Until it's Over

by Nicci French

  I ran softly down the stairs. It was so simple. Before I entered the kitchen, I stopped. The camera. I’d forgotten it. I ran back up and down so that by the time I appeared I was panting with the effort. None of them noticed, though.

  After the photograph, after Miles had kindly provided the distraction of telling everyone they would be ejected from the house, after the foil containers were cleared away, the washing-up done, I went upstairs, lay down on my bed without taking off my shoes, Peggy on the floor beside me, and waited for the house to grow quiet. I heard footsteps on stairs, floorboards creaking, water running, doors slamming, toilets flushing, but by twelve thirty it had all stopped. I forced myself to be patient. I looked at my watch again. One o’clock.

  An idea came to me. I felt through her pockets and found a purse. I removed the ornate little watch from her wrist and unclipped her necklace. That might make the death look like a robbery.

  I glanced at my watch. One fifteen. Time was moving in starts, not smoothly. As quietly as I could, I left my room and walked downstairs. I put my ears to the various doors and heard nothing. The last was Pippa’s on the ground floor. That, too, was silent. I was free to act, but as I started up the stairs, I heard voices. They were from outside the front door. I assumed they were passers-by but then I heard the scrape of a key in the lock.

  I ran up the stairs to the half-way landing, out of sight. The door opened and I heard footsteps. Pippa’s voice and someone else’s, a man’s. What was wrong with her? ‘Straight in here,’ she said, leading him into her room. ‘You want a drink? I’ll bring something up.’

  I waited until she returned. I heard the clink of glasses and her door closing. I sat on the upper stairs in half-darkness. I could see the old patterned wallpaper, peeling away and showing the plaster underneath but I couldn’t make out its colour. After a few minutes I heard murmuring sounds from Pippa’s room. If I acted quickly, I should be safe. I padded back upstairs. As I stood in my room, the risks of what I was attempting became clear to me for the first time. There were six – no, seven – other people in the house. They often stayed up late, left their rooms for a drink, a bath or a piss. It would take just one. I only needed a clear couple of minutes, but would God give them to me? I hoisted Peggy over my shoulder, walked out of the room and down the stairs, feeling every creak run through my body.

  I hadn’t even thought of what I would find out on the street. I eased the front door open and edged outside, hidden in the shadows of the porch. There was nobody. Twenty paces and I would be free. I stepped on to the pavement as if I was walking on to a stage, a stage surrounded by dark windows. Someone could be standing behind any of them, looking out. I counted the paces. It took twenty-seven and I reached her door. I walked down the steps to where the bins were and let her slip gently on to the cement. I pulled her behind the bins and covered her with bags of garbage. She might not be found for days.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  When I was still at school and went by the name of David, not Davy, teachers treated me as if I was stupid. My English teacher, who was tall, flat-chested and in love with dead writers, said I lacked imagination and my creative writing was plodding. My French teacher didn’t even know who I was. I was one of the people at the back of the class, not noticed. My science teacher called me ‘conscientious’, my Design and Technology teacher called me ‘competent’, and my maths teacher said I was ‘an average student’. Well, I wasn’t average now, not average at all. I was one in a million.

  It took me a time to get the hang of it. That night I hardly slept, and when I did I had strange, crowded dreams. My entire body felt unnaturally alert and vibrant: every creak or rustle made me start. I listened to footsteps on the road outside and waited, skin prickling, to hear if they would stop at our door. I couldn’t tell if the feeling throbbing heavily inside me and pulsing behind my eyes was excitement or fear. I was awake at dawn, and ready for the day ahead, way before anyone else in the house, but I didn’t go downstairs for a long time. I stood in front of the mirror in a clean blue shirt and jeans, and patted aftershave on my cheeks, practising my modest, boyish smile. I sat on the bed with my hands on my knees and my back quite straight, and breathed in and out, in and out. I heard Astrid in the room beneath get up and use the bathroom, then go downstairs. Very faintly, I heard sounds of voices from the kitchen: hers, Pippa’s, someone else’s, presumably the man Pippa was with last night. I got up and positioned myself beside the window so that I saw Astrid leave. Although she was limping slightly and I could see even from the top floor that her face was bruised, she still had that light-footed gait and held her head high. She walked down the street. She reached Peggy’s house. She didn’t hesitate but went on by.

