A Year Less a Day

by James Hawkins

  “OK, Ruth. If Jordan really had cancer ...” she starts.

  “He did, Trina. I know he did.”

  “All right. I’m agreeing with you. I’m saying that if he did, and he was using a false name, what would happen when you killed him?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” whines Ruth. “Why won’t anyone believe me?”

  “Well, the police have got a lot of evidence.”

  “But, I didn’t.”

  “I know ... Although the police are pretty sure that you did.”

  “I did not.”

  “OK. But let’s just assume that you did for the moment. What happened to his alien?”

  “What alien?”

  “The one Jordan was pretending to be.”

  “Do you mean his alias?”

  “Whatever. All I’m suggesting is that if we wait and see who doesn’t turn up for treatment in the next month or so, then we’ll know who to look for.”

  “A month,” cries Ruth, losing it again as Trina is escorted out. “I can’t wait a month in here. I have to find him now.”

  Ruth’s ability to search for her husband, and her psyche, take a serious blow mid-afternoon when a crusty old battleaxe in a judge’s gown yells, “Stop snivelling in my court you stupid woman,” and remands her in police custody for a further forty-eight hours.

  The certainty that Jordan was alone and dying somewhere on the street, and the agony of her powerlessness to help him, had gripped Ruth’s chest with an iron hand, and she had fainted in the prisoner’s box. “Shove her head between her knees,” the judge had ordered from the bench, and Ruth had quickly regained consciousness, though her mind had closed off to the outside world, and she had sunk into torpor.

  Ruth had been led back to her cell like a zombie and, as the matron and guards watch her on the cell-block surveillance camera later that evening, there is growing concern about her catatonic state.

  “The scrout hasn’t moved in over an hour,” says one as he taps the screen. “Just stares at the door like she’s trying to bore a hole in it.”

  Ruth is frozen in a trance, bolt upright and motionless, keening with a high pitched whine as tears stream down her cheeks. She is determined to stay awake for a second night—and every night—until Jordan is found, and she cries constantly, catching the salty tears on her tongue and sniffing back the snot. But behind her immobile face is a sharp mind focussed on every aspect of Jordan’s battle with ill health. She relives every one of his pain-filled expressions and every anxiety drawn word, counting the number of times he’d said, “What’s the point in carrying on?” and the occasions he’d wished aloud that he had been struck by a truck and saved the benefit of a leisurely penitence. “It’s like jumping off a cliff in slow motion,” he’d claimed one day, asking in a child-like tone, “Will the rocks hurt, Ruth?”

  It is Jordan’s pain more than her own that drives Ruth’s incessant tears and, as the evening wears on, her constant bawling starts rattling nerves.

  “Shut up. You’re upsetting the other prisoners,” shouts one of the evening staff as she hands over her charges to the night crew. “She hasn’t quit all evening,” the outgoing officer complains to Dawn and Jean as they sign in.

  “Well I won’t stand for it,” says Dawn grabbing the cell keys and shouting, “Jackson you shit-rat. Shut up now before I make you.”

  “Oh great,” moans Jean as Ruth wails even louder, crying, “I haven’t done anything. I haven’t done anything.”

  By midnight, Ruth is under attack from all sides as prisoners and officers alike try to sleep.

  “Can’t you shut her up?” yells one of the male guards from the adjacent block, and Dawn grabs the keys. “Right. That’s enough Jackson.”

  Dawn’s first slap sends Ruth reeling to the floor, but the crying intensifies until hysteria sets in.

  “Shut up; shut up; shut up!” screams Dawn, an inch from her face; but the howling won’t stop, and Ruth is turning beet-red through the strain.

  A couple of kicks go unnoticed in Ruth’s agonized mind as she seeks a way out of purgatory, and a voice inside is begging, please hit me, hurt me, wake me up and end this nightmare.

  They hit and they kick, but the nightmare doesn’t end, and ten minutes later Ruth is still screaming as an uncaring doctor “tut-tuts” at the red contusions on her face. “Been knocking yourself about have you, dearie? I’m going to give you something to calm you down.”

