The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  He saw less of Martin after that. At first he contrived subtly to avoid him and then started going out with Valerie, a girl with fat arms and wide hips he picked up in the union bar on cocktails night. He wasn’t convinced they were a good match, but the opportunity was convenient, given the Martin situation.

  The piece of fat remained wrapped up in its suitcase, which smelled so strongly that Maddox only had to open the case and take a sniff to re-experience how he had felt when Martin had given him the body part. As he lay in bed trying to get to sleep (alone. Valerie didn’t last more than a few weeks) he sometimes thought about the man who had knowingly willed his cadaver to science. He wondered what his name might have been and what kind of man he was. What he might have been in life. He would hardly have been able to foresee what would happen to the small part of him that was now nestled inside Maddox’s wardrobe.

  When Maddox left the hall of residence for a flat in Holloway, the case went with him, still empty but for its human remains. He kept it on top of a cupboard. It stayed there for two years. When he moved into the flat in N15, he put the suitcase in the loft, where it had remained ever since. The piece of fat was no longer in Maddox’s possession, but the suitcase was not free of the smell of formalin.

  Maddox’s 1986 diary was at the bottom of the box. It took only a couple of minutes to find what he was looking for. “Hellraiser, 11:00 a.m.” he’d written in the space reserved for Friday 10 October. A little further down was an address: 187 Dollis Hill Lane.

  He drove to Dollis Hill via Cranley Gardens, but on this occasion didn’t stop.

  “Why didn’t I think of checking my old diaries before, eh, Jack?” he said, looking in the rear-view mirror.

  His son was silent, staring out of the window.

  Turning into Dollis Hill Lane from Edgware Road, he slowed to a crawl, oblivious to the noisy rebuke of the driver immediately behind him, who pulled out and swerved to overtake, engine racing, finger given. Maddox brought the car to a halt on a slight incline outside No. 187. He looked at the house and felt an unsettling combination of familiarity and non-recognition. Attraction and repulsion. He had to stare at the house for two or three minutes before he realised why he had driven past it so many times and failed to recognise it.

  Like most things recalled from the past, it was smaller than the version in his memory. But the main difference was the apparent age of the building. He remembered a Victorian villa, possibly Edwardian. The house in front of him was new. The rendering on the front gable end had gone up in the last few years. The wood-framed bay windows on the first floor were of recent construction. The casement window in the top flat, second floor, was obviously new. The mansard roof was a familiar shape, but the clay Rosemarys were all fresh from the tile shop. The materials were new, but the style was not. The basic design was unchanged, from what he could remember of the exterior shots in the film, which he’d looked at again before coming out, but in spite of that the house looked new. As if a skeleton had grown new muscle and flesh.

  “Just like Frank,” he said out loud.

  “What, Daddy?”

  “Just like Frank in the film.”

  “What film?”

  “They made a film in this house and I came to see them make it. You’re too young to see it yet. One day, maybe.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s about a man who disappears and then comes back to life with the help of his girlfriend. It happened in that room up there.” He pointed to the top flat. “Although, the windows are wrong,” he said, trying to remember the second-floor window in the film. “I need to check it again.”

  The only part of the exterior that looked as if they’d taken care to try to match the original was the front door.

  As he’d walked from the Hellraiser set back to the tube two decades earlier, he’d read and re-read Linzi’s number on the torn-out piece of Filofax paper. He called her the next day and they arranged to meet for a drink.

  “Why are you so interested in this house, Daddy?” Jack asked from the back seat.

  “Because of what happened here. Because of the film. And because I met somebody here. Somebody I knew before I met your mother.’

  Linzi lived in East Finchley. They went to see films at the Phoenix or met for drinks in Muswell Hill. Malaysian meals in Crouch End. He showed her the house in Hillfield Avenue where he had visited Clive Barker.

  “Peter Straub used to live on the same road, just further up the hill,” he told her.

  “Who’s Peter Straub?”

  “Have you heard of Stephen King?”

  “Of course.”