  I stayed where I was. The postman was coming up the road, very slowly, stopping at each door. I held my breath and watched as he fumbled in his mailbag, pulled out a couple of envelopes, then pushed open the gate to number fifty-four. Past the rubbish bins, scratching his head in the warmth, pushing the letters through the letterbox, out onto the road again. I saw him yawn and felt a smile spread across my face. I had to stop myself snorting out loud: he’d been just a few inches from her body and seen nothing, smelled nothing, noticed nothing. Next door, Mick coughed, groaned. The walls were too thin in that house.

  I don’t usually like breakfast, but that morning I was hungry. Pippa and a tall man with a bony face were in the kitchen when I came downstairs. He was dressed in a smart suit and was fiddling neurotically with his tie, repeatedly pulling the knot tight, then loosening it. Married, I thought. Married and feeling furtive; he was more nervous than I was. Pippa looked as though she’d slept like a baby for hours. She was wearing a grey suit whose skirt finished just above her knees, a white shirt with one button too many undone so I could see the frilly top of her bra, and her hair was coiled on top of her head, with artful stray locks framing her face. She gave me a bright smile from her painted lips and introduced me to the man, who turned out to be Jeff and on his way out.

  ‘It was a bit rowdy during the night, wasn’t it?’ I said, to test them, but Pippa didn’t react and Jeff blushed scarlet; he must have thought I was referring to them. I found half a packet of bacon in the fridge, and a couple of eggs left in the carton, past their sell-by date, so I made myself a fry-up, with baked beans as well, and fried bread, plus a big cup of milky coffee. It was the best breakfast I’d ever had and by the time I was half-way through, Mick was downstairs and Owen too, looking dishevelled and unshaven, but in a deliberate, self-conscious sort of way. Nobody said much but, then, they never do in the morning. I could tell that not one of them was suspicious and I wanted to say something to shake them out of their smug complacency.

  When I left for work, I walked past number fifty-four as slowly as I could, glancing across at the bins. It was frustrating to think that I wouldn’t be around when she was discovered, and when I got to the end of the road I turned and went back to the house again, as if I’d left something behind, so that I could once more pass the hidden body. All day long, the secret of her tingled in me and I left work early, excited as any lover. Until Peggy was discovered, it was like writing a letter that might change your life but not posting it.

  At half past five, I got off the bus at the end of our road and it was then I saw the dustmen and stopped dead in my tracks, my heart swelling in my chest, my mouth dry, the road seeming to shrink, then expand in front of my eyes. There were two of them on the pavement, hauling bins and fitting them to the back of the vehicle, which the third was driving. They had only got to number twenty-eight. In the heat of the day, you could smell the rubbish. I would never do that job. You’d have to be desperate to deal with rotten meat and babies’ nappies. They seemed cheerful enough. One was whistling.

  I stayed where I was and lit a cigarette. I don’t usually smoke when I’m alone, just offer fags to other people, but this seemed like a special occasion and I needed to do something with my hands. When the refuse collectors got to number f
ifty-two, I started to walk slowly along the road again, until I was near enough to make out what was happening. Then I halted, and pretended to tie up my shoelace. Number fifty-four. This was it. Two bins, one green for the recycled stuff and one blue for ordinary rubbish, were pulled out on to the pavement and hoisted up on to the dustcart. A few bits of paper spilled on to the tarmac, and an empty shampoo bottle. Nobody shouted or cried out. A group of youths swaggered past.

