Dead Souls
Page 25
Mrs Platt starts telling us a story as I walk across the patched, peeling lino on the floor, dragging my toes against the rough patches where the pattern has been gouged out by falling crockery or heavy crates. I go into the pantry, looking for a bottle of cordial, gently drawing aside the clinking green plastic beads that hang like seaweed from a row of nails across the top of the door.
“So I’m in the pantry,” she says, taking long sips from the cup of tea she twirls around and around on its coaster. “I’m cleaning it out because Myra’s coming over, and you know what she’s like, and I don’t want to give her something to tell people down at the club. And I’ve moved aside all the tins and preserves and what have you, and I’m rooting around in that plastic ice-cream container I keep all me rubber bands in, and I’m trying to knot all the loose pieces of string together. So I tug on this bit of string, and it tugs back!” She laughs, and I can hear her bottom lip and her tongue slurping over her false teeth, which she pops in and out, in and out. My mother is giggling, too, saying incredulous things, but she is slightly hesitant, as she always is when the Platts discuss animals.
I find the bottle of cordial, but take off the lid and sniff it first, because there is a dusty bottle of vinegar that looks exactly the same sitting next to it. It smells like blackcurrant, and I take it back to the table.
“Now,” says Mrs. Platt, slapping the brown chequerboard tiles that march up and down the breakfast bar, “God knows I can handle any animal ‘cept spiders. Give me the heebies, they do. So Simon offers to go in, and he gets it in his bare hands, this bloody huge huntsman spider, and takes it outside, just like that. No fuss, no fluff-arsing around.”
My mother doesn’t respond this time: she just chews for a very long time on a piece of her open-faced sandwich. I know she is thinking, like I am, of that spider in Simon’s hands.
I excuse myself, saying that I want to play with the totem tennis pole that creaks when the wind bustles by and where a willy wag-tail perches sometimes, waiting for Mrs. Platt to hand-feed it a moth. Simon follows me: I know that he wants to see where I have hidden the baby birds, so instead I sit on the old bench swing on the broad, high verandah. The verandah is a massive block of cement that has been painted with thick green paint, as though it is pretending to be grass, but it does a poor job of blending in with the crumbling tree that sits in the lap of its L-shape, drowning under heavy garments of ageing, browning ivy. It shades us from the heavy autumn sun, which darts between overlong trembling branches and creeping burnt tendrils.
Stink beetles clamber up the rusted arms of the swing and over the floral-patterned vinyl, darting beneath the sharp plastic findings and down the gaps between the cushions. Simon is eating Smarties, licking them and then running them over his lips and tongue and chin so that his face turns various garish colours. A scaly skink tumbles down the verandah and darts over the sun-warmed brick paving and into the bowels of the suffocating ivy-covered tree that waves above us like Medusa.
I realise that there are too many small, innocent things here around us, and every time I see one, my heart beats a little faster.
****
Up close, the dam smells putridly of fish guts and decaying yabbies. The drought means that the water levels have dropped, and on its inclined banks are several metres worth of salt, sudsy bubbles on a drained bathtub. Yabby holes like vague freckles hide at the very edges of the water, and a necklace of blue and orange pincers and shells rings the dam.
A few metres out, far enough away that the rank water seeps over the tops of my gumboots before I get a quarter of the way there, on a notched yardstick, sits a crow, its scaly, reptilian feet gouging into the mud-flecked skull of a ram that Mr. Platt set out there like a voodoo totem as a joke years ago. The bird is glossy and fat, and it huffily puffs out its plumage to make itself look bigger, like Simon’s brothers when they bicker.
I run my fingers, which are cross-hatched with shallow grazes from dancing between briars and reaching for plump fruit, over the surface of the water, which breaks and shivers, like a dog when you pat it. The crow cries out once, throaty and harsh, the voice of the art teacher at school who has laryngitis. It must know that it is out of place here amongst the dusty greens and pinks and browns. It is stark, a stain, and it watches me sometimes in between snatches of staring at the sluggish fish.
