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

go mad and, of course, the only people I could possibly speak to were my accomplices, my co-conspirators: Sonia and Neal.

Sonia would be with Amos, and if there was anyone I wanted to avoid right now, it was Amos.

So it was that I found myself taking the bus to Stoke Newington and walking along the charming little streets to Neal’s house. It was such a beautiful day, the air soft and warm, the sky a deep blue with trails of cloud on the horizon. People looked happy in their light clothes, their faces open in the golden light.

It hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t be there but when I rang the doorbell there was no reply. I peered in through the letterbox and saw nothing but the strip of floorboard leading to the stairs. And now what should I do with myself, with my knocking heart and the hot dread that snaked through me? I sat on the doorstep and put my head into my hands, closed my eyes because the sun throbbed in my skull.

‘Bonnie?’

I looked up, blinking. ‘Neal!’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘A couple of minutes, if that.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so.’ I forced a smile. ‘I don’t know why I’m here. I didn’t want to be alone in my flat. How about you? Are you OK?’

‘Me? I—to tell the truth, I can’t seem to settle to anything. I’m jittery. That’s why I went out—because I couldn’t stay in. But then I couldn’t stay out either. I had to get back to the house, as if I needed to hide from everyone. God, I’d make a lousy criminal.’ His mouth widened into a desperate smile, like a hole in his usually handsome face. ‘But I am a criminal, aren’t I? I am! Me? Fuck. Who’d have thought it? I’m such a geeky, boring, law-abiding person. I never even break the speed limit, not even when I’m in a hurry.’

‘Shall we go inside?’

‘I keep thinking I’m going to tell someone. Like the Ancient Mariner. I’m going to stop someone in the street and tell them what I’ve done.’

‘Inside, Neal,’ I said.

‘Yes. Sorry. Here.’ And he fumbled with the key, muttering curses under his breath.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said, taking it from his thick fingers.

I made us a pot of coffee and then some toast and Marmite. We sat in the kitchen and Neal took a gulp of coffee, a giant bite of his toast, and then said—rather indistinctly through the crumbs, ‘Are we idiots?’

‘What?’

He took another bite; his cheeks bulged. ‘They’re going to discover, aren’t they?’

‘No. I don’t think that at all.’ I understood that although I had come here for a kind of comfort, or at least the companionship of a shared secret, I was going to have to prop Neal up.

‘I did it for you.’

‘I didn’t ask you to,’ I said helplessly.

‘I know. I know you didn’t. You didn’t ask me and I didn’t ask you—sometimes I feel almost euphoric with what we’ve done for each other.’

‘That’s not the way it was.’

‘And sometimes I just feel terrified.’

‘I know. Me too.’

‘Do they know anything?’

‘I don’t know what they know. I don’t think they know he died in the flat. They know about him and me. And I’ve told them about me and you.’

‘Not that there was anything to tell,’ he said. ‘Just one night.’

‘I said we were together. So, as long as we stick to that we’re all right.’

‘Yes. We were together. Yes.’

‘All evening and night.’

‘Yes.’

‘He was married.’

‘What?’

‘Hayden was married.’

‘He had a wife?’

‘A wife and a son.’

He pushed the last of his toast into his mouth. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Neal, I don’t have a fucking clue what anything means. All I know is that Hayden had a whole complicated, messy life and the police are going to be looking at all that as well. He had a wife he’d left behind, a son he hardly ever saw, he had friends he’d betrayed, people he worked with whom he let down. And you’re forgetting something.’

‘What? What am I forgetting?’

‘We didn’t do anything to him. I mean, I know we tampered with the evidence.’ He snorted wildly at that. ‘OK, you tampered with evidence and me and Sonia—well, I don’t know what you’d call it. But we didn’t kill or harm him at all. That’s a different kind of guilt. Someone out there killed him.’

‘And we cleared up for them.’

‘Yes.’

‘What must they be thinking?’

‘Well, what were you thinking when the body disappeared?’

‘I was thinking—well, I was thinking: Oh, fuck, oh, Christ, is this a dream, a nightmare, oh, my God, am I mad? I was—I was—I don’t know—It was just surreal and I swear to God I’ve never been through anything like that in my life, nothing even approaching it, when there was nobody I could talk to about it.’ He pulled at his hair.

‘Exactly. That’s probably what they’re thinking as well, whoever they are.’

‘Do you think it was anyone we know?’

‘Probably not. Maybe it was just a stranger. Maybe we’ll never know—nobody will ever know.’

‘And then what?’ He pushed away his mug and plate, laid his head on the table and started to cry. His shoulders shook and whimpers escaped from him.

I leaned across and put my hand on his back. ‘Don’t cry,’ I said. ‘Neal, don’t, please. It’s going to be all right. You didn’t kill him. You just tried to help me. You did it for good motives. We both did. We did it for each other and we’re going to get each other through this. Don’t cry.’

I looked at him lying across the table, his body shaking with wretchedness, and I wished it was me who was collapsed like that, and someone else was sitting with their hand on my back telling me it would be OK. For a moment I saw Hayden, his face open, crinkles round his smiling eyes, and he was saying, ‘But you’re a tough cookie, Bonnie.’ And I was. I wouldn’t cry and be comforted, not yet anyway, and