White Bodies: An Addictive Psychological Thriller

by Jane Robins

  “Drop the knife!”

  I don’t, I grip it even harder—but he wrenches it from me, with one clean wrench, and throws it clear, onto the floor. He puts his head close to mine, eye to eye, against the wall, and hisses, “You’re insane. What the fuck? Now get out of here now.”

  Tilda is watching, with horrified pale eyes.

  “For God’s sake, Callie. Why the knife? What are you doing?”

  “I need to protect you. Look at him! He’s mad with anger . . . you’re not safe.”

  The room is filled with a dreadful, painful silence—the three of us frozen in our space, looking at one another, unable to articulate our fury. Felix is heaving, loud desperate breaths, and he forces his words out: “We all need to be calm, and to talk . . . Something terrible and strange has happened here, and we need to work out what it is.”

  “Tilda?” I’m wanting more from her. I want her to come clean.

  “Felix is right.” She gets out of bed, wrapping herself in a woolen throw, stumbling across the room in flamboyant distress, like she’s playing Medea or Lady Macbeth. She inspects Felix’s wound, licking her finger, smearing it along the thread of blood.

  “You’re okay, thank heaven. . . . It only needs a plaster. Callie, you’ve crossed a line. We need to talk about it; let’s go into the other room.”

  I grab the duvet, pull it around myself, and the three of us go and sit on the sofas. Felix is slumped forward, his head in his hands. He’s failing to get his emotions under control, and there’s no way I’m going to leave Tilda alone with him. I’m in the corner of a sofa, cocooned in the duvet, hugging my folded-up legs, thinking about how to explain the knife. Tilda’s looking at me like she’s amazed by my behavior, and I’m once again on the point of saying that I read her letter. But I stop myself, realizing that if I confess, she’ll evict me in disgust, not caring what the consequences will be for her. So I fake a confused face, and say, “I don’t know what happened. . . . I don’t know why I did it.”

  “Fuck it . . . you had a knife!” She’s overwhelmed with disbelief.

  “I know . . . I know. When Felix went off in that angry mood, I got a knife and put it under the pillow. Just in case . . . in case I needed to defend you. I knew it was crazy. Really. I didn’t mean to use it.” Even to myself, I sound weak.

  “You’re unhinged—you know that, right?” Felix is sounding like he might hyperventilate. “I thought we might be able to talk this out, but we can’t. It’s too extreme, Callie, too bizarre. You’ve got to get out of here—I don’t want to see you—not for a long time. You have to leave Tilda and me alone. You realize I could get a restraining order? God knows what you might have done! You need psychological help. I’ll pay for it—you sort yourself out. And, honestly, stay away and get your own fucking life. It’s about time. I’m calling you a cab.”

  I look to Tilda for support, but she says, “Felix is right. You have to sort yourself out.”

  He starts pacing, working himself up into an increasingly angry state. I can see fear in Tilda’s eyes. But she refuses to be disloyal, and instead she says, “I’ll call the cab,” and she does. I’m sent out into the night, and she is left with him.

  30

  I didn’t hear anything from Tilda or Felix. No phone call to say they’d fixed me up with a psychiatrist, no offer to make amends. It was a pity, because I wanted to say that I’d dreamed up a solution to our problems in the form of group therapy—maybe under Liam’s guiding hand! In that sort of safe environment we could, maybe, slowly, gently address Felix’s anger and violence and Tilda’s complicity, her twisted, perverted death wish. We could work out protocols for the three of us to get along, maybe try out some kind of role-play. But as the days went by, my family therapy ideas dissipated, and Tilda’s silence became ominous. I was so frightened about her safety that I’d wake in the middle of the night, finding myself in a cold sweat. I couldn’t even be sure that she was still alive, and I kept thinking of the words she had written—he will kill me. I’m convinced of it now.

  At the bookshop, I was distracted, finding it difficult to concentrate, and I kept wandering back to Controlling Men, checking the latest news, hoping to see that Joe Mayhew would stand trial for murder rather than manslaughter. Then, two days ago, towards the end of a rare working Friday, as I was half dozing at the payment counter and Daphne was deep into her novel writing, my phone rang and I saw Tilda’s name on the screen. I answered nervously, but could barely comprehend her whispered words. In an agonized, jagged voice she was saying, “Come here, Callie. Come here now.”

