The Beautiful Dead

by Belinda Bauer

  Frustrating. Not the definitive answer Eve had wanted.

  ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’ asked Eve.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about enemies?’

  Zoey shook her head.

  ‘Maybe she was having a row with someone at school?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘She would have told us.’

  ‘Was she having any … personal problems?’ asked Eve hopefully. ‘Anything that might have been, y’know, getting her down …?’

  ‘Yes, maybe she killed herself,’ said Mrs Kihn, picking up that ball and running with it. ‘Maddie could be a bit serious.’

  Eve mentally crossed her fingers. She willed Zoey to agree – to nod and say, Yeah, she was crying in the toilets last week but she wouldn’t tell us why. Or I think she broke up with her boyfriend. She said life wasn’t worth living …

  But Zoey looked at her mother, wide-eyed, and insisted, ‘No way would Maddie kill herself. She’d just bought this a-mazing skirt from H&M.’

  22

  EVE GOT HOME to find that her father had had a bad day.

  Quite apart from pulling the lights off the Christmas tree, Mrs Solomon told Eve that he’d refused to take his pills, had had what she called ‘an accident in his trousers’, had broken the kitchen radio, and had then taken all the books off the upstairs shelf and put them in the bath.

  After she left, Eve went upstairs and found the books were still there, floating in tepid water.

  She didn’t wonder why Mrs Solomon hadn’t stopped Duncan. She already knew why. Because when her father was obsessed with doing something that was relatively harmless, it was easier just to let him get on with it than to intervene. Leaving him alone meant he was occupied – sometimes for days – while intervention could lead to all sorts of unpleasantness. In the same spirit they had both looked the other way while Duncan Singer had carefully peeled every piece of wallpaper off the spare-room wall, using only his fingernails. That particular endeavour had brought them weeks of silent relief. Eve had even read a book! It had been a fluffy bit of rubbish about some woman who couldn’t stop shopping, but it was a book! And she’d read it!

  It had been such a respite that after he’d finished the spare room, she’d encouraged him to strip the paper off his own bedroom walls – even making a start behind the door for him – but he’d become furious at her wanton vandalism and bundled her out on to the landing.

  There was no rhyme or reason to his madness.

  Eve sighed and pulled the bath plug, and started to shake water off the books and lay them out on towels to dry. They were books that had been on the shelves all her life. She knew their spines like old friends. She’d opened each of them at some point, even if only to see what was inside and then close them again. She saved the hardbacks first – her father’s old dictionary and her mother’s biographies, scientists and artists and explorers, their pages swollen now and their covers warped. She put them on the towels and dabbed at them pointlessly, then went back in for the soggy holiday pleasures of Wilbur Smith and Stephen King.

  Finally, swirling gently around the plughole, she retrieved her own sodden copy of Winnie-the-Pooh. Her mother had given it to her when she was five. They’d read it together endlessly.

  No, not endlessly.

  The end had come shortly before Eve’s seventh birthday.

  Now she sat on the damp bathmat and leaned against the side of the tub. She peeled the book open and felt herself sucked back through the years.

  Those little pen-and-ink drawings. She remembered touching them, could almost see her own dimpled finger pointing at the pages while she could feel her mother over her, under her, all around her, laughing and reading so close to her ear that it tickled.

  Pooh eating hunny. Tigger bouncing. Eeyore’s gloomy birthday balloon.

  Eve ached for the innocence.

  She shut the swollen book, then put it on the radiator in the box room to dry out.

  All the others she bundled up in her arms, carried dangerously down the stairs and tumbled into the bin. She told herself she would replace them all, but she knew that would never happen.

  She switched on the kitchen radio. As advertised, it wasn’t working; there was a sticker on the back that had been peeled off one of the bananas in the fruit bowl.

  Fyffes.

  Eve sighed and dropped the radio into the bin after the books.

  She called Joe. She didn’t leave a message. What the hell.

  She needed a drink.

  Eve snorted quietly at herself. She’d heard people say that in movies for years, but had never imagined a moment might come when she’d feel the same way.

  Needing a drink.

  Not fancying a glass of rosé with supper, or getting tipsy fast on party Prosecco, but really feeling the need of something to warm her and steady her and take the edge off reality, all at the same time.

  She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she was sure there was something in the kitchen cupboard.

  There was. Half a bottle of Advocaat from a few Christmases back, when Stuart had come to visit and the girl he’d been with had wanted snowballs. Marcie. She had brought all the makings with her, which had rung alarm bells with Eve, and she’d been relieved when Stu had broken up with her a few months later.

  Eve had never drunk Advocaat and didn’t like the look of it, but she poured herself a tumblerful and downed half of it in one go.

  Jesus Christ! It was bloody awful. Thick and sweet and burning, like whisky custard.

  She coughed a bit and drank the other half.

  Then she refilled the glass and went into the front room and picked up her phone from her bag, and Munchkin from his cage.

  She took all three into the hallway, closed all the doors and put the hamster on the floor for a safe bit of exercise, while she peered at her phone through wincing sips of Advocaat.

  She called Stuart. There was no answer.

  She sat on the bottom stair in darkness and watched Munchkin waddle purposefully around the skirting.

