by Ruth Rendell
A strange idea, with all its amazing possibilities, crossed his mind and he stood on the pavement, gazing the length of the High Street. But the girl had crossed the road and was waiting at the bus stop, while the man was only just visible in the distance, turning into the entrance of the underground car park.
Barry banished his idea, ridiculous perhaps and, to him, rather upsetting, and he crossed the road behind the oncoming bus, wondering how to pass the rest of the evening. Review once more those murder scenes, was all that suggested itself to him and then go home.
It must have been the wrong bus for her. She was still waiting. And as Barry approached, she spoke to him, ‘I saw you in the pub.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He never knew how to talk to girls. They intimidated and irritated him, especially when they were taller than he, and most of them were. The little thin ones he despised.
‘I thought,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I thought I was going to have someone to see me home.’
Barry made no reply. She came out of the bus shelter, quite close to him, and he saw that she was much bigger and taller than he had thought at first.
‘I must have just missed my bus. There won’t be another for ten minutes.’ She looked, and then he looked, at the shiny desert of this shopping centre, lighted and glittering and empty, pitted with the dark holes of doorways and passages. ‘If you’re going my way,’ she said, ‘I thought maybe . . .’
‘I’m going through the path,’ he said. Round there that was what everyone called it, the path.
‘That’ll do me.’ She sounded eager and pleading. ‘It’s a short cut to my place. Is it all right if I walk along with you?’
‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘One of them got killed down there. Doesn’t that bother you?’
She only shrugged. They began to walk along together up the yellow and white glazed street, not talking, at least a yard apart. It was a chilly damp night, and a gust of wind caught them as, past the shops, they entered the path. The wind blew out the long red silk scarf she wore and she tucked it back inside her coat. Barry never wore a scarf, though most people did at this time of the year. It amused him to notice just how many did, as if they had never taken in the fact that all those six had been strangled with their own scarves.
There were lamps in this part of the path, attached by iron brackets to the red wall and the brown. Her sharp-featured face looked greenish in the light, and gaunt and scared. Suddenly he wasn’t intimidated by her any more or afraid to talk to her.
‘Most people,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t walk down here at night for a million pounds.’
‘You do,’ she said. ‘You were coming down here alone.’
‘And no one gave me a million,’ he said cockily. ‘Look, that’s where the first one died, just round this corner.’
She glanced at the spot expressionlessly and walked on ahead of Barry. He caught up with her. If she hadn’t been wearing high heels she wouldn’t have been that much taller than he. He pulled himself up to his full height, stretching his spine, as if effort and desire could make him as tall as his cousin Ronnie.
‘I’m stronger than I look,’ he said. ‘A man’s always stronger than a woman. It’s the muscles.’
He might not have spoken for all the notice she took. The walls ended and gave place to low railings behind which the allotments, scrubby plots of cabbage stumps and waterlogged weeds, stretched away. Beyond them, but a long way off, rose the backs of tall houses hung with wooden balconies and iron staircases. A pale moon had come out and cast over this dismal prospect a thin cold radiance.
‘There’ll be someone killed here next,’ he said. ‘It’s just the place. No one to see. The killer could get away over the allotments.’
She stopped and faced him. ‘Don’t you ever think about anything but those murders?’
‘Crime interests me. I’d like to know why he does it.’ He spoke insinuatingly, his resentment of her driven away by the attention she was at last giving him. ‘Why d’you think he does it? It’s not for money or sex. What’s he got against them?’
‘Maybe he hates them.’ Her own words seemed to frighten her and, strangely, she pulled off the scarf which the wind had again been flapping, and thrust it into her coat pocket. ‘I can understand that.’ She looked at him with a mixture of dislike and fear. ‘I hate men, so I can understand it,’ she said, her voice trembling and shrill. ‘Come on, let’s walk.’
‘No.’ Barry put out his hand and touched her arm. His fingers clutched her coat sleeve. ‘No, you can’t just leave it there. If he hates them, why does he?’
‘Perhaps he’s been turned down too often,’ she said, backing away from him. ‘Perhaps a long time ago one of them hurt him. He doesn’t want to kill them but he can’t help himself.’ As she flung his hand off her arm the words came spitting out. ‘Or he’s just ugly. Or little, like you.’
Barry stood on tip-toe to bring himself to her height. He took a step towards her, his fists up. She backed against the railings and a long shudder went through her. Then she wheeled away and began to run, stumbling because her heels were high. It was those heels or the roughness of the ground or the new darkness as clouds dimmed the moon that brought her down.
Collapsed in a heap, one shoe kicked off, she slowly raised her head and looked up into Barry’s eyes. He made no attempt to touch her. She struggled to her feet, wiped her grazed and bleeding hands on the scarf and immediately, without a word, they were locked together in the dark.
Several remarkable features distinguished this murder from the others. There was blood on the victim who had fair hair instead of dark, though otherwise strongly resembling Patrick Leston and Dino Facci. Apparently, since Barry Halford had worn no scarf the murderer’s own had been used. But ultimately it was the evidence of a slim dark-haired customer of the Red Lion which led the police to the conclusion that the killer of these seven young men was a woman.
