Decay Inevitable

by Conrad Williams

  A gritting sound: the lowering of the coffin. Sean watched as Naomi disappeared by degrees. The slow burn of self-hatred he had felt since the day of his blunder flared. It mattered not one bit that the pathologist’s report indicated she had been dead long before he and Sally arrived on the scene. He felt responsible. As he pickled in these sour juices, he saw someone, not ten feet away on the other side of the fence, watching him from the leading edge of a field of towering grass.

  She was a small girl with long brown hair, clutching a perished sponge doll whose supportive wires were exposed in several places. The girl’s dress was a thin affair of plain sky-blue material. He could see her vested body through it. Her dark eyes watched him – not without humour – as he hunched in the protection of the trees. His main concern was that she would expose him, either to the mourners, or to the men standing to his right. But gradually her stare seemed to solidify in the brittle morning air, impaling him with something warm and comforting, so that presently he felt as though he and the girl were the only living creatures in miles.

  She didn’t appear shy at all, nor was she intimidated by the location or his posture of stealth. She made no attempt to communicate with him, other than to give him a gap-filled smile. She anticipated his shooing gesture by a second, turning and barging into the shield of grass quickly enough to have him wondering if he had imagined her. But no, the shimmer of grass betrayed the course of her movements. He watched her progress until, unexpectedly, the shiver of grass ceased when she must have been only a third of the way across the field.

  His concern for her safety was negated by the eerie certainty of his instinct that, should he plough after her, he would not find her. Irritated by the distraction, he returned his attention to the funeral, but the black suits were drifting away from the graveside like scraps of incinerated paper. A simple goodbye he had sought, but he had failed even in this, looking instead for intrigue in the irrelevances that surrounded him. Plodding back to his car, careful not to give away his position to the two stragglers with whom he had observed the service, Sean presumed that he was subconsciously reluctant to give up the police part of his brain – such as it was. From the sanctity of the driver’s seat he watched the slow dispersal of the mourners, recognising Naomi’s father as he did so. He had changed only marginally in the fifteen years since they had last met. Perhaps he was a little thicker around the middle; there was a deeper smattering of grey in the oiled black hair; there was sadness and fatigue in the eyes. Age and shock were pulling his body south.

  Sean caught a glimpse of his own face in the rear-view mirror but shied from its scrutiny. In the wake of Naomi’s death and the acknowledgement of his own failures, he didn’t want the awareness of his own mortality to compound his misery.

  He gunned the engine as the two men brought up the rear. They were relaxed, alert, like presidential bodyguards. Sean found first gear and moved sedately away, wondering why his heart beat so violently, why his head pounded with frustrated questions.

  ON THE TRAIN north, he tried to read the biography of an actor whose films he admired but he couldn’t give his mind to the words when Naomi kept dancing at its fringes. He pushed his focus beyond the filth on the window into fields wadded with mist. Low sunlight picked out the uncertain shapes of farmhouses; a man with a stick; a wheelbarrow. Hedgerows were blistered with newish berries. A series of narrow lanes striped the land for miles.

  He tried to remember the last time he had ventured north but only the memory of his leaving it emerged. London was all he seemed to have known. The images of a bleak, rainy motorway and a series of New Order cassettes; appalling sandwiches (or “sadwiches” as Rachel referred to service station food), and the dead grind of traffic made him grateful for this trip now.

  The train slowed noticeably. Presently the driver made an announcement that they were approaching Warrington Bank Quay. Sean collected his things and shuffled down the aisle to the doors. Through the window, the platform shuttled into view. The blur of faces waiting to board bothered him by their lack of features – lost to the train’s speed. Just before the brakes bit harder and he was able to define individuals, the grinning face of the child he had seen in the cemetery sprang out at him: a surprise in a pop-up book. He craned his neck to keep her in his view but she was lost to the passengers as they jostled for position in front of the doors. Once the train was at a standstill and the security locks were released, Sean hopped onto the platform and hurried back towards the lead section of the station. Through the criss-cross of bodies he saw a whip of long brown hair as she ducked down the exit steps. He followed as quickly as the crowds allowed him but knew as he reached the ticket barrier that she had given him the slip.

