When merciful unconsciousness swept down upon me, I assumed that I reached the end. I still felt triumphant, as if that single moment of bright-lit time was compensation for all that had happened to me, and all that might have happened. I was in great pain, but I felt that I had won, and that my victory was a victory for reason and sanity over unnatural hunger and foul disease.
It should have been the end.
If the world had only been the kind of world it ought to have been—the kind of world I had always believed in; the kind of world all men of wisdom believe in—it would have been the end.
But it wasn't.
Unfortunately—not to mention comically, tragically and astonishingly—it wasn't the end at all.
Tertiary Phase:
Derangement
1
I woke up to the sound of Doktor Avalanche pounding away, and the whole group joining in with Andrew Eldritch to sing the chorus of ‘More'. I was singing along with it in my head and I knew that I must have been singing along, subliminally, for quite some time. I must have sung along all the way through ‘Dr Jeep’ and, before that, ‘I Don't Exist When You Don't See Me'.
I opened my eyes, but at first I couldn't see anything. It was as dark as the dead of night. Part of me was still in the borderlands, bathing in the glory of the light. Part of me was clinging to the owls, reluctant to come back to the dull, cold world. But I could hear quite clearly, and what I heard beyond the insistent pounding of the music was the voice of my sister Sharon, screeching: ‘It worked! I knew it would work!'
After that, the voices became confused. People were moving about, calling in the distance. The music was too loud; I couldn't make out what was being said or by whom.
I kept my eyes open and slowly let the real light in. It was bright enough, I suppose, but it seemed weak and ochreous by comparison with the light which had caged me for so long, in the world of the owls.
Sharon was there, bending over me, trying to remove the Walkman from my ears. In the end, she succeeded. The urgent clamour of the Sisters of Mercy died away to that tinny pulsebeat which always leaks annoyingly out of other people's personal stereos.
I knew that Sharon had stolen the idea from something we'd seen on TV. She had put the earpieces of her Walkman to my ears, loaded with the tape which would be most familiar to me—the tape which was most certain to remind me of home, of her, of the great wide world. She'd fastened on the idea that people in comas could be coaxed out them by familiar sounds, and the doctor—figuring, no doubt, that it couldn't possibly do any harm—had given her the go-ahead. And who could ever say, now, that it hadn't worked? Who could ever convince her that my recovery at that particular moment had had nothing to do with the music? Why should anyone even want to?
Sharon was trying to kiss me, and Mum was trying to pull her away. I turned my head in bewilderment, not knowing which of them to look at. I saw Sharon's eyes fill with tears. Then, it seemed, pandemonium broke loose. The moment of clarity was lost in utter confusion.
It isn't easy to return to the world after being apart from it for so long. It's hard to turn the tap which stems the flood tides of sensation and memory, to get everything under control. It's even harder when those about you, heedless of the good advice of Kipling's celebrated poem, are busily losing their heads and clamouring for attention.
Everybody wanted to be the first to welcome me, first to talk to me, first to ask me questions. The nurse, being on her home ground, came in first by a short head. She shooed my oversolicitous relatives away, begging them to wait for someone called Dr Fellowes, who was supposedly ‘on his way down'. Mum consented to be shooed as far as the wall, but continued babbling all the while.
When the doctor arrived, he completed the expulsion so that he and the nurse could perform whatever arcane rituals they considered necessary. They took my pulse and peered into my eyes and asked me elementary questions in words of one syllable to see whether I could understand and talk to them. They did some other things, too, with the contraptions that had been stuck into me and the various recording devices I'd been hooked up to. It was all rather undignified, and more than a little painful. It seemed to take a ridiculously long time, too, but I guess doctors have to be seen to be doing something when patients come out of comas, or people would begin to suspect that they aren't really in control.
'I'm okay,’ I told them, when they'd finished. ‘I feel fine.’ I didn't know what all the fuss was about. Somehow, I'd assumed that all the time I'd spent in the world of the owls had been merely subjective. I had no idea at all how long I'd been asleep.
