The Red Room (16 page)

I reviewed my notes, and rang through to the
clinic for messages. Then I went round the
corner to the hairdresser's, though it had
recently started calling itself a salon and had been
redecorated in silver and white, with harsh slabs
of light. A young man with a shaved head, wearing
loose black trousers and a sleeveless black
T-shirt, tied me into a white nylon robe and
sat me down in front of a huge, unforgiving
mirror. He stood behind me, held my skull
in his practiced hands and asked me what I
wanted done.
"A cut," I said.
He lifted up strands of my brown hair and
considered me for a few seconds. "Make it a
bit more choppy, perhaps? Muss it up?"
"Just a cut."
"Highlights? A bit of copper. That's very
popular at the moment."
"Maybe next time."
"Nice hair, though," he mused, sliding it
through his fingers before laying a towel round my shoulder
and leading me over to a basin. I sat back and
let a tiny young woman, with hair that looked as
if it had been cut with garden shears, 261
sluice warm water over my head, and massage
shampoo that smelled of coconut into my scalp.
It felt wonderful. I closed my eyes against
the light. Then the young man hovered round me with
long-bladed scissors and a forest of clips that he
took from his belt and snapped into my hair. He
cut off thick shanks of hair with a crisp sound,
and they fell softly to the floor. When bits of
hair prickled on my face, he leaned forward
and blew softly on to my cheek.
Afterwards, I felt much better. My hair
swung when I shook my head, like one of those
advertisements for miracle conditioner. I ran
home and had a quick shower, then dressed in my
white jeans, biscuit-colored T-shirt,
pumps and ancient suede jacket. I felt
clean, fresh, alert.
The car-wash center was in a row of old and
dilapidated warehouses near the canal. I
got there just before six, but as I approached, I
saw that Will was already waiting for me on the pavement.
I drew up and he climbed into the passenger
seat. Another car drew in front of us and
turned into the depot.
"Where's your car?"
"Being cleaned, of course."
"Is that why we're meeting here--because you want
your car washed?"
"Lianne worked here for a few weeks earlier this
year. I thought it might be a good place for you
to begin. Though I'm not sure how many of the people who
worked here then are still here. It's got rather a
transient population."
"Here? Washing cars?"
"No. That's strictly for the men. Collecting
the money and handing out the tickets. The woman who
runs it was in hospital for a bit, having a hip
replacement. She's a friend of mine." As he
spoke, a woman came out of the depot toward us.
She was enormous, with bristles on her chin and thin
hair. Will opened his door and she bent down, with
difficulty. "Diana, this is Kit. Kit,
Diana."
I leaned across Will and shook her hand. She had
a firm grip and clever eyes.
"You're interested in Lianne?"
She sounded the E at the end of the name. I
wondered where she came from. "Yes. It's kind of
you to help." 263
"Do you want to come in, then? I'll be with you in
a few minutes."
"I think I'd better have a car wash first,
don't you?"
She smiled at me then. "Which one?"
I looked at the different washes chalked up
on a big board outside the depot. "I'll have
the superior."
For the first time, Will looked at me with a glimmer
of approval.
"That's twelve-fifty, then."
I handed her the money, which she slipped deftly
into a pocket in her skirt. Then she straightened
up and beckoned me in through the giant doors.
"Wind up your windows," she ordered.
"Are you staying in?" I asked W.
"Looks like it."
I edged through the doors and immediately I was in
another world, dark and wet and swarming with activity.
Sharp jets of water hit us from all directions,
and about six men, wearing wellington boots and
rubber gloves, were on the car, scrubbing it down with
long brushes. I watched them through the sudsy
windows. The man leaning over my bonnet had a
walrus mustache and sad wrinkles on his jowly
face and Slavic cheekbones. The one on Will's
side looked about seventeen, very black, very tall
and thin, startlingly beautiful with sloe eyes. He
looked like a film star. There was an older man,
Chinese maybe, who wiped my window
assiduously. He caught my eyes and smiled
at me through the water streaming between us.
"What is this place?"
"A car-wash center."
"Thanks," I said sarcastically. "I mean,
where do all these people come from?"
Will cast a sideways glance at me.
"Refugees mostly. They work here for a while,
no questions asked. Cash in hand."
"And people like Lianne."
"Sometimes I send kids here. It's safe
work. The money's not derisory. They're off the
streets, earning till they find something else
maybe."
