The Killer Next Door(74)

Hossein can’t believe that anyone would want to eat among the stench his labours are producing. But the English, he finds, are an odd race, prepared to put up with just about anything rather than engage with a stranger. It was one of many things about this grim grey city that depressed and confused him when he first came here. It took him a long time to learn not to take it personally. But he’s used to it now, and he can see its advantages. Certainly, it gives him some confidence that their plans for Roy Preece’s remains could see success, at least for a while. The Landlord’s neighbours will probably tut and spray Febreze around for months to avoid ringing on his doorbell and potentially having to deal with rudeness.

He bends back to his work. Everything they plan to do depends, ultimately, on getting these drains to work. They need to clean Roy up, get him pristine for his clean clothes, make sure he doesn’t contaminate his final destination. And the only way they can do that is by making sure that the place where they wash him is itself clean. And after that, if they are to carry on living here, business as usual but no rent to pay while, one by one they gradually melt away among the teeming masses…

Hossein is an economist by training, a troublemaker by reputation. He’s always prided himself on his competence. But sitting at a computer and marching with the Green Movement have done little to prepare him for the competencies he’s had to learn since he came to London. With a landlord like Roy, whose combination of meanness and inertia have meant that no repairs would get done unless one did them oneself, he’s had to become a carpenter-plumber-locksmith-glazier just to survive. And now, it seems, he is a drain clearance specialist.

He wonders what Roshana would make of him now, squatting over a manhole with a hose in his hand, waiting for some sign that something might happen. She used to tease him about the way he rolled up his sleeves and assumed an air of manly competence, which was pretty well non-existent. There were times he resented it – but he would give anything to have it back now. Her beautiful hands, her swift rejoinders, her courage, the way she railed against restriction. He tries not to think too much about her, for when he does, he feels as though the loneliness will overwhelm him.

He would be the first to admit that drains are not his area of expertise, but even so this blockage seems quite bizarre. The stuff he saw when he opened the manhole cover seemed to be at odds with the pool of blackened sewage he had been expecting. Sure, there’s sewage there, but it’s greasy, as though it’s been mixed with a gallon or two of cooking oil, and the greater part of the chamber seems to be stiff with something that looks unpleasantly like lard. Though there are six people living in this house, all cooking in their tiny kitchens, he finds it hard to believe that even all that could produce this much fat. I must talk to them all, once it’s clear, he thinks. They probably don’t know about fat: the way it hardens and turns to something that almost looks like stone once it’s coating the walls of a sewer. He only knows himself because he went down, as a cub reporter, into the bowels of the city with a team of sewer workers to see for himself, watched them scrape the stuff off the walls like barnacles off the underside of a boat.

‘That’s weird.’

He looks up and finds Collette standing in the kitchen doorway.

‘It looks strange to you?’

‘Yeah,’ says Collette. ‘Is that fat? It looks like fat.’

‘I think so.’

‘Is it moving?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like it.’

‘Careful, you don’t want to get a blowback.’

‘Thanks,’ he replies sarcastically. ‘I’ll do my best.’

A burst of laughter from next door; men and women together, talking in confident, ringing tones. The expensively educated in this country seem to have different voices, he’s noticed. Not just the accent: the actual tone. It’s as though money gives you extra lung power, the women’s voices deeper, the men sounding as though their throats begin somewhere deep in their abdomens.

‘Sounds like someone’s having a good time, anyway,’ says Collette.

Hossein looks at her. He knows they’re thinking the same thing. This wasn’t an event they had factored into the plan.

‘It’s okay,’ says Collette, uncertainly. ‘They’ll be done by teatime.’

‘Here’s hoping,’ says Hossein, and bends back to his work.

Deep beneath the earth, something gives. He feels it through his hands: a jerk in the hose, then a slight softening of its rigid hardness. The visible part of the chamber empties, suddenly and swiftly, as though a giant mouth had sucked on the other end. Around the sides, the fat still clings, greyish-white and granular.