The Red Room

by Nicci French

  I reread the scene-of-crime report. I looked at the photographs. I closed my eyes and tried to picture what it had been like down there by the canal. Something was irritating me. It almost drove me mad, this feeling of something beyond my grasp that I was reaching for. Yet there was excitement as well. Something was coming. I had a photocopied map that showed the sites. I stared at it helplessly. What was there to worry about?

  Julie came into the room, glowing, almost steaming from her shower. She was wearing her cut-off jeans, a very small T-shirt that didn’t reach her belly-button and no bra. There would have been no room for a bra. She was carrying a bottle of white wine and two glasses. Without a word, she poured it and handed me a glass. She went to the kitchen again and returned with a small Chinese bowl full of olives. She put it on the coffee table and sat on the sofa with her knees up against her chest and took a sip. I tasted mine. It was wonderfully cold. I looked at Julie. She was very attractive, tanned, so relaxed in her own body. I thought of Oban and smiled. There was something of the couple about us now, and I suppose he thought Julie was rather a catch for me. I could easily see the attraction of being gay. There was so much bother with men. Their basic foreignness, the different stuff in the bathroom, everything. I took another sip. Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it. It was probably to do with my upbringing or the pressures of society, but I was stuck with heterosexuality.

  “Try an olive,” Julie said. “I was walking through Soho this afternoon. It’s great, and I bought these olives stuffed with anchovies and chilies. It’s like being kicked in the face by a horse. In a good way, I mean.”

  I chewed one and indeed it did suddenly feel as if a match had been struck on my tongue but I took another gulp of wine and the cool dousing of the hot felt wonderful. “Nice,” I said.

  “I was walking around and doing some thinking. I’ve got to find three things. A job, a place to live and a man. That’s why I grabbed that guy outside. Is he married?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Or gay?”

  “I’ve never met him before.”

  “If he’s not gay and he looks good and he can string a couple of words together and he’s available, then you’ve got to act instantly.”

  “It’s my experience that when people are available it’s often for a good reason.”

  “You mean he might have a disease?”

  I only laughed.

  “But look, Kit, I meant what I said. I feel bad about squatting like this. I want to say that I’m actively looking for a place.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I’m cramping your style, I know.”

  “Do I have a style at the moment?” I asked. “No, I know I get a bit ratty, but if I was on my own, I’d probably be crawling up the walls.”

  “I thought you’d be out more. Looking for clues.”

  I leaned over, took the bottle and topped up my glass and Julie’s. “I’m mainly looking at files, I’m afraid.”

  Julie put two olives into her mouth then started coughing and gulped at her wine. She went very red in the face. “Have you got a suspect?” she managed to gasp.

  “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m going through everything I can with a different eye, to see if anything occurs to me about the sort of person they should be looking for. I’m just supposed to look at it lucidly, with no pre-judgements—a bit like those lateral-thinking riddles. You know, Antony and Cleopatra are lying side by side, dead. Beside them is a puddle of water and some broken glass. How did they die?”

  “Goldfish,” said Julie instantly. “But what about the man who gets into a lift on the ground floor and always presses the tenth floor, then walks the last five floors, whereas on his way down he gets into the lift at fifteen and goes all the way to the ground, no stopping?”

  “Dwarf.”

  “So, do you think they’ll find the murderer?”

  “That depends. If he stops now, then no, I don’t think they will.”

  “That’s a bit negative.”

  “Do you know how many murders are committed in a year?”

  “What? In the whole world?”

  I laughed. “No. In England and Wales.”

  “I haven’t a clue. Five thousand?”

  “A hundred and fifty, two hundred, something like that. And more than half of those, maybe two-thirds, are solved straight away. Most people are killed by people they know, husbands, family members. There’ll be a fight outside a club, some football fans, a burglar killing an old lady, caught by her as he’s leaving. For the rest, there’s the golden first forty-eight hours in which most people who are going to be caught are caught. That’s when the killer is still going to be covered in blood, behaving strangely, disposing of weapons and clothes, covering his tracks. It’s only days and days later when they’ve run out of ideas that they even think of asking someone like me to get involved. The murder weapon has been got rid of and not found. The blood has been washed away. If a witness had seen anything, they would almost certainly have come forward by now. You know when you’ve lost your keys and you get to that terrible stage where you’re looking in the places you’ve already looked in? That’s the stage they’ve reached now.”

  “Sounds hopeless.”

  I bit another olive. Lovely. “The police aren’t too bothered. No relatives creating a fuss. No press calling for a result. But there’s a bright side. If the situation is hopeless, then at least it’s difficult to make things worse.”

  “Is that why you were talking to that guy, Will?”

  “Yes. Lianne—well, there are a lot of people like her in this area.”

  “You mean prostitutes and runaways.”

  “I mean young women drifting around, not in stable relationships, earning casual money. And I think Will Pavic knows as much about that world as anybody.”

  “What is he? A pimp?”

