Free The Helper by David Jackson Page B

that he’s pretending this is all on his own initiative. Hates it even more that he’s leading this woman down paths she has
no reason to navigate.
    Can it, Doyle. Shut the fuck up and leave now.
    He says, ‘But if you say there’s no diary, then . . .’
    ‘I . . .’ she starts, and Doyle catches her glance at one of the doors. Unlike the other doors, this one is firmly shut.
    Cindy’s bedroom, he realizes. She probably can’t bear to go back in there. She has cleaned every nook and cranny in this apartment. But not in there. Opening that door breaks the
spell. Shatters the illusion that Cindy is still in there, listening to music or reading a book. Or just being alive.
    ‘She writes,’ says Mrs Mellish. ‘
Wrote
. A lot. Ever since she was little. Always scribbling in her notebooks. Poetry mostly. Some stories. But a diary . . .’
    Doyle waits. Part of him wants to ask if he can search the room. Another part insists this is bullshit. This is all a part of the killer’s sick game: sending him here to push this poor
woman to her breaking point.
    ‘If you want to take a look,’ she says, ‘it’d be okay. If you think it’ll help. Just . . . don’t mess it up, okay?’
    He nods. ‘I’ll be careful.’
    When he moves toward the room she doesn’t follow him. When he opens the door, he hears her footsteps moving away. She doesn’t want to look in here. Not yet.
    It’s a cozy, welcoming room. Tidy but full. The bed is made, and a baby-pink dressing gown lies along the bottom of it. A white bra hangs from one of the bedposts. There is a table with a
mirror and a large array of make-up items. On one side of the room is a line of cheap white storage units. They comprise a tall closet and a row of low-level units interrupted by a recess with a
chair pushed into it. The counter running above these units supports a music system and speakers, racks of CDs and DVDs, lots of cuddly toys, a hairdryer, straightening tongs, a stack of magazines,
an electric fan. On the wall above are several posters of actors and pop stars. On the other side of the room is a row of bookcases. Cindy Mellish read a lot of books.
    Doyle takes a deep breath. He can smell perfume. He wonders why it’s familiar, then realizes it hung on the air in the bookstore too.
    He moves closer to the bookcases. Fiction, poetry and biography mostly. Nothing trashy. No bodice-rippers for this girl. On the bottom shelves are Cindy’s notebooks. All different sizes,
different colors. Doyle sits cross-legged on the thickly carpeted floor, pulls out the first book, and turns the cover.
    What he sees on that first page is a poem entitled ‘Life Without End’. He starts to read it, but gives up after six lines. He turns the page, finds another poem called ‘Nobody
Hears Me’. Doesn’t bother to read this one. He flicks through the rest of the book, finds more of the same. Occasionally a doodle leaps out at him, but to Doyle’s eye the artistry
is as bad as the poetry. He wonders whether it’s him just not getting this arty stuff, then decides no, it really is that amateurish.
    He moves on to the next book, then the next, and the next. More poetry, more doodles. He chances across a short story called ‘Freud’s Ghost’, reads the whole thing through and
decides that either it wasn’t finished, or else it was finished and the point of it has totally escaped him.
    He speeds up his search then. Pull out a book, riffle through its pages, put it back. He gets all the way to the end of the shelf. Nothing. No diary. Nothing whatsoever about the events of her
life save for what may be lurking in the depths of her prose and poetry. And he’s already decided it’s beyond his ability to tease that out.
    He gets to his feet. He scans the spines of every book on the shelves, just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything. He goes to the storage units and opens each one. He finds clothes, bags,
shoes, more cuddly toys, but no diary. He tries all the