A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [82]
The living room was exactly as she had left it that morning.
She went into the kitchen. There was blood all over the lino. He had been in the middle of doing some washing. The door of the machine was open and a box of detergent tablets was sitting on the work surface above it.
The cellar door was open. She walked slowly down the steps. More blood. Great smears of it all over the inside of the paddling pool, and lines of it running down the side of the freezer cabinet. But no body.
She was trying very, very hard not to think about what had happened here.
She went into the dining room. She went upstairs. She went into the bedrooms. Then she went into the bathroom.
This was where they had done it. In the shower. She saw the knife and looked away. She staggered backward and slumped onto the chair in the hallway and let the sobs take her over.
They had taken him somewhere afterward.
She had to call someone. She got to her feet and stumbled along the landing to the bedroom. She picked up the phone. It seemed suddenly unfamiliar. As if she’d never seen one before. The two pieces that came apart. The little noise it made. The buttons with black numbers on them.
She didn’t want to ring the police. She didn’t want to talk to strangers. Not yet.
She rang Jamie at work. He was out of the office. She rang his home number and left a message.
She rang Katie. She wasn’t in. She left a message.
She couldn’t remember their mobile phone numbers.
She rang David. He said he’d be there in fifteen minutes.
It was unbearably cold in the house and she was shaking.
She went downstairs and grabbed her winter coat and sat on the garden wall.
64
Jamie stopped at an all-night petrol station on the way home from Tony’s flat and bought a packet of Silk Cut, a Twix, a Cadbury’s Boost and a Yorkie. By the time he fell asleep he’d eaten all the chocolate and smoked eleven of the cigarettes.
When he woke the following morning someone had folded a wire coat hanger into the space between his brain and his skull. He was late, too, and had no time for a shower. He dressed, threw back an instant coffee with two ibuprofens, then ran for the tube.
He was sitting on the tube when he remembered that he hadn’t rung Katie back. When he got out at the far end he took his mobile out of his pocket but couldn’t quite face it. He would ring this evening.
He got into the office and realized he should have made the call.
This couldn’t go on.
It was bigger than Tony. He was at a crossroads. What he did over the next few days would set the course for the rest of his life.
He wanted people to like him. And people did like him. Or they used to. But it wasn’t so easy anymore. It wasn’t automatic. He was beginning to lose the benefit of everyone’s doubt. His own included.
If he wasn’t careful he’d turn into one of those men who cared more about furniture than human beings. He’d end up living with someone else who cared more about furniture than human beings and they’d lead a life which looked perfectly normal from the outside but was, in truth, a kind of living death that left your heart looking like a raisin.
Or worse, he’d lurch from one sordid liaison to the next, grow hugely fat because no one gave a shit about what he looked like, then get some hideous disease as a result of being fat and die a long, lingering death in a hospital ward full of senile old men who smelled of urine and cabbage and howled in the night.
He got stuck into typing up the particulars for Jack Riley’s three new builds in West Hampstead. Doubtless including some typing error or a mislabeled photograph so that Riley could storm into the office asking for someone’s arse to be kicked.
Last time round Jamie had added the phrase “property guaranteed to depreciate between signing and closing,” printed the details out to amuse Shona, then had to snatch it back when he saw Riley standing in reception talking to Stuart.
Bedroom One. 4.88m (16´0˝) max x 3.40m (11´2˝) max. Two sliding-sash windows to front. Stripped