Ming came back in the early afternoon, closing the door quietly. He didn’t call my name, just came into the kitchen where I sat nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee that was my fifth of the day and was making me nauseous.
Ming spread out his wet newspaper, smoothing it flat, ripping it accidentally but pressing it back together with his fingertips. Carefully he turned the sodden pages.
‘Anything?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’ He lifted another page. ‘Nothing about Mum and Dad, of course.’ He gave me a rueful glance. ‘Nothing about Abby, nothing about Holy Joe. They must be suppressing that, whatever it is. Increasing pressure for that Colum Quinn to be extradited. He’s surfaced, apparently. Ma Baxter’s getting pretty strident, she’ll have us at war if she’s not careful.’ Shoving his fingers through his wet fringe, he rested his forehead on the heel of his hand. ‘Oh, and they’re not admitting it, but it looks like they’ve given up the search for the Bishop.’
‘Long ago,’ I said. ‘He’s more use to her missing, isn’t he? Diverts everyone from the fact the economy’s going down the toilet. That’s why the search wasn’t very thorough.’ I was quite shocked at the bitterness in my voice. Where had that cynical notion come from?
I knew I was right, though.
Shrugging, Ming turned to the back page of the Messenger. ‘That’s it, really. What time does the tide turn?’ He peered at the columns, tracing the tables with a finger.
‘About five, I think. Why?’
‘Five-ten. You’re right.’ He smiled. Half-standing up, he leaned across the table and kissed me. I touched his ear to try and keep him there but he drew away again, licking his cut lip. ‘The cave’s underwater.’
I gasped. ‘You’ve been to look?’
‘Uh-huh.’ He sat down again, placed his hands on the table. ‘It’s good in a way, Cass. If the cave’s full of water it’ll wash away... traces. You know.’
Funny, us sitting here discussing this so coolly. If I stepped back from my body and watched what I was doing, what I was talking about, I wouldn’t believe in myself. But I didn’t step back, I didn’t want a sensible perspective on this. It was best viewed all askew. Otherwise I’d go mad thinking about what we’d done.
I swigged my horrible coffee, made a face and stared at the oily film on its surface. ‘And if it washes... everything away?’
Ming shrugged again. It was becoming his regular form of expression. ‘It might wash right out to sea. Depends on the tide. Even if it gets caught downstream, even if the tide brings it back in, how will there be any evidence on it? Anything they know will be circumstantial.’
Circumstances. Yes, yes.
I watched Ming’s face. I thought about his violence, his ruthlessness, his fingers jabbing at Jeremiah’s throat and eyes. The scratches and bruising on his face when I found him in the wood, before we found the Bishop, seven lifetimes ago. Spitting on the corpse, and having the gall to go back and clean it off. Going back to the cave just now to check if it was flooded.
Maybe he had to keep going back, maybe it was a compulsion.
And When you report this leave me out of it. And Bishop Todd got the land.
And I just didn’t know any more.
‘Did you kill him?’ I asked.
I hadn’t meant to. I just opened my mouth and out it came. Ming looked at his fingernails and frowned. Then he sighed, and looked up at me.
‘No,’ he said coolly.
I kept watching his eyes, and swallowed.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I wish I had. I’d have liked it to be me. But it wasn’t.’
‘All right,’ I said.
Standing up abruptly, Ming switched on the kettle. He pushed down the toaster, empty, then pressed the cancel button. Then he did it again. The sound it made was a clanging mechanical protest, as if he was torturing it.
‘You said it was your Dad.’ His voice was muffled as he tormented the toaster again.
‘Yeah. I know.’
‘You said you knew it was him.’ Ming sounded alien, bitter and cool. ‘And that’s why you made me...’
I pulled the crusts off a cold bit of toast I’d made earlier. ‘I was so sure. I still think it was, it’s just I’m not sure any more. Not absolutely, a hundred-and-ten percent sure. That’s all.’
God, I sounded lame. I’d got Ming into possibly the worst trouble of his life because of a suspicion that was only ninety-nine-and-a-bit percent. Methodically I began to shred the stale toast into crumbs, rolling them under my palm. The fragments were hard and sharp enough to hurt, so I rubbed my flesh harder against them. Self-Harm with Toast.
Turning at last, Ming smiled with half his mouth, trying to fake some good humour. ‘Don’t feel bad about asking.’
