The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

THE PEOPLE IN THE FLAT ACROSS THE ROAD by Natasha Cooper

It had been a ghastly day. I’d decided to work at home so I could finish the proposal for our biggest client’s new campaign. The copy was urgent, you see, because they’d pulled back the meeting by three days. My boss and I were due to make the presentation at ten next morning, and the designers were waiting in the office to pretty up my text and sort out all the PowerPoint stuff for us.

The trouble was, I hadn’t expected the interruptions: far more at home than in any office; and worse because of having no receptionists or secretaries to fend them off.

First it was the postman. Not my usual bloke but a temp who couldn’t tell the difference between 16 Holly Road, where I live, and 16 Oak Court, Holly Road, which is a flat just opposite. Even so, I shouldn’t have shouted. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t read much; or speak English, either.

And he wasn’t to know how many hours I’ve wasted over the past year redirecting all the mail I get that obviously isn’t meant for me. Letters and packages with all sorts of names. I never pay much attention to the names once I’ve seen they’re not mine, so I couldn’t tell you what they were now.

I opened one parcel by mistake, not having read the label before I ripped off the brown packing tape. Wondering why someone was sending me a whole bunch of phone adapters and wires and stuff, I turned the package over and saw it was meant for the flat. That was when I crossed the road and made my third attempt to introduce myself and sort it out. The funny thing was, you see, that in all the months I’d been dealing with their mail I’d never actually seen any of them. Once or twice, there’d been a hand coming through the net curtains to open or shut a window, but that was all.

As usual, I got no answer, even though all the lights were on and there was a radio or TV blaring. I thought I heard their footsteps this time too, and voices, but I suppose it could have been imagination.

Anyway, I was so cross they couldn’t be bothered to do their neighbourly bit that I stopped bothering to take their mail across the road. I didn’t even correct the wrongly addressed stuff (some of the senders missed out the Oak Court bit too; it wasn’t only the postmen who got it wrong). Instead I’d scrawl “Not Known Here” or “No one of this name at this address” on the packages and envelopes before stuffing them back into the postbox on my way to work. If the packages were too big, which happened occasionally, I’d stomp round to the post office on Saturday mornings and dump them at the end of the counter. It took much longer than carting them across the road and leaving them on the flat’s doorstep, but it was way more satisfying.

Which maybe explains-though of course it doesn’t excuse-the way I shouted at the poor stand-in postie this time round. He took three steps backwards and muttered some kind of apology, so of course I had to join in and explain I hadn’t meant to yell.

Anyway, he was only the first. When it wasn’t people collecting for charity-decent, kind, clean, well-spoken people, who didn’t deserve to be glared at and sent away empty-handed-it was miserable, hopeless-looking young men trying to sell me ludicrously expensive low-grade dusters I didn’t want. Or Jehovah’s Witnesses. How was I supposed to flog my brain into producing light-hearted, witty sales copy with all this going on? I was ripe for murder, I can tell you.

And then there was the small man in decorator’s overalls who had the cheek to ring my bell and tell me my neighbours had been complaining about my overhanging hedge. He offered to cut it back and take away the debris for some even more ludicrous sum. He got all the insults I’d been choking down all morning, and no apology, and I still think I was justified. Almost. At least I didn’t lay a hand on him.

When I’d slammed the door in his face, I went back to my copy and re-read the pathetically little I’d managed to write. I had to delete the whole lot. You can imagine how I felt. I bolted some yogurt for lunch and spilled most of it down my T-shirt, so I had to change that and fling it in the washing machine, which wasted yet more time.

Then it was the end of the school day and there were shrieks from all the little darlings who’d been pent up in their classrooms for too long, and the exasperating heavy slap-slap of a football being kicked up and down the road. And chat from the little darlings’ attending adults, who all seemed to want to stand right outside my front windows, either talking to each other or jabbering into their mobiles.

When they’d all gone and the street was blessedly quiet once more, the doorbell went again. I shrieked out some filthy word or other (actually, I know quite well what it was, but I don’t want to shock you) and ran to the door, wrenching it open and snarling, only to see my ten-year-old godson, looking absolutely terrified.

I apologised again, of course, and discovered he’d only come to return the tin in which I’d delivered his birthday cake. He’s great, and on normal days I enjoy his company. He has an interesting, offbeat take on the world, and his talk of school and sports and music often gives me ideas I can use for work when we’re pushing children’s products. So I had to ask him in and offer him some Diet Coke, which was the only suitable thing I had in the house. Still looking scared, he shook his head and scuttled away like Hansel escaping from the wicked witch’s gingerbread house.

I managed a quiet hour after that, and I had about twenty-five percent of the copy written when the early evening crowd started: the meter readers, more charity-collectors, and then the party canvassers. Apparently we were going to have a by-election the next week. I eventually got down to real work at about eight, which was the time I’d have got back from the office on an ordinary day. I was spitting.

