Death of a God (33 page)

Is murder a drug, do you know? I ask because of the effect committing one had on me personally, quite the reverse of what I'd have expected, had I ever given any thought to the subject. No regrets or feelings of guilt, no panic as to what was going to happen to me. On the contrary, everything seemed beautifully calm and simple.

First I went and put on my washing-up gloves, and then I went to the cupboard under the stairs and fished out the enormous polythene bag the knitting machines had come wrapped up in, and which I could never bring myself to throw away. I felt foolishly glad that at last I'd found a use for it.

Loy went in quite easily, once I'd bent his knees a little. He had told me that he'd parked on the bomb site, so I took his keys out of the jeans he'd discarded on the floor, quickly put my own clothes back on again, put on my coat, and went out to the van and unlocked it. I left the rear doors wide open. Then I went back to the house to fetch his body.

He was a skinny boy, not at all heavy. I trussed the polythene with some cords I'd found lying in the back of the van, and heaved him on to my shoulder without difficulty. The art was in manoeuvring him through the narrow doorway into the hall, and then out of the front door without banging him; though why it was important not to bang him I couldn't tell you. The possibility that somebody might be watching never occurred to me, and even when a voice that sounded full of suppressed laughter sounded out of the darkness, ‘Need a hand, love?', I wasn't seriously perturbed. Nothing was quite real that night, the speaker included.

Yes, as you've probably guessed, it was Mr King, the Punch and Judy man. Well, that was our introduction – quite chivalrous, in an odd way: a gentleman offering to help a lady with a bulky package.

If you knew him, you'll know that everything about Mr King was odd. I myself only knew him for a very little while, but it was long enough for me to know that. What he told me was, that Loy and he had fallen out over a business deal and he had followed Loy from the University because he wanted to have it out with him once and for all. What with one thing and another, he said, he wasn't at all put out to find Loy dead, though he doubted he'd have gone as far himself, if it had been left to him. However, what was done was done, and might he ask how I proposed to dispose of the body?

I answered, truthfully, that beyond getting it out of the house, where the sight of it might upset my ailing husband, I hadn't given it any thought. Mr King tut-tutted, and said that was the trouble with women, they never thought things through. He seemed quite exhilarated. I fleetingly wondered if he had been taking drugs, but as I had never, to my knowledge, actually seen anyone under their influence, I was unable to come to any conclusion. I was only aware that I was beginning to feel very tired – to remember, if not with my mind, then with my violated body, why I had committed murder; and when Mr King suggested that he take over from then on, I was only too happy to comply.

Under his direction, we first shifted Loy's body from the Second Coming van to his own dark blue one, less conspicuous; and I went back to the house and fetched Loy's clothes, stuffed into the case which had contained the money. At the last moment I found I'd left one of the packets of notes unburnt, but there wasn't time to do anything about it, so I just left it in the case along with the clothes.

The Punch and Judy man following, I drove the white van down to the Chepe, and left it there.

I got into the blue van, and suddenly I knew where I wanted to go: Hob's Hole. Hob was the Devil, and the Devil should have his own.

Mr King said he was quite amenable, so long as I did the navigating. He had a figure of Punch on the front seat which he hung up in a kind of pocket at the side of the windscreen to make room for me.

‘Move over for the lady.'

There was hardly any traffic on the road. I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up I realized that we had overshot the turn-off, and I was glad. What could I have been thinking of? Hob's Hole was sacred to the Venus. Our saint, our protectress, Leo had called her. True, it wasn't until later that I saw the pictures in the
Argus
and knew, although I couldn't prove it, that it was Loy who had broken her breasts off in the Middlemass Auditorium. Even as a child, when she had stood on our mantelpiece he had hated her, and I had had to put her for safety on top of a bookcase, out of reach. All I knew then was, I couldn't pollute her shrine with the body of my satanic son.

Mr King didn't seem to mind at all that I had changed my mind. ‘Women!' he exclaimed cheerfully, turning the car round. He drew into the side of the road. ‘Where to now?' he demanded. ‘Any other bright ideas?'

