"Until it's Over" - читать интересную книгу автора (French Nicci)

Chapter Six

The third time I felt as if I was interviewing Detective Inspector Mitchell. As he made me tell the story all over again, he shifted in his chair, fidgeted with a pen, rubbed his scalp, adjusted his tie, failed to meet my gaze.

‘There we are,’ I said, when I’d finished. ‘The same story. Told in the same words.’

‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not the same.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Did I get something wrong?’

He reached into a bag on the floor, removed a file and pushed it across the desk. He nodded at me, so I opened it. There was page after typewritten page. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s the physical-traces report from the crime scene.’

‘It looks very detailed.’

‘If you read page four, you’ll see an account of the glass fragments found on Mrs Farrell’s coat.’

‘So?’

‘They’re from a supermarket-brand vodka bottle. The fragments were scattered round her body and underneath it. Hence they became attached to the material of her coat. One such bottle is duly referred to on the receipt found in Mrs Farrell’s car.’

‘Well, I’m glad that’s been cleared up,’ I said. ‘I was wondering where the bottle of vodka had got to.’

‘Shut up,’ said Mitchell.

‘What?’

He got up and paced the room. ‘I hate this fucking case,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Everything’s wrong,’ he said. ‘The yobs who stole the property aren’t the people who killed her. And now this.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t see…’

He sat down and jabbed a plump finger at me. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You remember our scenario?’

‘Your scenario.’

‘Mrs Farrell knocks you over. She attends to you, leaving her car unlocked, her shopping inside. She is attacked, robbed, murdered, dumped. Then, some hours later, the gang from William Morris help themselves to the alcohol. As we now know, they drink the vodka on the spot and toss it down into the recess in front of number fifty-four, where it smashed.’

He paused and stared at me meaningfully.

‘Is this a problem?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a problem. When they threw the bottle down, it should have landed on Mrs Farrell’s body.’

‘So it missed her.’

‘What?’ said Mitchell, sarcastically. ‘And the fragments lifted her body and positioned themselves under it?’

‘Maybe somebody else took the vodka. It could have been the same person who killed her.’

Mitchell tossed another file across the table. ‘Fingerprint report,’ he said. ‘It was them, all right. Her body fell, or was placed there, after the bottle had been smashed.’

‘If that’s true, the gang could have killed her after all.’

‘So she sat in her car for three hours?’

‘People do strange things. She might have been locked out.’

‘Oh, stop that,’ said Mitchell, wearily. ‘She had her keys. She wasn’t in her bloody car. So where was she for those hours? With her car unlocked and her shopping in it? And why did she come back?’

‘Is that what you’ve brought me in to ask?’

He leaned across the table. ‘I want you to be sure, absolutely sure, that you’ve told me everything you know.’

‘I have,’ I said.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me again.’

I was on my way to my room and looked up to see Dario peering down through the banisters, beckoning me, his face a parody of conspiratorial secrecy. ‘What is it?’

‘Up here,’ he hissed.

I shrugged and made my way up to the second floor where he and Mick had rooms. As always, Mick’s door was closed, but Dario’s was wide open. Probably he couldn’t even shut it any more: half-empty paint pots, hardened brushes, bottles of turpentine and a rusty saw blocked the entrance and spilled out into the corridor, along with the strange items he collected from skips and dumps all round East London. I stepped over a tennis racket with broken strings and made my way round a small trestle table, into the unspeakable squalor and sweet stench of the room. It was hard even to make out the bed, amid the stacks of old furniture he’d amassed: two desks, on top of each other, one without any legs; a wooden towel rack; a fraying wicker Moses basket filled to overflowing with pewter plates and mugs; a large blue trunk with brass handles; three ladder-backed chairs in various stages of disintegration; an armchair piled with clothes; a supermarket trolley on its side, one wheel missing; a little carved chest; two cardboard suitcases. Dario always said he was going to do them up and sell them.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Take a seat?’

‘Where?’

‘You could lie in the hammock,’ he said. ‘Or I’ve got some deckchairs I found the other day I could open up. They’re a bit cobwebby, though.’

‘I’ll stand. What’s up?’

‘I just wanted to know what they were after this time?’

As I gave a brief account of Mitchell, his anguish and confusion, Dario lit a joint and took a deep drag. The sweet smell filled the room. He flicked ash on to the floor and offered it to me, but I shook my head.

‘Does my head in,’ he said.

‘He has this feeling that we were there when it happened. I don’t exactly know how. Nor does he.’