But I did. Maybe I’d just wanted to share the blame around. Maybe I’d wanted it to be Ming, because then it wouldn’t be Dad. More to the point, it wouldn’t be...
‘Me,’ I blurted, but I had my hands clasped over my mouth and Ming thought I was talking to him.
‘What?’ he said curtly. He pushed the toaster down again, but this time he didn’t press cancel. This time he was going to let it burn the house down. Well, hey. Why not.
‘Do you think it was me?’ I mumbled.
Moving the flat of his hand over the toaster slots, he let the heat singe his palm. ‘Sorry?’
Yanking my hands away, I screamed. ‘DO YOU THINK IT WAS ME?’
Ming’s distant half-a-smile died, bitterness creeping into his voice. ‘Of course I don’t. Cass, I wouldn’t think that about you.’
‘That’s not what I mean! I’m not asking for your good opinion!’ I started to cry. ‘Ming. Do you think it might have been me? Did I kill the Bishop?’
16: Crumbling
You plant a seed in someone’s head like that, and it’s going to take root. I knew that now, I knew it as Ming’s eyes avoided mine, as I felt his body stiffen when I tried to touch him. I wanted to throw myself into the overflowing river for my idiocy, I wanted to yell at myself for the thousandth time in my life to keep my stupid mouth shut, but I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway.
I sneaked up to his room while he was downstairs watching TV, and stole some Internet time. The fact he didn’t come looking for me spoke volumes. Well. I’d accused him of murder, and then as good as admitted it myself. What did I expect, a forgiving peck on the cheek? More than likely he couldn’t bear to touch me. He could touch a fat cleric’s rotting corpse, I thought, anger burning my throat and eyes. But he couldn’t touch me.
I could barely see the desktop’s blurred screen, I had to keep blinking hard to make it out at all, but I managed to locate the search engine and type in ‘amnesia’. But so many sites were blocked, especially the medical ones, it was impossible to know which were any good, and the connection kept being interrupted. They might not be able to control the Internet but they were having a pretty good stab at it.
Memory loss, retrograde amnesia, transient global amnesia. I never knew it was so complicated. I never knew there were so many kinds. How long did it last? The answer was different everywhere I looked. Could it come back in patches? On and off? Riddle me this.
I’d hit my head on the tarmac, I’d fractured my skull. Could I still be having blackouts? I’d made myself forget what happened in the vestry when I was eleven. Could I be good at that now? Four years’ practice. Could I be getting better at suppressing my memories, like I was getting better at lying? Was it a learned skill? Could I make myself forget something else?
Could I kill somebody and forget I’d done it?
Nobody would tell me, so I just sat and stared at the screen and cried for a while, then logged off. I didn’t dare go down to Ming. I didn’t want to feel that coldness coming off him like I was opening a freezer door. I didn’t want to endure Keyser Soze’s smug leer as he curled possessively on Ming’s lap, Ming’s fingers rubbing his skull between his ears, when it was my scalp that needed stroking.
The worst p
art was, I could sense my own desperation, so I’m sure Ming could too. I was practically throwing myself at him, and I knew I was doing it, but I couldn’t stop myself. That night we lay in his bed, because we didn’t want to admit to ourselves that anything was wrong, but we quickly found that even in a single bed two people could lie all night without touching each other.
If we’d slept simultaneously we might have rolled together without meaning to, our bodies pulled together like magnets, and that might have been enough to crack the sheet ice between us and make us like each other again. But at no point were we both deeply asleep. When we were exhausted enough we dozed in turn, one at a time like sentries, but all we were guarding against was each other. I just wanted to melt into him again, so he’d make me feel better like he always had, but all of a sudden we were chemically incompatible. We woke to a surly, monosyllabic morning.
Mum picked a good time to show up, then.
She must have sensed the atmosphere in the house as soon as Ming opened the door to her, because she glanced first at him and then at me, hanging back in the dimness of the hallway, and said, ‘Are you okay, Cassie?’
I nodded, then realising she couldn’t see me well I said, ‘Yes. Hi, Mum.’
Mum turned to Ming, her brow furrowing. ‘Can I have a word with your mother?’
Ming managed not to shoot me a glance. ‘She’s out,’ he said smoothly. ‘They both are.’
