Turning Blue

by Benjamin Myers

  No.

  Churchill said his greatest achievement was persuading someone to marry him.

  Brindle looks around the room.

  Then again says Muncy. Churchill was no looker was he?

  Brindle notices something on the floor. He squats. It is an inhaler.

  Is your daughter asthmatic?

  Mildly.

  And her inhaler is here.

  It looks like it.

  The detective opens drawers and carefully begins to rifle through them.

  He stops and looks at Ray Muncy.

  You don’t mind do you?

  Muncy turns away and looks out the window. Looks down the valley.

  Do what do you have to do.

  Brindle continues. He methodically looks through boxes and make-up bags and flicks through notepads. He shakes magazines and opens wardrobe doors. Upturns shoes. He crouches and looks in a suitcase which lies splayed open. It contents strewn.

  His hand closes on something. He stands.

  Is your daughter sexually active Mr Muncy?

  Muncy turns back to face him.

  What?

  I’m sorry but I have to ask.

  She’s fifteen for Christ’s sake.

  Yes says Brindle.

  Fifteen.

  A lot of girls are active at that age.

  Not my Melanie.

  You’d be surprised.

  Muncy’s face darkens. He turns to Brindle.

  Now listen.

  Brindle looks at him impassively.

  I don’t like your questions.

  I have to ask them says the detective. They are necessary. I’m sorry.

  And I don’t like your tone either.

  Muncy’s voice is raised now. He is frowning. His brow is pushing down on his eyes. His jaw tight again.

  Brindle blinks.

  So. Is she?

  What?

  Boys Mr Muncy. Men. Women. Is your daughter sexually active?

  What difference does it make?

  Brindle opens his hand. He is holding a pregnancy-testing kit.

  Potentially a huge difference.

  THE CAR SLIDES sideways across the road and begins to fishtail. Mace squeezes the brakes and they lock and only by turning the wheel into the spin does he prevent the car from crashing into a wall. Three times this happens on the three-mile journey down from the hamlet. It takes him forty-five minutes. He parks the car and runs through the snow dragging his suitcase behind him but when he gets into the station it is silent. Dead. There is snow on the line and snow on the platform but there are no people. He looks up and down the tracks. Snow even hangs from the power lines. Everything is blanketed. There has been no activity but snowfall here.

  He walks back through to the tiny entrance hall to the ticket office. Its shutters are down. He looks up at the screen. The message ***ALL SERVICES CANCELLED*** runs sideways across it. Mace stands and watches for a longer time than is necessary then he turns and leaves the station.

  RUTTER AT TEN.

  As a growing boy in the corner. In the playground.

  Five or six boys are sitting on the wall. Village boys and farm boys singing a song.

  Your dirty mother. She likes to have a fiddle. She done it with the milkman with you in the middle.

  It is directed at him it is sung at him it is jeered at him. Sneered with venom.

  At him in the corner; him in his rags. By the boys on the wall the five or six of them. Big boys rough boys dirty tough boys.

  Village boys. Farm boys.

  They sing another verse.

  Your dirty mother. She likes to have a fiddle. She done it with the coalman with you in the middle.

  Sneered and jeered and while making wanker signs with their hands.

  Your dirty mother. She likes to have a fiddle. She done it with a black man with you in the middle.

  Now he is standing and now he is rising and now he is walking over.

  Rutter is walking over to the boys. The boys singing the song. The sneerers and the jeerers. No sense to that song but. No. No sense at all but. A nonsense song is that.

  There are five or six boys sitting on the wall. If one of those boys should accidentally fall.

  Your dirty mother. She likes it back scuttle.

  Rutter is tightening and Rutter is coiling and Rutter is breathing. He is walking over to them. His arms hanging down like sledgehammers. Hands feeling like steel heads. Making him walk funny.

  He is breathing and he is walking over to them and he is walking up to the biggest one. The thickest one. The biggest baddest bastard one.

