The Devil Upstairs

by Anthony O'Neill

  Cat wondered if everyone had lost their minds. Maggie was looking at Cat with something like awe. And there were others behind her, jostling about, coming forward for a look.

  ‘Bellamy . . . Alistair Dunn . . . Blair Griffon,’ Cat cried. ‘Who killed them, if not you?’

  ‘Who do you think, Cat?’ Agnes’s great bosom was heaving.

  ‘Who?’ Cat demanded hysterically. A crowd of shadowy figures was shifting and pressing behind Maggie. ‘Tell me who.’

  ‘The one upstairs, Cat.’

  ‘The one upstairs.’ It was exactly what she didn’t want to hear.

  ‘Aye,’ said Agnes, sniggering. ‘The one up top. Everything is going to be all right! Now is the time for the reckoning! Die Frau ist Gott!’’

  ‘Gott ist die Frau!’ hissed Maggie.

  ‘Shenhamforash!’ chimed the people in the room behind her.

  Cat stared at Agnes – her caterpillar eyelashes, her kidney-red lipstick – and almost slapped her. But there was something about the whole nightmare – the swirling fog, the palpable sense of evil – that she could no longer tolerate.

  She marched back to the VW, ignoring Agnes’s cries – ‘Cat! Cat! Don’t do anything daft now!’ – and wrenched the engine into gear and took off in a haze of fumes and back-spun gravel, heading for Dean Village or Hell, whichever came first.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  By the time cat crossed the city bypass the fog had become practically impenetrable. Twice she came close to rear-ending vehicles before remembering to activate the high beams. And even then it was difficult to keep her focus on the road while coming to terms with her new reality.

  The reckoning, Agnes had called it. And if Cat had had any lingering doubts, they were now demolished. Robin Boucher had ‘taken care’ of things, all right. Dylan Moyle and Blair Griffon, torn to shreds. Her malignant senior officers Alistair Dunn and Nick Bellamy, also struck down. Who would be next? How far would he go to ‘protect’ her? Had he ever stopped to consider that he might be turning her into a prime suspect? Mysterious deaths in Edinburgh were not common to begin with, but to have four of them directly related to her was too much for anyone to overlook. What should she do now? Go on the offensive? Call the police? When she’d been explicitly warned she couldn’t trust them – or anyone else?

  She swung into the kerb of a Liberton side street and phoned DI McReynolds but terminated the call before he could answer. She needed to be realistic. She couldn’t just imply things. Imply that she’d had some involvement in a Satanic ritual and that things had gotten out of control. Imply that Robin Boucher, the guy upstairs, was directly responsible for four murders while implying, for the love of God, that he was the Devil himself.

  She needed to speak to Madam Morganach, the self-proclaimed occult expert. Maybe the old hag would be able to provide some advice – maybe even some refuge until things worked out.

  Thirty minutes later, however, when she arrived outside the Corstorphine house – she’d used the car’s GPS – Morganach was not answering the door. Cat was backing into the fog, looking for some signs of life, when a pixie-like woman wearing a high-vis vest halted on her way past.

  ‘Can I help you, dear?’

  Cat wheeled around. ‘I’m looking for the lady who lives here – Madam Morganach.’

  The pixie shook her head. ‘She’s gone, whoever she was. I’m the next-door neighbour.’

  ‘Gone?’ whispered Cat, fearing for Morganach’s fate as well.

  ‘Packed up and left,’ the pixie said. ‘She was only there for a month or two.’

  Cat stared at her for so long that the pixie seemed alarmed.

  ‘Best get out of this fog!’ she said, hastening for her own front door.

  Back in the VW, Cat could make no sense of it. What was going on? If Madam Morganach had been a transient, then who was she working for? Was she part of the game too? Cat gunned the motor again and steered through the mist to the budget hotel.

  ‘Melanie,’ she asked at the desk, ‘can I ask you another favour, off the record?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Cat lowered her voice, even though the only person in the lobby was an old guy tussling with the revolving door. ‘If anyone enquires about my presence here, can you give them the run-around, tell them I’m not here? And then let me know about it as soon as possible? I’d be grateful.’

