Dead Lucky by Andreina Cordani

Author:Andreina Cordani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2022-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Maxine

We planned to make a video at a fairground once, long ago, back in the Alex days. Andy was desperate to go to the shooting range, to see how many cuddly toys he could win for Leni. Xav wanted to get Ed on to the ghost train for obvious, make-outy reasons. I was just hoping to film myself on the bendy mirrors and incorporate it into a silly video I was planning on body image. Problem was, we got the date wrong and the morning we turned up, the field was deserted. Colourful litter blew across the bare grass – discarded puffs of candy floss, sparkly streamers. A pile of broken glow-sticks had just been dumped under a tree. Tangled in the branches above, a warped, deflated Goofy balloon twisted in the wind.

That’s what Xav’s flat looks like now. A scene of mayhem, fun, carnage and destruction, abandoned and forgotten.

Over there on the balcony there’s a palm tree swaying in a pot and a few buckets of sand from the homemade beach Xav created in the middle of last winter.

Above my head is the zipline which runs from the top of the stairs to the lounge area, where the ball-pit used to be. There’s still a tangled orange wig hanging from the wire, which the police obviously didn’t see fit to bring down.

Of course, there are no files left here, and no X Marks the Spot treasure map. The police have been over and over this place before they declared it safe to go back into, and if the burn files were here they would have found them, and they would have come talking to me and Leni, and everyone else on there.

But I have to start somewhere. And besides, Ed’s asked me to pick up some of his old designer stuff so he can sell it on eBay, which is how I managed to get my hands on the key.

The floors have been swept clean, but there’s still junk everywhere, a lot of it smudged grey with fingerprint dust. I remember DC Riley’s comment and feel a pang of sympathy for the scene of crime officers who have to make sense of all this. How do you know what’s relevant? Could there be a clue on that half-empty bottle of Problematic eau de toilette? What about the shiny freebies, stacked up in their boxes? The Hawaiian leis? The assortment of rubber dog toys?

I could be here all day. And that’s even before I go into That Room. The one with tattered remnants of crime scene tape sticking to the door frame. The place where Xav was killed.

I’ll do my nice easy job for Ed first. Xav and Ed shared a bedroom upstairs, first door along. My sneakers squeak on the polished floors, echoing off the bare walls, and I admit for the first time that I feel uneasy being here alone.

And that I feel like I’m being watched.

It’s ridiculous. There’s nobody here, but the atmosphere in the flat is off-key, wrong somehow.

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