The Lying Room Read online

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said helplessly. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’

  ‘I heard your marriage with Fletcher was in trouble. I came to find you, I was going to forgive you, to give you a second chance and say we could start again. But I saw you with your boss. You looked at him the way you should have looked at me. You kissed him.’

  So he thought she had done it to him all over again.

  ‘You never told me, Will. If you had only told me what you felt.’ Her voice cracked but she went on. ‘Now that I know,’ she said, ‘everything can be different between us.’

  She heard her craven voice and cringed. But for a moment he looked uncertain. He lifted a hand, the one without the hammer in it, and touched her hair. Before she could stop herself, she flinched. It was the tiniest movement, but it was enough.

  ‘You were so lucky,’ he said. ‘Always lucky.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Now, you’ll know what it’s been like to be me. For a moment. Before you die.’

  Neve thought of Fletcher and Mabel, in the house together. Perhaps Fletcher was in his studio, sitting in front of a canvas. And perhaps Mabel was packing for university. She hadn’t fed Whisky this morning. Who’d remember, once she was gone? Who’d go on bike rides with Rory and cook with him? Who’d make sure that Connor did his homework and cleaned his teeth and didn’t play computer games long into the night? Who would see them all into adulthood, all along the bumpy way? They were too young. How would they all cope without her?

  ‘And that daughter of yours—’

  Neve’s arm went up. With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she hit Will in the face and she kicked him hard in the shin. She ran past him, into the hall, got to the door, her fingers on the latch, trying to open it. For an agonising moment, she thought she felt it give. Then something smashed into her and she fell, her face hitting the wooden floor. She was being dragged backwards by her legs. Her arm was at an odd angle, her body bumped against a chair leg. It was strangely quiet, neither of them saying anything, just the noise of breathing, hers and his. She should cry out, she thought, but she didn’t cry out.

  She could see him above her, but the sun coming in through the window made him into a dark silhouette. It’s still quite early, she thought: the day is only just beginning; Tamsin and Renata and Gary will be arriving at work. When will anyone know? How long will I lie here? Like Saul lay here.

  The hammer in Will’s hand lifted. She was going to be killed with the same hammer that had been used to murder Saul. She kicked and found a leg, heard a grunt.

  And then all of a sudden, a shape streaked through her vision, and she heard a yell. It took only a second, but as in slow motion, Neve saw Mabel standing there, she saw the swing of her left hand, she saw that her daughter was wearing Neve’s favourite tee shirt, the one that only a week ago she had retrieved from this flat, she saw her daughter’s pale face.

  Will staggered backwards, recovered and lifted the hammer high above him. He lunged towards her, and Neve pushed herself into a slithering dive and caught one ankle. He half tripped, his momentum carrying him forward, the hammer clattering from his hand, his body doing a weird, unbalanced dance, arms flailing until he fell. She heard his head crack against the corner of the table, like a gun going off, and then she heard it hit the floor, bounce and hit it again. She heard his breath exhale in a roar, like a train coming out of a tunnel. Then there was silence and for a few moments, nobody moved. Neve lay spreadeagled on the floor and Mabel stood beside her gasping for breath. Neve saw what Mabel was holding, what she had struck Will with: Saul’s stone trophy.

  Neve scrambled to her feet, a leg giving way beneath her, pain coursing through her, though she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was hard to focus. She felt like she was under a stormy sea. But she could see Mabel. Only Mabel. She looked utterly bewildered.

  Neve stood and Mabel clung to her, her body small and soft in Neve’s arms. Neve could feel her shaking. She could smell her musky hair and the fear on her skin.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘My darling love. Wait.’

  She knelt beside Will. His eyes were open and he looked past her. Blood pooled out from his cracked skull, so much blood and Neve was kneeling in it; it seemed to wash around her. Uselessly, she put her head to his chest and could hear no heartbeat. She put her thumb against the pulse on his wrist to feel for the tick of a pulse. Nothing. She pumped her fists uselessly up and down on his chest, pausing every so often. Then she stopped.

  Mabel’s voice quavered; she pressed both hands against her stomach and bent over slightly. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Did I do that?’

  ‘No. He did. But you saved me.’

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘I knew when you said on the phone that you had one thing left to do,’ said Mabel in a small, high voice. ‘I just knew you’d come here. I had this terrible feeling about everything. I thought I wouldn’t be in time.’ She gave a single, harsh sob.

  ‘But you were,’ said Neve softly.

  ‘If the door hadn’t been open—’

  ‘It was open.’

  She stood up. Will’s blood was on her jeans and on her hands and on the soles of her shoes.

  ‘I want to hug you and comfort you and take you home, but I can’t touch you again.’

  ‘What?’

  The two of them looked at each other, panting. Neve was thinking desperately. Was there any way out of this?

  ‘Do you have your mobile on you?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. That’s good. Was Fletcher there when you left?’

  ‘In his room, yes.’

  She looked at Mabel as she stood there, her hands still against her stomach and her face wet with tears.

