The house hunt, p.15
The House Hunt, page 15
John looked at me again with the same misted, faraway gaze. I reached out and squeezed his arm, nodding for him to go ahead and do as Donovan suggested, feeling a pang deep inside as he turned without protest and shuffled off into his front room.
Once he was gone, Donovan immediately searched through John’s coat pockets, removing a wallet that he flipped open and scanned – he only seemed interested in John’s ID – before pausing when he discovered a boxy Nokia mobile, then breaking it apart, removing the SIM card and battery with deft efficiency.
He returned the useless handset to John’s coat and draped it over the banister at the bottom of the stairs. The SIM card and battery he tipped into an umbrella stand by the door.
I felt horrible.
First there was John, who had no idea how dangerous Donovan was. Then there was Sam, who had no clue what was happening and what he might be returning home to face. And finally there was Bethany.
I was aware I was physically shaking again. I seemed incapable of controlling it.
‘You go after him,’ Donovan said, pointing behind me towards the room John had entered.
‘No, I want to leave.’
I stared at him, holding my ground.
Donovan didn’t seem impressed or perturbed, preferring to gaze up the stairs towards the landing instead.
‘You said he lives here alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not lying to me again, are you?’
I felt my nostrils pinch. A squirmy throbbing at the back of my head. I resisted the urge to reach up and cup my hand over the cut to my scalp.
‘I already told you. There’s nobody else here. We should go.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
Then he seized my elbow and dragged me on.
63
Sam
Sam exited through the foyer of the main university building, the Lost Girl hurrying alongside him.
It was dark outside, a swirling breeze picking up and the temperature low enough for him to pause to fasten his jacket.
‘Thank you again,’ the Lost Girl said. ‘For everything.’
He wondered why she was still following him. Was even starting to wonder if she was hanging around for other reasons. He doubted she had a crush on him. She could be one of those students who wanted him to think that she had a crush on him, but if that was the case, he couldn’t understand her angle. The colleague she’d asked him to email was in the Department of Geography and the Environment, not his own. Perhaps she’d ask him for more emails down the line.
‘You’re welcome,’ Sam told her, not just distracted by disabling the airplane mode on his phone and surveying the traffic that was already beginning to slow and coagulate on the streets around them, but also needing her to see and appreciate that he was distracted, had other priorities, reasons to move on with his day.
He had to be careful about this. He didn’t want to upset her, not when she was vulnerable.
‘I’m starting to wonder if I might actually sleep tonight, thanks to you.’
‘That’s great,’ Sam said. ‘Truly.’
As he scanned the square in front of him, he was surprised to find that the rest of the group were more or less arrayed around him, too.
The Librarian was sitting on a stone bench off to his left, vaping aggressively and talking on his phone.
Over by a coffee cart that was being closed up for the day, the Athlete and the Artist were engaged in casual conversation, the Athlete standing with his feet shoulder-width apart and his big arms folded, the Artist toying with the strap of her bag as if she was shaping up to leave but making no effort to actually go.
Behind them was the taxi rank, where the Boxer was resting his palms on the roof of a black cab, talking through the open window to a driver he seemingly knew. Noticing Sam, his expression became guarded and he returned his attention to what the driver was saying to him, apparently wary that Sam might approach him and give away his dark secret.
‘Do you have any phobias?’ the Lost Girl asked. ‘It just occurred to me, you heard all of ours, so I was thinking—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam told the Lost Girl, jerking a thumb over his shoulder with an apologetic grimace, setting off in the direction of Temple station. ‘But I really have to run to get my Tube. My girlfriend’s expecting me. I need to get home.’
64
Donovan let go of me when we entered the living room. John’s shopping bag banged against my hip as I stepped clear of him.
John was already seated in his favourite armchair, his bony hands clutching the armrests, staring fixedly ahead. He seemed only vaguely aware of our presence and he showed no signs of interest when Donovan crossed the room and drew the heavy curtains, the brass curtain rings clinking sharply, everything becoming dim and indistinct until he clicked on a floor lamp.
A strange second of dislocation.
In some ways, it was like travelling back to how our place had looked two years ago. There was a lot of dark-brown furniture and a wall-to-wall carpet. A threadbare three-piece suite and full-length fabric curtains. A boxy television in the corner and a low coffee table scattered with a newspaper, dirty cups, John’s magnifying glass.
I twisted the handles of the plastic bag around my fingers, feeling increasingly uneasy.
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve done everything you asked me to do. Let’s go.’
But Donovan didn’t respond. He was too preoccupied carrying out a fast survey of the room, running his eyes and fingertips over the fireplace and a glass display cabinet, craning his neck to peer behind a chair, tilting a low bookcase away from the skirting board as if he was a spy searching for hidden listening devices or a miniature camera.
I didn’t know what he was looking for, or why, and I was almost certain I didn’t want to know.
‘What’s in the bag?’ he asked me, without looking my way.
I ignored him, which prompted him to puff air from his cheeks, as if I was exhausting his patience.
