The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  * * * *

  “Mrs Maynard.”

  She could pretend she hadn’t heard, Claire thought, and carry on plodding. But a supermarket assistant who was loading the shelves with bottles of Scotch and gin nodded his head at her. “There’s a lady wants to speak to you.”

  “Mrs Maynard, it is you, isn’t it? It’s Daisy Gummer.”

  Claire knew that. She was considering speeding her trolley out of the aisle when her exit was blocked by a trolley with a little girl hanging onto one side - a six- or seven-year-old in the school uniform Laura had worn at that age. Claire’s hands clenched, and she swung her trolley round to point at her summoner.

  Mrs Gummer was in her wheelchair, a wire basket on her lap. The jacket and trousers of her orange suit seemed designed to betray as little of her shape as possible. Her silver curls were beginning to unwind and grow dull. Her large pale puffed-up face made to crumple as her eyes met Claire’s, then rendered itself into an emblem of strength. “Has to be done, eh?” she declared with a surplus of heartiness. “It’s not the men who go out hunting any longer.”

  The little this meant to Claire included the possibility that the old woman’s son wasn’t with her, not that his absence was any reason to linger. Before Claire could devise a reply that would double as a farewell, Mrs Gummer said “Still fixing up people’s affairs for them, are you? Still tidying up after them?”

  “If that’s what you want to say accountants do.”

  “Nothing wrong with using any tricks you know,” Mrs Gummer said, performing a wink that involved pinching her right eye with most of that side of her face. “Duncan’s done a few with my money at his bank.” As though preparing to reveal some of them, she leaned over her lapful of tins. “What I was going to say was you keep working. Keep your mind occupied. I wished I’d had a job when we lost his father.”

  “That would have helped you forget, would it?”

  “I don’t know about forget. Come to terms would be about the size of it.”

  “And what sort of terms would you suggest I come to?” Claire heard herself being unpleasant, perhaps unreasonable, but these were merely hints of the feelings that constantly lay in wait for her. “Please. Do tell me whatever you think I should know.”

  The old woman’s gaze wavered and focused beyond her, and Claire had an excuse to move out of the way of whoever was there. Then she heard him say “Here’s the soap you like, mother, that’s gentle on your skin. Who’s your friend you’ve been talking to?”

  “You know Mrs Maynard. We were just talking about . . .” Apparently emboldened by the presence of her son, Mrs Gummer brought her gaze to bear on the other woman. “How long has it been now, you poor thing?”

  “Three months and a week and two days.”

  “Have they found the swine yet?”

  “They say not.”

  “I know what I’d do to him if I got hold of him, chair or no chair.” Mrs Gummer dealt its arms a blow each with her fists, perhaps reflecting on the difficulties involved in her proposal, before refraining from some of another wink as she said “They’ll be testing the men round here soon though, won’t they? It isn’t just fingerprints and blood these days, is it?”

  The possibility that the old woman was taking a secret delight in this sickened Claire, who was gripping her trolley to steer it away when Duncan Gummer said “I shouldn’t imagine they think he’s from our neighbourhood, mother.”

  He’d taken his position behind the wheelchair and was regarding Claire, his eyes even moister than his display of lower lip. “They’ve told you that, have they?” she demanded. “That’s the latest bulletin for the patrol.”

  “Not officially, no, Mrs Maynard. I’m sure Mr Maynard would have told you if they had. I was just thinking myself that this evil maniac would surely have had enough sense, not that I’m suggesting he has sense like ordinary folk unless he does and that’s part of how he’s evil, he’d have kept his, his activities well away from home, would you not think?” He looked away from her silence as a load of bottles jangled onto a shelf, and let his lip sag further. “What I’ve been meaning to say to you,” he muttered, “I can’t blame myself enough for not being out that night when I was meant to be on patrol.”

  “Don’t listen to him. It’s not true.”

  “Mother, you mustn’t -”

  “It was my fault for being such a worn-out old crock.”

  “That’s what I meant. You weren’t to know. You mustn’t take it on yourself.”

  “He thought I was turning my toes up when all I was was passed out from finishing the bottle.”

  “Can’t be helped,” Claire said for the Gummers to take how they liked, and turned away, to be confronted by the liquor shelves and her inability to recall how much gin was left at home. She was letting her hand stray along the relevant shelf when Mrs Gummer said “You grab it if that’s what you need. I know I did when his father left us.”