  “Straub and King wrote a book together. The Talisman. They wrote it here. Or part of it, anyway. King also wrote a story called ‘Crouch End’, which was interesting, not one of his best.”

  Maddox and Linzi started meeting during the day at the Wisteria Tea Rooms on Middle Lane and it was there, among the pot plants and mismatched crockery, that Maddox realised with a kind of slow, swooning surprise that he was happy. The realisation was so slow because the feeling was so unfamiliar. They took long walks through Highgate Cemetery and across Hampstead Heath.

  Weeks became months. The cherry blossom came out in long straight lines down Cecile Park, and fell to the pavements, and came out again. Linzi often stayed at Maddox’s flat in South Tottenham, but frowned distastefully at his true-crime books. One morning while she was still asleep, Maddox was dressing, looking for a particular T-shirt. Unable to find it, he climbed up the ladder into the loft. Searching through a box of old clothes, he didn’t hear Linzi climbing the ladder or see her head and shoulders suddenly intrude into the loft space.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Shit.” He jumped, hitting his head. “Ow. That hurt. Shit. Nothing. Looking for something.”

  “What’s that smell?”

  “Nothing.”

  He urged her back down the ladder and made sure the trap door was fastened before pulling on the Eraserhead T-shirt he’d been looking for.

  Whenever he went into the loft from then on, whether Linzi was around or not, he would pull the ladder up after him and close the trap door. The loft was private.

  When he got back to the flat that evening, he went up into the loft again – duly covering his tracks, although he was alone – and took the small wrapped parcel from the suitcase. The lid fell shut, the old-fashioned clasps sliding home without his needing to fasten them. Quality craftsmanship.

  When it was dark, he buried the slice of tissue in the waste ground behind the flats.

  As the decade approached its end, the directionless lifestyle that Maddox and Linzi had drifted into seemed to become more expensive. The bills turned red. Maddox started working regular shifts on the subs’ desk at the Independent. He hated it but it paid well. Linzi applied for a full-time job at a ladies’ salon in Finsbury Park. They took a day trip to Brighton. They went to an art show in the Unitarian Church where Maddox bought Linzi a small watercolour and she picked out a booklet of poems by the artist’s husband as a return gift. They had lunch in a vegetarian café. Maddox talked about the frustrations of cutting reviews to fit and coming up with snappy headlines, when what he’d rather be doing was writing the copy himself. Linzi had no complaints about the salon. “Gerry – he’s the boss – he’s a really lovely guy,” she said. “Nicest boss I’ve ever had.”

  They spent the afternoon in the pubs and secondhand bookshops of the North Laines. Maddox found a Ramsey Campbell anthology, an M. John Harrison collection and The New Murderers” Who’s Who. On the train waiting to leave Brighton station to return to London, with the sun throwing long dark shapes across the platforms, Linzi read to Maddox from the pamphlet of verse.

  “ ‘This is all I ever wanted/to meet you in the fast decaying shadows/on the outskirts of this or any city/alone and in exile.’ ”

  As the train rattled through Sussex, Maddox pored over the photographs in his true-crime book.

  �
�Look,” he said, pointing to a caption: “Brighton Trunk Crime No.2: The trunk’s contents.”

  “Very romantic,” Linzi said as she turned to the window, but Maddox couldn’t look away from the crumpled stockings on the legs of the victim, Violette Kaye. Her broken neck. The pinched scowl on her decomposed face. To Maddox the picture was as beautiful as it was terrible.

  Over the next few days, Maddox read up on the Brighton Trunk Murders of 1934. He discovered that Tony Mancini, who had confessed to putting Violette Kay’s body in the trunk but claimed she had died accidentally (only to retract that claim and accept responsibility for her murder more than forty years later), had lodged at 52 Kemp Street. He rooted around for the poetry pamphlet Linzi had bought him. He found it under a pile of magazines. The poet’s name was Michael Kemp. He wanted to share his discovery of this coincidence with Linzi when she arrived at his flat with scissors and hairdressing cape.