  And cracking him one.

  And the big boy – the bad boy bastard stinking tough boy – falls.

  Falls from the wall.

  Smacks his head. The sound of it. Humpty bloody Dumpty diddums thinks Rutter.

  But he gets back up does the big boy. He stands back up. He straightens and touches a fingertip to his scalp and he smiles.

  Because he’s a big boy bred to wrestle animals all day long.

  Then it’s him that’s getting stomped. Then it’s Rutter that’s getting hoofed then it’s Rutter on the ground. It’s him in the corner again and it wasn’t meant to be like this.

  It is him in the middle. It is boots and fists and dirt and gravel. Footprints and bruises. It is digs and jabs and kicks and punches.

  She done it with a black man.

  A no-sense song that but. A nonsense song but.

  He is in the corner and he is by the wall he is in a ball and it wasn’t meant to be like this. It wasn’t meant to be like this at all.

  BRINDLE DECIDES TO climb the hill to the Rutter place in the fading light.

  Beneath the snow the path is rutted and uneven and for a short while it sinks into the hillside as black hawthorn bushes spring up on either side as if to trap him.

  Once a woman told him – told James Brindle – that he had weak lips.

  Weak lips. Her exact words.

  He was in a nightclub. He was still drinking then; still functioning socially then – and it was loud so he thought he had misheard and asked her to repeat herself. She did. He had not misheard. Weak lips.

  Ever since then he had wondered what that meant. To have weak lips. Even now years later every mirror was a reminder of this one cruel comment; one comment against a thousand others about his vibrant birthmark He considered what it said about him as a man and how all the success at work – the awards and the promotions and the killers brought to justice – could never change this and that perhaps it all somehow linked up with the well of loneliness that he felt inside. That his weak lips were at the centre of it all. That and the birthmark and the counting and the touching of surfaces and the powerful aversion to dirt and the feelings of bubbles coursing through his bloodstream and snakes squirming in his arms and the rest of it.

  He pauses to look back on himself. He looks down at the village and the way the houses cling to the road and then he looks over the other side to Muncy’s house and his land out back running down to the river and trees. Then he turns to the Rutter farm up the hill and heads towards it.

  AS HE LEAVES the cinema a hand gently touches his arm. Fingers curl around his elbow and seem to grip a nerve there. There is a shooting pain up his arm. There is a cold voice in his ear.

  You need to come with me.

  He goes to turn round but the hand presses the small of his back. Guides him.

  Just keep walking. Through that door on the right. No fucking about.

  He tries to stop but the hand is forceful.

  They get to the door and the man opens it.

  In he says.

  He is young and afraid and the man is very thin. His cheekbones are prominent and the skin on his face seems drawn tight. In the low light it has a waxy sheen and there is something about his mouth. His top lip is crooked as if had once been split all the way up to the nose and then stitched wrong. Stitched up too tight.

  His hair is combed back. It is crisp
with wet-look gel. He is wearing a shirt and tie. He is wearing spectacles.

  What’s this about but? he says. What’s going on?

  Mr Hood wants to see you.

  Who is Mr Hood?

  Not someone you want to say no to.

  He stands aside and ushers him through the doorway. They enter the darkness at the top of a flight of stairs. Again the hand is at his back – urging and pushing with a lightness that he finds unnerving.

  They go down the stairs and turn right then down more steps. They are at the back door of the cinema. They are in the bowels of the cinema.

  Not there says the man. He nods to the ground.

  There.

  He looks confused but the man squats down and touches a mat that is laid there. He feels around and then pulls at a metal ring and lifts the rug. A hatch opens.

  He nods to the space that has opened up and says: in.

  He looks down and then steps onto a ladder. The man follows and closes the hatch above them. They go deeper into the heart of the buildings. They pass through a series of low-ceilinged arched cellar rooms. Some are full of junk – old carpets and chairs stacked up and damp newspapers and bottles and rat traps and plastic crates – and others are empty.

