The Red Room

by Nicci French

  “Will Pavic here.”

  “I’m really sorry to bother you again,” I said. There was a pause, which he didn’t fill. “I need your help.”

  “So I assumed,” he said drily.

  “I need to talk to people who knew Lianne. Just a pointer in the right direction.”

  “Kit…”

  “Please.”

  “All right.”

  “God, that was easier than I expected.” He didn’t laugh. Maybe he’d forgotten how to. “Shall I come to your center?”

  “Let’s see. Are you free at, say, six?”

  “Yes.”

  “Meet me at the car-wash center on Sheffield Street. It’s just up the road from here.”

  “The car-wash center?”

  “That’s right. Big place. You can’t miss it. See you then.”

  “About the other day—” I said, but he’d already gone.

  __________

  I reviewed my notes, and rang through to the clinic for messages. Then I went round the corner to the hair-dresser’s, though it had recently started calling itself a salon and had been redecorated in silver and white, with harsh slabs of light. A young man with a shaved head, wearing loose black trousers and a sleeveless black T-shirt, tied me into a white nylon robe and sat me down in front of a huge, unforgiving mirror. He stood behind me, held my skull in his practiced hands and asked me what I wanted done.

  “A cut,” I said.

  He lifted up strands of my brown hair and considered me for a few seconds. “Make it a bit more choppy, perhaps? Muss it up?”

  “Just a cut.”

  “Highlights? A bit of copper. That’s very popular at the moment.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “Nice hair, though,” he mused, sliding it through his fingers before laying a towel round my shoulder and leading me over to a basin. I sat back and let a tiny young woman, with hair that looked as if it had been cut with garden shears, sluice warm water over my head, and massage shampoo that smelled of coconut into my scalp. It felt wonderful. I closed my eyes against the light. Then the young man hovered round me with long-bladed scissors and a forest of clips that he took from his belt and snapped into my hair. He cut off thick shanks of hair with a crisp sound, and they fell softly to the floor. When bits of hair prickled on my face, he leaned forward and blew softly on to my cheek.

  Afterwards, I felt much better. My hair swung when I shook my head, like one of those advertisements for miracle conditioner. I ran home and had a quick shower, then dressed in my white jeans, biscuit-colored T-shirt, pumps and ancient suede jacket. I felt clean, fresh, alert.

  __________

  The car-wash center was in a row of old and dilapidated warehouses near the canal. I got there just before six, but as I approached, I saw that Will was already waiting for me on the pavement. I drew up and he climbed into the passenger seat. Another car drew in front of us and turned into the depot.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Being cleaned, of course.”

  “Is that why we’re meeting here—because you want your car washed?”

  “Lianne worked here for a few weeks earlier this year. I thought it might be a good place for you to begin. Though I’m not sure how many of the people who worked here then are still here. It’s got rather a transient population.”

  “Here? Washing cars?”

  “No. That’s strictly for the men. Collecting the money and handing out the tickets. The woman who runs it was in hospital for a bit, having a hip replacement. She’s a friend of mine.” As he spoke, a woman came out of the depot toward us. She was enormous, with bristles on her chin and thin hair. Will opened his door and she bent down, with difficulty. “Diana, this is Kit. Kit, Diana.”

  I leaned across Will and shook her hand. She had a firm grip and clever eyes.

  “You’re interested in Lianne?”

  She sounded the ‘E’ at the end of the name. I wondered where she came from. “Yes. It’s kind of you to help.”

  “Do you want to come in, then? I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  “I think I’d better have a car wash first, don’t you?”

  She smiled at me then. “Which one?”

  I looked at the different washes chalked up on a big board outside the depot. “I’ll have the superior.”

  For the first time, Will looked at me with a glimmer of approval.

  “That’s twelve-fifty, then.”

  I handed her the money, which she slipped deftly into a pocket in her skirt. Then she straightened up and beckoned me in through the giant doors. “Wind up your windows,” she ordered.

  “Are you staying in?” I asked Will.

  “Looks like it.”

