The Rottweiler (v5)

by Ruth Rendell

  It looked just the same as it always did by night, deserted, cars parked nose-to-tail along all the kerbs with only narrow spaces between. The driver’s window of a newish Peugeot had been smashed, for the sake of its radio or mobile, no doubt. He seemed to remember that that window had been intact when he came in. At the lamp post on the corner was a waste bin but it had been emptied. The people two doors up Bridgnorth Street had already put their rubbish out for collection in the morning. Jeremy untied the string that closed the top of the bag and stepped back at the foetid stench. Another penalty of a superb sense of smell. He put the earrings, the lighter and the keyring inside and resealed the bag.

  As he climbed the stairs once again he paused outside Cobbett’s door. The light had gone out and the crying had stopped. Why did he care? Not for Cobbett, he thought, or whoever might be in there, child, ill-treated woman. The sobbing had somehow been for him, a lament for his life, a dirge because that life would soon be over in all senses that mattered. He went back into his flat, took off his clothes and lay sleepless on his bed.

  You would think, Becky told herself at seven in the morning, that drinking the way she did and the amount she did, her body would gradually get used to a large intake of alcohol and she no longer suffer such acute hangovers. That was the rule; she seemed to be an exception to it. Once more she thought, as she thought every morning, that she must stop or drastically cut down. She would put her job in jeopardy, ruin her looks, make herself fat, grow old prematurely and destroy her liver.

  She got up, staggering, her legs mostly obeying the directions they received, her head floating off towards the ceiling. The fierce headache wouldn’t kick in for half an hour and then it would begin its draconian punishment. Her teeth cleaned and mouth rinsed, cold water uselessly splashed over her face, two aspirins taken in vain, she asked herself why. Why was she drinking so much now when she was free, had time on her hands, a good job and plenty of money? For no reason, and that was why it was time to stop.

  The noises in her head were quite bad, a perpetual rustling that seemed to be on the left side and a rhythmic throbbing, a regular beat, on the right. Added to that was a ringing in the centre, directly above her eyes. She closed them, leaning against the kitchen table, and then she understood that the ringing wasn’t in her head, it was real. ‘Hello. Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Will. Let me in, Becky, please. I’m cold.’

  She pressed the key with the picture of a key on it, opened the front door to the flat and sank down into the first chair she came to. Will looked as if he had been crying for hours, his face red and puffy, his eyes swollen and slit-like. He was carrying a suitcase that looked heavy and he dumped it on the floor. Becky recognised it as the largest of the three suitcases he had. He didn’t speak. Oh God, Becky thought, has he lost the power of speech again?

  He hadn’t. ‘Can I have a drink of milk?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Help yourself.’

  While Will poured the milk into a mug, she made herself a stiff gin and tonic in a tumbler. The only thing that would help, however bad for her it was, more intake of alcohol. ‘What’s wrong, Will?’

  He wouldn’t answer precisely. ‘I’ve come to stay, Becky. I didn’t want to go home on Saturday, I wanted to stay then, I always do want to because it’s nice here.’

  ‘Isn’t it nice at Inez’s?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not like here.’

  ‘What’s in the case, Will?’

  ‘All my things I need.’

  He knelt down and opened it. Clothes there must be somewhere in its depths but all she could see were a toy truck—did he play with it?—a comic paper, the Radio Times, the video remote as if hers didn’t work and he could use his here, a jar of humbugs, a red baseball cap with ‘Man United’ on it in white, a video cassette of Spot the Dog.

  ‘I’ll get my room ready myself,’ he said. ‘I’ll do what you did. I’ll take out all the chairs but one and put the computer somewhere else and make the sofa into a bed and put sheets on it.’

  ‘What about work, Will?’

  ‘You could phone Keith and say I’m not well.’ The equivalent of the primary school sick note, she thought. ‘You could say I’ll be better tomorrow and to come here for me.’

  He fastened the case and dragged it into the study. Her headache lifting but her body still weak, she heard him moving furniture about while he hummed the dwarfs’ chorus from Snow White. He only sang, as she knew from old, if he was very happy.

