Death of a Murderer

by Rupert Thomson

  They hid their bikes in the gap between a fence of concrete slats and an old free-standing garage, then they scaled a wall and dropped down into a jungle of bindweed, lavender and nettles. Billy had climbed into other people’s gardens before, with Trevor Lydgate, when he was younger, but this felt different. There was something driven about Raymond, something merciless. Billy looked towards the house, with its black windows and its untended garden, and wondered what Raymond had in mind.

  Crouching low, they crossed the lawn, and when they reached the house they flattened themselves against the wall, their palms and shoulder blades pressed against sun-toasted brick. They must look as if they’d been caught in an invisible force field, Billy thought. Like people in a science-fiction programme. Turning his head sideways, he met Raymond’s gaze, and they both began to laugh. And once they’d started, they couldn’t stop. They bent double, gasping, trying not to make a sound. What if someone comes? Billy kept thinking, but that only made it worse. In the end, Raymond brought out the vodka. He took a long swig, then offered it to Billy. Billy swallowed some. It was warm and slightly oily, and he shivered as it went down.

  Just along from the back door, they found an open transom window. The frosted glass told them that it was a lavatory. Raymond heaved himself up on to the window ledge and slithered in head first, his legs wriggling comically for a few moments before they disappeared. I hope no one’s having a crap in there, Billy thought, and he had to pinch his arm hard to prevent himself from having the hysterics again. He glanced round quickly to see if anyone was watching, then followed Raymond through the narrow gap. He was stockier than Raymond, which made it more difficult; one of his trouser pockets snagged on the window-catch and ripped. Using both hands, he managed to manoeuvre himself down from the closed lid of the toilet seat on to the floor, landing in a heap at Raymond’s feet. He stood up. The room was only just big enough for the two of them, and he could smell the alcohol on Raymond’s breath.

  “What are we doing here?” he said.

  Raymond shook his head, then opened the door. They stepped out into a long, thin corridor with brown walls and a floor of cracked linoleum. There was a rack of musty raincoats, and a metal Hoover with a torn dust-bag. From somewhere near by came the squeaky chipmunk voice of a cartoon character.

  “‘Sexton’s have solved the mystery of elegant living,’” Raymond said.

  Billy stared at him.

  “I saw it above a furniture shop,” Raymond said, “in Widnes.”

  Later in his life, as a policeman, Billy would often walk or drive past that very sign, and it always reminded him of Raymond. It was as if, in saying the words out loud when they were fourteen, Raymond had erected a memorial to himself.

  They crept along the passageway, with Raymond leading. To the right was a parlour that gave on to the back garden. No sooner had Raymond entered the room than he was lifting a silver tankard off the bookshelf and forcing it into his trouser pocket. Billy wandered over to the window. Lying on the table was a black-leather handbag, half-open, with two five-pound notes visible inside. There was some loose change too. Billy held the handbag out to Raymond, showing him the contents, but Raymond was busy peeling a banana. As Raymond came and took the bag, the door behind him swung outwards and an old man shuffled into view. Though it was hard to believe, the old man didn’t seem to realise anyone was there. Seen sideways-on, the top half of his back was curved, like the shell on a tortoise; were he to walk up to a wall, his forehead would reach it first. Billy and Raymond kept perfectly still. If they didn’t move, perhaps the old man wouldn’t notice them at all. In any case, it was too late to hide.

  Arms dangling, the man hung in front of a sideboard. His head wobbled slightly, as though mounted on a spring, and he was mumbling to himself. Billy couldn’t make out any of the words. Then, after what felt like an age, the man turned and saw them. His eyes widened behind his spectacles; his mouth fell open.

  “Time to leave,” Raymond said.

  But somehow they couldn’t even take a step. It was as if they were being told a story, and they wanted to hear more.

