I wondered what their bedroom was like.
I sat back in the comfy chair. Jack gave me a look. He knew what I was thinking.
‘That one’s for visitors, really,’ he said. ‘Visitors can’t settle on this one. Loose springs. Catch you sometimes.’
Lisa slid across the dangerous sofa. It twanged under her. On a shelf behind her were three small delicate glass bowls. They looked as though they’d break if you breathed on them.
One held paper clips. Another held needles. The third held what looked like coiled fuse wire.
‘We’ll need to go to the bottle bank,’ said Lisa, looking at the empty wine bottle.
‘Got some left over from Christmas?’
‘Oh no, we just like to go. You can get your hand in sometimes. I could open another bottle. I’ve still got the corkscrew here somewhere,’ and she slid her hand up her skirt.
My palms warmed up and began to bleed. Jack sat up, watching. With a noise like tearing cloth the corkscrew appeared.
‘You okay mate?’ asked Jack. ‘Looking peaky.’
‘Is it the wine?’ asked Lisa, bounding towards me like a tiny avalanche. ‘Was it off? I thought it tasted funny.’ Her concerned face stopped about a millimetre away from me.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Bit warm for me. It’s been lovely. I’m a bit tired though. Might as well be off home. If that’s okay?’
‘You could stay here!’ said Lisa, looking delighted. ‘We could sort you out a piercing and you could stay here. The spare room is nearly finished.’
‘Couple of rough edges,’ said Jack. ‘Been meaning to get round with the sander. Never enough time, is there? Not enough hours in the day.’
‘I’ll get some blankets,’ said Lisa, leaning over. I had a quick view of her cleavage, a burst of lace and scarred flesh, a glint of metal and the raw edges of peeling scabs.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Really. I’ll be better off in my own bed.’
I stood up.
‘It’s been lovely,’ I said.
‘You’ll have to come again,’ said Lisa, looking up at me. Her perky little breasts shifted under her clothes. I made it to the front door without being flayed alive.
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said Lisa. ‘Been nice seeing you!’ She blew a kiss from a safe distance and retreated to the kitchen.
‘Yeah well mate,’ said Jack. ‘Been a blast. Bit of a biscuit, bit of a chat. Like being civilized. Tell you what, next time we’ll go out and get slaughtered.’
I hoped he meant drunk. I said I’d see him soon.
The door closed. A little while later Lisa screeched, not unhappily. The screeches ran up and down the street, and I left them to it and went home to bed.
Chapter Eight
Jack called me the following Sunday. He told me that he had young Liam to look after for the day while his mother went shopping. Liam was two or three, Jack wasn’t sure which.
‘I’ve got him until eightish,’ he said. ‘Can I bring him round? I don’t mind him breaking your junk.’
I thought about Jack’s house. It wasn’t a good place for a child. There were all of those sharp edges and little spikes. My house was unsuitable in a different way. It was unclean. The new shelves were overflowing, and the vacuum cleaner had choked to death a couple of years ago.
I think you have to empty them every now and then.
I like children, generally. I like elephants, too, but I wouldn’t want one in the house. I didn’t want Liam poking about. I was also wary of letting Jack into the house, given that he was convinced that we were serial killers.
I couldn’t leave Liam in his hands for a day, though. If Jack was becoming unhinged, Liam might not have a nice day. Uncles could be peculiar, as I remembered. Any teenage girl could tell you that. I thought of Liam toddling into the bathroom. Would Jack have put away the razor blade? I didn’t think so. I had a brainwave.
‘Bring him over,’ I said, ‘and we’ll take him to see Samantha. By the way, I notice that my niece is named after me, and your nephew is named after, well, who exactly? Not you, though.’
‘My sister was a goth. So it’s Liam Hussey, probably. No way they named that one after you though. I can’t think of anything that could be named after you. New sort of flea powder maybe. New sort of underpants.’
‘And this is how you talk in front of your nephew, is it?’
