Dead Pretty (5 page)

He threw the letters down and managed to go into the bedroom. Slowly pushing the door open, he expected anything. The vein was really letting him have it now, pulsating, and pounding in time with his heart.

The bedroom was empty. Someone had cleaned it up. Last year Mark had attempted his first DIY, stripping the bedroom of carpets and sanding down the floorboards. Lena had wanted it this way and it was better for his dust allergy, but a carpet would have been much harder to clean. The bed was freshly made, and the sheets drawn tight, hotel style. They were new and he didn't recognise them. He'd made it easy for them by running, given them the time to do this. Mark decided it must be
them
, not
him.
He sat down on the bed, then sank down. He wanted to immerse himself here, where Lena had died, but wasn't sure why. Need maybe, not reason. Grief not action. He found it hard to get his breath, and his eyes were threatening to lose control again.

His eyes searched the room, everything was where it should be, but as the sun came through the blinds he saw something on the lampshade, a red speck on the yellow shade. He knew it was blood, her blood. He stretched out and rubbed at it with a finger, and particles came away. They'd missed this, or maybe left it for him to find. To make the last day real.

Chapter Four

Lena's removal could mean anything. Mark's gut reaction that he might be blamed did not hold up now. He'd ran for nothing, and relied on someone like Kelly, which had given them time to take Lena away. He'd performed how they'd expected, like a rat on a wheel, and the thought tortured him.

He could hardly call in the police. They'd think he was barking, then they'd start checking up on him, and might think something else.

The phone rang. It put a charge through Mark and it rang many times before he decided to answer it. It was someone from Lena's modelling agency. She hadn't turned up for a job. He said she was ill. He was surprised he could keep his voice so calm, though his guts twisted with each word. It seemed a betrayal. When he put the phone down he pressed 1471 to make sure it was the agency number. It was, but he couldn't trust anyone from now on.

He began to go through drawers and cupboards. All Lena's stuff was in place. All his. If anyone had looked through this they had been very careful. Lena had been butchered, maybe left for him to find, or maybe they hadn't expected him to come back when he did. Her killing was a savage act that made no sense and spoke of madness, perhaps hatred, emotions that always had causes. There was no time to grieve or let anger take over, only time to get even.

Most of the stuff in the flat was Lena's; Mark had never been an accumulator but Lena had more than made up for this. He was surrounded by her, all the bits she brought back from her trips, the endless clothes, some never worn. One day we'll have a house, she told him, there'll be lots more space then. Mark picked up a doll from Amsterdam, its mute, glazed face looked up at him, with fat beige cheeks, fatter blue eyes and lips the colour of blood. She was always bringing kids' stuff like this home.

Lena had come into his life out of the blue, and had been taken out of it just as suddenly, yet she had seemed so normal, childlike at times, someone who needed looking after. Only normal girls didn't get killed the way she did.

Mark had made enemies in his job, lots of them, but nothing to warrant this. Not remotely. His working world was peopled with marriage cheats, small-time fraudsters, debtors, inefficient tricksters in the main. Sometimes the agency told him a caught-out husband was up for it, but not if they ever met. He'd never had to use what he'd learned as a younger man. His physique and aura had always been enough. He dealt mainly with the middle-classes anyway, they were the people who could pay, and they were the most predictable. To think a cheating husband with a grudge against him could track him down and do this to Lena was ridiculous. It was crazy to even go there but he was desperately seeking answers, any answers.

Mark took one of Lena's dresses from the wardrobe, the blue one she'd worn in Paris, his favourite. They'd gone on Eurostar. You won't have to fly, she said, it'll be great, and it had been, a weekend that stretched into four days. His first time abroad and he'd enjoyed all of it, to his surprise. It was a trip that confirmed their relationship, and moved it forward. He'd been amazed that he'd managed to keep her for more than the usual few weeks, and alert to the fact that maybe his life was going somewhere, that someone could look at him with something other than fear or contempt. He was still an outsider, that would never really change, and maybe he didn't want it to, but with Lena he no longer felt a complete loner, he felt he could be a part of the small world she created for him. He could go out and work, then come home to someone. What other people did.

The dress still smelt of the Guerlain he'd bought her in Paris. She'd told him how to pronounce it and laughed with surprise and pleasure when he'd bought some for her. Lena had had an ease with languages while he struggled with his own. Closing his eyes Mark saw her body form up in all its glory, he didn't want this image but Lena forced her way in. He saw the minor imperfections in her skin, the mole on her lower back, the colour of her eyes that seemed to change from blue to the palest green in different lights. He clenched his eyes tighter, opened them again, rubbed at them, but she was still there. His mind was playing tricks, it had every right to. Mark let the dress fall from his grasp and allowed exhaustion to take him.

