The Red Room

by Nicci French

  “No.”

  “Good. I’m over the limit anyway. So what next?”

  “Something to eat?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Have you slept?”

  “No.”

  “No sleep, no food.”

  “I’m not going to make the first move, Will.” Drink made me brave.

  “All right.”

  “Because it’s your turn.”

  “To answer your question, I left because one day I woke up with a hangover and I felt unutterably sick of it all.”

  “Of your job?”

  “My job, my slickness at it, my amazing ability to obey the letter of the law and never the spirit, my petty triumphs and successes, my drinking, my increasing cocaine habit, my house with its fine period furniture, my bank balance, my briefcase and laptop and mobile phone, which I carried to work early every morning on the underground, pressed up against all the other men just like me. Sick to death of all my things. The more you have the more you find you need. The latest, smallest mobile, fancy gadgets, a watch that’s a computer. Sick of the fucking trouser press, the suits and ties, the drinks parties, the meetings with lots of other men in suits just like mine who owned trouser presses and period furniture, the holidays in Cape Cod that people talked about, the conversations about golf and school fees and fine wines. I just woke up and knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go there for one single day more. It was a bit like alcohol poisoning. I felt sick of myself, allergic to the world I lived in. Disgusted by how oblivious I was to everything around me. Do you know? Every morning, and every evening, I walked past these groups of homeless kids, like the ones I spend my days with now, and past winos and prostitutes, and I literally didn’t see them, unless they were in my way. I was blind to them.”

  “Then you suddenly saw them?”

  “It wasn’t exactly the road to Damascus.”

  “But it was your conscience that made you leave and start the center?” I wanted him to say something good about himself.

  “I don’t use that word unless I’m trying to squeeze a donation for the center out of a businessman who wants to feel virtuous. Politicians have degraded it. Conscience. Integrity. Honor. Truth. Sincerity. Love.” His voice was scornful. “It was more like compulsion. Don’t make me out to be a crusader. I did it for me, to rescue myself. I’m the only person I’m trying to save. Do you want more drink?”

  “OK. Why not? What about your wife?”

  “She stayed.”

  “In the full house.”

  “Yes.”

  “Children?”

  “No.”

  “Do you ever see her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you get lonely?”

  “No. Or not until now.”

  “Why now?”

  “Why do you think, Kit?”

  “Do you do this often?”

  “What?”

  “What we are about to do.”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No. Can’t you tell?”

  “People seem one thing and are actually something quite different.”

  “How do I seem?”

  “Like someone who’s scared and making herself do it anyway.”

  “What am I scared of ?”

  “I don’t know. Me?”

  “Why should I be scared of you?” I was, though—dread and excitement filled me.

  “The world, then. Scared of getting hurt?”

  “I’m the one who’s supposed to say trite therapeutic things like that.”

  “Drink up.”

  “Finished. Now what?”

  “If I asked you to come upstairs, what would you say?”

  “Ask me, and you’ll find out.”

  “Will you come upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  He picked up the bottle by its neck and I followed him out of the kitchen and up the narrow, uncarpeted stairs into his bedroom: one futon, one wardrobe, a tall standard lamp and unexpectedly cheery yellow curtains, half open, that twitched in the breeze from the open window.

  “Undo the buttons on your blouse.”

  “Give me the bottle first. I need Dutch courage. There. Like that?”

  “Yes. You’re really very lovely.”

  “Then why do you look as if you’re in pain?”

  “Because you’re lovely.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “You don’t want to trust me, Kit.”

  “I don’t. I don’t trust you at all. That’s the point.”

  “I’ll be no good for you.”

  “That doesn’t really matter at all.”

  __________

  Afterwards, I lay on his futon and stared out of the window at the gibbous moon in the inky sky. Will lay beside me, silent, looking up at the ceiling through half-closed eyes. Then he said, “I’m hungry.”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  “It didn’t look as if you kept much food here.”

  “I don’t. I could get us a takeaway. Italian, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Greek. Or there’s even a Japanese not so far off.”

  “I don’t mind. Anything.”

  “I won’t be long.” He pulled on his old jeans and a gray sweatshirt.

  “Don’t go away.”

  I lay on the bed and listened to his footsteps clattering down the wooden stairs; heard the front door open and close. I was all alone, in Will’s house. After a few minutes, I went into the bathroom. Very clean and functional. I washed myself and put on the thick blue toweling robe that was hanging on the back of the door, then I wandered into the second upstairs room, a square room overlooking the back garden. All there was in here was a grand piano and a piano stool. I touched one of the ivory keys and a single note hung in the air. It sounded a bit out of tune. I opened the lid of the stool and found a few dog-eared pieces of music with penciled instructions scribbled across the top and a can of beer.

  I went downstairs to find something to drink, for my mouth felt dry after all the alcohol. In the hallway, the phone rang and an answering-machine clicked on. “Will,” said a man’s voice, in a stage-whisper. “Will, it’s me, mate. I need to talk to you. Will, are you there? Please? It’s urgent.” There was a silence, during which I could hear him breathing heavily. Madly, I held my own breath, as if the caller could somehow hear me too. Then the machine clicked off.

