I move quickly from room to room. Resisting the urge to panic.
The kitchen. Opening and shutting cupboards, the larder. Checking everything carefully, step by step.
The other bedroom. Under the beds. In wardrobes. She is not here. She is not in the bungalow. Not anywhere.
I move to the front door as quickly as I can, straining to stand fully upright to loosen my back. Could she have opened it, moved into the porch as I am now doing, opened the porch door and gone up the drive into the road? I move to the pavement. Look up and down. No sign.
Back to the bungalow.
The garden is the only place she can be. The garage is shut. Too hard to open it out and up and over her head at that age. The side door is locked. She cannot be inside. She must have gone out of the kitchen door and down into the garden.
I open the kitchen door and look down the full length of the garden. The railway line at the end. She is not there.
The trees, the stumps that I cut down and dug over. Not there either.
I look at the old air-raid shelter, its domed roof above ground, maybe two-thirds of the way to the railway line. There are three steps down, old broken, concrete steps to the entrance, which is boarded up.
I see her there, just the top of her head. I move quickly towards her.
She is bent forward, peering in through the tiniest of cracks. As I get closer, I can hear her talking, saying something into the crack. “Hello,” she says. “Hello?”
She turns as I start running towards her and says, “Look!” and then turns back and points towards the crack in the door. “Scarecrows!”
Part Three
THE AIR-RAID SHELTER
THURSDAY 27 JULY, 4.59PM
As I rush to grab the little girl there is – at the instant my hand closes around her arm – a terrible commotion at the front door. Shouts. Ferocious banging. Yells.
I am undone.
I let go of the girl’s arm, deciding to run. Down the stretch of the garden. Up and across the railway line. To the fields and river on the other side. And away. But where? A head start, no more than that. Not enough. But what else can I do?
I have not prepared for this moment. Not like this. That I might flee. I should have done.
A debit card. Cash. A change of clothes would give me a chance.
But I have nothing. Nowhere to run, nor hide. I am ruined.
I stop, turning back, stepping beyond the bewildered child. I hear screaming. A woman’s screams. The sound of the front door being broken down. A loud, splintering, cracking noise that ricochets through the air.
Then silence.
I am confused.
I do not know how to react.
Adrian, flustered and twitching, and the young woman, behind him and reaching for his arm, race out of the back door towards me. The young woman sees the child and sweeps by me to lift her up in her arms. She stops and turns, with Adrian, towards the bungalow, as if waiting for something awful to appear. Before I can speak, to ask, to demand to know what is going on, Adrian is talking all of a gabble at me.
“It’s him, Leon. He was upstairs on the bus. Saw us get off. He’s after us,” he shouts, looking straight at me as if I am going to do something about it. “Leon, Josie’s ex,” he adds angrily as he sees my blank expression; like I’m supposed to know who ‘Leon’ is.
“We need to hide,” the young woman cries. “In case he finds us here. He won’t give up and he’ll have a knife on him.”
I look at them both.
They are clearly terrified.
Of this horrific man, this Leon.
I usher the three of them quickly across the garden. Away from the out-in-the-open air-raid shelter. To the patch of scrub tucked behind the garage. We stand there, huddled together for a minute, maybe two. Adrian and the young woman look tense, frightened, waiting for their world to cave in. And mine too if they did but know it. She pulls the child – who looks wholly unconcerned by it all – next to her.
Adrian explains, in a series of stage whispers, “Leon was on the top of the bus… We were on the bottom deck… he saw us get off… Josie had her arm round me… he banged on the window… jumped up, to come downstairs… we ran… He must have got off at the next stop… he’s coming back after us.”
She then adds, “He won’t stop until he finds us, not now he’s seen me with Adey. Lily’s not safe either – he might snatch her from me… He’s on methadone,” she adds.
I nod, a sign of understanding, and then it occurs to me, but I do not immediately say it, that breaking down the front door was not only unnecessary (given it needs to be repaired) but also unwise. If this Leon is steaming down the road looking for them, he’s sure to come up the path when he sees the broken door inside the front porch, smashed in and swinging on its hinges.
He will barge into the bungalow.
Searching from room to room.
Charging out the back door into the garden.
Thoughts rush through my mind. I try to make sense of them. If he appears, right now, this next moment, this drug-crazed fury of a man, he will see us crouching here, half-hidden, half-watching.
What will he do? Cut Josie’s face? Stab Adrian in the stomach over and over again? Would he do that in front of the child?
Will he punch Josie, then Adrian, and grab the child? Run off with her?
Or just stand there and shout and swear and bluster like so many of these low-life bullies do?
Whichever way, the police will come to my door.
Even if he stands there, threatening Adrian, the neighbours might hear him and make the call, pressing 999.
I cannot have the police here, looking around, asking questions.
I have to do something. Slow things down from this overwhelming sense of panic into some sort of calm. Walk steadily to the front door before this Leon gets to it. I have to stand there, in this never-ending heat, pretending to be tidying round, doing the flower beds. Doing nothing much at all.
Me? Seen anyone?
