The Killer Next Door

Chapter Forty-Nine

Collette dreams she is on the banks of the Ganges, among the funeral pyres, surrounded by wailing mourners. She has covered herself in ash, matted her hair with mud, and is weeping, weeping, weeping. She picks up a stone and chips at her hairline, feels blood trickle down her forehead, digs cracked fingernails into dirty wrists. All around her, figures in white, blurred by smoke, howl out their sorrow in family groups. I’m the only one who’s alone, she thinks. I’m the only one.

A man in a coarse linen dhoti shalwar stops to look at her. His feet are bare and he wears big gold rings. ‘You’re crying, madam,’ he says. ‘Have you come to the funeral?’

‘Yes,’ she replies, and the howl in her head grows louder. ‘My mother. She’s died. I wanted to say goodbye.’

‘And which one is she?’ he asks, and sweeps an elegant hand across the burning landscape. She follows his gesture with her eyes, and sees a hundred burning ghats placed down the water’s edge, black smoke boiling from crimson flames and blotting out the sky. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I don’t know which one.’

‘Well, you’d better hurry,’ he says, ‘you don’t want to miss it.’

And then she’s on her feet, tripping on the hem of her overlong lehenga choli, pulling her scarf across her body because she feels wrong, with so much of her torso on show, when people have died. And she’s running from pyre to pyre, slipping in mud stamped out by a hundred generations, and weeping, clutching passers-by by the arm and begging: ‘I’ve lost Janine! Which one is Janine? I can’t find her! Oh, God, where’s Janine?’

And then she’s awake, and her grief is choking her. Her throat has closed up and she struggles for a moment to breathe. She breaks through the barrier of tears and inhales. It’s not true, she tells herself. It was just a dream. And then she remembers, and it’s as if it’s happened all over again.

She stares at the ceiling and listens to the insistent shush of the rain through the open window, feels tears prickle in her eyes. This is no good. I can’t afford this. I must get up, get on with something. Be busy. She checks the time on her phone. Nearly five. She’s been asleep for four hours. Hossein should be home from his Home Office signing-in duties soon. If she lets herself sleep any longer, she’ll be awake all night.

She slides out from the bed and runs herself a glass of water. Coppery lukewarm London tap water, but it tastes delicious. She must be dehydrated, not surprisingly. She remembers a couple of plastic cups of tea in the night, Vesta going off to the vending machine in the ground-floor lobby, sugaring them up for energy, but she didn’t drink much from either. She runs another glass, drinks half of it down and goes to the window. It’s amazing how different the back gardens of Northbourne look in the rain. The greens are greener already, and brickwork she’s thought of as faded terracotta turns out to be dark rust now that the dust has washed off it. She pulls the curtain back and watches the world; wonders at the way people can simply vanish as if they’d never been.

Someone’s crying. She thinks they’ve been crying all along, since she woke. The desolate sobs of someone young, lost, vulnerable.

Collette squints out of the window. The crying sounds as though it’s coming from outside, but it’s so hard to tell. Though the heat has broken, everyone has left their windows open to let the cool air in. The crying could be coming from anywhere.

Is it Cher? It sounds as if it could be. She leans out of the window and looks up, but the girl’s window is firmly closed. As she ducks back in under the sash, she looks down and sees that a number of roof tiles have fallen into the basement area and shattered. Thank God I’m moving on, she thinks. This place will come down round our ears in the winter, if this is what a little shower of rain will do.

The sobbing continues, low, miserable and despairing. The occasional ‘ow’ breaking in to the rhythm. They sound like they’re in trouble, she thinks. It sounds like somebody’s hurt.

Am I still dreaming? Am I having one of those dreams where you think you’re awake? Am I hearing myself cry in my sleep, and thinking it’s coming from outside me? I am so tired. Maybe I’ve never woken up at all.

She drifts across the room and slips through the door. In the corridor, the faint sound of Gerard Bright’s music lulls her, makes her feel safe. If I were awake it would be a hundred decibels louder, she thinks. I’m hearing it through the fog of sleep, registering it because it’s there. She stands at the foot of the stairs, looking up, for a long time. All is silent up on the landing: just the ticketty-ticketty-tick of rain on glass. Something’s changed about the light up there. Despite the overcast skies, the landing looks brighter that she’s ever seen it. She’s halfway up the stairs before she sees that it’s because Thomas’s door stands wide open.

The sound of sobbing has disappeared. She pauses on the landing and listens at Cher’s door, but hears no sound within. She taps, calls her name, but hears no response.

Something draws her to Thomas’s door. It’s so odd to see it open. She’s never seen it so before, never even glimpsed in to the stairwell. A terrible smell rolls down the stairs, a smell of rot and chemicals that fills her with dread. And yet she finds herself walking up. This must still be a dream, she thinks, as she runs her hand up the plasterboard wall of the stairwell. In real life this smell would be enough to send me back down the stairs to look for one of the others. So I might as well go with it. At least I know it’s not real, not like when I was on the banks of the Ganges. That felt so real I thought I was going to die.

