by Kevin Brooks
She put her bag on the table and wiped a mist of rain from her brow. ‘Where’s your dad?’
‘In the front room,’ I said. ‘Do you want some tea?’
I put the kettle on and sorted out the mugs and tea things while Alex sat down at the kitchen table, rubbing some warmth into her arms. ‘It’s a bit cold in here, isn’t it?’
The kettle boiled and I filled two mugs.
‘Enjoy yourself?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘It was all right.’
‘Where’d you go?’
‘Nowhere. Dean was fiddling about with some stuff from the shop, tape recorders, computer stuff, I don’t know.’
I fished the teabags from the mugs and threw them at the bin but they missed and splatted onto the lino. I added milk to the tea.
‘Alex?’
‘What?’
I put the teas on the kitchen table and sat down.
‘I’ve got a problem,’ I said.
‘You’re not pregnant are you?’ she joked.
‘No.’
‘Sorry.’ She stopped smiling. ‘What is it? Is it bad?’
‘It’s bad.’
‘How bad?’
‘Bad bad.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s Dad.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s dead.’
And then I told her what had happened.
‘Show me,’ she said.
I took her into the front room. She shuddered a little and wiped nervously at her mouth.
‘Cover him up, Martyn.’
I found a sheet in the airing cupboard and laid it over the body.
‘Come here,’ she said gently.
I moved over to her and she put her arms around me. Her skin smelled of rain.
That moment, when she held me ... it was as if nothing else mattered. Nothing. Everything would be all right. Her soft hand on the back of my head, the comfort of her body close to mine ... everything else just faded away into nowhere. This was where I wanted to be.
But nothing lasts for ever.
Back in the kitchen she just sat there looking at me. Flecks of green dappled the brown of her eyes, like tiny leaves. I had to look away. My tea was cold. Everything was cold.
‘You have to tell somebody,’ she said quietly.
The fluorescent strip light hummed and stuttered on the ceiling. A small puddle of rainwater had formed on the floor at Alex’s feet, dripped from the sleeves of her jacket. The harsh white flickering light reflected in the surface of the puddle. It bothered me. I wanted to turn it off. To sit in the dark. To do nothing.
‘Martyn, you have to tell somebody about it. You can’t just sit here and not do anything. You have to call the police.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s too late.’
A frown wrinkled her brow. ‘I don’t understand. Too late for what?’
‘They’ll know.’
‘Who?’
‘The police. They’ll know he died over an hour ago. They can tell. They’ll want to know why I didn’t ring straight away.’
‘So? Tell them.’
‘I can’t, can I?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know.’
‘Oh.’ She looked down, a little embarrassed, as if she’d suddenly realised there was something wrong with me. She had that don’t-know-what-to-do look on her face; the kind of look you get when a mad person sits next to you on a bus. But it didn’t last long. After a moment’s thought she wiped her nose and said, ‘Well, all right, but you’re not going to get arrested just because you don’t know why you didn’t do something, are you?’
‘No, they’ll probably just put me in a loony bin.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Or a home, or something.’
‘Martyn—’
‘They won’t let me stay here, will they?’ And then it dawned on me. ‘Oh, God. Aunty Jean. They’ll make me go and live at Aunty Jean’s.’
‘No they won’t.’
‘Of course they will! What else can they do? Christ! I can’t live with her, I can’t stand the woman. She’s worse than Dad.’
‘I’m sure it’s not that bad.’
‘How would you know?’ I snapped.
She looked hurt. ‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘Yeah, I know ... I know. I’m sorry. It’s just ... I don’t know.’
It was still pouring down. Rain streamed on the kitchen window. The shaving foam snow had melted. All that was left was a murky trail on the glass and a grubby white residue hardening on the sill. Alex scratched absently at the table top with a teaspoon, chewing her lip, while I just sat there thinking. It was one of those if only situations. If only no one knew about it. If only I had time to think. If only I could make things disappear. If only ...
‘Look,’ Alex said calmly, ‘why don’t you let me call the police. I’ll explain what’s happened. I’m sure it’ll be all right. I mean, it’s not like he’s been lying there for weeks, is it? It’s only been an hour or so. They’ll understand, they’re not monsters.’
I shook my head.
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve already told you, they’ll want to know why I didn’t tell them about it immediately, and I won’t have an answer. It’s bound to make them suspicious. They’ll think I’ve got something to hide.’
‘Yes, but you haven’t, have you? It was an accident.’
‘They don’t know that.’
‘But you can’t just leave it, Martyn. You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to tell somebody.’
I thought about it. I tried to follow it through – what if this, what if that – but there was nothing there. All I could see was a black hole. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘whatever I do, I’ll still end up at Aunty Jean’s.’
‘But you won’t have to stay there for ever, will you? You’ll be sixteen soon enough, you can get your own place.’
‘I’ll be in a straightjacket by then.’
‘And what do you think’s going to happen if you leave your dad’s body in the front room?’
I looked at her. ‘I don’t know.’
She took a deep breath and sighed.
