‘Traitor,’ she hissed with some venom.
I was shocked. I stared at her.
‘Just like him!’
The ‘him’ was almost spat out.
She took the colour shot by its top edge, then slowly and deliberately tore it down the centre. Putting one side over the other, she turned the picture and tore it down the centre again. Because of the double-thickness, this was not quite as easy as the first tear, and she breathed an oath as she gripped it, her face as white as her knuckles.
I was shocked again. I’d never heard Mother swear before.
Scooping up the pieces, she mixed them with the other torn photo before leaning over and dropping them into the yellow metal bin on the other side of the armchair. Their sound as they hit the bottom was louder than it should have been because of the stillness of the room itself, the noise of traffic outside muffled by the curtains.
‘Bastard!’ Mother said again and I couldn’t be sure if she meant me or the man in the black-and-white. ‘Both bastards!’ she said as if to put me right.
I could not believe it. She was acting as if I had deliberately left her. In fact, the same stiff-faced expression that she’d used when I announced that I was leaving home to flat-share with friends, then when I told her I was getting married, now hardened her features. I’d witnessed similar solidifying countenances many times in the past, particularly when I enquired after my father, but they had never been quite as severe, nor as furious, as this one. This was bloody scary! This was Medusa on a bad-hair day.
I shuddered and wondered if it was my hideous death that had sent her over the edge. Then I reconsidered. She’d always been a little crazy, hadn’t she? I mean, not outright, frothing-mouthed kind of crazy, but . . . disturbed. A hoarder of hurt feelings, a miser as far as warm regard was concerned. Why did she hate me? What had I done? It wasn’t my fault that I got killed. I had problems dealing with it myself. Did she think I’d deliberately deserted her? Did she assume I was just following my father’s example? No, it didn’t make sense. No sane person would blame a son for being killed. Not unless they really were insane . . .
It came back to that again. I refused to admit it. She couldn’t have been mad. But tearing up my picture . . .? What was that all about? And I was beginning to guess who the grey-haired man in the black-and-white was.
In the mean time, as I was assessing the state of my mother’s mind, she was reaching down for the letters on the floor. Several of them slipped through her podgy fingers as she picked them up and I was in like a dog whose supper bowl is ready. I quickly scanned the names and checked the addresses.
Every one of the aged envelopes bore my name and our old address except for two which still had my name, although the ‘Master’ had been dropped, and this current address. What the hell was Mother doing with them and why hadn’t she passed them on to me? It didn’t make sense. What reason could she have for keeping them to herself? They hadn’t even been opened.
Call me thick, but it did eventually dawn on me who had written and had kept on writing to me over the years. The old black-and-white photograph, torn but not thrown away – until now, that is, the letters addressed to our previous home, and then to Mother’s current one, the house I had shared with her through the early teenage years. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to work it out. The picture was of my father; the unopened letters were from him.
Oddly, I didn’t feel rage towards my mother. A huge sadness descended on me, though. How could she do it? All right, even if he had deserted us, run off with some other woman for all I knew – Mother would never speak of it, preferring to let my own imagination do its worst – he was still my dad. Even if he was the vilest man on earth, I still had the right to know him and judge for myself. Really, how could she do it?
I screamed ‘No!’ as she began to tear up the letters, methodically, one by one, dropping the remnants into the bin by her side, and I tried to grab them, but of course, my scrabbling hand touched nothing. I beat on the carpeted floor with the heel of my fist in angry frustration, as if the noise alone would stop her. Naturally, there was no noise. I could have wept, I could have screamed my frustration over and over again. But all I could do in the end was watch.
I remembered the drawings and paintings of mine, the long essays in exercise books, short stories meant for my eyes only, all those personal treasures – treasures to me! – which she had blindly, thoughtlessly, thrown into the dustbin, never letting me know until it was too late and the refuse had been collected, never asking me. I hadn’t hated her then, but I did now.
