Perhaps he wasn’t in the flat now. She went into the kitchen first, and was appalled by how much of a slob he was. Some of the remains of food on the dirty plates piled in the sink were barely cooked. He had virtually emptied the fridge and the freezer. She hoped the undercooked food had given him indigestion. She went into the living room, and let out a gasp so furious she hadn’t time to tit a word to it. Her video cassettes were strewn over the floor, and one blank tape had been ripped out of its ease She stalked into her bedroom, to see what havoc he had wreaked in there.
He was using her bed. Instinct told her not to look too closely at the rumpled sheets. She wondered if he’d imagined beating her up to help him masturbate. “Looks as if we’ve got the place to ourselves after all,” she told Nell, and went quickly to the wardrobe. Her dresses lay in a heap beneath the hangers, but that seemed to have been the extent of his inventiveness. She packed as many of the dresses as she had room for, and was starting on the chest of drawers when she saw her old toy monkey under the bed.
Its limbs had been torn off, its eyes gouged out. One socket and the area around it was stained with semen. Molly backed away from the idea of touching the monkey, and felt sick. She twitched at a blanket so that it hid the monkey from Nell. She piled the contents of the drawers into her second suitcase, and hurried to the bathroom to collect her toiletries, to be out of the flat as soon as she could.
The bathroom door wouldn’t open. At first she thought it had jammed. She threw her weight against it, and then she heard a thud at the far end of the bathroom. The toilet seat had fallen on the pan. “Come out of there,” she cried in a rage that made her throat and her head ache. “I want my things.”
There was silence. Did he think she would go away if he didn’t answer? Nell came into the hall as Molly began to pound on the door. “Get out of here, you shit,” Molly cried, “and don’t try anything. There’s someone here with me. You tell him, Nell.”
“That’s right,” Nell said reluctantly.
“Someone you know, and she knows you. She knows all about you.” The silence enraged her. “What are you doing in there, playing with yourself again? Seeing how much more of a mess you can make? Get out of my flat right now or I’ll bring the police.”
She heard a clatter of glass jars, and then glass smashed. “That’s right, you find something else to break,” she cried. “All right, I’ve had enough. Come on, we’ll break this door down and find out what he’s up to.”
Nell looked wary. Did she think he had broken the jar to use against them? Molly threw her weight against the door and felt the flimsy bolt jerk in its socket. “Come on,” she said, cold with anger, to Nell. “I’m not leaving him in here.”
She stared at Nell until Nell moved. They attacked the door together, and Molly heard wood splintering. The screws of the bolt must be loosening. One more combined onslaught and the door would give. She heard the gnash of broken glass under his feet, and Nell’s apprehension almost infected her. but she wanted him out of her flat. The renewed pain of her bruises only made her more determined. Just then Susan started clattering the letter box and crying, “What’s wrong?”
“You are,” Molly muttered, and hoped Nell hadn’t heard. She couldn’t risk driving him out now when the child was so near. Her rage was fading again, her throbbing arm made her bite her lip. She felt stupidly revengeful. “Never mind,” she murmured to Nell. “I can buy toilet things when I get home.”
But she didn’t mean to leave him in residence, by God. “Don’t get too comfortable in there,” she shouted as she left, and banged on the bathroom door. “We’re going for the police right now.” As she reached Bayswater Road she thought she heard her front door slamming, but Nell and Susan were hurrying across to the far pavement, bearing her suitcases which they’d insisted on carrying. She followed them in search of a cab. She felt wistful and homeless, robbed of all her years in her flat, but at least she was out of Nell’s. At last she was on her way.
57
ONCE Martin had ascertained that Molly wasn’t at MTV, there was little he could do except wait in Reception. It shouldn’t take Stuart Hay much longer to get here from Norwich than it had taken Martin from Oxford. It better hadn’t, for Hay’s sake.
