinks we’ll bore him. Boy, is he going to hit a learning curve.

  The door is open. They all know there will be no more locking of doors in this house. Cher lies on the bed, the green back in her face, Collette sitting beside her, mopping her brow with a damp flannel.

  ‘How is she?’ asks Hossein.

  ‘Thank God for tramadol,’ she says. ‘I gave her two. I don’t know if it’s killing the pain, but at least it’s making her care less.’

  ‘Do you think that was wise?’ asks Vesta.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what if it… if they want to give her something else in the hospital?’

  ‘No!’ croaks Cher. ‘No fucking hospital.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ says Vesta, ‘look at you. Of course you’re going to hospital.’

  ‘Don’t fucking talk to me like I’m a kid!’ she says as snappishly as she can.

  ‘Well, don’t behave like one, then.’

  The girl’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Please don’t,’ she says. ‘I can’t go back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Vesta says, more gently. ‘But look at you, Cher. You’re broken. This isn’t something we can mend with hooky antibiotics and painkillers.’

  ‘It’s just a collarbone,’ she says, and bites back a squeal of pain as its ends rub together inside. God, the kid’s got guts, thinks Hossein. You’ve got to give her that. But no one whose hand is going that shade of blue is staying out of hospital. Not if they want to live.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Vesta. ‘Really I am, Cher. You gave it the best go you could. We’ll do the best we can for you.’

  Cher starts to sob.

  Hossein touches Collette on the shoulder. She’s been silent since they came in, her face hidden by her hair. ‘You need to get going if you want to be gone,’ he says. ‘We need to call sooner than later.’

  Collette looks up at them, and they’re all surprised to see that her face is as calm as the face of the Madonna. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she says.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  They go up the stairs, one by one by one. An execution party, sombre, quiet, their subject composed, dignified. It’s started to go dark outside, the onset of dusk hastened by the rain. But autumn is coming, the season is changing, and Lisa Dunne is going to die.

  What a place to go, she thinks. And what a way. A footnote in history, another of the missing. By Christmas, the first of the cash-in books will hit the shelves. Someone at Sunnyvale will go through Janine’s sad little box and find her sad little photo collection, sell them to the Sun and have a holiday.

  The smell is less than it was when she came up here before. The windows and doors wide open have stirred up a through draught and at least dissipated the syrupy quality the air in here had before. But still, it’s a horrid place. She looks about her at the sad, drab evidence of the life lived here and feels a moment’s sympathy for Thomas Dunbar. Not a picture on the walls, not a single tiny flourish that suggests that he loved himself. Just the little shrine on the table by the far wall, his collection of memorabilia.

  She goes and stands over it, contemplates these trophies of lives lost. There were more than the three we’ve found today, she thinks. God knows what’s happened to the owner of those earrings, the girl who coveted the Louboutins but could only afford the pretend one for her key ring. Do their families know they’re missing? Do they still hope they’ll come back, one day?

  She strokes her watch. The last of Janine. The last good gift – the first, really. Her twenty-first birthday present, and not a branded thing, an antique with a gold link chain and a mother-of-pearl face. Janine must have spent months squirrelling away the cash for it. She remembers the pride on her face when she handed it over, showed her the engraving on the back. Tiny letters, but still clear after sixteen years against her wrist: For Lisa, my love always, Janine.

  She unclips the clasp and weighs it in her hand for a moment. A comforting weight, solid; her proof throughout her life that, however flawed, there was once love. The last of Janine – she has nothing else.

  She lays it down on the table next to the big, self-important bunch of keys that used to belong to the Landlord. Takes a deep breath and lifts her chin. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  They decide that the bathroom is the place for the final act. It seems logical, given the charnel he has made of the surprisingly elegant roll-top bath, that any cutting he has done has been done here. What is left of his last victim is little but bone, the flesh stripped off with obsessive dedication. There’s just a leg left uncleaned. It lies pathetically among its deconstructed skeleton, pale meat drained of blood, a rusty stain around the plughole. Whoever she was, she liked shell-pink nail polish. Probably spent a moment admiring it, turning her foot to catch the light, some short time before she encountered the garrulous man with the tinted specs.

