by Bill Hussey
‘I was in bed.’
Jack didn’t seem to be listening. He worked his palm up and down the undulations of the radiator.
‘Did you know Simon well?’ Dawn asked.
‘Not at all. He wasn’t a churchgoer; nor was his mother. In such a small place, you bump into people occasionally. I knew Peter Malahyde a little, his father, but that was a long time ago. I wasn’t there when Peter died.’
‘Odd turn of phrase,’ Jack said, breaking out of his reverie.
‘What I mean is, that was the last time a priest was ever at the house. Peter Malahyde was a Catholic. He died just before Simon was born.’
‘Simon never knew his father?’
‘No. And I barely knew him. It was Father Brody who administered the last rites …’
Dawn tapped the side of her head: ‘That Father Brody?’
‘That Father Brody,’ Garret nodded.
‘How did Peter Malahyde die?’ Jack asked.
He took his hand from the radiator and Dawn saw that his palm was red and lathered in sweat. His knuckles had started bleeding again. He didn’t seem to register any discomfort as he sat beside her.
‘Well, I don’t really know. A tissue disease, I think. They had oncologists, neurosurgeons. Even dermatologists, I believe. He … he fell apart.’ Garret’s skittish tone steadied. ‘We’re all betrayed by our bodies in the end.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell us, Father?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Garret smiled. ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, but not the going of Simon Malahyde, I’m afraid.’
As Dawn snapped the elastic band around her notebook, an abrupt clang came from the radiator pipes. Beside her, she felt Jack tremble. Garret’s smile broadened.
‘I don’t think we have any further questions,’ Dawn rose. ‘If you think of anything else, perhaps you’ll contact us?’
Jack grasped the priest’s hand and shook it. The radiator rattled.
‘I think you should get your heating checked,’ he said.
The door closed behind them.
Garret rested his head against the banisters for a moment. Why the hell had he mentioned Peter Malahyde? It was becoming so hard to concentrate. He shuddered. Pray God the Doctor had not been there when the slip was made.
Garret opened the cellar door. Cold air coursed by, whistling as it cut a route through the house, slamming doors upstairs. He reached for the pull string and yanked. Electricity buzzed through the swinging bulb. Bent almost double, Garret ducked beneath the door frame and descended into the cellar. A welcome mat of light see-sawed at the foot of the stairs. It rocked across the face of the semi-conscious child slumped across the hot water pipes.
Not enough morphine, Garret thought. Thank God I removed his tongue.
He wrested a shovel loose from a tangle of gardening tools in the corner. Its blade screamed across the cobbled floor. Resting it against the boiler, he straightened up, took a mahogany case from his pocket and levered open the lid. He removed a scalpel from its tissue paper. This knife once belonged to his father, Ethram Garret, a squeamish Edwardian doctor who had never had the stomach for surgery. Sometimes Garret thought he could still smell his father’s cancer on the Gladstone bag and the gleaming instruments that he had inherited. The same cancer that bled through his own slowly dismantling body.
The moving light at the top of the stairs flashed across the blade.
‘All done soon,’ Garret whispered. ‘Just tonight and then one more …’
He placed the knife on the stone flags in front of Oliver Godfrey. Sleepy eyes rolled from the scalpel to Garret’s face. Drool slipped from the boy’s swollen mouth. The stump of tongue clacked.
‘Nawh … nawh … pleesth …’
Oliver shrank back to the wall. The chains around his wrists and ankles clanked against the pipes. His movements opened the wounds that had been nicked into his body to weaken him. Thin blood trickled over old scars.
‘Nawh … Jethuth pleesth, nawh!’
Garret raised the shovel. His silhouette grew wide, focused and grew wide again in the pendulum swing of the light. During his time in the cellar, Oliver had screamed a good deal. The stump of his tongue choked his last cry.
Dawn laid the Malahyde file on a chair and removed her coat. Jack sat behind his desk and thumbed through her notebook.
‘So,’ he stirred, ‘I suppose, Mother first. What do you think?’
