Death of a Murderer

by Rupert Thomson

  “All you do is sit here,” Billy said. “Time goes pretty slowly.”

  Virus nodded. Now, finally, he had a framework within which he could function.

  Billy signed himself out, then handed the pen to Virus and watched as he began to record the fact that he had taken over as scene loggist. I am Police Constable James Malone… His writing was unexpectedly small and tidy, and the letters all leaned forwards, like people walking into the teeth of a gale. Billy hoisted his bag on to his shoulder. At the door, he turned and said, “Careful you don’t catch anything.”

  Virus gave Billy the finger, but he was grinning.

  Out in the corridor, the mood had altered. A new day had started, and nurses were hurrying this way and that. Some pushed trolleys or wheelchairs; others were carrying charts. The air smelt of breakfast—hospital breakfast: damp toast, stewed tea, watery scrambled eggs. Walking back to the main entrance, Billy felt ambivalent about having been relieved. On the one hand, he badly needed rest. Putting in a twelve-hour shift on very little sleep had left him veering between moments of great clarity and sudden bursts of panic and despair. He still couldn’t believe that he had broken down in front of Eileen Evans; he hoped to God it didn’t go any further. On the other hand, the operation wasn’t over yet, and he would be missing out by not being there. Though he knew his place—he was just a bobby, a cog in the machine—it would have been satisfying to be able to see it through. But perhaps that satisfaction wasn’t something he had worked for. In the end, perhaps, it wasn’t something he had earned.

  From his various conversations with Phil Shaw, and with other personnel, in both the police and the hospital, he had learned a good deal about what would be happening that day. He knew that undertakers were being brought in from somewhere at least two hundred miles away—Sue had been spot on about the difficulty of finding a firm willing to handle the body—and that they were scheduled to arrive at five o’clock that afternoon. While the body was being transferred from the fridge to the coffin, with Phil looking on, police vehicles would be moving into position outside. The crematorium being used was situated to the north-west of Cambridge, near the junction of the A14 and the M11. It was a good twenty miles from the hospital, in other words, and traffic would have to be controlled for the entire length of the route. The journey would take about forty minutes. At no point would the hearse be stationary.

  The funeral was due to take place at seven-thirty, after the crematorium had closed. About a dozen people were expected to attend the short service. Owing to illness, the woman’s mother would not be among them. The body would be cremated, and when the ashes had cooled they would be placed in an urn. Once again, the sergeant would be on hand to oversee every stage of the process.

  Towards eleven, he would leave the crematorium in an unmarked car, the urn in his possession. Hopefully, any journalists or members of the general public would have dispersed by then; a raw, cold night was forecast, with the possibility of rain, and it was unlikely anyone would want to hang around in that kind of weather. The sergeant would be driven to a secret location where he would surrender the ashes to an unidentified third party. The moment the ashes left his hands, his job—and the job of the police—would be over.

  On reaching the cafeteria, Billy stopped and looked in, hoping to say goodbye to Mr. Prabhu and wish him well, but he wasn’t there. He would be having a word with the medical staff, or maybe he, too, had gone home to get some sleep. Moving on again, Billy nodded at the two volunteers who were manning the reception desk, then he left the hospital.

  He stood on the steps that led down to the car-park and breathed the damp, leafy air. It was still dark. To the north, white smoke was rising from the sugar factory. He knew much of what the day would hold for the police, but there were still questions, weren’t there? Who was the unidentified third party, for instance? And who would decide where the woman’s remains were scattered? Which piece of land would be considered neutral enough, or resilient enough, to become her symbolic resting place? Or would she be scattered over water? And would that be the end of it? Would people finally forget? Forgive? Billy didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. All he could do was speculate. He remembered how the ash from the woman’s cigarette had fallen soundlessly into the drain, and how, later, he had examined the metal grille and been unable to find any trace of it, not so much as a single grey-white flake. Perhaps that was how it would be. Not rest exactly, but disappearance. Not peace, but silence.