Mum and Sharon were allowed back in when Dr Fellowes had gone through the motions, but they'd hardly had time to tell me how worried they'd been, and to explain that Dad had driven home so that he could go back to work, before the shooing started all over again.
This time, it was the police who took over. Theirs was, after all, the most serious business requiring my urgent attention.
There were two of them: a plain-clothes detective sergeant named Miller, and a uniformed WPC named Linton. They seemed irredeemably dull and ordinary, although they were both a little flushed. They must have rushed from the station at top speed.
'I'm sorry to bother you when the doctor probably needs to take a closer look at you, and when your family wants to be with you,’ said Miller, ‘but it's vitally important that you tell us everything you can about what happened to you. Do you understand that, Anne?'
'Yes,’ I said. My voice sounded strange. I hadn't quite got the hang of speaking yet.
'Do you remember what happened to you?'
Oddly enough, I hadn't remembered, until he asked. I knew that there was a reason why the police wanted to see me, but I hadn't actually reminded myself what it was. Now, though, I remembered.
Maldureve had let me down. He hadn't come to save me.
'I was attacked,’ I said. ‘In the Marquis of Membury's Garden.'
The detective let out a sigh of relief, as if he'd been more than half convinced that I wouldn't remember anything at all.
'Did you see the man who attacked you, Anne?’ he said, urgently. ‘Can you describe him?'
I had heard so many stories about people blanking such things out, and losing all consciousness of them, that I was mildly astonished by how easily the memory came floating back into my head. I had been on a long journey, and yet it was all still there, as fresh as if it had happened moments before. All that was missing was the fear. The memory was crystal clear, but it was like a movie I'd seen, not something that had actually happened to me. I could remember everything, quite dispassionately.
The young WPC reached out and took my hand, squeezing it reassuringly.
'I'm sorry, Anne,’ said Miller, insincerely. The urgency that was in him drowned out any possibility of sorrow; he had a hunger for answers which had to be appeased. ‘We have to know, and there isn't any time to waste. Did you see the man who cut you? Can you tell us who it was?'
'No,’ I said, faintly. ‘It was too dark. He grabbed me from behind. I didn't see his face.'
'Are you sure?’ said Miller, intently. ‘Are you sure you didn't know him?'
'No,’ I said, before realising that it would sound ambiguous. ‘I mean, of course I didn't know him. I didn't see him, either. He spoke to me, but I didn't recognize his voice.'
'What did he say?’ the detective asked. ‘Exactly, if you can.'
I could. I paused a for a few seconds, to make perfectly certain, and then I told him. ‘He said: “Shut up! Keep quiet or I'll cut you.” Then, he said: “Get down, you bitch. Get down, you filthy, fucking bitch!” Exactly. That's exactly what he said. If I ever hear his voice again, I'll know him. I think I'd know him again. I'm sure of it.'
I couldn't understand why DS Miller looked annoyed. I couldn't understand why he looked at me as if he were half convinced that I was lying.
'What else do you remember, Anne?’ said the policewoman gently. ‘What else can you tell us abo
ut him?'
I hesitated again, and then spoke slowly, trying all the while to remember every last detail. I wanted to make certain that what I said was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
'He wore gloves,’ I said. ‘Thick woollen gloves. They were dirty—soiled. I could smell and taste the soil when he put his hand over my mouth. He had bad breath. His body was solid and hard. Muscular. But he wasn't tall. Not for a man. He was bigger than me, but not much. He had a knife. It wasn't long, but it had a sharp edge. A “kitchen devil", I think. He cut me. Here.'
As I spoke the last few words I put my hand up to my neck to feel the wound. I no longer expected it to be painful. If it had had stitches put in it, the stitches had been removed or had dissolved. The wound was healing well. What I could feel was just a scar.
'It's okay, Anne,’ said WPC Linton. ‘It'll show, but it isn't bad. You needed a blood transfusion, but you're fine. You should have recovered consciousness a week ago, the day after the operation, but maybe your body felt that it needed time.'
