Death of a Bookseller, page 28
“If she’s sick, I can’t work. If she’s sick, I have to drive all the way home to clean up.”
“She’s fine,” I snapped.
I felt less confident about that as we headed north. Laura’s face had turned a sour, pale colour, her mouth a slash of feathered lipstick that leaked a thin trail of drool on to her velvet dress. She looked like shit. She looked half-dead.
The driver hit the brakes at an unexpected red light, and she jerked awake. “Where’m I?” she croaked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and gazing around the interior of the car in a daze.
“Nearly home,” I said in a sing-song voice.
“Where?”
“Nearly home,” I said again. Even though I had been tipping my Prosecco out all evening, I felt a giddy pleasure, a second-hand tipsiness. Lydia’s talk of autopsies at the party was the perfect social lubricant for a situation like this. Laura would surely let her guard down and jump at the chance to really speak her mind, her inhibitions obliterated by whiskey cocktails. I’d say something like “Lydia’s just one of those fair-weather true crime fans. It’s all just a fantasy to her, isn’t it? She can’t handle it when it’s real,” and Laura would look at me, wide-eyed, and say, “My God, you’re so right.”
I thought perhaps I’d get the chance to tell her about my project. I was convinced I’d be able to win her over with the right pitch. There was an insatiable hunger for fresh true crime content, and someone was bound to cover the Stow Strangler in more detail eventually. Wouldn’t she rather be part of the narrative?
As we pulled up in front of Laura’s flat, I realised I’d been so focused on getting her here in one piece that I’d completely forgotten to deal with Sam. He opened the passenger-side door, oblivious as he shrugged off his unclipped seatbelt.
“No, no, you should take the cab home,” I said in a panic, shooing him back into the car.
“What? Why?”
“This is my chance,” I said in a rushed, whispered whine. “Please, I need to get her alone, ask her about you-know-what. She won’t open up with you there.”
“But—she’s barely conscious,” he said, eyes flicking to where Laura stood, leaning against her garden wall with her head bowed. “And I thought I was meant to be coming back to yours—meeting your mum and all that?”
“I’ll text you later,” I said, kissing him on the chin and then pushing the car door closed, forcing him to slide back into the passenger seat. The expression on his face was clouded with confusion, but I didn’t have time to feel guilty. I’d been excited to show him off to the other booksellers, but the purpose of the night had changed, my focus shifted. I didn’t give him a second glance as I slammed the cab door and bustled up to Laura’s front door.
I put an arm around her shoulders and guided her up the cracked garden path as the car drove away. As we approached the front step, a fox darted from the shadows and, in one fluid motion, streaked over the wall and into the neighbour’s front garden. I gasped in surprise and, mind still reeling from the shock of it, reached for the key to let us in.
It was only when the key was in the lock and the door had swung open that I realised my mistake. Laura was frowning at her feet—we had left her Converse and beret in the back of the cab—and then, slowly, she raised her hand and opened it to reveal a set of keys looped onto a tiger’s eye keychain.
“How’d you do that?” she said, blinking, confused, her drunken brain struggling to piece together what had just happened.
“With—with your key,” I stammered, pointing at her keys. “You did it.”
She lifted her head as though it were a great weight attached to her neck, and squinted at me. She was slack-jawed and perplexed, fighting to stay present in the moment.
“Do you . . .” she said, and there was a rising note of panic in her voice. “Do you have a key? Do you have a key to my house?”
“Laura—”
“Do you have your own fucking key?”
I felt like my entire body had been plunged into cold water.
“You’re just drunk,” I said, mind racing. It couldn’t end here, like this, over one silly mistake. This was meant to be our happy ending, our reconciliation. She was unsteady on her feet, swaying on the spot, tuning in and out of the moment. This situation was salvageable, I was sure of it.
“You’re just drunk,” I said. “And you’re seeing things and you’re blaming me—as usual.”
“What’s in your hand, then?” Livid tears glossed her bloodshot eyes, and a slug of snot crawled towards her top lip.