No, no one here, mate. (That’s what these morons call each other, ‘ma-aa-aa-t-e’.)
I saw a couple running that way, though, a few minutes back.
Then I’d point him far, far away, send him on his search somewhere else. Maybe I’d add a clever comment: “I saw them flagging down a cab.” That would fool him, that’s for sure.
“You wait here,” I say to the young woman, “I’ll go and see what’s happening.”
She looks at me, scared but grateful, the handbag over her shoulder now clutched defensively to her chest, as if to protect her. Adrian pulls a face. He has this nervous twitch, a tic, I think they call it, where he moves his jaw to the left and then the right and back again. I don’t know if he knows he does it. It’s to do with stress. He repeats it endlessly when he’s under pressure. I’ve seen it before when he had his troubles with the police. The little girl just looks at me, her face a blank canvas.
I move out and up the garden.
Eight, nine, ten steps take me to the back door.
I stand there, listening, trying to hear if this Leon is inside, thrashing about.
All I hear are noises from the road to the front of the bungalow. Cars. A motorbike. A lorry pulling away up the hill. Louder than they should be. The noises. The front door must be wide open, the outer porch door too. So loud that I cannot hear if anyone is moving about the rooms, from one to the other, a knife in his hand, ready to slash and stab anyone he comes across.
I have to step inside the back door. Appear calm, as if I am going about my everyday business. Pottering in the garden. So hot, I have come in for a glass of water. If he’s there, what do I do? Feign surprise for sure. Act angry, what the hell are you doing in my bungalow? What have you done to my front door? Dare I do that if he’s off his head on drugs?
But he’ll realise, won’t he?
If he sees the front door caved in – he’ll realise that someone has knocked it down and come through at speed; and it can only
be them. Who else would it be? He’ll push past me, shove me to the floor and head for the back garden where Christ knows what will happen.
Ambulances. Police. Forensics.
They’ll all be at my door. And in the garden.
And it will all be over for me. Today. This evening at the latest.
I have to get to the front door and out into the porch before this Leon appears by the bungalow. Tug the front door to behind me as best I can. Pull the porch door closed as well. Stand in front of it, obscuring the view, pretending I have been tidying around and weeding, am standing there just taking a breather.
I take steps, four, five, six. Stand in the middle of the hallway, listening.
No noise from the rooms to either side. Adrian’s bedroom. Mine. The bathroom. All the doors are ajar, no one inside.
I take the final steps to the front door, 10, 11, 12. Into the porch, look out, no one in sight.
I steel myself to walk, as nonchalantly as I can, down the path, to the gate and beyond. I stop and turn, as if I am fiddling to fix a broken hinge, while looking around me. Up the hill, I can see what looks like a couple of young girls walking away, almost out of sight. On the other side of the road, near the top, and going the same way, is a man, in what looks like a black T-shirt and jogging bottoms.
I think that must be him, disappearing into the distance.
There are cars coming up and down either side of the road and, as I turn and look the other way to where they would have got off the bus, there is only a short, stumpy-legged woman walking towards me with three gormless-looking children in tow. Two boys and a girl, who is shouting at the top of her voice. I pity the poor father of that little lot.
He has gone.
Leon.
All is well.
I sigh, step back and walk into the bungalow. The front door is not as bad as it sounded. There is some damaged wood on the frame and some twisting of the metal by the latch, but it seems to close well enough with a little pushing and shoving from me.
As it jams into place, I hear the creak of a floorboard behind me.
I jump, my nerves in tatters.
And then I turn and face down the hallway.
THURSDAY 27 JULY, 9.57PM
Six hours on from their return – Beauty, the Beast, the little girl – we are all now finally settled into place. I have agreed that Josie and Lily can stay, at least for tonight, until the danger from this Leon has passed.
As Adrian said – as he sidled up behind me in the hallway – this Leon will never let it go. He will not leave them with Adrian. He will go back to where they live and will lie in wait there for their return. “They are only safe here,” said Adrian, surprisingly firmly. “This is the one and only place he can’t find them.” He then added, “We don’t want to call the police.” And I agreed with that. Not here anyway. I don’t want them at the bungalow.
So we all had tea together and smiled and nodded as Adrian jerked and fiddled his way through that and the washing-up and the sitting around and playing with the little girl afterwards. They then went to bed in Adrian’s room while he “kipped down,” as he put it, in the living room. I have retreated to my room where, finally, with the sweat of the day drying on my back at last, I write in my diary one more time. About her. And how it ended.
As she stood by the bins, tipping in the rubbish, she looked across at me as if she wasn’t surprised to see me there at all. She did not look ashamed or guilty about what she had been doing – nor was she worried or concerned about me in any way. She did not even smile. She simply raised her eyebrows, pulled a face (as if to sneer ‘oh, it’s only you’) and kind of sniggered to herself. I swear she sniggered. I know she did. I saw her. I heard her too.
It was the snigger that made me so angry, if I am honest.
If she had not sniggered, I would have thought better of what I was going to do and walked away. For sure, I would have. Yes.
But she did. And so I had to do it. The fact is, she made me.
