The Girl Downstairs

by Iain Maitland

  We’re going to transfer you … for two weeks,” they said. “To the Priory … on the NHS … to get you better.”

  I do not know if they would have sectioned me if I had refused. I would have asked, but I found it hard to speak through my sobbing.

  I spent four months in the Priory in Essex. At the beginning, when I thought I would be out in a fortnight, I treated it as a kind of a “pick me up” break. A week or two in a Travel Lodge-type place with breakfast, lunch and an evening meal, all there ready for you. In-between, there were talks with nurses and a doctor, and I knew, instinctively, the right things to say so that they ticked rather than put a cross in the boxes. There were various leisure and exercise classes, too. I made an effort with those. Yoga and drawing and the like. I learned how to draw the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine quite well.

  I was angry when I found out I was going to be there longer than two weeks. I caused some damage to my room and the corridor; it took four of them to bring me down as I was making my way to the exit. It became a prison. I did not calm down for ages. And I lost my privileges. It set me back a good while. Someone looked in on me every fifteen minutes for ever such a long time.

  But I came good. Slowly but surely, over the four months. I learned to accept and deal with my alcoholism. I admitted it in group meetings. “My name is Philip Adams … and I am an alcoholic.” Dealing with the shame and the sorrow of what happened to my wife and daughter. Laura Jane Adams. Lucy Anne Adams. Learning to live with that. Accepting the past. Changing the present. Loving the future. Learning to handle the depression that overwhelmed me every day. A mix of medication and structure and routine, little goals and small rewards. A hand of solitaire. A game of chess. Watching a robin in the garden.

  One gloriously sunny day, they let me out.

  As I left my room for the last time, I looked in the mirror and accepted what I saw. A flawed and damaged middle-aged man.

  Who was going to stay alive and devote my time to saving young and troubled girls. And, by doing that, saving myself, too. And maybe, just maybe, finding some kind of love.

  I awake suddenly, disoriented for a moment or two. It is dark other than a shaft of moonlight shining through a crack in the curtains. My mind clears.

  I turn my head towards the bedside table. The illuminated numbers on the clock show 1.20 a.m. precisely. Something’s woken me. Fluffy lies still by my feet. Rosie is now in my daughter’s room and is not very happy about that.

  There is movement on the landing outside my room. A door closing. Heavy footsteps. It is the Lump. He is here. This monstrous being.

  I am up and out of my bed, slippers on and heading for the door. I grab my heavy bedside lamp, wrenching its lead and plug out of the wall in my urgency. For my defence. And Rosie’s protection.

  He has come here. The Lump. Broken in through the back door of the nookery. Searched there. And come out and into the living room, making his way up the stairs to find Rosie. He is now on the landing. Ready to take her by force.

  I have a moment to think as he arrives. He will not know which way to turn. To the left, my room. To the right, where Rosie is sleeping in my daughter’s room. I have to save her from him.

  I pull open my bedroom door. He is there in the darkness, his back half-turned towards me. He jumps as he senses my presence, then turns. He is pulling his coat around himself. Now reaches for something in his pocket. A knife.

  It happens so fast. I hit him on the head as hard as I can with the base of the lamp.

  He stumbles back to the wall. Somehow staggers forward as I pull him round desperately, so his body is facing me, lined up at the top of the stairs.

  I hit him again hard on the head. Once. Twice. The third blow missing him by inches, as he is already falling backwards and tumbling downstairs and hitting his head on the cold stone floor. I hear his skull crack. It seems to echo.

  There is silence, and I stand there in shock at what I have done. What I had to do. I had no choice. But it paralyses me. I cannot seem to move. I know I need to do something. Then there is the sound of movement from my daughter’s bedroom. Rosie is up. I hear the pit-pat of her bare feet on the wooden floorboards.

  She turns on the light in the bedroom. I see it shining at the bottom of the door. She opens the door. Her little face. A long tee shirt. Bare legs. She looks at me standing there in my old-man pyjamas. A heavy blood-smeared bedside lamp in my hand. I drop it, and it lands on the top stair, and we both watch it roll and fall down the stairs in the half-light towards the body at the bottom. Her mouth drops open in horror at what I have done.