“Nothing,” I said again, squeezing the spare keys until the metal pinched my skin. “Just my keys, they’re mine.”
“You’re lying,” she said through clenched teeth, and something seemed to break inside her then. Her cheeks were growing red and her fearful expression boiled over into a look of rage. “It’s always you, isn’t it, Roach? Always you, crawling around, listening in—why is that? What is it about me that you find so fucking fascinating? Huh?”
A soft breeze gathered momentum, and then a strong gust of wind whipped first her hair and then mine and for a brief second all I could see was blonde. A bitterness welled within me, and I thought of all the care I had taken in my research, all the kindness I’d shown her. Buying her a cherry seltzer, offering to stay out for one more drink, returning her keys on their rose quartz keyring. She was selfish and ungrateful. Unsalvageable.
“I’ve only ever been good to you,” I said. “But you’re so stuck-up, so fucking full of yourself. This is the second time I’ve taken you home after you’ve had too much to drink, but has it ever occurred to you to say thank you?”
“Fuck you,” she said. She was crying now, thick mascara-flecked tears streaking through the foundation on her cheeks. “Fuck you. You have no idea—no idea. And you’re not a victim—you’re not a victim, Roach! You’re not a victim, and I don’t owe you anything.”
“I don’t want anything,” I snapped back. “I don’t need you, I’ve got everything I need—I’ve got a boyfriend and I’ve got a job and I’ve got Lee, I don’t need anything from you.”
I pushed past her. It was over, it was done, but she wasn’t ready for our connection to break. She snatched at my arm with sharp, mean fingers.
“What did you say?” she said, and her voice was low and dangerous. “Who’s Lee? What do you mean, you’ve got Lee?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said quickly, trying to brush her off. “I’m leaving. Fuck this.”
“What do you mean, you’ve got Lee,” she hissed, tightening her grip on my bicep.
“That hurts,” I said, twisting my arm in a futile attempt to loosen her hold. “I don’t need your permission. I can write to whoever I like. I don’t need your permission, I don’t need your blessing and I don’t need your help. It’s not just your story to tell.”
The shock of it seemed to have smacked a moment of sobriety into her. Her mouth dropped open and she blinked, almost too stunned to speak.
“Are you . . . are you writing to Lee Frost?” Her face contorted with disgust, with horror. “Are you . . . in touch with him?”
“What do you care?” I said. She reared her hand back and slapped me as hard as she could. Her palm connected with my cheek with a sharp crack, and the unexpected sting of it made me gasp and I dropped the spare set of keys in surprise.
She didn’t miss a beat. Laura lunged for the keys that were splayed on the doorstep and grabbed them, and then dashed into the flat, quick as a fox. She slammed the door in my face. The sound of metal scraping against metal followed as she slid a chain into place, and then she opened the door a crack to deliver one final blow.
“I’m calling the police,” she said. “And I’m calling Sharona, and I’m getting you arrested and I’m getting you fired, you fucking freak.”
“It’s not a crime to have a spare key,” I called to her through the narrow gap, a protective hand held against my flaming cheek. “You can’t prove anything.”
She slammed the door for a second time, and I slapped it once, hard, with the flat of my hand, then I turned away to face the dark street. A light switched on over the road, and the silhouette of a curious neighbour filled the window frame. Let them watch, I thought. What did it matter.
The whole exchange had left me winded, out of breath. I needed to gather my thoughts and think things through. I was on the precipice of something great, that much was certain. It was too late to salvage the siutation with Laura, but perhaps she had served her purpose. She was the bridge that connected me to Lee—perhaps that was all she was ever destined to do for me. I couldn’t walk away now, though. I had to reset the narrative before I could move on with the story.
Face still raw from her vicious and unprovoked attack, I took off towards the park.
