Final Demand

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘David . . .’ Sheila laid a hand on his arm. She felt stagey, doing this. They weren’t themselves. She would wake up and find it had all been a dream.

  ‘We shall track this animal down and bring him to justice.’ The man seemed to have learned some sort of script too. He was a new one; maybe he was an inspector, she didn’t know. He had introduced himself but she hadn’t caught the name. The whole scene had the glazed unreality of a TV series. But then everything seemed like that.

  ‘What exactly are you doing?’ David demanded. ‘Six weeks this monster has been free.’ Monster? He, too, sounded stilted.

  ‘How about coming along to the Incident Room?’ asked the man. ‘Meet some of the people involved?’

  ‘No!’ said Sheila. They would all look up; the victim’s parents. They might – God forbid – have photos pinned to the wall. She had seen those on TV, photos of the victim. At the time she had felt a pleasurable frisson. Wasn’t that almost the strangest thing of all? She felt sick. She wanted to be taken home and tenderly laid in bed.

  David was firing questions at the man. Who had they interviewed? What about the forensic report? He sounded impressively knowledgeable, another person entirely, but he was badgering the man. All his anger seemed to be channelled in the police’s direction. In fact, he had always been suspicious of them – drug busts in the past, that sort of thing. Sheila was a more trusting soul and used to tell him what a difficult job they had; it had been one of their regular arguments.

  Suddenly, painfully, she missed their squabbles. How normally married such things now seemed! Chloe’s death had bulldozed through the landscape of their relationship, scoring it open like a raw wound and squashing the plants – whatever they were, she could hardly remember now what the terrain had looked like.

  David’s aggression embarrassed her. She had wanted to come with him, however. The police were their allies. The world was so hostile; it pursued so heedlessly its own ends. Here in the police station Sheila felt briefly at home. Chloe might be simply a case to the police, but she was at the forefront of their minds. The same questions preoccupied them. Where exactly had she been killed? (Sheila couldn’t even put a word to the other thing that had happened to Chloe before she was killed, not yet.) Somewhere on her route home, for the police had found out, by questioning people at the nightclub, that she had failed to get a minicab and decided to walk. But she had been discovered near the railway station, way off her route, left on a patch of waste ground (nor could Sheila say body or dumped). They suspected she had been killed somewhere else. They were agonizing, these speculations, but at least she was companioned in the horror of them.

  ‘Of course it makes our task more challenging, that this was a motiveless attack – no links, as far as we know, to any other murders or serious sexual assaults . . .’

  Nobody had watered the detective’s spider plant. It sat alone on the windowsill, its roots bulging out of the plastic pot. But still it had struggled to produce offspring, the survival instinct was that strong. It had put out runners, with babies attached to them. They dangled down from the ledge.

  ‘. . . but we’ll get a break. Sooner or later he’ll make a mistake, let something slip. Somebody, prompted by something else entirely, will make a connection. It’s happened more times than I care to mention . . .’

  The question she couldn’t ask – nor could David. The question they kept secret in their separate hearts: How much did she suffer?

  She put up quite a fight, someone said. Or maybe it had been in one of the newspaper reports she had tried not to look at. David had snatched them away, to protect her.

  In the other offices, phones were ringing. They must be about Chloe; it was unthinkable that anyone could think of anything else. David and the detective had come to the end of their conversation; in fact they were standing up and shaking hands. Sheila didn’t have the energy to get up.

  Was nobody going to answer that phone? In the next room it rang and rang. It could be the vital call, the one they had all been waiting for. I know the man, he’s my next-door neighbour. It could be a boy’s voice. I saw this car by the station, mister, and I got its number.

  Whoever he was, the man, he was alive on this earth; that was the incomprehensible thing. He must be driving around in his car (that car). He probably looked like anybody else. He walked into shops and bought things, perhaps he had a wife and children. In this hot weather they would be getting the paddling pool out. He went out at night and his wife asked him, when he returned: Where have you been? And he replied: Out.

