‘What?’
‘I’m not able to tell you right now.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake . . .’
The officer holding the cuffs gave me a meaningful look and I shut up.
‘Go home,’ Moseley said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
‘What about my sister?’ I said. ‘Did you speak to the police in Eastbourne? Has anyone?’
He sighed wearily. ‘Just go home, Mr Sumner. Have a shower.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘You reek.’
‘You have to call them. I’m reporting a crime. You can’t ignore that.’
‘All right. Jesus.’ He had reached the end of his tether with me. ‘I’ll call them now. OK?’
‘Thank you.’
A few seconds passed. ‘What are you still hanging around for?’
‘I’m waiting for you to call Eastbourne.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he muttered. ‘Go home. I’ll ring you shortly. OK?’
I walked home in the rain. It was that fine, drizzling rain that soaks you from head to foot within seconds. My wallet must have been at Sasha’s, probably on her bedroom floor, so I couldn’t get any money out to pay for a cab or get a bus. I needed to get home as quickly as I could so I could plug my phone in and try to call Tilly and Sasha. Plus I would phone Eastbourne station myself, make sure someone was checking out Beachy Head. I alternated running and walking, jogging as far as I could each time until my lungs burned and my legs were on the verge of collapse.
It took me just over an hour to get back, by which point I was drenched, water trickling down my face and stinging my eyes. I let myself in and went up the stairs, opening the door and going into the warmth. I dropped my coat on the floor, kicked off my shoes and stripped off my wet top and socks, headed into the bathroom to grab a towel.
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My hair stuck up from my scalp, my skin looked like the surface of the moon, my eyes were sore and pink. But I didn’t have time to stand around studying the wreck I’d become. I needed to call Tilly, the police and Sasha, in that order.
My phone charger was plugged in next to the bed, so I went into the bedroom, sat down in my damp jeans and plugged the phone in, holding it and urging it to switch on, jiggling my knees up and down and muttering ‘Come on, come on.’
After what felt like an eternity in purgatory, the Apple logo appeared on the screen and a few dots appeared to let me know I had a signal. I immediately called Tilly. It went straight to voicemail. While I was leaving her a message, telling her that I prayed she was OK and to please call me the second she could, the phone vibrated a few times. When I looked at the screen, I saw I had two voicemails. The first was from Tilly. It had come in just after I’d spoken to her in the police station.
I listened to it. The wind was howling behind her but her voice was clear.
‘Hey, bruv. I tried to talk to you but you were gone. Are you all right? You sounded really stressed out. Call me back. Charlie’s just going to take me up to the cliff edge so I can take some photos of the lighthouse.’
My heart jumped and skipped and I chewed my knuckles, the phone still held to my ear. While I was frozen in that pose the second voicemail message began to play. It was a gruff male voice, thick London accent.
‘This is a message for a Mr Andrew Sumner. This is the Lost Property office at London Bridge. Your bag has turned up. Yeah, someone at the bus depot left it in a cupboard in their office and it’s just made its way to us. The young lady who reported it left us this number to call if it turned up.’ He laughed. ‘I recognised it as soon as it came in because she used to ring us every day. We’re open—’
I had stopped listening.
My bag of mementoes. Charlie really had left it on a bus. She really had reported it to London Transport and chased it daily. I stared at the phone screen, the guy from the lost property office still chattering away, as if the truth might leap out from it. I had been certain Charlie was lying about the bag.
If she hadn’t been lying about that, did that mean . . . ?
Something went bang in the living room.
Somebody was in the flat.
It couldn’t be Charlie. There was no way she could have got back from Beachy Head in time. But she was the only other person with a key. Then I realised what it must be: another bird, flying into the front window. My stomach settled and I stood up and walked into the living room to check.
Sasha was sitting on the sofa. Her bag lay by her feet, half its contents spilled out like guts on the carpet. She had a cushion on her lap. She didn’t get up, or move, but rolled her eyes towards me. She must have been in the flat when I got home, but I hadn’t looked in the living room.
‘Sasha. What are you doing here?’
She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. I went over and stood in front of her, my mind racing all over the place, hearing voices. Lance saying that Sasha was a fantasist, that she had invented everything. The man from the lost property office telling me that Charlie hadn’t been lying.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sasha said. Her voice was very quiet, a forced whisper.
‘What for?’ I didn’t want to get too close. All of a sudden, I was afraid of her.
She opened her mouth to speak but again, nothing came out. What was wrong with her?
I crouched on the carpet before her, keeping my distance. ‘Sasha, I saw Lance at the police station.’
She stared at me.
‘He said that you made the whole thing up, that you were a fantasist.’
She shook her head and said a single word. ‘Liar.’ Her face creased with pain and it hit me: why had I believed him, a stranger, over the woman I had known and trusted longer than any other? Sasha hadn’t been lying. Lance was the fantasist.
‘I believe you,’ I said, and her lips twitched; the faintest flicker of a smile.
Then she coughed and drops of spittle flew from her mouth, flashing red in the light that streamed in from the window.
I scooted closer, put my hands on her upper arms. She was freezing, her body like marble.
