by Alex Marwood
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but what do you expect us to do?’
‘Get him out. Help him – something.’
‘I think he’s dead already,’ says Hossein, succinctly.
‘We should get him out, though.’ Collette looks at him, pleadingly. When I say we, she thinks, I mean you men. I’m all for the gender division of labour, in this instance. ‘We should. In case.’
‘What’s he doing here?’ asks Hossein. ‘It’s two in the morning.’
‘Drowning,’ says Vesta. ‘Can we talk about this later?’
‘Yes,’ says Hossein. Takes a deep breath and offers her a hand to get up off the floor. She slips, twice, on her bare soles as she rises; props herself against the wall. In her nightie she looks small and frail, that strange warrior queen quality to her features stripped away, and every second of her almost-seventy years is etched across her face. Hossein puts his fists on his hips and stares at the body. It really is huge. It looks like a narwhal has climbed out through the drains and fainted.
‘What the fook’s going on here?’ says a voice. Cher, black eye and split lip, stands in the kitchen in leggings and a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt, her forehead creased in confusion, a hand on the door-jamb propping her up as she holds her injured ankle off the floor.
Vesta starts to weep. ‘I thought it was a burglar. How was I to know it was him? What was he doing here at this time of night?’
Collette overcomes her horror of the dirt and goes over to put an arm round Vesta’s shoulders. Under her nightie, she’s all skin and bone, and shivering as though the temperature has suddenly dropped. Poor Vesta, she thinks, I can’t imagine how this must feel.
‘I don’t know,’ says Hossein, and nudges the tool bag with his foot. The bottom cover of the water heater has been removed, and propped in the bath. ‘But I don’t think it was a social call.’
‘He’s all over shite,’ says Cher.
‘Thanks for pointing that out,’ says Hossein.
‘How did he end up like that?’
‘I hit him with a steam iron,’ says Vesta. ‘I thought he was a burglar.’
‘C’mon,’ says Thomas. ‘We have to get him out.’
Hossein pulls a face that says that he would rather be back in Evin prison than here, and steps forward to give him a hand. Gingerly, they each hook a hand into an armpit, and heave. The liquid in the toilet pan slurps, sucks like quicksand, then lets go with a sulphurous belch. The Landlord flips free, lurches out of their grip and lands face up in the doorway.
His eyes and mouth are open and his skin is blue.
‘Oh, God,’ says Cher. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’
They gather round the corpse in silence. He lies propped against the wall tiles, and drips. Sewage runs slowly from his mouth and nose; green-brown drool, like a zombie’s. He’s lost his spectacles. They must be down there in the toilet bowl, but no one volunteers to retrieve them. The fact that his eyes have been open since they pulled him out makes it clear that he will have no further use for them.
‘I guess there’s no point in trying CPR, then,’ says Collette.
‘No,’ says Thomas. ‘I’d say he’s been dead for a while. You must’ve been out for a bit, Vesta. Do you feel okay?’
‘How do you think I feel?’
Cher stands by the cooker and absently fingers the lump on her own skull. ‘What do we do now?’ she asks.
Chapter Thirty
The silence seems to last for hours. Five people, gathered round a corpse, and suddenly no one wants to meet anyone’s eye. Even Vesta hangs her head. She feels sick: from the bang on the head, from the shock, from the wallowing in stuff that should be safely underground, from the sudden lurching change to her world. She rubs at her arms and sees that all it does is spread the slime. Grabs the kitchen paper and wipes hopelessly at her face. It will never come off. It’s her Lady Macbeth stain.
She looks under her lashes at the others. Collette has moved away, and is gnawing at a hangnail by the cooker. Probably shouldn’t be doing that, thinks Vesta, but doesn’t point it out. Hossein looks pensive in his red T-shirt, his old-fashioned striped pyjama bottoms with the cord tie. Cher huddles by the sink, looking terrified. Thomas stands in the doorway looking… what? Goodness me, she thinks, amazed. He looks intrigued. As if this is some sort of psychology experiment and he’s running it.
