"So you were right," he said.
"Right?"
"About the place having a maniac."
"No," she said. "No."
"But the kid—"
She got up and stood at the window, looking down two stories into the darkened street below. Why did she feel the need to reject the conspiracy theory so urgently? Why was she now praying that Purcell had been right, and that all she'd been told had been lies? She went back to the way Anne-Marie had been when she'd visited her that morning: pale, jittery; expectant. She had been like a woman anticipating some arrival, hadn't she, eager to shoo unwanted visitors away so that she could turn back to the business of waiting? But waiting for what, or whom? Was it possible that Anne-Marie actually knew the murderer? Had perhaps invited him into the house?
"I hope they find the bastard," she said, still watching the street.
"They will," Trevor replied. "A baby murderer, for Christ's sake. They'll make it a high priority."
A man appeared at the corner of the street, turned, and whistled. A large Alsatian came to heel, and the two set off down toward the cathedral.
"The dog," Helen murmured.
"What?"
She had forgotten the dog in all that had followed. Now the shock she'd felt as it had leaped at the window shook her again.
"What dog?" Trevor pressed her.
"I went back to the flat today— where I took the pictures of the graffiti. There was a dog in there. Locked in."
"So?"
"It'll starve. Nobody knows it's there."
"How do you know it wasn't locked in to kennel it?"
"It was making such a noise," she said.
"Dogs bark," Trevor replied. "That's all they're good for."
"No," she said very quietly, remembering the noises through the boarded window. "It didn't bark."
"Forget the dog," Trevor said. "And the child. There's nothing you can do about it. You were just passing through."
His words only echoed her own thoughts of earlier in the day, but somehow, for reasons that she could find no words to convey, that conviction had decayed in the last hours. She was not just passing through. Nobody ever just passed through; experience always left its mark. Sometimes it merely scratched; on occasion it took off limbs. She did not know the extent of her present wounding, but she knew it was more profound than she yet understood, and it made her afraid.
"We're out of booze," she said, emptying the last dribble of whiskey into her tumbler.
Trevor seemed pleased to have a reason to be accommodating. "I'll go out, shall I?" he said. "Get a bottle or two?"
"Sure," she replied. "If you like."
He was gone only half an hour; she would have liked him to be longer. She didn't want to talk, only to sit and think through the unease in her belly. Though Trevor had dismissed her concern for the dog— and perhaps justifiably so— she couldn't help but go back to the locked maisonette in her mind's eye: to picture again the raging face on the bedroom wall, and hear the animal's muffled growl as it pawed the boards over the window. Whatever Trevor had said, she didn't believe the place was being used as a makeshift kennel. No, the dog was imprisoned in there, no doubt of it, running round and round, driven, in its desperation, to eat its own feces, growing more insane with every hour that passed. She became afraid that somebody— kids maybe, looking for more tinder for their bonfire— would break into the place, ignorant of what it contained. It wasn't that she feared for the intruders' safety, but that the dog, once liberated, would come for her. It would know where she was (so her drunken head construed) and come sniffing her out.
Trevor returned with the whiskey, and they drank together until the early hours, when her stomach revolted. She took refuge in the toilet— Trevor outside asking her if she needed anything, her telling him weakly to leave her alone. When, an hour later, she emerged, he had gone to bed. She did not join him but lay down on the sofa and dozed through until dawn.
* * *
The murder was news. The next morning it made all the tabloids as a front-page splash, and found prominent positions in the heavyweights too. There were photographs of the stricken mother being led from the house, and others, blurred but potent, taken over the backyard wall and through the open kitchen door. Was that blood on the floor, or shadow?
Helen did not bother to read the articles— her aching head rebelled at the thought— but Trevor, who had brought the newspapers in, was eager to talk. She couldn't work out if this was further peacemaking on his part or a genuine interest in the issue.
"The woman's in custody," he said, poring over the Daily Telegraph. It was a paper he was politically averse to, but its coverage of violent crime was notoriously detailed.
The observation demanded Helen's attention, unwilling or not. "Custody?" she said. "Anne-Marie?"
"Yes."
"Let me see."
He relinquished the paper, and she glanced over the page.
"Third column," Trevor prompted.
She found the place, and there it was in black and white. Anne-Marie had been taken into custody for questioning to justify the time lapse between the estimated hour of the child's death, and the time that it had been reported. Helen read the relevant sentences over again, to be certain that she'd understood properly. Yes, she had. The police pathologist estimated Kerry to have died between six and six-thirty that morning; the murder had not been reported until twelve.
She read the report over a third and fourth time, but repetition did not change the horrid facts. The child had been murdered before dawn. When she had gone to the house that morning Kerry had already been dead four hours. The body had been in the kitchen, a few yards down the hallway from where she had stood, and Anne-Marie had said nothing. That air of expectancy she had had about her— what had it signified? That she awaited some cue to lift the receiver and call the police?
"My Christ…" Helen said, and let the paper drop.
"What?"
"I have to go to the police."
"Why?"
