Caedmon’s Song

by Peter Robinson

  The ancient, rotten sea smell stuck in her nostrils, and the blood and brain matter were smeared all over her fingers. When she could catch her breath again, she washed her hands in the rock pool and knelt there gasping until she had controlled her heartbeat. She couldn’t bear being close to the body any longer. Crawling to the mouth of the cave, she listened for a few moments. It was all quiet on the beach, except for the crash and hiss of the waves. Martha slipped out of the cave like a ghost in the moonlight and set off back to the guesthouse.

  20

  KIRSTEN

  ‘You’ll have to expect a bit of pain now and then,’ said Dr Craven, writing on her prescription pad with a black felt-tip pen. ‘Traumatic injuries often cause extreme pain. But don’t worry, it won’t last forever. I’ll prescribe some analgesic. It should help.’ She sat back and handed the slip of paper to Kirsten.

  Behind the doctor, a brusque woman in her early forties, with severely cropped grey hair, steady blue eyes and a beak of a nose, Kirsten could see the small Norman church and the village green, with its two superb copper beeches, rose beds, little white fence and benches where the old people sat and gossiped. She could even hear the finches and tits twittering beyond the open window. Brierley Coombe. Home.

  The previous evening she had managed to keep the pain from her parents. She had simply claimed tiredness after the journey, then taken four aspirins and a long, hot bath before going to bed. The pain receded, and she had actually slept well for the first time since the attack.

  Dr Craven leaned forward and tapped a blue folder. The stethoscope around her neck swung forward and clipped the edge of the desk. ‘I’ve got all your details, Kirsten,’ she said, ‘and I’ve been on the telephone to Dr Masterson at the hospital. If anything at all bothers you, please don’t hesitate to come and see me. And I’d like you to drop by once a week anyway, just to see how you’re doing. All right?’

  Kirsten nodded. Dr Masterson? She hadn’t even known his name, the man who had probably saved her life. One of her benefactors, anyway. She didn’t know the name of the person who had so fortunately been walking his dog on the night of her attack either. But Dr Masterson? She remembered his dark complexion and his deeply lined brow, how he always looked cross but acted shyly and kind. She had even invented stories about him to pass the time. His father must have been an army officer serving in India, she had decided – a captain in the medical corps, most likely – and he had married a high-caste Indian woman. After independence, they had come to England . . .

  The ease with which she could make up stories about people on so little evidence always surprised her. It was a skill, or a curse, that she had had since early childhood, when she had filled notebooks with stick drawings and family histories of invented characters. If she could make up lives for others, she thought, then she could probably do the same for herself. That would certainly be preferable to telling the truth to everyone she met. Already, on her way to the doctor’s surgery that morning, she had noticed neighbours – people who had known her since childhood – giving her those pitying looks. What was worse was that one of them – Carrie Linton, a stuck-up busybody she’d never liked – had given her a different kind of look: more accusing than pitying.

  ‘Kirsten?’

  ‘What? Oh, sorry, Doctor. I was daydreaming.’

  ‘I said make sure you eat well and get plenty of rest. The healing process is doing very nicely, or Dr Masterson wouldn’t have approved your coming home, but you’re still convalescent, and don’t forget it.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And if you have any difficulty at all in adjusting to your condition, I can recommend a very good doctor in Bath, a specialist.’

  Adjusting? Condition? Good Lord, thought Kirsten, she makes it sound as if I’m pregnant or something.

  ‘I mean psychologically and emotionally,’ Dr Craven went on, her eyes fixing on the diagram of the human circulatory system on the wall. ‘It might not be an easy road, you know.’

  ‘A psychiatrist?’

  Dr Craven tapped her pen on the desk. ‘Only if you feel the need. They can help, you know. There’s no stigma attached these days, especially . . .’

  She’s embarrassed, Kirsten thought. Just like all the rest. They don’t know what to do with me. ‘In cases such as mine?’ she offered, finishing the sentence.

