Our House(107)

Merle looks at her and it seems to Fi that nothing in her eyes has changed from yesterday: Fi is still the victim, the human sacrifice. ‘I don’t know yet. Let me think. Tell me why he’s Mike and not Toby.’ As Fi explains, Merle picks up the coat draped on an open box near the kitchen, interrupting her to ask, ‘Is this his?’

‘Yes.’

Merle’s fingers disappear into its folds, re-emerge with a brown leather wallet. ‘Michael Fuller. Okay. That’s good, I think.’

‘Why’s it good?’ Fi asks.

‘Because you called him Toby. You’ve probably never mentioned Mike or Michael to anyone, have you?’

‘No. I didn’t know it was his name until last night.’

Merle continues to poke through the wallet. ‘And I remember Alison saying you haven’t met his family yet. Is that true?’

‘Yes. Or friends.’

Merle glances up at her. ‘Not a single one? No colleague or neighbour? Kids?’

‘No one. We didn’t share lives like that.’ Because ‘we’ didn’t exist. She has no idea who Toby – Michael Fuller – is. Who he was. Because he’s not a man now, he’s remains. As Fi suppresses the need to retch, Merle looks oddly heartened.

‘I’d say that’s very fortunate,’ she says, and places the wallet on the worktop before searching the coat pockets for other items. Car keys. Nicorette chewing gum. Two phones. Both are charged, both present security screens requiring passcodes the women have no way of guessing. ‘Which one does he use when he calls you?’ she murmurs, to herself as much as to Fi.

‘I don’t know, but if I call it from mine, it will ring and we’ll find out,’ Fi suggests.

‘No!’ Merle grips her arm. ‘Don’t make any calls from your phone while you’re here, okay?’

Fi nods. Merle’s mood is commanding, constructive, and Fi has a childlike desire to please her. ‘What if I call the number I have from Bram’s phone? The one I used to text him? Then we could assume it’s the other one that he uses for me?’

It is as if he has no name now; she can’t bring herself to use it, as if to do so would be to rekindle his life force.

Merle pauses, before thinking aloud: ‘For all we know, he might have your number on both these phones. We’ll get rid of them both and hope they’re not traceable. This man is a criminal, right? He uses false names. Someone like him isn’t going to have a nice family plan, is he? Will it look weird, though? He came here because Bram texted him, so where’s the phone he got the text on? Still, there might be a hundred reasons why he’s ditched his phone on the way.’ She finds a plastic bag in one of the drawers, drops the two phones into it, then pulls Fi into the passageway between boxes, as if removing the two of them from the dead man’s sightline. She speaks in low, clipped utterances: ‘Listen to me, Fi, does anyone else know you came here last night?’

‘No. Only him.’

‘Did you call anyone when you were here? Bram’s mother, maybe? To speak to the boys?’

‘No, only from your place earlier. Well, I texted him, like I said, but only from Bram’s phone.’

‘Did you use the internet?’

‘No.’

‘Where’s your laptop? You haven’t used that here, have you?’

‘No. I don’t know where Bram put it. In one of these boxes, I’m guessing. I haven’t used it since before I went to Winchester. Tuesday evening.’

‘Good.’ Merle backs out of the passageway and scans the items on the counter before wiping the wine bottle and glasses with a tea towel. She does the same with the discarded packaging from Bram’s pills. Without explanation, Fi hands her the knife, which Merle cleans and returns to the cutlery drawer.

‘Anything else? Where’s this other phone you texted from?’

This too is wiped. Fi wonders if it will join Toby’s in the bag, but instead Merle places it on the yellow paper.

‘Why are you leaving it? That’s the one I’ve used!’

‘Exactly. Listen, Fi, there’s a way out of this. The police find him – maybe even you do, or we do together, that’s better! Later today, okay? We’ll find his body and we’ll call the police and we’ll say we recognize him from yesterday, that he caused a scene at Trinity Avenue when he came looking for Bram. We spoke to him inside for a few minutes but he got aggressive and we asked him to leave. Before that, we’d never laid eyes on him in our lives. Do you see where I’m going?’

There is a slow, spreading sensation through her stomach and chest: it takes a few moments to recognize it as hope. ‘You mean Bram came back and sent the text? Bram gave him the pills?’

‘Yes, or left him here in such misery that he took an overdose himself. I don’t know, I wasn’t here. And neither were you. They’re Bram’s pills, not yours.’

Fi stares, her mind sifting images of the early hours. ‘The sleeping pills, though, Merle. Oh God, were they from a prescription made out to you?’

‘Yes, but so what if they were?’ Merle’s focus is intense. ‘There’s no box with my name on it. If anyone gets that far, I’ll say I gave them to Bram. A few weeks ago, I don’t remember exactly when, but when he was complaining about insomnia. He didn’t tell me he had any other prescription medication or I would never have given them to him.’