  The old man staggered towards them. He was shouting, but all the sounds that came out of him were slurred and nasal, and both his ears were full of hair. It was horrible. Just then, a wailing started up, very loud yet strangely forlorn, and it took Billy a moment to realise that it was a siren at one of the chemical plants. They would go off as part of a practice drill, or when a shift ended, but sometimes it meant that an accident had happened. If there was a leak, you had to run as fast as you could into the wind. Raymond had told him that, and he’d got it from his father. Billy wondered which way you were supposed to run if there wasn’t any wind.

  The noise seemed to trigger something in the old man. He grabbed a walking stick from the back of a chair and began to lash out in all directions. Swish—swish—swish. He didn’t appear to be attacking anything in particular, unless it was the air itself—or perhaps he was signalling his outrage at the presence of intruders. In any case, he was destroying the room. First a chintzy table-lamp went flying, then a shelf of bric-àbrac. The head snapped off a prancing china horse. A shell-shaped ashtray shattered. Billy watched, half-enthralled, as the stick’s black rubber tip arced through the centre light. The shade exploded, and bits of cloudy glass bounced like hail on the carpet.

  By now, Raymond had slipped out of the room. Eluding the stick’s wild orbits, Billy followed. Through a half-open door he saw an old woman with thick glasses and very little hair. She was watching Wacky Races. When she spotted Billy in the doorway, she waved, not with her whole hand, just with her fingers.

  Raymond and Billy cycled back over the level crossing and up the hill, not stopping at all until they reached the park. One foot on the ground and the other on a pedal, Billy could taste blood in his mouth, and his right side ached, but it felt good to be outside again. There had been almost no air in the house, and what there was had smelt unpleasantly sweet, like stale cake.

  When they had got their breath back, Raymond offered Billy one of the fivers.

  Billy shook his head. “You’re all right.”

  “Sure?” Raymond said.

  Billy was looking back over his shoulder. “They were mad.”

  “They were just old,” Raymond said.

  That night, when Billy was cleaning his teeth, a tiny triangle of misty glass fell out of his hair and landed in the sink. He kept it in a matchbox for a while, not because it was precious, but as a reminder of something. He couldn’t have said what exactly.

  He didn’t see Raymond after that, not for several weeks, and when school started again they both avoided each other. That year Raymond went around with an older boy called Derek Forbes. Billy took up judo.

  He dreamt about Raymond, though. All the time.

  13

  On first arriving in the mortuary, Billy had had the impression of an orderly, efficient space, but the longer he spent in the room, the more damage and neglect he noticed. The shell-shaped doors were set in a plain wooden frame that was badly scarred, especially at a point about three feet off the floor. The doors themselves were marked as well: there were dozens of little dents, all in a cluster, and all roughly the same diameter. There were similar marks on the fridge doors, and at a similar height. He thought he knew why, and a brief inspection of the trolley at the far end of the room confirmed his suspicions. Its leading edge and sharp corners lined up perfectly with most of the marks and dents. Clearly the porters were none too careful when it came to wheeling bodies about. The work wouldn’t exactly be well paid, of course, but that was only part of the story. If you had a job in a hospital, you couldn’t allow yourself to be disturbed by all the illness and disease surrounding you. You had to go to the other extreme, affecting indifference at the very least, and, from the outside, that could look insensitive or even callous. Similar strategies came into play if you worked for the police. Walking back to the entrance, Billy touched the dents in one of the doo
rs. Maybe, after all, he had something in common with that surly young porter. He still felt like thumping him, though.

  He moved to his left, passing shelves of neatly folded shrouds. In the gap between the main bank of fridges and a fridge marked police bodies he found a mop, a bucket, two rolls of pale-blue paper towels and a yellow-plastic pyramid that said wet floor. There were also a couple of empty card-board boxes, one of which had the words return to mortuary scrawled across it. Here too there was evidence of carelessness or haste. All the various items had been piled on top of each other, higgledy-piggledy, and Billy imagined, for a moment, that his neighbours, the Gibsons, had been involved somehow. Their back patio was always a jumble of toys, most of them broken. In the garden a swing lay on its side, grass growing over it; the sandpit was half-full of rain-water, and green with mould. The Gibson family: they weren’t actually criminal, but they didn’t seem to know how to clear up after themselves, and they never showed any respect for anything—and then they went and got their knickers in a twist about a wind-chime…

