The Devil Upstairs

by Anthony O'Neill

  Early in July her belongings arrived from the US and an overly solicitous delivery guy helped her lug the boxes up the stairs (before lingering disagreeably, like a man who’d watched too many porno movies). When he left, with a surly glance at his £10 tip, Cat was finally able to hang up her most cherished artworks, stock her shelves with her favourite books, crowd her closets with the remainder of her best clothes, and generally unpack and squirrel away a lot of things which she would have done better to leave in America.

  In all these actions she found an invigorating sense of recon-struction.

  Four weeks into her residence – just as she was beginning to have too much time to reflect on things – she started work in ABC’s headquarters in Lauriston Place. She was guided around the building (a block of green-tinted glass known locally as ‘the Aquarium’), met her new colleagues in the Internal Fraud Department (Ross, Fergus, Jenny, Skye, Isla and Agnes), was shown to her closet-sized office, and handed the keys to her company car, a VW Golf, in which she would soon be visiting branches across Scotland.

  ‘You and I are gonna get along fine,’ declared Agnes, a fearsome Goth who’d taken up the task of showing her the ropes.

  This now, for Cat, was the time for routine: awake at six-thirty, twenty laps at the pool, a hot shower, granola and black coffee, a quick drive to work, home at six, dinner, chores, some down-time, a five-mile run, bed just before eleven, rinse and repeat, every movement from the flick of the kettle switch to the return of her trainers to the shoe rack an integral component in a reassuring daily ritual. This also was the time for Edinburgh to assume its new role of a comforting backdrop, for her flat to become a cosily familiar sanctuary, and for Cat to consider how idyllic it was, to be living in such an enchanting building in such a remarkable city.

  And Cat did that – all that – for another two blissful weeks.

  And then, on Friday, 28 July, she became aware of the problem.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  ‘When I bought the place,’ Cat admitted, ‘I didn’t even realise there was an apartment upstairs. You can’t really see it from the street – the roof slopes in dramatically – and I just assumed it was a storage space or an empty loft or something.’

  Agnes grunted. ‘Lots of buildings in Scotland have old nooks and crannies that’ve been converted into living spaces. You should’ve been more careful.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And then, for my first five or six weeks in Edinburgh, the flat was empty. The guy who lives there was away somewhere. I think he was away when I inspected the place, too, or just super quiet. But now he’s back. And suddenly I get why the previous owner was so eager to sell.’

  ‘He’s some sort of maniac?’

  ‘He’s a musician.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘And he makes noise. Lots of noise.’

  ‘All musicians do.’

  ‘But it’s not just the music – though that’s bad enough. It’s all sorts of things. Dropping stuff. Stamping around. Banging doors.’

  ‘All through the night?’

  ‘Day and night. Every night. He never seems to sleep.’

  ‘Just kill the cunt.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ Cat said, grimacing. ‘I wish I could.’

  It was an unusually humid early August evening and, with Agnes at the wheel, the two women were hurtling down the A91 towards Edinburgh after interviewing staff at the ABC branch in Montrose. It had only been Cat’s third such expedition since reviving her career in Scotland, so she had let Agnes take charge while familiarising herself with the local idioms and procedures. In fact, Agnes, though wildly different in most ways – as plump as Cat was slim, as loud and impulsive as Cat was prudent and methodical – had become her closest colleague in the department, and the nearest thing to a friend outside office hours, for all her fondness for booze, deep-fried food and the c-word.

  ‘Is the cunt renting?’

  Cat grimaced again. ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Complain to the landlord, if he is. Tenants need to maintain good records, you know – especially in a compact city like Edinburgh.’

  ‘The previous owner surely would have done that, if it was going to do any good.’

  ‘Complain to the factor, then.’

  ‘I don’t know what a factor is,’ Cat admitted.

  ‘The building superintendent.’

  ‘I don’t think there is one.’

  ‘How many flats in the building?’

