Ripped

by Frederic Lindsay

  Not if they were dead. Not anything.

  Murray sank back. They had already been told that. There was no point in her asking. He thought they were heading south, but he couldn't recognise any of the buildings.

  'Almost there,' Stewart said, sounding relieved.

  They bumped over a ramp and the car began to sway and jolt. Around them there was a sudden impression of space, of darkness, as if you might look up and see the stars, yet he knew they had not travelled far enough to shake free of the city. Getting out of the car, he looked up and glimpsed the moon and scarves of cloud drawn ragged by the wind.

  'What's wrong?' Stewart caught his arm as if to support him. 'I'm all right.' He felt Stewart's grip let him go slowly as if reluctant.

  The dizziness came and went as they crossed the broken ground. Cars were drawn up in a haphazard curve around the arch of a tunnel. All the headlights were on and as they passed in front of each car they swept long shadows into the entrance.

  'It's all right inside,' Stewart said. 'We told those bastards who are on strike to get the lights back on in there.'

  The last words echoed as they entered under the arch. They went on not asking questions, since the answers would come soon enough. When Murray glanced back, there was nothing behind them but the tunnel and the lamps on the walls drawing together in the distance. It had been cold when they got out of the car and then warmer out of the wind, but now the air around them was chilling. It felt like walking down into a grave. The breath rose white from their mouths. Unmistakable, the erect figure of Peerse towered in the middle of the way about thirty yards distant from them. Seeing their approach, the woman between the two men, he raised his right hand and moved it in a gesture so ambiguous it was impossible to tell whether he was calling them forward or imploring them to go back.

  BOOK FIVE

  25 Cold Malcolm

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6TH - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7TH 1988

  Once he had come back to the car from visiting Frances and found the side window broken and bright splinters of glass scattered inside. He had swept the seat clean and driven away in guilty haste. When he got home, Irene had turned his hand and he had seen blood beaded from a fine slice along its edge.

  Walking that street tonight had been like falling, he had so many good reasons for not coming back to see Frances. 'I shouldn't have come,' he told her.

  'You'll come, you'll come, you'll come.'

  Her face under him was stupid with lust. It had never been like this with her before. Instead of being excited, he was chilled by her need. 'Just get it into me,' she gasped, driving her pelvis against him. 'No tricks, just put it in. Put it in!' In impotent revenge, he laid his full weight on her, that she raised with her loins using the strength of a coal heaver, until realising what was happening she began to curse 'bastard, bastard, bastard' and lift him in her spasms higher with every curse. Until with a final grunting scream she was finished and dwindled under him; to complain in a moment, 'Ease up. Christ, you're smothering me.' He rolled off her on to his back. What in prospect had drawn him, attracted and repelled like a dog to vomit, was going to make a bad meal in memory. At the thought of food his mouth filled with water; not steak or fish with fine wine but a hot pie, the kind they ate on terracings at football matches, holding it in both hands, the grease running between their teeth.

  'I locked the door behind you, didn't I?' she whispered.

  'It's locked.' He lay with his arm covering his eyes and his head turned from her. 'Both locks and all the bolts. Not forgetting the chain. You put the chain back on as well.'

  She turned and pressed herself against his leg. He edged away. 'That's all right.' Her voice was quick and placatory, with no resentment. 'You don't have to bother. Just hold me.' She tugged at his fingers to draw his hand over her. 'Put your arm round me.'

  'What's wrong?' He had never seen her like this and it made him uneasy.

  'Last night someone tried to break in. I heard noises. I got up and stood behind the door.' She touched his shoulder and her hand was cold. 'I didn't put any light on. Scratching noises.' She shuddered against him. 'And then I heard the lock turning back.'

  'Did Irene know this when she asked me to come here?'

  'And then,' her whisper hardly reached him, 'then I heard the second one go too. I knelt down and put my hands over the bolt that goes into the floor. The door was shaking and I pressed my hands down, then it stopped and I thought he had gone away. Only after a while it started again, but just for a little while.' He hitched up on an elbow to look at her. Her face was pale and seemed shrunken until it was no larger than his fist. There was nothing left of her prettiness; it was gone like a conjuring trick.

