The Neighbour

by Fiona Cummins

  She grinned back at him, but nerves boiled inside her.

  ‘How do we know we can trust her?’ That was Charlie. She glimpsed his face, the black camouflage markings raked across his cheeks, his nose.

  ‘You can trust me,’ she said. It was true. She’d never been one to betray a confidence, but they weren’t to know that.

  ‘She’s here, isn’t she?’ said Bailey. ‘She’s part of it now.’ He opened the inside of his jacket. Aster glimpsed a bottle of white spirit, an old rag and a box of matches.

  A sharp intake of breath before she had time to think about stopping herself. ‘You can’t do that. You might kill him.’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘Serves him right.’

  Aster wanted to turn and run, to burrow down into the safety of her bed and forget that this night was happening. This was not what she had expected. Yes, in some distant part of herself, she had suspected they might try and spook him, but never this. This was on a different level.

  ‘It’s going to be magnificent.’ Charlie’s eyes gleamed in the dark. ‘Teach that old bastard a lesson.’

  Marco threw them a sharp look. ‘Shut up. If someone sees us, we’re all going to be in the shit.’

  The boys hid their bikes at the entrance of the woods. The police tape was still there, but the officer had gone. They nudged each other, ducking and feinting with their fists, fired up with the thrill of making trouble. Of crossing a line.

  Aster trailed behind them. Bailey was whispering something to Charlie. Marco slowed down until he fell into step with her.

  ‘I don’t think this is a very good idea,’ he said, low enough for the others not to hear.

  ‘Then why are you here?’ Aster wasn’t being sarcastic. She wanted to know.

  Marco laughed but it lacked humour. ‘Same reason as you. It’s impossible to refuse Bailey when he wants something.’ A sideways glance. ‘In his world, you’re either with him or against him.’

  She swallowed, trying to clear her throat, which was closing up with anxiety. A breeze was picking up. She could smell the sea. The sickly sweetness of a plant she didn’t recognize. Most of the houses were in darkness, one or two had security lights that spotlit the four of them as they passed by on the pavement. It made Aster think of those old films her father enjoyed, of criminals snared in helicopter search lights.

  ‘Let’s walk in the middle of the road,’ said Bailey.

  Trefor Lovell’s house was at the end of The Avenue and surrounded by police tape. A patrol car was parked by the kerb, but of the two officers inside, one had his eyes closed and the other was glued to the screen of his phone.

  This was not what Bailey had been expecting.

  ‘Back up,’ he hissed to the others, and they pressed themselves into the high hedge of the house next door.

  Marco and Aster started to walk back up the road. ‘Hey, where do you think you’re going?’ Bailey’s voice jerked them back, like fish on a hook. They clustered together, hidden from the police car by a bend in the road.

  ‘Let’s cut and run,’ said Marco, not quite meeting Bailey’s eye. ‘It’s way too risky.’

  ‘What’s wrong with a little risk?’ said Bailey with a grin.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ said Marco, meeting his gaze head-on this time. ‘The police are sitting right there.’

  ‘So what?’ said Charlie, standing next to Bailey, choosing his side. ‘Makes it more interesting.’

  ‘No,’ said Marco. ‘No fucking way.’

  ‘Don’t be a pussy,’ said Bailey. He pointed to Aster. ‘You’re more of a pussy than she is, and she’s a girl.’ He held out his hand, beckoned with his fingers. ‘Come on, Aster.’

  Aster wanted to ignore him. To tell him he had no right to order her around. To turn her back on him and walk away. Marco was right. It was time to go home. But her instincts warned her that Bailey could get ugly. And she didn’t know how far he would go.

  ‘Why don’t we come back tomorrow night?’ she said, buying time with a compromise, already plotting her excuses.

  ‘Let’s just get on with it,’ said Charlie. ‘All of us agreed to this. Let’s not pussy out now.’

  He shoved Marco back towards the house, and the boy, who was slighter and a couple of inches smaller, lost his balance and stumbled. Aster waited for him to push back, to insist on leaving, but his head was bowed and he didn’t speak.

