The smell is less than it was when she came up here before. The windows and doors wide open have stirred up a through draught and at least dissipated the syrupy quality the air in here had before. But still, it’s a horrid place. She looks about her at the sad, drab evidence of the life lived here and feels a moment’s sympathy for Thomas Dunbar. Not a picture on the walls, not a single tiny flourish that suggests that he loved himself. Just the little shrine on the table by the far wall, his collection of memorabilia.
She goes and stands over it, contemplates these trophies of lives lost. There were more than the three we’ve found today, she thinks. God knows what’s happened to the owner of those earrings, the girl who coveted the Louboutins but could only afford the pretend one for her key ring. Do their families know they’re missing? Do they still hope they’ll come back, one day?
She strokes her watch. The last of Janine. The last good gift – the first, really. Her twenty-first birthday present, and not a branded thing, an antique with a gold link chain and a mother-of-pearl face. Janine must have spent months squirrelling away the cash for it. She remembers the pride on her face when she handed it over, showed her the engraving on the back. Tiny letters, but still clear after sixteen years against her wrist: For Lisa, my love always, Janine.
She unclips the clasp and weighs it in her hand for a moment. A comforting weight, solid; her proof throughout her life that, however flawed, there was once love. The last of Janine – she has nothing else.
She lays it down on the table next to the big, self-important bunch of keys that used to belong to the Landlord. Takes a deep breath and lifts her chin. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
They decide that the bathroom is the place for the final act. It seems logical, given the charnel he has made of the surprisingly elegant roll-top bath, that any cutting he has done has been done here. What is left of his last victim is little but bone, the flesh stripped off with obsessive dedication. There’s just a leg left uncleaned. It lies pathetically among its deconstructed skeleton, pale meat drained of blood, a rusty stain around the plughole. Whoever she was, she liked shell-pink nail polish. Probably spent a moment admiring it, turning her foot to catch the light, some short time before she encountered the garrulous man with the tinted specs.
Collette is having difficulty controlling her gag reflex. These pathetic remains disgust her. The last thing she wants to do is get down and get closer. And she’s frightened. Afraid of pain, afraid of dying. Afraid of what she is asking them to do. She looks over her shoulder and sees that Hossein has turned pale and Vesta looks grim enough to scare the devil. It’s not just me, she thinks. Neither of them wants to do it either. But they must. Someone has to do it. It’s the only way.
She kneels down and bends her head.
They’re both crying. Hossein and Collette are crying. Despite all the things they’ve done, the things they’ve seen, over the past few weeks, this final act has brought them close to collapse. Hossein stands over her, paralysed. He’s taken the cleaver from Vesta’s hand, come boldly forward, determined to carry it through, and now he’s by her, can see her face, her neck, her shoulder, he has crumbled. He sways like a kid on the bathroom tiles and squeezes the bridge of his nose as tears slide from his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’
‘Please!’ she begs. ‘Please, Hossein! You have to! Please!’
‘I want to. Oh, God, Collette, I can’t. I can’t…’
He shuts up, closes his eyes and deep-breathes. Struggles to compose himself.
‘Hossein, just get on with it. We can’t waste any more time. Cher’s downstairs, for God’s sake. Do you want her to lose her arm? Just do it. Just – please, Hossein, I can’t do this myself.’
He hauls in a huge breath, raises the cleaver and lunges. But it’s a half-hearted gesture. He shies away at the last second, buries the blade in the wall.
Collette screams. With rage, with frustration, with terror. She doesn’t want this to happen. Each time she thinks it’s about to, the blood surges through her veins and it takes every effort of will she has just to keep still. ‘Hossein!’
‘Oh, my God,’ says Vesta. ‘You’re torturing her!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’
Vesta lets out an old-lady humph of disapproval.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘I guess it takes a woman to do a man’s job.’
She snatches the hatchet from his hand, pushes it out of the way and brings it boldly down.