by Nick Louth
‘I’m Anton,’ he said. ‘I think you know my girlfriend, Leticia. Nice to meet you.’
A look of horror swam across Verity’s face, and her eyes widened. ‘Oh, yes of course. How are you?’ She looked away, seemingly uninterested in the answer.
He was used to such looks from white people. Looks of superiority, disbelief that he could be running his own restaurant, and sometimes just fear. Several years ago in south London he had picked up a purse that an elderly white lady had dropped outside a newsagents. He chased after her, calling out. When she finally turned and he held out the object, she had flinched as if he was about to strike her. After taking the purse, the first thing she had done was to check the contents. The gratitude when it came was perfunctory. He was upset about it for days.
So Anton was used to strange expressions on the faces of white people. But this one he didn’t know how to categorise. Maybe it was racism. He was darker than Leticia and had inherited from his Windrush generation parents some long Jamaican vowels. She could pass for white English on the phone, he couldn’t. To her it seemed a small thing, but when you see small nuances in attitude on a daily basis it confirms your fears, and those tender spots eventually become calluses.
There were only two reasons this woman might be here to see Leroy. Anton knew most of Leroy’s women, but there were always new ones. She was probably his type, skinny and high-class, but didn’t seem quite young enough. So it must be the other reason. Her anxiety and edginess confirmed it to him.
He looked forward to telling Leticia all about it. Her boss wasn’t a murderer. But she was a drug user.
* * *
Anton St Jeanne arrived back at the flat a little before two a.m. He wondered what it was that he had said to so upset Leticia. She’d replied to only one of his texts, just a terse be home soon around noon. Nothing after that. And she wasn’t answering the phone at home. When they had a row, he could normally see it coming. The time two years ago when the female customer made a pass at him. Another time, his failure to show for a play because of a crisis at the restaurant. She had bought expensive tickets, and one went to waste. But this, he just couldn’t fathom. She had a bee in her bonnet about her boss being a killer. It was crazy. It just didn’t make any sense at all. Having seen the woman, he was surely right to have dismissed the idea. Still, maybe he had been too heavy about the way he did it.
He climbed the stairs quietly, slid the key carefully into the lock and turned it. Put on the lounge light. She had left no note. He tiptoed into the bedroom. The curtains were open, and in the harsh light from the streetlamp he could see that she wasn’t there.
This was serious. She must have gone back to her mother’s. That had only happened once before. Leticia had always labelled him a procrastinator, but everyone had their triggers. He was really worried about his girlfriend now, but he’d ring her mother in the morning. It was much too late now.
Chapter Thirty-one
Leticia awoke to direct sunlight on her face, a headache and a raging thirst. The cold had turned to warmth. She could hear birds. The coo of pigeons. For what felt like an hour she suffered the discomfort, trying to focus on the birds and their freedom. Finally, she heard footsteps and the sound of a key in the lock to the shed. The door was opened slightly and the big man who had overpowered her edged his way in. He didn’t meet her gaze, but just scratched his head. ‘Are you hungry or thirsty?’ he asked.
Leticia nodded, and made a low groan through her gag, the only sound available to her. He glanced at her, then looked away hurriedly as if he had found her naked. She was too scared to eat but at least if he removed the gag she might be able to shout for help.
The man said: ‘If I take the gag off you mustn’t scream. If you do, bad things will happen. Understand?’ She followed his gaze and saw the many tools pinned to the wall, including a mallet and a hand scythe.
She nodded again. He crouched down and carefully untied the cloth around her face, and removed the golf ball that was in her mouth.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she croaked. He nodded. She could already feel that her captor was quite uncertain and lacking in confidence.
‘I need to go to the toilet, Gary. That’s more important than food.’
He looked surprised. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘Verity called you Gary.’
He nodded as if this made sense. Close up, his unwashed odour was pervasive.
‘I need the toilet. And something to drink. And headache tablets.’
