The Killer Next Door

Chapter Forty-Six

She’ll go, now, thinks Vesta. Poor old Hossein. He’ll miss her as much as I will. More, maybe. Being by himself’s only something he’s had to learn lately.

She feels blank. Dazed. She’s desperate for sleep, longs for the narcotic bliss of unconsciousness. Remembers coming home from the all-night vigil over her father’s bed, in a car much like this, tired Nigerian driver, air-freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror, LBC on the radio. When her mother passed, she stumbled from the room and lay down in her own bed in the front room and slept until the undertaker knocked on the door. That was in the days when the basement door was still open to the street, before Roy Preece had it shut off, to protect her, he said, from burglars. I want to die at home, she thinks. Just not the home I’m living in.

Collette leans against the window and watches the south London streets go by. The driver has put a CD of mixed soul music into the player and turned it up slightly louder than necessary, a sweet gesture to give them their privacy. She sees him watch her in the mirror as they wait at the traffic lights at Tooting Bec, the sari shops and sweetshops just opening for morning trade. I need a bacon sandwich, she thinks. Funny how death always seems to make you hungry.

The heatwave finally broke in the night and fat raindrops fall against the windscreen. Vesta cracks her window open and breathes deeply of the fecund, green scent of cracked earth and exhausted foliage. London smells muddy in the rain. Especially after such a long time without it, the coat of smuts and dust that has settled on streets and cars and buildings washing down to grime the pavements. It’ll be autumn soon, she thinks. And then another long London winter, the rain and the cold somehow getting through your clothes in a way that country people could never imagine. But Collette will be long gone by then, and Hossein’s heart will be broken. I’ve seen the way he looks at her, when he thinks she’s looking away. It’s not like he can go too, is it? Not just now, but later. His future’s here. He can’t spend it on the run.

Collette has been silent since they left the hospital. Dry-eyed. Still in shock, thinks Vesta, even though she’s known that this was coming. It’s always still a shock. I had eighteen months with Mum, changing her sheets and mopping her brow and cleaning her down with a sponge as she crumbled away into her pillow, but I still didn’t expect it when it finally came. Still felt like I was falling off a cliff. I remember: until the funeral, it was like looking at the world from the other side of a wall of glass. Everything – sound, smell, touch – was doughy and dull, as if someone had turned the dials down on my senses. That’s how she’ll be feeling now. Just – empty.

As they wait to turn right into Tooting Bec Road, she notices a shiny black car, smoked glass windows, two cars back with its indicator on. Why would you want to drive around in something that looks like a hearse? she wonders. There’s enough death in the world without reminding yourself of it every second you’re on the road. It bounds forward as the lights change, cuts across the oncoming traffic as though the law didn’t exist at all, provokes a chorus of blasting horns. Collette seems to jump from her fugue state and stares at the shaking fists of the drivers on the Balham High Road.

‘Bloody Mercedes,’ says their driver. ‘It’s always Mercedes, isn’t it? They think they own the road.’

Collette’s head drops back against the headrest and the life goes out of her eyes. Vesta waits a few seconds, then says: ‘You did well tonight, Collette.’

Collette looks at her with watery eyes. ‘Thanks.’

‘How do you feel?’

She grimaces, shrugs. ‘You know,’ she says.

Might as well broach the subject, thinks Vesta. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘About what she said. About Tony. That must have been… a shock.’

‘I might have known,’ says Collette. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t work it out. She’d do anything for a man who paid her a bit of attention. I just didn’t think he’d find her. Denial, I suppose. That’s what they’d say it was.’

‘You can’t know everything, Collette. That was good of you, though. I admired you. What you did with it.’

‘Thanks,’ says Collette.

‘You mustn’t take it to heart. I daresay she didn’t know what she was doing.’

‘No, I daresay,’ says Collette, but there’s an ugly edge of bitterness to her voice.

Vesta tries another route to comfort. ‘Hossein’ll be waiting when we get back. They all will.’

Collette sighs. ‘I think I could just do with some sleep.’

‘I’m sure. Me too. Some sleep before you start dealing with things.’

Collette’s brow puckers, as though it’s not occurred to her that there might be things to deal with.

‘You’ll want to call an undertaker,’ she says. ‘They gave you some cards, didn’t they?’

‘Um, I…’ she holds her bag out, open, as though this constitutes some kind of answer. ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to miss her, Vesta.’

