Care of Wooden Floors (28 page)

On the cleaner’s floor, the sounds of the street were louder and clearer. Car brakes squealed at the junction and a tram rumbled by. The footsteps of passers-by rang clearly on the pavement. I took the keys from the bucket and froze. There were maybe three dozen keys on a series of linked rings, with no apparent hierarchy or organisation. Some were marked with twists of wool, blobs of paint, numbers scratched into the metal or written in fading marker pen. I looked at the door – shut, locked, robust. The keyhole was almost identical to Oskar’s, highly polished
brass, but here years of polish had blackened the wood around it and worked grey-green residue into its cracks. There were numerous keys that resembled Oskar’s in the bunch. I tried one at random. It slid neatly into the hole, but refused to turn. The second I tried would only go in halfway.

I felt a vein throbbing in my neck and swallowed. Sweat moistened my fingers inside the gloves. The passing footsteps in the street seemed louder and louder and as each set ascended my throat constricted, waiting for the moment when the walker would pause and I would hear the building’s heavy door being pushed open. I hunted for a third key to try and my fingers slipped – the bunch fell to the tiled floor with a crash. The sound went straight through me and resounded against the hard edges of the stairs. And as I bent to retrieve the keys, clumsy and ridiculous in the yellow gloves, I saw with fresh revelation what lay on the floor at my feet – the body, a dead thing, a great indivisible final fact. Its reality and unreality struck me. An actual human corpse – a silent tumulus with extraordinary power to overturn my life and evaporate my freedom if I was discovered in its presence, or an investigation even associated me with it. And yet it was so little, barely more trouble than a heavy trunk or more awkward than a double mattress. Maybe that was its awful secret, the thing that we all turn from: that time in the company of the corpse of a stranger isn’t a ceaseless nightmare; it could even feel normal. Just don’t think about it too much, I told myself.
I won’t think about it.

The fourth key did not turn. The fifth key turned smoothly and the door opened, revealing a slice of crimson carpet, yellow-green wallpaper and a thick crowd of faded winter coats and plastic macs supported by a buried row of pegs. I opened the door wide and pulled the cleaner into the flat as quickly as I could, bringing in the bucket of bottles and sponges too, and then shutting myself in.

With the door closed, I leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, trying to get oxygen back into my body. Sweat broke everywhere against my skin; I felt I could still hear footsteps on the street, on the stairs, ready to push through the door or round the corner and see me with the body, and I told myself over and over that it was OK, the danger had passed. The cleaner’s flat shared a plan with Oskar’s, but it was much darker. Where Oskar had inserted a glass partition between the hall and the kitchen, here the wall was still solid brick, creating a gloomy corridor hung with pictures and terminated by a bead curtain.

Pressing myself against the wall, I listened intently. Nothing. The thick pile of the carpet made it easy to advance down the corridor without making a sound, but the bead curtain rattled as I parted it. The sea of swirling crimson underfoot flowed through to the living room, where a plastic-covered sofa faced a television, metal folding chairs were stacked against a small dining table and dressers and cabinets supported a large population of china and knick-knacks. It was cluttered, but there was no sign of any other inhabitants.

I returned to the body – an indistinct shape in the under-lit hall, perhaps a coat fallen from the mass on the
pegs. It was surprisingly difficult to drag it down the corridor – the deep carpet put up more resistance than tiles or polished wood. The added effort triggered a deep weariness in me, a desire to be finished with the corpse, and with the floors, and with Oskar’s flat – but the weight, the effort, also seemed appropriate, worthy of respect, a reminder that I was dealing with something substantial.

In the living room I faced an unanticipated question: Where to leave the body? Face-down on the floor did not seem natural. It had to look as if it had not been moved – that she had simply dropped on the spot and stayed there. I pulled her into the centre of the room and turned her over. Her head, blank eyes still open, rolled as if she could not stand to look at me. Her arm, where I held it to flip her, was cool, and the flesh of her face was losing its colour, highlighting the little hairs on her cheeks and blue-tinged lips. As she turned over, the dark rosette of blood on her thigh was hidden, and I remembered my unfinished job upstairs, reversing the floorboards. There was all the more reason to do it now, with the possibility of rogue corpuscles of the cleaner’s blood somewhere in their grain, waiting to slander me to forensic investigators. Would it come to that? Not if I could leave her in the right condition down here.