I smiled back at her when she sniggered. And then I hit her in the face with the heavy saucepan as hard as I possibly could. The first blow seemed to stun her into silence. Before she could regain her senses and scream, I hit her as hard as I could again. And Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. She was not able to scream after that. No, not at all.
If I am frank, I did lose my temper somewhat – my little ‘moment of madness’ as it were – and I hit her more times than I care to remember. In fact, I cannot recall just how many times I actually hit her.
I do know that I hit her quite hard each time and, towards the end, I found myself grunting out loud in time with the blows. It was only when I became aware of the grunts – quite out of character, I must say – that I realised exactly what I was doing.
Strangely, for you would think she would fall backwards and lie on the path on her back, she did not. She sort of crumpled in on herself – it is the only way I can describe it – and fell straight down onto her knees. She then slumped forward onto me, her bloodied, snotty face landing on my thigh, leaving a nasty smear, before I stepped back and she fell flat on her face by my feet.
My first instinct, and it was not easy to do with all the spluttering and sighing sounds she was making, was to try and listen to hear if anyone from either side or Adrian inside the bungalow might have heard anything. I could not see any lights going on nor hear any sounds of movement or noise of any kind. I had, with more than a little luck, ‘got away with it’.
(Do you know, I can hear, quite clearly, singing from Adrian’s room? Clear as a bell. The young woman. She has a sweet and melodious voice. Quite sure and steady. I know the song – ‘Annie’s Song’ by John Denver, from years and years ago. From when I was young. Mother had the record and used to play it for a while before father broke it. It is soft and gentle. Sad and even a little melancholy the way the woman sings it. She is singing the child to sleep.)
It is not an easy thing to do, to end a life. Especially with a grown adult. It is not like drowning a stupid puppy that’s outstayed its welcome after Christmas. I went, many years ago, to an Agatha Christie play, I think it was, at a local theatre. Some amateur nonsense. With dimmed lights, a man, in silhouette, strangled a woman – 10, 20 seconds and the deed was done. It is not like that. No. Nor is it like a TV show or a film where someone is shot or stabbed and goes “ooh, argh” and falls down dead on the spot. No, it is not like that at all. People don’t like to die. She didn’t, that’s for sure.
As I stood over her, waiting ages for her huffing and puffing to come to an end, she finally stopped and fell silent for a moment.
And then – and I cannot explain it properly – she started groaning to herself while dragging her knees forward as if she were going to struggle up and onto her knees and then somehow stand on her feet.
(The young woman’s singing is calm and soothing. I do not mind it. I do not mind it at all. But it does not last. I hear the child thump-thump-thumping her feet against the wall. She does not want to go to sleep, the child. No. No. No. The woman stops her singing. There is a moment’s silence. Then she starts singing again, soft and plaintive. The thump-thump-thumping begins again too.)
I dragged her body – not yet a corpse – through the side door and into the quietness of the garage. There was blood on the path and I moved a bin to cover it, making a mental note to clean it up in the morning. I would burn it away with some acid I had left from removing the tree stumps. I kept the side door half-open, both for the moonlight, so that I could see what I was doing, and to hear if anyone was moving about outside.
I am going to be quite honest here, although it reflects no credit on me at all. I will be matter of fact about it. As I rolled my wife over, her décolletage somewhat spilled out and over her low-cut dress and I was aroused by this, notwithstanding her general battered appearance and the less-than-pleasant surroundings.
My wife had not allowed me to have sex with her for several years at this point –
talk of the menopause and the permanent wearing of sanitary appliances and all of that had, I felt, been exaggerated and so I took the opportunity to check ‘what was what’ down there. It was more than a moment of curiosity. I wanted to get to the truth of the matter. She was, after all, hardly in a position to discourage me.
I discovered, and I must say I was not the least bit surprised, that there were no signs of anything untoward. No blood and guts, shall we say. Anyway, let me just add that, what with one thing leading to another, and, as I stated, she had denied me for some years, I satisfied myself with her. It does me no credit.
(Josie has stopped singing once more and I can hear her trying to reason with the child. There was another series of thumps against the wall – the child’s feet, I assume – followed by one or two words in a raised voice from Josie and then a high-pitched whine from the child. On and on it goes. For God’s sake, why won’t the stupid child shut up?)
I had assumed that hitting her with a rather heavy, copper-bottomed saucepan both in the face and around the head so many times would have dealt with her. But no, it was not enough. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I might let her live – if I might, somehow, reverse what I had done. I admit I had second thoughts. Regrets even – for I am at heart a decent sort of chap. As I say, this sort of thing is out of character.
I pondered for a while as I looked down at her still-gurgling body, her face little more than pulp. It was her face that decided things for me. If she were to survive, she might be in a vegetative state and would be a silent, but reproachful, burden on me for the rest of my days. I did not wish to have to feed her nor wash her dirty parts or push her around in a wheelchair for years on end while she blubbered nonsensical words about what I had done to her. If she recovered enough to function, to speak, to converse properly, then she would no doubt say something to someone and I, one way or the other, would eventually go to prison. I could not have that.
Mr Todd's Reckoning Page 13