No One Gets Out Alive (8 page)

‘Hang on, hang on, I need to speak wiv you.’

‘I have nothing to say to you.’

‘Suit yourself. Just wanted to show you somefing.’

Stephanie dropped her bag on the bed and turned to close the door at the precise moment Knacker appeared in the doorway to deter her. The lights went out behind him. He shook his head with
irritation and slapped them on again. It struck her as odd that he would be annoyed with his own policy of timed lighting. Maybe it was his parents’ innovation.

His presence made her tense and nervous, but he made no move to enter the room. He sniffed up his long nose; the bones at the top were thickened by poorly healed breaks. ‘I know the
conversation we had last night was awkward.’

Awkward?
She stared at him, aghast.

‘We might have got off on the wrong foot and all that. So I’ve been having a fink today. And fought I was probably being a bit harsh last night.’ Clearly delighted he had her
full attention, he immediately resumed his tedious loquaciousness. ‘I fought, have a heart, Knacker. Girl’s on her own and all that. New city. No fella. No friends . . .’

What?
What do you want?’ She couldn’t bare him outlining the downsides of her life; she’d stuff hot wax in her own ears before she listened to another word.

The lights clicked out. She wished
he
would click out. Knacker slapped them on again. When the light returned he looked startled at having been plunged into such a heavy darkness. Then
his eyes lidded, like a crafty serpent she thought, but the half-smile never left his face. Very slowly he said, ‘I was getting to that. If you’d let me finish.’

She raised her hands. ‘What? I can have my deposit, can I?’

He raised a finger as if talking to a naughty child. ‘Ah, ah, ah. Don’t put words in my mouf.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘If you would care to follow me, I will show you.’

‘Why would I go anywhere with you?’

‘My, my, someone’s had a bad day, but don’t take it out on me, yeah, when I’m trying to do you a favour.’

Stephanie closed her eyes. Another night feeling terrified without sleep, followed by another eight hours on her feet, holding a tray of muffin fragments outside a coffee shop, gave her a sense
that something inside her had finally broken and that nothing would be able to fix it. She opened her eyes and when she spoke there was no bite or strength left in her voice. ‘Favour? My
deposit is the only favour I want.’

‘You’re like a broken record, you are.’ He broke into a bad falsetto to mimic her voice, in revenge she presumed. ‘Deposit. Deposit. Deposit.’ Then he grinned and
showed her his peg teeth. ‘Some fings are worth putting a down payment on, yeah? Holding deposit. You don’t wanna look a gift horse in the mouf, sister. So follow me and see what you
fink a this. No pressure. I ain’t trying to sell you nuffin’. I’m doing you a favour. You don’t want it, I’ll even help you carry them bags down to the street, cus
that might be your only other option, yeah? Else why would you be here?’

She wanted to be a man; she wanted to punch his face. But she was a girl denied even rudeness because he was unstable.

‘Come on, come on. This way, darlin’.’ Knacker stepped away and into the corridor, beaming at her. At the new distance his eyes appeared weird, like they were too close
together, and a fraction of a second too slow to move, like he’d spent a significant amount of his life frying his brains with skunk weed or glue.

The lights clicked off and returned him to the darkness.

‘What you fink of this then?’

The sight of the room made her feel more awake than she’d been all day. It was on the first floor and didn’t appear to be a part of the same building that housed her room, the
kitchen or the bathroom. The latter dismal place she’d not even been able to bear that morning; before leaving the house she’d just put new make-up on in her room and dressed in the
previous day’s clothes.

And like a replay of yesterday morning, as she’d made her way out of the building she’d heard a man shuffle across the tiles of the hall; he must live on the ground floor, because
she was certain there had been no sound of movement on the staircase as she descended from the second floor to the first. So the man must have coincidentally come out of a ground floor door and
left the house at the same time as her on two consecutive days. Only this morning her paranoia suggested that he was not running from her but circling her.

Stephanie had paused on the stairs when she heard the footsteps, and not moved until the front door had shut behind him. If the man leaving the building had been throwing himself into the crying
Russian girl the night before, then Stephanie had not wanted to so much as glimpse the back of his head. Because he would have been the same man that had stood outside the door of her room,
listening, after he’d finished with the Russian.

