Thank you. Now the second digit. Great. Now the third. And the fourth.
He’s shown you 0000. It is not the code.
OK Patrick. I understand that you don’t want to cooperate with me, but you need to think about yourself as well. I’m not going to make threats, I just want you to think about the situation you’re in, and what my options are if I don’t get the correct answer next time. Nod when you’re ready to be serious. I’m in no hurry. Good. Now what’s the code?
This time his phone responds. You look through the apps he’s used most recently. You check his diary and find nothing alarming.
Thanks, you say when you’re done.
He’s trying to talk, trying to be calm, but his eyes rush round like mice.
I’d like to hear what you have to say, but I can’t take off the tape because you’ll scream. If you’re patient, I’ll give you the opportunity later to write something down.
You sip some water from a glass you found.
So I imagine you want to know why I’m dressed like this, and what this stuff is for.
He stares.
Are you religious?
He hesitates. Shakes his head. Shrugs.
Not sure? I think that’s fair. I’m not a believer myself, and it leaves me stuck with a lot of questions. When we met we didn’t get the chance to talk, but I’d been watching you for a while and you struck me as someone unconcerned by the difficult parts of being. I won’t say that you are unreflective. I don’t know you yet. You just seemed so sure of yourself, more than a thoughtful person ought to be. Anyway, I thought about you afterwards, and all the things I wished I’d been able to say. There’s that wonderful French expression, esprit d’escalier, or staircase wit, which describes the frustration of hitting on the perfect remark when it’s too late to say it, and I suppose this was a version of that, in a way. I imagined being able to ask you some of the questions that beset me, thinking that to you they would be fresh and troubling. Of course I might be wrong there. Another thing I wanted to know was whether I’d imagined you correctly.
You are hot and breathing heavily. You drink more water and walk unsteadily to the armchair, your plastic shoe covers sliding on the plastic sheet.
Have you ever noticed, you say, lowering yourself into the seat, how our language conflates mystery with greatness? When we want to describe the very best or greatest things of all we don’t say excellent, which feels weak, or optimal, which only engineers say. We say amazing or incredible or wonderful or fabulous or astonishing or fantastic, all words, you’ll notice, that mean inexplicable or surprising or impossible or seemingly untrue. In order to evoke greatness we evoke our own failure to understand, our ecstasy of interest, the curiosity we feel about how anything so great could come to be. It’s funny how much our daily speech reveals without our noticing. Die Sprache spricht, as Heidegger said, which means language talks, once it’s translated.
A lorry rumbles past and the daylight dims.
Now ask yourself whether this works the other way around. When we encounter something inexplicable, do we ipso facto call it great? The answer is yes, but that hardly delivers the scale of affirmation needed. Worshipping the presumed greatness of the inexplicable is not just something people do. It’s the main strand of human history. The plagues that freed the Israelites, the miracles of Jesus, the early Muslim conquests against impossible odds. God, the greatest thing of all, must be the author of these events, the rationale goes, because they cannot be explained in any other way. God is our absent explanations, and as such He is visible only to us, the one species that seeks them. Eastern religions arrive at the same place by a different route, preaching that people should try to free themselves of all desires, including curiosity, which is the desire to know. In short they solve the quintessential human problem by disinventing our humanity. Samsara, the cycle of rebirth, even presents being alive quite bluntly as a problem that needs solving, and in the process cunningly clouds our fear of death by making immortality a predicament. Who would not wish to achieve acceptance of such a consoling fiction in preference to the fact that we are trapped in a race to understand our lives before they end, and that we cannot win?
He just lies there.
Anyway.
You feed another length of rope through the crook of his left elbow and knot the ends behind a sofa leg. Looking at how you’ve rigged it, and given that the wrists will separate eventually, you decide it’s best to separate them now, so you make a bracelet around the right wrist with your last cable tie and strap this tight to the ankles with more rope. Next you sever the bindings that joined the wrists together, upon which the left springs free and begins to jerk about, making the sofa jolt and simmer. Quickly you take hold of the rope round the elbow and pull the whole arm back until no slack is left for it to move in. This is not difficult to do. Two of your arms are stronger than one of his, and the angle is in your favour, but in order to tie a new knot to secure the arm you end up having to sit on his shoulder, and are fairly bounced about until you’re done. At last you stand back to watch. Channels of sweat run down the inside of your overalls. The forearm stiffens and swings, but he does look well trussed. You should have set this up earlier, but it’s been useful to test yourself against his strength and the struggle has primed your feelings.