  Panic began to tap its finger on her shoulder. She trawled the silt of her memory, seeking inspiration. Desperate. Determined.

  ‘Let’s head round the back and climb over the fence,’ said Bailey, already heading for the garden.

  ‘Wait.’ Aster blurted out the words. ‘I’ve got a genius idea.’

  The display window of Lovell’s shop was a tangle of faded fancy dress costumes and toys that had seen better days. The four teenagers stood in a semi-circle on the dead grass that hemmed the pavement, the moon fat-faced and silver. Bailey and Charlie were whispering and laughing. Aster and Marco could not look at each other. Both were ashamed of their weakness.

  Across the shop’s door was a link chain secured with a padlock. Dirt smeared the glass. A length of blue and white tape – POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS – moved in the breeze.

  ‘Do you reckon Lovell keeps his gun in here?’ Bailey’s breath was warm in her ear, his lips grazing her skin. But it didn’t excite her. It made her feel sick.

  She faked a smile. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Right.’ Bailey rubbed his hands together. ‘Let’s do this.’

  Aster had half expected to see a police cordon around the shop, but even then, she did not appreciate its seriousness. She did not understand that Lovell was still in custody, that they were trespassing, and that officers were due to return at first light with an extension to the search warrant that had been executed on his house and garden a few hours earlier. That they were contaminating a potential crime scene. Breaking the law. But she knew on the most basic level that what they were doing was wrong.

  Charlie unzipped his rucksack, slipped on some gloves and produced a pair of bolt cutters. As he did so, Aster glimpsed the teeth of a hacksaw and a coil of rope. He saw her looking. ‘In case we need to tie the bastard up.’

  Aster felt something inside her break.

  Bailey was soaking a rag with white spirit. The fumes hit the back of her throat and made her cough. He rattled the match box at her. ‘Want to do it?’

  Aster shook her head. She might be easily led but she wasn’t stupid. ‘I think that privilege belongs to you,’ she said.

  Bailey grinned, wolf’s teeth in the dark.

  Marco had moved to the corner of The Avenue and was keeping lookout. ‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘Before someone comes.’

  ‘Hold the torch.’ Charlie handed it to her, heavier than she expected. She shone it on the door as he snapped through the padlock and pulled it apart from the hasp.

  ‘Showtime,’ he said.

  Bailey stood in front of the door, Charlie at his heels. He hadn’t outlined his plan, but Aster suspected he was going to toss the rag into the shop and follow it with a lit match. A warning to Lovell of what they were capable of. Of what was to come.

  But Bailey’s plan was about to backfire in the most spectacular of ways. Because Lovell had anticipated an attack on his property of exactly this kind and he was ready for them. As the teenager pushed open the shop door, a loud crack went off.

  ‘What the fuck?’ said Charlie.

  Bailey let out a yell and stumbled forward, clutching his arm. He tripped over the lip of an ancient tin bath placed just inside the door of the shop and fell in, headfirst.

  The others heard splashing, and then a strangled cry, followed by sobbing, ugly and raw. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ Bailey was muttering that word over and over again and each time it was striated with fear and disgust.

  He tipped out of the shop door backwards and swung around to face the three teenagers, pawing at his eyes. He spat on the grass, two or three times. Aster’s t
orch was strobing wildly as she ran forward to help him, but the light touched his face and she balked, backing away from him.

  ‘Help me,’ he said.

  Bailey’s clothes were clinging to him and his tears were carving tracks down his face.

  His skin was no longer pale. Rusty patches were daubed across his cheeks and forehead, in the fine hairs of his eyebrows and the folds of his ears. His haystack of hair was much darker and so wet that droplets rolled down his neck and hit the grass in a steady rhythm, like the beat of a heart.

  A baptism not of water or fire, but of blood.

  They all stared at him, frozen by the sight of the boy in his ruined clothes, clots sticking to his skin.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Marco breathed out all their fears.

