A Thousand Cuts

by Simon Lelic

  That’s right. You saw them then. And there’s a van parked there sometimes. I think if there’s a story that’s breaking somewhere else, it gets called away. When it’s no longer needed it comes back. Susan, she hasn’t been out. She won’t go out. She won’t even open the curtains in our bedroom. That’s where she spends most of her time. In the bedroom. Or in Sarah’s room. Sometimes she sits in Sarah’s room.

  So I’m the one who has to talk to people. You know, deal with things. Not that I mind. I’d rather be doing something. And everyone has been very kind.

  The funeral is this weekend. It was difficult because it would have clashed. With the others. So many people wanted to attend them all. Quite a few of the children but also the teachers. It took some co-ordination but they’re at different times now. Sarah will be the first. It’s called the Islington Crematorium but actually it’s in Finchley. Felix, the boy who died, the younger one, his service is happening there too. The other boy, Donovan I think his name was, I think he’s being buried. Somewhere south. I don’t know about the teacher. Veronica, wasn’t it? I don’t know about her.

  Do you believe in God, Inspector? Don’t answer that, I’m sorry. I only ask because I haven’t decided myself. I’m forty-seven and I haven’t decided. We had to choose, you see. For the service. I wasn’t ready for that. My daughter has just been taken from me. She was eleven years old and now she’s gone. And I’m trying to arrange things for her funeral and the chap, the funeral director chap, he was a very pleasant chap, I mean it’s not his fault at all but he asks me, he has to: are there any cultural or religious requirements of which we should be aware? Which is like asking me whether I believe in God. Your daughter’s just been murdered; do you believe in God? Or maybe it isn’t but that’s how it struck me. I couldn’t answer right away. I’m agnostic – is that the word? I always say one of them when I mean the other. Susan was brought up Catholic. We didn’t go to church with Sarah because Susan wanted Sarah to be able to choose. So I couldn’t answer. I told him I had to talk it over with my wife.

  We’re not having a religious theme. That’s what we decided. There will be no mention of God.

  The music. I’m still not sure about the music. Sarah loved the Beatles. She just adored them. There’s a CD she had, a greatest hits it must have been. Maybe there were two CDs. One had a blue cover, I think. One was red. And they were all you would ever hear from her bedroom. The door would be shut but you would hear it through the walls, through the floor. And everyone knows all the songs, don’t they, so it didn’t matter that you couldn’t hear the words. You’d hear the melody and Paul McCartney and you’d find yourself singing along. You could tell what mood she was in by what song she played. If she was miserable, she would play ‘Eleanor Rigby’, over and over and over. If she was mad at us, at me and Susan, she would play ‘Yellow Submarine’. I don’t know why. I think it was because she thought we didn’t like it. And I don’t. I don’t know about Susan but I don’t. Although I’d like to hear it now.

  ‘Across the Universe’. That’s what we’re having at her funeral. Does that seem inappropriate to you? ‘Across the Universe’ and also ‘Penny Lane’. ‘Penny Lane’ was Sarah’s favourite.

  Will you listen to me? I’m sorry.

  No, I’m not being fair. I’ll prattle on all day if you let me.

  That’s kind but there must be something in particular that you wanted to ask me. I’m sure you’ve not come here just to chat.

  No, go ahead. Really, I don’t mind.

  Well, I don’t know what I can tell you. She was only in year seven, she really hadn’t been there very long.

  No, no trouble. She was very bright. She was very hard-working.

  She enjoyed it, yes, I suppose so. As much as any kid enjoys going to school.

  No, she never mentioned him. He taught her I suppose. I suppose he must have taught her.

  The headmaster, yes, on several occasions. I spoke to him just yesterday, in fact. Something about a memorial service he was planning. He hadn’t fixed a date but he wanted to see what I thought. You know, just in principle. I told him I thought it was a fine idea. I don’t know though. I mean, I don’t know if we shall go. Probably we won’t. What with Susan and everything. But I told the headmaster that we would appreciate the gesture even if we didn’t actually attend. And that it would help the others. What’s that word the Americans use? You know, when you get to that point where you can put things behind you, where you’re able to move on.

