by Deborah Bee
That’s when I notice Kitty. She’s listening to what’s being said. That wasn’t strange in itself, but then she’s laughing about it, and watching herself laughing in the mirror, silently laughing, great big laughs but no volume. Another burst of giggles escapes from the TV room and ripples down the hall.
Kitty turns to face the far end of the corridor and looks at herself over her shoulder, and giggles like you would if you were flirting with someone. Mischievous giggles.
She stops and she juts her chin into the mirror, examines her teeth, frowns, rubs her teeth hard with her finger, then fluffs out her hair and smiles a big cheesy smile.
Then she shakes her head as if she really can’t understand what everyone is going on about and nods, as if she is agreeing with herself.
Then she sees me and narrows her eyes; or maybe she didn’t narrow her eyes, maybe she’s just short-sighted, and maybe she didn’t have her lenses in. I don’t know, all I’m saying is it looked to me like she narrowed her eyes.
She’s staring at me now, and I am not going to move and I am not going to change my expression – she can go to hell before I crack.
She can’t decide if I’ve seen her or not, that’s what’s holding her up, and cos I’m not giving she decides her best option is to go all innocent, like butter wouldn’t melt.
‘You like my new hair?’ she goes, holding up the ends for me to see as I walk towards her, then staring at her reflection again. ‘It’s called “graduated”,’ she says, pronouncing it grad-u-ated, like it’s a word she’s never even heard before.
‘In England, it’s called “grad-u-ated”, in France it’s called “ombre”, and in New York it’s called “degradé”. It’s all over Instagram.’
‘Degradé sounds a bit like degraded,’ I say.
‘Does it?’ says Kitty, not in the least bit interested in what I think. ‘I think it sounds . . . exotic.’
*
We’ve made hot chocolates, me and Clare, and we’ve taken them to our flat so that we don’t have to mind out for long noses, Kitty’s long nose, specifically.
‘So, what does a criminal injunction stop him doing?’ says Clare.
I’ve just told her about Terry, about leaving the letter in my house, using my notepaper as well. I wonder what else he looked at, and touched, it feels like I’ve been violated.
‘Coming within one hundred feet of me,’ I say, trying to work out in my head how far that is. ‘How far is one hundred feet anyway?’ I say.
‘Well, I’m five foot, so it’s . . . twenty of me,’ she says.
We both fall silent.
‘That doesn’t sound right,’ I say.
‘Twenty times five is one hundred,’ she goes.
‘Yeah, it’s not that,’ I say. ‘I can’t do feet and inches. Only metres. That’s what comes of being a science teacher. What’s one hundred feet in metres?’
‘Thirty,’ she goes, blowing on her hot chocolate, ‘it’s definitely about thirty.’
‘My solicitor . . .’ I say.
‘. . . oh, sol-ic-i-tooooor,’ she says, imitating a posh voice. ‘How did you get one of those?’
‘You can get one,’ I say, ‘and an injunction. Anyone who feels threatened can get one, so my solicitor Jane says; she’s only young, got newborn twins.’
‘So, you had to go to court?’ Clare says, licking the froth off a spoon.
‘Yeah, I was half expecting Terry to turn up, but he didn’t. That would be typical him. No, PC Halsall took me, then it was just me and the judge and Jane, you know. All seemed a bit much really, like I was massively overreacting, or like I was making it all up. You know how your voice goes a bit sort of echoey sometimes, so you can hear yourself speaking. To be quite honest, I’ve said all that stuff so many times I’ve almost stopped believing it myself, and we were in and out like a factory line. You get given a copy of the order, and you give that to the police station, and then they’ve got what’s called “powers of arrest”.’
‘Gareth’s too smart to get arrested. He knows people everywhere. They pull strings for him.’
‘Thought you said he was American?’
‘He is. He just knows everyone. Charms everyone. It’s cos he’s good-looking.’
‘Terry hasn’t got the looks and he hasn’t two brain cells to rub together either, that’s the truth, but he still gets what he wants. Not through charm though, that’s for sure. Took five coppers to arrest him – first time around.’
