Turning Blue

by Benjamin Myers

  His knees are bent and his thighs are burning screaming straining. The metal is digging into his shoulder. He takes a deep breath and pushes some more and the grill levers open and then in one quick moment he tosses the crowbar away into the water and grabs the rope with both hands. As he does the weight of the parcel pulls him forward and his back spasms and one foot steps over nothingness.

  For a split second he teeters. One foot hovers over the abyss and he is on the brink of giving himself to it but he manages to shift his centre of gravity and stumbles splashing backwards into the tunnel away from the deep dark chasm of the vertical drain. With him comes his quarry.

  Would it be so bad he wonders to have joined her in this wet underworld?

  He moans and yanks at the rope. He hears his voice; hears his own desperate cry. The rope slides through his hands and it burns his palms – strips the skin right off – but he tightens his grip and pulls and pulls. And it burns.

  He pulls hand over hand for eight nine ten feet of rope that snakes slack on the surface of the dirty drain water behind him then he feels the metal of chains in his red raw hands and he knows he is near the bottom.

  He leans against the wet stone of the tunnel wall and gives it one final pull and with a splash and another moan that comes deep from within him the bound parcel of tarpaulin and rope and chain and breeze block and dead girl comes rising up from the deep.

  He uses its partial buoyancy to his advantage and drags the body of the girl through the water to the steps. He flops down in the moonlight. Soaking gasping wheezing and sobbing. He can’t catch his breath and his hands are screaming.

  He waits a minute. He waits two minutes.

  Then he stands. He moves the parcel around so that it lies across the widest step. He squelches as he moves. The concrete is grey. The concrete is dry. The concrete is a mortuary slab.

  He slowly begins to untie the rope. Rutter unwraps the parcel. He turns it over as chains clink and dirty water runs out from it.

  He is aware of the feeling of water on his skin. The stillness of the air. The silence.

  Then he is untying and lifting and hefting and dislodging.

  Rolling and clanking and unwrapping and reeling.

  When the ties are undone he jerks the tarp sheet out like a magician doing the tablecloth trick and it unravels and then she is there.

  She is there. The girl.

  She is an abstract bloated thing. A recondite form face-up.

  The girl has doubled in size and lost her shape. She seems so pale and rounded now.

  In his hurry to rid himself of her he had forgotten he had packed her naked; her clothes bundled down by her feet with the breeze block.

  Dead when she was dangled down the empty drain the girl’s epiglottis was closed but when the recent storms came the waters rose and must have forced their way in through her orifices to fill the girl so that her body is now a yellow barrel with translucent skin and a roadmap of hardened veins sitting below the surface. The fat-tissues in her body have coagulated into hardened soaplike clots in places. Within her there are pockets of trapped gas.

  Rather than halt it the cold waters have merely slowed the process of decomposition. Her small breasts are only partially there. One of them has half rotted away to leave a concave brown mush and the sallow skin of her torso is smeared with dirt and blood and darkened lesions. Her lower half remains hidden.

  The dead girl’s arms have ballooned to oversized proportions so that she now appears grossly overweight. She is a grim caricature of a human now; an inflation.

  Her face. She has no lips no ears no eyelids. Her visage is a slick wax mask and a dark brown patch covers one side of it like a wet blistered birthmark. Part of one cheek has rotted away to make her mouth a twisted grimace that reveals blue gums black tongue and loose teeth.

  He sees his hand reaching out and he touches a front tooth and it inverts. He touches it again and it falls into what remains of the girl’s mouth. Down into her. He flinches backwards.

  Her hair. It is barely there. What is left of it hangs from the back of her crown. It is darker than he remembers and resembles the matter found in a bath’s plughole or at the bottom of a blocked U-bend.

  Her eyes. It is the girl’s eyes that are the hardest part to look at. Her sockets are empty now they still stare at him. They stare but they do not see. They look at him from one thousand years away. As if she is trapped beneath an Arctic plain.

