by Ruth Rendell
The television was, of course, on and showing its usual late-afternoon–early-evening fare. Neither Will nor the Beattys seemed to find anything to object to, for all three of them it was the obligatory background to home life, as normally present as light and air and an equable temperature. Will alone was really watching it. Keith and Kim chatted, glancing from time to time at the screen, occasionally addressing a meaningless remark to James, who looked up and nodded or raised his eyebrows. Becky watched Kim gently take Will’s hand and expected to see hers pushed away, but Will kept hold of it and in quite a strong grip. Well, support might be coming from that unexpected quarter …
How long were they going to stay? Her thoughts were moving in a way that made her dislike herself. These people, these sorts of people, never knew when to leave, they didn’t know how to make a graceful departure. She would probably have to tell them tactfully. But instead, principally because she needed another drink, she went out into the kitchen, gulped down the whisky quickly before James came out to find her and began thinking about food. If they were here much longer she would have to feed them. Eggs, she supposed, it always came to eggs in the end, or she could phone for food.
The door opened and she expected James, but it was Kim.
‘I was wondering if I should order a pizza or maybe Chinese takeaway. What would you like?’
‘Oh, we aren’t stopping. I’ve had my tea and Denise’ll be expecting Keith. Becky, I came out to say—well, I’ve had an idea. About Will, I mean.’
A flush had come into her cheeks and now she looked very pretty. Becky noticed how beautifully cut her hair was and how clean. But, of course, she was a hairdresser … ‘What sort of an idea, Kim?’
‘I really like Will. I don’t know if you know that but I really like him. I know he’s been ill, he’s had a sort of breakdown, hasn’t he? Your friend said you had to take time off work to look after him and he really ought to go home and I thought, you know, why don’t I sort of move in with him and look after him for a bit?’
‘You?’
‘Yes, well, I mean, you know, I really like him. I know he’s shy and he never says much but he’s sort of nice and gentle and, you know, most blokes aren’t. When I say “move in” I don’t mean like partners, I mean I’d just be there at first, and maybe one day …’
‘There’s only the one room.’ Becky felt her head spin. With the shock of this or the whisky? Both, probably. ‘But it’s a big room.’ And with the put-you-up turned into a bed and a screen … ‘There’s your job.’
‘It’s not far. I could get home at lunchtime. And he’ll go back with Keith, won’t he?’
She could go back to work. She’d be free again. And Will would like it. James and she would be able to see each other properly, go out, he could stay the night, and once a week Will would come for the day as he used to, Will and Kim would come … She was letting her thoughts run away with her.
‘I’d like to think about it.’ She would tell James, ask him.
‘Your friend left,’ said Kim. ‘He said to tell you he had to go.’
‘We’ll keep him on the edge,’ said Anwar. ‘Let him sweat.’
‘Dirty murderer.’ Flint had a pious look, all disapproval and conscious virtue. ‘Deserves all he gets. The gas chamber’d be too good for him. Give him a lethal injection and make it slow.’
This display of familiarity with execution methods brought a snarl to Anwar’s mouth. ‘Shut the fuck up, can’t you?’ he said.
Julitta, their spokesperson, had gone home for the day to see her mum in Watford and wouldn’t be back before midnight. It was hard to say if Jeremy, had he known this, would have been comforted by it or more dismayed. He felt only that it would be unwise now to go far from the phone. It might be three when it rang, it might be nine or later. He wanted nothing to eat and he was afraid to drink lest alcohol send him to sleep. What did he want? He asked himself that, thinking a true answer might be of help, but if he were absolutely honest—and there was no point otherwise—he wanted to run away and hide. Only there was nowhere to hide.
He found some books, new ones he had bought but hadn’t yet looked at, and began on a reputedly wonderful biography of Winston Churchill. When he found he was looking at the print and taking in the shape of the words but not their sense, he gave it up and tried a novel. That was worse. A new translation of Suetonius managed to hold his attention because the dissolute lives and excesses of those Roman emperors continued to fascinate, perhaps because, however wicked and evil one might be, they were always worse. Killing a few young women would have been all in the day’s work for Tiberius, say.
