by Nicci French
‘I’m not evicting you,’ said Miles. I could tell from the way he said it that he had said this many times already.
‘We have rights,’ said Dario. ‘Don’t we, Pip?’
‘Miles has already been generous,’ said Leah.
‘Generous how?’ asked Owen. ‘Generous in telling us to go? Generous in giving us a paltry few weeks to find somewhere else to live?’
‘I’m a sitting tenant,’ said Dario. ‘Correct, Pip?’
‘Well…’ began Pippa.
‘Can I say something?’ Miles interjected.
I almost felt sorry for him.
‘Not if you’re going to give way even more,’ said Leah. ‘This has gone far enough.’
Davy got up from his chair and came and squatted down at my feet. ‘Are you all right, Astrid?’ he mumbled. ‘You seem a bit out of it.’
I smiled gratefully at him and opened my mouth to speak, but closed it again. I couldn’t bear to talk about it. Not yet. I didn’t want this rabble turning their attention on me and showering me with their questions.
‘… in the light of rising house prices and tenants’ rights…’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ I mouthed.
‘… we need to reach an agreement on how much money is fair and reasonable,’ Pippa was saying. She sounded suddenly like a different person. Someone bureaucratic and pedantic.
‘You want him to pay you off,’ said Leah. ‘I might have known it would come down to money in the end.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Pippa. ‘How vulgar to mention it.’
‘I want to be fair,’ said Miles. He half turned and flung me a look of such desperate appeal that on another day I might have come to his rescue. Instead, I sat limply in the armchair and thought of Ingrid de Soto ’s mutilated face and felt nausea rise in me.
‘We have to work out a ratio,’ said Pippa, ‘depending on how long we’ve each been here.’
‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ said Leah. ‘You’ve been here the longest.’
‘What about all the work I’ve done on the house?’ put in Dario.
Beside me, Davy made a huffing sound and said something about damp courses.
‘What about the fact that you’ve paid no rent since you moved in?’ snapped Leah. ‘And it all needs redoing anyway.’
‘Are you sure you want to be alone with this lady, Miles?’ asked Dario.
‘I’ve not been here very long,’ said Davy.
‘You and me both, mate,’ said Owen.
‘No one’s going to lose out,’ said Miles. ‘How about fifteen thousand?’
‘Are you mad?’ exclaimed Leah. ‘Listen, Miles, you don’t have to give them anything at all. They haven’t got a leg to stand on and they know it. Don’t be intimidated.’
‘They’re my friends,’ said Miles. ‘Don’t interfere. Or don’t you want me to have friends? Is that it?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Fifteen thousand each?’ said Pippa.
‘Pippa, you know I can’t afford anything like -’
‘Because a fifteen-thousand-pound lump sum, to be shared out between us, is insulting. We’ve lived here for years. We’ve helped you pay your mortgage. Now we have to find somewhere else to live. We have to put down deposits and buy furniture and begin again. Meanwhile, the value of your house has gone up tenfold.’
‘Twenty, then. In instalments.’
‘We all chipped in for the boiler,’ said Dario. ‘That cost loads.’
‘Yeah,’ said Pippa. ‘Even though some of us, not to mention names, Mick and Dario, get more benefit from it than others.’
‘If you don’t like my painting,’ said Dario, sulkily, ‘what about Astrid’s garden? She’s spent days, weeks, on that.’
‘Nobody asked her to do it,’ said Leah. ‘We’re having it dug up.’
At last I spoke. ‘What a cunt you are,’ I said.
Leah turned and stared at me. Her beautiful eyes were hard. ‘The cunt who got your man, though.’
‘Whoa,’ said Davy. He looked startled.
‘Have you never heard the word before?’ Leah asked brightly. ‘Up north, did they never…?’
‘Cunt,’ said Mick loudly. Everyone stared at him. Who was he talking to? Then Pippa gave a tiny giggle, and smacked a hand over her mouth.
‘Stop now,’ pleaded Miles. ‘This isn’t how to do anything.’
‘Why? I’m just starting to enjoy myself,’ said Leah.
‘I don’t care about the money,’ I said. ‘You can have mine, if you want. This is just really, really horrible.’