  They turn a corner and he sees a large screen and he sees men sitting around it drinking and watching a film. Smokes hangs heavy in the air. The film is silent and black-and-white but not old. It is CCTV footage.

  He sees a struggle. He sees a man on a woman he sees a man in a woman he sees a man going through a woman. At it. Dismantling her. Wild.

  He sees the shape of himself. Rutter.

  Him. Rutter. Possessed.

  It is of the car park outside – the car park of the X – and it is like a strange dream.

  He looks to the man now and the man smiles and says cameras young man. We had them sent over from America special. They call them eyes in the sky. Capture anything.

  He looks back to the screen and sees the way in which the woman is stumbling and falling and the way you can only really see her legs sticking out from behind a car in the dark and how his legs are bending and folding into hers.

  The men are watching in silence.

  Then the footage suddenly ends and the lights come on. The men – seven or eight or nine of them; men with suits and wallets and wives and pictures of children back on their office desks – put down their drinks and begin applauding. The thin man is looking at him sideways. He sees that as the lights come on the lenses of the man’s spectacles darken. The thin man says come on and leads him to stand in front of the screen.

  Gentlemen he says. The star of the show.

  In the low light he sees that some of the men are in work suits and one or two are in black ties and dinner jackets. Others are more casually dressed. They are of differing ages. A couple seem very old to him.

  Get the lad a drink for fuck’s sake says one of the other men.

  He doesn’t want one.

  I’ll have his then.

  I see he’s dressed for the occasion says another voice. More laughter.

  He looks at the men’s faces. He thinks he recognises two of them. They seem familiar. Just as he is trying to place them one of the men says Christ – it’s fucking Steve Rutter.

  He squints. He places the face. It is Wendell Smith. One of the valley men. The owner of a chicken-packing plant.

  Wendell says Rutter.

  The thin man turns to him.

  No first names here.

  Wendell Smith speaks again.

  He lives up by Muncy’s place.

  This causes interest amongst the men.

  Rutter looks at the thin man and sees that his glasses have darkened further and then he looks at the men again. One of them is wearing a large brightly coloured baseball cap.. He thinks perhaps that he is off the television but he does not have a television so he cannot be certain.

  I’m Mr Skelton says the thin man. And that as you know is Mr Smith. Now that we’re all friends maybe you can tell us what you did with her?

  With who?

  The men drink and smoke and shift in their seats. They watch with interest.

  You can speak openly son. You’re amongst like-minded people.

  He says nothing.

  Skelton nods to the screen. A guaranteed life sentence that. Guaranteed. Isn’t that right your honour?

  One of the men smiles and nods.

  The thin man – Skelton – tips his head towards the young man and says to the others: imagine what they’d do to someone like him in prison gentlemen.

  The men smile and laugh and rearrange themselves again.

  It only takes one phonecall says Skelton. You could be anywhere in the world and all it would take is one phonecall to have done to you what you did to her. Mr Hood’s not happy about this.

  Who’s Mr Hood?

  One of the men interjects. A fat man in a tuxedo.

  Who is this joker Skelton?

  Skelton ignores both questions.

  Now. Answer carefully and honestly: what did you do with the woman?

  He swallows and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

  Dumped her.

  We’d gathered that. Where?

  What does it matter?

  If her body was found and traced back to here it would matter says Skelton. It would matter a great deal. One more time. Where did you dump her?

  He sniffs then scratches at his patchwork stubble.

  The pig pen.

  There is silence for a moment and then Skelton says the pig pen?

  Aye. The hogs ate her.

  The man in the baseball cap leans forward in his seat and removes his cigarette from his mouth and says with a big smile: the hogs ate her.

  He nods.

  And that works does it?

  Aye. A half-dozen hogs and a few hours and they’re all gone. Every last bit of them – all except the teeth.