A man in a yellow mac beckoned me
forward. I moved slowly into a new set of
jets: clean water to rinse off the soap. More
men, this time with cloths, approached. Behind us
another car moved into position.
"This is amazing!" 265
Will looked smug, as if he'd arranged it
all for my benefit.
"About Doll," I said at last. "I'm
sorry about that."
"Why?"
"I mean, sorry to trouble you like that. After all,
you hardly know me--but I couldn't think what else
to do."
"Why didn't you call the police?"
"I didn't want to get him into trouble--and,
to be honest, I was in a bit of an awkward
position myself. It's a long story. Too
long."
He nodded as if he wasn't curious. "You
were right to call me."
"Is he dangerous, then?"
"I don't know. He's ..." He
hesitated for a few seconds. "He's
wretched."
Once again, I was signaled forward, this time
into a small bay ahead.
"We get out here," said W. "Now they clean
inside. He'll be back, though."
"Doll?"
"He's fallen for you. He thinks you understand
him."
"Oh." I didn't know what to say.
"And he thinks you're beautiful," he said, as
if that was rather funny.
I climbed out of the car and waited for W.
Instantly, four other men climbed in, two with
cloths and buckets, one with a paintbrush to get
at the crevices and corners, one with an
industrial vacuum cleaner. Diana appeared,
with two cups of coffee. "This is Gonzalo,"
she said, gesturing. "He knew Lianne when she
worked here."
He had floppy black hair, olive skin,
the shyest smile, and a soft, limp hand when I
shook it.
"Hello," I said, and he ducked his head.
He was wearing a pink Bart Simpson
T-shirt. "So you knew Lianne?"
"Lianne. Yes. Lianne."
"Were you her friend?"
"Friend?" His accent was thick. I couldn't tell
if he understood a word I was saying to him.
"Were you Lianne's friend?" I repeated.
He frowned at me. "Where are you from,
Gonzalo?" 267
His face cleared. He jabbed himself in the chest.
"Colombia. Beautiful."
"I don't speak Spanish." I turned
to W. "Do you speak Spanish?"
"Nope. But I bet Lianne didn't either.
Gonzalo, was Lianne happy?"
"Happy?" He shook his head. "Not
happy."
"Sad?"
"Sad, yes, and this." He put his hand to his
mouth in a theatrical manner.
"Scared?" I asked.
"Angry?" suggested W.
"Lost," said Diana. She pushed a mug of
coffee into my hand and I sipped it. It was bitter
and tepid. "You see it in the eyes. There are people
who aren't quite with you anymore. You see it a lot
here." She jerked her massive bristly chin in the
direction of the men, swarming like bees over the cars.
"And you saw that in Lianne's eyes?"
She shrugged. "I hardly met her. She was
here when I wasn't. She seemed a bit
withdrawn maybe. She didn't engage with people much.
Did you find that?" She turned to W.
"Maybe," he said cautiously. I had never
met a man so unwilling to commit himself.
"Well, who can blame her, eh? But she was
honest, I'll say that for her. She didn't
pocket any money that I could work out."
I watched them, the fat woman and the surly
man. Gonzalo shifted from one foot to the other.
"Thank you," I said to him.
He gave me his shy smile and backed away.
My car was shining, inside and out. The man with the
walrus mustache was giving it a last look over.
"And thank you," I said to Diana. "I
appreciate it."
She shrugged. "You're Will's friend."
I wasn't so sure about that. I looked over
at W. "Do you fancy a drink?"
He seemed slightly taken aback.
"OK," he said, as if he hadn't been able
to think of an excuse in time. "Why don't you
follow me? There's a place I know near here."
I clinked some coins into the tip-box, and then
we drove in convoy in our gleaming cars, down
small back-streets by the side of old
warehouses. I'd never been here--this was a
London I had never visited.
We went to a pub on the 269
canal-side. From the front, it looked rather
dreary and run down, but at the back there was a
deck over the water, where we sat with our tomato
juice. The sky was turning a strange brown,
little sighs of wind rippled across the oily dark
water and a few large drops of rain fell.
"You like it?" said Will dreamily.
"What? My drink?"
"The canal."
"It looks a bit dirty to me."
He sipped his drink. "They're going to clean
it up. Have you heard about the development
project?"
I looked at the black water. The warehouse
on the far side was open to the sky; all the windows
had been broken and inside there were piles of
twisted, rusty machinery. Everywhere there was rubble and
strange sorts of rubbish that I didn't want
to think about too much. "Who'd want to develop
this?"