‘He’s not in here, he’s fucked off upstairs. He’s following Lisa about. I’ll be over in half an hour.’ He hung up.
I got dressed – it was Sunday, and as a rule on Sundays I don’t get dressed until the evening, and that’s only if I’m going out. I called my brother and told him we’d be over.
He didn’t sound all that pleased about it. It’s hard to tell with Tony, though. He doesn’t have a happy voice. That might be my fault. I upset him once upon a time.
I’ll tell you about that later on.
When Jack arrived I locked up and climbed into the van. In the back, a gloomy child eyed me.
‘Hello,’ I said brightly. ‘You must be Liam.’
‘I hope so,’ said Jack. ‘Otherwise I’m in dead lumber with his mother.’
He pulled out into the traffic.
After a short journey he stopped the van half on, half off the kerb not far from my brother’s house. Caroline was watching us from an upstairs window. The neighbours were watching us from their windows, too. Jack took hold of Liam’s hand and toddled him to the door. Tony opened it, looking as gloomy as ever. Marital difficulties, if you really want to know. Samantha peeped around her father. She looked at Liam the way you’d look at a long and complex equation. She looked at me in passing, then settled on Jack.
‘Jack!’ she shouted, stumbling out of the house and grabbing him by the knees. ‘Jack!’
‘Coming in then?’ asked Tony. ‘Caz is just getting ready. She’s been getting ready for an hour or two, so she should be down before nightfall. I was doing the back garden. Bring them through, being as it’s a nice day. We can stay out there.’
I hadn’t noticed, but it was a nice day. The sky was a startling blue and there were few clouds, none much larger or greyer than an aircraft carrier. The wind was warm.
Tony led us to the back garden. It was one of those long patches of scrubland that older houses have, ten feet across but seemingly miles long. Mossy red brick walls ran down its sides, ending at a collapsing fence in the far distance. A scrawny lawn occupied the first twenty yards. After that things looked wilder. A shed was leaning into itself. There was evidence of gardening close to the house, a fork and spade leaning against the wall, a set of shallow trenches. I gave the trenches a professional examination. They looked fine.
A hutch stood on a trestle table. Something inside it looked at me then scurried out of sight.
‘Jack!’ said Samantha. ‘See the pigs.’
She dragged him to the hutch. It emitted squeals.
‘Oh yeah, guinea pigs,’ he said. ‘I had some when I was little. Friendly things. What’s their names then, trouble?’
He hoisted Samantha into the air.
‘That one’s Jack,’ she said. ‘That one’s not.’
‘What’s that one?’
‘Not Jack.’
‘Right you are then,’ and he popped her back onto the lawn. ‘This is Liam come round to see you. Hey Liam, don’t hide round there.’
Liam had turned shy. Tony had started messing with his trenches. They looked very professional.
It’s not as easy as it sounds, digging trenches. It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing them for foundations or just for gardening, what you want is nice straight sides and a good level bottom. The trouble is, soil doesn’t like being in straight lines, it likes to be in a mess. It’s happiest when it can get on a shoe and get itself onto an expensive carpet, but if that’s not an option, it’ll settle for settling. You have to dig at an angle and press the edges flat, compressing the soil. That holds it together. That’s how to get straight e
dges on your trenches.
These were very straight.
‘Did you do those?’ I asked.
‘Who else?’ asked Tony. ‘I had some advice about it though. Hadn’t done any digging before. ’Cept at the beach, sandcastles and that.’
‘Nice job,’ I told him. He looked pleased.
Liam approached Samantha. She looked at him doubtfully. I could understand that.
‘Jack?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Jack, ‘this is Liam. He’s come to see you. Tell you what, you see your guinea pigs?’
She nodded.
‘Well let’s call the other one Liam. Jack and Liam, that’s easy to remember. Jack’s the big handsome one, and Liam isn’t.’
Liam didn’t seem fazed by any of this. He was looking into the hutch. The guinea pigs – Jack and Liam – looked back at him, chattering. Samantha prodded him.
