Dark Corners

by Ruth Rendell

  NICOLA HAD SAID nothing about coming back that evening, but he expected her. Even if those people were still in the garden, still eating and drinking, her return would be a comfort. He would ask her about the goose—did she really want it? He didn’t care if the hall table had an ornament or not.

  He had eaten no lunch, had eaten nothing, and no wine was in the house. In the kitchen was half a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese left over from last evening’s dinner. He lay on the bed and fell asleep, overcome with despair. At some point in the afternoon or early evening—it was still light—he was awakened by the party guests going home. They weren’t especially noisy, he had to admit that, but the slightest sound would have disturbed him. He got up and watched them go.

  The sky had clouded over and a wind got up. The tree branches in Falcon Mews swayed and all the leaves fluttered. A blackbird was singing somewhere and a magpie making its repetitive squawk. He searched for his phone, but it had run out of charge. If Nicola didn’t come, bringing food, he would have to go out and buy himself something to eat. Though it was Sunday, all the shops round here stayed open till late.

  He picked up the backpack, and its weight told him the goose was still inside. He’d take it back to Tony’s Treasury, he decided, and see what Tony would give him for it.

  He heard Dermot’s footsteps on the stairs, and Sybil’s. He wouldn’t be walking her home yet but maybe taking her out to dinner. Some snack at one of the cafés on the Edgware Road, Carl thought contemptuously. This would be an evening when he wouldn’t follow them. Nicola had left some money in a jacket pocket: a twenty-pound note and five-pound coins. He wrote on an orange Post-it he took from a pad in the other pocket, Borrowed £25. XX. That would be enough to get something to eat in case Tony refused to buy back the green goose.

  Dermot and Sybil had disappeared when Carl came out into the mews. No one was about except for Mr. Kaleejah and his dog. He took that dog out three or four times a day. It was carrying a rubber bone in its mouth. Carl walked along Sutherland Avenue and across Maida Vale into Hall Road, and from there into Lisson Grove, where a crowd was coming out of the Roman Catholic church. The Tesco in Church Street would still be open. But Tony’s Treasury wasn’t. Carl hadn’t anticipated this. That Tony might refuse to take the goose back, yes, that was possible, but not for his shop to be closed. The Tesco was open, though, and still had a couple of Sunday papers on the rack outside. He bought a loaf of bread, a piece of cheddar, a bar of chocolate, and a half bottle of rosé, using the money he’d taken from Nicola.

  Carl wanted to avoid seeing Dermot. He didn’t think Dermot would be near the canal, but when he and Sybil had eaten they would walk back to Jerome Crescent via the little path that ran from Lisson Grove. So Carl followed a route that was new to him, into Lisson Green where the canal came out from under the Aberdeen Place bridge. The water was dark here, the path along the bank deserted. He also noticed that you could see the path from Lisson Grove, and see too where the canal disappeared under the next bridge on its way through Regent’s Park.

  He sat down on a wooden bench and ate some bread and cheese. He was surprised to find how hungry he was. The path continued to be deserted. After a while, he made his way into Paveley Street. There, looking for a path out, he saw Dermot and Sybil up ahead in Jerome Crescent, entering the block where Sybil lived. Going to continue the engagement celebrations, Carl thought bitterly.

  Lights were on in a couple of windows in Sybil’s block. Carl sat down on the stack of bricks. He didn’t know why. He certainly wasn’t waiting for Dermot. He didn’t understand what brought him here so regularly to watch what Dermot did, what they both did, as if they were fascinating people whose activities were of enormous interest, rather than the reverse.

  Carl got up and walked round the block, round Jerome Crescent and back. As he watched, a light in one of the windows went out, then the other one. He moved into deep shadow as Dermot appeared at the entrance, then emerged into the half-light and crossed the street towards him.

  “Hello there. What brings you here?” Dermot sounded surprised.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” Carl said. “I’ve brought you a present.”

  “That’s awfully decent of you,” said Dermot, like a public-school boy of a hundred years ago. “For my engagement, is it?”