And that’s how it went on for the rest of the night. Alex saying call the police and me saying no. Alex saying why not and me saying I can’t. Why not? Because. Yes, but. No. Why not? Because. Yes, but. No ... Round and round in never-ending circles. We weren’t getting anywhere. By the time it got to midnight we were both too tired to carry on.
‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow,’ I said finally.
‘It’s already tomorrow. The longer you leave it—’
‘I know. Let me think about it, OK? I’ll sort it out in the morning.’
She sighed again, looked at her watch and nodded wearily. ‘All right.’
I got up and went over to the back door. On the path outside, wet black bin-liners sagged by the wall. Cats had got into one, scattering the path with sodden tissue and chicken bones.
‘What about tonight,’ Alex said. ‘You can’t stay here.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘You can come over to my place if you want. I’ll get Mum to make up a bed in the spare room.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, locking the door. ‘But I’ll be all right here.’
We were standing in the doorway. The rain had stopped. A crescent moon hung high and white in the black sky. The street was empty, the surface of the road wet and black in the sodium glow of streetlights. Alex buttoned her coat.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ she asked again.
I nodded.
She put her hands in her pockets. ‘I’d better go. I’ll come round in the morning. OK?’
I watched her cross the road back to her house. Back to her home, her mother, her warm bed.
She didn’t look back.
I shut the door.
The house was still cold. And quiet.
> I went upstairs and got into bed.
Thursday
A small windowless room lit by a naked lightbulb. Condensation gleams on bare concrete walls. On a shelf by the wall twin cassette tapes whirr in a big black tape recorder, red light blinking automatically.
It’s cold, but my hands are sweating.
Across the table from where I sit, Inspector Morse shakes his head impatiently.
‘I don’t have time for this, Pig. What did you do with the gun?’
Standing behind him, wearing a long coat and a deer-stalker hat, cradling his angular chin in his hand, Sherlock Holmes fixes me with a black-eyed stare. I look away and turn my attention back to Morse.
‘What are you talking about?’ I ask him. ‘What gun?’
‘Oh come on, Pig,’ he says with exasperation, ‘I know you shot him. Holmes knows you shot him. We all know you shot him.’
‘Shot who? What are you talking about?’
He gives me his tight-mouthed look and rises from the chair. Sherlock leans over and whispers something in his ear. Morse grins and sits down again.
‘Where were you at eight-thirty this evening?’
‘At home. Watching television.’
‘Watching what?’
‘Watching you.’
‘Why did you shoot your father?’
‘I didn’t shoot him. It was an accident—’
‘That’s not what Alex says.’
‘What?’
‘Alex says you shot him.’
‘She wasn’t there!’
‘That’s what you say.’
‘It’s the truth!’
‘Where were you at eight-thirty this evening?’
‘Watching television.’
‘Watching what?’
‘Watching you!’
‘Lew-is!’
Morse’s face shifts eerily as he shouts, changing into something else.
‘Lew-is! Lew-is!’
His silvery-grey hair darkens, glinting with oil.
‘Lew-is! Lew-is!’
A blackened wound appears on his forehead.
He won’t stop shouting. ‘Lew-is! Lew-is!’
Blood seeps from the corner of his mouth.
‘Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is!’
‘SHUT UP!’
I sat up screaming vainly into the darkness. It was four o’clock in the morning.
The thing about dreams, they don’t come from anywhere else but yourself. It’s not as if there’s some evil demon waiting around somewhere, waiting for you to sleep so he can sneak into your mind and show you all his crazy things. It’s you that does it. It’s your mind. Whatever demons there are, you invite them in. They’re your demons. No one else’s.
I don’t know what that means.
I couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to take a bath. I felt dirty. My skin itched, sticky with sweat. And my legs ached, too. My legs always ache in the morning. Growing pains.
I shut the bathroom door and turned on the bath taps. The water gurgled and spat for a while, stopped, then coughed into life. I sat down on the toilet and waited for the bath to fill. My reflection looked back at me from the mirror on the wall.
‘What?’ I said.
The head reflected in the steamed glass was unmoved.
What I saw was a boy who didn’t seem to fit his body. Thin. Gawky. Awkward. A shock of mud-brown hair, cut in no recognisable style, tired blue eyes, a too-small nose and a crooked mouth with slightly wonky teeth. I was no beauty. But then again, I wasn’t exactly a hunchback, either. Odd-looking? Maybe. But what’s wrong with that?
The bath was nearly full. I opened a bottle of shampoo and emptied a good dollop into the bath and watched the froth of rainbowed bubbles rise from the surface of the water like a perfumed mountain. Then I turned off the taps and stepped into the bath and lay there soaking and sweating in the silent heat of the water.
I lay there until it turned flat and cold. And then I lay there some more.
Thinking.
What could I do? What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Cry? Scream? Run away? Feel sorry for yourself?
What’s the point? There’s always an answer somewhere. You’ve just got to find it.
I brushed my teeth. I dressed in clean clothes and ran a towel over my hair. I cleaned the sink, wiped the shelves, opened the window to let in some fresh air. It was still dark outside. A solitary bird whistled from somewhere hidden – tsui-tsui-tsui.
