Austerity Street Read online

  ‘Have you honestly got nowhere to go?’ Davey asked. ‘What about family?’

  Sleepless nights under the stars were still fresh in David’s mind. He could feel the bitter cold that stabbed at his bones like ice picks and froze his senses. He would never forget what it felt like to be so tired he was in a permanent daze. It was useless, he remembered, to try drift off on park benches or in shop doorways with only sheets of discarded free newspapers for cover. He cursed himself for not grabbing a duvet before leaving the bailiffs to change his locks. He could have taken anything he wanted but, numbed by events, he had merely walked away with nothing but the clothes he was standing in.

  ‘Nah. I’ve got no one, mate,’ he admitted. ‘It’s just me. I thought, if I kept my head down here for a bit, I could straighten myself out and look for another job. I’m getting benefits now, so I’ve been trying to put some money back towards a deposit on a flat share or something.’

  ‘Surely, there’s a hostel?’ Jacob prompted. ‘Anything must be better than this. What if the old bill come?’

  David looked down at the clean shirt he had put on before he curled up on Joan Smith’s sofa earlier that night. He had been careful to charge her electric key every week, and hadn’t wanted for hot water or access to a washing machine for a whole month. He knew with every passing day that his time at the flat was running out. He just hadn’t summoned the strength to move on.

  ‘I am not vulnerable enough,’ he eventually said. ‘That’s what they told me at the council. I’m a forty-four-year-old bloke with no history of drug or alcohol abuse. They figure I should be able to stand on my own to feet.’

  ‘I’d say anyone who can live with a corpse for more than four weeks is vulnerable,’ Davey whispered.

  ‘Move over Sadiq Khan,’ Jacob quipped. ‘We’ve got a proper up-and-coming socialist here.’

  Davey was quick to respond. ‘Well, this takes sofa surfing to a new level, don’t you think?’

  David attempted a smile.

  ‘You know you can’t stay here, David. You are going to get caught. You’ll end up in jail.’ Jacob knew he was stating the obvious, but considered David may need to hear it for reality to sink in.

  ‘I know. Since the first night, when I climbed in through an open window, I’ve been using a key I found on the kitchen table to come and go. For the first week, the telephone kept ringing and I was afraid to stay for too long. I used to slip in late at night, have a wash, a bit of shut-eye and then be gone by sunrise. Just lately, it’s been so cold, I’ve been kipping here all night.’

  ‘Why are you still here? That body’s going to be discovered any day,’ Davey told him. ‘They must be able to smell the corpse upstairs. It’s rancid, man.’

  David shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

  He knew in his heart of hearts that he was lucky it was not the middle of summer. The stench would be far worse in milder weather. Joan Smith’s body had decayed at a slower rate because her flat was like a fridge. It was so cold, he had been tempted to switch on a fan heater once or twice - but only for a few minutes.

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ he muttered, secretly feeling overwhelmed with guilt. A woman he used to see every day was being denied dignity in death because of his desperation. ‘You came here to burgle her,’ he pointed out.

  ‘No, we didn’t!’ Jacob retorted. ‘We weren’t looking for money, or anything like that. We were hungry.’

  ‘Hungry?’ It hadn’t occurred to David that two teenage boys would be snooping around an old woman’s house in the dead of night looking for food. Although, he couldn’t help noticing that neither had an ounce of fat on them.

  ‘The food bank’s put us on stop,’ said Jacob. ‘We’ve been too many times, they told me. I don’t even know where my mother is. She goes out and doesn’t come home for days. I can’t remember the last time there was something in the fridge.’

  ‘It’s the same at our place,’ Davey confided. ‘My latest step-dad has not worked since Boulton’s closed down ten years ago. Every day, he just sits in front the telly drinking himself stupid and taking drugs. Mum lets him walk all over her. He’s really mean.’

  ‘Shh! What was that?’ David eased himself up out of a chair and crept over to a window, his own shadow casting an ominous end to the conversation. He poked a finger through two slats in blinds and pressed an eye to the gap.

