by Peter Laws
Pam looked at Matt. There was a definite shiver to her voice. ‘It’s like he heard your voice, Professor.’
Fenn’s shirt had pulled out a bit. He started tucking it back in as he headed for the door. ‘I’ve changed my mind, Matt. You can come in with us. And bring your books.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Matt and Fenn stood in the corridor, while Pam tapped the code into the keypad. There was a small window in Ernie’s door, but her blonde mane blocked it from view. Just before she reached the last digit of the code, her finger hovered over the final number.
‘Press it,’ Fenn said.
‘Erm …’ She didn’t move.
‘Press it, Pam.’
‘Sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s still on the table.’
‘And?’
‘He’s still talking.’
‘And?’
‘He’s looking right at me.’
‘Oh …’ Fenn stepped forward and patted her on the shoulder. There was a tenderness to it. A signal that she ought not be embarrassed. Then he tapped the final number in himself. A locking mechanism clicked and the red light turned green. Pam stepped back and shook her uniform into place.
Matt hitched the bag on his shoulder. ‘I’m ready.’
Fenn whispered, ‘I’ll start the conversation, Matt. You just sit in the corner and observe. But if he talks to you, then talk back. And watch me for signals. Got it?’
‘Got it.’
Fenn tugged at his tie. ‘You don’t believe in this sort of thing, do you?’
‘In demons? Nope. You?’
Fenn’s voice said, ‘No.’ But his face said something quite different. He turned and peered through the little window in the door. ‘Must be murder on his knees, crouching up there like that.’ Then he took a deep breath, turned the handle and went in.
A few seconds later they were all inside, breathing Ernie air. And Ernie air, it turns out, smells like, Matt sniffed … like soil. It smelt like soil.
Three soft chairs were waiting to receive backsides in the windowless room, but no backsides seemed keen to touch them. Everybody stayed upright instead, staring at the crouching man on the desk.
Ernie stopped that weird whispering the second they’d walked into the room.
Come on, Matt. He thought to himself. It was the second you walked into the room. That’s when he stopped.
In the flesh, Ernie’s dark and hooded eyes weren’t the shadowed, messy holes they’d been before on low-grade CCTV. That was no shock. But what did make them all stiffen was that the eyes were open. Wide open. It’s not often you enter a room where someone is staring quite so intently at you. But Ernie’s gonzo eyes lolled out through the curtains of black hair. The look would have been slap-your-thigh hilarious if wasn’t so damn unsettling. So Matt just nodded a polite and silent hello in response, then he looked away. He hitched his bag around for a bit on his shoulder, like it needed altering. It didn’t.
He grabbed a chair and dragged it into the corner. He sat, just as he’d been told. When Pam closed the door she gave Matt a complicated, sweet look. Like she was both deeply relieved, yet genuinely upset that Ernie had chosen to glare so fixedly at Matt, and not her. And he really was staring, because once Matt sank into his chair he looked up and saw those same bulging eyes had slid a fraction in the dry-looking sockets, just to follow him.
Matt lowered his gaze to Ernie’s midriff. He thought of the gashes under his hospital pyjamas. The name, Baal-Berith, sliced under there. The very moment he thought that, a smirk turned Ernie’s mouth up at the edge. Then his eyes flickered and finally shrank into a more normal-sized stare.
Fenn, still standing, broke the silence. ‘Hello friend,’ he said with a smile.
Nice work, Fenn. Go for the cheery approach. Maybe do some balloon modelling for him.
‘Is there anything you need? Would you like a drink, perhaps? Some food? There’s a vending machine right outside this room. Lots of chocolate. My treat.’
Silence.
‘And how about the temperature in here? Just say the word and we’ll get it just how you like it.’
Silence.
All this time, Ernie just squatted up there, not like a man but more like a bizarre oversized puppet, hunched on the table. He seemed to be waiting for someone in the ceiling to grab his strings and to scoop up a pole so they could yap his jaw open and shut.
Fenn cleared his throat, ‘You said send him in, send him in earlier. Is there someone you’d like to see?’
Silence.