  Bailey was still holding his arm, still crying. ‘It hurts.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Aster, waking up. She could not bear to touch him, struggled to be close to him, but her compassion would not let her ignore him. And when she stepped nearer, she realized that instead of the animal stink of copper and spoiled meat, there was a familiar, synthetic odour.

  Not blood, but red paint.

  She touched his arm lightly, just below the sleeve of his T-shirt. And there it was. A hole in the skin, a puncture wound.

  ‘I think you’ve been shot,’ she said. ‘You need to go to hospital.’

  Charlie was there in an instant. ‘Don’t be fucking stupid. Yeah, sorry, we were setting fire to a shop and our friend got shot. We’ll go back to yours. You’re the nearest. We can clean him up there.’

  Aster imagined Bailey trailing paint on the pale floorboards of their new house, Charlie opening cupboards in the kitchen, looking for food, loud and aggressive, Marco, sweet but ineffectual.

  ‘Not all of you,’ she said. ‘Just Bailey.’ She turned to him. ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘Yeah.’ But when she looked in his eyes, she read pain in them.

  Charlie was shoving the bolt cutters back into his rucksack, muttering to himself. Marco was speaking to Bailey, low and comforting. She swung the torch around the entrance of the shop, searching for the bottle of white spirit, the incriminating rag. With the toe of her trainer, she kicked them towards Charlie and he picked them up. She wasn’t going to get blamed for this.

  Her torch swept across the surface of the tin bath, still rippling, deep and wine-dark. She picked out splashes on the tiled floor, spattered walls. A bloody-looking footprint. She must remember to wipe her own feet on the grass outside.

  She backed away, her torch swinging in wider circles, making sure she had missed nothing. Eyes watched her. Porcelain dolls sat in rows, an army of the lifeless who might blink and twist their heads at any moment. Boxes of marbles. A handful of old batteries. A rusted jack-in-the-box. Against one wall of the shop was a long, narrow table. The light landed on a box of dominoes. An old wig. A can of WD-40.

  A black wallet.

  Aster paused and swung back the torch, seeking it out. There it was again. A piece of leather decorated with an insignia that she couldn’t read but looked like a coat of arms. The light wavered as she took a step closer, reached for it and flipped it open, loose threads at one end.

  A name and a face.

  Her eyes darted across the identification.

  Detective Inspector Adam Stanton. The dead police officer.

  74

  Now

  I have been observing the lives around me fall apart. I do not wish to gloat, I despise self-aggrandizement, but there is a pleasure in watching others falter, don’t you think?

  If one is honest, most of us take joy in the stumbling footsteps of our enemies and, occasionally, our friends. Especially those who glitter with confidence, strutting through life. As for rudeness, I cannot abide it, or the arrogance of those who talk over me or look through me. I will them to trip and fall. I want them to skin their knees and bloody their noses.

  The shop was closed for a month and it never recovered. Neither did I. Because the past has a way of catching us up. Of eating us from the inside.

  I had to bury the secret in the dirt with their bodies.

  Like we buried you.

  75

  Wednesday, 1 August 2018

  26 The Avenue – 2.07 a.m.

  Dessie was in bed, but she was not asleep. She switched on her lamp at the rattle of Fletcher’s key in the front door.

  She waited.

  First, the sound of the handle being worked up and down, then the thump of his shoulder against the door, trying to force it. She wondered how long it would take him to realize that she had left her own key in the lock, deliberately shutting him out.

  She had never imagined herself to be one of those women who throw their lover’s clothes out of the window, screaming and making a scene. Sewing shellfish into the hems of his trousers or cutting up suits. She still wasn’t that woman. But she had packed most of his belongings into a case and it was waiting in the hallway. He could collect it in the morning.

  A hammering on the door.

  She rolled onto her side, pillow over her head. The hammering stopped. Her phone vibrated with a message. She turned it off. The hammering began again.

  Dessie pulled on her dressing gown and went downstairs. As soon as she switched on the hall light, the noise ceased.