  The man in the baseball cap smiles again. The men are smiling back at him.

  He’s right you know says Wendell Smith. The lad’s a farmer. And his mother. Centuries old that lot. As old as the soil itself.

  You wouldn’t think he was capable would you? says the man in the baseball cap. Who else son? How many others have you put in this pig pen of yours?

  None.

  He’s lying says one of the men. You can tell.

  Tell us the truth now lad and we’ll look after you says the man in the baseball cap who he now sees has a level of authority over the others. Lie and you won’t see the morning.

  None.

  Mr Skelton says the baseball cap. Please remove one of the young man’s eyeballs.

  Skelton grabs him and moves in with a clenched fist with one thumb sticking out.

  Wait he says. Wait.

  Skelton stops.

  There might have been one before.

  One what?

  One lass a while back. A bit ago. Just some lass. Will you tell the authorities?

  The man in the cap starts laughing at him and the other men start laughing and then they are all laughing. All except Skelton.

  Son says the man in the cap. We are the authorities.

  CHICKENS ANNOUNCE BRINDLE’S arrival into the yard.

  Brindle sees a place defined by absence. The barns are missing panels and reduced to rotten skeletons. A tractor sits slumped without a windscreen and a front wheel leaning to one side like an old man who has keeled over. There are empty oil drums and grain buckets and spools of frayed rotting rope. He sees another piece of farmyard machinery. It is a digger of some sort but all its parts have rusted and the paintwork is chipped and there is a film of algae on the inside of the open window. Everything once mechanical now seems rusted and locked and beyond purpose.

  He pauses by the chicken coop and sees sad thin birds who have pecked at each other’s feathers in agitation. He sees no sign of cultivation or growth. Nothing harvested or stored.

  Brindle turns a corner and suddenly dogs are ba
rking at him. He sees them only as small dark braying shapes. He pauses and then moves closer. Terriers scrabble at chicken wire to get at him from inside their pen. Brindle crouches and they bark louder and fight each other in the melee.

  The back door swings open and a form fills the doorway. Brindle stands up slowly.

  Who’s that out there?

  Mr Rutter? he says.

  I said who’s that out there?

  It’s the police Mr Rutter.

  Get away from my dogs you shithouse.

  Brindle walks towards him. Brindle moves towards the light.

  I’m a detective. James Brindle.

  The coppers have already been. I’ve already answered all your questions.

  Brindle steps into the elongated rectangle of light spilling from the house. Sees a small man in the doorway. A weasel.

  Not my questions he says. Can I come in?

  Have you got a warrant?

  I don’t need a warrant for a chat. Warrants are for searches.

  They’ve already been in. You’re not searching my house.

  I know says Brindle. I just want a chat.

  About what?

  You know what.

  Brindle faces him now. Rutter looks shrivelled and lined. All sinew. A dirt-marked creature of the landscape. He is holding a poker in his hand. He is staring at the birthmark on Brindle’s face.

  Can I come in? It’s cold out here.

  No says Rutter.

  As he stares the detective stares back.

  Melanie Muncy. How well do you know her?

  I don’t.

  You don’t know her at all?

  Rutter shrugs.

  Only I’ve just come from her father’s and he says you’ve been here as long as these hills.

  So?

  So. They’re just down the hill from you. Melanie grew up here in sight of this house.

  Rutter shrugs.

  Aye.

  And you’re still saying you don’t know her?

  I’m not saying I don’t know who she is. I’m saying I don’t know her. There’s a difference.

  You’re right Mr Rutter. There is a difference.

  Well then.

  Brindle turns to face the dark farmyard. Puts his back to Rutter. Shoves his hands deep in his overcoat pockets.

  Live here alone do you?

  Rutter grunts an affirmative. Brindle turns back and fixes him with a stare. He studies his face and notices that there is red raw grazing on his right wrist then without blinking he says where have you put Melanie’s body Mr Rutter?