Project 45 Chapter four

Chapter Four

I was dozing in bed as the harsh winter sun cut slithers of white against the carpet and the unwashed pile of clothes. The light ran across the clock face on the wall but not enough to be able to see it clearly. I was sure it was late, even on a Sunday. I heard the indistinguishable voices and footsteps of the people making their way through life. I was carefully examining the line of dust as it sparkled across the room.
This Sunday morning meant a lot to me, it was two days since I was questioned by the police, and I was free and home. Of course I didn’t have any right to be happy, to push my toes into the mattress and smile at my own brilliance for outsmarting the police. Angelica’s death was just another thing I had pushed to the back of my mind, one day expecting it to burst into my thoughts and cripple me. But not today.
Across my bedroom lay the evidence of two years of single life. Various mugs and half full water glasses jutted and balanced on every surface. A full inch of dust on the windowsill and an overflowing rubbish bin, not to mention the worrying vintage of the crumbs and scraps of food.
I smiled smugly, if I had a girlfriend I would have to clean once in a while. Luckily it was just me, and mess was my natural habitat. Who can imagine Sunday Lunch with the parents when your underwear is still hanging off the kitchen chairs. I felt a stab of guilt, I wondered how Angelica’s parents were this morning, or every morning for the rest of their lives.
The doorbell cut through my sleep mangled thoughts. It was the buzzer for the outside door, it makes the same noise that the buzzer on a game show makes for an incorrect answer. The sound shot straight to the part of my mind which controls anxiety. I was wide-awake immediately.
As I raised my creaking body out of bed I glanced at the clock. I had been wrong about the time, it was half eight in the morning. Now I was really worried, the voices and footsteps I had heard before had clearly been in my mind, or I lived in an apartment block with mental cases. Nothing ever happens at half eight on a Sunday morning, nothing good anyway.
I picked the cleanest looking pair of jeans out of the clothes pile and threw on a t-shirt that had been hanging from the bed post. I held my hand over my eyes while they got accustomed to the full blast of day.
Now the venerable, squashed feeling came back to my stomach. A worry so deep it was almost pain. I stumbled through the angry sunlight past empty pizza bottles and C.D cases, I made into the hallway, lined with shoes. My feet got tangled up in a blanket which was hanging half off the sofa, but somehow I made it across the battlefield and to the front door
I pushed the buzzer. ‘Who is it?’ I asked in a voice choked with sleep.
‘Lisa Taylor,’ the voice said expectantly.
I rubbed my hand over my face, trying to remember. Lisa Taylor? An ex girlfriend? No, than was too unlikely. Someone from work? ‘Who is it?’ I asked again.
‘Lisa Taylor,’ the shrill voice repeated angrily. ‘Lawrence Duncan?’
It didn’t really sound like a question, this person already knew who I was. Maybe she was with the police, the guilt and panic hit me again. ‘Lawrence isn’t here,’ I replied crispy.
‘I know you live alone.’
It sounded like a threat
‘Listen,’ the voice said, ‘we need to talk about my sister, and I’m going to wait here all day if I have to.’
Oh, that Lisa Taylor. A new wave of guilt passed through me, I looked out at the room and was suddenly aware of the mess. I let her up without another word, I should’ve expected this.
All I remember of Lisa Taylor was that she lived in the same house as Angelica. Other girls didn’t really pass on my radar back then, and she had already left school when I started. She sometimes glared at me through the doorway, she had the same eyes as her sister.
I moved away from the door, I could hear her clacking footsteps and I wondered how far away she could be. The door was thrown wide open and it banged against the wall. She was a formidable figure, her hair pulled tightly back from a harsh face, storming into war like an army sergeant, patent black heels cutting a path through the filth on my floor. She was five foot seven or eight in the heels, but she was a giant to me.
‘Why?’ She spat at me. There as such hatred in her voice, such venom. ‘Why did they let you go?’
I didn’t know the answer to than myself, I was just grateful that they did. ‘I…I’ I mumbled weakly, at least it was something like that, before I got cut off.
‘Do you have any idea what my parents are going through?’ she hissed like an angry cat. ‘You can’t even contact us? You can’t even explain yourself.’
‘Surely the police…’ I trailed off again, the look in her eyes enough to make me want to sew my mouth up forever.
‘The police?’ She laughed hollowly, ‘they told us there wasn’t enough evidence. But,’ she waved her finger at me, it looked like a loaded gun. ‘I want to hear it from you, I want to know.’