The book kept him going till the afternoon, though after he had laid it down, if anyone had asked him to specify what it was about, he could only have given a vague reply. He had begun to will the phone to ring, but in vain. The sandwich he made he couldn’t eat. He managed a glass of orange juice with a wineglassful of vodka in it. The weariness he feared came and he fell into a troubled sleep.
The phone ringing woke him. He reached for it and knocked over his empty glass. It was a wrong number, the scolding voice blaming him for not being the person she wanted. He was wide awake now and it was only three thirty. The girls came into his mind, Gaynor Ray, Nicole Nimms, Rebecca Milsom, Caroline Dansk, Jacky Miller. If he could find something they had in common he might be some way to finding out why he did what he did. They were all young or fairly young, all single (though he hadn’t known that) but for Gaynor who had a man she lived with, and all walking down the street alone. That was all.
He re-created the sensations he had when he saw them, always the same sensation, and always felt for this particular girl. Not for the hundreds of others he might see in the course of a day, though these, or individual ones, might equally well have been alone in a lonely street and he alone behind them. It always happened when he was behind them—was that significant? Something they had about them was what drew him, something in their walk or stance or backward glance or posture. And when he recognised it, or some inner eye of his did and unconsciously, his whole body and soul—yes, his soul—swelled and shook with desire, an excitement intolerable unless he used it for its only purpose. For sexual it was not. No act of sex would have exhausted it or satisfied it. The object which had aroused it had to be—annihilated.
As far as this, or almost as far, his inner investigations invariably brought him. He must go one step further, or several steps back, to uncover the rest, the cause, but he never could. Occasionally, he had played analyst and analysand, taking both parts, had lain on his couch and his shadow-self sat in his chair, asking the questions and giving the answers. He might as well do it now, pass the time. He lay down, on his back, and closed his eyes. The analyst asked him to go back, back beyond his father’s death, beyond school, into his early childhood. Many times he had tried this before and always, at the age of about three, came a blank. The part of his mind that was neither analyst nor analysand knew that some authorities said memory was virtually lacking from before a child could speak coherently, for we think and remember in words.
He surprised himself by saying, ‘It’s too far back.’
Surely, in these curious sessions, he had never said that before?
‘Go to the time, then,’ the analyst said.
‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’
‘It’s school,’ he said. ‘I’m at school. I’m twelve or thirteen. I’m happy, I’m all right. My dad’s ill, very ill, he’s going to die, but I’m happy and guilty too. Guilty for being happy. Oh, I can’t, I can’t do this!’
‘You can.’
‘I’ve got friends. Andrew is my friend.’
‘Go on.’
‘My mother’s very unhappy because my dad’s dying. I love her. Andrew’s mother goes with her to see him in hospital. I love his mother—I mean, I love my mother … I can’t go on, I can’t, I can’t …!’
He was crying now and the analyst was crying, both of them sobbing,
breaking their hearts, merging into one man sitting up, weeping into his single pair of hands.
Television documentaries he sometimes watched, those and political programmes. There was something on about Jung but that seemed too near the bone after his experience of the afternoon. You could damage your mind like that, some said, literally drive yourself mad. And that was how it had felt. He would never do it again. The programme on Tibet sounded possible but once he had turned it on he became very nervous. Although the sound was turned quite low and he wasn’t deaf or anywhere near it, he was afraid he wouldn’t hear the phone when it rang. Much the same applied to going outside on to the roof garden, though it was lovely out there, the sky a tender lilac-blue, still coloured at the horizon by the last of the sun, and not at all cold. He saw a large moth alight on the table and spread flat its brown ring-marked wings.