‘Wait,’ he said and squeezed out of the door, leaving it slightly ajar. The small visible slot of the outside world was an unkempt and weed-strewn garden. She wondered if Gary really would hit her if she screamed. He didn’t radiate criminality. At least, not in the way that Neville Rollason and many other of her clients had. If she had to guess, she would put him down as somewhere on the autism spectrum. She’d done a course on the various types of disability she might come across with ex-offenders, but it was two years ago and she couldn’t recall the details. But anyway, common sense dictated that screaming now wasn’t a good idea. It might make him panic, and he might well kill her without meaning to, just to stop the unsettling noise. Now was not the time to risk that, not if her life wasn’t in imminent danger.
She could hear him outside on the phone to someone. She couldn’t make out what he was saying but from the tone, he was clearly taking orders not giving them. Probably from Verity. The conversation stopped and he squeezed back into the shed, stuffing the mobile into his pocket. He reached up to a shelf and pulled a dull metal object down. He knelt down, looked at her intently for the first time and, grasping her wrist, slid out the triangular blade from the Stanley knife. Leticia started to scream, but his big hand clamped over her mouth. ‘Don’t worry, I’m only cutting the cable ties.’ Gradually he worked round, freeing her from the bed frame. He allowed her to come up to a sitting position and then re-bound her hands with tough plastic baler twine from his pocket.
‘What time is it?’
He looked at his watch ‘9:37 a.m.’
‘And where are we?’
‘No. Don’t ask that.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Gary, did you murder that man Neville Rollason?’
‘No.’
He eased her off the bed frame, pulled her to her feet, then blindfolded her with a scarf. Her legs protested at taking her weight, her shoulders an agony of cramps. She was led into the outside world of sound. Blackbirds, pigeons, distant traffic. Faint music, and voices, perhaps in an adjacent garden. No, it was the muffled bass of a car stereo in the street. She wasn’t sure if Gary had taken a tool from the shed with him. If so, it was probably the knife. Something small. She would play for time. He led her through a door, and up a step. The change in noise levels made it clear she was indoors. Somewhere stale. Unemptied bins and unwashed bodies. She heard flies. She was guided carefully up a staircase. The smell became a stench, and there was a rumbling snore, like a blocked drain trying to empty. Eventually she was manoeuvred into a small room that reeked of air freshener, the blindfold removed and the door shut behind her.
‘Be quick,’ he said through the door.
She was in a tiny traditional bathroom, woodchip wallpaper painted mauve, a horseshoe-shaped pink acrylic rug snug round the base of the WC. A big jar of potpourri on the floor. Black mould furred the ceiling edges and the rotten window frame, held shut with rusty screws. The cistern was old-fashioned cast iron, high on the wall with a dangling chain and a black rubber pull. She shot the flimsy bolt and used the facilities. Sharp glossy toilet paper, more like baking parchment. The spare roll sat wrapped on the floor, in a green wrapper. Izal Strong Medicated. She’d heard of the stuff – almost wartime vintage, she thought – but had never experienced it. Surprised it was still available.
She finished up and rinsed her hands at the tiny grubby basin. Not cleaned in a long time.
Gary tapped on the door and she unlocked it. She sub
mitted to the blindfold as he said: ‘I’m going to introduce you to my mother.’ She took just a few guided steps. Gary knocked on another door. ‘Mum, I’ve got her here.’
‘Brrnnghn.’
The low growling sound from within didn’t seem female nor quite human, more like the voice of several people at once. It took a moment to realise what had been said: ‘Bring her in.’ The door was opened and the odour almost overpowered her. She could hear the whine of an extractor fan, hard put to match its task.
A dead body. That’s what was in here. It couldn’t be anything else. She was suddenly very frightened. If she hadn’t heard the voice, she’d have thought Gary’s mother was actually dead in here, perhaps with others. She felt her knees go weak, and reached out for a wall as she was ushered into the room. Gary steadied her hand until it found something vertical. A door frame.
‘What’s your name?’ the voice gasped. Leticia realised this person was reaching desperately for every breath. Each vowel a suck or a gasp.
‘Leticia Mountjoy.’