  ‘Well, yes.’ Dr Craven seemed to miss the irony in Kirsten’s voice. The corners of her lips twitched in one of her rare, brief smiles. ‘You are rather unique, you know. Few women, if any, have ever survived an attack from such a maniac.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Kirsten said slowly. ‘I hadn’t really thought of it that way. Like Jack the Ripper, you mean? Did anyone survive him?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Criminology isn’t my forte.’ She leaned forward. ‘What I’m saying, Kirsten, is that there may be some resultant emotional trauma. I want you to know that help is available. You only have to ask for it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The doctor sat back in her chair and peered at Kirsten over the top of her half-moon glasses. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.

  ‘Feel? Not so bad. The pain’s eased a little now.’

  ‘No, I mean emotionally. What do you feel?’

  ‘What do I feel? I don’t know really. Just blank, numb. I can’t remember anything about the attack.’

  ‘Do you keep running over events in your mind?’

  ‘Yes, but I still can’t remember. It keeps me awake sometimes. I can’t concentrate for it. I can’t even sit down and read a book. I used to love reading.’

  ‘The amnesia may only be temporary.’

  ‘I don’t know if I want to remember.’

  ‘That’s understandable, of course. As are all your feelings. You’ve suffered a tremendous shock, Kirsten. Not just to your body but to your whole being. All your symptoms – emotional numbness, bad dreams, inability to concentrate – they’re all perfectly normal given the circumstances. Awful, but normal. In fact, I’d be worried if you didn’t feel like that. You feel no anger, no rage?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘It’ll come later.’

  ‘I suppose I do feel that I’d like to kill him, the man who did this to me, but it’s more of a cold feeling than an angry one, if you can understand what I mean.’ She shrugged. ‘Still, I don’t imagine I’ll get the chance, will I? I wouldn’t know him from Adam.’

  ‘No. But let’s hope the police find him soon.’

  ‘Before he can attack anyone else?’

  ‘Such people don’t usually stop at one. And the next victim might not be so lucky.’ Dr Craven stood up and held out her hand. ‘Don’t forget what I said. Take good care of yourself, and I’ll see you next week.’ Kirsten shook her hand and left.

  Outside, the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. The rounded hills that fringed the village seemed to glow bright green with some kind of inner light, as if they formed the backdrop to a painter’s vision. Kirsten put her hands in her pockets and ambled along the High Street. Not much there, really: a pub, the village hall (an 1852 construction, the newest building in Brierley Coombe), the shops (converted cottages, most of them) – post office, grocer’s, butcher’s, chemist’s, newsagent’s.

  The village stood on the edge of the Mendips, between Bath and Wells, and it had its share of thatched roofs and award-winning gardens. Orderly riots of roses, petunias, periwinkles, hollyhocks and nasturtiums assaulted Kirsten’s senses as she walked by the trim fences. The place always reminded her of those picture-postcard villages in English murder mysteries – Miss Marple’s St Mary Mead, for example – where everyone knew his or her place and nothing ever changed. But no one ever got murdered in Brierley Coombe.

  Kirsten took the prescription from her pocket and walked into the chemist’s. It was only a small place, more decorative than functional, and one of the few chemist’s shops that still kept those huge red, green and blue bottles on a shelf high in the window. The sunlight
filtered through them onto Mr Hayes’s wrinkled face. He had a good dispensary, Kirsten knew, especially for female ailments.

  ‘Hello, Kirsten,’ he said with a smile. ‘I noticed you’d come back. Sorry to hear about your trouble.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kirsten said. She hoped he wasn’t going to go on and tell her how you couldn’t be too careful these days, could you. He was that kind of man. But perhaps something in her voice or expression put him off his stroke. Anyway, he just looked puzzled and went to fill the prescription immediately.

  With the painkillers in her pocket, Kirsten headed for the house. Brierley Coombe had been her home ever since the family had moved from Bath itself when she was six. Although the village was equidistant from Bristol and Bath, they had always frequented the latter for shopping and entertainment. Her mother regarded Bristol – big city, once-busy port – as too vulgar, and Kirsten had consequently only been there twice in her life. It hadn’t seemed so bad to her, but then neither had the north of England.