The sun goes dizzily behind a cloud, and when it comes back out, something shiny catches my eye. I wade through the water over to the other side of the dam, yanking my clay-heavy gumboots up with each step and watching the water rush to fill in the holes I’ve made. I wonder if there are leeches in the water, hiding amongst the shimmering cellophane ribbons of drowning grass beneath the surface.
At the edge of the other side of the dam, there are seven carp hanging by the gashes in their necks. They aren’t very big, and they are the colour of a smoky day in the city. The sticks propping them up sag a little, even though they have been driven deep into the mud. They have sharp little arms that stick out in awkward places, and if you squint, you could almost think that they are seven people standing at the edge of the dam, waiting.
The crow is watching me again, and I look away, looking instead over at the rickety barn that stands on legs of sand-filled oil tins.
****
The next day is cool but humid, and the sky is fatly pregnant. It sags under the weight of a broad doona of rain clouds, which crack together like marbles every half hour or so.
“Like breaking bones,” says Simon, staring out of the window. We are in what used to be his grandmother’s bedroom, and the room smells of mothballs and talcum powder. There is a long clothes rail on one side of the room, and it is loaded with padded pink coat hangers that are cloyingly sweet with hanging bags of crunchy potpourri. Simon takes one off and sits on the bed, where he slashes the hanger down its belly with a pocketknife, as calm as a surgeon wielding a scalpel. It makes me think of the time Mrs. Platt made me go outside to pat the still-writhing body of a king brown she had peppered with sparrow shot. I was surprised to find that the snake was muscular and solid, not slimy and cold like I had expected. Simon’s curiosity had gone beyond my own, of course, and I had gone out to the chook shed later that day to find him staring on in fascination as a black carpet of ants storming the long red scarf that was the opened snake.
Simon shreds the wadding inside the coat hanger, pulling it out and scattering it so that there is a small pile of fuzzy snow near his crossed legs. It makes me sneeze.
“Wonder when Mum’ll be back,” he says, running his pocketknife over the callused skin of his thumb.
“They’ll be another half hour or so,” I say. “We can get them on the wireless if you want.”
He digs his thumb into the wadding, kneading it with his hand as though it is a lump of soft dough. Then his other arm flashes out and back so quickly that I’m not sure that it actually has, until I see a small thread of blood unravelling itself across my leg, and I think of the snake, sliced open, of the bird he clutched in those praying hands, before those opened...and I think of myself, opened.
I am barefoot, and the broad loops of the burgundy carpet are spongy beneath me. A multi-stringed orange plastic necklace slithers around on its hook as I slam the door on Simon. I want to open the flywire door closest to me, but it shrieks when it opens as though it is being slaughtered. There are four battered armchairs in the lounge room, and a ribbed orange recliner, but he would find me within moments.
I sprint down the passageway, throwing closed the door behind me, trying to keep my footsteps as light as possible. I can hear him behind me, his breath harsh and cruel, just like him. I think of him being fragile, and I think again of breaking eggs, like when Mr. Platt taught us how to blow out the yolk from swallows’ speckled eggs, and Simon had an obscene grin on his face when a long string of red poured out.
The front door swings closed behind me, making a hissing sound, and I interrupt a gathering of sparrows that are picking at the lawn with se
izure-like stiffness. They flee past me, as though I am the one wielding the knife, and I skid a little as I try to decide where to turn. My arm blooms with blood from a trimmed-back branch of the pomegranate shrub.
I end up sprinting past the concrete podium of the old drop-down dunny, with its bouquets of flowering weeds and pulsing black lines of ants. It is getting darker, with the sun surrendering to the oily clouds that bully their way across the sky. Something hits my face, and I think it is Simon until I realise that it is only rain. I run with my arms outstretched so that the back gate swings open as I slam into it, and then I am in the dusty area that butts onto the house. Succulents and cacti clamour at my feet, their plump green forms deceptively soft. The pine needles and brittle fallen leaves are light but noisy against my tread, and to my hazy eyes they are mottled snowflakes, unfamiliar and confusing.