‘Yes,' I said, as if it had been in my mind all along. ‘I want to crucify him in the Market Place.'

Well you saw for yourself the result of our labours. Having only one ladder between the two of us made it awkward. If I hadn't thought of using that belt of Loy's, I don't know how we'd ever have managed it.

I'm sure, all those years ago, they did a more professional job with Jesus. For one thing, they weren't wearing gloves then, I don't suppose, in case of fingerprints. Yet it was funny, really. Apart from the gloves, we took absolutely no precautions – there, almost in the shadow of the police station! Anyone who happened along couldn't have failed to see us.

But nobody did come along. The Market Place and the surrounding streets were as quiet as the grave. Mr King seemed to take it all as a great joke. When we had finished, he drove me back to Sebastopol Terrace.

I didn't ask him in. After what had happened already that night, I wouldn't have let even you in, Mr Jurnet, if you had come knocking. I got out of it by saying I still had the room to clear up. I added, meaning it, I suppose, that I couldn't think of how to thank him for all he'd done.

‘I'll think of something,' he said: took the Punch out of its pocket and settled it comfortably on the seat beside him, and drove away.

It was light before I had the house back in order. Not that Loy had died all that messily: simply that I suddenly felt so tired in all my bones, it was all I could do not to drop down on to the couch, on to that horrible, stained loose cover, and sleep forever. I forced myself to brew some really strong coffee and, having drunk two mugs of it, set to work: stripping off the cover first of all. The upholstery beneath was no problem, being a nasty plastic stuff you could sponge off. When it was dry I put on my spare cover, washed the other one in the kitchen sink, wrung it out, and left it by the back door in a bucket, ready to hang out after breakfast, along with some other household things I already had waiting.

Very little blood had dripped on to the floor. Still, just to be on the safe side, I scrubbed the boards all over, and polished them afterwards with a polish scented with lavender. Leo would be astonished. I would tell him that I'd suddenly felt inspired to do some spring-cleaning in honour of Easter. The only job I left undone was the fireplace, choked with ash. I was simply too tired. I would make the fire early, before Leo was up, and he would never know that I had burnt his life away in that mingy little grate.

You came next day, Mr Jurnet, with your Sergeant, and told us the news. You won't believe this, but it's true: it shocked me as much as if I were indeed hearing it for the first time. I wouldn't want you to think I was pretending. Yesterday had happened to someone else. Today, I was a woman who had lost her son in a ghastly way.

Poor Loy! Poor Leo, who had loved him so!

A couple of nights later, long after Leo had gone to bed, Mr King came back. This time I offered him a cup of tea, but he refused it.

‘One good turn deserves another,' he said, still as full as ever of that spooky laughter. He said he'd been turning over in his mind what I'd said about showing my gratitude, and he'd come up with something.

‘Some time soon,' he said, ‘you're going to be a very rich lady, has that ever occurred to you?' And, when I stared at him, dumbfounded: ‘Loy, that boy of yours. He had a head on his shoulders. Thousands, hundreds of thousands – millions, I shouldn't be surprised – salted away here, there, and everywhere. The lawyers'll know where to put their hands on it, they always do.

‘And who's it all going to go to, if not his mum? If he's made a will, you're bound to be the chief one to benefit; and if he hasn't, you'll get the lot. Even if he's gone and left it to the cat's home, you'll be bound to get what they call ‘‘reasonable provision''.' He got up from his chair, did a funny little jig, and sat down again. ‘Take it from me, Mrs F. – good times are just around the corner!'

I thought of the £13,000 burnt in the fireplace. Any other time I could have laughed my head off.

As it was, I said, ‘You're mad if you think I'd take a penny of Loy's money.'

‘
I'm
mad!' Mr King burst out laughing. His large nose became bright red. When he had calmed down, he said, ‘What you do is your business. If you don't choose to be an heiress, all the more for me.'

It was blackmail, of course. Either I handed over to him an unspecified sum of money from Loy's estate, or – there was no need to complete the sentence.