  Claire snatched her hand back and drove her trolley to the checkout as fast as the shoppers she encountered would allow. She couldn’t risk growing like Mrs Gummer while Laura went unavenged. Time enough when the law had taken its course for her to collapse into herself. She arranged her face to signify that she was too preoccupied to talk to the checkout girl, and imitated smiling at her before wheeling out the trolley onto the sunlit concrete field of the car park.

  Tasks helped advance the process of continuing to be alive, but tasks came to an end. At least riding on the free bus from the supermarket to the stop by the golf course was followed by having to drag her wheeled basket home. She might have waited for Wilf to drive her if waiting in the empty house hadn’t proved too much for her. His need to go back to work had forced her to do so herself, and on the whole she was glad of it, as long as she could do the computations and the paperwork while leaving her colleagues to deal face to face with clients. She didn’t want people sympathising with her, softening the feelings she was determined to hoard.

  As she let herself into the house the alarm cried to be silenced before it could raise its voice. Once that would have meant Laura wasn’t home from school, and Claire would have been anxious unless she knew why. She wouldn’t have believed the removal of that anxiety would have left such a wound in her, too deep to touch. She quelled the alarm and hugged the lumpy basket to her while she laboured to transport it over the expensive carpet of the suddenly muggy hall to the kitchen, where she set about loading the refrigerator. She left the freezer until last, because as soon as she opened it, all she could see was Laura’s birthday cake.

  She’d thought of serving it after the funeral, but she would have felt bound to scrape off the inscription. That still ended at the unfinished letter - the cross she had never made. She’d considered burying the cake in the back garden, but that would have been too final too soon; keeping it seemed to promise that in time she would be able to celebrate the fate of Laura’s destroyer. She reached into its icy nest and moved it gently to the back of the freezer so as to wall it in with packages. While Wilf rarely opened the freezer, she could do without having to explain to him.

  He ought to be home soon. She might have made a start on the work she’d brought home from the office, except that she knew she would become aware of trying to distract herself from the emptiness of the house. She wandered through the front room, past the black chunks of silence that were the hi-fi and video-recorder and television, and the shelves of bound classics she’d hoped might encourage Laura to read more, and stood at the window. The street was deserted, but she felt compelled to watch - to remember. Remember what, for pity’s sake? She’d lost patience with herself, and was stepping back to prove she had some control, when she saw what she should have realised in the supermarket, and grew still as a cat which had seen a mouse.

  * * * *

  “Wilf?”

  “Love?”

  “What would you do . . .”

  “Carry on. We’ve never had secrets from each other, have we? Whatever it is,
you can say.”

  “What would you do if you knew who’d, who it was who did that to Laura?”

  “Tell the police.”

  “Suppose you hadn’t any proof they’d think was proof?”

  “Still tell them. They’ll sort out if there’s proof or not. If you tell them they’ll have to follow it up, won’t they? That’s what we pay them for, those that do, that you haven’t fixed up not to pay tax.”

  “I’d be best phoning and not saying who I am, wouldn’t I? That way they can’t find out how much I really know.”

  “Whatever you say, love.”

  He had to agree with her, since he wasn’t there: he’d left home an hour ago to be early at a building site. She couldn’t really have had such a conversation with him when he would have insisted on learning why she was suspicious, and then at the very least would have thought she was taking umbrage which in fact she was too old and used up to take. She knew better, however. If Duncan Gummer had been as obsessed with her as she’d assumed him to be, how could be have needed his mother to identify her at the supermarket? Now Claire knew he’d used his patrolling as an excuse to loiter near the house because he’d been obsessed with Laura, a thought which turned her hands into claws. She had to force them to relax before she was able to programme the alarm.

  The suburb was well awake. All the surviving children were on their way to school; a few were even walking. The neighbourhood’s postman for the last four months had stopped for a chat with a group of mothers being tugged at by small children. Less than a week ago Claire would have been instantly suspicious of him - of any man in the suburb and probably beyond it too - but now there was only room in her mind for one. She even managed a smile at the postman as she headed for the golf course.

  The old footpath, bare as a strip of skin amid the turf, led past the first bunker, and she made herself glance in. It was unmarked, unstained. “We’re going to get him,” she whispered to the virgin sand, and strode along the path to the main road.

  A phone box stood next to the golf course, presenting its single opaque side to a bus stop. Claire pulled the reluctant door shut after her and took out her handkerchief, which she wadded over the mouthpiece of the receiver. Having typed the digits that would prevent her call from being traced, she rang the police. As soon as a female voice, more efficient than welcoming, announced itself she said “I want to talk about the Laura Maynard case.”