One of the chooks darts across my path, its head bobbing back and forth. It seems unnerved by the bursts of thunder that roll by in slowed down bursts of static, and I’m not surprised, because the air is so heavy that it presses at my face like cling wrap.
When I get to the graveyard of bottles and tins, I scoop one up, but when I swing it against the knotted, piebald trunk of a tree, it does not smash, but clunks dully, the way that the middle C key on the piano in the music room does.
A few seconds later, I am at the base of the water tank, and I scramble, spider-like, up the web of rusted scaffolding, my leg still weeping blood. The rain mingles with it, diluting it like cordial, and it runs down the inside of my calf like piss. I clamber up on to the dilapidated wooden platform, which is a series of splinters and leaf-filled holes, and try to avoid the caked-on birdlime. I shuffle my foot to the left, and I kick something soft and hollow. When I look down, I have to clamp my hands tightly over my mouth as though I am suffocating myself so that I don’t cry out.
It is the baby bird, dehydrated already like the hanging ducks in the windows of Chinese restaurants. It is an old man, sagging skin on needle-like bones, and its beak has shrunken into its eyeless skull. It is riddled with ants, so many of them that it seems to be moving, and all I can hear is the ringing sound of its death on the water tank, a sound that for all I know might never have stopped.
I hear Simon approaching, and even with my eyes closed I can see the feral look on his face, and I pray, standing above the church-roof of leaning gum trees that line the driveway, that he will pass. And if he does, I will climb down from here and run, for as long as it takes, until I reach that main road.
****
june
Paul Finch
The first video was in grainy black-and-white, and started with an elderly man seated in a car at traffic lights. It was broad daylight, but that didn’t stop another man, in a leather jacket and khaki trousers, appear from a side-alley and smash a claw-hammer through the driver’s window. It was unclear how badly the driver was injured, but the attacker struck him a further six times before casually reaching in, unlocking the rear door, opening it and walking away with a briefcase.
The second video had been taken from high vantage, and showed a narrow alley. Two workmen were painting a ground-floor window. As they got on with the job, a youth, no more than 13 years old, walked past and idly kicked over a tin of emulsion. One of the decorators made a comment, for the youth turned and confronted him. There was an exchange of words before the youth sauntered away. Two minutes later, he returned with several other youths of varying ages. Before the two decorators realised what was happening, they were being bombarded with bricks. When they dropped to the floor, they were set about with bats. The beating, which included their heads as well as their bodies, was savage and prolonged, and left the two men lying motionless in pools of blood.
The video-tape clicked off and someone turned the light on. Nick Brooker looked across to where Superintendent Wentyard and Detective Chief Inspector Knox were watching him. The Super was a tall, elegant man with an immaculate uniform and a shock of white hair. He spoke impeccable English. The DCI, on the other hand, was a dour Scot, squat and paunchy, with a pale, rugged face and thick red-grey beard. His suit was scruffy, crumpled.
“Pretty grim,” Nick finally said.
“Pretty senseless, too,” Knox replied. “I mean, there are inner-cities and inner-cities, but this level of violence is unprecedented even for the twenty-first century.”
Nick glanced at the empty TV screen. He was in his late thirties, but had hard blue eyes and a sharp, badly scarred face. His dark, unruly hair hung down past his collar.
“It’s the same pattern as last year?” he asked.
Knox nodded. “More or less. Underwood is a busy sub-division all year round, even by Birmingham standards, but things really get going about now.”
“Summer’s always been bad for disorder, sir,” Nick said. “Long, warm evenings, outdoor drinking, that sort of thing.”
Wentyard leaned forward. “I think, Detective Sergeant Brooker, there’s a little bit more to this than that.” He steepled his fingers. “Incidents of reported violent offences in Underwood have gone up steadily since the end of April. Last week alone was a ten per cent increase on the previous week.”
Even Nick was surprised to hear that. “And you expect the showdown at the end of June?”
