The Killer Next Door(67)

His eyes and mouth are open and his skin is blue.

‘Oh, God,’ says Cher. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

They gather round the corpse in silence. He lies propped against the wall tiles, and drips. Sewage runs slowly from his mouth and nose; green-brown drool, like a zombie’s. He’s lost his spectacles. They must be down there in the toilet bowl, but no one volunteers to retrieve them. The fact that his eyes have been open since they pulled him out makes it clear that he will have no further use for them.

‘I guess there’s no point in trying CPR, then,’ says Collette.

‘No,’ says Thomas. ‘I’d say he’s been dead for a while. You must’ve been out for a bit, Vesta. Do you feel okay?’

‘How do you think I feel?’

Cher stands by the cooker and absently fingers the lump on her own skull. ‘What do we do now?’ she asks.





Chapter Thirty


The silence seems to last for hours. Five people, gathered round a corpse, and suddenly no one wants to meet anyone’s eye. Even Vesta hangs her head. She feels sick: from the bang on the head, from the shock, from the wallowing in stuff that should be safely underground, from the sudden lurching change to her world. She rubs at her arms and sees that all it does is spread the slime. Grabs the kitchen paper and wipes hopelessly at her face. It will never come off. It’s her Lady Macbeth stain.

She looks under her lashes at the others. Collette has moved away, and is gnawing at a hangnail by the cooker. Probably shouldn’t be doing that, thinks Vesta, but doesn’t point it out. Hossein looks pensive in his red T-shirt, his old-fashioned striped pyjama bottoms with the cord tie. Cher huddles by the sink, looking terrified. Thomas stands in the doorway looking… what? Goodness me, she thinks, amazed. He looks intrigued. As if this is some sort of psychology experiment and he’s running it.

They’re going to put me in prison. I’ve killed someone and I’m going to jail. So this is how it ends: he always wanted me out of here and now he’s got his wish. He’ll be sick as a dog that he never got to benefit.

She looks round her devastated home. Mum would turn in her grave. She was always so houseproud, and I’ve tried my best to keep it the way she’d like it, always felt bad that I lacked her application and her eye, but now look. It’s all completely spoiled. She would cry and cry, if she knew. Every day, she washed these floors. She couldn’t abide dirt, and God knows the world was dirtier when I was a child than it is now.

Thomas speaks. ‘Do you want to call an ambulance?’

‘Don’t think that’ll do much good,’ says Cher. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, but there are ways that things are done,’ he says, ‘and that would be the normal way.’

Hossein leaves the room and comes back a few seconds later with Vesta’s old quilted dressing gown. He holds it out for her and she shrugs herself into it distractedly, stands by the Landlord’s swollen feet and hugs the collar round her neck. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says again. ‘I don’t. I didn’t mean to kill him.’

‘I’m sure they’ll understand that,’ says Collette. ‘It was an accident. How were you to know he’d let himself into your flat in the middle of the night?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Thomas. ‘With that great big dent in his head.’

Vesta bursts into tears. She’s been numb with shock for the past few minutes, but now emotion floods her, chills her. ‘I can’t! I can’t go to prison. I didn’t know… he was creeping around in my bathroom. He could have been anybody.’

‘You should be okay,’ says Thomas. ‘People do get sent to prison, but it’s usually for guns…’

‘You’re not helping much, Thomas,’ says Hossein.

‘I’m just telling the truth,’ he says. ‘We need to be realistic, here.’

She sees herself in a grey uniform, carrying a divided tray of textureless taupe foodstuffs through a room full of glaring women. Feels cinderblock walls close in, suffocates in the confines of a bunk bed. ‘I can’t. I just can’t go to prison. I’d die in prison. I’ve never been in trouble in my life.’

Collette speaks up. ‘And they’ll want to question all of us.’

The room falls quiet again.

Oh, God, thinks Vesta. What have I done?

‘Fuck,’ says Cher. ‘Then I’m screwed.’

Thomas’s curious expression deepens. ‘Why would that be, Cher?’

‘’Cause I’m only fifteen, you stupid dick,’ she snaps.