Day of the Dead

by Nicci French

  ‘It’s just going to be a few days,’ she said softly. ‘We’re nearly at the end.’

  Lola turned her head and looked at her.

  Frieda continued speaking. ‘I could get some medication. Something to help you sleep.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s the dead people. Don’t you think of them? Don’t you see them when you close your eyes? And there are going to be more of them. More and more and more.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There aren’t going to be many more. There’s going to be one more.’

  ‘One more? Who’s that going to be?’

  ‘Me, of course.’

  Now Lola sat up and faced her. ‘Is that what you want? Do you want to sacrifice yourself to him?’

  ‘It’s not what I want. It’s what he wants.’

  ‘And you think, if …’ Lola paused, and when she spoke it was with an apparent effort. ‘If he killed you, you think he would stop? Stop all of this killing?’

  Frieda leaned closer to Lola, raised a hand and stroked her hair, as if Lola was a small child who had woken from a nightmare. ‘Yes, Lola, I think he would.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going to make some tea. Something herbal. Ginger, I think. Would you like some?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘I already said yes.’

  So Frieda got up and walked out of the large living room into the dining room, which they hadn’t used because the table and the chairs were all rotten and dirty. From there she entered the kitchen at the back of the house. She filled the kettle and switched it on. While she waited for it to boil, she looked out of the back window. There was a cobbled street where there would once have been stables, which were now those immaculate houses. Two mugs stood in the sink. She washed them up and put a ginger teabag into each one, poured the boiling water onto them, then stirred them with a teaspoon until the water turned amber. The ginger aroma was soothing in itself.

  She took the two mugs through the dining room and then into the living room. Lola wasn’t there. She called her name, but there was no reply. She took a sip of the ginger tea. It was still too hot and burned her lips. She walked across to the front window. There she was. Lola, jacketed, was blundering across the road. She was making her brief escape, sucking in air, weaving about as though she was drunk. She went through one of the entrances to Regent’s Park and disappeared behind the boundary hedge.

  Frieda looked at the mugs she was holding. She had a sudden impulse to throw them to the floor, let them smash. But then it occurred to her that the owner would never know and wouldn’t care if they did. Someone else might come to stay here and they would have to deal with the mess and that wouldn’t be fair. So she just put the two mugs on the floor.

  When Lola arrived in the park, she looked around. Then she went swiftly towards a middle-aged woman who was walking with two dogs. She was throwing a tennis ball for them to fetch. She looked at Lola with a mixture of disapproval and alarm. Lola wondered why, then remembered her appearance, her grubby clothes and her pale, unwashed, matted hair.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Lola. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you. I’ve lost my phone. I need to ring my friend to get her to pick me up. Could you lend me yours? It’ll just be a minute. Less than a minute.’

  The woman seemed doubtful.

  ‘It’s really important,’ said Lola. Her eyes filled with tears and her voice wobbled.

  ‘All right. If you’re quick.’

  And she handed Lola the phone. Lola moved a few yards away and turned her back on her, so she couldn’t be overheard. She dialled the number that she had memorized. She thought she would remember it for the rest of her life.

  She waited. Perhaps he wouldn’t answer. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, thicker and thicker. They rolled into her mouth and she could taste the salt. There was a plane overhead, scrawling its signature into the autumn sky. Her heart was jolting so hard she thought it would break out of her body.

  He answered. A thick, soft voice.

  ‘It’s Lola,’ she said.

  Silence at the other end, just breathing.

  For a brief moment she thought she couldn’t say the words. They were in her mouth, grim as stones. But then she took a deep, harsh breath that hurt her throat. ‘We’re at eighteen A Rivingdale Terrace … Yes. Rivingdale Terrace. Frieda says you’re only going to kill one more person … Yes, of course she means herself. I’ve got to go.’