  ‘Ready, darling?’ David looked down at her, his eyebrows raised. They looked thicker, now he had lost so much hair. The bald part was cleanly bald, no stray wisps, but had the hair around his ears always been so grey?

  They went out into the street. The sunlight assaulted her; it burnt her eyes. Crying had made them feel skinned; it seemed impossible that there were any tears left.

  She died alone.

  As they crossed the road, David held her hand. This comforted Sheila. She thought: We’re in this together. If we help each other we might, just might, survive.

  Encouraged by this, she said: ‘Do you keep seeing her?’

  ‘Seeing her?’

  ‘On buses, in crowds. I keep just glimpsing her, and wondering why she doesn’t turn round.’

  David released her hand. They walked down the hill towards their car.

  ‘Last night I heard a car stopping outside,’ she said. ‘I thought – it’s a minicab, she did find one after all. I saw her getting out and she said, I know I’ve been ages – you know what she’s like when she apologizes, sort of abrupt – I’ve been on a long journey but I’m home now.’

  There was a silence. Then David said: ‘Thank you, pigeon.’

  For a moment, Sheila thought he was addressing her. Then she saw the white smear on the windscreen.

  David rummaged in his pocket for a tissue.

  ‘He won’t talk to me,’ she said. ‘He’s closed off, more and more. I try to reach him but he won’t let me.’

  ‘It’s his way of dealing with it,’ said her sister.

  ‘I want us to talk about her. If we don’t, it makes her even more . . .’ She couldn’t say the word. ‘Even more not here.’

  Fiona, her sister, nodded. They were sitting in her kitchen in Hebden Bridge.

  ‘He’s always been bloody difficult,’ said Fiona. She and David had never got on. They were too similar, that was why – touchy, prickly. Sheila had tried to defend her husband, smoothing things between them. In her family she had always been the peacekeeper. ‘So bloody autocratic,’ said Fiona, ‘bossing you around. You should stand up to him more.’

  ‘Now hardly seems the time.’

  Fiona refilled their glasses. ‘And he did the same with Chloe. That’s why he feels so awful now.’

  ‘He loves her. When she was younger he was a wonderful father.’

  ‘Oh, underneath he did, I’m sure. But he didn’t show it, did he? Always criticizing her and making her feel hopeless.’

  Sheila found this bracing. It was refreshing just to talk about her daughter, even in this irritable way. For a moment, she felt normal.

  Fiona had a dim view of men in general. She had divorced her husband, a builder, some years earlier and was subjecting herself to a punishing regime of diets and line-dancing. She was on the warpath, searching for another lover whom she would soon find wanting. Her own children had found her alarming; so had Chloe.

  ‘It’s not just David,’ Sheila said. ‘Nearly everybody, they don’t like to mention her name. I suppose they feel awkward or feel it’ll upset me. Or they offer their condolences, people who’ve never taken the slightest interest in her, which sort of feels like intruding. It’s as if the only thing she’s done is to die. I want to talk about the normal things, even the annoying things, I don’t mind.’ Know what my job is? she’d once told Chloe. I’m the Sponge Lady. I walk behind you, mopping thi
ngs up. Oh, their giggles in the kitchen. ‘I want people from Clarence Street, and Morecambe, and all the places we’ve lived in to just chat about her, silly things; we’d just sit there chatting about that time she tried to wax her legs, or her disastrous driving test . . .’ She stopped. ‘Anything. Don’t they understand?’

  She gazed at the walls. There were lines of rough plaster down them where Alan, Fiona’s husband, had chased in the wiring but never got round to making it good. All the rooms were unfinished – the half-tiled bathroom, the unpainted lobby. Like her daughter, they had just stopped. Fiona didn’t notice it any more; she had got used to it. And she wasn’t the sort to do it herself. Visitors said: ‘Just moved in, have you?’

  Their mother lived in the bungalow next door. Maybe that was another reason for the departure of Fiona’s husband; he felt outnumbered by this big, volatile family, that closed ranks at the first sign of trouble. If she were an outsider, she herself would feel unnerved. David had nobody to turn to; without her, he was alone in the world.

