No Longer Safe (12 page)

That stay hadn’t worked out too well. She was seeing Roland
at the time – he was a mechanic and her parents didn’t approve. It only dawned
on me some time later that I’d been brought in purely to cover for her. The two
of us would stroll down to the harbour and then Roland would turn up –
Oh, what a coincidence!
– and she’d ask me to
disappear for a few hours, but not tell her parents about it once we got back.
I’d had nothing better to do at the time; I ate ice creams, went to a couple of
art-house films at the quayside and got through a novel. With hindsight, I
could see she’d used me. The memory brought back uncomfortable reminders of the
old me – the one who was too eager to please and didn’t expect any better. I
didn’t want to dwell on either of those unpalatable aspects of myself.

‘In the year after Leeds, what happened then?’ I asked. ‘You
didn’t jet straight off to America?’

She pushed the rest of her cauliflower to the edge of her
plate. I’d barely touched mine.

‘I stayed in Bristol with my parents for a while. I needed
to make some money. I’d spent everything my parents had given me to tide me
over at Leeds.’

‘So, you got a job?’

‘I worked in a lab for a few months for a pharmaceutical
company, researching metabolic diseases. My father suggested it. I loathed
everything about it – setting the alarm, getting on the bus every morning,
meetings, rules. Within about six weeks it had driven me mad.’

Wasn’t that what life was like once you stopped being a
student? Didn’t people in the real world have to set their alarm, live to other
peoples’ schedules and work within corporate systems? Didn’t you just knuckle
down and grin and bear it?

‘You left?’

‘I couldn’t do it anymore. It was making me ill. I couldn’t
breathe.’

‘And your parents let you swan off to America to be an au
pair – just like that?’

I knew they’d ploughed lots of money into Karen’s education.
They clearly expected great things for her future.

‘They made a hell of a fuss,’ she said, casting her eyes
upwards, ‘as you can imagine. They wanted better for their brainy daughter, but
they didn’t understand. I just wanted time to let my hair down and live a
little.’

‘And you were an au pair, letting your hair down for,
what…nearly five years?’

She laughed, her mouth full. ‘You disapprove.’

‘I’m just surprised that’s all. You seemed so motivated at
University. I always saw you as go-getting and, well, a bit ruthless, to be
honest…’

‘Life in LA was so easy,’ she said. ‘I was living way above
my means in a rich family home. I realised I didn’t have to climb a career
ladder to be happy – there were easier ways to earn money.’ She smiled as she
said it, but her words didn’t ring true. I knew more than ever now that she was
hiding something from me.

I winced as I turned my head.

‘Headache again?’ she asked.

I put my hand out. ‘Honestly – there’s nothing wrong with
me. An intruder is dead at the end of my bed – I think that’s enough to give
anyone a funny turn.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she conceded. 

At bedtime, Karen wound some wire she’d found in one of the
drawers around the arm of the kitchen window, so it couldn’t be opened. All the
other ground-floor windows were too small for anyone over about six years old
to get through.

We went upstairs. There was nothing else for it. The police
wouldn’t be coming until the morning, so Karen brought a clean white sheet from
the attic room and we covered the body with it. It was the best we could do to
afford him some dignity.

‘Sofa or top room?’ suggested Karen.

My preference would have been to sleep on the floor in Karen’s
room, but there wasn’t space. Karen helped me change the sheets in Jodie and
Mark’s room and, reluctantly, I took a deep breath and settled down in there,
hoping they wouldn’t come back.

I had to take another sleeping tablet or else I wouldn’t have
slept at all. I had no option, but I wasn’t pleased with myself. I could
picture Dr Winslow’s face.

‘Absolute last resort,’ he’d said. ‘These are to be used
once in a blue moon, okay?’

During the night I had vivid dreams of wandering
around the house. I floated like a ghost in and out of every room. I started in
the top bedroom, opening the drawers and cupboards, finding odd things – like a
pair of wire-cutters and a box of lollipops. Did they belong to the cottage or
to Mark and Jodie? At one point I had visions of leaning over the dead man,
peeling the sheet away from his face, and then backing away because of the
smell; putrid offal with a sickly sweet overtone. After that, I was in the
sitting room trailing my fingers over the books in the bookcase. I remember it
being cold. A cruel, gnawing cold that ate into my bones. I looked down and my
bare feet were buried in snow.