He made himself watch two news bulletins, and ‘watch’ was right, for the sound was so low it was no more than a faint whisper. When the phone call hadn’t come by eleven, he took his clothes off, put on his dressing gown and cleaned his teeth. Flossing in front of the mirror brought to mind the brace he had once worn to correct his dentition. As he thought of it he found the girls returning to his mind, especially one girl or woman who wasn’t one of them. He held on to her, suddenly short of breath, but she faded as fast as she had come and he spat toothpaste and saliva into the basin. He went to bed. The extension was plugged in and on the bedside cabinet. He sat up for a bit, reading Suetonius, pausing sometimes to reflect how riveted he would have been without this dread hanging over him. The light out, he lay in the dark, wide awake. The same feeling as he had had over the television sound returned, only this time he had a neurotic fear he wouldn’t be able to hear the phone bell in the dark. Of course the light had to go on again. He wouldn’t sleep, anyway.
Midnight, one o’clock. Suppose they had given it up, whatever they planned to do, got cold feet and taken the stuff to the police? Or even suppose the police had found them, raided their hideout and discovered the earrings and the rest? But they wouldn’t, not for a petty burglary. You don’t know if it was petty, he muttered to himself, you don’t know what Inez had down there or that ridiculous Russian woman. Someone like that might have a fortune in jewels. Two o’clock. If only he could run away, run to his mother …
Just before three the phone rang. He picked up the receiver.
‘Surprise, surprise,’ said the voice he had heard that morning. ‘Me again.’
CHAPTER 21
He had agreed to everything she asked because he had no choice. In all areas of life, most people have some sort of choice. It depends, of course, on what they have done and what the threat may be. A few dirty photographs fallen into the wrong hands, an infidelity possibly disclosed, these can be dealt with by a resourceful man or woman or the consequences bravely faced, a ‘publish and be damned’ stance maintained. When the threat is to reveal, or by irrefutable implication reveal, a series of murders, the killer has no recourse but to submit. Revelation is worse than any compliance with threats, however costly.
She asked for £10,000. She was alone, she said, but he didn’t believe her. When she said she hadn’t done the burglary alone, she was in this with one other, her boyfriend, but he hadn’t seen the strongbox and what she had found inside, when she said her father had broken it open but had never realised the significance of its contents, then he half believed. Only a woman, she said, would recognise and appreciate what those objects were and what they meant, and that he understood. It might be true. She wanted £10,000, she was poor, she and her boyfriend needed the money for the deposit on a flat, they had to have somewhere in London and London prices were through the roof. All right, she might want more, she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t, a little more. There was a frankness about this which almost convinced him. Whether it convinced or not, he had to pay, he had to meet her and pay, to play for time and because he had no choice.
She would call him next day to name a time and a place.
‘Don’t take too long about it,’ he said, hating to plead, but dreading the effect on his mind if he had to pass through another day like this one. ‘In the morning, please.’
‘OK, I’ll try.’
After she rang off there was a terrible silence. It seemed to him, in the middle of Paddington, in the heart of a great overcrowded city, that London had never been so quiet. He began talking to himself aloud. ‘She phoned,’ he said, shouting in the stillness. ‘She did phone. At least the waiting’s over. It’s over, I know the worst and I can sleep.’
He couldn’t. He lay in the dark for a while, then with the light on. He thought about it, about himself. He didn’t particularly want to live, not if he or someone he deceitfully called his other self went on killing women. But if she went to the police he wouldn’t die, he would live for years incarcerated. That was what he couldn’t face. Death would be fine but death was not so easy to get. He lay face-down, then on his side, then on his back. At some point, half dozing, he told himself she would phone at six in the morning, at seven. He should have known better. People like that go to bed in the morning, at six or seven she would be settling down to sleep somewhere till it was time to get up at three. Three in the afternoon was her morning. At eight he got up, drank water, fell on the bed and slept heavily until midday. The events of the previous day rolled back and he relived them all, heard her voice in recall, remembered his decision to pay. Getting up, afraid even to take a shower, he sat in his dressing gown, waiting for her to call.
