Land of the Living

by Nicci French

  I knew I had traced Jo to within the last couple of hours of her freedom, Wednesday afternoon, and she'd been looking for a kitten. She had disappeared on a Wednesday afternoon, and the next day I too had gone. After all this time of blundering around chasing for clues, that was all I had. A pathetic shred.

  I turned on my track and went down the high street and left on to a road that led to Lewin Crescent. I walked up the narrow street until I came to the dingy house with its boarded-up windows and knocked on the door. I listened and I could hear miaows; I even thought I caught a faint whiff of urine. Then I heard shuffling footsteps on the other side of the door. The door opened a chink on its chain and her eyes peered suspiciously out at me. "Yes?"

  "Betty?"

  "Yes?"

  "It's Abbie. I came to see you two days ago. I asked you about my friend."

  "Yes?" she said again.

  "Can I come in?"

  The chain slid and the door opened. I stepped into the hot, stale room, with its moving carpet of cats. The smell caught in my nostrils. Betty was wearing the same blue shift with its missing buttons and covering of cat hairs, and the same ratty slippers and thick brown tights. I thought at least some of the ammonia smell came from her. She was so thin that her arms were like sticks and her fingers twigs. Her skin gathered in pouches on her small face.

  "So it's you again. Can't keep away, can you?"

  "There was something I forgot to ask you."

  "What?"

  "You said you'd seen my friend? Jo?" She didn't answer. "The one who came about having a kitten and you said she couldn't have one because .. ."

  "I know who you mean," she said.

  "I didn't ask about the man I was with. Hang on." I fumbled in my bag and took out the strip of passport photos of Ben. "Him."

  She glanced briefly down. "Well?"

  "Do you recognize him?"

  "I think so."

  "No, I mean, did you recognize him? Before."

  "You're a very confused young lady," she said. She held out a hand to the ginger cat that was butting against her legs and it leapt up and nuzzled its chin against her fingers, purring like a tractor.

  "What I want to know is, had you seen him before he came here with me?"

  "Before?"

  "Have you seen this man more than the once?" I asked desperately.

  "When did I see him?"

  "Yes."

  "What?"

  "I mean, yes, when did you see him?" I was starting to feel slightly sick.

  "I said that to you. I said, when did I see him? "Yes" isn't an answer."

  I rubbed my eyes. "I just wanted to know if you'd seen him before two days ago. That's all."

  "All sorts of people come here. Is he from the council?"

  "No, he's-'

  "Because if he's from the council, I won't let him into my house."

  "He's not from the council."

  "Cats are naturally clean animals, you know."

  "Yes," I said dully.

  "And some people think it's not nice, the way they hunt. But it's just their nature."

  "I know."

  "I don't give my kitties to homes where they're allowed to go outside. That's what I told your friend. When she said she'd let a cat outside, I told her it wasn't a fit place. It would just get run over."

  "Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry to have bothered you." I turned to go "Not like the hippie lot, mind."

  "The hippie lot?"

  "Yes. They don't make proper checks." She sniffed disapprovingly.

  "These, um, these hippies have lots of cats, like you?"

  "Not like me," she said. "No."

  "Did you tell Jo about them?" '"

  "Maybe," she said.

  "Betty, where do they live?"

  I don't know why I felt I was in such a hurry. It was as if I was scared the trail would go cold. I knew where Jo had gone after Betty's or, at least, I knew where she might have gone, and that was enough for me. Now I was in the final hour or two of her final day. Everything else had faded and all I could see was her receding shape and I was stumbling along in her footsteps. But who was coming behind me? Who was following me?

  Betty had called them hippies, but I guessed from what she'd said about them their dread locked hair and patched clothes that they were New Age travellers. She had told me that they lived in an abandoned church over in Islington, and I prayed that they hadn't moved on. I jogged back to the high street and flagged down a taxi. Because I didn't know the exact address although I knew the general area, I told the woman driver to take me to the Angel. I could walk from there. I kept glancing over my shoulder. I kept looking for a face I'd seen before. I saw nobody, but still the sickening sense remained that I didn't have much time left. I sat on the edge of my seat, impatient with traffic jams and red lights.