  I edged through the doors and immediately I was in another world, dark and wet and swarming with activity. Sharp jets of water hit us from all directions, and about six men, wearing wellington boots and rubber gloves, were on the car, scrubbing it down with long brushes. I watched them through the sudsy windows. The man leaning over my bonnet had a walrus mustache and sad wrinkles on his jowly face and Slavic cheekbones. The one on Will’s side looked about seventeen, very black, very tall and thin, startlingly beautiful with sloe eyes. He looked like a film star. There was an older man, Chinese maybe, who wiped my window assiduously. He caught my eyes and smiled at me through the water streaming between us.

  “What is this place?”

  “A car-wash center.”

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I mean, where do all these people come from?”

  Will cast a sideways glance at me. “Refugees mostly. They work here for a while, no questions asked. Cash in hand.”

  “And people like Lianne.”

  “Sometimes I send kids here. It’s safe work. The money’s not derisory. They’re off the streets, earning till they find something else maybe.”

  A man in a yellow mac beckoned me forward. I moved slowly into a new set of jets: clean water to rinse off the soap. More men, this time with cloths, approached. Behind us another car moved into position.

  “This is amazing!”

  Will looked smug, as if he’d arranged it all for my benefit.

  “About Doll,” I said at last. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Why?”

  “I mean, sorry to trouble you like that. After all, you hardly know me—but I couldn’t think what else to do.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “I didn’t want to get him into trouble—and, to be honest, I was in a bit of an awkward position myself. It’s a long story. Too long.”

  He nodded as if he wasn’t curious. “You were right to call me.”

  “Is he dangerous, then?”

  “I don’t know. He’s…” He hesitated for a few seconds. “He’s wretched.”

  Once again, I was signaled forward, this time into a small bay ahead.

  “We get out here,” said Will. “Now they clean inside. He’ll be back, though.”

  “Doll?”

  “He’s fallen for you. He thinks you understand him.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to say.

  “And he thinks you’re beautiful,” he said, as if that was rather funny.

  I climbed out of the car and waited for Will. Instantly, four other men climbed in, two with cloths and buckets, one with a paintbrush to get at the crevices and corners, one with an industrial vacuum cleaner. Diana appeared, with two cups of coffee. “This is Gonzalo,” she said, gesturing. “He knew Lianne when she worked here.”

  He had floppy black hair, olive skin, the shyest smile, and a soft, limp hand when I shook it.

  “Hello,” I said, and he ducked his head. He was wearing a pink Bart Simpson T-shirt. “So you knew Lianne?”

  “Lianne. Yes. Lianne.”

  “Were you her friend?”

  “Friend?” His accent was thick. I couldn’t tell if he understood a word I was saying to him.

  “Were you Lianne’s friend?” I rep
eated. He frowned at me. “Where are you from, Gonzalo?”

  His face cleared. He jabbed himself in the chest. “Colombia. Beautiful.”

  “I don’t speak Spanish.” I turned to Will. “Do you speak Spanish?”

  “Nope. But I bet Lianne didn’t either. Gonzalo, was Lianne happy?”

  “Happy?” He shook his head. “Not happy.”

  “Sad?”

  “Sad, yes, and this.” He put his hand to his mouth in a theatrical manner.

  “Scared?” I asked.

  “Angry?” suggested Will.

  “Lost,” said Diana. She pushed a mug of coffee into my hand and I sipped it. It was bitter and tepid. “You see it in the eyes. There are people who aren’t quite with you anymore. You see it a lot here.” She jerked her massive bristly chin in the direction of the men, swarming like bees over the cars.

  “And you saw that in Lianne’s eyes?”

  She shrugged. “I hardly met her. She was here when I wasn’t. She seemed a bit withdrawn maybe. She didn’t engage with people much. Did you find that?” She turned to Will.

  “Maybe,” he said cautiously. I had never met a man so unwilling to commit himself.

  “Well, who can blame her, eh? But she was honest, I’ll say that for her. She didn’t pocket any money that I could work out.”

  I watched them, the fat woman and the surly man. Gonzalo shifted from one foot to the other. “Thank you,” I said to him.

  He gave me his shy smile and backed away. My car was shining, inside and out. The man with the walrus mustache was giving it a last look over.