Few of the people who passed through the lobby seemed to recognize Martin. Those who must have didn’t acknowledge him, except for the odd double take. All the same, they made him nervous in case someone like Ben Eccles thought of calling the police. Suppose the police were looking for him so as to serve their papers on him? Now that Hay had rekindled his hope, however faint, of finding Molly, extradition seemed a real threat.
Martin had had all he could take, both of worrying about the police and of wasting his time. He left a message at the desk for Stuart Hay to wait, that he was going over to Molly Wolfe’s.
The afternoon was growing colder. The bare trees of Hyde Park were caught in the blue ice of the sky. Everything looked sharp and clear and detailed, and quite beside the point. All he wanted was to see that Molly was well, and then he would leave her alone. It was no longer important what she believed about him, only that she was all right now. He hurried past the police station, cursing the police for their part in her breakdown, and was almost at the pedestrian crossing when he saw her across the road.
He was lurching in front of the speeding traffic until he stopped himself—of course it couldn’t have been Molly. Why would she have been with a woman and a young girl who were both carrying suitcases? He’d hardly even glimpsed her face as she vanished down the steps into the Underground. He ran across when the traffic lights allowed him to, but there was no sign of the three even when he ventured down the steps. As he headed back up, he had to step aside for a pale man with angry pimples and spiky hair, who looked as if he were chasing someone into the Underground. One glance at his face convinced Martin that he wouldn’t like to be whoever the man was chasing, especially not when he caught them. He ran up the steps, and up the hill to Molly’s.
He could see from the street that she’d gone. Now that the curtains were open, he saw at once that her wardrobe and chest of drawers had been emptied. He rang the bell anyway, hopelessly, and thought that she must have been in the flat when the police had dragged him away. Perhaps it had been his attempt to speak to her that had made her go into hiding. All the way back to MTV that thought aggravated his rage. And so did the sight of Stuart Hay getting up from a Reception chair and ambling toward him.
Stuart halted only inches from him. “I want to be straight with ‘you right away,” he croaked, then had to clear his throat elaborately. “I went to see Guilda Kent, who ran the Oxford project, and she’s out of her head. So is Danny Swain who was one of our subjects.”
Clenching his fists hard let Martin speak. “And you’re still saying you aren’t responsible?”
“No, I think I’m the only one left who is.”
This was so unlike his attitude in Oxford that again Martin was speechless. “I take it she wasn’t at home,” Stuart said.
“No.” Martin wasn’t ready to give up his resentment. “I’ve no idea where she is,” he said accusingly.
“Perhaps she’s already over the worst of it. She seemed a lot more stable than Swain, as I remember.”
“Look, don’t presume, all right?” Martin lowered his voice as people turned, hoping for a scene. “You don’t know what sort of state she’s in, and neither do I.”
“As you like. I was going to suggest that as long as we don’t know where she is, we should go and see Joyce Churchill. She’s the other subject who lives in London.”
“What, the woman who looks after old people? She contacted Molly a few weeks ago.” Martin tried not to be too hopeful. “I suppose Molly could be with her.”
“It isn’t far. We’ll take a cab.” He stood aside for Martin at the revolving doors. “I’ll pay,” he said as if that made things right.
Martin didn’t talk to him once they were in the taxi; for the moment there seemed
to be nothing to say. He stared out at Regent’s Park and Kentish Town as Stuart blew his nose and snuffled. When the taxi drew up before a Georgian house on the brow of the hill, Martin hurried down the short path to ring the bell.
There was no reply. He rang again as Stuart, having paid the driver, followed him. The neat flower beds beside the path were growing unkempt, and Martin thought Joyce Churchill had left home too. He tried knocking, the last hope, and the door swung open. It had been left minutely ajar.
Perhaps she was at a neighbor’s or round the corner at the shops, or perhaps she thought she’d closed the door. Martin and Stuart listened then knocked again loudly, they glanced at each other and nodded, and then they went in. Somewhere above them in the house was the slowest, thickest breathing Martin had ever heard.