  She takes charge. Pushing by me.

  Moving down the stairs. Stopping to stand the lamp carefully up at the side of a stair halfway down. As if that matters.

  She crouches over him.

  He is all of a jumble on the floor. A big solid mass of bent arms and broken legs. She cannot move him, but I see her put her hand towards his head. His mouth. Checking for breath. Then rummaging by his arm. To take his pulse. Then inside his dressing gown. Feeling for his beating heart.

  She looks up at me. Organised and sensible in the middle of this hell.

  “Do you have a mirror?” she asks.

  I don’t reply. My brain is working. But it is somehow slower than usual. My brain does not seem to connect with my mouth.

  “A mirror,” she repeats. Then she adds, in a raised voice to get my attention, “Go into the bedroom for the make-up box on the bedside table. Fetch me the mirror from that. Go on.” Suddenly, she is in charge.

  I turn automatically and make my way into the bedroom. The room is messy, clothes spread out in piles on the floorboards. The duvet has been thrown back, and I see an odd, wet mark in the middle of the sheet. I move closer. It is not blood. I reach out and touch it and lift my fingers to the light, and I realise what it is. It is from him. He has been here. With her. He was leaving. Not arriving.

  “Hurry!” I hear her calling as I wipe my fingers on the duvet and reach for the make-up box, rummaging inside. I am then back out and down the stairs, handing the tiny mirror to Rosie.

  She leans forward, the mirror pressed close to his mouth.

  She sits back and brings the mirror up to her face, peering at it. She turns and looks at me.

  “He’s dead,” she says in her matter-of-fact way. This man who was in her bed, inside her, only a few minutes ago. “You’ve murdered him.”

  Part IV

  The Cottage

  14

  Friday, 29 November, 1.25 Am

  I walk down the stairs one slow step at a time. Holding the handrail. Feeling sick.

  I am done for now. Finished by this split-second fatal decision. The wrong one. A decision that was forced on me.

  I will now be going to prison. I don’t know what will become of Fluffy. Or me. I cannot face being locked away again. I would rather die.

  I touch the light switch at the bottom of the stairs. The 40-watt bulb illuminates the stairs and hallway slightly, but not by much. It’s a dirty half-light, and the cottage is still so cold. It really is a morgue now. She grimaces slightly in the light and crouches back. I see she has nothing on beneath her tee shirt, between her legs. I cannot seem to look away. Even now.

  She notices my gaze and moves her knees together. Brings her head down. Kind of crouches over. She has the palm of her hand resting on the side of his – Andrew Lumb’s – head. I cannot see the expression on her face. Warmth. Affection. Love. I cannot think there would be any of those from this alley cat, having sex with this man-child she barely knew. I do not know what possessed her. What to think of her. Too soon to tell.

  But she is not who I thought she was. This girl with the tragic childhood. Locked away for so many years. Out at last into what should be normality. Ending up on the streets, beaten and abused by men. I wanted to save her. Nurture her. I would have been a mentor to her.

  She stands up, her tee shirt somehow catching round her midriff, exposing her lower half to me ag
ain. She tugs it down and looks at me. Her face is blank; I cannot read it.

  I look back, not sure whether she is going to take charge. Or wait for me. I do not know what to do. I feel I will be physically sick.

  I look down at Andrew Lumb, one arm and one leg bent at unnatural angles. Like a swastika. His face is turned to the side and squashed as if he is gurning. He is ugly.

  “He’s dead?” I say, half-statement, half-question.

  “Yes,” she answers simply. “He’s not breathing.”

  I bend over and repeat, almost without thinking, what she did. Checking his mouth for breath, his wrist for a pulse, his chest for a heartbeat.

  I don’t know why. He is clearly dead. His eyes are open and glazed. There is stuff hanging out of his nose. Some sort of froth on his lips. But I don’t know what else to do.

  A silence as I wipe my hand on the trousers of my pyjamas.

