The Face That Must Die

by Ramsey Campbell

  The detective’s voice brought her out of her memories. “Damnation,” he muttered without turning. “I’ve got your clay under my nails. May I wash my hands?”

  “ Of course you can. There’s soap in the kitchen.”

  He went slowly, as though still parading the absence of his limp. “Can you find it?” she called. “Just by the knives in the sink.”

  Receiving no reply, she was making to show him when he said beyond the door “Have I dropped my notebook out there?”

  She searched the floor. Anything could hide amid the collage of her flat. “I don’t think so,” she called at last. “What does it look like?”

  He emerged, and went to the table. “Here it is,” he said. Her view was blocked, but she saw him slip an object into his pocket.

  She brought him tea, milked and sugared. Four spoonfuls! What a sweet tooth! It was like one of the inevitable idiosyncrasies novelists gave their detectives. She headed at once for the subject she wanted to discuss. “Isn’t it dreadful, playing a trick like that on Roy,” she said.

  “ You wouldn’t think there’d be such bigotry these days.”

  “ You’d be surprised how some people still feel.”

  “ Of course the police didn’t think he had anything to do with these murders, but having them check was upsetting enough.”

  His bright quick eyes fixed her. “Is that all he told you?”

  “ Just about the police. Why, is there something else?”

  His lips grew thin, reproving her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you mustn’t tell me. It’s just that this whole affair has been worrying me too. Roy thinks someone in the house was responsible. You don’t think that, do you?”

  He gazed at her. After a while he said “Yes, I’m afraid someone in this building is definitely implicated.”

  She stared depressed into her tea. Its whirling, a roulette of bubbles, slowed. She felt that ill luck and viciousness had invaded the house. She couldn’t control her suspicions: the culprit must be the almost invisible man on the ground floor, The Bell With No Name. The names she and Cathy had given him didn’t seem so funny now.

  The detective finished his tea and handed her the cup. “I’ll tell Roy you were here, shall I?” she said.

  At once his hand burrowed into his pocket. He must be making sure he hadn’t forgotten his notebook again. “Look,” he said abruptly, “I’d like to ask a favour of you. I shouldn’t really have told you as much as I have. Would you mind not mentioning you saw me?”

  It might lose him his assignment, at that. No doubt his faded overcoat was only a kind of disguise, but at that moment it made him look rather pitiful, vulnerable. “It was my fault,” she said. “I wouldn’t let you out of the porch. All right, I promise I won’t tell him.”

  She watched him down the stairs. Now the slowness of his walk looked triumphant, a march. Before closing the front door he glanced up at her. “Thank you for everything,” he called.

  ***

  Chapter X

  Horridge closed the dictionary and gazed at it as though it were a treasure chest. Around him people searched the library shelves for adventure, horror, romance, crime. None of them was aware of his triumph. He sat gazing out at Cantril Farm, smiling to himself.

  The dictionary gave only one definition of “fanny”: buttocks. That in itself showed how corrupt the painter was, to change her name to that – corrupted by Craig, perhaps. But the next entry in the dictionary was even more suggestive. Fanny Adams had been a girl murdered and cut up in 1812. Could any other coincidence have linked the painter to Craig so closely? Why, if you looked at it correctly, it even confirmed that Craig was the killer.

  Not that confirmation was needed. Once again the creature had betrayed himself by silence: he hadn’t told the woman about Horridge’s phone calls. So she wasn’t wholly in his confidence – but that didn’t make her any less contemptible. No pang of sympathy for her would distract Horridge from what he planned to do.

  He’d seen at once what kind of woman she was, with her face made up to look younger than forty, her oversized earrings that looked rusted by her red hair, her blouse flamboyant as a scrawled wall: a woman with no taste or breeding. Everything had confirmed his first impression: the audience she boasted of wanting to reach, the shirking class; her outrage that poor defenceless Craig was being made to see what people thought of him; her painting itself, all that modern rubbish – it was entirely typical that she couldn’t even describe people when asked. Of course that was something he could be thankful for.