‘It’s going to end badly,’ Dario said. ‘For me probably.’

‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’ve gone over and over it in my mind and I’ve tried and tried to remember.’

‘Yeah, you said.’

‘There’s just one thing, but when I came off my bike and you and Davy came over, I’ve got some memory that someone else was there. Or maybe I was concussed.’

‘That was some bang when you hit the road.’

I gave up. ‘I can’t think about this any more. It makes my brain hurt. I’m going to go and get myself a coffee.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, and followed me down three flights of stairs into the kitchen. Mick was sitting at the table, shelling monkey nuts and then, with a look of great determination, throwing each one high into the air and trying to catch it in his mouth. I said hello to him but he didn’t stop, though a nut bounced off his nose. I went over to the back door and gazed out on to the long strip of garden. ‘Let’s go out somewhere, to a club or the movies or something,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel like hanging round here talking about dead people.

But then we heard the front door opening and closing, and footsteps coming down the stairs: Miles and Leah, both cool and elegant. Leah had a couple of bottles of chilled white wine for the household, which was nice of her, but she also had one of those metal tape measures that extend for metres, then kink in the middle, and a notebook. She poured herself some wine and opened the tape measure.

‘Right,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Let’s get to work.’

‘Plans?’ I asked.

‘We thought we could make this room really lovely,’ said Leah.

‘It is really lovely,’ said Dario, dolefully. ‘I’ve only just finished painting it.’

‘It’s too dark. We need to open it up, make the most of its size. It should be full of light, leading into the garden like it does,’ Leah continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It should almost feel like being outside when you’re inside.’

‘Architects’ fucking bollocks,’ said Mick.

Leah stared at him and Mick stared back, then threw a nut at the window.

‘What did he just say?’ Leah asked Miles, who shrugged uncomfortably. ‘As I was saying,’ she continued, with a visible effort, turning away from Miles and talking to me, though I really wasn’t interested in hearing her ideal-home plans. ‘Then if we make that first bit of garden a patio area with benches and chairs and pots, it’ll be like a continuation of the room.’

‘You mean where the vegetable patch is?’ I said.

‘That’s right.’

There was a pause, like when you’re waiting for a firework to go off.

‘I tell you what,’ I said, getting up from my chair and putting a hand on Dario’s bony shoulder, ‘I think we shouldn’t go to a film. I think we should go and have a picnic in the park. Right now. It’s such a gorgeous evening.’

Dario, Mick and I ransacked the fridge for bits to eat. Pippa arrived with a tall man in a dark suit and a slim black briefcase, and sent him to buy more food from the corner shop. Then, as we were leaving, Davy turned up with a lovely young woman in tow. She had shoulder-length brown hair, and large brown eyes, fair skin and pink cheeks; he introduced her as Mel and she blushed, smiled and shook our hands in turn.

‘Come for a picnic,’ I said.

‘We were going out to eat,’ began Mel, hesitantly.

‘Great idea,’ said Davy. He grinned at Mel. ‘It’s an initiation rite, but I’ll protect you. Let me have a shower first.’

After the world’s shortest shower, Davy collected his frisbee and Dario took a large rug from Miles’s room. I put plastic cups into a bag with Leah’s wine. The park was just a few minutes’ walk from the house, less if you climbed over the fence. It was not a very beautiful park – no ponds and walkways and landscaped views of London, no deer grazing inside well-tended enclosures – but it was beautiful this evening, green and tranquil in the dusk. There was no wind, and everything was very still, as if waiting. We made our way across the grass, strewn with plastic bags, cigarette ends, crumpled cans, to the chestnut tree, where we spread the rug and laid out our random assortment of food. As I was pouring wine into the plastic beakers I saw Owen walking towards us and raised a cup to him. He had his camera with him, and he stopped a few feet away from us and started taking photos.

‘How do we look?’ I called.

He lowered the camera. ‘How should I know? I’m interested in that tree and its shadow.’

‘Flattering,’ I said.

He frowned at me, not smiling, then put away his camera, sat on the grass and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Pippa’s friend, whose name I never found out, used his briefcase as a small table on which to assemble messy sandwiches. We threw the frisbee to each other until the light became too murky to continue. Then we lounged on the grass and talked and didn’t talk. Pippa and her latest sat with their legs tangled: I saw Davy and Mel shyly holding hands when they thought no one was looking. Dario lay flat on his back with a joint clamped between his lips, snorting smoke through his nostrils. He was giving a garbled account of my meeting with DI Mitchell to Mick and anyone else who would listen. Mick wasn’t paying much attention but he seemed more at ease than usual. He was wearing a black singlet and I noticed for the first time that he had a tattoo on his shoulder: two intersecting spirals that moved and expanded when he flexed his muscles.

