A Thousand Cuts

by Simon Lelic

  Szajkowski, Bumfluff says again. He turns and writes it on the board. It’s from Poland.

  Poland, says Gi. Gi is Donovan’s mate. It’s short for Gideon, but if you call him Gideon he’ll tell everyone that you’ve got herpes. Poland, says Gi. Does that mean you’re one of them plumbers, one of them that are stealing our jobs? My old man reckons all you immigrants should be rounded up and locked away in camps.

  What’s your name? says Bumfluff. It’s going to take me some time to memorise them all but I may as well start with yours.

  Horace. My name’s Horace.

  Horace. Bumfluff checks his list. Horace what?

  Horace Morris.

  Horace Morris. Really. Well, I don’t see it. Are you sure that’s your name?

  Yes, sir, pretty sure. Horace Morris.

  Bumfluff nods. Well, he says. Well, Horace. I’m English. Like you. My father was English. My grandfather was a Pole.

  Then Donovan pipes up. He’s been wetting himself to, you can tell. Your grandfather was a what, sir?

  A Pole. It means he was Polish.

  Polish.

  Polish, not polish. From Poland.

  So that’s where it comes from. Shitecoughski. It comes from Poland. Shitecoughski.

  You’re not quite saying it right, says Bumfluff. It’s Szajkowski.

  Shitecoughski.

  Szajkowski.

  Shitecoughski.

  And this is hilarious because every time Donovan gets to the cough part he does it just a little bit louder, like he’s trying really hard to get it right. Bumfluff, he just stops. He stops and he’s standing there by the whiteboard and he’s still got his briefcase on the desk and he hasn’t even had a chance to sit down.

  Shitecoughski, goes Donovan. Shitecoughski. And then the others join in. You know, like they’re practising. That’s when Donovan drops the ski bit and then he drops the shite part and in the end he’s just going cough, cough, koff, k’off, uckoff, fuckoff, fuck off. And the ones who aren’t laughing, they’re doing it too, and Bumfluff he’s just standing there watching.

  I felt sorry for him at the time. I was laughing. I could tell you I was laughing just because everyone else was laughing but really I was laughing because it was funny. It was really funny. But I felt sorry for him too. Donovan, he usually leaves me alone. Most people, even his closest mates, all except Gi maybe, they all get it sometimes, they all have to take some grief. So I get it sometimes so I know what it’s like. They don’t hit the girls or anything but they tease them, they taunt them. Me, it’s usually about my hair. It’s blonde, right, which isn’t so bad but they can make just about anything seem bad, they can turn anything so it’s bad. Besides, it’s not what they say, is it? It’s that they’re saying it. And if they’re teasing you, everyone else is ignoring you, even your mates, even your best friends, and those days, that term or however long it goes on for, because for some people it never stops, it just goes on and on until God, I don’t know, until you leave school I guess, or until Donovan… Well. That whole time, though, you could be surrounded by people, your friends like, people you thought were your friends, and the sun could be shining and there could be a million pounds just lying there in the gutter and still you’d feel like the most miserable, the most unlucky, the most loneliest person in the world. You’re a policewoman. I don’t suppose anyone ever bullies you. But trust me. Being bullied: it bites.

  So I felt sorry for him. Which is weird too now. I felt sorry for him, this bloke who’s gone and shot these people, these people who haven’t done anything, except Donovan, these people who most of them are still just kids. Even Miss Staples was all right, she was nice. She got some grief about her name too, now I think about it, but she handled it right, she just laughed it off.

  Bumfluff, though. He didn’t laugh. Even if he had of laughed I don’t think it would of helped. Instead of laughing, he did the one thing he never should of done.

  But that was later. For a while he kept on going. He’s like, okay, yes, thank you, that’s enough. And most of the kids stop, the normal kids, but Donovan and his mates carry on, not as loud, not as obvious but they carry on. Bumfluff tries to get them interested, he says to Gi, you know it’s funny you should say that, what you said just then about immigrants.

  And Gi coughs and says, immigrants aren’t funny, sir, immigrants are a serious problem cough. They’re a pest. Cough.