Mum watched his eyes.
‘They’ll be back in a couple of hours if you want to wait.’ He shrugged.
I was chilled by his nerve, but Mum smiled more naturally and shook her head. ‘No, Menzies, it’s okay. I want to talk to Cass and I think we need to go for a walk.’
I bit a thumbnail, ripping it carefully off with my teeth. ‘How’s Abby?’
‘I don’t know.’ The smile grew brighter, less natural. ‘Dad’s seeing her, Cass. She’s okay just now, so far as I know.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Are they treating her all right?’
‘Yes. Yes, Cassie, they are. She hasn’t been charged with anything yet.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Hasn’t she?’
The edge in my tone must have cut through to Mum. Twisting her hands together, she bent the fingers so far backwards I reached for them, terrified they’d break. When she saw my movement she took a breath and looked up, and I snatched my own hands back.
‘Cassie.’ She sucked her lower lip. ‘Your Dad.’
‘What about him?’
‘Do you remember, Cass, when you woke up one morning with a spider on your face? A big one.’ She made a wry face, trying to make a joke of it though the memory still made my spine tingle. Anyway, didn’t she know my sense of humour was on extended leave? ‘I think you were seven or eight,’ she said. ‘You just woke up and found it there, remember?’
Oh, like I’d forget.
‘You were demented. I would be too!’ she added hurriedly. ‘Your Dad had to chase it round the room till he killed it. He didn’t really like killing them, but he knew you’d never sleep again if he didn’t get it.’
Yeah. I gave her a reluctant smile.
‘And your Dad hugged you and said he’d never let another monster near you. He’d never let a monster touch you again. Do you remember that?’
‘Yes,’ I said, looking at the wall.
‘Well.’ Mum hesitated. ‘It’s just that he was wrong. He couldn’t keep the monster away and he couldn’t even chase it down afterwards.’
Ming just stood there, but he didn’t seem embarrassed at all. He listened and said nothing.
‘And I know that’s not your fault, it’s his and mine. But please, Cass, just think, promise me once every day you’ll think how your father feels about that.’
I turned my head and stared at the door, wishing I could barge it down and run away.
Mum put her knuckles to her eyes. ‘I’m ready to tell you why Abby’s in jail. But only if you’re ready to hear it.’
I looked at Ming, and he looked at me, and then at Mum. And Mum just looked at me.
‘I’ll be in my room,’ said Ming.
17: Holy Joe
‘They knew who Holy Joe was. They knew all along.’
The coffee in Mum’s cardboard cup was stone cold because all she’d done was turn it in her fingers, her shoulders hunched over as if she was trying to protect it from the dripping tree above our bench. The rain had eased but it hadn’t stopped, and water trickled and rolled from her wet hair to her jaw before running down her neck, bypassing her upturned collar. She must be getting soaked. The massive sycamore wasn’t much shelter. I suppose I was getting soaked too.
‘He could have been stopped, Cass, because somebody knew him. How else could they have known that body they found was Holy Joe’s? It had been there so long, so long. Someone must have identified him. From clothes, maybe, or a piece of jewellery. Or they had his dental records. So you see, someone knew him. We were right about that. Terribly right. So we did the right thing, you see, Cass? We did the right thing all along.’
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘What did you do?’
We sat at opposite ends of the bench, tetchy gulls screaming above our heads, and watched litter bob in a scummy rim round the park boating lake, pockmarked with rain. I tried to take another mouthful of coffee but got only the last oily dregs. Mum’s lashes were dewed with rainwater, and she rubbed them with a fist to clear them.
‘Oh, Cassandra, I’m sorry I was useless after Abby was arrested. I don’t know why I froze up and couldn’t tell you everything. I’ve had enough time to think about it.’
‘Well,’ I said, though I tried to restrain myself. ‘You’re used to not telling me stuff.’
‘I know. I’m sorry I’ve been no use to you for the last four years. We’re too used to secrets in our family, too used to secrets and death and saying nothing.’
She was babbling, prevaricating, and she knew it.