  ‘Of course, Ms Thomas.’ Melanie sounded as though such requests were commonplace. ‘And do you want me to record you under a different name, perhaps?’

  ‘Please,’ said Cat, ‘that would be excellent. Try – uh – Stella Vidales.’ Her friendly sister’s married name. ‘And do you know a place where I can conceal my car? Out of sight, you know?’

  ‘Oh’ – Melanie leaned halfway over the counter to point, as if asked the same question every day – ‘there’s a spot there beside the maintenance shed that’s never used.’

  ‘Fabulous,’ Cat said again, and went back into the fog to shift the VW. When she returned a group of Slavic-sounding tourists were bustling out of the elevator. Seeing Cat they stopped in their tracks, stared at her and chattered excitedly among themselves. Chilled by the thought that they might be part of Boucher’s fan club – that they might inform their king of her presence – Cat dived into the elevator, hammered the buttons and tried not to think about it.

  From the window of Room 406 she could still see little through the mist but the building across the road. And when she dragged out her phone she noticed that someone had been trying to call her from a suppressed number – almost certainly DI McReynolds. Shit. She turned the thing off at once, hoping the cops hadn’t already triangulated her location.

  She hauled out the hotel’s instruction book – a folder of plastic-sheathed pages – and worked out how to make an international call. Then, using the room phone, she rang through to her sister.

  ‘Cat, it’s great to hear from you.’ Her sister sounded distracted.

  ‘Stella, you wouldn’t believe how good it is to hear your voice.’

  ‘Is something wrong? I didn’t recognise the number you’re calling from.’

  ‘It’s too difficult to explain. I just want you to know I miss you. Hell, that I love you.’

  ‘Seriously, Cat, what’s wrong?’ It was as if affection, coming from the black sheep of the family, was itself cause for alarm.

  ‘If I told you what was going on here, you wouldn’t believe it. All I want you to know is that I’m completely innocent. If something happens to me, just remember that. I’m completely innocent.’

  ‘Innocent? Cat, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Look, there are things going on here for which I might get the blame. That’s all I can say.’

  ‘Something to do with your work again?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘I told you, Cat, you should have gotten out of that business long ago.’

  ‘You might be right. Also, I don’t want to sound melodramatic – I really don’t want to sound melodramatic – but I might end up dead.’

  ‘Jesus, Cat, now you’re scaring me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’

  ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be talking to the police?’

  ‘I wish I could trust them. Or even trust them to believe me.’ Cat released an anguished sigh. ‘And there’s one other thing. Would it be OK if I decide to come home?’

  ‘Here? To Fort Lauderdale?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘But of course – of course you can come here.’

  ‘I might effectively be hiding out there, I don’t know. Would that be OK with you?’

  ‘The spare room’s yours whenever you want it. I’ve been meaning to call you, you know. I was going to phone you today. There’ve been some developments you should know about.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You know that crime boss who was threatening you? Paul Scicuna or whatever he was called?’

  ‘Paulie Sciclu
na, yeah.’

  ‘He’s been murdered – in prison, it was – so you don’t have to worry about him any more.’

  Cat almost said ‘Good’ but settled for ‘Oh’. Scicluna had been the head of the syndicate that orchestrated the hotel scam. Even after being sent to the Miami Correctional Facility he’d represented a credible threat to Cat’s safety. So naturally she had wanted him dead.

  ‘Also’ – Stella hesitated – ‘I don’t know how you’ll take this, Cat, but it’s about Scottie.’

  ‘Scottie . . .’ Cat instinctively tightened. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I’m sorry I have to mention him at all, you know, but—’

  ‘Just say it.’

  ‘He’s . . . he’s dead too, Cat.’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Found dead in prison, just like Scicluna.’

  Cat closed her eyes. And for a second she felt overwhelmed, as though all her circuits were going to blow at once.