  No, that’s not what I meant. It’s funny – it’s interesting – because we’re going to touch on that subject—

  You’re not supposed to touch us, sir, says Donovan. It’s not legal. Cough.

  The subject, says Bumfluff, we’re going to talk about that subject, about immigration and how we’re all immigrants really, we’re all descended from—

  Are you calling me a Paki? says Gi and the rest of us are like, shit, you can’t say that, and we’re looking over at Liyoni because she’s from Sri Lanka or Somalia or somewhere but she’s not saying anything obviously, she’s just staring at her desk.

  No, Horace Morris, I’m not. And please don’t use that word.

  Which word, sir? Cough.

  You know which word.

  I don’t, sir. Honestly. Cough. Tell me, sir. Say it.

  I will not say it and neither will you. If I hear you saying it again you’ll be explaining your choice of vocabulary in front of the headmaster.

  Gi shuts up after that and it’s quiet for a minute but then Donovan, he does this cough and his timing is brilliant and he does it really loudly and hardly disguises it at all. It was like… Well, I won’t do it. But you can imagine it, can’t you?

  So now Bumfluff sits down and he’s got his eyebrows raised and he’s got this expression on his face, you know that expression that teachers have, like it’s your time you’re wasting here not mine. So he’s sitting there with his eyebrows and it’s not making any difference, the coughing’s just getting louder and more and more people are doing it. I did it too. Just once. Samantha, she was sitting next to me, she did it first but she hid her mouth behind her hand. No one would of heard her but me. I did it and I did it properly and Samantha was like Lizzie! and Donovan saw me and he laughed and at the time I thought it was funny but afterwards, I dunno. Afterwards I wished I hadn’t of.

  He’s sitting there for a while. He’s sitting there and it looks for a minute or two like he knows what he’s doing, like he thinks he knows what he’s doing. But it doesn’t stop. The coughing. The normal kids stop but Donovan, Gi, Scott, Nigel and that lot, they don’t stop. So Bumfluff gets up after a while and says enough, that’s enough, and he’s looking at Donovan as he speaks but Donovan just holds out his palms. See, Donovan and Gi are on one side of the room and Scott and Nigel are on the other so when Bumfluff is looking at one pair he can’t see what the other pair are doing. He’s trying to watch the lot of them but he’s like a kid in front of a tennis match who can’t keep up with the ball.

  Someone throws something. I don’t know what it is but it’s wet. It’s wet and it hits Bumfluff right on the cheek, just above his beard. It makes this sound. Imagine chucking a fistful of mud at a wall. That’s the sound it makes.

  Bumfluff’s reaction: that’s what makes it worse. He’s shocked, I suppose. You would be shocked, wouldn’t you, if someone had chucked something at you and it hit you and you hadn’t seen it coming. He gives this yelp. His voice, it’s not that deep anyway, but this yelp is like a kid’s yelp, it’s like a little girl’s. I’d be embarrassed if I made that sound, do you know what I mean? I don’t even know if I could make that sound. No, it was higher than that. Wait. No, higher than that. See, I can’t do it. And as well as yelping, Bumfluff does this spasm, like you see special kids doing sometimes when they can’t control their limbs. Like this.

  We laugh. Everyone laughs. You would of laughed too, I promise you. You wouldn’t of been able to help it.

  It must of been quite loud. It must of been loud before then but by now it’s been going on for a bit of time. I s
uppose that’s why Miss Hobbs comes in. She knocks and she doesn’t wait and she opens the door. She says, Mr Szajkowski, is everything all right in here? We can hear all this commotion two classrooms away.

  I can’t really do her voice.

  Anyway, Bumfluff, he’s Hubba Bubba pink. I don’t know if he’s angry or embarrassed or hyperventilating or what but even through his beard you can make out the colour of his skin. That’s when he leaves. Which is basically the worst thing he could of done. Miss Hobbs is standing there with one hand on the doorframe and one hand holding the door and Bumfluff says, excuse me, and picks up his briefcase and says excuse me again and he’s gone. Just like that. And Donovan, I can see the look on his face. And I don’t know whether he’s been expecting Bumfluff to go but while the rest of us are just sitting there half dumb, Donovan, he gives this little wave.