‘Look at that,’ said Jack. ‘Women after him already. Must be in the blood. I can’t walk down the road myself without women throwing themselves at me.’
‘Throwing themselves under buses, more likely.’
‘Jack!’ said Samantha, giving Liam a playful shove. Liam giggled and suddenly sat in the soil.
‘Liam mate, I don’t think we want to sit in the dirt, do we? What’s your mother going to say when I get you home?’
Jack hauled Liam upright and passed him back into Samantha’s clutches. I leaned down to look at the guinea pigs. They were both brown and white and large. One had short fur, the other looked like an escaped beard.
‘I thought they were smaller than this,’ I said. Tony sometimes bought things off men in pubs. Perhaps someone had sold him a brace of beavers.
‘I thought they were, too,’ said Tony. ‘I remembered them being about the size of hamsters. They’re probably crossbreeds. Half bear or something.’
The guinea pigs looked at me and chattered to one another.
‘This one must be Jack,’ I said, choosing the hairier one.
‘Jack!’ agreed Samantha. Perhaps she’d call everyone Jack. I couldn’t decide whether that would make life more or less complicated.
‘No,’ said Jack, ‘the other one’s Jack. This is Liam.’
‘I’m going to do a run for them, for when the weather’s warmer,’ said Tony. ‘Not enough room for them in there. Look at the size of them.’
‘Are you going to do anything with the other end? Down there where that shed is?’
‘Haven’t thought about it really.’ He leant on his spade and wiped his forehead. ‘Don’t know what’s keeping Caz,’ he said after a pause. ‘She might not be down. Things to think about, you know.’
I did know. Family things. You never get clear of them. There I was, mortgage and job, amicable relations with the B&S Building Society, a fully trained trench digger and still I was as tied to my family as I had been when I was three weeks old and relying on them for everything. There didn’t seem to be a week that didn’t contain news of one or more relatives discovering worrying lumps or forgetting where the garden was. Cousins got married, sometimes to one another, and produced children. I had to buy more Christmas presents every year, but every year I got fewer back. I could only be sure of getting two presents. One of those would be from me, and it’d be something I wanted. The other one would be from Jack, and it would be something impractical – an empty budgie cage, say, or a heavy ring designed to be inserted somewhere tender. I didn’t think I’d be getting a present off Jack this year. I might get something from Judy if we lasted until Christmas. I didn’t know if I deserved to keep her. A night or two before I’d been comparing her to Lisa and she’d been coming second in all categories. OK in a big field, bad when there are only two competitors. I knew that Judy wouldn’t be happy to know that. I wanted her to be happy. She was stunning. She was marble, alabaster, a figurine. I wanted to keep her somewhere and look upon her and perhaps knock out bad poetry. I wanted to adore her.
I wanted to tear Lisa’s clothes off and fuck her on the kitchen floor.
I decided that these were different things – spiritual and physical, perhaps – and that because of that, I wasn’t actually being mentally unfaithful. I thought of them in different ways. I’ve never been unfaithful. I’ve been around unfaithful people and it doesn’t work. An affair doesn’t work. It’s like the killer whale they used to have at Dudley Zoo. It’s just too big to fit in there and sooner or later it gets out and there’s mayhem.
They really did used to have a killer whale at Dudley Zoo. It was called Cuddles and it regularly bit its keepers. It used to live in a tank about the size of the children’s paddling pool in the park. Trembling wet-suited keepers would clamber into the pool to play a few games and emerge bleeding from huge bite wounds.
Cuddles the killer whale was the most popular attraction in Dudley Zoo.
Anyway, that’s what affairs are like, large mad fish in very small tanks. The very least that will happen is the carpet getting wet.
After an hour or so Tony began to drop hints about getting on with the gardening.
‘If you cleared off I could get on with the gardening,’ he said.
‘We’d better be getting off then,’ I said. ‘It’ll be time for Liam’s tea soon. What’re you having?’
Liam ignored me.
‘So long then, princess,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll be back soon. Shall I bring this little fellow to see you?’