‘Somebody you’d like us to call? I can bring a phone—’
‘Are yooooouuu?’
It was a shock to hear it.
A shock to see those chapped, smirking lips peel and tear slowly apart, then form a bottomless hole on the elongated ‘oooo’ sound. And from that hole came a groan from a throat so dry and brittle, it must be packed with dirt and sand and gravel and … cemetery soil. That’s what it smelt like in here. Not just soil, but cemetery soil. Etched into Matt’s nostrils from presiding over many graveside funerals.
‘Are yooouuuuu thirsty?’ he groaned the words out, directly at Matt. ‘Wanna drink?’
Matt threw on a smile. ‘I’m good, thanks. I had a milkshake in the car. But I appreciate you asking.’
Ernie’s lips seemed to have paused on the ‘k’ sound of the word ‘drink’. Like he was stuck on the last syllable he’d said.
‘How about you? You sound absolutely parched,’ Matt said. ‘You should have some water. Okay?’
Ernie didn’t answer but the ‘k’ shape in his mouth finally changed. It collapsed slowly into a slit, which may have been a smile, it was hard to tell. He started nodding slowly. Slowly and repeatedly, without stopping.
Fenn called back to Marriot, ‘Get this man some water.’
She shot through the door, eager for clean air, and Fenn caught Matt’s eye. It appeared that Matt now had the floor. Fenn gave him a nervous-looking nod to proceed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘So … anyway, I’m Matthew. And I’m pleased to meet you.’
Still staring. Still slowly nodding. Stuck again on his last answer.
‘So what’s your name?’
Silence.
‘Do you have a name?’ Matt went on. ‘I’d like to—’
‘Pleased …’ the word wheezed out of him. ‘Very pleased to meet you, indeed.’
‘Likewise.’ Matt heard the sound of metal clinking. It was Ernie, gently tugging his cuffed hands away from the bar on the table.
‘We should shake hands …’ Ernie’s voice was odd. It sounded, at times, like a buzz. ‘Gentlemen shake.’
‘I don’t think that’s allowed.’
‘Oh? But that’s what gentlemen do. They shake hands.’
‘Yes but—’
‘I like to be the gentleman.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘I like to wriggle fingers into fingers.’
Matt looked back at Fenn briefly. ‘Yes, but we don’t actually know if you are a gentleman yet. None of us do. I mean you were found this morning covered in blood and we’re a bit flummoxed about that, to be honest. We don’t know how it happened, and we don’t know your name. What is your name?’
A long silence followed, with the occasional clink of metal on metal.
‘It’d be really gentlemanly if you could clear that up. Or just tell us what happened. Can you remember what happened?’
The metallic clinking stopped. ‘Why did you ask for my name, just now?’
‘I was being polite.’
‘But you already know my name.’
‘I’m afraid not. We haven’t met.’
‘We have met, Matthew.’
Fenn frowned, and so did Matt. ‘We have?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Your house.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
Matt shook his head. ‘I think—�
�
‘In your bathroom,’ Ernie started to tongue a line along his bottom lip. ‘I’m in your bathroom.’
Matt laughed. ‘You know, I’m pretty sure I’d remember meeting a fella like you in my bathroom.’
‘I’m often there. You know that. I like it there. In the dark.’
‘Anyway …’ Matt said.
‘In. The. Dark,’ Ernie started nodding again. ‘Oh, yes …’
Matt didn’t speak for a moment, but Fenn kept urging him on. ‘Well, I’ll take your word for it,’ Matt said, ‘but back to my big question. What happened to you last night? And did you write that word into yourself?’
Ernie’s toes suddenly broke into a flurry of movement, scrunching and wriggling against the desk. ‘In fact, Matthew … why don’t you switch all the house lights off one of these nights? Switch the lights off and go in the bathroom. Look into the mirrors and call my name. And I bet you’ll see me … just like I see you. Then we can talk proper, about everything, and we can really wriggle our fingers together.’