  “Tilda . . . what is it? What’s happened?”

  “Just come here. I need you.” Then she hung up.

  A sharp chill ran through me. I blurted something out to Daphne, talking too loud, grabbing my bee bag, running out of the shop on weak legs, turning left towards the minicab company.

  At Curzon Street, I buzzed repeatedly until I was let in and I ran up the stairs, finding the door to the flat wide-open, entering in a frantic, fearful state, expecting catastrophe—but all I found was Tilda lying on her sofa, looking slightly drained and sleepy. In the middle of the afternoon, she was wearing a flimsy gray silk nightdress and her hair was messy and unwashed, but other than that, she seemed unchanged from when I last saw her. But then she spoke, and it was obvious that she was afraid:

  “Oh, come here . . . I can’t get up.”

  I knelt beside her, put my cheek against hers. “What’s happened? What did he do to you?”

  “It’s not that, Callie, not this time. . . .”

  She pulled herself upright, so that we could be face-to-face. “Oh God, I’m so worried. I’ve been calling Felix all morning and he hasn’t answered his phone. He’s away in the country, at some conference in a hotel somewhere, so in the end I phoned the hotel, and they were so weird . . . they told me that they ‘weren’t in a position to comment about Mr. Nordberg,’ so I practically screamed at them to tell me now whatever it was they had to tell me, but they said that I should stay at home and wait and that ‘someone will inform me of the situation in due course.’ Doesn’t that sound dreadful? Like something awful has happened?”

  “It doesn’t sound good. . . . How long ago did you speak to them?”

  “Ages ago, about two hours. It’s been bloody horrible, just lying here imagining ghastly things.”

  I was about to suggest that I make a cup of tea, but at that second the buzzer sounded. Tilda and I looked at each other, simultaneously clasping our hands to our chests, and I went to answer.

  “Hello, is that Tilda Farrow?” A woman’s voice, kind of croaky.

  “It’s her sister. . . . Who is this?”

  “Is Ms. Farrow at home?”

  “Yes she is. Who is this?”

  “It’s the Metropolitan Police, may we come in?”

  Sergeant Dawn Nokes had a bad cold and most likely a painful throat, but she did the talking anyway, while a young constable, Lyron Wright, stood in the background with a contrived look of concern on his face. Sergeant Nokes made sure that Tilda was Tilda, and asked us both to sit down, and we were side by side on the sofa, as stony and stiff as two statues, while she sat in the white leather armchair, dragging it across the floor to be closer, leaning forward to an unnatural degree. I was focusing on her red nose, raw under her nostrils.

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” she said softly. “This morning, when he was staying at the Ashleigh House Hotel, your husband . . . Felix . . . went for a run. Afterwards he was found in his hotel room. He had died, I’m afraid, and it looks like he had had some sort of attack or fit.”

  Tilda snapped back angrily, “No. No. That can’t be right. Felix is extremely fit, exceptionally healthy . . . Peak fitness . . . You’ve made a mistake!”

  “I’m so very sorry.” Sergeant Nokes put her hand on Tilda’s arm, but she swiped it away just as Constable Wright stepped towards us and said, “Yes, me too.”

  Something about his casual manner made T
ilda leap up and she threw herself at him, shrieking “No! No! How dare you—get out of here!” She was thumping him with her fists, aiming at his face, so that Constable Wright had to bring his arms up to defend his head. Sergeant Nokes and I pulled her off, and she staggered back to the sofa and put her head in her hands. We couldn’t see her face for her falling hair. Constable Wright looked uneasy.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No worries.” He shrugged. “It’s what people do.”

  I sat by Tilda and tried to make the news sink in, but I couldn’t anchor it to any imagined context, any understandable chain of events. “What do you mean, an attack or fit? It’s not possible. He’s thirty-two, way too young for a heart attack. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “We don’t know the full details yet,” said Sergeant Nokes. Then, through a hacking cough: “There will have to be a postmortem.”

