The Mermaids Singing

F ROM 3" DISK LABELLED: BACKUP. 007; FILE LOVE. 005

I walked boldly up the path and pressed Adam’s doorbell. In the seconds before he answered the chime, I composed my face into what I believed was an apologetic smile. I could see the fuzzy outline of his head and shoulders as he walked down the hall. Then the door opened and we were face to face. He half smiled quizzically. As if he’d never noticed me before in his life.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘Only my car’s broken down, and I don’t know where there’s a pay phone, so I wondered if I might use your phone to call the AA? I’ll pay for the call, of course…’ I let my voice trail away.

His smile broadened and relaxed, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘No problem. Come in.’ He stepped back and I moved inside the door. He gestured down the hall. ‘There’s a phone in the study. Just on the right there.’

I moved slowly down the hall, ears alert for the sound of the front door closing behind me. As the lock snapped back into place, he added, ‘There’s nothing worse, is there?’

‘I’ll just look up the number,’ I said, pausing in the doorway to reach in my backpack. Adam kept on walking, so that when I pulled out the Mace spray, he was only a couple of feet away from me. It couldn’t have been more perfect. I let him have it full in the face.

He roared in pain and stumbled back against the wall, hands clawing at his face. I moved in swiftly. One foot between his ankles, hands on his shoulders, a quick twist and down he went, face crushed into the carpet, gasping for breath. I was down on top of him in seconds, gripping one wrist and twisting his arm up his back while I snapped the handcuff over it. He was struggling against me by now, tears streaming down his face, but I managed to grab his other flailing arm and snap the other half of the cuffs on it.

His legs were thrashing under me, but my weight was enough to keep him pinned to the floor while I took a ziplock plastic bag from my backpack. I opened it, extracted a pad soaked in chloroform and clamped it over his nose and mouth. The sickly odour drifted upwards into my nostrils, making me feel slightly light-headed and queasy. I hoped the chloroform hadn’t gone off; I’d had the bottle for a couple of years, ever since I’d stolen it from the dispensary on a Soviet ship where I’d spent the night with the first officer.

Adam struggled even harder when he felt the cold compress cut off his access to the air, but within minutes his legs stopped their pointless thrashing. I waited a little longer, just to be on the safe side, then I rolled off and fastened his legs together with surgical tape. I returned the chloroform pad to its secure bag, then I taped Adam’s mouth shut.

I stood up and took a deep breath. So far, so good. Next, I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and took stock. I am familiar with the theory of the French forensic scientist Edmond Locard, first demonstrated in a murder trial in 1912, that every contact leaves a trace; a criminal will always take something away from the scene of his crime and leave something behind. With this in mind, I had carefully chosen my wardrobe for today. I was wearing Levi 501s, the same brand I’d seen Adam wear often. I’d topped it with a baggy V-necked cricket sweater, the exact double of one I’d watched him buy in Marks and Spencer a couple of weeks before. Any stray fibres I left behind would inevitably be ascribed to the contents of Adam’s own wardrobe.

I took a quick look round the study, pausing by his answering machine. It was one of the old-fashioned ones, with a single cassette tape. I opened the machine and helped myself to the tape. It would be nice to have a memory of his voice sounding normal; I knew that the soundtrack on the video wouldn’t have that same relaxed quality.

The door to the garage was locked. I headed off up the stairs, where I found the jacket of his suit tossed over the back of a chair in the kitchen diner. The bunch of keys was in the left-hand pocket. Back downstairs, I opened the garage door and unlocked the hatchback of his two-year-old Ford Escort. Then I went back for Adam. He had, of course, come round. His eyes were filled with panic, muffled grunts came from behind the gag. I smiled down at him as I pressed the chloroform pad over his nose again. This time, of course, he couldn’t struggle effectively at all.

I pulled him into a sitting position, then brought a chair through from the study. I managed to get him on to the chair, and from there I was able to sling him over my shoulder and stagger through into the garage. I dumped him in the luggage space, and slammed the tailgate shut. Not a trace of his body was visible.

I checked my watch. Just after six. It would be another hour till it was dark enough to be certain none of the neighbours passing casually would notice a stranger driving out of Adam’s garage. I filled the time by browsing through his life. Packets of photographs revealed friends, a family Christmas dinner. I would have fitted into this life perfectly. We could have had it all, if he hadn’t been such a fool.

I was startled out of my reverie by the phone. I let it ring, and went through to the kitchen. I helped myself to a bottle of creme cleanser and a cloth and carefully washed down all the paintwork in the hall. I put the used cloth in my backpack, then fetched the vacuum cleaner. I went over the entire hall slowly and carefully, erasing all traces of the struggle from the hard-wearing Berber carpet. I trailed the vac behind me, right into the garage, where I left it in a corner, looking as if it had always lived there. Satisfied I’d removed all traces of me, I climbed into Adam’s car, pressed the remote-control button on his keyring and started the engine as the garage door rose smoothly before me.

I shut the door behind me, and drove off. I could hear muffled noises from the back of the car. I raked around in the glove box till I found a Wet, Wet, Wet cassette. I shoved it into the player and turned the volume up high. I sang along with the music as I drove out of the city and on to the moors.

I’d been worried that Adam’s car might not make it all the way up the track, and I’d been right. About half a mile from home, the road became too overgrown and rutted. With a sigh, I got out and walked up to collect the wheelbarrow. When I opened the tailgate to tip him into the barrow, his eyes were wide and staring. His muffled calls were wasted on me, however. I dragged him unceremoniously out of the car and into the barrow. It was a hard half-mile up the track, since his constant struggling made steering more difficult. Luckily, Auntie Doris had had the foresight to buy a proper builder’s barrow, one with two wheels in front.

When we reached the farmhouse, I opened the trapdoor. The cellar below looked dark and welcoming. Adam’s eyes widened in terror. I stroked his soft hair and said, ‘Welcome to the pleasure dome.’