You saw what they were doing to that man. That wasn’t execution. No clean dispatch, no merciful bullet to the head, like a dog. That was torture. That was getting their kicks from watching a man choke to death on his own blood. You saw how they were enjoying it. You think they would have hesitated to use you up for afters?
And what if they didn’t? What if they took you in and made you one of their own? You know you would never have got away, right? No four weeks’ notice and bringing in doughnuts for your colleagues on your last day. Just: life as a possession, always thinking of the consequences for not doing as you’re told. You put yourself in this position the day you accepted that job, she tells herself, even if you did lie to yourself about it. No bar manager gets paid that sort of money. Not unless someone’s buying their silence.
Maybe I should have taken that policewoman up on her offer. Gone in and handed myself over. Surely a life in witness protection would be better, more stable, than this?
The man next door turns off his music and the silence is so sudden that she finds herself checking once again to ensure that she is alone. Upstairs, Cher paces, paces, paces. Collette looks in the cupboard under the sink, finds a butter dish, of all things, covered in greasy dust, and stuffs it full with money. I should get some tape tomorrow. I can stick a bundle to the back of both those drawers; that’ll take care of two of them.
And she knows the answer about the police. Has known it since she started noticing the cash pass through. He owns the police. No one operates that casually, throws his presence about, keeps his profile above the parapet, unless he feels safe. And no one who basically runs a knocking-shop feels safe from raids unless the raiders have been paid off. Someone’s in his pocket, at least one someone. And she doesn’t know who. Never will, even when the knock in the night lets her know she’s been found.
Scarlet blood on white skin, fingers crushed and bent like Twiglets. That won’t be me. I won’t let it be me.
She’s sweating like a mule in the airless room. Stops to run a glass of water, leans against the sink to drink it, runs her eye over her hiding place, looking, looking, for more.
Chapter Twenty-One
Vesta rifles through the post on the hall table, divides it into neat piles for its recipients – whole armfuls each week – gathers the junk for departed tenants into a bundle to put in the bin. It’s not a task that takes long. Half a dozen windowed envelopes for Thomas, a couple – brown paper, official stamps – for Hossein. Something from the council for her – her tax rebate, she hopes. Old ladies, she’s noticed, get less and less mail as pensionable age recedes behind them. Even the Reader’s Digest doesn’t want to give her fifty thousand pounds tax free any more.
Gerard Bright has a postcard, addressed in a childish hand. She mostly notices it because it’s the first piece of handwritten mail to come through the door in a month. She has a cousin in Melbourne who sends cards with clockwork reliability on birthdays and Christmas, though it’s over twenty years since they last saw each other at her auntie’s funeral in Ilfracombe. She sends them back with the same dedication: the last of her family, a single precious jewel among the seven billion. He includes a Xeroxed round robin yarn of children and grandchildren, a second wife and a land cruiser. Vesta just sends good wishes. She has little to boast of. No one wants news of friends they have never met. It’s one of the reasons people have children, that blood relations lend legitimacy to boasting to strangers.
She puts the card on top of his bank statement. Something to brighten his face up, she thinks. He always looks so grey and mournful when she sees him, the only person in London not to sport a suntan this summer, as though he spends his life in a cave, like a fungus.
There’s nothing, as usual, for Cher – she’s not had a single letter since she came here – and nothing, she notices, for the new girl, either. If you pay your power on a meter key, it’s still possible not to exist at all in the modern world, whatever the government says.
Seeing Gerard Bright’s card reminds her that she’s not had a single card herself this summer. She used to get them from time to time, from former neighbours, old colleagues from the primary school kitchen in their static caravans down on the coast, even the odd friend from school. She would prop them in pride of place on the mantelpiece, to look at and make her feel remembered, to give her dreams of a seaside escape of her own. One day, she thinks. If he ups his offer to twenty grand – God knows, that would still only be ten per cent of what the flat is worth – I could just about do it. A little static near a pebble beach, just a patch of patio to see out my days… but eight? Once I’d paid the movers, I’d barely have enough for a deposit.
She hears a key in the door and slips the junk mail into her Budgens bag, along with the potatoes and the eggs and the bit of bacon she’s bought as a treat. Smiles as Cher lets herself in, pretty and normal today, no wigs, no fake glasses, just an orange cotton dress above the knee and a pair of gold plastic flip-flops, white earphones in her ears, a Pucci-patterned headscarf tied round the base of her Afro making her look older, more sophisticated, like a model on the front of an album from the 1970s. ‘Hello, love!’
‘Hiya.’ Cher pulls out a single earphone and she hears a tinny scritch of music. She looks down at the little gadget in her hand – all smooth and shiny with a circular thing at the top – frowning as though she’s unsure how it works, then presses and holds a button on the side. Takes out the other ’phone and wraps the wire round the machine. ‘You been out?’
‘Just for a bit. Went up the High Street for a few bits and bobs. What’ve you been doing with yourself?’
‘Went and had a sit on the Common,’ says Cher. ‘Did a bit of scrumping. Loads of people up there.’
‘Scrumping? I never noticed any apple trees on the common.’
‘They don’t always grow on trees,’ says Cher, mysteriously, and tucks the iPod into her pocket. ‘How’ve you been? How’re your drains? He been and done anything about them yet?’
‘Good grief,’ she says. ‘Don’t remind me. I was in a good mood a minute ago. If he has, he hasn’t told me. You in the mood for a cuppa?’
‘I’d kill for something cold. You seen my cat anywhere?’
‘I’m sure he’s about. He’ll be asleep on your bed at this time of day, I should think. I’ve got bitter lemon in the fridge. I made it yesterday.’
Cher looks incredulous. ‘You made bitter lemon? I thought it was one of those things they made in factories. Like Pepsi.’
‘Oh, good grief, you young people! You don’t know anything, do you?’
‘No,’ says Cher, complacently. ‘We’re young, innit?’
She strides past Vesta, all legs and ankle bracelets. ‘D’you want a hand with that?’
‘No, love, I’m fine, it’s not heavy. You go ahead and put the kettle on.’
‘’kay,’ says Cher, and pulls the door open. Puts her foot on the top step, shouts in surprise and falls forwards into the dark. Vesta hears an ‘oof’ and the sound of tumbling. She runs to the doorway, grabs the frame and peers into the gloom. ‘Cher? Cher! Are you all right? What happened? Cher?’
She feels above the door for the light switch, clicks it on and puts her head into the stairwell. Cher is halfway down the stairs, hanging on to the banister at the point where it begins, one leg buckled beneath her, the other straight out down the steps, her flip-flop dangling from her big toe. ‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘That was close.’
‘Are you okay?’ Vesta suddenly feels nervous and tottery and old. She puts her bag down and works her way towards her with a hand on each wall.