The Red Room

by Nicci French

  “I’m an adviser, that’s all,” I said uncomfortably.

  “You don’t need to convince me,” he said. “What do I know? As far as I can see, there’s someone driving around attacking women. They are dangerous, they need to be caught. All that’s clear. I don’t understand what you’re doing. Or why. Why you’re so involved. I don’t understand what you’re after.” With his finger he gently traced the scar on my face. It made me shiver. “You’ve already been attacked once. Isn’t that enough?”

  I took his hand in mine. “Stop that,” I said. “I should introduce you to some detectives. You all seem to feel the same about what I’m up to. Meanwhile I’ve got to do some of this useless work.”

  “I didn’t say it was useless. I said I didn’t understand it.”

  I leaned down and kissed him. “The problem,” I said, “with everything, really, is that you only know at the end, when it’s too late, if it was worthwhile. I’ll see you.”

  “Tonight?”

  “You want me to?”

  “You want me to get down on one knee?”

  I looked around the café. “Not here,” I said. “Look, here I am, all hopeful, as you put it. I’m saying I want to see you again, tonight, at your place. Now, what about you?”

  “Yes,” he said, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “Yes.” We stared at each other.

  When I left he was still sitting there, with his greasy plate and cold tea and stern face. In twelve hours, I would hold him again.

  28

  At last, I thought, a witness who was straightforward, a man who spoke his mind, dealt in facts and nothing else, saw what there was to be seen, never let fancies cloud his judgement. He shook my hand firmly and cleared his throat as a preliminary to speaking. My eyes felt scorched in their sockets. All the coffee and the dark brown tea I had drunk this morning was toxic in my system.

  “Dr. Quinn,” I said.

  “I’m Terence Mack. But people call me Terry.”

  “Do you make a habit of walking along the canal after midnight?” I asked.

  He gave a sniff. “I don’t think someone like me needs to worry.”

  I couldn’t help but agree. He was compact and gingery, with hairy knuckles and wrists, and long ear-lobes. His dark gray suit was rather too tight round his waist, and he wore, over his white shirt, a striped red and black tie that made my head ache even more. He, too, must have been up half the night, but he didn’t look weary at all. He sat upright and alert.

  But he was a dead loss, for all that. Like most witnesses, he had only realized after the event that something was happening. I had his statement in front of me. It was short and precise; he had even noted the exact time of the attack immediately afterwards: 1:19 A.M. according to his watch, which was set at the correct time, to be sure. He had, he said, been walking along the canal because he had been at a meeting with clients from Singapore at the Pelham Hotel, just up the road, and afterwards had been unable to find a taxi. The path was the shortest route to the busy intersection of roads near Kersey Town station, where he knew there was a cab rank.

  “I was coming out of the tunnel,” he said to me now. “There’s a light there. So I stepped out into the darkness and for a moment I couldn’t see anything at all. You know how it is.” I nodded. “I just heard a noise. I could make out some shapes, scuffling, by the water’s edge. Then the next thing I knew there was this woman in my arms, screaming.”

  “And she said…” I looked back at the statement “… ‘Help! Help, please help.’”

  “Maybe she said help more times than that, I can’t be exact. She screamed from an inch away. Her hair was in my eyes, so I couldn’t see much at all, but her voice was clear enough.”

  “And you saw nothing after that.”

  “Just this other fellow standing there.”

  “The other witness?”

  He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Weird-looking guy.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Who?”

  “The weird-looking guy.”

  “He helped.”

  “And there was definitely another man?”

  “What do you mean? What do you think this is all about?”

  I looked at the statement once more. “There isn’t much of a description here.”

  He looked a little shamefaced. “It was over so quickly. Just shapes in the darkness and the woman flying at me. I didn’t really know what was going on. At least I noticed the time.”

  “That was good,” I said. “How was Bryony, I mean, the woman?”

