Land of the Living

by Nicci French

  Fifteen

  As far as I could tell in the darkness, Ben Brody lived in a nice house, just near a park. The street was wide and lined with tall trees that waved their empty branches in the lamplight.

  "Why don't you just wait in the car while I grab a few things? You look all in."

  He opened the car door and I climbed into the passenger seat. It was freezing, and the windows were frosted over. It was a very empty, tidy car, just a box of tissues and a road atlas on the floor. I huddled up in my thick jacket, blew curls of breath into the icy air and waited. A light went on in the upstairs room of Ben's house, then a few minutes later it went off again. I looked at the clock on the dashboard; it was nearly two. I asked myself what I was doing there, in the deep of the night, in a part of London I'd never set foot in before, in the car of a man I didn't know. I couldn't come up with an answer that made any sense at all, except that I'd reached breaking point.

  "We can go now."

  Ben had opened the door. He was dressed in jeans, a thick speckled jumper and an old leather jacket.

  "What've you got there?"

  "A torch, a blanket, some oranges and chocolate for the journey. The blanket's for you. Lie on the back seat and I'll cover you up."

  I didn't protest. I clambered over and lay down and he draped me in a thick blanket. He started the engine and turned up the heating. I lay there with my eyes open as we slid away. I saw street lights flick by; tall buildings. Then I saw stars, trees, a distant aeroplane in the sky. I closed my eyes.

  I slept and woke through the long drive. At one point I surfaced to hear Ben droning some songs to himself that I didn't recognize.

  Another time I struggled into a sitting position and looked out of the window. It was still dark and I could see no lights in any direction. No other cars passed us. Ben didn't say anything, but he passed me a couple of squares of chocolate that I nibbled slowly. Then I lay down again. I didn't want to talk.

  At half past five we stopped at a garage for petrol. It was still dark, but I could see a smudgy greyness on the horizon. It seemed colder than ever, and I could make out snow on the hilltops. Ben came back carrying two polystyrene cups of coffee. I climbed over into the front seat, dragging the blanket with me, and he handed one to me. I wrapped my hands around its warmth.

  "White, no sugar," he said.

  "How did you guess?"

  "We had coffee before."

  "Oh. How far is it?"

  "Not long now. The cottage is a mile or so from a village called Castleton, on the coast. Take a look on the map if you want it's on the floor by your feet. I may need you to guide me a bit."

  "Do you think she'll be there?"

  He shrugged. "You always have dark thoughts in the early hours of the morning."

  "It's starting to get light now. You must be tired."

  "Not so bad. It'll hit me later, I expect."

  "In the middle of your meeting."

  "Probably."

  "I can drive if you want."

  "I'm not insured. You'll have to talk to keep me awake."

  "I'll do my best."

  "We passed Stonehenge. I nearly woke you. But we'll go back the same way."

  "I've never seen it."

  "Really?"

  "It's amazing the things I haven't seen. I've never been to Stonehenge, or to Stratford, or to Hampton Court or to the Tower of London or to Brighton pier. I've never been to Scotland. Or the Lake District, even. I was going to go to Venice. I'd bought the tickets and everything. When I was in a cellar with a gag over my mouth, I should have been setting off for Venice."

  "You'll go one day."

  "I suppose so."

  "What was the worst thing?" he asked, after a pause.

  I looked at him and he looked ahead, at the road and the rolling hills. I took a sip of coffee. I thought about saying that I couldn't talk about it, then I thought that Ben was the first person I had met since I ran barefoot from captivity who wasn't looking at me with an expression of wariness or alarm. He wasn't treating me as if I was pitiable or deranged. So I tried to answer. "I don't know. I can't say. Hearing him wheeze and knowing he was there beside me. Thinking I couldn't breathe and was going to suffocate, going to drown inside myself. It was .. ." I tried to come up with the right word '.. . obscene. Maybe just the waiting in the darkness and knowing I was going to die. I tried to hang on to things so I wouldn't go mad not things from my own life, because I thought that would be a further way of tormenting myself, of going insane with loneliness and terror. Just images, really, like I told you before. Beautiful pictures of the world outside. I still think of them now, sometimes, when I wake in the night. But I knew I was getting stripped away, bit by bit. I was losing myself. That was the point -or, at least, that's what I think the point was. I was going to shed all the bits that made me into me and in the end I'd just be this ghastly object gibbering on a ledge, half naked, dirty and ashamed." I stopped abruptly.

