Read by Lin Sagovsky
I’ve lived on Lonsdale Road my whole life. My brother lives across the street and three doors down, in the house that we both grew up in. When I married Harry I made sure we moved onto Lonsdale Road. It wouldn’t feel right to live anywhere else, and birds of a feather need to stick together, they say. But there’s been so much trouble these last years, to do with number thirty-seven. Then Harry let me down Christmas just gone, after the party at Devan’s, sucking on that young girl’s ear like some kind of pervert. He was drunk though, and thought it was all a laugh.
I’d thought it was all over.
A year before that they arrested Cresswell. They found all sorts in the basement, stuff that you wouldn’t want to think of. Not just bodies but bits of bodies. Some people said that they weren’t surprised; that Cresswell had one of those faces. Not like my Harry, who has the face of a naughty cherub.
“It’s because I’ve led a blameless life,” he says to me. He’s a cheeky one.
Cresswell kept to himself, pretty much. No friends. After they took him away number thirty-seven was empty for a long while. None of us on the street knew what to feel about it really because we didn’t like the house standing empty, but then we weren’t sure that we wanted someone to move into it either.
“It’s creepy,” Harry said. “It gets into people’s thinking. We don’t want it empty too long, Tess. We want things to get back to how they were.”
My brother, Wilfred, agreed.
“It’s a reminder,” Wilf said. “We need a nice young couple to move in there.”
We didn’t get a nice young couple, though. That young man with the ratty face moved in.
“I wonder if he’s one of those murder fans,” Harry mused.
I told him to drink his tea and stop worrying about it. The house had someone in it now and that was a good thing.
We live at number thirty-five, you see, which is right next door to number thirty-seven. The ratty faced man came around after a couple of days. He brought us some wine as a gift, but Harry and I stay away from drink mostly, so we said to him that was very nice but we’d rather have some tea and digestives. We invited him in.
“My name’s Tony,” he said. Harry was just staring at him funny, so I told Tony what our names were.
I gave him a look over while he ate our digestives. His fingernails looked like they could do with some attention, and underneath each nail was dark with dirt. I almost slapped the biscuit out of his hands and told him to go and wash them. His T-shirt had paint marks on it.
“You a decorator by trade, then?” I asked him.
He shook his head. No.
“I work at the yard,” he said. “I drive a fork-lift.”
“You’ve got paint on your clothes,” I told him.
“Just sorting out the house,” he said. “You know how it is…”
We knew how it was. Everyone knew how it was. He didn’t stay long and we were glad when he left.
Agatha and Cassie were round ten minutes later.
“What’s he like?” Agatha asked.
“Is he simple?” Cassie asked. “I heard he’s simple. Cresswell was simple.”
Duncan Cresswell, before he was arrested and all of the body parts were found in his house, used to sit on the swing in his unmown back garden and sing to himself. He used to buy his food at the corner store, the same every time: beef and tomato pot noodle, two cans of Tennants super, a packet of Hob-Nobs. It was a wonder he hadn’t died of scurvy.
“He’s not simple,” I said.
Cassie looked disappointed.
“He looks like a rat, though, doesn’t he?” she said a few moments later, her face brightening.
“Yes, he does,” I agreed. “He could use a shave.”
“You don’t surprise me,” Agatha said. “No self-respecting man would move into that house. You mark my words, he’ll be trouble.”
Harry sat in the corner while we talked.
“Those two are idiots,” he said, after Agatha and Cassie had gone. “I don’t know why you give them the time.”
“Well, thank the Lord almighty for idiots,” I said, feeling cross with him, and stood up. “I’m going to make some dinner.”
“Sausages?” he asked hopefully, but I was still angry.
“No,” I told him. “We’re having chips and nuggets.”
He made a face and went back to his paper.
*
Tony’s name was Anthony Bouvier. The postman gave us a parcel to give to him so we saw his name. You can’t steam them like you used to, but whatever was inside didn’t weigh much. Anyway, having a French surname didn’t help Tony’s popularity any. Right minded people don’t have much time for France, and Cassie had once had her heart broken by a French exchange student, back in her schooldays.
“Serves her right,” Harry said. “Cosying up with a toad-muncher.”
I just let those sort of comments slide off me back then. That was before he had too much to drink at Devan’s party and started sucking on that girl’s ear. He shouldn’t have got drunk is what I say, but Wilf has taken care of it and there’ll be none of that from now on. Wilf doesn’t like bother.
“I don’t know why you married that loony,” Wilf said to me just last week.
“You introduced us,” I reminded him.
Wilf got one of his black looks, and I could see his hands trembling, but there was nothing he could say and he knew it.
Anyway, I was talking about Tony Bouvier. Well, whatever decorating he was doing was a mystery to the rest of us. He stripped the walls all right, but he didn’t start painting them again for over a month. After two months one wall in the living room was brilliant white, and the rest were just grey plaster with old pieces of wallpaper stuck to them. You could see bottles and cans lying around on the carpet in the living room as well, the same carpet from when Cresswell lived there. Wilf went around the back to look in the kitchen and there were dirty plates piled up in the sink like the leaning tower of pizzas.