  ‘You have to go back home as quickly as you can; take the side roads to the underground. On your way back, buy yourself a new pair of trainers and dump those in a bin somewhere. There might be blood on them. Pack clothes for uni – and that’s what you’ve been doing, all morning, all right? Make sure Fletcher knows you’re there. Have coffee together. If I know him, he’ll think you’ve been at home all along. And your mobile will confirm that.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘But you’ll do all that? Mabel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One more thing. This is very important.’

  ‘What?’

  Neve took her purse from her bag, extracted two twenty-pound notes and handed them to Mabel.

  ‘Go round the corner to a booth and buy a pay-as-you go phone. Walk about five minutes up the road and send me a text. The text should say, “Come to Saul’s flat.” That’s all. Then switch it off and throw it away. Have you got that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Mabel. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Listen. This is important. Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Say the words back to me.’

  ‘Come to Saul’s flat.’

  ‘That’s right. You need to do it very, very quickly. As quickly as you can.’

  Mabel nodded slowly. She looked dazed, as if she had just clambered out of the wreckage of an accident.

  ‘How can you do this? Someone’s died. He’s lying there in front of us and you’re thinking all of this.’

  ‘You haven’t touched Will, but have a shower anyway, put your clothes in the wash along with some of the boys’ stuff.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that. It’s over.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Go, Mabel. You need to hurry.’

  ‘I want you to come as well. You’re hurt. You look terrible.’

  ‘I’m fine and I’ll come as soon as I can.’ She looked into her daughter’s frightened face. ‘You’re safe from harm,’ she said very softly. ‘Go.’

  Mabel left and Neve stood by Will’s
body. Her left arm throbbed painfully and she remembered being dragged along the floor with it wedged under her body. Her face throbbed as well. She could feel her brain working, thoughts clicking into place. She retrieved her mobile from where it was lying in a corner of the room and checked she still had the key to the flat. She left, shutting the door behind her, and found her unlocked bike still leaned against the wall. She pedalled furiously away, not caring in which direction, and braked to a halt as soon as she heard her mobile ping.

  Mabel had done it. She had sent the message.

  She had no idea if the police would be able to tell where she had been when she received it but at least she wasn’t in the flat.

  She cycled back, keeping her head down, locking her bike this time, punching in the code. She was about to go in when she remembered something and rubbed at the buttons with her sleeve. Then she firmly pressed the intercom with her index finger, held it there, released it. Then she ran back up the stairs. She looked at her watch when she got to the door of the flat and had to check it was still working: it was not yet ten o’clock. The morning sun was still low in the sky.

  Inside, she took off her backpack and her jacket and put them by the front door. She rolled up her sleeves and began.

  She filled the sink with hot soapy water and found the disinfectant spray. What would Mabel have touched? She began with the door, outside and then in. Then she picked up the trophy and plunged it into the water and scrubbed at it with the scouring pad, top to bottom, dried it, and held it tightly, pressing her fingers on to it.

  She wiped the walls, which Mabel might have stumbled against, the surfaces she might have touched, the edge of the table.

  Once that was done, she turned to the body. The hammer was on the floor near it. She picked it up and put that into the soapy water as well, scrubbed it violently, sprayed disinfectant on to it, dried it, and laid it back beside the body. He was wearing gloves, so it wouldn’t seem strange that there were no prints on it.

  What else? She made herself concentrate. What if he had taken photos of her? She went to the kitchen and pulled on the rubber gloves she knew were under the sink, and then knelt beside the body, in the pool of blood, and patted at the pockets until she found Will’s mobile. She pulled it out. But she couldn’t open it because it asked for a password and she didn’t have that. She would just have to pray that Will hadn’t been stupid enough to have anything incriminating on his phone. She was about to slide it back into his pocket when it began to ring, and she saw that the caller was Fletcher. Feeling sick, she waited for it to stop, then put it back in the pocket.

  What else? The poem, she thought – where was that little poem she had written on a card and given to Saul? She needed to check Will didn’t have it on him. Once again, she patted his pockets. His eyes stared past her. She found his wallet and opening it, shook out its contents. Nothing. She pushed her fingers into all the pockets of his trousers, having to reach under his body to do so. Her fingers, clumsy in the rubber gloves, found a card. She pulled it out and there it was: Jenny kiss’d me when we met . . . She put it into the soapy water and watched the ink dissolve. Then she picked up the mushy remains of the paper, tore it into tiny bits and flushed it down the lavatory. She saw herself in the mirror and almost didn’t recognise herself. She had a fresh bruise on her face, running all the way down one cheek and eclipsing the old one, and an ugly gash under one ear. Blood was running down her neck. She looked down at her trousers, which were wet with blood – his, this time.

  Was there anything she was missing, something that could betray her? The key to the flat, she thought. She got it out of her wallet and washed it thoroughly as well, then frowned. She’d had the idea of taking it out of the flat and dropping it into a bin, but then she wouldn’t be able to get back in again; it was too risky to go out and just leave the door on the latch. Eventually, she slid it into Will’s jacket pocket. She peeled off the rubber gloves. Would they retain traces of her? Fingerprints? She turned them inside out and then ran very hot water over them and rubbed them with a wire-wool brush. That would have to do. Holding them between the tips of her fingers, she put them under the sink again, pulled the plug to let out the water. She looked at her watch. It was nearly half past ten.