  ‘Sorry to wake you,’ he said through the letterbox. She had no idea where he had been. He had not mentioned he was going out after work, and certainly not so late. ‘I think you’ve locked me out.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Benjamin.’

  She had half expected him to deny it, but his silence told her everything. Eventually, he spoke, but there was no fire in his voice, just defeat. ‘How did you find out?’

  That admission of guilt was all it took to douse the outrage that had driven her since her discovery. She slid down the wall by the door, too tired to fight.

  ‘The garage. I was going to book us a surprise holiday.’ Her voice cracked on surprise.

  ‘Let me in, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I can explain everything.’

  ‘Like why you were spying on unsuspecting women?’

  ‘It was a horrible mix-up, Dessie. An awful fucking time. I was cataloguing clouds, but they thought I was a pervert. I had to plead guilty, or they’d have sent me to prison.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have given me the time of day,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t have given me so much as a second look.’ He started to cry. ‘Would you? Would you?’

  Dessie could never bear the sound of someone crying. And she had always tried so hard not to make judgements about people.

  ‘I might have done.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. Nobody would. No smoke without fire, isn’t that what they say?’

  He was right. She would have run a mile if she’d known about his conviction. But he might not be lying about his motivations. She’d heard the same from one of her sister’s friends, whose brother had gone to prison. He’d refused to admit his guilt and, in her summing up, the judge had remarked on his lack of remorse and sentenced him to seven years.

  She loved Fletcher. But she didn’t know if she believed him.

  All afternoon she had trawled their relationship, picking it over, holding up a magnifying glass to its imperfections. She’d remembered a night, a few months back, when she’d come in from drinks with friends, her mouth tasting of garlicky olives and red wine. She’d thrown off her jeans and silk shirt, collapsed into bed without brushing her teeth and fallen into a deep sleep.

  A couple of hours later, her eyes had opened. She wasn’t sure what had disturbed her, but there was a man standing over the bed. She’d screamed before she’d realized it was Fletcher, and he’d soothed her, his hand on her arm.

  ‘It’s only me. Go back to sleep.’

  He’d lain down next to her, on his stomach, stroking her hair, and in that vague, half-asleep way of the middle of the night, she’d registered a slight thud, the sound of so
mething heavy being placed on the carpet before she’d drifted off again.

  It was only when she awoke in the morning that she’d noticed Fletcher’s camera on the floor. Her underwear had also been removed, but she had no memory of taking it off. At the time, she’d dismissed it to the black hole of drunkenness, had barely given it a second thought. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She had trusted him. She had invited him into her home and her life, allowing herself to be seduced by the man she thought he was. A part of her could not understand how she might have got it so wrong. How was it that she had not sensed this darkness in him, that her judgement had been so skewed? Was it because he was telling her the truth?

  The letterbox lifted again. ‘I do understand how you feel, you know.’ And then he was standing up, preparing to leave. She could see the shape of him behind the stained glass. ‘I’ll go far away from here and you’ll never have to see me again, I promise.’ His voice sounded muffled against the door and then she picked up the sound of footsteps, of him walking away.

  She crawled over to the letterbox, lifted it. ‘Fletch, wait.’ The footsteps stopped. ‘Why did you change your name?’

  He crouched down and she saw his mouth, the stubble on his chin, through the open flap.

  ‘I wanted a clean page, a new beginning. Everyone deserves a second chance.’ A hopeful lift to his voice. ‘If you let me in, we can talk about it properly.’

  Dessie remembered their holiday plans, their first Christmas together, the way he made her laugh.

  She unlocked the door.

  76

  Wednesday, 1 August 2018

  4 Hillside Crescent – 2.08 a.m.

  DS Wildeve Stanton was many things, but she wasn’t a fantasist.

  By her reckoning, Trefor Lovell had been in custody for eleven hours. The police had another thirteen hours to charge him or let him go. But if they’d found enough evidence to hold him for murder, it could be another three days before he was released. Or remanded in custody. Without bail. Which was no good to her. She needed to talk to him now.