Significance (33 page)

He picked up another folded slip, opened it and was shocked to see how long it was and how many items were on it. Dress £45, dress £55, shoes £49.95, dress £45, bag £29.95, accessories £10.99, accessories £20, dress £65, knitwear £55. Total payable £375.89!

He snatched up another receipt – this one was from Next and totalled £128.97.

Suddenly the voices of the agent and the young couple were coming back down the hallway.

‘It's a very short walk to the tube station at Hammersmith, and you have the shops on King Street, the Lyric and of course the river is no distance at all…'

‘And when might it be available?'

The three interlopers had drawn to a halt near the study and the agent had peered in at Thom, a dubious expression on his pinched face. ‘We can discuss availability in a moment,' he said to the couple. Then he turned to Thom. ‘Sir, we're done here. Perhaps you could ask Miss Swann to get in touch.'

And with that all three departed leaving Thom alone in Lucy's flat, which seemed an odd thing to do. Except, of course, for the fact that he had followed them in without being noticed – meaning that the agent must have assumed that Thom was already in the flat and had emerged from another room before confronting them in the living room. Thom felt that he had every right to be there as Lucy's boyfriend, even if Lucy wouldn't see it that way.

As he considered the situation he grew increasingly troubled. No, not troubled – angry. He was angry because it had been so easy to get into her flat, angry with the letting company for beginning the process of finding a new tenant, and angry at the young couple for their elegant insouciance, and furious with Lucy for her stubbornness and stupidity and recklessness and silly childish silence.

Lucy…

Now they were gone, he felt Lucy's absence even more palpably.

He was still holding the receipts. Four new dresses. Over five hundred pounds spent on clothes in one go! It was so unlike Lucy.

Feeling fury tinged with guilt, but desperately trying to justify himself, he made his way to her bedroom where he opened both doors of her wardrobe. Hanging there he saw the clothes he was used to seeing her in – she favoured earth colours; moss
-
green or cinnamon skirts, tawny linen jackets and trousers, blouses and sweaters in mustard and amber and mulberry. At one end of the rail there was an awful scarlet taffeta ball gown that she'd only ever worn once long before he knew her and which she kept for sentimental reasons. He'd seen a photo of her wearing it when she was seventeen. Her hair was long and full of twirling, twisting glossy curls, her cheeks glowed pink as if she had applied too much rouge or, judging from the champagne bottle she brandished, had drunk a wee bit too much. And she was laughing, her head thrown back, her mouth open and her eyes a little bit glazed and squinty. This was not a person he recognised. But then hadn't she said much the same about a photograph she'd seen of him in his youth? The one of him in cricket whites with grass stains on the groin where he'd rubbed the ball before bowling. He was grinning and frowning squint
-
eyed into the sun, his arms loose and simian, expressing all the self
-
consciousness of being photographed like this on the sports field, by his mother who, to make matters worse, had on that day, worn a ridiculous over
-
sized hat as if she were at Ascot not St Benedict's Grammar. He'd been angry and defensive when on first seeing the photo Lucy had said, ‘That's you? You!' She seemed to be mocking him for his gauche middle
-
class, middle
-
of
-
the
-
road, provincial earnestness.

While he could easily see that he and the awkward
-
looking young man were one and the same, with Lucy it was different. The drunken laughing girl in the red dress would always be laughing at him. He couldn't possibly be in love with that girl. Only the taffeta dress in her wardrobe provided the direct link between his Lucy and that Lucy.

He realised he was staring at the press of clothes in a rather meaningless and unfocussed way, and so to counter this he hefted the tight row of hanging clothes as far along the rail to the right as was possible, then began to move each item, one at a time in the other direction, examining them as he went.

There were hardly any dresses at all, and those that were there he recognised from previous occasions. He could not find four brand
-
new dresses. Then something else struck him and he looked up to the top of the wardrobe where she kept her suitcases. The smaller of the two was there, but the large red one was gone. He closed the wardrobe doors and wandered past the bed to the window.

He did not understand why she had not told him she was going away. It was unkind of her, cowardly even. Especially if she had gone away with some other man. A man who had perhaps footed the bill for these dresses, paid for the trip – some extravagant week
-
long break in Italy or Iceland. Or for that matter in the UK in some cosy boutique hotel in the Lake District or Cornwall.

He went into the living room and pressed the play button on her answer machine. A mechanical voice announced that she had twenty
-
six new messages. The first of which was his. He was surprised at the brisk formality of his own voice.

‘Thom here, I'll be finished work at six. Give me a ring.'

The second message was also his.

‘Lucy? You there? Pick up.' A silence. Then, ‘Okay, ring me.'

The third was Lucy's mother. ‘Hello, hello? Lucy, darling, Mum here. Just ringing for a wee chat. Daddy sends his love. Bye for now.'

The next was a brief listening silence.

Then Thom again, sounding edgy and ticked off. ‘Lucy, I've tried your mobile and the college. Give us a ring, eh?'

Then the letting agency. ‘Hi, it's Julie here from London Living. Just a reminder that your lease is due for renewal. The papers are in the post and we need them back by the specified date on the form. Thank you.'

A message from the college. ‘Hi Lucy, Mitra here, can we meet up to talk about the screen
-
printing project? Noel's quite keen now to set things in motion. Bye
-
ee.'

So it went, all of the messages increasing in urgency or frustration or confusion.

‘Hi Lucy, okay, the meeting is tomorrow. I've arranged for me, Noel, Keith from finance and Susan Walters from surface pattern design to be in the print area at one. Bye
-
ee.'