  Once back in his car, Billy checked his mobile—no new messages—then put it on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. Though it was cold, he decided not to use the heater; it would only make him drowsy. If he drove fast and the traffic was light, he could be parked by the estuary in time to see the river change colour—though there wasn’t much colour involved, not in November. The water just gradually made its presence felt: from black to charcoal-grey, or steel-grey, or even, sometimes, silver—like looking at a glass-topped table in a darkened room. But he hadn’t forgotten his promise to have breakfast with Sue. He wouldn’t stay for more than a few minutes.

  He turned out of the hospital. Wednesday morning. Curtains still drawn in many of the houses. Soon children would be sitting up in bed, knuckles in their eyes and tangled hair. Soon they would have to start preparing for school. He remembered the butterflies he’d had when he was young—that strange, sick feeling…The short days were the hardest: you got up in the dark and came home in the dark. The road curved gently downhill. He passed a pub, an empty car-park, a playground. Over one roundabout, and then another. It was on the faces of other drivers too. A rumpled quality, a puffiness. Not just the last vestiges of sleep, but a certain vulnerability; you could almost see them swallow, dry-throated, at the thought of what being awake involved.

  He accelerated on to the A14, the town behind him now. Behind him, too, was the sugar factory, its thick, creamy smoke pouring upwards in his rear-view mirror. His eyes felt heavy. He wound the window down an inch or two, and cool air streamed into the car. Westbound, there was a tailback. East-bound, though, the road was clear except for a lorry with a Dutch numberplate.

  Maybe we could go away…

  Sue would have been thinking about the holiday they’d had shortly before she got pregnant with Emma. In Amsterdam, they had found themselves outside a coffee shop, and she had startled him by suggesting they should buy some dope. “But I’m a police officer,” he said. She laughed at him. “Billy,” she said, “it’s legal here.” Though full of misgivings, he handed her the money and watched as she disappeared through a black glass door. I’m buying drugs, he thought. Then he remembered what she had told him. It’s legal here. The words just didn’t ring true, somehow. But he had done worse things…

  That afternoon they drove out to the coast and parked on a road that overlooked the sea. Susie produced a packet of cigarette papers, and Billy was surprised again, this time by her dexterity. Shutting the windows, they lit the joint. The car soon filled with smoke. It was a Sunday, and families kept walking past. People with small dogs and children.

  “It doesn’t feel legal,” he said, sinking lower in his seat.

  When they had finished the joint, they went for a walk along the beach. A cold wind tore in off the North Sea. Waves crashed against the sand like walls collapsing.

  “It’s not working,” Billy shouted, and he could hear the relief in his voice.

  As soon as they turned inland, though, he began to talk nonsense. Then he had a fit of the giggles, something that hadn’t happened for years. In a souvenir shop, he took eight bars of chocolate up to the cash-till, but just before paying he had a moment of doubt. Nudging Susie, he showed her what he was buying. “Do you think this’ll be enough?” he said.

  Back in Amsterdam again, they decided to go to the cinema. They would be safer in the dark, they thought, where nobody could see them. They bought tickets to In the Name of the Father and sat in the front row.

  After a
while, Billy leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I don’t understand this film at all.”

  “It hasn’t started yet,” she whispered back. “This is the adverts.”

  When the pub blew up, Billy laughed. He couldn’t help it. The whole thing seemed so artificial, so exaggerated. Ludicrous, really.

  “People died,” Susie told him earnestly. “In real life.”

  Billy’s laughter became uncontrollable, and they were asked to leave.

  They returned to their hotel and had showers, then Susie painted her toenails, which seemed to take hours. Later, they lay on the bed, watching TV. Once, as Susie leaned forwards, her bathrobe loosened and Billy saw the curve of a breast, the underside, heavy and soft.

  Then, inexplicably, he fell asleep.