  ‘It’s the old bill,’ he said. ‘I think they are coming here.’

  The first time the letterbox rattled, all three of the flat’s living occupants froze like the stiff in the room next door.

  ‘Hello? Is anybody in there?’ an official-sounding voice shouted through the door. ‘Mrs Smith? Is it you?’

  The intruders looked at each other, and they were all thinking the same. They wished they were somewhere else. Each was trying to figure out an escape route, determined not to be caught with Joan Smith’s decomposing remains.

  ‘And you’re sure the neighbours reported hearing male voices in the flat?’ they could hear a police officer say into a radio.

  ‘Go!’ David whispered, pointing towards the hallway. ‘Climb out of the bathroom window. Second door down the hall.’

  Jacob and Davey didn’t wait to ask if he would be following them. They were on their toes and running up a stairwell towards the first floor before they dared to pause to draw another breath. When he thought he was a safe distance away, Jacob gasped for air. He was still savouring the the scent of his own sweat when he pressed his face to a small window above concrete steps. As a second patrol car swung into the confines of The Farm, he could see David slip into the darkness without attracting any unwanted attention.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Davey gasped. ‘That was a close call.’

  Second Floor - Number 29

  ‘What is it, Mummy?’

  Justine Jacobs turned away from a window and smiled at the innocent, pale little face gazing up at her.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Go and eat the rest of your tea.’

  She waited until Millie was sat back on the sofa clutching a plate of cold baked beans before she allowed her attention to drift back down to the scene that was unfolding on the street below. Four police cars, an ambulance and a paradmedic’s motorcycle were drawing attention from passers-by. They were parked outside a flat on the ground floor. A man in a high-vis vest was gesturing people to stand back.

  There was a police presence at The Farm when Justine took Millie to school in the morning and the drama appeared to have escalated during the day.

  Something serious has happened, she was thinking. I hate this place.

  ‘I’m still hungry,’ Millie cried, and Justine knew she would have to use the last of the bread she had picked up in the reduced aisle at Tesco three days before. If she was lucky, she would find enough loose change in coat pockets and down the back of the sofa to buy a fresh loaf in the morning. There was always the food bank at the Catholic church in George Street, if push came to shove. She’d managed to avoid it so far, but knew it was there for that day when she really had nothing left to fall back on.

  The bland, windowless kitchen depressed her. Lacking any form of personality, it was crying out for a splash of fresh paint and a few colourful nick-knacks to give it a bit of lift. The loud whirring sound of an extractor fan eating her electricity every time she switched the light on never ceased to stop annoying her. She felt like ripping it off wall and stamping on it.

  Justine cursed the day she moved to The Farm. ‘Bloody place,’ she muttered under her breath, ensuring the flat edge of the knife she was using to scrape butter from a tub was set at just the right angle to avoid missing concentrations of the spread that were wedged in the rim of the container. It wasn’t the start she had wanted to give Millie. It was a million miles away from what she had hoped for. She never expected a garden, not in London, but neither had she expected this.

  ‘Here you go, poppet,’ she said, handing Millie a thinly buttered crust. �
�We’ll see if we’ve got enough pennies to go to the shops tomorrow.’

  It broke her heart to see her young daughter’s face light up and her eyes widen with the expectation of a treat. She wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Millie would have to wait another two days for anything that even remotely resembled a Kinder Egg. But Justine couldn’t tell her that. Life was full of surprises, but Millie was too young to know most of them are not nice ones.

  The five-year-old was still nibbling bread when Justine saw a body being wheeled out of Number 3. She knew whoever was on the stretcher was beyond saving, because a zipped-up bag covered every part of their lifeless frame. There was no oxygen mask over a face, nor a drip being held at the person’s side. And there was no sense of urgency. Just two anonymous-looking people in uniforms slowly pushing a stainless steel trolley that was weighed down by a black plastic body bag sealed from end to end.