  I took a bottle of fizzy water out of the fridge and drank two glasses of it. It was nearly eleven. In the past forty hours, I’d had about two hours’ sleep, if that. But I didn’t feel tired, not exactly; I felt strangely over-focused. My skin tingled; my heart pounded; my brain raced; all the objects in the room seemed unnaturally clear to me, as if they were back-lit. I went into the living room and sat on the soft, deep sofa with my feet curled up under me. That was how Will found me, when he returned fifteen minutes later. He came into the room carrying a large bag and his face looked preoccupied and wearily bleak—the face he wore when alone. Then he saw me. He didn’t smile, but it was as if a shadow moved away from him. I did that, I thought, as I moved up to make room. He didn’t say anything, but put his arm around me and pulled me against him. His cheek was cold from the night air. Then he sighed and leaned forward to pull two black trays from his bag.

  “That looks beautiful, like a work of art. It’s a pity to wreck it.”

  “We should be drinking sake with this.”

  “I don’t want anything more to drink.”

  “Here, eat this.”

  He fed me a chunk of raw tuna smeared with a hot green paste and dipped into soy sauce, and I chewed it obediently. It didn’t taste of fish or brine. It just tasted of freshness. “Nice.”

  “And another.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Don’t close your eyes.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Eat this. Kit, Kit.”

  I tried to keep my eyes open,
but it was all too lovely for me to bear any longer—the warm room, the deep sofa, his dressing-gown with his smell on it wrapped around my naked body, the unfamiliar food, the vague prickle of fear somewhere in my belly, the feel of his hand stroking my hair, the sound of his voice in my ear, calling my name. His breath on my cheek. I felt myself sliding into a blissful darkness.

  31

  I looked at Michael Doll for a minute before I approached him. There was a line of men along the edge of the canal. It was a Wednesday morning. Didn’t these people have jobs to go to? A couple of radios were tuned to different stations and turned up loud. The fishermen’s telescopic rods were enormously long, sometimes extending back across the towpath and forward across to the far side of the canal. As I stood there a young cyclist came along the path, forcing much grumbling and moving of rods out of the way.

  There were one or two clusters of fishermen, huddled together over a cup of something warm poured from a Thermos flask, but mainly they sat alone. Somehow Michael Doll was even more alone, further along the bank, away from the others. Had they heard about him? His dog sat beside him, motionless except for the saliva that dribbled from between his yellow teeth. I walked toward him, stepping over rods and between plastic boxes of hooks, reels, maggots. Although it wasn’t a cold day, Doll was wearing a red and black checked coat like a Canadian lumberjack and a rather jaunty navy blue cap. He was looking directly ahead, and as I got closer I could hear that he was singing under his breath. Then it was as if he had felt my gaze on his face, like a breath of wind, and he turned. He smiled, but not with surprise. He had an air of expectancy that chilled me. “Hello, Kit,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” I said, pushing my hands into my pockets and looking around. “I’ve never actually seen you fish before.”

  He gave a little throaty chuckle. “It’s a good life down here,” he said. “Good people.” He lifted up the rod. There was nothing on the hook. “They nibble the worms off, canny blighters.” Another chuckle. He moved the rod so that the hook swung toward him and he caught it deftly. He was sitting on a fold-up camp stool. Down by his left boot there was a tobacco tin full of earthworms. He sorted among them with his fingers until he had apparently found one with which he was satisfied.

  “The others seem to be using maggots,” I said.

  “Maggots is a waste of money,” he said. “You can dig up the worms round the back. Many as you want. Besides, worms is more meaty.” He almost closed one eye and narrowed the other as he lined up the unfortunate worm so that it could be impaled on his hook. “You know, it’s a funny thing, people worry about foxes and baby seals but they don’t worry about fishes or worms. I mean, like, look at this worm. People say a worm don’t feel pain but look at this worm.” He pushed the point of his hook through the worm. Some gray liquid came out. Did worms have blood? I thought I’d done it in biology when I was about thirteen but I couldn’t remember. “Look,” he said unnecessarily, “it’s wriggling more. You’d think for all the world that it was in pain and trying to escape, wouldn’t you? Steady now.” This last was addressed to the worm. Far from escaping, the worm was now impaled a second time on the barbed hook. “Who’s to say that a worm don’t feel pain like you or me do?”

  “So why do you do it?”

  Doll swung the rod again and the worm disappeared into the dark waters of the canal. The little float tipped and bobbed and finally settled in an upright position. “I don’t think about it,” he said.

  “Yes, you do. You were just talking about it.”

  He frowned with concentration. “Well it goes into my brain, if that’s what you mean. But it don’t bother me. It’s just a worm, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. Do you catch many fish?”

  “Sometimes I get ten. Sometimes I sit the whole day in the rain and get nothing.”

  “What do you do with them?”

  “I just throw them back. Except sometimes the hook’s in too deep. You pull the hook out and it rips their mouth or pulls their guts out with it. Then I snap their neck and give them to a cat that lives round where my flat is. Loves them, he does.”

