The Killer Next Door

Chapter Six

It’s a long journey from Ilfracombe to Northbourne by public transport. Vesta’s been on the road for eight hours, hobbling from bus to train to bus again, and is feeling her back and the arthritis in her knee. The walk from the High Street, dragging her suitcase behind her on its wonky wheel, seems to take as long as the trip from Victoria. I’m not sure how many more times I can do this, she thinks mournfully. I feel my age more each year. But, oh – if I didn’t have my two weeks by the sea, what would be the point of any of it? Just Northbourne day after day, the hoodies in the bus shelter and the litter on the common, the rattle of the suburban trains passing by at the end of the garden. Damn you for a coward, Vesta Collins, she chides herself. You always wanted to live by the sea. You should have gone when Mum died, not taken the easy route and tied yourself to a sitting tenancy.

On the corner of Bracken Gardens, she sees Hossein sauntering up the road towards her, dapper in a shirt of cotton brocade, his beard neatly trimmed. She waves, and his face is suddenly wreathed in smiles. He hurries up to her and stretches out a hand to take hold of the handle of her case.

‘You’re home!’ he says. ‘I’ve missed you.’

Vesta laughs, and pushes at his upper arm. ‘Oh, go on, you. You’re all charm.’

He takes the bag and starts pulling it towards the house. ‘What are you doing?’ she protests. ‘You’re on your way out!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, woman. I can go later.’

‘But you -’

‘Enough,’ he barks. ‘Do as you’re told.’

She subsides, content. The magazines she read when she was young, when feminism was a mere glint in Germaine’s eye, were full of warnings about Middle Eastern men and how controlling they were. Never said anything about the gentlemanliness, though, she thinks. Catch an Englishman dropping his trip to the bookies to drag an old lady’s suitcase home.

‘Did you have a good holiday?’ he asks.

‘Oh, lovely, thank you. It’s so beautiful down there. Even with that silly statue they’ve stuck in the middle of it.’

‘So I heard,’ he says.

‘Yes. You should go and see it,’ she says. ‘Silly, being here and not seeing anything of the country.’

‘As soon as I can, I will,’ says Hossein. ‘There are a lot of places I want to see.’

Vesta remembers. ‘Sorry, poppet,’ she says. ‘Mind like a sieve, me.’

Hossein gives her his lovely smile again. ‘It’s okay. I take it as a compliment.’

‘Where were you off to, anyway?’

‘To sign my little book,’ he says, ‘so they know I haven’t run away. Then I’m going to Kensington.’

‘Kensington!’ says Vesta. ‘Posh!’

He laughs. ‘Iranian shops. I’m going to see my cousin. He lives in Ealing.’

‘That’s nice,’ says Vesta. ‘It’s nice to have family. Even if they are in Ealing.’

‘Yes,’ says Hossein. ‘It is. Do you have any family of your own?’

She pauses, sighs. ‘Not any more. I had an auntie in Ilfracombe, but she passed away a few years ago, now.’

‘No brothers or sisters?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

She sees him glance at her from the side of his eye. Don’t look at me like that, she thinks. It’s a fine old day when you feel sorry for me.

‘You don’t miss what you never had, dear,’ she says. ‘It’s not like I don’t have friends, is it?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘You’re good at that.’

Vesta smiles. Such a charmer. But still, she feels warmed by the compliment. ‘So how’s life at the old homestead?’ she asks. ‘Any gossip? How’s that little girl? Not got into any trouble, has she?’

Hossein shrugs. ‘No. She’s okay, I think. No trouble. There’s a new woman, moved into Nikki’s room.’

‘Oh! Nikki didn’t come back, then?’

‘No. Not a sign of her. And her rent’s run out, so boom, she’s history.’

‘That’s weird,’ says Vesta. ‘She was a nice girl. I didn’t think she would be the type.’

Hossein shrugs expansively, as is his habit. ‘I know. But there you go. And you know what he’s like. Not going to leave it a day longer than he needs without getting some money.’

‘Well,’ says Vesta. Then: ‘She just went? I can’t believe it. She didn’t say goodbye? Not even to Cher?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Well,’ says Vesta, again. The itinerant movements of the young never cease to amaze her. ‘Maybe she went back to Glasgow. Did she make up with her folks, did you hear?’

‘Vesta,’ says Hossein, ‘nobody tells me anything. I sometimes think you’re the only one who realises I speak English.’