‘So now what?’ she says, spooning the hot chocolate into her mouth.
‘I stay in here, don’t go anywhere, wait and see where he turns up and get the tagging done on him properly.’
‘Tagging?’ she says.
‘They put these devices on long-term prisoners who get out on release, on their ankles, and it’s like satnav on their legs. No, not satnavs – what do I mean, those tracking signals, and the police know where they are, what they’re up to, all the time.’
‘Sounds like a good plan,’ says Clare.
‘You’d think, right? It would be a good plan if the government hadn’t given the contract to a bunch of crooks.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Rather than the police putting on the devices, as they’re meant to, they get an outside contractor to put them on, cos they’re way too busy filling out forms and filing their nails, and then they wonder why it doesn’t work. The whole thing’s corrupt. Seems that half the cons don’t get tagged in the first place. And the other half get what’s called “loose tags”. Seriously, it’s a proper name. The cons pay £400 to get the tag put on loose, so they can slip it off. They reckon Terry went to his mum’s for some coffee and walnut cake, and then he just left his tag there. Took it off and left it in her house. Bloody idiots.’
‘You are actually shitting me!’
‘Nope. The cons take them off and then they put them on someone else – so it’s moving around the house and everything.’
‘Loose tags,’ Clare says, half smiling. ‘That’s really something!’
‘There’s a story about some bloke who was in his seventies who strapped it on his cat. They found out cos they could track him hopping over all the garden fences in his street. Then this other bloke, he got them to put the tag on his wooden leg, then he detached that, left it in the corner of his bedroom and put on his spare. It’d be funny if it wasn’t terrible.’
She snorted into the remains of her hot chocolate.
‘The police are a bit shit, aren’t they? Really. I mean, what have they done for you?’
‘They’ve got us both in here,’ I say.
‘But how safe are we in here?’ Clare says.
‘Safer than we were out there,’ I say.
‘I’m going to wash my hair,’ Clare says suddenly. ‘Will you stay?’
‘Stay where?’ I say.
‘Just stay outside the door. So I can hear you,’ she says, looking embarrassed.
I nod.
‘I get nervous in the shower. Used to love long showers. Could spend all day. But Gareth . . . Can I use your shampoo?’ she says. ‘I was going to earlier but I didn’t want to without asking.’
‘You’re on the mend,’ I say. ‘Of course, you can. Did you eat today?’
‘Mrs Henry made me onion soup. Out of a packet.’
‘We can get some fruit tomorrow,’ I call to her in the bathroom, ‘and maybe we can get you some supplements from the health food shop, like vitamins. Did that doctor bring you any of those weight-gaining shakes?’
‘I hate those drinks. They make me want to throw up just thinking about them. And I’m not sure those vitamin supplement things work,’ she calls, switching on the shower and putting her hand under it, waiting for it to heat up. ‘Gareth told me that my moods were erratic and that I needed some vitamin shots. Saw this American doctor in Harley Street. Some friend of his. Had these shots every month or six weeks. I can’t really remember. And medication. Gareth said I’d be full of en
ergy. I couldn’t see any difference. Didn’t feel any fitter at all. If anything, the tablets made me feel worse.’
‘Worse how?’ I shout through the door, not wanting to sound too interested.
‘Depressed. Tired. Generally hopeless. But living with a psychopath has its side effects. Gareth swore by vitamins. I used to pretend to take them, in the end, he got so weird about it. Said I needed them to help calm me down. It was all I could do to get up in the mornings. Look, can I use your shower gel too. I’m going to get all this stuff tomorrow.’
‘Anything you want,’ I shout.
‘I think I lost my bearings in the end,’ she calls above the noise of the shower. ‘Stopped caring about my work and my friends. After I got fired, they stopped calling.’
I hear her turn the water off.
‘Will you help me wash this dressing gown tomorrow?’ she says as she walks back into the sitting room, wrapping it tightly around her. ‘And have you got any nail scissors?’ she asks, staring down at her toes.
‘In the green toilet bag on the windowsill. Help yourself,’ I say.