‘Sasha, what’s wrong? What’s going on?’
She looked into my eyes and coughed again, blood droplets splattering my face.
My voice went up an octave as I spoke, panic mounting. ‘Sasha, what’s happened? What’s wrong with you?’
She made a guttural sound, trying to speak, but could only manage a single syllable. ‘She . . .’
‘What? She what? Do you mean Charlie?’
Sasha stared into my eyes and pulled the cushion away from her lap with great effort, as if it was heavier than a rock.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
‘Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. Sasha . . .’
There was a hole in her stomach. A gaping wound, dark blood trickling from it, down between her legs onto the upholstery. A wild, ridiculous thought entered my head, that not even Maria would be able to get those stains out, and at that moment Sasha toppled sideways, rasping, a line of blood running from her mouth, and I caught hold of her. She flopped. A dead weight.
‘Don’t touch her.’
The voice came from behind me. After gently laying Sasha on her side and closing her eyes, I turned and stared at the woman who had just murdered my best friend.
Forty
‘Stand up. Get away from her. But keep your hands up, like this. I want to be able to see them.’ She smiled as she said this. The butcher’s knife in her hand glinted.
I did as she asked, catching sight of myself in the mirror above the fireplace. Sasha’s blood ran in streaks across my naked torso.
Rachel looked at me affectionately, the way you might look like at a child who’d spilled his dinner over himself. ‘We’re going to have to get you cleaned up. Come on, strip the rest of it off. Let’s get you in the shower.’
‘Rachel . . .’
She was wearing her biker gear – the leather boots and trousers – and there was a holdall by her feet. There was a dark patch on the front of her black T-shirt. The muscles in her arms appeared to ripple, reminding me that I had once envied her athletic build, developed from all those months of lifting my sister.
But though she looked the same, she held herself differently. She seemed more open, confident. Her hand didn’t move to her mouth as she spoke. She seemed fully relaxed. Here she was, for the first time since I’d met her, showing her true self. Her real, terrifying self.
‘Quiet,’ she said. ‘Take your clothes off. Stop fucking around.’
Trying hard not to look at Sasha’s body, I unbuttoned my jeans and pushed them down, kicking them off. I felt curiously calm. Where was my phone? Still charging in the bedroom. I glanced around for a weapon but there was nothing within reach. Certainly nothing that could take on the huge knife Sasha held. Plus the leather outfit acted like a suit of armour. Anything I threw would bounce off her.
‘Underpants too,’ she said.
‘Come on, Rachel.’
‘Off.’
I obeyed, and stood before her, naked and completely vulnerable. I guessed that was her intention. She looked me up and down, slowly, like I was a statue in a Roman museum.
‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘But dirty. You’ve got that bitch’s blood on you.’ She looked at Sasha, tutted and shook her head. ‘You shared a bed with her last night, didn’t you? What was she like?’
I had my hands cupped over my shrunken genitals. The flat was warm but I was shaking. ‘Please Rachel . . .’ I still couldn’t remember if I’d had sex with Sasha. I didn’t think so, was sure I would know if I had.
‘Save it. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s only the future that matters now.’ She took a step towards me. She was smiling. ‘Come on, let’s get you into the shower.’
She escorted me into the bathroom at knifepoint. Again, I looked around for a weapon. There were some razors in the cabinet. A small cup that held the toothbrushes. That was it. Holding the knife pointed towards me, she turned on the shower, which hung on the wall above the bathtub, with the other hand. When the water was hot and steam began to rise into the air, she ordered me to step into the bath. I stood beneath the scalding water and she handed me a bar of soap, told me to scrub. Sasha’s blood ran down my body in thin, pink rivulets.
‘Wash it all,’ Rachel said. ‘I want you clean. That’s it, wash off all the whore’s blood. I want all traces of her scrubbed from your skin.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, as I did what she commanded.
She looked at me like I was stupid. She shrugged.
‘Because I love you, Andrew.’
I looked around the bathroom. Rachel barred the door and there was no other way out, just a tiny window that had been painted shut years before. There weren’t any heavy objects in the room that I could smash it with. Even if I did smash the window, all I would be able to do was shout for help. By the time anyone heard me, Rachel would have stabbed me to death. There was already one body in the flat. If she was caught, she would do life for murder. It wouldn’t matter if there were two of us or one.
‘You killed them, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘Karen and Harold? And it was you who threw the acid at Kristi?’
‘The cleaner? No, that was nothing to do with me. A happy coincidence.’
‘But the others?’
Her face twisted into a glassy-eyed smile again. ‘Oh yes. You can thank me later.’
My only hope was that Rachel believed she loved me. The people she’d hurt so far had been the people around me. There was one little bright spot in this fucked-up, terrifying situation. Tilly must be OK. When Charlie said ‘Say goodbye to your sister,’ that was exactly what she meant. It wasn’t supposed to be a permanent goodbye.
I had been so wrong about Charlie. But I didn’t have time to think about that, because Rachel reached up and turned the shower off, pointing the knife at my face.
‘Into the bedroom,’ she said.
