Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  He had given her that stuffed toy himself. Christine had loved Garfield, as had lots of her post-Snoopy generation. She’d had a Garfield pencil case, a Garfield ring folder and a poster on her bedroom wall about being allergic to mornings. Newson had bought her the toy as a Christmas present and had sent it to her after she had dumped him in what he hoped was a dramatic gesture. He’d enclosed a note with it that said, ‘I’d been hoping to give you this personally, but it was not to be. Merry ‘heartbroken’ Christmas from one’ who will always love you.’

  Newson had last laid eyes on that Garfield twenty years before and here it was, grinning at him again.

  ‘I never thanked you for it, did I?’ Christine said.

  ‘No, you didn’t. But that’s fine.’

  ‘Thank you, Edward.’ She dropped the toy to the floor between them and put her arms around him. A moment later they had collapsed together on to the squashy sofa, locked in a passionate embrace.

  After a long and jaw-breaking kiss in which Christine worked her mouth and tongue as if trying to unblock a toilet, she disengaged her face, smiling the big, pretty smile that she had perfected at the age of eight. ‘That nice?’ she said, in a slightly babyish voice.

  ‘Um, yes, lovely.’

  ‘Just picking up where we left off, really.’ Christine’s hands went behind her back and she began to unfasten her halterneck top.

  Newson gulped. ‘That Garfield isn’t really your favourite thing, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, let’s put it this way, I always kept it, didn’t I? And I’ve had a few presents in my time, I can tell you.’

  ‘I’m sure you have.’

  ‘I don’t keep them all for twenty years, you know. But I thought it was cute. Like you.’

  Her top was off now and Newson could not help but stop and stare in amazement. They looked so strange. Not unattractive, by any means, but strange. Of course, he’d seen pictures of breasts like these before, two perfect domes attached to a chest with that slightly weird location of the nipples, sitting unnaturally high. But he’d never seen a pair for real, and they were without doubt fascinating objects. Christine had not gone obscenely far With hers: these -were not grotesque caricatures of breasts as beloved by tabloid newspaper editors, but she’d certainly opted for big ones, and they were staring at Newson like two entirely in-dependent entities.

  ‘You like?’ said Christine, now affecting a sort of Italian accent.

  ‘Lovely,’ Newson replied.

  ‘Obviously, I’ve had them done.’

  ‘No! Really? Honestly? That’s amazing. I had no idea.’

  ‘A couple of years ago. I think they look fantastic. I’m really proud of myself for doing it.’

  ‘Yes, yes. And so you should be. They’re lovely. Absolutely lovely,’ Newson said, although he was not sure that he was telling the truth.

  ‘They were pretty big before, anyway. Well, you’d remember, I expect, you naughty boy.’—

  ‘Oh yes. I remember.’

  ‘So I had to have a lot put in or else it wouldn’t have made any difference, would it?’

  ‘No. I’m sure not.’

  ‘I know of girls who’ve spent thousands and when they came out their boyfriends have asked them when they’re going to have the operation. That’s no good, is it?’

  ‘No, certainly not.’

  ‘I’m thirty-five, Ed. In my job image and looks are everything.’

  Newson wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to justify herself to him, but he knew that if he said that she’d be offended. So instead he remained silent.

  ‘Nobody wants birds with saggy tits fronting up their corporate dos. The company I work for bin you the second you start looking even slightly rough. We had a girl let go because she came back from holiday with brown sunspots on her face. Don’t talk to me about employment rights. They get round them. They’re bloody ruthless.’

  Newson was learning a little more about Christine’s life all the time. He had presumed that she worked for herself. Now he knew that she did not, that she was paid to stand around being a blonde with a pretty face. Not a career at all, but a job and a job with a sell-by date on it.

  ‘You look fantastic,’ he said.

  ‘I tried to claim them against tax,’ she said, looking down at her breasts, ‘No go, though.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘So do you want to feel them, then? Of course you do. everyone does. Even girls. Go on, I want you to.’

