I shook myself out of this reverie and moved on, past the Festival Hall, feeling wetter and colder all the time. There weren't many people around, only a few figures scurrying towards the nearest shelter, huddled beneath umbrellas or shielding their heads with newspapers. The streets around Waterloo were busier, though not by much. I stopped off at the station to warm my bones with a cup of coffee before striking out through the downpour for Lambeth North.
Patricia's flat was a conversion job, but one of the things I had liked was its position on the end of a terrace, which meant it had its own separate entrance on the side street around the corner. Lucky Patricia; no awkward neighbourly encounters in the hallway, no having to sift through other people's fishy-looking mail, no Krankzeits to thunder up and down.
I pressed her doorbell. Of course there was no reply. I hadn't expected one. I looked around; the building site across the road, like the Flirt office, was deserted. I went on to check out Patricia's back yard, which backed on to a tiny corner of scrubby public land. There was a bench right under her back wall. I clambered up to peer through the tangle of barbed wire. Before the gazumping, I'd planned to fill the yard with shrubs and creepers; Patricia had filled it with dirty milk bottles and an old kitchen cabinet. It was clear she had failed to exploit the property's full potential on the outside; now, letter or no letter, I wanted to see what she'd done to the inside. I climbed down and strolled back to the front door. There was no one around, but even if there had been they wouldn't have noticed me. I was an old hand at looking casual. I inserted my key, turned it, and stepped inside.
What little light there was came through the small panel of amber glass in the front door. I didn't much care for the way Patty had decorated the hall. The wallpaper was turquoise, and reminded me of the decor in a Tandoori restaurant. There was a framed reproduction of Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy on the wall.
I stood for a while, ears straining, but apart from my own breathing the only sound was that of water dripping slowly off the bottom of my raincoat. I took it off and left it draped over the Rousseau. The first door led to the kitchen, where there were little jars of dried herbs and some recipe books on a shelf above the fridge. Hanging from some red plastic hooks were an apron with Supercook emblazoned across the front, an oven-glove shaped like a penguin, and a tea-towel decorated with characters from Mabel Lucie Atwell. It was all preternaturally tidy, except for a single unwashed mug — not at all like my kitchen, which was rarely without a sinkful of dirty crockery.
The bathroom smelt of fake pine, and the predominant shade was lilac. There were no interesting prescription drugs in the wall-cabinet; just aspirin, and Listerine, and tampons manufactured in Havant. I retraced my steps along the hallway. The bedroom had been decked out in lemon yellow, in that bland style witless folk called 'feminine' — floral-patterned quilt, brass bedstead, and fluffy toys. The bed hadn't been made; apart from the mug, it was the only evidence I had seen of sloppiness. On the dressing-table were a couple of pinkish-beige lipsticks, a bottle of Dior perfume, and some blemish concealer. I sneered and went into the last room. This was the room which faced on to the street, and it was darker than the rest of the flat because the blinds were closed. I could just about make out the outlines of furniture, and that was all, so I went over to the window and yanked on the cord to let in some light.
I should have realized something was up as soon as I felt the scrunching beneath my feet, like the sensation you get from walking on a crisp layer of snow. As I let the light in, I turned away from the window and saw a lot of things. Not all of them registered immediately. But I saw enough to make me snap the blinds shut, quickly, before the smell of burning could get any worse.
The first thing I saw was the mirror over the mantelpiece, or what was left of it. There was hardly any glass left in the frame — most of it lay in pieces on the carpet; I'd stepped on some and shivered it even further. It was impossible to tell precisely what had happened, because the floor was covered in debris; as well as glass, there were pieces of broken china, scraps of fabric, and feathers. I remember thinking how odd it was this room should be so untidy when the rest of the flat had been so neat. Patty had slipped up there.
Then I saw exactly where she had slipped up. One of her slippers had fallen off, and I saw her bare foot before I saw the rest of her. She was lying alongside the sofa, one cheek pressed into the carpet, hair spread out like a fan. There was blood on her dressing-gown, but not much.
And that was it. That was all I saw of her as she was then, because the exposed part of her face was already turning a shiny plum colour, even as I looked. The light came in through the window from the north. What with the clouds and rain it was fairly feeble, but it was still enough to make her skin blister and pop. Patricia Rice was fortunate it was not a sunny day.
Her limbs twitched. There was movement beneath the dressing-gown, but I knew it was involuntary. There were sounds, but they were involuntary too, like the bubbling and hissing when milk boils over and splashes on to the hot-plate. And there was a smell like lamb chops cooking beneath the grill; it was a smell which under normal circumstances I would have liked, which made it worse. It took me a split second to see all this and then I fumbled for the cord and pulled the blinds shut.
I was thinking practical thoughts, and lots of them. My brain was a different creature from the battered cephalopod of the day before; now it was whirring through the options like a well-oiled fruit machine. Carefully, I trod back across the room and switched on the lamp by the telephone. I was quite calm. I was calm because I knew what was going on. I'd seen this sort of thing before: open wounds on the neck, glassy-eyed stare.
Definitely Violet.
Violet had been here.
And Violet would be back, this night or the next, to complete what she had begun. It was this certainty, more than anything else, that stopped me from leaving the blinds open, though I couldn't for the life of me imagine why anyone should bother to preserve someone as boring as Patricia. I craved nicotine, but I didn't dare light up. I wanted to leave things as near as possible to how I'd found them. As it was, I knew that Violet, as soon as she came back, would smell that someone else had been present. I wondered whether she would be able to identify the source of the scent; I wondered whether her olfactory recall went back that far.
But I had other unfinished business. I crossed the room again and rifled the bureau. Patricia's papers were not as organized as the rest of her life. I found a mass of unpaid bills: gas and electricity and television rental. There was an uncompleted insurance form, and a half-finished letter to someone called Moira, and a small red address-book notable only for the number of blank pages. I thought of my own personal organizer crammed with names and addresses and telephone numbers, and for a few seconds I almost felt sorry for Patricia. Then I decided it served her right. Nice girls don't gazump.
But there was no sign of my letter. I scanned the rest of the room, reluctant to touch any more than was necessary. I especially didn't want to touch what was left of Patricia. There was a sudden hiss of tyres on wet tarmac as a car went past the window. I checked my watch, thinking I'd been there ten minutes, but more than half an hour had passed since I'd inserted the key. It was time to beat a retreat and devise a plan of action. As I pulled my raincoat back on, I heard the muffled thud of a pneumatic drill starting up across the street. The building-site boys had finally turned up for work. They didn't see me letting myself out. No one did. No one had seen me go in. And no one saw me leave.