The Indecent Death of a Madam

by Simon Parke

  ‘Yes, the original artist was playing most of the tribute as well. I could see the boy’s problem.’

  ‘Only one?’

  A seagull swooped towards them, then climbed again.

  ‘The karaoke screen that he’d fixed to the keyboard – it kept stopping, which threw him, as he didn’t know the songs particularly well.’

  ‘Which is a shame.’

  ‘It is a shame.’

  ‘For a tribute act.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not to know the songs.’

  ‘Now can we talk about something else?’

  Peter contemplated the night sky, aware that there were bigger problems in the world, more punishing conundrums.

  ‘But it was sold out!’ he cried to the heavens, as one utterly bemused. ‘How could that – well, how could that sell out anywhere but in his own front room?’

  ‘Stormhaven is not the West End, Peter. It’s the Worst End, I keep telling you. People take what they can get here . . . like the seagulls.’

  After a chill night walk along the seafront, with a westerly wind in their faces, they were approaching his front door. The light was still there in the upper window, where a candle burned at the top of the stairs.

  ‘I’ve always meant to ask you about that.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The candle.’ She pointed upwards. ‘And the last time I tried, you didn’t answer.’

  ‘We were just off to the asylum, as far as I remember. It wasn’t the best of times.’

  ‘It’s never the best of times to get an answer out of you.’

  The abbot turned the key and they stepped inside. It wasn’t the best of times now either.

  ‘And you meant to ask what, exactly? How much it cost? Where I bought it?’

  ‘Don’t be dull, Abbot.’

  They were hanging up their coats, Tamsin taking longer than usual, learning new ways with her plastered arm. They’d done a good job at A & E, she had no complaints about the care; but the fact was, a plastered arm changed everything.

  ‘I’d just like to understand the question,’ said Peter.

  ‘Well, not everyone has a candle burning on the stairs, night after night. That’s not normal.’

  ‘It’s normal here. Do have a seat.’

  He’d give Tamsin the comfortable one, in consideration of her condition.

  ‘But not in the real world, Abbot. So what’s it about?’

  ‘What’s any candle about?’

  He looked up the stairs at the light in the landing dark. He thought back for a moment to the light in the asylum, approaching him in flickering silence, refusing to declare its intentions. It had been a disturbed and unsettling light. But this light was something else.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tamsin. ‘I’m not a fan of candles. Everyone imagines they’re great, but I don’t see it. Wax is messy . . . occasionally for a dinner party, perhaps.’

  ‘Well, I look forward to my invitation. The previous ones have clearly been lost in the post.’

  ‘You hate dinner parties.’

  ‘Which is just as well.’

  ‘So what is it about?’ She wouldn’t give up.

  ‘I’m not sure you’d understand, or perhaps I don’t. But it’s always burned for . . .’ And then he stopped. ‘If you don’t mind, Tamsin, I think I may leave it for the moment.’

  ‘Leave it?’

  ‘Yes, I’d best keep the oven door closed for now.’

  ‘Your oven door is always closed.’

  ‘Then let me open it with some gratitude.’ From his position on the herring box, he looked at her with a smile. ‘You took my bullet, Tamsin. Down there in the asylum cellar, you took my bullet.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I? God knows why.’ She looked down at the plaster cast on her right arm, the one that had moved to shield him, though her shoulder had taken much of the force. ‘You were being an idiot, goading him. In hostage situations, you’re meant to talk people down, not talk people up. The idea is to calm them.’

  ‘It was better he touched his rage.’

  ‘You didn’t get shot.’

  ‘I was thinking more of Cherise. He never wanted to kill her. He couldn’t really go back to being a soldier. He thought he could, but he couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad Cherise is OK.’ Tamsin waved her plastered arm in the air.

  Peter smiled. ‘You took the hit, but we all walked free.’

  ‘Including Terence. So where’s the old soldier now, Abbot?”

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s not here, is he?’