  Sheila gazed at the day’s letters, lying on the table. Singles Nite at the Shangri La: First Cocktail on the House! Suddenly the thought of David pierced her heart. How could she presume to feel alone?

  ‘The awful thing is, he feels so guilty,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t talk about it, the thing about the phone.’

  ‘What thing?’

  She told Fiona about it. Her sister had known about the phone being cut off, how Chloe couldn’t get through and so she had to walk home. But now Sheila told her about the argument and how David had refused to pay for the phone to be reconnected. ‘He blames himself, you see. He blames himself for her death.’

  Fiona looked at her. Her eyes were piercingly blue; she wore tinted contact lenses. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Do you blame him?’

  One night in June, two months after Chloe’s death, Sheila went out. She could leave the pub because they had hired a supply barman. His name was Kit, that was all she knew. In the past she had been motherly with the staff, commiserating with them about their love lives and asking them about their hopes for the future. Now she couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t even speculate about whether he knew what had happened. Grief does not ennoble us or deepen our generosity towards others. It doesn’t make us a nicer person. It makes us self-centred and bitter and smelly. As Sheila sat in the bus she thought: Kit probably thinks it’s because he’s black. And I can’t be bothered about that either.

  Nor could she summon up much interest in the pub’s continued loss of custom. Over the past weeks all the parties in the function room had been cancelled. ‘In the circumstances, it seems inappropriate,’ people said. ‘We don’t like to intrude. But if we can be of use . . . if there’s anything we can do to help . . .’

  ‘Hire the fucking room,’ David muttered, behind Sheila’s shoulder.

  That night, Friday, was usually the busiest of the week but the place was half-empty. And no wonder. David stood behind the bar like a shop dummy – clean and smart as always, dressed in shirt, tie and jacket, but chillingly formal. He moved stiffly, as if he would spill. Nowadays he kept a glass of Scotch on the go but there was nothing convivial about this; he knocked it back alone. Sheila herself wasn’t much better; greasy-haired, sleepwalking through the hours. Dust had settled on the table-legs; outside, the window-boxes were bare.

  Nobody mentioned Chloe. It was as if she had never existed. Her name hadn’t been spoken since Sheila had visited her sister, two weeks earlier. And people avoided her in the street; she could see them looking at their watches, as if they had just remembered something, and hurrying across the road.

  Maybe it was due to the nature of Chloe’s death. What possible words of comfort could they give? Illness or accident might, she supposed, be marginally easier to deal with. But this was so far beyond anyone’s comprehension that there was no formula for dealing with it. She was set apart from the human race, sentenced to isolation as if she were infectious. But what, Sheila thought, can they catch from me?

  Sheila got out of the bus in Piccadilly Gardens. It was nine o’clock. She made her way past Debenhams and down Tib Street. She knew the way. In the sixties she had bought clothes at a boutique on the corner; Chloe’s age, she had been, and equally self-conscious. She didn’t have the figure for mini-dresses – too big in the bust and hips – but she had caught the eye of Taboo’s lead singer, hadn’t she? David Milner, the sexiest bloke in the room. And within a month she had moved in with him.

  The boutique had long since disappeared. The building had been renovated; there was an internet café and a sign saying 6 X Studio Apartments for Sale. Once she had bought a lime-green miniskirt. Her little sister Monica had borrowed it without asking and spilt red wine down it. Would this have been more possible to bear if Sheila had had other children? Would they have been a comfort to her now? She couldn’t imagine it; she couldn’t imagine anything.

  The sun was setting. PIXIES. The neon shone in the fading light. Sheila heard music; kids were going in. It seemed perverse, to disappear into the gloom on such a golden evening, but they were young, weren’t they?

  A bouncer stood at the door. He was large and black. Was he the one? All she remembered, from the police report, was that the bouncer – the last man on earth, except one, to see her daughter alive – had an unpronounceable name.

  She looked up at him. He had a kind face, she decided. She needed him to be kind.

  ‘Excuse me. Were you on duty eight weeks ago, a Friday night like this one?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m new – hey, not you, mate!’ He turned and barred the way to a tattooed youth. ‘I started this Tuesday, ma’am.’