They’re going to put me in prison. I’ve killed someone and I’m going to jail. So this is how it ends: he always wanted me out of here and now he’s got his wish. He’ll be sick as a dog that he never got to benefit.
She looks round her devastated home. Mum would turn in her grave. She was always so houseproud, and I’ve tried my best to keep it the way she’d like it, always felt bad that I lacked her application and her eye, but now look. It’s all completely spoiled. She would cry and cry, if she knew. Every day, she washed these floors. She couldn’t abide dirt, and God knows the world was dirtier when I was a child than it is now.
Thomas speaks. ‘Do you want to call an ambulance?’
‘Don’t think that’ll do much good,’ says Cher. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, but there are ways that things are done,’ he says, ‘and that would be the normal way.’
Hossein leaves the room and comes back a few seconds later with Vesta’s old quilted dressing gown. He holds it out for her and she shrugs herself into it distractedly, stands by the Landlord’s swollen feet and hugs the collar round her neck. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says again. ‘I don’t. I didn’t mean to kill him.’
‘I’m sure they’ll understand that,’ says Collette. ‘It was an accident. How were you to know he’d let himself into your flat in the middle of the night?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Thomas. ‘With that great big dent in his head.’
Vesta bursts into tears. She’s been numb with shock for the past few minutes, but now emotion floods her, chills her. ‘I can’t! I can’t go to prison. I didn’t know… he was creeping around in my bathroom. He could have been anybody.’
‘You should be okay,’ says Thomas. ‘People do get sent to prison, but it’s usually for guns…’
‘You’re not helping much, Thomas,’ says Hossein.
‘I’m just telling the truth,’ he says. ‘We need to be realistic, here.’
She sees herself in a grey uniform, carrying a divided tray of textureless taupe foodstuffs through a room full of glaring women. Feels cinderblock walls close in, suffocates in the confines of a bunk bed. ‘I can’t. I just can’t go to prison. I’d die in prison. I’ve never been in trouble in my life.’
Collette speaks up. ‘And they’ll want to question all of us.’
The room falls quiet again.
Oh, God, thinks Vesta. What have I done?
‘Fuck,’ says Cher. ‘Then I’m screwed.’
Thomas’s curious expression deepens. ‘Why would that be, Cher?’
‘’Cause I’m only fifteen, you stupid dick,’ she snaps.
‘Language, Cher,’ says Vesta automatically, without the help of her brain.
Collette’s mouth falls open.
‘You’re fifteen?’
‘Are you thick, as well?’
Collette’s head is full of bees. She can barely hear her neighbours over the sound of buzzing. I have to get out of here, she thinks. There’s going to be police swarming all over the place, and once there’s been police, sure as night follows day there’s going to be press, especially with the way he’s died. It’s the sort of story the papers eat for breakfast. If the police don’t put two and two together, it’s only a matter of days before Tony does. Just one careless moment, a photographer waiting outside when I come out to put the bins out, and I’m toast. But what do I do? What do I do about Janine? I can’t leave London now. I can’t leave her. She’s dying. I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life…
‘But…’ she says, the protest only very loosely applied to Cher. The girl takes it as a reaction to her
revelation, and glares at her. Of course she’s fifteen, thinks Collette. An attitude like that, she couldn’t be anything else. Why on earth didn’t I see it?
‘Ever been in a care home?’ asks Cher.
‘I… well, yes, as it goes.’
‘Well, then,’ Cher begins, then looks annoyed, as though Collette has stolen her thunder. She hobbles away and fishes a pack of Marlboro from the back of her leggings. Stands in the garden door and lights one with the little Bic tucked beneath the cellophane. ‘And the first person who tells me I’m too young to smoke gets this in their eye,’ she says. Her hand is trembling.
‘Roy Preece,’ says Thomas, gazing down at the Landlord. ‘What d’you suppose he was doing?’
‘He wanted me out,’ says Vesta. ‘He’s been trying to get me out for years.’
‘Well, it looks to me as if he was doing something with your boiler,’ says Thomas.
‘At two in the morning?’
‘I didn’t say he was doing anything good, did I?’