‘She makes a bit more sense after what Garret told us about her husband’s death. I suppose grief can do that to some people. Make them selfish … I mean …’
Jack cut in: ‘It’s this alienation from Simon I don’t understand.’
‘Well, we don’t know much about him. She said she didn’t like him. Why? Drugs maybe … That room of his was a bit freakish.’
‘But there’s something more. If she’s not bothered about him, why did she insist on seeing us? Why make up a story about new evidence?’
‘There’s a difference between not liking your son and not caring what happens to him,’ Dawn said. ‘It’s too early to theorise over. We need to find out who his friends were, what might have been preoccupying him lately. Jesus, I need caffeine. You?’
‘Please. Did you say there’s been an article in the Gazette? I’ll call them. See if they’ve heard from anyone who knows him.’
She was halfway out of the door when Jack said, ‘Listen, if you ever go back to that house, and you need to go down to the work shed, take someone with you. It’s just, when I went down there I … It’s a bit treacherous. I nearly fell, and it’s in the middle of nowhere so …’
‘Sure,’ she frowned.
What was the matter with him? He’d been distant and distracted ever since he got back from searching the cabin. On the return journey to the station, she had asked him if he’d found anything there. He hadn’t answered, just slumped further into the passenger seat and gnawed his nails. And what was that idiotic warning about not going into the forest alone? A sort of hesitancy had entered his voice. The same kind of tone he had used during that phone call. He was lying, and lying didn’t come easily to him.
She fed the drinks machine silver and punched in the order. Her mind ticked away as the machine whirred and ground. She took the coffees from the slide tray and was at the office door when she stopped.
Careful, she told herself. Think it through: he’s lying about something to do with Simon Malahyde’s work shed. Ignoring why he would lie for a moment, she wondered about the other observation she had just made. It was the same voice he had used when he told her he wanted to end it. When he told her that he wasn’t interested in a woman saddled with a kid. Had it been his intention to blind her with the ugliness of those words? To make her feel so repulsed she wouldn’t question him about his decision? With a Styrofoam cup in each hand, she elbowed open the door.
‘Why you take that sweetener stuff, I’ll never know. Tastes like dried cat vomit and …’
The scene that confronted her withered the words in her throat. Jack was crouched on the floor, the contents of her bag strewn at his feet. Photographs from her holiday were in his hands. She tried again to speak, but her mouth was dry and cottony. The shock of this intrusion stunned her, and she felt bruised, disoriented.
Flares of colour darkened his cheeks. As he straightened up, her lipstick crumbled beneath his shoe, leaving a dusty cerise stain on the carpet. With eyes downcast, he stood like a wounded, indignant child, holding out the thirty or so prints. Splashes of coffee burned her hand as she slammed the cups on the desk. She snatched the photographs from him. The first shot showed her in a bar, her eyes glazed, standing between two men with Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned to their navels.
‘What do you think you’re doing …?’ she snapped.
‘Your bag fell open,’ he muttered. ‘They dropped out. I was picking them up … Seems you had quite a time of it.’
‘Fuck you. Fuck you, Jack.’ The urge to lash out was hard to res
ist. ‘You don’t get to comment on my life. You’re not part of my life.’
He took a short, trembling breath through his nose and the high-colour drained from him. Then, without a word, he moved to his desk and sat down. She started rearranging her bag. Someone thundered along the corridor outside. The shockwaves rattled the glass in the office door. The air conditioning clicked off. The intensity of her anger throbbed at her temples and made her movements hurried and clumsy.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.
Collecting the crumbs of lipstick into her hand, she brushed them into the wastepaper basket. Her fingers, stained dark red, appeared hazy through a film of tears.
‘You’re right,’ Jack said. ‘I’m not … It’s none of my business. Do you want me to …?’
‘No. God, how many times do I have to tell you?’ she said, hoping that he wouldn’t notice as she dried her eyes. ‘Dave Fellowes will have told the whole station we’re working on this. I don’t want gossip.’
When she turned, she found him staring hard at the grain of the manila folder on his desk.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘The Gazette … Someone’s contacted them. A friend of Simon’s. I thought we might see him tomorrow.’