What had I been to her all those years? A son, or her possession? Had she never felt any real true love? If so, she would have talked to me, she would have confided in me. She would never have sulked every time I made plans of my own. It was the natural thing for offspring to stretch their wings, to learn for themselves, and finally to leave the nest, so why had she never accepted that? Why had she never welcomed Andrea as my wife? Why was she so aloof towards her grandchild, Primrose? Was she so selfishly wrapped up in her own ways and woes that there wasn’t room for others in her chilly heart? But the prime question kept stalking me.
Was she nuts?
Terrible things to think about your own mother, I know, but remember what I’d been through. Murdered most foully, witness to my wife and daughter’s grief, lost and alone without a body to call home. Who could blame me for being in a bitter frame of mind?
Those letters were from my father and she had kept them to herself for reasons of her own. Skunk he might have been, but a kid needs to have some knowledge of its old man. And maybe he wasn’t quite as rotten as she’d said. I’d heard only her side of the story. Years of poison. But now a brittle glimmer of doubt had opened up in my mind. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t the swine she’d always led me to believe.
One by one she gathered up the letters that had fallen from her clutches, tearing each of them with growing vigour – and anger. By now the thunderous look on her face would have turned cream sour, the hateful beam of her eyes would have paralysed rabbits. Spittle glistened on her lips and there was a drool at one corner of her mouth.
‘Bastard!’ she repeated again and again, and I wasn’t quite sure if she meant the author of those letters or me. Better to think she meant the former, but it was still shocking. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected visiting Mother – deep mourning or stoic fortitude – but it certainly wasn’t this.
‘Bastard!’ Rip.
I stood and gazed down at her hunched shoulders, her spiteful hands and frighteningly hard face, shaking my head with a different kind of sadness than before. This was a pitying melancholy, the anger in me held tight, restrained by the pity itself. Her head seemed to vibrate with her displeasure, the tangled ‘snakes’ quivering as if truly alive. I wanted to leave, but stayed rooted to the spot. Her behaviour was almost mesmerizing.
‘Bastard!’ Rip.
Then a word I would never in a hundred years have imagined my mother using.
‘Cuntcuntcuntcunt . . .’ Over and over.
At least it broke the spell. I’d backed off, over to the other side of the room, my startled eyes fixed on her as she dropped the strewn letters, picking up pieces and tearing them into even smaller pieces. What in God’s name had happened to Mother? Had my death driven her over the edge, finally broken through that old, cold reserve she had always worn like a self-protective mantle? Or was this the true Mother, the monster lurking behind the respectable and reserved woman she showed to the rest of the world? Abruptly, I realized I didn’t want to witness any more, and with this thought, I left my mother’s home . . .
. . . To find myself beside my own corpse.
It was a stark, miserable room, with off-white tiles from floor to ceiling and frosted-glass windows on two sides. There were work counters filled with bottles, jars, bowls and various kinds of metal instruments all around the walls, with cupboards and single drawers beneath them, glass-fronted cabinets above; these
were crammed with more bottles and compounds, most of them brightly labelled and the only cheer in this gloomy place. When I say gloomy, I mean in aspect – two long fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, but their brightness merely seemed to accentuate the unflinching drabness of the place.
Nearby was a round glass container of pinkish liquid standing on top of a cream-coloured box with dials and switches, two clear plastic tubes running from it. It resembled a drinking-fountain, the type you get in American offices, but because of the colour of the liquid inside I surmised that it was an embalming machine, because I knew I was in some kind of mortuary. Close to it on the counter was a tray filled with body plugs and eye caps, the latter obviously used to keep eyelids closed, and next to that an open jar with make-up brushes. Further along was a sink and swivel-headed tap, more jars and metal containers filling the worktops alongside and the shelves that ran round two sides of the room. A cushioned stool on wheels stood in one corner, while a small-wheeled utility trolley with two metal shelves, and a drawer beneath the lower shelf, was positioned next to a rectangular white porcelain table with raised lips around its edges and a drainage hole at one end. There was another table a few feet away from the first and both were identical and anchored to the tiled floor by broad central pillars; the only difference between them was that the former also held my cadaver. It was covered up to the hips by a green surgical drape, and my head was supported by a block behind the neck. Behind that was a water tap with a short hose attachment.
