Mr. Flood's Last Resort(66)

I glance at Mrs. Cabello. In one hand she clutches a large glass of Chardonnay, in the other a balled tissue. Her tears fall reverently on the box full of cat litter on her lap.

“So you see, Dr. Fortune felt that the last thing he could do for you was to spare you the sight of Manolete’s broken body. He organized to have him cremated with all due respects paid.”

Mrs. Cabello nods. One of Manolete’s peers is stretched across the sheepskin rug that lies in front of the fireplace. It fixes me with the uncanny lamps of its amber eyes. It doesn’t believe a word.

Mrs. Cabello puts down the box of cat litter and the wine and stands up, fueled by drunken purpose. “Wait. I have something for you. But in all this,” she flaps her hands, “I had forgotten.”

She lurches past the glass-topped coffee table. The bald cat on the hearthrug watches her leave, before returning its gaze to me. It regards me with unblinking disgust. I don’t blame it.

I look around the room. It’s like being inside a mad wedding cake. The windows are dressed in froths of white and gold voile and the sofas are plump crescents of white leather. In the corner of the room there is a kidney-shaped cocktail bar made of white marble, like the fireplace. Which is a wonder to behold, covered, as it is, by permed cherubs. Above the fireplace is another portrait of Mrs. Cabello lolling in soft focus with her mouth open and her eyes glazed. She is wearing see-through harem pants and a bra made from coins.

I wonder idly whether Mrs. Cabello is a porn star.

She wanders back in again with her eyes wide and devastated and a package wrapped in brown paper in her hands.

“Mary Flood gave this to me just before her accident.” She sits back down heavily on the sofa. “You take it. I never opened it.” She pushes it across the table.

“I don’t understand. Why would you want to give it to me?”

Mrs. Cabello picks up her wine. “One morning, early, Mary knocked on my door and asked me to hold on to it.” She takes a sip. “She said that someone, a friend, might call when she wasn’t in and I would need to give this to them.”

I look down at the package. “Did Mary give you the name of this friend?”

Mrs. Cabello shakes her head emphatically. “No.” She begins to cry, softly. “And no one ever called for her. Not a single living soul.”

I open the package. It’s a notebook: leather-bound, heavy, with thick blank cream pages. I open the front cover. Inside, written in a small neat hand: M D

Don’t be afraid to tell our story.

M F





CHAPTER 31




I am climbing the stairs at Bridlemere. It’s slow going, what with my legs sinking up to the knee with every step. Mice fly past me and cats glide down the banisters. I upset a box of glass eyes and they cascade, winking, down the stairs.

The painting on the landing is empty now but for a trail of rose petals; the woman in black has disappeared.

*

IN THE white room the air is cold. Curled furls of wallpaper hang down; rashes of mold dapple patterns on the wall beneath. Spores draw hieroglyphics, coded sentences—dire warnings. The patterns begin to flicker and shift across on the wall, like images seen through a zoetrope.

Beckett nests on the counterpane, decomposed to no more than a ragged pelt, a twist of rot where a sleeping cat once lay.

I walk over to the dressing table, lift out the jewelry box and then the necklace. It breaks and scatters. The pearls hit the carpet and unwind, turning to maggots before my eyes. I watch them wriggle under the bed.

Closing the door behind me, I walk along the hall. I feel something brush my ankles and look down to see Beckett, dressed in shreds of blighted fur, lumbering on atrophied legs. He grins up at me: all skull and jawbone.

I open the door and he pushes into the room ahead of me, his tail of mottled bone snaking.

In the red room the air is alive with flies. They dance around puddles of dark clotted liquid. It’s Countess Báthory’s bath time! Gouts of blood arc across the walls and run down from the ceiling in slow drips. Indescribable gobbets fleck the furniture. Beckett jumps up on the bed and circles around, his remaining fur turning red. I walk across the carpet to the dressing table and open the drawer.

Inside, an unready baby, a small coil of head and limbs, eyes fogged and sightless, face veiled with gore, feet as narrow as hooves. Gripped in the bud of its fist, a photograph. Two girls stand on a boarded walkway flanked by sand dunes. The marram grass starts to sway and a gull turns lazily in the sky.

The fist twitches; the tiny wound of the baby’s mouth opens.

I hurriedly close the drawer and look up at the mirror. Smeared in red there’s a word:

MAUD





CHAPTER 32




Biba Morel ignores my glare. She has been on the phone ever since I walked into her office approximately twenty minutes ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s talking to no one at all. She holds the phone in the crook of her neck against her raised shoulder, leaving her hands free to search out stray crisps from under her keyboard. She has an air of pathological coldness, like a social-working Don Corleone in an outsized floral dress.

Now and again she lets loose her terrible salacious laugh, then reverts back to a series of noises: from grunts and shrieks of interest to dismissive clicks of her tongue. But really her attention is on the half-eaten coronation chicken torpedo roll in her in-tray. She laughs again, a sudden, startling, munificent laugh running up and down octaves, communicating openhandedness and gritty honesty.