Chapter Thirty-five

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.

There was a buzz and a crackle. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi,’ I said, smiling into the little lens above the speaker.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, my name’s Jonathan Whiteley. I’m from number seven. I was just talking to the postman about a package and he said he might have delivered it to you by mistake.’

‘Oh, God,’ the crackly voice said. ‘Was that you? Hang on.’

As the door opened, I stepped forward and inside.

Ingrid de Soto was lovely. That was what money did for you. She didn’t live on the same planet as the rest of us. Her expensive hair was pulled tight into a bunch. She was wearing a blue silk dressing-gown and under it I could see the swell of her breasts, the flash of a gold necklace, thin as a wire round her neck, another round one wrist, a watch. In comparison, Pippa was shabbily dressed, Astrid was dishevelled, Melanie seemed cheap. But I was on her planet now. I looked around. She was clearly alone.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I was confused. Sorry, I made a stupid mistake.’ She smiled at me apologetically, with her beautiful, expensive teeth.

Now I was the one to be confused. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. Had I slipped up?

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Here.’ She handed me the package.

I forced a smile. ‘No, really,’ I said. ‘What mistake?’

She laughed. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘We get lots of deliveries in envelopes like those. I thought it was one of those sent to the wrong address. I just rang up the courier to collect it.’ She checked her watch. ‘Bloody hell, they’ll be here in a moment.’ She smiled again. ‘It’s not your problem.’

I punched her, hard, and she fell to the floor. As I grabbed her by the neck, much of the ferocity was really against myself. I’d made this brilliant arrangement to rob someone with whom I had no connection and the result was that a courier was about to arrive and catch me in the act. I was so furious with my own stupidity that I hardly felt the flailings of her arms and hands against me and hardly heard the gurgling and choking. I forced her down, banged her head against the floor and tightened my hands around her throat until I saw that her eyes weren’t looking back at me, or at anything. I let her go.

‘You bloody idiot,’ I said, and I didn’t know if I was talking to her or to myself.

I was standing over her, panicking. She lay sprawled beneath me on the floor, hands splayed. I looked at my watch and made myself breathe slowly and calmly. Eight thirty-five. I could give myself two minutes. That was all. I looked around. It was everything I had imagined, everything I had dreamed of. But to escape now I had to do the opposite of what I’d planned. I had to make this not look like a robbery. I had to make it look as if I was insane. What did insane people do when they killed women? I thought of Owen and his fucking photographs, and it seemed like a private joke. I took the knife from inside my jacket and unsheathed it. I held Ingrid de Soto ’s head steady, then cut bold strokes on her cheeks and forehead, the way I remembered from Owen’s photograph. The incisions didn’t bleed. I took one of her earrings between my fingers, pulled it clean out of her perfectly shaped earlobe and put it in my pocket. Suddenly it was a horrible sight, the blank dead jelly eyes. I turned her over, face down, staring into the floor. I checked my watch. Time up.

I walked to the front door. I just needed to get to the gate, and then to the other side of the road, and I would be free. Then I remembered: the bloody package. I couldn’t just leave it there, could I, the thong and the condoms and scarf? I turned back, stepped over the sprawled body and looked around. There it was, on the shelf of a dresser by the door. I picked it up. A thought came to me and I also picked up an oval glass paperweight with spiralling patterns on it and an invitation on thick white card. I returned to the door, my shoes clicking on the tiles, echoing. I stepped outside, pulled the front door behind me and heard it click shut. I walked along the path, hearing the gravel under my feet. Don’t run. People would remember someone running. Out of the gate, not looking to either side. I crossed the road. What now? Concealing myself, I rested my forehead against the trunk of a tree, feeling the roughness of the bark. It was alive and that woman was dead. Then a sudden thought came into my mind: Why did I kill her? To protect myself, because it had gone wrong? No, I said, that’s not true. All you needed to do was take your package and leave. She would have apologized to the messenger. That would have been that.