This Is What Happened, page 17
Cash, then, and different shops. There was no reason, if he was careful, why anyone need raise an eyebrow.
Nobody had missed Maggie Barnes for years. Why would they start now?
The previous day he had walked along the towpath. Sue had stood him up, but that was okay, he thought that was okay—she’d put an x on her text—and he had walked along the towpath to the old abandoned factory, like in a folk song. The previous summer there’d been an encampment there, crusties with dogs, smoking dope and drinking cider, but now it was deserted. There was a wilderness behind those broken walls. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were already half a dozen missing people in a couple of dozen places back there. That thought squeezed a laugh from him. Half a dozen missing people in a couple of dozen places. He’d just be adding to an ongoing jigsaw puzzle. London was full of them, people nobody cared about. The police would never put them back together. Why would they? Nobody cared.
He rubbed at his cheeks. He was very tired. Which wasn’t surprising, he had so many things to do. He should make a list, but no. Best not put this on paper.
Another thing he should do was text Sue. Or maybe call her. With all this going on, it was crucial he keep a foot in the real world, that while all these problems were being dealt with, he was still visibly going about his ordinary life. It wasn’t as if he needed to establish an alibi, the way criminals do. All the same, it was important to show that everything was normal, to leave no bumps in the day. Nothing anyone could look back on later, and think odd.
He should clean his laptop history too. Not that anyone would ever examine it, but still, he’d searched Maggie Barnes once or twice, making sure she hadn’t been missed. She hadn’t, of course. The Internet didn’t care about her any more than anyone else. He sat down to do that now, because that was how he was, methodical, thorough. First, though, he had another look for Sue.
But it was impossible. He had no surname for her, and he had already learned the hard way that there were many people called Sue who worked in advertising in London. Many. The image results alone, you could pore over for hours.
It didn’t matter. Sue wasn’t going to come wrecking his life the way Maggie had, the way Lin Hua had. He didn’t need to research her. He would get to know her slowly, each discovery strengthening the bond they were starting to form. The Internet was destroying traditional relationships, and he wasn’t going to get caught in that trap. He scrolled a little way through Sue, advertising, London, then prepared to log off, but had another thought. He had her mobile number. Why not search for that?
Wouldn’t take a minute.
Late the previous day, a sinkhole had appeared in a suburban street in Newcastle, and already Meredith had seen its photo four times: on her phone and on newspaper front pages. Later she’d see it in the evening press, and the following morning it would doubtless appear in Metro—“yesterday’s news tomorrow”—so by and by, it would start to seem normal. Sinkholes usually happened elsewhere in the world. But lately, these weirdly circular pits had been appearing all over the country, at the ends of driveways, cars teetering on their brinks. There were scientific reasons: fluctuations in the water table, instability exacerbated by subterranean works. But mostly, Meredith decided, it was because the world had a sense of humour. What better way of pointing out the precarious nature of our lives than by opening up holes where we walked?
She was on her way to see Dickon Broom while having these thoughts. Maybe they would appeal to him, a way into today’s topic. My sister disappeared in the sinkhole of the city. It was part of the Generation Y trap nobody had been warned about yet: the young were just getting used to life’s low ceilings, and now the floors were vanishing beneath their feet. Something philosophical like that, to distract him from the fact that Meredith had lied to him, about her name, about who she was, about why she’d befriended him in the first place. Because she wanted to know what he’d done with her sister. If anything, she reminded herself. You know nothing for a fact.
Her journey had that grindingly inexorable quality that usually signifies trips to the dentist, or to a break-up with a lover. You try to dig your feet into each moment, to prevent it from sliding into the next, but . . . She didn’t want to confront Dickon Broom. She suspected that if you scratched his surface hatred would ooze forth, that the things he pretended to—his interests in animal welfare, human rights, the environment—would peel away without leaving a mark, and underneath he would be a raw lump of gristle. She didn’t know precisely why she felt this, but it had to do with his slow-motion walk, his pedantic drawl, with the way the tips of his incisors appeared when he smiled. Kindness showed in the eyes. It didn’t in his.
So no, she didn’t want to put herself on the wrong side of Dickon Broom, and explaining to him that their relationship was based on her need to find her sister was unlikely to have a pretty ending. But otherwise, she’d reached a wall. She’d found nowhere to lay a flower for Maggie, nowhere to nail a plaque. Perhaps she never would. But this next step needed to be taken before she accepted that as final.
She reached her stop and left the Tube. On the streets the weather was grizzling once more, its continuing dissatisfaction with the city expressed as damp air, cold pavements, wet windows. At a nearby tricycle, whose bearded owners were brewers of artisanal coffee, unless they were artisanal brewers of coffee—like “organic,” the word had become fluid of meaning, and mostly just signified “pricey”—she bought a latte. A delaying tactic, she recognised. But it made little difference. The end was near.
Looking up, she saw Broom heading towards her.
She didn’t need to pack, but she packed anyway, if you could call it packing when no case was involved, no bags, no luggage. All Maggie had done, really, was collect her things and lay them on the bed. There wasn’t a lot. Her clothes, apart from those she was wearing. Her toiletries. The laptop Harvey had given her, and a small pile of DVDs.