  “He runs a hostel that helps some of these runaways.” I smiled at Julie’s disappointed expression. “Sorry. He’s not a lawyer or a doctor or a television producer. I’ve already gathered from the expressions on the police’s faces every time his name comes up that they don’t think much of him. Anyway, as you may have heard, he wasn’t very keen on communicating with me, so maybe your plot to get him into your clutches could be useful. While he’s falling in love with you, he might start talking to me. Or do you mind me being here?”

  “For Chrissake, you’ve got to be here. You’ve got to help.”

  Julie was going out for the evening but I finished the bottle of wine and read through files I’d already read. I looked at the map again and then I gave a sort of grunt.

  “That’s it,” I said to nobody. It wasn’t a great eureka moment. I didn’t run around the room shouting. But I felt puzzled and that was something.

  __________

  When I appeared in Detective Inspector Furth’s office the following morning, he looked as if I had arrived to repossess his stereo. “Yes?” he said.

  “I’ve had a thought.”

  “Good,” he said briskly. “You didn’t have to come in, though. You could always just give a ring. It saves us all trouble.”

  “We don’t have to be enemies, you know,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, in a tone of innocence.

  “Doesn’t matter. Do you want my idea?”

  “I’m agog.”

  “You may want to look at the map,” I said.

  “I’ve got my own map.”

  “Do you want to hear what I’ve got to say?”

  “Please tell me your thought, I’m on tenterhooks.”

  I sat down opposite Furth’s desk. The chair was irritatingly low, which made me feel as if I was looking up at the chairman of the board. “Why the canal?” I asked.

  “Because it’s secluded.”

  “Yes, but look at the map.” I laid out my photocopy on his desk. “There are very secluded parts of the canal, but not where the body was found. Look. Where Lianne was found
is right by the Cobbett Estate.”

  “That’s secluded enough,” Furth said breezily. “I know the site backwards. There are plenty of bushes. It’s poorly lit, deserted at night. Also, the murderer could escape along the canal in either direction or cut off into the streets.”

  “That’s what occurred to me when I looked at the map. It’s a place that can be driven up to. Look, it’s almost next to the estate car park.”

  “So?”

  “Another thing puzzled me. Lianne had her throat cut and her carotid artery severed. Her clothes were soaked in blood. I looked at the scene-of-crime report for the amount of blood found on the scene. Nothing.”

  Furth gave a shrug.

  “Well?”

  “Isn’t that strange?”

  “Off the top of my head, not really. If she was pulled backwards, the blood might just go on her and the murderer. The other spots wouldn’t be noticed. Anyway, the scene-of-crime guys probably didn’t mention it. What would have been the point?”

  “This is the point. What if Lianne wasn’t killed on the canal? What if she was brought there, already dead, and dumped? The site was chosen because it could be driven up to, and was dark and quiet, as you say.”

  “Is that it?” said Furth briskly.

  “Yes.”

  He got up, went to a filing cabinet and opened a drawer. He flipped through it, pulled out a gray file, walked across and tossed it onto the desk. I picked it up and looked at it.

  “Recognize it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Darryl Pearce. He found Lianne’s body, remember? Remember how he found it? He heard a drawn-out groan or cry. He hung around a bit. Cowardly bastard. Finally made up his mind, rummaged in the undergrowth and found her. What’s your argument? Did your murderer bring a half-dead person in his car? Do you know how long it takes someone to die after a wound like that?”

  “I thought of that as well,” I said.

  “Then what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “One of the things I’ve tried to remember is not to give too much importance to any single piece of evidence. Because it might be wrong. Remember the Yorkshire Ripper hunt? They looked in the wrong place for about a year because they believed a fake tape.”

  “You think that runt Darryl Pearce has the brains to fake anything?”

  “I was wondering about that. I tried to work out if he might have made a mistake or fabricated the story to cover up for something, but I couldn’t think of anything.”

  “So?”

  “Mary Gould.”

  “Remind me.”

  “The woman who found the body.”

  Furth looked dismissive. “She was the one who was too scared to report it and phoned up the next day. It was no big deal. She didn’t have anything important to contribute.”

  “She saw the body, but in her statement she didn’t say anything about Lianne still being alive. What do you make of that?”

  “She might have forgotten. Or not noticed.”

  “You don’t not notice someone bleeding to death from an artery.”

  “She could have arrived on the scene just after Lianne had died.”

  I looked at Furth. His expression was a little less contemptuous. He looked as if he was starting to become interested, despite himself. “So,” I said, “in that scenario, you imagine Darryl Pearce hearing a groan. According to his account he was on the towpath, just by the canal. Then while he is deciding what to do, Lianne dies and Mary Gould arrives from the other side, from the direction of the housing estate, she said. She is horrified and runs off before Darryl comes round and finds the now-dead body. That’s quite a lot to happen in ninety seconds.”

  “You got a better suggestion?”

