The Red Room

by Nicci French

  When I called on him the morning after my visit to Kersey Town, it was like trying to see the prime minister. He gave me a friendly nod. “Are you in a rush?” he asked.

  “Not especially,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “You can talk to me as we go.”

  This wasn’t an easy matter. He was always taking a call, always between meetings. He was always that few minutes late to demonstrate he was the most important person. It was like talking from the platform to someone who was on a train pulling out of a station. I started telling him about my conversation with people who knew Lianne, but he interrupted quickly, “Do I need to know this, Kit?”

  “Look, Oban…”

  “Dan,” he insisted.

  “The background to the victims is all we have.”

  He stopped for a moment and gave a doubtful grunt. “I’m not convinced, Kit. Until I see something specific, we’ve got to stick with what I said at the press conference. The presumption must be that what we have is an opportunist killer. Have you talked to Seb? He agrees with that.”

  “No, I haven’t talked to him.” In fact, I had been putting it off. That was one of the reasons I hadn’t returned Poppy’s phone calls in the last few days—I didn’t want to get Seb instead.

  “We’ll see him in a minute. You can talk it over.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “And I don’t want any rivalry between you.”

  “There isn’t any rivalry.”

  “By the way, Kit, have you been talking to anybody about our Mr. Doll?”

  “No,” I said. “Who would I talk to about him?” A thought struck me. “He came round to my flat.”

  Oban shrugged. “I’d watch yourself.”

  “So obviously Julie knows about him.”

  “Obviously,” said Oban, with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Oh, and I’ve talked to Will Pavic about him. Will knows him anyway.”

  “Pavic again?” Oban gave another grunt. “You’re getting into some strange company. He’s treading a fine line, that one.”

  “So people keep saying.”

  Oban’s expression became somber. “No, I mean it, Kit. Pavic has rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way in this area. The social-service people hate him. I think a few journos are out to get him.”

  “What on earth for?” I said. “I know he’s not exactly easy to get on with but he’s only trying to help.”

  “Really?” said Oban dubiously. “Not everyone would agree about that. There are rumors, more than rumors, about drug-dealing in that hostel of his. Some people say that he’s just turning a blind eye to it, but others are saying he rakes a percentage off the top. I can tell you that if he makes one false move he’s going down. Anyway, that wasn’t what I was saying. I’ve been phoned up by a couple of journalists about Mickey Doll.”

  “What for?”

  “Just questions. Is it true that he’s been questioned for the murders? Is there a prospect of his being charged? Why did we let him go?”

  “How did they hear about him?”

  “This station’s like a bloody news agency. If someone farts in here, someone else will be on the blower to the Mail about it.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Just bare bones. If anybody rings you about it, refer them to me. Ah, here he is now.”

  I half expected to see Michael Doll but he was referring to Seb, the media’s favorite psychiatrist, Poppy’s husband, my kind-of friend. Today, he looked as if he was ready to go on the one-o’clock news. He was wearing crisply pressed black trousers, boots and a rather spectacular black-leather jacket over a shiny white shirt. His hair was deftly tousled and he had the appropriate day or so’s growth of stubble. He stepped forward, kissed me on both cheeks than gave me a hug. “Kit,” he said. “Isn’t this great? Working on the same case, I mean.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, wrapped in his arms and deeply uncomfortable there. “How’s Poppy?”

  “What? Oh fine, hunky-dory. You know Poppy.” He gave a light laugh and winked at Oban. “Kit and I go way back.”

  “Obviously.”

  “She and my wife are thick as thieves. So this is like a family affair.”

  “So you know Julie?” asked Oban.

  “Julie?” Seb frowned. “Do I know Julie, Kit?”

  “I hope I’m not putting my foot in it,” Oban said roguishly.

  “No,” I said frantically, feeling my cheeks burn. “Look, I keep wanting to say—”

  “Never mind. There are things we need to discuss. Hang on.” His mobile was ringing again.

  “Oban was telling me about your views on the case,” I said to Seb as we waited. “I knew some of them already, though. I think I heard you talking about the case on the radio, but I’m not sure if I heard your conclusion. I think they had to play a record.”

  “Oh, that,” he said absently.

  Oban put his phone in his pocket and joined us again. “We need to talk integration here,” he said.

  “Well, of course I’m completely delighted that Kit’s on board.” Seb gave his wide smile once more and touched my shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to see her being a bit more ambitious about her work. But I suppose we should just formalize the pecking order. Two separate inquiries have been merged into one, and I was the consultant for the primary murder.”

  “But the murder of Lianne happened first, Seb. Do you mean that the murder of Philippa Burton is more important?”

  “I mean it was a larger-scale inquiry. What I’m saying is that we have two psychological consultants and I want matters made clear. Just to formalize things.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” I said.

  “Well, for instance—just a random example—there should be a consistency in the public presentation of the psychological expertise.”

  “You mean, you want to appear on television and at press conferences,” said Oban drily.