  “That’s right . . . there will,” said Constable Wright.

  Tilda looked up, her anger giving way to despair. “I won’t believe it until I see him,” she said. Then she flopped down again into my lap, and I held her to me, while Sergeant Nokes told us that the American police would inform Felix’s parents. Then she made us all tea.

  The police left at about the same time as the reporters arrived. I’d gone out to buy bread and milk, and on my return found three scruffy male photographers leaning against the wall by the front door, and I overheard snatches of their conversation. Her career’s pretty fucked isn’t it? . . . The desk is only interested because she’ll look like shit. . . . Celebrity meltdown . . . I pressed the buzzer, calling out, “Have some respect! Leave her alone!” which prompted them to grab their cameras and to take pictures of me. I felt like shouting abuse, but Tilda buzzed me in, and I escaped before I could do any harm.

  She wasn’t in the sitting room or the kitchen space, so I looked in the bedroom, and found her lying facedown on the bed, covered with piles of Felix’s clothes—random white, pink and blue shirts, dark suits and cashmere sweaters. I dropped the shopping and crawled under, to be with her, and she turned to me, her skin mottled and red, her eyes bloodshot. “I’m trying to find his smell, and I can’t! Everything smells of fucking washing powder . . . I can’t bear it.”

  Like her, I couldn’t smell anything of Felix, I could smell only Tilda, and as she rolled away from me I buried my face in her back, and we breathed together. I wanted to fall asleep, and I had to resist sinking into unconsciousness.

  “Oh . . . I’m so sorry . . . ,” I said. “I’m so sorry about everything.”

  And in that moment, I was truly, deeply sorry that I had spied on Tilda, had been paranoid about Felix, had become so obsessed with Controlling Men. It seemed like I had made this happen, had caused Felix’s death.

  But then Tilda got out of bed to go to the bathroom and I saw fresh bruises, yellow-purple stains next to each other, bleeding into each other, on her upper left arm—and I was jolted into remembering the reality of Felix. And although I was sad for my distraught sister, I also felt profound relief.

  She said, “Callie . . . will you come to the hospital with me, to see Felix’s body?”

  “Of course I will.”

  She came out of the bathroom and sat on the side of the bed, picking up a white shirt and holding it to her face. Then she pulled off her T-shirt, and put on Felix’s shirt, struggling with the buttons because of her trembling hands. “I want to go tomorrow,” she said. “I phoned Sergeant Nokes while you were out—and she said we need to go to Reading; he’s at the hospital. She’s arranging for us to be there at eleven.”

  “I’ll stay here tonight,” I said, “so you’re not alone.” She was at the dressing table now, and she said, “That’s sweet of you” as she looked at herself in the mirror. “I need to speak to the reporters downstairs. . . . I was going to make my face look respectable, but I don’t think I will. It’s better that they see my distress. It’s the truth after all.”

  I went with her to the front door. As she opened it, the photographers scrambled away from their position by the wall and took pictures. Tilda stood silently, then said, “As you know, my husband, Felix Nordberg, died today. We had been married only a few weeks and I’m not sure I will ever come to terms with this tragedy. I ask you please to respect my privacy.” Then she came back inside and shut the door, and as she did so, she slid down against it, and became a little ball of grief on the wooden floor.

  “Let me help you,” I said, feeling suddenly happier inside than I had been for months. It was so good to be of use to my troubled sister, so reassuring. And as I guided her up the stairs, I scarcely noticed the guilt that I felt.

  31

  I’d thought Felix would be in a refrigerated drawer, in a stack of cavities filled with the recently dead. But he wasn’t. Instead he’d been wheeled into a small white room in the basement and covered with thick sheets. A policewoman introduced herself as Melody Sykes, asked Tilda if she was ready, and pulled the sheet down so that we could see his face. His eyes were closed so that we would never again see their grayness, or that aloof gaze; and his desiccated lips were dark, and parted, as though he was about to say something as he died, words that were now lost for all eternity. I felt nothing other than repulsion as I looked at him—a ghastly, yellowing waxwork. Tilda was practically hysterical. She laid her face on his chest, stroked his hair, kissed his forehead, then turned into me, nestling her face into my shoulder, saying, “I can’t bear it. . . . I can’t bear it.”