  “Why not save a bit of money?” she said, moving the chair from Maddox’s desk into the middle of the room. As she worked on his hair, she talked about Gerry from the salon. “He’s so funny,” she said. “The customers love him. He certainly keeps me and the other girls entertained.”

  “Male hairdressers in women’s salons are all puffs, surely?”

  Linzi stopped cutting and looked at him.

  “So?” she said. “So what if they are? And anyway, Gerry’s not gay. No way.”

  “Really? How can you be so sure?”

  “A girl knows. Okay?”

  “Have you fucked him then or what?”

  She took a step back. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “How else would you know? Gerry seems to be all you can talk about.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Maddox shot to his feet, tearing off the cape.

  “You know what,” he said, seizing the scissors, “I’ll cut my own fucking hair and do a better job of it. At least I won’t have to listen to you going on about Gerry.”

  He started to hack at his own hair, grabbing handfuls and cutting away. Linzi recoiled in horror, unable to look away, as if she were watching a road accident.

  “Maybe I should tell you about all the women at the Independent?” he suggested. “Sheila Johnston, Sabine Durrant, Christine Healey . . . I don’t know where to start.”

  It wasn’t until he jabbed the scissors threateningly in her direction that she snatched up her bag and ran out.

  The next day he sent flowers. He didn’t call, didn’t push it. Just flowers and a note: “Sorry.”

  Then he called. Told her he didn’t know what had come over him. It wouldn’t happen again. He knew he’d be lucky if she forgave him, but he hoped he’d be lucky. He hadn’t felt like this about anyone before and he didn’t want to lose her. The irony was, he told her, he’d been thinking his flat was getting a bit small and maybe they should look for a place together. He’d understand if she wanted to kick it into touch, but hoped she’d give him another chance.

  She said to give her some time.

  He shaved his head.

  He drove down to Finsbury Park and watched from across the street as she worked on clients. Bobbing left and right. Holding their hair in her hands. Eye contact in the mirror. Gerry fussing around, sharing a joke, trailing an arm. As she’d implied, though, he was distributing his attentions equally among Linzi and the two other girls.

  Mornings and evenings, he kept a watch on her flat in Finchley. She left and returned on her own. He chose a route between his flat and hers that took in Cranley Gardens in Muswell Hill. He parked outside No.23 and watched the darkened windows of the top flat. He wondered if any of the neighbours had been Nilsen’s contemporaries. If this man passing by now with a tartan shopping trolley had ever nodded good morning to the mass murderer. If that woman leaving her house across the street had ever smiled at him. Maddox got out of the car and touched the low wall outside the property with the tips of his fingers.

  Linzi agreed to meet up. Maddox suggested the Wisteria Tea Rooms. It was almost like starting over. Cautious steps. Shy smiles. His hair had grown back.

  “What got into you?”

  “I don’t know. I thought we’d agreed to draw a line under it.”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  At the next table a woman was feeding a baby.

  “Do you ever think about having children?” Linzi asked, out of the blue.

  “A boy,” Maddox said straightaway. “I’d call him Jack.”

  Maddox didn’t mention Gerry. He took on extra shifts. Slowly, they built up trust again. One day, driving back to his place after dropping Linzi off at hers, he saw that a board had gone up outside 23 Cranley Gardens. For sale. He rang the agents. Yes, it was the top flat, second floor. It was on at £64,950, but when Maddox dropped by to pick up a copy of the details (DELIGHTFUL TOP FLOOR ONE BEDROOM CONVERSION FLAT), they’d reduced it to £59,950. He made an appointment, told Linzi he’d arranged a surprise. Picked her up early, drove to Cranley Gardens. He’d never brought her this way. She didn’t know whose flat it had been.

  A young lad met them outside. Loosely knotted tie, shiny shoes. Bright, eager.

  Linzi turned to Maddox. “Are you thinking of moving?”

  “It’s bigger and it’s cheap.”