"To tell them I went to the house," she replied. Trevor looked mystified. "The baby was dead, Trevor. When I saw Anne-Marie yesterday morning, Kerry was already dead."
* * *
She rang the number given in the paper for any persons offering information, and half an hour later a police car came to pick her up. There was much that startled her in the two hours of interrogation that followed, not least the fact that nobody had reported her presence on the estate to the police, though she had surely been noticed.
"They don't want to know," the detective told her. "You'd think a place like that would be swarming with witnesses. If it is, they're not coming forward. A crime like this—"
"Is it the first?" she said.
He looked at her across a chaotic desk. "First?"
"I was told some stories about the estate. Murders. This summer."
The detective shook his head. "Not to my knowledge. There's been a spate of muggings; one woman was put in hospital for a week or so. But no; no murders."
She liked the detective. His eyes flattered her with their lingering, and his face with its frankness. Past caring whether she sounded foolish or not, she said: "Why do they tell lies like that? About people having their eyes cut out. Terrible things."
The detective scratched his long nose. "We get it too," he said. "People come in here, they confess to all kinds of crap. Talk all night, some of them, about things they've done, or think they've done. Give you it all in the minutest detail. And when you make a few calls, it's all invented. Out of their minds."
"Maybe if they didn't tell you the stories… they'd actually go out and do it."
The detective nodded. "Yes," he said. "God help us. You might be right at that."
And the stories she'd been told, were they confessions of uncommitted crimes, accounts of the worst imaginable, imagined to keep fiction from becoming fact? The thought chased its own tail: these terrible stories still needed a first cause, a wellspring from
which they leaped. As she walked home through the busy streets she wondered how many of her fellow citizens knew such stories. Were these inventions common currency, as Purcell had claimed? Was there a place, however small, reserved in every heart for the monstrous?
"Purcell rang," Trevor told her when she got home. "To invite us out to dinner."
The invitation wasn't welcome, and she made a face.
"Apollinaire's, remember?" he reminded her. "He said he'd take us all to dinner if you proved him wrong."
The thought of getting a dinner out of the death of Anne-Marie's infant was grotesque, and she said so.
"He'll be offended if you turn him down."
"I don't give a damn. I don't want dinner with Purcell."
"Please," he said softly. "He can get difficult, and I want to keep him smiling just at the moment."
She glanced across at him. The look he'd put on made him resemble a drenched spaniel. Manipulative bastard, she thought; but said, "All right, I'll go. But don't expect any dancing on the tables."
"We'll leave that to Archie," he said. "I told Purcell we were free tomorrow night. Is that all right with you?"
"Whenever."
"He's booking a table for eight o'clock."
The evening papers had relegated The Tragedy of Baby Kerry to a few column inches on an inside page. In lieu of much fresh news they simply described the house-to-house inquiries that were now going on at Spector Street. Some of the later editions mentioned that Anne-Marie had been released from custody after an extended period of questioning and was now residing with friends. They also mentioned, in passing, that the funeral was to be the following day.
Helen had not entertained any thoughts of going back to Spector Street for the funeral when she went to bed that night, but sleep seemed to change her mind, and she woke with the decision made for her.
* * *
Death had brought the estate to life. Walking through to Ruskin Court from the street, she had never seen such numbers out and about. Many were already lining the curb to watch the funeral cortège pass, and looked to have claimed their niche early, despite the wind and the ever-present threat of rain. Some were wearing items of black clothing— a coat, a scarf— but the overall impression, despite the lowered voices and the studied frowns, was one of celebration. Children running around, untouched by reverence; occasional laughter escaping from between gossiping adults— Helen could feel an air of anticipation that made her spirits, despite the occasion, almost buoyant.
Nor was it simply the presence of so many people that reassured her; she was, she conceded to herself, happy to be back here in Spector Street. The quadrangles, with their stunted saplings and their gray grass, were more real to her than the carpeted corridors she was used to walking; the anonymous faces on the balconies and streets meant more than her colleagues at the university. In a word, she felt home.
Finally, the cars appeared, moving at a snail's pace through the narrow streets. As the hearse came into view— its tiny white casket decked with flowers— a number of women in the crowd gave quiet voice to their grief. One onlooker fainted; a knot of anxious people gathered around her. Even the children were stilled now.
Helen watched, dry-eyed. Tears did not come very easily to her, especially in company. As the second car, containing Anne-Marie and two other women, drew level with her, Helen saw that the bereaved mother was also eschewing any public display of grief. She seemed, indeed, to be almost elevated by the proceedings, sitting upright in the back of the car, her pallid features the source of much admiration. It was a sour thought, but Helen felt as though she was seeing Anne-Marie's finest hour; the one day in an otherwise anonymous life in which she was the center of attention. Slowly, the cortège passed by and disappeared from view.
The crowd around Helen was already dispersing. She detached herself from the few mourners who still lingered at the curb and wandered through from the street into Butts's Court. It was her intention to go back to the locked maisonette; to see if the dog was still there. If it was, she would put her mind at rest by finding one of the estate caretakers and informing him of the fact.