  'I'm going home.'

  'Please,' she said.

  He lowered himself back on to the bed. He stared at the faint outline of an old stain surfacing in some enigmatic shape through the white plaster of the cornice.

  'We can do anything,' she said, 'you can do anything, if you won't leave me.'

  His decision, though, had been made. He dozed and imagined that he had risen and dressed. It occurred to him that he had not been able to enter her because she belonged to John Merchant and so he did not have the power; but Merchant was dead, and to meet that objection Merchant changed at once to Bradley. The big Yorkshireman Bradley was dead too, of course, but for some reason that did not matter. She belonged with Bradley and with Merchant and so he did not have the power. This explanation comforted him and lapped in warmth he slept.

  At some time later, he wakened out of a dream full of turning locks and the sounds of bolts being drawn back. The bed beside him was empty.

  A debtor to mercy alone he'd learned that for Miss Geddie of covenant mercy I sing all of them had learned nor fear with thy righteousness on he sang and the words turned to ice and erected themselves in silver spears glittering from his lips my person and offering to bring learned it out of fear, they were all terrified of her, as a child learned it well to remember always the terrors of law and of God who turned in his arms with Frances, two women side by side, Miss Geddie so strong, he saw her hand on Frances, cold it was colder than anyone could bear, colder than anyone could live and bear, anguish, spears of ice thrust in him, a cold agony with me can have nothing to do and he held a naked body in his arms and went forward through the passage that pulsed like a living thing only the pulses were round eyes of glass picking up light from the torch behind him and he carried her in the body of the giant, the ice giant, so cold, forced down like a mouthful of chewed meat in the pulsing tunnel and got here at last, to the belly of the giant, mummy, a belly of ice my Saviour's obedience and blood Jesus, was she smiling at him with those teeth striped with blood, so strong Miss Geddie, her hand on Frances, two women side by side, and then the blood came out of Frances's mouth, bright blood striping her skin, covering her teeth, she came close to him, he would warm himself upon her naked flesh, he knew her body, felt the little gristle under the left nipple roll between his fingers, put fingers in her mouth, in her arse, in the crack of her sex, erected the cold spear of his prick to stab into her, into her warmth melt in her, sorry, Miss Geddie, sorry, Miss Geddie, Frances came on top of him, her fault her fault, and was colder than any ice, colder than regret colder than righteousness, colder than Miss Geddie when you were naughty hide all my transgressions from view spears of denial lifted into the glittering air from his lips, not naughty, a man, not to be frightened by their bogeys by their lies, the I thing, melting in Frances, listen for the truth in the dark, holding darkness in his hands, her lips open over him.

  What is love?

  She moved on him, lay on him, rubbed her breasts and crotch on him; when she laughed, he choked on the foulness of her breath

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12TH

  For Murray, it seemed that each waking of his brother was like a journey. All of them were impossibly far, and often he would open his eyes and be gone again, turning back. Watching Malcolm's head roll and the querulous thinning of his lip
s, it was easy to wish for him more peace than waking could bring.

  Seated by the bed, Murray found the quietness disturbing.

  Even in the white hours of the early morning, the wards he had been washed into as a victim had sighed, bustled, clanged, groaned. In this room it was quiet. The loudest noise was the altered sound of Malcolm's breathing.

  With a start, he realised his brother was watching him.

  'Where's Mother?'

  He had to bend close to catch the words. 'She's not gone long. She'll be back soon.'

  'Why are you always here?'

  The whisper was puzzled and fretful.

  Murray got up and went across to the door. Through the glass, he could see into the short length of corridor. It was deserted. 'I'm supposed to let them know when you wake up.'