  Linzi smiled stiffly. They followed the agent up the stairs. He unlocked the interior door and launched into his routine. Maddox nodded without listening as his eyes greedily took everything in, trying to make sense of the flat, to match what he saw to the published photographs. It didn’t fit.

  “The bathroom’s gone,” he said, interrupting the agent.

  “There’s a shower room,” the boy said. “And a washbasin across the hall. An unusual arrangement.”

  Nilsen had dissected two bodies in the bathroom.

  “This is a lovely room,” the agent said, moving to the front of the flat.

  Maddox entered the room at the back and checked the view from the window.

  “At least this is unchanged,” he said to Linzi, who had appeared alongside.

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked at her and realised what he’d said.

  “This flat’s all different. I’ve seen pictures of it.”

  The story came out later, back at Maddox’s place.

  “You took me round Dennis Nilsen’s flat?”

  He turned away.

  “You didn’t think to mention it first? You thought we might live there together? In the former home of a serial killer? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “It’s cheap,” he said, to the closing door.

  He watched from the window as she ran off towards West Green Road. He stayed at the window for a time and then pulled down the ladder and went up into the loft. He pulled up the ladder and closed the trap door. He opened the big brown suitcase. It was like getting a fix. He studied the dimensions of the suitcase. It was not much smaller than Tony Mancini’s trunk.

  Christine was at work. Maddox read a note she’d left in the kitchen: “We need milk and bread.”

  He went into the living room and took down the Hellraiser DVD from the shelf. Sitting in the car with Jack outside the house on Dollis Hill Lane, Maddox had noticed something not quite right about the windows on the second floor. They were new windows and set in two pairs with a gap between them, but that wasn’t it. There was something else and he didn’t know what. He fast-forwarded until the exterior shot of Julia leaving the house to go to the bar where she picks up the first victim. The second-floor window comprised six lights in a row. For some reason, when rebuilding the house, they’d left out two of the lights and gone with just four, in two pairs. But that wasn’t what was bothering him.

  He skipped forward. He kept watching.

  Frank and Julia in the second-floor room, top of the house. She’s just killed the guy from the bar and Frank has drained his body. Julia re-enters the room after cleaning herself up and as she walks towards the window we see it comprises four lights in a row.
Four windows. Four windows in a row. Not six. Four.

  Maddox wielded the remote.

  Looking up at the house as Julia leaves it to go to the bar. Second floor, six windows. Inside the same room on the second floor, looking towards the windows. Four, not six.

  So what? The transformation scenes, which take place in that second-floor room at the front of the house, weren’t shot on Dollis Hill Lane. Big deal. That kind of stuff would have to be done in the studio. The arrival of the Cenobites, the transformation of Frank, his being torn apart. It wasn’t the kind of stuff you could shoot on location. But how could they make such a glaring continuity error as the number of lights in a window? Six from outside, four from within. It couldn’t be a mistake. It was supposed to mean something. But what?

  “Daddy?”

  Maddox jumped.

  “What is it, Jack?”

  “What are you watching?”

  Maddox looked at the screen as he thought about his response.

  “This film, the one shot in that house.”

  “The house with the windows?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is it important?”

  “I don’t know. No, I do know.” His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not.”

  He drove to the supermarket. Jack was quiet in the back. They got a trolley. Maddox stopped in front of the newspapers. He looked at the Independent. Although he’d first met Christine on the Independent arts desk, it wasn’t until they bumped into each other some years later, when they were both freelancing on TV listings magazines at IPC, that they started going out. Although they were equals at IPC, Christine had routinely rewritten his headlines at the Independent and while he pretended it didn’t still rankle, it did. Not the best basis for a relationship, perhaps. Then a permanent position came up on TV Times, and they both went for it, but Christine’s experience counted. They decided it wouldn’t affect things, but agreed that maybe Maddox should free himself of his commitments at IPC. He said he had a book he wanted to write. Together they negotiated an increasingly obstacle-strewn path towards making a life together. If they stopped and thought about it, it didn’t seem like a very good idea, but neither of them had a better one.