  What was to be done? If he went to work tomorrow she supposed she could too. He’d be alone for a couple of hours each afternoon but that wouldn’t be too bad. She had sent her lover away and there would be no more. The television would be on all the morning and all the evening, day in and day out, every day. She would feel no more guilt, all that would be in the past. A kind of deadly peace would replace it, a lifeless calm with a sweet, wilful child ruling her and always there. For her goings out and her comings in, her meetings and her partings, her waking and her sleeping. Perhaps, with the guilt gone, the need to drink would go too. Perhaps. One day.

  His coming here was inevitable. Maybe, somewhere inside her throbbing head, she had always known it would happen. All she had done was put off the evil day. But I do love him, she thought. The words had a hollow ring. Did she love him? Did she love anyone in the world?

  Becky put her arms on the table and her head on her arms and wept. She wept for a car crash and a fragile chromosome and a callous society and for herself.

  From the study came Will’s voice singing, ‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, as off to work we go …’

  ‘You should have informed us last night,’ said Detective Inspector Crippen, ‘when it happened. Not waited till now.’

  ‘I thought you’d be over the moon when I came to you with the best lead to the Rottweiler’s identity you’re likely to get.’ Anwar wasn’t really indignant. He didn’t care. If the police did nothing after the evidence he was giving them, he would get hold of the media and see what they made of the law’s indifference when presented with plain evidence of a garrotting attempt.

  ‘Let’s have a look at your neck.’

  Anwar, who had covered it with a polo-neck sweater worn under his suit, not from embarrassment but the better to create a drama when his throat was bared, pulled down the dark-blue woollen stuff and extended his head.

  Both policemen, Crippen and Zulueta, reacted almost as well as he had hoped. ‘That’s a nasty lesion you’ve got there,’ said Crippen, recoiling a little from the bright reddish-purple ring encircling Anwar’s olivine throat. ‘I’ll be very much surprised if that doesn’t leave a scar.’

  ‘You’d better get it seen to,’ said Zulueta. ‘That needs medical attention.’

  Crippen was still shaking his head, perhaps at the evil tendencies of West London’s humanity. ‘Tell me again what happened.’

  ‘I was walking home from Marylebone Station. I’d been visiting my auntie in Aylesbury.’ He had been doing this, with his parents, on the previous Friday, but Auntie Seema would never remember which day it was, she’d always been a couple of cumin seeds short of a korma. ‘It was around midnight when I came up Ashmill Street from Lisson Grove.’ They wouldn’t be able to fault that, it was the shortest way.

  ‘You don’t look much like a girl,’ said Zulueta, ‘or a woman at all.’ He looked at Anwar in perplexity, at his boniness, his concave chest and skinny legs, the incipient growth of beard on his chin and cheeks, and his big, bold nose.

  ‘Maybe he couldn’t see very well,’ said Anwar. ‘It was dark and he was under a tree. I was cutting through the garden into Broadley Street. He came at me with this electric cable and before I could do anything it was round my throat.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I’m not a girl, am I? I fought him off, of course.’

  ‘And you say you recognised him?’

  ‘Sure I recognised him,’ said Anwar virtuously. ‘I don’t know his name but he lives in the flat
above my friend Frederick Perfect.’

  Having won a hundred pounds on the Lottery, Freddy was in cheerful mood. He waved at Jeremy from the shop window and was pointedly ignored, though the tenant of the top flat had certainly seen him, had even met his eyes.

  ‘He can’t be going to work at this hour,’ said Freddy. ‘He doesn’t look well, like he’s sickening for something. I hope it’s not infectious. Going out without a coat or an umbrella will make things worse. It’s going to pour. I wonder where he’s heading for. Maybe the doctor’s. That will be it.’

