Good Samaritans, page 21
‘I’m always ravenous after sex, you know?’ He had laughed.
To others he had said that he was running away from the girl he had just fucked because she was ‘batshit crazy’ and wanted him to spend the night. But he was drunk and ended up tripping and smashing his face into the pavement.
In whichever overly-embellished-with-bravado story he opted for, Charlie mentioned that he’d had sexual intercourse that evening he had left the club with a hot-looking woman.
But now that woman was on the news. And she was fucking dead. And she looked like those other women he had heard about. Bleached and wrapped in plastic. But he didn’t care about them. He had never met them. He had never fucked them. He wasn’t possibly the last person to see them alive.
He was panicking now. The bruising on his face had almost disappeared. He had to undo the top button of his shirt and loosen his tie because his breathing felt constricted. And the girlfriend he had lived with for four years looked worried about him over breakfast. Charlie had told her a different story, a half-truth: that he was hit from behind and the guy took his wallet. He left out the part about his post-coital gluttony.
The right thing to do would be to go to the police and tell the truth: he met Hadley Serf in a club, went home with her, fucked her against the door and then left. On his way back to meet his friends, he was jumped from behind and beaten. He was told to leave her alone.
There would be a time and location. There may be some footage of the incident from the cameras of a nearby shop. The police may be able to pick out Ant’s face from the video. Ant would lead to Seth. The case could be blown wide open.
But Charlie Sanders wasn’t concerned with justice and he clearly cared very little for Hadley Serf. Charlie Sanders was the most important person to Charlie Sanders.
And he hardly ever did the right thing.
125
And then she’s home.
And things look the way they did a week or so ago.
The smell of bleach and disinfectant that has overrun the house recently has been replaced with a pungent array of spices and oil.
Seth’s back is towards the kitchen doorway but he hears Maeve come through the front door. He is stirring something on the stovetop.
‘That smells amazing.’
Seth turns around and smiles. He woke up this morning and masturbated in their bed. He showered, got dressed, stripped the bed, threw everything in the washing machine with double the amount of softener the bottle suggested, and replaced it with fresh linen. Then he cleaned out the bath three times and rinsed it thoroughly. Next, he disposed of the ashes from the burner in the garden down the drain at the bottom of the outside pipe and washed it down with a hose. He drank coffee. He ate. He masturbated a second time; it took much longer than the first to get where he wanted. He answered some work emails and checked the status of his orders to ensure that they would all ship on time so he would receive his sizeable bonus at the end of the month. He found a recipe for dinner and walked to the shop to pick up a bottle of wine for Maeve that would accompany it perfectly.
‘I grabbed you a Viognier. Apparently it goes well with spice.’ Seth opened the fridge door and pulled a bottle from the rack – he had ended up buying three – and started pushing the corkscrew into the top.
‘What are you making?’
‘Well, it’s almost done, just bubbling away while the rice cooks. It’s a red Thai curry. Vegetable, though. Asparagus, spinach and pak choi. Figured we could try something a little different.’
Maeve liked different.
The meal may have been something different but that didn’t mean that everything wasn’t suddenly the same.
He pops the cork on the wine, pours a large glass and hands it to Maeve. She takes a sip.
‘That is different. It’s nice. Can’t wait to taste it with the food. You need me to help with anything?’
‘No. No. It’s fine, almost done here. Go through. I’ve set the table.’
‘The table? Is it my birthday? Did somebody die?’ She smiles, unapologetically.
Maeve kicks off her heels and you can see the release in pressure as her feet hit the floor.
‘Go, go, go,’ Seth shoos her into the lounge.
The table is set for two. Maeve sits down and swigs her wine. She is desperate to turn the television on.
‘Don’t do it, Maeve. I’m dishing up soon.’
‘What?’ She peers around the door to see if he is watching her.
‘You know what. We don’t need the news on right now. I know you want to see it. I don’t. Let’s just eat and sit and talk and have some wine.’
Seth is only going to have one glass because he has to drive to Oxford later.
‘Bring the bottle in. I’m almost done with this glass. It’s delicious.’
Seth brings the food through first then goes back to retrieve more wine.
They do exactly as he wanted. They connect. They discuss each other’s days, deciding that everything is almost clear but perhaps they should dispose of the roll of plastic in their garage. Maeve even asks him about work and he finally tells her about exceeding his quarterly target. They talk about going away for a week with the money, maybe doing something to the house, upgrading Seth’s car.
And, when they’re finished, and Maeve has devoured a bottle of wine while Seth sipped his single glass, Seth goes upstairs to change his clothes while Maeve flicks on the television and sits by herself with another glass of cold wine and a tingle of warmth at the back of her throat.
She knows he is going out.
She doesn’t ask him where he is going.
She doesn’t question what time he will return.
126
Hadley Serf was troubled, that’s for sure.
A history of mental health issues. That’s what they’re saying.