  It was starting to get dark by the time we reached the Angel -or, at least, the colour was draining from the day. I had lost all track of time and I couldn't even think what day it was. It was a weekday, I knew that. Most people were at work, sitting in heated offices, drinking coffee from vending machines, having meetings that they liked to think were important. I paid the driver and got out, side-stepping a half-frozen puddle. Out of the low, dulling sky a few flakes of snow fell. I pulled up the collar of my jacket and started walking.

  Some of the church had been painted in primary colours, and there was an asymmetrical rainbow over the large wooden-ribbed door. A rusty pink-sprayed bicycle leant against the wall, beside an , old pram full of wood and another full of tin cans. By the side of the church was a van decorated with swirls and flowers, and with blinds drawn down over all of its windows. A large, dun-coloured dog was nosing its tyres.

  I lifted the knocker and let it fall with a heavy rap on to the door, which was already open a crack.

  "Just push and come in," shouted a female voice.

  The interior of the church was dim and hazy with smoke from a fire burning on the floor, in a makeshift fireplace of bricks. Round it a group of people sat or squatted, wrapped in blankets or coiled in sleeping-bags. One was holding a guitar, although he was making no attempt to play it. I saw the shapes of other figures towards the back of the church, where there were still a few pews. There were mattresses and bags over the floor. A great crack ran down the stained-glass window.

  "Hi," I said uncertainly. "Sorry to butt in."

  "You're welcome here," said a woman with cropped hair and studs in her eyebrow, nose, lips and chin. She leant forward and thick copper bangles cascaded down her arm.

  "I'm Abbie," I said, and shook her mittened hand. "I just wanted to ask .. ."

  "Well, we know you're Abbie at least, I do. Some of us haven't been here for more than a few days. I'm Crystal remember? You've cut your hair, haven't you? Anyway, sit down," said Crystal. "Do you want tea? Boby's just made some. Boby! Another tea -we've got a visitor. You don't take sugar, do you? See, I always remember."

  Boby came over with mud-coloured tea in a pewter mug. He was small and skinny and had a white, nervous face. His combat trousers hung off him and his neck looked thin in the chunky knit of his sweater.

  "Thanks," I said. "I've been here before, have I?"

  "We've got some beans spare. Do you want some?"

  "I'm fine," I said. "Thanks."

  The man with the guitar ran his fingers over the neck of the instrument to produce a few broken chords. He grinned at me and I saw that his mouth was full of black, broken teeth. "I'm Ramsay,"

  he said. "Ram for short. I came yesterday from the bypass protest. My first night for weeks on the solid ground. Where've you come from?"

  I realized I looked like a runaway. I'd become one of them. I didn't have to struggle to make sense here. I slid down by the fire and took a gulp of my tepid, bitter tea. The smoke from the fire stung my eyes.

  "I don't know where I've come from, really," I said. "But Betty told me about you lot."

  "Betty?"

  "The old woman with all the cats," s
aid Crystal. "You told us about her last time."

  I nodded, feeling oddly peaceful. The fight had gone out of me. Perhaps it wouldn't matter, being dead. "I probably did," I said. "I probably asked you about my friend Jo."

  "That's right. Jo."

  "I asked if she'd come here."

  "D'you want a roll-up?" said Boby.

  "All right," I said. I took the thin cigarette that he held out and Ram lit it for me. I inhaled and coughed. Nausea swept over me. I took another drag. "Did she come here?"

  "Yup," said Crystal. She looked at me. "Are you OK?"

  "Yes."

  "Here. Have some beans." She picked up one of the tins of baked beans that was by the fire, stuck in a plastic spoon and handed it over. I took a mouthful: disgusting. Then another. I sucked on the roll-up and pulled acrid smoke into my lungs.

  "Great," I said. "Thanks. So Jo came here, did she?"

  "Yeah. But I told you."