  “A bit shocked,” said Terence. “A bit hysterical. She was saying it was all right, there was no need to do anything, even though she was in a terrible state. Poor girl. Is she all right?”

  “She’s traumatized. But she will be, I think. What was Doll—the other guy—doing while you were phoning?”

  “Doing? Not very much. Holding on to her, seeing if she was all right. Not the kind you need around in an emergency. She was crying by then, but softly. Holding on to my arm and whimpering and saying would I stay with her. She was in shock, I could see that. Her hands were trembling. She was breathing in these short gasps. I hope they gave her tea with lots of sugar, that’s always best for shock. Can I ask you something?”

  “Yes.”

  “The fellow I gave my statements to, name of Gil I think, he said the attacker was probably the same man who murdered Philippa Burton.”

  “He did?” I said drily.

  “Is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I should have got him. I could’ve. I didn’t know what was going on.”

  “You’re sure there was nothing about the fourth shape you remember—height, hair, clothing?”

  He shook his head regretfully. “It was over so quickly.”

  “Did you see where he went?”

  “No. I presumed up the steps to the road, but I didn’t see him. I should have followed, shouldn’t I?”

  “You phoned for help. That was the main thing. It’s for the police to run after people.”

  “She was shivering. I put my jacket over her shoulders until the police and ambulance arrived.”

  “Good. That was good.”

  “But Philippa Burton’s murderer. That would have been something….”

  __________

  “A pretty lady,” he said, and his voice trembled. “Such a pretty little lady.”

  “Michael,” I said, trying to hold his eyes, which wandered all over the room, not resting on anything for long, except the view out of the window, which overlooked the car park.

  “Twice,” he said, in a strange, high tone. “Two times it’s happened now to me. I’ve been there twice, Kit.”

  He looked dreadful. There was an ugly, suppurating gash running from his left nostril, over the corner of his mouth and down his chin, which gave his face a distorted appearance, and set his mouth into a vague twitchy smile. The wound was swollen and purple, and it looked to me as if he’d been tugging at the stitches; ends of nylon thread stuck out of his skin. Even as we spoke, he couldn’t keep his hands off it, but touched and picked at it. His lip was swollen, and he kept dabbing at it with the tip of his tongue. There was a large graze on his forehead. One wandering eye was bloodshot. His hair was greasy. His clothes hung off him, as if in a couple of days he’d lost several pounds in weight. He smelled bad, too—a thick, sour odor that filled the poky room.

  “Why me, Kit?” he asked, in his fretful voice. “Why am I always the one?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully enough. “You’re all right, though, aren’t you? Hero of the hour.”

  “Pretty lady,” he said again. His eyes flickered round to rest on me for a moment. “Not as pretty as you. You’re always the prettiest, don’t worry about that. Soft hair, though.” He made a faint mewing sound, which made me shudder.

  His statement was a jumble of contradictory assertions—that he’d seen a huge man, a giant of a man, trying to stran
gle Bryony, that she’d run from her attacker and straight into his outstretched arms, that he’d rescued her himself, that he’d seen the man drive off in a blue estate car, maybe it wasn’t blue, maybe it was red, maybe it wasn’t an estate car, that maybe, come to think of it, he’d seen him run off down the canal, that Bryony had fainted.

  “Just tell me the things that you know for sure, Michael. Why were you by the canal so late?”

  “Fishing. Good time for it. Full moon. Nobody around, no bloody noise.”

  “Where were you? Right on the edge?”

  “My patch. In the shadows, just near the tunnel, where no one can see me, but I can see them.”

  “What did you see?”

  “You know,” he said. “The lady. The man after her. And the other man. Terry. Have you met Terry? We both rescued her. Chased him off, saved her.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “A man. A big man.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Not exactly. I just saw shapes and then I got up, I think I got up, I don’t know exactly, I was confused, anybody’d have been confused, Kit, and I held on to her so he couldn’t get her.”