  She didn’t quite know how to walk. She had an image of herself lying down on the damp grass, among the fallen leaves, and curling into a ball and waiting there until all of this had gone away. She wanted to disappear. The ground to swallow her. Her body felt strange to her, and she felt strange to her body, as if everything was breaking up inside her. She stood quite still for a moment, trying to regain her equilibrium. The she walked back out of the park.

  ‘Lola.’

  She jolted to a stop. It was Frieda and she was holding out a hand.

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry,’ she managed to say, though her voice sounded like a blurt of sound. Surely Frieda would notice everything was wrong. ‘I just had to get some air.’

  Frieda smiled and took her arm. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s the most expensive place I’ve ever stayed in. And the most unpleasant. When I saw you run across the road, I realized we need to get out of it.’

  Lola looked at Frieda. She had a bag slung over each shoulder. ‘Get out?’ she repeated. ‘You mean, now?’

  ‘This very minute. Why wait?’

  ‘I’ve got things I need to get.’

  ‘I’ve got everything.’

  ‘But … I’m not sure I can bear moving again, Frieda. I mean, this is horrible, but what’s the next place going to be like?’

  ‘Let’s walk while we discuss it,’ said Frieda, and she led a reluctant Lola back into the park and turned south. ‘I don’t want to play my therapist card, but when someone starts thinking about rats crawling over them while they’re asleep, it’s time to move.’

  ‘But surely moving isn’t a way of solving your problems. You need to deal with them where they are.’ Lola stopped. Her gaze was wild. ‘There’ll probably be rats wherever I go. They were probably in my mind. Let’s go back. Please.’

  ‘It’s the kind of thing I’ve said to my patients,’ said Frieda. ‘You can move as much as you like, but you’ll still have your problems with you. However, in this case I’ll make an exception. The rats were real. There are probably cockroaches as well.’

  They moved off again, Lola allowing Frieda to steer her, her feet dragging through the leaves.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she said. ‘Do we have to contact one of your friends again?’

  ‘Keegan thought something like this might happen. He gave me the key. And we can walk there. I think we both need a bit of exercise.’ She tipped her head back. ‘It will rain later,’ she said, talking more to herself than Lola. ‘Heavy rain to clear the air.’

  They reached the south-east corner of the park and joined Euston Road. It was tantalizingly close to Frieda’s house, almost dangerously so. Someone might recognize her. They crossed the road and left the traffic for the quieter roads that ran past the university buildings. It was a route she knew intimately from her restless night walks. She walked past the terraced houses, the stolid red apartment blocks, the small hotels, until they reached an improbable little house in the corner of a small square. Frieda unlocked the front door and they stepped inside.

  It was like an imitation family house. There were etchings on the wall. There was a front room with a sofa and a couple of chairs. There was a kitchen at the rear and a small yard backed by the walls of a huge building. But there was nothing personal. No mail on the mat. No television and no phone.

  ‘What is this house?’ asked Lola. ‘It’s like a pretend house or a film set or something.’

  ‘I think my friend uses it for people like us.’

  ‘What are people like us like?’

  ‘People
who need to disappear for a while. There are more of them than you’d think.’

  ‘So what does your friend do?’

  ‘It’s clearly one of those jobs that’s hard to explain. Like a management consultant. But this is better, isn’t it?’

  Lola looked around. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s better. I’m glad we left that place behind. I wish I could have left myself behind as well.’

  FORTY-TWO

  That evening, Frieda made them butternut-squash soup. The kitchen was clean and bare. There was one large saucepan and one small; a frying pan, a roasting pan. All the china – pale green – came in sets of four: four large and four small plates, four bowls. So too did the cutlery and the glasses.

  She had bought some more whisky and she poured them both a slug, setting Lola’s in front of her without a word and sipping at her own as she chopped the squash, tipped it into the pan to fry. While it cooked, she sliced bread, set places at the table, then opened her laptop and turned it on. All the while, Lola sat without a word, her shoulders soft and heavy, a blank look on her face.