  "Why don't you peel us both an orange? They're in the bag between us."

  I peeled two oranges and their aroma filled the car. My fingers were sticky with the juice. I handed him his, segment by segment. "Look," he said. "There's the sea now."

  It was silver and empty and still. You could hardly tell where the water ended and the dawn sky began except to the east, where the sun cast a pale light.

  "Tell me where I should be turning off," he said. "It must be about now."

  We turned right, away from the sun, along a small road that descended towards the coast. Then left again, along an even smaller road.

  "It's just about here, I think," Ben said, peering ahead.

  There was a closed gate and a small track. I got out of the car and opened the gate, waited till Ben had driven through, then closed it again.

  "Do Jo's parents come here much?"

  "Hardly at all. He's too ill, and it's not very luxurious. So they're always glad to have people use it. It's pretty basic, no heating or anything, and beginning to get rather run down. But from the bedroom you can see the sea. There it is."

  The cottage was tiny and grey-stoned. It had thick walls and small windows. Tiles had blown off the roof and lay smashed around the front door. It looked shabby and neglected.

  "There's no car here," said Ben. "No one's here."

  "We should go and look, anyway."

  "I guess so." He sounded dispirited. I opened the door and got out, and he followed. Our feet crunched over the icy grass. I went up to a window and pressed my face against it, but could see little. I rattled the door, but of course it was locked.

  "We have to get inside."

  "Is there any point? You can see no one's been here."

  "You've just driven for four hours to get here. What shall we do? Break a window?"

  "I could try getting up to the upstairs window," he said dubiously.

  "How? And, anyway, that looks all locked up as well. Why don't we just break the window that's cracked? We can get it repaired later."

  Before he had time to object, I took off my scarf, wrapped it round my fist, and punched hard and fast against the cracked pane, bringing it back quickly as soon as I felt the impact so that I didn't cut my wrist. I felt rather proud of myself- it was just the way they do it in movies. I picked out the remaining shards of glass and laid them in a pile on the grass. Then I opened the window from inside.

  "If I stand on your back, I can climb through," I said to Ben.

  TOO

  But instead, he put his large hands round my waist and raised me up to the window. The memory of being in the cellar, gripped and lifted down from the ledge, was so powerful that for a moment I thought I would gag or start screaming hysterically. But then I was through the window in an undignified scramble and inside the kitchen. I turned on the lights, noticed that the fireplace was full of wet ashes, and let Ben in through the front door.

  In silence, we checked the whole house. It didn't take long -there was just a bedroom and a box room upstairs, a kitche
n-living room and a lavatory and shower downstairs. The bed was not made up. The heater for the water was not turned on. The place was chilly and deserted.

  "It was a fool's errand," said Ben dully.

  "We had to do it."

  "Maybe." He prodded the ashes with the toe of his boot. "I hope she's all right."

  "I'll buy you breakfast," I said. "There must be somewhere, by the sea, where they do warm food. You need to have a rest and something to eat before you drive back."

  We got into the car and drove through Castleton, which only had a post office and a pub, to the next small town. We found a little cafe that was probably full of tourists in the summer months but now was empty. It was open, and they did English breakfasts. I ordered the "Special' for both of us sausages, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and fried bread and a large cafetiere of coffee.

  We ate the greasy, comforting food in silence.

  "We should go if you're going to be in time for your meeting," I said, after the last mouthful.

  We didn't talk much on the way back. There was more traffic on the road, thickening as we approached London into a slow crawl of cars. Ben kept glancing at the clock worriedly.

  "You can leave me at an underground station," I said, but he drove me to the front door and even got out of the car and saw me to the door.