  As the ambulance crawled away from The Farm, its dignified pace a further signal that a tragedy had unfolded in a flat below, Justine moved away from the window. She turned her thoughts to the brown envelope she had put off opening all day. Without scrutinising it, she had tossed it on a sideboard next to the telly, convinced it was another appointment to attend an interview at the job centre. With Millie now at school, the pressure was on to find a job, and quick - before her benefits were cut. The thought of trying to survive on even less filled her with a sense of hopelessness.

  The urgency to find work was complicated by a lack of childcare. Free vouchers were great - if they could actually be used. She knew any job offer would have to match childcare availability or simply fit in with school hours and holidays. Fat chance of the latter, she thought.

  To her surprise, when she flipped the envelope over, she realised it wasn’t from the job centre after all. It was from her mum. Silly me, she was thinking as she tore at the paper.

  ‘Oh mum!’ Justine was reduced to tears as two brand new, plastic five pound notes slipped out from the short letter they had been concealed in.

  ‘Hi Justine - It’s not much, but I hope you and Millie can enjoy a treat with the ten pounds I have enclosed. Hope to see you soon. Mum.’

  Justine couldn’t hold back the tears as she crouched down to retrieve the cash from her living room floor.

  ‘What is it, Mummy?’ Millie asked, fearing something was wrong. Part of her tone pleaded for a reassuring answer.

  ‘Look,’ said Justine, holding up the five pound notes. ‘Nanny has sent us some money, so we can get some treats.’

  Justine knew the bulk of it would be spent on essentials, like bread, milk and vegetables. But, at the same time, she was able to assure Millie, ‘We’ll get you a Kinder Egg when you come out of school tomorrow. Okay?’

  ‘Yay!’ Millie jumped for joy, her little blonde pigtails swinging from side-to-side as if to further emphasise her elation.

  Justine promised herself she would find enough money later in the week to put some credit on her mobile ’phone. A call back home was long overdue.

  It was the talk of The Farm. An elderly woman called Joan Smith had been found murdered in her flat on the ground floor. A brief report on the local television news was more subtle. It said police were treating the pensioner’s death as ‘unexplained’ and that inquires were continuing. Justine, like many other tenants, was afraid the 82-year-old had fallen victim to the rampant gang crime that terrorised the vulnerable in lifts and stairwells. The thought of one day falling prey to poker-faced thugs who excelled in the art of spreading misery made her shudder.

  I’ve got to get us out of here, she was thinking as she passed the spot where she had seen the body being carried to a waiting ambulance the day before. It’s not safe.

  When she reached the sanctity of the school gates, she kissed the top of Millie’s head and savoured the sweet scent of freshly washed hair.

  ‘Mummy will take you to the shops when you come out of school,’ she told her. Then, she watched as Millie skipped into the playground towards a waiting member of the teaching staff. It warmed her heart to see Millie so happy. She was too young to comprehend that reality has a way of stifling happiness.

  Justine’s route back to The Farm took her past a small precinct of shops. While determined to keep one of the five pound notes until Millie came out of school, she knew she would have to spend the other so she could get some food down her throat before Millie came home. Her stomach had been rumbling for hours. She made a beeline towards an independent mini mart, passing a bench where a lone, unremarkable male sat staring into thin air.

  David Turner was clasping a newspaper he found discarded on top of a bin next to the metal bench. He had already read a small report at the bottom of the front page three times, and knew he would probably read it over and over before sloping off to find a quiet spot to get his head down. His mind raced with the connotations of the story, and the potential ramifications for him.

  They think she was murdered. It’s obvious, he was thinking. What if inquiries lead to me? I’m no murderer. The woman was dead when I found her.

  He couldn’t help contemplating what Jacob and Davey would make of the report. Would they start to doubt his version of events? Would they begin to question what they had been told? Is it likely they will dob me in it? He didn’t think so, but couldn’t be entirely sure. After all, they had broken into the flat with the intention to steal.