  CHAPTER FOUR: RENTED ACCOMMODATION

  EARLY NEXT MORNING, after a night spent in the hotel across the road from the train station, he rented a car, a blue Rover 25, rang a few of the landlords advertising bedsits in the local newspaper, and moved his meagre possessions into a furnished studio flat above a greengrocer on Ripley Street, overlooking the car park of the general hospital on one side and the railway on the other.

  He chivvied himself along with thoughts of how much such a chicken coop would fetch in London, and without a view anywhere near as attractive. He spent the afternoon in town, buying groceries and items he felt he would need for the bedsit: a desk which he arranged to have delivered that evening, a table lamp, a couple of litres of white paint, and a paint roller. Once or twice during his shopping trip, he looked up from the languid scrum at the market stalls, certain that there would be someone looking directly at him. He wondered if he would see the little girl again, but although there were plenty of youngsters out shopping with their parents, none of them resembled her.

  He lugged his purchases back to the car and locked them in the boot. The thought of returning to the flat and arranging everything, stamping his authority on the place, was attractive, but he felt the compulsion to slow down. If he was going to fit in here, he needed to slough his London skin. Warrington wouldn’t require the same thrust that the capital demanded of him. There was no rush in which to become embroiled.

  The decision made, he sauntered across the road to a pub free of misspelled chalked menus and entreaties to attend karaoke night. He took his pint to a window seat and let the lethargy of a Tuesday afternoon seep into him.

  Time became some great warm blanket that he was trying to unfold, but that showed no signs of ever being fully spread. Pleased with the beer, he had another half, read the newspaper, and struck up a conversation with an old-timer who had a plaque above his stool at the bar which read David’s Seat. He even flirted mildly with a good-natured barmaid, who possessed none of the contemptuous dismissiveness of some of her southern counterparts.

  Readying himself to leave, he heard one glottal moment from the adjoining pool room: Clew.

  An arch provided the entrance to the pool room on the far side of the pub. It framed part of the table with its blue baize and cones of dusty yellow light. Two pairs of legs stretched out, one ending in a pair of plaster-spattered trainers, the other in soft, black leather boots.

  There was a cigarette machine by the arch; although Sean didn’t smoke he pulled out a handful of change and walked over. Feeding coins into the slot, he chanced a look into the pool room. The men were on their own, leaning back on short stools, shrouded by the shadows. One of them, the man wearing the boots, was more animated than the other, who was a motionless mass of black.

  Sean hurriedly returned to his car and parked across the street from the pub. Clew he had heard. He wouldn’t listen to the rational voice that told him he had misheard “clue”, or “cue”, or “I’m having a Strongbow, how about you?”. And what if he hadn’t? What if they were having a conversation about Naomi Clew, the poor woman who had lost her life thanks to the sterling work of the Met? So what? It had been all over the papers.

  Sean recognised the shoes as they left the pub. The man with the boots was as animated as
before, hastily gabbling to his unruffled friend, hands fluttering around his head like duelling birds. Sean recognised him as the young man with the candyfloss hair from the funeral. The other man was wrapped in expensive black: cargo trousers, a cashmere polo neck and a nubuck leather jacket. He wore a trimmed beard and little round frameless sunglasses. He wasn’t saying much, just nodding occasionally. As they parted, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his agitated colleague. Then he stepped into a night-black Shogun and roared away.

  The other man, now getting into a battered white van with the words LORD DEMOLITION on the side, Sean followed. The O in LORD was a wrecking ball swinging into action. As they drove through town and into the countryside, Sean tried to convince himself that he should try to forget what had happened to Naomi. There were other, better men processing evidence and sniffing out her killer. It was half a lifetime away. Big distances. Wasn’t it enough that he was here in their home town?