I sat on the cleaner’s sofa. Its clear plastic covering squeaked under me. Before this week I might have thought the plastic a fussy, unnecessary precaution; now it seemed very sensible indeed. And that crimson carpet looked very good for concealing stains. My initial impression of the cleaner’s apartment was gloomy disorder. Looking more
closely, I saw how well kept it was. The kitschy china statues of shepherdesses were all carefully arranged. There was not a speck of dust on the lacquered surface of the low table beside the sofa. Next to the television remote control – the numbers rubbed off half its buttons by years of use – was a framed black-and-white photograph of a man in an anachronistic military uniform, three small medals on his breast. A husband? Father? Brother? Lost love? The portrait could have come from any year between 1930 and 1970, but something made me certain the man was dead. He looked away from the camera, lost in time. She would have relatives, of course, friends, acquaintances, neighbours here in the building – a personal cosmos orbiting around her, now gone. She would be missed, like this man in the uniform – and would anyone remember him, now? A desperate sadness mounted inside me, and I swallowed it, thinking hard about my breathing, thinking
I’m not going to think about that
.

An arch, hung with another bead curtain, led to the kitchen, where pine-fronted cabinets skulked. Another thing swept away in Oskar’s remodelling, with all its structural solidity replaced by glass, openness, natural light and, presumably, somewhere, some heavy-duty steel taking the load. The side wall of the living room, where Oskar built his bookcases, was here entirely covered by a full-colour photograph of a waterfall in a forest, blown up to life size. This decoration had faded with time, taking on a bluish hue. A stag looked out nobly from the scene, peering over a sideboard loaded with ceramic animals.

Care, and time, and work had gone into this apartment – the same sort of devotion that Oskar expended on his own. It demanded that I leave the cleaner in some kind of respectful state, even after the monstrous disrespect I had so far piled upon her. Again, I had to fight with myself, to stop myself being overwhelmed with melancholy and what I supposed was guilt. I looked down at my hands, still in their stupid Tweetie Pie yellow rubber gloves, their insane, inappropriate jollity, and across at the corpse. She still didn’t look as if she had just fallen down – she was too straight, and her legs were awkwardly crossed at the ankle. But I had no idea how she might look if she had simply dropped on the floor from a heart attack – even the swandive that she had actually fallen into when she died up in Oskar’s kitchen didn’t look natural. The best I could think of was to sit her on the sofa, as if she had felt unwell and sat down, only to die.

It was worth a try. I rose and tried to pick the body up, my hands under her armpits. But my arms were already tired after dragging her all the way down from Oskar’s flat; the muscles in my forearms ached and my bones were shadows. Although I could move the body to the foot of the sofa, there was no way I could lift it onto the cushions.

Not with my arms outstretched, anyway. Taking a deep breath, I stood astride the cleaner’s body, hooked my arms under hers and put my remaining strength into lifting her off the ground. We were brought together into a kind of embrace, her cooling weight against me, her face dangerously near mine; a wrong move and her head could turn, her cold cheek could brush against mine...

Her rump slid onto the squeaking cushions and I let her go, stepping back and brushing off my chest and forearms reflexively. She was on the sofa; her pose was all right, head against the cushions, one arm hanging limply over the side, legs apart but not obscenely so. A spasm of nausea gripped me, but I swiftly had it back under control – everything was fine, she was on the sofa, I could leave now.

I returned to the front door to move the bucket of cleaning products from where I had left it to the kitchen. There had been something else, too – the mop, which would have to be fetched from upstairs.

Turning to take the bucket back to the kitchen, something caught my eye. The clouds that filled the sky had parted enough to briefly reveal the sun, which was rising towards its peak. Light was spilling across the floor. Carved into the thick pile of the carpet were two clear grooves, parallel tracks leading into the living room and curving round to the foot of the sofa, where the cleaner was slumped. It was a trail, left by the cleaner’s feet dragging along the floor. And it was unmissable.

