The Killer Next Door(104)

Her rigor has passed, and her forearm is flopped down the outside of the bath, the hand and fingertips blackening almost as he watches. He picks up the hand, lets it drop, watches the loose flaps of skin hanging down from her upper arm wobble horribly in the raw light from the bare bulb above their heads. Whatever I do, I’ll have to do it soon, he thinks. What a waste of time.

He has no experience of taking a fresh corpse apart, but he knows it’s going to be a lot harder than it was with Alice or her predecessors. Fresh, juicy cartilage will be harder to cut through, and it will be nigh on impossible to break up fresh bones with any tools he can reasonably bring into the flat.

‘Piss,’ he says, out loud. Turns to the basin and splashes cold water on his face, puts his specs back on and looks at himself in the mirror. Such a mild face, a lock of hair falling foppishly loose over his forehead, his chest and shoulders slightly pudgy under his open-necked shirt. No one, he thinks, would think that I have a dead girl in my bathroom. They wouldn’t think anything about me, most of them. They’d just look straight through me, not even notice I was there. Which is good, of course, if you’re going to be dropping severed limbs in litter bins. But God, what a hassle. Why can’t she just magically disappear?

He sighs and gets down on his knees with his carving knife. The first and obvious step is the same as it’s always been. Rationally, he needs to get rid of the messy inside parts, the bits that spread, before he can start to think about dividing up that flappy torso.

So close to her face, he is assailed by a horrible feeling of being watched by those eggshell eyes. He grabs a hand towel from one of the suction hooks on the side of the basin, and throws it over her face, to hide it. Then he bends forward and slices into the distending belly, coughs as a gust of fetid air rushes out. There’s no pleasure in this. Other times, he’s been carried through the disgust by the pleasure of experimentation and, in latter times, his pride in his work. This is just a nasty, demanding chore, like doing his taxes.





Chapter Forty-Five


They’ve put her in a side room. Everyone knows what that means. It’s a week – only a few days – since she last saw her, and in that time she seems to have halved in size. She lies among her tubes, swamped in a bed that seems to have been brought in from the set of Land of the Giants. Collette hovers in the doorway, the ward doctor close behind. She wants to turn and walk away, stride off up the ugly hospital corridor with its discarded wheelchairs and its sanitiser stations, as though doing so will make the whole thing not exist. If she crosses the threshold, it becomes part of her life.

Oh, I’m sorry, Janine, she silently tells the stranger-mother on the bed. I should have come. Should have taken one more punt that Malik wouldn’t be there. If I’d known it was the end I wouldn’t have left you all alone. Wouldn’t have spent the week holed up with a man, pretending I wasn’t going out of fear.

‘She’s not in any pain,’ says the doctor. She’s told Collette her name, but that detail has gone through her head like the rushing of wind, as has much of everything else she’s said. All she knows is that she will soon no longer be a daughter. ‘We’re keeping her comfortable.’

She tries to take the first step, but her foot seems to be stuck to the ground. She throws the doctor an appeal for help with her eyes. Push me forward. Carry me over. The doctor stands, efficiently patient. They must be so used to this, she thinks. These wards are full of the old. Really, how they organise things so that the corridors aren’t crowded with weeping relatives is a miracle in itself.

‘It’s okay,’ she says, in a voice that manages to inject sympathy and encouragement into the need for action. I must move, thinks Collette. Janine’s not the only patient here tonight. All over this hospital there are hundreds of people, and this poor woman’s having to reassure thousands of relatives. Go in, Collette. Just do it.

‘She’s sleeping, at least?’ she asks. ‘That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?’

The doctor shakes her head. ‘No. I’m sorry. She’s slipped into a coma, I’m afraid.’

The word hits her like a bucket of water. Coma. One of those words you never want to hear. Coma, carcinoma, myocardial: words that suck your breath away.

‘So I’m too late, then,’ she says, desolately. I was right not to let him come in with me, she thinks. It’s not the place for him, too much to ask. But oh, I’m so alone. I don’t know how I’ll get through this.

‘No. You’re not too late. She’s still here. She may well know you’re here. And sometimes they rally a bit. Come back for a while. It still matters. That you’re here.’