Chapter 13 Toyota
Friday Night
It’s pitch dark outside, but no ravens are cawing, and the corpse is waiting patiently for me in the wheelbarrow.
I pull off the parcel tape, and cut and pull back the plastic wrap until I reach the body.
I reveal just enough of his torso to push my hand down inside his jacket.
It is not easy as he is stone cold and stiff as a board.
I reach his pocket and pull out the car key fob.
Something inside me is whirring with pleasure.
There’s only so much adrenaline one can squeeze out of not following washing machine instructions.
I spend another fifteen minutes wrapping him up again with the last of the parcel tape.
It’s like having to rewrap Christmas presents because you used the normal wrapping paper instead of the Santa wrapping paper – a thankless task.
I open the garage door and feel the sting of the night air.
Our little corner of Muswell Hill is unnaturally quiet.
I’m pleased it’s cold, as that will slow down decomposition.
I put on Stephen’s old gardening coat and a muddy pair of wellies, and walk up our road, discreetly pressing the button on the key fob every few feet.
Nothing beeps all the way to the bottom of Ennerdale Avenue, so I turn into Muswell Road and then right up Braithwaite Avenue. I stop as a police car turns and cruises slowly towards me. I put my head down and walk purposefully until it passes.
The wind is whispering in the treetops and the clouds are moving fast across the sky.
Unwittingly, I find myself at Cait’s house.
It looks ghostly in the orange streetlights.
With no lights on, the windows look like gaping eye sockets and the ivy resembles tears running down its cheeks.
I need to make sure we’re still on the same page so I take out my phone and type:
Thanks a million for today. You’re the best. Friends need each other so much, especially women. Please remember . . . let’s talk tomorrow. xxx
No luck all along Kewsick Road either. I turn back into Ennerdale Avenue.
I know I should try a larger circuit but it’s too cold.
I head home, and click again. Some twenty feet ahead of me, a car flashes its lights and beeps.
It’s a blue Toyota Corolla hybrid. Not the kind of vehicle I was hoping to use to transport a corpse around London in the dead of night. I was holding out for a G-wagon.
It has a child seat in the back, and all the sticky evidence of a family – wipes, chocolate stains, and lots of sand.
I’m no detective but I hypothesize that this man has recently taken his family to the seaside and is too fucking lazy to clean his car.
It reminds me how much I detest both the seaside and untidy people.
I pull on a pair of gardening gloves from my coat pocket, open the boot, and realize that it isn’t designed to hold a sizeable corpse (not something mentioned in the brochure, I imagine), and no amount of folding will help.
I try to create some extra space by taking out the engine oil, a five-litre bottle of screen wash, a poorly folded picnic rug, and a child’s lunch box with an uneaten Twix bar inside.
Still too small. I feel hungry, so I admit I eat the Twix, but it doesn’t improve matters.
I throw the lunch box, picnic blanket, and oil back in the car and walk home.
I decide to take the screen wash as it’s amazing how quickly you get through it in the winter.
I realize there’s only one option left. I fetch my own key fob, reverse my white Porsche Cayenne up to the garage door and park it just outside.
All the nearby households seem to be sleeping or watching TV with curtains drawn. A dog walker further along the street stops at a lamppost as his dog defecates. He glances idly but will forget he’s seen me by the time he’s put his hand in the green plastic bag to grapple with fresh dog shit.
I create a small ramp using two old pieces of teak shelving that Stephen is saving for some unknown future need and, with a run up, push the wheelbarrow right to the lip of the boot, then tip with all my might.
It works momentarily, but then the corpse falls back into the barrow and I have to start again.
I’ve packed this car for a two-week holiday in Cornwall before, and fitted in a buggy, cot, two suitcases, nappies and a high chair, so I’m not going to be defeated by six feet of stubborn flesh. I try again by tying the corpse to the tie-loops in the boot and using a spade as a lever.
After a brutal wrestling match, I manage to push him into the boot.
The rigor mortis doesn’t make this an easy task, but with nearly seven hundred litres of boot space, the Porsche is up to the task.
I sprinkle him with some patio cleaner, in the hope that this will help disguise any unpleasant smells, and close the boot.