  Ruth’s trembling hand takes hold of the doctor’s wrist and she peers into his eyes with every ounce of will. “I don’t want anything. My husband is out there dying in the rain, and they won’t believe me.”

  “Let go of my hand dear.”

  “They’re keeping me prisoner here.”

  “I know ... Now be a good girl and let go.”

  “Why are they doing this to me?” she screams into his face as her nails dig deep.

  “Let go. You’re hurting me,” he tries calmly.

  Ruth snaps. “Why won’t you believe me? Why won’t you believe me? My husband is dying on the street.”

  “Let go; please let go!”

  “This is a set-up. You’re in on it. His fucking moth-er’s set me up.”

  “Guard ... Help! Help!”

  The shrill shriek of a panic alarm sends guards running, and a wall of uniforms pound down the corridor and crash through the door. Ruth sinks under the deluge as the terrified doctor is dragged away. “Leave her to us,” screams one of the guards, wound up from an evening of Ruth’s wailing, and fists fly.

  A few minutes later the doctor is brought back, armed with a hypodermic needle. Inspector Wilson has arrived and the yelling has stopped, but one of the male guards is hobbling around clutching his chin, moaning, “The f’kin bitch kicked me. The f’kin bitch kicked me.”

  Ruth is still swamped in a sea of flesh, but she manages to get her teeth into the pudgy hand covering her mouth, and she shouts, “you should take up kick boxing—it’s good for anger.” Then a fist lands straight in her face and she flops as the doctor jabs in the needle.

  “This is very serious for you,” says Wilson as he helps ease the subdued woman from the floor a few minutes later.

  “I don’t fucking care. Why don’t you listen? I haven’t done anything.”

  “You realize that you will also be charged with assaulting a doctor and two guards ...” starts Wilson, but Ruth is still snivelling.

  “I don’t care what you do to me. It doesn’t matter anymore. All I tried to do was save his life.”

  chapter eight

  The lights had gone out for Ruth a few minutes after the loaded needle had been shot into her arm, and have stayed out all night. Morning dawns in darkness, as Ruth’s swollen and pus-encrusted eyes refuse to open. Her sobs salt her wounds and sting her eyes until she bursts into another wail.

  “Shut up, for fuck’s sake, Jackson,” yells a warden, and Ruth tries, but fails.

  “You don’t want me to come in there, Jackson. Now shut the fuck up!”

  At home, Ruth would have buried her head in the pillow, as she had most nights for the past three months, but here there is no pillow. Stripped to her underwear, “for her own protection,” she lies on a wooden bench with only a thin blanket for warmth and nothing for comfort, and continues bawling loudly.

  Keys rattle and a chair’s leg scrapes on a tiled floor. “This is your last warning, Jackson ...”

  Holding her breath, Ruth cries as silently as she is able, while the morning matrons, inured to her suffering by years of experience, relax back and sit at the end of the corridor discussing her as if she is tabloid trash. Noreen, the mouthy one, is a flabby blond in her fifties who gets a kick out of the job, while her partner, Annie, just wants to put her kid through university.

  “It says here that they haven’t found her husband’s body yet,” says Annie as she reads the article on the font page of the Province.

  Noreen pours herself a coffee. “No. And they haven’t found the one whose
throat she slit either. Then there’s her mother.”

  “I heard about that. Apparently she just vanished, and no one ever reported her missing.”

  “There’s a lot of that going on—makes you wonder about going out at night.”

  “But she was only a kid.”

  “Teenager—wouldn’t be the first.”

  Nothing has missed the rumour mill: Ruth’s explorations into the underworld of pornography and drugs, even the suggestion that she was running a coven in Raven’s back room.

  “They found black candles and a black leather settee, one of the guys was saying,” says Noreen, dropping her voice. “Witchcraft, I bet. Human sacrifice in the suburbs. Did you hear what she did to the doctor?”

  The way the night staff had portrayed the melee, Ruth had fought with demonic strength, and her nails had clawed so deeply into the doctor’s wrist that she might even be a vampire.

  “Bled like crazy,” one of the night matrons had said as she gave her the keys and handed over at six that morning. “She got her nails right into his vein.”