  Most inexcusable of all had been her suggestion that he was a friend of Craig’s – though he was grudgingly grateful to her for telling him that he was a detective. She’d seemed almost eager to help him triumph. He’d enjoyed few things so much as deluding her. Everything had been on his side, for a change. After his ruse in her flat, he felt sure of victory.

  Now he must visit old Mr Fearon. Suppose Mr Fearon was dead? It had been years since Horridge had seen him. Still, he felt too justified to believe he would be thwarted now. He returned the dictionary to its shelf, patting its spine gratefully, and left.

  He’d learned Mr Fearon’s address by heart the day he had met the old man in the L-shaped street of shops and recognised him from years ago in Boaler Street. He knew nobody else in Cantril Farm. He’d clung to that knowledge in case he ever needed it.

  Passing buses marked the main road. When he headed for it, buildings constantly blocked his way. Beside the path, grassed patches were sown with broken glass. He read the names on the blocks of flats and houses: Cremorne Hey, Boode Croft, Custley Hey. What kind of language was that? Were they trying to get rid of English?

  Now he could see his destination, on the far side of the main road. He couldn’t go straight to it, though a path led across grass to a gap in the railings. He’d been tricked by these paths before: they led you onto the main road and abandoned you there, on the wrong side of the railings, without a pavement. Sometimes he thought that the planners had faked those paths to teach people to obey without questioning.

  He had to follow the walkway, a dried-up valley of concrete which plunged beneath the road. The tunnel was treacherous with mud and litter; the walls were untidy webs of graffiti. All the overhead lights had been ripped out. He stumbled through, holding his breath; the place smelled like an open sewer.

  On the far side he clambered up concrete steps. Fragments of glass squeaked and cracked underfoot. Nearly there now. But did the name on the wall before him refer to the entire block? And where was 81?

  He hurried beside the pebble-dashed wall, past displayed rooms. He peered through passages that opened between flats. There it was, at the far side of an inner square of concrete: an L-shaped flat, exposed at both ends by passages. Once before he’d found himself on this side of the main road, and had determined to see where Mr Fearon lived. The location reminded him of his own.

  He made for the flat. Somewhere there was a faint metallic screeching. He was beneath the concrete stairway to the upper flat, and ready to knock on the door, before he saw that this wasn’t 81 at all. He recoiled, disoriented. Then he saw that the corners of the square were identical. He’d simply mistaken the corner – but none of the flats was 81.

  He could feel his nerves tightening like a net. Had he come too far, beyond the territory whose name he’d read on the wall? There must be dozens of places in the concrete maze that looked just like 81. A dread which he’d tried to suppress was creeping into his thoughts – that sometime, perhaps in fog, he would come home and be unable to distinguish his own flat.

  Anonymity surrounded him. The muffled screeching persisted, scraping at his nerves. That was the only sign of life here: the voice of a machine. What kind of machine? A bacon-slicer – no, not quite. Suddenly he remembered that he’d heard such a sound on Boaler Street, in Mr Fearon’s shop.

  He limped towards the sound. Beyond one passage was a square, which seemed indistinguishable from the square he wa
s leaving. From a corner flat came the screeching. He had to approach close before he could read the number, on an oval plaque smaller than an egg: 81. He hadn’t strayed from the right path for long.

  He knocked, knocked louder. The screeching faltered, and failed. After a while the blue flowers on the plastic curtains stirred, and an old face peered between them. The flowers sagged back into place; the face reappeared, blurred and surrounded by separated blobs of its flesh, in the frosted glass of the door. At last the door opened.

  The old man gripped the doorframe, both barring the way and supporting himself, and glared a challenge. Did he think Horridge was a complaining neighbour? He was silent for so long that Horridge wasn’t sure he recognised him. Could this face really have been Mr Fearon’s before it had shrunken inwards so? Then the old man said “You’re Frank Horridge’s son.”

  It didn’t sound like an invitation to enter – more like the solution to an annoying problem. A frown joined his stare, urging his visitor to come to the point. Horridge had hoped to ask him a favour in memory of Boaler Street, but hadn’t expected him to be so crabby. He could only say like any other customer “Could you cut me some keys?”