I’m going to cut this off, you say, tapping his left hand. You’re right-handed, yes?
He’s gone quiet and still.
When I’m finished, I’m going to give you pen and paper, and I’d like you to write down whatever you like. It could be how you’re feeling, what you think of me, a confession, anything you want to say. Anything at all.
Now he’s nodding crazily. He seems to switch moods fast.
Yes? You will write something?
He nods and nods and nods. He juts his head towards my bag.
You want to write it now?
His eyes are like upturned bowls.
Will you be quick?
The nods are frenzied.
OK. OK. Try this.
You slide the notebook under his right hand, which grabs it like a raft. You put a pen between the fingers, and immediately they begin to write, but being behind his back, and being restricted by the cable ties, the letters merge into a heap of scribble.
Hold it, hold it, you say. I can’t read that. Let’s start again.
You tear out the page and give the pad back to him.
Write one word, OK? Then tap the pad when you’re done.
The fingers resume. They’re making a long word from capital letters.
BROTHER? you ask.
He nods and nods. You tear off the page. The next word is shorter and clearer.
COME
Then,
12
BROTHER COME 12?
He’s murmuring and jerking around.
You mean you have a brother and he’s coming here at twelve?
He taps the pen frantically, almost in triumph. You put the pad back under to protect the tarpaulin. He starts writing again.
HAS, then, KEY
You’re saying that your brother is going to arrive here at twelve and that he has a key?
He slaps the pen down on its side.
Your watch says 11.32.
What’s your brother’s name?
His fingers stumble around, knocking the pen out of reach. You pick it up and return it to them. They write,
STEVE
You consult his phone and soon find a strand of recent text messages from Stevo. There’s stuff about football, and about a university degree. They sound like brothers or very close friends, the way they talk. It’s the coarseness and the mockery. Scrolling back further you find mention of my baby brother, which appears to mean Patrick. There is nothing about visiting. You search for Stevo, Stephen, Steven and Steve in his email. You search his diary and his social media accounts. At last you say,
I think you’re lying.
He thrashes around, to the extent that he can. He tries to
stab you with the pen as you take it from him.
Listen. Listen to me, Patrick. Even if I believed you, what would I do?
He starts nodding again. Nodding and nodding.
No, forget all that, you say preparing a tourniquet. I’ve thought about this.
He is trembling.
This is something we are going to share. We are explorers, whether or not we want to be. We both want to know how this is going to feel.
You pull up the mask. A dark expansion fills his jeans.
It won’t take long.
He struggles, but the arm is easy to hold. The laws of leverage are with you. You realise that you need a hard surface to lean against, however. You look around for a tray, a large book, anything. The laptop you decide would be too slippery. At last you find a breadboard in the kitchen. There are dull roars when he sees you with it. You unbutton his shirt sleeve and roll it to the elbow, where the rope makes you stop. You loop on the tourniquet, take a deep breath and look at the wrist, nearly the same flecked wheaty brown as the board it’s pressed to. There’s a covering of golden hair and a pale band where the watch was. Do you begin here? Between the carpal bones and the top of the ulna? There are smudgy little cuts already where he’s wriggled against the bindings, and the nobble at the top of the ulna might be useful as a guide. Or do you go in the soft underside? Where the skin is milky and hairless, where the blood is. You’re wishing this dilemma on yourself. You should just start without delay.
