Death of a Murderer

by Rupert Thomson

  He thought of how he had rushed to A and E the year before, having just been told about Sue’s crash. He found her behind a curtain, on a high, hard bed. She looked so young that he knew she must have been through something violent, but the only mark on her was a small scratch at the base of her thumb: she’d cut herself when she crawled out through the shattered window. On the right side of her head, behind her ear, her hair looked as though someone had furiously backcombed it, and the fine, spun-sugar tangles were studded with bits of broken glass. The fact that she’d escaped without injury staggered everybody. It also made them suspicious. There had to be damage somewhere, surely…The doctor who examined her described how organs could get twisted in certain types of accident. If the car rolled, for instance, as it had in her case, there was always a possibility of internal bleeding. Sue should stay in bed, he said. She had to keep quiet. Rest. During those long, tense days, Billy turned on the TV and saw a plane slide slowly into one of the Twin Towers. He wasn’t able to process the images at all. They had no effect on him except as an illustration of his own private catastrophe. The demolished skyscrapers stood in for the car that Sue had reduced to a pile of scrap. The three thousand casualties symbolised her brush with death. It was his own story, written large, yet it all felt curiously stilted and obscure. It was a time when things seemed hard to believe, and hard to sustain. He dressed Emma in the mornings, and drove her to school. He cooked her meals. “Mummy resting,” she said once, at breakfast—and then, looking him full in the face, “Mummy all right.” She wanted him to reassure her, but she might also have been prompting him, or even coaching him. The future could be talked into existence. He took one of her hands in both of his. “Yes,” he said. “Mummy’s fine.” At night, though, when Sue was sleeping, he would tiptoe into the room and hover uselessly next to the bed, her bitter breath clouding the air below him, or he would leave the house and stand on the grass track, shivering. What did he think as he stared out over the field? Did he pray?

  If something should happen to my wife…

  He turned the corner into the corridor that led to the mortuary. At first, he didn’t notice the woman, partly because he hadn’t expected anyone to be there, and partly because she was leaning against the wall in one of the shadowy areas between two lights. She was wearing the same lilac suit, and she was smoking, as before.

  “How did you—?” He broke off, uncertain as to what question he should be asking.

  She didn’t look at him. Instead, she simply lifted her cigarette up to her mouth. When she inhaled, a row of fine vertical lines showed on her upper lip. She took the smoke deep into her body and didn’t exhale at all. The smoke was just absorbed.

  “Did you believe him?” she said.

  She sounded the same as she had when he saw her in the hospital grounds, her vowels harsh and flat, her accent recognisably Mancunian.

  “That Indian bloke,” she said. “Do you think he got it right?”

  Billy couldn’t take his eyes off her. His forehead felt cold, his ears too. A steady industrial hum came from the ramp beyond her.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t bite.” She tapped half an inch of ash into the cupped palm of her left hand. “I spent a lot of time in this place.” She looked past him, down the corridor. “I have to say, they were pretty good to me, actually.”

  And now Billy saw that she wasn’t alone. Behind her, standing close to the wall, was a frail, dark-haired boy of about thirteen. He wore a pair of black swimming-trunks, and his body was the colour of cement.

  As Billy watched, the boy stepped out of the shadows, into a pool of light. Bending suddenly, he vomited on the floor. It was just water, Billy realised. Water from the reservoir. The boy stayed doubled up, hugging himself as though he’d caught a chill.

  “What can I do for him?” the woman said. “There’s nothing I can do.” She rounded on Billy, her voice losing its note of resignation, becoming harder. “You don’t say much, do you?” She looked straight at him, with her cigarette held just to one side of her mouth. “Most people want to ask me questions. Why did I do it? What was I thinking? How can I live with myself?”

  She reeled off the various expressions of other people’s curiosity in a bored monotone that Billy found repellent. Yes, the questions were predictable, and she had probably heard them a hundred times, but she was talking about torture, murder…Then again, she’d never been known for her tact, had she?

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Surely you can do better than that.” She was still staring at him. The swollen eyelids, the narrow mouth. One hand full of ash. “Come on, Billy,” she said. “This is your big chance.”

  Take a deep breath. Look away.

  A few feet to his left he saw a notice that said pathology. There was a door with a small window in it, at head height. He peered through. There didn’t seem to be anybody in the room, but all the lights were on. In the fluorescent glare he could see a row of white coats hanging on a rail, each one clean but shapeless, limp, like recently discarded skin. He felt a creeping sensation at the back of his neck, beneath his hair, a dread that he was quite unable to explain.

  He had a question for the woman now, but when he turned to face her she was gone. She must have run out of patience. Lost interest. Or perhaps she had sensed what he was about to ask, and it had driven her away. He crossed to the place where she had been standing and moved the flat of one hand over the wall. It felt uniformly dry and cool. There was no evidence that anyone had been there, not the slightest vestige of human warmth or body heat. Kneeling quickly, he inspected the floor. No suggestion of any water either. Not a trace of ash.

  “Did you drop something?”

  Still on his knees, he glanced over his shoulder. A nurse stood at the end of the corridor. Though her eyes were fixed on him, her face was turned slightly away, as if she found it difficult to look straight at him.