The next thing I knew I was in the kitchen. Karen was
slapping my face.

It was 3am and I was holding a knife.

I wasn’t dreaming anymore. Karen really was
slapping my face and I really did have a knife in my hand, holding it in front
of me like a sword. I dropped it as soon as I realised what it was, then I
flopped into Karen’s arms.

‘What are you doing down here?’ she hissed. She put the
frying pan she’d been wielding on the floor. ‘I heard a noise. It’s the middle
of the night.’

It was hard to focus; the table, the fridge, the floor all
seemed to be covered in a grey fog. ‘I’m not sure – I’m a bit confused.’ I knew
my words were slurring one into the next; the sleeping tablet tugging me
towards oblivion.

‘Alice – you had a carving knife in your hand.’ She was
leading me towards the stairs.

‘Did I? I don’t remember.’

She must have taken me back to the attic room and put me to
bed. I didn’t remember a thing.

Karen was on her own when I went down for
breakfast.

‘Where’s Mel?’ I asked.

‘Still asleep.’ It was early. I hadn’t heard a peep out of
her.

Karen poured me a cup of coffee and handed me a plate with
two slices of toast. She stood over me waiting to see what I had to say;
whether I’d remember last night.

‘I’ve…I’ve never done that before,’ I said, my voice small,
dropping away.

‘What do you remember?’ she sat down, leaning forward, her
chin cupped in her hand.

‘Not much. I think I was wandering about the place; going
into different rooms.’

‘Did you take a sleeping tablet last night?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t look at her.

‘You had a knife, Alice. You were holding it up when I came
towards you. I was scared.’

I didn’t believe her at first. ‘I can’t have...’ Then the
picture crystallised inside my mind. She was telling the truth; I remembered
the blade clattering onto the flagstones. ‘What was I doing with a
carving knife
…?’

‘You’d been outside,’ she said.

‘Had I?’

‘The back door was open. You were frozen.’

‘Like I said – nothing like this has ever happened before. I
can’t understand it.’

Karen spread a layer of thick strawberry jam on her toast.
For a second it looked congealed and obscene.

‘My brother used to sleepwalk,’ she said, getting straight
to the point. ‘The GP put it down to his sleeping tablets, because he only
started doing it once he was taking them. They swapped him to a different
type.’ She licked her lips. ‘Perhaps you should try that.’

I was shaking, not sure if it was from the cold or the
shock. I wrapped my hands tightly around my waist.

‘Yes, yes, perhaps I should…’ I said in a half-whisper. I
put the toast to one side; I couldn’t cope with anything solid just now.

‘You hear of people attacking their nearest and dearest in
their sleep, sometimes,’ she said. ‘Even
killing
them – when they’re actually sleepwalking. I remember a case when we were at
Uni. A bloke stabbed his mother-in-law and the defence tried to claim it was
diminished responsibility. He was sent down, though – the jury didn’t believe a
word of it.’

‘Oh, God – don’t say that,’ I burst out. I wasn’t sure what
she was implying. ‘You don’t think I…’

There was a silence and Karen didn’t close up the yawning
gap fast enough. I got up, my chair scraping across the floor like nails on a
blackboard. ‘It can’t have been me,’ I cried. ‘I wouldn’t do anything like
that.’

‘Look – we’d better try the police again,’ said Karen. ‘I
can’t stand this much longer.’

She picked up her phone and went to find her boots in the
hall. ‘Wait…’ I said. ‘I’m really terrified.’

‘I know – we both are.’

‘No – what I mean is…wait…I need to...’

I left her at the bottom of the stairs and went up to the
landing outside my bedroom, my hand on the doorknob. I held it there, feeling
the sweat build up for half a minute, before I dared turn it. I knew the smell
would be getting worse by now. I squeezed my eyes shut and stepped inside. And
came straight back out again. I heaved and ran for the bathroom, but nothing
came up.

I had to do this. I had to go back in.

I took a deep breath and hurried back inside. Karen had left
a window open – or maybe it wasn’t Karen, maybe it had been me, last night – I
couldn’t be sure anymore. My sense of reality was buckling at the edges.