  In the middle of the night he woke up with an erection. Susie was sleeping deeply, one arm abandoned on the outside of the covers. His penis felt harder than it had ever felt before, and it wouldn’t go down, no matter how long he waited. In the end, he decided to put it inside her. He didn’t know what else to do. She was facing away from him, which made it easy, and she was already wet, which made it easier still. It was almost as though she had been expecting him. He pushed into her gently, stealthily, and then stayed there, without moving. He could feel the muscles inside her contract around him, gripping him. Was she awake after all? If she was, she gave no other sign of it. He came without touching her, except in that one place. Just by thinking about her, imagining her—even though she was right next to him. He could feel the pulsing in his penis as the sperm pumped out, but his penis didn’t move at all. Still inside her, he fell asleep again.

  The next morning she sat up in bed and looked at him. “Did you do it to me in the night?”

  He nodded.

  “Did I wake up?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  She lay back, her head resting on the pillow. “I don’t mind, you know. I don’t mind it if you do that.” She was staring at the ceiling. “What was it like?”

  “It was amazing,” he said. “It was like our bodies weren’t there at all, only the parts of us that were touching. They were there all by themselves, and they were much bigger than normal, and it was dark all around them, as if they were in a cave…”

  Susie’s head turned on the pillow, and she looked at him again. “I think you’re still stoned,” she said.

  A brittle rattling began, and Billy glanced over his shoulder. On the back seat of the car were all the newspapers that he had bought at the weekend, their pages vibrating in the draught. He wound the window up a fraction, enough to stop the noise.

  Amsterdam, though.

  That was the first and last time he ever smoked dope, and he didn’t regret it either, not for a moment, but if they were to go back to Amsterdam in the near future, with Emma, it wouldn’t be like that. It would just be an extension of the life they were already living. What Sue had really been trying to say, he thought, wasn’t so much that she needed a holiday, or that she would like to return to a place where they had once been happy, but that she wanted to recover some spirit or quality that they appeared to have lost. Well, he wanted the same thing. It wouldn’t be easy, though. In fact, he wondered whether it could actually be done.

  On a footbridge up ahead someone had written rural revolt in giant capitals. Labour had been in power for five years now, and all the excitement and the optimism had gone. All the shine too. They were always interfering, trying to tell people how to live their lives. Why couldn’t they deal with the things a government was supposed to deal with—health, education, transport—and leave the rest of it alone? Whoever was responsible for the graffiti had damaged public property, but Billy found himself approving.

  He checked his rear-view mirror, then concentrated on the road in front of him. It was empty.

  Then a lorry piled high with timber, which he overtook.

  Then nothing.

  39

  As he came over a rise, not far from Stowmarket, Billy saw the lights of a petrol station below him and veered off the dual carriageway, braking hard. The cold air wasn’t enough: he needed a soft drink, something sugary to help him stay awake.

  Parking outside the shop, he went in and picked up a bottle of Lucozade and a newspaper. He’d been hoping Keith would be behind the till—when Billy worked the late shift, he often dropped in and Keith would let him have a sandwich and a cup of coffee for nothing—but it was a man he’d never seen before, young and overweight, with floppy brown hair and a twist of gold wire dangling from his right ear.

  “Traffic’s bad,” Billy said. “Going west, I mean.”

  Not bothering to look up, the young man nodded. “There was an accident, apparently. Lorry shed its load…”

  “When was this?”

  “About an hour ago.” He rang up the soft drink and the paper, then glanced through the window, towards the pumps. “Any petrol?”

  Billy shook his head. “No.”

  Behind him, a slot machine gave off a series of muffled and incongruous sounds. The whinnying of horses, pistol shots—an Irish jig.

  He reached into his pocket, bringing out a five-pound note and Mr. Prabhu’s business card at the same time. He placed the money on the counter. “I’ve been working all night,” he said. “I’m hoping the Lucozade will give me a bit of energy.”

  The man handed Billy his change and turned away.