  One of the men turned back to collect the bags of garbage that I’d pulled into place last night. He put both hands round the neck of a bag and hoisted it up on his shoulder. It was almost comical. He stopped, stared for a long time, then called his workmate over, gesturing. I could see one of Peggy’s legs now, and then the figure of the driver swinging from his seat. There was shouting and commotion.

  It’s magic how quickly news spreads. In a matter of a minute or so, thirty or forty people were standing in a semicircle around the body, everyone yelling and staring and punching numbers into their phones. They seemed to come from nowhere, and although they crowded up against each other, nobody got too close. It was as if there was an invisible line they couldn’t cross, dividing the living from the dead. Except I’d crossed that line. I joined the crowd and stood at the back, peering over the shoulders of the others to see what they were seeing. Really, she didn’t look much different from when I’d left her last night. A little less like a woman and more like a thing.

  When I heard sirens, I sauntered off and sat in the little café that Astrid sometimes went to with Pippa, and I drank a mug of tea. Tea is a peaceful drink.

  It was like being a conductor of an orchestra. I told Dario, when I got home, that something was going on in the street and he told Mick, and then the pair of them went to have a look and came back infected with the excitement of the crowd.

  ‘I think someone’s been mugged or something,’ said Dario, and I made clucking noises.

  ‘Or worse,’ said Mick. ‘That’s what they’re saying in the street. Murdered.’ I covered my mouth with my hand, the way people do in films when they hear bad news.

  ‘In our street?’ I said.

  Was I overdoing it? It didn’t seem so. I thought I’d burst if I didn’t tell someone myself. Who? Astrid, of course: I had to be the one who broke the news to her, so I called her mobile. She was at the Horse and Jockey, but I told her maybe she should come back. I didn’t say why. I wanted to see her face when she heard. But Astrid came in and then, shortly after, she went out again, as if she wasn’t very excited by what was going on, and I was left with a sour feeling, as if it hadn’t worked properly. When Miles came back I persuaded him and Pippa to come with me to have a look at the house, which was now cordoned off. There were still police cars there, though the ambulance had gone, and I walked up to a young officer and asked what was going on.

  ‘An incident,’ he said.

  ‘Has someone been murdered? That’s what everyone’s saying.’

  He just looked at me.

  ‘Who is it? Who lives here? We live up the road, so we’re neighbours of whoever it is.’

  ‘There’s been an incident,’ he said, and that was all. An incident.

  ‘Come on, Davy, we’ll know soon enough,’ said Pippa, tucking her hand through my arm and tugging me away. ‘You’re living in London now, not a small town. This is the kind of thing that happens. You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘But it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Right under our noses.’

  The three police officers who came to the house made me feel safe, especially the one who was in charge, PC Prebble. Jim, he said his name was, smiling at all of us as if he wanted to be our friend. He was plump with a round face and a big, squashed nose. I could tell at once he liked me. I was personable and trying to be helpful, while the others – well, it was obvious he found them an odd lot, and not surprising, really. Dario was shrill and twitchy. Mick was silent to the point of being rude. Miles seemed bored. Pippa overdid her flirtatious act so that at one point I saw Prebble exchange a glance with one of his colleagues. Leah, Miles’s girlfriend, arrived just after them and acted as if they were invisible, which was quite hard when the downstairs room was so crowded. I offered them tea and then they sat at the table with their notebooks and asked us if we had heard anything unusual last night.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Dario. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘It’s always pretty noisy round here,’ added Pippa.

  ‘I heard people shouting in the night,’ I said.

  ‘When would this be?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just know I woke and there were noises, but it didn’t seem that remarkable. As Pippa says, it’s not a quiet street. All I can say is that it was dark.’

  ‘Dark,’ said Prebble, gloomily, and doodled in his book. ‘And it was just the seven of of you?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Leah. ‘I don’t live here.’

  ‘Yet,’ said Dario, under his breath, then gave a nervous giggle.

  ‘Astrid was here too,’ I said. ‘She’s out at the moment. And also…’ I stopped and looked at Pippa.