It was a bizarre scene, like a shot from a television crime
drama. I had to know if it was possible. I had to double check.

I made myself think it through, starting with the intruder
creeping up the stairs and coming into my room. Could he have tripped on the
rug? I glanced at the sheet covering him. I’d have to move it to be certain.

I lifted it away from his body, using two outstretched
fingers, squeezing my nostrils together with the other hand. I gazed down at
his boots. Did he look like he’d slipped? The rag rug was rumpled under his
legs, but maybe that had happened when he fell.

I looked at his head. There was definitely a wound on the
top near the crown. Karen’s theory about him hitting his head on the bedstead
was plausible, surely. I scrutinised both of the iron balls on the frame at the
foot of the bed. I couldn’t tell if there was any blood on them; in any case,
it would have dried by now. I didn’t want to touch them. We’d already touched
enough.

I thought about the police. Was Karen really calling them as
I carried out my amateur re-enactment? I turned to the door. She was standing
on the threshold with her phone in her hand, waiting.

‘I’m trying to work out if I could have killed him,’ I said,
my voice breaking.

‘You’d had a sleeping tablet then, too, hadn’t you?’

I nodded, not looking at her.

‘You think you might have hit him with something and not
realised?’

I dissolved into tears, dropping my head. ‘I don’t know.
After last night…’

Karen side-stepped the body and gave me a brief hug. I looked
around the room; there was nothing there I could have used to hit him – the
washstand was too heavy, the lamps were built into the wall. The weapon must
have come from somewhere else.

Then I realised the flaw in our thinking.

‘If I
had
hit him –
why wasn’t the weapon right here, when we found him?’ I ducked down to check
under the bed, then ran my eye under the cupboards. Nothing had rolled
underneath, out of sight. I stood up straight. ‘Unless, I got rid of it – or
hid it, or…’

Karen made a smacking sound with her lips and didn’t
contradict me.

‘What about the police?’ I said.

Karen looked down at her phone. She’d already put her boots
on, ready to go outside to get a signal. ‘What do you want me to do?’

I couldn’t think straight. I might have done something
outrageous, unthinkable, without even knowing it – but equally, I might not
have done it. My fingerprints would be on a weapon, my DNA would give me away.
Forensic techniques were ingenious, these days, once the police got here they’d
tear the place apart.

Karen was offering me a choice.

‘I need time…to think,’ I said.

I didn’t have anything concrete to go on – nothing but an
all-consuming panic and dread whirling into a tornado inside my head. I could
see the blue light flashing in my mind’s eye, police officers pulling me away,
feel the snap of the handcuffs around my wrists.

Karen was still waiting, holding up her phone.

‘Don’t call them,’ I said, my words barely audible. I knew
it was wrong; against everything I believed in and had been brought up to abide
by. But terror was billowing inside me over what I might have done. I couldn’t
see straight, never mind think straight. I cupped my forehead. ‘Just until I
can think it through.’

‘Okay.’ She lowered the phone. ‘I won’t – for now.’

‘Really? You’ll do that for me?’ I rushed over and clung to
her, but she pulled away.

‘Let’s just agree it was a complete accident and he fell,’
she said. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s over with.’

‘It’s not really, though – is it? What if…it was me? That
means…’

I couldn’t bring myself to put into words what it would
mean.

She tugged at my sleeve. ‘Let’s go down to the kitchen –
away from him.’

We sat at the table and I waited for her to speak. To do the
Karen-thing and take control. All I could hear was my breath coming in and out
in tiny snatches.

‘Right,’ she said, finally. ‘If anyone comes back – Jodie
and Mark or that man of yours – they’ll know straight away from the smell that
something’s badly wrong. We can’t avoid it any longer.’

I gaped at her, waiting for her to make everything right
again.

‘Let me think.’ She stared at the grain of the wood in the
rustic table, her finger trailing over her upper lip. ‘Okay – I know what we
should do. The main thing is to stay calm and be rational.’

I said nothing.

‘This random stranger, Charlie whatever, broke in,’ she went
on, ‘and there was a freak accident. It serves him right. No one is going to
come looking for him. The damage has been done. He’s dead. It’s over. Let’s
clear him away before the others get back – then we can think about what to do
next.’

‘Clear him away?’ It sounded so heartless, so callous.