58
MOLLY ran up the steps and out of the Underground and into Kings Cross Station. The sooner she was out of London, the safer she would feel—safe from what, she didn’t know.
She struggled through the crowd to the shortest of the shuffling queues for the ticket windows, and glanced around. Of course she wasn’t being followed, except by Nell and Susan.
Didn’t anyone have cash? Everyone paid by credit card, which added minutes to each transaction. She watched Nell dumping the cases beside Susan and hurrying to the departure board. She willed the queue, five people still ahead of her, to shuffle faster, for God’s sake move. Nell made her way over to Molly. “Your train’s just gone.”
“Did you notice when the next one is?” Molly said.
“Not for almost two hours.”
“Bloody hell.” At least she would be able to call her parents to let them know she was coming, once she got her breath back. The queue shuffled grudgingly forward, and when at last she reached the window with her handful of banknotes, she had to close her eyes before she could think of her destination. She stuffed the ticket into her handbag and headed for her suitcases, which were somewhere to sit down.
Sitting down made her feel no better; she still felt as if Susan were watching her, even though the child’s face was turned away. She couldn’t be watching, nor could whoever had followed Molly out of the Underground, for nobody had. Molly rubbed her prickling forehead with her sleeve. “Aren’t you feeling well?” Nell said.
“No, not very. I’ll be all right soon.”
“I know someone not far from here who used to be a nurse,” said Nell.
“Oh, I don’t think I’m that bad.” But perhaps she was, for the crowd seemed to be closing in on her, the uproar of trains and amplified voices was growing unbearable. Perhaps once she was out of the station she would feel better—with all those faces she couldn’t be sure that one of them wasn’t watching her—and perhaps the ex-nurse could give her something to perk her up. “How far from here?” she said.
“Just a few minutes’ walk. Come on, we’ve plenty of time.” Nell was already helping her up and so was Susan. As soon as Molly was on her feet, they picked up the suitcases and pushed through the crowd, and she could only follow.
Nell and Susan hurried her alongside the station, and in a few minutes the crowds and the lights had fallen behind and they were walking along a dark street where there seemed to be no houses. Down what she took at first to be an alley a canal lapped, a treacly sound in the dark. She glanced back toward the lights of Kings Cross and saw a man coming after her, quite fast. She ran to keep up with Nell and Susan. She’d meant to ask them to slow down, though the icy night air had revived her somewhat, but decided that she wouldn’t after all.
Now there were windows. Nell was leading her along a road between tenements. Lights went on here and there, drawn curtains colored the lights, and Molly wondered why the sight of so many windows made her nervous. She hurried past the Lewis Carroll Library that was the ground floor of a tenement, she had to look twice at a maisonette before she realized it was a church, and then she saw that Nell had brought her to Caledonian Road.
“Nearly there,” Nell said.
They turned along a side street that was closed by a gate. Saplings grew from gaps the size of flagstones in front of the terraced houses. It must be the night that massed above the roofs, though to Molly it felt like enormous walls. She felt edgy at the thought of meeting whoever Nell had in store for her. She would much rather head for the nearest pub.
But Nell had halted in front of a house, and now she was climbing the steps to the front door. Suddenly Molly didn’t want to go into that house. It must be shyness that her exhaustion made feel like panic, but she didn’t care. She ran to the steps and tried to clear her dry throat, to say | she’d changed her mind. Too late. Nell was rapping at the yellow door with the shiny silver bar of the knocker. Before Molly could say a word, a woman opened the door.
She obviously didn’t recognize Nell, who seemed at a loss what to do. “Can I help you?” the woman said. That spurred Nell, who grabbed both cases and marched into the house, followed by Susan. Both of them turned to wait for Molly.
Molly was as bewildered as the woman looked. The woman turned sharply to Nell as someone came out of a room at the. end of the hall, beyond the stairs. He was dressed in black, his pale oval face was calm as a mask. “All right, Doreen,” he said. “They are expected.”