‘No hurry,' the man said, smiling. I must say, I never saw him out of temper. ‘You don't have to go running after them. They'll be getting in touch with you. You'll see. No need to act pushy – it makes a bad impression. Just bear in mind, that's all, that I still have your polythene bag put away in a safe place, and that case with the lad's clothes –'

‘I'll bear it in mind.' I too smiled, as I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Since I don't want Loy's money, what does it matter to me who has it?'

We parted the best of friends. The first day after that, that I felt Leo could safely be left on his own for a few hours, I took my shopping bag, went down to the station, and took a cheap day return to Havenlea. In my bag I put my plastic mac and my French cook's knife, which Leo took pride in always keeping beautifully sharp for me. On top, for the look of the thing, I put a net of oranges.

I hadn't been to Havenlea since the last time we'd taken Loy there. It had always been later in the year when there were plenty of people about. Now, the emptiness of the place dismayed me. People would be bound to remember the solitary woman walking along the front with her shopping bag over her arm; her height, the colour of her coat, her eyes, her hair.

On the other hand, if I were indeed the solitary woman, then there was no one else to see me; or, if anybody did, it would not be a real remembering. I looked so ordinary.

The wind slapped strongly at my face, and I felt better. I have always enjoyed the wind off the sea. Suddenly certain that the Punch and Judy tent stood where it had always stood, and that the Punch and Judy man would be inside, waiting for me, I walked briskly along the promenade until, sure enough, there it was, the same as ever, red-and-white striped, with the little pennon flapping. There was a shelter a little before, into which I stepped out of the wind to unfold my mac and put it on. I took out my knife and held it carefully in my right hand, close against my side. Then I went down to the beach.

A tuneless humming came from the tent, a sound with that unmistakable undertone of amusement, so that I knew it was Mr King at home. The fabric of the tent was pushed out of true, following the outline of a rounded back. Without stopping to think about it, I nudged a flap apart with an elbow, and plunged the knife in, knowing instinctively that once was enough. I didn't get a proper look at Mr King at all, only a fleeting glimpse of a Punch as it keeled over, looking quite amused, I thought.

I went back to the shelter, took off the mac and folded it back into its pouch. As it turned out, I could have done without it. In spite of all the blood, not a single drop showed on the plastic.

Before catching the train back, I tried to find the café the three of us always used to go to – Loy had been mad on their pastries, and I could have done with a cup of tea. But where it had been there was now an amusement arcade.

I didn't get my cup of tea till I got back home, and then I had it with Leo, which was much better.

Do you know, Mr Jurnet, what it means to be raped? Of course you don't, so I'll tell you, because I've been giving the subject a lot of thought.

It's a hateful and nauseating act of violence, but when you come down to it, it isn't important. It doesn't count, because it doesn't touch you any way but physically. It isn't at all sexual.

Does that surprise you?

I'll go further and say that when you're a virgin, as I was, and then you're raped, as I was, first by Loy's father and then by Loy's father's son, you are still a virgin in the only sense that has meaning. I tell you this because, apart from those two, you are the only man I ever slept with, and I would like you to feel that you went to bed with a virgin, untouched, even if she did offer herself to you like a whore.

How I envied Miriam when I saw the two of you together! No: envy isn't the word. I was happy for you both. I was just a little sorry for myself.

I knew what had to happen to me sooner or later; that somewhere in His yellow-brick, tin-roofed heaven, the God of the Conventicle was lying in wait for me. Even before you told me about the way every murderer makes mistakes, conscious or unconscious, I was sure that if the police didn't find me out, sooner or later He would. I'd go over everything I'd done, or said, again and again. It was like those picture puzzles they have in children's books – how many mistakes can you spot? How many had I made? Not that it mattered, except in so far as I mustn't be caught, so long as Leo had need of me.

That's how things would have gone along, until they came to the inevitable end, if you hadn't happened to call round with my pencil box, the one thing left from my childhood that gives me pleasure. Now, it is doubly dear to me. Though, all said and done, it wasn't so much after all – was it? – to want, just for once, to know what it was like, as a woman, to lie with a man in perfect love.