  “That’s right.” Carl suddenly decided to give him the goose. He didn’t know why he’d said he had a present. Just an odd impulse. He bent over the backpack and started unzipping it. For a brief moment while Dermot watched, anticipating his present, Carl began taking the goose out, then abruptly he lifted the backpack as high as he could and brought it down hard on Dermot’s head. He was taller than Dermot, and there was a crunch of bone.

  Dermot uttered a long, dull groan. It was the only sound he made as he slumped over onto the pavement.

  Careful not to touch Dermot, Carl bent over him to see whether he was still breathing. He didn’t appear to be. Then Carl picked up the bag. He couldn’t see any blood. Perhaps it was too dark, or there wasn’t any. He hoisted the backpack onto his shoulders and for some reason looked at the windows that had been lit up. Both were still in darkness, though he fancied he saw a faint flicker of movement behind the higher one. He thought, Why did I never think of doing this before? For months I’ve been desperate to get rid of this awful threat, this burden. He felt no guilt, no regret. He felt relief.

  He walked away and up the path into Lisson Grove. It was as well the backpack was on his back because his hands were shaking so much as to be useless for carrying anything. He climbed up the hill past the Catholic church, turned into Lodge Road, and walked along beside the high walls above the railway line. Walking was automatic, his legs carrying him mechanically towards a safer place. A single cyclist rode past him and up to cross Park Road. Carl went across the road after him and down a path into the green, the trees, the dense leafiness that clustered and shivered in the rising wind along the canal bank. The water was black and still and shiny.

  He hoisted the backpack off his shoulders, unzipped it, and lifted out the green goose. Something dark was on his hands, but whether it was blood or not, he couldn’t tell. He looked about him into the trees above, the leaves making a soft whispering sound. The screen of branches that hid the road running alongside Regent’s Park was dense and dark. The man on the bike had disappeared, was no doubt far away now, heading for Primrose Hill or Camden Town. Carl knelt down on the canal bank and dropped the backpack into the water. It floated for a few moments, then sank with a sucking, glugging sound.

  He remained on his knees for perhaps two minutes holding the goose, then got to his feet with difficulty, like an old man, feeling about him in vain for something to hold on to. Carrying the goose under one arm, he started to walk back. He climbed up into Park Road and thought, without quite knowing why, that it would be better to go back along the St. John’s Wood Road rather than Lodge Road.

  It started to rain, a drizzle at first, blown about by the wind, but soon it changed to a great storm. Good, Carl thought, it would wash Dermot’s blood off him, although he was pretty sure what little there was had been on the backpack. He could feel the rain lashing against him, and streaming down his back and legs. It changed him from being mildly warm to a sudden, sharp cold, and a huge weariness took hold of him, an exhaustion so powerful that he stumbled as he walked.

  The rain had driven home those people who had been in the streets. Sutherland Avenue was deserted, apart from the Tesco supermarket, where cars still came and went, skidding through puddles. Turning into Castellain Road and staggering to the corner of the mews, he found himself dreading that Dermot might be there, waiting inside the front door to make some fatuous remark. Then he remembered.

  No Dermot. Never again. But Nicola was there, opening the door just as he reached out with his key. She took one look at his sodden clothes and without asking him why he was carrying her green goose, put her arms round him, and pulled him inside.

&nb
sp; 23

  THEY WERE GOING to move Lizzie again. For some reason they were in a hurry and packing stuff into bags and boxes, and they’d forgotten to give her the pills. It wasn’t much help—her hands were still shackled and her ankles tied—but at least her head was clear. She thought, They’ll remember in a minute and then they’ll drug me, but it seemed they thought she’d had the pills, for they dragged her down the stairs, clutching her arms painfully and roughly, and bundled her into the backseat of their car. It was broad daylight, but nobody was nearby. Had anybody seen her, they would have thought she was just another drunken woman and would have taken little notice.

  She didn’t know where they were taking her, only that it was like countryside here, with broad areas of grass and big trees. She didn’t recognise it, but they must have thought she did, because Redhead pulled to the side of the road and stopped, and Scotty got into the back and tied a scarf round her eyes. The smell of him so close was bad, but she must smell as foul, for while she could still see, she saw him flinch away from her.