  Yes, that’s it. I don’t expect we shall ever get there but there’s the other children to think about, isn’t there? The ones who saw it all happen. The ones who lost their friends.

  You’ve been to the school, I assume?

  You’ve seen the tributes then. The flowers, the notes. The ribbons too. It’s astonishing, isn’t it? How many people just one life can touch. That helps sometimes. I feel guilty that it does but it helps: knowing that others are grieving too. In different ways, for different reasons most of them, but they’re grieving nonetheless. You know what they say about misery. There’s truth in those old sayings, don’t you think? Except for that one about healing, the one about time. I can’t imagine that there’s any truth in that.

  But yes, the headmaster. He’s always seemed a decent enough fellow. He seems to say the right thing, make the right noises, you know. I don’t envy him his job, I can tell you. It can’t be easy, even in normal circumstances. He must be doing something right though because they’re under such scrutiny these days, aren’t they? The school always does well in the tables. It always comes out near the top. That’s why we sent Sarah there. That’s why we moved here.

  No, thank you. I still have this one. I’m okay.

  You know, it’s interesting that you ask. About the school. Because do you know what a friend of mine said? He said to me – well, actually, it was both of them, him and his wife – they said to me – Susan wasn’t there and I’m glad now I think about it that she wasn’t – but they said to me: you should sue. The school. Can you believe that? They told me I should sue the school. For hiring him. For putting him in charge of our children, they said. For taking a man at face value, I say. For not knowing what no one could have known.

  Because no one could have known, could they? No one could have predicted what would happen. What he would do. You know that better than me, I’d imagine. You have access to his records, don’t you, to these lists people have, to these registers. And he was clean, wasn’t he? He had no history. The headmaster, he told me all of this. He assured me that there was nothing they could have done. He said this man had a vendetta against one of the children and that Sarah just got in his way. He said it was unfortunate, it was tragic but what happened was a freak, an aberration. He said it was the inscrutable will of God.

  I haven’t spoken to them since. The friends I mentioned. I’m putting what they said down to shock. I mean, it’s everyone’s first reaction, isn’t it? To look for someone to blame. People say it’s an English thing, this need to find fault, to look for scapegoats, but I don’t think it’s just us. It’s human nature. I mean, I can’t deny that I have my moments. I can’t deny that sometimes I succumb. Do you know what I wish? Obviously you know what I wish but apart from that do you know what I wish? I wish that he weren’t dead. So I could talk to him. That’s why. Sometimes, that’s why. I wish he were alive so I could ask him… I’m not sure what I’d ask him. I’d ask him why I suppose. Although I don’t know that he would be able to answer. It seems to me if he were rational enough to be able to answer he wouldn’t have done what he did in the first place.

  Then other times, other times I wish he were alive so I could kill him.

  I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that.

  Sometimes I think I do but I don’t.

  I think what I’m doing is what my friends were doing. It’s hard, isn’t it? When there’s no one to blame when something terrible happens. Or when there’s no one left to blame. Do you know what I
mean? It’s always easier to deal with the pain if you can twist that pain into anger, if you can lash out, if you can blame someone, anyone, even if they don’t deserve to be blamed.

  Do you know what I mean?

  .

  Lucia was right. Though the clouds became bloated, there was no breach. The effect, rather, was like shutting the windows in a room that was already stuffy and overheated. And the clouds lingered. The afternoon was dark long before evening arrived. The evening was sunless, then starless. The night was no cooler than the day.

  She did not sleep. Usually, whenever she said she had not slept, she would know that actually she had, in starts, for an hour, perhaps two hours, at a time. But that night, the night following the memorial service, she did not sleep. She lay on sheets that scratched, uncovered but for a corner of a blanket she clutched only because she needed something to clutch, her head perspiring on pillows that felt recently vacated even on their underside. She tried to convince herself that no one in London was sleeping, that the country was awake and uncomfortable and as worn out as she was. She tried but she convinced herself only that she would never sleep again, whereas everyone else, the ones who in the morning would say, no, I didn’t sleep a wink, not a wink all night, were in fact sleeping in starts, for an hour, perhaps two hours, at a time.