He woke a few hours later, disorientated, his head still full of insane imagery, and the nerve still with him. It started up again as soon as he was conscious, throbbing out its message against the side of his head.

Something was moving in the room. Mark prepared to spring up, his hands clenched into fists, then Danni appeared, inches from his face. They'd always shared a mutual disdain of each other and the cat had never been this close to him before, not even when he fed her. Now she was face to face with him, studying him inquisitively. She was confused, maybe traumatised by what she'd seen, maybe even willing to turn to Mark for succour.

If only you could talk, mate, Mark muttered, as he reached out and ruffled Danni's head.

She did not spring back, hiss or scream, her usual reactions to him, but accepted the fondle. Danni came nearer Mark's head, sharing the pillow with him and started up a cracked kind of purr. Lena had brought the cat in one day, declared her Danni, and that it was now part of the family. She'd actually used the word
family.
Danni had been hanging round in the street outside the modelling agency, and she'd adopted it, much to Mark's disgust. He was glad of the cat now. Danni was warm and alive, and she needed him.

Mark moved Danni away, got up, and opened the window. It was hot and stuffy in the room and well past midday. He looked down on the park, which was full of the kind of green you only get in a British summer. Lush, thick and safe. It looked safe anyway. He knew better. The park had filled up, kids and mothers mainly. Excited laughter drifted across to him, the ice cream van chimes again, a woman's anxious call to her child. For a moment Mark was taken back to his youth, when he had always got up this time, if not later. He felt ashamed he'd dropped off like this, sleeping so soundly a day after Lena had been murdered. He should already be on the trail of the killers, but he did not know where the trail began, let alone what lay at its end.

Danni was looking for Lena, sniffing around, eyeing the bed suspiciously, and eyeing him suspiciously, now that he was up. The cat was ready to bolt again, and Mark was envious. Danni could leave, latch on to another sucker, Lena fading from her memory in days. She followed him into the kitchen and whined for food. Mark fed himself also, some tuna he made into sandwiches with the remainder of the bread, washed down by orange juice and two cups of strong coffee. Eating also made him ashamed. He wanted to hunt for her killer or killers, and feed on the adrenaline of the chase, not bother with food and sleep. The need for revenge welled up in him, he didn't care how bloody it might be, he just wanted to give it back to someone, and could not see any further than this. Mark doubted there
was
any further than this for him. He was not quite thirty yet it seemed as if he'd lived a long time.

There'd been two good years with Lena, but before then, a trail of wasted childhood, struggle, alienation, losing a brother and being banged up. He could count out these events in his mind quickly, counting out his past was like counting money, it passed easily through his hands. It had always seemed him against the world, until Lena came into his life. Now he was back to square one. Maybe this was what he was made for, all he was good for, maybe Lena was just a dream, a device to trick him into thinking life might be better. They'd called him
Psycho Eyes
when he was a kid, sometimes he'd hated it, usually he'd liked it. It fitted his rages, and marked him out on the estate as someone not to mess with, but it was a title he always felt he had to live up to. To assume the role of the hardest kid on the block, to go about wasting his life while other kids, the ones who feared and even respected him, did better. Looking back, he could see that he'd only ever been a one-eyed king of a blind and useless kingdom.

The kitchen was full of Lena. She'd often watched the small TV here, smoking the occasional cigarette, knowing that he hated it, but unable to stop completely. There were several photographs of her pinned on their notice board and one of them together. A night shot, the Eiffel Tower looming behind them, lit up like it was hung with stars. She'd liked images and collected a lot of them. Lena had always seemed dismayed there was so little visual stuff from his past. No baby shots, just a few badly composed kid mug shots his mother had taken, not much else. The police had the best ones, on file. He'd stolen lots of cameras from the houses he burgled but had always sold them on for peanuts. Even then, he sensed his life did not warrant much recording. There was one good photograph of Shane, which his mother had paid to have done. Mark took it from a drawer and looked at it now, at the two-year-old who looked so little like him. Blond, blue-eyed, falsely angelic, butter melting in his hair, but never his mouth. He'd been his mother's new life at the time, someone to start again with, someone who would at least be hers in his early years. But he was quickly taken away, like all her transient pleasures, and his disappearance was never solved. The wound was still open, it always would be, and Mark felt it dig at him now. He put Shane's photo alongside one of Lena's and for a weak moment imagined Shane as their child. He wondered if they'd have got that far. They'd never talked about it, but he thought about it now. Danni cried out, as if sensing the strangeness in Mark, then she was gone, speeding through the cat-flap without a backwards glance. If she had any sense, Mark thought, she'd be gone for good, done with this place and the horror she'd seen.

