FRIDAY 28 JULY, 10.12AM
I sit on my bed in my room, as hot as ever, still sweating, even though the temperature drops a few degrees at night. The heat still torments me. But the bungalow is quiet and peaceful; they are asleep in the bedroom. All I can hear is the slow screeching and squealing of a train and its containers edging their way slowly along the track at the bottom of the garden. On and on it goes, as it seems to do all night, every night.
I did not expect to write another diary entry; not now, not ever, not having covered everything and come to terms with it all. Every last thing. I have absolved myself. But I will now write one more, final time and then, instead of tearing out various pages here and there, I will destroy the whole diary and move on with my life once and for all. There are better times ahead for me now.
I cannot keep looking back, dwelling on matters. It is not good for me. What is done is done. I have things straight in my mind. I have accepted and made sense of it all. I did what I had to do and that’s that. I had no choice. I had to kill Adrian.
I picked up the hand-held fire extinguisher, the heaviest thing to hand, from beside the kitchen bin. I opened the back door, closed it behind me – so that Josie and Lily would not hear – and ran down the garden towards the air-raid shelter as fast as I could.
As I got to the steps, Adrian had turned and was standing inside the doorway. He had his hands to his face and his mouth hung open and his eyes stared straight forward into space. It was hard not to think of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ (a picture I have always rather liked) at that instant.
I believe, writing now, that talk of scarecrows and the air-raid shelter had raised his suspicions and, hardly being able to believe it, he thought he’d put his mind to rest by checking before he set off down the track to Josie’s.
He did not seem able to focus even as I moved into the doorway, put my hand on his chest and pushed him back just as hard as I could down the stairs inside the shelter. He stumbled, took two steps backwards, then seemed to lose his feet from underneath him and tumbled back and fell heavily to the floor, already dazed.
I hit him with the fire extinguisher. About the head. Many times.
I do not know how many. Very many is all I would say. Too many.
He was dead at the end of it. And I found myself crying, sobbing even. As I am doing now.
I must stop writing for a moment, gather myself together. I am not a bad man. I am not cruel or nasty or violent or evil. I am a calm and rational man. I do only what has to be done. What I have to do. No more than that.
I do not doubt Adrian would have called the police once he had pulled himself together. I had only seconds to spare. There would have been no reasoning with him, no chance of explanation. No way of getting him to see sense. To explain the reasons why. He was always his mother’s son, not mine, not really. He was what they call a mummy’s boy.
I contemplate whether his instruction for me to wait by the front door was nothing to do with Leon and all to do with giving him time to check and then dial 999. I would, if I had stood at the front door for much longer, have seen the police cars racing to my driveway. I would have been arrested. Charged. Put on trial. Sentenced, no doubt, to life, perhaps many times over. The rest of my days would be completely ruined. I might even die in prison. So, the fact of the matter is, I had to do it.
I knew, when I had finished, that he was dead. I had, to use a rather childlike expression, ‘bashed his brains out’. There was surprisingly little blood and mess all things considered. If I had had some of those cleaning wipes that people use in kitchens these days, I could have wiped and tidied things and, sitting him up with his head at a slight angle, it would have looked as though he were simply sleeping. I have never used wipes, though, preferring a proper cloth you can wring out and use time and again. I had nothing like that to hand either, though.
I pulled Adrian past her and him and pushed him flat across the back of the shelter. I then took his phone to stamp on and to throw the bits on the railway line. It occurred to me at this point that if I were to move her and him too, to a similar position at the back, they would not be readily visible unless you came most of the way down the stairs, and actually into the shelter.
I did this as best I could and I will not dwell on the matter other than to say that, given the intense heat of late, the bodies were in a state of considerable decay. The heat, the smell and the flies, big fat bloated flies buzzing in and out, combined to make me physically sick more than once. It was not until after I had left and secured the door and walked down towards the train track to stand and breathe that I regained my composure and was not physically sick again. It took a good while.
I am now what the television and newspapers would call a serial killer. I have taken three lives. Her. Him. Adrian. I do not deny those. But I do not count anything else; dirty puppies or cats who soil my flower beds. I am not Jack the Ripper. I am not a proper, nasty murderer.
I do not know how I would describe myself actually. It is something of a conundrum. The fact is that I had thought about killing her, but that is all. She was having an affair and would have left me and taken half of everything, leaving me destitute! I do not think I would have done anything, though. Not really. Not me. But then she smirked and laughed at me – quite openly – as I debated what to do when she was standing by the bin; it was that sniggering – her laughing at me – that caused me to momentarily lose my calm. When I had recovered myself, I did only what I had to do.
Him? I did not ask him to come round! But I had to get him to come into my bungalow when he did. I could not have him on the doorstep hollering and then, if I shut the door in his stupid face, going away and calling the police with his wretched suspicions. Even when he was in the bungalow, I would not have done anything. But he insisted – he was adamant – that he was going to call the police. So that was that.
Adrian – the thought of that upsets me, actually. But I now have to be strong and not let it get to me too much. I have much to look forward to. Me and Josie and the girl. We are, in our own funny little way, something of a family.