She reaches the door at the top of the stairs and finds that it, too, is open. She calls, tentatively, into the room: ‘Hello? Thomas? Hello?’ And steps inside. Sloped ceilings, a generalised grime, and an extraordinary and pungent collection of cardboard air fresheners drawing-pinned to the sloping ceiling as though they are a decorative flourish, a television on a stand and a record player on which the arm goes back and forth, back and forth, in the centre of an old LP. She goes over and takes it off. Can’t bear to watch old things damage themselves.

Cher’s black cat shoots out from under the stained and sagging sofa, trots towards her then moves to a gallop as he gets near. ‘Hey, Psycho,’ she says, and stretches out a hand. He ducks, slips past her legs and hurtles off into the house. She shakes her head. He’s never been a friendly cat, though he’s devoted to Cher and follows her wherever she goes.

And now she can hear the sobbing again. It’s muffled, as if the voice’s owner is shut behind a door. She calls out, once more, more loudly this time. Wherever Thomas is, he’s not here in among his stinking artefacts. ‘Hello?’

The sobbing stops. A shout in response. ‘Hello? Hello? Oh my God! Is someone there?’

It’s Cher. Somewhere in this flat, sounding weak and scared and desperate. ‘Cher?’ she calls.

A noise on the sloped ceiling; someone shifting, up on the roof, the sound of a tile loosening itself, sliding over her head and smashing on the flags below. ‘Oh, God! Collette! Oh, God, I’m here!’

‘Where?’

‘On the roof!’

She almost asks what she’s doing there, but thinks better of it. ‘Where?’

‘On the roof! I can’t get down. Please. Help!’

She’s beginning to realise that she’s awake; fully awake and in a place that makes her very uncomfortable. She doesn’t want to wait for Thomas to come back – he’s not the sort who would take kindly to uninvited guests.

‘How did you get up there?’

‘Bedroom window. Oh, no, Collette, don’t…’

‘Hold on,’ she calls, and goes to the bedroom.

No, I am dreaming. I must be. That looks like…

She stops in the doorway and gapes. Her scalp crawls. Oh, my God, those are women. One on a chair, an Egyptian queen made of leather, one on the floor behind the door, one arm contorted beneath her and the other thrown full-length over her head, flaking into the carpet like a resident of Pompeii. Bags of salts, bottles of oil, a rail of dresses. What is this? What is this?

Cher’s voice brings her back to herself. ‘Collette? Collette!’

She does as she always does, as she’d trained herself. Thinks: I won’t think about this now, I’ll think about it later. Action always trumps thinking in an emergency. She steps gingerly over the wizened brown legs of the woman on the floor and climbs on to the bed. Leans her arms along the windowsill and puts her face out into the rain.

Cher is above her, huddled against the chimney, her clothes clinging to her body and her hair poodled around her face. She’s shivering, barefoot, only wearing a light top over her jeans and it’s soaked through. She’s holding her right arm with her left, her hand dangling between her legs, and black circles ring her eyes. Collette looks closer, and sees that her jeans are stained with blood. It drips from the tips of her useless fingers, mingles with the water and trickles away across the roof.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks, redundantly.

‘Peachy,’ says Cher, and grinds her teeth.

Her head is fogged with confusion. ‘What the hell’s going on? What are those…?’ She points back into the room.

‘Do you mind if we talk about that later?’ says Cher, in a small voice, her tone surprisingly humble. Her body is rattling with cold and shock and she is beginning to sway on her perch. ‘I could do with some help. I’ve done something to my shoulder.’

‘How did you – where’s Thomas?’

‘He…’ Cher shakes her head. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Gone? Gone where?’

‘He…’ She seems confused, dazed, rests her head against the brickwork. ‘I think I killed the fucker. He was coming after me, so I pushed him.’ She jerks her head behind her, then hisses and clutches her shoulder. ‘Collette,’ she says, ‘it’s nice to chat and all, but…’

Collette slaps herself internally to wake herself up. ‘Okay. Yes. Hold on.’

She hoists herself on to the window frame, lurches forward, saves herself by grabbing the open pane. Sees the trees on the other side of the road seesaw towards and away from her. ‘Careful,’ calls Cher.

‘Yes, thanks, I’ll try.’

There are dead bodies in the bedroom, she thinks. All this time, we’ve been living downstairs from a bunch of dead bodies. It looks like he’s been mummifying them. They can’t have got that way naturally, can they? And, oh, God, I hope Vesta doesn’t wake up. One more cracked skull outside her bedroom window and I think she’ll tip over the edge.

‘Oh, Collette?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry. About your mum.’

She looks up in surprise. It seems like such a startlingly normal thing for someone to say under the circumstances. She’s such an odd kid. ‘That’s okay,’ she says, because she can’t really work out what the appropriate response would be.

She hooks a leg over the windowsill and lowers herself slowly down. Heights have never been her thing. Looking over edges has always made the inside of her head ring hollow, like a bell, the muscles behind her ears contract. Well, don’t look down, she tells herself. Just look at where you’re treading, and look at Cher. Once you’re up there, you’ll have no choice but to keep your cool. Just don’t think about what you’re doing now, or you might not be able to do it at all.