  ‘Six, one atop the other.’

  ‘Maybe the place is too small.’

  Honking the horn at a motorist who swung into her lane, Agnes mouthed the c-word again.

  Cat shook her head. ‘In Florida I lived for a while in a condo, and there were strict rules in place. Anyone with floorboards had to cover at least seventy per cent of them to reduce noise.’

  ‘Got bare floorboards, has he?’

  ‘They creak like ship timbers. And – I swear to God – I think he deliberately leans on them, at their weakest points, just to make a racket.’

  ‘It’s an existential thing,’ Agnes said. ‘Some people are like toddlers – they only feel alive if they’re making noise.’ She honked the horn again.

  ‘Maybe that’s why he’s a musician.’

  ‘Does he shag?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I used to live beside a couple that shagged like rabbits. Round the clock like newlyweds. I had to thump on the walls to get some peace. That’s what you should do, you know. Bang on the ceiling and shout at the top of your lungs: “Oi! What are you playing at?”’

  ‘I didn’t come here to make enemies.’

  ‘You didn’t come here to tolerate cunts, either.’

  ‘Do you have to say that word?’

  ‘Which word?’ Agnes thought about it and sniggered. ‘Hey, you’re in the wrong country if you blush at a bit of swearing.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything else—’

  ‘Prick?’

  ‘Not that, either.’

  ‘Fud?’

  ‘Like Elmer Fudd? That’ll do.’

  Agnes chuckled. ‘OK, then.’

  ‘And, in answer to your question,’ Cat said, ‘I haven’t heard him shag. Not yet, anyway. I have heard him on the toilet, though.’

  ‘Ha! Seriously?’

  ‘I set up an inflatable mattress in my second bedroom – I use it as a study mainly – and tried to sleep there. But it must be directly below his bathroom. I swear, he pees directly into the water, this great thunderous stream, just for the hell of it. Then he slams the lid down.’

  ‘He puts the lid down? You sure he doesn’t have a girl?’

  ‘I’ve never seen one, if he has.’

  ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Cat. ‘The building has a common mailbox, though, so I’ve seen his name on envelopes. Mr Dylan Moyle.’

  ‘Dylan Moyle . . .’ said Agnes, nodding. ‘Sounds tasty.’ She roared past two lorries carrying freshly sawed logs. ‘Maybe he’s hung.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why you’d say that.’

  ‘Said he pissed “thunderously”, didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think that signifies anything.’

  ‘You never know,’ said Agnes. ‘Go up and introduce yourself. You might be sharing his bed before long.’

  ‘I assure you I won’t be doing that.’

  ‘Why not? It’s one way to solve your noise problem.’

  ‘It’s one way to make problems, if you ask me.’

  ‘Not frigid, are you?’

  Cat, who in general could shrug off insults and even enjoy them, made a disapproving noise. ‘Abrasiveness can be another “existential thing”, you know.’

  Agnes laughed. ‘Well, we’ve all been wondering about you. Coming all this way, all by yourself, living alone. Either a prude or burned out, we figure.’

  ‘The truth, as usual, is in the middle.’

  ‘That makes not a jot of sense.�
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  ‘Whatever,’ said Cat. It was too difficult to explain how much she enjoyed being alone. How she had learned the hard way not to trust people. How she had not even contacted her surviving relatives in Scotland, including the sons of her mother’s uncle, for fear of needing to socialise with them. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t care if he looked like George Clooney. He’s inconsiderate, I know that for a fact, and that’s a deal-breaker for me.’

  ‘If you have a quiet word with him, maybe he’ll change his ways.’

  ‘If he doesn’t already know he’s making too much noise, then he’s dumb as well as inconsiderate. I mean, as soon as I moved in, I bought rugs and carpets for the floors. And every night I creep around to make sure I don’t disturb anyone downstairs. And I’ve never even met the people downstairs.’