‘I’m Poppy, well, Penelope really. Vee mentioned you.’
‘Vee?’
‘Verity, my daughter.’
‘Why are you holding me prisoner here? You have no right to do this.’
A great wheezing noise rocked the woman, and she could feel the floorboards vibrate with her movement. A laugh. ‘The trouble with you, Leticia, is that you are too observant for your own good. Too inquisitive, too nosy. You’ve made this all very difficult, and it wasn’t easy to begin with.’
‘Neville Rollason was my client. I was responsible for him.’
‘And did you like him?’
‘It’s not a question of like or dislike, I had a job to do.’
‘How very professional of you.’
‘Verity is a professional, just like me. Our job is to guide—’
The throaty rasp interrupted. ‘Verity took some persuading, it’s true. Never happy with the plan.’
‘So you took it upon yourself to punish this man? Just like the vigilantes.’
‘He killed my firstborn, Robert. Verity’s and Gary’s older brother. He killed my son and he destroyed my family. He disappeared on Wednesday, 4 September 1986. It’s a date carved into my heart. His body was never found.’
Leticia had suspected something like this. ‘I didn’t think that was one of Rollason’s murders.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Not officially. Did he admit it?’
The wheezing laugh again. ‘Oh yes, he did. Eventually, almost with his dying breath.’
She felt Gary shifting uncomfortably beside her.
‘Excuse me, I need oxygen. I lose my voice without it,’ Poppy said. There was a pause, the hum of a machine. When her voice returned two minutes later it was higher and more melodious. ‘You see, Leticia, I’m a grieving mother and I have very little time left. I needed the truth, and I needed justice. Your lot let him out. Removed what little justice there was in my life. Disgusting. You gave him a new name, bought him a nice little house…’
‘Rented, actually.’ And not so little.
‘…Applied for his benefits, his council tax benefit, his Jobseeker’s Allowance. No one filled out a form for my Carer’s Allowance, my Personal Independence Payment. Your lot built him a new life, while I lay rotting in my old one.’
‘I take your point.’ Leticia could not deny this woman her grief, her grievance. ‘The justice system is so imperfect. But that doesn’t mean to say you’re entitled to get Gary to exact revenge on your behalf by killing him.’
The big man shifted uncomfortably beside her but said nothing.
‘Gary? No, Gary didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t ask him to do that. It’s not really in him to end a life. Won’t kill a spider, will you Gary? It was my job and I did it. Gary brought this despicable man up to the room when he was still unconscious and tied him to the single bed. The same one you’ve been using. I didn’t want to touch him, so Gary put a plastic sheet on him. I use the hoist to get myself from my bed to that one, and I gradually lowered myself onto him, right close, face to face. I needed to see him suffer.’
Leticia struggled to imagine how big this woman must be. ‘You squashed him?’
The laugh again, interrupted by a hacking cough and then a long suck of oxygen. ‘Not all at once. I had some important questions to ask him, so I did it a little at a time. I used the remote to gradually lower myself in the hoist. Sat on him, then lay on him. Hard to get it right. Eventually, I knelt on his hips. My forearms were across his chest. Lifted the hoist, then set it down. Squeeze, hold, hold, hold, then relief. Squeeze then relief. I must have done it a hundred times. Taking him to his final breath, saw the flush on his face turn to purple, blood fill his eyeballs. I wanted him to find it as difficult to breathe as I do. When you have 489 kg on you, it’s very hard to take a breath.’
‘You weigh half a tonne?’ Leticia squeaked.
‘Just recently, yes. I didn’t always. When I was young I was a dancer, believe it or not. On a cruise ship. Ballet was my thing, though there is no call for that on a cruise. When I was sixteen, I weighed less than eight stone, around a hundred pounds. My weight was quite normal for as long as my life was normal. Then on 4 September 1986 my Robert disappeared on the way home from playing football. Verity was only four and Gary just a baby. I struggled with it for a few months, depression, anxiety and worst of all, hope. Hope is the bitterest of all emotions because of its falsity, its nagging chirpy unwarranted optimism. My marriage failed, my husband divorced me, and I found my solace in eating. You see, when hope died I took to my bed and I have not left it since.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry? Words are cheap. You can’t imagine the pain. I promise you that. It never goes.’