Silence fell on the room. For a moment, the expression on each face was frozen. Then the anger and self-righteousness turned into shame. Miles put his head in his hands for a moment, then lifted it again, meeting my eyes. ‘I wish this wasn’t happening,’ he said. ‘I wish I could turn back the clock.’
‘You can,’ said Dario, eagerly. ‘You can, mate. Just say the word.’
‘Let’s go to the pub,’ said Davy. ‘Get out of here. Talk about it later. Not rush into anything. Yes? What do you say?’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Leah, but nobody took any notice of her.
‘Good idea,’ said Dario. ‘The most sensible thing I’ve heard for hours. The first round’s on me, except I don’t have any money on me, now I come to think of it. Don’t know where it’s gone. Come on, Miles, don’t look so wretched. Nobody’s died.’
‘I don’t want to dig up your garden, Astrid,’ Miles said to me.
‘I can always make another.’
‘I tell you what, Pippa.’ Miles turned to her. ‘I should get the house valued, then come up with a proposal. Maybe I’ll get outside advice, just so we can try to keep everything as neutral as possible. I want to be fair. I hope you know I’m not out to rip you lot off.’
‘But are they out to rip you off?’ muttered Leah. ‘That’s what you’re not considering.’
Miles ignored her. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t always have the whole household in on the discussions. It gets so heated. If you and I discuss things first, Pippa, then put it to the group… What d’you say?’
‘OK,’ said Pippa. ‘Why are you wearing those clothes, anyway, Astrid? Where did you get them from? A skip?’
‘I got them from the police,’ I said reluctantly.
It was a very strange sensation. It was as if I was suddenly a magnet drawing each element in the room towards me. Everyone turned to me, waiting for me to continue.
‘There was an accident,’ I said, then paused to consider the word. ‘Not an accident,’ I corrected myself. ‘There was a death. Someone died. I saw her. She was… she was dead in front of me.’
‘Again?’ breathed Davy.
‘What do you mean, not an accident?’
‘She was murdered,’ I said. ‘I saw her through the letterbox and I smashed the window and climbed in and she was lying on the floor. I touched her.’ I gave a little shudder. ‘I touched her and then I turned her over and her face was all…’
‘It’s all right,’ said Davy. ‘It’s all right. You don’t need to say.’
‘Cut up,’ I finished. ‘I’ve never seen a dead body close up before.’
‘But -’ began Miles.
‘Oh, fuck,’ breathed Dario.
‘You poor, poor thing,’ said Pippa.
‘I don’t want to talk about it any more,’ I said. ‘I just want to go to sleep.’
‘It’s still daytime,’ said Dario. ‘And we’re going to the pub.’
Davy cast him a ferocious look.
‘Who was she?’ asked Owen. The expression on his face was one of curiosity. ‘Did you know her?’
‘What?’ I shook my head. ‘No, I didn’t know her. I’d seen her before. She was just a client.’
‘Wow,’ said Dario. ‘Blimey. First Peggy and now this woman. What is it with you?’
‘Shut up, Dario,’ Pippa said. ‘Have a bit of tact.’
‘It doesn’
t matter. He’s only repeating what the police have been saying half the day.’
‘It must have been terrifying,’ said Davy.
‘Yes.’
A brief silence fell. I could see that everyone was struggling to find the right questions without seeming too ghoulish.
‘You lot go to the pub,’ I said. ‘I’m not really in the mood.’
‘I’ll stay with you,’ said Pippa.
‘No. You go. I’d quite like to be alone for a bit.’
Chapter Eleven
I was summoned again to be interviewed. It sounded urgent and I had to cycle up to Kentish Town in the middle of a working day, infuriating Campbell. But after I had locked my bike and been signed in, there wasn’t much of an interview. Kamsky asked me a few questions but I had nothing new to say and mainly he walked up and down in silence. When he said something it was as much to himself as to me.
‘These are the essential questions,’ he said. ‘One: why did the house show no sign of forced entry, unless Mrs de Soto knew her killer? Two: where was the package you were supposed to collect? Three: why were you present at both murders?’