  Kirsten had no friends left in Brierley Coombe, and the way she felt now, that was a blessing; the last thing she wanted was to have to go around explaining herself to people. Indeed, she had to think hard to remember ever having friends or even seeing any young people there at all. That was another way in which it resembled an Agatha Christie village – there were no children, nor could she remember any. It was absurd, she knew, as she had been a child there herself and played with others then, but there was no village school, and, try as she might, she couldn’t bring to mind the voices of children playing on the green. Over the years, they had all drifted apart. They went to prep schools first, of course, then on to public schools as boarders, as she had done, for there were no poor people in Brierley Coombe. After that, it was university – usually Oxford or Cambridge – and a profession in the City. Perhaps when they had inherited their parents’ houses and made their fortunes or retired from public office, they would come home to spend their remaining days tending the garden and playing bridge.

  The peace and quiet that Kirsten had enjoyed at home during the long summer and Easter holidays had always suited her after the hectic social life up at university. She was a bright and studious girl and managed to get plenty of work done – but she was easily distracted by a good film, a party or the chance of a couple of drinks and a chat with friends. At home, she had usually been able to catch up with her work and read ahead for the next term.

  But what would she do with her time now? Her student days were over; her life was utterly changed, if not ruined entirely. She didn’t know if she would be able to pick up the pieces, let alone put them back together again. Come to that, she didn’t know if there were any pieces left. Perhaps she didn’t even care.

  She was still thinking about it when she opened the gate and walked down the broad path to the house – more of a mansion than a cottage. Her mother was in the garden doing something nasty to the honeysuckle with her secateurs. Gardening and bridge, they were the strict borders of her mother’s existence.

  When she saw Kirsten coming, she wiped her brow and put down the clippers, which flashed in the light, and shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked up at her daughter. A difficult smile slowly forced the corners of her lips up, but it didn’t reach her eyes. It was going to be a long haul, this recovery, Kirsten thought with a sudden chill of fear. It wasn’t going to be easy at all.

  21

  MARTHA

  The seagulls were grotesquely distorted, no longer sleek, white bullet-faced birds. Their feathers were mottled with ash-grey, and their bodies were bloated almost beyond recognition. They could hardly stand. Their wiry legs, above webbed feet as yellow as egg yolk, couldn’t support their distended bellies, which were stretched so tight that a pattern of blue veins bossed through the grey and white markings. Their wings creaked and flapped like old, moth-eaten awnings in a storm as they tried to fly.

  But mostly it was their faces that were different. They still had seagull eyes – cold, dark holes that knew nothing of mercy or pity – but their beaks were encased in long, gelatinous snouts smeared with blood.

  They still sounded like seagulls. Even though they could no longer fly, they waddled on the dark sands and keened like the ghosts of a million tortured souls.

  Martha woke sweating in the early dawn. Outside, the gulls were screeching, circling. They must have been at it for a while, she thought as her heartbeat slowed. She must have heard them in her sleep, and her mind had translated the sound into the pictograph of a dream. It was like dreaming of searching for a toilet when you’ve had a bit too much to drink and your body is trying to wake you up before your bladder bursts.

  Just the thought of moisture made Martha thirsty. She got up and drank a glass of water, then crawled into bed again, the sour taste of vomit still in her mouth. Unable to get back to sleep immediately, she found herself thinking of the gulls as her allies. She could imagine them with their sharp hooked beaks picking and pulling at the body in the cave, snatching an eyeball loose or making an ear bleed. Did they never stop? For them, life seemed nothing more than a long-drawn-out feast: one for which you had to go out and catch your own food and tear it to pieces while it was still alive. Had she become like them?

  Martha glanced at her watch: 6.29. That day, she remembered, high tide was chalked in as 0658, so the gulls couldn’t have found the body unless it was floating on the water’s surface. Already the cold North Sea would have stuck its tongue into the cave and slurped Jack Grimley’s corpse into its surging maw.

  Shivering with horror at what she had done, Martha turned on her side, pulled the covers up to her chin, and drifted back into an uneasy sleep with the paperweight in her hand and the harsh music of squabbling gulls echoing in her ears.