"Are you kidding? A couple of hundred acres
of prime land right in the middle of London? In
a couple of years this will all be wine bars, health
clubs and apartment blocks with private
garages."
"Is that good?"
He drained his glass. "It'll be
respectable," he said.
"You make that sound like a dirty word. Won't
it help your young people? There'll be jobs for them."
"I don't think most of them will fit in here.
They'll be pushed somewhere else where they can be someone
else's problem." I shivered and he looked at
me. "Are you cold?"
I shook my head. "Someone walked over my
grave."
But he took off his jacket and hung it round
my shoulders. For a moment I was surprised by the
thrill that ran through me when I felt his hands touch
my shoulders. It had been such a long time since
anyone had touched me.

21

"I still can't believe it."
"No," I said meaninglessly.
"I mean, that kind of thing doesn't happen,
does it? Not to people you know. I can't get over it."
She shook her head from side to side, as if
to clear it. "Poor Philippa," she 271
said.
"Mmm."
"And Jeremy. And poor, poor Emily.
What will happen to Emily? What a thing. Who
would want to do a thing like that?"
Since this wasn't a real question, I didn't
answer. I sipped the coffee she had made for
me and waited. Tess Jarrett looked like a
small, glowing chestnut. She sat curled up in
a large easy chair in the conservatory of her
elegant home, small and round without being
plump. She had burnished brown curls all
over her head, flecked brown eyes, honey skin
that glowed with health and wealth, round tanned arms, a
small mouth, perfect white teeth, pearly
nails on her small hands and her neat, sandaled
feet. She was, she said, Philippa's best
friend. Her very, very best. She shone with horror and
excitement.
"We were inseparable," she said. "Even more since
Emily and Lara were born. They're almost
exactly the same age as each other, you see, and
we both gave up work, so we spent lots of time
together. It was nice." It was difficult to imagine
Tess as a mother. Though she was thirty-two years
old, she looked so young and girlish, as if she was
about to put her thumb in her mouth.
"How long had you known each other?"
"We were at sixth-form college together." Her
eyes widened. "That means I've known her for
half my life. Knew, rather. I can't get used
to saying that."
"It's hard," I agreed.
"And then, of course, after we got married, we
lived near to each other. Hampstead and Belsize
Park are ten minutes' walk apart. We'd
meet several times a week. We used to go
shopping together." She fingered the pastel folds of
her cotton dress. "We bought this together two
weeks ago, for when Rick and the children and I go
to Greece. And Rick and Jeremy get on
well too. Poor Jeremy." She sighed
gustily.
"Tess," I said into the silence that followed,
"sometimes we can find out about the killer by finding out
about his victim. That's why I'm here."
She nodded. Her face took on a tragic
cast. "Yes," she murmured. "I know that."
"So I don't need to know about her last
movements, or that kind of thing. That's for the 273
police. I'm more interested in her moods, what
was going on in her life. And sometimes friends know more
about that than family."
"I knew everything about Philippa," she said
emphatically. "We had no secrets. For
instance," she lowered her voice and leaned forward,
"I told her when I was having problems with
Rick, shortly after Lara was born. I think
men often find it difficult when their wife has a
baby, don't you? You can't give them all your
attention anymore. You're so tired, anyway,
getting up in the night, and breast-feeding, and things
like that. I think they're jealous, really. Men are
like children themselves, aren't they? What was I saying?
Yes, so Rick was getting very short-tempered and
rather demanding, you know what I mean, and I didn't
want--well, I told Philippa about that. It
helped, just to talk about it. She was very good at
listening, Philippa was. She wasn't a
chatterbox, not like me." She laughed girlishly,
and I joined in politely for a couple of beats.
"Sometimes," she went on, "I think that was why we
were such good friends. I was the chatty extrovert, and
she was more--was She stopped and frowned at me.
"Yes?" I didn't want Tess to stop now
that she'd finally worked her way round to Philippa.
"More someone who is a bit on the outside of
things, if you see what I mean. Whereas I'm
right at the center."
"Was that how she chose to be, do you think? On
the outside."
"Oh, yes, she was quite happy. I never saw
her cry. Isn't that odd? I cry all the time.