  None of these remarks seemed to require a reply. Inez smiled vaguely at Freddy. He had come downstairs very late this morning, following in Zeinab’s footsteps, but for that, for this one instance at any rate, she was not sorry. Only just after she had unlocked the door and put the books out on the pavement, the man who had bought the Chelsea china clock came in. He had walked about, appearing to examine objects—but not really examining them, she thought—then walked up to her and asked her to have dinner with him. She was so surprised she said she’d like to, and when he had gone realised that, surprise or not, she would like to very much.

  Not, of course, going to the doctor’s, Jeremy was on his way to buy a gun.

  A real handgun he wouldn’t know how to handle. A replica would do or even a toy, so long as it looked like a pistol or a revolver from a distance. Toys were as frightening to bystanders as real guns so long as you didn’t fire them.

  He had passed a terrible night, finally falling asleep at seven in the morning. If asked, he was in the habit of saying he never had dreams or if he had them they were forgotten when he woke up, and this was roughly true. What he had were curious nocturnal visions or fantasies that recurred and recurred in wakefulness, breaking open in front of his eyes and teasing him with their apparent meaninglessness. There had been the time when he had seen the first girl he had killed, full-face, in profile, looking down, looking up, laughing and weeping, and later the procession, like Macbeth’s kings, of varieties of garrotting means, rope, wire, cable, cord, string, tape, chain and twine, dancing and rolling down an endless stair. Last night, having not suffered this particular affliction for a long time, he saw flagons and phials and bottles of perfume but smelt nothing. The scent bottles, large, small and tiny, clear, golden, pink, green, blue, black, tossed and jumbled as if thrown from a height. He tried to resist them, closing his eyes, then forcing them open, getting up, putting lights on. As soon as he lay down again, light on or off, they began again, jumping and skipping, falling, falling, falling, but never reaching the ground, where mercifully they would have broken and been swept away.

  Now they were gone, but not the memory of them nor the need they had left behind. His thoughts were full of the scent and how he didn’t know its name. But he must get the gun before he gave way to this desire. There was a place along New Oxford Street, near St Giles’s, where he thought he could get a replica. At Marble Arch he got on a bus going eastwards and after a slow journey that took a very long time in heavy traffic, he got off at the point where Shaftesbury Avenue meets New Oxford Street. The place that sold the replica guns had been next to the umbrella and walking stick shop but it was no longer there. It would have to be a toy.

  A taxi took him back the way he had come and dropped him outside Selfridges. In spite of his need, he avoided the perfume department but went up in the escalator in men’s fashions. Among the toys on the first floor he found a passable gun which would do. It was silver and black, and made of plastic but that wouldn’t be detected by anyone in the street below. He bought it. Should he or should he not take a hostage? If the Asian girl who used to work in the shop were still there he wouldn’t have hesitated. He must take someone to be sure his plan to commit suicide would work. No, not suicide, for he could throw himself off the flyover if that was what he wanted, but to be killed, to die at the hands of others.

  Down on the escalator, he headed this time for Perfumes. He had to know. It mustn’t take long, though. Unless the boy he had met last night had failed to go to the police, they would be with him soon. Phone first and when they got no answer …? Come and wait for him, no doubt. His heart pounding and his palms sweating, he walked into the perfume department, his nostrils immediately attacked by scents, sweet or bitter-sweet, musky or fruity, but harmless to him in an area where one was far from harmless.

  He was looking for the girl who had sprayed him with the lethal essence.

  She had been beautiful in anyone’s eyes, dark, black-eyed, with some oriental blood, he thought, no epicanthic fold on her upper eyelid, so that blood would be Far Eastern. The spray bottle had been black and gold.

  At all costs, whatever happened, he mustn’t let her spray him with it again. He was more afraid of the scent than of dying.

  CHAPTER 29

  He recognised her. Not tempting customers with perfume this time, but standing behind a counter talking to a girl of similar age but very dissimilar looks. Rather cautiously, he approached her, confused by the variety of goods in stands and on shelves. How did women cope with all this? Why did they? It seemed to involve unnecessary and ultimately useless labour. An underlying fear drove social comment away. Did the police know by now? The thought surfaced. It had been there for the past half-hour, buried under something spurious, unneeded, a fantasy question that if solved would contribute nothing to his well-being, his life, his peace. All that was gone for good. He wanted to know the name of the perfume before he died, that was all.

