Odette clapped a hand to her nose. She stepped back from the doorway, as though, if she moved aside, the smell would leave politely like a patron. Was it a gas leak? She thought not; the stench was too stomach-turning, too organic. Until she found the source, opening to the public was out of the question. Rearranging her scarf into a makeshift mask, and wincing as a tassel caught her braids, she entered the foyer.
Her soles squeaked on the Minton floor. The peeling radiator ticked. Nothing was obviously out of place. It was the first time the museum had opened since Christmas. Maybe, in the meantime, a rat had died in the walls. Or a soil pipe had burst. Odette walked to the exhibition hall and considered her options. Strictly speaking, she should telephone the museum’s manager, Sally. But Odette was new. She wished to make a good impression by solving the problem herself.
A steel crook, for opening the high windows, rested against a cabinet of Roman dolls. Odette picked it up and hooked it through each window latch. Blessed ventilation. If the air cleared, she might be able to tell where the reek originated. Crook still in hand, she zigzagged across the hall. At the back of the room the pungency made her cough. It was worst by the door to the basement stairs. She was drawing closer.
Sally hadn’t included the basement when she’d shown Odette round. ‘Nothing’s in there but the boiler room,’ she’d said, ‘and some toy storage.’ Odette walked downstairs now, holding the scarf tighter to her face. The passageway below was narrow and dark. She flipped a Bakelite switch. The pale yellow bulb flickered and made her blink. Cracked subway tiles lined the walls. The entrance to the boiler room read Staff Only. Paint, or some other dark liquid, had leaked under the doorway and left a maroon stain on the lino. Not quite maroon. Noir rouge. Like a slice of agate; like her mother’s nail polish.
Was now the time to ring Sally? Or possibly – the police?
Odette warned herself not to overreact. The stain may look like blood, but was that likely? Might there not be a more sensible, everyday explanation? Her imagination sometimes leapt to the wildest scenarios, and she had learnt to counteract them with level-headed questions. Better to be sure what was in that room, before she rang anyone.
She turned the handle, but the boiler room door didn’t budge. Puzzling. It couldn’t be locked, because there was no keyhole. She tried again, then leant her full weight against it. When it gave way she nearly lost her balance.
Her eyes watered, and she gagged on the putrid air. Something crunched underfoot – little white polygons of bone in blood. By the light of the corridor, Odette could see the door had been bolted. The brass fitting swung underneath the handle. Her shove had been enough to loosen the screws. But – if the door had been locked from the inside…
‘Hello?’ Odette gasped. ‘Is anyone there?’
The boiler groaned and Odette heard the buzzing of flies. One of them flew from the shadows. It stopped to feed in a puddle on the floor, inches away from an abandoned pistol. Odette swivelled, searching for the gun’s owner, and cried out. A tumble of limbs and cloth was slumped against the wall. Part of the woman’s head was missing. The skin that remained was marbled – like a piece of jade, Odette thought.
Her hands shook. She needed to call the police, but she couldn’t look away from the corpse. During her archaeology degree she’d handled human skeletons. That hadn’t prepared her for the violence of this death. The rotting flesh reminded her, as dry bones could not, that she too was made from fat and lymph and sinew. Humanity was reduced to nothing more than briefly animated meat. Odette stared and stared at the broken body. How could anyone wreak such damage? Until she understood their reasons, the world would feel broken too.
*
Her confusion deepened once the police arrived. The small museum was overrun with strangers in uniforms and hazmat suits, creating boundaries with tape. An officer told her to sit in the foyer. Someone gave her a cup of tea but she only drank a sip because it was bitter.
She had expected to see Sally, or some other representative of the museum. No one came. Odette soon realised that the police weren’t admitting anyone past the crime scene barrier at the front steps of the museum. The only reason Odette was on the police side was because she’d been first on the scene. She was part of the evidence that they needed to collect and analyse. Presumably Sally was being questioned outside – or at the station, or even on the phone. Odette preferred to think she was somewhere nearby. It made her feel less isolated.
A short round woman with a shining face carried a table into the foyer. The wood was splintering. The woman sat on a folding chair and said she’d take Odette’s statement. Her voice was too loud. She used words of one syllable, as if she were speaking to a child. Except you’d smile at a child, and this woman wasn’t smiling.
‘Where are you from?’ she said.
‘I’m staying with my parents in Hounslow. Just for the Christmas holidays – normally I’m in halls in Cambridge. I’m a student.’
The woman didn’t write the response down. She repeated: ‘Hounslow?’
Odette sensed the underlying sentiment: if you were brown you didn’t belong. She allowed a brief silence to elapse, before giving the answer the woman wanted. ‘I’ve lived in England since I was a child. I was born in Seychelles.’
She watched the woman write THE SEYCHELLES in her notebook.
‘And you’ve just started cleaning here?’ the police officer said.
‘Not cleaning – volunteering, to get some work experience before I graduate.’
They went on to the morning’s events. Odette gave the details with detachment. She listened to herself and wondered how she was speaking so calmly, when there was a woman who, below their feet, had once been alive but wasn’t any longer. Her words dried mid-sentence. The woman repeated the preceding question.
After the statement Odette had to stay in the foyer, in case there were any further questions for her that day. No one took the table away. Another bitter tea was handed to her, and this time she drank it, not knowing how long it would be before she could have a drink at home. The question about her origins had disquieted her. It said the police saw her as out-of-place, and it was a short step from ‘out-of-place’ to ‘suspicious’. The afternoon edged closer to evening. She was moved from one side of the foyer to the other because she was by the doorframe, and the police needed to verify it hadn’t been forced. Finally, the round shining officer returned, this time to take her fingerprints.
‘I didn’t touch anything apart from the door,’ Odette said.
The officer ignored that comment. When the prints were complete, she said, ‘You can go. We have everything we need from you for today.’
‘Thank you.’ Odette’s shoulders slumped.
It had long turned dark outside. Odette walked past the police officers still scattered round the barrier.
A woman, dressed in leathers and a helmet, leant on a motorcycle at the side of the road. She beckoned Odette to her.
Odette took a few steps closer. ‘Hello?’
The woman raised her visor to reveal brown eyes, almost russet, beneath the street lamps.
‘I have something for you,’ she said. In her hand was a small card. ‘Victim support. In case you need someone to talk to.’
The card had the name and contact details of a psychologist. Dr Ruby Rebello.
‘Are you with the police?’ Odette asked, confused. During the interview no one had mentioned victim support.
‘No, I run a private clinic, but I work with a lot of victims of crime. I treat trauma.’
Odette tucked the card in her coat pocket.
‘Thank you,’ she said, to be polite. She wasn’t the victim of this crime. Once she was at home, in her own bed, the world would surely start to make sense again. She wouldn’t be plagued with questions of how this death had occurred. She wouldn’t constantly be wondering why. It was the year of her final examinations. Soon she’d forget that poor dead woman. In the stress of revision and looking for a job, Odette would hardly ever think about her at all.
But no matter how sternly Odette repeated this, she knew it wasn’t true.
4
APRIL 1968
Margaret