  Agnes shook her head. ‘You’ll go mad judging people by your own standards. Time to play by his rules, I say. Play loud music, bang on the walls, see how he likes it.’

  ‘No . . .’ Cat stared out at the heather-dotted pastures of Fife.

  ‘You really don’t want to confront him, do you?’

  ‘I doubt it will do any good. It might even make him worse.’

  ‘So, what are you gonna do?’

  ‘I dunno . . . Pray.’

  Agnes glanced at her. ‘Not religious, are you?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Well, my parents were. And I’m American. So it’d be silly to suggest I hadn’t taken on some influences.’

  Agnes, who had a pentagram swinging from her rear-view mirror, nodded approvingly. ‘Wise answer,’ she said. ‘Wise answer.’

  Shortly afterwards they whisked across the Firth of Forth via the Queensferry Crossing – one of three majestic bridges linking Fife to Edinburgh – and Agnes made a sceptical sound. ‘George Clooney’s a bit long in the tooth for you now, isn’t he?’

  But Cat was too distracted to answer. The heat, the waves, the sun-seared evening sky: she had been impaled, briefly but disturbingly, by a totally unexpected feeling of homesickness.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  At nine p.m. that night Cat heard Moyle leave his flat and trudge down the stairs. She knew enough about his habits by now to suspect that he’d be out for a few hours, possibly at a pub or club, and would return well past midnight. But once or twice he hadn’t come back at all. And that meant there was the possibility of a full night’s sleep.

  She’d started going to bed much earlier than was her preference. In Miami she had routinely hit the sack at eleven and risen no later than six-thirty for an early morning run. In Edinburgh she had been forced to move her run to the early evening and go to bed as early as nine-thirty, so she could snatch at least five hours of sleep in bits and pieces across the night. The only alternative was to retire only when exhausted, when it was impossible to keep her eyes open, hoping that the sheer intensity of fatigue would allow her to ride out the loudest of disturbances. But – in her case, anyway – that rarely seemed to work.

  She lay there for a while, hearing the booms and whistles of Edinburgh Festival fireworks. The rattle of someone’s wheeled suitcase on the setts. The distant whoop of a disturbed bird, probably in the riverside trees. And somewhere along the way she must have drifted off to sleep.

  She was chasing a red balloon through a forest of fire-blackened trees. She couldn’t understand why the balloon was so important but she knew she had to catch it. The balloon, which was pulsing like a heart, bobbed and curled through the air towards a huge twisted oak tree. There was a hollow in the tree, of the type that animals nest in, and the balloon was disappearing into it. Cat made one last frantic effort to catch it but it was too late. She edged closer to the trunk, and was reaching, very tentatively, into the hollow (her hand so tiny it could only belong to a child), when suddenly—

  BANG!

  Cat jolted to her senses.

  She thought for a moment it was a firework.

  But then:

  Clap clap clap.

  A footfall so loud that it had to be Moyle, stomping up the stairs.

  Clap clap clap. His customary jackbooted staccato. Clap clap clap. Every step like a gunshot. Around and around, past Cat’s door, stopping at the flat above.

  Jingle jingle jingle, went his keys.

  Kee-waaah, went the door with its pneumatic hinge.

  Ka-lunk! He’d let the door fall shut.

  Cat knew that the residents downstairs would have heard this much as well. Hell, it was likely that people all over Dean Village had heard it.

  But what came next was a symphony played exclusively for her.

  Klonk klonk, went something dropped on floorboards. Whump, went some inner door that he had thrown closed. Ga-wonk, went something else. Creak creak creak, went the floorboards as he crossed his living area.

  For a minute or so there was nothing. Cat shot a glance at her alarm clock: 2.07 a.m.

  Kawissssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, went the sound of the toilet flushing. Then the noise of the water pipes hissing and clanging – for some reason these pipes, which ran down behind Cat’s own bathroom, were loud enough to be heard even from her bed.