‘He thought I was wasn’t here,’ says Vesta. ‘That’s it! I told him I was going to stay in a hotel because of the drains. This afternoon. He must’ve thought I wasn’t going to be here. Like with the burglary. And that time when my garden got vandalised. He knew I was away, every time.’
Hossein frowns and walks away into the bathroom. They stand in silence and listen to him moving things around, the clang of metal on enamel as he shifts the boiler cover.
‘I can’t be here,’ says Collette. ‘If there’s going to be police. I’ll have to go, tonight. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Vesta, but I have to get out of here. I’d help, you know I’d help, but…’
‘I know. I understand.’ Despite her dirty face, the old dressing gown and the tangled hair, Vesta, with her noble bone structure, looks suddenly dignified in the wreck of her kitchen. She stands up straight and pulls her collar tight, stares off into the distance. Resigned, thinks Collette. She looks resigned. Like she’s given up already. ‘It’s my mess to sort out. It’s wrong to drag any of you into it.’
‘We’re in it already,’ says Thomas. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she says, and stops to bite back a surge of tears. ‘Yes, I know that, and I’m sorry.’
Thomas sighs, and comes over to stand by her. He rubs her arm, awkwardly. He doesn’t look as if the gesture comes naturally to him. He looks, thinks Collette, like someone who’s acting out sympathy based on things they’ve seen on telly. I hope he doesn’t hug her. She might scream. ‘Poor Vesta,’ he says. ‘This wasn’t your fault, you know.’
‘I thought he was a burglar,’ Vesta says, again. The phrase is coming automatically now, as though she’s rehearsing her statement.
‘Does he have any family?’ Thomas asks, gently.
She shakes her head. ‘No. Three sisters, there were, and they managed to produce one child between them. I suppose it explains a lot, really, if you think about it. Why he was like he was. Terribly spoilt, when he was a child. Always stuffing his face with chocolate. God knows how much pocket money he got; he always had a comic or a gadget or some trendy toy when you saw him. But his mum wouldn’t let him play with the other kids. She thought they were dirty so I don’t think he had any friends. He’d come here after school and hit a ball round the garden with his cricket bat, all by himself. Always smashing my herbaceous border. His aunties lived here, back then, in the upstairs. Never saw them have a visitor, either, apart from Roy and his mother. It’s not normal, is it?’
No one seems to know what to say to this. They murmur in agreement. As an epitaph, it’s not much, thinks Collette. Roy Preece: he ate a lot of chocolate and read the Beano. I wonder what mine will be? I wonder if I’ll get an epitaph at all? You tend to only get an epitaph if there’s a body to bury.
Hossein appears in the doorway. ‘Vesta? Do you recognise this?’
He holds out a man’s T-shirt, white-gone-grey and marked with grease. Vesta looks at it as though it’s a hundred yards away, then shakes her head.
‘Only it was in the…’ He loses his vocabulary, blinks and pulls a face as he tries to find the word, ‘… hole. You know. In the wall. Sort of tubey thing that lets the gas out.’
‘The vent?’ asks Collette.
‘Yes. The vent.’
‘Of the boiler?’ asks Thomas.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want to do that,’ Thomas says to Vesta, who’s slow on the uptake. ‘Might as well lock yourself in the garage with the car engine running.’
‘I want a drink,’ says Vesta, and bursts into tears.
Chapter Thirty-One
As they come down the front steps, Cher lets out a hiss of pain, and Collette, remembering, grabs her by the arm. ‘How are you feeling?’ she whispers.
Cher hops her way down the steps with a grimace and, when she reaches the bottom, whispers, ‘Like I’ve been beaten up, thankth for athking.’
She’s deliberately lisping to stop the sound from carrying on the still night air. It’s an old trick that passed from kid to kid in the care homes, along with skills like lock picking and uses for aerosols. But they both glance nervously to their left, up at the front windows, as though they expect to see that the man who didn’t come to his door when they were shouting outside Vesta’s will be looking out from between his curtains. But Gerard Bright’s sashes are down and the glass is dark. He must be out. There’s been no music from his flat all day, now Collette thinks of it. Maybe he’s away. Perhaps the universe is cutting them a break after all.