‘But you can do things about your weight, you always can.’
‘I know. I’ve been on a diet recently.’
‘It didn’t work?’
The laugh again and some more oxygen. ‘Yes, it worked perfectly! I was 350 kg and I didn’t think that was enough to do what I had to do to that wicked man, so I stepped up my intake and added more than 150 kg in the final two weeks before his release. My peak weight was eighty-seven stone, or 1,200 pounds. If I was so minded I could get a place in the Guinness Book of Records, at least for the UK.’
‘May I look at you?’ Leticia asked.
‘I wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t look my best in the mornings. Takes me three hours to get ready for my fans.’ A great gasping sigh escaped her. ‘And of course, I have yet to decide what we’re actually going to do with you. When Vee let me know what had happened, and I decided to talk to you, I was hoping that you would volunteer that Rollason was one of the most evil men who ever lived. I hoped you would agree that he deserved to die, and that what I had done was a service to the great British public. We need to be sure you would keep our secret. But now I’m not so sure.’
Leticia was terrified, but principle stuck uncomfortably in her throat. She couldn’t just swallow it. ‘Just because somebody might deserve to die doesn’t mean to say it’s our job to do it. Or your job to do it.’
‘How wonderful to be so moral. You know I could sit on you and you would agree to anything. Rollason took three minutes eight seconds to die, once I’d got my full weight on him. Oh, how he begged. Wept, and in the final moments called for his mother. There’s nothing like not being able to get air. You’re young, so you might last another half a minute. Or maybe not.’
Leticia felt a wave of fear but steadied her voice: ‘I can tell from talking to you that you are not that kind of person. You felt the loss of your son. You’re not a psychopath.’
‘Don’t be so sure. I killed a stranger for money, just a few weeks ago.’
‘No!’
‘I did. It was easier than I thought, but then he wanted it.’
‘You’ve no need to kill me. It won’t help you.’ Leticia knew she was sliding into desperation. Soon to be begging f
or her life, just like Rollason.
‘I haven’t decided. Look at it from my point of view. I’ve achieved my aim, which is to find out who killed my son and to exact retribution upon the murderer. My body is gradually collapsing under its own weight, my spine is crumbling. I don’t have long to live, so for me it wouldn’t matter if I’m caught. But what point is there getting justice for my beloved missing son if I sacrifice the future of my remaining son and a daughter? They’re both implicated. If you open your mouth they’ll both be imprisoned long after I’ve died.’
‘I can keep that secret,’ Leticia said. Principles began to crumble.
‘No, I don’t think you can. Gary, undo her blindfold.’ The scarf was removed and Leticia found herself gazing at the largest person she had ever seen. The top half of Poppy Tilling’s head was normal, the hair held back in a short greasy ponytail. But from the dark deep-set eyes downward, a blotchy mottled skin expanded in a series of viscous jelly waterfalls, with a sagging basketball-sized wattle hanging beneath her chin. The nightdress was like a tent, a protruding arm a giant plaited brioche of blubber. Her hand and fingers were incongruously normal, heavily ringed, the nails neatly trimmed and varnished in red.
‘You see, I need to make sure my babies are okay. Gary has Asperger’s and would be bullied in prison. Verity, well. She’s had an eating disorder since she was nine. While I ate myself to a huge size for some kind of comfort she has binged and purged and made herself sick on and off for many years. Bulimia. Families, as we all know, are complicated, and react to trauma in different ways. I gave her most of the money from the Chinese guy. She is flying to South America this evening to start a new life.’
‘I thought she had a job in Nottingham?’
The woman laughed. ‘A cover story.’
‘None of you can escape your problems like that,’ Leticia said. ‘You just take them with you.’
‘Not where I’m going,’ Poppy said.