Chapter 47
The sun is still high in the sky when the sound of the peacocks rings out.
I know that without even taking off my eye mask.
I can tell because my head is throbbing and I’m dizzy and tired and my thoughts feel like decades-old molasses.
In comes a flash of Olivia and Jonathan together. I bury my face in the pillow.
And then the doorbell rings—a loud, shrill sound.
I pull off my eye mask, take out my earplugs and then lie there, squinting at the light leaking in through the middle of the curtains thinking: It must be one of the women Oscar has been seducing, popping past for a daytime visit. Serves him right.
The doorbell rings again.
A moment later, I hear footsteps.
Then chatter.
I lie in bed, my head aching, willing them to go away. But then, hang on, the voices sound male.
And serious.
I sit up.
Something is wrong.
I pull on my robe and slippers, gently open my door and creep over to the banister, then look downstairs into the grand entrance hall.
Oscar is up, wearing jeans and a white shirt, sunglasses on, looking like some sort of doomed romantic rock-and-roll dream, and there are two men down there with him. Men in uniform.
The police.
The police are here.
The world dissolves into soup around me.
Why are they here?
Is it about Emma?
Or is it about Red Flannel Jeff?
Ah fuck. I bet that’s it. It’s far more likely that I’d get caught than Oscar. That’s just how my life goes.
Red Flannel Jeff must have done what I said, gone in and confessed, and then . . . remembered me. What I did to him. Is that it? Or did the taxi driver figure something out? Was there still blood on me? Or did someone film me? Those people outside the car, did they see something?
How could I have been so reckless?
‘Aubrey, darling,’ comes Oscar’s voice as he looks up at me calmly.
Our eyes meet and I’m thinking, Yours forever, Aubrey, then of those pictures of me in his office, then of Emma’s body under the sofa, then those women he was in bed with last night.
‘Would you put on some clothes and come down here? The police have some questions.’
My throat tightens. My vision blurs for a moment.
I nod. ‘I’ll just get dressed.’ Then I retreat to my room and fling open my wardrobe, looking through the clothes I brought with me.
I pull on a demure-looking cream dress, a no-sir-I’d-never-eat-someone dress, rinse my mouth out with mouthwash and run a brush through my hair. I slip on a cardigan and some thick socks, and as I go downstairs I think: Or maybe this is about Kenny?
Maybe the police are following up on all the black Aston Martin owners. Maybe there’s something else Oscar left linking me to Kenny, something I don’t know about?
But no matter what the answer, none of it is good.
As I go downstairs, I realise how far into the darkness I’ve fallen.
The three dead bodies, Riley looking for me, the people we’ve fed off .
. . how much I enjoyed Red Flannel Jeff.
This is exactly like every vampire book and TV show and movie I’ve ever watched.
Exactly who I was never going to be . . . Maybe I deserve this.
By the time I get to the door of the sitting room, and take a deep breath before entering, I’m thinking: I’m done for.
I’m imagining myself being put in the back of a paddy wagon.
Trying to explain why I can’t eat their prison food .
. . I mean, Oscar won’t go down for it, will he?
He’ll do whatever he needs to slither out of it.
He’ll probably just move somewhere dark, like that nickel town that gets almost no sunshine—Norilsk, in Russia—and wait till it passes. It’ll be me who takes the fall.
Unless he helps me. And I loathe that I have to rely on him for that.
I smile as I walk into the room.
The police are perched on a lemon-yellow sofa. Oscar is on the other sofa, his sunglasses still on, and there is a pot of tea, some cups and a plate of biscuits on the coffee table.
‘Big night last night?’ one of the officers asks with a cheery grin, nodding at Oscar’s sunglasses, and probably the fact that according to the grandfather clock in the corner of this room it is one pm, and we’ve clearly just woken up.
He’s around thirty-five with pale blond hair, pink cheeks and a northern accent just like Jonathan’s. And now I’m thinking of that post of him and Olivia last night again. My insides shrivel, the world takes on a greyish hue, and I suspect I have officially entered the depression stage of grief.
‘Yes, it’s that time of year, I’m afraid,’ Oscar says as I sit down next to him.