Several minutes later, after I had checked myself over, for signs of blood or mess on my hands or clothes or shoes, I turned away from the railway track to go back indoors. Looking up, I saw, framed in the doorway, the little girl watching me.
I did not know how long she had been there.
Nor what she had seen.
I beckoned her forward urgently – be quick!
She came down the garden and stopped just in front of me. She looked up, with her mock innocent face. I thought quickly, remembering she was asleep when I went into the kitchen and saw Adrian on the steps.
How long was I in the shelter?
Five, six minutes?
And out of it, by the railway line?
Five, six minutes more?
I thought, at worst, she might have seen me coming out of the shelter and being sick by the railway line. I grasped her arm, leaned forward and spoke quietly and forcefully.
“Keep away from the shelter, do you hear me? Keep away.”
(She did not respond until I repeated myself and she then gave what seemed to be a quick nod of agreement.)
“The scarecrows are back and they are hiding in the shelter from Mr McDonald.”
(She looked up at me with her big brown eyes, ever so serious.)
“Keep away from the shelter. Otherwise Mr McDonald will kill you. He. Will. Kill. You.”
(She looked frightened and went to pull herself away from me to run back into the bungalow.)
I grabbed her, going down on my knees to hug her and hold her. “Don’t say anything. Please don’t frighten Mummy,” I whispered into her ear. She struggled a little, perhaps more than a little, but I held her even tighter and kept whispering sweet things to her until she seemed to relax into my arms. “It’s our secret, Lily. Just you and me. Please don’t scare Mummy.” And so, with me holding her arm, we went back into the bungalow to see ‘
Mummy’.
I was worried, had expected even, that the girl might say something to Josie about the scarecrows, Mr McDonald, the air-raid shelter – what I said, how I said it – the moment she saw her. I stood close by, ready to do something, I was not sure what, if she did.
But the little girl simply reached out her hand, as Josie awoke, and sat up on the bed, and stroked Josie’s arm over and over again, as you might do with a purring cat. After a moment or two, Josie was up and moving into the kitchen to get the girl some squash and a piece of fruit.
I followed and we pottered around like a happy little family. By the time we sat down in the living room, I knew all was well and, if I might be forgiven for a moment of jollity at this point, I couldn’t help but think that we might live happily ever after.
SATURDAY 29 JULY, 3.13AM
I awake suddenly, not sure what it is that has disturbed me. I sit up in bed, listening. My first thoughts are that this Leon has broken in, either through the front door or the side gate, the noise alerting my subconscious mind to imminent danger. I reach for the kitchen knife I keep tucked behind the clock on the bedside cabinet. Hold it ready.
But all is quiet.
No noise from inside the bungalow.
Nothing outside either.
I wait, knowing that something is wrong, amiss in some way and that whatever it is will become apparent at any moment. I cannot relax until I know what it is. I wonder, for a second, whether Josie has upped and gone and taken the little girl with her, the sound of the door shutting behind her waking me.
“Where’s Adrian?” she had started asking from early evening onwards. “He should be back by now.” Over and over again, she said it, getting on my nerves (not that I showed it).
I said, so many times through the evening, one way and another, that it would have taken a while for him to get to her place, gather her things, wait until dark and all was clear before getting a taxi back. It all takes time, I emphasised. Nothing to worry about, I said, repeating myself time and again.
“He’s not answering his phone,” she said, echoing herself, in various ways, as the evening progressed. “Leon… Leon might have… What if Leon…” She would begin to say, as if thinking out loud before checking herself and falling silent.
I told her to wait, until morning, before deciding what to do. That Adrian may have seen Leon outside her home and that he was keeping his head down until he’d gone. “But he’s not answering his phone,” she’d reply every time and I had no real answer to this other than to say he might have dropped it somewhere, climbing over a gate along the railway line on his way out. She shook her head, unconvinced. And so we moved towards bedtime in an uneasy silence.
I realise suddenly what has woken me. A flash of lightning lights up the sky outside my window.
One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Missis…
The loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard. The heatwave, thank God, is ending. And we are about to get rain. Lots of it, I suspect.
When Josie and Lily went to bed in Adrian’s room, with Josie still going on and on about his phone and him not answering it, I decided I had to do something; otherwise, by morning, she would be in such a state that she would insist on going to the police. I cannot have the police back here. Her. Him. Adrian. Piecing it all together. I simply cannot, no matter what I had to do.
What I did was very simple. I took the landline phone from its base in the kitchen and put it on my bedside cabinet. I dug out her old mobile phone from her handbag at the back of my wardrobe. I charged it a little. A fiddly affair, but no matter. Enough of a charge to make a call anyway. I then thought for a few minutes before pressing the numbers of the landline phone carefully on the buttons of the mobile phone. A pause. Clicking. The landline phone started ringing. I put the mobile phone behind me, under the pillow, out of sight.
I let the landline phone ring on until I heard Adrian’s door being opened carefully. Imagined Josie tip-toing across to my door and standing there, waiting and listening for news of Adrian. And then I spoke my quickly made-up and rehearsed lines as I answered the phone.