The quadrangle was, unlike the other courts, practically empty. Perhaps the residents, being neighbors of Anne-Marie's, had gone on to the crematorium for the service. Whatever the reason, the place was eerily deserted. Only children remained, playing around the pyramid bonfire, their voices echoing across the empty expanse of the square.
She reached the maisonette and was surprised to find the door open again, as it had been the first time she'd come here. The sight of the interior made her light-headed. How often in the past several days had she imagined standing here, gazing into that darkness. There was no sound from inside. The dog had surely run off— either that, or died. There could be no harm, could there, in stepping into the place one final time, just to look at the face on the wall, and its attendant slogan?
"Sweets to the sweet." She had never looked up the origins of that phrase. No matter, she thought. Whatever it had stood for once, it was transformed here, as everything was; herself included. She stood in the front room for a few moments, to allow herself time to savor the confrontation ahead. Far away behind her children were screeching like mad birds.
She stepped over a clutter of furniture and toward the short corridor that joined living room to bedroom, still delaying the moment. Her heart was quick in her: a smile played on her lips.
And there! At last! The portrait loomed, compelling as ever. She stepped back in the murky room to admire it more fully and her heel caught on the mattress that still lay in the corner. She glanced down. The squalid bedding had been turned over, to present its untorn face. Some blankets and a rag-wrapped pillow had been tossed over it. Something glistened among the folds of the uppermost blanket. She bent down to look more closely and found there a handful of sweets— chocolates and caramels— wrapped in bright paper. And littered among them, neither so attractive nor so sweet, a dozen razor-blades. There was blood on several. She stood up again and backed away from the mattress, and as she did so a buzzing sound reached her ears from the next room. She turned, and the light in the bedroom diminished as a figure stepped into the gullet between her and the outside world. Silhouetted against the light, she could scarcely see the man in the doorway, but she smelled him. He smelled like cotton candy, and the buzzing was with him or in him.
"I just came to look," she said, "…at the picture."
The buzzing went on— the sound of a sleepy afternoon, far from here. The man in the doorway did not move.
"Well," she said, "I've seen what I wanted to see." She hoped against hope that her words would prompt him to stand aside and let her past, but he didn't move, and she couldn't find the courage to challenge him by stepping toward the door.
"I have to go," she said, knowing that despite her best efforts fear seeped between every syllable. "I'm expected…"
That was not entirely untrue. Tonight they were all invited to Apollinaire's for dinner. But that wasn't until eight, which was four hours away. She would not be missed for a long while yet.
"If you'll excuse me," she said.
The buzzing had quieted a little, and in the hush the man in the doorway spoke. His unaccented voice was almost as sweet as his scent.
"No need to leave yet," he breathed.
"I'm due… due…"
Though she couldn't see his eyes, she felt them on her, and they made her feel drowsy, like that summer that sang in her head.
"I came for you," he said.
She repeated the four words in her head. I came for you. If they were meant as a threat, they certainly weren't spoken as one.
"I don't… know you," she said.
"No," the man murmured. "But you doubted me."
"Doubted?"
"You weren't content with the stories, with what they wrote on the walls. So I was obliged to come."
The drowsiness slowed her mind to a crawl, but she grasped the essentials of what the man was sa
ying. That he was legend, and she, in disbelieving him, had obliged him to show his hand. She looked, now, down at those hands. One of them was missing. In its place, a hook.
"There will be some blame," he told her. "They will say your doubts shed innocent blood. But I say what's blood for, if not for shedding? And in time the scrutiny will pass. The police will leave, the cameras will be pointed at some fresh horror, and they will be left alone, to tell stories of the Candyman again."
"Candyman?" she said. Her tongue could barely shape that blameless word.
"I came for you," he murmured so softly that seduction might have been in the air. And so saying, he moved through the passageway and into the light.
She knew him, without doubt. She had known him all along, in that place kept for terrors. It was the man on the wall. His portrait painter had not been a fantasist: the picture that howled over her was matched in each extraordinary particular by the man she now set eyes upon. He was bright to the point of gaudiness: his flesh a waxy yellow, his thin lips pale blue, his wild eyes glittering as if their irises were set with rubies. His jacket was a patchwork, his trousers the same. He looked, she thought, almost ridiculous, with his blood-stained motley, and the hint of rouge on his jaundiced cheeks. But people were facile. They needed these shows and shams to keep their interest. Miracles; murders; demons driven out and stones rolled from tombs. The cheap glamour did not taint the sense beneath. It was only, in the natural history of the mind, the bright feathers that drew the species to mate with its secret self.
And she was almost enchanted. By his voice, by his colors, by the buzz from his body. She fought to resist the rapture, though. There was a monster here, beneath this fetching display; its nest of razors was at her feet, still drenched in blood. Would it hesitate to slit her own throat if it once laid hands on her?
As the Candyman reached for her she dropped down and snatched the blanket up, flinging it at him. A rain of razors and candy fell around his shoulders. The blanket followed, blinding him. But before she could snatch the moment to slip past him, the pillow that had lain on the blanket rolled in front of her.
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