Читать книгу The Killer Inside - Cass Green, Cass Green - Страница 12

Irene’s hands trembled as she checked inside her handbag for her purse. It would involve a bus ride to get to Michael’s flat and she got anxious about travelling anywhere on her own lately. But she needed to know what was going on.

She thought about ringing Linda. She still had her number.

The shameful truth was that she was a little frightened of Linda, with her screechy laugh and her sharp tongue. No wonder she and Michael hadn’t lasted, although Irene wasn’t naïve enough to think that her eldest son had been blameless in the marriage.

It was drizzly outside, and Irene felt a strong desire to turn straight back as she began to walk down the street. Everything felt so loud after being on her own for the last couple of weeks – roaring traffic and the jarring sound of human voices.

When the boys were little, and scared about something, she used to say to them, ‘Just put one foot in front of the other,’ and that’s what she did now, making her way to the bus stop and joining a small queue of people there. A young woman with a pram was jiggling it backwards and forwards in an attempt to distract a baby that was emitting hiccupy sounds of misery. The woman’s eyes had lilac smudges beneath them and her long red hair was greasy at the roots. Irene gave her a sympathetic smile and the woman looked surprised for a moment, almost as though she felt caught out in her thoughts, then she rewarded Irene with a returned smile.

‘How old?’ Irene said, peering into the pram and seeing a baby so tiny it still bore the wrinkled, shocked look of the newly hatched.

‘Three weeks,’ said the woman quietly. Irene looked up to see her eyes were now brimming with tears.

She patted the hand that was holding the handle of the pram and said, ‘It will get so much easier. I promise you that, sweetheart,’ and the woman nodded her thanks and lowered her eyes.

Climbing onto the bus, Irene felt a stab of guilt at what she had said. If only sleepless nights were the hardest bit of parenting. She hadn’t expected to be worrying herself sick in the wee small hours about her children when it had been thirty-four years since she had given birth.

When, twenty minutes later, she arrived at the street where Michael was renting the attic room, she looked up and down for his car. But there was no sign of it.

That didn’t mean anything in itself, she told herself, as she got to the terraced house where he lived. He might just be out.

Her stomach turned over as she pictured him lying on an unmade bed with an empty bottle of pills next to him. It would be so unlike him to do something like that though, wouldn’t it? He had never been the one to take drugs. Not after his brother.

But life hadn’t been especially kind to him lately. Breaking up with Linda had really cut him up, however much he’d claimed he was ‘better off without her’.

Irene was glad they didn’t have any children of their own, even though she would have loved grandchildren. It would have made the break-up even harder on everyone.

Gathering herself, Irene went to the front door and located the buzzer for the top flat. There was no name, just ‘Top flat’. It wasn’t the sort of place anyone would put down roots. When Michael got made redundant from the print company he’d worked with for many years, he’d been given a small pay-out, which was keeping him afloat. When she’d asked him about getting a new job, he told his mother he was ‘assessing his options’. He was forty, but that wasn’t very old these days, was it? Forty felt like nothing much now, not to Irene, anyway.

There was no reply from the top flat. Irene pressed the buzzer again and then got a shock as the front door was suddenly flung open. A young black man with a woolly hat and a beard, a cigarette halfway to his mouth, seemed as surprised to see her and for a moment they both stared at each other.

‘You going in?’ he said after a moment and Irene blurted out, ‘Do you know Michael? He lives in the top flat?’

The man scrunched his brow for a minute then recognition dawned. ‘That fat ginger bloke?’

Irene bristled, but forced herself to remain polite.

‘He’s my son,’ she said. It was answer enough for the other man who avoided her direct gaze then and said, ‘Not for a while. Ask Rowan on the second floor. She usually knows what’s going on.’

Irene thanked him stiffly and, as he bounded down the steps behind her with an air of gratitude to be getting away, she came into the cramped hallway. There were two bicycles to one side, and on the other an ornate and old-fashioned wooden sideboard with a speckled mirror. It was covered in a sea of post and fast-food flyers and, looking around awkwardly, Irene began to rifle through, separating the letters from the flyers.

She quickly found one, then two letters addressed to Michael, but on closer inspection, they looked like junk mail. She put them back.

The steps were steep, and covered with a treacherously rucked carpet, so she climbed slowly but was still a little out of breath when she got to the top floor. She took a moment to collect herself, then rapped on the door to Michael’s flat. She waited, then did it again, but there was no response.

‘Michael? Love?’ she called out, hating how quivery she sounded. Nothing happened.

Reluctantly, she walked back down the stairs and found herself hesitating on the second floor.

She felt silly knocking on doors and speaking to strangers about her business, but, in for a penny, in for a pound, she guessed.

Some very strange sounds were emanating from inside the flat there. It sounded like someone was giving birth, having an argument and playing the drums at the same time.

Irene steeled herself once again and knocked gently on the door. Nothing happened for a moment and so she did it again with more confidence this time. The music, if that’s what you could call it, abruptly stopped.

The door opened, and a very overweight woman peered blearily out at Irene. She was somewhere in middle age, with hair in pale-coloured dreadlocks held back by a red scarf. Her skin bore the look of a lifelong smoker and there was a sweetish smell that even Irene recognized wafting out of the flat. It no doubt explained the slightly unfocused look in her eyes.

‘Can I help you, darling?’ she said in a surprisingly high-pitched, girlish voice.

‘I’m looking for my son, Michael,’ said Irene. Suddenly she found she was close to tears. Her knees were hurting, and she was gasping for a hot drink. All she wanted was for someone to say, ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Michael’s fine.’

The woman looked at her and something Irene couldn’t place passed across her face. Maybe something had happened between her and Michael. Irene couldn’t help herself immediately hoping he had used protection and then being disgusted with herself for even thinking like this.

‘I haven’t seen him in two weeks,’ said the woman, frowning now. ‘He hasn’t been answering any of my messages.’

‘Oh.’ Irene felt herself sagging and leaned a hand against the doorframe.

She hadn’t wanted it to be anything other than a silly old bat with too much time on her hands worrying about nothing. But this strange person now looked as worried as Irene felt.

‘Look, you’d better come in,’ said the other woman.