Everybody knows that means she had tried to kill herself before. Attempted suicide is not something that evokes great sympathy in the masses. People don’t understand that level of low. They don’t think things can ever get so bad that you would want to end it. They don’t really believe that people often don’t have a choice in the way that they feel. That it can be medical and chemical, not just psychological or environmental.
It does help me understand a little more why she would enter into a conversation with a stranger on the phone.
Loneliness is a powerful catalyst for foolishness.
I don’t understand why they have led with that information on the news but I keep watching. Hoping to catch a glimpse of Detective Pace.
But it’s a male newsreader that I see. His inflections are spot on for the tone of the piece. His expressions well rehearsed.
They cut to the farmer’s son. He has one of those naturally strong physiques; like he has always had to pick up heavy things. His face is friendly and honest. He says he was taking the tractor out that morning and, when he went to open the gate, he saw something behind the wall. Wrapped in white plastic. His first thought was that somebody had been fly-tipping and that he would walk out further and find boxes or a sofa or something.
‘But what I found was much worse than that. I knew it was a body from the way it was wrapped and I could see something where the plastic had ripped. It was horrible.’ The audience would feel sorry for this guy. He was sweet and stupid and shaken. He goes on, ‘I mean, we have to slaughter the cows after a certain amount of time. I’ve seen it. But that’s different. That’s so different.’
Somewhere on the demented social-media sphere, a handful of evangelical vegetarians and vegans are up in arms. Outraged that we would distinguish between the life of a person and an animal. In turn, this is infuriating the majority of people who would always value human life over any other species. And, somehow, the real message is being distorted and diluted and forgotten.
An innocent girl in her twenties was strangled to death, bleached to albinism and dumped without care, miles from anywhere for another innocent person to discover.
And some blogger is comparing her to a pig. And a hundred commentators are abusing the blogger in return.
And, somewhere else, a handful of rational thinkers are trying to look at the real issue. They are remembering the name of Daisy Pickersgill and Theresa Palmer and urging people not to forget that.
But, in another dark corner, a pledge to highlight the seriousness of mental-health issues was bubbling. Hadley Serf is creating a legacy. She is doing something good after her death. It was not in vain.
The message is as mixed as any political campaign. And that is just fine with me. It is better for things to get lost.
Those black flames never appear. Detective Pace is not there.
The newsreader moves on to sports.
I pour myself another drink. The house feels warmer today and I feel thirstier. My fascination for this case is dwindling. I just want it to be over.
Seth is out and I am stuck in the house. Things haven’t gone back to how they were before. Dinner was delicious. We were connected. I felt it and I know he did, too. It’s a case of building on that now. Not taking another step backwards.
And not waiting for the next round of cancers and miscarriages and redundancies and bloodied corpses in the car.
It’s almost midnight and he still isn’t home. I don’t want to be asleep in bed when he gets in so I run myself a bath – Seth has cleaned it out – and I take my wine upstairs with me to drink while I soak.
I have an old Roberts radio in the en suite. Not one of the new retro ones, a proper vintage radio. I like that it looks broken and worn and that it sounds fuzzy and warm.
I undress in the bedroom and walk across the upstairs landing with the radio in my left hand and the glass of wine in my right. The empty house feels safer and I feel freer. I swing the radio as I swig my drink. Something modern plays with a sweet melody.
In the guest bathroom, I place the radio on the floor where the clothes we burned were once piled up. I don’t let go of the wine.
Beneath the sink is a cupboard full of products that haven’t been used; the Beaumans have not had many guests over the last year. There is a fragrant bubble bath but I opt for the salts. I like the way they effervesce across my skin and how soft it feels afterwards.
With the hot tap running, I tip in half the packet. I place it back in the cupboard beneath the sink and stand over the bath, watching it run. Sipping my new favourite Viognier and staring into the space where Hadley Serf lay a day or so ago.
It doesn’t bother me.
This is my house.
He is my husband.
And this is my drink. And it is running dangerously low.
I add some cold to the flow and move the water around with my left hand. It’s too hot. I have another few minutes before it gets deep enough for me to dip a toe in. So I tiptoe down the stairs and into the kitchen. The tiles are cold and so is the unopened bottle of wine. I grab the corkscrew from the side and take it all back to the bathroom upstairs. I don’t worry about the window. There is nobody watching me tonight.
I turn off the hot tap and leave the cold running while I open the wine. I pour. I stop the tap. I turn up the radio and I get in the water. I lie down and it rises above my breasts.
I drink down more wine, an ice-cold path cutting through the warmth all around me. I could sleep, but I won’t. Another song I don’t know jumps out of the radio speaker and I swallow more alcohol. It has no taste, now. It is just a refreshing temperature.
My head drops back against the tub; I feel my hair get wet. I lie still. It’s great to not move for a moment. I will make the moment last as long as I can. As long as it takes for Seth’s key to turn in that front door. For him to walk up those stairs and push that door open. For him to stand over the bath and look at me. To see me.
He’d better not have blood on his face this time.
I don’t want tears.
127
There were plenty of spaces in that car park but Seth managed to find the exact one where he had strangled Hadley Serf to death the week before.