  At the station the next day no one looked as though they had not slept. Her colleagues appeared no more weary, no more dishevelled than usual. Lucia, on the other hand, saw the image reflected by her monitor, by the glass partition of Cole’s office, by the mirror in the ladies’ toilets as a forgery, painted with mascara and foundation on a canvas that was worn and cracked. She drank coffee though she knew she was drinking too much. She was hot and she was edgy and the coffee made her hotter, more on edge.

  And the clouds lingered.

  She tried to not think about Szajkowski. She tried to not think about the school, about Travis. She cleared her desk and filed her files. She emptied her inbox and deleted documents from her desktop. But she saw Walter, she heard his guffaw, she smelt his failing deodorant, and the sight, sound, smell of him was more than enough to remind her. She sent Cole an email. She wanted to make sure that the report – the bastardised report, Walter’s report – had not been filed in her name. From the moment it occurred to her that it might have been, she became determined to make sure that it was not. She knew it was unimportant but she became determined nonetheless. She blamed the coffee and took another sip.

  Cole did not reply and Lucia grew tired of waiting. For the first time since she had joined the police force, she lamented the lack of paperwork awaiting her attention. She craved menial tasks but she had none. When he had first handed her the Szajkowski case, Cole had absolved her of responsibility for anything else. Now Cole had snatched the Szajkowski case back and for the moment Lucia had nothing.

  She tried to look busy. It was hard to look busy and at the same time to watch Walter, to listen to his conversations, to angle herself in such a way that she might catch a glimpse of Cole in his office, to walk past the doorway and to linger without seeming to. What she most wanted to do was march in. What she most wanted was to ask and be told what was happening with her case, what the superintendent had said, the commissioner, the home secretary. What she most wanted, seeing as she was playing this game, was to rewind twenty-four hours, forty-eight, and write the report again, write it better, present it again, present it better. Present it later so Cole would not have time to do anything other than accept it.

  She pulled out her files again and she read. She read the statements and the more she read the more she felt vindicated, righteous, wronged. She found a highlighter in her drawer, a yellow one, and stole a green one from Harry’s desk. As she read she annotated: yellow for the prosecution, green for the defence. She marked yellow, yellow, nothing for a while, then yellow again, more yellow. She drank coffee. Every so often she would pull the lid off the green pen with her teeth and highlight a sentence, a paragraph, not because she felt she really needed to, more to assure herself that she was being fair.

  At lunch she bought a sandwich and ate one half of it. She drank water to flush out the coffee but filled her mug as soon as she returned to the office.

  The yellow highlighter was running low. She felt like brandishing it at Cole, saying, here, look, do you see now? I was right and you were wrong. But it did not run out. She willed it to. She double underlined and scrawled extravagant asterisks in the margins but still it did not run dry. Whenever she was forced to pick up the green pen she left the cap off the yellow. She knew she was breaking the rules she had set but the contest had already become a rout.

  Until she reached the end of one statement and realised she had marked it only in green. She read it again with her yellow highlighter poised but found only another section that should probably also have been green. The same thing happened with the next statement, then with a third. And though it was the yellow pen that lay bare on her desk, it was the green one that gave out first. Lucia cursed. She blamed Harry for buying cheap, decided the highlighter must already have been running out, dismissed the game she was playing as void. She gathered the statements in a ragged pile and dropped them into a drawer. She looked for Cole. She looked for Walter.

  ‘Looking for me, sweetheart?’

  He was behind her. He was at her shoulder and she had not noticed.

  ‘You wish,’ she said. Then, hating herself even before she spoke: ‘Walter, wait a minute. What’s happening? Do you know what’s happening with the case?’ She had meant to sound earnest and professional. Her voice was needy and weak. She heard it and Walter heard it. His smile unfurled in stages: first the left corner, then the right, then the hoisting of his upper lip. His mouth parted and his tongue poked through. It twitched and curled upwards, caressing the yellowed enamel of his teeth.