Becky phoned Kim at the hairdresser’s. If she was sure, if she hadn’t changed her mind, they could give it a try. Will had been consulted, gave little sign of being pleased or displeased with the idea, but she could tell he wasn’t aghast. In some ways he was pleased at the idea of being back in his own home in Star Street, and if he said once or twice that he’d like it best if Becky came too and stayed with him, she didn’t repeat his words to Kim. She packed his things and set off early in the car, to stop on the way at the big Sainsbury’s in the Finchley Road to stock up with all the things Will liked to eat and some things she thought Kim might like.
Everything was happening early, as it always does when you want something very much, the getting to the airport when you long to be at your destination, the arrival at the meeting on which your whole future seems to depend so that you pace for ten minutes in the street outside the venue. Becky got Will to Star Street by four, knowing Kim couldn’t get there till five. They went in by the street door and up the stairs. The place had been shut up. It was close and airless and dusty. Becky opened the windows and dusted the surfaces. She made tea and set out the pastries she had bought. Guilt returned, the guilt that had been absent all the time she was doing her duty, and she asked herself what her sister would have thought of her, longing as she was to be rid of this poor child, her only relative, the little boy left behind motherless and—not quite like other little boys.
Kim rang the bell loudly and repeatedly at exactly five o’clock. Becky ran down and opened the door.
‘I’m not late, am I?’
‘You’re absolutely on time.’ Becky wanted to say, you’re not catching the only train that runs today, you’re not going for the interview of a lifetime, but Kim would no more understand than Will would. She smiled instead.
Now, of course, she knew she couldn’t go immediately. She had to stay and show Kim where everything was, explain things, tell her about the burglar alarm, the other tenants, she had to stay simply not to look as if she was longing to leave. It finished with her cooking a meal for them, pork chops and mashed potatoes and carrots and peas. Kim kept saying how lovely it was, how she loved the flat. She marvelled at the size of the room, the large bedroom area the curtained-off section made, the comfort of the makeshift bed. The dismal Russian music keening in from next door passed over her unheard.
By the time she left it was nine, Kim and Will were in front of the television and the sounds from Ludmila’s fl
at had ceased. Becky got into her car, wondering if she were right to go. Should she rather have taken Will away with her for just one more night? But after all, what could happen? She had told Kim to phone if he seemed distressed, to call her at any time and she would come. The night passed and, strangely, she slept, her sleep visited by dreams of her sister and by Will as a baby, but otherwise undisturbed.
Jeremy hadn’t been in for his tea since the burglary. Morning after morning Inez had set out the two cups as usual but only one had been used. She knew he was up there. She had heard his feet on the stairs and, from the street, seen him at one of his windows. Evidently he had decided to drop her—if you could drop someone you rented a flat from and who lived in the same house. Her pride was a little hurt but not her feelings. It would be unsurprising if this absenting himself from the shop in the mornings was a lead-up to his moving out. One day he would just walk in and hand her his notice.
‘William has come back,’ said Freddy, strolling in by way of the interior door. For some reason, since the burglary, he seemed to have decided Inez must never be left alone in the shop, so for the three-quarters of an hour or so between nine o’clock and a quarter to ten, he had determined to be there to ‘help’ her. ‘And he’s brought a young lady with him.’
‘You mean Becky?’
‘Oh, no, Inez, a really young lady. She must be his paramour. She stayed the night. I heard her voice last thing last night and first thing this morning. Those walls are paper-thin, you know.’
Inez didn’t know. When the conversion had been done she had had the walls insulated with soundproofing material. Freddy’s news astonished her. Will with a girlfriend! Was she expecting to live there with him while he continued to pay the same rent, or Becky did? Was this Ludmila and Freddy all over again? At any rate, Becky might have told her.
As she was reflecting, rather indignantly, about this, the phone rang and it was Becky to tell her.