  The van took a succession of turns onto lesser roads until tarmac was replaced by dirt tracks. Five miles away from the town, Sean hung back as far as possible, without losing sight of his quarry, not wanting to give his ambition away. Still, he was considering a return to Warrington, worried that his pursuit would be spotted before long. There was nothing out here to offer an excuse behind which to hide. No post office or pub he could claim a visit to.

  The van slowed and turned onto a lane that fed a driveway to a tired old farmhouse. Sean parked quickly and picked a parallel route through a ploughed field, his eyes never leaving the van as it pulled up outside the front door. The engine died; the driver got out. A figure appeared in one of the upstairs windows, emerging out of the net curtains like a face in a bad dream. Hunkering down by a frozen jut of earth, Sean watched as a bunch of keys was tossed to the driver. Once he was alone, Sean scooted up the side of the house, cursing as he tripped and slid over the solid ribs of earth pushing up through the frost.

  “You wanted out of this job, dickbrains,” he muttered, as he hit shadow to the south side of the house and clung to the brickwork. “You stupid, stupid tit. Go home. Go on. Go home now.”

  White pinned down the land for miles around. A distant line of trees looked like stubble on a corpse’s face. Sean had to stop for a moment to gulp down air and try not to let the space tear him away from his position. Ten years in London had failed to inure him to the vertiginous sprawls that existed beyond the city. For a moment, he was terrified by the lack of motion, the conviction that nothing around him had altered in a thousand years and that, if he didn’t move soon, he would be fixed in the scenery for another thousand. He felt vulnerable, exposed, targeted. Vomit charged his clenched teeth and he let it come, as quietly as possible. Darkness crowded him, the sun blotted. Let it be a cloud, he hoped, rising in expectation of some grim-faced, leather-clad ape ready to beat him senseless. But the eclipse had been imagined. Pale sunshine bleached the sky, turning it into a reflection of his surroundings. Getting a grip of himself, he moved towards the rear of the house, scanning for windows all the while. Of those he saw, only one – high up – was without a curtain blocking the view. He tried the back door. Locked. What was he going to do if it was open?

  They were talking about the dreadful murder of a local girl. That’s all.

  And yet, and yet...

  Sean retreated, wondering why his suspicions were so high. Could it just be guilt that was driving him to such extreme behaviour? Was he so desperate to atone for his mistake in London that he would follow any lead, no matter how tenuous? If that was the case, he reasoned, trudging back to the car, then he would destroy himself within weeks, or find himself up before the magistrates on a charge of harassment. In the driving seat, Sean was able to relax, away from the panicky reaches of land, and relish the fresh snap of cold air that had locked itself inside with him. He watched the house for a little longer, hopeful that he would witness them dragging a body outside, but nothing so theatrical occurred. Wondering how he might quash the compulsion to act on behalf of a dead woman– the first girl he had kissed–and suspecting that this visit to Warrington had been ill-thought-out, he started the engine and trundled the car down to the main road.

  Seconds later, accelerating back towards town, an oncoming car passed him. In the mirror, Sean watched as it turned into the driveway he had just vacated. Pulling over to the side of the road, Sean’s eyes found themselves in the mirror. They were wide and worrisome. Whatever doubts he had had were spirited away as his lungs begged for him to release the hold on his breath.

  One of the men he had seen at the funeral. Tough, barrel-shaped bruiser with tufty white hair.

  CHAPTER FIVE: GIRL

  EARLY MORNING, HIS run took him on a rough circle past the school on Lodge Lane, down to Sankey Valley Park, under Seven Arches and on to the dual carriageway that snaked west, beyond the cooling towers of Fiddler’s Ferry power station and onwards to Liverpool via Widnes and Runcorn.

  Sean headed east, back towards town, barely registering the growl of traffic or the slap of his feet on the wet pavement. The night before, he had returned to the farmhouse and hung around as night gathered and the temperature plummeted. Towards midnight, Barrel-chest and the driver Sean had followed left in the white van. Sean took after them, certain he was solidifying from the cold, his hands and feet sluggish on the controls of the car, his mouth a blue-grey slit that flashed itself to him in the rear-view mirror as streetlamps swung by.