All at once Molly was breathless with panic. She felt as if she had been here before and forgotten, as if it were more than life was worth to step over the threshold. Susan and the man in black were watching her, and she had a sudden nightmare impression that they were watching her with the same eyes. She turned to hurry down to the pavement—and then she froze. Lurching at her up the steps, his face distorted by hatred and triumph, was Danny Swain.
59
AS SOON as they were in the house and had closed the door, Stuart called, “Is anyone there? ‘ It seemed odd to Martin, since someone audibly was. Perhaps Stuart’s cold had made him deaf, or perhaps he didn’t think the slow thick sound upstairs was breathing. But it couldn’t be anything else, though it made Martin think of waves—the waves of a sea that was thicker than water. He followed Stuart toward the nearest room, a living room with paintings of children and cats on the walls. “You could check upstairs while I look around down here,” Stuart said.
Did he think Martin was used to prying, or was he secretly uneasy about the breathing? Still, if they split up it might take less time to find something that would help them. Perhaps whoever was sleeping upstairs might be able to tell them where Molly was. Martin started up the stairs, calling “Hello.”
The breathing didn’t falter. It made him feel suffocated, and so, as he climbed, did the growing smell. Something smelled unhealthily old. He made as much noise on the stairs as he could, for fear that the sleeper would wake at the last moment and start screaming. “Hello there,” he shouted.
All of the doors on the landing were open but one. There was a bathroom, a bedroom with an unmade double bed, an office with a desk and a safe and a shelf of philatelic catalogs. All three rooms were deserted. Now there was only the closed door, and he felt less enthusiastic about waking the sleeper; the smell up here was overpowering, as if something had been left for too long. He went to the top of the stairs and called to Stuart, but his voice was swallowed up by the breathing. He felt as if it were swallowing him. “Stuart.” he called more loudly, and the breathing ceased.
So did Martin’s. He stood staring at the closed door with one hand pressed over his mouth and nose, and couldn’t think what to do. All they needed was for the sleeper to start screaming burglars, screaming for the police. His head was beginning to throb when he heard whoever was beyond the door suck in a breath, and a voice piped nervously, “Is that you, Joyce?”
So it wasn’t Joyce in the room, and certainly not Molly. It was nobody who could help. “No,” Martin called, cursing himself.
“Who then? Is it Geoffrey?” The sexless piping voice was trembling, and sounded near to hysteria. “It can’t be Geoffrey. Come in so I know who you are.”
Mart
in wanted nothing so much as to steal away. Everything—the breathing that had turned irregular and laborious, the threat of hysteria in the voice, the festering smell—made him unwilling to go into the room. But he couldn’t leave the person in such a state when he had been the cause of it. He listened in the hope that Stuart had heard him and was coming up to join him, but could hear no sound downstairs. He stepped forward quickly and opened the door.
The room was dark. The smell was considerably worse. The light from the landing fell short, so that all he could make out was a pale shape that looked as if it were overflowing the double bed. At least he must be visible, which allowed him to hope he could explain without going into the room that he’d been looking for Joyce and had found the front door ajar. Then the voice came out of the dark. “Who is it?” it piped, nearer still to hysteria, and there was nothing to be done except switch on the light in the room.
When he reached in and found the switch, the light came on so brightly that he wasn’t immediately sure of what he was seeing. Some of the mound that was overflowing the bed was blankets, but he could see that the form under the blankets was very large. He had to stare to convince himself that the two whitish objects near the top of the bed were arms, lying on the blankets, for they looked soft and shapeless as enormous ropes of dough. They had to be arms, for above them on the pillow was the head they belonged to.
It was bald and white and puffy. It looked as if it would quiver like jelly from its scalp to its chin if it wobbled up on its neck. If its toothless mouth hadn’t been opening and closing he might not have realized it was a head, for the features were almost lost in fat. But the whitish tongue was fluttering sluggishly about the mouth as the voice piped. “What do you want? Who are you?”
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