Matt twitched as the door clicked open. It was Pam, creeping in with a white plastic cup. She handed the water to Fenn – there was no way she was going to hold it to Ernie’s mouth. Fenn did, though. He reached over and set the plastic rim against his cracked and quivering bottom lip.
‘Go ahead,’ Matt smiled. ‘Wet the whistle.’
Ernie immediately slid his tongue into the water. It pushed through his dry lips like a slug. Like a long tentacle of meat, which is all that tongues are, Matt supposed. Just Ernie’s long meat tentacle that up till now had lain coiled in the deep caverns of his body, but was now unfurling. Pulling taut up his throat and slipping itself out into the light. Fenn tilted the cup on an angle, and Ernie started sucking and slurping the water, loudly. It dribbled down his chin. Nobody wiped his mouth.
‘So what is your name?’ Matt said, as Fenn stepped back and sat. ‘Remind me.’
‘I wrote it down.’
‘On your stomach?’
The slow, smiling nod started again.
‘So you’re Baal-Berith, then?’
‘Mmm-hmmm,’ he closed his eyes and kept nodding. ‘But I’d be grateful if you say it again, please.’
Matt frowned. ‘Baal-Berith.’
‘And again.’
‘Baal …’ Matt trailed off. ‘Anyway, where were you last night?’
‘I like it when you say it. Say my name again and I’ll tell you where I was last night.’
Matt looked to Fenn. His face said, Do it!
‘Okay,’ Matt said. ‘So where were you last night … Baal-Berith?’
His eyes flicked back open. ‘Bathroom mirror.’
Matt sighed. ‘Not that again.’
‘No, I mean after I was in your mirror …’ He curled a finger, so he was pointing at his own chest. ‘I was in this one’s. His mirror made of wood. His house. The man I’m in now.’
‘I see. So you’re speaking through his body?’
‘That’s true.’
Matt leant forward and pointed at Ernie’s chest. ‘So what’s his name?’
‘His name is Tom …’
‘Tom who?’
‘Tom, Tom, the piper’s son … sucked the prick of an Englishman.’ He snuffled a laugh into his shoulder.
‘Well, that’s a real shame you’re being like that,’ Matt put his hands on the arms of the chair. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t waste our time, but I think we’ll just go—’
‘Tom Leopold. This one’s name is Tom Leopold.’
Matt spotted Fenn’s face. The flush of excitement. He mouthed a frantic word … where! Ask him, where?
‘Thank you for that. And Baal, where exactly was Tom—’
‘Full name, please.’
‘Sorry. Baal-Berith. Can you tell me where Tom’s house is?’
‘I can …’ Another chuckle.
‘Prove it, then …’
Silence passed, and eventually Matt put both hands on the armchair again.
‘Easy,’ Ernie said. ‘It’s Cheddington. Tom lives in … Chedd. Ing. Ton. And I live in Tom.’
‘And the address?’
‘Have you ever hurt anybody, Matthew?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Have you ever really hurt anybody?’
Matt didn’t answer right away, he just listened to Fenn’s pencil scraping out the words Tom Leopold and Cheddington in a pad. He tore the sheet out and thrust it at Pam, whispering in her ear. She nodded and span away. He could hear her footsteps clicking on the corridor as she ran to call it in.
Tom, if indeed this guy really was called Tom, was oblivious to all this. All that existed was Matt, and the handcuffs, and the question. Which he said again, in almost a reverent whisper. ‘Have you ever really hurt anybody? Let all that anger and bitter loneliness fill up your fists and turn them into claws? Have you done that, Matthew?’
Matt looked down and saw his own splayed hand pressing a man’s cheek into the carpet of his dead mother’s house. And then that hand curling into a fist and pounding that killer’s cheekbone, which sounded less like the crunch of loud movie punches but more like the rhythmic slaps of skin. Over and over, stopping only to wipe the tears from his own cheek, then to start again.
‘Yes, I’ve hurt others.’ Matt swallowed. ‘What about you, Mr Berith? Have you ever hurt anybody?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Did you hurt someone last night?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Someone at your house? In Cheddington?’
‘Oh yes. Mmm-hmmmm.’
‘Who did you hurt?’