  ‘That’s all,’ she said defiantly. ‘We were having a house meeting until quite late.’ She smiled at me, daring me to contradict her, and I smiled reassuringly back. Her secret was safe with nice, reliable Davy.

  ‘And nobody noticed anything unusual?’

  ‘No,’ said Mick. I think that was the only word he uttered the entire time the police were with us.

  ‘Who’s dead?’ asked Owen.

  ‘A Mrs Margaret Farrell. Did any of you know her?’

  We all exchanged enquiring looks then shook our heads. No, we didn’t know a Mrs Margaret Farrell.

  ‘It’s depressing, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That someone can live just a few doors down and we don’t even know her name? Until she dies, that is.’ I shook my head sorrowfully.

  ‘Is it true what they’re saying?’ said Pippa. ‘That she was killed and put behind her rubbish bins?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘How horrible.’

  ‘But you’ll catch them,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll do our best.’ He closed his notebook and stood up. ‘The other officers will take your names and phone numbers. If anything occurs to you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.’ He pulled out a card and put it on the table.

  ‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘I hope you find them very soon.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The best bit of the evening came later. Astrid was back and Owen had disappeared somewhere. We were all sitting downstairs, aimless but unwilling to go to bed yet. I sat on the sofa next to Astrid and every so often shifted position so that my arm brushed against her bare, golden one. I pretended to study my Portuguese, Astrid flicked through a magazine, Miles turned on the telly and we watched the end of some programme about decorating your house, and then the beginning of another of those cookery programmes where this smiling woman was making a fancy dish and letting her long hair fall over the ingredients. Miles changed channels and some film was just starting, which none of us wanted to watch but no one could be bothered to turn off. Dario ran into the room, excited, like a child.

  ‘Turn the TV on!’

  ‘It is on,’ said Miles.

  ‘… the body of fifty-seven-year-old Margaret Farrell was found yesterday evening. Police have begun a murder inquiry…’

  I needed to time this right. I waited, and Pippa said: ‘Margaret Farrell – she’s Peggy!’

  ‘Peggy!’ echoed Astrid.

  So then I spoke, lowering my voice in awe. ‘We saw her last night. Me and Dario and Astrid. We saw her.’

  I have to say I did it perfectly. People who play tennis talk about the sweet spot on the racquet, the thrill of the perfect shot. It felt so natural, as if I could do no wrong. I moved a bit and felt Astrid’s warm, living flesh pressed against mine and her sweet-smelling hair brush my cheek. I closed my eyes and savoured the moment.

  Chapter Thirty-three<
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  ‘Fancy a drink?’ said Ross.

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll catch you later, then,’ he said.

  Ross had arrived on the job a few days before. He was good-looking, with just the right confident carelessness about his hair and clothes. I couldn’t work out what he was doing with work like this. Probably just earning some cash before taking off. The day he arrived I tried to make conversation with him. He looked at me curiously and I babbled some nonsense. I felt myself go red and hated myself for it – hated him as well. For the days after that we worked in separate parts of the house and ignored each other. I was on the wiring, the plumbing, the plastering. He was painting and doing the finishing touches. He had lost interest in me.

  The most important rule, said Petra Davies, author of Success in Friendship: A User’s Manual, is to care about other people. Petra Davies was wrong. She was as wrong as it is possible to be. The secret, as I was discovering, is not to care. I’d found this in the days at work after the murder. Everything seemed unimportant now, a charade, with nobody in on the joke except me. My head was buzzing with thoughts about Peggy dead and Peggy alive, about the police, about the guys in the house, and I worked without thought or interest. But I noticed from little murmurs and nods of approval that I was working faster and more effectively than before. I plastered one of the walls in what was going to be the master bedroom. I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I hardly knew where I was or what I was doing. But when I finished, I stepped back and was startled by what I had done. It was a beautiful piece of work, smooth and level across the whole wall.