Beulah Grove is dark. Despite the open windows that show on all the upper floors in the street it seems that Vesta’s cries for help have gone unheeded beyond number twenty-three. But everyone knows that, in London, only the threat of theft will fling a householder from their sleep.
‘I can do thith by mythelf,’ whispers Collette. Cher glances at her sideways.
‘No,’ she replies. ‘It’s easier with two of us, and I know where they are. You don’t want to be blundering around there in the dark.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
Cher’s ankle is really hurting, now. Lying in her bed, she’d begun to think that it was improving, but now she’s limping along the street it feels loose and hot and unsteady, as though something’s ripped inside. I won’t be running for a while, that’s for sure, she thinks, and feels a little moment of relief at the thought that her rinsing days are over. It’s a stupid way to make a living, actually more dangerous than straight honest whoring. As she’s found to her cost, an angry, ripped-off client is the worst client of all. Each step she takes jars through her body from foot to neck. Can’t afford to make a fuss, she thinks, and grits her aching teeth. Got to just get on with it.
‘Are you feeling any better?’ asks Collette. ‘Are the antibiotics doing their stuff?’
‘Hope so,’ she replies grimly, blanks out the worst-case scenarios. Even Cher knows that antibiotics don’t work against viruses. There’s an ache low in her tummy, but she doesn’t mind that; assumes it’s evidence that the Levonelle morning-after pill Collette got from the chemist’s yesterday morning is working. ‘Headache’s gone, anyway. So that’s good.’
‘Good,’ says Collette.
‘Sorry I didn’t tell you,’ says Cher. ‘You just… you don’t know who you can trust, around here.’
‘I know. It’s okay. I’ve not exactly been shouting my own business from the rooftops, have I?’
They reach the scruffy front garden of number twenty-seven. It’s full of rubble, the stump of the tree that used to lever up the slabs of the pavement in front raw where it’s been cut off and painted over with poison. The windows gape, glassless, at them, still framed by scaffolding. The new owners seem to have knocked out every wall on the upper ground floor. Cher doesn’t know much about how these things are done, but it seems to her that the whole place must be ready to fall down.
She leads the way into the side-return, stepping carefully round discarded cement bucke
ts and piles of old bricks. At the far end, bright blue even in the darkness, a folded length of damp-proof membrane lies propped against the closed door. Cher noticed it a few days ago as she was passing, remembered it because she was surprised some pikey hadn’t been past and lifted it. Maybe it’s just leftovers and the builders don’t care, but it’s perfect for their purpose.
She points. Collette nods and goes to scoop it up. ‘Gosh, it’s heavy,’ she whispers.
‘Gonna need to be,’ replies Cher. ‘The Landlord’s no Tinkerbell.’
She grabs one end as they emerge from the alley, and they start to make their way back. ‘I still don’t understand about the T-shirt,’ says Cher.
‘Ugh,’ says Collette. ‘Carbon monoxide.’
‘You what?’
‘Gas.’
‘From the boiler? She’d’ve smelled that, wouldn’t she?’
‘No. It’s a by-product of burning stuff. That’s why those sorts of things are always on an outside wall. So they can have a vent to let it out. You know there’s always a British family that dies in a holiday rental in Cyprus every year? It’s that. You can’t smell it, you can’t see it. And if you don’t let it out, it builds up and kills you. But you’re asleep by that point, because it knocks you out. You never know anything about it. You know. Like those people with the cars and the hosepipes.’
‘So he was…?’
‘Yes. Looks like it. Hard to think he was doing anything else. Another old lady dead in her bath.’
‘Christ,’ says Cher. They pause at the edge of the pavement and look up and down the road. They only have to cover a short distance, but being spotted now could be their undoing. The street remains quiet. Not a light in a window, not a curtain moving. Three o’clock, the dead zone. They set off for number twenty-three. ‘Fucker,’ she says. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’
Collette doesn’t speak. She’s not so sure, but then, she doesn’t have as much history with the Landlord as the rest of them. Cher’s injuries are still fresh, on her body and in her mind, and it’s clear that she sees Vesta as some sort of granny figure. She’s entitled to feel some rage.