‘Sam takes the District Line, right? Those trains can come in pretty fast. You do understand I can call my contact back any time I like?’
‘Is that supposed to scare me?’
‘It does scare you. It should scare you. So just tell me what’s in the bag.’
I delayed a moment longer, then raised it and looked down.
The bag was moderately heavy. I parted the handles and peered inside.
Not that I needed to because I already knew what I’d find.
‘Well?’
Donovan had progressed to tugging the curtains away from the wall and scanning the skirting board beneath the bay window.
‘Cat food,’ I told him. ‘Two tins.’
He absorbed that for a second, then allowed the curtains to flap closed and crossed towards John, crouching in front of him, peering into his face.
‘Where’s your cat, John?’ He waved a gloved hand in front of John’s glazed eyes. ‘Where is your cat?’
‘Barnaby?’ John’s voice trembled. ‘Oh, he’ll be back before long. Barnaby is always hungry.’
Donovan turned, snatching up the television remote and switching on the TV.
The volume was loud. An early-evening quiz show. The hosts and the contestants were too happy and smug for the moment, the colours too vibrant.
‘This way,’ Donovan told me, tossing the remote aside. ‘Bring that bag with you.’
He swept out into the hallway without waiting for my response, and after glancing at John one last time, I followed him, watching as he stepped into the former dining room that was now John’s bedroom, finding a light switch on the wall.
I edged inside after him, watching as he went through a similar routine to the one he’d carried out in the front room. First, he ducked down behind the old hospital bed Sam had sourced for John, with its painted and scratched metal railings, and the primitive electrical control panel that allowed him to raise and lower the bed. Then he closed the curtains, nearly upsetting the tray table with a framed photograph and some of John’s meds on it as he completed his sweep of the room, again paying close attention to the skirting boards and the area behind the door while ignoring the framed picture of a cricket scene on the wall, before taking the shopping bag from me and moving on into the kitchen.
He opened the bag as he entered, reaching inside for one of the cans and then barking, ‘Christ!’ and raising his right foot in the air as he almost stepped into a bowl of cat food down on the floor. Inside the bowl was a congealed mix of paste and kibble.
‘Stinks in here.’
He looked around him until his gaze zeroed in on the landline phone fixed to the far wall, close to the yellowed, freestanding fridge.
Based on his reaction, I gathered it was what he’d been hunting for in the other rooms he’d been searching, and I watched with a deep sense of trepidation as he set the shopping bag down on the small Formica table and crossed towards it, snatching the handset off the wall, trailing a springy spiral cord, then looking all around him before spying a pot of kitchen utensils from which he removed a pair of scissors that he used to snip through the spiral cable and then through the phone line connected to the wall unit.
There was a pedal bin close by and he stamped on it until the lid flipped open, then dropped the handset inside and, after a moment’s thought, added the scissors, too.
He took his foot off the pedal and the lid clanged shut, but already something else had attracted his attention.
He was peering curiously at the many tins of cat food stacked on the kitchen countertop on the other side of the room. There had to be twenty or twenty-five tins altogether.
Donovan strode towards them, then snatched open the doors of a cupboard above the counter.
He stepped back.
The cupboard was filled with yet more cat food.
‘He goes every day,’ I explained. ‘It’s his routine.’
Donovan nodded slowly and picked up the shopping bag again, removing the two new tins John had just purchased and stacking them on the counter alongside the others. He then scrunched the empty bag into a ball in his hands, passing it between his palms as if it was a thinking aid.
‘Tell me about the rest of his routine.’
If he was impacted by the reality of John’s dementia, he didn’t show it.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Where else does he go? Who else does he see?’
‘Nobody.’
He frowned, unconvinced.
‘Nobody except Sam,’ I told him. ‘And me, sometimes.’
‘What about a cleaner? Or a carer?’
I hesitated.
‘Don’t lie to me. Not again.’
‘We get a cleaning agency in,’ I told him carefully. ‘About once a month.’
‘When are they next due?’
My eyes travelled to the calendar on the wall behind him. Sam had circled a date a couple of weeks away in red. I didn’t like these questions. I hated to think where he was going with them.
‘A fortnight.’
‘Doctor?’
My voice dropped. ‘John hasn’t been in a while.’
‘Kids? Other relatives?’
‘No.’
‘His wife’s dead?’
I stared at him, a cold sensation streaking up my arms and legs.
‘There are photographs of them together,’ he explained with a jerk of his chin. ‘In the living room. On the tray table next to the hospital bed. On the fridge here. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’
I glanced at the portrait shot on the fridge. It was an image taken from decades before, of John in his prime in his police uniform, his chest puffed out, Mary at his side, beaming.
‘Plus you told me earlier he was retired and lived alone, there’s no evidence of a woman’s things in that living room, and from the state of his clothes and this place generally . . .’
He left the rest unsaid but it was clear he hadn’t missed much.