  As Frieda started scrolling through news items on her computer, she spoke without looking up: ‘When you get to the endgame in chess, everything changes. There are just a few pieces left. A pawn can be as powerful as a queen. They circle around each other, blocking each other, protecting each other, even bluffing, trying to find an opening, a way through.’

  ‘And this is the endgame?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Frieda didn’t answer. She stood up and prodded the squash with a fork, making sure it was tender.

  ‘There’s no food mixer here,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to mash it with a fork and then add the stock. Can you do that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you mash the squash with a fork? Lola?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Have some whisky.’

  ‘It’ll make me cry.’

  ‘Crying isn’t so bad.’

  ‘No. I mustn’t. I feel like I’m coming apart.’ She looked at Frieda with her wide child’s eyes. ‘I mean, literally coming apart. My stomach’s kind of unfolding itself.’

  ‘You’re scared,’ said Frieda.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here. Mash these roughly.’

  Frieda tipped the squash onto a plate and pressed a fork into Lola’s hand. She watched as Lola obediently sank the fork into the yellow chunks. She remembered the first time she had met Lola – how guileless she’d been, chattering away. She remembered how she had impulsively flung her arms around her and said she was so sorry for all she must have been through. Now she sat mutely at the table. She had lost a lot of weight and her skin was dull, with a cold sore at the corner of her mouth. Her hair needed washing and cutting. Her clothes were grubby. Her nails, Frieda saw, were bitten to the quick. She took the fork out of Lola’s hand and pulled the plate away. ‘That’s enough,’ she said gently. ‘Thank you.’

  She made the soup, adding yoghurt at the end, and ladled Lola a full bowl.

  ‘Eat.’

  Lola lowered a spoon into the thick liquid, lifted it to her mouth, hesitated. She took half the spoonful, then laid it back in the bowl.

  ‘Starving yourself is not going to help,’ said Frieda. Her tone was sterner. ‘And have some of the bread.’

  Lola had a few more spoonfuls, then pushed the bowl away from her. ‘I feel a bit sick,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel very well. I think I’ll go to bed.’

  ‘You can have some for lunch. I’ll make you tea.’

  ‘Thanks.’ And she left the room.

  Frieda cleared everything away. Then she went into the small yard with her whisky. It was just starting to rain, large drops falling from the dark sky. She stood for several minutes, relishing the rain on her face, the smell of autumn it brought. She went back inside, made tea, and took a mug to Lola who was lying curled in a foetus position in her bed, the covers over her head.

  ‘Any better?’ she asked, and put the mug on the side table.

  A small, indeterminate noise came from the shape.

  ‘OK. I’ll see you in the morning. But if there’s anything you need, at any time, I’m just next door.’

  Lola lay quite still and heard the door click softly behind Frieda. The light on the landing went off. She drew her knees further up, put both loosely clenched fists against her face. She closed her eyes and it was dark; opened them and it was still dark. She could hear the rain falling outside, beating against the windows.

  How close she had come to telling Frieda. She had felt as if the words were behind her lips and every time she opened them they might escape. She could imagine them now. She could imagine the gush of relief once she had spoken and how Frieda would listen, take the words into herself, relieve her of her terrible burden. But she hadn’t spoken and she mustn’t. She mustn’t.

  And as she did every night when she lay in the darkness and closed her eyes and listened to the sound of her own breathing, Lola let herself remember.

  Receiving that message from Jess and deciding to go there, without telling Frieda – because, of course, Frieda would have prevented her, and she gave a tiny moan under her covers, thinking of how everything might have been different, if only, if only …

  Opening the door of the flat she had shared with Jess, noticing there was a different smell. She had thought Jess had been smoking, though it was against their house rules to smoke inside their flat. But she hadn’t really given it a thought. She’d run up the stairs, calling Jess’s name, puzzled as to why she didn’t answer at once. She was the one who’d said it was urgent, after all.