  ‘Never mind,’ Lucia said. ‘Forget it, never mind.’

  She made to spin her chair but Walter stuck out his hand and caught it before she could turn away.

  ‘Lulu, Lulu. Don’t be embarrassed. I’ll tell you what you want to know.’

  ‘I said forget it, Walter. Forget I mentioned it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know,’ Walter said, ‘but first I need you to answer me one question.’

  Walter had let go of her chair. She could have turned away but she did not. She folded her arms. She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Tell me,’ Walter said. ‘What is it about beards?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Beards. What is it about them? It’s the way they tickle, am I right? You like the way beards tickle. Down there.’

  ‘I haven’t got time for this, Walter.’

  ‘Because I can grow one. If you’d like me to. If a beard would turn you on.’

  Lucia rolled her eyes and twisted away. She clicked her way to her inbox and found it empty. She selected a folder, opened an email at random. She studied it.

  ‘It’s the only thing I can think of.’ He was addressing the room now. Lucia closed the email and opened another. Without registering who had sent it, she hit reply and started typing. ‘The beard, I mean. I can’t think of any other reason why you’d have a thing for this Szajkowski.’

  ‘I don’t have a thing for him, Walter. Don’t be absurd.’ She spoke to her screen.

  ‘So what is it, Lulu? If you don’t have a thing for him, what’s got your knickers up your crack? Why are you so desperate to defend him? To pick on the school instead?’ He took hold of her chair again and forced her round. ‘Come on, admit it. It’s the beard isn’t it? Charlie. Hey Charlie! You’re in luck my son. Lulu here has a thing for facial pubes.’

  Charlie grinned. He licked a finger and ran saliva across his moustache.

  ‘Walter, I’m busy. Let go of my chair.’

  ‘You don’t look busy, Lulu. You haven’t looked busy all day.’ He tightened his grip, leant in close. ‘I’ve seen you watching me. I’ve seen that hunger in your ey
es.’

  ‘Walter, let go.’ Lucia wrenched her chair just as Walter removed his hand. She spun and hit her knee against her desk. She bit down on her cry just as it threatened to escape her mouth.

  ‘Walter. Get in here.’ It was Cole, watching from the door to his office.

  Walter held up a finger.

  ‘Would you shoot me, Lulu? Just because we have our fun. Would you shoot me and say that I deserved it? That I provoked you?’

  Lucia held her knee. She did not answer.

  ‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it? Answer me, Lulu. Would you shoot me?’

  Ignoring the pain, she got to her feet. ‘No, Walter. I wouldn’t shoot you. That would be like admitting that you bothered me.’ She bumped shoulders with Walter as she passed him. ‘Besides,’ she said and she turned. ‘A bullet would be too quick. You wouldn’t feel it. No, Walter. I’d use something blunt.’

  The car park was beneath the building, not quite underground but covered and hemmed in by thick concrete columns. The light was poor. The sun had not yet set, though it was dragging the day with it as it dipped towards the horizon. Lucia peered into her bag for her keys. She gave up and tried rummaging with her hand. She shook the bag, peered in again.

  She was late heading home only because she had waited for Cole to leave first. After that she had waited for Walter. She had hoped Cole would tell her something, that Walter might let something slip. Neither one of them had obliged. Instead, she would have to read about it in the papers. She would hear it on the news. It was her case but she would hear what had been decided on the news.

  Lucia’s Volkswagen was parked in the corner furthest from the stairwell, opposite a line of empty squad cars. She reached it before she had found her keys. The light on the wall was faulty: it buzzed and it fizzed and it flickered on and off. Lucia angled the bag towards it. She cursed, dropped on to the balls of her feet and tipped the contents of the bag on to the floor. She found the car keys immediately. She swore again, scooped up the keys and refilled her bag. With her hands pressing on her unbruised knee, she struggled upright.