“Hello?… Dawn!… How are you?… How’s your dad?”
(A pause for the answer. I could imagine Josie at the door, listening intently. I made various commiserating noises before I spoke again.)
“Oh no… I’m so sorry to hear that… do you want me to come up?”
(I’m a clever man, I am, I really am.)
“Adrian’s with you?… Well, I was puzzled where he’d got to!… It’s good to know he’s safe. He left so quickly. You must have called him.”
(Another pause, a long-ish one, as if I were listening to her endless woes and misfortunes. Again I made various comments, “yes”, “oh dear”, “lost his phone”, and so on until I thought it was time to end the conversation.)
“Well, look, Dawn, don’t worry. And tell Adrian not to worry about his phone either. All is well here… Yes… well, I’ll wait to hear from you again soon… Once you’ve heard from the coroner… next week? Yes… lots of love to you and Adrian, Dawn. Speak soon… Love you too… Bye… bye.”
(I could not help but smile to myself as I clicked the phone off and I could hear the floorboards in the hall creaking as Josie crept away back to the bedroom. I will tell her the ‘news’, as if I don’t know she heard my one-sided ‘conversation’, in the morning.)
And now, with peace and happiness in the bungalow at last, at long, long last, the rain starts to fall. It is as if the heavens themselves have opened.
Torrential, I hear it on the roof and on the windows.
On and on it goes, 40 days and 40 nights worth all in one go.
I pull the half-open window to. Lie back on my bed, satisfied. Josie and Lily are here. They will not leave because this Leon is out there somewhere. They are safe in the bungalow.
They will be happy too without Adrian, at least for a while. I will, in a week or so, tell them that Adrian has stayed on to help with clearing up and selling her father’s house. Then, later, that he has met and fallen in love with someone else and won’t be coming back.
Josie will be upset, of course she will, poor thing. There will be tears and sadness. She will sob and cry and throw herself dramatically on the bed, kicking her legs up and down, close to hysterics. I will be there, naturally. Sitting and waiting. Until she is ready.
She will sit up, her shoulders slumped, and I will take my place next to her on the bed. “There, there,” I will murmur gently as she leans against me and rests her head on my shoulder. I will put my arm around her and pull her close. And she will look up at me with tears in her eyes. And I will kiss them dry for her.
For the first time in weeks, I pull the duvet up and over me and snuggle down.
Josie and me. And Lily. An odd little family perhaps, but a family nonetheless.
Happy days lie ahead.
Happy days.
Happy, happy days.
Part Four
THE RAINS
SATURDAY 29 JULY 7.51AM
Today is, as people say, the first day of the rest of my life.
And very good it is too.
It is one of many perfect days that lie ahead.
Josie and Lily are in the living room, sitting at the table, waiting patiently to begin their breakfast. I am preparing this in the kitchen, going back and forth, wanting to get it all just so on this wonderful day. I am not – usually – a fussy sort of chap but I am this morning and I feel rather embarrassed, bashful really, about this, but in a nice, excited kind of way.
I do not think I have ever felt so happy.
We are a family. We really are.
And I know, yes, I am certain, we will all live happily ever after.
I am putting together a breakfast you’d have in a four-star hotel. A bit of a treat really for the girls. (I won’t say “my girls”, not yet anyway!) It is a continental breakfast as Josie and Lily are both vegetarians, of course; something I have thought about but will no
w consider fully, talking to Josie about it at length at some point today before converting. I think she would like that.
I tick off, mentally, what is on the table so far. After the plates and bowls and knives and forks and such like, I put some yoghurts down. One is just outside of its sell-by date but is far too good to waste (it is not one of the usual Co-op own brands). I have taken off the lid to indicate that one is for me. I added a jar of honey. Another of lemon curd (which I rather like). But no marmalade.
(I opened a jar of marmalade recently with Adrian and it had a little growth of green mould in the middle and he made his usual gagging and retching noises. “There,” I said, scooping off the mould with a teaspoon, “the rest of it is fine.” But it seemed to make things worse, what with his wide-eyed, gulping noises and all, and so I ended up throwing it away.)
I have just done some toast, white and brown, cut into triangles and looking rather nice in their own little toast racks. I have put these on the tray with a tub of fancy margarine. Not a Co-op own brand or anything like that. I then add a box of cornflakes and another of shredded wheat, both Kelloggs, along with a cup full of sugar and a small jug of milk, and there we are, ‘good to go’.
I smile at Josie as I sit down at the table and she smiles back.
Lily does not look at me but turns away. Sulky little madam!
I do not say anything, not today. Another time, yes. I will start correcting her behaviour soon enough. It is important she learns her table manners. For now, I will let it pass.
“It’s still raining,” I say conversationally, looking out across the garden. “All night long.”
Josie twists to look out of the window too and smiles at me as she turns back to the table. “It will be good for the garden and the flowers. It will save you watering everything.”
I smile and nod my reply as if agreeing, although I have never really watered anything much out the back. I have always near enough left the garden to its own devices.
Mr Todd's Reckoning Page 18