‘I wasn’t present.’
‘Four,’ he continued, showing no sign of having heard me. ‘Who else knew that you were going to Mrs de Soto ’s house?’
‘Nobody. Campbell. I don’t know. I’ve told you everything.’
‘I don’t think so. I think you know something but you don’t know you know it.’
‘That sounds too clever for me.’
‘What were you doing the day before yesterday?’ I asked Owen, as we walked towards the Downs. The men of the house were going to play football with a team who called themselves the Hackney Empire against another team from Enfield. Pippa, Mel and I were going to watch. I had planned to spend the entire day in bed, trying to shut out the horror of the day before yesterday, but the familiarity of the outing was comforting. It was like going back to a time before the horrible things started happening. Except that walking there with Owen was unsettling. I wasn’t like Pippa: I couldn’t just go back to being a friend as if nothing had happened, as if sex was like a day we’d spent at the seaside. I was trying to act casually, speak to him in a friendly and neutral fashion, but my throat felt dry and my stomach lurched when I looked at him. Everything about him, which had been so familiar for months, now seemed mysterious to me. He’d become a beautiful stranger, grim and infinitely desirable. But I still wasn’t going to take my clothes off and sit in front of him while he took unsettling photographs that turned me into an inanimate, tortured object.
‘The day before yesterday?’
‘Were you busy?’
‘Why?’
‘The police will probably ask. You’ll need an answer.’
‘I was at a magazine in the morning with the picture editor and -’
‘Which magazine?’
‘Bella.’
‘Fake alibi?’ said Davy, cheerfully, appearing at my side with Mel in tow.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ But I could feel myself blush.
‘I was with Mel, so I’ve got a witness,’ continued Davy.
Mel giggled shyly and put her arm through his.
‘Here,’ said Davy, ‘can you lend me a fiver, Astrid? I’ve left my wallet at home and I want to pick up a paper or two.’
I fished my purse out of my bag and opened it. ‘I’ve only got some change. I thought I had loads of money. I only took some out a couple of days ago.’
‘Never mind.’
‘I’ve got money,’ said Mel. She was ridiculously eager to please, like a little panting dog. A sleek, pretty dog with large, woebegone eyes.
‘Thanks.’ He pocketed the note and bounded into the newsagent on the corner.
We loitered outside, while Pippa, Mick, Miles and Dario ambled towards us. Dario fished a packet of cigarettes out of his back pocket and stuck one in the corner of his mouth.
‘Doesn’t it make your chest hurt during football?’ asked Mel.
‘Sure,’ said Dario. ‘If I run.’
‘Dario doesn’t run much,’ explained Pippa. ‘He kind of loiters and puts his foot out to trip people up.’
Dario ignored them. He looked at me. ‘I was thinking, I don’t know which is worse. If it’s a coincidence or if it’s not a coincidence.’
‘If it isn’t a coincidence,’ said Miles. ‘That’s clearly worse.’
‘It can’t not be a coincidence,’ I said.
‘Unless you killed them both,’ said Dario, drawing deeply on his cigarette and cackling at the same time. ‘No, no, don’t worry, Astrid, I was just winding you up.’
‘I’m glad someone can laugh at it,’ I said.
‘It can be to do with a sort of energy,’ said Dario.
‘What?’ I said.
‘It’s like a forcefield,’ said Dario, ‘where terrible things happen, or have happened, or are going to happen. They’re like a kind of spiritual magnetism and certain very sensitive people – such as you – are attracted to them.’
‘I collided with her car,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ said Dario.
‘And I wasn’t exactly attracted to the other woman. My boss radioed me and asked me to collect a package.’
Dario took another deep drag and looked mysterious.
‘The attraction doesn’t have to be direct,’ he said. ‘There are collections of forces and they act on particular people. There’s something special about you, Astrid. An aura. We might not be able to see it, but we can feel it.’ I heard Owen give a small sound, almost like a snort, and turned to glare at him, but he looked away. Dario took a last drag on the cigarette and dropped it on the pavement, grinding his heel into it as Davy came out of the shop carrying a bulging plastic bag.
