Nicci French - Until it's Over

Early the next morning I bought an A-Z at the newsagent up the road, took the Underground to Highgate and walked the rest of the way, map in hand, like a tourist. The walk was all uphill. At the end, I felt I’d arrived at a place that looked down on the rest of us, scrabbling around in the heat of the city.

Century Road was just off the main street, and I needn’t have worried about picking out the de Soto house: set back from the road, behind an iron fence, a burglar alarm blinking above its porched door, its tall windows glinting in the morning sun. Two cars were parked in the forecourt, a Jaguar and a Range Rover. His and hers. I looked around, suddenly feeling self-conscious. It seemed stupidly suspicious to be standing on a residential street staring at an expensive house. I walked along the road and through a square until I got to a shopping street. I returned to Century Road with a newspaper and a cup of coffee. I sat on the kerb, sipped coffee and pretended to read the paper. Now I looked like a dozen boring, explainable, forgettable people.

At twenty to eight a man in a suit came out of the house, got into the car, drove out and away, down the hill. I sipped at my now empty cup and actually began to read the paper. A bomb blast in a Baghdad market. A train crash in Egypt. At twenty-five past eight the postman walked through the gate and up the drive. He pressed a button and spoke into a small grille. After a few seconds the door opened and he stepped forward. He had a package in his hand, but whoever had answered was lost in the shadows. He turned round and I saw a glimpse of a woman disappearing inside, back into that world where she felt so safe. The door closed.

It was obvious that I couldn’t break into a house like that. There were probably alarms of a kind I knew nothing about. I needed to be invited in and I needed to be sure that she was alone, with no builders, butlers or gardeners. That was the challenge. I thought for a moment, then felt excitement ripple through me. I stood up and carefully crammed the newspaper and the coffee cup into a bin. People noticed litterers.

Now that I had decided, I was burning to act but I had a whole day and night to get through. It took about an hour to reach the gallery where Melanie and Laura worked. I pushed the door open and entered the hushed, cool interior. There were no customers, but Laura and Melanie were there. Melanie was wearing a flowery cotton dress that Astrid wouldn’t have been seen dead in. She had pink lips and looked like a child about to go off to a birthday party.

‘Davy.’ She blushed and put up a hand to check her hair. ‘I wasn’t expecting you!’

‘Why would you be?’ I asked rudely. ‘Hi, Laura.’

‘Hello, Davy.’ She looked at me appraisingly and I felt my anger mount.

‘These are a bit expensive, aren’t they?’ I said, flicking my hand dismissively at a canvas.

‘Well, not if you -’

‘Is there somewhere we can talk privately?’

‘You can go to the stock room,’ said Laura. ‘It’s not as if we’re rushed off our feet.’

Melanie led me into the back. Through the frosted-glass door I could see Laura’s shape moving around the gallery and I could hear her as well, the clack her shoes made on the wooden floor.

‘Are you all right, Davy?’ asked Melanie.

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.’

‘Well, here I am.’

‘I was worried.’ As she spoke, she took a step forward and lifted her face. Her expression was anxious and hopeful. I knew she wanted me to kiss her, a chaste and tender kiss to reassure her of my affection.

I didn’t kiss her, but there under the naked bulb, among the box files, pressed against the computer that beeped and whirred, I pulled up her flowery dress and pulled down her demure white knickers, pulled them over her sensible shoes and put them into my jacket pocket. I pushed my hand between her legs. She tried to stop me. Her eyes were wild and she struggled silently, looking over my shoulder at the door. Then she stopped struggling and I unzipped my flies and pushed myself inside her. When I’d finished – it didn’t take long – she put her arms round my neck and pressed her face into my chest and told me it was all right and she understood and she loved me and she was so happy I’d tracked her down. She kissed me on the mouth, called me ‘darling’, and led me back into the shop by the hand, looking mussed and proud.

I’d tried nice. I’d tried considerate. And it hadn’t worked. But when you were cruel, when you were indifferent, they liked you for it. If you treated them really badly, they fell in love with you. It was their own fault.

Making up the package was fun. It was almost a pity that nobody but me would ever see it. I collected a packet of condoms I’d taken from Owen’s room, a thong of Pippa’s, a scarf Mel had left behind, and the lip-gloss I’d nabbed from Astrid’s room. I’d also taken a padded envelope from a pile in Astrid’s room, small enough to fit through the letterbox. I addressed it to Jonathan Whiteley, the boy I’d been best friends with at school, at Century Road but a different number. The de Sotos lived at number twenty-seven. I wrote number seven. Far enough away so that she probably wouldn’t know who lived there, similar enough to be an understandable mistake by the postman.

Also, on the way back from seeing Melanie, I had gone to a shop I’d seen just off Brick Lane. It sold catapults and flick-knives to survivalists and fantasists. I chose a knife with a large, serrated blade. It needed to look scary. The man behind the counter was largely bald at the front but with a long grey ponytail behind. Who was he trying to fool? He put the knife into a paper bag. ‘Good for cutting up deer,’ he said.

‘See many deer in the East End?’ I said.

‘I seen some in the Lea Valley,’ he said.

It should have been impossible for me to sleep that night. I should have gone over and over it in my head, checking and rechecking that it could possibly work. But when my alarm went off at six, I felt as if I was being dragged out of a deep pit of sleep. At first I didn’t recognize where I was and thought I was back at home, as if London had been a dream.

As I came down the stairs of the sleeping house, I met Astrid in the hall. ‘You’re early,’ I said.

‘I’ve got to fill in for someone,’ she said, with a groan. ‘You?’

‘Same,’ I said. ‘More or less.’

I couldn’t afford to loiter outside the house this time. It wasn’t necessary either. I waited at the other end of the street for the postman to arrive. From a distance I saw Mr de Soto ’s Jaguar pull out of his drive and felt a lurch in my stomach. This was what it must feel like to be a boxer about to enter the ring, a rock star making his way to the stage. That feeling of a humming, expectant crowd out there, waiting for you to deliver an experience to them. Except in this case the audience didn’t know they were going to be an audience. They didn’t know their life was going to be changed.

The postman appeared in the road just after eight. It was as if I was pushing them around like counters on a board. It was going to be so simple: just get into the house, check she’s alone. If she isn’t, leave, no harm done, try again somewhere else. If she’s alone, threaten her, immobilize her, steal what I want at leisure. Walk away, untraceable.

The postman went from house to house, up and down the paths, up, down, up, down. What a job. A job, you can’t do well or badly. Just deliver the mail or don’t deliver it, that’s all.

I waited until he was a couple of houses away, then started to walk up the street. As I walked, I pulled on my surgical gloves and took the package from the plastic carrier-bag. I timed it perfectly. The postman emerged from the de Soto drive and turned away from me. I waited until he had disappeared round the corner. Then I walked quickly up the drive and pushed the package through the letterbox. It just fitted. No turning back now. I walked to the road, pulling off the gloves. I needed to give it ten minutes to make it took convincing. I glanced at my watch. Exactly eight twenty-seven. I timed myself walking away from the house. At eight thirty-two and thirty seconds I turned and walked purposefully back to the house. I pressed the doorbell. Time to go onstage.