The Landlord reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, mops his glistening face and the top of his head, and tucks it back in. The exertion of walking up from the station in the heat has left deep, damp stripes down his shirt. But it’s clean sweat, he thinks, and sets off up the steps.
Thomas Dunbar has left an envelope on the hall table, neatly separated from the piles of junk mail, most of it addressed to long-gone residents. He’s the only one of his tenants, as far as he can work out, who is actually gainfully employed. Punctilious, quiet, respectable. He works at the Citizens’ Advice and, since the hours there were cut back, has involved himself in some organisational role with a furniture recycling charity. He has paid his rent on time in every month of the thirty-six he’s been here. Never any trouble, with Thomas. Or, it seems, with Gerard Bright. His envelope’s there next to Dunbar’s, the Landlord’s name in neat block capitals on the front. The Landlord tucks them in his pocket, doesn’t bother to check their contents. He knows that Dunbar’s will contain a cheque for the precise amount of his debt, made out in careful, neat script, the gaps scored through with a ruled line and a capitalised ONLY, and that Bright’s will – God help him for leaving it out for anyone to nick – contain cash. Of course, he’s probably in there anyway, he thinks, listening, although there’s no music playing. Watching through the keyhole, for all I know. Anyone tried to nick it, he could be out there before they got to the front door.
He knocks on the door of flat two. Hears the sound of a bolt being pulled back and a chain being slipped on, raises an eyebrow. Collette opens the door in a knee-length cotton dress, her hair pulled back from her face with a rubber band. She looks better than she did when he first met her. I bet she’d brush up nicely, he thinks. Quite a looker, our Collette, if she’d wipe that don’t-touch-me look off her face. ‘All right?’ he says.
‘All right, thanks.’
‘I see you’ve added some extra security,’ he says.
She shrugs. ‘Yale lock’s not a huge amount of protection, is it? Specially given what happened to the old lady downstairs.’
‘I hope you’ve not damaged my door,’ he says.
‘You can take it off my deposit if I have.’
She looks him straight in the eye. The look of someone who’s used to handling stroppy clients. Managing that bar in Spain, he wonders. But he’s never believed any of her story, never will. Policewoman? Could be. A no-questions-asked rooming house like this attracts all sorts, and where all sorts are, the plod are rarely far behind. Teacher? He considers for a moment. Yes, that’s it. She’s another teacher. Split with her husband and on the downward slide, but she’ll never shed that air of judgement.
‘Settling in?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ve got the rest of that money for you inside. Hang on a sec.’
She turns away and closes the door. He’s used to that. His tenants rarely seem to want to let him look inside their quarters. Ironic, really, considering that he has keys to every room in the house. He presses an ear against the door, hears the sound of things being moved around, and a zip being drawn. He is back in the middle of the corridor by the time she returns. She extends an arm from behind her chain, a sheaf of notes in her hand. ‘There you go,’ she says. ‘I think that’s the lot.’
The Landlord counts. Three hundred and twenty pounds, all present and correct. ‘Yup,’ he says. ‘That’s you done till next month.’
‘You’ll be giving me that receipt I asked for, of course?’ She gives him The Look again. No one’s asked him for a receipt since he made a brief, unsatisfactory foray into student accommodation back in the noughties, though Vesta Collins is a stickler for her rent book. He has a receipt book somewhere in his desk, he’s sure of it. It might be a bit yellow by now, but he doesn’t suppose that matters. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I’ll drop it in next time I’m passing.’
‘Thanks,’ she says, and closes the door, firmly.
Rent day’s not a lengthy procedure at the moment. The Government pays the rent for Hossein Zanjani directly into his bank account. It’s swings and roundabouts with these asylum-seeker/single-parent DSS accounts. The tax is a nuisance, but at least the pay is regular. No feckless bimbos skipping out on their bills, no I-swear-I’ll-have-it-next-week types. A bit of a wait for payment to start, sometimes, but it always come through in the end.
He tucks Collette’s money into the pocket alongside the envelope, takes his Filofax from the shopping trolley and leaves it parked in the hall. Hauls himself slowly, step-by-laboured step, up the staircase, gripping the banister like a mobility aid. Good God, this heat is heavy. It’s been threatening to thunder for weeks, but nothing ever happens. He wishes it would. It’s like wading through treacle. If the fun bit weren’t on the first floor, he would leave it until later.
He stops on the landing to mop his brow again and takes the bunch of keys from his pocket. The padlock key stands out, polished by the rubbing of his fingers. He likes to feel it sometimes, when he’s sitting on his sofa; touching it somehow makes him feel closer to the contents of his cupboard. He leafs past it, finds the key marked Three. He always likes to have the key to the room in his hand when he comes knocking, in case the tenant doesn’t answer. Sometimes they try hiding until they think he’s gone, to wriggle out of paying up. It gives them the shock of their lives, when he comes in anyway.
He stops outside Cher Farrell’s door and has a little listen. Faint sounds of movement, then the hiss of the tap being turned on and off. She’s in there. He’ll be interested to see how she responds. He knocks.
To his surprise, her footsteps cross the room immediately, and she throws the door open as though she’d been expecting him – something of a contrast with last month. He had to make three trips back before he caught her in then, and in the end he only managed it by waiting in his cupboard until he heard her thunder her way up the stairs. ‘Hiya!’ she cries, and beams at him. It’s a false, over-bright greeting, too friendly.
‘Hello,’ he says, suspiciously.
She’s stunning, today. Her hair’s pinned loosely to the back of her head with a chopstick, brassy tendrils falling loose against a neck so smooth it could be made of alabaster. Skin that’s like that all over her skinny body, he knows. He’s thought about touching it many, many times. Her make-up is relatively light – in smoky browns and taupes – her eyelashes not coated into tarantula legs like she so often wears them. She has on a pair of pedal-pushers, like the ones the young girls used to wear when he was a child, and a crop top, which they certainly never did, and a pair of platform shoes so high you could use them as a step-stool. Her legs go on and on, colt-like, and her belly is flat and brown and muscular. He knows she’s been sunbathing in the garden and she looks young and fresh, and fragrant and, standing before her, he feels squat and sticky and ungainly. He’d thought he’d got over his resentment of all the young girls, their careless beauty, the eyes that turn away as he shambles down the street as though he’s something they don’t want to exist, but Cher is something else.
‘I suppose you’ll be wanting the rent,’ she says.
‘That’s right,’ he replies.
‘Hang on a tick. I’ve got it right here.’ She turns back into the room, striding across the threadbare carpet to her knock-off Chloe handbag, which lies beside the bed.