The Killer Next Door(16)
He rolls out his plastic sheet. It is heavy – the heaviest gauge he could buy – and transparent, so the faded flower pattern on the carpet shows eerily through from beneath. As he crawls across the floor, he brushes Marianne’s shin with his elbow.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, my darling,’ he says. ‘Excuse me.’
The skin on her legs looks dry, today, her hair low in lustre, her make-up faded.
‘I’ve been neglecting you,’ he apologises. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been busy… you know how it is. I hope you won’t hold it against me.’ He needs to pay her a bit of attention once he’s finished his ministrations for Nikki. It’s not fair to give someone else all the love, when Marianne has been with him so long, been so pleasing. Tonight, when Nikki is safely stowed, they can watch Big Brother together. He’ll maybe paint her nails and brush her hair through. He bought a bottle of spray-in shiner at Sally Hair and Beauty when he was up in Soho the other day. Hopefully it will make all the difference.
He’s judged the size of the sheeting wrong, and has to fold it under itself when he reaches the bed. No matter, really, and definitely preferable to leaving a gap. This part of the process is always messy. There are always spillages, however careful one is. He smooths the plastic out, tucks it in, and goes to get the rest of his tools from the kitchenette. There’s a bucket under the sink, and a trowel inside it: he’s learned through trial and error that, for this particular job, a trowel is the best possible equipment, and a wire brush for the fine work. It will be hot work, but the air-conditioner is turned up full and the flat is blissfully cool and dry, despite the heat. The heat has been a problem for him. He had only a few lovely hours with Nikki in her soft, pliable state before he was forced to go to work.
The Lover pulls on his pink Marigolds and returns to the bed. He’s proud of the bed, of his ingenuity in spotting its potential and buying it. To the casual observer, it’s a dull old divan in muddy brown, the faded duvet cover and sagging pillows giving no indication that it is, in fact, the seat of his heart.
The Lover bends down, takes hold of the two woven tabs that protrude from the side of the bed, and lifts. With a hiss, the top of the bed, mattress and all, rises into the air, propelled by a gas hinge within. Inside, two compartments, each the width of the bed and half its length. In one, half a dozen humidifiers, each in need of emptying. The other is filled with white crystals. No, crystals that were once white, but have become tinged, over the past two weeks, with brown.
‘Right, my darling,’ says the Lover, ‘let’s get started.’
Chapter Nine
Out on the landing there’s a cupboard set into the wall, by the stairs up to Thomas Dunbar’s flat. It’s where the Landlord keeps his tools, whatever tools those are, and he keeps it locked. But today she finds the door hanging open, and can’t resist the urge to have a look. And in the back of the cupboard, barely visible in the gloom, she finds the door.
This isn’t right, thinks Cher. That’s an outside wall, I’m sure it is. lf I open it, I’ll just step through to three storeys of thin air.
But she steps inside anyway, and closes the door behind her so no one can see what she’s doing. Aside from the door, the cupboard contains nothing much beyond a broken vacuum cleaner and a collection of rags, which hang from nails hammered into the risers of the stairs above her head. There’s no one out on the landing, and the house sounds quiet, but she feels uncomfortable, as though the silence is a sign that someone is hiding nearby, listening. In the stifling darkness, she feels her way over the back wall with her fingers until she finds the latch, lifts and pushes. The door resists for a moment, as though it’s not been opened in many years, then it scrapes back over dusty floorboards and her world is once again filled with light.
It’s a grey light, a dead sort of light. A light that bleaches the colour from the world, makes everything dusty. Cher steps over the threshold and finds herself in an attic room, all sloping rafters and thick cross-beams, the light seeping in through a single skylight ten feet from where she stands. This is not right, she thinks, even as she steps in. It shouldn’t be here. But here it is: a jumble of beds and bassinets, all scratched and broken and covered in dust.
She jumps as she sees a figure move into view from behind a curtain; breathes again when she sees that it is just herself, blurred by a haze of crackled silvering in a console mirror half-covered by an old sheet. A miniature rocking horse, skewbald, its mane missing in hanks, sways back and forth on its rockers, as though its infant rider had leapt from its back and fled at the sound of her arrival.