  Rounding a pillar, Billy found himself facing the fridge where the woman’s body was being kept. At some subconscious level, perhaps, this had been his intended destination all along. Now that he had arrived, though, he didn’t know why he was there, or what it was that he wanted to do. At last, he reached out and tested the handle, just as the sergeant had done a few hours earlier. It was still locked, of course. How could it not be? All the same, a flicker of disappointment went through him. She looked old. Older than sixty. Was he becoming morbid, voyeuristic, or was it his own sense of dislocation that he was grappling with? Ever since he had been left by himself in the mortuary, he had felt a little as if he were guarding a phantom, or the figment of someone’s imagination. He didn’t quite believe she was there. Perhaps he needed something that would anchor him in the experience, make it tangible. But wasn’t that exactly what all those journalists outside were saying? In the end, he didn’t think his urge to look in the fridge would bear too much examination. Do your job, he told himself. Just do your job. With the murderer’s head behind that sheet of metal, only inches from his knuckles…He remained motionless for several seconds, and then stepped back, the cold shape of the door-handle imprinted on the inside of his fingers.

  14

  Billy passed the narrow door that led to the toilet and shower room. On the wall was a cooling control panel and a boxed first-aid kit. Someone had added an “s” on to the end of the word “aid.” There was nothing precious about a mortuary. The only concession to feeling was the chapel of rest. Directly linked to the mortuary through the bare wooden doors behind his chair, it could also be accessed from the corridor outside, which allowed members of the public to avoid the unsightliness, the ruthless practicality, of death. He pushed the doors open and peered in. A simple icon hung near the bed where the deceased would be laid out. Close by was an orange settee with arms of pale wood. The walls were orange too, though lighter. For all its warm colours, the chapel of rest was as functional as any other part of the mortuary. You came here to pay your last respects, or sometimes, even more distressingly, to identify your next of kin. In this room people’s worst fears would become a reality, and the air was petrified, stale, glassy with shock. For many, this would be where the suffering began.

  As he shut the doors, Billy noticed the clock. Nine thirty-three. Was that all? He sat down on his chair again. His left arm ached where that vicious dwarf had fractured it with a karate kick back in the early eighties; if he felt the chill of the mortuary anywhere, it would be there. Unscrewing his Thermos, he poured himself a cup of coffee. It was strong, with plenty of milk and sugar. He took a sip and let out a sigh of satisfaction. Ah, that was good. Now for some paperwork. He picked up his pocketbook and leafed through the pages until he found his notes on the community-centre break-in that had happened the weekend before last. The culprits were two fourteen-year-olds, Darren Clark and Scott Wakefield. They hadn’t stolen anything, but they had caused a fair amount of damage, smashing windows, covering the walls with graffiti and urinating on a piano. Since it was a first offence, he thought it unlikely that they would go to court. Instead, they’d probably be cautioned by an inspector, in the presence of their families. All the same, there were at least three forms to be filled out. Drawing his chair up to the table, he began to compile his report.

  It was just a laugh, really, Darren had said at one point. Something to do, you know? We didn’t mean nothing by it. When Billy first started out in Widnes, in 1979, he might have thought he could steer a boy like Darren back on to the straight and narrow, but from long experience he now knew that very little could be done. In all his time as a police officer, there were only one or two teenagers whose lives he could honestly claim to have changed for the better. It wasn’t much of a return on twenty-three years’ work.

  How many more times in his life would Darren Clark get into trouble and then try and make light of it? Pen poised above the paper, Billy stared into space, reminded once again of the afternoon when he and Raymond broke into the old couple’s house. He would have been Darren’s age, give or take a few months. Was that what he had thought—that it had all been a bit of fun? Before, perhaps, but not when it was over. No, from his point of view it had left a sour aftertaste. Something so exciting at the beginning—the hot weather, the walk up to the park, the vodka—and then something he wished he hadn’t been part of, something he would rather have forgotten.