  The old man looked suspicious. Had he forgotten how Horridge knew he cut keys? At last he grumbled “I’m not supposed to do that, at home, you know.” But he relinquished the doorframe and turned his back on Horridge, who ventured to follow him.

  In the main room the overhead light blazed. Dusty tassels dangled from the lampshade. Bluish daylight seeped through the curtains. Mr Fearon pulled back a shabby screen to reveal his cutter’s tools, as though he had been hiding them from the portrait of Christ on the wall, gazing out of the glittery rays of his halo. The business seemed furtive – but Horridge refused to be made to feel like a criminal. What he was doing was right and necessary.

  He took out the moulds. He had a moment of panic: suppose they had been squashed out of shape in his pocket? At first he’d protected them with the cards that bore the photographs, and now they were wrapped in newspaper. He unwrapped them and handed them over.

  The old man hardly glanced at them. “These are for your flat, are they?”

  “ Yes, of course. I made these impressions a long time ago, in case I ever lost my keys.”

  “ It’s the first place I’ve seen round here with two Yale locks in it.”

  Horridge felt as though a steel trap had sprung in his belly. “I like to keep my bedroom locked.” His polite determinedly unoffended tone sounded guilty to him.

  “ You don’t want to go locking interior doors. If you have burglars they’ll only break the locks and cause more damage.”

  That was none of his business. Though his body felt tightly entangled in nerves, Horridge refused to answer. After a while the old man stared hard at the moulds. “What kind of clay is this?”

  “ Just some that I used to play with.”

  He hadn’t anticipated that question; his lie was jerky, nervous. But his reference to the past seemed to mellow Mr Fearon. “Aye, those were the days,” the old man said. “It was a good street. You knew everyone then. Not like this bloody transit camp.” The sense of shared memories made him friendlier. “All right, I’ll make your keys for you. I’ll whiz round to you with them tomorrow. Whereabouts do you live?”

  Nobody must know where he lived, not now.

  The skin of Horridge’s face felt as though it were shrinking. “If it’s all the same to you,” he managed to say between stiffening lips, “I’ll wait for them.”

  “ Well, it’s not the same to me at all. It’s a damned long job, son. Did you know that?”

  “ No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.” Before the old man could win the conversation, he added hastily “It’s urgent, you see. I can’t get into the house without it.”

  “ You’ll just want the front door key, then. Which one is that?”

  Oh God. God, no. Could the old man see the sweat exploding all over Horridge’s body? “I won’t be able to get into my bedroom either,” he complained.

  “ You’re in a bad way, aren’t you?”

  Unsure what the comment referred to, Horridge didn’t dare answer. “All right, I’ll do it now,” the old man sighed at last, shaking his head. “Just you wait there and don’t start getting restless. This is going to take longer than you think.”

  He plodded behind the screen, and drew it closed behind him. Eventually he emerged, bearing some object which he concealed from Horridge, and trudged into the kitchen. Horridge heard the flare of gas, and its monotonous breath, sometimes interrupted. After a considerable time Mr Fearon pottered back. The screen creaked shut.

  His comings and goings seemed to dawdle on for hours. Each time he appeared he made some remark, as though he’d spent the interval thinking of it. “I suppose you still miss your father. Always good for a laugh, old Frank.”

  “ There aren’t many like him these days.”

  “ Brought you up single-handed and looked after you when you had the accident, with never a word of complaint.”

  Horridge could only agree inarticulately; he felt at the mercy of the old man’s goodwill. Once Mr Fearon said “Getting much work?” Perhaps he was growing senile. And once, to Horridge’s dismay, he said “Just keep your ears open for the door. I’ve got someone coming for keys.”

  The cramped room, the old man’s small sounds which Horridge could neither ignore nor interpret, his infuriating slowness, his secrecy which preyed on Horridge’s imagination – everything reminded him of life with his father. His hands moved restlessly, neither quite opening nor becoming fists: he felt he was a puppet of his nerves. When the metallic shrieking began, it seemed to drill deep into his teeth. At least it meant that the ordeal was almost over, for the old man soon emerged with two keys. Horridge clasped them gratefully. “How much do I owe you?”