Seven
It was dusk when the sun found its only toehold on the day. At the municipal playing fields, a burst of fire blinded the players and spectators. The display was fleeting. Twilight ran misty fingers over the city and floodlights lit the pitch. A whistle blew and the boys tramped to the sideline, steam billowing from chattering mouths and flared nostrils.
‘How can you get so mucky on Astroturf, Jamie?’
‘Don’t know. Thirsty.’
Dawn reached into a plastic bag and handed him a Coke and a chocolate bar. Between chewing and gulping, Jamie picked at his legs. The sweet confection eased his anger.
‘Can’t believe we lost to those dickh c idiots … did you see Jim’s goal? I set him up for that. Sort of. We should’ve had ’em. Should’ve been a piece of piss – erm, pie, easy as pie.’
‘If you took a breath once in a while you might be able to avoid swearing altogether.’
‘Hmm. Can I stay at Jim’s tonight? Come on,’ he nudged her shin, ‘it’s Friday. You could invite Jack round.’
She snatched the empty bottle from his hand and dropped it into the bag.
‘Jim. I don’t know Jim, do I?’
‘New striker. He’s got Friday the Thirteenth on DVD, and Cannibal Holocaust … Which we won’t be watching, obviously …’
He smiled, his mind on the Playboy that Jim had swiped from his dad’s collection.
‘I’ll stop picking this scab if you let me go.’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t know Jim’s parents …’
‘Well, I think they’ve got a mutated son they keep in the attic, but otherwise they’re pretty sound.’
‘No, Jamie. Not tonight. Perhaps Jim can come over next weekend.’
‘Oh, but, Jesus! Don’t glare, you’re not even religious. If you don’t let me go, I’ll start running drugs from my room. I’ll get a girl in trouble …’ he searched his mind for something that would really rankle. ‘I’ll join the Young Conservatives.’
‘You sound overqualified for the Young Conservatives,’ she said, deadpan.
‘Fine,’ Jamie muttered, tearing off a strip of scabs.
He wasn’t that annoyed, but feigned an outraged stomp over to his kitbag anyway. Usually he would be pissed off with yet another of his mum’s overprotective displays, but it was her first proper night home. Having said that, it would’ve been cool to have seen the Playboy, but at least Jim had promised to loan him the DVDs.
As he said his goodbyes to his teammates, he wondered if Jack would come over tonight. When his mum left to go on holiday – a holiday she insisted she’d booked months ago, though Jamie couldn’t remember her mentioning it – she had given short answers to all his questions.
So, is Jack going with you?
No.
Why?
It was booked ages ago … I didn’t know him then.
When you get back, can we go to Jack’s house? He’s got an alternative Marvel universe comic. Where Hulk kills Wolverine.
We’ll see.
And one when the X-Men beat the crap out of the Fantastic Four …
Christ, Jamie, will you shut up a minute?
It hadn’t been the play exasperation she usually used when he got excited. For some reason, she’d been really pissed.
One night, while his mum was abroad, he’d crept downstairs and used his grandad’s clunky old phone. As a little kid, he’d played with it for hours, loving the noise the Bakelite made as you put your finger in the holes and drew the spinning dialler around. That night the click-click-click-click-whhuurr seemed very loud in the quiet corridor below his grandad’s bedroom. He’d copied Jack’s number from his Mum’s address book. The phone rang for ages before someone picked up.
‘Yo, Jack?’
‘Jamie? Is that you? Does your mum know you’re …’
‘She’s on holiday, didn’t you know? Have you had a row? She spazzed when I asked if I could call you.’
‘Well, listen, J, I’m a bit busy right now. Could you …?’
‘Sure, I’ll call later or something. Jack, maybe you could come over, we could …’
‘I’ve got to go, Jamie. Sorry.’
He’d hung up. Every time Jamie stole a minute to call again over the next fortnight, Jack’s answering machine cut in. Something must have happened between them. Jamie was determined to find out what.
‘So, what we doin’ tonight?’ he asked, as his mother eased out into the Friday rush-hour.
‘Well, I’m having a bath and going to bed. You can stay up ’til ten, and between now and then you can do what you like. Within reason.’