While Stephanie had waited on the stairs for the male tenant to leave the building, she’d also noticed a strip of yellow light under the door of the bathroom on the first floor. So maybe
another tenant had been inside the bathroom getting ready for their day. It could not have been the Russian girl, because Stephanie had not heard her neighbour’s door open at any time during
her mostly sleepless early morning vigil.

With the man standing outside her room the night before, she’d sat with her back against the door for two hours before sleep overcame her around one a.m. And within those two hours of
tense, alert wakefulness, she had not heard him creep away. Not heard any sound in the corridor outside her room. Or,
thank God,
inside it either.

Even as the sky lightened at dawn, after she stirred, near concussed with sleep deprivation, when Stephanie eventually inched the door open there had been no one in the corridor and not a trace
of the smells or the atmosphere she’d encountered in the night. The Russian girl’s room had been quiet and unlit.

Knacker stood and grinned by the foot of the bed in the first floor room that he was so keen to show her.

Stephanie never passed through the doorway. ‘I don’t understand.’

Knacker’s big hyena grin evolved into a mucky laugh thickened by catarrh. ‘It’s yours, girl. If you want it. Same price an’ everyfing. Least ’til the whole house is
done up. Fought it might be a bit more comfortable, like. You know, might help wiv your current dilemma.’

‘What . . .’ She didn’t know what to say, or what to make of the offer, or the room. This was a room you might see in an eighties film. Two triple-bulb spotlights cast an icy
glow over black walls and the starkness of a white carpet and ceiling, but without fully lighting the room. Mirrored wardrobe doors gave the impression the room was much bigger.

‘As I told you, I’ve been fixin’ the place up, room by room. This kind of job takes time, darlin’. I finished it up today. There’s nuffin’ I can’t do
wiv these hands. You know the Dorchester, yeah, on Park Lane? I did a total refit there. That kind of craftsmanship don’t come cheap neither.’

He carried on talking but his voice barely registered while Stephanie stared at the room. She heard snatches: ‘Bloke said . . . how much . . . I said, get out of it, what you fink I
am?’

The bed was enormous, the iron ends decorative and painted white. There was a mirrored glass table with chrome edges set under the window, that appeared to have come from a hairdresser’s
that thought itself classy. Across the room from the bed was a bulky television set, with a case made from grey plastic. She remembered the style from years ago.

‘Then I was finking about me old mum and dad’s place . . . Lot of work, but me and me cousin . . . what they always did, have lodgers, like . . .’

Stephanie was aware of the chemical odours of carpet cleaner and air freshener hanging in what smelled like an older space. Because that’s what it was: an unaired musty room, with dated
décor that gave the impression it had been sealed away for some time, left unused and unchanged. Knacker might have made an attempt at cleaning it, but the paintwork was old, sallow in
places on the ceiling. There was no smell or sign of recent decoration or refurbishments. Knacker was lying. But the room was still a vast improvement on the one she had; a room she would not be
able to spend another night inside.

‘Don’t have to make up your mind straightaway, but my phone’s been ringing all day. Rooms here is getting a lot of interest. This one will get snapped up by the first person
that sees it. But I fought being as you was already here and paid up for the first mumf . . .’

If it were possible for her to tolerate one more night at this address, in this room, and to go to work Friday, then she could leave tomorrow night with three days’ pay. And she
wouldn’t have to make that call to Ryan tonight.

She could be frightened in this building, and anxious about her safety amongst at least two male presences, or try and get to Coventry tonight, where she had never even found a single
day’s work, while dead on her feet and broke, and plunge into another kind of emotional manipulation from an ex-boyfriend. That was the choice.

One more night?

At least this was a new room; it wasn’t
that
room. No two rooms could be alike.

Could they?

Knacker was manipulative, but his only desire, she was sure, was money. The other one’s business was not clear, but she’d not even seen him, and his dealings were with the Russian
girl up on the second floor. This room was even on a different floor of the house.

