Later she murmured: ‘Honey, I reckon you just shot the deputy too. Now. Get dressed.’
Time flew for Beatrice. She pottered unsteadily about the ground floor flat, reconstructed the armchair, folded the duvet, had a bath, made herself a coffee and by the time she had done all that it was a quarter past ten. She checked her overnight bag for her washing things, her pyjamas and dressing gown, and above all for the manuscript she was about to deliver (Murder on Denmark Hill by Beatrice Burne-Jones), picked up the keys, remembered what she had been told, and put them down again. She let herself out into the tiny lobby, paused for a moment, thought really hard: had she left anything behind? No she had not, and she pulled the inner front door to, made the latch click, then leant against it to make doubly sure it was properly locked. Then she turned to the outer door, put up the catch, turned the knob of the yale lock, and pulled. Nothing. She pulled again. It must be stuck. No. She bent down and found by the doorknob a second brassy key hole: writers of detective stories know a thing or two about locks – she recognized a mortice. She turned, hammered on the second front door, the one that led to stairs and the upstairs flatlet, but knew it was useless. The occupant had left shortly after Ben and Amanda for the primary school where she taught, and against all her usual habits, had double locked the outer door.
Writers of detective stories also know a thing or two about locked room mysteries, but for the life of her Beatrice could not see how she was going to get out of this one.
Lennie was strong, and after the initial shock had worn off, not naturally squeamish. Ranjit was small and slight of build and it was not much of a problem to get his legs and lower torso into one big black bin liner. The top half was messy, but he got over that by pulling a white swing-bin liner over the old man’s crushed skull. Then he found some parcel tape, and used it clumsily and in large amounts to fasten the two bin liners together. This was the worst part really: the tape stuck to itself, and to the wrong bits of the bags, to his fingers. He found it almost impossible to hold the edges of the plastic where he wanted them to be, and manipulate the tape at the same time. But he managed.
Then he humped his five-foot-long parcel over his shoulder and got it down into the shop. The next problem was getting it on to the top of the nearest skip without anyone seeing him: Amirya had been adamant about that. He went back upstairs, and peeping round the lace curtain waited until the coast was clear, the street empty. He did not have to wait long. Monday morning, half-past ten, everyone was at work or school, or almost everyone. Only a young woman, part ethnic, was across the road and for some reason bending down over the letter-box of the house opposite. It did not occur to Lennie to wonder why. The young woman straightened and walked briskly away, round the corner, was gone, leaving the street to a large and ugly ginger tom who sidled along the low garden walls opposite.
‘Help! I say help! I need help.’
Five minutes earlier the young part ethnic lady who worked flexitime as a cashier and shelf filler at Tesco’s half a mile away, had heard the plaintive cry. But she could not work out where it was coming from.
‘Over here. I’m behind the front door of number five, speaking through the letter box.’ The flap was sprung and very difficult to lift from inside and keep open. But Beatrice had managed using her Parker pen which she had now wedged in the gap so it kept the flap open. ‘I’m locked in the lobby and I can’t get out.’
‘How did that happen then?’
‘The upstairs tenant must have double-locked, using the mortice. She never has before. And I’d already pulled my sister’s front door shut, leaving the key inside. It’s what they told me to do.’
‘I don’t see how I can help.’
‘Well I think you can. This is my address book. It has my brother-in-law’s work number at the BBC, Broadcasting House, and I am sure if you could get through to him they’ll let him come home to release me…’
‘No miss. I can’t do that. I’m late for work already, you keep calling and I’m sure you’ll find someone soon.’ And she hurried away. Damn, thought Beatrice.
On the other side of the road Lennie opened the shop door and was in and out with his awful black parcel in ten seconds flat, draping it across the high pile of rubble that more than filled the skip. He locked the doors behind him again and went back to the upstairs bedroom to wait for the skip truck to come.
Presently the large ginger tom leapt up on to the skip and began scratching round what Lennie knew very well was the head end of the parcel. Presently he could see the white of the inner bag, then hair and…
‘Oh shit!’ cried Lennie, aloud, and grabbing up the parcel tape again he shot back out into the street. The cat hissed and scatted, and he hurled lumps of cement after it trying desperately for the sort of accuracy that might make it reluctant to come back. Then he got to work again with the tape that seemed more unbiddable than ever and absolutely refused to stick to anything wet… And apart from the blood, it had begun to rain…
‘Help. I say. Help. Please.’
He looked all round, up and down the empty street. Even the cat had gone.
‘Over here. I’m locked in behind the front door of number five.’
Heart thudding now, Lennie came between the skip and the back of his pick-up, crossed the road. He stooped, looked beneath the wedged letter flap. He couldn’t believe it. He could not believe it. There was a woman behind the door, a grey thin middle-aged biddy, just the sort that spies on everything that happens. Peering through the slit, she must have seen everything.
‘How long you bin ‘ere?’
‘Oh, about twenty minutes I think, not more…’ Lennie groaned inwardly: she had, he thought, she had seen everything. ‘Listen, here’s what I want you to do…’
But Lennie was not listening. He ran back into the shop, setting the bell jangling behind him, locking himself in again. What to do, what could he do? He was done for unless… he’d killed once, could he kill again? Yes. He’d have to, it was the only way, but how? How? He paced about the shop, banging his forehead, wringing his big black hands, wracking his brains, then, Sunny Jim, it came to him.
Beatrice could not believe her bad luck. Only two passers-by in twenty minutes had appeared to hear her, and neither seemed prepared to help. She was beginning to feel desperate, claustrophobic, it was after all a tiny space she was in, little more than a metre square and two metres high, trapped between three locked doors. She tried bracing her back against the wall and her feet against her sister’s door, but soon realized it was quite useless. She was nowhere near strong enough. Every time she heard footsteps she got back on her knees and cried out through the slit again, help, help. She could hear the footsteps stop, she could guess how they looked around for her, and then hurried on from the ghost-like cry before she could tell them where she was.
But now, at last, someone seemed to be coming, was it the man who had come from the other side of the road? She rather thought it was. And what’s this, has he thought of some ingenious way of getting her out, a black plastic spout through the letter box, fluid from a red plastic can splashed about her feet, the smell of petrol, and what’s he doing now? A packet of Sunny Jim firelighters? Is he mad, am I mad?