  “ How much is it worth to you?”

  What was that supposed to mean? What did his stare imply? Perhaps that he wouldn’t ask a direct question so long as his customer wasn’t too blatant. Angry to be made to feel guilt but helpless, Horridge had no idea what to reply.

  At last the old man said wearily “Oh, give us two quid. That won’t break you, will it?”

  Perhaps he’d hoped to be offered more – but he could be no poorer than Horridge. He crumpled the notes in his hand as if they were litter, and plodded to let Horridge out. But Horridge said “I’d like my impressions back, please.”

  “ Right enough, you wouldn’t want to be leaving them. They’re no use to anyone now, son. I had to crack them.”

  “ I’d still like the clay.”

  Not until he was crossing the third square of concrete patched with uncombed grass did he realise why Mr Fearon had stared sideways at him. The old man felt suspected now: he thought Horridge hadn’t trusted him to dispose of the clay. Horridge grinned to himself as he limped to the shops. Mr Fearon wouldn’t dare betray him.

  Now he must act fast, just in case the painter mentioned him to Craig despite her promise. After all, why had so many pieces been cut out of the newspapers in her flat? Could she have been making sure that none of her visitors saw Craig’s face? He bought a plastic wallet full of marker pens and hurried to his flat.

  He lifted his newspapers from their lair. Eventually he found the photograph: the wardrobe in which the first victim had been discovered, with one word hacked out of the wood of the door: BITCH.

  He stared at his blank piece of cardboard, then he grinned. Of course! He took it to the window, and gazed at the graffiti that crawled over the fence. He’d never thought he would be grateful for that eyesore. But now, as he wrote BITCH with the pens, he copied the discords of colour, adding flourishes and elaborations as his memory prompted. At last he pinned the notice to his bedroom door and admired his handiwork. It reminded him of the paintings that cluttered the walls in the painter’s flat. He grinned, wiping his hands. He was convinced, and he was sure his victim would be: the writing looked exactly like Fanny Adamson’s sign
ature.

  ***

  Chapter XI

  Craig had one foot in the bath when the telephone rang.

  The water was warm around his ankle. Should he answer the call, and perhaps be made to feel worse? By the time he had dried his foot and inserted it into his slipper, the ringing had ceased. He sank into the water, grateful for its soothing embrace. He’d had a bad enough day already.

  There had been another letter from the intolerable pensioner. Craig’s colleagues read out their hostile correspondence or passed it around the long Inland Revenue office, but the letters depressed him too much for that. “Maybe if you have time between your cups of tea you’ll deign to work out how much tax you owe me on these dividends.” That was bearable; years ago, bitterly gleeful, Craig had written DIFFICULT TAXPAYER in red ink on the man’s control card. But there was always the postscript: “Haven’t you anyone in your department who can write legibly?”

  “ When are you going to buy me new glasses?” Craig knew his poor handwriting was growing worse – hardly surprising, under all the circumstances.

  Still, he might have read the letter out if he had been sure of his colleagues, except that he no longer knew himself. One police visit and three phone calls had done that. Not since his marriage had he felt so uncertain how to behave.

  He tried to relax, to feel like the water. At least the third-floor discotheque wasn’t thumping overhead; they must all be out, thank heaven. Though he admired Cathy: a capable woman. She needed to be, with that husband of hers.

  Had that been true of Daphne? Perhaps she hadn’t been quite capable enough. Memories floated up. Of late they had been uncomfortably vivid, sharp with guilt. Perhaps the lulling of the water might soften them. He knew he couldn’t elude them.

  Had he really wanted to marry? He’d thought so then, but had that come of a need to prove he could have a girlfriend? Still, he’d grown fond of Daphne; they’d talked and hummed Mozart together, to the amusement of their colleagues; in restaurants, they were happy to be quiet together as well as to chat. Best of all, she’d seemed content with affection rather than outright sex.