‘What the hell,’ I said, and went downstairs.
Dabbing at toast crumbs and sipping tea, I watched through the window as the sun rose slowly and nudged away the dead cold blackness of the night. It wasn’t much to see, the birth of another grey day, but I watched it anyway. When it was done I looked at the clock and saw that it was still early.
I made some more tea.
I felt as if I was waiting for something; but I didn’t know what it was.
What happened next, I suppose you’d call it fate. Whatever that is. I remember once one of the teachers at school started talking about destiny – fate, determinism, free will – that sort of thing. Mr Smith, it was, the English teacher. ‘Call me Brian,’ he used to say, but no one ever did. It was pretty weird stuff, what he talked about, but it was kind of interesting, too. I spent a couple of days looking into it, getting books out of the library, reading this and reading that, but I didn’t find out all that much because it’s one of those things that doesn’t really go anywhere because no one knows the answers. There aren’t any answers. All that happens is the further you look into it, the more confusing it gets. So I stopped.
One thing that did stick in my mind, though, was something that Albert Einstein once said. I like him, Einstein. He’s the crazy-haired one who thought up relativity. Everything is determined, he said, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
I thought that was pretty good.
The invisible piper on this occasion was the postman.
It must have been about eight o’clock when the post rattled through the letter box. Bills, junk mail, catalogue stuff. Dad liked to order things from catalogues. Gardening equipment, tools, pens, radios, Elvis Presley clocks, shirts, hats, anything. When the stuff was delivered he’d hide upstairs so the delivery man would have to leave whatever it was round the back and Dad wouldn’t have to sign for it. Then he’d claim that he never received what he’d ordered and he’d sell the stuff down the pub. He even sold a computer once. Two computers, come to think of it. They sent a replacement for the one he said had never arrived and he sold that too.
Amongst all the rubbish there was an envelope addressed to William Pig, Esq., that caught my eye. It looked official. Handwritten, that old-fashioned slopey kind of writing, with a fountain pen. I chucked the rest of the post in the bin and went back into the kitchen, sat down at the table and opened the letter.
Dear Mr Pig, it began. Further to our meeting on 1st December, I write to confirm that, as requested, a cheque in the amount of £30,000 was paid into your account this morning, being full payment of the bequest made to yourself in the last will and testament of Miss Eileen Pig ...
I put the letter down, blinked, and picked it up again.
... £30,000 ... being full payment of the bequest made to yourself in the last will and testament of Miss Eileen Pig ...
A three followed by four zeros. Thirty thousand. Thirty thousand pounds. I read on.
... blah blah blah do not hesitate to contact us ... blah blah blah ... further advice ... blah blah blah ... Yours sincerely, signed M Squiggle, Malcolm G Elliott LL.B (Hons) Solicitor.
£30,000.
A three and four zeros.
Thirty thousand pounds.
I couldn’t believe it.
Who the hell was Eileen Pig?
Thirty
thousand pounds? Dad had never mentioned anything. He must have known about this for ages. He wasn’t going to tell me.
He wasn’t going to tell me.
I stared at the letter again. It was dated Wednesday, 18th December. Yesterday. Thirty thousand pounds. Paid into his account. And he wasn’t going to tell me. I couldn’t believe it. Someone, some relative, leaves him thirty thousand pounds in her will – and he was going to keep it to himself. It was so sick it was funny.
I went into the front room.
‘Dad?’
He didn’t answer.
I held out the letter towards him. ‘What were you going to do with this? Leave me? Sod off somewhere on your own, drink yourself to death on a beach in the Bahamas and leave me to Aunty Jean?’
He still didn’t answer.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I shouted.
The sound of my voice, trembling, close to tears, rang out flat and dull in the dead air. I sat down in the armchair and sighed. The silence was true. Dad was never going to tell me anything. He was just a shape beneath a white shroud.
I folded the letter into my pocket and went upstairs.
Dad’s room was a heap. Curls of wallpaper peeled from the walls revealing old layers of sick-yellow paint. Magazines littered the floor, mostly girly mags and copies of Exchange & Mart. A few paperback books, too – Westerns, stupid romances. I kicked them all into a pile. The bed – a big high thing with a solid wood headboard – was unmade and smelled unwashed. Bits of broken biscuits and breadcrumbs lay scattered beneath the duvet and three whitish pillows were scrunched up against the headboard, each one discoloured with the stain of Dad’s hair oil.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. I hadn’t been in here for a long time, not since Mum had left. I used to come in early Christmas morning to get my presents. Dad would still be asleep, head beneath the bedclothes, snoring off the Christmas Eve drinks, but Mum would be awake, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, smiling. I’d sit at the bottom of the bed, barely able to control my excitement, as she reached down under the bed and brought out presents wrapped in gold and silver paper and tied with ribbon. Boxes, packets, parcels, all kinds of shapes and sizes. All for me. Lego, Meccano, a football, Scalextric ...