  Now that her head was clear, Lizzie considered her position, and not for the first time. Could Swithin Campbell be behind her abduction? she wondered. Was that even his real name? She’d invited him into Stacey’s flat, had wanted him to think she was well-off. Could he and Redhead and Scotty have mistaken her for Yvonne’s daughter, another Elizabeth? Now that they all knew she wasn’t the Elizabeth they’d supposed her to be, what was going to happen to her?

  They drove on, through open spaces or streets, she could no longer tell. They were all out of the car and halfway up a path when she thought she had a chance of escape, but her ankles were still tied and the single, hobbled step she took resulted in her sprawling. Redhead picked her up with rough hands and, once they were inside a door, slapped her face on both cheeks painfully. The scarf was pulled off and she was dragged upstairs to a single room at the top.

  Most people of Lizzie’s age would not have been able to identify the type of dwelling she was in. They would have known it was old and small, and that was about it. She hardly knew why she bothered to amass all this stuff in her head. Why did she care? Perhaps she thought it might be useful to know once she got out of here. If she got out.

  She got off the bed where they had dumped her and, wide-awake for the first time since she had become their prisoner, stumbled across to the window.

  She was in the kind of cottage her grandmother had lived in. Such small, terraced or sometimes semidetached houses are to be found in every London suburb, tucked away among blocks of flats, tall Victorian terraces, and large single houses. A few are still occupied by a solitary elderly resident; others have been bought by young couples who have smartened them up and filled them with the latest equipment.

  This cottage, Lizzie saw, had been lived in by someone of her grandmother’s generation. She could tell by the single bed and its eiderdown, the two little armchairs with cushions on their seats shaped like doughnuts, and the twenty or thirty tiny ornaments on the mantelpiece: china dogs, a brass bell, two framed photographs, and a number of unidentifiable objects. She thought this old lady—for it was surely a woman—must have died and left the house to a relation, perhaps Redhead’s or Scotty’s mother, and that was how they had possession of it.

  The window was large, far too large for the cottage, and although it had been put in perhaps only ten years previously, the frame looked jerry-built and rotten. The curtains, pink roses on a blue-and-green background, were drawn, and Lizzie pulled them back so that she looked out on what seemed to be a public park. She could, she realised, be anywhere south of the river Thames, a vast area of London she barely knew. Below her were tall trees, smaller trees and bushes, tennis courts, paths winding among flowerbeds, people strolling. Birds in the trees, English ones, and those green parakeets that were English now, having come here to live and settled down happily.

  She thought, feeling happier suddenly, Tomorrow they will let me go. I know it, but I don’t know how I do. She sat down in one of the little armchairs and swung her bound legs up onto the other chair. It is almost as easy to untie a knot in a rope with cuffed hands as with free ones, and she had this one undone in seconds. Someone would be bound to come in, so she sat where she was with the rope tied loosely round her ankles and waited. Someone did come, Redhead, with a plate of chips and a can of Diet Coke. He didn’t speak as he took off her cuffs, allowing her to eat, and he didn’t even glance at her ankles.

  As he was leaving, she said, “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Downstairs. I’m not taking you.”

  Once she would have argued, pleaded, even cried. Not now. She thought of the old woman who had lived here, waited till Redhead had gone, and looked under the bed. It was there, a china chamber pot, as she had once heard someone call it. She would have to use it and, worse, leave it for one of them to empty. The alternative was to pour the contents out the window. People used to do that, she had read in a social-history book, in the days when there was no plumbing.

  Revelling in having her hands free for the first time in days, she used the pot and pushed it back under the bed, so as not to have to see it. Then she lay down under the eiderdown and thought about the old and the poor who had not so long ago used chamber pots and carried big pottery jugs of hot water to fill bowls for washing in. It was the first time she had thought about something other than herself and her plight. For some unaccountable reason, going to bed with an almost-empty stomach on top of a pot full of urine in a stuffy room no longer seemed a dreadful fate. It would pass, she knew; it would soon end.

