The Killer Next Door(79)

There’s barely a thing in here that a normal person would call furniture. Her small bedsit is opulent by comparison. How long’s he lived here? she wonders. It could be any time at all, but judging by that pile of stereo equipment over where the fireplace must have been once, it’s decades. He’s bought stuff and put it down, and never thought about finding something to put it on.

In front of her stands a sofa. Tubular legs and black leather, the chrome chipped and smeared and the cushions sagging deep in the middle, the imprint of ten thousand nights watching one or other of the three televisions that sit opposite, wired up, it seems, to a DVD player, a video player and a Sky box. Why a man would need more than one telly, she’ll never know, but she’s not a man. Between them, with just a foot-wide gap from the sofa so that no one on it would have to stretch to reach it, there’s a black-painted MDF coffee table with a smoked glass surface. Yes, the 1980s, she thinks. He bought the flat off the developer, went to MFI and got some man-stuff, and hasn’t done a thing since. The walls are lined with a hotchpotch of storage: metal shelves of the sort you find in a garage and those dark-veneer dressers that were all the rage before IKEA invaded with its palette of birch. A few cushions that he’s used for comfort rather than decoration on the sofa, and a polyester blanket, also in black. In the gaping space where a table should be, an exercise bike and what looks like it might once have been a rowing machine; souvenirs of moments long ago when Roy Preece thought he’d get fit and find a wife, but has long since adapted into laundry storage. On the shelving, row upon row of media. Videos, furthest away, then piles and piles of DVDs, no pretence of order or caring how they look. Most of the cases are blank, but she can see from the glimpsed covers of the few pre-printed ones that the Landlord hasn’t been watching chick-flicks as he’s lain on that sofa. She can see cocks and breasts and buttocks from where she stands. Mostly breasts.

Hossein takes them in with a look of elegant disgust. Looks down at the coffee table. It’s strewn with the litter of a bachelor’s neglectful existence: aluminium takeaway cartons with traces of curry still clinging to the sides, a half-eaten kebab in its polystyrene box, screwed-up chip paper, a scatter of cardboard boxes, a collection of remote controls, an Android tablet in silver chrome, a bottle of baby lotion, a box of Kleenex. Poking out from beneath, she sees a bin liner, half-full with more of the same. He looks politely away, as though doing so will somehow spare the dead man his shame.

Cher voices what they’re all thinking. ‘Eugh,’ she says. She looks down at the shrouded form at her feet and pulls a face. Don’t, thinks Collette. Don’t say it. We’re all thinking about it already. We don’t need to talk about it.

‘Three tellies,’ Cher says. ‘What the hell did he want with three tellies?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Collette.

‘You don’t think he used to watch ’em all at once, do you? Eugh, God.’

‘That’s enough, Cher,’ she says, firmly. She really doesn’t want to think about it.

Cher looks thoughtful. ‘I don’t suppose…’ she begins.

Collette knows where this is going. ‘No. We’re not taking anything.’

‘But I need a telly,’ says Cher. ‘You know I need a telly.’

‘I said no,’ Collette says, and she suddenly thinks, oh, God, I sound like her mum. She’ll be telling me she’s sorry she was born in a minute.

‘But —’

‘No, Cher,’ says Hossein. ‘I’m sorry. No. It’s not going to happen.’

Cher looks thunderous. Looking at her now, Collette can totally believe that she’s fifteen. Her veneer of worldliness is paper-thin when it comes down to it. She’s in the middle of committing a crime, and she’s practically thinking about nail varnish and mascara. ‘Right,’ she says, in that you’ll-be-sorry voice she remember from her own teens. She chucks her chin in the air and pulls a face. ‘Come on, then. We haven’t got all night.’

Before anyone else can move, she strides over to the body and yanks on the loose end of the plastic wrapper. The Landlord rolls out like a genie from a carpet, bumps up on his side against the wall, comes to rest staring at their feet. His eyes have clouded over and his skin, scrubbed clean with the power jet before they put him in the car, has begun to turn grey.

Cher starts to fold up the plastic, all business now she’s starting to feel safe. ‘Come on, then,’ she says, and starts towards the door.

‘Hang on,’ says Thomas.