  Newson reached out and began to caress Christine’s firm breasts.

  ‘You’ve got lovely gentle hands,’ she said. ‘You always were a gentle person, weren’t you, Ed?’

  A great surge of pleasure and affection swept over Newson. He was drunk, and it was all so very erotic. Christine sat next to him on the sofa, her long blond hair falling on her tanned shoulders, her feet tucked under her long legs, a happy smile on her face. She looked like a caricature of a cartoon teenager, and he felt like an adolescent, fumbling and fingering away.

  ‘OK,’ she laughed. ‘Now you’ve got to know them you don’t need to be scared of them.’ She leant forward and unzipped Newson’s trousers.

  ‘My my, Ed!’ she exclaimed with comical shock. ‘Have you had this cosmetically enhanced? It’s most impressive. Well, you know what they say about short men!’

  They laughed together. Christine’s frank, open manner was relaxing to be around. Perhaps it was her PR training, but she knew how to make a man feel at ease.

  ‘I don’t think I ever saw this the first time around, did I?’ she enquired.

  ‘No, we didn’t get quite that far.’

  ‘Such innocent days. Special, special days. I’ll just get something to put on it, shall I?’ She got up and went to the bathroom, walking across the room in her little mini-skirt with her breasts leading the way. Moments later she returned. ‘Have to do the right thing, don’t we?’

  She slipped a condom on to Newson, then stood up, reached under her mini-skirt and pulled down her knickers. Then, stepping daintily out of them, still wearing the skirt, she placed herself astride Newson, one golden thigh on either side of him, and lowered herself down. Newson could not help but reflect that Christine for all her silliness was a girl with a fair degree of natural class. He certainly preferred this to Helen Smart’s taste in lovemaking.

  And so began a wonderful, long, relaxed evening of gentle, unselfconscious, undemanding adult sex. They did it together on the sofa with Christine on top. Then they drank a Bacardi Breezer, which was all the booze that Christine had in her fridge, and went into the bedroom where they made love again, but this time for a long, long time in the big soft old double bed with its pink sheets and picture of Betty Boop on the duvet cover.

  By the time they had sated themselves it was past ten o’clock. Christine turned off the shaded lamp that had illuminated their lovemaking and they fell asleep. It had been a long time since Newson had actually slept with a girl, spending the night in her bed, and he relished the experience. He gloried in the soft skin so close to his, the gentle breathing, the hint of perfume in the room, and the warm, cosy luxury of a woman’s presence, in a woman’s room. He woke up several times in the night but was happy to lie there listening to Christine sleep. At about four a.m. she stirred and they made love again. Her tastes were as conventional as Helen’s had been strange, and Newson much preferred it that way.

  Afterwards, Christine smoked, something that normally Newson would not have liked, but even this now seemed sexy and feminine and intimate.

  ‘I’m thinking about that woman,’ she said.

  ‘Which woman?’ Newson said with a start.

  ‘Helen Smart.’

  ‘Ah, her.’

  ‘We did do what she said we did, you know.’

  ‘I thought you had.’

  ‘It was a fucking terrible thing to do.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘There were six of us, and a nasty tease got out of hand. We made her put tha
t tampon in her mouth. It was my idea, too. I just suddenly did it. I called her a disgusting cow and told her next time perhaps she would remember to stick it where she was supposed to stick it and then she wouldn’t mess up the changing room.’

  ‘Because she’d left blood on the bench?’

  ‘Well, we said that was why, but I think we did it because she thought she was better than us. She was some intellectual bloody communist and we were airheads.’

  ‘I don’t think she had that much confidence.’

  ‘We thought she did, and, anyway, it happened. I’ve always known it was terrible and it shows I’m not a good person. I’ve thought about it over the years and it always makes me feel bad.’

  ‘But not bad enough to have owned up to it yesterday.’

