Beyond Black: A Novel (49 page)

Al put her fingertips against the door, feeling for a thread of life through the grain of the wood. “He’s gone,” she said. “Goddammit, Colette, I should know. Besides, look behind you.”

Colette turned. I still forget, Al thought, that—psychically speaking—Colette can’t see her hand in front of her face. Mart was perched on the top of the neighbours’ fence, swinging his feet in their big sneakers. The fiends now roused themselves, and began to giggle. By Al’s feet, a head popped up out of the soil, “Coo-ee!”

“I see you turned up, Pikey Pete,” Al said. “Fresh from that little job of yours at Aldershot.”

“Would I have missed this?” the fiend replied. “Rely on me for a nice noose, don’t they? I had a great-uncle that was an hangman, though that’s going back.”

Dean lay on top of the shed on his belly, his tongue flapping like a roller blind down over the door. Morris was urinating into the water feature, and Donald Aitkenside was squatting on the grass, eating a sausage roll from a paper bag.

“Ring the local station and ask for PC Delingbole,” Al said. “Yes, and an ambulance. We don’t want anybody to say we didn’t do it right. But tell them there’s no need for sirens. We don’t want to attract a crowd.”

But it was school-out time, and there was no avoiding the attention of the mums bowling home in their minivans and SUVs. A small crowd soon collected before the Collingwood, buzzing with shocked rumour. Colette double-locked the front door and put the bolts on. She drew the curtains at the front of the house. A colleague of Delingbole’s stood at the side gate, to deter any sightseers from making their way into the garden. From her post on the landing, Colette saw Evan approaching with a ladder and his camcorder; so she drew the upstairs curtains too, after jerking two fingers at him as his face appeared over the sill.

“We’ll have the media here before we know it,” Constable Delingbole said. “Dear, oh, dear. Not very nice for you two girls. Forensics will be in. We’ll have to seal off your garden. We’ll have to conduct a search of the premises. You got anybody you could go to, for the night? Neighbours?”

“No,” Al said. “They think we’re lesbians. If we must move out, we’ll make our own arrangements. But we’d rather not. You see, I run my business from home.”

Already the road was filling with vehicles. A radio car from the local station was parked on the verge, and Delingbole’s boy was attempting to move back the mothers and tots. The kebab van was setting up by the children’s playground, and some of the tots, whining, were trying to lead their mothers towards it. “This is your fault,” Michelle shouted up at the house. She turned to her neighbours. “If they hadn’t encouraged him, he’d have gone and hanged himself somewhere else.”

“Now,” said a woman from a Frobisher, “we’ll be in the local paper as that place where the tramp topped himself, and that won’t be very nice for our resale values.”

Inside, in the half-dark, Delingbole said. “Do I take it you knew him, poor bugger? Somebody will have to identify him.”

“You can do it,” Al said. “You knew him, didn’t you? You made his life a misery. You stamped on his watch.”

When the forensic team came, they stood thigh-deep in the low, salivating spirits that cluster at the scene of a sudden or violent death. They stood thigh-deep in them and never noticed a thing. They puzzled over the multiple footprints they found by the shed, prints from feet that were jointed to no ordinary leg. They cut Mart down, and the length of apricot polyester from which they found him suspended was labelled and placed carefully in a sealed bag.

“He must have taken a long time to die,” Alison said, later that night. “He had nothing, you see, Mart, nothing at all. He wouldn’t have a rope. He wouldn’t have a high place to hang himself from.”

They sat with the lamps unlit, so as not to attract the attention of the neighbours; they moved cautiously, sliding around the edges of the room.

“You’d have thought he could have jumped on the railway track,” Colette said. “Or thrown himself off the roof of Toys ‘R’ Us; that’s what they mostly do round Woking, I’ve seen it in the local paper. But oh no, he would have to go and do it here, where he would cause maximum trouble and inconvenience. We were the only people who were ever kind to him, and look how he repays us. You bought him those shoes, didn’t you?”

“And a new watch,” Al said. “I tried to do a good action. Look how it ended up.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Colette said. But her tone was sarcastic, and—as far as Alison could discern her expression in the gloom—she looked both angry and bitter.

In spirit, Mart had looked quite chipper, Al thought, when she saw him perched on the fence. When she sneaked into the kitchen, in search of supper, she wondered if she should leave him out a plate of sandwiches. But I suppose I’d sleepwalk in the night, she thought, and eat them myself. She believed she caught a glimpse of him, behind the door of the utility room; livid bruising was still fresh on his neck.

