of the bath. Although she had sprayed the dark space with disinfectant, several hairy brown bowls of spider-nests remained beneath the shadowed legs.
The tops of her feet were prickled with pimples that itched when she touched them. They had appeared when she’d discovered the spiders, and now she wondered if they were bites, or even tiny stings.
She told herself that the room would be transformed with fresh plaster and paint, and lights that worked, but resolved to keep her showers short until then.
‘Floorboards creak, pipes expand and contract—you’ve never lived in such an old house before. You have what doctors used to refer to as an overactive imagination; it comes from being too creative, and of course Paul’s away . . .’ Her mother managed to hang sentences filled with insinuations of mental instability and general uselessness in the air like embarrassing items of washing. Helen Owen loved her daughter, but not enough to stop herself from being cruel.
‘I’m coping brilliantly,’ Kallie rallied. ‘And before you say it, I know it wasn’t the best time to take on something like this, but it was a lucky opportunity. Nobody knew she was going to die so suddenly.’
‘That’s simply not true, darling. There’s a lot we can do to maximize our health and reduce stress, and I think you have to ask yourself if Paul has your interests at heart. He seems barely employable, he has trouble controlling his temper, and then he leaves you with all the stress of moving, into a house that sounds entirely unfit for habitation—’
‘I have to go, Mum. I’ll call you later.’ Kallie knew better than to talk with her mother when she was like this; Helen was alone and angry and probably drinking.
There was still much to do before going to bed. She pulled on her jeans and ventured out into the garden. The sodden bushes hung like overcooked spinach, or foliage in a drained fishtank. The steps to the small patch of grass were so overgrown that she had to cut her way through with a kitchen knife. She heard the cat’s peculiarly human cry before she got to the top. Somewhere inside the tangles of bindweed, she could see Cleo’s piebald torso flexing and twisting in an effort to free itself.
Cutting through the bindweed was slow work. When she was finally able to reach in and grab the cat, it slipped away with a whimper of pain. Her foot caught on a broken plastic drain lid, and she tipped over into a wet bed of weeds. Withdrawing her left hand, she was surprised to find her fingers covered in blood. The cat had stopped wriggling now, and was lying on its side under a bush. Even in the watery cloudlight of late afternoon, she could see that its fur had been parted by a number of short, deep cuts that looked like knife slashes.
‘Come on, baby, let me help you.’ Kallie reached out her hands and gently lifted it up. As the cat feebly batted her with its paws, she could see that its back left leg had been almost severed. Torn sinews gleamed with pearlized whiteness. There were more cuts across the creature’s face.
As she sought to regain a foothold in the dark snarls of weed, she knew that the poor thing was dying. She wondered if foxes could do something like this. They had been drawn into the city to scavenge on junk food, but did they also prey on cats? Cleo was covered in mud and blood. It was as if something had clawed its way up through the moist earth to attack her.
By the time she was able to gently lift it free, the cat was dead. Kallie glanced back at the little terraced house, its interior darkened, its brickwork retreating from sight under cover of rainfall, as if the property was disassociating itself from her palpable distress.
12
* * *
FOLLOWING THE RIVER
‘Are you sure you can keep up?’ asked May, concerned. His partner was breathing hard and had paused to lean against the railings.
Bryant waved aside the concern for his health. ‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I’ve been much better since I started remembering to take my blue pills.’
‘Why, what do they do?’
‘They alleviate the side effects of my yellow pills. I don’t think he’s got this right. I expected the river Lea, something over Romford way.’
The detectives were following Gareth Greenwood down Farringdon Road, rather too closely for comfort, but at least the heavy rain was reducing