by Nicci French
As we ate we made conversation. I asked him about where he had been on holiday in recent years and where he would go on holiday now, if he could go anywhere.
‘Are you planning a surprise?’ he said.
‘I’m just curious. We still have so much to learn about each other.’
I felt myself forgetting what he said almost as he was telling it to me. I think he wanted to go somewhere in South Africa where you could walk and swim in the sea. Or was it Australia?
I found it possible to smile and nod and ask questions and move the conversation on, but I found it completely impossible to eat anything at all. I knew that I couldn’t swallow any food and if I tried I would instantly gag and vomit. Instead I made a show of cutting up the food and shifting it around on my plate and then, once or twice, stabbing a piece of duck breast with my fork and raising it towards my mouth and then seeming to think of something to say and putting my fork down again.
I took one or two very small sips of wine. I could drink, but I had to keep my head clear. Mainly I drank water, glass after glass of it. Afterwards, I cut up some strawberries and mango onto a plate and I was able, just about, to eat a couple of pieces, even though they felt toxic in my mouth, stinging and sickly sweet.
I made the coffee and we sat on the sofa together. I managed to drink some coffee. I liked that it was too hot. I liked the way it scalded my tongue. It was like deliberately giving myself electric shocks or cutting myself.
And then I led him to the bedroom.
I had given in to sex before with boyfriends, with Jason: easier to let it happen than say no. This was different. Now it was like being a prostitute, without any sense of shame, without pleasure but without pain as well. I had dressed for it. I had worn a red dress that I had bought years earlier and didn’t much care for because it was bright and sexy and drew attention to me, but it was the sort of thing that Aidan might appreciate. I wore lacy black underwear that just about matched if you didn’t look too closely. I would rather have turned the light off, but I left it on. Seeing everything that was happening made it worse for me, much worse. But I decided it might make it more exciting for him.
The sex wasn’t exactly an out-of-body experience. As I did things to him and let him do things to me, I experienced a certain level of disgust but it was controllable. It was like when you leave some fish remains in the kitchen bin for a day too long and you have to deal with them. The smell is awful but manageable as you pull the bin bag out of the bin and tie it up and carry it to the bin outside. I still managed to smile and groan and gasp and cry out at the appropriate moments.
When it was over, I was able to lie on the wet patch and not be overwhelmed by repulsion.
‘That was wonderful,’ he murmured, stroking me.
I murmured something in reply and then got out of bed. As I left the bedroom, I didn’t put my dressing gown on. Why would I put a dressing gown on in my own flat, just to go to the bathroom? Casually I pushed the bedroom door shut behind me. As I took a couple of strides across the living room, I felt his sperm trickling down the inside of my thigh.
His jacket was still over the back of the chair where he had hung it when he arrived. I put my hand into one pocket and then the other. Good.
I crept into the little hall and eased the front door open to put the envelope half under the pot but visible. I was still naked. I didn’t have time to put anything on, but I crouched down so that nobody could see me. Then I closed the front door, very, very gently, and went to the bathroom and peed and washed as much of him out of me as I could and then went back to bed.
Aidan was already asleep, almost with a smile on his face, one arm flung back.
I got back into the bed with him. I had to. If he woke up in the night, I had to be there beside him. Before turning off the light, I looked at him and I was struck by a strange idea: he looked truly contented. This awful rubbishy, sleazy charade that I had performed, so crude and overdone, was exactly what he wanted from me.
I set the alarm on my phone and made sure it was plugged in and charging, and then I rechecked that the alarm was set to the right time and switched on, and that the phone really was connected and wouldn’t run out of battery.
Of course there was no chance of me sleeping. I was sure of that. How could I possibly sleep? But I switched the light off, lay back and immediately fell asleep and had a night not of turbulent nightmares but of calmness, of floating in a tranquil sea, safe and warm and looking up at the stars.
SIXTY-TWO
The alarm woke me with a start and that strange feeling of a day that isn’t like a normal day, a day when you have an exam or the beginning of a holiday, a wedding or a funeral. As I sat up, Aidan stirred and murmured. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.
‘Hi, honey,’ he said.
I got out of bed. I wanted to get into the shower, but I couldn’t. He might have joined me and that would be disastrous. I went into the bathroom and quickly washed my face and under my arms. That would have to do. I returned to the bedroom and pulled on knickers and jeans and a tee shirt.
‘I’ll make coffee while you’re in the shower,’ I said as casually as I could manage.
‘Sounds good.’
I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. When I heard the shower, I ran to the front door. The envelope was there. I felt a tremor of alarm, but it was in a slightly different position. I closed the door once again as quietly as I could. After some desperate fiddling and rearranging Aidan’s jacket, I looked around. There was nothing else, was there?
Just one thing.
I picked up my mobile and dialled 999.
‘Which service?’
‘Police,’ I said. There was pause. Please hurry, please hurry, I silently prayed. I heard a voice. I gave my name and my address.
‘I’m in terrible danger. My partner has said he’s going to kill me. I’m going to be killed.’
‘Is your partner in the room?’
‘He’s in another room. He’ll come in any second.’