  ‘Do you know who it was? I want to talk to him.’ She added weakly: ‘I’m a parent.’

  ‘Nope, no idea. Sorry.’

  Sheila went into the building. She paused, for a moment, to adjust to the gloom. It was a narrow corridor, with stars suspended from the ceiling. Kids squeezed past her and went upstairs. She felt old, an obstruction. She tried to remember the surroundings for later – to remember them for Chloe’s sake – but she couldn’t connect this place to her daughter.

  The police had also interviewed the cloakroom girl. She was the one who had told them about Chloe phoning for a cab. At the end of the passage was a booth. A girl sat there. Sheila went up to her and asked her the same question. Was she working in the club, that night?

  The girl shook her head. ‘I’m sitting in for my friend,’ she said. There was something nude about her face; she had plucked off her eyebrows, that was why. The skin moved, two ridges of it, as she raised them. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m looking for her.’

  ‘Mel? She’s gone back to New Zealand.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sheila paused. ‘Or the bouncer who was around then. He had a foreign name.’

  ‘Oh. You mean Cheddar. That the one? Big geezer, looked like a mass-murderer.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘He’s left.’ She stopped, and looked at Sheila. ‘Hey, you OK?’

  ‘I need to see him.’

  ‘Want to sit down?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Let me think. He had a day job, somebody said. Want me to find out?’

  It needed a wash, the car. It had been neglected, of late. In fact, it had always been neglected. Sheila was naturally untidy and David, though a neat man in other respects, lost his will when it came to the Mondeo. Chloe had been the worst offender. Sheila remembered her husband’s bellow when he had opened his Manchester A–Z and found it glued together with one of her sucked sweets.

  Enboldened by her visit to Pixies, Sheila went into Chloe’s bedroom. She needed to stir the air in it, to keep it alive. The clothes had long since been tidied away; she opened the wardrobe and sniffed the dresses like an animal. She had become an animal – aching, snuffling, farting, crying. She opened a drawer and handled Chloe’s knickers. They were familiar to her – some of them she had bought herself – and greyed
by repeated washing. Large knickers, sprigged and striped cotton. Had they ever been touched by a man’s fingers? Desperately she hoped so.

  Sheila was beyond tears now, she had no more to shed. She pulled out a bra, 38C, frayed at the seams. For years now she hadn’t seen Chloe naked. Once a carefree child, her daughter had become shy as she grew up. Beneath the underwear Sheila felt the crackle of wrappers. She drew out packets – Hob Nobs, Digestives – nearly empty packets with a few biscuits left.

  This undid her all over again. She lay down on Chloe’s bed and pressed her face into the pillow.

  And now she was driving into the car-wash. A mannequin with a mechanical arm beckoned her under the railway arch: Wash’N’Wax Valet Service. She drove through a doorway into the great, vaulted darkness. Two men sprung out and lathered the windows. A sponge rubbed away the last smears of bird shit. The men were obscured by suds. Was one of them him? Looked like a mass-murderer. Suddenly the thought struck Sheila: Could it be him, the bouncer? He had followed her home?

  How stupid she had been! Her brain was so slow nowadays, she could feel its cogs grinding and searching for a connection. Behind the foam the men-shapes shifted. A great hand, startlingly near, swabbed the window beside her. She heard words shouted in a foreign language.

  Something struck the car roof. She jumped and sat there, rigid. A face loomed up at the window. It nodded.

  She wound down the window. ‘What do you want?’

  The man smote the flank of the car. ‘You go.’ His finger pointed ahead. She tried to gather her wits: of course the bouncer hadn’t killed her, the police had eliminated him long ago.

  Engaging first gear, she slid the car on to tracks. They held it in a grip. Helplessly she sat while the car slid forward, through plastic curtains that slit open, and then great heavy fronds were slapping at her windscreen.

  She put up quite a fight.

  Jets of water squirted her from all sides. The car shuddered. Had the man locked the car doors? Why hadn’t Chloe got out?