I shuddered when I looked down at my patched-up face.
I supposed they’d done as good a job as they were able, but it must have been impossible for the mortician to make me reasonably handsome again. I won’t dwell on it, but although an effort had been made to restructure my skull – in other words, to pull the nose and forehead out again (they had been totally bashed in, remember) – it still looked as if it had been hit by a ten-ton truck. God, it was gruesome. Quasimodo’s uglier brother. Frankenstein’s lesser-known creation. I was a monster, a dead, disfigured monster. No open casket for me then.
The deep cuts over my chest and upper arms had been expertly sewn up with coarse, unfussy stitches; the mauve-to-purplish-yellow discolorations of much of my skin resembled hideous body paint. Before I turned my head away in disgust, I noticed one other thing. In fact, I did a double-take. On my left-hand side at a point just below my ribcage was a slightly puckered wound the size of a small bead, a perfectly round puncture that was dark with dried blood.
I was leaning forward for closer inspection when a muted cough from somewhere behind distracted me. Still bent, I looked around and saw the figure of a man sitting at a desk in a small annexe room to the mortuary. He was wearing a plain white coat and was busy scribbling notes in a pad on the desk. I wondered if he was writing a post-mortem report on me, but quickly realized he was more likely to be a funeral director than a pathologist, for neither room was excessively large, nor were there any body cabinets. No, I was being prepared for my own funeral, and that realization sent shivers through me.
It made me feel really dead.
The third place I visited was the worst.
The first two had disturbed and frightened me, but number three – well, that totally freaked me out. I don’t know how I got there, it certainly wasn’t intentional, but one moment I was alone with myself in the funeral parlour’s drab laboratory, the next I was in a dark, shadowy place that was somehow familiar to me.
I looked around. Yes, I’d been here before, but when? I remembered. I was here the night I was murdered. In this very room. A creepy basement flat. I recognized the desk and the angle-poise lamp, the cupboard against a wall, the dreary curtains. I remembered the shadows.
But why had I come here again? As I asked myself that question, I saw the newspaper clippings on the desk. On the last occasion I’d watched a man – what was it about that man that made me tremble now? – cutting up a newspaper, taking the clippings and placing them neatly alongside others. Others whose headlines screamed of murder and mutilation! I knew now and I’m sure I must have known then, even if I hadn’t acknowledged it, that the hunched figure was the killer himself. Had to be. Why else would he be cutting out those particular news items if not for his own scrap-book? Why collect them if the stories were not about himself? Actually, this logic meant nothing to me because, you see, I just knew that the person who occupied this dingy flat was the killer the police were looking for. Call it instinct, or psychic recognition – call it what you like. I was certain, that’s all. I had no doubt whatsoever.
And, I reflected, I had come here because some innate awareness that had nothing to do with logic or calculation had brought me here. After all, I was no longer in the world of reason or normality; I was existing on some other plane where thought – or the psyche – was all. This man (and I wrongly supposed this is why I trembled) was my killer. He murdered and mutilated me!
The trembling ceased. Ceased because in my out-of-body state I had frozen. And I had frozen because I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs outside the window, the stairs that led down to the flat from street level. Then shuffling footsteps as they trod the short passageway.
And stopped outside the door.
20
I heard the key turning in the lock, nothing smooth about the sound. Then the door was pushed open with some effort, as though its edges were tight or out of skew with the frame. A dark figure shambled through, with hardly any light let into the room from behind him. It was still daylight outside, but it seemed to have difficulty reaching into this place below the street. The door closed with a short grinding noise, wood against perished wood, and once more the deep shadows consumed most of the interior.