  Silence for a minute or two, then Moyle moved into the room directly above her. Cat prayed he was about to flop onto his bed and go to sleep.

  Klunk klunk – probably boots being thrown on the floor. Ka-woot – possibly a belt. Skaweeeeeeee, went something like a closet door. Then the squeak of bedsprings. It sounded as though he’d dropped onto his mattress.

  Cat held her breath. Could it be? Could she really be in luck?

  The silence lasted possibly fifteen minutes – Cat was drifting into dreamland again – when there was another jagged noise.

  BA-KLONK!

  She spasmed awake as if electrocuted. For a moment she didn’t even know what had happened – her heart had registered the noise before her ears.

  Then:

  Creak creak creak. Moyle was shuffling again across the floorboards. Skaweeeeeee. He was opening the closet. Creak creak creak. He was leaving the room.

  PLONK. He’d dropped something in his living area.

  ‘Fuck!’ he cursed to himself.

  Nnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrr. He was dragging a chair across the floor.

  Bahlunk lunk lunk. He was plugging something into a socket.

  Silence for thirty seconds.

  TWAAAANG. He’d struck a chord on his electric guitar.

  Cat gasped. If precedent was anything to go by, Moyle would be awake for the next couple of hours. Experimenting with his music. Repeating riffs. Shifting around. Watching television. Drinking. Turning taps on and off. Dropping things.

  She glanced again at her alarm clock. 2:52. She figured she’d get just fragments of sleep before 7:45, the latest she could rise and still make it to work on time. But she’d have to make do with the briefest of showers, don her clothes in a mad rush, and gobble down her breakfast or sacrifice it entirely.

  Wrapping the pillow around her head, Cat remembered fondly her early days in Dean Village, not two months earlier, when her biggest problem had been trying to decide between an early morning run around the neighbourhood or a vigorous swim in the heated pool of the Drumsheugh Baths.

  Somehow she had to regain control.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Two nights later cat arrived home just as the couple in Number Four – she’d seen them a couple of times from the window by now – were getting out of their Prius. They introduced themselves at the stair door and continued chatting as they mounted the steps. Maxine was an artist who’d spent some years on the Continent and was now working as a tour guide; her partner Michael was some sort of legal expert, originally from Wales, who’d also spent a lot of time abroad. Cat accepted their invitation to dinner the following evening.

  ‘We’re vegans, if that’s a problem,’ Maxine added before parting.

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Cat, smiling.
‘So am I.’

  Though the meal wasn’t great – a middling goulash and a soggy strudel; Maxine apologised constantly for missing ingredients – Cat warmed to the two of them immediately. They were a bohemian couple, interested in arts and travel and fitness and good wine; they didn’t own a TV because, in Michael’s words, ‘It’s nothing but shit.’ They were also devoted nudists – they’d met during a Spencer Tunick photo shoot on a Swiss glacier, apparently – and often walked around the apartment au naturel. ‘That’s why we keep the blinds down,’ said Maxine.

  ‘And the heating up,’ chipped in Michael.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Cat, chuckling. ‘It’ll help keep my own power bills down.’

  Maxine showed off her sculptures, which were suggestively erotic, and over glasses of some sort of mulled Bavarian liqueur – of which Cat sipped only to be sociable – they discussed the charms of Edinburgh and the hikes that Cat just ‘had to do’.

  ‘You can go all the way from Dean Village to South Queensferry without hitting more than two sets of traffic lights,’ Maxine enthused.

  ‘You take the bike paths first,’ Michael explained, ‘then follow Queensferry Road for a mile or so, then wander down through the Dalmeny Estate. We do it all the time.’

  ‘How far is it?’ Cat asked.

  ‘About 18,000 steps,’ said Maxine.

  Cat, who wore a fitness tracker while running, struggled to calculate. ‘Which is—?’

  ‘About nine miles. Then we have lunch by the Firth and walk back.’

  ‘And I thought I was a health nut.’