Had I really been unconscious for a whole week? Longer than that, apparently.
The detective thought all this was a waste of time. ‘Miss Charet,’ he said, in a tone that was almost stern enough to be accusative, ‘I'm sorry, but I have to be quite clear about this. Is there any possibility that the man who attacked you was Gil Molari?'
I stared at him, and the stare made him move back slightly.
'Gil?’ I said. ‘No, it certainly wasn't Gil. Why would he?'
'Are you absolutely certain?’ said Miller, apparently hoping against hope that I wasn't.
'Yes,’ I said. ‘It didn't sound like Gil and it didn't feel like Gil. Everything was wrong: his height, the texture of his body. Everything. Gil was home in bed, with a bad cold. Why on earth should you think it might have been Gil?'
It was their turn to hesitate. The policewoman seemed disapproving of Miller's tactlessness, but there was something conspiratorial in their exchange of glances, affirming that they both knew something I didn't, and that neither of them wanted to be the one to tell me.
'Anne,’ said Miller, much more softly, ‘you aren't the only one who was attacked. Two days later, a little girl was found dead less than ten yards from the spot where you were attacked. I think you knew her mother, Mrs Leigh. Cynthia Leigh.'
I was still staring. ‘Janine?’ I said, hesitantly. ‘Janine Leigh is dead?'
'Gil Molari is dead too,’ said Detective Sergeant Miller, with a curiously flat and weary inflection. ‘He committed suicide, the same day the girl was murdered. He cut his throat. He'd soaked his flat in petrol, and he set fire to it just before he did it.'
I wanted to go on staring, to remain absolutely stock-still, as if by refusing to move I could freeze time in its tracks. I couldn't do it. Tears filled my eyes, and I suddenly felt desperately weak. I ought to have wondered whether I might still be unconscious and dreaming, but the reality of the world was sharply obvious to me, and I couldn't muster the least defiant doubt to combat what the detective was saying.
In the end, I whispered: ‘You can't possibly think that Gil killed Janine.'
'We're not saying that he did,’ said Miller, awkwardly. ‘He spoke to the girl and her mother outside Wombwell House, but we don't know his movements for about three-quarters of an hour after that, until he turned up again at the laboratory where he worked.'
'We think he might have been the last person to see her,’ WPC Linton put in. ‘If he was still around when she came out of the building. But there's no real evidence to link him with the murder. None at all.'
The detective sergeant didn't seem to approve of this intervention, but he let it pass.
'I'm a policeman,’ he said. ‘I have to ask these questions, and I can't ask Gil Molari anything. He spoke to you on the day you were attacked; he spoke to the little girl not thirty minutes before she was killed. He may have been the last person to see her alive, and he did a very thorough job of killing himself within a couple of hours of her murder. I have to investigate all the possibilities. If Gil Molari didn't do it—if this man who attacked you also killed the little girl—then we still have a very dangerous and violent person running around, who might very well kill again. You see why I have to be sure?'
I could see that he had hoped that it was Gil, so that he could close both cases. But it hadn't been Gil who attacked me. I knew that, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
'We haven't found a murder weapon,’ said the policewoman, who was still trying to soften the blow for me. ‘We don't even know what kind of weapon we're looking for. According to the postmortem, the little girl lost a lot of blood, but it wasn't on the ground where she was found, so we're not even sure where she was killed, let alone by whom. We've been hoping that you might be able to help us. We desperately need any information that you can give us'
I shook my head, slowly. ‘That's all the description I can give you,’ I said.
'You see,’ Miller went on, ‘there's so much about this entire affair which seems to make no sense at all. All three of you—you, Molari and the little girl—ended up with cut throats. Both you and Gil had some weird kind of bruising to the throat even before you were cut. Gil told me that you have a nervous habit of picking at your throat, and that was what raised your bruise, but he couldn't explain his own. He didn't even seem to know that he had it. Can you explain that?'
'No,’ I said. It was the first lie I'd told, but I told it without hesitation. ‘That is ... I suppose I used to pick at my throat, when I was fidgety. Gil told me to stop doing it half a dozen times. He didn't do anything of that kind, though.'