  It was usually tiredness that caused accidents, Billy thought as he left the shop—that, or a momentary lapse of concentration. Some time after Sue’s crash, when she was no longer having the nightmares, he had asked her whether she had an explanation for what had happened, imagining she would blame treacherous road conditions, or the car’s light steering, but she had told him it was all her fault. She’d simply lost control. “But outside Emma’s school?” he said. Even months later, he still found this aspect of the crash astonishing. “That’s the whole point,” Sue said. “I was thinking about the time I took her to Whitby, and how I nearly—” She broke off, unwilling—or unable—to complete the sentence.

  As he walked to his car, Billy saw that it was getting light. Mist cloaked the wispy trees that divided one side of the A14 from the other. On a whim, he took out his mobile and dialled the number on the hi-fi dealer’s card.

  He answered almost immediately.

  “Mr. Prabhu?” Billy said. “This is Billy Tyler. We met in the hospital cafeteria.”

  “PC Tyler,” Mr. Prabhu said. “Of course. So you’ve decided to take me up on my offer?”

  Billy laughed. “No. Actually, I was just wondering about your wife. Is she all right?”

  “She’s out of danger, I’m happy to say. It seems the operation was a success.”

  “That’s wonderful. You know, I looked for you earlier, at about four, and then again when I left the hospital at seven, but there was no sign of you. I thought you must have gone home.”

  “No, they let me sleep in the ward—on a chair. My neck’s killing me.”

  “Well, anyway,” Billy said with a smile, “I’m glad your wife has come through it all OK.”

  “It was very thoughtful of you to ring, PC Tyler. Thank you so much.”

  “Well, goodbye, Mr. Prabhu.”

  “Goodbye—and have a safe journey home.”

  Ending the call, Billy felt something slacken inside him, something that had been stretched to breaking-point. He had wanted to talk to someone who would be glad to hear his voice. He had needed good news.

  He slid the phone into his pocket and put the Lucozade on the roof of the car, then flicked through the paper. There, on Chapter 7, was a photo of the crematorium where the woman’s body would be burnt that evening. The caption said furnace heading for hell. Tucking the paper under his arm, he reached for the Lucozade and drank it standing beside the car. After two or three long gulps, he tipped his head back and stared at the sky. Another cloudy day. Thick cloud too. He thought of people in planes, and h
ow they would be above it all, and he wished he could be catapulted straight upwards, into miraculous sunlight. He finished his drink, then dropped the bottle in a rubbish bin and climbed back into his car.

  Ten minutes later, he passed the turning that led to his village, the trademark brick façade of a Travel Inn visible off to the right, but he only left the dual carriageway a few miles further on, at the last exit before the Orwell bridge. Ahead of him as he drove down the hill was Ipswich harbour with its marina full of yachts and its static, dark-blue cranes. He rounded the roundabout. A fire had been lit behind a wooden fence next to the boatyard, and smoke was drifting across the road. The acridity of the fumes told him that what was being burnt was probably illegal. Rubber, it smelt like—or plastic. Two Christmases ago, his brother had flown back from San Francisco, where he was now a successful paediatrician, and Billy had driven to Runcorn with Sue and Emma to see him. On Boxing Day night, sitting up late over a whisky, Billy had asked him what he remembered about their father.

  “Not much,” Charlie said. “He gave me a toy saxophone once. It was gold.” He swirled the whisky in his glass. “I burned it.”

  “Really?”

  “In the garden,” Charlie said. “I threw it on the bonfire. For a few moments nothing happened, then it sort of went all floppy. It made a real stink.” He sipped his whisky. “I used to think that was the real him, that stink. I still do, actually.”

  “Remember when I broke my toes?” Billy said, then told him the story of how he had gone to the Iron Door in Liverpool.

  “What?” Charlie said. “You saw him play?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Was he any good?”

  “I don’t know,” Billy said. “I couldn’t tell.”