  “Are you sure? You are quite sure it happened like that? You pulled her away?”

  “Oh, yes.” He smiled with his misshapen mouth. “I saved her. I’m sure I saved her. Does she realize that? The papers say terrible things about me, but I saved her from him. Tell them that, will you? Tell everyone what I did, Kit, so then they’ll know. They’ll be sorry for the things they did. Everyone’ll be sorry then.” Once again he touched his face, licked his cut lip.

  “What happened after that?”

  “After?”

  “After you pulled her.”

  “Then this other man came out of the tunnel, and she ran to him and the other one ran off. And she screamed and screamed and screamed. I didn’t know anyone could scream that loudly.”

  “Michael, listen. You must think. Is there anything you can remember, anything at all, anything you saw, or you heard, no matter what, that you haven’t told the police or me?”

  “I stroked her hair to comfort her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the other man, the one who came out of the tunnel, he said—excuse me, Kit—he said very loudly: ‘Fucking hell.’ Sorry.” Doll looked prim.

  “Where are you going now, Michael?”

  “Where?” His eyes wavered on me. “I don’t suppose I could come to…”

  “You should go home, Michael. Get yourself a solid meal. Clean clothes. Rest up.”

  “Rest up,” he repeated. “Yes. Things have got a bit out of hand, really. They gave me pills but I don’t know where I put them.”

  “Go home, Michael.”

  “Am I safe?”

  “Are the police protecting you?”

  “They said they’d keep an eye out.”

  “Good,” I said. I smiled at him. In the middle of my confusion about what had happened, my deep weariness, my distaste for Doll, I felt a jolt of surprising and unwelcome tenderness for him, with his slashed face and reddened eyes and his general squalid hopelessness and helplessness. “I think you’re quite safe, really. It won’t happen again. Just take care.”

  “Kit. Kit.”

  “Yes.”

  But he didn’t have anything to say to me. He just stared at me for a few seconds. His eyes filled up with tears. They ran down his cheeks, over his cut face, into his dirty neck.

  __________

  It was eleven o’clock. I had two hours before my meeting with Oban and Furth, three before I was due at Bryony Teale’s house. I thought about going home and taking a shower, maybe lying down. But suddenly I didn’t feel tired anymore. I felt sharp and clear with lack of sleep, as if I was standing on a high mountain, breathing in thin air. I thought about getting myself something to eat, but the idea of food made me feel slightly nauseous. All I wanted was a glass of cold water to wash through my body, dilute some of the bitter coffee I’d gulped down.

  I walked out of the station, and on the high street I bought a large bottle of carbonated water and took it to a patch of green nearby, where there were seats and drooping rose bushes. There, I sat on a bench in the sun, drinking my water and watching the people who walked past. The warmth felt lovely on my skin, gentle and soothing. I sighed and closed my eyes and felt sunlight trickle down my neck. My head buzzed lightly with fragments of the last twenty-four hours: I heard Will’s groan of last night, felt his hand on my breast. I saw him as he had been this morning, so careful not to promise me anything. I pictured Bryony’s face on the hospital pillow; her pale orange hair and caramel eyes, her trembling hands. I let Doll into my mind, with his plaintive incoherence and his blotchy oozing face. The other witness—Terence Mack with the square, hairy hands—had been momentarily blinded by the light of the tunnel. Nobody had seen anything that mattered. Everyone was always looking in the wrong direction. Drama happened in the dark shadows.

  I sat there for a long while, thinking and not thinking, letting the images drift across my brain like wisps of fog, insubstantial but suggestive. The sun moved in and out of clouds. People came out of their offices and sat on the patch of grass to eat their sandwiches. I thought about Albie, but he seemed a long way off now—a man laughing in the distance, head thrown back, white teeth gleaming; a stranger. It was hard to believe that for months on end I had gone to sleep wishing he was beside me, and woken each morning remembering all over again that he had hurt me and that he wasn’t coming back to take me in his arms and say that he was sorry. Never again. He’d never again hold me and touch me. Such a hard, sharp word: never. Definite, like a knife, like a line drawn under something.

