Make Me Clean, page 22
‘Yeah.’
Maria stares at the stash of money in the bag. If Balogan hadn’t already realised the money was missing, perhaps he wouldn’t miss it now …
No. Bigger things to sort out first.
She hugs the girl goodbye, looks her in the eyes and asks, ‘Cass, I need to know … will you tell anyone? About this?’
‘Are you mad?’ She starts laughing. It’s almost as disturbing as if she’d said she was going straight to a police station.
She hurries out of the flat without saying goodbye, still laughing.
As soon as she’s gone, Maria checks rooms, the wardrobe. There’s no one else in the flat.
Then she lays the empty double bass case next to Mal’s body, lifts him up, rolls and rams him in. She puts the gun next to him and closes the top by sitting on it and bouncing until it clicks shut. A stroke of luck. If Mal had been bigger, she wouldn’t have got him in.
For the next hour and a half, she scrubs the carpet, every surface, anything she might have touched. She leaves the smashed guitar near the broken chair. She’s sure she’s wiped her fingerprints off the neck of it. The tequila bottle she wipes clean of blood and puts into her backpack – no point wasting that.
She puts the cleaning stuff back in Balogan’s flat and gets her coat.
She hoicks up her rucksack, zips shut the holdall of money and slings it over her left shoulder before wheeling the double bass carrier out of the flat – down the long corridor, into the lift, willing it to descend quickly, down, down, down to the basement. This is much later than she usually leaves, but her luck holds – she sees no one as she steers the case through the underground car park, unlocks the storage room and shoves it into a corner right at the back, where she covers it with old boxes – some empty, some housing spare bulbs, mop heads, nuts, bolts screws, wood, who the hell knows what – stashing them carefully on top of each other, creating a wall. Finally, she props the giant floor polisher and a stack of old paint tins against the tower. Not ideal, but she has no better plan right now. She’ll have to leave it here until she can think of how to get rid of it, where to dump it.
She wonders if she should leave the bag of cash alongside it. But—
She could use it for so much: a deposit for Elsie’s house as soon as Del puts it on the market; a nest egg so she can stay with Elsie rather than leaving her to go out to clean; an escape fund.
She checks the car park. Only a few cars are ever parked here and there are no security cameras as far as she can see. But how many people have keys for this room? She has no idea. Few flats are occupied, so hopefully not many.
On the bus, she surreptitiously peels off her rubber gloves. She drops them into a wastebin as she walks back to Elsie’s.
Under the bridge by the bus stop she sees a youth kick at a dead pigeon. It isn’t the worst thing she’s seen that morning by a long shot.
55
The dawn has seeped into a dull grey morning. The rain has almost stopped but Maria guesses it will be one of those soupy days of apathetic drizzle where it never feels like proper daylight, and you get just as soaked as you would in a downpour.
Three posters of missing cats on her way back. Reward! Chipped! We miss him so much!
Missing people on the radio news. So many things mislaid, including basic human decency.
She is bone tired, soul tired.
She showers and changes, everything in her body aching and heavy, then she goes to the hospital, hating to leave Elsie by herself in the ward despite the horror of her own long, gruesome night; despite being desperate for a sleep she knows will not come easily.
Del hasn’t bothered visiting, according to the nurse, and she can’t really blame him. He’s most likely already gone to work because, like her, he needs to earn a living, and Elsie is so out of it, she’s no idea who’s there and who isn’t. All language seems to have deserted the old woman, which is terrible to see – a foreshadowing of what it will be like at the end.
Perhaps it’s already here.
She treks back to the house, dumps her jacket in the hallway, and just as she’s about to switch on the kettle, she stops dead. There’s someone at the bottom of the garden. A man. Her heart starts battering as she creeps closer to the window, trying to make out what he’s doing.
He’s got a spade. He’s digging up the rose bed—
She drops the packet of teabags she’s just picked up, grabs a kitchen knife, and scrambles for the door, not sure exactly what she’s shouting.
As she tears out of the kitchen, the man turns, spots her, and legs it towards the bottom gate. She runs after him. He twists away when she tries to grab him and runs up towards the house, panicked, Maria hurtling after him screaming like a banshee.
She manages to clutch the back of his damp hoody, and he squeals, ‘Stop! Stop!’, swinging round and holding the shovel out in front of him for protection. ‘Gerroff me, woman!’ he gasps.
‘Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing?’ challenges Maria. She guesses she must look deranged, given the man’s reaction. She’s still holding the knife.
‘Del sent us,’ he gasps.
‘What?’
‘Del. His auntie lives here, don’t she? He wanted it tidied up a bit before the old girl came home.’
‘Del did what?’ Elsie’s coming home?
‘The garden, innit? Del said.’
She takes in the man’s gardening gloves, notices there’s also a gardening fork lying on the grass next to a big bag.
‘Din’t get chance to call before. Who are you?’ asks the bloke, gathering himself.
‘I look after Elsie.’