That worried me. Because he’d also studied the photos of me and Sam in our home. What had he deduced from those, I wondered? What conclusions had he drawn from touring our house?
‘When did she die?’
‘About a year and a half ago,’ I told him quietly, glancing behind me over my shoulder. But I needn’t have worried about John overhearing us. He was in his own head right now. And the TV was too loud. I could hear the quizmaster joking with his co-presenter. ‘She had a fall on the stairs. Broke her hip. There were complications with her recovery in hospital. She never made it back home.’
‘So who looks after him?’
‘We do,’ I said. ‘Me and Sam.’
But mostly Sam.
Sam’s grandparents had been good friends with John and Mary. They’d lived next door to one another for most of their lives. And John and Mary – perhaps because they’d never had kids of their own – had taken a shine to Sam. They’d sent him birthday cards and Christmas gifts. Sam had been fond of them in turn.
It had been rough for Sam when he’d lost his grandparents. His parents had been killed in a car smash when he was only a teenager and so, when his grandfather and later his grandmother died, he’d felt properly like an orphan for the first time.
Like me.
I understood that was one of the bonds that had connected us, but it was also why Sam spent so much of his time caring for John. He’d call round most mornings before work and every evening to make sure everything was OK, which is why he had a key to John’s place. I’d got into the habit of cooking meals for Sam to bring over for him, too.
I loved Sam for doing it. I liked that he was so kind. But I think we’d both known for a while now it had been nearing the point where John was going to need more support than we could give him. I’d mentioned it to Sam several times, as considerately as I could. He’d nodded glumly and told me I was probably right, but he hadn’t acted on it yet.
I got that it was part of why he’d been so stressed about putting our place on the market. Once we had a buyer and the prospect of selling became truly real, everything with John would come to a head. I suspected Sam carried a lot of guilt about that.
‘Now can we go?’ I asked.
Donovan passed the bag between his hands some more, tilting his head from side to side as though he was running through the pros and cons of my suggestion. He pressed his lips together and made a small noise in his throat as if he’d reached a decision. Then he unfurled the bag and snapped it in the air so that it billowed and expanded.
‘Afterwards,’ he told me.
‘After what?’
But instead of answering me, he rushed out of the room with the bag.
65
‘Hey!’ I called.
Donovan ignored me.
I darted out into the hallway after him.
‘Hey!’
He didn’t slow. If anything, his pace increased.
Everything about his body language – his speed, his contained movements, the way his gaze was fixed dead ahead of him – scared me.
A streak of electric horror forked downwards from the top of my skull, branching out through my torso.
‘What are you doing?’
He circled one wrist with a fast movement, cinching the handle of the plastic bag around his fingers.
‘Don’t!’
He circled the other wrist. Snapped the bag taut between his hands. Then he swerved right through the doorway into the front room without looking back.
I ran down the hallway and in through the doorway after him.
And stopped cold.
Fear fluttered in my stomach.
Donovan’s eyes flashed my way from where he was standing behind John’s armchair with the bag – held taut and tight – above John’s head.
John’s glazed attention was on the television, light flickering across his docile face.
‘No,’ I breathed.
Donovan watched me.
There was the slightest contraction of one eye, as if he was assessing my response.
Then he lowered his hands.
I sprang forwards – my shin barking off the edge of the coffee table – and launched myself at him.
I made a grab for his arm. His chin.
My fingers scrabbled against the stubble on his jaw.
But before I could get a proper grip, he hunched his back and ducked his chin down against his chest, then spun tightly around, shaking me loose, sending me sprawling towards the hearth and the fireplace.
I slammed down hard.
Pain lit up across my elbows, knees and chin.
I braced my hands out ahead of me and was able to arrest my momentum before I crashed into the fireplace.
Just.
Then I turned.
Donovan was staring at me with a thoughtful, analytical expression.
Behind him, John had bolted to his feet, though Donovan seemed not to care.
John was treading one way, then the other, his body language agitated, his eyes wide and afraid as he looked between us.
I had no idea if he was really seeing us or if he was actually seeing the muddled component parts of a scene that didn’t make any sense to him.
He scratched at his neck.
‘I’m going to feed Barnaby,’ he muttered. ‘Barnaby. I have to feed him now.’
As he stumbled from the room, disappearing along the hallway, Donovan kept his focus on me.
I said, ‘He doesn’t have a cat.’
‘Excuse me?’
I shifted onto my side, my upper back braced against the marble mantelpiece, needing him to understand.
‘Barnaby’s dead. He was put to sleep two months ago.’
Donovan eyed me as if from afar, suspicion clouding his features.
‘He doesn’t remember,’ I continued. ‘He goes to the shops every day. Because that’s his routine. But he doesn’t remember about his cat. He won’t remember you. He won’t remember us being here. He won’t remember calling at the house, or seeing you inside, or going to the shops, or when his cat doesn’t come home tonight. He won’t remember any of it.’
‘Well, that’s too bad,’ he said, turning to go.
‘If we leave now, I’ll talk to you,’ I called. ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