‘I hear you.’ Cheery Cop smiles as he bites into a biscuit. The other one, dark-haired, more serious, is frowning and pulling out his pad and a pen. I can hear both their hearts beating. Both are calm.
‘So,’ starts the serious one, who isn’t eating any biscuits, ‘tell us about the party you had here that Felix Anderson came to.’
Felix. This is about Felix.
Relief flows through me—this has nothing to do with me—but it’s short-lived.
Because now I’m thinking about that garden bed.
About how I bet Felix is buried in there.
Surely the police are well versed in this sort of thing.
What if they notice that the beds are newly dug up?
What if they look closer? Instinctively, I look out the window to check if I can see the bed from here, and instead see one of the peacocks wandering around.
‘I do it every year,’ Oscar says, lifting his sunglasses onto his head and looking concerned. ‘It’s a nice thing for the people of the town, brings us all together. Gives us a reason to dress up.’
‘But Felix is from London, not here?’
‘That’s right, he’s a dear friend,’ Oscar says, frowning. ‘You said you were investigating his whereabouts, but what exactly do you think happened to him? Because he seemed fine. Didn’t he, darling?’ he asks me, reaching for my hand.
I want to pull my hand away, Oscar is the reason I’m in this situation, everything was fine-ish before he appeared. But he holds my hand still.
‘Yes, in very good spirits,’ I say, doing my best to play along.
‘Strange situation,’ says Serious Cop as his pen scrawls across the page, and the other one takes a big slurp of tea. ‘He hasn’t been seen since the night of your party. Not on CCTV at the train station. Nothing.’
‘Right, right,’ Oscar says. ‘I think he would have driven, though. I can’t be certain, but Felix doesn’t like public transport.’
‘Hmm,’ says Serious Cop, his mouth distorting, like maybe he’s chewing on his cheek. He turns to me now. ‘So how did you know him?’ he asks me.
A flash of his teeth sinking into my neck. The cold air on my legs. Then Oscar, with Felix’s head in his hand . . . dripping blood.
‘I only met him that night,’ I say with a small, innocent smile. ‘But he seemed nice.’
‘And you’re from London too?’ he asks me.
‘Mmhmm,’ I say. Please don’t ask where I work. Please don’t look it up. Please don’t be too interested.
‘Look,’ Oscar says, letting go of my hand and leaning in towards them like he’s about to tell them a secret, his legs splayed and his elbows on his knees.
‘I don’t want to speak out of school, but Felix is known for going off on .
. . let’s call them benders. Sometimes he’s gone for a couple of weeks,’ Oscar says.
‘You should probably talk to his girlfriend, Carmilla. She’ll tell you all about it. ’
Something shifts in the policeman’s energy. ‘Yes, she did say that, when she came in.’
Carmilla went to the police.
‘But then she got extra worried because while it looked like maybe he’d gone somewhere—he’d packed a bag and taken his passport, and his car was gone too—he hadn’t taken his toothbrush or his phone charger. She said that he was a meticulous packer and had never forgotten those things before.’
Now something almost imperceptible in Oscar’s energy shifts too.
That’s where Oscar went on Boxing Day night. He wasn’t at the club, he went to Felix’s place. Of course, he would have had Felix’s keys from his body. He must have packed a bag with his passport to make it look like he’d gone somewhere.
I sit dead still, trying to control my expression; I’m going for a calm smile.
Cheery Cop wipes the sugar from the biscuit on his trousers and Serious Cop jots down a few more notes.
‘Well, that’s it for now,’ Serious Cop says. ‘Thank you for your time. But if you hear from him, please do let us know.’
‘Of course,’ Oscar says, and we all stand up. Oscar stands close to me, his hand on my lower back.
We go outside to see them off. Their car is parked right by the entrance.
And Oscar’s Aston Martin is right there beside it, and I’m staring at them, willing them not to look at it, not to notice a dent or something and link any of us to Kenny.
Because if that happens, I just know they’ll end up buried next to Felix. And then I’ll be five bodies deep.
‘Okay, you have a nice rest of your day,’ Serious Cop says and then they both get into the car.
Oscar smiles as we watch it drive off, but as soon as they’re through the gate the smile is gone. ‘Fucking Carmilla,’ he says. Then he turns to me. ‘Get some sleep, I’ll see you later on.’