  "Bye," I said awkwardly. Our long journey together already seemed unreal. "Let me know what happens, will you?"

  "Of course," he said. He looked tired and despondent. "I'll talk to her parents as soon as they're back from their holiday. I can't do anything else till then, can I? And maybe she's with them."

  "I hope your meeting goes well."

  He looked down at his clothes and attempted a smile. "I don't really look the part, do I? Never mind. Goodbye." He hesitated as if he was about to say something else, then changed his mind, turned and got back into his car.

  Sixteen

  I didn't know what to do with myself for the rest of the day. All my plans had petered out and there didn't seem to be any other trails to follow. I had a bath, washed my hair, did my laundry. I played back the messages on the answering-machine. There was only one new one. I opened my laptop and checked for emails. There was one, warning me about a computer virus.

  I prowled around the living room, looking at my lists tacked to the wall and trying to focus on what I actually knew. I had been grabbed either on the Thursday evening or on the Friday, Saturday or Sunday. My mobile was being answered by a man. I had had sex with someone. I came to a decision: every time someone rang, I would pick up the phone and speak to them. I would open all her mail. I would try to contact her friends.

  I started with the mail. I took the letters I'd left propped up on the mantelpiece and slit them open one by one. She was invited to take part in a time-share in Spain. She was asked to rewrite an educational textbook about the Gunpowder Plot. She was invited to a school reunion. A friend she hadn't seen for years wanted to get back in touch. Another friend sent a newspaper clipping about the pros and cons of Prozac - I wrote down her name and phone number on a scrap of paper, and the phone number of the man who'd sent her an estimate for a new boiler. I looked at the postcards, but they were just scribbles from foreign holidays or thank-you notes.

  Then I went through all the messages stored on the answering-machine. I'd already talked to her editor. Few of the callers had left their last names or their numbers. I rang someone called Iris, who turned out to be Jo's cousin, and had a confused conversation with her about dates. She had last seen Jo six months ago. I rang the woman who'd sent the Prozac cutting. Her name was Lucy, she'd known Jo for years, through all her ups and downs. She had seen her on New Year's Eve, when she'd thought Jo had been subdued but more in control of her life. No, she hadn't heard from her since and, no, she had no idea of her plans. She started to sound worried, and I said it was probably fine, not to worry. The boiler-man was out and I left a message on his machine.

  I went to Jo's computer, on her desk in the corner of the room, and turned it on. I looked at the files, and wondered if I should call her publisher to say that I was pretty sure that the project she'd been working on for her was here. I clicked on her mailbox and scrolled down the more recent emails. I considered sending out a standard message to all the people in her address file, asking if they had heard from her, but decided to wait for a day or two.

  Ben had said Jo was a private person, and I'd invaded that privacy pretty thoroughly by now. I hoped she would understand. He had also said that she was neat. I decided I'd better have a thorough clean-up. I washed the plates we'd used the night before, scrubbed down the bath, put things away. I looked around for the vacuum cleaner and found it in the tall cupboard near the bathroom, along with a cat-litter tray and some unopened cat food, and a black bin-bag which, when I inspected it, had skiing stuff in it. I vacuumed my room and hers. The washing-machine had finished its cycle, so I hung clothes out on radiators. I made myself another cup of coffee, though I was already feeling twitchy with caffeine and strangeness. I put on some music and sat down on the sofa, but I was restless. Then I heard someone downstairs, shutting a door, and it struck me that I hadn't even done the obvious thing of asking Jo's neighbours when they'd last seen her.

  I finished my coffee and went out of the flat and round to the ground-floor entrance. I rang the bell and waited. The door opened a crack and one eye peered out at me.

  "Hello, I'm Jo's .. .Jo's flat mate Abbie, and I .. ."

  The door opened wide. "I know who you are, my love. Jo introduced us. Remember? Peter. You said you'd visit me but you never did, did you?"

