The Killer Next Door(112)
‘Oh, Psycho, I’m sorry,’ she says, and puts out a finger for him to butt with his head. Opens her arms to him. Psycho rears on his hind legs, throws himself against her chest and begins to purr. Wriggles upwards so his front paws are on her shoulder as she picks him up, presses his wet black nose into her ear as she hugs him tight. ‘Oh, my pussycat,’ she says. ‘Let’s not argue again.’
She’s still kissing his head as she turns round to go back the way she came and glances through the open bedroom door. Jumps, because there’s someone in there, a skinny woman, all shrivelled skin and staring blue eyes, stock-still on an old dining chair beside the bed. Cher blushes, opens her mouth to apologise, explain herself, then closes it, hard. She feels as though someone’s superglued her feet to the floor, wants to back away, turn, run like hell for the stairs – because the woman is Nikki.
Was Nikki. Oh, God.
Nikki dried up, a Nikki made of leather. Her flaming red hair still recognisable, but brushed out, sprayed and curled in a grim, hard facsimile of an Oscar-night ‘do’. She’s Nikki, but crossed with a Galapagos tortoise, all hard and gnarly and thin, thin, thin. False fingernails, filed sharp and painted scarlet, stuck on to bony fingers, cheekbones to die for. A green shift dress, and feet and ankles, tendons standing out like guy ropes, each bone delineated by the thin, hard skin that adheres to it, all crammed into over-tight, film-star stilettos with winkle-picker toes.
She finds her breath, gulps in acrid air and turns to run for the door.
Thomas stands outside the bathroom, blocking her exit. He’s dressed like a surgeon, in a white plastic pinny that’s smeared with brown, and holding a small circular saw.
Chapter Forty-Eight
She doesn’t hesitate. Throws, because she has nothing else to throw, the cat at him, bolts inside the bedroom and slams the door.
A smaller room, one side cut off to make space for the bathroom next door. Cher leans against the door and holds the handle, looks wildly round for something that will help her, a weapon, something to stop him getting in. There’s nothing. A horrid, bare, dry little room with a divan bed and a chest of drawers against the far wall, an eaves cupboard, a miserable flat-pack wardrobe. He’s coming. Oh, my God, he’s coming!
Nikki grins at her mirthlessly from her chair. It’s only after a couple of seconds that she notices that she has a second companion. Up against the wall next to her, thrown face down on the floor like a doll whose owner has moved on to the next piece of plastic. Dark hair, faded bluish, brittle, the scalp showing through, the skin gone grey and beginning to flake off from the frame. Arms bent as though they’ve been designed to hold on to the arms of a throne, the fingers clawed. Cher can see up the skirt, see dainty underwear hanging off shrivelled buttocks. She looks like she doesn’t weigh a pound, but she’s the only thing within reach.
Cher braces her foot against the bottom of the door and stretches. Gets a handhold round the ankle and starts to pull the body towards her. The skin is oily under the touch, not dry, as she’d been expecting. It slips through her grasp and the dry clutching fingers catch on the carpet, hold her there. Cher drops to her haunches, grips the ankle with both hands and hauls, lets out a shriek of effort. Something in the fingers snaps and the body flies free. Lands on top of her dry, dry hair in her open mouth. She throws it against the door and scoots backwards on her bottom, howls out her disgust.
Outside, ‘More Than A Woman’ starts up on the record player. She barks out a laugh. Did he put this on purposely? Is this his special music for doing whatever he was doing in that bathroom? Is this why those drains got blocked up? He’s probably been putting stuff down the bog for months, flushing away the stuff he’s taken out of these women, clogging up… oh, God, Roy Preece drowned in Nikki.
The door handle turns and he pushes against it. She sees the door crack open, catch on the corpse behind it. It won’t hold for any time at all. He’s already bracing, jiggling it back and forth, and she’s jumping on the floor.
Cher jumps on to the bed and dives through the open window.
She hits the tiles, and finds herself sliding. Four floors up, and she’s heading down, at speed. Months of dust and pollen and traffic smuts that have settled on surfaces in the dry heat have formed a slick in the rain, a slick as unpredictable as ice, and just as deadly. Her cheap flip-flops skate over the surface, her legs wheeling as she hunts for traction. Her right hand, flat on the roof, catches on something that drives itself deep into her palm. She shrieks in pain as she jerks to a halt, feels something snap at the base of her neck, rolls on to her face and digs her knees in to the tiles.