Another text arrived. He read it and closed the phone without replying.
As usual, loud music was playing in the downstairs flat.
He drained his glass and let his head fall back against the soft cushion. The Artex ceiling had attracted cobwebs and grime, but he doubted he would ever feel the need to repaint or clean it. Very few people ever came here. Linzi had spent a lot of time in the flat, of course. He laughed bitterly, then chewed his lip and stared at the ceiling, sensitive to the slightest noise in spite of the thump of the bass from the downstairs flat. Christine had hardly stepped over the threshold. She’d been once or twice soon after they’d met, but not since. There was no reason to. It was clear from the odd comment that she resented his keeping the flat, since it was a drain on resources, but as he’d argued, there was no room in the house for all these books and tapes. Not to mention the stuff stored in the loft. He chewed his lip again.
He switched on the stereo and the ordered chaos of Paul Schiitze’s New Maps of Hell clattered into battle with the beat from below. Schiitze’s 1992 release was the constant soundtrack to any work he did on the book in the flat. (On the rare occasions that he worked on it at the house, he played the follow-up, New Maps of Hell II: The Rapture of Metals.) He believed it helped. It started out as an aid to getting the mindset right, he sometimes imagined telling Kirsty Wark or Verity Sharp in a television interview, and soon became a habit, a routine. I simply couldn’t work on the book without having the music playing in the background. It was about the creation of a hermetically sealed world. Which, I suppose you have to admit, Hell is. Although one that’s expanding at an alarming rate, erupting in little pockets. North Kensington, Muswell Hill. London is going to Hell, Kirsty.
He opened a file and did some work, tidied up some troublesome text. He saved it and opened another file, “Dollis Hill”. Notes, a few stabs at an address, gaps, big gaps. He was going to have to go back.
He replayed the mental rushes. Autumn 1986. A fine day. Gusty, but dry, bright. Walking in an unfamiliar district of London. A long road, tree-lined. High up. View down over the city between detached houses and semis. Victorian, Edwardian.
The entryphone buzzed, bringing him back to the present with a start. He closed the file. He got to his feet, crossed to the hall and picked up the phone.
“The door’s open. Come up,” he said, before realising she couldn’t hear him.
He remained standing in the hall, listening to footsteps climbing the interior staircase. When the footsteps stopped outside his door there was a pause before the knock came. He imagined her composing herself, perhaps straightening her clothes, removing a hair from her collar. Or looking at her watch and thinking of bolting. He opened the door as she knocked, which startled her.
“Come in,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
All Maddox had done to improve the image on the video was change the size of the Media Player window so that the reporter’s mouth, while slightly smaller, was less affected by picture breakup.
While Karen studied the footage, Maddox crossed to the far side of the room. He returned with a glass of red wine, which he placed beside the laptop. Karen raised a hand to decline, but Maddox simply pushed the glass slightly closer to her and left it there. Finally, while she was watching the footage for a third time, her hand reached out, perhaps involuntarily, to pick up the glass. She took a sip, then held the glass aloft while studying the image of the jaunty reporter: Michael Caine glasses, buttoned-up jacket, button-down shirt, hand alighting on hip like a butterfly.
Maddox watched as she replayed the footage again. Each time the reporter started speaking, she moved a little closer to the screen and seemed to angle her head slightly to the left in order to favour her right ear, in which she had a trace of hearing, despite the fact there was no sound at all on the film. Habit, Maddox decided.
Karen leaned back and looked at Maddox before speaking.
“He’s saying something like newspaper reports . . . of the investigation . . . into the discovery of the burned-out bodies of two women . . . Fifteen – or fifty – years ago . . . Something of the century. I’m sorry, it’s really hard.”
Her speech was that of a person who had learned to talk the hard way, without being able to hear the sound of her own voice.
“That’s great. That’s very helpful, Karen. It would be fifteen, not fifty. I didn’t even know for certain that he was talking about Christie’s house. Burned-out, though, are you sure? That’s strange.”
“No, I’m not sure, but that’s what it sounds like.”
Karen’s choice of expression – sounds like – reminded him of a blind man who had asked Maddox for help crossing the road as he was going to see the doctor.
Maddox went to fill up her glass, but she placed her hand over it.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I said I could only stop by for a minute.’
Maddox stood his ground with the wine bottle, then stepped back.
“Another time,” he said.
“Have you got something else you want me to look at?”
“I might have. If it’s not too much of an imposition.”
“Just let me know.”
He showed her out, then switched the light off again and watched from the window as she regained the street. She stopped, looked one way, then went the other, as if deciding there and then which way to go. Hardly the action of a woman with an appointment. He watched as she walked south towards St Ann’s Road and disappeared around the corner, then he sat down in the armchair and emptied her wine glass. His gaze roved across the bookshelves and climbed the walls before reaching the ceiling. He then sat without moving for half an hour, his eyes not leaving the ceiling, listening to the building’s creaks and sighs, the music downstairs having been turned off.