‘Have you thought you might be in danger?’ Mick said suddenly.
We stared at him and he stared back, his pale blue eyes unblinking.
‘I thought it briefly,’ I said finally, ‘after I hit the door of Peggy’s car and I was flying through the air.’
‘What danger could she possibly be in?’ said Davy.
Mick just shrugged.
‘You’re a bloody idiot,’ Davy said, with unaccustomed ferocity. ‘It’s bad enough for Astrid as it is.’
‘Thanks, Davy,’ I said. ‘But I’m OK.’
On the Downs we sat on the warm grass while we waited for the match to start. Davy pulled a bundle of papers out of the plastic bag and tossed them towards me. ‘Something to read while we’re playing,’ he said.
‘Why so many?’ I asked, or started to ask, but then I saw the headlines.
‘I thought you should be informed,’ said Davy, awkwardly. ‘Was I wrong?’
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘No, I guess not.’
We picked up papers and rifled through them, skimming the front news stories, the features and the comment pieces, avidly swapping bits of information. Of course, I should have expected a lot of coverage of Ingrid de Soto ’s murder, but even so I was taken aback by quite how much there was. Much more than Peggy’s, but then, as Miles remarked acidly, Peggy had been a middle-aged, unphotogenic housewife in Hackney, whereas Ingrid de Soto was blonde, glamorous, rich and the right side of forty. ‘Money, sex and death,’ he said. ‘All that’s missing is religion.’
It was true that money and sex featured in many of the stories, and even God slipped in once or twice, via an interview with a local vicar, who’d clearly never met Ingrid de Soto but was eloquent about the nature of good and evil and the decline of traditional values in our celebrity-obsessed and faith-deprived contemporary culture.
The football started. There was a lot of yelling and grown men rolling over pretending to be hurt. People kept shouting, ‘Ref,’ and holding up a finger. Mick scored two goals, one with his head. Dario lurked by the touchline. Mel went away and came back with three ice-cream cones for Pippa, me and herself. Owen got hit by a high tackle and I saw a bruise shaped like an egg form on his shin.
&nbs
p; While it went on, I learned a great deal about the dead woman that I hadn’t known. I found out that she was thirty-two (I’d always fancied her to be older, because of her chilly, well-bred politeness, and her tall, co-ordinated house, which had the kind of affluent respectability that seemed horribly grown-up to someone like me). That she had moved from Hong Kong to London, and to Highgate, seven years ago. That her husband, Andrew de Soto, was the manager of a hedge fund, whatever that was. He was reported to be devastated by his wife’s death. But Ingrid de Soto was rich through her father as well as her husband: William Hamilton was in oil, a millionaire many times over. She was his only child and he was flying to London to see her body. She had no children (I’d known that – no house could ever look so flawless with a child). Highgate neighbours were ‘shocked and appalled’. Friends were shocked and appalled too. They described her as ‘lovely’ and ‘smart’. She had no enemies, apparently: everyone liked her.
‘They didn’t talk to any of us despatch riders, did they?’ I said.
‘Did you dislike her, then?’ asked Mel, her eyes round with horror.
‘We dislike everybody,’ I said. ‘The whole world is basically against us. “Horror on the Hill”,’ I read from a headline.
‘Hey, what’s this?’ Pippa shook her paper in front of me. ‘ “Ingrid de Soto ’s body was found at her exclusive Highgate home by bike messenger, Alice Bell…” ’
‘ Alice?’
‘ “… Alice Bell, who is said to be very traumatized by her experience.” ’
I grabbed the paper from Pippa’s hands. ‘Where?’
‘It must be a later edition.’
‘Who said I was very upset?’
‘Well, you were, weren’t you?’
‘Of course I was. Am. That’s not the point. How do they know about me?’
‘ Alice,’ said Pippa.
‘Why would they tell them my name – not my name, as it happens?’
‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’ asked Mel.
‘I don’t know. It feels odd, that’s all. Everything feels odd at the moment. It feels like everything’s gathering a momentum of its own.’
‘I’ve got something to say,’ announced Davy, as we sat round with bottles of water and cans of beer after the match had finished, no one really wanting to return to the house.