  They had pulled up outside a disused ironmonger’s shop. The shredded awning bore the name BOUGHEY’S. He watched the barrel-chested man get out of the van and wave to the driver. Words followed him through the door: “See you tomorrow, Salty.”

  So. He had a name. He had an address. He did not yet have a reason. He had reason for few things. Bitterly, Sean had turned the car back towards Ripley Street, quelling the urge to follow the white van on another journey. White van, he felt, played penny whistle to Salty’s big fat tuba.

  Now, Sean pulled the hood of his track suit over his head and jogged backstreets, angling towards that ironmonger’s once more. He was almost distracted by some of the memories that leapt up at him; every corner rounded was another half-turn on an unseen winch hauling him back through time.

  Here, in the maze of ginnels that was the Wellfield Road estate, were the paths that he had haunted at fifteen with his best friend Glenn and their girlfriends, Sarah and Julie. A concrete cylinder – a pathetic, token toy for the local kids – partially submerged in a square surrounded by fences and front porches, had been a respite in the winter, when walking the frozen streets was too painful. It was still there, along with the soot stains from candles and the scratched names, overlapping across the years to form a tangle of self-affirmation. Sarah’s old house was boarded up now, its highest windows cracked and starred. They had spent innocent evenings in the kitchen, drinking tea and listening to the radio while her mother made strategic checks on them, designed to spoil any moves he made on her.

  Sean pushed himself along the canal bank that backed onto the estate, wondering where she was now. What happened to all those people with whom he had been to school? Were they as detached as him, dislocated, wheeling around for something solid on which to latch? Or, as he suspected, had they sussed it all out? If they were happy, well, good luck to them.

  The hunched cluster of buildings that housed the ironmonger’s emerged from the bushes and trees lining the bank to his right. Sean arrowed up the bank and silently vaulted the fencing, dropping into a slush of remarkable litter. Among the drifts of dead food cartons and drinks cans there were bruised tailors’ dummies, shattered television sets and small forests of cat furniture wrapped in corduroy and sisal. Sean picked his way through the mess, counting houses until he hit the ironmonger’s. A high wall and a pair of tough wooden gates blocked off his view to the rear of the building, all of it topped off with coils of razor wire. A peek through the slats awarded him a view of a thick sheaf of tall weeds and a rusting bath leaning against a sk
ip. All of the windows were frosted and blackness piled against them from within.

  Sean tried the gates. They shifted under the sawing action of his arm but did not give. He had instead seen how he might climb over without harming himself when he heard a brief, human bark of panic somewhere behind him.

  He clung to the gate, head twisted, frozen as he searched the cavernous ruin of what must once have been a car park. Heavy trees with discoloured leaves lurched into one another, creating a knit of confusion he could barely see into. The tarmac they grew out of was as warped as the sway and twist of their branches.

  Very clearly, he heard: “Keep fucking still, bitch, or I’ll cut you.”

  The words rushed out of the dark. Sean stood quietly for a moment, eyes closed, letting the sounds come into him. His heart was a cold, measured echo, somewhere too deep inside him. He was not afraid.

  “Suck it, bitch,” he heard. “Oh no? Okay, then. Mac, cut her tit off.”

  Sean moved.

  He pelted into the clotted darkness, freeing his sweatshirt from the waistband of his track suit bottoms so that he could get at his knife. A woman was mewling under the thrash of bushes. “Stop it... please... stop it.”

  There were two men crouched over her, their black jackets shining dully as they dipped in and out of the protection of a weeping willow. One of them had his trousers around his ankles. Sean veered towards him, his steps disguised by the din of their violence. Lashing out a foot, he caught the first man across the top of his thigh; he went down heavily, a yell cutting off the sobs of the woman pinned beneath them. Before the other could bring himself upright, Sean flashed his arm out and cut him across the bridge of his nose. Blood sprayed from between his fingers as he dropped to his knees.