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

this: say the word and you can walk out of here and I’ll wait until you’re safely away and then I’ll call the police. I’ll have to. Because, you see, what I’ve been thinking of needs someone else. I can’t do it alone.’

Sonia looked at the body lying out of sight behind me, and this time she didn’t glance away. She was like someone standing on the edge of an abyss and staring down into it, unable to drag herself away from the horror.

‘So what do you want from me?’

‘I want—’ I took a deep breath, and then the words came out in a blurt, sounding even more absurd and impossible than I’d imagined. ‘I need you to help me get rid of the body.’

Sonia gave a gasp and took a step backwards so she was almost against the door. ‘Get rid of it?’ she said weakly. I noted that she was saying ‘it’ not ‘he’, as if she was trying to forget that here was a man she had once known, had not long ago talked to, argued and laughed with. ‘Are you serious?’

‘If we got rid of it, maybe nobody would look. Not for a long time at least.’

‘You are serious? You think that you and me—No, Bonnie. No. You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘I couldn’t do it on my own,’ I said. ‘I tried to think of a way but I couldn’t.’

‘This is crazy. Look at him. He’s big. We can’t just—I mean, how?’ She gave a small, high laugh that stopped as abruptly as it had started, though the harsh sound seemed to hang in the room. ‘You’ve been watching too many films.’

‘It’s the only thing I can think of.’

‘It’s mad—and it would be horrible. I feel sick even thinking about it. Have you allowed yourself to imagine what it would be like? He’s dead. He’ll be starting to go hard or something soon.’

‘Oh, no! Don’t.’

‘What? Don’t talk about it? If you can’t even bear to talk about it, how will you actually do it? That’s what happens, isn’t it? Everything starts to change.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘You don’t want to touch him. The dead aren’t like the living.’

‘I have to, Sonia.’

‘It’s a crime, don’t forget. Maybe that doesn’t mean so much to you, not now, but for me . . .’ She stopped and swallowed hard. ‘Covering it up, blocking the investigation. We could go to prison for a long, long time. I could, I mean. Have you thought about that?’

She stood over me, her face blazing, and my head sank back onto my knees.

‘You’re right and this was unforgivable,’ I mumbled. ‘Get out of here this minute, and I’m terribly sorry I ever rang you. I mean it. Go.’

‘Get up, Bonnie.’

‘What?’

‘Stand up. I can’t talk to you while you’re crouching on the floor like that.’

I stumbled upright. The room seemed to sway around me. ‘I feel drunk,’ I said. ‘Or as if I’ve got flu.’

‘You really thought we could just get rid of it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You were right and you should go.’

‘How? I mean, how on earth would we even get his body out of this flat without being seen? And then what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘When does Liza get back?’

‘September. But we can’t just leave his body here for her to discover.’ For the briefest second I allowed myself to think of decomposition and decay, of his body seeping and crumbling into the carpet. My stomach turned and I whimpered.

‘So?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The only thing I’ve thought about is getting rid of it. Making it go away.’

‘Yes, that,’ said Sonia, grimly, pulling back her mouth again. She almost looked as though she was smiling. But she wasn’t.

‘Which is why I knew I needed someone. You. I needed you.’

‘Did you think about how you—we—would do it?’

‘I just thought about putting it somewhere where it would never be found.’

‘Brilliant. Like where?’

‘Like really, really deep woodland where nobody ever goes.’

‘For God’s sake, Bonnie, this is England,’ said Sonia. ‘There aren’t deep woodlands where nobody goes. And if there were, how would you—how would we—get it there? I can tell you that, wherever you put it, someone walking their dog would find it. When you read in the papers about bodies being found, that’s what happens. A man walking his dog.’

‘Couldn’t we bury it somewhere?’

‘Where? That’s got all the problems of finding somewhere to dump the body without being seen, and then when you’re there you have to dig a huge hole, deep enough so it doesn’t get dug up by scavengers. There’s a reason why they make graves six feet deep. And, wherever you do it, it shows for a long time. It’s not just a matter of going to Hampstead Heath after midnight.’

‘What about burning?’ I asked, a bit wildly.

‘It’s not like an old newspaper.’ She made a gesture of repugnance. ‘The human body is a difficult thing to burn.’

‘They do it in crematoriums.’

‘Yes,’ said Sonia. ‘With an industrial-strength furnace that can heat up to a thousand degrees. And even then it doesn’t destroy everything. It’s not something you can do in your back garden.’

I had a horrible flashback of cremating my guinea pig when I was small and the smell that had filled our garden. I put my hands over my face, feeling sick. ‘What then?’ I said. ‘What can we do? We can’t hide it and we can’t bury it and we can’t burn it. You’re not going to suggest cutting it up, are you? I can’t, Sonia. I’d prefer to die myself than do that.’ In fact, the thought of dying seemed inviting right now, to close my eyes on all this.

‘No, I’m not,’ said Sonia. ‘I’ve dissected animals and I’m just not going there.’

‘People do go missing, though,’ I said. ‘Some bodies are never found.’

‘Not very often, except in films. Not unless you’re the Mafia and you can bury a body in concrete and build a motorway on top of it. This is not an easy thing to do.’

My mind wasn’t working properly. Everything seemed to