My two years, she thought. These are my last two years.
There were things in the kitchen she supposed were technically hers too, since they hadn’t been here when she arrived, and Harvey had provided them specifically for her use. But she didn’t think it fair to remove these from the safe house. They included a mug with thick blue stripes, a sieve and a cheese grater. The kettle had been here already, alongside a few pans, and the array of long-handled spoons and stirrers, the wooden rolling pin, had all been lying in drawers for her to find.
She wondered when the next refugee would arrive to take possession of her little queendom, and hoped, whoever it was, that they’d find safety here. It hadn’t all been awful. It had been packed with awful moments, true, but they were mostly to do with discovering things that had happened elsewhere, and would have happened anyway. That Joshua was dead, and that the country had Collapsed. About the discontents rippling outwards, the riots and police strikes, the sinister awareness that a foreign power had quietly taken control. All those poor families thrown onto the streets. She had never asked Harvey what had happened to them. When the Chinese government had stretched out its helping claw, and the banks had struggled off their knees, were those people allowed back into their homes? Or was being a casualty a permanent state?
But she had to make an effort to leave all this behind, alongside the kitchen implements. Joshua apart, none of it had been her fault. In fact—in a small way—she had worked to prevent it from happening, and the fact of her failure was now just dust in history’s pan. Nobody could change the past. And it was now up to other people to challenge the future, because for herself and Harvey, the struggle was over. They would make a quiet life in a new place, and hope never to be noticed again. This wasn’t cowardice, it was common sense. They had been brave. It was now their turn to be something else.
As for Dickon Broom, she would never forget him. He had given his life for the cause, while she had merely given two years. And while the evil Lin Hua had brought him low, he remained the hero Maggie had imagined, and nothing could take that away. It was to honour that fact that she took the pile of DVDs she’d collected and removed them from the bed. There was little in the safe house to comfort her successor, and she could easily spare them this much. A few old movies and TV sitcoms—they had shaved some hours off her solitude, and could do the same for someone else. She put them in the wardrobe, on its topmost shelf. And then she sat and waited again, because she had nothing else to do.
Broom’s mind was busy and that’s why he didn’t see Sue standing by the barista tricycle. He had places to go, hardware to buy. Back home, the Internet had offered a number of services prepared to identify the owner of the phone number he’d fed it, but the first few demanded payment, and he was hoping to find one which would satisfy him for free. Later, he thought. He’d have time later—afterwards—to scroll through them. He’d need some dull task or other to occupy him then. Dealing with Maggie had increasingly been an unhappy chore, and that wasn’t going to change today.
At the cash machine, he found that his debit card wouldn’t allow him withdrawals, and he had to use his credit card instead. That would rack up a hefty interest charge, and he cursed under his breath as he counted the notes out—but cash was cash. Now he had it in his hand, it was invisible. He could buy whatever he needed, and leave nobody the wiser.
To keep himself invisible, then, and spread his purchases out, he went down into the underground, and caught a Tube to Oxford Circus. In a crowded department store—where did everyone come from? How come they all had money?—he prowled the kitchenware area, looking at knives, examining blades.
The cleaver he found was heartbreakingly expensive. He was only planning on using it once, for Christ’s sake. He wondered what their returns policy was, whether he could bring it back the following day, and for a moment that notion shone with possibility—but he doubted it would fly. Chances were, there’d be markings, discolouring—chances were, Maggie would turn out tougher than she looked. He couldn’t return something palpably used, and wouldn’t want to explain its usage. He’d need more cash, though, before the day was through. This whole thing was getting ridiculous.
But: outlay now, income later. Get through this, and his house would be his once more. Two flats to let, or one whole property to sell. Either way, quids in, so stop fretting, Broom. Suitably self-chastened, he made his purchase, enduring some flattering banter
(“Very serious piece of equipment, sir. A good choice.”
“Thank you.”
“We get a lot of professionals buying into this range.”
“I can imagine.”)
in the process, and left the shop via one of its cash machines. There were two of these in the lobby, “for your convenience.”
In a hardware shop off the Edgware Road he bought a thick pair of gardening gloves, because he knew from experience how sawing could chafe the hands—he couldn’t say how he knew this, couldn’t precisely remember wielding a saw, but all the same, he knew that he knew it. Gardening gloves, then—and rolls of thick plastic bags too, and some twine and rolls of duct tape. The parcels he’d be making would need to be tightly bound.
For the saw, he thought he’d return home and use his local shop. The one he’d seen the other day would fit the bill nicely, and would be cheaper than in Central London. And also: support your local tradesmen. That was an environmental issue, one he’d blogged about in the past.
Practising what he preached was a matter of integrity.
After Broom walked straight past her, Meredith experienced one of those odd moments when relief and disappointment merge. She hadn’t been ready for an encounter, but at the same time, if he was elsewhere—on a mission—she might be hanging in the wind for hours. And she’d already exhausted the local possibilities: the park, the parakeets. There was only so much coffee she could drink.