  She waits for me to speak.

  “He had a knife,” I say. “In his pocket. He was reaching for it. I was defending myself.”

  She leans forward and slides a hand carefully inside the pocket closest to her. It comes out with a small Yale key. She opens her palm to show me.

  “The other pocket,” I say. “It was the other side.”

  She pulls and tugs unceremoniously at the dressing gown that’s partly under the body to expose the other pocket.

  She puts her hand in again and pulls out his hat. She holds it up. He was reaching for his stupid bobble hat, not a knife.

  I am in anguish.

  She folds the hat over and puts it back in the pocket.

  She sighs. I am not sure why.

  “Should I call the police?” I ask finally, not knowing what else to say.

  She shrugs as if to say, I don’t know. Then thinks and speaks.

  “I’ll have to go if you do … I can’t be found here. It’s not my fault, this. I’d go back inside.” She stops for a moment. Before I have time to think of my reply. She then adds, “You’ll go to prison. You won’t survive. You’re soft.”

  She looks at me, and I look back. She is right. On all three counts. I know it.

  “What else can I do?” I ask, my brain starting to formulate an idea. The one I think she already has. Being a step or two ahead of me.

  “If you call the police,” she says, “you’ll go to prison. And I’ll leave now.” She repeats herself as if preoccupied; she is thinking out loud.

  “If you take him to his house and leave him at the bottom of his stairs … same as this … no one will ever know what you did.”

  I am shocked. I should not be. It was the thought I had just had too. Was formulating. I think I am stunned at how impassive she is about it. I look at her and suddenly see her differently. This girl with years of brutality behind her. I see them all in her hard face.

  “I hit him on the head … back and front. There will be DNA from me … and from you … and his DNA all over the lamp … and in your bedroom … in … your bed.”

  She looks down at him as if she has not heard my comment, or at least does not want to address it. Then starts asking questions.

  “Does he live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t have a job?”

  “No.”

  “Does he get benefits? Sign on?”

  “I think … no … he wouldn’t know what to do … he probably lives off his parents’ savings … inheritance.”

  “And he has no family or friends, you said?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t think so. He used to go out once a week with a group of … people like him … on a minibus … but I’m not sure he does any more.”

  “No one will miss him, then.”

  Statement or question, I’m not sure.

  “And not many people come down this far … down this lane?”

  “Not really, no. Dog walkers. The postman. We’ve had kids on motorbikes in the summer, but nothing lately. A police car sometimes. But not in this weather.” I go to mention the helicopter, but stop myself.

  “Any letters sticking out the letterbox could be pushed through. You could watch for parcels.” She says, thinking it through step by step.

  “Move him and put him at the bottom of the stairs like he is here. Then leave him. Watch to see if anyone calls. If anyone asks, you say he is on holiday. If you see post, you push it inside. You get rid of parcels. Burn them on the fire.”

  I nod and swallow. For some reason, I can’t answer. My throat is dry.

  “He won’t be found for ages. After the snow. After winter … the spring.”

  “DNA,” I repeat. “Fingerprints too. All sorts. There will be signs of us on him. Him on us. There and here.”

  She pulls a face as if to say, so what? “They’ll not check. When he’s found. They’ll see him at the bottom of the stairs and will think he fell. You could loosen the carpet at the top of the stairs. Why would they think anything else?”

  I look at her. She has this all worked out. This street urchin. So innocent in some ways. But not in others.

  “Don’t clean him up or anything … don’t try to be clever … don’t overthink things … make it natural.” She thinks a bit more, and she is close to smiling, as if this is some sort of game. “You could find himself yourself in the spring if you wanted. Then call the police. Anything of yours on him won’t be suspicious.”

  “Move him now. I will open the kitchen door … and the back gate … and his gate.” She picks up the Yale key on the floor. “You can then drag him through, unlock his back door and leave him by the staircase. I’ll clean up here while you do that.”

  She looks at me. “Okay?” She repeats it. “Okay?”

  I nod my agreement.

  She hands me the key. I turn to go.

