Nine Lives Read Online Free PDF Page A

was racing. I started the car, for I daren’t linger in fear of witnesses, and by the time I was out of the city I was calm again. And elated. I could not tell my Verry what I had done, but I would give her a good seeing-to with my new-found passion.
    TWO DOWN. SEVEN TO GO.
    The church clock …
    The church clock was striking eight as Neil Clarkson turned into Shepton Road. She lived at the end of the street, so he would be late. At least two minutes late and she would dock it off his time. Money-grubbing bitch, he thought. At eight o’clock in the morning, three times a week, every week for the past six years, he had rung her bell and winced at the echo of the nursery chimes. Three times a week, each week, for the past six years and every bell ring at thirty quid a throw. He hated her. Though once, years ago, he remembered, he had loved her. ‘Transference,’ they called it. But that mercifully was short-lived. More than once he had tried to get rid of her. But she had a hold on him, in a grip that tightened over the years. Sometimes he felt that she needed him more than he did her.
    He opened her gate and pressed viciously on the bell. He waited, offended by the chimes. Normally, if that were a word that could be applied to her profession, she would open the door as the chimes still echoed. But there was no response. He looked at his watch and he waited. After three minutes, he reckoned she owed
him
, so he rang again and kept his finger on the buzzer. The chimes of ‘Baa, baa, black sheep’ rang out over the neighbourhood in monotonous repetition.
    Next door, a woman appeared at an upstairs window. ‘Stop that racket,’ she yelled, and she slammed the window down as the sheep bleated for the last time.
    Neil Clarkson waited. He was afraid to ring the bell again. The door sported a wide letter box. He hesitated beforelifting the flap. She might catch him, and he knew she overvalued her privacy. But he would risk it. He looked around. There wasn’t a soul on the street, and the woman at the window had no doubt gone back to bed. Gingerly he lifted the flap so that it was only half ajar. But it was wide enough to stun him. He dropped the flap in panic. Even through that narrow aperture, it was clear that she was dead. He thought it might be wishful thinking on his part, so he looked again, this time lifting the flap to its limit. And there indeed she lay, spread-eagled on the floor and laced in blood. He dropped the flap again and wondered what to do. But first he had to deal with the extraordinary feeling of relief that overcame him. Of bliss almost. At last he was shot of her. No longer did he have to grapple week after week with his broken relationship with his father. It was
his
father, and he could feel what he wanted about him. It was none of her business. And never had been. She had tried to divert him from blame, but over the years she had cunningly nurtured that blame in order to keep him by her. For the first time in so many years, Neil Clarkson felt free and with only a slight nudge of shame, he celebrated her passing.
    But he couldn’t leave her lying there. She deserved to be reported. He needed a phone. He would call next door, he thought, but not the side of the rattling window. The other side might be more welcoming. He pressed the doorbell and was rewarded with an ‘Oranges and lemons’ rendering, and he wondered whether the whole neighbourhood had reverted to second childhood. The door was opened immediately, but only by an inch or two, chained as it was to the lock.
    â€˜Yes?’ the woman asked.
    She looked wide awake and Neil was glad he hadn’t roused her from her bed. He hadn’t rehearsed what he would say, and as the words came out of his mouth he realised how blatantly he was incriminating himself.
    â€˜There’s a woman dead next door,’ he said. ‘I saw her through the letter box. Murdered. There’s blood. I’ve got to