  Bye sir, he says. Right in front of Hobbs and everything.

  .

  ‘He wasn’t the victim, Lucia. No one is going to accept that he was the victim.’ Philip offered her a cigarette. He frowned when she shook her head. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since New Year.’

  ‘You’re not jogging as well, are you? You look skinny. I can’t stand it when people give up smoking and take up jogging. It’s bad for their health. It’s bad for the economy.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ Lucia said.

  ‘No, I couldn’t possibly. I’d feel like I were goading you.’

  ‘Really, it’s fine. It doesn’t bother me. I’d rather you smoked.’

  But Philip put the cigarette case back into the pocket of his shirt. ‘You take my point, don’t you? This man killed three children. Children, Lucia. He killed their teacher. A mother. Even the Guardian had Szajkowski down as a monster.’

  ‘He was not a monster, Philip. It was monstrous, what he did, but he was not a monster. And since when did you start reading the Guardian?’

  ‘I don’t. One of our paralegals does. Or did, rather. I found a reason to fire him.’

  ‘Then you did him a favour. Probably saved his soul.’

  Philip retrieved his cigarettes. ‘I just want to hold one. I won’t light it, I promise.’

  Lucia waved. ‘Go ahead.’ She watched Philip open the case and prise a cigarette free. He let it nestle in his hand, where it looked as much a part of him as his little finger.

  ‘So maybe he wasn’t a monster,’ Philip said. ‘Maybe he was just crazy. Maybe it was this heat that drove him nuts. Maybe it’s the heat that’s affecting you.’

  The weekend was turning out to be as oppressive as the weathermen had predicted. The sunlight was thin, filtered as it was through the fumes and filth of the city, but the haze was like a blanket piled on bed sheets that were already too thick for the season. There was no natural breeze in Philip’s garden. There was no breeze anywhere. Philip, though, had created one. He and Lucia sat under a parasol on his weedless flagstone terrace, on teak furniture that had recently been oiled, with a fan directed at each of them. Lucia had scolded her host for the extravagance when she had arrived but she was relishing his resourcefulness now. For the first time in what seemed like weeks, she felt no compulsion to take a shower, to change her clothes, to shave the hair from her head. She felt comfortable. She felt comfortable and she felt ever so slightly drunk.

  ‘You’ll stay for lunch.’

  Lucia shook her head. ‘I can’t. I have to work.’

  ‘You have to decide, you mean.’

  ‘Same thing,’ Lucia said. She finished the last of her wine.

  ‘You’ll have another drink at least.’ He reached for the bottle.

  ‘Don’t you have any coffee?’

  Philip made to raise his cigarette to his lips. He caught himself, scowled at the unlit tip. ‘Who wants to drink coffee in weather like this? Here.’ He let the bottle drip into the ice bucket for a moment before offering it across the table.

  Lucia placed her hand across the rim of her glass. ‘Really. No more. It’s not even twelve o’clock.’

  ‘You should get up earlier. On Philip time, it’s already the middle of the afternoon.’

  ‘I should be going. I’m sorry. You know, for calling so out of the blue. For dropping by like this.’

  ‘Lucia dear. You’re no fun any more. No cigarettes, no alcohol before midday. I mean, really. Is this what they’ve been teaching you in the Met?’

  Lucia stood. ‘Your house is lovely. Your garden is lovely.’

  ‘Lucia,’ said Philip. He had placed his cigarette in his mouth and was frisking his clothes for a light. He found one. With a guilty shrug aimed at his guest, he struck a match and filled his lungs. ‘Lucia, sit down for a moment.’ He tilted his head as he exhaled but the fan behind him blew the smoke towards Lucia as though she were drawing it from the air herself.

  Lucia sat, breathed in.

  ‘You asked me for my opinion. My professional opinion.’

  Lucia nodded. ‘And you’ve given it.’

  ‘Yes but allow me a closing statement. There is no case, Lucia. The CPS won’t buy it. Your DCI won’t buy it. The pain you would cause would be for nothing, other than to make yourself look like a fool. Which,’ he added, flapping at the smoke with his hand, ‘is a secret that only you and I know.’