  And tonight I’d see Will. I’d go to his house and I’d make him look at me and see me, and I’d feel happy for a while. I stood up, and wrenched my mind back to Bryony Teale.

  29

  “Nice,” I said, looking out of the window.

  “Bad area, though,” said Oban, sniffily.

  Oban had told me that Bryony Teale was willing to talk to me. Especially to me. A sympathetic female ear, Oban had said on the phone. Not as a compliment. I had walked over, and as I approached the house, the window of a car outside had slid down and a hand emerged, beckoning me over. Oban peered out. He opened the door and invited me to sit next to him on the back seat. He said he wanted to talk first. It would have been nicer outside, even on this gray day, but Oban was obviously more comfortable in the car. Maybe it seemed like a mobile office.

  The house was part of a terrace that curved in a gentle crescent, not so much a bold letter C, more a parenthesis. The houses were tall and narrow, late Victorian. Some were shabby, one was boarded up, but a few bore the telltale signs of gentrification: shiny-painted front doors with brass knobs and knockers, freshly pointed brickwork, metal shutters on the lower windows. Oban pointed down the street. “Ten years ago a stack of flowers was piled up there.”

  “Why?”

  “A couple of boys were walking along down toward Euston Road when they ran into a gang of other kids. They chased them and they caught one by those railings. They beat him up and then when they were done someone pushed a knife into him.” He looked back at the house. “I don’t know why people like that want to move here.”

  “From what I hear they’re trying to do some good to the area, show some faith in the local people.”

  Oban pulled a face. “Right,” he said. “And this is the thanks they get. They’re so bloody naïve. I’ve seen it all before. That woman walking down the canal as if it’s a country lane. I mean, I’m not a particular fan of country lanes, but this is stupid. Did you hear of the woman a few years ago who was staying in one of the local hotels?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hear stories about lots of women.”

  “This one stayed on the road, but some boys dragged her down on to the towpath. She was raped. They asked her if she could swim. She said no, clever thing. So they threw her in. She swam a
cross to the other side. Got away.”

  “What’s your advice?” I asked. “To stay indoors with the door locked and the TV on?”

  “It would be safer.”

  “The best idea would be if everybody went walking by the canal.”

  “Who wants to walk by a smelly canal?”

  Enough was enough. “Do you think we should go in and talk to Bryony Teale?” I asked.

  Oban looked thoughtful. “It might be better if you talked to her on your own,” he said. “At first anyway.”

  “I’m not sure if we’ll get anything from her at all yet,” I said. “She seemed in a bad way last night.”

  “Just do what you can. Give us something, anything.” Then Oban’s voice dropped into a mutter that I couldn’t make out at all.

  “What was that?”

  Oban started to speak but nothing except a sort of twitching splutter emerged. “It’s that bloody Doll,” he finally managed. “He’s in it somewhere. I don’t know how but he is.”

  “You said he was just a witness.”

  “Witness my arse,” said Oban, his face a fiery red now. The police driver sitting in the front of the car turned round and gave me a look. “I want to bury that bastard. Ask her about Doll. Ask her what he was doing there.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “As I understand it, the point of the connection was the place, this same area of canal, and the same method of abduction. That’s where Doll spends his life, sitting there with his rod and his maggots. And there was the girl and the witness. He helped her.”

  Oban gave a sarcastic laugh that was part grunt, part cough. “I haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on,” he said. “But Doll has been in this from the beginning like a bad smell. He’s bound up with it somewhere. I just know. So do you. You’ve seen him, you’ve seen where he lives.”

  I gave a shudder. “I know. All right, I’ll ask. Do I just knock at the door?”

  “That’s right. We’ve had an officer there all day, just to make cups of tea probably. She’ll answer.”

  “What are you going to do?”