  He is struggling. He is struggling to recognise the girl as she once was; a living breathing entity capable of independent thoughts and actions. Capable of breath and laughter and dreams.

  Now she exists only in another dimension called death.

  IN A FUGUE-LIKE state he sits and he looks and he reaches for the body of the girl but then he turns and leaves the storm drain and he stands in the rain and he smokes another cigarette and he smokes it down to the nub and the rain falls gently and it sounds like music.

  He realises that any notion of moving the body now is completely impractical. Bloody stupid that is. Suicidal.

  His mind has become so muddled of late. So muddled.

  It is still night but it won’t be night forever and she won’t be here forever and he won’t be him forever.

  They are out there he thinks. Her family. The police. People in houses; people in villages and towns and cities.

  He turns back to the gaping dark entrance and the concrete corridor of this mausoleum he has created.

  It scares and excites him to think of the things he is still yet capable of. The things he has done in his life and the things he may yet do.

  So he finds himself returning to her; finds himself squatting. The soles of his boots squeaking on the concrete. The rain outside. The black moors.

  And Rutter.

  8

  UP THE DALE. Along the road. He thinks about folk crimes. Stories in the soil. Skeletons.

  He winds his way up the valley and thinks about the things they put beneath the sod. The mute mythologies. The history of the land.

  He counts the bars on gates as he drives past them then counts the number of cottages and farm houses that he can see up the hillsides. He plays around with the figures in his head. He adds and subtracts and divides and multiplies to make new numbers.

  Numbers wheel by the window.

  Brindle climbs the valley and turns into the hamlet. The sky pressing down. The clouds hurrying by. He parks up.

  Folk crimes. Stories of the soil. Names of the living and names of the dead. Steven Rutter and Melanie Muncy and Aggie Rutter and Margaret Faulks and Ray Muncy and Ian Rogerson and Roy Pinder and Roddy Mace and June Muncy and Bull Mason and Johnny Mason – names he never knew three months ago. And in there somewhere Larry Lister. Of course Larry Lister. Of course.

  He walks up the drive and knocks on the door and waits then knocks again and then a man answers. A wild-looking man – as wild as Rutter in his own way – with thick out-grown hair and a thick beard. Wet lips and grey hooded eyes. The eyes of the medicated.

  Mr Muncy?

  He says it as a question even though he knows it is him.

  A grunt of confirmation greets him.

  It’s DS Brindle he says and it comes out as a question again – as if he himself is not sure. James Brindle? The detective. We spoke about your daughter.

  The man stares back. Slack-jawed and hostile. Holding the door. Almost clinging to it.

  Yes. Of course it is.

  Something changes in Muncy’s eyes when he says this; something awakens within him. It is the brief re-ignition of hope and in this moment Brindle knows that this is going to be painful. And he knows that Muncy is not his man. He didn’t do it.

  This man did not murder his own thinks Brindle. He knows this. Is sure of it. Less than a second is all it takes. Ray Muncy says:

  Have you found her?

  His pale face is expectant.

  No says Brindle. No I’m afraid not.

  Muncy’s face slackens.
It visibly drops as hope slides away.

  He lets go of the door that has been supporting him and it slowly begins to close.

  Can I…?

  Muncy stares at the carpet. Brindle reaches out and gently stops the door from closing with his fingertips. He speaks quietly.

  Can I come in Mr Muncy? I just have a few questions.

  The words when they come are a torrent. A garbled deluge.

  She’s dead isn’t she?

  Well we can’t be—

  I’ve tried to hold out hope says Muncy. June hasn’t. June gave in months back – she’s not got that kind of disposition. Never has had. But not me. No. Not me. I’ve always believed she’s out there. That’s the important thing isn’t it? To know that she’s coming back. One day – doesn’t matter when. Just that she’s coming back to us. The reason why didn’t matter so long as she was coming back. Hope. Hope was what would deliver her back to us Mr –?

  Brindle.