That should have unsettled Ant. But he is too excited.
He taps on the passenger window. He is smiling. Seth is not.
Ant gestures the question of whether he could come into the car by waving a finger back and forth between himself and the door handle. Seth nods and beckons him in with his right hand.
Ant sits. He brushes his jacket down flat but fidgets. He can’t stop moving, adjusting himself, tapping his foot, bouncing his legs.
‘Okay. So, what’s the plan? What are we doing? Where are we going?’
‘Firstly, you need to calm down. You are a weakness in your agitated state. I don’t like that. I don’t like the risk. Some people get off on that. Those people get caught. So calm down. We don’t get caught.’ Seth is looking forwards the entire time he speaks. Ant is an unnecessary aggravation and Seth is worried he could do something stupid to the childish idiot. He has to calm himself, too. He keeps Maeve in his ear.
He doesn’t want to arrive on his doorstep with another body in the boot this soon. He wouldn’t be able to explain that to her.
‘Sure. Sure. Sorry. I’m just a bit nervous, you know?’
‘That’s understandable.’ It is quiet. Menacing. Short. ‘Breathe.’
They sit in silence for a while. Ant doesn’t know what to say and is doing as he is being instructed. Seth is focused.
Ant finally speaks. ‘So are we going somewhere?’
‘No.’
‘So we’re waiting for somebody?’
‘No.’
‘Then, I’m sorry, what are we doing here?’
‘We are talking, Ant. We are getting to know each other. Don’t you want to get to know each other?’
‘Well … I … we should…’ He doesn’t know what to say to that. Ant was expecting to see Seth kill somebody at the very least. He thought he might even be in the car when he did it. Now he is confused. ‘Who is the victim?’
‘I don’t use that word.’
‘Are you being serious? It’s just that … well, I don’t understand.’ Now they are looking at each other. Ant has turned his body around so that his back is resting against the passenger door. ‘What are we doing here? I thought we’d be doing something real, tonight. You know?’
Ant scratches at the back of his hand. It doesn’t itch. It’s nervousness. It’s digging away at the dirt.
‘Look,’ Seth sits forwards and Ant flinches. ‘I can’t just pluck somebody off the street. That’s not how it works.’
‘How, exactly, does it work, then?’ It’s the adrenaline doing most of Ant’s talking.
‘I call people. Random people. Phone numbers in a list. I engage with them. Then we meet. We do things like you and I are doing now. We talk. I listen to them. There’s a lot of power in listening to somebody, Ant. You should know that.’
‘I’m listening now. I know how to listen,’ he interjects.
Seth realises just how young Ant is.
‘I have to develop it. Cultivate it. We meet for lunch. We go for drinks.’
‘I saw that,’ Ant jumps in again.
It is here that Seth learns that Ant was watching him even before that night, and he doesn’t like the fact that he had been followed.
‘Listen. I don’t set out to kill. Here is what you need to know about relationships. They go bad. They all do. Somebody fucks up. Sometimes you can find a way to save it and sometimes you can’t. And sometimes they do something unforgivable. And before you know it, that person is in the boot of your car and your face is covered in blood again and you have to find a way to get rid of them.’ The lies come easy. It’s not about connection any more. It’s not even about enjoyment. It’s necessity. It’s addiction.
Ant is completely attentive.
He sees a traditional yellow Post-it note in his mind.
When did you realise?’
Where did that happen/what happened?
How did that feel?
But he keeps his mouth shut.
‘So, that is what we need to do. We can’t just take that girl off the street.’ Seth points ahead at a twenty-something woman, holding a pile of books. ‘Because we know nothing about her.’
‘She looks like a student.’
‘Yes. She appears that way. But we do not know that. And we have to deal in certainties.’
‘Okay. So when do we do this?’
‘It is happening now. I am grooming someone as we speak,’ he lies again.
‘Well, I don’t want to wait around forever.’
‘It has come to my attention that this relationship is not equal. You will give me a number that I can contact you on. When the person is in place, I will call you. The next time we meet, you will give me any other copies of the photos that you took. Do you understand?’
‘And that will make the relationship equal?’
‘You will need to start trusting me and I will show you what I know. We will do this one together. And then you can do what you want with that knowledge and we can go back to not being friends.’
‘This has been a bit of a buzzkill.’
‘I am serious about what I do.’
Ant exhales in resignation and gives Seth his mobile phone number.
‘You need a lift home?’ Seth smiles.
‘No, thank you. I don’t want you to know where I live.’
‘You’re smarter than I thought.’
Ant gets out the car, half slamming it before walking back across the car park the same way he had entered.
It crosses Seth’s mind to follow him home. To end this. But Maeve’s voice is in his ear. He listens to her.
She is the reason he has not been caught.
She is the person that will stop that little prick from ruining everything.
128
Ant looks back fifteen times before disappearing behind a building, where he stops for a moment and rests his back against the wall. He’s out of breath. Partly from walking so fast, but also frustration, exhilaration.
