The Killer Next Door(43)

‘What for?’ she asks. He doesn’t look like he’ll be up to anything much, but Cher is counting on that.

He runs through the vocabulary he’s heard in films. He’s not a habitual buyer of pussy. He’s practically congratulating himself on his audaciousness. ‘How much for French?’

‘French?’ She can’t resist taunting him, taking the piss out of his attempts at sounding like he knows what he’s doing. ‘What’s that?’

‘I, er…’ His sweaty fatboy face falls as he realises he’s going to have to be more graphic; grapple with vocabulary he usually only uses with other men. ‘You know. Blowjob.’

‘Oh, riiiiight. Why didn’t you say so?’

‘I…’

‘Never mind. That’ll be sixty.’

‘Sixty?’

‘Oh, Christ. You’re not going to start haggling, are you?’ Cher shifts, deliberately; flashes a bit more cleavage, slightly, ever so slightly, parts her thighs.

His eyes glaze. ‘No. No, all right.’

She sits and looks at him; starts to slip off her shoes. It takes him a moment to work out why she’s gone quiet, then he reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out a fat, card-filled leather wallet. She waits silently as he counts out three twenties: one, two, three. Even in this light she can see there are quite a few more in there. He hands them over, fanned out like they’re a prize. Fat drunk rich boy wants me to suck his cock. Just like the fat old Landlord thinks he can get me to do, when I can’t come up with the rent. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

His phone rings and she takes her chance while he’s distracted. Waits until he’s got it out of his pocket and is looking at the screen – it’s an iPhone, of course it is, but it’s probably not worth her while to try to get that too – then bats it lightly out of his hand, so quickly he barely registers the blow. It skitters away across the pavement, lands up in the gutter. Fatboy looks up at her, lower lip quivering, cross and confused. She smiles. ‘Oops. Sorry.’

‘Ssss,’ he says. Wobbles to his feet, wallet carelessly in his hand, and walks over to the kerb. Silently, on bare feet, shoes in hand, she creeps up behind. As he bends and stretches, Cher snatches her moment. Runs forward and, with all her might, shoves at the unstable backside.

Fatboy goes ‘oof’, and goes down flat on his face. Change and keys and fountain pens jingle out of his pockets and the wallet flies from his fingers, lands on the tarmac four feet away.

She’s leapt over the top of him and snatched it up before he’s even drawn a breath. She is fifteen feet away before she hears his bellow of rage. Cher runs for her life.

No lights show in windows as she flies down Roupell Street, hammers her bare feet along the flagstones and hopes to God she will encounter no broken glass. Thudding footsteps, thumping heart; the wig is starting to slip on her head and she clamps a hand to hold it on. Lets go again, for running one-armed slows her up. If it comes off, it comes off, as long as she’s out of sight before it does. Cher has always been fast on her feet. If she’d been given the chance, she would have run for the county. She’s almost reached the alley that opens to her right before she hears the scrape of his pursuing footsteps, the howling voice. ‘You… fucking… bitch!’

She reaches the mouth of the alleyway, skids into it without looking. Hits the dumpster belonging to the Thai restaurant and recovers herself before she can feel the pain. Slaps her way round it and barrels forwards into the dark. Steps in something that squelches, collects something sticky on the sole of her foot. No time to shed it; she can hear him coming towards the mouth of the alley. He’s seen her go up here. She must get out the other end before he sees her go.

The path narrows towards its top end; she has to pull her arms and shoulders in to navigate it, loses the skin on her elbow anyway.

He cannons into the dumpster, as she did. Another ‘oof’, a swear word. He’s puffing like a walrus already. He’ll run out of breath altogether long before she does.

Then she’s out, at the four-way junction on Whittesley Street. Cher turns right again. It’s less than a hundred yards to Theed Street, and if she makes it there, gets round the corner and out of sight, he will have no idea which direction she has taken. He is still sliding about at the foot of the alley. She takes the opportunity to snatch the wig from her head and runs on, dangling it like a designer handbag.

A diet of Chipsticks and Haribo, and still she makes the corner in under fifteen seconds. Rounds it to her right and lets her pace drop slightly. She can hear the train announcer in Waterloo East station as her pulse begins to slow. She turns right again and trots back to Roupell Street, retraces her steps to the foot of the alley. There’s no sign of him now, though she can hear him, cursing and casting about under the Dickensian streetlights, peering through the gloom and realising he’s lost. She hangs a left and returns to Brad Street.