  – but it’s exhausting. Hope drains you. And seeing you here now – and I remember you of course I do what with that red thing on your face – seeing you here now with that look about you I know it was a stupid thing to cling to. I feel a bloody idiot for thinking she was ever coming back. Naive. She is dead isn’t she Mr – what was it again?

  Brindle. DS Brindle. I’m afraid I can’t answer that question Mr Muncy. But there have been sufficient developments to convince me that perhaps now is the time to begin preparing for the possibility that your daughter may have been murdered.

  Muncy’s face drops further.

  What developments? says Muncy. What are you on about? Have you got someone like?

  No. Not as such. If I could come in for a moment I’d like to run through a few questions. There are certain points from the initial investigation that I would like to clarify including your alibi.

  Muncy’s mouth tightens.

  Is that what this is about – you lot sticking me under your microscope again? While you’re looking at me the cunt who killed my Melanie is out there. You lot never change.

  I assure you I will be as quick as I can says Brindle. I’m sorry for the intrusion.

  A week you lot were up here in the snow and then you packed up and shipped out and I’ve barely had a peep since winter. Do you know how many times I’ve called up to try to find what’s been going on and now you turn up banging on about murder and wanting to check my alibi?

  I want to talk to you about something you mentioned to a friend of mine.

  What friend are you on about?

  Roddy Mace. The journalist. You told him that Roy Pinder has links to Larry Lister.

  Muncy’s face changes again.

  Lister?

  Yes.

  Oh says Muncy. Oh yes. I know all about them. There’s things I’ve heard you wouldn’t believe. Not in a million years. The papers haven’t reported the half of it. That dirty fucker.

  And I also wanted to talk to you about the other girl.

  What other girl?

  This isn’t the first disappearance round here is it?

  You’re not making sense.

  The student Mr Muncy. The girl who was last seen on your campsite and who has never been seen since.

  Muncy looks at Brindle. He studies his face.

  I remember her.

  Good says Brindle.

  Do you think…?

  Yes says Brindle. Yes I do.

  THERE ARE NO visible signs of a disturbance. The scene officer will later correctly remark that whoever did this had come in through the door – that the victim knew his killer. He invited them in. Nor are there any obvious signs of a struggle or fight. There are no tables or chairs upturned or pinhead dots of blood on skirting boards; no bruises in the shape of fingers or defensive knife wounds on the victim’s palms. There is nothing broken or smashed or disturbed.

  He is sitting in his armchair when they find him in his Horsforth maisonette. Framed photos of himself on the walls; a wardrobe full of old stage wear. Stale smoke still hanging above him like a miasmic shroud.

  It is his solicitor who finds him. In a rare showing of non-legalese speak he tells one reporter that the way Larry Lister was sitting in the chair with his unlaced trainers planted on the carpet was just like when he used to deliver his straight-to-camera opening monologue on Uncle Larry’s Party before adding that he had thought his client was sleeping or – slightly more disturbing – playing a trick on him.

  When repeated banging on the windows failed to rouse him the solicitor had called the police. There is he explains no one else who has a key to the property.

  The police arrive about thirty seconds before the first journalist does. Clearly someone on the inside has been leaking information to the media.

  Only when they try to move the body and his slack mouth falls open do the officers discover the cause of death: Lovely Larry Lister’s tongue has been removed. The complete lack of blood and Lister’s calm pose and blank – almost tranquil – face are baffling to one and all.

  And only when the police pathologist strips him bare on the mortuary slab hours later do they find the king of light entertainment’s missing tongue – that instrument which has been the making of him and in many ways also the breaking of him – inserted partway up his puckered anus. A smattering of fine grey hairs surrounds it.

  MACE SEES BRINDLE’S car parked up. He is out of breath. His car is in for its MOT so he has hailed a taxi from town. It dropped him on the main road and he ran all the way down into the hamlet with his lungs on fire while promising himself he’ll give up smoking soon.