“That’s when it happened last year,” Knox said. “And the year before. And the year before that. We’re talking serious rioting. Officers badly hurt...the whole place barricaded off. Took us weeks to get it under control.”
“This time we intend to nip it in the bud,” Wentyard added. “There are no such things as no-go zones in this country.”
“I wish I believed that, sir,” Nick replied.
“Whatever you believe, just do the job you’ve been given to the best of your ability and we shall all be a lot happier. Personally, I’m not sure I buy into this Un-Crime business, or whatever your unit is supposed to call itself. I don’t buy into this special unit ethos full stop, especially when it’s something as fanciful and money-wasting as yours. As far as I’m concerned, this job is a serious one and it belongs in the real world. It starts and finishes on real streets, with real men and women in real uniforms confronting real criminals and hooligans. Still… as DCI Knox is impressed by your record, I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. For the time being.”
Nick nodded and smiled to himself. This was no less than he got in whichever force area he was sent to; what else could he expect? A Scotland Yard department formed specifically to target strange and bizarre crimes — ‘unconventional crimes’ for want of a better phrase (hence ‘Un-Crime’) — was always going to generate hostility in a conservative body like the police. That was why it still only boasted a staff of one — him.
****
Underwood was on the fringe of Birmingham society. Geographically, it was located close to the city centre, but it was still on the fringe.
Thirty faceless blocks of concrete maisonettes, linked together by rubble-strewn underpasses and vandalised walkways, comprised its central area. Many units were boarded-up, a few just gutted shells. The parking areas underneath were seas of litter and broken glass, burned hulks of vehicles jammed into every narrow space. Even the playgrounds, once fenced off and secure, were bleak patches of wasteland with only rusted iron bones remaining of their equipment. Obscene graffiti ran wild over everything.
June, such a joyous month in much of Britain, made little difference here. In fact, it made things worse. Flies swarmed in the alleys. Rubbish festered and stank. The shadowy places where people lived grew hot and thick and stifling.
Nick didn’t wonder there was scope for riots in this place, though that didn’t excuse it. Not to his mind. He’d seen enough decency emerge from poverty to know that there was no hard and fast rule about crime and its causes; and anyway, who did the hoodlums punish when they went on their lawless rampage? Those who lived alongside them: timid householders, frightened pensioners. Not the rich and powerful, not the establishment.
Long-term sociological solutions were fine, but in the meantime the scumbags needed locking up.
He arrived on the evening of 20th June, dressed in oily denims and rotted trainers. He hadn’t shaved in three days and carried all his worldly goods in two plastic bags. The flat was on a balcony overlooking a litter-strewn plaza, and consisted of a kitchen, bedroom, lounge and bathroom. It contained only the most basic furnishings. He settled in quickly, unpacking the few belongings he’d brought with him: tins of food and booze, which he left in the kitchen; his phone and his ‘burglary kit’ — pliers, crowbar, screwdriver, brace-and-bit. Courtesy of the West Midlands Drugs Squad, he also had a few wraps of speed, a bottle of amphetamines and ten cubes of resin — just enough for a small-time dealer. He placed that on the bedroom window-sill, where intruders could easily find it.
His money he slid into a plastic wallet and taped to the underside of the wardrobe. There was strictly no warrant-card or paperwork. This was what Hollywood might refer to as ‘deep cover’. Anything he needed to know, he’d already memorised: names and addresses for local hoods and trouble-makers; anarchist groups active in the area; known heavies doing time in local jails, just in case anyone wanted to test him on his cover-story.
He ventured out onto the estate that evening and the first thing that struck his experienced eye was how physically menacing it was; all narrow corners, dark doorways and precipitous drops to concrete lots. There were ambush-points every twenty yards. Nick had grown up in a town in the south Lancashire coal-field, which by the mid-1970s was severely deprived and unemployed, but thanks to its residential layout — rows of crumbling but neighbourly terraced houses — had managed to retain some community spirit. What possible community could exist in Underwood?