‘A car’s on its way. It’ll be there in a few minutes. Can you leave the premises?’
‘No, I can’t. It’s not safe.’
I repeated my address to make sure they’d got it right.
‘Another thing: you need to contact Inspector Kelly Jordan and Inspector Ross Durrant. Kelly Jordan and Ross Durrant, in charge of the investigation of Skye Nolan. They must come as well. It’s really important. Have you got that?’
‘Why?’
‘Just give them the message. Say I’m in danger. Matter of life and death. I’ve got to stop, I think he’s coming.’
I put my phone down on the table. I could hear Aidan, up in the bedroom. He was dressing and while he was dressing, he was humming something. The kettle had boiled, but I ignored that. I opened one of the drawers and took out a pair of kitchen scissors. I pulled the collar of my tee shirt away from my neck and cut through the seam. I put the scissors back in the drawer. I grabbed the cut pieces of the shirt with both hands and tore the material, just an inch or so. It wasn’t really necessary, but it might help in the first couple of minutes.
Aidan came into the room, all fresh and scrubbed from the shower. He looked like he was glowing. He moved into the space like he owned it.
‘Is the coffee ready?’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was in another world.’ I wasn’t going to make any coffee. ‘What time do you need to be at work? I can make you breakfast. Would you like some toast or I could fry some eggs and bacon. I think I might have some pastries in the freezer.’ I had no bacon, I had no pastries. I could have said anything: kippers, eggs benedict, kedgeree, devilled kidneys. We weren’t going to have any kind of breakfast.
He looked puzzled. ‘What happened to your shirt?’
I looked down at it as if I had only just noticed it. ‘It got torn.’
‘I can see that. But you only just put it on. What happened?’
‘It got caught on something.’
For a moment, I was at a loss. Why weren’t they here yet? Hadn’t they heard my message properly? Could they have taken it down wrong? I’d said it twice. Was this all about to go in utterly the wrong direction?
‘No, everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘So what do you want for breakfast?’
‘I don’t know. Just a piece of toast. And coffee.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll make them.’
I wondered whether I was going to have to go through the performance of finding bread and grinding coffee when I heard a car outside and heard voices and footsteps and then a ring on the door.
‘What’s going on?’ Aidan asked.
I didn’t answer. I opened the flat door and then the front door to two uniformed police officers. I stepped aside and gestured them inside. They were tall men and they bowed their heads as they entered, as if the ceiling was too low for them. In fact, the two of them in their visibility vests with all the straps and buckles and paraphernalia did make the room look small. They stared around quizzically. Aidan stared at them, his face almost comical with surprise.
‘There was a call,’ one of them said.
‘It was from me,’ I said. ‘My name is Tess Moreau.’ I gestured at Aidan. ‘This is Aidan Otley. He said he was going to kill me. He said he was going to kill me, the way he killed Skye Nolan and Peggy Nolan.’
Aidan gave an uneasy laugh.
‘Is this a joke? A crazy sick joke?’
‘No,’ I said. I felt tall and strong.
Aidan’s eyes flickered between me and the policemen; his mouth was pulled into a kind of quivering smirk.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Ridiculous and insane. She’s insane. I didn’t say anything like that. I haven’t killed anyone. This is all rubbish…’ He pointed at me. ‘That shirt. She did that to herself.’
The two officers looked at me.
‘What’s all this about?’ said one of them.
‘Two detectives are on their way,’ I said. ‘They should be here soon.’
‘What do you mean? Why are they on their way?’
‘Just wait.’
The two officers didn’t seem happy about the idea of just waiting. They started to ask Aidan some questions, but he was dismissive.
‘This is all rubbish,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you’re even here. I’m going to be late for work.’
‘Apparently this young woman reported an emergency.’
‘When?’
‘About ten minutes ago.’
Aidan opened his mouth and closed it. He looked behind him towards the bedroom and the shower and then back at me. He stared at me directly and gave a very slight shake of the head. Even with the two police officers there it made me shiver.
‘What have you done, Tess?’ His voice was gentle.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t even look at him.
It was a few minutes before I heard a car pull up outside. I hoped it would be Kelly Jordan or at least the two detectives together, but it was Ross Durrant on his own and he didn’t look at all happy to be here. He had a murmured conversation with the officers during which he occasionally looked over at Aidan or at me. When he was finished he walked across to me, leaned in close and spoke in a whisper: ‘I swear that if you are playing games with us – again – I will arrest you and charge you with perverting the course of justice. Do you understand?’
‘Is Kelly Jordan on her way?’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘When she gets here, I’ll explain everything.’
This seemed to make Durrant even angrier. He asked Aidan to take a seat, but Aidan said he was happy to stand.
‘Why are you here?’ Durrant asked him.
‘I spent the night.’
‘Were you and Ms Moreau intimate.’
‘Oh yes.’ And Aidan turned his head and smiled at me.
‘Was the encounter consensual?’
‘It was.’
Ross Durrant looked round at me.
‘None of that matters,’ I said.
‘Is he lying?’
‘Wait until Kelly Jordan gets here. Then I’ll explain everything.’
His face had gone red with anger.
‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Five bloody minutes. Then we’ll talk, whoever’s here.’
Kelly Jordan arrived in three minutes. She didn’t look much more pleased than her colleagues to be here. She made no attempt at a greeting and she didn’t smile.
‘What’s this about?’ she said.
This was it. This was the moment I had been waiting for. Now that it had come, I felt tranquil, even though everything depended on what I was about to say.
‘Aidan Otley threatened to kill me,’ I said. ‘He said he’d kill me just as he’d killed Skye Nolan and Peggy Nolan.’
‘This is all rubbish,’ Aidan said in an almost amiable tone. ‘I never knew these women. I’d never even heard of them.’
‘Aidan said that he had trophies. He had a trophy from Skye Nolan’s flat and he had a trophy from Peggy Nolan’s house and he had kept them in his flat and he would show them to me as a sign of what he would do to me.’
There was a silence. Aidan looked at me in shock and then his expression changed to a smile. He actually laughed.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I get it. Two objects?’
‘That’s right.’
‘One belonging to Skye Nolan and one belonging to Peggy Nolan?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at the two detectives. ‘She thinks she’s framed me. She’s put two objects in my flat and then she’s phoned the police with this completely made-up accusation.’
‘What do you mean framed?’ I said. ‘When would I have done that?’
‘You’ve been there. Or you could have got in when I wasn’t there.’
‘I don’t have a key to your flat. I’ve never had a key to your flat.’
‘You could have managed it somehow.’
He looked back at the two detectives.
‘Do you want me to tell you about those two trophies?’ Aidan closed his eyes, clearly trying to remember. Then he opened them. ‘Yes, that’s it. The mother gave Tess two presents and she showed them to me. One was a bracelet that had belonged to her daughter. It was copper with swirly engraving on and some kind of light blue stones on it. The other was a square little clay thing, enamelled on top, yellow and green. It’s the sort of thing you’d put a hot drink on, what’s it called?’
‘A coaster,’ I said, in a low voice.
‘That’s right, a coaster. It had the daughter’s initials carved into the clay at the back. Tess kept them here, but somehow I don’t think they’re here anymore. I think they’re probably in a shoebox under my bed or in a shelf in my cupboard, somewhere a bit hidden but easy to find. Do you want the police to have a quick search or is it a waste of time?’
I started to speak, but Aidan interrupted me.
‘I’ll save you the trouble. She keeps them in her knicker drawer.’
I looked at him sharply. ‘Have you been going through my things?’
He only shrugged. ‘I needed to check on you,’ he said. ‘And it’s lucky I did. And when you don’t find them, we can go and retrieve them from the place in my flat where Tess put them.’
‘Any objection?’ Ross Durrant said. ‘Not that it matters what you think.’
‘If it doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘you’d better go ahead.’
One of the officers – the red-haired, fresh-faced one – left the room and Aidan looked at me.
‘When this is over,’ he said, ‘it feels like we’ve got a thing or two to talk about.’
Ross Durrant looked at me coldly.
‘Anything you’d like to correct?’ he said.
‘Do you mean these, sir?’ said a voice behind me.
I turned. The young officer was stand
ing with outstretched hands. In one was the bangle with lapis lazuli and in the other was the coaster. Aidan looked like he had been punched in the stomach.
‘You bitch,’ he said. I waited for the words Poppy must have heard him say to Skye, and sure enough, he said them. ‘You fucking cunt.’
SIXTY-THREE
They left me with the red-haired officer. As Aidan passed me, he leaned towards me.
‘You’ll never get rid of me,’ he said in a whisper.
I asked the officer what his name was.
Thorpe, he told me. Ronnie Thorpe.
‘OK, Ronnie, would you like some coffee?’
His eyes darted around as if he was expecting Durrant to emerge from a cupboard.
‘If you’re making some.’ He couldn’t meet my eye.
‘I am.’
I made us both strong coffee, taking my time over it. Then Ronnie sat stiff-backed and perspiring at the table, while I rang my school to say I wouldn’t be in until the following morning. I’d been a victim of a crime, I said, and heard the intake of breath at the other end.
I fed Sunny. I washed up the dishes from last night, sluicing the congealing duck fat off the plates, sloshing the glasses under hot water for ages and then rinsing them several times. I scrubbed at the kitchen surfaces. Every trace of him. Anywhere he might have touched.
‘How long will this take?’ I asked Ronnie.
Ronnie didn’t know. He only knew I was to stay in the house; his job was to keep an eye on me.
I went and had a shower. The water was tepid, but I stood under it until it turned cold, washing every inch of my body, scrubbing at it, and even that wasn’t enough. I cleaned my teeth, gargled with mouthwash. I pushed the torn tee shirt and the knickers I’d been wearing into the wastepaper basket. I did the same with the red dress and the lacy underwear from last night. I put on drawstring linen trousers and a crisp white cotton shirt, soft on my skin. I stripped the sheet off the bed, pulled the duvet cover off, the pillowcases, and threw them onto the landing, to take to the bin outside later. I had a sudden impulse to cut off all my hair, but thought that Poppy might be alarmed to see me shorn so I just coiled it into a tight knot at the back of my neck.