‘Ten? Jeeze … So nobody’s coming round then?’
‘Nope. Listen, I have to go in tomorrow. I’ll drop you at your grandad’s for the morning, okay?’
‘I could stay home, you know. I’m old enough.’
‘Remind me to check the forecast later. If there’s a possibility of patchy ice and snow flurries in hell, then you can stay at home by yourself.’
‘Fine. Mum?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You said I could go over to Jack’s when you got back …’
‘I didn’t say anything like that.’
‘You did. I wanted to see his comic books. You said …’
‘No … Look, pass me the aspirin from the glove compartment.’
‘I’d just pop in and out. Anyway, you’d like to see him, wouldn’t you? Have you seen him today? Do you think he’d …?’
‘Jamie, it feels like someone’s doing the rumba in my head. Pass me the aspirin.’
‘I will if you just listen,’ Jamie said, leaning towards her. ‘Have you and Jack argued? I’m sure it wasn’t his fault. You can be a bit …’
‘Sit back, I can’t change gear with you there.’
‘You’ve been horrible to him, haven’t you?’
‘Don’t be so stupid. Move will you?’
‘What have you said to him? No wonder we don’t know anybody, normal people have friends come over. Nobody ever …’
‘Jamie, I said move … Shit!’
Jamie’s elbow knocked the car out of gear. The Range Rover leapt forward. Horns blared and tyres screeched. Headlights flashed in the rear-view mirror. Dawn fumbled for the brake and yanked the steering wheel right. She avoided the car in front by inches. The Range Rover bunny-hopped across the road and into a line of traffic cones which separated off the fast lane of the dual carriageway. The cones smacked against the front bumper and crumpled under the wheels. Jamie felt the slight jolt as they ploughed through the barrier and hit the partially resurfaced lane. A yellow sign advising of highway maintenance had its legs swept away and slammed onto the bonnet. The car stalled.
Dawn restarted the engine and, with apologetic waves to the trail
of traffic behind, reversed out. The metal sign idled off the bonnet. She indicated left and brought the car to a stop on the hard shoulder. Jamie made himself as small as he could in the passenger seat.
‘Jack doesn’t want to see you anymore …’ She stopped and shot a glance at her son. ‘I mean he doesn’t want to see either of us, understand? You think I’m overprotective, don’t you? Well, you know that nasty little feeling you’ve got in the pit of your stomach? The one that hurts because you’ve been rejected? That’s what I protect you from. But you’re a big boy now, aren’t you? Maybe you don’t need protecting.’
She hit the steering wheel with her palm. Jamie watched her, unsure of what to do.
The Ford tucked in so close to the kerb that its tyres flapped against the concrete lip. The driver wound down the passenger window and Terri approached with her usual caution. One time, she’d been caught unawares by some crazy who’d stuck her in the throat with a needle. A religious freak, the police had told her, ‘down on whores’. She’d been wary ever since.
‘Hi. I’m looking for Coral …’ the man began, leaning over the passenger seat.
‘She’s away seeing her mother.’
Terri was savvy enough to know that men panicked if told their regular girl was ill.
‘We … we … usually go to hers.’
‘My flat’s being fumigated. Look, sweetness, what do you want to do? If it’s quick, I know a place.’
You might see the quiet guy tonight, Coral had told her, sniffing and rubbing Vicks across her chest. He turns up when he feels the need. I reckon he’s filth but he won’t run you in. And it won’t take long. He just … The phone had interrupted her and Terri wasn’t interested in the quirks of every one of Coral’s clients.
The guy opened the passenger door. Terri ducked inside, ratcheted the seat back and adjusted her tights. She looked over and saw him watching the movement of her hands. He had a cute white scar between his eyes: a simple line of two shallow humps, like a kid’s picture of a bird in flight. She told him to take a left at the Chinese and then a right onto the causeway. Perhaps he was just nervous, but his driving, jerky and too fast, made her feel a little sick. She turned the rear-view mirror to check her makeup. A clicking sound drew her attention. He was touching her bracelet beads with a fingertip.