  While he was crossing the floor, the dark beauty had disappeared. He looked around him, hoping to see her. There were dozens of girls everywhere, some as perfect as any model, all of them good-looking. He said to the pale, fair girl, ‘Excuse me?’

  She turned and he fancied the expression on her face, kindly, tolerant, understanding, was one she had been trained to assume when the customer was male. ‘How may I help you?’

  The ridiculous phrase, which had no place in ordinary day-to-day speech, for once failed to rile him. He said, almost diffidently, ‘I was in here just over a week ago and your friend sprayed some perfume on me …’

  ‘My friend?’

  ‘The young lady you were talking to just now. I wondered if you could tell me what the perfume was called.’

  ‘Well, Nicky doesn’t actually work with our products. She’s over there.’ She pointed to another stand, another counter with a different array of packages and bottles and jars behind it. ‘But she’s in a meeting now.’

  This excuse or apology, more often applied to the whereabouts of company chairmen or chief executives, took him terribly aback. He felt old and as if transported to a new and different world. Going back home now, defending himself, if necessary making an end to everything, seemed the only option.

  Sympathy for him brimmed in her eyes like tears. ‘Can you remember the date? What the—er, fragrance, looked like?’

  ‘It was Saturday the first of June. In the morning. I think it looked—it was black and gold. She sprayed it on me, I needed—I want …’

  ‘I quite understand,’ she said, and all he could think of was how little she could possibly understand. ‘I could find out for you. My name is Lara—have you got that? Lara. If you’d leave me your phone number …?’

  He had no business cards for Star Street, so he told her the number and she wrote it down. He would never hear from her, he knew that. In the unlikely event of her phoning him, of her not losing the piece of paper and forgetting him, it would come too late. He thanked her, aware that in the past few hours Jeremy Quick had been growing humble, his customary arrogance seeping away, as Alexander Gibbons quietly stepped into his place.

  Star Street he must approach carefully. He was thankful for the rain that had begun while he was in the store. It was a fine drizzle, which hung in the air like a mist and increased the smell of diesel and fast food. Going home in a taxi wasn’t to be contemplated, but it wasn’t far. He decided to walk. If police cars were there, if Crippen’s or Zulu
eta’s cars was there—he would recognise the inspector’s dark-red Audi and the sergeant’s blue Honda from a long way off—he would retreat to work out a strategy. But it might not be those particular officers, they or one of them might be taking a day off or a completely different team have been transferred to the case. He walked up Seymour Place, turning left into George Street, the Edgware Road ahead of him.

  It was fairly certain the boy in the black veil hadn’t gone to the police on the previous night. If he had, they would have come for him first thing in the morning, something he had desperately feared as he lay wakeful, his sleepless fantasy running before his eyes. And what happened to his theory that ‘these people’, the boy and his girlfriend, went to bed so late that they never adjusted to daytime life until the middle of the afternoon? That obviously wouldn’t apply in an emergency, not when she saw the mark on her boyfriend’s neck from the garrotte. Then he wouldn’t have waited until this morning …

  By this time he was crossing the Edgware Road and he was very wet, having contemplated buying an umbrella but rejecting the idea. He was calculating which direction would be the safest to approach from. They would expect him either to come up Star Street from here or down it from Norfolk Square, so he would take St Michael’s Street. He was quite unaware that he was watched from a window on the left-hand side, Anwar pointing him out to Flint as they stood in the hall, squinting through the glass panel in the front door.

  ‘You gonna give the filth a bell?’

  ‘I don’t know. But, no,’ said Anwar. ‘I’ve given them enough fucking help. Let them do some work for a change.’

  No police cars, no cars at all. Oddly for a mid-week morning, the residents’ parking and the meters in the vicinity of the shop were all vacant. Jeremy hesitated outside the tenants’ street door and went in through the shop instead. A scream or even a sign of shock from Inez would have told him a lot.