by C. J. Tudor
This is not how it’s supposed to end, my oxygen-deprived brain gasps. This is not my grand finale. This is a cheat, a swizz. This is…and suddenly there’s a dull thud and his grip slackens. I can breathe. I drag his hands from my neck. My vision clears. The reverend stares back at me, wide-eyed with shock. He opens his mouth.
“Confess…”
The final word dribbles out, along with a trickle of dark red blood. His eyes continue to stare at me, but the light has been extinguished. Now they’re just orbs of gristle and fluid; whatever was once behind them has finally departed.
I struggle out from underneath him. The ax is sticking out of his back. I stare up. Nicky stands over her father’s body, her face and clothes spattered with blood, hands gloved in red. She looks at me, like she’s only just noticed I’m there.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She sinks down beside her father, tears on her cheeks mingling with blood. “I should have come sooner. I should have come sooner.”
2016
There are questions. Lots of questions. I can just about manage the hows, wheres and whats, but as for the whys, I don’t have all the answers. Not even close.
Apparently, Nicky drove over after she got my message. When I wasn’t home, she tried the pub. Cheryl told her where we’d gone and the nurses told her the rest. Nicky, being Nicky, came after us. I’m glad—more than glad—she did.
Chloe decided to visit her father one last time. A mistake. As was mentioning that she was camping in the woods. And dyeing her hair blond. I think that’s what did it. The sudden similarity to Hannah. An awakening in his mind.
Talking of the good reverend’s mind, the medics are still arguing about that one. Was the consciousness, the walking (and killing), a temporary aberration from his near-catatonic state or was it the other way around? The invalid act was just that: an act. All along, he understood everything.
Now he is dead, we will never know. Although I’m sure someone will make their name, and probably a bit of cash, by writing a paper on it, or maybe a book. Mickey must be spitting in his grave.
The theory—mostly mine—is that the reverend killed Elisa, thinking she was Hannah, the whore carrying his bastard child and, in his deranged mind, ruining his reputation. Why did he chop her up? Well, the only explanation I have is the one he quoted at me in the woods:
“ ‘If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.’ ”
I think chopping her up was his way of making sure she would still enter heaven. Maybe after he realized his mistake. Maybe just because. Who really knows? God might be the reverend’s judge, but it would have been nice to see him in a courtroom, facing the prosecution and the unforgiving faces of a jury.
The police are talking about reopening the Elisa Rendell case. These days, they have better forensics, DNA, all that cool stuff you see on TV, that could prove beyond doubt that the reverend was responsible for her murder. I’m not holding my breath. After the night in the woods, and the memory of the reverend’s hands around my neck, I doubt I will ever do that again.
Hoppo makes an almost full recovery. The doctors reattach his ear, not perfectly, but then he always wears his hair a little long. His arm, they’re doing their best with, but nerves are tricky things. He has been told he may regain partial movement, he may not. It’s still too early to tell. Fat Gav consoled him with the fact that he can now park wherever the hell he wants (and he still has one good wanking arm).
For a few weeks the press make themselves an annoying and unwelcome presence around the town and at my front door. I do not want to talk, but Fat Gav gives them an interview. In it, he mentions his pub several times. I have noticed, when I go in there, that business is booming. So at least one good thing has come out of this.
My life begins to resume something of a routine, except for a few things. I tell the school that I will not be returning after the autumn half-term, and I call an estate agent.
A dapper young man with an expensive haircut and a cheap suit comes to the house and looks around. I bite my tongue and try to contain my feelings of intrusion as he peers into cupboards, stamps on floorboards, mmm’s and ahh’s and tells me that prices have risen considerably in the last few years and, despite the fact that the house needs “some updating,” still quotes a valuation that makes my eyebrows rise slightly.
The FOR SALE board goes up a few days later.
The day after that, I put on my best dark suit, smooth down my hair and carefully knot a somber gray tie around my neck. I’m just about to leave when someone knocks on the front door. I tut—timing—then hurry across the hall and yank it open.
Nicky stands on the doorstep. She looks me up and down. “Very smart.”
“Thank you.” I glance at her bright green coat. “I take it you’re not coming?”
“No. I only came back today to talk to my solicitor.”
Despite the fact that she saved three lives, Nicky could still be prosecuted for the manslaughter of her father.
“You can’t stay a little longer?”
She shakes her head. “Tell the others I’m sorry, but—”
“I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“Thanks.” She holds out a hand. “And I just wanted to say—goodbye, Ed.”
I stare at her hand. And then, just like she did all those years ago, I step forward and wrap my arms around her. She tenses for a moment, and then hugs me back. I breathe her in. Not vanilla and chewing gum but musk and cigarettes. Not clinging on but letting go.
Eventually, we pull away from each other. Something glints around her neck.
I frown. “You’re wearing your old necklace?”
She glances down. “Yes. I always kept it.” She fingers the small silver crucifix. “That probably seems strange, keeping something so tied up with bad memories?”
I shake my head. “Not really. Some things you just can’t let go of.”
She smiles. “Take care.”
“And you.”