  But Ruth won’t be doing it again. When she finally pries open her ballooning eyes she’ll discover the root of the pain in her hands—all her nails have been trimmed to the quick.

  “You try to bring your kids up right and there’s shit-rats like that around,” moans Noreen as Inspector Wilson arrives.

  “So, how is our client this morning?” asks Wilson, nodding to Ruth’s cell.

  Annie looks up. “Someone’s going to throttle her if she doesn’t shut up.”

  “She’s no fool; she’s working on an insanity defence.” says Wilson.

  “If she doesn’t shut up soon, I’ll plead insanity as well,” cracks Noreen. “You heard she attacked the doctor?”

  Wilson nods. “One of the reasons I’m here.”

  The sickly taste of blood and bile still cloys at the back of Ruth’s throat and makes her retch as Annie gives her a poke. “Visitor,” she says. “Will you behave if we give you your clothes?”

  Dressing takes Ruth an eternity, while Noreen and Annie stand over her and make a point of staring. Her new clothes are ripped and filthy from the fight, and the sting of her raw fingertips on fabric makes her whimper as she tries to do her buttons up, but no one helps. And all the while, the swelling over her right eye pulses like the discordant din of hip-hop and threatens to drive her insane.

  “I’ve got some good news, Ruth,” says Wilson, with an edge to his voice, as she is blindly led, in handcuffs, into the interview room ten minutes later.

  “What?” she snivels, though is barely able to speak through swollen lips.

  “We’ve found your friend Tom.”

  Ruth catches her breath and looks up. “He’ll tell you ...”

  “It’s good news for us,” continues Wilson, talking over her. “Bad for you, I’m afraid. He denies any knowledge; says he never lent you any money.”

  “What about his neck? I cut ...”

  “Says he nicked himself shaving. He swears that you don’t owe him a cent.”

  Momentary relief turns to apprehension. That’s what he says now, she thinks, but he’ll change his mind as soon as I get out. “He got me into porn,” she whimpers.

  “We know all about that ... But what about the drugs?”

  “They’re for my husband’s cancer.”

  “Not that kind of drug, Ruth. We’re not stupid. We know what’s happening. We’ve even got you on surveil-lance videos, buying on the street.”

  A brick might have hit harder, although the hurt wouldn’t have been so deep, and she slumps in tears as her worst fears come true.

  “Don’t get upset, don’t cry, don’t argue,” she had told herself on the occasions when Jordan had been unable to get out of bed, and she had buddied-up to a bunch of denim-clad sub-humans outside the youth club and walked back to the café with dirt on her hands.

  “From the amount found in your apartment, you’ll certainly be charged with possession—possibly trafficking,” continues Wilson.

  “But it was Jordan’s medicinal marijuana,” she tries lamely.

  “And that’s why you bought it from a pusher on Queen Street?”

  The pain in her fingers and face can’t compete with the pain within as she fights with images of her broken mother and recalls all the promises she made to herself that she would never, ever, end up on the same road.

  “What’s happening to the café?” she asks eventually, when she sees no other path.

  The spark of life that Ruth and her husband had kindled has gone, and the café is now as cold and clinical as a mortuary. Sheets of white paper plaster the windows, shielding the forensic team from the lenses of press photographers. And the tropical aromas from Ethiopia, Columbia, and Costa Rica are lost in a welter of dust motes as floorboards and ceilings are pried and probed. Halogen spotlights turn December’s gloom into glacial brilliance, but the light is as frosty as the winter’s sun on the distant Rockies.

  The gaggle of reporters who’d hung around outside the café the first day have already moved on; so have most of the rubber-neckers and displaced customers. Donut Delight is bursting with the overflow, and the crossword gang is crammed into a tight spot. There is only one topic of conversation.

  “Sends a shiver up your spine doesn’t it?” says Darcey, without looking up at the others. Matt and Maureen nod while trying to concentrate on 10-down. “A cheap place to stay in Ireland.”

  “You don’t think she did it, do you?” asks Matt, but nobody answers as Trina pushes through the crowd and plops, “INNOCENT,” in the spot before anyone can stop her.