  Afterwards, in the parking lot, Melody Sykes said she belonged to Reading police station and explained that there would most likely be no more police involvement. The postmortem would take place, and then we’d be free to have the funeral. She had a strong, rich voice and an accent from somewhere north of Newcastle; and after she drove off in her red Peugeot I said to Tilda, “If she were a tree, it would be an oak tree.” But she wasn’t really listening, and said, “I want to see where he died.” She had cleaned up her face and was looking presentable, and as she spoke it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. So we phoned for a minicab to take us to the Ashleigh House Hotel.

  In the taxi, I had my arm through hers and, looking out the window, she said, “When people see a dead body they say, Oh, it wasn’t him, that it’s obvious the spirit has left. But it wasn’t like that. To me, that was Felix, it’s what he’s become. . . . Forever alone.”

  The car took us along a wooded lane, then turned into the driveway of the hotel, a straight gravel path cutting through long lawns, arriving at a white building with a Georgian-style facade. The reception area was large, with leather comfy chairs arranged on one side, the reception desk on the other, and straight ahead a wide staircase up to the bedrooms. Felix’s last steps would have taken him up that staircase, I thought. Behind the desk, a young woman was working at her computer; she looked up and asked if she could help. Her name badge read Agnes, and her accent suggested she was Eastern European, maybe Polish.

  “My name is Callie Farrow, and this is my sister, Tilda. Her husband was staying here, for the London–New York conference. And he died here. Just yesterday.”

  “Oh, I’m very sorry. Yes, it was terrible. I was here, and I saw him go for his run. He looked so well! I’m really very sorry.”

  Tilda turned away, like the words were hurting her.

  “We were wondering if we might look around,” I said. “Maybe see the room where he died. We think it might help.”

  “Of course. I’ll call the manager.”

  Within a minute, the manager arrived and introduced himself as Otto, and he explained that he had been one of the people to find Felix in his room. Tilda gripped my arm as she asked, “Where was he, exactly? I have an image of him lying on the floor, and nobody knowing he was down there, nobody coming.”

  “Oh no . . . It wasn’t like that. He was on the bed. It was as though he was lying in some comfort. If you’ll forgive me, I’d say that he looked peaceful, like someone in a painting. It was a strange
thought of mine, but I thought it might reassure you to know this.”

  “Yes,” said Tilda. “In a way it does.”

  “I went to the room because I was summoned by Mr. Julio Montero, a colleague of Mr. Nordberg’s, I understand.”

  “Yes . . . yes he is,” said Tilda. “Is he still here, in the hotel?”

  “No I’m afraid not. But, excuse me, what is it that we can do for you?”

  “I’d like to see his room. The room where he died.”

  It was decided that Agnes should show us, and as she led us up the stairs, she kept turning around as if about to say something before changing her mind.

  My first impression was that the room was so light and white and uncluttered that Felix would have been happy here. Tilda and I looked at the bed, as though it could tell us something about his last moments, but it had been remade into a state of pristine neatness, as though his death was a minor event, easily erased with the changing of sheets and the puffing of pillows. I went to the window to see Felix’s view, which was of a garden and a golf course, and silvery woods in the distance. At the same time, Tilda walked round the room, skimming the surfaces with her fingertips, touching where she thought Felix had touched.

  “Everything’s gone,” she said, “but I can feel his presence. I can see him in this room doing ordinary things, having a shower, changing into his running gear.”

  Her eyes were wet again, and Agnes said, “I took some photos yesterday morning. Of him, and of the room. Just in case they might be important . . . I didn’t know whether you, or others in his family, might like to see them. . . .”

  Tilda looked at her harshly, her voice a strained whisper: “What? What are you saying? That you photographed his dead body? Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know. For some reason, I thought it important to make a record. I don’t really understand why.”

  Tilda sat on the bed, her head drooping as though she were too tired to think, but she rallied herself and said, “I’d like to see them. Come here and show me.”