  ‘Cat – are you OK?’

  Nothing from Cat.

  ‘Cat, are you all right?’

  Everything is going to be all right.

  ‘When’ – Cat had to force the words out – ‘when did this happen?’

  ‘Scottie’s death? Why, just yesterday evening. We only got the news this—’

  Cat dropped the phone and slammed her hands around her head.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Oh jesus, she thought. Boucher’s not just killing men I’ve told him about – he’s killing everyone I’ve ever wanted dead. It was as if he’d raided the darkest fissures of her memory and, with a few bloody strokes, sterilised the world for her – cleaned up the world for his princess.

  Scottie was her cousin from Philadelphia. The one who’d watched her from his upstairs window. The one who’d cornered her in the garden shed and asked her why she was exterminating the insects when ‘all God’s creatures have their duties, Cat – even the slugs’.

  The one who’d then lowered his pants and presented to Cat his own pulsing slug.

  The one who’d moaned with delight when he forced himself into her mouth.

  The one who’d shrieked in agony when Cat bit him in half.

  Oh, it was a terrible, terrible thing. And things were already so complicated, what with Cat’s mother fatally ill and her father knee-deep in financial problems. So, in an atmosphere of heated claims and counterclaims, everyone in the end agreed not to talk about it. The two families had gone their separate ways, acrimonious and shrouded in shame. And in the way of such things the monstrous secret had festered. And when the delayed impact of anger and trauma finally walloped Cat, she had naturally dreamed of crushing Scottie like a centipede.

  Presently she spent another fraught night in her hotel bed, shredded by anxiety and uncertainty, remembering things that ought to have been quarantined, imagining things she wasn’t supposed to think about, her emotions wheeling wildly between satisfaction, confusion and disgust. When she awoke in the morning she was shocked she had slept at all.

  But at least the fog had lifted.

  The view from the window was even better than she remembered. Through leafless tress she could see deep into Dean Village: the winding river, the gables, the slate roof tiles, her own building with Boucher’s MG in its parking space. She could even see a few of the acolytes, or whatever they were, milling around with cameras. When a couple of them looked in her direction, she shrank back into the darkness, unlikely as it seemed that they could have spotted her from such a distance.

  She wanted to witness Boucher leaving the building but that meant a constant vigil without pause. She could not afford to visit the bathroom or go out for lunch. Or to draw up a chair because she could not see the stair door from sitting level. But for a full three hours, barely blinking, she stood in vain. She thought about ringing Maxine, assuming she was home, and asking her to find out if Boucher was in residence. But that would involve an innocent party and possibly even get her killed – who could say?

  No sooner had she thought this than the stair door opened – her heart quickened for a moment – and out stepped Maxine and Michael, both wearing overcoats and berets, off no doubt to some arthouse screening or gallery opening. Cat felt a wave of affection for them – such a sweet-natured, fun-loving couple, a million miles away from the sick-minded devils who populated her own private hell. Then she fixed her eyes back on the door.

  Another two hours passed and most of Dean Village was in shadow. The top half of her building was aglow, almost amber. She could see through her bedroom window, for God’s sake – even the blue smudge of the Monet print on the wall. And Boucher’s skylight above that. But she could see nothing of the man himself. She wondered what he was thinking. Whether he had learned by now of her absence. Whether, if he could read her mind, he already knew where she was. And whether he would—

  There was a sharp knock on the door behind her.

  Cat’s heart somersaulted. She couldn’t answer.

  Another knock, more insistent.

  She had a vision of Boucher, having been led to her room by his acolytes, beaming at her from the corridor. ‘Cat, my dear, I wish it hadn’t come to this.’

  Then she heard rustling. The sound of a card key thunking into the lock. An almost inaudible buzz. And the door was swinging open. Cat braced herself.

  But it was only a maid. With a perplexed expression on her face.

  Cat nodded impatiently. ‘It’s already done,’ she said. ‘It’s already been cleaned.’