‘Well,’ says Vesta again. ‘So what’s she like?’

‘Don’t know,’ says Hossein. ‘She only got here today. I heard the Landlord letting her in, so I…’

‘Oh, you big scaredy-cat.’

He shrugs again. She’s right, of course. A man his age shouldn’t be hiding from strangers, even if they do have Roy Preece attached. They reach the steps and he bends to slide the handle back into the case. Picks it up and starts towards the door. ‘Good God, woman. What have you got in here?’

‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t have anywhere to dispose of the bodies. It was only a bed and breakfast.’

‘How many people you killed? Have you no self-control? You’ve only been gone two weeks.’

She starts up the steps behind him, winces as she bends her knee. She can’t wait to have a sit-down and put her feet up, have a cuppa. There’s not much in the flat, but she at least had the foresight to lay in a pint of UHT before she left. Not as good as fresh, but better than nothing, and there’s no way she’s leaving the house again today. There’s a packet of digestives in the tin, she’s pretty sure, and a block of cheddar in the fridge. There are times when the reduced appetite of age is a great convenience.

Hossein opens the front door, and stands by to wait for her to pass. From behind Gerard Bright’s door a piece of music, all piano and sobbing cello, plays on and on as it had done the day she left for Ilfracombe; it’s as though she’d just popped out to the corner shop. She steps in to the hall and notices that the familiar smells of her childhood – dust and impermanence, and a slight whiff of damp – have had another layer added to them. Something… meaty, she thinks; like something’s died under the floorboards and has yet to desiccate. We need to get this place aired out, she thinks. There’s no ventilation on this stairwell, with all the doors shut most of the time.

She stretches, her journey finally over, and leafs through the mail on the hall table. A couple of circulars – the usual stuff, animal charities thinking she’s a sucker, old-people insurers reminding her she’s going to die. ‘Oh, but it’s good to be home,’ she says, and isn’t sure she means it.

‘No place like it,’ says Hossein, but she misses the faint irony in his voice.

She puffs out her cheeks and drops the letters into her bag, ready for the recycling bin. ‘Can I tempt you to a cuppa?’ she asks Hossein. ‘Before you go out?’

He checks his watch. ‘Sure. I don’t have to hurry.’

She fetches her key from her handbag. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, then.’

She knows the moment she ducks in through her narrow door under the hall stairs that something isn’t right. The air in the flat is too fresh. For a moment, she wonders if she forgot to close a window before she left for Devon, but then she switches on the light at the top of the stairs and sees that her umbrella stand – her mother’s umbrella stand – is lying on its side.

For a moment, her brain freezes. The sight of the unexpected where all is so familiar leaves her grasping for thought. ‘Oh,’ she says. Then, catching sight of The Crying Boy, his frame askew on the wall, she suddenly knows what has happened and her guts lurch. ‘Oh,’ she says again.

She hears Hossein drag the bag in through the door as she feels her way wordlessly down the stairs, clutching on to the banister as soon as it starts, like a proper old person. Her legs are weak, her breath watery. Sixty-nine years she has lived here, the world changing around her and neighbours coming and going, but this has always been her place of safety. No one has ever come in here without invitation. No one has ever invaded.

She reaches the bottom of the steps with a flood of relief and dread as she feels the solid ground beneath her feet. The hall is scattered with umbrellas and walking sticks, her father’s precious books tossed out from their shelf on to the faded Axminster, her coats, her mother’s hats – globes of fake fur and fabric roses she could never bear to give to the charity shop – ripped from the hooks above and trodden into the ground. ‘Oh,’ she says again. Hossein, concentrating on balancing his burden down the steep staircase, has yet to see the chaos, is yet to remark upon it.

She doesn’t want to go any further. Wants to turn tail and run, go back to Ilfracombe, not have to face it. Glancing up the corridor towards her tiny kitchen, she can see light where the outside door should be. It’s hanging open, on its hinges, kicked or jemmied during one of the nights she slept unknowing in her bed and breakfast, lulled by the sounds of gulls and water.

Vesta puts a hand on to her breastbone, feels her heart thud in her chest. It’s too much. This is too much. She steps over the fallen umbrella stand and peers into the living room. The curtains are open, the nets still drawn, but the light that penetrates here, even on a blazing summer day like today, is thin and pale. She switches on the light, looks around her, feels tears spring into her throat.

‘Oh, Hossein,’ she says. ‘Oh, my Lord.’