‘Did I tell you that Kitty was in here earlier?’ Clare says, coming back a bit later, toothbrush in her mouth.
‘She’s been dying to get in here. What did she want?’
‘No, I mean, she had a key, and let herself in.’
‘What the . . .?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What was she doing?’
‘She looked like she was hoping to nick something,’ she says, between brushing.
‘You bet she was,’ I say. Not that I’ve got anything much worth nicking.
Clare goes back into the bathroom to spit out the toothpaste.
‘She’s very pretty,’ she says, drying her hair with a towel.
‘Pretty people often seem so much more convincing. Use their charms . . .’ I say, thinking about the way Kitty was practising her laughing face earlier.
‘Tell me about it,’ she says. ‘Gareth’s a model. Part-time actor and model. Not that he has ever done a single job the entire time I’ve known him. But anyway. Whenever we went anywhere, especially at the beginning, when I first met him, all the women would fall over themselves to say hi. He used to get this look on his face . . .’ She does a kind of trout pout. ‘One that said, “Look at me, I’m the hottest guy in the room”, and they’d all melt. Right in front of him. Like he was Harry Styles or something. Trouble was, he was the hottest guy in the room. Women couldn’t take their eyes off him. He’d say, “See her. Over there. That’s Beth. The one with the body like a supermodel. She is 1000 per cent in the looks department, don’t you think?” And then Beth would come over and be all over him, like a rash. And I’d say, “Do you have any idea how all this makes me feel?” And he’d go, “I’m worth it though, right?” And I’d say, “Why do I feel like I’m the only one working at this relationship?” And then he’d tell me to work harder. And, later, he’d make me swear on my best friend’s life that he was the best fuck I’d ever had.’
She pauses, I think because she’s glad it’s all over. But then she gets this wistful look in her eyes and I wonder if a part of her was wishing that the hottest guy in the room was still with her, in that mad way that DVs do.
She snaps back to the present.
‘Like I say, I think I lost my bearings. I thought he was doing me a favour,’ Clare says.
‘And was he the best fuck you ever had?’
‘Well, here’s the joke,’ she says, wiping her face with a ball of cotton wool, covered in my moisturiser, ‘He was the only fuck I ever had. I was a virgin when I met him.’
‘REALLY?’ I shout, loudly. ‘Sorry,’ I say, quietly. ‘That came out wrong.’
‘Yes, really,’ she goes. ‘But then, he didn’t like that either. Said I should have told him. Said that because I’d already fucked him, I was no longer a virgin and therefore technically no longer marriage material.’
‘What! That’s mental,’ I say.
She snorts.
‘Anyway, did you get the key back off Kitty?’ I ask.
‘It’s here,’ she says.
‘Wonder what she thought she was after.’
‘She said she feels safer further away from the front door.’
‘And don’t tell me, it helps her sleep at night.’
‘She did say exactly that too.’
Twenty-Seven
DS Clarke
There’s a selection of plant pots on the outside ground floor windowsill, and more along the sides of the three steps leading up to the black front door. Some of the pots are terracotta and have cracked so that pools of soil sit around their bases. Some are black plastic and intact. None contain plants. The only evidence of plants having been there is the faded, muddy labels stuck to the sides of the pots. DS Clarke notes to herself: an unloved house.
A young police officer is waiting for her by the open front door.
‘Afternoon, Detective Sergeant, I’m PC Corkett!’ he says officiously, fresh from training.
‘Corkett.’ She nods, thinking this one is even younger and more of a wanker than usual. ‘Anything to report so far?’
‘Not immediately, sir. I mean, sarge.’ He blushes right up to his hat rim. ‘It’s your average house. Perhaps tidier than we might have expected, judging by the report. PCs Chapman and Walker are inside.’
When DS Clarke steps over the polished silver front doorstep, her overriding impression is that she’s entering a show home. Not a speck of dust anywhere. Gleaming, with a hint of lavender furniture polish. Her mind goes back to the plant pots outside the front door.
‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ she thinks, making a mental note of something else that didn’t add up, the hallway tiles. Black-and-white ceramics like you get in posh hallways.