  Malcolm looked in the direction of the bell. His head and then his eyes moved very slowly, with an underwater slowness. It's not going to be any good, Murray thought. Even if I get time alone with him, he'll remember walking through the streets to her flat, perhaps a little more than last time, but we'll hit the barrier again. On the other side of the black line struck through that night, there was only a kaleidoscope of lunatic fragments.

  'Why isn't Mother here?'

  'She'll be back.'

  Murray waited, he was good at waiting. After a time, a dry spasm of coughing jerked Malcolm's eyes open.

  'Frances isn't here?'

  'How could she be?' Murray explained as he had before, 'Frances is dead. You were found with her in the Underpass, tied together. Until you opened your eyes, I thought you were dead too.'

  'Tell me...'

  A white glitter of lamps and the cold at the end of the tunnel. Men crouching over an ugly shape like a badly tied carpet, that fell apart into the two bodies, one looking as dead as the other. The sparkle you could not help seeing of frost in the bush of black hair over the woman's groin. A man's voice: 'Christ, look at his arm!' A man's voice: 'There are tracks from out there near the middle.' 'She's been a looker.' 'Fancy getting up against her now?' 'Christ, no, she looks frigid.'

  Laughter. He had glanced at Irene, but she seemed not to have heard, standing apart with Peerse who was frowning over her head at the smothered incongruous sound; looking back then and seeing Eddy Stewart among the group, the grin slackening his lips.

  'I don't remember anything that would help you,' Murray said.

  The head turned from side to side on the pillow. It had been a full-fleshed face, a little soft round the mouth, good looking in one of the conventional ways; the kind of man who reminded women as the night wore on at parties of some singer or actor. Now the most noticeable feature of his appearance was his teeth. Square and white they were too large for his mouth. His lips could not cover them.

  'I carried her…'

  'That's right.' Murray leaned forward to hear. 'You could have done – it could have been that way – through the tunnel down into the Underpass.'

  'I'd been there before... that day with Heathers...'

  The thread of voice slipped away and Murray came so close his cheek almost brushed his brother's lips and still he could not be sure that what he heard was, 'Poor girl. Poor girl.'

  'Frances?'

  'The poor black girl... poor girl... I carried her... '

  'Black girl? There wasn't any black girl.'

  Malcolm's eyes opened, suddenly clear and rational. 'I told her to look out through the peephole... Because it was a woman she let her in... She wasn't afraid of a woman...'

  'That was in the flat,' Murray said, confirming it. 'Frances went to the door and saw this woman through the peephole – and because it was a woman and you were there, she let her in, is that right?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did she have a gun, this woman? Was that how she forced you? How could she force you to drive the car – and then to carry Frances? Can you remember?'

  But his eyes had closed again, showing only a thin slice of white under each lid. After a pause, during which Murray thought he had slipped away again to sleep, he whispered, 'I had to drag her... It took a long time.'

  A long time. Whatever else was lost, they knew the kind of time it must have taken him. Out of the tunnel, somewhere in the open area, he had been struck from behind, a desperate blow. He must have come round lashed ankle to ankle, bound face against the naked corpse, his wrists fastened behind its back. He would not have been able to stand up; there was no way of getting free without help. Probably he had tried to shout. There was no one there to hear him. After a supervisor had used his fists in a dispute the previous day, every worker on the site had walked out. There wasn't any way of predicting a thing like that. Was there some way the killer could have learned of it? Or come there by chance; was that kind of coincidence possible? It had been cold, colder than anything he could account for, cold beyond reason. One eye stuck shut with blood from the head wound, Malcolm must have known how close he was to dying for even in that terrible bewilderment he had begun to drag his burden inch by slow fought inch. When he was found by a partner in the specialist firm, he had made it almost back to the mouth of the tunnel, but it had taken a long time. By then, given the way he had lain while unconscious and the tightness of the cords, the damage had been done.

  'It wasn't anything to do with Irene,' Murray said. 'She was with me.'

  Suddenly, he realised that he had spoken aloud and glanced down at his brother with a reflex like an acknowledgement of guilt.

  'Mother?' Malcolm whispered.