  ‘You’re telling me to keep my mouth shut.’

  ‘Au contraire. I wouldn’t dream of telling you anything. I’m wondering, that’s all.’

  ‘What are you wondering, Philip?’ She folded her arms.

  ‘I’m wondering, Lucia, whether this is about what you think it’s about. Whether in fact it’s about something else.’

  ‘Like what? What else would it be about?’

  ‘Like I don’t know. Like maybe you had a dog called Samuel when you were a child. Like maybe you feel some connection with this monster – this man, sorry – just because you read the same books.’

  Lucia uncrossed her arms. She dropped her hands into her lap, then tucked them under her armpits once again. ‘That’s ridiculous. I’m doing it – I’m considering it – because it’s my job, that’s all. This is my job.’

  ‘Your job, surely, is to do what that boss of yours tells you.’

  ‘You don’t think that. I know you don’t think that.’

  Philip shrugged. ‘Maybe not. But I do think you should let this one go.’

  Lucia rose once more from her chair. ‘Probably I will. I have to think about it but probably I will. Thanks. For the wine and for the advice. I’d better get going.’

  As Philip escorted Lucia to the door, he asked after David. Lucia was surprised it had taken him so long. ‘He’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’d imagine that he’s fine. I’m certain of it, in fact.’

  Philip tutted, put his arm round Lucia’s shoulder. ‘There’s someone else though. Tell me that there’s somebody else.’

  ‘Why does there need to be somebody else?’

  ‘Because you’re too young to be alone.’

  ‘I stopped being young when I turned thirty.’

  ‘Then you’re getting too old to be alone.’

  ‘You’re old. You’re alone.’

  ‘How dare you. I’m not even sixty. Besides, I’m young at heart. And I’m only alone when I choose to be.’

  Lucia stopped, kissed her host on the cheek. ‘Shame on you, Philip. Corrupting all those young boys.’

  ‘They’re solicitors, darling. Barristers. As you so charmingly alluded, they’re going to hell as it is.’

  It was late in the day when she reached the hospital but earlier than she had planned it to be. From Turnham Green she had taken the tube across London and picked up her car at her flat. She had driven to the school and pulled to the side of the road and for an hour at least she had sat. On her way home again she had stopped at the McDonald’s on the Bow Road and ordered French fries and a milkshake at the drive-through. She had parked in the car park and thought about eating but could not. Later, on her way to the hospital, the car had smelt of chip fat, whic
h had made her nauseous but hungry too. She had chewed some chewing gum – soft, flavourless, warm from her pocket – while her stomach had pleaded its case for proper sustenance.

  At the door to Elliot’s ward, she wished she had accepted Philip’s invitation to stay for lunch. She imagined salmon and salads and something with strawberries for dessert. They might still be seated on his terrace, three bottles down, a feverish city sunset tinting their reminiscences with sentiment. But at some point Philip would again have asked about David, and Lucia would have had to relive things she did not have the detachment yet to relive. That and the wine would have turned nostalgia into melancholy and when she thought about that she was glad she had not stayed. She wished instead that she had drunk the chocolate milkshake, maybe eaten a few of the chips.

  The security glass was cold against her cheek. She could see Elliot in his bed, sitting upright but with his head bowed. There was a woman perched next to him and she too was staring at her hands. The woman looked like Elliot. No, that was not quite accurate. The woman had the same colour hair as Elliot did. That, and their bearing, was what made them seem so alike. The two of them might have been praying. Perhaps, thought Lucia, that was what they were doing.

  She should go, she told herself, but she did not move. She watched the boy. She watched his mouth, as resolutely closed as it had been on the previous occasion that Lucia had visited. They might have stitched it shut when they sealed his wound.

  The woman was saying something, Lucia realised. She heard her voice but not her words. Someone else came into view – a pair of shoulders, the back of a head, on Lucia’s side of the bed – and Lucia pulled back, out of sight. She should go.

  ‘Detective Inspector May, isn’t it?’