  I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets and tried to maintain an expression of polite interest. I could hear Doll muttering to himself, but then I listened more closely and realized he was talking to the fish, the invisible fish down in the oily dark water, trying to coax them onto his hook. “There you are,” he whispered. “Come on, my beauties. Come on.” He lifted the hook out of the water. There was no fish but half of the worm was gone. He gave a wheezing laugh. “Crafty buggers.”

  “Michael, I’m really here to talk about what happened on the canal.” He murmured something unintelligible. “Didn’t you think it was strange that you should be here when this happened?”

  He looked round. “Not strange,” he said. “I’m always here. It’s my patch. If he wants to kill girls on my patch then I’m here.”

  “All right,” I said. “This is your patch. You know it. Did you recognize the man? Was there anything familiar about him?”

  “Nah,” said Doll. “It was all on top of me so quick. Dark. Saw nothing.”

  “Are you all right, Michael? You haven’t been attacked again?”

  “Nah,” he said, smiling at me. “It’s all forgotten. Forgotten and forgiven.”

  I looked warily at his float. The worm would have been chewed about three-quarters of the way down by now. I didn’t feel I could face the torment of a second worm at this time of the morning. “Try to think, Michael,” I said. “If you remember anything, anything at all, just get in touch with me. You can get in touch with me via the police.”

  “Nah, I got your number.”

  “All right,” I said doubtfully.

  “I know where you live.”

  “Or you can tell the police.”

  “Look, a fish, a bloody fish.”

  There it was, flashing silver dangling from Doll’s line. I left at speed before there was any chance of watching its intestines pulled through its mouth.

  __________

  Walking home, I passed a coffee shop with a temptingly empty table outside in the sunshine. I sat down, ordered a double espresso and tried to make some sense of the clutter in my brain.

  When the second cup arrived, I phoned Oban. Yes, Bryony had given them a statement and he was in low spirits. “As you know, we got fuck-all out of Mickey Doll that made any sense, pardon my French, and as far as our description goes we’ve got Terence Mack’s fairly tall man and Bryony’s fairly short man. Maybe we can get the two of them together and they can get their stories straight.”

  “It was a scramble in the middle of the night,” I said. “What did you expect?”

  “I can’t believe that this bastard broke cover, people saw him and we’ve still got bloody nothing. What are you up to?”

  “I’m sitting in a café drinking coffee.”

  “I wish I was bloody with you. By the way, are you going to give us some kind of report on the incident? What do you reckon about it?”

  “Bryony told me that she thought it might have been a straightforward mugging gone wrong, nothing to do with the case at all.”

  “Yeah, she said the same to us. What’s the matter with her? Doesn’t she want to be famous?”

  “We should consider it.”

  “Do you want to put her in charge of the inquiry? I’d be glad to be shot of it.” I couldn’t help laughing. “Are you still there, Kit?”

  “We don’t want to be sidetracked,” I said. “It’s not just Bryony. It doesn’t quite fit the pattern.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t fit the pattern? It fits too many bloody patterns. There’s the spot on the canal, there’s Doll. That should be enough, even for you.”

  “I was thinking of the attack itself. The other two were done quite skillfully, in a way. But this was so clumsy.”

  “Come off it, Kit. These killers escalate, they get more reckless. They need to take more risks to get the sam
e thrill. If the witnesses hadn’t been a wimp and a headcase we’d have had him. And as for that bloody headcase…”

  “I don’t know, Dan. I just went and talked to Doll down by the canal.”

  “Don’t tell me. You think he’s too nice to have done it.”

  “The opposite. If Doll were a murderer, he would be much worse than this. I should know. I’ve just watched him putting a worm on a hook.”

  “Is that the basis for your judgement?”

  “One of them.”

  “Well, I’ll keep you away from my thirteen-year-old, then. You should see what he does with beetles and a magnifying-glass.”

  My coffee cup was empty. I couldn’t manage any more. My head was already buzzing. The sun had gone behind a cloud. It was surprisingly cold.

  “So what are your plans?” I asked.

  There was a silence on the line for a few seconds so that I began to think we had been cut off.

  “I’ve got a horrible feeling that what we’re really doing is sitting and waiting for him to do something even more stupid and get caught. In the meantime we’re going to try some more publicity. I’ve briefed some journalists on the new attack. I was trying to persuade Mrs. Teale to go on television but she didn’t seem keen. Maybe you could work on her.”

  “All right.”

  “Any other ideas? What are you up to?”

  Now I was silent for a few seconds. What was I up to? “I suppose I’m trying to look at everything again. I have this feeling we’re missing something.”

  “Are you looking for some connection between them all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But Kit,” said Oban, with only the smallest hint of exasperation, “we’ve already got connections. You established one of the main ones. Why are you looking for others?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, suddenly lacking in all energy. “Maybe I’m just blundering around in the dark.”

  “You said it, not me,” said Oban. “Let me know if you find the light switch.”

  And now he really was gone.