The New Girl Friend
For Paul Sidey
The New Girl Friend
‘You know what we did last time?’ he said.
She had waited for this for weeks. ‘Yes?’
‘I wondered if you’d like to do it again.’
She longed to but she didn’t want to sound too keen. ‘Why not?’
‘How about Friday afternoon, then? I’ve got the day off and Angie always goes to her sister’s on Friday.’
‘Not always, David.’ She giggled.
He also laughed a little. ‘She will this week. Do you think we could use your car? Angie’ll take ours.’
‘Of course. I’ll come for you about two, shall I?’
‘I’ll open the garage doors and you can drive straight in. Oh, and Chris, could you fix it to get back a bit later? I’d love it if we could have the whole evening together.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, and then, ‘I’m sure I can fix it. I’ll tell Graham I’m going out with my new girl friend.’
He said goodbye and that he would see her on Friday. Christine put the receiver back. She had almost given up expecting a call from him. But there must have been a grain of hope still, for she had never left the receiver off the way she used to.
The last time she had done that was on a Thursday three weeks before, the day she had gone round to Angie’s and found David there alone. Christine had got into the habit of taking the phone off the hook during the middle part of the day to avoid getting calls for the Midland Bank. Her number and the Midland Bank’s differed by only one digit. Most days she took the receiver off at nine-thirty and put it back at three-thirty. On Thursday afternoons she nearly always went round to see Angie and never bothered to phone first.
Christine knew Angie’s husband quite well. If she stayed a bit later on Thursdays she saw him when he came home from work. Sometimes she and Graham and Angie and David went out together as a foursome. She knew that David, like Graham, was a salesman or sales executive, as Graham always described himself, and she guessed from her friend’s life style that Da
vid was rather more successful at it. She had never found him particularly attractive, for, although he was quite tall, he had something of a girlish look and very fair wavy hair.
Graham was a heavily built, very dark man with a swarthy skin. He had to shave twice a day. Christine had started going out with him when she was fifteen and they had got married on her eighteenth birthday. She had never really known any other men at all intimately and now if she ever found herself alone with a man she felt awkward and apprehensive. The truth was that she was afraid a man might make an advance to her and the thought of that frightened her very much. For a long while she carried a penknife in her handbag in case she should need to defend herself. One evening, after they had been out with a colleague of Graham’s and had had a few drinks, she told Graham about this fear of hers.
He said she was silly but he seemed rather pleased.
‘When you went off to talk to those people and I was left with John I felt like that. I felt terribly nervous. I didn’t know how to talk to him.’
Graham roared with laughter. ‘You don’t mean you thought old John was going to make a pass at you in the middle of a crowded restaurant?’
‘I don’t know,’ Christine said. ‘I never know what they’ll do.’
‘So long as you’re not afraid of what I’ll do,’ said Graham, beginning to kiss her, ‘that’s all that matters.’ There was no point in telling him now, ten years too late, that she was afraid of what he did and always had been. Of course she had got used to it, she wasn’t actually terrified, she was resigned and sometimes even quite cheerful about it. David was the only man she had ever been alone with when it felt all right.
That first time, that Thursday when Angie had gone to her sister’s and hadn’t been able to get through on the phone and tell Christine not to come, that time it had been fine. And afterwards she had felt happy and carefree, though what had happened with David took on the colouring of a dream next day. It wasn’t really believable. Early on he had said: ‘Will you tell Angie?’
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
‘I think it would upset her, Chris. It might even wreck our marriage. You see . . .’ He had hesitated. ‘You see, that was the first time I – I mean, anyone ever . . .’ And he had looked into her eyes. ‘Thank God it was you.’
The following Thursday she had gone round to see Angie as usual. In the meantime there had been no word from David. She stayed late in order to see him, beginning to feel a little sick with apprehension, her heart beating hard when he came in.
He looked quite different from how he had when she had found him sitting at the table reading, the radio on. He was wearing a grey flannel suit and a grey striped tie. When Angie went out of the room and for a minute she was alone with him, she felt a flicker of that old wariness that was the forerunner of her fear. He was getting her a drink. She looked up and met his eyes and it was all right again. He gave her a conspiratorial smile, laying a finger on his lips.
‘I’ll give you a ring,’ he had whispered.
She had to wait two more weeks. During that time she went twice to Angie’s and twice Angie came to her. She and Graham and Angie and David went out as a foursome and while Graham was fetching drinks and Angie was in the Ladies, David looked at her and smiled and lightly touched her foot with his foot under the table.
‘I’ll phone you. I haven’t forgotten.’
It was a Wednesday when he finally did phone. Next day Christine told Graham she had made a new friend, a girl she had met at work. She would be going out somewhere with this new friend on Friday and she wouldn’t be back till eleven. She was desperately afraid he would want the car – it was his car or his firm’s – but it so happened he would be in the office that day and would go by train. Telling him these lies didn’t make her feel guilty. It wasn’t as if this were some sordid affair, it was quite different.
