The Red Room

by Nicci French

  I shook my head. “That’s your dress,” I said. “That dress does not want to be worn by me ever again.”

  I tried on five different dresses. I was after a complicated and subtle effect. I didn’t want it to seem as if I’d made an elaborate, rather pathetic attempt to impress at what was, after all, a casual dinner. On the other hand it wouldn’t do to appear insultingly casual. I settled on something simple and black, which didn’t look as if it had been sprayed on but neither did it look as if I was going to a barn dance. When I emerged from the bedroom, Julie gave a whistle which made me laugh. “That’s amazing,” she said. “You look incredible. Is that what you call dressing down?”

  I went over to her and turned her toward the large antiqued mirror on the wall. I leaned on her shoulder and we scrutinized each other and ourselves with a critical eye. “We’re wasted on this crowd,” I said. “We should be going out somewhere so trendy that I haven’t even heard of it.”

  “I thought these were your best friends,” Julie said.

  “More like obligations. You remember that detective, Oban?”

  “Course.”

  “He thinks we’re gay.”

  “What?”

  “I think so.”

  Julie giggled and then her face wrinkled with concentration. “Was it something we did?”

  “I think it was just that we were two women living together, you doing the cooking, all that. You know, a cozy set-up.”

  “And a turn-on for him as well, I suppose.”

  “Maybe.”

  She turned her back to the mirror. “I can see the attraction,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s just that it’s always been men with me. Don’t know why.”

  There was a ring at the door. I looked at my watch. It was one minute to eight. “Don’t they know that eight means nine?” I said, going across to the door that led down to the street. It was Catey, with Alastair hovering shyly behind. Catey was prettily dressed in pale green, and Alastair wore a suit and a tie. He looked as if he had come straight from work. They kissed me on both cheeks then gave me a bottle of sparkling wine and a large bunch of flowers.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” said Alastair.

  What, I wanted to say in reply, could you possibly have heard about me? But I just smiled.

  “We’ve got so much to catch up on,” said Catey, and ran up the stairs.

  With a bit of desperate improvisation, there was just enough to catch up on to last us until eight minutes past eight when Francis arrived. He was wearing a white shirt with no tie and a suit that looked so terrible—as if it had been made out of some Terylene substitute, left out in the garden for a week and then not ironed—that I realized it must have cost more than my car. He had brought some champagne. He looked round the living room. “This is an exciting moment for me,” he said. “This is the flat that Kit never lets anybody come to.”

  Catey and Alastair looked round it with new interest. It was like one of those moments in the National Gallery when you give a painting a casual five seconds. Then you look in your guidebook and discover it’s the most important German painting of the fifteenth century and you retrace your steps and say to yourself, “Come to think of it . . .” I flashed a look at Julie, which was the closest I got to explaining that, to be more precise, this was the flat that I didn’t let Catey or Francis come to.

  “None of you know each other,” I said. “This is Julie, who’s staying with me and has done the cooking tonight and, well, everything, really. And this is Francis, who works with me at the clinic. And this is Catey, who, er, who’s an old friend. And this is Alastair.”

  “Alastair works in the City,” Catey interjected. “At something totally incomprehensible, of course. Do you know? I heard on the radio the other day that sixty percent of people have no idea what their partner does at work. By the way, Kit, what happened to that person you were, you know…?”

  I was tempted to say, no, I don’t know, but I said in a meek voice that we weren’t seeing each other anymore, and there was a silence. Francis opened his champagne and filled a glass for himself, then wandered around the room looking at the furniture, pictures, books as if he was compiling a psychological analysis of me, which of course was what he was doing. He made me think of the days in summer when a big fat bumble bee would get in through a window and chunter around the flat until I could flap it back out of the window with a magazine. Meanwhile Catey began to talk about what an interesting area this was and how clever of me it had been to get in early.

  His unofficial tour concluded, Francis sat down on the sofa between me and Julie. “How’s the return to work?” he said, terminating the London property conversation.

  “That’s a big question,” I said.

  “Are you still doing the same thing?” Catey asked brightly.

  “Well…”

  “I was telling Alastair about what you do in the taxi. The reason it came into my mind was that I was wondering whether you know anything about this terrible murder the other day.”

  I was puzzled. How could Catey—who, as far as I knew, still worked in a gallery—possibly have heard about my connection with the Lianne murder?

  “Which one?”

  “The one on Hampstead Heath. That mother who was killed with her daughter there. Philippa Burton.”

  “No, I’m not involved with that.”

  “It’s like Lady Di. People have been laying flowers on the road nearby. They go on for more than a hundred yards. Someone’s left a book of remembrance. Ali and I walked over there just to have a look and it’s extraordinary. There’s a traffic jam, lots of police, queues of people. Women were crying, men were carrying their children on their shoulders so that they could get a glimpse. Why do people do it?”

  “What do you think, Francis? What’s your professional opinion?”

  He looked alarmed. “It’s not really my field, of course. Maybe people believe that at the spot something happened, a good thing or a bad thing, there’s a special energy. Like heat. People go there to get close to it.”

