Transgressions (30 page)

“Excuse me?”

Registering it was a woman’s voice, the girl now stopped and turned but didn’t come any closer.

In the car she took a deep breath. “I . . . I couldn’t help noticing. I mean, I just came out from a party back there and saw you standing at the bus stop. You’ve obviously missed the last bus.”

“Yeah,” she said with about as much friendliness as a Rott-weiler.

“Well, I’m on my way north, too. I mean, that’s where I live and I wondered if I could give you a lift home. You won’t get a taxi now in this weather and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

The girl stared at her. She was not unattractive—dark hair framing a heart-shaped face with a cute little nose going raw with the cold. She put her head to one side, almost as if she were trying to smell out any possible trouble. A splash of snowflake hit one eye and she blinked it away. “Er, thanks, but I’m fine. I only live a few blocks away.”

Now it was clear they were both lying. Obviously the girl had detected something. In the car she tried frantically to think of something to say that might reassure her, but her mind went blank. The young woman had turned away and was already moving off down the street again.

Shit. She tried to put herself in her place. A deserted street late at night and a woman offering you a lift. There would have been a time when you wouldn’t have questioned it. But that was before the sexual appetite of Rosemary West had been splattered all over the front pages, reminding one in turn of Myra Hindley and how much the world had changed. Now women in cars could mean men in the backseats. Now the world was so fucked up that girls could die from being too careful.

In the mirror she thought she detected a move from his doorway. Oh, no, you don’t. She pulled out again and caught up with the girl twenty yards on.

“No, please, listen, don’t go.” Her voice was louder now. In his doorway he would be able to hear every word carried through snow silence. So be it. “I mean, I don’t want to scare you, but you must have heard that there have been attacks on young women in this area recently. Apparently there’s some nut going ’round with a hammer, pulling girls off the streets, raping and battering them. It was in the local paper this week. The police have put out a warning about young women walking home alone.”

“Oh, Christ.” The girl hesitated. Clearly her life was too full to bother with the local paper. But somebody must have said something about it, you could tell from the flicker that crossed her face.

She rammed the point home. “I know you’re probably nervous of accepting a lift, but I honestly think you should take it. I mean, I couldn’t help noticing that guy by the bus stop. He . . . well, I thought I saw him start to follow you down the road.”

This time the panic showed on her face as she darted her eyes back to the street behind her.

“Oh, Christ,” the girl said again, but this time she came closer to the driver’s window to check her out more closely. What did she see? A woman who had got straight out of bed and into the car without so much as a glance in the mirror. She probably looked worse than he did. She could feel her wavering. I should have brushed my hair, she thought. What had those young girls who accepted a lift in the Wests’ car been thinking at this moment? Nice couple, no doubt. Her mumsy face and figure making up for any hint of wildness in his eyes. She kept her gaze steadily on the young woman’s face. Believe your instincts, she wanted to say to her, that’s what I did and I’m still alive now.

The girl glanced into the back of the car, trying to check behind the seat as well as on it. Smart cookie. Then, at last, she said, “I live just beyond Manor House, about two or three miles from here. Is that on your way?”

“Sure, no problem.” She grinned with wild relief. “Get in.”

As the girl walked around to the passenger seat Elizabeth glanced in the mirror and thought she saw a hand flick out from the doorway. How does it feel? she thought triumphantly. Having the prize snatched from right underneath your erection? May the snow freeze your prick off before you get it home, you bastard. She pulled away from the curb while the girl was still doing up her seat belt.

I
n normal weather the journey would have taken fifteen minutes, maybe less. Now it took twice as long. The roads were like skating rinks. Just before Finsbury Park they came across an accident; a van had wrapped itself around a streetlight and there were two police cars on either side with half the street cordoned off.

“Looks like he missed the turning altogether,” she said quietly.

“Yeah,” replied the girl. “I hope he’s all right.”

They crawled along Seven Sisters Road, a Local Authority salt spreader rumbling toward them out of the darkness like some mutant UFO, yellow lights flashing in swirling snow mists.

“Amazing weather,” the girl said under her breath.

“Yes,” she muttered, “I can’t remember the last time London looked like this.”

“They say it’s going to be a white Christmas.”

“You think it’ll last that long?”

“Don’t see why not. There’s only two days to go.”

Two days. No. It must be more than that. How long had it been since that moment in the supermarket? Two days? No, more, surely. She realized that she could no longer remember; that caught between work, sleep, and fear she had lost her bearings. The girl was saying something. . . .

“Sorry?”

“I said, if it is, it’ll be the first in twenty-six years.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And there wasn’t nearly as much snow as this then.”

She glanced across at her. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-six herself, probably hadn’t even been born then. “How do you know?”

“Research. I had to do it for a program idea I was working on.”

Having started talking, she didn’t want to stop. It turned out she was a receptionist for a small independent television company working out of Docklands. It was only her second job, but she was determined to make it into production, so she was doing extra work on the side. The company was just starting out and there was hardly any work around but they were very democratic, and the boss was really encouraging. He’d promised to put forward any ideas she had. He’d also promised to take her with him to a couple of TV festivals so she could meet the people, because in this business it wasn’t so much what you knew as who you knew. Mind you, it took a long time to make all the contacts. Not like the little town she came from in Devon. You could put all the movers and shakers together in the back room of one of the pubs in Axminster and still have room to spare. Still, London was much more exciting. Of course it would be better with a car; she wouldn’t have got stuck like she did tonight if she had her own transport, but on her salary . . . well, she’d just have to wait till she got her first idea accepted. It was, she seemed to suggest, only a matter of time. “So”—she paused briefly for breath—“and what job is it that you do?”