  “That’s fine by me,” I said hastily.

  “So that’s agreed,” said Oban.

  “It was only a hypothetical example,” Seb said, “but very well, if that’s what you want, then I accept the responsibility.”

  “However, Kit remains centrally involved,” said Oban firmly. “After all, she is the person responsible for the two inquiries being merged.”

  “Yes, I heard about that,” said Seb. “What a piece of luck.”

  I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to be goaded. “How is the fiber analysis going?” I asked. “Have they managed to get any closer to the car type?”

  Oban shook his head. “You can see the technical stuff if you want. It’s a very specific kind of colored synthetic fiber. It definitely comes from the same source but that doesn’t mean it’s actually the carpet from the car itself. It could be from a blanket or a piece of cloth or a hundred other things. The result’s no bloody help at all.” He put his hands in his trouser pockets and looked blank. “I’ve got to be going. There’s a meeting with someone from the Home Office. Then I’ve got to see a collection of people who’re going to dowse for the murderer. Or at least I think that’s what it was. Idiots with forked sticks.”

  He went and Seb and I were left awkwardly together with nowhere to go. “How’s Poppy?” I said, then remembered I’d asked that already.

  “Oh, you know,” he said, looking over my shoulder. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to call you. Did Poppy tell you? Megan and Amy hardly slept for days after your goodnight story. Woke screaming in the night.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean…”

  “No, I was only joking. Interesting idea, though. I’ve been thinking about it. Did you get it from somewhere?” “I think I told you that it was a dream I’ve been having since my accident.”

  “Red room. Interesting idea. A bloody chamber. So you think it’s a sort of womb? Your mother died, didn’t she? Do you think you’re expressing a wish to return to her dead womb?”

  I had a strong impulse to beat Se
b around the head with a heavy object. “No, I don’t,” I said. “It’s a story about being very afraid because being slashed across the face made me very afraid.”

  “Possibly,” Seb said reflectively. “Have you written about it? Are you planning a paper on it?”

  “No,” I said. “My subject is usually other people’s dreams.”

  “Good,” he said. “Good.”

  __________

  The next morning, very early, the phone rang. It was Oban. “Get a paper.”

  “What do you mean? What paper?”

  “One of the tabloids. Any of them. Fuck it.” And he put the phone down.

  Five minutes later after a breathless run down to the man outside the tube station, a selection of the day’s tabloid newspapers was spread out on my table. The familiar, slightly eager, slightly dazed expression of Michael Doll was staring up at Julie and me out of a mess of huge, raucous headlines: ARREST IN PIPPA MURDER. “I’M INNOCENT” SAYS PIPPA SUSPECT. PIPPA SUSPECT’S “WEIRD” PAST.

  Pippa. That name again. The right length for a headline. And where was Lianne? Who cared about her? I scanned the papers. It was all there. The questioning, a suspiciously detailed account of what had been obtained by Colette’s wire, the release on what were described as “technical grounds.” There was a sketchy account of his life and times: children’s home, reformatory, minor sexual offenses. A young woman from the Daily News had managed to get an “exclusive” interview, as if there was any problem in getting this pathetically lonely man to talk to a young woman. Here, at least, Lianne was mentioned. Doll boasted that he had been close by. To make things worse, he tried to deny that he had been a suspect. No, not at all, he said, he was an important witness, he was the only person who had actually seen anything. There was a photograph of him in his room looking proud of himself.

  That room. There was a description of the room by the journalist—a rich, clever young woman coming face to face with a desperate, poor, fucked-up man—that was a form of accusation in itself. The article ended on a note of caution that looked as if it had been composed with a lawyer looking over the writer’s shoulder: “We do not suggest that Mickey Doll has any involvement in the crime. He is not a suspect. No evidence has been found linking him to the tragic murders of Lianne and young mum Philippa Burton. Yet men like Mickey Doll, with his porn-fueled fantasies and his criminal record, are an obvious threat to the community, to our families, to our children. In identifying a man like Doll, in printing his photograph, in revealing where he lives, we are not, of course, recommending any actions against him by members of the public. That would be illegal, however understandable, however legitimate the concerns of ordinary people. It is time for the politicians to act.”

  Julie took away the interview and read it with her coffee and a bowl of the fruit she ate for her breakfast. “Hmm,” she said, when she had finished. “It doesn’t really capture his full charm.”

  But the following day Oban told me, rather casually, I thought, that Doll was in hospital. A concerned citizen had walked up to him in a pub and smashed him in the face with a broken bottle. “So he’s scarred too,” he added cheerfully. “He’s apparently been asking for you, but I wouldn’t visit, if I was you.”

  “No, it’s probably not a good idea,” I agreed, with a pang of guilt, and put Doll out of my mind.

  24

  Two days after Doll had been attacked, I went back to the Burtons’ house, not because I thought it was a particularly fruitful idea but because Oban pressed me into it. “Something odd about the bloke,” he’d said.