LAURA
Roach rifling through my past, Roach reaching out to Lee Frost. Had they spoken? Were they friends? Did she know him, had he told her things? I feel sick to my stomach. Roach, writing to Lee Frost, Roach, touching my things, my books, my clothes, my jewellery, my makeup. I can change the locks, I can change the locks but there is no exorcism strong enough, no exorcism strong enough to bleach Roach from the walls the floor the furniture the soul of this space.
She’s infiltrated it. Infiltrated it, infested it, infected it, tainted it with her unwelcome touch. Everything that means anything to me has been tainted by Roach, by her greasy hair and stink of sweat, her dirty clothes and broken fingernails, her unbrushed teeth and sallow skin. My writing, my words, my work, my memories, my mother, and now even my home.
I call Sharona but she doesn’t answer and I call Eli but he doesn’t answer and they’re ignoring me, I suppose, because of all the drama. I call the police, but I’m too drunk and I can’t get the story straight, and the woman on the other end of the line is patient and she is patient until she is not.
“A cockroach has a key to your front door? Are you intoxicated, miss? Do you usually take medication?”
I hang up and try Eli again, and he doesn’t answer, of course he doesn’t answer. The adrenaline of the fight already feels diluted, the details slipping away. I pour myself a glass of bourbon, a large one that stings my lips, and collapse on to the sofa. Questions thrum through my head: has he written back? are they in regular contact? has he opened up to her? have they discussed my mother?
Does Roach know more than I do about my mother’s death?
I close my eyes, smashed and exhausted, and dial Eli again, and again it goes to voicemail and I just
I cannot go on like this
I cannot go on
I cannot
ROACH
The crisp air smelled like woodsmoke, and I could almost believe it was the smell of my own hair burning, singeing under the flame of my pent-up rage. Apart from anything else, there was too much incriminating evidence of my creepy-crawling for me to leave things as they were—she had my set of keys, and I’d stashed my clothes under her bed earlier that night. There was incriminating evidence on me too—the amethyst necklace, the lipstick, the dress. If I could just return her things and reclaim mine, there would be no evidence. It would be her word against mine, and who was going to believe her after the way she had behaved?
I jumped the fence and walked briskly through the liquid dark of Lloyd Park. Bare branches swayed in a blustery wind, and I had to pull my hood up to stop the breeze from dragging my hair into my eyes. The park was empty—there were no fitness freaks on the kinetic gym, no teens drinking on the skate ramps, no pensioners playing bowls on the pavilion, no dogs wriggling across the grass.
When I reached the pond, a shallow moat that ringed a small duck island in the middle of the park, I used my phone as a torch. The light shivered in my shaking hands as I scanned the lip of gravel that hemmed the water until I found what I was looking for. A large stone, the size of half a house brick. I picked it up and weighed it in my hands. It was smooth on one side, and jagged on the other, with a craggy peak that reminded me of the chunk of amethyst tied around my neck. It was heavy enough to smash a window, to crack a skull.
With a deep breath, I counted to three. The sound of the rock as it smashed into my brow bone was the sound of an apple smacking concrete. I gasped an expletive and pain bloomed from the point of impact. When I touched my brow, my fingertips were coated in a dark slick of blood. I smeared as much of it as I could down my face, but blood dries quickly and it wasn’t enough. I inhaled and struck myself again and again, until finally the blood flowed freely.
There was a light on, a gold glow bleeding through Venetian blinds. The house looked just like Laura’s, the same garden path, the same bay windows. As I rang the bell, I imagined a group of carefree students up late getting wasted, or a bleary-eyed bartender just home from work, but when the door opened a crack, a tired-looking redhead peeped through the gap.
“Jesus wept,” she whispered, clocking the blood. She pulled the door open all the way to reveal a tiny grub of a baby cradled in one arm. The child was asleep, gurning against a slobbery fist crammed into its mouth, lashes wet with recently fallen tears.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said, and she pressed a finger to her lips as she rocked the sleeping baby. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I’m Laura—I live next door.”