‘Alice,’ she snapped, ‘there are two outcomes at the moment
– either we tell the police or Mark and Jodie come back and all hell breaks
loose – which one do you want?’

I couldn’t remember what had happened on the night he died.
I couldn’t remember last night either, but I knew I’d been sleepwalking,
because I’d been found with a knife in my hand. If I’d killed the intruder, the
police were going to work it all out. What kind of a defence would I have?

The alternative was that Karen was going to help me.
Together, we could make it all go away. It wasn’t right, but it was what I
wanted more than anything. I’d only just started living my life after twenty-seven
years. I wasn’t a bad person. In my right mind, I’d never dream of hurting
anyone. I couldn’t lose everything now.

‘Okay,’ I whispered.

I’d have to pull myself together and go along with whatever
her plan was.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Just do what I say. Let’s go.’

We worked quickly and in bursts, to focus all our energy.
Even though there were two of us, and the man had a slight build, he was heavy
and the stairs were narrow.

We’d started calling him Charlie now – somehow it made the
situation seem less dreadful. We sat him on the top step and had to bump him
down each one, wrapped in the sheet like a big sack of luggage. It kept coming
loose and every so often I’d see the buckle on his belt, a shoelace, the stubble
on his chin and remember he was a real person.

Dragging him down was horrible; even though he was dead, it
seemed cruel – disrespectful – to be putting him through that. I’ll never
forget that sound; the thud as his shoulders humped down to the next step.
Thirteen of them in all; they were interminable. I winced at every single one,
thinking his body was going to split apart with the impact.

When we reached the kitchen, we left Charlie on the floor,
tightly bound in the bedsheet, leaning against the fridge.

‘We’ll just have to pray it’s too early for the others to
come back,’ said Karen, fully geared up for the task.

I couldn’t believe I was doing this. My brain, my gut, my
conscience were all telling me to stop. I wanted to yell at Karen and make her
see that moving the body – and hiding him – was
so wrong
. We
had
to tell the police and brace ourselves for the consequences. Then I remembered
Karen’s face when she found me sleepwalking and imagined myself being led to a
cell for the rest of my life – and I lost my nerve.

Karen turned and dragged my hands away from my crumpled
face. ‘Come on, Alice. There’s no room for pussy-footing around. We’ve got to
do this as fast as we can.’ She opened the door and a blast of freezing air
made me snatch a breath.

‘Byre, first,’ she said.

Once outside, the bleak chill of morning was a blessing. Its
rawness brought me to my senses. Ahead of us, the sun was sliding slowly
upwards behind the black spindled fingers of the trees. The snow had done its
job of covering everything and the sky was heavy with more to come.

Karen’s car had melted into the landscape in one dome-shaped
blob; all paths were gone, boulders and shrubs were hidden. The detail was
disguised. It was going to be our best friend.

Because of our position, I could see mountains, dips and
swathes of land, valley after valley unfolding in white for miles. The scene
would have been enchanting if we hadn’t had a body to dispose of.

Once inside the byre I’d been expecting abandoned stalls,
buckets on their sides and piles of rotting hay, but the place was being
refurbished into a studio. Instead of the ammonia-rife stench of manure,
emulsion caught in my nostrils. There was a series of modern recessed
down-lights in the beams and radiators leaning against the walls ready to be
installed. Apart from a spot in the roof where snow must have recently broken
through, the conversion was well underway.

Karen tracked down a rusty wheelbarrow leaning up against an
old cow stall. ‘Look for something thick to cover him with,’ she said.

I found a tatty tarpaulin squashed into a metal bathtub and
we made slow progress back to the cottage, Karen trundling the barrow with
difficulty into the drifts ahead of us. At least the snow was muffling all the
sounds we made.

‘We’ve got to get him in without any faffing about,’ she
instructed, opening the back door. ‘Imagine he’s a heavy sack of potatoes,
okay? Don’t drop him.’

On the count of three we dragged him outside and heaved him
into the wheelbarrow, laying the tarpaulin over him. We tucked it in at the
sides, but there must have been a gap, as one of his arms flopped out onto the
snow. Karen dared to squash it under the sheet. It was at least thirty-two
hours since he’d died and the rigor mortis was starting to wear off.