‘Oh. Yeah. Well. Del gave us the key to the garden gate. Got these for the old girl. She’s in hospital, innit?’ He indicates half a dozen rose bushes in the bag by the garden fork that she’d failed to register. ‘Those ones there are well fucked, mate.’
Del doing something really nice and thoughtful for Elsie!
When Maria finally gets rid of the would-be gardener, assuring him that she will plant the new rose bushes, and yes, he can still claim his twenty quid from Del, she has difficulty making her tea.
She sinks on to the sofa, lays back her head and wonders what truly terrible things she must have done in a former life to deserve this. Now, on top of all her other worries, she has another bloody body to dispose of.
A short, fractured sleep shreds her.
What to do?
She lies rigid on the sofa, waiting, dreading a bang on the door from the police, or Balogan turning up on Elsie’s doorstep, materialising like a dark angel demanding retribution. She hadn’t realised she was so afraid of him.
She took his money.
She can’t have been thinking straight.
She knew the people next door worked for him; knew he was their boss. What will he do if he thinks Cass has stolen from him? She can’t forget the look on the girl’s face when she suggested she take the bag – she was terrified.
What might he do if he guesses Maria has it?
But how would he know?
Should she tell Balogan she took the money for safekeeping? Although if that was true, why didn’t she just put it in his flat?
Because she wants it for herself.
If it wasn’t for Elsie she could flee, using the money to start again somewhere new, a different country. Del’s not said anything more about selling the house, but it’s coming.
She feels totally wrung out – too tired to move, too exhausted to work out what she should do next.
The irony is the theft makes her feel worse than killing Mal, killing Nick, killing Brian’s boss. What a fucked-up moral compass she has.
But a cover story for stealing Balogan’s money is the least of her problems when there’s the contents of the double bass case to consider. She has to move that as soon as possible.
So stupid to leave it there! What was she thinking?
She calls the cleaning agency, claiming she’s ill, although she can’t explain what sort of sickness ails her.
She paces around the garden and regards the new rose bushes left by the gardener Del sent round. The labels show pink blooms, although now they’re just stubby sticks with thorns and a few tiny buds.
She wonders if Elsie will ever get to see them flower.
And she wonders if she could bring the bass case back here and bury Mal’s body in another part of the garden. As bad as Fred West.
She has to get back to Balogan’s as soon as possible. What the hell will she do if someone’s found the body?
Her whole life is now a series of questions. It’s all bloody unravelling.
She takes the tube back to the South Bank to save time. It’s a mistake. It’s so crowded she’s hemmed in by bodies on all sides, the crush suffocating. She feels herself panicking and has to get off three stops early, emerging into the daylight like a survivor of a zombie apocalypse.
Could she wheel the double bass case down to the Thames and dump it in the water? Somehow find a dark secluded place along the riverbank where there are no people and no security cameras? Does anywhere like that even exist in London? Wouldn’t the evidence be washed up on some shore?
Or should she wheel it back to Elsie’s? Deal with it there?
Nothing else comes to mind. Think!
The only thing she knows for sure is that she’ll have to remove the case from the basement room. A caretaker (not that she’s ever seen one), builders, electricians, other flat owners, anyone could have a key. Is she the only cleaner who has access? The agency gave her the key along with those to Balogan’s flat so she could use the heavy-duty carpet cleaner for a deep clean when she started.
As she arrives at Balogan’s she feels lightheaded, and her knees aren’t at all keen on her making her way across the car park to the storage room at the back. She jumps like she’s been tasered when there’s a movement to her right, and a skinny rat scuttles across the floor in front of her, minding its own business. She unlocks the door with clumsy fingers.
She takes a breath, steels herself, switches on the light, and stops breathing.
Is she losing her mind?
Before her, all the supply boxes have been stacked neatly on top of each other against one wall. The paint cans are similarly piled up alongside them and the floor polisher has also been moved to the side.
She has to put her hand on the wall to steady herself.
There is nothing else in the room. The double bass case – presumably along with its contents – is missing.
56
Before Maria’s stress became specific – an entirely fitting response to the number of bodies littering her path – she sometimes wondered what she was so afraid of. What kept her awake at night even as a kid? The fear of dying?
Right now, dying seems like it might be a huge relief – an end to this churning anxiety.
An assault of questions, the most startling being, Where is the bloody double bass case?
Has Balogan moved the body? How would he even know it was there? And if not, who the bloody hell did? Why would anyone throw out a double bass case? Would the bin collectors even take something that size? What if they looked inside? Did Cass come back and find it?
For a fleeting moment she wonders if attacking Mal was some sort of warped flashback. But it went on too long. And the holdall of cash is real enough.
Jesus. The money!
She has stashed it in Elsie’s airing cupboard, right at the back, covered with the sheets and duvet covers. Del never bothered changing his own bedding when he slept over, and he hasn’t stayed at the house at all while Elsie’s been in hospital.
Even now the bag nags at her.
Maria has always thought of herself as a basically good person. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. What a joke. She has never considered herself a common thief. It doesn’t sit right with her.
She leans on the wall by the storage room, trying to order her thoughts.