I got out of the shower, shivering and dripping, and Rachel jabbed the tip of the knife into my back, beside my spine. I gasped with pain and she said, ‘Oh for goodness sake.’
‘Rachel . . .’
‘Shut up, Andrew.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Please don’t make me lose my temper.’
We entered the bedroom and she instructed me to lie on my back on the bed. There were handcuffs attached to the bed frame. She snapped one over each wrist. Then she cuffed my ankles together. If I had been scared before, now I was terrified. I turned my head and saw that my phone was gone. She walked out of the room and came back carrying the holdall.
‘How did you get in?’ I asked. I needed to keep her talking, try to connect with her, talk her round. Find out what she wanted.
‘You keep a spare key in your bedside drawer,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I thought you meant for me to take it.’
I took a deep breath. ‘And the little bag of heroin. You put it in Charlie’s suit pocket.’
She smiled at me. ‘Clever, aren’t I? You’ll soon realise, Andrew, that all those other women – Sasha, Karen, Charlie – they’re nothing compared to me. I thought maybe Harriet was a threat too, but I could tell from your emails that you stopped caring about her a long time ago. I don’t think you ever loved her.’
As she talked, she put the holdall on the bed and removed some items from it. From my prostrate position I couldn’t see what they were, could only see a flash of silver, something catching the light.
‘You’ve read my emails?’ I said.
‘Hmm. All I needed was your iCloud password. Once I had that all I had to do was set it up on my iPad and I had access to everything, including all the texts you send and receive on your iPhone. Easy.’
‘But how did you get it? My password?’
She smirked. ‘I installed a piece of keystroke-recording software on Tilly’s computer. I wanted to keep an eye on her emails, see what she was saying about me. And when you stayed at Christmas you logged in to your iCloud emails and your Facebook. The software stored your passwords. That was the best Christmas present I ever had.’
I was stunned and horrified. With one password she could access everything because I used my Apple computer and phone, using my iCloud account, to send all my messages. And my Facebook password gave her even more access to my life.
‘And you deleted loads of my Facebook friends.’
‘Only the sluts.’ She smiled at me. ‘You didn’t notice me for a long time, did you? I know you merely thought of me as the poor sap who looked after your sister, who did the job you didn’t want to do.’
I opened my mouth but she put a finger to my lips. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t blame you. Some people are meant to be carers – like me – and others are supposed to be cared for. Like you. The first time I met you I knew that it was actually you I was supposed to look after.’
She put a hand behind my head and tilted it upwards, put something on my tongue. Before I could spit it out, she poured water into my mouth from a plastic bottle and the pill slipped down my throat.
‘What was that?’ I said, gasping, water running onto my neck. The rest of my body was still damp, cold.
‘Just something to relax you.’
‘Rachel, come on. Why don’t you uncuff me? We can talk about everything.’
She shook her head. ‘Later. When I’ve finished.’
‘Finished what?’
She leaned over me and I saw that she was wearing something familiar. It was a helmet – the same helmet Mr Makkawi had worn when he’d performed my eye operation. It looked a little like an old-fashioned miner’s helmet, a brilliant light attached to the front.
‘Rachel, why are you wearing that?’ I could barely speak. On top of everything else, the sight of the helmet ha
d brought back memories of the pain of the eye examinations I’d undergone. The awful torture as they shone brilliant lights into my eyes, the veins filling my vision like bloody corals, the horror of being trapped, my eyes forced open, the laser they used for the follow-up surgery causing the nerves in my eyes to scream, like when a dentist pokes a nerve in a tooth.
She didn’t reply. Instead she took a couple of small objects from her holdall.
‘You know, Rachel isn’t really my name,’ she said. ‘But I like it. Makes me feel pretty.’ She spoke in a strange sing-song voice.
A deep shudder went through my core as I realised what she was holding.
Eye clamps.
‘No, please, Rachel, please don’t . . .’
She ignored me. ‘Did you know I worked at Moorfields for a while? Fascinating place. I took this helmet when I left. That’s where I first saw you, when I realised that we should be together. You were coming out of your operation. You were unconscious. You looked so beautiful, like an angel lying there. I looked up your details. One of the other nurses told me that you’d told her about your sister, that she was in a wheelchair. You told her that she was looking for a personal assistant. It seemed like fate. What better way for me to get close to you, to watch you.’ She wagged her finger at me. ‘Though I was disappointed you didn’t visit more often.’
She snapped the clamps onto my eyes, forcing them open. I stared at her face, tried to turn my head, but she grabbed my chin and forced me to look at her. Tears pooled in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. She dabbed them away with a tissue. The hard metal of the clamps dug into my eye sockets, the pressure intense, like someone pushing the end of a spoon into my eye. I tried to kick with my legs, but Rachel straddled me, leather on my bare skin, pinning me down.
‘When I got Fraser to push you down those steps, I was hoping you would break your back. I was very disappointed. I thought, if I could get you to have an accident, I could be your personal assistant. I could look after you. We’d be together all the time.’ She licked her lips. ‘But that didn’t work. Fraser . . . what a fuck-up he is.’