  It could all boil down to degrees of severity. Would the two teenagers readily admit to breaking and entering, if they knew they would then be exonerated from the much more serious crime of murder?

  David cursed himself. Stop it! She died of natural causes. The post mortem will confirm that. You’re wasting time worrying about nothing.

  Ivor Patel was pleased to see Justine. ‘Hello, my dear,’ he smiled, adjusting his tie. He spoke as soon as he saw her approaching his counter. She was clutching a loaf of bread and a plastic container holding four pints of milk. A familiar face in the small convenience store, her custom, even if it never stretched beyond a few pounds, was always appreciated.

  ‘No sweets for the little one today?’ he asked her.

  Justine shook her head. ‘Later,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be back when she comes out of school.’

  Mr Patel smiled.

  And Justine smiled back, feeling sorry for a man who probably lost a tangible percentage of his stock to the droves of shoplifters who deliberately targeted small businesses around The Farm because of their lack of sophisticated security.

  For a small shop, it was never short of customers. The queue at the till sometimes stretched back to the entrance. Today, it was fairly quiet. Walking around the two free-standing aisles in the middle of the store, Justine spotted just three other people. Two she didn’t recognise, but the third was another tenant at The Farm. It wasn’t someone she knew by name, just a face she regularly passed in corridors.

  The unkempt woman had a look of desperation about her. She appeared to be about fifty, but Justine figured she was probably much younger; her appearance unkindly aged by strife and poor-fitting clothes that previously hugged musty hangers in charity shops. Although the woman had, on a few occasions, nodded in her direction, Justine never felt the urge to return the gesture. Keeping herself to herself was something she had grown accustomed to. It kept her safe.

  There was something about people who looked desperate that frightened her. Justine considered them the most dangerous of all, as if having nothing to lose meant they were especially prone to sudden, depraved impulses. The kind of people who provide endless fodder for the criminal justice system.

  Justine chanced a look in the woman’s direction as she left the shop, and caught a glimpse of a bar of chocolate being slipped into a canvas bag. The shelf where the chocolate had previously been on display was bare, indicating more than one item may have ‘missed’ the shopping basket the woman was holding in her left hand. The theory was borne out by a stark contrast. The woman’s right hand seemed to hang much lower than th
e left, as if what was in the canvas bag weighed more than what was in the basket.

  Why did I have to see that? Mind your own business, Justine told herself as she flashed her eyes in a different direction. Pretend you didn’t notice.

  The bench where the man had been sitting was empty when she came out of the shop. She was tempted to rest there for a while and watch the world go by, but it was too damned cold to hang about. Clouds of frozen breath billowed out of her mouth like steam from the funnel of an old engine every time she parted her lips. And she didn’t want to have to face the woman she had just seen swiping chocolate off Mr Patel’s shelves.

  Justine returned to The Farm quietly pleased with herself. On the way back, she had popped into a butcher’s shop and snapped up a small tray of belly pork for under two pounds and four large potatoes for a pound. She was certain Millie would not go hungry that night.

  ‘You can sleep in Mummy’s room tonight,’ Justine told Millie as she sat in her pyjamas playing with the toy she’d found inside her Kinder Egg. ‘We’ll be nice and warm. Two little bugs cuddled up together.’

  With less than fifty pence left on the electric meter and more than twenty-four hours to wait until the next benefit payment went into her bank, Justine knew she couldn’t afford to put the heating on if she wanted to use the cooker the following day. And, despite assurances from maintenance men, she still wasn’t convinced that mould she regularly scrapped off the wall in a corner of Millie’s room was harmless.

  Millie was tired. Her eyes blinked as waves of fatigue sapped her concentration. Justine could see she was trying to fight it, wanting to stay awake for ‘just another five minutes’ to keep playing with her new little toy. The model of a princess from one of her favourite Disney films fired her imagination, prompting animated one-sided conversations and squeals of delight.