Still, I got the copy finished in the end-and it had just the right edgy but funny tone for the product. I was pretty sure the clients would like it. But when I saw it was half eleven, I knew the poor designers weren’t going to be happy. I’d kept them hanging on for hours. I hoped they wouldn’t be so angry they screwed up. We needed the presentation to look brilliant as well as sound it.

So I e-mailed my text to them with a genuine apology, and asked them to get it back to me by eight the next morning with all the pix and whatever stylish tarting-up they could manage. Then I copied everything to my boss, with an e-mail to say I’d meet him at the clients’ at nine forty-five. That would give me plenty of time to have the crucial six hours’ sleep and get my hair sorted and pick the best clothes to say it all: cool; monied; efficient; sexy.

As you can imagine, I was pretty hyper by this time, so I took a couple of sleeping pills. Only over-the-counter herbal stuff. I think they’re mainly lettuce, and the label on the packet always makes me laugh: “Warning: May Cause Drowsiness.”

I was calming down a bit. I chased the pills with a glass of wine and a bit of bread and cream cheese with a smear of mango chutney, which reminds me of the sandwiches my mother used to make me when I was ill as a child.

So, fed, wined, and drugged to the eyeballs with lettuce, I took myself to bed. Just to be sure, I opened The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which hardly ever fails to send me to sleep. It did its stuff pretty soon. I ripped off my specs and turned out the light, to find myself in that state where you fall hundreds of feet through the air, while still being plastered to the mattress. Heaven, really.

Through the lovely muzzy feeling, I thought I heard the phone ring once or twice. I ignored it and it stopped long before the answering machine could’ve cut in.

The next thing I knew I was floating on twinkling turquoise waves in warm sunlight with dolphins leaping in the distance and a raucous London voice yelling, “Go, Go, Go.” I’d barely got my eyes open when there was this almighty crash downstairs and thundering feet and cracking wood as my bedroom door burst open, spraying splinters and bits of the lock all over the place. I got chips of wood in my hair and all over my face.

I’d always been a coward. But I’d never been afraid before. Not like this.

I couldn’t breathe. It was as if I’d been hit in the throat. My heart was banging like a pneumatic drill. And I thought I’d throw up any minute. Or pee in my bed.

The worst of it was I couldn’t see anything much. There seemed to be dozens of sturdy thighs in jeans at eye level and stubby black things that looked like gun barrels.

It seemed mad. But it’s what they looked like. All I could hear was panting: heavy, angry panting. Whatever they were going to do, I knew I had to be able to see, so I reached for the specs on my bedside table. A voice yelled at me to f-ing stay where I was and not move. I couldn’t. I mean, my arm was way too heavy. It crashed down on the table and knocked the specs to the floor with the lamp and my book. It made them jam one of the black things nearer my face and yell at me to stay still.

It really was a gun.

Then a hand came and grabbed the edge of the duvet. I hadn’t got anything on under it, but that didn’t strike me until they ripped the duvet off me and let the cold air in. I twitched. I couldn’t help it, in spite of the guns. But nothing happened. Except that one of them swore. I don’t know what he thought he’d see under my duvet except me.

“What?” said one of the others. He moved his head a bit. At least, I think it was his head. All I could see was a kind of furry pink mass where his face must be. He raised his voice: “What’ve you got?”

“Nothing,” called another man from further away. “There’s no one else. Only a kind of study, with a computer and filing cabinets and magazines and things.”

“Magazines? What magazines?”

“Women’s stuff. Cosmo. Vogue. Things like that.”

He came closer and bent right down into my face. That’s when I saw he had a dark-blue peaked cap with a chequered headband and POLICE in neat white letters.

I began to breathe again.

“God, you scared me,” I said, and my voice was all high and quavery. I tried to toughen it. “Can I have my glasses, please? And a dressing gown?”

“Don’t move.” Three gun barrels came even closer to my face. And I heard the scrunch of glass. I don’t suppose they did it deliberately, but one of them mashed my new Armani specs under his heavy great feet.

That was enough to make me more cross than scared. Or maybe it was reaction. Shock or something. Anyway, whatever it was, I forgot their guns and not having any clothes on and I just yelled at them, in a voice even my grandmother would have admired. And no one was grander than my grandmother.

“Stop being so damned silly. You’ve got the wrong sodding address, like the sodding postman. You want the people in the flat across the road. Now let me get up and get my dressing gown. And stop playing silly buggers with those idiotic guns.”

The nearest man took a step back and I knew I’d won. After a bit, another of them handed me my dressing gown, smiling and nodding in a sloppy apologetic kind of way, like a bashful terrier. A minute ago he’d been holding a gun to my face; now he wanted to be friends? Mad.