  “It’s exciting,” I added. “People want to be near to feel involved in all the drama.”

  “And they care,” added Julie. “They were upset when they heard about it and they wanted to show it. There’s nothing bad about that, is there?”

  “No,” I said, and I looked over at Catey. “I’m working on a murder in a place where people aren’t leaving flowers.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “The victim was homeless. Her body was found by a canal. I don’t think anybody cared much at all.”

  “That’s sad,” said Catey. But she didn’t pursue the subject.

  At ten past nine when Will Pavic still hadn’t appeared, I decided that we would start eating. We sat down, leaving, on Julie’s insistence, a space next to her for him, should he arrive. The vegetables, olive oil and exotic bread that Julie had conjured up from somewhere or other were all extraordinary. It was like being in a restaurant but with the added benefit of having my own furniture. The risotto was wonderfully chewy and flavored with sorrel, which I had thought was a weed, but hugely impressed Catey. I seemed to get some reflected credit for Julie’s food, as if I had been the impresario for the occasion.

  The main course was almost finished when there was a ring at the door. Will was standing there in jeans and a blue shirt, rough trainers, carrying a jacket under his arm. Suddenly I felt overdressed, which was ridiculous. He was the one who ought to be apologetic. “It’s been a bad day,” he said. “I should have rung to say I couldn’t come, but I haven’t got your number.”

  “It’s in the phone book,” I said shortly. “Well, I don’t know if it is in the phone book anymore. You could probably have got it somewhere. Come and eat. We started, I’m afraid.”

  He followed me upstairs. Indoors, in the brighter light, he looked tired and drawn. I introduced him to the people around the table, who looked sheepish suddenly, as if they had been caught eating when they weren’t a
llowed to. Julie came forward, with a charming smile, shook his hand and didn’t let go, leading him to his place beside her. He tossed his jacket on to the sofa as he passed it.

  “You’ll have to catch up,” said Julie. “Do you mind if I pile everything onto your plate?” He smiled and shook his head. “Red or white?”

  “Whatever.”

  For the next few minutes, he ate steadily, glancing around the table, but mainly concentrating on his food.

  “Maybe we should try and bring Will up to date,” Julie said. “Like in a soap opera. We talked about this area. I did my normal spiel about traveling around the world. You’ve never heard that, Will. I’ll tell it to you later. And Catey and Alastair went to look at where a murder was committed on Hampstead Heath and they signed the book of remembrance…”

  “We didn’t actually—”

  “… and Alastair was just talking about working in the City.”

  Pavic looked round at Alastair. “Where do you work?”

  “Just off Cheapside.”

  “What firm?”

  Alastair looked puzzled.

  “Hamble’s.”

  “Pierre Dyson.”

  “Well, yes,” said Alastair. “I mean, I’ve never actually met him, but, yes, he’s the chief. Do you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. “Sorry,” said Alastair. “What was your name again?”

  “He’s called Will Pavic,” I said.

  “Hang on, hang on. I remember. Wahl Baker, right?”

  Will looked uncomfortable now. “That’s right.”

  “It’s great to meet you, Will. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “You mean about the hostel?” I asked.

  “No, no,” said Alastair contemptuously. “I don’t want to embarrass your guest, but he managed the Wahl Baker fund for ten years. Legendary years. Fantastic.”

  “It wasn’t so fantastic,” Will said quietly.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Alastair.

  “I didn’t know you worked in the City,” I said. “I don’t,” said Will. “Not now.” And then he fell silent as the conversation drifted off in another direction.

  For the rest of the meal I sneaked glances across the table at Julie and Pavic. I heard fragments of her conversation about something in Mexico and something else about Thailand. His replies were brief and I couldn’t make them out.

  After the meal we sat on the sofa with coffee, tea, or, for Catey, a concoction that smelled medicinal. Will was clearing the table and we found ourselves in the kitchen

  at the same time.

  “Not exactly your sort of people, I suppose,” I said.

  He didn’t smile. “What do you know about my kind of people? They seem all right.”

  “I meant me as well.”

  He gave a smile that might have been sarcastic.

  “Julie’s nice, though,” I volunteered dutifully.

  “She seems nice,” he said.

  There was a pause. “I can’t believe you swapped being in the City for that hostel in Kersey Town.”

  “You know the City?” he said.

  “I know Kersey Town.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “What about now?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again, and seemed to think before talking. “Sorry,” he said. “I think it’s too big a subject for this kitchen in this dinner party.”

  “Then I suppose I should be sorry,” I said. “By the way, I talked to someone who knows you.”

  A flicker of interest. “Oh yes?”

  “A detective called Furth. He’s working on the Lianne case. Know him?”

  “Yes, I know him.”

  “He warned me against you.”

  “That sounds like Furth.”

  “I don’t like him either.”

  Will piled the plates carefully by the sink and turned to face me. “I don’t know what you want, Kit, but I don’t care what you think about the police or anybody else.”