  “Something odd about most people,” I replied.

  “He’s not upset enough.”

  I wondered what that meant. Jeremy Burton had seemed upset enough to me, with his hopeless, tired face, his little grimaces of bafflement and misery. Was there a right amount of grief, then? How did you measure it? I thought about the thousands of people who’d laid flowers on the site where Philippa’s body had been found, and wept copiously for a pretty young mother and for the little girl she had left behind. Was that grief ? I didn’t say any of this to Oban, of course—he’d just have raised his eyebrows ironically and sent Seb instead.

  I arrived at the house on a Sunday morning, as Jeremy Burton had requested. Philippa’s mother opened the door, and ushered me through the hall and into the gleaming kitchen. There were flowers everywhere—faded velvet irises, shriveled ox-eye daisies and numerous vases of white lilies, whose thick, oppressive fragrance filled the house. As I passed the living room, I saw banks of condolence cards on the mantelpiece and the table.

  I looked out of the kitchen window. The father and daughter were in the garden together, sitting on a wrought-iron bench with their backs to the window. He was doing a crossword, and she was kicking her legs back and forth. Something made him look round, and I raised a hand and made my way out into the garden and across the lawn. He gave a nod of recognition. I had worried about blundering back in but he didn’t seem displeased to see me.

  We shook hands and he folded up the paper self-consciously, although not before I’d noticed he hadn’t filled in a single clue. He was wearing an open-necked T-shirt and khaki shorts, but nevertheless looked rather neat and smart. Some people always look respectable, I thought, and some people never do. Give Doll a bath, a haircut, a shave, a manicure, dress him in a thousand-pound suit, and he’d still look unwashed and somehow unsavory. You couldn’t clean off his past.

  “Look,” said Emily.

  I crouched down. She had laid her treasures on the bench beside her. There was a round gray stone and a sharp white one, a forked stick, a feather, a clump of moss, a small pink bouncing ball smeared with mud, an old cat’s collar, a wooden ice-cream stick, a plastic tube.

  “Look,” she said again, and uncurled her plump fist. There was a small shell on the palm of her hand.

  “Where did you find that?” I asked.

  She pointed to the graveled area near the kitchen door.

  “It’s lovely,” I said, and she closed her fist over it again. She was wearing a spotted sundress, and her hair was clipped back behind her ears, making her face seem thinner than I’d remembered.

  “I’m going to give them to Mummy,” she said, in a self-important voice. I glanced at her father.

  “She means, put them on Phil’s grave after she’s buried,” he explained, wincing. “It was my mother-in-law’s idea, that Emily should collect things for her. I’m not so sure. She seems to be taking the idea a bit too literally.” He frowned so that a small furrow appeared over the bridge of his nose.

  “What else have you found?” I asked Emily.

  She climbed carefully down from the bench, shell in one hand, and started to gather up the treasures with the other. “Come and see,” she said.

  “Can I come in a minute? First I need to talk to your father.”

  She nodded. The stones and moss and plastic tube fell on the grass. She knelt down and started to pick them up. Her father made no move to help her. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his shorts, his newspaper tucked under one arm. I glanced across at him. His face looked bruised with tiredness. “I tell you what, Emily, why don’t I bring those to you when I come and see what else you’ve found for your mother?”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t forget that.” She pointed to the plastic tube, lying at my feet.

  “I won’t.”

  We watched her as she plodded away from us.

  “She thinks Philippa’s coming back.”

  “Does she?” I looked at her straight back and spindly legs as she disappeared through the kitchen door.

  “Won’t you sit down?” He pointed to the bench.

  “Thanks.”

  “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks, I’m fine.”

  He sat down too, at the other end of the bench.

  “I heard about your contribution,” he said.

  “Oh, well…”

  �
�I underestimated you, I think.”

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “All right.”

  “Sleeping OK?”

  “Yes. Well, no, not really. You know. I wake and…” He trailed off.

  “Eating?”

  He nodded.

  “I talked to Tess Jarrett a few days ago. She said that Philippa seemed distracted during the last few weeks before her death. Do you think that’s true?”

  “No, I don’t.” I waited. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”

  “She didn’t seem to have anything on her mind?”

  He stared down at the ground, as if he was trying to pretend I wasn’t there. “She seemed the same as usual.”

  “Tell me about the night before she died. Describe your evening together.”

  He sighed and started intoning in a monotonous voice: “I came back from work at seven. Emily was in bed and Philippa was reading her a story. We both said good night to Emily.”

  “What did Philippa say, when she said good night?”

  “What did she say?” He blinked at me. “Do you know, I can’t remember. We went downstairs and I poured us both a glass of wine and we walked round the garden together. It was a nice evening.” His voice was getting a bit less clipped. “We had supper outside, there.” He pointed at the table on the patio.

  “What did you eat?”

  “Moussaka. Green salad.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “I can’t remember.” He looked distressed. “I can’t remember anything, except at some point she asked me if I thought she was looking older.”