I watch her walk back down the driveway and disappear around the corner. Holding on, I think. Letting go. Sometimes, they’re one and the same.
Then I grab my overcoat, check the small hip flask is still in the pocket and head out of the door.
—
The October air is chill. It snaps and nips at my cheeks. I climb into my car gratefully and turn the heater up to full. It has just about started to get vaguely lukewarm by the time I reach the crematorium.
I hate funerals. Who doesn’t, except undertakers? But some are worse than others. The young, those taken suddenly and violently, babies. No one should ever have to see a doll-sized coffin making its descent into darkness.
Others simply feel inevitable. Obviously, Gwen’s death was still a shock. But, like my dad, when you have said goodbye to your mind, the body at some point will inevitably follow.
There are not many mourners. A lot of people knew Gwen, but she didn’t have many friends. Mum is here, Gav and Cheryl, a few of the people she once cleaned for. Hoppo’s older brother, Lee, couldn’t—or wouldn’t—take leave. Hoppo sits at the front, wrapped up in a duffel coat that seems too big for him, arm in an industrial-looking sling. He has lost weight and looks older. The hospital only released him a few days ago. He is still returning for physio.
Gav sits in his wheelchair beside him and Cheryl on the pew the other side. I take a seat behind them, next to Mum. As I sit down, she reaches for my hand. Like she used to when I was a boy. I take it and hold tight.
The service is short. Which is both a mercy and a timely reminder of how seventy years on this planet can be condensed into ten minutes of summary and a few unnecessary wafflings about God. If anyone mentions God when I die, I hope they burn in hell.
At least, with a cremation, once those curtains have swished closed, that’s it. No slow shuffle out to the churchyard. No watching the coffin being lowered into a gaping grave. I stil
l remember that all too well from Sean’s funeral.
Instead, we all file outside and stand around in the garden of remembrance, admiring the flowers and feeling awkward. Gav and Cheryl are holding a small wake at The Bull, but I don’t think any of us are really up for it.
I talk to Gav for a bit then leave Mum talking to Cheryl and sneak around the corner, primarily for a quick cigarette and a sip from my hip flask but also just to get away from people.
Someone else has had the same idea.
Hoppo stands near a row of small headstones marking where ashes have been buried or scattered. I always think the headstones in the crematorium garden look like shrunken versions of the real thing: a miniature model graveyard.
Hoppo looks up as I walk over. “Hey?”
“How are you, or is that a stupid question?”
“I’m okay. I think. Even though I knew this was coming, you’re never really ready.”
No. None of us is ever really prepared for death. For something so finite. As human beings, we’re used to being able to control our lives. To extend them, to an extent. But death brooks no argument. No final plea. No appeal. Death is death, and he holds all the cards. Even if you cheat him once, he won’t let you call his bluff a second time.
“You know the worst thing?” Hoppo says. “Part of me feels relieved that she’s gone. That I don’t have to deal with her anymore.”
“It’s how I felt when Dad died. Don’t feel bad about it. You’re not glad she’s gone. You’re glad the illness is gone.”
I take out my hip flask and offer it to him. He hesitates, then accepts it and takes a sip.
“How are you doing otherwise?” I ask. “The arm?”
“Still not much feeling, but the docs have said it will take time.”
Of course. We’re always giving ourselves time. Then, one day, it just runs out.
He offers the hip flask back. Even though I feel a tug inside, I gesture for him to have some more. He takes another sip and I light my cigarette.
“What about you?” he asks. “Ready for the big move to Manchester?”
I plan to work as a supply teacher for a while. Manchester seems a suitable distance away to get some perspective on things. A lot of things.
“Just about,” I say. “Although I have a feeling the kids will eat me alive.”
“What about Chloe?”
“She’s not coming.”
“I thought you two…?”
I shake my head. “I thought it would be best to stay friends.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Because, nice as it might be to imagine that Chloe and I could have some kind of relationship, the fact is she doesn’t see me that way. She never will. I am not her type, and she is not the right person for me. Besides, now I know she is Nicky’s little sister, it just feels wrong. The pair of them need to build bridges. I don’t want to be the one to blow them up again.
“Anyway,” I say, “maybe I’ll meet a nice northern lass.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
There’s a pause. This time, when Hoppo offers the flask back, I take it.
“I suppose it really is all over,” he says, and I know he doesn’t just mean the chalk men.
“I suppose.”
Even though there are still plot holes. Loose ends.
“You don’t look convinced?”
I shrug. “There are still things I don’t understand.”
“Like?”
“Don’t you ever wonder who poisoned Murphy? It never made any sense. I mean, I’m pretty sure Mickey let him off the lead that day. Probably because he wanted to hurt you, like he was hurting. And the drawing I found was probably Mickey, too. But I still can’t see Mickey killing Murphy. Can you?”
He takes a long while to reply. For a moment, I think he won’t. Then he says, “He didn’t. No one did. Not intentionally.”
I stare at him. “I don’t understand.”
He looks at the hip flask. I hand it back again. He upends it.
“Mum had already started getting a bit vague about stuff, even back then. She would misplace things, or put things in the wrong place entirely. Once I caught her pouring cereal into a coffee mug and then adding boiling water.”
