The Killer Next Door(89)
Even with the bare light bulb on, the hall is dark, and stuffy. The two doors to her left and the one at the end of the hall – hollow, unpanelled doors, seen-better-days white gloss paint, those old-people half-moon pull handles – are closed, and neither light nor air seep through. More of the same boring laminate, no embellishments other than a row of half full recycling boxes and a couple of grubby coats on hooks. A joyless sort of place, she thinks, as she walks up it to what she assumes will be the kitchen. Not exactly living for pleasure, was he? Apart from eating kebabs and fingering his privates.
She has all sorts of plans for the things she’ll do with her home, when she gets on her feet at last, based on things she’s seen through windows, or in the pages of magazines. If your life is made up of necessities, your head is filled with all the pretty shiny things that would make it complete. Pink paper lampshades. A collection of paper fans, opened out and pinned to the wall. Sari fabric draped round curtain poles. Floor cushions. A Tiffany lamp. One of those make-up chests that looks like a steamer trunk. A collection of slogan mugs hanging from hooks under a shelf full of tea caddies. A wall motto, spelled out in big gold letters. She’s not sure what it will read, but she likes the look of them. A fake fur bedspread. Nothing slaggy, like animal print. Classy. Wolfskin. Or mink, maybe.
She finds it hard to imagine how someone with the sort of money the Landlord has – had – could live in a place that looks like a storage unit. Even with Vesta paying practically squat, he must have been taking in over a grand a week, and a lot of it – hers and Collette’s, anyway – cash-in-hand, as well, so no tax. Cher can totally see why someone blessed with what she regards as footballer levels of wealth would fill their house with high-spec electronics, so she’s not surprised by the televisions, but the rest of the flat, its sparse furnishings, its piles of redundant stuff that suggest that he was simply too lazy to take them to the dump, is a disappointment. She’d sort of imagined him sitting on a gold sofa, wearing a gold lamé tracksuit and fingering his gold pendant chains as he watched Dallas on a gold TV and sent texts from a mobile encrusted with Swarovski crystals. Instead it’s chocolate milk bottles in plastic recycling boxes and a small collection of offcuts of timber stored along the hall wainscot.
The kitchen is a galley, lined on both sides with cabinets in the nineties Spaceship Interior style. Scratched stainless steel surfaces, chrome door handles, lino that’s done up to look like those steel plates you find on walkways. I’d never have that, thinks Cher. Why would you have that? You’d never keep it clean, all those bobbles. Nobody would have a kitchen that looked like this if they meant to cook here. It’s the kitchen of someone who lives on takeout.
Nonetheless, there are greasy plates piled up by the sink, and a rancid waste bin. She goes through the cupboards and drawers at lightning speed. Plates. Pint glasses. Cutlery: but the knife blades are thick, like kids’ school knives. She doubts they’ll fit in a screw head. Well, he must have a screwdriver somewhere, she thinks, or how did he screw it in in the first place?
She carries on. A bunch of pans that look inherited – pitted exteriors, handles with melt marks and scratches – and unused. A drawerful of spatulas. A cupboard so full of gas bills and council tax reminders that she has difficulty getting it closed again once it’s open. A collection of tea towels that have the eerie look of souvenirs about them. Inherited again, she thinks. Like the apron and oven gloves that hang on the end wall. A cork pinboard to which two dozen delivery menus and a couple of minicab cards are fixed with drawing pins. Cleaning stuff. She raises her eyebrows at this. She’s not seen much evidence that he uses it. A bucket with a grey old rag hanging over the edge. A pressure cooker. A slow cooker full of Tupperware lids. A toasted sandwich maker.
Nothing tool-like; nothing that will help her. She goes back down the hall, pokes her head into the bathroom. Mildew along the border of a glass shower screen, a hair attached to a bar of soap, a cardboard box on the toilet cistern stuffed with chemist drugs: laxatives, Immodium, Boots Soothing Heartburn Relief pills, cough mixture, Bonjela. She doesn’t bother with more than a cursory look. No one keeps tools in the bathroom unless they’ve been doing work in there.
A flash of memory. The tool kit on Vesta’s bathroom floor.
‘Oh, shit,’ she says, out loud. Her voice echoes off the tiled walls, mocks her. They took the kit down to the building site when they dropped off the remains of the damp proofing. Some Slovak will have most of it strapped round his waist by now.