One of your knees holds down the arm, the other the hand, exposing the wrist between them. Your expensive boning knife is factory sharp and easily parts the skin, but strikes bone straight away beneath it. You’ll make no progress with a level blade so you raise the handle and with the point start looking for ligaments. There’s little blood at first. It just rises, brims, and rolls neatly to the side. Soon the flow thickens, however. Then you must have hit something because it really starts to go. Now you’re digging against a spout. You become impatient. You lift your knee off the wriggling fingers and reach for a roll of plastic sacks. This you slide under the forearm before pressing the hand down on to the board, now slick with blood, hoping to create an angle that will widen the wound. It makes little difference. As you search for better access, his fingers manage to grasp yours, nearly taking the glove off, but he’s lost strength and the blood makes everything slippery and you pull free. He’s going bananas. You’re thankful for the rigging. You turn the arm over and try the soft side. Blood everywhere. You’ve severed the skin all the way round now, so you try wrenching upwards, hoping to tear the fibres you can’t cut. You can’t use the mallet and chisel because you need a hand as well as your knees to make the arm lie still. All you have left is the saws. If this is getting done, it’s getting done with savagery. The spurts are rhythmic. The blood goes spurt-spurt-spurt, which means you’ve got an artery, which you expected, but you hadn’t expected it to be like this. Perhaps you were too gentle with the tourniquet. At any rate you’re glad you have the mask. You read somewhere that surgeons use them not to protect their patients but to shield their own mouths from jets of blood. The bank of towels that you put down is crimsoning.
A last thrust with the saw delivers the hand. You find a dry bit of towel and wipe it reasonably clean. The rest is barely still an arm, all sticks and skin rags. You have the blowtorch to cauterise the stump, but it’s difficult to say that there is a stump now. And still the blood and the blood and how it comes. You show Patrick the hand, much heavier to hold than they feel attached. He isn’t interested. He’s pale. He may be in shock. Treatment at this stage could restore him, or it could squander what time remains. You offer him the pad and the pen again, say something limp, but he just stares. You feel foolish, you with your fancies. You tell him, still out of breath, that if he, writes something he might, stop you, or you’re not, going to stop. From nowhere the comforting words of Epicurus come to you, and you remind him of them. Whatever causes no distress when it is present, gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. All he does is bleed.
Then it’s like he knows, like he’s been listening, the way he rears up crablike on his head and heels and, you think, tries screaming. There’s something past terror in those eyes and cheeks. It’s an insisting flash of life, maybe a response to you picking up your chisel, maybe what made you pick it up. Whatever. You get in there, into the soft section of him, into his lifted middle, which gives back to you a kind of slock slock slock, all thick and easy. The wing arm flails but it has no hand. Maybe you shout things. Maybe you’re too focused. Sometimes you hear a dink as you clip a button, and soon his shirtfront’s worked to shreds, the gut to slush inside a bowl of bone. You move to tauter areas, such as the thighs and throat. Soon you’re exhausted. Don’t be surprised by that. In the giddy prison of the moment you’ll get carried away but when you pause you will be aching. The chisel handle will be sticking to your fingers. Beneath the glove you’ll feel blisters on the rise. You’ll think about checking for a pulse but stop when you step back and see what lies in front of you. A red oblong. A Rothko drying. Two blue denim legs then … Well, it isn’t going to have a pulse. Crouching, you’ll knock against the parasol stand and hear the water lollop. The clean trainers still attached to it will rock along. You’ll see that the hand has somehow fetched up among the purplish rubble of the abdomen, beside an almost pristine kidney which you’ll cut free and weigh in your palm, letting it slide over your fingers, its tuft of vessels shivering. It will be this sight and the great heat of everything, the wrist-deep warmth, that you’ll remember best. The air will be a miasma of rust and dung. Your overalls will start to stick together. You’ll become aware of traffic on the road again.
At this point take care not to underestimate the importance, the difficulty or the duration of the cleaning phase, however unrewarding you may find it. Your job, in plain terms, will be to get the body jointed, bagged and hidden, the flat clean, and everything you’ve used removed from it and burned or otherwise disposed of. You’ll not be able to get beyond the detection of forensic science, but remember that forensic scientists find nothing where they don’t look. So be finicky. Temporarily disturb yourself with such a pathological meticulousness that even the existence of a crime will stay in dispute. In short, bore the police.