I had no idea what she wanted to know, her eyes still silencing me I said nothing. ‘No guilt?’ she said quietly, it sounded like a question but I couldn’t be sure. ‘No shame? Just looking at your smug face makes me feel sick.’ I wasn’t feel too smug at that moment. ‘You were the only suspect and they let you walk out, I want to know why.’
‘I…I…’ was all I managed to weakly splutter.
‘Defend yourself!’ She screamed at me. ‘Tell me you didn’t do it!’ She had taken another step towards me, I could see cracked red veins running through her eyes. I still didn’t say anything. ‘Tell me you didn’t do it!’ She punched me on the arm, her small hand still managed to hurt me. ‘I remember you,’ she said, her eyes narrowed and hurtful now. ‘I remember the way you acted around her. Always there, always staring at her. If you know something, if you know something I don’t.’ She wagged her finger at me, her hand was shaking and her eyes were wet.
‘I don’t know anything,’ I said in one breath.
‘You’re withholding information!’ She screamed like a banshee, every word emphasised and screechingly painful. ‘You can’t lie to me!’
I stayed rooted to the spot, held in shock by her outburst. I had no idea what she wanted to hear, what would make her feel any better, what would make her hand stop shaking. I focused on the door and not on her wild eyes. ‘I didn’t kill Angelica,’ I managed to say.
This at least stopped the screaming. She opened her mouth angrily and then shut it abruptly. Then followed the worst awkward silence I had ever suffered. Lisa’s eyes darted to the mess, they scanned every pile of rubbish like a computer.
Then something horrible happened. Her whole body went limp, she didn’t faint, she just fell. She slumped down onto my sofa, the beer bottles wedged between the cushions rattled together. She put her head in her hands and began to sob. If there’s one thing that terrifies me it’s a woman crying, in my flat. She was shaking violently now, shoulders, hands and legs quivering. She looked like she was having a seizure.
‘I didn’t kill your sister,’ I repeated, because it had had an effect the last time.
‘I know,’ came the thick voice from between her hands. ‘You’re just as useless as you were as a schoolboy.’ It was probably the wrong time to be hurt by anything she said. ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ came the long whine. She looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. ‘Just look at where you live,’ she wailed, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes.
I moved nervously towards her. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Coffee,’ she said through a loud sniff, ‘black, one sugar.’
It took about ten years to make the coffee. The whistle of the pot was the loudest sound ever recorded. As least it covered the sound of her crying.
I placed the mug delicately on a pile of magazines.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and the sudden words jolted me. She had stopped shaking. ‘I didn’t really think you had killed her. I just needed to be angry at someone.’
I considered the range of emotions she had gone through in the last ten minutes, she must be exhausted. ‘I really don’t know anything,’ I said softly.
‘I just need to understand why the police would let their only suspect go.’
‘There was no proof,’ I said.
Lisa banged her mug down on the table, coffee dribbled all over last month’s FHM. ‘There’s no proof of anything!’ She shouted, the shrill, bitter tone rising again. ‘No sign of a struggle, the neighbours didn’t hear anything. There’s just you.’ She looked at me as though I were a cancerous growth.
‘There can’t just be me. I’m a nobody,’ I confessed. Lisa nodded in agreement. ‘What about her friends? Those neighbours you mentioned.’
‘You remember Angelica,’ Lisa sniffed, ‘she had a close circle of friends, but they’ve all been questioned. They have alibis, so do the neighbours. She’d been single for over a year, no jealous exes, no cult groups known in the area.’
‘She did pick just a few close friends,’ I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone, ‘but there were always admirers around her. And what about colleagues? It’s only been three days, it takes so much longer to complete a police investigation.’ She sobbed loudly again, I would try anything to prevent her from crying. ‘They’ll find something.’
‘They won’t find anything,’ she spat. ‘I’ve seen the police report.’
I thought about this, ‘how have you seen the police report?’ Then I thought some more, ‘actually, how did you know where I lived?’
She ignored me, her head was in her hands again. I heard a raking sob spread through her. I could handle anything but the crying, so I did something stupid. I was just trying to help her, to comfort her, but what I said next is going to rule the rest of my life.
‘We’ll find out who did this,’ I said. I think I meant to say ‘they’ll find who did this.’ Whatever the reason for my Freudian slip, it happened.
‘Then you’ll help me?’ Her face broke into a dark smile.