I slid over the grass towards Davy, and he and Mel moved apart.

‘Sorry to butt in,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to ask you something. You know the police hauled me in again?’

‘I heard,’ said Davy. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I think they’re desperate,’ I said. ‘You know when you’ve lost something and you start looking in the places you’ve already looked? I think that’s what they’re doing. I just wanted to ask you something that’s been getting on my nerves. You know when you and Dario ran out to help me in the street?’

Davy grinned. ‘I’m not likely to forget it, am I?’

‘I know I asked you before, but I still have this nagging impression that there was someone with you. Someone who said goodbye to Dario, or Dario said goodbye to him. Or her. Dario said there wasn’t and I don’t mean to doubt his word, but this is a murder we’re talking about and if there’s anything we can do to help…’

‘Of course,’ said Davy. I thought he looked slightly uncomfortable, but perhaps I was imagining things. ‘Maybe there was someone – but if there was, Dario’s the one you should ask.’

‘I have asked him. You’re telling me there was, aren’t you?’

‘I’m not telling you anything. It was sunny. I was tired. I was sitting on the steps, with my eyes closed, probably, letting everything drift over me, you know how it is.’

‘Your eyes were closed?’

‘I dunno. Maybe, is all I’m saying. They were open for your accident, though. It makes you realize how unreliable memory is, doesn’t it? If you ask someone in advance to remember everything that happens, that’s what they do. But if you ask them afterwards – well, ninety per cent has gone over their head. My head, I mean.’

‘OK,’ I said, not satisfied.

‘What are you two conspiring about?’ said Pippa. ‘Are you planning to tell Miles we’re sitting tenants and we’re never leaving?’

‘The police hauled Astrid in,’ said Davy. ‘Gave her the third degree yet again.’

‘I should call you in as my lawyer,’ I said.

‘Any time, darling,’ she said.

‘Charge my client,’ I said. ‘Or let her walk.’ Then a thought occurred to me. I looked round. Her partner of the evening was far enough away, pouring himself another glass of wine. I spoke to her in a quieter voice: ‘Pippa, do you remember that guy who stayed over the night I had my accident?’

‘Just about.’ She gave a coy giggle, which irritated me.

‘You might want to mention him to the police. They really want to talk to anyone who was in the area. He may have seen something when he arrived.’

Pippa’s expression turned frosty. ‘We didn’t see anything.’

‘Even so,’ I said. ‘It might be worth mentioning.’

‘It’s not really a good idea,’ she said.

‘Married, by any chance?’ said Davy.

Pippa shot him a fierce glance. ‘It would be awkward,’ she said.

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you didn’t see anything.’

‘Exactly.’

I sighed. I’d done my duty as a responsible citizen, and I didn’t want to think about Peggy any more, not this evening, anyway. I went back to where I’d been sitting and lowered myself on to the grass. I lay on my back next to Owen and gazed dreamily up into the sky, which was fading from turquoise to silver grey. The trees’ branches were massed darkly above me, and through them I could make out the faint outline of the half-moon. I closed my eyes.

Then Dario lobbed the frisbee towards me, spilling my wine, and the spell was broken. I sat up, cursed Dario and poured myself some more. In the thick evening light, I looked across the park. From where we were, I could see the roof of our house. Leah and Miles were there, planning how it would look once we were out of the way. They’d change bedrooms into studies and extra bathrooms, knock down walls, throw old beds and sagging sofas into a skip, paint over all the marks and stains that had accumulated through the years, until nothing would be left to show that we had lived there. Time to move on, I thought, but I’d never felt less like moving on than that evening in the park.

As the air cooled and the day faded, we saw another figure walking towards us. It was Miles. He didn’t say anything, just sat down beside me, so close that our hips touched and I could feel his warmth through the material of my jeans. I poured out the dregs of the wine for him, smiling at him to make peace. He put his hand over mine and I let him, just this once.

‘It’s fine,’ I told him. ‘Like you said, we couldn’t stay there for ever.’

‘She’s measuring windows now,’ he said gloomily. ‘You don’t think she could by any chance be pregnant, do you?’