That sounded familiar.
“One day, maybe a year or so after Murph died, I came home and she was making Buddy’s dinner. She’d put some wet food in a bowl, and she was adding something from a box out of the cupboard. I thought it was his dry food. And then I realized—it was slug pellets. She had mixed the boxes up.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I stopped her giving it to him just in time, and I think we even made a joke about it. But it got me thinking: what if she had done the same thing before, with Murphy?”
I consider this. Not deliberate. Just a terrible, terrible mistake.
Never assume, Eddie. Question everything. Always look beyond the obvious.
I laugh. I can’t help it. “All this time, and we had it so wrong. Again.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
“Why would you?”
“Well, I guess now you have your answer.”
“One of them.”
“There’s something else?”
I drag harder on my cigarette. “The party. The night of the accident. Mickey always said someone spiked his drink?”
“Mickey always lied.”
“Not about that. He never drank and drove. He loved that car of his. He would never risk pranging it.”
“So?”
“I think someone did spike his drink that night. Someone who wanted him to have an accident. Someone who really hated him. But they didn’t count on Gav being in the car as well.”
“Someone like that would be a pretty poor friend.”
“I don’t think that person was any friend of Mickey’s. Not then. Not now.”
“Meaning?”
“You saw Mickey when he arrived back in Anderbury. The first day. You told Gav he’d spoken to you.”
“So?”
“Everyone assumed Mickey wandered into the park that night because he was drunk, thinking about his dead brother, but I don’t think so. I think he intended to go there. To meet someone.”
“Well, he did. A couple of teenage muggers.”
I shake my head. “They’re not being charged. Not enough evidence. Plus, they deny being anywhere near the park that night.”
He considers. “So perhaps it’s like I said right at the start—Mickey was drunk, he fell in?”
I nod. “Because ‘there are no lights along that stretch of the path.’ That’s what you said when I first told you that Mickey had fallen in the river and drowned. Right?”
“That’s right.”
My heart sinks, just a fraction.
“How did you know where Mickey fell in? Unless you were there?”
His face slackens. “Why would I want to kill Mickey?”
“He finally found out it was you that caused the crash? He was going to tell Gav, put it in the book? You tell me.”
He stares at me for a little longer than is comfortable. Then he hands me back the hip flask, pressing it hard into my chest.
“Sometimes, Ed…it’s better not to know all the answers.”
TWO WEEKS LATER
It’s strange how small your life seems when you are leaving it behind.
After forty-two years, I imagined my space upon the earth would be bigger, the dent I have created in time a little larger. But no, like pretty much everyone else, most of my life—at least, the material part of it—can be safely accommodated in one large removal van.
I watch as the doors slam shut, the last of my earthly possessions safely boxed up and labeled inside. Well, almost the last.
I smile at the removal men in what I hope is a jovial and matey kind of way. “All done, then?”
“Yup,” the older, more weathered of the
team replies. “Sorted.”
“Good, good.”
I glance back at the house. The SOLD sign still glares at me accusingly, as if telling me that I have somehow failed, admitted defeat. I thought Mum would be unhappier about me selling, but actually I got the sense she was relieved. She has insisted on not taking a penny of the profits.
“You’ll need it, Ed. Set yourself up. A new start. We all need those at times.”
I raise a hand as the removal van drives away. I am renting a one-bedroom flat, so most of my things are going straight into storage. I walk slowly back into the house.
In the same way that my life feels smaller now that my possessions have been taken away, the house, inevitably, feels larger. I hover a little aimlessly in the hallway, then trudge up the stairs to my room.
There’s a darker patch on the floor, beneath the window, where my chest used to stand. I walk over to it, kneel down and take a small screwdriver out of my pocket. I wedge it under the loose floorboards and lever them up. Only two items remain inside.
I carefully lift out the first: a large plastic container. Folded up underneath is the second: an old rucksack. Mum bought it for me after I lost my bumbag at the fair. Did I mention that? I liked the rucksack. It had a picture of the Ghostbusters logo on and it was both cooler and more practical than a bumbag. Better for collecting things, too.
I had it with me when I cycled out to the woods that bright, bitter morning. Alone. I’m not sure why. It was still really early and I didn’t often ride out to the woods on my own. Especially not in winter. Maybe I just had a feeling. After all, you never knew when you might find something interesting.
And that morning, I found something very interesting.
I literally stumbled over the hand. After the shock subsided, and a bit more searching, I found her foot. Then the left hand. Legs. Torso. And finally, the most important piece of the human puzzle. Her head.
It rested on a small pile of leaves, staring up at the canopy of trees. Sunlight filtered down between the bare branches. It pooled in golden puddles on the woodland floor. I knelt down beside her. Then I reached out a hand—trembling slightly with anticipation—and touched her hair, brushing it back from her face. The scars didn’t look so harsh anymore. In the same way that Mr. Halloran had softened them with the gentle strokes of his paintbrush, death had softened them with a cool caress of his skeletal hand. She looked beautiful again. But sad. And lost.