  There’d been no one in the main room, nor any answer when she’d called through Jess’s shut door, so she’d gone into her own bedroom to fetch some of her stuff. Now that she was here, she might as well. She got as far as taking the watch that her granny had given her when she turned eighteen and putting it on her wrist when she heard a sound. Just a small sound, but it made her turn.

  ‘Jess,’ she had called. ‘Is that you?’

  And she’d opened her bedroom door and stepped into the living room.

  And her world had changed. At that moment, it had tipped, become something else entirely, and even now as she lay curled up in bed, she could feel the way that fear had gushed through her body like toxic chemicals.

  Jess was there. She was being held upright by a man. Lola could see her eyes, her eyes that stared at her in utter terror. His hand was over her mouth; her dark hair trickled over his fingers. There was no sound in the room at all. With his other hand, he held a knife against Jess’s throat, its blade against the white skin. As Lola looked, she saw one tiny bubble of blood spring up at its tip.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Lola saw that the man was looking directly into her eyes, and that he was smiling at her amiably. In some corner of her consciousness, she recognized him as the man by the canal, the man on her phone. His name swam into her mind. Dean Reeve. She was standing in the living room of her flat with Dean Reeve, and he had a knife against her friend’s throat and he was smiling at her, as though it was a mildly nice surprise that they had met like this.

  ‘Hello, Lola,’ he said at last. Jess gave a small jerk, and he didn’t bother to look down but held her more tightly. A bead of blood worked its way down her neck. ‘I’m glad you got the message.’

  Lola wanted to put a hand up to steady herself but she was standing frozen in the centre of the room. She wanted to shout, but her throat was locked with terror.

  ‘You’re going to do something for me,’ said Dean. ‘Aren’t you?’

  She made herself nod, up and down and up and down, like a puppet’s round wooden head jerking on a string.

  ‘That’s a good girl. But I’m going to make it easier for you. Your mum and dad, Dave and Carol. In that little village near Málaga. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to them, would you?’

  Now she shook her head from side to sid
e. Her hair clipped her cheek. Jess’s eyes were still staring at her.

  ‘I know you wouldn’t. And it won’t, if you help me. But if you don’t help, do you know what will happen?’

  He was still smiling. His eyes were brown and friendly.

  ‘Of course you don’t know. Not until I’ve shown you. Watch carefully.’

  And then, quite casually, barely glancing down, he had drawn the knife across Jess’s neck and, for a moment, nothing happened and then the neck opened up and dark blood came out in gouts and he had lowered her body to the floor.

  And Lola still didn’t move. She didn’t help. She didn’t run to her friend and try to save her. She had tried to tell herself that it wouldn’t have made a difference, and of course it wouldn’t. But, still, she hadn’t moved and she’d watched as Jess lay on the floor, like a fish on land, writhing.

  ‘It’s no use telling me where you and Frieda are now,’ said Dean, taking a step back so that the blood didn’t cover his shoes. ‘As soon as she discovered you’d gone she would have gone as well, if I know Frieda.’ He smiled. ‘And I do know Frieda. But when you know your next address, you’re going to call me.’

  Lola couldn’t say anything. She was watching Jess’s eyes cloud over. She was watching her die.

  ‘I’m going to tell you a number,’ continued Dean. ‘And you’re going to memorize it.’

  He had given her a number and made her repeat it. She had repeated it over and over again, until he was satisfied. It was the number she had called from the changing rooms when they were staying in that house full of cats. It was the number she had called from the toilets in St Pancras station, when Frieda was talking to the man with cold eyes. And it was the number she had called that morning in Regent’s Park. She would remember it, she thought, until the day she died; the paired digits she had said over and over while Jess stared up at her with sightless eyes.

  Now she was scared to speak in case she let the words out. Sometimes she physically put a hand across her mouth. She would feel Frieda’s dark eyes rest on her and she would have to turn away, leave the room. Because every time she nearly spoke the words, she heard his voice, soft and slow, Your mum and dad, Dave and Carol. In that little village near Málaga.