  She took out her mobile but then she saw the little packet on the table, torn open, and the coil of gold beside it. The necklace. She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and inspected the envelope to make sure there was nothing incriminating inside, then simply laid it with all the other junk mail on the floor beneath the letter box. The little necklace she put around her neck.

  As she did so, she thought of the man who had given it to her. Once, as they were lying in the dark, Saul had told her how he had first noticed her, how he had watched her when she couldn’t see him, how just the sight of her had excited him. And then she looked down at the body on the floor – the second body on the floor. All these years he had been thinking about her, blaming her for things she knew nothing about. He had followed her, planned about her, tried to destroy her life. And all the time she had been unaware. What had set it off? Was it the wrong kind of look, years ago in Newcastle, in some forgotten party? Was it a dismissive word? Or was it just his own fantasy about who she was? It was like being loved, in a way, the great mystery of love and desire and hatred.

  A final thought occurred to her. Her hands were too clean. She knelt once more beside Will and put both hands on his body, lifted them off and looked at them. Now she was marked by his clothes and his blood.

  She made the call.

  She began to feel very cold and she also felt like her mind was working slowly. It was hard to think at a time when she urgently needed to think. Was this what it was like to be in shock? She vaguely remembered reading about people lost in the snow up on mountains and they would become unable to think and in the end they would just lie down and go to sleep and quietly die. Except that then they suddenly felt warm instead of cold.

  Neve’s mind was starting to drift and she knew that it mustn’t. These would be the crucial minutes. It would just take one mistake. She must be composed. She must remember.

  She walked away from the body and into the hall. She knelt on the bare boards and pressed her head against her knees. Her bloodstained fingers were tingling and her lips were very dry. She closed her eyes because the light was hurting them. It felt like hours but it was barely fifteen minutes when there was a harsh ringing sound from just a few feet away. She scrambled to her feet, took a deep breath and pressed the button next to the front door with the back of her hand so that she wouldn’t get blood on it. Though of course that didn’t matter; the blood was meant to be there. Think, she told herself: think.

  A voice crackled from the speaker and she buzzed him in. She opened the door of the flat and heard footsteps. Hitching appeared.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said.

  Neve held up her hands, smeared with Will’s blood. Hitching’s eyes widened in shock and alarm.

  ‘He tried to kill me,’ she said. It sounded strange, wrong, the words coming from very far away. ‘He tried to kill me,’ she repeated. Her voice came out low and cracked.

  Hitching’s mouth opened in surprise that was almost comical.

  ‘What? Who tried to kill you?’

  ‘He’s in there.’

  Hitching pushed past her. She heard his footsteps clattering on the wooden floor. She followed and found him leaning down over Will’s vacant face. He looked up at her.

  ‘Did you call an ambulance?’

  ‘I called you.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ He took his phone out. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’

  He turned away from her but she could hear him calling for an ambulance and then for police. When he was finished he looked back down at the body and then up at Neve. His face looked chalky with shock.

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you call an ambulance?’ he repeated.

  ‘He was dead.’ It occurred to her s
omewhere in the sluggish murk of her mind that of course she should have called an ambulance after she had phoned Hitching. It would have been the obvious thing to do. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t. I just – I called you. It was all I could think to do.’

  ‘Was he dead when you found him?’

  Neve took a deep breath, which hurt her chest, like something was ripping. This was the beginning.

  ‘He tried to kill me,’ she said.

  Hitching seemed almost physically stunned. ‘You mean, you killed him?’

  Neve shook her head slowly, too many times. Pain swung around in her skull. ‘No. I tried to defend myself. He had a hammer and he was going to hit me but I picked up the stone block from the windowsill and hit him and he staggered and ran at me and fell and hit his head on the table.’ She remembered the crack. ‘It was so loud,’ she said. ‘Then he hit it on the floor and there was another crack. I tried to help but he died.’

  Hitching kept looking between the body and Neve.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘You’ve met him. It’s Will Ziegler.’

  Hitching rubbed his bald head with one hand, massaging it.

  ‘I’ve got so many questions,’ he said. ‘I’ve got so many that I don’t know which one to ask first.’ His face was contorted in concentration. ‘But here’s one. Why were you here?’

  ‘I got a text.’

  ‘What text?’

  Neve took out her phone and unlocked and handed it to Hitching but he shook his head and stepped back.

  ‘I don’t want to touch it,’ he said. ‘Put it down on the table.’

  Neve did as she was told and Hitching looked down at it.

  ‘Come to Saul’s flat,’ he read aloud. ‘What was that about?’

  Neve was trying to remember the right answer when she heard sirens. They both looked out of the window. The little street was suddenly full. There were two ambulances and three police cars and then a fourth, skewed across the road, up on the pavement. Neve saw uniforms, green and blue. A minute later the room was full of them. Will’s body was surrounded. She could no longer see it.