He took a different route back, climbing the Harringay Ladder and going west past the top of Priory Park. He floored the pedal through the Cranley Gardens S-bend and allowed the gradient to slow the car so that he rolled to a stop outside No. 23. There he killed the engine and looked up at the second-floor flat where Dennis Nilsen had lived from October 1981 to February 1983. One of Nilsen’s mistakes, which had led to his being caught, was to have left the window in the gable dormer wide open for long periods, attracting the attention of neighbours.
Maddox looked at his watch and started the engine. He got on to the North Circular, coming off at Staples Corner, heading south down Edgware Road and turning right into Dollis Hill Lane. He slowed to a crawl, leaning forward over the wheel, craning his neck at the houses on the south side. He was sure it would be on the south side. He definitely remembered a wide tree-lined avenue with views over central London. Land falling away behind the house. Long walk from the tube. Which tube? He didn’t know.
He turned right, cruised the next street. He wasn’t even sure of the street. Dollis Hill Lane sounded right, but as soon as he’d got the idea of Cricklewood Lane off the internet that had sounded right too. He’d gone there, to 108/110 Cricklewood Lane, after reading on the net that that was where they’d shot Hellraiser. When he got there and found it was a branch of Holmes Place Health Clubs, he worked out it must have been the former location of Cricklewood Production Village, where they’d done the studio work.
Some time in the autumn of 1986, Maddox had come here, to a house in Dollis Hill. A movie was being made. Clive Barker was directing his first film. Hellraiser. They were shooting in a rented house and Maddox had been invited to go on the set as an associate of Barker’s. He was going to do a little interview, place it wherever possible. Could be his big break. It was good of Clive to have agreed to it. Maddox remembered the big white vans in the street outside the house, a surprising number of people hanging around doing nothing, a catering truck, a long table covered with polystyrene cups, a tea urn. He asked for Steve Jones, unit publicist. Jones talked to him about what was going on. They were filming a dinner party scene with Andrew Robinson and Clare Higgins and two young actors, the
boy and the girl, and a bunch of extras. Maddox got to watch from behind the camera, trying to catch Barker’s eye as he talked to the actors, telling them what he wanted them to do. Controlling everybody and everything. Maddox envied him, but admired him as well. A make-up girl applied powder to Robinson’s forehead. A hairdresser fixed Ashley Laurence’s hair. They did the scene and the air was filled with electricity. Everyone behind the camera held their breath, faces still and taut. The tension was palpable. The moment Barker called “Cut”, it melted away. Smiles, laughter, everyone suddenly moving around. Maddox noticed the hairdresser, who looked lost for a moment, diminutive and vulnerable, but Steve Jones caught Maddox’s arm in a light grip and cornered Barker. The director looked at Maddox and there was a fraction of a second’s pause, no more, before he said, “Brian,” in such a warm, sincere way that Maddox might have thought Clive had been looking forward to seeing him all morning.
They did a short interview over lunch, which they ate on the floor of a room at the back of the house.
“We’re surrounded by images which are momentarily potent and carry no resonance whatsoever,” Barker was saying in transatlantic Scouse. “Advertising, the pop video, a thing which seems to mean an awful lot and is in fact absolutely negligible.”
Maddox noticed the hairdresser carrying a paper plate and a cup. She sat cross-legged on the floor next to another crew member and they talked as they ate.
“What frightens you?” he asked Barker.
“Unlit streets, flying, being stuck in the tube at rush hour. Places where you have to relinquish control.”
Once they’d finished, Maddox hung around awkwardly, waiting for a chance to talk to the hairdresser. When it came – her companion rising to go – he seized it. She was getting up too and Maddox contrived to step in front of her, blocking her way. He apologised and introduced himself. “I was just interviewing Clive. We’ve known each other a couple of years. I was in one of his plays.”
“Linzi,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m only here for one day. The regular girl called in sick.”
“Then I’m lucky I came today,” he said, smiling shyly.
She was wearing a dark green top of soft cotton that was exactly the same shade as her eyes. Her hair, light brown with natural blonde streaks, was tied back in a knot pierced by a pencil.
“Are you going to stick around?” she asked.
“I’ve done my interview, but if no one kicks me out . . .”
“It’s a pretty relaxed set.”
He did stick around and most of the time he watched Linzi, promising himself he wouldn’t leave until he’d got her number. It took him the rest of the afternoon, but he got it. She scribbled it on a blank page in her Filofax, then tore out the page and said, “Call me.”
The chances of finding the house in darkness were even less than in daylight. He’d been up to Dollis Hill a couple of times in the last few weeks, once in the car and once on foot. Lately, he’d been thinking more about Linzi, and specifically about the early days, before it started to go wrong. He’d spent enough time going over the bad times and wanted to revisit the good. He wanted to see the house again, but couldn’t. He needed to locate it for his book. He’d rewatched the film, which contained enough shots of the house’s exterior that it should have been easy to locate it, but it didn’t seem to matter how many times he trailed these suburban avenues, the house wasn’t there. Or if it was, he couldn’t see it. He’d begun to think it might have been knocked down, possibly even straight after the shoot. It could have been why the house had been available. In the film there was a No.55 on the porch, but that would be set dressing, like the renumbering of 25 Powis Square, in Performance, as No.81.
