‘Oh,’ she said simply.
‘Oh,’ I replied.
She was on the opposite flight of stairs, with the gap between us, and I didn’t want to get any closer.
‘I wish you weren’t here,’ she said.
‘The building’s surrounded. There’s nowhere to go.’
She thought about this for a moment and nodded. She climbed over the bannister and, holding on to it, looked down at the drop.
It was at least fifty feet to the floor.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.
‘Why? Why shouldn’t I be ridiculous?’ There were tears in her eyes.
‘Because you’re a young woman, your whole life ahead of you, this is—’
‘What?’ she laughed. ‘What is it?’
‘Something you can still come back from.’
‘Now who’s being ridiculous? What do they give people for murder?’
‘It depends if they did it, it depends if they were coerced or threatened.’
‘Let’s say that they weren’t. Let’s say they were in love and got swept up in the whole thing …’
‘Years,’ I said. ‘A decade at the most. With good behaviour, you’d be out in less. Still you, still young.’
She barked out another laugh. ‘To do what? Stack shelves until I’m eighty-five? I’d rather fucking die.’ As she said this I looked at the hand she held the bannister with. The wrist it was connected to. It seemed at the time like I’d never seen such a slender body, such thin fingers and bones.
‘No you wouldn’t,’ I said as she looked at the drop again. ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ I said more urgently. ‘The first time we met, do you remember how you felt when you saw the violence against Ali?’ She looked at me. ‘Death’s worse. It’s a thousand times worse in every way.’
She looked at me pitiably. ‘I was concerned and upset. I was horrified. I knew it was all fucked. Even then. I knew it had caught up …’ She looked at me. ‘I was worried about myself, Detective. And death? I’ve seen that close up, too.’
A heavy thought occurred to me. ‘Cherry,’ I said.
‘Cherry? He was a man in a fucking wig. He was disgusting.’
‘What happened?’
‘He’d heard everything,’ she shrugged. ‘He’d heard the man in 413 telling Ali about us. He was laughing. He was going to leave a mystery behind, he said. With any luck it’d make us sweat. Lead the police to us.’ She looked at me meaningfully. ‘After, when you lot arrived and saw the body, we knew we could rely on Ali not to talk. But Cherry …’ she said, satirising the name. ‘He wasn’t hard to find from Ali’s description. A man in a pink wig and a mini-skirt, selling his arse on Oxford Road. I did offer him money, I did try.’ She momentarily lost her balance and then gripped the bannister tightly. I could see her knuckles turning white. ‘He actually thought I wanted to fuck him.’
‘Where was this?’ I said, taking a step closer.
Her slip had made me feel light-headed.
‘Some disgusting room in China Town. He said he didn’t want money. I laughed at him and he got offended. He had the nerve to be offended. I knew he only wanted more, and I knew he’d never keep his mouth shut. So I shut it for him.’
‘We have a witness who says Cherry was taken from her flat by a man,’ I said. She looked up at me. ‘I think it was the same man who just assaulted Natasha Reeve.’
‘Freddie Coyle?’ she said with a smile.
‘I wonder why his wife didn’t recognize him?’
The smile slid off her face. ‘Well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Another problem. His solution was to meet her here and kill her.’ She swallowed. ‘That was why I had to come. Cherry was one thing. Killing Natasha was just stupid. Insane. I tried to stop him …’
‘You did,’ I said, but her eyes had glazed over and she wasn’t listening. ‘She’s going to be OK. If you were the one who intervened then you probably saved her life down there.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ she said, looking down, breathing heavily. She smiled. Nodded. ‘That’s good to know.’
She looked directly at me.
‘Please—’ I said.
She let go of the bannister and vanished. I closed my eyes. There was a terrible silence before her body crashed down on to the marble floor, fifty feet below. I didn’t move for a moment. At length I opened my eyes, remembered to breathe. I steadied myself and put both hands on the bannister, hoping my senses were wrong. Hoping for a miracle. When I looked down I saw that there hadn’t been one.
13
The door to 413 was open. I climbed the short staircase leading to it. I heard the traffic and street sounds from Oxford Road, felt the breeze on my skin. I walked through the doorway and stepped back against the wall. The light came from a desk lamp, giving the room a moody, intimate tone. The glare of the city outside cast moving, kaleidoscopic shadows across the walls.
At the far side of the room, sitting in a chair, facing the open window, was the solid, immovable silhouette of a man. He looked like a negative image of himself.
‘It’s over,’ I said.
He didn’t move.
The room had been completely torn apart, as though in a frenzy, a rage. Clearly the man had been looking for something. The smoking gun that I’d implied was hidden here somewhere. He turned and looked at me. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time.
The man I’d known as Freddie Coyle.
‘Is she alive?’ he asked, disinterestedly.
‘It depends who you mean.’
‘Natasha,’ he said. ‘My wife …’
‘I’m afraid so. She’s even lucid. She didn’t recognize you, though, Freddie …’
‘Funny that,’ he said with a weak smile.
‘Which means you must have changed quite a bit in the last six months.’
‘Be the change you want to see in the world …’ he said, staring at nothing.
‘He was helping you to change identity, wasn’t he? The man you murdered?’
He looked at me. ‘That’s quite a leap, Detective …’
‘Speaking of which, Aneesa just threw herself down the centre of the stairs. She’s dead,’ I said bluntly. ‘So maybe you’ll get it if my patience is a bit thin.’ It was the first time anything I’d said had registered on his face. I thought the news hit him hard and decided to exploit it. ‘Tell me what all this was about.’
He shook his head like he barely knew it himself. I was angry. I went forward, took him roughly by the arm and marched him out of the room. ‘This is unnecessary,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel like talking.’ When we reached the landing I pushed him towards the bannister.
‘Look at her,’ I said.
He gave me a desperate smile. ‘I don’t want to.’
I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the bannister. ‘Look at her,’ I repeated. He did. From where we stood, Aneesa was a shadow, a smudge on the ground floor. He screwed his eyes shut and began to shake.
‘Let’s get closer,’ I said, pushing him towards the stairs.
‘Listen …’
‘Too late for that. Let’s go and have a look at your handiwork.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that.’
‘Get used to it. In prison they’ll have a different nickname for you every day. Maybe that’ll suit someone going through an identity crisis.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I took him by the arm and dragged him down the stairs with me. ‘I said I didn’t want to look.’ He was starting to sound hysterical. Perhaps we both were.
‘There are two ways down,’ I said. ‘You’re more than welcome to follow her.’
‘I don’t feel well …’
‘I don’t care.’
‘What do you want? You said you wanted to talk …’
‘You could always try, but I want to get up close to her. See what that kind of impact can do.’
‘What do you want to know?’ He was panicking now, trying to pull away from me.
‘How did you meet the man who died up there?’
‘Through an old client, a man living in tax exile.’
‘But you needed something a little more complicated, you needed a complete reinvention …’
‘Freddie was ripe for it. He had no friends, he never socialized. When he started having the affair with Geoff, I found out.’
‘So you decided to put a wedge between him and the only people in his life?’