  Mace knows he’s in there. At Muncy’s. Using what he gave him. All that information. All that work. Brindle claiming Mace’s research as his own; Brindle stealing Mace’s thunder.

  He takes the knife from his pocket and walks down to the detective’s car. He plunges the blade into a tyre. It’s stupid and it is immature but as the stale air hisses from the slit in the black rubber it still feels good. The air it emits smells like rotten fish guts.

  RUTTER UNWINDS THE lower half of the twisted tarpaulin.

  Full length she lies with her thighs as decomposed as her torso. Mottled and transparent and waxed and unreal. His eyes move down. Taking it all in.

  There is something down there. His eyes see before his brain computes. His mind scrambles. Hurries to process.

  There is something pushing out. Out of her. Something rounded and real and alien and horrific. Something unknown.

  His mind races to take it in.

  A trick of the light. It must be. Maybe the shadows are –

  He leans in. Squints.

  Maybe it is –

  No. It is not a trick of the light.

  Something is protruding from her.

  He looks and looks again.

  Rutter makes out the suggestion of tiny features – eye sockets and the remains of a nose peeping out – and he reels backwards. He presses himself against the portal wall. He is hyperventilating. Vomit splashes the back of his throat. He is gagging yet still he looks.

  Down there. A tiny alien thing. Pushing out her stretched dead slit.

  Abdominal gases must have forced it. In putrefaction the gases have put pressure on her uterus and that secret that grew within her.

  Decomposition pushed it. Laboured it.

  Part-delivered it.

  After death came a fleeting life.

  A stillborn.

  Still born.

  Not newborn but oldborn.

  Deadborn.

  A coffin birth.

  He turns and runs into the night. He runs gasping.

  IT WAS WINTER when she fell.

  Right there in the yard between the hen hut and the pig pen.

  He saw her from his window.

  Black ice. Dusk. Horizontal. Her head. Two buckets of feed flung high as her feet went from beneath her.

  He hadn’t moved. One bucket rolled in a crescent shape spilling seed as it went. It made a slow searing sound that
he found thrilling. The sound of cold metal on colder ice. Then it stopped.

  She had laid still with the toes of her boots pointing skywards. Her breasts and belly spread flat beneath her coat.

  It is her fault he thought as he looked on. All of this. All of this is her fault. Everything that has happened to him and all the things he has had done to him and all the things he has done to others – her fault.

  Just knowing you’re the combination of all those men’s filthy muck mixed up and carried for nine months and moulded and born into the shape of you. Just knowing that will destroy a man.

  Often he thinks about what it would it be like to have never existed. To have never known the pains of the world. To have not experienced loneliness and desire and disgust and fear. To have never felt hatred for the only relative he has ever known.

  Ten minutes passed. The white sky softening and darkening. The spilled buckets.

  Perhaps this is it he thought. Perhaps it’s over perhaps it’s finished perhaps I’m free.

  Ten more minutes passed before he stepped away from the window and went downstairs. Put on his padded shirt and beanie. Picked up his tobacco pouch and truck keys. Money.

  He left by the back door. Went to lock up and then decided not to lock up because he didn’t need to lock up. He walked out into the yard.

  Careful of that ice now –

  His mother laid out. Just yards away.

  He turned and quietly walked round the side of the house to the truck. He climbed in the truck. He started it. Revved the engine and noticed that it needed tuning.

  He pulled out and the crunch of rubber on frost-covered ice was satisfying.

  Down the track. Squeezing the brakes.

  The tyres skidding and the rear end fishtailing. Through the hamlet now. Turning left. Avoiding town and instead going down the dale. Heading east to the city; the only place he could think of that could provide an alibi. That could provide a place to be both seen and unseen.

  His mother up there on ice.

  Heart slowing to near nothingness.

  HIS FIRST MANIC thought keeps returning: is it mine?

  A baby he thinks. Don’t be stupid.

  He doesn’t know much about all that stuff – the hows and wherefores – but he knows enough. Dead girls can’t conceive no more than dead cows can.