‘Lucy, it's three o'clock now and to be blunt, it didn't look good you not being there; you are after all the project leader. What's up? Is it Thom? Is he giving you a hard time? Again! Anyway, at the meeting I told a little white lie, said you had food poisoning. Okay? Anyway hun, give me a ring. I'm beginning to get worried.'

Mitra had rung Thom at the college the day before yesterday and left a message asking if he knew how she could get in touch with Lucy. Her tone had been bristling with polite contempt. Now he understood why.

The last few messages chilled him.

‘Hello, this is a message for Miss Lucy Swann; we haven't received your renewed contract for the flat. This may be an oversight on your part. If so could you drop into the office by close of business today with the paperwork? Thank you.'

‘Lucy, Mum here again. Is everything alright my darling? We haven't heard from you for over two weeks now. I know you're busy, but just give us a wee tinkle so we know all's well. Bye for now.' Her voice sounded frail and on the edge of tears.

‘Hello Lucy. Daddy calling. Your mother's getting very worried now. Well, you know what a worrier she is with you there in the big bad city. Alright doll. Ring us! Okay?'

‘Lucy, it's Mitra again. Look, I had a chat with Noel. I came clean about my fib and he said that he was also worried and how last time he'd seen you, you were a bit spaced out. Kinda not yourself. Sorry. And … oh god … don't hate me for saying this, but I remembered something you told me about what happened before. You know, the breakdown when you were at college. And you know, now I think about it, you were a bit hyper these last few weeks. Look, I don't want to make things worse, I'm just worried. Please get in touch and I'm sorry if I've overstepped the mark here. Love you.'

Thom sat down on the sofa. Stared for a long time at the answer machine. The red light no longer blinking, just glowing faintly as if waiting.

La Barbe
-
Bleue

Vivier and Pelat were back at the station by eight
-
thirty in the morning, while Lamy had been left with another officer to search the rest of the gîte's garden and the area immediately behind it for any other evidence. Pelat had expected Lamy to respond somewhat grudgingly to this order (not that there was any question he could challenge any task she assigned him, but certain facial expressions could give him away) but in this instance, surprisingly, he looked positively delighted with the prospect.

She remembered the steady, somewhat disturbing gaze he had fixed on the mother's breast as she fed her child, but allowed that this might have been an entirely benign sort of stare, not one borne of sexual desire, but rather awe and wonder at this perfectly natural and beautiful act.

Vivier was making coffee while Sabine laid out the plastic bags which contained the newly found evidence on a table.

It was curious how the contents of the bag had landed in a neat sort of pile in the flower bed, it almost gave the impression that it had been carefully positioned there, but on the other hand if it had been swung in an arc, then centrifugal force would keep the contents safe at the bottom of the bag until impact. The basket (she was sure her mother had possessed one very like this, though larger – it had been abandoned in the woodshed and contained a few old wooden pegs, short lengths of string, boxes of matches and some rusty hinges, hooks and shutter fastenings) evoked for Pelat an aura of the nineteen
-
fifties and sixties, as had the dress the young woman wore.

When the old couple, the Eszterhas came in (if they came in) they might identify the body in the morgue as the young woman they had seen two days ago, and also recognise the cardigan and bag as hers. So that the girl, the bag and the cardigan could then be tied with each other and they could begin to piece together a journey of sorts. Or several journeys rather; the cardigan's to the lost property store at the café, the bag's to the garden overlooking the Bais du Somme and the young woman's to her lonely death on the waste ground near the industrial estate.

Now it seemed they could learn certain intimate things about the murder victim; what brand of mascara she favoured, where she shopped. They knew that she smoked cigarettes and that she was almost certainly staying in a hotel. The key fob was numbered six, but it was unfortunately one of those generic ones that could be bought at most locksmiths, a simple circular black tag with the number in an inset white shape. It could belong to any number of small hotels and guest houses in the town, or for that matter any other town. The woman may have had a car and could have driven into Neuville
-
Sur
-
Mer for the day with the intention of returning to her hotel later that night.

Despite the news about an unidentified woman being found dead, no hotelier had come forward to report the disappearance of one of their guests. There again the rumours were rife that the dead woman was a prostitute and so perhaps the connection was not entirely obvious. Equally, in the event that the woman had booked in for a whole week or perhaps two, her comings and goings would not necessarily have been noticed, nor, crucially, her absence.

Sabine pictured the woman's hotel room in her mind's eye, a smallish room, simply furnished. The bed made up in readiness for its occupant, some personal items on the small table next to the bed, a paperback book perhaps, a travel alarm clock, a packet of tissues, a lip salve. On the dresser, a make
-
up bag and some jars of moisturiser, eye make
-
up remover, cleanser, perfume. In the en
-
suite bathroom, shower cream, shampoo, conditioner. In a glass near the sink, a toothbrush and paste. Hanging on the shower rail to dry, underwear that had been hand
-
washed in the sink.

In the wardrobe, more pretty dresses or light summer skirts and blouses. In the suitcase on the folding stand, an accumulation of souvenirs and gifts, a bottle of cognac. There too, perhaps, the woman's passport, her house keys.

All of it waiting for the occupant's return, the pillows on the bed cool and smooth and somehow achingly lonely – sensing their uselessness without a human head to cradle through the sweet dreaming night.

And the imagined dresses too, which hung uselessly in the wardrobe like lonely and disembodied dancing princesses deprived of their night at the ball. Another image abruptly invaded Sabine's mind, that of the locked room in Charles Perrault's La Barbe
-
Bleue. It had haunted her dreams for years, the nightmare of that forbidden room where the walls were hung with the corpses of young women and the floor was sticky with their spilled blood.