  He was a tiny old man, much smaller than me. I wondered if he'd shrunk with age or if he'd always been the size of a pre-pubescent schoolboy. He wore a yellow jersey that was -unravelling at one sleeve, a checked scarf round his thin neck, and slippers. He had a small amount of grey hair and his face was crumpled and grooved. "Come inside," he said. I paused. "Come on, don't stand outside, come inside. I can make us tea. Sit down. There. Don't mind the cat. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. You'll want biscuits too, I dare say. Sugar? Do you take sugar? You've been rushing around, haven't you? I've seen you come and go. I've got the time to notice these things."

  The room was very hot and scrupulously tidy. Books lined the walls. He had all of Charles Dickens in leathery-looking hardback. I sat on the squashy leather sofa and took the tea he was holding out. The cat twitched in its sleep; it looked like the fat tabby I'd seen out of my window. "Thanks, Peter. Lovely. Remind me, when did we meet?"

  "Wednesday," he said promptly. "The day you arrived. I happened to come out on to the pavement, just for a breath of air, when you were taking all your things in and Jo introduced us. I said you should visit if you ever felt at a loose end. But you didn't. And then you went away, of course."

  "When was that? When did we go?"

  "Lost your memory, have you?" He laughed cheerily. "I haven't seen you both around. Been on holiday together, have you?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Is Jo back too? Nice girl, Jo. Ever so helpful. She took me to the hospital when I fell over and broke my leg. And came and visited me. No one else did, but she came and she brought flowers."

  "She's not back yet," I said vaguely.

  "I'm eighty-six," he said. "Do I look it?"

  "No," I lied.

  "My mother lived until she was ninety-five. Ninety-five and then suddenly, one day, boom. She was gone. I still miss her. Silly, isn't it? I'm an old man and I think about my mum every day. I still have her hairbrushes, you know, lovely silver hairbrushes with ivory backs and real horsehair bristles. You don't get things like that nowadays. And her napkin ring, silver with her name on the inside. Pretty."

  "That tea was just what I needed. Thanks a lot."

  "Are you going already? Without a biscuit?"

  "I'll come again soon."

  "I'm usually here."

  I was in a deep sleep having a dream in which a fire alar
m went off. I couldn't see where the fire was and I couldn't see where the fire exit was. I was paralysed by this ignorance. If I had known where the fire exit was, I could have headed for it. If I'd known where the fire was, I could have run away from it. The fire bell rang again and woke me up. Dimly and stupidly I realized it was the doorbell. I reached for my dressing-gown. My eyes wouldn't open. That was the first problem. They felt as if they were glued together. I pulled the lids apart on one as if I were peeling a grape but even so I had to get myself to the door virtually by touch. Even sleepwalking I made sure that the chain was fastened. I opened the door and the face of a young police officer appeared in the gap. "Miss Devereaux?" he said.

  "What time is it?"

  He looked at his watch.

  "Three forty-five," he said.

  "In the morning?"

  He looked behind him. It was grey and cloudy but very obviously daytime. My mind began to clear. "If it's about the car," I said, "I was planning to get it. It got a ticket, and then it got clamped. I've kept meaning to do something about it but I've been busy. You don't want to know."

  He looked blank. "I'm not here about a car," he said. "Can we come in?"

  "I want to see identification."

  He sighed and passed a thin leather wallet through the door. As if I could tell a genuine police identification. "You can probably buy these on the Net," I said.

  "I can give you a phone number to call, if you're still concerned."

  "To some friend of yours sitting in a bed sit somewhere."

  "Look, Miss Devereaux, I've been sent by DI Cross. He wants to talk to you. If you have some problem with that, could you take it up with him personally?"

  I unlocked the door. There were two of them. They wiped their feet noisily on the doormat and removed their caps.

  "If Cross wants to talk to me, why isn't he here?"

  "We've come to collect you."

  I had an impulse to say something angry but at the same time I felt relief. Finally Cross was coming to me. I wasn't the one creating trouble. Five minutes later I was in a police car heading south. When we stopped at traffic lights, I saw people staring in at me. Who was this woman sitting in the back of a police car? Was she a criminal or a detective? I tried to look more like a detective. When we crossed the river, I looked out of the window and frowned. "This isn't the way," I said.