Nicci French - Until it's Over

I gave the address and said I would wait until they arrived, then walked up and down the small stretch of grass, not knowing what to do with myself. Maybe whoever it was had had a heart-attack or a stroke. Or had fallen down the stairs and knocked herself unconscious. Or maybe it wasn’t an arm at all, I thought, and someone would stroll up the road just as the ambulance arrived with its blue lights flashing and I would look like the idiot of the year.

But if it really was something like a heart-attack, shouldn’t I do something about it right now? Or if she’d cut herself and was bleeding profusely, wasn’t it important to tie a tourniquet round her? Didn’t every second count? I should have asked them on the phone. Who would know? I thought of calling Mick – if he’d been in the army, surely he’d know things like that – but quickly changed my mind. Mick was probably at work, but if he wasn’t he was at the top of the house and never answered the phone. I’d get Dario instead.

I rattled the door. I stood back and searched the upper floor for an open window I could climb through. I pulled my tool-kit out of my pannier: screwdrivers, adaptable spanners, inner tube, Swiss Army pen-knife. Useless. Before I fully understood what I was doing I picked up my entire bike and swung it against the large window to the left of the porch. The glass shattered and there was a violent shriek of a burglar alarm.

With my gloved hand, I knocked the remaining jagged pieces of glass from the frame so that I could climb through. I was standing in an opulently furnished living room. I walked through it and out into the hall. On the gleaming boards a woman lay face down. One arm was flung above her head, and one knee was bent. For a moment, I simply stood and stared down at her, unable to move, with the alarm throbbing in my eardrums. Bobbed blonde hair, expensively highlighted. Tanned skin. A blue silk dressing-gown riding up over her slim, impeccably waxed legs. I crouched beside the figure and, with a feeling of absolute dread, put a hand out to touch her arm. It was still warm. I gasped with relief, then tried to pull the motionless body on to its back. I jerked back in horror, letting go of her as I did so. Her head hit the floor with a thump. It wasn’t just the eyes, open and glassy, staring upwards. Or the lips, swollen and blue. Her smooth face looked as if it had been drawn on with a red pen. But then I saw that the lines weren’t drawn but incised, slashes on her cheek and forehead and even across one eye. The iris was crushed, something white oozing out from it.

I thought I should do something, press the chest, give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and then I saw the sightless eyes, eyes with nothing behind them. It was pointless.

I stood up and pressed myself against the front door, my hand over my mouth, the body on the floor filling my vision. The alarm swelled in the air and in my skull. I tried to make myself feel that this couldn’t be happening. It was a dream, an aberration. I’d blink and find myself back in my ordinary life, cycling up a hill in the rain on the way to collect a package. My mind focused on other things. I thought about how neat the house was, hardly a speck of dust in sight. How many hours did some cleaner work each week to make everything look as if it was in a magazine? I imagined myself telling the story later, to the house, and I already knew that I would do so with a kind of horrified excitement. I thought about my irritation with this woman, or people like her, as I had hammered at the door, and the way we messengers had bitched about her, and should I feel guilty about that? I vaguely wondered about getting my hair cut. I remembered that it was Miles’s birthday next week and I needed to buy him a present but I didn’t have a clue what. Something for his house – a sharp little reminder that we were leaving it? And that made me think about having to start flat-hunting soon, rather than leave it to the last minute – though I knew quite well that I probably would leave it to the last minute anyway, whatever my resolutions, and spend weeks sleeping on friends’ floors and living out of suitcases. I wondered if my hearing would be damaged by the blasting throb of the alarm, and then I wondered if it was a way of sending people mad, subjecting them to this kind of noise. I decided it would be better to go and wait outside; after all, there was nothing I could do here and it seemed indecent to be standing staring at the flimsily dressed body of a woman who had seemed so impregnable in life. But I couldn’t seem to make myself move. I thought how amazing it was that your brain can hold so many disparate feelings and ideas at once. And all the time I was staring at the impossible dead body on the floor, just a few feet from where I stood.

I fished out my mobile once more, noticing that my hands were trembling, but I didn’t dial because at that moment I heard, behind the house alarm, the sound of a siren. The ambulance at last. I turned and pulled open the door to see it draw up outside the house. People had already started to gather in the road. I watched as a man and a woman jumped down and ran towards me as I lifted up my hand to beckon them on. Then, as they came into the garden and I saw their eyes move from me to the body that was lying behind me in the hall, I turned and vomited into one of the earthenware pots.

‘Did you touch the body?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

The police officer looked disappointed. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘I didn’t know she was dead,’ I said. ‘I thought she might be injured. I thought she might need help.’

His expression softened. ‘I can see that.’ He stepped closer. ‘Are you all right? Would you like to talk to a WPC?’

‘What for?’

‘They’re trained,’ he said.

There was a long pause.

‘The window,’ he said. ‘That was you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve caused quite a disturbance.’

‘As I said, I thought she might be ill. It seemed urgent.’

He looked round at the shattered window. ‘Looks a bit drastic,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t think of anything else.’ Behind him, the hallway was crowded. There were other police officers, people dressed in white like doctors. Outside, vehicles were coming and going.

‘So, Miss erm…’

‘ Bell.’

‘Why were you here, Miss Bell?’

‘I’m just a bike messenger,’ I said. ‘That’s my bike outside.’

‘Do you know this woman?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve been to the house a few times.’

‘Why did you come today?’

‘The office rang me about a package.’ There was a silence. ‘I’m sorry. ‘I’ve got nothing else to say. I mean, I can’t think of anything.’

The officer rubbed his chin as if he was trying to think of another question but couldn’t. ‘I know that this has been a terribly shocking experience for you. But we’re going to ask you to come in with us and give a full statement.’ He looked at me, surprised by my expression. ‘I’m sorry, is there something funny about that?’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Not at all. I was just startled. I’d never talked to a policeman before. And now I’ve given two statements in a month.’

‘Really?’ said the officer. ‘What about?’

So I had to tell him about my bike accident and my encounter with Peggy Farrell. I thought he’d find it curious, funny even in a grim kind of way, but almost immediately his face become serious and he told me to stop and wait and he left the room.

I was becoming an expert on police interview rooms. Two officers drove me down the hill to another police station. They wouldn’t let me ride my bike. It would be brought, I was told. They drove into the rear car park and I was led in through a back entrance. I was met by a WPC, who took me through to my next interview room. There wasn’t much to tell it apart from the other. Instead of beige walls, it had institutional light green. I sat on a plastic chair and was left alone. I took out my phone. There were about ninety-seven messages from Campbell and others. I rang Campbell.