Mark thought of going down to see Julie, his mother. It had been a long time. They'd patched things up as much as they could after losing Shane, but it would be a visit at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. He could never unload Lena on her, it would take Julie further into hell. If she hadn't stopped blaming him for Shane at least she had stopped thinking he had anything to do with it, but Lena would start it all up again. It would be another bloody tragedy coming from him. Julie had met Lena once, about a year ago. He had taken her down to the Welsh coast, at Lena's insistence. Julie was living near Cardiff now, a housing association flat that seemed to suit her. She was anonymous there, her past had not travelled from the estate with her. Shane would always be part of that hill-top dwelling place and she'd never go back there. Mark hadn't been back either. They'd both moved on, as much as they could. Julie had also done with men, as far as Mark knew. There'd been plenty in his childhood, his upbringing was bound with a chain of them, a succession of pathetic ‘uncles' that had dropped in and out of his life. Mark doubted Julie would ever bother again, she could never take another chance, though she was still under fifty. It seemed like neither of them had ever been young, maybe there'd been no time for it in their lives. Grim survival did not do young very well.

Julie was quite isolated now. She'd been distant from her parents as long as he could remember, which meant there'd been no grandparents for him. Julie's mother had never come to terms with Julie's early pregnancy or her choice of men and when she moved to the estate their relationship became even more distant. Mark had grown up thinking this was normal. Julie's father had died a few years back but her mother was still around. Mark hadn't seen her since Shane went, and doubted that Julie had. A difficult line of communication, stretched by guilt and blame, finally snapped with Shane. It made no sense to go down there, it hadn't made sense seeing Tony. Mark wasn't sure if he was playing for time, or just pissing into the wind.

Julie had been impressed with Lena, and a little surprised that she was with Mark. They'd all drunk too much, and the two women cried over Shane. How do you stand it, Lena asked, then cursed herself for the drunken stupidity of her question. Because we have to, Mark told her, we've always had to. ‘Hang on to her' was the last thing Julie said to him, ‘if you can'.

He couldn't. Mark needed a drink. He needed a drink badly, he wanted to lose himself in it, to punish himself with booze, so that his thoughts might be wiped out for a few hours. He saw no need to go undercover now. If he was being watched, so be it. He didn't know what the fuck was going on anyway, so any development would be welcome. He put the rest of his money back in the tin, it was probably safer in the flat than on him, especially if he got drunk. He went to the Queen's Head, even Kelly might be company this night. The Irishman's watering hole was a Victorian pub, and little in it had changed in a hundred years; no one had thought it worthy of a makeover.

Kelly was there, he was always there, watching the racing on the telly. If he was nervous to see Mark he didn't show it.

‘Sit down, Mr Richards. I just won sixty quid. That nag there, Poison Whisky.' Kelly dabbed a finger at his newspaper. ‘Had to bet on that, didn't I? I've drunk enough of the stuff in my time. Eh, do you want me for anything, Mr Richards?'

‘No.'

‘Shall I get us some drinks?'

‘OK.'

Kelly was buzzing. He's enjoyed the last few days, Mark thought, it's been lucrative for him. Now he thinks I'm his friend. Now he thinks that I want to drink with him. Well, he's right on the second count, I'm that desperate. Kelly brought back two pints and two large chasers.

‘Get that down you, Mr Richards. You're going through a bad patch, I can tell. Dunno why though, with a piece like that Lena. Where is she anyway, ain't seen her for a while. Eh, you 'avn't had a fight, 'ave you?'

Kelly's thin face broke into a grin, each tooth trying to outdo the next in crumbling decay. Mark drank the whisky first. One quick gulp and it was down, searing his chest like hot iron. He was barely aware of Kelly's rambling talk. It was humid, almost fetid, in the pub. The oppressive air of the underclass. Mark remembered the books he sometimes looked at in the houses he'd targeted, the ones with lots of pictures in them. This pub reminded him of a book he'd actually taken from the house of one of his school teachers, that weed who taught history. An old book full of dust, and lots of little sketches by someone called Hogarth. It was from another time but the people he drew were in here now. Same wasted, wizened faces, darting eyes, people at the bottom fighting for any scraps that might filter down, kept going by boozy dreams. Though it was risky, Mark had kept that book in his bedroom for a while, cutting out the sketches and pinning them on his wall. Somehow they made him feel better.