Miller was still staring at me, accusatively. ‘This is all very weird, Anne,’ he said. ‘Very weird indeed. Do you have any idea why Gil Molari would want to kill himself, if he didn't kill the little girl?'
'No,’ I said. He wasn't satisfied with that, but there seemed little point in my insisting that Gil hadn't a care in the world, if he really was dead. ‘Perhaps it was an accident,’ I added, lamely.
'I watched him do it,’ said Miller, in a curiously aggressive tone. ‘It was no accident.’ After a pause, he went on: ‘I also talked to his supervisor. He said that Gil believed that he'd picked up some sort of virus in the lab where he worked—and that Gil was extremely disturbed by that belief. But the professor swears that he hadn't picked up any such virus, and that even if he had, it would only have given him a cold in the head. He did have a cold in the head, didn't he?'
'Yes,’ I said.
'I talked on the phone to his father and mother in California, and spoke to them face to face yesterday, when they arrived here to fly the body home. This is one hell of a mess, Anne. I just don't know what the hell is happening here. The newspapers are already talking about some kind of Jack the Ripper character—they seem to have taken it for granted that the guy who cut you also killed the girl. If that's so, he must be a real screwball to go back so soon to a spot where he'd already carried out one attack. The papers seem to feel that it was our fault ... that careless policing let it happen a second time. But I had just smashed through the door of your boyfriend's flat when he struck that match, Miss Charet, and I'll never forget what I saw in those few seconds. Something very strange is happening here, and I don't know what it is. I want you to help me, Anne. I want you to help me figure out why one person is in the hospital and two are dead.'
'I don't know,’ I said, faintly.
Detective Sergeant Miller looked as if he were about to contradict me. He looked almost as if he would have liked to charge me with having murdered both of them.
'She doesn't know, Derek,’ said WPC Linton, becoming anxious about his state of disturbance. ‘She really doesn't.'
The detective's pent-up anger seemed to ebb away. ‘I'm sorry, Anne,’ he said, eventually. ‘I was hoping that you'd be able to give us a little more, but I guess we have to be grateful for what we've got. If there's any other detail, however trivial, that comes back to
you, you have to let us know. If the man who attacked you is still out there, with one attempted rape and a murder already on his charge sheet, there's no knowing what he might do next.'
'No,’ I said, dutifully.
'Whatever impression you pick up from the papers,’ said the policewoman, still trying to be gentle with me, ‘this isn't the kind of thing that happens every day. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing for all of us. We were really hoping that you could help us ... and you have. It's not much of a description, but it's something. It gives us something to go on. We'll do our level best to catch him, Anne.'
'Yes,’ I said.
They got up from the bed as Dr Fellowes came back into the room. He looked at them as if to say that they'd had more than their ration of time. The policewoman let go of my hand, after one last reassuring squeeze. She really did care; I had the impression that she daren't let it show how much she felt for me. She thought that she understood how I must feel, to wake up to news like this.
'The inspector will probably want a word,’ said Miller. ‘And someone will be in to take a formal statement. I want you to think very hard, Anne. Anything else you remember ... anything at all.'
'It's important,’ WPC Linton added, for the sake of having the last word. ‘Take your time.'
When they had gone, I looked up at the doctor.
'Take it easy,’ he advised. ‘You may have been asleep for a very long time, but that doesn't mean you can't be tired. You'll have to stay in for a few days, while we see how you are. Just for observation, you understand. You're getting better, but it must have been a very nasty experience. You need time to get over it.'
He didn't know what he was talking about. He was just waffling away, for want of something better to say or do. I suppose that he'd been practising that kind of hopeful non-activity all his life, in between those brief occasions when actual treatment was being administered. He took my pulse again and looked into my eyes: more medical rituals, for the sake of reassurance. Then he went to the door and told Mum and Sharon that their turn had come around again, and that the field was entirely clear for their equally meaningless rituals of rejoicing.
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