82
‘Erika! I had the baby, they got it wrong. It’s a girl!’ her sister cried, sounding breathless and exhausted. It took Erika a few seconds to realise it was Lenka.
‘Oh, Lenka! That’s wonderful! What happened? I thought you weren’t due for a couple more weeks?’
‘I know, but Marek took me for lunch and just after we ordered my waters broke. You know what he’s like – he insisted on waiting for it to be packed up as takeaway – but it all happened so fast… The contractions started coming and then there wasn’t even time for gas and air when we got to the hospital, she just popped out.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘We’re calling her Erika, after you. And after Mum, obviously,’ said Lenka.
Erika felt herself welling up with emotion and wiped her face with the sandy back of her hand. ‘Oh, Lenka. Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you,’ she said. Tears and exhaustion washed over her.
‘I wish Mum could be here, and you, of course,’ her sister said, also getting teary.
‘Yeah, well, things have all got out of hand here…’
There was a rustling noise, then Erika’s brother-in-law, Marek, came on the phone. She chatted away to him for a few minutes. It felt so surreal, being sat on a dark beach whilst her family was hundreds of miles away, celebrating. Lenka came back on the phone and then said she had to go.
‘I promise that when this case is over I’ll come and see the baby,’ said Erika.
‘That’s what you always say! Don’t take too long,’ said Lenka, wearily. There was a wail of the baby and then she was gone.
Erika sat for a long time, smoking and drinking a toast to her sister and niece. As the sky darkened, so did Erika’s spirits. She was an aunt, and despite the fact she and her sister weren’t close, she felt so happy for Lenka. Happy, yet dismayed at the way in which their lives had gone in such different directions.
It was only the cold breeze and the knowledge that Keith was waiting back in his flat that made her get up off the cold sand.
As she walked back along the beach, she saw the rows of houses and bed and breakfasts stretching away to where her hotel sat on the end of the prom. She came up off the beach via the steps and stopped in front of Keith’s flat. The windows above were lit up, and the twang of a sitar and smell of weed wafted down, but Keith’s windows were in darkness. She was about to knock on the door, when she pulled back her hand. Keith always left the lights on. He was scared of the dark.
Erika stepped off the small front path and into the square of concrete with the wheelie bins. She moved to the front bay window and saw that it was open. She peered into the darkness. A smell of damp and disinfectant wafted out.
She made a decision, hauled herself up onto the windowsill and climbed inside.
83
Erika stood inside Keith’s dark bedroom and listened. The air was thick with heat and dust. She tried to tune out the muffled music coming from the flat above, but couldn’t hear anything beyond the bedroom door. She moved past the gloomy bulk of Keith’s hospital bed and into the hallway. There was a pool of light cast through the glass in the front door, but as she crept down the hall she moved into the shadows. She passed the door to the second bedroom, which was ajar – she could just see the two wheelchairs, silent and empty. The two large wheelchairs loomed in the shadows.
The music ceased for a moment, and in the silence Erika strained to hear something. Then it started up again: a dull, tuneless throbbing. She kept moving, staying alert, past the wide-open bathroom door. The light pollution from the seafront seeped through a tiny window above the sink, helping her eyes adjust to the murkiness.
Erika stopped and stiffened when she heard a snuffling and then a crackle over the throb of the music. She inched towards the frosted glass door at the end of the hallway and pulled out her phone. As she turned the corner into the living room, she activated the phone’s light.
Erika almost cried out. Standing in the centre of the room was a woman. She was small, with ghostly pale skin, and an uneven bob of coarse black hair. Her eyes were pools of black that contracted rapidly to pinpricks when Erika trained the bright light on her from the camera phone. Beside the woman, she could see Keith slumped back in his chair, arms flopped apart. A plastic bag was tied tight over his head, so tight that the thick lenses of his glasses were mashed into his eye sockets.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Simone,’ the woman sniffed, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘I didn’t want to kill him.’
‘Jesus,’ said Erika, her voice trembling. She moved the light from Keith’s body and trained it directly in Simone’s face, attempting to dazzle her, to give herself enough time to think, but Simone moved fast and Erika suddenly found herself slammed up against the back wall with a knife to her throat.