I cry in Dumbo and Bambi when I watch
them with Lara, and any film, really, that's a bit
soppy, and at the television news if they show
starving children, and when Lara cries I sometimes cry
as well, even if she's crying because I've told
her off, and we sit there like a couple of babies
howling, and I cry when she does something for the first
time as well--I was in floods of tears when she
said "Mummy" for the first time. I can't help it,
stupid, isn't it? I cry when I'm happy and
I cry when I'm sad. But Philippa
wasn't like that. Even when I first met her, she
wasn't."
"Which doesn't mean she was happy," I said
neutrally.
"No." She uncurled her legs and wiggled
her toes. "Of course not. But she always 275
seemed a steady kind of person. Not up and down
like me. I'm a pendulum. Over the moon then
down in the dumps, that's me. Even when she was young
and had boyfriends, she didn't fall head over
heels in love. She did it--patiently, I
suppose. She was good at waiting and seeing.
Anyway, she didn't have that many boyfriends. She
was very calm. She never lost her temper with
Emily, not like I do with Lara, little monkey.
She was very firm with her, but she didn't just blow.
"How on earth do you do it?" I used to ask
her. Used to. Can't get used to that." She
blinked her brown eyes at me, and a single tear
rolled down her cheek, then another. I handed her
a tissue. "Thanks. Sorry."
"What was her relationship like with Jeremy?"
"Well, how should I describe it? Me and
Rick, we argue sometimes, and then make up--
arguments are almost worth it when you make up at the
end, aren't they? But she and Jeremy didn't
argue. They were very courteous with each other. He
bought her flowers every Friday, without fail.
Isn't that nice? I wish Rick did that.
Yellow roses were her favorites, and sweet
peas, though you can't usually buy sweet peas from the
florist's, can you? She was good at gardening--have you
seen her garden? Jeremy and Emily are back
there again, I think, after staying at her mother's. I
must go and see them soon. Anyway, I never
saw them being lovey-dovey--but maybe that's just the
way they were. I mean, you never know what goes
on in other people's lives, do you? And when Emily
was born, they were thrilled. Do you know? I've
lied to you, I have seen Philippa cry. I went
to see her just after Emily was born, the next day
I think it was, in hospital. I was enormous
with Lara, like one of those little round-bottomed toys
you push over and then they pop up again, except if
anyone had pushed me over I would just have lain on
the floor forever. I hate hospitals, don't
you? They make me think I'm about to die. All
those depressing green walls. Philippa was
sitting up in bed, and holding this little bundle and
staring down at it, and when I came in, she
looked up and there were tears streaming down her
face. A great sheet of tears. She said,
"She's so beautiful. Look how beautiful she
is. My own little daughter." Then of course I
had to go and cry too, and then Emily woke up and
began roaring. She loved Emily. 277
That's why--was She stopped abruptly.
"Yes?" I said delicately.
"Oh, it's probably nothing."
I waited. She was aching to tell me.
"I sometimes think she was having an affair."
"Mmm?" I murmured.
"I don't know why, and maybe I shouldn't
say it, but I just sensed it in her behavior, and
she wasn't at home in the day so much. I think
women have an instinct for that kind of thing. I wouldn't
dream of telling anyone else this, it's
probably not true, but I'm sure there was something
like that going on."
"Do you know who she might have been having an
affair with?"
"No. Could have been loads of people. I mean,
she is lovely to look at. Was. Slim and
blond, lucky thing. Lots of men would jump at
the chance. Rick, even. I don't mean that, of
course, but you know how men are after the first flush of
passion is over with their wives and they've settled
down and their life seems a bit dull, everyone
gets like that, I think, and anyway Rick always
had a bit of a soft spot for Philippa. But
don't get me wrong, no way am I saying it
was him--God, I'm sure I'd know that,
woman's instinct, and I'd kill Rick if he
did anything like that, and of course Philippa was my
best friend forever ..." She came to a halt and
looked at me in a bewildered kind of way, as
if she'd tied herself up in her words. "I'm just
saying there were lots of men she knew, husbands of
friends, men who moved in the same circle. But I
don't suspect anyone particularly, I just
think in the last few weeks of her life there was
something going on."
"Something?"
"Hmm, maybe I should say someone. Her
attention kept wandering. She had this excited,
secret look. She let me down a couple of
times when we'd arranged to meet, which she never used
to do, and then made some pathetic excuse. She was
fidgety, kind of. Not all there. She'd fallen
for a man. I'm sure of it."