  “Of course she didn’t do it,” says Trina, jamming herself between the other two women, with her eyes on 31-across.

  “Have you been to see her?” asks Matt.

  “I’m on my way now. I took her some really nice clothes yesterday to cheer her up.”

  “How is she?”

  “She seemed happy when I told her that I’d find Jordan.”

  Darcey and Maureen look up and say, “How?” in unison, but Trina clams up. She has a plan, but she does-n’t want anyone poking holes in it—and she knows there are holes.

  “Oh, look. There’s Cindy over there,” she says, loping off.

  Cindy looks out of place as she sits on her own in Donut Delight, with her resume in her purse and her eye on the front door of the Corner Coffee Shoppe at the other end of the street.

  The crime-scene tape has been reinforced by a second strand since Trina’s incursion, and the uniformed policeman now has a critical glance at every visitor’s badge—even those with whom he had breakfasted an hour earlier at the briefing.

  “The scrout’s got quite a violent streak,” Sergeant Brougham had told the small group as they had sat around the café waiting for a plumber to begin dismantling the sewer system. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find something gruesome in the drains.”

  “Do you still want us to do the floorboards, Sarge?” asked one of the men.

  “Yeah, Pete; as soon as the truck arrives and we get the carpets out of the way.”

  The rolled carpets, enveloped in plastic sheeting, are being carried out and piled into a large blue van as Trina slides into the seat opposite Cindy, asking, “What’s happening at Ruth’s place?”

  “They’re taking the crappy carpets now. There won’t be much left soon.”

  “What else have they taken?”

  “They’ve got a dumpster around the back. Jordan’s crappy mother is there telling them what’s his and what’s hers and what to chuck out.”

  “Oh, no,” sighs Trina and takes off at a run.

  “What’s going on at the coffee shop, Cindy?” asks a voice from above, and Cindy snaps back her head.

  “Raven!” exclaims Cindy. “Where have you been? I didn’t think you were ever coming back.”

  Raven’s face falls. “Neither did I.” Then she laughs, “You were right, Cindy. All men are crappy. But what’s going on? They wouldn
’t let me in.”

  Cindy drops her tone. “It’s like the kitchen-sink version of psycho. I heard it all—the yelling and shouting.” She stops and looks around before dragging Raven down into a conspiracy. “I told the police I was too busy to look, but to tell the truth, I didn’t wanna get involved. I know what men can be like when you get between them and their crappy wives. Been there, done that.”

  “Jordan killed her?” Raven asks incredulously.

  “Other way around. She killed him.”

  Raven’s face screws-up in confusion. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. She’s in jail. It’s in all the papers.”

  “I don’t believe it,” says Raven firmly, but Cindy checks around again then whispers in her ear. “I’m not supposed to know this, but I’ve got a friend who says Ruth’s pretending to be insane.”

  “No ... That’s not ...” starts Raven, but Cindy is still whispering. “She even attacked a doctor and the guards. I heard they put her in a straitjacket. I knew something was up when she went overboard with all that crappy rabbit food.”

  “I have to contact Serethusa,” says Raven, as she slides out of her seat; then she pauses. “Where’s all my furniture and stuff?”

  “I should have thought you could afford new,” says Cindy, but stops as Raven gives her a confused look. Then she queries, “You did win the lottery, didn’t you?” Raven’s chaise-lounge is in the dumpster with many of Ruth’s clothes and a load of rotting food from the closed café, together with a furious Trina Button.

  “You can’t throw this away,” Trina is yelling to Jordan’s mother as she wades through the garbage, pulling out Ruth’s possessions.

  “Leave it alone you stupid woman,” Gwenda Jackson shouts as she tries to grab the stomping woman. But Trina is too fast for her and has her hands full by the time Sergeant Brougham appears.

  “Not you again ... Get out of there.”

  “She’s throwing all Ruth’s stuff away,” bleats Trina.

  “Well, she won’t need it where she’s going,” shoots back the older woman. “And I’m damned if I’m having it in my place after what’s she’s done.”