  Wondering if this is the biggest mistake of my life.

  I stop for a moment to get my breath by the step up to the Lumbs’ back door.

  My hot breath against the cold moonlight air. A thin zigzag of blood in the snow, leading back to his gate and beyond to my cottage.

  The heavy and cumbersome body lies by my feet in the snow, blood dripping onto my slippers.

  I turn, exhausted by my efforts dragging him here by the shoulders, his head rolling back and forth against my thighs as I drag, stop, drag, stop, drag, stop my way from my cottage to his house. I am not used to this. It’s hard work. There is blood all over my thighs. So much blood everywhere. I would not have thought it was possible. It as if his body is emptying itself of all of it.

  I leave him on the ground as I open the back door of his house. Move in and wait, letting my eyes become accustomed to the dark. Checking the way is clear to the foot of his stairs. Through the kitchen into a small hallway. The size and layout are different to mine, although it all still feels just as cramped. And it seems so old, so out of time; untouched since the 1970s, I’d say. His grandmother’s house originally, I think.

  I flick the kitchen light on, for there is no one anywhere about to see it, to be suspicious, to remember the moment. The kitchen is a mass of orange and chocolate-brown colours: swirly wallpaper, tea, coffee and sugar jars, Formica surfaces, wood-effect linoleum floor. The house that time forgot. A full and wide-open bin bag of rubbish, leftover food and packets and wrappings rests besides the kitchen door.

  The hallway has long-since-faded, striped cream wallpaper and a dark swirly carpet. An old-fashioned mustard-coloured door and a glass shelf with a cream-coloured rotary dial telephone on it. It all smells stale and dirty. I turn and look up the stairs, which has the same swirly carpet and dulled brass bars across each step. I wonder whether one of those might loosen easily near the top.

  I go down onto my hands and knees and crawl up the stairs, feeling each bar as I get closer to the landing, pulling them in turn to see if one might come away. They are all tight, and so is the carpet on the landing. I can do nothing now. I will come back in the morning with a screwdriver and see if I can loosen one enough to rumple the carpet near th
e top of the stairs.

  I edge my way back down, using a corner of my dressing gown to wipe each bar where I touched it with my fingers. A corner of my dressing gown catches on one bar halfway, and a thread is tugged out. I pull it loose and slip it into my pocket. I have to be careful.

  Then I am at the bottom of the stairs and hurrying back outside for the body. I cannot stop and dwell on what I have done. I have to focus on what I am doing. One task at a time.

  As I stand there looking down at his body, I see a dark pool of blood by the back doorstep. I doubt that will ever come out. I am suddenly sorry for what I have done to him. I made a spur-of-the-moment mistake, and he has paid for it with his life. But I thought he was a monster and a danger to the girl, that he was going to rape her. I was sure of it. And it all happened so fast. I thought he had a knife and that he would kill me with it. I acted in self-defence. Those are the facts.

  But I do not know what the police would say about it if I called them. To confess. I killed him, after all. Hit him not just once – self-defence – but two or three times, spun him round, pushed him down the stairs to the cold stone floor below. He did not fight back. I could have stopped at any moment after the first blow. I did not. I lost my temper.

  Manslaughter?

  Murder?

  A long sentence, I know that.

  I do not know what she would say if I telephoned the police after she had gone back to bed and was asleep when they arrived. I remember her words: “You’ve murdered him.” I wonder if that is what she will say to them. Feeling cornered. That Andrew Lumb was in the cottage at her invitation. That I was jealous. Angry. A dirty, leering, possessive old man. She could put words, threats – maybe even death threats – into my mouth.

  And whether, in her fury at being recaptured, she will go further and say I forced myself on her. “Look, he hit my face and twisted my arm so hard he almost broke it.” And rage, “He raped me repeatedly.” And that I have somehow held her here captive, maybe threatening to hunt her down and kill her if she left. “And,” she’d add, “he killed Andrew when Andrew tried to stop him raping me, hitting him so hard he broke his skull. He pushed Andrew down the stairs and left him to die. I was too scared to do anything.”