Hossein takes them in with a look of elegant disgust. Looks down at the coffee table. It’s strewn with the litter of a bachelor’s neglectful existence: aluminium takeaway cartons with traces of curry still clinging to the sides, a half-eaten kebab in its polystyrene box, screwed-up chip paper, a scatter of cardboard boxes, a collection of remote controls, an Android tablet in silver chrome, a bottle of baby lotion, a box of Kleenex. Poking out from beneath, she sees a bin liner, half-full with more of the same. He looks politely away, as though doing so will somehow spare the dead man his shame.
Cher voices what they’re all thinking. ‘Eugh,’ she says. She looks down at the shrouded form at her feet and pulls a face. Don’t, thinks Collette. Don’t say it. We’re all thinking about it already. We don’t need to talk about it.
‘Three tellies,’ Cher says. ‘What the hell did he want with three tellies?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Collette.
‘You don’t think he used to watch ’em all at once, do you? Eugh, God.’
‘That’s enough, Cher,’ she says, firmly. She really doesn’t want to think about it.
Cher looks thoughtful. ‘I don’t suppose…’ she begins.
Collette knows where this is going. ‘No. We’re not taking anything.’
‘But I need a telly,’ says Cher. ‘You know I need a telly.’
‘I said no,’ Collette says, and she suddenly thinks, oh, God, I sound like her mum. She’ll be telling me she’s sorry she was born in a minute.
‘But -’
‘No, Cher,’ says Hossein. ‘I’m sorry. No. It’s not going to happen.’
Cher looks thunderous. Looking at her now, Collette can totally believe that she’s fifteen. Her veneer of worldliness is paper-thin when it comes down to it. She’s in the middle of committing a crime, and she’s practically thinking about nail varnish and mascara. ‘Right,’ she says, in that you’ll-be-sorry voice she remember from her own teens. She chucks her chin in the air and pulls a face. ‘Come on, then. We haven’t got all night.’
Before anyone else can move, she strides over to the body and yanks on the loose end of the plastic wrapper. The Landlord rolls out like a genie from a carpet, bumps up on his side against the wall, comes to rest staring at their feet. His eyes have clouded over and his skin, scrubbed clean with the power jet before they put him in the car, has begun to turn grey.
Cher starts to fold up the plastic, all business now she’s starting to feel safe. ‘Come on, then,’ she says, and starts towards the door.
‘Hang on,’ says Thomas.
Cher stops. ‘What?’
‘We can’t leave him like that,’ he says.
Cher puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s a bit late to come over all respect-for-the-dead,’ she says. ‘We had to squash him down to get him into that boot.’
‘No,’ says Thomas, ‘it’s not that. Look at him.’
For a moment, they all look. A blubbering whale of a man lying against a skirting board, his eight chins dipping into the neck of the green T-shirt Thomas had gone and bought him. A swollen tongue protrudes from slack white lips and his feet and shins are covered in rough, flaking skin where his circulation had begun to fail.
‘What?’ asks Cher.
‘Look at his colour.’
They look. Grey-white on the front and then, they notice, red on the back. From what they can see of his skin, where cloth has rucked up and flesh has burst out, Roy’s gone two-tone. He’s turned into a Battenberg: all spongy-pale on one side and pinky-purple on the other. He looks like someone’s stood over him with a rolling pin and tenderised him from top to bottom.
Cher shakes her head and frowns. ‘What the fuck is that?’
Hossein clears his throat. ‘Livor mortis,’ he says.
‘Liver what?’
‘Livor mortis,’ he says. ‘It’s when the blood settles after death. It doesn’t stay in the veins, it… comes out. It makes the flesh turn that colour, where it settles.’
‘Christ,’ says Cher, ‘how the fuck do you know a word like that?’
‘It’s Latin,’ says Hossein. ‘It’s the same in any language.’
‘Okay,’ says Cher. ‘So what do you want me to do? Get out my make-up?’
Hossein shakes his head. ‘Thomas’s right. We can’t leave him like that.’
‘Go on then, professor. Why not?’
‘When they find him -’
‘If they find him.’
‘They will find him eventually, Cher,’ he says. ‘And when they do, they’ll know he’s been moved.’
‘How?’
‘Blood follows gravity,’ he says.
‘You’re in Britain now,’ she says. She always gets rude when she’s feeling ignorant. It’s a defence system she learned long ago. ‘Speak English.’
‘Wherever is the lowest bit, that’s where the blood goes. When you die. It doesn’t just stay where it was.’
‘Oh,’ she says.
‘So they’re going to know he was on his back,’ he says. ‘So they’ll know someone moved him.’
‘So what? They’re not going to be thinking it was a heart attack with that dent in his head, are they?’
‘No, they’re right,’ says Collette. ‘If we leave him like that, they’ll know it wasn’t a burglar. They’ll know he didn’t die here.’
‘They’ll know he didn’t die here anyway, won’t they?’
‘Why?’ asks Thomas.
‘Doh. No blood.’
‘Skin’s not broken on his head,’ says Thomas. ‘Did you notice him bleeding at Vesta’s?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then.’
‘Come on, then,’ says Collette. ‘Let’s roll him over.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sunday. Vesta has always liked Sundays. She likes the way the road is quiet, the way the house tends to start its life and noise mid-morning. Her Sunday routine is always the same: a lie-in till nine o’clock, a nice breakfast of poached eggs on Marmite toast followed by Sung Eucharist at All Saints church on Norwood Road, a glass of sherry at the social in the vestry, then a quick diversion into Morrisons on the way home to see what’s in the reduced fridge. By two o’clock, they’ve often decided that the Sunday-lunch crowd has passed and have reduced the few remaining joints to half price. It’s one of the nice things about nowadays – that joints come in all sizes, including spinster-size. She likes to spend Sunday afternoons pottering about the kitchen, doing a bit of baking, making sure everything’s in shape for the coming week and looking forward to her dinner.
This Sunday, she wakes at six and smells the drains – Hossein has cleared them, but it will take time before the lingering aroma disperses – and it all comes crashing down on her head. Two nights ago, I killed a man, she thinks. I can’t go to church in a state of sin. I can’t mix with those good people, take the host, laugh over the cheese straws any more. It’s all over. Everything I knew before has gone.
She lies on her back in her single bed and stares dry-eyed at the ceiling. This ceiling, the cracks slowly growing across it, has been the first sight to greet her each day for the best part of the last thirty years. It has been her safety and her contentment. Not a big life, but a good one, with all the never marrying and the no kids and the moments of loneliness. It’s been a better life than many, and I’ve lived it as well as I could. And now it’s gone. For ever.
I shall never feel happy here again, she thinks. I’ve lived here all my life, and now my home is gone.