Later, as she was coming out of the bathroom, Morris stopped her. “I suppose you think we was out of order?” he said.

“You’re an evil bastard, Morris,” she said. “You were evil when you were earthside, and now you’re worse.”

“Oh, come on!” Morris said. “Don’t take on! You’re worse than your bloody mother. We wanted a laugh, that’s all. Not as if the cove was doing much good this side, was he? Anyway, I’ve had a word with Mr. Aitkenside, and we’re going to take him on to clean our boots. Which is currently young Dean’s job, but with Mr. Aitkenside getting fitted with the sets of false feet, Dean could do with some assistance. He has to start at the bottom, you know, that’s the rule. I reckon he’ll shape up. He’s no more gormless than Dean was when we picked him out of the golf net. If he shapes up, in about fifty years he might get to go on Spirit Guide.”

“Don’t expect me to thank you,” said Al.

“That’s just like you, innit?” Morris said. His features convulsed with spite, he bounced up and down on the landing. “No bloody gratitude. You talk about when I was earthside, you give me the character of an evil bastard, but where would you be if it weren’t for me? If it hadn’t been for me, the boys would have cut you up a bloody sight worse. You’d be disfigured. Aitkenside said, she has to learn respect for what a knife can do, and they all said, all the boys, quite right, she has to learn, and your mum said, fine, you carve her, but don’t go carving her face, the punters won’t like it. She said, it’s all very well your squabbles, but when you gentlemen have all got bored of her, I’ve still got to sell her on, ain’t I? And I supported her, didn’t I? I backed her up. I said to Aitkenside, quite right, show her what’s what by all means, but don’t make her into a bloody liability.”

“But Morris, why did they do it?” Al cried. “What did I ever do to you? I was a child, for pity’s sake, who would want to take a knife and slice up a child’s legs and leave her scarred?” I must have screamed, she thought, I must have screamed but I don’t remember. I must have screamed but no one heard me.

“There was nobody to hear,” Morris said. “That’s why you have to have an outbuilding, innit? You have to have an outbuilding or a shed, or a caravan if you can’t manage that, or at least a trailer. You never know when you need to show some little shaver what’s what or hang some bugger what’s getting on your nerves.”

“You haven’t answered me,” Al said. She stood in his path, fingering the lucky opals as if they were weapons. He tried to swerve past her, but her aura, welling out and smothering him, forced him back. Gibbering with frustration, he condensed himself, and slid under the carpet, and she stamped on him hard saying, “Morris, if you want to keep your job, I want some answers. If you don’t give me answers I’m going to give up this game. I’ll go back and work in a cake shop. I’ll work in the chemist like I used to. I’ll scrub floors if I have to. I’m going to give it up, and then where will you be?”

“Ho,” said Morris, “you don’t frighten me, gel, if you go and work in the chemist I shall make myself into a pill. If you get a job in a cake shop I shall roll myself into a Swiss roll and spill out jam at inopportune moments. If you try scrubbing floors, I will rise up splosh! out of your bucket in a burst of black water, causing you to get the sack. Then you will be wheedling me around like you used to, oh, Uncle Morris, I’ve no spending money, oh Uncle Morris I’ve no money for me school dinners, I’ve no money for me school trip. And all the time going behind my back with the same sob story to MacArthur, and whining for sweeties to Keith. Too generous by half, that’s Morris Warren. The day I was taken over, there wasn’t five bob in my pocket. I was taken over and I don’t know how, taken over wiv money owing to me.” Morris began to whimper. “MacArthur owes me. Bill Wagstaffe owes me. I’ve got in my black book who owes me. Bloody spirits is devious, innit? Always some reason they can’t pay. ‘My pocket vapourized. Holy Bloody Ghost got my wallet.’ So there I was turning up airside, they says, turn out your pockets, and when they saw that was all the money I had to my name they bloody laughed. They said, you don’t work you don’t drink, me old mate. That’s the rule here. Then I got put on Spirit Guide. First I got Irene Etchells, and then you, God help me. I say God help me but the bugger never does. That’s why I bother wiv Nick, wiv Nick you get a career opportunity. You get sent on courses.”

“If you get promoted,” Al said, “nobody will be happier than I will. The only bit of peace and quiet I had was when you were on your course.”

“Peace and quiet?” Morris yelped. “How could you have peace and quiet? Wiv a past like yours? Not ten years old, and a man’s testicles on your conscience.”

“What testicles?” Alison yelled.