The slit smile was back.
‘Who did you hurt?’
‘I hurt … Jussstttiiiiinnneeeeee.’
Matt and Fenn caught each other’s gaze.
‘Who’s Justine?’ Matt asked.
‘Tom’s sexy wife.’
‘I see. And how bad did you hurt her?’
A sniff rattled things in his nose. ‘Have you ever had a tongue in your mouth, Matthew?’
‘All my life,’ Matt said.
‘I mean someone else’s.’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’
‘I had a tongue in my mouth last night.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I had Justine’s tongue in my mouth.’
‘Does Tom know?’
‘But she was in the cellar at the time. And I was in the kitchen. Can you figure out how that was possible?’ He started giggling. ‘Because all things are possible.’
Matt looked away for a moment. ‘So you’re saying you killed her?’
‘Tongues are much, much bigger and much, much heavier than you think. Much thicker than lips …’ The meat tentacle pushed through again and tasted air. The CCTV camera seemed to buzz at that. Some deep circuit in the system was saying this was the right time to zoom in.
‘We need an address,’ Matt said. ‘Now.’
‘Then say it again.’
‘Your name?’
He closed his eyes and nodded.
‘Baal-Berith. There …’ Matt said. ‘So where—’
‘And again.’
‘For crying out loud, Baal-Berith … Baal-Berith. Now what’s the address?’
‘Say it again …’ For the first time in this entire interview, Tom had torn his gaze from Matt. Now they were on Fenn. ‘Both of you … say my name … and then I’ll tell.’
Matt and Fenn looked at each other. They said the name at the same time. It came out awkwardly. Like when girl bands announce their band’s names in interviews. ‘Baal-Berith.’
Tom’s slit grew into a huge, toothy smile, and Matt could see that tongue of his was frantically pushing behind his teeth, trying to squeeze through the gaps. Matt looked away. The sight of that pink flesh, pushing with a mind of its own, wasn’t good for the psyche. Perhaps the tongue was the only thing left of Tom Leopold, and it was fighting to get out. Tom’s head slowly started returning to the place it was at the very start. The
heavy eyelids closing half over, the forehead sinking, the cuffed wrists stopping their constant yanking. Then he said one more thing.
‘Look for the cross,’ Tom whispered. ‘It’s quite the pretty one. I’m tired now … okay?’
Tom was silent from then on, and no amount of Matt asking for a street name would help. Even Fenn said the words Baal-Berith another few times, hollering it out like he was trying to rouse his Amazon Alexa. But the ancient name fell through the air, a dud firework. So Fenn checked his watch and hurried out the door, not looking back.
‘Hey,’ Matt dragged his bag. ‘Wait for me.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
In the corridor, Fenn closed the door and tapped in the code. The lock clicked shut and the light turned red. Through the window, Matt saw that Tom or Ernie or Baal-Berith − or whoever the hell it was − was somehow back where he’d started. Off the desk and sitting in his seat, head down, unmoving. Matt pictured that long strip of tongue, sliding and coiling back into its dark cave.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Matt said as they hurried down the corridor.
‘I’d appreciate that.’ Fenn pushed into what looked like a reception area to find Pam just hanging up the phone.
‘I’ve got officers looking through the files for Tom Leopold,’ she said. ‘And I’ve sent a car to Cheddington.’
‘Good. Then tell the car we’ll join them. Oh, and tell them to look for a cross.’
‘What sort of cross?’
‘A pretty one,’ Matt added.
She frowned. ‘Okay.’ She thrust a sheet of paper at Fenn. ‘That’s a postcode for Cheddington High Street. Probably half an hour’s drive from here. It’s a small village. I should probably come with you.’
‘No. I want you standing at Tom’s door.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘By myself?’
‘Who else is there?’
‘But …’
‘Just stay at the door, and watch him, all right? And you call me if there’s any change. It’s all locked.’
She swallowed and nodded. ‘And if he starts talking? Should I go in?’
‘No. Just call me. And if he says anything, you write it down. And Pam? Best not look in his eyes.’
CHAPTER NINE