  That was it. I tossed the towel onto the kitchen table and took a combative step toward him. “What the fuck did you come here for? You come late, and then slouch in the corner like some adolescent with your sarcastic comments and grumpy expressions. You think you’re better than me, do you?”

  Will shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned. “I came because I was taken by surprise by your friend’s invitation and couldn’t think of anything to say. And I’m sorry I was late. As I said, it was a bad day.”

  “I had a bad day.”

  “I’m not going to have a bad-day competition.”

  “I’m not the enemy,” I said.

  “Aren’t you?” he said, and he walked out of the kitchen. I went after him so we arrived almost together. I was flushed and furious. I don’t know what he looked like.

  “We were just saying,” said Catey, “how amazing it was to do what you did, to give up everything, a fantastic job, and work in this hostel.”

  I thought he was going to be as horrible to Catey as he had been to me, back in the kitchen, but his expression was almost benign. “It wasn’t so amazing,” he said. He turned to Alastair. “I mean, why don’t you give up your nice job?”

  Alastair looked startled. “Well, that is, I don’t know, really. Because I don’t want to, I suppose.”

  Will spread his hands. “I did want to. That’s all.”

  Julie came over—no, slunk over, if that’s the word—with a mug of coffee and handed it to Will. “Why are you bad-tempered with Kit?” she asked.

  He gave a start and looked across at me, almost shiftily. “Bad-tempered?” he said. “Maybe I’m over-sensitive. When I first started the hostel, I expected help from people, from the police, from social workers. It didn’t work out like that. Now I just want them to leave us alone. So sometimes I snap at people.”

  “I just want to help,” I said, realizing as I spoke how pathetic that sounded.

  “You’re too late,” he said. “She’s dead. I was too late as well.” He gave a sad smile. “There. That’s something we’ve got in common.” He sipped at his coffee, then gulped it down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I’d better go.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Not because of me.”

  “It’s not because of you. I’m not fit to be seen in public just now.”

  He said goodbye quite graciously to everybody and was nice to Julie about the meal. Julie saw him out and when she came back murmured to me, “The search goes on.” I managed a splutter of a laugh but I felt shaken and on the pretext of making more coffee I retreated to the kitchen and did all the washing-up. When I returned with the jug, I saw that my plan to revenge myself on these people hadn’t entirely worked. Francis was talking about himself, Julie was talking about the Taj Mahal at dusk, Catey was talking about Alastair, Alastair was looking modest. I was able to pour out coffee, drink coffee and say almost nothing.

  After too long, they left with ominous cries of how we must get together soon, and I even saw Francis and Alastair exchanging phone numbers on the stairs, a nightmare vision of my burdens joining together and becoming even bigger ones.

  Julie and I were left alone. I pulled a face. “Sorry to inflict all that on you,” I said.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I liked them. And they like you. They all care about you—you’re lucky to have so many friends, you know.” For a brief moment, she sounded almost wistful. “I should be apologizing to you. My Pavic plan didn’t really work.”

  “Doesn’t matter. There was nothing wrong with the plan. It was Pavic who was the problem.”

  She smiled and drained her glass. She put down her glass then stepped across to me. She put one hand on my cheek and kissed me on the lips, quite lightly. “If I become a lesbian,” she said, “you’ll be the first person I make a pass at. Night-night.”

  14

  I’d been right about one thing—the moan had come from the witness, or a moan had, at least. A polic
e officer called on Miss Mary Gould and she said she wasn’t sure, well, yes, maybe she might have cried out when she saw the poor girl, in fact, come to mention it, yes, she was sure she had. She wasn’t in trouble, was she?

  So it had been wrong to assume that Lianne had been killed by the canal.

  “Which means,” I said to Furth, “that there’s no reason to think it was Doll rather than anyone else. Right?”

  “Lady,” he said, thrusting his face toward mine so that I could see the yellow stains on his teeth, the shaving rash on his neck, the lines of exhaustion round his mouth, “this is all wanking around, you know. She was murdered beside the canal, by Doll.”

  “It would be worth looking into other murders, though, wouldn’t it?”

  “We’ve already done it. Gil and Sandra spent four hours this morning trawling through the unsolved murder cases in London from the last six months and no match turned up. So there goes your theory. Sorry. Just the one body for you, not a glamorous clutch of them.”

  “What were you looking for?” I asked.

  “We are trained police officers, you know. Similarities in methods of killing, victim, geography. That kind of thing. There was nothing. No drifter, no mutilated bodies, no common location. Zero. Nothing.”

  “Can I look through the cases too?”

  He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “You’re meant to be helping, not getting in the way. What’s the point?”

  “I’m looking for different things,” I answered mildly.

  He shrugged wearily. “If you want to waste a day off, it’s your business.”

  “Are there a lot, then?”

  “Thirty odd, unless you want to extend your search parameters to include the Bronx.”

  “How do I look at them?”

  “We’ll take someone away from catching criminals and you can find a spare terminal.”

  “So when can I see them?”

  He looked at his watch and muttered something under his breath. Then: “Half an hour or so.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked, in a more earnest tone.

  “What?”

  “Are you always sure that you’re right?”