Balogan is dangerous. But he’s the only person she could talk to about what happened at the neighbours’ and the missing bass case. And although he terrified Cass, that’s not why she thinks she’ll have to give the money back to him. She just can’t keep it. It’s something to do with him trusting her with his things, with his memories, confiding in her. She would rather ask for a loan than steal it.
She feels she’s made a choice. It may be the wrong one.
She sets off back to Elsie’s, gnawing at her nails on the tube. In a tunnel she sees herself reflected in the window – her eyes look wild.
She’s almost crying with fatigue as she collects the bag. She daren’t sit down or have a drink, because if she did she might collapse. Instead, she forces herself to set off again immediately. She’s sweating as she clutches the sports bag close to her chest and trudges back to the tube. What would happen if someone found her with all this cash? What would happen if she was robbed? Wouldn’t that be ironic.
She sees someone in a hoody and for a second thinks it’s Cass before the girl turns to reveal a different face.
She ricochets across London once more.
She feels sick as she approaches Balogan’s building and her guts plummet as the lift travels up to the top floor.
Her mind is so preoccupied, it’s only when she arrives at the flat that she realises she’s not thought this part through properly. Too tired, too distracted.
She has no way to get back into Mal’s flat to leave the bag there, which was one idea she came up with on the way over. Pathetic.
How will she explain why she has the money?
Perhaps … claim they left their door open and – what – she just found it? It’s a bit, A big boy did it and ran away.
She hesitates in the lift for so long the doors close in her face and she has to press the exit button again.
There’s no noise at all as she walks past Mal’s flat, which is more disturbing than the music ever was. She finds she is walking more slowly than usual down the corridor, and she’s shaking as she knocks, as a courtesy, but before she gets the keys in the lock, the door opens, and her heart makes a bid to leave her body through her ribcage.
His face looks weary and unreadable as he gestures for her to come in.
It seems pointless to play out a charade – she doubts she could even if she wanted to because she is beyond tired – and as soon as he shuts the door she immediately thrusts the bag towards him and blurts out, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it.’
Balogan takes the bag, but doesn’t react, waiting for her to continue. His silence is frightening.
She edges into the room. He motions her to the sofa. Maria’s legs obey before she’s consciously computed the request. He places the bag on a chair and remains standing.
There’s a long pause. Maria squirms.
He sighs and says, ‘I think you understand I am now in a difficult position.’
She repeats, ‘I didn’t mean to take it.’
‘But you did.’ His eyes are glacial.
She’d have been better keeping it and saying nothing.
Out of habit she glances around the flat. There is no mess in the room.
There is, however, a gun on the counter of the bar.
Maria was never called into the headmistress’s office at school, she was rarely in trouble back then. She was a good kid. She wonders if this is what it might have felt like, waiting for your punishment – minus the gun, obviously.
Balogan stands, watching her. The silence expands.
Eventually he says, ‘You stole from me.’ Not a question.
She has to look down at the rug to avoid his eyes.
She tries to breathe through a wave of dizziness that swells and threatens to overwhelm her, until she can bear it no longer. She opens her mouth, considers fudging some version of the truth, but simply says, ‘Yes.’
‘But you brought it back. Why?’
‘It was wrong. I’m sorry.’
‘You must have known it was wrong when you took it.’
‘No. Not really. I …’ It doesn’t even ring true to her. She blows out a big breath and says, ‘Yes.’
‘So why?’
‘I didn’t really think. I just …took it.’
‘What for?’
‘To look after my old lady.’ It sounds weak. ‘She needs it.’ And, more honestly, ‘I need it.’
‘This woman is not your family.’
Of their own accord, her eyes keep glancing back to the gun. Balogan notices where she’s looking, walks over to the bar and picks it up. He doesn’t try to hide it.
‘This was a betrayal.’
‘I understand if you don’t want me to work here any more.’
He makes some noise that might signify amusement or annoyance.
‘It is much more than that.’ He doesn’t point the gun at her, but he continues holding it by his side. ‘How can I trust you now?’
She tries to explain as best she can. It comes out garbled. ‘I am sorry. Really sorry. It was a bad decision – a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was just sitting there, in the bag, on the floor next door, and I thought … I’m not sure what, exactly.’
It’s strange that he doesn’t ask her how she came to be in the neighbouring flat or how she knew it was his money.
She flounders on. ‘All I was thinking was how much good it could do – to help Elsie? I wanted it for her. Because she’ll need full-time care when she gets out of hospital. I want her to be able stay in her own home with her own things around her. As long as she can, anyway. Her nephew wants to sell her house and put her in some care home, without her cats – and I know they’re just cats to him, to most people, but they’re important to Elsie; they’re her family. She can’t be without all the things she’s worked so hard for over the years. Everything she knows and recognises! It’s not fair on her! She doesn’t deserve that. But … but I can’t look after her and do all my other work. She needs a nurse, a professional. And care homes, I just can’t … But. I’m sorry. I really am.’
He walks over to the window. ‘This is not your concern. It is not your responsibility, this woman.’