He looked at his watch and calculated that if he was quick he could get to Ladbroke Grove in time for coffee and to drive Christine home, thereby reducing the amount of grief she would give him. Negligibly, he realised, but still.
In the morning, he feigned sleep while she dressed. Her movements were businesslike, crisp. The night before had been a riot, as expected. When he had turned up at the dinner, two and a half hours late, she had contented herself with merely shooting him a look, but as soon as they left she started. And as soon as she started, he switched off.
It didn’t let up even when they got home, but he wasn’t listening. He marvelled at how closely he was able to mimic the condition with which Karen, his lip-reader, had been born. Thinking of Karen, moreover, relaxed him inside, while Christine kept on, even once they’d got into bed. Elective deafness – it beat hysterical blindness.
When he was sure Christine had left the house – the slammed door, the gate that clanged – he got up and showered. Within half an hour, having spent ten minutes pointing the DVD remote at the television, he was behind the wheel of the car with his son in the back seat. South Tottenham in twenty minutes was a bigger ask by day than by night, but he gave it his best shot. Rush hour was over (Christine, in common with everyone who worked on weekly magazines, finished earlier than she started), but skirting the congestion charge zone was still a challenge.
He parked where he had the night before and turned to see that Jack was asleep. He left him there, locked the car and walked up. He had decided, while lying in bed with his back to Christine, that it would be worth going up into the loft. Somewhere in the loft was a box containing old diaries, including one for 1986. He had never been a consistent diarist, but some years had seen him make more notes than others. It was worth a rummage among the spider’s webs and desiccated wasps” nests. His size meant he didn’t bang his head on the latticework of pine beams.
The loft still smelled faintly of formalin. He suspected it always would until he got rid of the suitcase at the far end. He shone the torch in its direction. Big old-fashioned brown leather case, rescued from a skip and cleaned up. Solid, sturdy, two catches and a strap with a buckle. Could take a fair weight.
He redirected the torch at the line of dusty boxes closer to the trap door. The first box contained T-shirts that he never wore any more but couldn’t bear to throw away. The second was full of old typescripts stiff with Tipp-Ex. The diaries were in the third box along. He bent down and sorted through: 1974, a shiny black Pocket Diary filled mainly with notes on the history of the Crusades; 1976, the summer of the heatwave, Angling Times diary, roach and perch that should have been returned to the water left under stones to die; 1980, the deaths of his three remaining grandparents, three funerals in one year, coffins in the front room, all burials; 1982, his first term at university, meeting Martin, his best friend for a while. Martin was a year older, which had impressed Maddox. The age difference hadn’t mattered. Everything was changing. Leaving school, leaving home. Living in halls. Martin was a medical student. They would stay up late drinking coffee and Martin would smoke cigarettes and tell Maddox about medicine, about anatomy and about the bodies he was learning to dissect.
Maddox could listen to Martin for hours. The later they stayed up, the more profound their discussions seemed to become. Maddox watched as Martin dragged on his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs for an eternity, stretching the moment, before blowing it out in perfect rings. When Martin talked about the bodies in the anatomy lab, Maddox became entranced. He imagined Martin alone in the lab with a dozen flayed corpses. Bending over them, examining them, carefully removing a strip of muscle, severing a tendon. Getting up close to the secrets, the mysteries, of death. Martin said it didn’t matter how long he spent washing his hands, they still smelled of formalin. He held them under Maddox’s nose, then moved to cup his cheeks in an affectionate, stroking gesture.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he said, as his hand landed on Maddox’s knee.
“Could you get me in there? Into the lab?” Maddox asked, shaking his head, picturing himself among the bodies, as Martin’s hand moved up his thigh.
“No. But I could bring you something out. Something you could keep.”
Martin’s hand had reached Maddox’s lap and Ma
ddox was mildly surprised to discover that far from objecting, he was aroused. If this was to be the downpayment on whatever Martin might fetch him back from the dissection table, so be it.
“I’ve got something for you,” Martin said a couple of days later, “in my room.”
Maddox followed Martin to his room.
“So where is it?” Maddox asked.
“Can’t just leave that sort of thing lying about. But what’s the rush?’
Martin lay down on the bed and unbuckled his belt.
Maddox hesitated, considered walking out, but he felt certain he’d always regret it if he left empty-handed. Instead, he knelt beside the bed and spat into his palm.
Afterwards, Martin pulled open his desk drawer.
“There you go,” he said.
Maddox withdrew a strong-smelling package. He started to work at the knot in the outermost plastic bag, but it wouldn’t come easily. He asked Martin what it contained.
“A piece of subcutaneous fat from the body of a middle-aged man. If anyone ever asks, you didn’t get it from me.”
Maddox returned to his own room on the seventh floor, washing his hands on the way. He cut open the bag and unwrapped his spoils. The gobbet of fat, four inches by two, looked like a piece of tripe, white and bloodless, and the stench of formalin made him feel sick and excited at the same time. Maddox was careful not to touch the fat as he wrapped it up again and secured the package with tape. He opened his wardrobe and pulled out the brown suitcase he’d liberated from a skip in Judd Street.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 Page 28