  IT MUST HAVE been four or five in the morning when the crash woke her. Outside it was getting light, and a large pane from the window in her room had been smashed. Most of it was lying in shards on her bed.

  Lizzie got up and put on her shoes before making her way to the window, glass crunching under her feet. Standing there looking down, she heard thuds and bangs as Scotty and Redhead ran downstairs. Seconds later they both appeared carrying bags and hoisting backpacks and ran up the street in search of their car. They were abandoning her.

  What had caused the crash? Had someone fired a gun at the window? Had something exploded? Scotty and Redhead evidently thought so. Lizzie knew she must leave as quickly as she could in spite of the early hour, in spite of Stacey’s soiled black-and-white dress. She opened the door of the wardrobe—on the off chance, her grandmother would have said. Nothing was inside but a padded jacket, shiny, purple, but not dirty. It could have belonged to anyone, but no matter. She put it on.

  Only then did she remember she had no money, no bus or tube pass, no credit card. But she didn’t care. Freedom was the main thing, and she had freedom. She went downstairs. The front door was open, and out in the street there was no one but a young man pulling a case on wheels along a path in the park. It didn’t matter which way she walked, though it made sense to go in the opposite direction from Scotty and Redhead.

  She saw what must have caused her smashed window. The biggest pigeon she had ever seen had flown straight into the glass and lay dead, a shining mass of blue and green and gold and brown feathers, on the pavement.

  “Oh, poor bird,” said Lizzie aloud, tears in her eyes. She bent down and picked up the dead pigeon and laid it on the grass just inside the park gate, covering it as best she could with leaves.

  She walked along painfully in Stacey’s ridiculous high heels and read on a street name the postcode SE13. Beyond its being southeast London, she had no idea where that was. There might be a tube station, though, and there would certainly be buses, but neither would be of any use to her with no pass and no cards and no money.

  What she could do came to her quite suddenly, and she thought what a fool she had been not to have thought of it before. The sole form of transport you paid for only at the end of the journey was a taxi.

  24

  TOM AND DOT were still trying not to feel anxious about Lizzie.

  Dot believed that Lizzie must be somewhere on
holiday. Cornwall was a likely choice because Lizzie knew someone whose parents lived there. Tom fixed on Barcelona. It was popular with young people; indeed, he’d read that visitor numbers—formerly about a million a year—had increased sevenfold in recent years. But another day had come and brought no Lizzie with it.

  They got up an hour or so later than usual on weekend mornings, having always done so when Tom worked, so Dot was standing at their bedroom window at twenty past eight on Sunday morning, drawing back the curtains, when a black cab pulled up outside their gate. A girl she didn’t at first recognise got out of it and ran up the path. She was young, with straggly, caramel-blond hair, and a short black-and-white dress covered by a cheap, shiny padded jacket probably bought from a market stall. Even from this distance she looked dirty, very dirty.

  It was Lizzie.

  Tom was sitting up in bed, drinking the tea Dot had brought him. “Our daughter is at the front door,” Dot told him, and then, using a phrase popular with her own mother, “She looks as if she’s been pulled through a hedge backwards.”

  The door was opened to admit a Lizzie even dirtier than she had looked from upstairs. “Mum, can you pay the man? It’s a terrible lot but I haven’t any money.”

  “How much?”

  “Thirty-five pounds.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Dot, who did.

  In the house, Lizzie said she’d pay her back but was first going to have a bath and wash her hair. Dot didn’t ask her where she had been or why she was dirty and without money. As for Lizzie, she wasn’t sure what she would tell her parents about what had happened to her.

  Lying in the bath, she decided. If she told her parents the truth, they would only make a fuss. Without a doubt, they would want to inform the police. She would be asked awkward questions that she might struggle to answer, such as why was she living in Stacey’s flat, drinking her drink, wearing her clothes? She couldn’t also help feeling a little complicit in her own abduction: Had she not wanted people to believe she was someone else; someone a lot wealthier than she actually was? Now, she just wanted to be left in peace to live her own life and forget the whole awful episode.