Still holding the bucket, I rubbed the toe of my shoe against this groove. It was possible to obscure it, but only by replacing it with a scuffed, disordered patch that looked just a little more natural. I looked, slightly desperately, for an undisturbed area of carpet, to see how it should appear. It was...not exactly orderly, but its disorder had an unforced rightness about it. I worked my way down the corridor, trying to smooth out the grooves with the sole of my shoe. After leaving the bucket in the kitchen, I examined the results.

It didn’t look quite right. The grooves were gone, but in their place was a pattern of strokes left by my foot. I walked up and down the corridor, toeing the carpet here and there to even out some patch or tuft that looked suspicious, feeling like a gardener tending to a prize lawn, but without the pleasure or pride. By the time I had finished, any pattern had gone, but I still felt the texture of the path from door to sofa looked irregular, that aberrant activity could be detected in it. Was that really true, though? Wasn’t that just my mind, knowing what it knew, seeing signs that no one else would pick up – signs that might not even be there?

Nothing could be done about it, in any case. I grabbed the keys and headed for the door. Again, the stairwell was clear; I locked the cleaner’s front door and affected nonchalance as I ascended the stairs.

The keys, clutched in my gloved hand, gave me another nagging source of concern. They would have to be left in the cleaner’s flat, and ideally, to complete the illusion I wanted to create, her door should be locked from the inside. But then how would I get out?

Standing once again in Oskar’s flat, wiping the mop handle with a tea towel to remove any prints my fingers might have left on it, I mused on the problem of the door. Successfully moving the body downstairs without being seen had given me a surge of confidence. Finessing the job by locking the door from the inside would satisfy me, and reassure me that I had thwarted any possible investigation. As ever, the floor was the obstacle – the direct route without using the door or the stairs would be straight up,
through all the plaster, joists and boards. If I were more familiar with the building I might have known of secret passages, servants’ stairs, dumb waiters – but for all my intimacy with Oskar’s possessions and floors, I barely knew anything of the rest of the structure he inhabited. No doubt the cleaner had known it best.

The air had thickened with moisture and the flat was warmer; I was paying in sweat for my fight with the cleaner and the effort of moving her remains. I took off the gloves, went into the bathroom, washed my hands under the cold tap, and splashed water on my face. The mirror was in front of me, and I examined what I saw. Those eyes had seen a dead body now, up close. Did they look any different? Was something added, or gone?

In the living room, the light had diminished, squeezed out by the gathering weight of purple-grey clouds. A stray gust of wind thumped the windows, hurling a few fat drops of rain against the glass. Thunder sounded, like furniture being moved in a flat above. I had to leave, I had to get home, if not today then tomorrow. There was nothing more to stay for, not after what had happened. I telephoned the airline and asked about flights; there was nothing today, but seats were available tomorrow afternoon. I gave my card numbers, having barely listened to the substantial price the operator gave me. Then I dialled the number of Oskar’s hotel room from the note on the table. It would be very late in Los Angeles, but maybe not too late. But the phone rang unanswered; seven rings, eight, nine...I killed the connection and dialled the second number, for the hotel reception. The calm American
voice announcing the name of the international chain was so welcome it seemed almost angelic.

Was Oskar in his room? The receptionist rang up; there was no answer. I left a message, asking Oskar to call me, thanked her, and put down the phone.

Oskar didn’t strike me as a heavy sleeper – unless he had taken a pill or was drunk, I was prepared to believe that he was not in the room. Terror washed through my gut: maybe he had left, checked out of the hotel, was already in a Lufthansa jet headed for Frankfurt. No – wait. Surely the hotel would have told me if he had checked out. But shadows of the fear still lingered. I had been thinking of Oskar as connected to his location; checking there and finding him gone was unnerving.

Steady, heavy rain began to fall. I could not remember if I had left the bedroom window open or closed, and hurried through to check. It was closed, bolted, and the cat had not reappeared on the balcony.

The balcony. The cat. That was how to leave the cleaner’s front door locked. I slid back the bolt on the window and stepped out. The street was loud with drumming, running, splashing water and the occasional whoosh of a car. Another balcony was directly below Oskar’s – attached to the cleaner’s bedroom, I imagined – and beneath that was the drenched street.