Vesta lays a hand over hers. What do you want me to say, lovey? Don’t worry, the pain will kick in soon?

‘You have to just take this stuff one day at a time,’ she says, horribly aware of all the clichés that death forces from one’s lips. She has heard so many with-the-angels-now palliatives from well-meaning people over the years that she wants to bring in a law to ban them.

They turn right past the common, and Vesta notices that the Mercedes is still behind them. Maybe it is a hearse, she thinks. Or a funeral car. What would someone in a car like that be doing down here in the middle of the day? ‘It will kick in sometime, I’m afraid. You can’t avoid it. It’s just – how it is.’

‘Maybe it won’t,’ says Collette. ‘She’s been gone a long time already. And so have I. I don’t know if there’s much point in throwing a funeral, really. It’s not like I know who her friends were. Even if she had any. All she ever wanted to talk about was what had happened on EastEnders, when I used to go and see her. Or moan on about the council.’

‘Oh, Collette,’ says Vesta, ‘you’ve got to have a funeral.’

A flash of defiance. ‘I don’t, you know.’

Their driver is agog. She can feel him longing to turn the music down so he can hear properly. Collette’s head slumps back against the window, and she stares out once again, her lips pursed. They reach the three-way junction at the bottom of Northbourne Common, and the driver takes the right-hand branch.

Vesta leans forward. ‘No, sorry. We need the other road. The one that runs past the station.’

He puts his brakes on, pulls over to the side to prepare for a U-turn. The black Merc glides past them and turns in to a side road fifty yards up on the left. Suddenly, Collette is sitting up, alert, staring after it. Oh, God, it’s not, is it, thinks Vesta. I couldn’t have been that unobservant, could I?

The driver makes the turn in three moves and heads back towards Station Road. Collette cranes through the rear window. She’s grinding her teeth. If it comes out now, thinks Vesta, I don’t know what we’ll do. Go on to Gatwick?

They get caught at the traffic lights and have to wait a full minute. A small queue builds up behind them: a Fiesta, a Panda and what looks like the Poshes’ SUV, though it could be any SUV, really. Featureless, soulless guzzlers of petrol, a mystery in a world that claims to be worried about resources. No black bonnet emerges from the side road, no cashmere overcoats with the collars turned up against the rain.

Collette sits back as they turn the corner. ‘I can’t go on like this,’ she says. ‘Jumping at shadows. Hiding every time I see a tinted window.’

‘Yes,’ says Vesta.

‘It’s time I moved on,’ she says.

‘Hossein will be sad. I’ll be sad, too, come to that.’

Collette clamps her lips together and stares out of the window again.

‘He will, you know,’ says Vesta. ‘You’re the first… well, I’ve never seen him interested in anyone…’

Collette tries to ignore her. ‘I don’t suppose anybody much wants to stay in that house now,’ she says. ‘He’ll be gone the minute he gets the chance, trust me. But I’m not dragging him into all this. He doesn’t deserve that. I was only here because of…’ She has to wait a beat before she carries on. The crying’s going to start really soon, now, thinks Vesta. She thinks she’s hard as nails, but she’ll be in bits by tonight. ‘… because of her. I’m stupid. I shouldn’t have got mixed up with all of you. Christ, what a mess. He deserves better than that. He was fine here, your little cosy family and your cups of tea, before he knew I existed. He’ll be fine when I’m gone, too. We’re not some Romeo and Juliet. It just… is. What it is. You’ll all be fine. You’ll be better off, really. Give it a couple of weeks and you’ll all have forgotten I was ever here.’

Vesta raises her eyebrows. ‘You think I want to still be here? After… that?’

Collette shuts up.

‘Good God. I bloody hate the place. If that… bugger had just given me a bit of cash I’d have been out of there like a shot.’

This seems to come as news to Collette. ‘Really?’

Vesta pulls a face at her. This conversation is getting too personal for a public place. ‘Yes,’ she says.

Collette considers her. ‘It’s a crappy life, on the road. Really. You don’t want to do that.’

‘No. No, you’re right. I was thinking more about the seaside, myself. Open a café, feed the seagulls. But I’ve blown that now, haven’t I? I’m going to be stuck in that hole in the ground with the damp and the drains and the… ghosts for the rest of my life.’

Collette’s eyes fill with tears. ‘My God, Vesta. I’d do anything. I’m so tired. I’m so damn tired. Sometimes I think I’m so tired I just want to die.’