  She started to feel a bit woozy, probably from the trauma.

  She hit Redial.

  Once again it rang all the way to voicemail.

  ‘Stu,’ she said. ‘It’s me, Eve.’

  She stopped talking and frowned.

  Meeve.

  That’s what ‘me, Eve’ sounded like to her ears. She’d never noticed before, and dithered about whether to hang up or not.

  She took another swig of Advocaat, but it was all gone. Then she realized that she was still connected to the voicemail system but hadn’t said anything for what felt like some time. So she hung up, then redialled and started again.

  ‘Stu, it’s me. Eve. I just wanted to call you to say hi. I was wondering how you were and how work’s going and all that stuff. And also …’

  Dad punched me in the face.

  Eve covered her mouth. She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say it out loud. It was too awful.

  And what could he do? It would only make him worried and helpless. Or not bother him at all, which would be even worse.

  She fought to keep from crying.

  Munchkin stopped at her toe and sat up on his haunches and looked at her, whiskers quivering in concern.

  Eve wiped her nose on her sleeve and glanced up – and her stomach tensed into a solid knot.

  There was somebody at the front door.

  No light was on in the hallway and so the silhouette was clearly thrown against the etched glass by the street light outside. Somebody was just standing there, not knocking. Just … standing.

  ‘Stuart,’ she hissed, ‘there’s somebody at the door—’

  She put the phone down on the stair and rose warily, looking at the door, but not moving towards it.

  Was it locked?

  What if it wasn’t? Sometimes it wasn’t! What if the handle turned and the door opened and a killer walked into her house?

  Don’t be silly, she told herself. He doesn’t know where you l
ive. But there was no logic in her guts.

  Eve looked around the hallway for something with which to defend herself. There was the empty vase on the hall table.

  And there was a tennis racquet.

  She hadn’t played since September, but she also hadn’t put the racquet away in the cupboard under the stairs because she was lazy with house stuff. At first it had bugged her every time she had looked at it. Then she’d made an effort not to look at it. And now every time she caught a glimpse of it, she thought that it would only be a few months before she and Charlotte started playing again at the courts in the park, so she might as well just leave it there. It was ridiculous really, when all she needed to do was put it in a cupboard, but there it was.

  All this passed through her fuzzy brain in a split second as she darted over and picked it up and unzipped the head cover.

  Once the tennis racquet was in her hand, Eve felt invincible. She was a strong player with good hand–eye coordination, and the alcohol said she could probably kill a man with a topspin forehand.

  In fact, she thought, why the hell was she cowering in her hallway waiting for someone to burst into her home and terrify her?

  Fuck that!

  In a stride she was at the door. With her Advocaat heart pumping brave blood through her body, she twisted the Yale knob slowly, raised her racquet and took a deep breath.

  Then yanked the door open.

  There was nobody there.

  But Eve didn’t drop her guard. She stepped quickly off the porch and on to the snowy path, swinging the racquet in swift, lethal arcs, first to one side and then the other, like a Wimbledon ninja.

  Still nobody.

  Had she been mistaken? Had the shadow been that of a person? Or a tree?

  Eve turned and nearly skidded over. Then she righted herself and frowned at the porch, trying to work out what she’d seen.

  The gate closed quietly behind her.

  She spun into a lethal backhand, but only got halfway before somebody grabbed her arm, interrupting the stroke and making her shriek with sudden fear as she struggled to escape a powerful embrace.

  ‘Eve! Eve, it’s me!’

  She stopped and twisted round furiously. ‘Jesus, Joe! You scared the shit out of me!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He let go of her arm and she set about him with the racquet.

  ‘Ow! Don’t!’ He put up his hands to deflect the blows, then grabbed her again in a bear hug. ‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘Stop!’

  She stopped and glared at him, and he released her.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ he yelled.

  ‘I saw a shadow at the door. I thought it was him.’

  ‘Who? Rafa Nadal?’ Joe touched his lip. ‘I think I’m bleeding.’

  ‘The killer!’ she snapped.

  ‘What killer?’

  ‘Kevin Barr’s killer. He called me, Joe! He called me and told me—’

  Eve stopped.

  Then – finally – she burst into tears.

  Joe closed the door and double-locked it behind them.

  Then he stood and held Eve for five solid minutes while she cried into his jumper.

  When her sobbing subsided he said, ‘Can we turn on a light? It’s like a horror film in here.’

  ‘Careful,’ she hiccuped. ‘Munchkin’s loose.’

  He looked around nervously. ‘Who’s Munchkin?’

  ‘My hamster.’

  ‘OK,’ said Joe, relieved. He turned on the light and they trod carefully into the kitchen, and Eve sat at the table while Joe made tea in a weird action replay of Mr Elias.

  Except that this time it was Joe bleeding down his chin.

  Eve’s Advocaat-and-adrenaline cocktail was wearing off fast. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought you were the killer.’

  ‘You thought there was a killer at the door, so you opened it?’

  ‘It sounds stupid when you say it like that.’

  He laughed, then winced.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Eve.