  ‘Like Roger Jameson did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I sort of tried, didn’t I, when we bumped into her backstage. But she was so nasty, same old self-righteous Helen Smart. I thought, who knows, maybe she deserved it.’ Christine put out her cigarette and rolled over to go back to sleep. ‘Maybe I’ll send her something, some flowers or a bottle of champagne,’ she said sleepily. ‘John Lewis do a nice basket with a half bottle of Australian and some muffins.’

  Newson wondered whether she was joking, and decided that she was not. In Christine’s world a nice basket of muffins was significant currency.

  He closed his eyes and, unbidden, Natasha was with him. She was with him every night before he slept, although on this occasion she had taken a little longer than usual to turn up. He tried to force her from his mind and replace her with the girl lying next to him, but he could not.

  When he awoke the following morning he had a hangover. It was Sunday and Christine was all cuddly smiles and giggly excitement. She seemed unaffected by their day-long binge and wanted to go and buy coffee and croissants in the traditional manner.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, grabbing a dressing gown and heading for the shower, ‘it’s what you’re supposed to do after a first date. Although this isn’t our first date, is it? We just broke up for a while, that’s all…Hey! How about this? We could go up to Hampstead and have breakfast at Louis’. They’re normally absolutely packed, but you could flash your card and get us in, couldn’t you? Oh, sorry, I expect that’s against your principles, isn’t it? But we could at least get some carry-out and go and sit on the Heath. Why not? The sun’s shining and we’ve got all day…‘ She was shouting from within the shower now, and her words were soon lost in the sound of the water. Nonetheless, Newson could hear that she was continuing to prattle.

  He sat up in bed and considered the situation. ‘We just broke up for a while, that’s all.’ Had she really said that? Did she really think that they were back together? He rather thought she did.

  This was extraordinary.

  For so long Newson had lived the life of a monk and now suddenly he was fighting girls off. Not only that, but the girl whom he had long seen as the very definition of the phrase ‘out of his league’ was tilting her cap at him and setting the pace. And the pace was fast.

  Too fast for him.

  He should have been pleased. It was everything he’d hoped for when first he went online to find her. A gorgeous, fun girl, great sex, a relationship even. A way to break his cycle of dependence on the fantasy of Natasha.

  Why not go for it? He’d had a good time the day before, and an even better night. Christine was an easy girl to be with. Why not have Sunday breakfast with her? Why not hang out with her for the rest of the day? Why not arrange to meet tomorrow and see where it all went from there?

  Because it was already clear to Newson that Christine was expecting more from him than he was prepared to give. She was not a girl looking for fun, sex and a few romantic dinners. A girl like Christine would never need to look for that. She was looking for a relationship, for Mr Right. And Newson knew that he was no Mr Right. Not for her anyway.

  It was quite shocking, Newson reflected, how time had changed everything. He was not a vain man. He had never considered himself any kind of catch for a girl, but he could see that the tables had been turned. For twenty years his status with Christine had remained frozen at the low point in 1984 when she had dumped him for a sixth-former. Now, things were different. For all his unrequited romantic obsessions, Newson was happy with his life, and Christine wasn’t. Her brittle self-confidence and expensive breasts could not hide the fact that she was a single woman in a dead-end job paying rent to a flight attendant for half a room in a tiny flat. He could now see that when Christine contacted Friends Reunited she too had been reaching back into the past for a way to break the cycle of the present. Newson was successful, he had status in the community. And that was what Christine craved: status. Once, she’d had it in abundance, she’d been the golden girl of the school.

  ‘Isn’t it fantastic that neither of us have any fucking kids yet?’ Christine said, emerging from the bathroom, a towel knotted across her ledge-like breasts. ‘I’ve been out with loads of guys with kids and, believe me, their kids are never out of the picture. Particularly on Sundays. It’s so boring. You either can’t go round because she’s there and doesn’t want to meet you, or you have to sneak off early in the morning because she’s coming round to drop them off and has insisted that the precious infants aren’t corrupted by meeting the slag who’s shagging her ex. You end up feeling as cheap as if it was you that walked out on his family, not him. But you haven’t got kids, have you, Ed? And neither have I, so we can do just what we fucking well like.’