  As if it were moved by a separate intelligence, and one not willing to deceive itself any longer with weakness or Murray's questions, Malcolm's left hand crept out from under the covers, passed across his body and felt down his right side.

  'Mother?'

  I want this hurt to go away.

  Given three wishes, in the child's world of mysterious powers what was wrong could be set right.

  In slices, catching the corruption as it ate its way upwards, the surgeons had exchanged Malcolm's right arm for his life. He would live, but there was no kiss-and-make-better to return what was gone. The last operation had taken the arm off at the shoulder.

  With a convulsive spasm, he half raised himself and fell back.

  'You didn't tell me.'

  'You knew,' Murray said. 'It's just that when you wake up you don't want to remember.'

  The doctors had been impressed by him, not enormously though, since hospitals, all things considered, witnessed astonishing amounts of courage. Malcolm's had been of the male stoical kind. Now he stared up, hopeless and afraid and full of hate; but it was all right to be yourself with family.

  'You should have looked after me, Murray,' he said. 'Mother thinks you should have looked after me.'

  Malcolm's glance showed how much he discounted that possibility, and yet its bitterness was unreasonable as if his weakness had drawn him into the child's world of belief.

  'No more operations,' Murray said. 'I've spoken to the surgeon. They'll give you an arm – prosthesis, it's called.'

  'A prosthesis,' Malcolm mocked. But went on with a change of tone, 'You're telling me they'll hang a lump of tin and plastic on me.'

  'They'll fix it so you can work it with the muscles of your back.'

  'Oh, God,' Malcolm groaned and shut his eyes.

  Be grateful for it, Murray thought, and that you're not a manual worker. And for six months full pay, and six months half. The benefits of a steady job. He listened to the sound of his own breath. It went in and out so quietly that it was only when he forced it gently on the out breath that he heard it sigh in his nose. It was a little noise but in the stillness he heard it as his own, not lost in the rasping snore of the crippled man.

  'Is it true she was dead?'

  Murray thought for a moment, then said, 'When you were tied to her, she was dead.'

  'I thought she spoke to me.'

  'With the wounds she had, she was dead. The ones in front were enough to have killed her - and you were
covering those.' A spasm of coughing shook the man on the bed. It went on until he began to choke. Murray held him up and gradually the fit eased. He slumped in the support of the cradling arm.

  'I feel my elbow itching.'

  'I'll scratch it for you.'

  'If you can find it.'

  It took a moment to recognise the thin squeezed note as laughter.

  'It's in the other arm. My God, I can feel an itch in the arm that isn't there.'

  Murray laid him down. 'That happens.'

  'Will it happen once I get my prosthesis? Will the elbow of my prosthesis itch?' Malcolm asked contemptuously.

  'Maybe.' Murray stood up and stretched. He rubbed his neck where it had gone stiff. 'I'll get somebody.'

  'You want to know what I regret – really regret?'

  With his hand on the door, Murray hesitated. Through the glass, he saw his mother accompanied by a nurse coming towards the room. She was moving very slowly. In all her long life, until this time when Malcolm had been hurt, she had not needed the aid of a stick.

  'Mother's here.'

  'Murray? You know what I regret? The women I haven't had. And the ones I could have had but passed up. Murray? Who's going to look at me now?'

  Letting the door swing shut behind him, Murray stepped out into the corridor.

  Mother came waveringly, feeling forward with her stick at each step. Yet those milky eyes, he knew, missed nothing of him. Groping forward, she held him in her blind gaze and with her stick beat, beat, on the roof of his skull.

  26 The Children of Annette Verhaeren

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13TH 1988

  The gull screamed a savage brainless cry and flew up almost into his face as he entered the gate. Startled, he watched it rise beyond the spire, a blunt tower of grey stone that matched the overcast sky, as if the church was a fortress set on this hill above the sea. When he looked down, he saw that he was being watched. Erect among the stones marking the lairs of the dead, a man stood motionless, resting his weight on the handle of a spade.