  ‘He’ll be holed up somewhere, like he has been all his life. But he’s not free, poor man. Wherever he is, he’s not free.’

  Tamsin looked at him with strange intent, almost wonderment, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she saw.

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I like him.’

  ‘What do you mean, of course? He killed Rosemary.’

  ‘Formative attachment patterns are not easily disposed of in later life.’

  Tamsin snorted her derision. ‘You mean his mother was a cow, so that’s all right?’

  ‘I mean, our emotional identity is modelled and cultivated by family, whether for wounding or harmonizing. And it’s a long goodbye from such modelling. I’m still saying goodbye to mine.’

  ‘Too long a goodbye for Rosemary, killed in cold blood,’ said Tamsin. ‘Yet you like him?’ Her words dripped with disbelief. ‘Those two facts don’t seem to you a little, well, contrary?’

  ‘I host them both, that’s all I’m saying. I think Rosemary liked him as well.’

  ‘Until he tied her to a bed and . . .’

  ‘I know,’ said the abbot.

  ‘You’ll be a better copper when the romantic in you dies.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a copper.’

  ‘He could have killed us all.’

  ‘Fortunately, I had a saviour.’

  ‘That’s not a name I want on my tombstone.’

  Peter got up. He’d been sitting for too long that evening.

  ‘You’ll be disappointed to hear this, I know. And you’ll disagree, Tamsin – but I fear there’s strong evidence for the existence of kindness in you.’

  ‘It was nothing of the sort. I just . . .’

  ‘You just what?’

  Tamsin glanced down at the plaster cast and waved it a little, like one might a medal.

  ‘The doctor said I’ll be able to remove it in six weeks. Injury in the line of duty . . . could get me promotion.’

  The abbot chuckled. ‘So this sacrificial act was ambition rather than kindness?’

  ‘And only a flesh wound.’ Outside, a car sounded its horn. ‘My taxi’s here.’ She got up. ‘Good teamwork, though.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Good teamwork.’

  Good teamwork? When did Tamsin ever work as a team? And when did he?

  ‘Is that the post-case debriefing?’

  ‘Do we need more?’

  The abbot indicated that her summary would probably cover it.

  ‘Want help with your coat?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not disabled, Peter.’

  ‘No – but you have a disability. Your right arm is broken and your shoulder recently dislocated.’

  ‘I’m fine. It’s only change.’ She hung her coat over her shoulders.

  ‘You need one of those capes,’ said Peter, ‘like the nurses used to wear.’

  ‘This isn’t the brothel, Abbot.’

  He opened the door and she stepped out into the still night, a January moon over the rippling water, gentle waves breaking contentedly on the Stormhaven shingle. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen them so content . . . or felt so himself. The lights of the Newhaven ferry glowed in the distance, like a birthday cake on water.

  ‘Thank you, Tamsin,’ he said.

  ‘Cold, isn’t it?’ she said, pulling her coat round her.
r />   ‘Terence was aiming at me.’

  ‘You were saved by the dark.’

  ‘And by my colleague. Teamwork, as you say.’

  ‘So let that be the end of it. And I won’t hug you. It’d be too painful.’

  She never hugged him; it wasn’t her way, but tonight she had a reason she could name. She walked to the road and eased herself into the taxi. The engine was running and the taxi pulled quickly away along the seafront towards Newhaven, but wouldn’t stop until it reached Hove, another land completely.

  *

  High in the dark sky above, out over the sea, Terence put the plane on autopilot. He wanted to look around, un-busy himself. This was something like freedom, clear of the world below.

  He’d left Blessings’ house and walked two miles through the night to the village of Ripe. He’d then gained access to the little Deanland aerodrome, and the aircraft of a friend, a Cessna 120. He’d have liked one last flight in his Sierra, but knew the police would have Shoreham airport covered. So he exchanged a tarmac runway for grass, and a speed of fifty knots with twenty degrees of flat had taken him up into the night over Sussex.