Clare’s father was a builder, DS Clarke reminds herself.
The stairs are carpeted in grey wool from edge to edge. The walls decorated with a matt paint, an expensive shade of green, perhaps Farrow & Ball. There are two reception rooms, the first is carpeted in bottle-green wool and freshly vacuumed, judging by the wheel marks. It has a polished fireplace, inside and out.
Chapman skips down the stairs with the confidence of someone who has been up and down them a few times already.
‘You might want to keep downstairs for now, sarge. The forensics team are up there.’
DS Clarke thinks she should have put the blue plastic shoe covers on, but since her back has been playing up this week, she decides to let it go.
‘Halsall told me that Sally-Anne got the injunction OK yesterday?’ PC Chapman says, following her into the dining room.
‘Yes, I spoke to her this morning. We were half expecting him to show up but he didn’t. Fucking tags. What do you see, Chapman?’
DS Clarke faces each wall of the dining room in turn and stares and stares, from top left to bottom left, at every skirting board and dado rail, every doorknob and lock.
‘I see a laptop. Open. People never leave their laptops open. There’s also a mobile. People never leave them behind. Nor do they leave their car keys, like those over there,’ she says, pointing to the side table.
‘Unless they had to leave in a hurry.’
She shrugs.
‘Have you checked the fridge yet? Any food? Checked the dishwasher?’
People often forget the dishwasher. DS Clarke had found more evidence in dishwashers than she’d care to count.
‘Both empty. The whole place is forensically clean.’
‘It’d better not be.’
DS Clarke knows PC Chapman is right, even after just five minutes. The downstairs toilet floor is clean enough to eat off. DC Walker comes thundering down the stairs.
‘No one home,’ she says, brightly.
‘I think we all know there is no one home, Walker. You are supposed to be gathering evidence.’
‘Of what?’
She actually looks surprised. Surprised!
‘You’re a
detective. Go detect.’
‘There’s a lot of new clobber in the wardrobe,’ Walker says, rolling her eyes.
‘There you are, you can detect! And?’
‘Well, that doesn’t exactly stack up, does it?’
‘Why not?’
‘She said she only had a few items of clothes, tops and sweatpants, didn’t she?’
‘You’re saying it’s women’s clothing?’
‘Yeah, I said! Clobber.’
‘I’m sorry, I obviously didn’t understand the nuances of your colloquialisms. Clobber is female?’
*
PC Corkett, who hears the exchange from the front door, is staring at his shoes.
‘Come along, Chapman,’ DS Clarke says, leading the way up the stairs.
The landing looks like every landing of a middle-class, middle-income, middle England estate. There’s pretend posh art, a five-pound print that’s been clipped inside a silvered frame. Off to the left there’s a family bathroom. The pedestal mat and bath mat are matching. The guest bedroom has plumped-up scatter cushions and flowery curtains that don’t look used.
DS Clarke walks over to the window overlooking the back garden. It’s dirty, the window, but only on the outside. She traces a finger over the inside and it’s spotless.
The garden is knee-high in nettles that have started to go to seed.
The rotary washing line is broken with pegs still clipped to it.
There’s an outhouse.
And a side gate.
‘It’s all Net-a-Porter. Stupid money,’ Chapman calls from the front bedroom.
‘You ever bought anything on Net-a-Porter, Chapman?’ asks DS Clarke, wondering who did.
‘Not on public sector wages, I haven’t.’
‘This is Chanel. Looks expensive,’ says Walker, mispronouncing Chanel as channel.
‘Walker, are you the only person on the planet not to have heard of Chanel?’
‘What, the perfume?’
The master bedroom is overly feminine. That was DS Clarke’s first thought. Master bedrooms give a lot away about the power in a relationship. Dark and imposing suggests a male-dominated home. Comfortable and messy is nurturing. This she hasn’t seen before. Pristine fitted wardrobes. A mirrored dressing table hung with scarves and strings of pearls. An old-fashioned powder puff and silver hairbrush. A silk dressing gown and designer perfumes. The overwhelming impression was ‘pampered princess’. And the wardrobes were stuffed with designer dresses.
