The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

up: in a minute I’d be telling them everything, just to fill the silence.

‘Why Newcastle?’ said the male officer, suddenly interested.

‘That was just a random city,’ I said.

‘Random?’

‘I said Cardiff too.’

In the end I only told them what I’d said the previous day with Sally: that I’d last seen Hayden about nine days ago, that I had checked his flat two days ago and found signs of his disappearance, that I had no idea of where he could be but wasn’t really worried.

‘How well did you know Mr Booth?’ said Becky.

‘Not well. I met him by chance. He was playing in our band.’

‘You didn’t see him socially?’

I paused for a moment. I didn’t want to be caught lying. ‘Just in the way that you do when you’re playing in a band,’ I said. That could cover quite a lot.

‘Did you know any of his friends?’

‘No,’ I said.

Before

I wasn’t drunk enough, or they were too drunk, or both. Things that seemed hilarious to them didn’t seem funny at all to me—particularly when they got on to remembering all the different places they’d trashed in their time on the road. Nat and Ralph were there—the two I’d seen that night at the Long Fiddler—and so too were a couple more people Hayden had played and toured with.

‘Remember when you set fire to the waste-bin?’ said Jan—I think his name was Jan: he was tall and thin and bendy, with straggly blond hair and pale blue eyes. He was wearing mud-encrusted boots that were resting on Liza’s nice table between the tin-foil curry containers.

‘And you tried to put it out with a bottle of whisky?’ That was Mick, who had a scar that puckered his lip, and dark red hair.

There were roars of laughter. Jan reached for another can of beer, missed and sent it flying to the floor, where it lay leaking its pale liquid over the carpet while he simply picked up another.

‘Remember that flat in Dublin?’ said Ralph, setting up another quiver of hilarity around the room.

‘Or those cockroaches that fell on our faces when we were sleeping?’

I picked the can up and pushed Jan’s feet off the table. He barely noticed. I stomped off to the kitchen to get a cloth. Tales of vomit, broken glass, excess drugs and cute women floated through to me and I stood there scowling and feeling like a nagging wife, worrying about the stains on the rug, the marks on the table, the fragile black vase on the mantelpiece, all of Liza’s precious knick-knacks.

When I came back into the room, Hayden was giggling like a teenager, his eyes watering and his shoulders heaving. He had the best giggle of any man I’d ever met, hiccupy and infectious. He’d drunk a large amount of whisky and beer, and his body had a floppy looseness about it.

‘I think I’m going to make a move,’ I said, as his mirth subsided.

He grasped my wrist. ‘Don’t go.’

‘No, really.’

‘Please. You can’t leave. This lot will be off soon.’

‘Will we?’ asked Nat.

‘Bonnie?’

‘Invite us over, then throw us out when you’ve found something better to do.’ This was from Jan.

I stared at him for a moment but he didn’t seem bothered. ‘Now I really am going to go,’ I said coolly.

‘Don’t mind them. They’re just oafs,’ said Hayden. He stood up, with some difficulty, and wound his arms around me, leaning against me. I felt the weight and heat of his body, his breath against my cheek. There was a group jeer.

‘Piss off,’ said Hayden. He kissed my jaw but I pulled away from him. I could feel the atmosphere in the room curdling.

‘Remember that time with Hayden and the tabby cat?’ Mick was attempting to return the group to its previous boozy nostalgia.

‘Remember the time with Hayden and the mysteriously disappearing money?’ said Jan. ‘That was fun.’

Hayden held my hand. He rotated my thumb ring slowly, not looking at Jan and appearing not even to hear him.

‘Not now, mate,’ said Mick, quietly.

‘It’s all right for you to say that. You didn’t lose any money. You don’t have a sodding debt to pay off.’

Hayden went on playing with my ring.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

At that Hayden looked at him. He didn’t seem in the slightest bit drunk any more. His voice was contemptuous. ‘What do you want me to say? If you want to be safe, go and train as an accountant. You’re a musician. Of a kind.’

‘Now then,’ said Mick.

‘Your self-pity makes me sick.’ Hayden’s voice was horribly amiable. He put my hand against his face and held it there.

Jan’s face became mottled with anger. ‘You took the advance—our advance—and spent it. Sounds like theft to me.’

‘Have you ever heard of expenses?’

‘You mean you pissed it away.’

Hayden shrugged. ‘I did what was best for the band,’ he said. ‘Get over it.’

‘What? Losing my money and my girl to you? That’s your advice, is it?’

‘It worked all right for me.’

It seemed to me that Hayden was asking to be attacked. Certainly, he didn’t move when Jan hurled himself across the room, and when Jan’s fist hit him in the stomach he merely gave an approving grunt. I held on to Jan’s arm but he shook me off and hit Hayden twice more, once on his head and then, clumsily, his neck, before Mick and Nat dragged him away. Hayden sat back and smiled at me, a very sweet smile that frightened me. There were tears in his eyes.

‘Leave now,’ I said to the four men, and they shuffled out, leaving the flat like a demolition site. I turned to Hayden. ‘You’re an idiot.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Did you steal the money?’

‘Of course not.’

‘But you spent it?’

‘It went. The way money does.’ He rubbed his face and when he took his hand away the smile was gone and he just looked tired. ‘If you’re telling me I’m hopeless, of course I am. I told you at the beginning not to get involved with me.’

‘And I told you I’m not involved.’

‘No?’

‘No. This