‘You know about Holy Joe but you don’t remember him, you don’t remember the fear. It was like a virus. Nobody really thought it would be them next – nobody ever does – but nobody felt safe. It wasn’t as if we thought they’d find him and stop him. There were people, church people, who said they understood him, that his heart was in the right place. The right place! Cass, can you imagine? Oh, he was trying to save those women’s souls. He was trying to push back the permissive society; well, wasn’t the One Church trying to do the same? Sure, he was disturbed, he was going about things the wrong way, but his aims were holy. He was devout. He meant well. Those girls were asking for it. Oh, Cassie.’ There were real tears in Mum’s eyes now, but she didn’t rub them away. ‘They weren’t asking for it any more than you were.’
A cold-eyed gull skidded onto the water and folded its wings, bright snowy white against the greenish murk. Out of nowhere, I wanted to cry for those murdered girls. I wondered how they’d felt, I wondered if they’d managed to blank it out, any of it, or if they knew everything about their own deaths. Ferociously I chewed the edge of my coffee cup.
‘We were looking the wrong way, so we were. We worried and fretted and looked over our shoulders for Holy Joe, while Ma Baxter got into politics. Ma Baxter wasn’t a bogeyman.’
‘She makes people feel safe,’ I said with sudden clarity.
‘That’s true.’ Mum stirred her coffee with a fingertip. ‘People scare their children with bug-eyed monsters, not Ma Baxter and militias. People like a bit of repression, you know.’
‘So long as they’re not getting it themselves,’ I put in bitterly, thinking of Ming.
‘Yes. Do you blame them? Ma Baxter feeds people’s fears, Cass, and then she feeds off them. She terrifies you with the monster under the bed, then she offers to kill it for you. The Church let her use them but they knew what they were doing, and they used her too. Politics and extreme religion: what a cocktail! We all got drunk on it and we’ve still got the hangover.’
‘That’s one of Dad’s lines.’
Mum laughed sh
akily. ‘Yes.’
‘Abby says it can’t last forever. The One Church.’
‘Maybe not. Maybe it’ll collapse under the weight of its own conflicts, but my, it’ll get ugly in the meantime. They’ll do their damnedest to wipe out secularism and atheism before it does the same to them. Your father thinks the Church needs to split to stop it becoming a monster. Wilf thinks that’ll kill it. Who’s to know who’s right?’ Mum poured her cold coffee into the wet grass, then looked longingly towards the coffee kiosk.
‘Don’t even think about it, Mum,’ I said. ‘You didn’t drink the last one.’
‘Ah, I know. I’m putting it off, getting away from Holy Joe. Maybe I’m scared of him even now. I see him in my dreams, Cass, I see him before I fall asleep. Didn’t we all?’
Oh, bad dreams, guilty dreams. I knew about those. ‘But you did see him, Mum?’
‘Yes, Cassie. I saw him. For real.’ Mum heaved a sigh. ‘Like I said, nobody thinks it’ll happen to them, but everybody’s afraid it’ll happen to someone they know. I was afraid for Abby, her and her boyfriends and her hairdos and her dancing and her makeup. My mother used to try and scare her with tales of Holy Joe, what he’d do when he found her kissing a boy.’
‘And wasn’t she scared?’ I shivered.
‘Abby? You’re joking. She didn’t exactly laugh in your grandmother’s face, God knows she’d never dare do that, but she sniggered and giggled in our bedroom in the dark. I used to lie there frozen to the mattress, terrified Bunty would think we were both laughing behind her back. I don’t know who scared me more: Holy Joe, or Bunty.’
‘Bunty.’ I made a wry face.
‘Ah, well. You weren’t there, you didn’t feel the fear. Mind you, nor did Abby, the silly cow.’ Tipping her head back, Mum closed her eyes and let water drip onto her skin from the sagging foliage. ‘She went too far one night, our Abby. Probably in a lot of senses, because she was out much too late, and Bunty stayed up to wait for her. Oh, I shivered in our bedroom, wondering what Bunty would do when Abby showed up. Abby was a trial to her, she kept saying, a trial. The Cross the Lord had sent her. And see, I was more nervous than ever for Abby, because that night we were the only people left in the whole building, in the whole square. We were last to leave before the renovations and there’d be no neighbours to intervene on Abby’s behalf. Lord knows everybody interfered in everyone else’s business all the time, but not that night. Everyone else was gone.’ She put the palms of her hands over her eyes. ‘You never really knew those tenements, Cass, but you’ve seen them. Can you picture Bunty’s?’
Bad Faith Page 15