Begin with the body. Seven big cuts make a cadaver manageable. At the knees, hips, neck and shoulders. The head, still bound, still bearded, you’ll be able to detach with just a stout knife or cleaver, clearing away the pipes around the vertebrae before splitting them apart with a mallet behind the blade. You will need the saw for the others. That lesson’s learned. Don’t start getting the idea that you’re an artisan. Rigor mortis sets in fast, perhaps before two hours, after which everything becomes more difficult. With the cuts made, put each piece in a waste sack of its own, folding the arms at the elbow and tying them shut. Each sack then goes inside another, but do not on any account be tempted to overfill them. When the time comes to take everything outside you’ll want nothing that needs heaving or which might split.
A word on methods. A large male body contains around six litres of blood so the tarpaulin will now look like an abattoir floor, and you a slaughterman. Your main task will be to avoid treading blood around. Once the body parts are bagged replace your overalls. Check that the bags are clean then pile them by the door. If a bag is not clean, put it inside another one. Replace your gloves as often as you need to. The aim is to designate clean and dirty areas and change clothing each time you move from the second to the first, and to do this seldom. You’ll be helped by the fact that much of the blood will by now have coagulated into lengths of gel that can be scooped into a bucket. The rest should be mopped up with paper or cotton towels. Bag all loose rubbish. Clear away your tools into their box, and bag that too, along with the breadboard, water glass and mugs. You should now have just a filthy tarpaulin with a parasol stand on top of it. With a sponge and a bucket of water, carefully soak up and rinse out the blood and tissue from
them both, starting at the edge of the tarpaulin and working inwards to the middle, folding as you go. Lift the clean parasol stand on to a new refuse sack or spare overall and drag it to the bathroom for emptying. Afterwards wrap it in the tarpaulin and bag them both.
It will have been on your mind that you may have punctured the tarpaulin at some point, and in one place you’ll find you have, and that a good quantity of blood has seeped into the carpet. Most homes contain some of the blood of their occupants, but there’ll be about a wineglassful down there, nearly a foot outside the edge of the rug. The carpet will be one of those coarse hard-wearing ones common in rented property and too tightly woven to clean. If you move it to cover the stain, the rug will look strangely placed, and invite investigation. Fetching a knife from the bags you’ll therefore try to cut the stain away. The blade will flex awkwardly under the pressure you have to apply, but soon you will have the red section removed, leaving a ragged D-shaped hole. This will look strange too, or at least like it needs explaining, until you hit upon the idea of singeing the edges with the blowtorch. Now it will look as though Patrick deliberately placed the rug strangely in order to conceal an accident of his own, most likely with one of his cigarettes. Lastly you’ll go round rearranging and spraying everything, the leg of the sofa about four times.
When the flat is clean, bag your things and his jacket. The wallet from it you’ll leave in a line on the kitchen counter with the watch, phone and keys. Then you’ll change your mind and bag them all, dismantling the phone. Before opening the door, sit down. Slow your breathing. Try to imagine being a detective arriving here. It will occur to you that the extent of your cleaning may itself raise suspicions, so you’ll fetch pillows from the bed and shake them wherever you’ve cleaned in the hope of dusting any sterile patches with his sheddings. You may be aware that you are delaying again. It’s carrying out fifteen bags that you’ll be dreading.
Deep breaths again. Deep breaths and busy but unhurried walking will get it done. You will be seen, but it’s not about whether you will be seen, it’s about whether you are remembered. You will have been skittish about looking for cameras, not wanting to stare into one, but you’ll not think there are any. You’ll remove your overalls and tuck them into a bag. You’ll tell yourself that you’ve done well and open the door to air, driving, chirrups, cumulus, growth, urban planning, conservation, conversation, wavelengths, architecture, shade, idiolects, signage, particulates, law, fashion, accessibility provision, isobars, handlebars, residents’ parking. You’ll flinch from the rushing river of it, you on the bank, knowing that to those afloat the river is all. You’ll put the bags out on the concrete and shuttle to your van eight times. The loading of vans is mundane. You’ll be a paragon of the nondescript.
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