The Killer Next Door(84)

Malik is standing outside the Costcutter on Christchurch Road.

She’s so wrapped up in her thoughts that she doesn’t see him until she is almost upon him. Then something about his bearing – the slim Armani-clad body that she knows from experience is made of solid muscle – suddenly catches her eye, and she dives into the Venus bar and hides herself behind a potted palm.

Her heart hammers, and she hears the sound of the sea. Somewhere, a long way away, a clatter of glassware coming out of a dishwasher, a voice asking in a pointed manner if it can help. She turns and waves at the barman, and he shakes his head and turns away, rubbing at a wine glass with a cloth.

Collette creeps forward to the folding door. She’s not even sure if it is him. His hair is different. When she last saw him, he had a buzz-cut. Now it’s long enough to curl over his collar, swept back from his face with some product that glistens.

Yes, it’s him, all right. She shivers, despite the heat of the day. What’s he doing here? What the hell is he doing here?

Malik seems to be watching the road from behind his sunglasses, scanning it up and down with those laser-beam eyes. The underground is a hundred yards away, but it might as well be a mile. She can’t walk past him. She’s changed, but not so much he won’t recognise her if she’s who he’s looking for.

It might not be, Collette. It could be coincidence. London’s full of Turks; there’s practically one on every street corner. You don’t even know if he works for Tony any more. For all you know, you’re standing in his bar.

Yeah, she thinks. Want to test that theory?

‘Can I help you?’ the barman asks again. He’s going to throw me out in a minute, she thinks. Walks across the wooden floor and buys a glass of Sauvignon. It’s early to be drinking. The place is empty apart from two thirty-something women eating panini and wearing sunglasses. The barman silently pours her drink out, slides it across the counter.

‘Meeting someone?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Avoiding someone.’

‘Ah,’ he says, and goes back to polishing his glasses. He’s not interested. She’s just another lush finding an excuse to start her day.

She walks back to the doorway. He’s still there, still outside Costcutter, hands crossed over his crotch like a footballer waiting for a penalty, still looking. He scans the road like a Terminator: a slow 180-degree sweep up, down, up, down, the whole movement taking maybe ten seconds.

Look, the whole place is full of people, she thinks. What can he do?

Follow you.

She has to go. She knows that. It’s only a matter of time before he changes his vantage point – he’s not standing on the route from Sunnyvale to Collier’s Wood underground for nothing. He’s not waiting for a girlfriend.

Her hair has grown, and grown out, since they last saw each other, and she’s stopped straightening it and let the natural curl come in. And she’s put on weight. When you ran a bar full of twenty-year-old girls who took their clothes off for a living, keeping yourself awake on coffee and the odd line like everyone else, your natural weight quickly became whippet-like, but it was never a weight that she could have maintained while eating. She’s gone up two full dress sizes since she left, though that still only makes her a twelve. And she’s wearing flat sandals – he’s never seen her in anything other than towering heels. From the back, she reassures herself, I look like a completely different person.

She counts as she watches his scanning technique. Yes, ten seconds. If she leaves as he reaches the apogee of his turning arc, she can get twenty, thirty feet down the road before his eyes hit her back. Far enough that he won’t know her. Far enough that she’ll just be another girl in the street. She walks down to the far side of the restaurant’s bistro folding doors, puts her wine down untouched on a table, waits, counts and exits.

Don’t show fear. They operate on fear. Just keep walking, normal pace, and don’t look back. He’s not going to try anything now, even if he does see you. Stay where there are people and you’ll be safe. It’s when they find out where you live that you’re really in trouble.

She tells herself these things, but she only half believes them. She strides out along Christchurch Road, her footsteps unnaturally loud in her ears, as though she were in an echo chamber. Breathe. Breathe, Collette. They want you to be afraid. You get afraid, you get disorientated. You get disorientated, you make mistakes.

She hears his feet turn on the pavement and start to follow…

Drawn up by the mouth of Christchurch Close is a shiny black Beemer. Tinted windows, chrome accessories, undoubtedly this year’s model. Totally Tony. She can see someone in the driver’s seat, a darker shadow behind the dark glass. Unless Tony’s had a change of staff, it’s most likely the Albanian, Burim. Rough manners, an attitude that says he will settle any disagreement with a knife. Malik’s number two, but never backward in coming forward.