The traffic lights before Manor House were coming up. She extemporized something about translating for a publishing company, then steered the conversation gently back to the bus stop.

“Yeah, he gave me quite a fright actually. I didn’t see him there at all. He told me I’d already missed the last bus and that it would probably be at least an hour before the night one came.”

“Was that what he was waiting for?”

“I dunno. S’pose so. I thought he was going to offer to share a taxi home. But he didn’t.”

“Would you have taken it if he had?”

She looked at her with scorn. “I’m not that stupid. There was something weird about him. That’s what decided me; I mean, when you said you thought he was following me.”

She had a sudden flash of a litter-strewn alleyway, and a young woman pinned up against a wall. The jeans wouldn’t be easy to pull off—a tough enough job when you wanted to get naked let alone when you didn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t bother with the zipper and studs. Just use a knife. How would he keep her quiet? He would need both hands to hold her down while he got the clothes off her. Would he gag her? They hadn’t mentioned that in the papers. But, then, it hardly mattered. In this weather there would be no one listening. She shivered. She was going to ask her if she would recognize him again, but she never got around to it.

“It’s just here.”

“What?”

“You can drop me just here.”

They were still on the main road. She came to a halt. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I only live three or four doors along that side street. It’s fine, really. Thanks a lot.”

Was it something she’d said? Maybe not. Maybe it was only common sense not to show a stranger exactly where you lived. She decided not to argue. There was no way he could have followed them here, and the chances of there being two rapists operating in the same five-mile radius of London on a night like tonight seemed slim. Even in hell there have to be some statistical rules.

She sat in the car and watched until she saw her walk down the road and turn in through one particular front gate. Then she locked the car doors from the inside and drove slowly home.

I
t stopped snowing somewhere on the journey back and the wind died down. With so little traffic the streets were eerily beautiful. Even Holloway Road had a kind of majesty to it. When she got out of the car outside her house the silence was almost religious, the slam of the car door like thunder in the night.

She looked around. The road was shining with frost crystals, the parked cars like stranded sheep, coated in thick white fur four or five inches deep. Within a few hours there would be glove tracks all over them as the local kids scooped up an armory of snowballs. Not now though, now it was pure magic, the glow of the streetlights throwing pale shadows on the unspoiled surfaces.

She looked up into the night sky. No stars. It felt heavy up there, as if there were more to come. At the top window of the house next door she caught sight of a face, like a small white moon, pressed against the glass. Her neighbors had a six-year-old son whom she occasionally saw on his way to or from school. Sweet kid. A little overprotected for his age, she sometimes thought, but, then, what did she know? Not only would this be his first white Christmas but he would never in his whole life have seen so much snow. No wonder it was too exciting for sleep.

She waved up to him. He waved back, then ducked shyly out of sight. She tried to remember what that feeling was like, when your heart was ready to burst from the wonder of it all. Then you grew up and what did you get in its place? A little hard-won wisdom? If you were lucky the occasional stretch of peace? It wasn’t enough. I want the wonder back, she thought fiercely. I want to feel that intense again.

What was it her mother used to say to her? Be careful what you wish for. You might find you get what you want, only to discover that it isn’t what you bargained for.

The second she turned the key in the lock she knew something was wrong. But she had no idea what it was. She stood in the hall and listened. Nothing. Not a sound. She snapped on the light and went to the bottom of the stairs. From where she was standing she could see right up to the top of the house. Still nothing. Was he in here somewhere? Was that what she could feel? No. It wasn’t possible. How could he possibly have got in?

Then she saw the answering machine on the hall table, its message light blinking the number 1. There had been nothing on it before she went out, she was sure of that, because she had erased the previous messages sometime yesterday afternoon. Keeping her eyes all around her she reached out a hand and pressed the rewind button. The machine buzzed into life. The tape whirled back, stopped, then started again.

She hadn’t heard his voice since that night, but there was no mistaking it: flat, sibilant, bleached of emotion, as if he had thought of what he was going to say then practiced too much. Funny how it didn’t quite fit with the tension of his body.

“Hello, I723LPD.” It took her a second to realize what the number referred to. “Women drivers. They’re all the same. Don’t have a clue about whose right of way it is. Well, I just want you to know that if you
ever
cut me up again, I’ll do the same back to you.” There was a brief silence. “Or is that what you were after?” The words made her shiver. They made him laugh. “Snowing cats and dogs, wouldn’t you say? Sleep well.”

The machine clicked off. She grabbed the phone and punched in 1471: British Telecom’s answer to heavy breathers. The female computer voice told her that she had received one call at 12:45
A.M.
, then quoted a local number. She scribbled it down and before she let herself think further dialed it back. The same disjointed tranquilized tones cooed into her ear: “Sorry. This number does not receive incoming calls.” Phone booths. You find them on a million street corners.

She went back to the tape and replayed it, pondering every word. “I just want you to know that if you ever cut me up again, I’ll do the same to you.” If she played that to someone else now they wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Of course not. That was the whole point. But what about the last bit, “snowing cats and dogs”? What the hell did that mean? She thought about it. Then she raced down to the kitchen.

The door was locked, and when she got inside, the room was dark and empty, the sheet drawn across the French windows exactly as she had left it. She rushed to the lights and switched on the patio light.