  Collette is having difficulty controlling her gag reflex. These pathetic remains disgust her. The last thing she wants to do is get down and get closer. And she’s frightened. Afraid of pain, afraid of dying. Afraid of what she is asking them to do. She looks over her shoulder and sees that Hossein has turned pale and Vesta looks grim enough to scare the devil. It’s not just me, she thinks. Neither of them wants to do it either. But they must. Someone has to do it. It’s the only way.

  She kneels down and bends her head.

  They’re both crying. Hossein and Collette are crying. Despite all the things they’ve done, the things they’ve seen, over the past few weeks, this final act has brought them close to collapse. Hossein stands over her, paralysed. He’s taken the cleaver from Vesta’s hand, come boldly forward, determined to carry it through, and now he’s by her, can see her face, her neck, her shoulder, he has crumbled. He sways like a kid on the bathroom tiles and squeezes the bridge of his nose as tears slide from his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’

  ‘Please!’ she begs. ‘Please, Hossein! You have to! Please!’

  ‘I want to. Oh, God, Collette, I can’t. I can’t…’

  He shuts up, closes his eyes and deep-breathes. Struggles to compose himself.

  ‘Hossein, just get on with it. We can’t waste any more time. Cher’s downstairs, for God’s sake. Do you want her to lose her arm? Just do it. Just – please, Hossein, I can’t do this myself.’

  He hauls in a huge breath, raises the cleaver and lunges. But it’s a half-hearted gesture. He shies away at the last second, buries the blade in the wall.

  Collette screams. With rage, with frustration, with terror. She doesn’t want this to happen. Each time she thinks it’s about to, the blood surges through her veins and it takes every effort of will she has just to keep still. ‘Hossein!’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ says Vesta. ‘You’re torturing her!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’

  Vesta lets out an old-lady humph of disapproval.

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I guess it takes a woman to do a man’s job.’

  She snatches the hatchet from his hand, pushes it out of the way and brings it boldly down.

  Collette screams again. Drops to the floor and curls her whole body round her injured hand, clamps her palm over where the fingers are gone, to try to stem the blood. It hurts. She can’t believe how much it hurts. It’s only two fingers. What’s two fingers? How can the pain from two fingers be running through every nerve I’ve got?

  Vesta picks up a towel, wipes her fingerprints from the hatchet handle and drops it in the bath. ‘I told you my dad was a butcher, didn’t I?’ she says.

  Epilogue

  DI Burke walks her back up to the car park. It’s been a long day and he wants a break. He’ll probably take the opportunity to slip out to the Cross Keys for a pint before he comes back in to fi
nish off; the girl’s been done and processed and her laborious, childish signature scrawled across the bottom of each sheet of her twenty-page statement. No more overtime, on this case. It’s open-and-shut, no one to try, everyone slightly resentful because no one’s made a glamorous arrest.

  ‘That’s the trouble with the serials…’ He voices his thoughts out loud. ‘Half the time it ends up with everyone complaining we didn’t do our jobs because no one knew it was going on.’

  ‘Oh, I know, Chris,’ she says, sympathetically. ‘I mean, Christ, even Fred West had the grace not to do himself in until after we’d got him. I don’t know what we’re meant to do, though, short of CCTV in everyone’s houses. It’s not like anyone who was living there noticed.’

  ‘Harr,’ he laughs. ‘You won’t get the Mail pointing that out.’

  ‘You do wonder, though, don’t you? I mean. Sometimes you have to think that people are deliberately stupid.’

  ‘No,’ says Chris Burke, ‘just simple stupid. Let’s face it. Anyone over twenty-one living in a place like that isn’t going to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder, are they?’

  ‘I thought you said the man on the ground floor used to be a music teacher? That’s not exactly stupid, is it?’

  ‘Touch of Asperger’s, IMO. Not uncommon, with musicians, as it goes. It’s where they get the concentration to practise. Not too good at multi-tasking. You obviously don’t remember, but he was a big joke in the papers last summer. Got sacked from some private school in Cheam for not noticing that half his kids had climbed out on to the roof while he was doing something with a speaker system. Anyway, he’s gone downhill since then. Wife kicked him out and kept the kids. He was out of the house teaching private piano lessons in the afternoons, but he couldn’t find another job. I think he just sat there doing the piano hands to classical music CDs all day while he waited for his access visits to roll around and didn’t notice what time it was, never mind anything else. He hadn’t even noticed that the tenant next door had changed from Nichola to Lisa. Thought they were the same person. That she’d dyed her hair.’