  “Yes,” he said, getting to his feet. “Well, I thought I did.”

  “What was it?”

  “It’s all right. It was nothing.” He gave her a smile that was supposed to be efficient and reassuring. “Thanks, anyway.”

  As he hurried off towards the mortuary, he was aware that the nurse was probably still watching him. Had she seen him running his hand over the wall? And if so, what sense could she possibly have made of it?

  24

  There was a name he could no longer avoid. It had come to him on Friday, when he sat in his car and listened to the news, and then again on Saturday, when he went walking in the woods. It had come even more strongly when Phil Shaw showed him the fridge where the woman’s body was being kept. During the past few hours it had grown more and more powerful until it seemed that the name had a voice, and it was calling out to him, demanding his attention.

  Four years ago, in the autumn of 1998, he had been summoned to Northampton to give evidence in a trial. He hadn’t been able to leave Ipswich until the late afternoon, and after driving for about two hours he had checked into a Travel Inn at the junction of the A14 and the A1, not far from Huntingdon. His room was tidy and overheated, with a big double bed and a notice you could hang outside your door that said SSSSHHH…FAST ASLEEP. Like most Travel Inns, it made you feel as if you’d ended up in the middle of nowhere. Their locations seemed determined largely by the presence of a main road or a motorway; apart from that, they didn’t appear to have any connection with real life at all. This would be a terrible place to die, he remembered thinking as he set his case down on the bed.

  On the far side of the car-park was a large, partially timbered building that the brochure referred to as the “food barn.” It had a restaurant and a bar, and on that particular night it was full of lorry-drivers, travelling salesmen, and a party of high-spirited golfers from a club in Warwickshire. Billy was halfway through his Chicken Kiev when a man in a grey suit jerked to a standstill in front of his table.

  “Billy Tyler?”

  Billy stared
up into the man’s face. “My God,” he said. “Trevor? Is that you?”

  He rose quickly to his feet, and the two men shook hands.

  “Billy Tyler,” Trevor said again, but in a tone of wonderment this time.

  Billy was grinning now. “What a coincidence.”

  Trevor Lydgate had been in the year above Billy at primary school, but their mothers were friends so they had played in each other’s houses from an early age. Their friendship hadn’t lasted long, though, because the Lydgates moved away, to Manchester, and the two boys gradually lost touch.

  “Look, you finish your meal,” Trevor said, “then come and join me for a drink. I’m over there, in the corner.”

  Billy watched the thin, balding man move away across the bar—he remembered a slender boy with light-brown hair—then he sat down again. Picking up his fork, he smiled to himself and shook his head. So there was a reason for these out-of-the-way places after all…

  A few minutes later, he was sitting in a booth with Trevor, drinking pints of Stella and catching up on the events of the last twenty-five or thirty years. They both drank fast, excited by the chance reunion, and determined to make the most of it. Every now and then, their conversation would reach into the distant past, as if for a point of reference, a touchstone; they wanted to emphasise the unlikely nature of their meeting—or to make sure that it was all true, perhaps, to prove that the things they remembered had actually happened, that they really were who they said they were.

  Trevor was married, with four children. Three boys and a girl. He worked for a firm that manufactured pottery. Plates, mugs, bowls—that sort of stuff. The firm was downsizing, though, and he would soon be looking for another job. At his age, he didn’t think it would be easy. “I’m in my forties now,” he said. “Can you believe it?” Trevor sounded amazed, almost jubilant, and yet, at the same time, Billy saw anxiety pass over his face, as sudden and fleeting as the shadow of a cloud. In any case, Trevor went on quickly, he would cross that bridge when he came to it. He was living in Staffordshire, in a town called Stone. It was very handy for the M6.

  “But tell me about you, Billy,” Trevor said, leaning forwards over the table. “What have you been up to?”

  Billy couldn’t help smiling at Trevor’s eagerness. He seemed so interested. As if any news of Billy’s would delight him, just so long as Billy could manage to put it into words. It was a childlike quality, one not generally found in people who were middle-aged: either they had lost it along the way, or else they’d had it ground out of them.

  “I’m in the police,” Billy said.

  “Really? I’ve never met a policeman. I mean, not socially.”

  “We’re all right, you know. We’re human.”

  Trevor beamed. “You know, I didn’t used to trust the police. Back in the late seventies, I mean, when Thatcher first came in. Now, though, I think it would be a fascinating job. Who knows, if I get fired, I might even become one myself—or is it too late for me?”

  “It’s not exactly well paid,” Billy said, “and you do have a large family…”

  “That’s true.” Trevor nodded, then drank.

  Though he appeared to be agreeing with Billy, he had by no means been put off the idea. Trevor seemed to be a man who was given to continual small enthusiasms. He would probably be exhausting to live with.

  “Four children,” Billy mused. “How do you do it?”

  “Ask my wife.” Trevor chuckled, shook his head. “What about you, Billy? Have you got kids?”

  “I’ve got a daughter,” Billy said. “Emma. She’s got Down’s.”

  This piece of information would have thrown most people. Not Trevor, though.

  “How bad is it?” he said.