  He headed for the coast, found a good horizon and took the plane high, 5,000 feet over the sea. No police dogs here. And perhaps he’d have a child, a child through Blessings, something of him continuing – or was that just sentimental rubbish? Still, it made him feel glad – perhaps as glad as he’d ever felt. He reached for the Cessna’s limit, one last stretch of the legs, before turning back towards Stormhaven and lowering altitude. He wouldn’t be going to prison; it would remind him too much of home.

  Down below, a homeless man called James, with whom he’d recently exchanged a few brief words, saw it all unfold. He’d remained in the beach hut with the stove, found respite there, and had just come out to Splash Point for a pee, when he saw the plane’s downward approach.

  Fascinated by flight, and sensing danger, his hand went to his mobile phone, which his wife still paid for every month. He looked to the sky, as Terence looked down . . . there, a distant figure on the shore, a figure at Splash Point looking up.

  Terence had company – a man had come to watch him fly. A brief moment of connection between them as Terence felt the rush of the steep decline, down towards the water, feeling alive, this was life . . . and then levelling out, altitude of 150 feet. So close to the sea and on to autopilot, the plane could do the work now. He’d worked enough in his life, and in some dusty and dangerous places. He wished to rest.

  The craft flew level with the skyline, the ball of the Slip Indicator safe between the hairlines, the plane balanced and happy, moving towards the white cliffs. They say that death is white – a white arrival, a clean slate; that would be good.

  And James filmed it all on his phone. He could just see the pilot, who seemed at rest, flying towards rock, the terrible smash of plane and chalk, the flash of fire in the night sky, the fractured aircraft falling on to the shingle, into the waves, the debris of death.

  James had never had that courage . . .

  *

  ‘Homeless hero films murderer’s sick suicide.’

  That would be the Silt’s headline, along with the story of renewed contact between James and his family after the publicity surrounding the incident. He found himself suddenly feted – the homeless hero, valued now by people who’d been passing him by for years. There weren’t many who didn’t want to interview him, get a slice of his story, including an abbot, would you believe – an abbot, in Stormhaven! And accompanying him, her arm in plaster, a rather glam detective.

  ‘Life’s tide, eh?’ he remembered saying to the monk, who seemed a perfectly reasonable fellow.

  ‘Life’s tide indeed,’ he’d replied, as if he’d seen some ebb and flow himself. ‘Who knows what the morrow will bring?’

  James was meeting his family later. They’d wanted to come to Stormhaven and a local paper was paying.

  ‘Not me,’ he’d replied. ‘And I’ve given up trying.’ He didn’t want to get his hopes up . . . but couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Well, whatever it brings, I wish you a good morrow, James.’

  Even the detective managed a smile.

  ‘It must be strange,’

  said Terence.

  ‘What must be strange?’ Rosemary was cold.

  ‘Returning to the place of your fame.’ He’d found a chair and sat by the bed where Rosemary lay tied. ‘The TV documentary you invited in, your moment of power and glory.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, not at all.’

  She’d just been doing her job. It had felt neither powerful nor glorious. The care in Bybuckle Asylum was abominable; she’d merely highlighted the fact and grasped a nettle everyone else had avoided.

  ‘And here we are again in this ruin of a place; once a home but now a shell.’ He sat slightly hunched in his large overcoat with its deep pockets. ‘I once went back to a place of fame.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘A battlefield – well, it was a small village at the time of my first visit.’

  ‘This was with the Special Forces?’

  ‘Some hostages were being held and it was our job to get them out. And I made a bit of a name for myself there, I suppose.’

  ‘You deserve a name.’

  ‘A rather violent face-off, nothing pretty. Thirty-seven dead by the end – mostly theirs, but some of ours. We laid the bodies out in the high street, like in a spaghetti western, the silence . . . I remember the silence.’ He paused. ‘But we were heroes, we knew we were heroes.’

  ‘You’re clearly a very brave man.’