‘OK. Thanks.’ As soon as she’d spoken, she began worrying that her desperate acceptance might be another mistake she would pay for dearly in the very near future.

‘Fought you’d see sense. Young girl like you don’t wanna be movin’ about all the time, dossin’ on floors, like—’

‘Who lived in here before?’

‘What’s that matter? She ain’t here no more. Place is vacant.’

‘The other room. The one I have. It’s . . .’

His bony face turned to her quickly, the chin raised. ‘What about it?’

Stephanie didn’t know what to say.
I won’t stay inside the room because it’s haunted,
was not an option. That morning, as soon as she’d put some distance between
herself and the house,
haunted
became a word coated in an absurd skin; it didn’t even have to leave her mouth to make her feel ludicrous.

Stephanie studied Knacker’s face, and suspected there might be a trace of apprehension in his expression over her line of enquiry. Either that or it was the defensive posture he adopted
about the house. But while so tired and confused, she wasn’t sure she could trust any of her perceptions. Perhaps no one could help her, save a priest or a psychiatrist, but the need to talk
to someone about the room, to escape the prison of paranoia that her mind had become, became compulsive. ‘It . . . the room. It’s not right.’

‘Eh? What you talkin’ about? Place is old. Might need a tart-up, but nuffin’ major, like. This whole place is sound as—’

‘No, I didn’t mean that. I heard something. In my room. At night.’

Knacker grinned. ‘Got spooked, did ya?’ He was thinking of laughing at her.

She cut him off. ‘I wasn’t just frightened. It was worse than that.’

Knacker narrowed his eyes as if he was hooding them so she couldn’t read them. He sniffed. ‘Not sure I am comfortable with what you are suggesting.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t have patience wiv all that crap.’

‘But I heard a voice in my room. Two nights running.’

He laughed. ‘You heard a TV. Coulda been mine. Fink I had it on.’

‘Didn’t sound like a TV. And the sound . . . under the bed, I thought they were mice, but I’m not sure—’

‘Fack’s sake, girl. You jumpin’ at the sound a mice. Not that I’m saying there is any here. I cleared them all out. The house’s been empty for a while, that’s
all. They get into empty houses, see. Cus of the cold. Maybe there’s still one left.’

‘But that wouldn’t explain—’

‘You’re pullin’ my leg, you are. What you after, rent reduction? I’ve heard it all now.’

‘Someone was inside my room.’

Knacker stopped laughing and sniffed. He looked wary.

‘I heard someone. Twice. Both nights. But they weren’t there when I turned the light on. Who lived in that—’

‘As I said, I would fank you, yeah, I would appreciate you not making remarks about me mum and dad’s house, yeah? I got no time for none of that rubbish. So you is out of
line.’

‘Sorry.’ She said it automatically, though she wasn’t sorry at all.

‘How would you like it, if I came round your mam’s house, and I started going on about all of this, yeah? So I’ll fank you to not talk about it again. This place is gonna be
somefing, I can tell you, when it’s all done up, so I don’t want none of that, yeah, about my house. Reputation and all that.’ He sniffed loudly and relaxed his shoulders. Getting
his own way was important to Knacker.

It struck her as odd that he wouldn’t put a name to the subject, but told herself to just focus on getting through the night. Even if it only meant a few hours’ sleep.
Get your
pay tomorrow. Grab your bags and take off. You can do it.
If she upset Knacker now he’d put her back in her old room, or on the street, and she’d spend the next few hours chasing
after Ryan, and trying to get a train to another city, to stay in another place she didn’t want to be. And there was no guarantee she even could crash at Ryan’s place. He’d still
not been in touch.

Towards the landlord she now felt the edge of an emotion that gave her a shudder of self-loathing:
gratitude.

‘Anyway, you got a new place. Best room in the house. Even fought about taking this one myself. But I like my privacy upstairs.’

‘But can you at least tell me who lived in this room?’

His frown told her the question was unwelcome. ‘How should I know? Place was empty when I took it on, like. Me mum and dad had all kinds here. Lodgers. Stoodents. Girls. You know. Gave
them somewhere decent to stay, like. I’m just carrying on the family tradition.’