  “Hold on, madam, I’ll put you through to -”

  “No, you listen.” Now that she was past the most difficult utterance - describing Laura as a case - Claire was in control. “I know who did it. I saw him.”

  “Madam, if I can ask you just to -”

  “Write this down, or if you can’t do that, remember it. It’s his name and address.” Claire gave the information twice and immediately cut off the call, which brought her plan of action to so definite an end that she almost forgot to pocket her handkerchief before hanging the phone up. She stepped out beneath a sky which seemed enlarged and brightened, and had only to walk to the stop to be in time for an approaching bus. As she grasped the metal pole and swung herself onto the platform of the bus she was reminded how it felt to step onto a fairground ride. “All the way,” she said, and rode to the office.

  * * * *

  “Claire? I’m back.”

  “I was wondering where on earth you’d got to. Come and sit and have a drink. I’ve something I’ve been wanting to -”

  “I’m with someone, so -”

  “Who?”

  “No need to sound like that. Someone you know. Detective Inspector Bairns.”

  “Come in too, Inspector, if you don’t mind me leaving off your first bit. I don’t suppose you’ll have a drink.”

  “I won’t, thanks, Mrs Maynard, not in the course of the job. Thank you for asking.”

  She wasn’t sure she had - she was too aware of the policeman he’d made of himself. His tread was light for such a stocky fellow; the features huddled between his high forehead and potato chin were slow to betray any expression, never including a smile in her limited experience, but his eyes were constantly searching. “Do have one yourselves,” he said.

  “I’ll get them, Claire. I can see you’re ready for a refill.”

  “You’ll have the Inspector thinking I’ve turned to the bottle.”

  “Nobody would blame you, Mrs Maynard, or at any rate I wouldn’t.” Bairns lowered himself into the twin of her massive leather armchair and glanced at Wilf. “Nothing soft either, thanks,” he responded before settling his attention on Claire.

  She smiled and raised her eyebrows and leaned forward, none of which brought her an answer. “So you’ll have some news for me,” she risked saying.

  “Unfortunately, Mrs Maynard, I have to -”

  Wilf came between them to hand Claire her drink on his way to the couch, and in that moment she wished she could see the policeman’s eyes. “Sorry,” she said for Wilf as he moved on, and had a sudden piercing sense that she might be expected to apologise for herself. “You were saying, please, go on.”

  “Only that regrettably we still have nothing definite.”

  “You haven’t. Nothing at all.”

  “I do understand how these things seem, believe me. If we can’t make an immediate arrest then as far as the victim’s family is concerned the investigation may as well be taking forever.”

  “When you say not immediate you mean . . .”

  “I appreciate it’s been the best part of four months.”

  “No, what I’m getting at, you mean you’ve an idea of who it is and you’re working on having a reason to show for arresting him.”

  “I wish I could tell you that.”

  “Tell me the reason. Us, not just me, obviously, but that’s what you mean about telling.”

  “Sadly not, Mrs Maynard. I meant that so far, and I do stress it’s only so far, we’ve had no useful leads. But you have my word we don’t give up on a case like this.”

  “No leads at all.” Claire fed herself a gulp of gin, and shivered as the ice-cubes knocked a chill into her teeth. “I can’t believe you’ve had none.”

  “We and our colleagues elsewhere questioned everyone with a recorded history of even remotely similar behaviour, I do assure you.” The policeman looked at his hands piled on his stomach, then met her eyes again, his face having absorbed any hint of expression. “I may as well mention we received an anonymous tip last week.”

  “You did.” Claire almost raised her glass again, but wasn’t sure what the action might seem to imply. “I suppose you need time to get ready to follow something like that up.”

  “It’s been dealt with, Mrs Maynard.”

  “Oh.” There was no question that she needed a drink before saying “Good. And . . .”

  “We’re sure it was a vindictive call. The informant was a woman who must bear some kind of grudge against the chap. Felt rebuffed by him in some way, most likely. She didn’t offer anything in the way of evidence, just his name and address.”

  “So that’s enough of an excuse not to bother with anything she said.”

  “I understand your anger, but please don’t let it make you feel we would be less than thorough. Of course we interviewed him, and the person who provided his alibi, and we’ve no reason to doubt either.”

  Claire had - Mrs Gummer had admitted to having been asleep - but how could she introduce that point or discover the story the old woman was telling now? “So if there’s no news,” she said to release some of her anger before her words got out of control, “why are you here?”

  “I was wondering if either of you might have remembered anything further to tell me. Anything at all, no matter how minor it may seem. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed to start us filling in the picture.”