  ‘And then I go back there again ten years later.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s something in me that wants to go back to my scene of triumph. And what do I find?’ Rosemary didn’t know. ‘I find children playing where the bodies lay. No bloodstains, no bullet-ripped walls. And the terrorist hide-out, the focus of most of the savagery – that was now a bakery . . . a bloody bakery.’

  ‘Your work was done.’

  ‘My work was done, yes. I should have been happy. Do you think I should have been happy?’

  ‘I think you should have been proud of your work . . . and bought a nice loaf for your troubles!’

  ‘But I wasn’t, you see. I wasn’t proud – or pleased. Naughty boy, eh? Rather a shock, that, I don’t mind admitting. I think I still needed it to be a battlefield where I was the hero . . . but it wasn’t a battlefield, not any more. All of that was forgotten; I was forgotten. They had new memories, new hopes – they didn’t want some bloody soldier disturbing their charming life. They’d had enough of all that; they didn’t even remember the soldier. I was just another tourist.’

  Rosemary lay on the metal frame, listening. He had returned . . . though what his intentions were she had no idea.

  ‘My mother kept the video, by the way – the bit of the programme when she spat at you.’ Rosemary began to feel ill. ‘She could never forget, my mother. Determined old hag – could hold a grudge for ever.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘It can’t have happened far away from where you are now . . . could be the same bed, even. Was this her bed, perhaps? That would be a bloody thing, wouldn’t it? If it was the same bed – she’d like that. She wasn’t always kind.’ Terence paused. ‘She was never kind.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Though she didn’t last long after the place closed down. Got dementia.’

  ‘It happens, sadly.’

  ‘Lack of company, I think.’

  ‘They didn’t encourage friendships in the asylum. You do know that, Terence?’ Silence. She couldn’t even hear his breathing. ‘Friendships among patients were broken up; the staff found them too threatening. Friendships made patients seem more normal, more human, more like the staff . . . and the staff didn’t like that. It’s all in the report. They broke up friendships.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt.’

  ‘It’s called the truth.’
<
br />   ‘She ended up like a battery chicken in substandard accommodation, courtesy of Geoff Berry – that’s all that need concern us.’

  ‘Is that what she said?’

  ‘“Care in the community is the new name for hell,” that’s what she said. “The new name for hell.”’

  ‘She made plenty of hell for others, as you well know.’

  ‘She walked out in the end and never came back. I don’t know where she died.’

  ‘Your mother was held together by spite, Terence, not community.’ She might as well say it. ‘It was her victims that kept her alive. When this place closed down, she had no one to crucify any more. Except you. She could always get to you, even when she wasn’t there: “No one loves you like I do, Terence.”’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Isn’t that what she said?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter what she said. She’s dead now.’

  ‘I wish she was, Terence.’

  Rosemary remembered their conversations in the car. He’d never answered her question – always avoided it. He simply got out of the car and started walking, as if that was an answer. So she asked again.

  ‘Does nothing matter to you, Terence?’

  ‘She always joked that I should shoot you. “Get her address from the TV company!” she’d say. She’d never written me letters before, but she started writing then. Lots of them – you were on her mind. I didn’t pay undue attention because I never thought we’d meet. But we did, you and your accomplice.’

  ‘My accomplice?’

  ‘At the Etiquette Society, the property louse Geoff. So it proved to be good for something at least.’

  ‘How is he my accomplice?’

  ‘And then you told me what brought you to Stormhaven – the report on the Bybuckle Asylum. So let’s do it, shall we? Get the bitch off my back.’

  ‘Do what?’

  But the gun was already out of his pocket. Two shots into the head, one through the eye, the other in the forehead. He paused to confirm the killing, unscrewed the silencer, returned the gun to his coat pocket and turned to leave. There was no happiness.

  ‘Now we’re evens, Mother,’ he said, wrenching the door of Gladstone Ward shut behind him. He walked down the dark corridor, through the hallway and out on to the empty seafront. ‘I never want to hear from you again. Ever.’