  ‘You in right room?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, check downstairs. Ca’ – she corrected herself mid-syllable – ‘Stella. Stella Vidales. Check at the desk.’

  The maid nodded and retreated.

  Cat turned back to the window to find an abrupt change in scenery. An unmarked saloon had pulled up in front of her building. DI McReynolds was getting out. He was buttoning his jacket and going to the stair door. He was pressing on one of the buzzers – no need to guess which one. He was waiting for an answer. His body language, even from a distance, looked tense. He was pressing the buzzer again. Still no answer. He was dragging out his phone, tapping a number. Was he calling her? Or headquarters? Was he even supposed to be on the case?

  Whatever. He was putting the phone away and trying one last time on the buzzer. And then, defeated, he was ambling back to his car and driving away.

  But to do what? To check with ABC? To summon a locksmith? To round up a posse of constables with battering rams?

  She stood for another hour and the sunlight faded completely. The sky was slate blue. The streetlamps flickered on. There were still acolytes milling around – a whole swarm now, more of them than ever. Cat’s throat was parched, she was hungry and desperate for a pee. But she couldn’t leave her post. To have stood this long without seeing Boucher surely meant he was bound to appear at any moment. Unless he had slipped out of the building at the precise moment she had turned to deal with the maid? Or unless he had already departed – because he was hunting for her?

  Then another car pulled up – the third-hand Clio that Agnes had driven to Aileanach Castle. And there was the driver herself, throwing open the door.

  Cat was no longer sure what she thought of Agnes. On one hand it was Agnes who had led her into this trap in the first place, who had shamelessly set her up, who to the last did not seem to comprehend why she was not delighted by the deadly turn of events. She was as manipulative as Boucher himself. But Cat still couldn’t hate her.

  Agnes shuffled to the stair door and hit the buzzer repeatedly. When there was no response she turned to the acolytes – a couple of them were milling around – and asked them a question. Gestures, raised hands; she seemed to be arguing with them. Then she shook her head and got back to pressing the buzzer. Again and again, as though convinced that Cat was ignoring her.

  Belatedly it occurred to Cat that she must be trying Boucher’s buzzer as well. Well, of course she would – as a last resort Agnes woul
d naturally call upon her dear friend Cock Robin. But wait. There was no answer from him as well. Agnes kept trying – possibly both buzzers at once – but was getting no response from either flat. And now she was retreating. She was heaving herself into the Clio, doing a messy three-point turn and blurting off.

  Cat was convinced of it now: Boucher was not home. He had not been home for hours. But that only meant he might be right around the corner. So there was no time to waste – she had to get in and out before he returned.

  She took a deep breath and went for broke. She raced down the hotel stairs and rushed around to her VW and tore open the door and threw herself inside and span around the block to Bell’s Brae and down the slope and across the stone bridge and deep into Dean Village, steering between a ludicrous number of acolytes to her parking space beside Boucher’s MG, then flinging open the car again and dashing for the building and fumbling for her key and getting it into the lock and throwing the stair door open and slamming it in the faces of the acolytes and bounding around the swirls of the staircase with her other keys poised and finding the locks of her own door – too many goddamn locks! – and hurling the door back and launching into her flat and throwing on the lights and heading for her living room and finding the drawer with her passport and birth certificate and other valuables and fumbling around and finally getting the damn thing open and dragging everything out and oh yes she needed a suitcase and there was one in her bedroom and she was turning for the door and almost tripping over the black cat when she noticed that the light in the living room was strangely lurid and looking up she saw her paper globe lamp . . .

  She froze, staring at a stain bleeding through the ceiling from above, just as it had done when Moyle had died . . . a great rusty bloom that could only mean that someone upstairs had been ripped apart, torn to shreds, eviscerated . . . that someone upstairs had been killed . . .

  Oh no, oh no . . . oh no . . . not again . . .

  She stared and gasped and stared and gasped . . . then ducked into the bathroom and had an insanely long pee . . . and then came back and stared and gasped some more.