She took in my blonde hair, my bloody face. “Sure, I think I’ve seen you around,” she said. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’ve been mugged, and I’m locked out,” I said, in my best Laura voice—a panicked Pollyanna. “They took my phone, my keys—everything.”
A cold wind stirred the loose frizzy hair that framed the woman’s face. She shivered, and the baby in her arms emitted a thin whimper, a crest of sorrow rising in its tiny throat.
“Shh, shh, shh,” she whispered, gently jigging the baby on her hip. “Look, do you need to go to A&E? I could call you a cab?”
“No, no—actually, I think I left my bedroom window open. I was thinking I might be able to climb over your garden fence and get in that way.”
With a look of mild concern, she fished her mobile phone from the pocket of her cardigan. “Well, at least let me call the police?”
“No, honestly—”
“But you don’t have a phone,” she said, with a concerned frown. “If we call them right now, they might still be able to catch whoever did this to you.”
The wind was blowing and the baby was grizzling, but she was standing strong, blocking my path like a bouncer. I had already wasted so much time. Laura could already have called the police, or Sharona, or Eli, and a sense of urgency was overtaking my rationality. This bitch wasn’t going to let me into her home unless she had somehow interfered with my situation, that much was clear. A hands-on-hips busybody. A mugging wasn’t an emergency, though, and a rowdy Saturday night in December would be keeping the police busy. I took a calculated risk.
“You’re right,” I said, forcing a customer service smile on to my stinging face. “Could I please borrow your phone?”
She unlocked an iPhone with a cracked screen and handed it to me and then, to my great relief, she stepped aside to let me in. The house was warm, the lights low. I dialled six-six-six. The phone clicked and I was connected to an automatic message.
“The number you have dialled has not been recognised.”
“Police, please,” I said.
“Please hang up and try again.”
I followed the woman through to a galley kitchen that mirrored Laura’s. A small table was spread with an unfinished meal—a plate of buttered toast, a cold-looking cup of coffee with a milky film floating on the surface—and the detritus associated with a small baby: a packet of baby wipes, a thin white blanket, and a little fidgety chew toy, like something you’d give a dog.
“I just wanted to report a mugging,” I said into the phone. “Two guys jumped me on Cazenove Road.”
The smell of other people’s houses always turns my stomach. Unfamiliar cooking, a different brand of detergent, a stranger’s skin and hair. I swallowed.
“The number you have dialled has not been recognised.”
“Do you want a cup of tea?” she whispered. I shook my head no.
I supplied the robotic voice with Laura’s information, and a brief and generic description of my phantom muggers—jeans, hoodies, baseball caps pulled low, no, I couldn’t see their faces.
“Please hang up and try again.”
“That’s great, thank you,” I said, and then I disconnected the call.
The neighbour was walking in small figures of eight, rocking the baby in her arms with an almost mechanical rhythm. The rest of the kitchen was a mess of plates scabbed with dried food, and the bins were stacked with excess recycling.
“All he does is cry,” she said, patting him on the back. “If I put him down, even for a second, he cries. If I fall asleep, he cries. Does he ever wake you up?”
“The police are on their way,” I said.
She looked at me, studying my face. This was a bad idea, I thought.
“There’s baby wipes there—do you want to clean up a little?”
“I just want to get home,” I said, and it came out as a whine.
“Stay for a minute. Catch your breath.”
My mouth was dry, and I swallowed. She kissed the baby’s peachfuzzed skull. “Do you want to be a mother, Laura?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve never wanted children. My mother was murdered when I was a teenager. I can’t stand the thought of bringing a child into a world this cruel. You don’t recover from something like that.”
A shadow crossed her face, and she paused her mechanical rocking, eyes fixed on mine. She tightened her grip on the baby in her arms. “No,” she said softly, taking a small step backwards. “I guess you don’t.”
“I’d like to go now,” I said.
The garden consisted of a dirty deck that stank of fox piss and gave way to a jungle of overgrown weeds. I dragged a wooden garden table to the fence, and gathered the hem of my dress in one hand.