  "I can't remember things," I said.

  "I get like that too," said Ram, and made another stab at a chord. A man opened the door of the church and came in pushing the pram. He tossed some more wood on the fire then bent over and kissed Crystal. They kissed for a long time.

  "So she came here looking for a kitten?" I said finally.

  "Because that crazy Betty thinks we keep cats here."

  "Don't you?"

  "Can you see cats?"

  "No."

  "I mean, we have had a few strays, because we give them milk and food. And some of us were in a raid that released cats from a laboratory the other month."

  "I dunno how she heard about us, though."

  "Nor do I," I said. "So did she just go away?"

  "Jo?"

  "Yes."

  "She gave us some money for our projects. A fiver, I think."

  "And that was it?"

  Tup."

  "Oh, well," I said. I looked around. Perhaps I could join them and become a traveller and eat baked beans and sleep on stone floors and up trees and make roll-ups until my fingers were stained yellow. That would be different from designing offices.

  "Except I said she could always try Arnold Slater."

  "Arnold Slater?"

  "He's the man we gave some of the strays to. When the dogs started chasing them. He's in a wheelchair but he looks after them anyway."

  "So did she go there?"

  "She said she might. So did you last time, I mean. Weird, eh? Like deje vu. Do you believe in deje vm?"

  "Of course. Round and round and round I go," I said. I threw the end of the roll-up into the fire and drained my tea. "Thanks," I said. I turned suddenly to Boby. "You have a big tattoo of a spider, don't you?"

  He blushed violently then pulled up his thick jumper and on his flat white stomach was a tattooed web that stretched out of sight round his back. "There," he said.

  "But where's the spider gone?" I asked.

  "That's what you said before."

  "Clearly I'm a very consistent person," I said.

  It was really dark when I left the church, even though it wasn't evening yet. I could make out the ghost of a moon behind the clouds. Arnold Slater lived two minutes from here and he was old and in a wheelchair and Jo had thought she might go to see him and I had thought I might follow Jo and go to see him ... I stepped out into the road, and at that moment the mobile I'd grabbed as I left Ben's started to ring, making me jump violently. Backing on to the pavement, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled it out. Without thinking, I pressed the 'call' button.

  "Hello?" I said.

  "Abbie! Where the fuck are you, Abbie? What are you up to? I've been out of my mind worrying. I've been calling the house all day and you didn't reply so I came back and you weren't here

  "Ben," I said.

  "So I waited and waited. I thought you might have gone to the shops or something, and then I saw my mobile wasn't on the charger any longer, so I rang it on the off-chance. When are you coming home?"

  "Home?"

  "Abbie, when are you coming back?"

  "I'm not coming back," I said.

  "What?"

  "You and Jo. I know about Jo. I know you were with her."

  "Listen to me now, Abbie -'

  "Why didn't you tell me? Why, Ben?"

  "I was scared that'

  "You were scared," I said. "You."

  "Christ, Abbie -' he said, but I pressed the off-button. I held the phone cradled in my hand and stared down at it as if it could bite. Then I scrolled down the names in its memory bank. I didn't know any of them until I came to Jo Hooper. I recognized the number, because it belonged to her flat. But then there was another Jo Hooper (mobile). I pressed 'call' and heard the sound of ringing and just as I was about to give up, someone said, "Hello," in a whisper. So quiet I could hardly hear and, anyway, whispers in the dark all sound the same.

  I didn't say a word. I stood with the mobile pressed to my cheek. I tried not to breathe. I heard him breathing very softly. In and out, in and out. There was a coldness in my veins. I closed my eyes and listened. He didn't say anything else. I had the strongest feeling that he knew it was me, and that he knew I knew it was him. I could feel him smiling.

  Twenty-six

  I felt that I was in a dream running down a slope that was becoming steeper and steeper so that I was unable to stop. There was nothing in the street that I recognized not the stunted tree with a broken branch flapping down, not the huge wooden buttresses propping up one ramshackle stretch of houses. There was just a smell about it. I had the impression of footsteps sounding ahead of me. Jo's. My own. If I moved more quickly, I would catch them.