A ceiling light flicked on, but its power was belittled by the general gloom, even though the dusty hanging bulb was without a shade.
The figure stood just inside the street door for a moment, as if alerted to my presence, and this gave me a chance to take a better look. I didn’t like what I saw, not one bit.
Other than by his strange attire, I don’t think his best friend would have recognized him (although I doubted this scruffy individual had a friend, let alone a best one: apart from his general shoddiness, he seemed to exude unpleasantness. Or maybe my own fragile imagination was doing him a disservice, I thought at the time). He wasn’t tall, just kind of bulky, and he wore a dark oversized raincoat that trailed almost to the floor. Covering his head was one of those old-fashioned trilby hats, with the wide brim snapped down in front, shadowing his eyes; and wrapped around his face – literally around his face, for it covered everything but his eyes – was a heavy, knitted navy scarf, whose ends were tucked into the breast of the raincoat.
He looked ready to rob a post office.
He didn’t move, just stood there inside the threshold, broad but sloping shoulders slouched, and I caught the glimmer of his eyes in their black pits, reflections of the lightbulb that moved from side to side as if they were searching for something. A couple of times they seemed to settle on me, but after a beat they’d move on, continuing to search. Could he feel my presence? If so, he seemed to be the only person who could. Even Primrose hadn’t sensed me, and I’d always thought kids were particularly susceptible where that kind of thing was concerned. Kids and animals. When he suddenly made a move in my direction, I hurriedly backed away. Dark eyes that were bulging and set wide seemed to stare directly at me from out of the umbra beneath his hat brim. But again, and to my relief, they passed on to stare into the gloom beyond me. This was one person I didn’t want to be seen by.
With that same odd snuffling sound he’d made the last time I was here, he turned away and took a rolled-up newspaper from one of the raincoat’s deep pockets. He threw it on the table, the draught it caused disturbing the newspaper clippings that remained on the surface from the other night, so that one or two fell lazily to the floor. He unfurled the journal, and laid it on the desk, then, looking again at the headline, he undid the buttons
of the coat.
Moving to one side for a better view, I saw that the newspaper was the late edition Evening Standard and its headline screamed at me: ‘AXE KILLER’S 4th VICTIM NAMED’.
Without any doubt whatsoever, I knew the fourth victim referred to was me. In whatever dimension I now existed, some kind of psychic gift came with the territory, and that’s why I was drawn to this place. My murderer was being shown to me. And I had to wonder why? Was this punishment for past misdemeanours? Was this my own personal hell, my killer revealed with nothing I could do about it? My own torment of the gods? Whatever the reason, I wasn’t happy about it.
The man hadn’t yet shed the raincoat, although it was unbuttoned; he just stood hunched over the journal, knuckles pressed against the tabletop, his head hung low so that from behind he looked decapitated. He gazed at the headline before him. No, he was reading beyond the headline; he was reading the text. I drew closer to the desk, but well to the side of the bowed figure. I didn’t want to be that close to him. Hell, I didn’t want to be in the same room as him!
I saw the photograph of myself beneath the block type, a company shot, in fact, one showing me a few years younger.9 It was weird reading of my own death and heartbreaking to see a smaller, inset picture of Andrea standing on our doorstep, distress evident in her drawn features; next to her, an arm thrown protectively around her shoulders, was Oliver. In the background, I could make out the figure of Primrose, shyly peeking around her mother’s hip. I could have cried for them all.
Without warning, the newspaper was picked up and hurled across the dingy room, its pages separating and falling to the floor in disarray. Still angry, the hunched man swept all the clippings, together with the long-bladed scissors I’d watched him use a few nights ago, off the table. He banged the wood and made another of those horrible snuffling/snorting noises.
I dodged out of his way when he whirled round and took a couple of paces towards me. Foolishly, I felt vulnerable, even though I was sure that I could not be seen. Or maybe it was fear of his body invading my space so that I’d share his feelings. I thought that might somehow be very unhealthy.