  “I’ve got an alternative. Mary Gould finds the body, cries out, runs off. Darryl Pearce hears that cry and assumes it came from Lianne. That’s all I’m saying. Darryl Pearce’s statement is the only suggestion we have that Lianne was ever alive when she was lying by the canal.”

  Furth leaned back. “Fuck,” he said reflectively.

  “Do you see what I mean?”

  “I’m going to have to think about this one.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What?” asked Furth, looking past me into space.

  “If we’re agreed that the actual killing isn’t tied to the canal—”

  “Which we’re not,” Furth interrupted.

  “—then the significance is not the place but the means of killing. Which may mean that if this is a random killer on the look-out for a vulnerable victim, then there may be other killings that have been overlooked. So it would be worth checking with other cases. What do you think?”

  “I’ll consider it,” said Furth.

  “Do you want me to talk to Oban about this?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” I said brightly. And, having spoiled Furth’s morning, I left, feeling oddly cheerful.

  13

  When you’ve got somebody awkward coming to dinner, all the agony aunts agree on what you should do. You need to find your very best friends. You talk to them and explain the situation. You invite them round but on the firm promise that you’ll repay them by inviting them for a really enjoyable evening in the near future. I considered this and then I had a moment of inspiration. I thought: Fuck it. Why should I put anybody I care about through an evening like that? I had a much better idea. I had a small group of people in the corner of my brain like a migraine that was always waiting to happen. They were like something stuck to my coat that I couldn’t get rid of. They were the people to whom I owed hospitality but whom I never got round to inviting.

  There was Francis at the Welbeck, for example. He had invited me to dinner at his flat in Maida Vale. There had been a terrible argument—I couldn’t remember what about—and somebody had left early, and Francis had got very embarrassed and very drunk. I had described the event to Poppy and she thought it sounded funny and even enjoyable, in a Blitz spirit sort of way, but it really wasn’t. In fact, Francis had actually avoided catching my eye for days afterwards, and had never referred to the evening again. Still, I suspected I ought to reciprocate in some form, someday, and this seemed like a good opportunity, not least because it was such short notice that he almost certainly wouldn’t be able to come. I rang him at work and said that I was having a few people round the next day, could he come? Great, he said. See you then.

  Then there was Catey. I had met Catey because at university her boyfriend was the best friend of someone I had gone out with for a while. It was a distant enough connection, God knows, and it wasn’t as if we had hit it off especially. There were dozens of closer friends with whom I’d lost touch gradually or suddenly but my tepid relationship with Catey had been kept going over the years by a stubborn, persistent drip of invitations, a dinner party that year, a drinks party the next, and I would respond with an invitation ratio of about one to every four of hers. Once more I hoped that she wouldn’t be able to come, and that that would be my obligations discharged for another year or two. Indeed, when I got through to her it turned out she was engaged for the evening, but then she said “No, no, I’m sure I can put them off,” and that she wanted me to meet Alastair, her new boyfriend, in fact, almost her fiancé. She rang back three minutes later. That was fine, she said. See you tomorrow. Lovely, I said.

  Julie insisted on cooking and I agreed to that without any protest since the entire imminent disaster had been her idea. When I arrived home just before seven the flat was full of rich smells. The table was laid. The main room was tidy. I went into the kitchen. On one side there was a large dish I had forgotten I had. She must have been rooting around in the back of my cupboards. It was full of vegetables. I could see tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, sliced onions.

  “You said to keep it simple,” Julie said. “That’s the first course. Marinated vegetables. Then there’s a risotto. I’ve got the liquid all ready. And I got some fruit and ricotta round the corner.
”

  “I bought some wine,” I said, faintly.

  “Then we’re all done.”

  “How do you do all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this. This stuff, the laid table, the dish with vegetables that could be put in a magazine. There are no cookbooks lying around wedged open with stains where you spilled oil on them.”

  Julie laughed. “I don’t know how to cook. This isn’t cooking. I just fried or boiled a few vegetables and poured some olive oil and a splash of vinegar over them, sprinkled a few herbs. This is just fast food.”

  “Yes, but where did you learn how to do it without planning and worrying and complaining and making a mess?”

  She looked puzzled. “Compared with what?” she said. “Are you comparing boiling up some rice with going and looking at dead bodies and thinking about how they died?”

  I pulled a face. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” I said lamely.

  “But your dress,” Julie said. “You haven’t changed your mind about that?”

  __________

  Julie looked almost too sensational in the dress. With her tousled hair and still-tanned face and arms and legs, lipstick and just a touch of mascara, she looked as if she should be performing a torch song in an exotic bar rather than having dinner with a selection of my more drab friends.

  “You look amazing,” I said, and she gave a half-grin as if it was all a joke, as if we were both going to dress up in grown-ups’ clothes to play a game. “I’m not going to be able to compete. I think I’ll dress down this evening.”

  “Is this all right?” Julie said, looking slightly alarmed. “You want this back for this evening? I’m sure I can dig out something.”