‘No,’ said Samantha.
‘And what about Liam?’ he asked, giving me an evil grin.
‘Jack!’ said Samantha.
‘Liam,’ said Jack. ‘I’m Jack. I’m taller than Liam and more charming.’
‘Jack!’ said Samantha. I was still unhappy that it seemed to be her favourite name. What was wrong with Sam? That was a terrific name. Jack was the sort of name you’d give to a donkey, and not necessarily a favourite one.
‘Right then, fair enough. I’ll see you. And you too, Tone. Kisses to the missus.’
Tony said goodbye to Jack, gave Liam a pat on the head, waved vaguely in my direction and turned his attention back to his trenches. Samantha went and peered at the guinea pigs, and they peered at her.
I said goodbye to her.
‘Jack!’ she said.
The drive back was terrifying. I’d imagined that we’d been having a nice afternoon, or at least a less obviously horrible one. Meeting the family, doing the garden – a spot of real life like you find in sitcoms, where problems last half an hour or less. Everything seemed to be on an even keel.
If anyone could break the spell, it was Jack.
‘I had to talk to someone,’ he said out of the blue. I looked at him. He was looking straight ahead, keeping his eyes on the road. He was looking where he was going. I didn’t think I wanted to go there. Usually, he paid no attention to the road. He’d glance at it once in a while, then fiddle with the radio or the heating. He was looking at the road so that he wouldn’t have to look at me. He was going to spoil my afternoon.
‘I had to tell someone,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t cope with it any more. The things I remembered …’
I looked at Liam, strapped into a child’s seat. He’d found something interesting in his nose and he was busy distributing it around the back of the van. He wasn’t interested in the conversation. So, Jack had told someone. It didn’t have to be a disaster.
‘Who?’ I asked. Probably Lisa, I told myself, and she’d know he was mad. She’d have assumed that he was drunk or something. She was mad herself. Just as long as it wasn’t one of his drinking friends, like Eddie Finch. Eddie would have sold his grandmother to Idi Amin for a good story. It would be fine, I told myself, as long as it wasn’t –
‘Eddie Finch,’ said Jack. ‘I told him all about it. Everything we did.’
There you go, I thought. That’s the worst that can happen.
It wasn’t, of course. That was just the start of the fun.
PART FOUR
Sam, aged twenty
Chapter Nine
It was November. The nights were getting colder and darker. I had a thick coat, a scarf, gloves, and layers of underclothes. Jack was wearing the leather jacket he always wore over old faded clothes. He didn’t have any gloves. And scarves were out of the question.
There was a full moon. We were at the end of the old railway tracks leading to Dudley Port, an area of flat sand where the railway tracks end. There was nothing else there. There hasn’t been anything there since the last century.
There is now.
Jack was carrying a small sack, and in the sack were a few body parts. Some fingers and a few toes. Things that weren’t too wet. We’d learned the hard way that tongues made a mess when you removed them from their owner, and they made a mess all the way to the burial ground. Because fingers and toes have more hard than soft in them, they bleed out quickly. They’re also light. You wouldn’t want to carry an arm all the way across town. We steered clear of genitalia. We weren’t perverts. We left eyes where they were, too. In horror novels, eyeballs pop out without much effort. Someone hiccups and their eyes are in the soup. In the real world, they don’t come out intact. We experimented with a spoon but it really didn’t work. We tried using a vacuum cleaner, which worked but the eyeball vanished up the tube and into the cleaner. Neither of us felt like going through a vacuum cleaner bag. So we settled for fingers instead.
We needed to bury the body parts at the end of the tracks. That was in the parchment. Something of each victim had to be taken and buried there. The parchment was very specific about some things. The end of the railway line was specified. Jack asked to see the parchment every now and then, but he wasn’t at a suitable level. He was good for carrying body parts and bumping off victims. He hadn’t got the hang of much else. This was the fifth and last victim. Five was the specified number. It had been foretold.
Seeing the Wires Page 12