So she wandered the strip a few times, drinking the cup she already had. There was a butcher’s and a supermarket, Sunrise Stores. A display of garden furniture graced the window display of a hardware shop, and she wondered whether this meant they were trying really hard or had given up altogether. The coffee, she had to admit, was good. Maybe men with beards knew what they were doing after all. And she wondered, too, about gardens, and whether Dickon Broom’s house had a garden at the rear, or backed directly onto other housing.
Catching herself thinking this, she started to laugh. Meredith Barnes, she thought. What are you now, a burglar? Was she going to sneak up to Broom’s back door, shimmy it open with a handy tool—she could probably pick something up in the hardware shop—and explore the other flats in his house, all the while awaiting his returning tread? It would be the worst kind of suspense show, the kind you’ve seen a hundred times. The girl pushes open a door and something rushes out—she jumps! Then, hand to heart, relaxes. It’s only a cat. Then the villain appears.
She dropped her empty coffee cup in a recycling bin. She needed to talk to Broom, not prowl around his property. She needed to ask what she should have asked a few weeks ago: had he ever seen Maggie while he was lurking round the park café, chatting up lone women? Ever spoken to her? He would be angry, but she was prepared for that. She was angry too: she’d lost her sister. And if he was an innocent, just a lonely man who happened to be in the right place for suspicion to cloud him, well, that was his fault. If not for his creepy manner, which he evidently considered personal charm, she’d have got rid of him during their first minute’s conversation and not given him a second thought since.
Thinking all this she felt her heart rate picking up, blood coursing into her cheeks. This was what anger did, it made you feel more alive. Which was not necessarily a comfortable feeling, but surely beat the alternative.
She walked back to Broom’s, found herself circling his block once more, almost despite herself—was there a way in round the back?—and found there wasn’t. There were gardens, or yards, because she could make out the tops of a few small trees and the wigwam tip of a conservatory, but there was no convenient back alley running alongside them. It was just as well. The easiest temptations to resist were those never on offer. The choice now was to head home and come back another day, or just find somewhere to sit and await Broom’s return. If she chose the former, she could treat herself to a quiet afternoon: read a book, watch a movie, put life on hold for a bit. What harm would it do? Whatever had happened to Maggie had happened. If Meredith metaphorically—or even literally—pulled a duvet over her head for the rest of the day, no outcomes would be altered. The only difference would be that she’d feel more prepared, and be better able to talk to Broom about who she really was, and what she really wanted.
That was that then. Her circuit had brought her back to Broom’s front door, and since she was there anyway, she repeated her actions of the previous day, and walked up his short path, up the steps to his door, and rang his noiseless bell again. There was no response. She glanced down at the blacked-out basement windows, and imagined for a moment she could perceive a shape behind them, a still figure awaiting her departure, but that was more of the tired old suspense show she’d been thinking about earlier. She shook her head. She had made her decision. Nothing could happen today. She would go home.
Ten minutes later, she was on a Tube.
2
Let’s have a plan here.
Let’s have a plan.
The thing was to get everything over with as swiftly as possible. No getting round it, this would take ages, but do it efficiently and he’d be free and clear by this time tomorrow. The actual deed, the sad bit, would be a matter of a moment. A meat mallet to the temple. She’d never know what hit her, would still be thinking happy thoughts about the life to come when he removed all knowledge from her head forever. It was the best way. The difficult part would be suppressing his own natural instincts, his gentle temperament. That was what he had to overcome. He actually found himself thinking: Knock that on the head, and you’re home and dry. Funny how the brain made jokes as a coping mechanism. There might be a blog in that. Or maybe not.
So anyway: one swift blow, then get her into the bath. That was where the hard work would happen.
Broom was being realistic here. He could see himself being up all night.
He had travelled back by Tube, the line half-empty this time of day. The cleaver had been carefully packaged in a cardboard box to prevent accidents in transit. This was now in the same carrier bag as his other bits and pieces, the balls of twine and plastic sacks, the gardening gloves, the duct tape. He had bleach too. All he needed was the saw, and he was good to go.
There was so much detail, so much organising. He had to be methodical. He would leave this shopping in the hallway, so as not to have to keep traipsing up and down the stairs, on top of everything else he had to accomplish.
. . . Clothing. That was another thing. He could have bought overalls but that was just another expense, and another opportunity for someone to remember him. But he had an old tracksuit from when he’d taken up running, something a lot of the students at MISE did. He’d done that two or three times, after which it had found its way to the back of his wardrobe. He could wear that for the hard part. And coming out of the station, he picked up a handful of Evening Standards. It would be good reinforcement for the plastic bags, and burn more easily afterwards.
At the hardware shop he bought the saw, paying for it in cash. Had no conversation with the young woman who served him beyond the obvious exchange about Nice Day and what have you. So that was good.
Except, Broom thought, he really had no business being cagey. In a sense he’d got away with this two years ago. Today was just admin. Even Maggie would allow that. What he was going to do next was simply tidying up. It had all gone too far, he’d already admitted as much. He couldn’t waste the rest of his life being sorry. It was time to move on.