  “We’re lucky, really. On a scale of one to ten, she’s probably seven or eight. I mean, she’s fantastic, I love her to bits, but it’s still difficult.”

  “You must worry…”

  “She’s four and a half, and she can’t talk properly. She just makes sounds. Their tongues are bigger, you see.” Billy swallowed some more lager. “Her eyes are bad too. She had to have an operation to tighten the muscles. And she has to wear special shoes to help her stand up…” Billy thought about mentioning her heart, but he just couldn’t bear it.

  “I expect you have to watch her all the time,” Trevor said.

  Billy nodded. “Yes. Non-stop.”

  It was his round. He went up to the bar and ordered two more pints. Before he could even sit down with the new drinks, Trevor was talking again.

  “If you think about it, though, we all have to watch our children now, don’t we? So many things can happen to them. When we were young, it was different.” He reached for his new pint and took a gulp. “Back then, it was all woods and fields, and we’d be gone for the whole day, and no one even thought twice…”

  Trevor’s voice had started trembling halfway through the sentence, but then it gave out completely, and he put his face in his hands. Billy stared at Trevor’s bald spot, unable for a moment to believe what was happening.

  “Trevor?” he said. “What is it?”

  But Trevor wouldn’t answer. He sat in the booth with his hands covering his face, his whole body shaking.

  “What’s wrong, Trevor?”

  People were beginning to look at them, wondering what was going on. There’s a bloke crying over there.

  Billy clambered to his feet and put an arm round Trevor’s shoulders. “Come on, Trevor. Let’s get you back to your room.”

  He picked Trevor’s key up off the table, and they left the food barn together, with Billy taking most of Trevor’s weight. Once outside, the cold air hit them. The wind was swooping in from the east, over the landscaped banks and mounds, and Billy thought he could smell snow. That keen, metallic edge. When he lifted his head, the cars bounced beneath the yellow lights. Their shiny surfaces swirled glassily about. How many pints had they had? Six? Seven?

  Trevor’s room was on the ground floor, behind reception. On opening the door, Billy saw that the room had been designed for people who were disabled, with pinkish-brown grab-rails everywhere, and a red string dangling between the toilet and the bath. IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY THE DUTY MANAGER CAN BE CALLED BY PULLING THE RED CORD. Billy hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  “Asked for a non-smoking room,” Trevor said, slurring his words, “and this’s all they had.” His head lurched on his neck as he looked around. “It’s no different, really. Everything’s a bit lower, that’s all. The bed, door-handles…”

  “It’s fine,” Billy said.

  Trevor stumbled into the bathroom. Through the closed door, Billy heard the splash of urine, then a controlled roar as the toilet flushed.

  When Trevor emerged again, he avoided Billy’s gaze. “Sorry about all that,” he said, wiping his face. “Sorry, Billy. God. Do you want a drink?”

  He seemed to have pulled himself together. His speech was clearer. All the same, Billy didn’t feel he could leave Trevor on his own.

  “Go on, then,” he said. “Just the one.”

  Trevor fetched two water-glasses from the bathroom, then opened his briefcase and took out some red wine and a corkscrew. “I always have a bottle on me,” he said, “just in case I run into an old friend.” He was trying to be funny, but his voice was too thin to carry it off. Too wobbly.

  He poured the wine. Even as he held out a glass for Billy, he was gulping from his own. “So I never told you what happened to me?” he said.

  Billy crossed the room and sat down in the armchair by the window. He had checked into the Travel Inn because he was tired, and here he was, staying up and getting drunk. “When are you talking about?” he said.

  “When I was ten.”

  “I didn’t know you then. You’d moved away.”

  “That’s right.” Trevor settled on the end of the bed. He drank some more wine, then reached out and placed his glass on the desk where the TV was. Only alcoholics put glasses down that carefully.
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  “So what happened?” Billy said.

  Trevor began to talk about the old days again, what he called “back then”—children off playing by themselves, and no one giving them a thought. Had it ever really been like that? Maybe it had. What Billy remembered most, though, was the housing boom, and all that building going on. Stacks of bricks, cement-mixers. Scaffolding. He and Trevor would climb up inside the new houses and drop messages down between the walls: swearwords, or spells, or sometimes just their two names and the date. They were still there, probably…Only dimly aware of Trevor’s voice, Billy was on the point of drifting off to sleep when a single sentence drew him right in close.

  “But that day, for some reason, I was all alone…”

  Billy roused himself. “Sorry. Where was this?”

  “In Manchester. A place called Fallowfield.”

  A white car pulled alongside him, Trevor said, as he was walking. The driver was a woman, and she was on her own. She wound her window down, called out to him. He couldn’t remember what she said, but he remembered that she had a hard voice, flinty and impatient; she sounded like someone who was bad-tempered, or in a hurry. She had black hair, with a headscarf tied over it. Though it was November, she dangled her right arm out of the window, and her painted nails showed up vividly against the door. Between the first and second fingers was a cigarette. There was a moment when she withdrew her arm and dragged on the cigarette, and the whole time she was inhaling she never took her eyes off him, then her arm returned to where it had been before, and the smoke soon followed in a thin blue stream.