Across the landing, Colette’s door opened. She stood in her bedtime T-shirt, very white and severe. “That’s it,” she said. “I don’t intend to spend another night under this roof. How can I live with a woman who has rows with people I can’t see, and who stands outside my bedroom door shouting ‘What testicles?’ It’s more than flesh and blood can stand.”

Alison rubbed her forehead. She felt dazed. “You’re right,” she said. “But don’t be hasty.”

“It’s simply not acceptable conduct. Not even by your standards.”

Alison moved her foot, so Morris could slide from under it. “At least wait until the morning.”

“I don’t believe it’s safe to wait until morning. I shall pack a small bag and I shall send someone for the rest of my things in due course.”

“Who?” Al said, in simple wonderment. “Who will you send?” She said, “You can’t just rush off into the night. That’s silly. You owe it to me to talk it over.”

“I owe you nothing. I built your business up from scratch. It was a blundering amateur mess when I came on board.”

“That’s what I mean. Come on, Colette! We’ve been through such a lot.”

“Well, from now on you’re on your own. You’ve got plenty of company, I would have thought. Your special sort of company.”

“I’ve got my memories.” Al said. “Yes. That’s fine.”

She turned away. I won’t entreat you anymore, she thought. She heard low voices from downstairs. It sounded as if Aitkenside and the rest had come in and were making themselves a snack. Colette closed her door. Al heard her talking. For a moment she stood still, in astonishment. Who has she got in there with her? Then she realized that Colette was using her cell phone, and was making arrangements to depart.

“Wha?” Gavin said. “Who’s this?” He spluttered, coughed, blew his nose twice; he sounded like a bear that has been hibernating at the bottom of a pit.

“It’s not that late,” she snapped. “Wake up, Gavin. Are you awake? Are you listening to me? This is an emergency. I want you to get me out of here.”

“Oh,” said Gavin, “it’s you, Colette. How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been better. I wouldn’t ask, except I need to get out right now, and I need somewhere to stay, just for tonight. I’m packing a bag as we speak.”

There was a silence. “So let me get this straight. You want me to come over there?”

“Yes. At once.”

“You want me to drive over there and get you?”

“We used to be married. Is it too much to ask?”

“Yes—no—it’s not that—” He broke off. To consult Zoë, perhaps? Now he was back on the line. “The problem’s my car, you see, it’s—well, it’s in the garage.”

“What a time to pick!” she snapped. “You should have a little Japanese one like ours, never lets us down.”

“So why don’t you, you know, get in it?”

“Because it’s hers! Because she’s the owner and I don’t want a dispute. Because I don’t want her near me, or anything that belonged to her.”

“You mean Fat Girl? Are you running away from her?”

“Look, I’ll call a cab. Only be ready to let me in when I get there. It may take a while.”

“Oh, I’ve got wheels,” Gavin said. “I can come. No problem. As long as you don’t mind it. I mean, it’s not my usual standard.”

“Gavin, come now, in whatever you happen to be driving.”

She clicked the phone off. She put her hand on her solar plexus, and tried to breathe deeply, calmly. She sat on the side of the bed. Vignettes from her life with Al ran through her mind. Alison at the Harte and Garter, the day they got together, arranging the sugar straws and pouring the milk. Alison in a hotel in Hemel Hempstead, trying on earrings at the dressing table, between each pair dabbing at her earlobes with cotton wool balls soaked in vodka from the minibar. Alison wrapped in a duvet, on the night the princess died, her teeth chattering on the sofa of the flat in Wexham. As she hauled down a bag from the top of the wardrobe and pushed into it a wash bag and some underwear, she began to rehearse her explanation to Gavin, to the world. A vagrant hanged himself in the shed. The air grew thick and my head ached. She stamped outside my room and shouted, “What testicles!” She snapped her bag shut, and lugged it downstairs. At once she thought, I can’t turn up like this, what about Zoë, she’ll probably be wearing designer lingerie, maybe a one-off a friend has made for her, something chiffon, something silk, I wouldn’t like her to see these sweatpants, she’ll laugh in my face. She ran upstairs, took off her clothes, and stood before her open wardrobe, wondering what she could find to impress a model. She glanced at her watch: how long would it take Gavin to get over from Whitton? The roads will be empty, she thought. She dressed; she was not pleased by the result; maybe if I do my makeup, she thought. She went into the bathroom; painstakingly she drew two eyes and a mouth. She went downstairs again. She found she was shivering, and thought she would like a hot drink. Her hand reached for the kitchen light switch, and drew back. We’re not supposed to be here; the neighbours think we left. She crossed the room and began to inch up the kitchen blind.