  “And thank you,” I said to Diana. “I appreciate it.”

  She shrugged. “You’re Will’s friend.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I looked over at Will. “Do you fancy a drink?”

  He seemed slightly taken aback. “OK,” he said, as if he hadn’t been able to think of an excuse in time. “Why don’t you follow me? There’s a place I know near here.”

  I clinked some coins into the tip-box, and then we drove in convoy in our gleaming cars, down small backstreets by the side of old warehouses. I’d never been here—this was a London I had never visited.

  We went to a pub on the canal-side. From the front, it looked rather dreary and run down, but at the back there was a deck over the water, where we sat with our tomato juice. The sky was turning a strange brown, little sighs of wind rippled across the oily dark water and a few large drops of rain fell.

  “You like it?” said Will dreamily.

  “What? My drink?”

  “The canal.”

  “It looks a bit dirty to me.”

  He sipped his drink. “They’re going to clean it up. Have you heard about the development project?”

  I looked at the black water. The warehouse on the far side was open to the sky; all the windows had been broken and inside there were piles of twisted, rusty machinery. Everywhere there was rubble and strange sorts of rubbish that I didn’t want to think about too much. “Who’d want to develop this?”

  “Are you kidding? A couple of hundred acres of prime land right in the middle of London? In a couple of years this will all be wine bars, health clubs and apartment blocks with private garages.”

  “Is that good?”

  He drained his glass. “It’ll be respectable,” he said.

  “You make that sound like a dirty word. Won’t it help your young people? There’ll be jobs for them.”

  “I don’t think most of them will fit in here. They’ll be pushed somewhere else where they can be someone else’s problem.” I shivered and he looked at me. “Are you cold?”

  I shook my head. “Someone walked over my grave.”

  But he took off his jacket and hung it round my shoulders. For a moment I was surprised by the thrill that ran through me when I felt his hands touch my shoulders. It had been such a long time since anyone had touched me.

  21

  “I still can’t believe it.”

  “No,” I said meaninglessly.

  “I mean, that kind of thing doesn’t happen, does it? Not to people you know. I can’t get over it.” She shook her head from side to side, as if to clear it. “Poor Philippa,” she said.

  “Mmm.”

  “And Jeremy. And poor, poor Emily. What will happen to Emily? What a thing. Who would want to do a thing like that?”

  Since this wasn’t a real question, I didn’t answer. I sipped the coffee she had made for me and waited. Tess Jarrett looked like a small, glowing chestnut. She sat curled up in a large easy chair in the conservatory of her elegant home, small and round without being plump. She had burnished brown curls all over her head, flecked brown eyes, honey skin that glowed with health and wealth, round tanned arms, a small mouth, perfect white teeth, pearly nails on her small hands and her neat, sandaled feet. She was, she said, Philippa’s best friend. Her very, very best. She shone with horror and excitement.

  “We were inseparable,” she said. “Even more since Emily and Lara were born. They’re almost exactly the same age as each other, you see, and we both gave up work, so we spent lots of time together. It was nice.” It was difficult to imagine Tess as a mother. Though she was thirty-two years old, she looked so young and girlish, as if she was about to put her thumb in her mouth.

  “How long had you known each other?”

  “We were at sixth-form college together.” Her eyes widened. “That means I’ve known her for half my life. Knew, rather. I can’t get used to saying that.”

  “It’s hard,” I agreed.

  “And then, of course, after we got married, we lived near to each other. Hampstead and Belsize Park are ten minutes’ walk apart. We’d meet several times a week. We used to go shopping together.” She fingered the pastel folds of her cotton dress. “We bought this together two weeks ago, for when Rick and the children and I go to Greece. And Rick and Jeremy get on well too. Poor Jeremy.” She sighed gustily.

  “Tess,” I said into the silence that followed, “sometimes we can find out about the killer by finding out about his victim. That’s why I’m here.”

  She nodded. Her face took on a tragic cast. “Yes,” she murmured. “I know that.”