When Friday came she dressed with great care. Normally, to go round to Angie’s, she would have worn jeans and a tee shirt with a sweater over it. That was what she had on the first time she found herself alone with David. She put on a skirt and blouse and her black velvet jacket. She took the heated rollers out of her hair and brushed it into curls down on her shoulders. There was never much money to spend on clothes. The mortgage on the house took up a third of what Graham earned and half what she earned at her part-time job. But she could run to a pair of sheer black tights to go with the highest heeled shoes she’d got, her black pumps.
The doors of Angie and David’s garage were wide open and their car was gone. Christine turned into their driveway, drove into the garage and closed the doors behind her. A door at the back of the garage led into the yard and garden. The kitchen door was unlocked as it had been that Thursday three weeks before and always was on Thursday afternoons. She opened the door and walked in.
‘Is that you, Chris?’
The voice sounded very male. She needed to be reassured by the sight of him. She went into the hall as he came down the stairs.
‘You look lovely,’ he said.
‘So do you.’
He was wearing a suit. It was of navy silk with a pattern of pink and white flowers. The skirt was very short, the jacket clinched into his waist with a wide navy patent belt. The long golden hair fell to his shoulders, he was heavily made-up and this time he had painted his fingernails. He looked far more beautiful than he had that first time.
Then, three weeks before, the sound of her entry drowned in loud music from the radio, she had come upon this girl sitting at the table reading Vogue. For a moment she had thought it must be David’s sister. She had forgotten Angie had said David was an only child. The girl had long fair hair and was wearing a red summer dress with white spots on it, white sandals and around her neck a string of white beads. When Christine saw that it was not a girl but David himself she didn’t know what to do.
He stared at her in silence and without moving and then he switched off the radio. Christine said the silliest and least relevant thing.
‘What are you doing home at this time?’
That made him smile. ‘I’d finished so I took the rest of the day off. I should have locked the back door. Now you’re here you may as well sit down.’
She sat down. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He didn’t look like a man dressed up as a girl, he looked like a girl and a much prettier one than she or Angie. ‘Does Angie know?’
He shook his head.
‘But why do you do it?’ she burst out and she looked about the room, Angie’s small, rather untidy living room, at the radio, the Vogue magazine. ‘What do you get out of it?’ Something came back to her from an article she had read. ‘Did your mother dress you as a girl when you were little?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe. I don’t remember. I don’t want to be a girl. I just want to dress up as one sometimes.’
The first shock of it was past and she began to feel easier with him. It wasn’t as if there was anything grotesque about the way he looked. The very last thing he reminded her of was one of those female impersonators. A curious thought came into her head, that it was nicer, somehow more civilized, to be a woman and that if only all men were more like women . . . That was silly, of course, it couldn’t be.
‘And it’s enough for you just to dress up and be here on your own?’
He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘Since you ask, what I’d really like would be to go out like this and . . .’ He paused, looking at her, ‘and be seen by lots of people, that’s what I’d like. I’ve never had the nerve for that.’
The bold idea expressed itself without her having to give it a moment’s thought. She wanted to do it. She was beginning to tremble with excitement.
‘Let’s go out then, you and I. Let’s go out now. I’ll put my car in your garage and you can get into it so the people next door don’t see and then we’ll go somewhere. Let’s do that, David, shall we?’
She wondered afterwards why she had enjoyed it so much. What had it be
en, after all, as far as anyone else knew but two girls walking on Hampstead Heath? If Angie had suggested that the two of them do it she would have thought it a poor way of spending the afternoon. But with David . . . She hadn’t even minded that of the two of them he was infinitely the better dressed, taller, better-looking, more graceful. She didn’t mind now as he came down the stairs and stood in front of her.
‘Where shall we go?’
‘Not the Heath this time,’ he said. ‘Let’s go shopping.’ He bought a blouse in one of the big stores. Christine went into the changing room with him when he tried it on. They walked about in Hyde Park. Later on they had dinner and Christine noted that they were the only two women in the restaurant dining together.
‘I’m grateful to you,’ David said. He put his hand over hers on the table.
‘I enjoy it,’ she said. ‘It’s so – crazy. I really love it. You’d better not do that, had you? There’s a man over there giving us a funny look.’
‘Women hold hands,’ he said.
‘Only those sort of women. David, we could do this every Friday you don’t have to work.’
‘Why not?’ he said.
There was nothing to feel guilty about. She wasn’t harming Angie and she wasn’t being disloyal to Graham. All she was doing was going on innocent outings with another girl. Graham wasn’t interested in her new friend, he didn’t even ask her name. Christine came to long for Fridays, especially for the moment when she let herself into Angie’s house and saw David coming down the stairs and for the moment when they stepped out of the car in some public place and the first eyes were turned on him. They went to Holland Park, they went to the zoo, to Kew Gardens. They went to the cinema and a man sitting next to David put his hand on his knee. David loved that, it was a triumph for him, but Christine whispered they must change their seats and they did.