  ‘I was worried about you. I left my phone at work the other day, but when I picked it up tonight there were all these missed calls. I was worried about you …’

  He glanced at her face and she remembered how swollen and bruised it was.

  ‘Oh,’ she said with a dismissive wave. ‘Right now my face is the least of my worries.’

  He didn’t look convinced that that was true, but left it.

  ‘Tell me about this phone call.’

  She did. And when she had told him everything that had happened since they last saw one another, he was quiet for a very long time.

  Eve felt a sudden terrible dread that Joe didn’t believe her. She knew it sounded outlandish and unlikely, but Joe had always trusted her before.

  Maybe she’d lost the right to his trust when she’d given the Kevin Barr clip to Ross.

  ‘Listen,’ said Joe. ‘If the man who called you really did push that poor girl under a train, it’s because he’s a total fucking nut-job, and nothing to do with you!’

  Relief flooded through Eve like a sugar high.

  ‘But I bet he’s just screwing with you,’ Joe went on. ‘I bet he saw on TV what happened and has decided to claim responsibility to make himself look more interesting. He probably loves manipulating or scaring you, just because you’re a strong, successful woman. Or some such feminist claptrap.’ He winked at her. ‘I’m only half kidding though. All I’m saying is: don’t feel guilty. Yet.’

  ‘Until we know I’m to blame?’ she asked wryly.

  ‘Exactly,’ grinned Joe. ‘Then you’re on your own.’

  ‘Cheers,’ she smiled.

  ‘Did you call the police?’ said Joe.

  ‘No. I mean, I have no proof that the man who called me is the killer of Layla Martin or Kevin Barr or Maddie Matthews – or even the person who sent the SD card.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Perhaps we should see how much we can check out ourselves. Then we can go to them with firm evidence.’

  ‘Or none,’ said Eve. ‘Preferably.’

  Joe nodded, and drummed his fingers on the table. ‘What do we know about him?’

  ‘He’s a nut.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s a nut who’s revealed stuff about himself. Just by calling you. Did he say anything weird that might give us a clue?’

  Eve shrugged. ‘A murderer called me. All of it was weird.’ But she reran the conversation in her head, replaying and reconstructing and reinterpreting the words, the speech patterns, the accent. Sorting the wheat of clue from the chaff of crazy.

  We’re in it together now, Eve …

  She shuddered. Remembering was still too close to reliving.

  Finally she said, ‘One thing was odd. No odder than the rest of the stuff, really, but the girl who fell under the train … He called it his show.’

  ‘His show?’ said Joe. ‘See? That’s pretty weird.’

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Eve. ‘He said, Did you like my show? – or something like that.’

  ‘Sick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she went on. ‘And he didn’t say he watched my report. He said he’d watched my review. As if he was an artist and it was—

  ‘OH!’ She gasped.

  Joe leaned forward. ‘What?’

  Eve looked at him, wide-eyed with realization.

  ‘An exhibition!’

  23

  12 December

  THE CLEAN-UP CREW at Piccadilly had done an amazing job.

  Eve couldn’t help examining the platform and tiled walls for traces of blood, but they simply weren’t there any more.

  It was late morning and so the crush of people on the platform was far less than it was during rush hour. Even so, Eve was wary of every wave of humanity, and kept close to the wall and away from the yellow line as they walked to the far end of the platform.

  The small white flyers were still there on the big posters for Les Misérables and Vodafone. Easier to read without looking through blood-spattered wi
ndows …

  EXHIBITION

  Venue: Here

  Date: December 10

  Time: 18.00

  ‘He told me to be here at six o’clock. Maddie Matthews was killed at six o’clock.’ Standing on the platform, it all came back to her. ‘I think he called my name, too.’

  Joe looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Just once. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. Like a weird echo. But I looked down the platform to see who was calling me, and that’s how I saw it happen.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Joe said quietly.

  ‘You think he did?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said grimly. ‘But if you’re putting on a show, it stands to reason you want people to see it.’

  ‘If I hadn’t looked,’ said Eve, ‘maybe he wouldn’t—’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ he said quickly. ‘You can’t second-guess him, Eve, because you’re not like him.’

  She said nothing.

  We’re the same, you and me.

  The one thing the killer had said that Eve would never tell anyone.

  Joe looked around and pointed to the other end of the platform, where a camera was positioned in a discreet corner.

  ‘CCTV.’

  He hoisted his camera on to his shoulder. ‘I’ll get a few shots of the flyers and then we’ll go and see if we can view the video from that.’

  ‘OK.’ Eve nodded, but her stomach quivered at the thought.

  The Security Data Manager was called Craig Banks, and he wore a carefully tended moustache, a starched shirt, a cricket-bat pin on his London Underground tie, and black shoes so polished that they would have made a Coldstream Guard blush.

  ‘I’m not showing you the footage of the incident,’ he said the minute Eve introduced herself. ‘That’s under investigation.’

  ‘Which incident?’ said Eve blankly – which put Banks nicely on the shiny back foot.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No incident.’

  Eve went on – all innocence – ‘We were just interested in the exhibition.’

  ‘What exhibition?’

  ‘It’s advertised on the flyers. An exhibition on the westbound platform. We’re doing a piece on street art and artists.’