  I'd written Arnold Slater's number on the back of my hand. Twelve. The far end of this insalubrious street. But I was going to the house of an old man in a wheelchair. He couldn't be the one. I wouldn't have stopped anyway, now that I was almost scraping at Jo's heels. I thought of her walking along this street, impatient. Could it be so difficult to get a bloody cat? The street was the familiar mixture of the restored, the abandoned and the neglected. Number twelve wasn't so bad. It must have been owned by the council because quite elaborate work had been done to enable a wheelchair to get to the front door. There was a concrete ramp and some heavy-duty handrails. I rang the bell.

  Arnold Slater wasn't in his wheelchair. I could see it folded up in the hall behind him. But he was no kind of threat to anyone who could move faster than a tortoise. He was an old man in an outdoor coat, blinking at the daylight and holding the door handle as if for support. He looked at me with a frown. I was trying to remember him. Was he trying to remember me?

  "Hello," I said brightly. "Are you Arnold Slater? I've heard that you might have a cat for sale."

  "Bloody hell," he said.

  "Sorry," I said. "Don't you have cats?"

  He shuffled aside to leave a space. "A few," he said, with a throaty chuckle. "Come in."

  I looked at his thin, sinewy wrists protruding from his raincoat. I assured myself once more that this man couldn't do me any harm and stepped inside.

  "I've got cats," he said. "There's Merry. And Poppy. And Cassie and, look, there's Prospero."

  A mustard-coloured shape darted down the hallway and disappeared into the gloom. I suddenly had an image of a secret society, a freemasonry, of cat nuts dotted around London, linked by their obsession like the secret rivers that run beneath London.

  "Nice names," I said.

  "Cats have their own names," he said. "You've just got to recognize them."

  I was in a fever. His words seemed to come from a long way away and take a long time to reach me. I was like someone who was drunk and trying not to show it. I was doing my best possible impersonation of a cheerful young woman who was terribly eager to have a discussion about cats. "Like children, I guess."

  He looked offended. "They're not like children. Not like my children. These ones can look after themselves."

  My head was buzzing and I was moving from one foot to another in impatience. "I was sen
t by the people in the church. They said you had cats for sale."

  Another scratchy laugh, like he had something stuck in his throat. "I don't have cats for sale. Why would I want to sell a cat? Why do people keep thinking that?"

  "That's part of what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you had other people coming here wanting to buy cats from you?"

  "They're mad. I've taken the odd cat off their hands and then they send people on to me as if I was a pet shop."

  "What sort of people?"

  "Stupid women wanting a cat."

  I forced myself to laugh. "You mean women have been pitching up here trying to buy a cat? How many?"

  "A couple of them. I told them both that they weren't for sale."

  "That's funny," I said, as casually as I could manage, 'because I think a friend of mine may have been one of the people who was sent to you. Could this be her?" I had been fingering the photograph of Jo in my jacket pocket. Now I took it out-and showed it to Arnold.

  Immediately he looked puzzled and suspicious. "What's this? What do you want to know for?"

  "I was wondering if she was one of the women who came here looking for a cat."

  "What do you want to know for? I thought you wanted a cat. What's all this about? You some sort of police or something?"

  My thoughts were scattered all over, I could almost hear my brain humming inside my head. I felt in a rush, escaping something and chasing something both at the same time, and now I had to think of some half-way plausible explanation of what on earth I was up to.

  "I'm looking for a cat as well," I said. "I just wanted to make sure I'd come to the same place she had."

  "Why don't you ask her?"

  I wanted to scream and howl. What did it matter? This wasn't a checkpoint on the Iraqi border. It was a house in Hackney with four mangy cats. I just needed to move on to the next square in the ridiculous game I was playing and he was the only one who could help me. I tried to think. It was so hard. Poor Jo hadn't got her cat here, that was obvious enough.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Slater," I said. "Arnold. I just have this need to get a cat."