No wonder he was so calm about the Landlord. No wonder he knew so much about what we were doing. He’s been doing it for God knows how long. Up here in the roof, all snuggled up with his corpses. Oh, Jesus, this is so high. How come it doesn’t look this high from the street? Lying on her stomach, she edges along the window frame until there is no more window frame to be had.

She looks up at Cher. The girl’s face has a peculiar tinge of green to it and the shaking has stopped. She’s going into shock, she thinks. I need to get her inside, get her warmed up. I wonder if that break’s cutting off her circulation? I swear I see a lump on her collarbone. It’s snapped clean in two. She must be in agony.

‘Hold on,’ she says. ‘Just… hang on in there, Cher.’

She puts the ball of a foot down on the tiles to slide herself, and it slips out from under her like it’s skating on ice. Collette grabs at the window again, pants as panic overtakes her. I’ll just… I’ll go back in. I’ll go and find someone. Someone else will know what to do. Someone else will know what to do. Hossein. Christ, bloody Gerard Bright, if it comes to it. Anyone. I’m not brave enough. I can’t. She hangs her head in through the window, sees the thighs of the girl in the chair, so still, so thin. Oh, that poor child, she thinks. He would have done it to her, too, and we’d never have known. All the people in this house, moving on, the waters closing over their heads, we’d have been sad for a couple of days, we’d’ve asked each other where she was, and then… we would have forgotten her. The way everyone who lives here is forgotten, one by one, by the people they’ve shared their space with. The same all over London, the anonymity we all cherish: it’s a sure road to oblivion.

She pulls herself together. No one has ever missed Cher, or mourned her. She won’t be one of the people who’ve let her down. She puts her foot on the windowsill, uses the slip of the tiles to slide herself upwards. Gets a foot in the hinge and kicks again. Now her head is five feet from the roof’s ridge, her foot a knee-bend from the top of the window frame. She feels her hip shriek with the strain of the angle, flat on her face, all her weight on her torso, and then her foot is there. She steadies, brings her other foot up beside it and bunny-hops to where she can grab the flashing.

Cher looks as if she’s fallen asleep. Up here, with no shelter from the wind, the rain gusts horizontally, catches her in the face like birdshot. It’s hard to believe that yesterday they were still in a heatwave, for today they are a long way into autumn. Weird little fucked-up island on the edge of the Arctic circle, she thinks, one of the world’s largest economies, and we’re still prioritising bankers’ second houses over kids like this. If she had disappeared, no one apart from us would know, much less care. She’s been disappeared for years.

She reaches out and touches the girl’s good arm. Cher jumps, opens her eyes and lets out a moan. Now she’s close up, Collette can see the damage she’s done to herself. Her collarbone jags out beneath her skin, and shades of black and brown and khaki spread across her chest, vanish inside her top. Her hand has been ripped open by something sharp, the cut dirty and wide and still bleeding. She’s going to need a hospital, this time. If Collette can get her down off this roof before she dies of the shock, she’s going to have to be sucked back into the system. This is beyond any of their abilities.

‘Come on,’ she says. She’s glad that Cher is small and light, at least. If she were even Vesta’s size this would be impossible. ‘This is going to hurt. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to make it not.’

Cher laughs, weakly. ‘I’ll just have to kill you later.’ Still got her sarcasm, which has to be a good sign. She lets out a cough, freezes, tries to suppress another.

Collette takes her good hand and helps her inch her way along the flashing. She can hear Cher’s teeth grind together with each bump, makes encouraging small talk of courage and the future. A millennium passes as they move, and yet they hear only a single car. Collette is as wet as the girl, now. Her hands are slippery, and she’s afraid that she will be unable to keep a grip if she starts to teeter.

Over the window; a few feet that look like a million miles. I can’t do this, thinks Collette. We’ll start to slide and I won’t be able to hold her. A buffet of wind catches them, blows Cher’s dripping hair off her face. The green tinge has gone from her skin, but so has the brown. Cher has turned white.

‘Be brave, sweetheart,’ says Collette, and cups her face in her hands. ‘We’re going to go down now, okay?’

Cher nods, like an automaton. I don’t like how quiet she is, thinks Collette. She should be making noises. And as she thinks it, Cher starts to sway on the roof beam. Back, forth, back, forth. In front of them the open window, behind her, the long drop.

Collette doesn’t have time to make a decision. She grabs Cher’s legs and pulls. Drags her off the point of the roof just as she slumps and goes limp. Holds her tight in her arms as they slide.

Her jeans snag on the window frame. Cher is on top of her now, her weight carrying them inexorably forward. Her eyes are open, the pupils staring into Collette’s. I can’t hold her, she thinks. She’s going to carry us over. Whatever happens, I can’t protect her shoulder. The best I can do is -

They drop through the window and bounce on the bed, and Cher wakes up and starts to scream.