“He hasn’t even changed the locks,” Harry noticed. I didn’t like that, I can tell you.
“He’s not right,” Agatha said. “He’s another Cresswell, you mark my words. What kind of man moves into a house like that?”
“He’s not like Cresswell,” Cassie said, coming back to our immediate neighbour. “Cresswell was simple.”
I used to run into Cresswell in the street. He had large, wet eyes, like a cow’s eyes. Sometimes he would have forgotten to tie his shoelaces.
“Sometimes I wonder how he did it,” Agatha said. “If brains was money he’d not have been able to afford a box of matches.”
“But he confessed,” Cassie reminded her, saving me the trouble.
*
Every year Devan Elliott would throw a Christmas party and we all liked to be invited. Once he had one of those actresses from Coronation Street there. It caused quite a bit of excitement, even if she didn’t stay much more than an hour. I think her husband killed her in the end. On television, I mean.
Devan’s wife’s called Mary. Although she’s a good fifteen years younger than him, which puts her about forty I would guess, she’s a quiet little thing. Her niece was visiting when the Christmas party came round, and that young miss couldn’t be more different to her aunt. She was a pretty one, but tarty. She didn’t seem to want to talk to the other women as much as the men.
“Look at how red her mouth is,” Harry said, plucking a glass of wine off the sideboard.
“Should you be drinking?” I asked him, but he didn’t seem to hear me.
“Look at her clothes,” he said. “What a little slut.”
He finished his wine and reached for another one. I looked around for Wilf but he hadn’t arrived yet. It was up to me.
“I don’t think you should be drinking,” I said to Harry. “I think you should give me that glass.”
He looked at me with dead eyes, and I could sense him go very still.
I went off then, seething and concerned, to talk to Agatha and Cassie. Tony had arrived, and was talking to Willy Pierce. He seemed shifty, moving from foot to foot, but after a few minutes he laughed and patted Willy on the shoulder. That wasn’t like Creswell. When you spoke to Cresswell he looked at you sheepishly, with worried eyes, and kept saying, “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know,” he would say. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I tried to keep an eye on Harry. I tried to keep an eye on Mary’s niece as well, but an hour later I saw them standing together, and not long after that I couldn’t see either of them.
“Have you seen Harry?” I asked Devan.
“He’s had a few too many, your fella,” he laughed. “Gone to get a bit of air, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He winked at me, as if he’d been talking in innuendos.
I went out into the street. I knew where Harry would be.
The lights were on in the basement of number thirty-seven. The door was round the back. I cursed Tony, then, for not having changed the locks.
Mary’s niece was already dead when I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Harry was naked, smeared in blood. He had something in his mouth that he was happily sucking away on, like a baby with a dummy, and when he saw me he opened his mouth for me to see. The girl’s ear dropped out onto the basement floor.
“Oh, Harry,” I exclaimed. “You said you were going to stop this nonsense.”
He was in a rapture, his eyes shining with innocent joy. With a bloodied forefinger he kept poking the dead girl’s face, her head rocking emptily back and forth.
“I done another one, Tess,” he said merrily. “I done another one. Ain’t I bad?”
I thought about it. I always had to be the level headed one, first with father and Wilf, and then with my own husband.
“No,” I said sternly. “It wasn’t you. It was that dirty little man. What sort of man moves into a killer’s house, Harry, eh? What sort of a man does that?”
“I’ve got a big stiffy,” Harry said, showing me. I wasn’t really interested.
I was working things through, like I did before. Wilf would help again, cleaning things up here. He didn’t want the attention any more than I did. I’d go back to the party and get Tony drunk. I’d wait until we were alone and then whisper to Agatha and Cassie that he’d lunged at me. Everyone would know it had happened then, and it wouldn’t be long before Cassie had persuaded herself he’d done the same to her, or she’d seen it happen, or anything she could make up that put her in the middle of the story. I’d let her take the attention. Harry and me’d tell people we’d seen Tony with that girl. Wilf would help me take care of it.
“Come on, Harry,” I said. I could see that he was calming down, and soon he’d be able to follow me. “Come on and we’ll get you all cleaned up. You need to be presentable. Where did you put your clothes?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head and grinning up at me, just like he’d been caught stealing chocolate. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
(c) Joshua Osto, 2017
Joshua Osto was born in Birmingham. His work has appeared in Prole, The Canary Press, Birkensnake and Glassfire magazines. He loves Paella and Bettina. He dislikes injustice and slippers.
Lin Sagovsky’s recent roles include Clairee in Steel Magnolias at Islington’s Hope Theatre, to multiple five-star reviews. Apart from voicework in various media, she helps non-actors become better communicators, playing impossible people from doormat drudges to kickass Alpha females, in places ranging from Mexico City to Milton Keynes.
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