  “So I don’t need to know about her last movements, or that kind of thing. That’s for the police. I’m more interested in her moods, what was going on in her life. And sometimes friends know more about that than family.”

  “I knew everything about Philippa,” she said emphatically. “We had no secrets. For instance,” she lowered her voice and leaned forward, “I told her when I was having problems with Rick, shortly after Lara was born. I think men often find it difficult when their wife has a baby, don’t you? You can’t give them all your attention anymore. You’re so tired, anyway, getting up in the night, and breast-feeding, and things like that. I think they’re jealous, really. Men are like children themselves, aren’t they? What was I saying? Yes, so Rick was getting very short-tempered and rather demanding, you know what I mean, and I didn’t want—well, I told Philippa about that. It helped, just to talk about it. She was very good at listening, Philippa was. She wasn’t a chatterbox, not like me.” She laughed girlishly, and I joined in politely for a couple of beats. “Sometimes,” she went on, “I think that was why we were such good friends. I was the chatty extrovert, and she was more—” She stopped and frowned at me.

  “Yes?” I didn’t want Tess to stop now that she’d finally worked her way round to Philippa.

  “More someone who is a bit on the outside of things, if you see what I mean. Whereas I’m right at the center.”

  “Was that how she chose to be, do you think? On the outside.”

  “Oh, yes, she was quite happy. I never saw her cry. Isn’t that odd? I cry all the time. I cry in Dumbo and Bambi when I watch them with Lara, and any film, really, that’s a bit soppy, and at the television news if they show starving children, and when Lara cries I sometimes cry as well, even if she’s crying because I’ve told her off, and we sit there
like a couple of babies howling, and I cry when she does something for the first time as well—I was in floods of tears when she said ‘Mummy’ for the first time. I can’t help it, stupid, isn’t it? I cry when I’m happy and I cry when I’m sad. But Philippa wasn’t like that. Even when I first met her, she wasn’t.”

  “Which doesn’t mean she was happy,” I said neutrally.

  “No.” She uncurled her legs and wiggled her toes. “Of course not. But she always seemed a steady kind of person. Not up and down like me. I’m a pendulum. Over the moon then down in the dumps, that’s me. Even when she was young and had boyfriends, she didn’t fall head over heels in love. She did it—patiently, I suppose. She was good at waiting and seeing. Anyway, she didn’t have that many boyfriends. She was very calm. She never lost her temper with Emily, not like I do with Lara, little monkey. She was very firm with her, but she didn’t just blow. ‘How on earth do you do it?’ I used to ask her. Used to. Can’t get used to that.” She blinked her brown eyes at me, and a single tear rolled down her cheek, then another. I handed her a tissue. “Thanks. Sorry.”

  “What was her relationship like with Jeremy?”

  “Well, how should I describe it? Me and Rick, we argue sometimes, and then make up—arguments are almost worth it when you make up at the end, aren’t they? But she and Jeremy didn’t argue. They were very courteous with each other. He bought her flowers every Friday, without fail. Isn’t that nice? I wish Rick did that. Yellow roses were her favorites, and sweet peas, though you can’t usually buy sweet peas from the florist’s, can you? She was good at gardening—have you seen her garden? Jeremy and Emily are back there again, I think, after staying at her mother’s. I must go and see them soon. Anyway, I never saw them being lovey-dovey—but maybe that’s just the way they were. I mean, you never know what goes on in other people’s lives, do you? And when Emily was born, they were thrilled. Do you know? I’ve lied to you, I have seen Philippa cry. I went to see her just after Emily was born, the next day I think it was, in hospital. I was enormous with Lara, like one of those little round-bottomed toys you push over and then they pop up again, except if anyone had pushed me over I would just have lain on the floor forever. I hate hospitals, don’t you? They make me think I’m about to die. All those depressing green walls. Philippa was sitting up in bed, and holding this little bundle and staring down at it, and when I came in, she looked up and there were tears streaming down her face. A great sheet of tears. She said, ‘She’s so beautiful. Look how beautiful she is. My own little daughter.’ Then of course I had to go and cry too, and then Emily woke up and began roaring. She loved Emily. That’s why—” She stopped abruptly.