  There was a sudden, prolonged buzz from the door-bell. Billy glanced at the clock—nine forty-five—then went over and undid the locks. Standing in the corridor was the constable who had been on duty by the main entrance.

  “Your wife’s here,” he said.

  Billy stared at him. “What?”

  “Your wife, Sue. She’s in reception.”

  “Is she all right?” Billy said.

  “I don’t know. She just asked if she could see you.” The man stepped into the room and stood by the stainless-steel sink in the corner. He rubbed his hands together. “Cold in here.”

  “Would you mind taking over?” Billy said.

  “No problem.”

  Billy signed himself out, making a note of the time, then watched as the constable signed himself in. His name was Fowler.

  “I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes,” Billy said. “That’s if I don’t get lost.”

  “Bloody corridors,” Fowler said.

  15

  After eight o’clock at night the main entrance was locked, and the only access to the hospital was through Accident and Emergency. As Billy followed the signs, hurrying now, he was still thinking about that afternoon in Weston Point. They had cycled back along the brow of the hill, a dense yellow haze hanging over the Mersey. The river had a sweaty gleam to it, more like skin than water. Billy had hoped Amanda might still be sunbathing in the garden, but when they got to Raymond’s house she’d gone indoors. On his way home, Billy ate some grass to disguise the smell of alcohol, and Mrs. Parks, their neighbour, saw him do it. He’d felt bad about the break-in. At least he hadn’t taken any of the money, though.

  When Billy reached A and E, Sue was sitting on a chair with a copy of the News of the World lying unopened on her lap. Inwardly, he was already groaning. What had happened this time? What was so urgent that it couldn’t wait till morning?

  As soon as she saw him, she stood up, the newspaper splashing to the floor.

  “What is it, Sue?” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  He watched her pick up the paper and put it on a small formica table. Looking away, he caught the eye of a constable stationed by the entrance. The man’s expression was one of mild commiseration.

  Billy turned back to Sue. “How did you get here?” he said. “Where’s Emma?” He stepped past Sue and peered through the glass door, as if his daughter might be out there somewhere, in the dark. She could never be left alone, not even for a moment. She was always wandering off. She had no sense.

  �
�She’s asleep,” Sue said. “Jan came over.”

  Janet Crook lived two doors down, next to the Gibsons. Her husband had left her three years ago. There had been talk of a younger woman.

  “I borrowed Jan’s car,” Sue said.

  Billy was aware that both the constable and the two volunteers behind reception were listening to their conversation, though they were pretending not to.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said.

  His arm round Sue’s shoulders, he ushered her through the sliding door. Reporters instantly closed in, their faces blank, insistent, and Billy had to remind himself of one of Phil Shaw’s directives: as regards the press, he should do his best to be patient and friendly.

  “Could you leave us alone, please?” Billy said. “This is a private matter.” He spoke more bluntly than he’d intended to, but his annoyance had spread rapidly and would now, he felt, include almost anyone he came across.

  He walked Sue to the left, past the locked main entrance, then down the slope towards the building where the nurses lived. They found a picnic table set in among some trees and sat down side by side, facing out, like people on a bus. Though there was no moon, the tree-trunks glinted. Silver birches. He stared upwards through a tangle of bare branches. The yellow car-park lights made the pieces of sky that were visible look blue.

  “Do you love me, Billy?”

  Billy sighed. “Is that what you drove out here for?” Leaning forwards, with his elbows on his knees, he looked straight ahead. He wasn’t sure he had the energy for this. “For God’s sake, Sue, I’m working.”

  “I was worried,” she said. “I don’t know. I just got worried.” Lines appeared on her forehead. “Will we be all right, do you think?”

  His voice softened a little. “Of course we will.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems so difficult.”