  22

  KIRSTEN

  They came back again that night, the dreams of slashing and slicing, to invade Kirsten’s childhood room. The white knight and the black knight, as she had come to call them, both without faces. This time, they seemed to be trying to teach her something. The black knight handed her a long ivory-handled knife, and she plunged it herself into the soft flesh of her thigh. It sank as if into wax. A little blood bubbled up around the edges of the cut, but nothing much. Slowly, she eased out the blade and watched the edges of torn skin draw together again like lips closing. A pinkish bubble swelled and burst. And all the time she didn’t feel a thing. Not a thing. Somehow, she knew the faceless white knight was smiling down at her.

  23

  MARTHA

  The dead fish stared up at Martha with glazed, oily eyes. Pinkish-red blood stained their gills and mouths, and sunlight glinted on their silvery scales and pale bellies. The fishy smell was strong in the air, overpowering even the sea’s fresh ozone. Holidaymakers paused as they walked along St Ann’s Staith and took photographs of the fish sales. The people involved, no doubt used to being camera-fodder for tourists, didn’t even spare them a glance.

  The auction sheds that Friday morning were hives of activity. Earlier, while Martha had still been sleeping, the boats had come in, and the fishermen had unpacked their catches into iced boxes ready for the sales. Crab pots were stacked and nets lay spread by the sheds. As Martha watched, a man hosed fish scales from the stone quay. Gulls gathered in a raucous cloud, and occasionally one swooped down after a dropped fish.

  Of course, Martha realized, they only sold the fish here; they didn’t clean them and gut them. That must be done elsewhere – in canning factories, perhaps, where the loaded lorries were headed. How little she really knew about the business.

  It didn’t matter now, though, did it? Odd that he had turned out not to be a fisherman, after all. But you can’t be right about everything. Even so, as she walked by and watched the sales, she scanned the groups of fishermen by the railings and the auctioneers and buyers in the open sheds. It was what she had planned to do, and she was doing it anyway, even though there was no longer any point.

  Martha felt strangely dazed and ligh
t-headed as she walked down the staith towards the bridge. She hadn’t slept well after the gulls had woken her, and the thought of what she had done haunted her. At breakfast time she’d been very hungry and had even eaten the fried bread she usually left.

  The old couple at the window table were still there, he grinning and even, now, winking, while his wife glared with her beady eyes. But all the others were gone, or had changed into someone else. Martha was finding it hard to keep track. The guests were all starting to look the same: serious young honeymooners; tired but optimistic couples with mischievous toddlers; old people with grey hair and morning coughs. She felt the same way she had on the only occasion she had tried marijuana. She could see more, sense more, each line on the face, the flecks of colour in the eyes, but ultimately it all added up to the same. The more individual the people became to her, the more they became alike.

  She crossed the bridge, bought a newspaper, and turned up Church Street. It was becoming a routine. Still, this morning she needed waking up even more than usual: there were important decisions to be made. In the Monk’s Haven, she sipped strong black coffee and smoked a cigarette while she flexed her brain on the crossword. Then she flipped through the headlines to see if there was anything interesting going on in the world. There wasn’t.

  Only for a short while, when she had finished with the paper and still had some coffee and cigarette left, did she allow herself to think of the previous evening. It had been awful, a million times worse than anything she had imagined. She could still feel the loose fragments of bone shifting under her fingers, and that soft, pulpy mass, like a wet sponge, at the top of his head. She didn’t feel sorry – he had deserved everything he got – but she was appalled and amazed at herself for really going through with it. After leaving the body in the cave, she had run down to the sea and rinsed her hands and her paperweight again before going back to the guesthouse. She hadn’t seen a soul on the way. The door opened smoothly on its oiled hinges and the carpet muffled her ascent to her room. Once safe, she had brushed her teeth three times, but still hadn’t been able to get rid of the bitter taste of vomit. Even now, after the breakfast, coffee and cigarettes, she felt herself gagging as she recalled Grimley’s body jerking on the sand and those long minutes in the dank, stinking cave: the blood, the staring eye.