I didn’t want the day to end. After everyone had wandered off to their own rooms, I went out into the garden. The last warmth of the day had gone and it was clear and cool. I sat on Dario’s creaky little bench for a while and looked at the house: the lights in the rooms went off one by one. Only the kitchen glowed. Then I stood up and walked to the end of the garden, where I stared out over the other houses stretching in either direction, with their fences and their long gardens, and beyond them the tall, patchily illuminated tower blocks. So many people all around me; so many strangers up close. In the distance, I could hear music, the bass note jumping. Then, abruptly, it stopped and there was a sudden, unnerving silence.

I turned back to the house and started. Someone was standing a few feet away from me. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You don’t have exclusive rights to the garden, do you?’

‘Why do you always have to be so aggressive? I’m not in the mood tonight, OK?’

Owen shrugged and struck a match; his face flared into view as he held it up to the cigarette between his lips.

‘Can I have one too?’

‘You don’t smoke.’

‘I do, sometimes.’

‘Here.’ He held out the packet but I stayed where I was, so he was forced to cross the patch of grass separating us. He shook out a cigarette, handed it over, then lit it for me.

I felt a violent thrill of hostility towards him. ‘You won’t mind, anyway,’ I said, breathing a curl of smoke into his face.

‘Mind what?’

‘Leaving.’

‘It’s a pain, having to find somewhere new.’

‘You’ve hardly made an effort to be part of the house, have you?’ I continued. ‘You don’t see us, do you? You don’t notice when we’re there and when we’re not. We could be anyone. There are days when I can’t remember you even saying good morning or goodnight, let alone “Do you want coffee?” or “I’m going to the shop, is there anything you need?”’

‘I’ll try to remember.’

‘Don’t bother.’

He dropped his fag end and it winked like a small red eye between us. I threw mine after it. Then he put one hand against my stomach and pushed me so that I stumbled backwards. He stepped after me and pushed me once more. Now the tree was sharp against my back. I slapped his cheek and in the half-dark saw him wince. Good. He bent forward and kissed me hard. I reached up and put my hands in his thick hair and pulled him closer, tasting blood, his or mine I didn’t know. Layers of clothing coming loose, buttons snapping, zips torn apart, teeth on skin, hands on each other’s body, breath in gasps, muttered curses.

‘Not here,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he said.

I couldn’t think why not. Couldn’t think. Now we were on the rough ground, pushed up against the fence at the back, pricked by thorns and bits of bark. It was messy and undignified. He had to tug my jeans off, and then he was against me, inside me, and all the bits of my body I’d thought were healed hurt again. Every bruise throbbed. His eyes shone in the night.

‘I don’t even like you,’ I said, when at last we rolled away from each other.

He didn’t speak for a moment, just lay with his arms outstretched, staring at the sky. Then he got to his feet, tucking his ripped shirt into his jeans.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, standing over me where I lay with my undone clothes and my battered body. ‘Or is it good morning?’

And with that he was gone. I waited a few moments before scrambling up and leaning against the fence, touching my puffy lips with the tips of my fingers. Then I, too, went indoors, into the silent, sleeping house. Owen’s light was already out when I crept up the stairs. I tugged off my clothes, washed myself in the basin, trying not to see my face in the mirror. I tumbled into my bed, and waited for sleep.

I don’t know what woke me. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t bothered to close my curtains, and I could see from where I lay that the sky was already getting light. Birds were singing violently outside. I turned my head and saw on my mobile that it was five o’clock. I closed my eyes again and willed myself to sink back into sleep, but it was no good. I remembered the previous night and felt heavy and sick, consumed with desire.

I swung my legs out of bed, pulled on my dressing-gown and opened the door. Not a sound from the house. Everyone was sleeping. I tiptoed along the hall, turned the handle of Owen’s door with an agonizing click. He was lying with the covers pushed down to his waist and one hand dangling over the edge of the bed. I closed the door softly behind me and crossed to him. He didn’t stir, until I climbed into the bed beside him and pulled the thin duvet over our two bodies and kissed his shoulder, his neck, his stomach. He gave a small groan but still kept his eyes shut and didn’t speak. He turned on to his side and slid a hand between my legs. The belt of my dressing-gown tangled between us and I wriggled out of it and threw it on the floor. We were very quiet. I put a hand over his mouth when he came.

‘You haven’t even opened your eyes,’ I said.

‘Perhaps you’re not who I think you are,’ he said. I rolled off the bed and pulled on my dressing-gown. He opened his eyes at last and looked at me. ‘And I haven’t even seen you naked, Astrid Bell.’

‘Nor will you. This is such a bad idea.’

‘It isn’t an idea at all,’ Owen said. He put out a hand, ran it up my leg, and I shivered helplessly.