  Newson knew enough about life to know that as the years went by the number of unencumbered singletons diminished. A girl like Christine could get herself laid twenty times a day if she so desired, but to find a man whose life had so far not been claimed, that was harder. A lot harder.

  ‘So. Breakfast?’ said Christine, drying her hair.

  ‘Yes, fine, great,’ said Newson.

  They took a cab to Belsize Park and then walked up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead. The sunshine was glorious, the air was fresh, and Newson was still trying to work out what he felt. Perhaps he was being too hard on himself, and on her? Could he not simply take his luck where he found it? He would be quite happy to spend the day with her and indeed the night She was pretty and fun, and he had been lonely for so long. But he knew that he had nothing more to offer than that, that he would not wish to develop anything remotely serious with Christine Copperfield. He liked her, but he could never love her, not in a million years.

  Besides which, he was in love with Natasha Wilkie, and he always would be. He knew, therefore, that he should not sleep with Christine again, no matter how much he might like to.

  They did manage to get a table at Louis’, but shortly after they had sat down and ordered the famous croissant, Newson’s mobile rang. It was Natasha.

  ‘I think I have something,’ she said, ‘from Adam Bishop’s past. I’m at UGH. Where are you?’

  ‘Not far. Hampstead. I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  Newson explained to Christine that he had to go. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I may not have kids, but I do have an ongoing murder investigation, and something’s come up. I can’t let it wait, either, because the man’s still out there and there’s always the chance that he’ll, as they say, kill again.’

  ‘How exciting,’ Christine said. ‘I suppose that’s just one of the down sides of hanging out with a big tough cop. Oh well, nothing’s perfect, is it? Will you come round later? I could cook you dinner. Or, much more fun, you could take me out to dinner. I love eating out.’

  ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be. You never do with this sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be at home. Come if you can.’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘Ed, you will call me, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They exchanged mobile numbers and Newson left the café. He took the Northern Line down to Warren Street and walked a couple of blocks west to University
College Hospital. Detective Sergeant Wilkie was waiting for him in the gloomy entrance to the Victorian building.

  ‘I did what you suggested,’ she said, ‘and got a list of Adam Bishop’s schoolmates in 1959. He was at a state junior in Catford, near Lewisham. There were thirty-eight in the class. After that I thought I’d run the names through whatever hospital archives remained for admissions in that year.’

  ‘Christ, how many of those records still exist?’

  ‘A surprising number, actually. I brought Campbell and Levaux in from their Sunday off and we got stuck in. We started with Great Ormond Street, but nothing checked out there. Then we spread out across the London hospitals and, bingo, we got lucky. One of the names on Adam Bishop’s class of ‘fifty-nine list was admitted at UGH in February of that year. A lad called William Connolly.’

  ‘How do we know it’s the same William Connolly?’

  ‘He was a nine-year-old boy and, get this, he was seriously ill due to blood poisoning caused by…’

  ‘Infected puncture wounds?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Wow. That sounds like the real thing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly does. But if it was Bishop who stabbed him I don’t think Connolly ever snitched. I’ve checked the school records and there’s no mention of an expulsion or suspension. And we’ve gone through Hampstead, Bromley and Lewisham police archives and they don’t record any juvenile arrests. If it was Bishop — ’

  ‘Come on, it has to be Bishop.’

  ‘If it was, he got away with it.’

  ‘He may have got away with it then, Natasha. But forty-five years later I think it caught up with him.’

  ‘Well, maybe. Anyway, I’ve tracked Connolly down.

  He’s still alive, still living in south-east London. What do you reckon?’

  ‘I reckon let’s hope he’s in.’

  William Connolly lived with his wife in what had once been a council house just behind Blythe Hill, scarcely three hundred metres from-where he had been to school. The little house smelt of old-fashioned Sunday lunch, boiled cabbage, Bisto gravy and proper grey meat. Grandchildren swarmed all over the place. Mr Connolly showed Newson and Natasha into the parlour.—