Even the Dogs: A Novel (16 page)

four

They cut his body open in a clean white room and take him apart piece by piece.

They come crowding into the room, and turn on the lights, and open the heavy steel door he’s been lying behind. The photographer from the flat is here, and the younger policeman, and the woman who combed her fingers through Robert’s hair. The older man with the thick tangle of dark hair is here, wearing a black suit, and the way he stands over Robert makes it look like he’s still in charge. And we still haven’t got an identity, he’s saying, asking, looking at the woman from the flat and another man with a notebook already out. They shake their heads, and they say that nothing’s really come up, no one’s come forward, there’s nothing to say this is even a case. See what you can do for us today, Frank, says the man with the notebook, and they all smile and start to laugh, and the doctor asks two younger men to take Robert through. They wheel him out to another room, and transfer him to another trolley, and wheel him into a room with sinks and counters and bright white lights and trays of sharply shining tools. We follow them, hanging back a little, wanting and not wanting to see what will happen now, and as we move into the room we hear the rest of them behind us, scrubbing their hands and arms and dressing in layers of protective clothing, the medical staff in green gowns and plastic aprons, thick gloves, rubber boots, and clear plastic visors which cover their faces, the others wearing white hooded overalls just as they did at the flat, and visors over their faces, and white rubber boots.

Fucksake. It’s only Robert. What can he do to you now.

They come through and they stand around his body, still safely bagged and sealed, and they talk, telling each other what they know about the case, reading the policeman’s report, studying the notes.

They shift him on to a large steel table with a sink built in to one end, and taps, and hoses, and extraction fans which begin to whistle softly as they talk.

They weigh him and measure him and take pictures of his shrouded body. They switch on the overhead lights, searchlight-bright and stark and shocking. We press close in around them. We want to see. We want to touch. The policeman checks the number on the lock, breaks it open, and stands back. The photographer leans in and takes pictures, and he keeps taking pictures while they unzip the body bag and pull it open. They unwind the plastic sheet from around his body, checking it for any fallen debris, any scraps of him or his life, and they place everything they find into plastic containers with labels which note the date and time and reference number, labels which should but don’t say things like: a piece of tobacco which fell from the last cigarette Robert smoked; a strand of someone else’s hair, apparently a woman’s, which from its position at or around Robert’s arm must have been there since the source rested her head against his shoulder; the blood-darkened larvae from a bluebottle fly, hatched from an egg laid on Robert’s skin, which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside him.

They take the plastic bags from his hands and his head, and as his face rises into the light we almost expect him to take a deep gasping breath, or to blink, or to say something like What the fuck’s happened this time? What the fuck have you gone and done? Which is how he always used to wake up, before. With a jolt. Like he’d heard something. Something like the closing of a door, or the ringing of a phone. His eyes snapping open and his voice going What the fuck is it now before he even quite knew he was awake. His voice thick and wet and slurred. Cranking himself up on his elbows and looking around the room to see who was there this time, waiting for someone to catch his eye and saying Will someone get me a fucking drink or what?

They take photographs. They cut slices from the ends of his cracked yellow fingernails and drop them into labelled plastic bags. They pluck hairs from the top of his head, from his eyebrows, from his nostrils, tearing them out by the root and dropping them into more labelled bags.

Should be more like this though but. We drape a freshly laundered sheet across a long wooden table and lay him out on that, dressed in his Sunday best. We put his head on a soft silk cushion. We weigh his eyelids down with pennies, and stuff his arse with cotton wool. We place flowers around him, and light candles, and put out chairs so that people can come and go all through the day and night to remember who he was and how he was and raise a drink and tell stories about his long eventful life. Like a what they call it a wake. Like saying remember this.

Remember the woman cutting hair at the day centre. Every couple of weeks she’d be there, with her combs and scissors and bottles of shampoo. Weren’t bothered about keeping it short or how it looked to be honest but just, being touched. Hands running through your hair. Someone taking the time. Someone holding up a mirror and asking if that was okay. Worth waiting for. Robert never went down there, never went anywhere, borrowed Steve’s clippers every few months and buzzcut it himself, made a right mess of it most times as it happens but no one ever said. Could do with someone trimming his hair nice now and not just tearing it out by the root.

And what about. All the cigarettes that have stained those fingernails. The layers of grease and dust and skin which have collected beneath them. Each moment of his life scraped up under there. The fabric of the armchair worn thin beneath his fidgeting hands. The labels of beer-bottles picked away from the cold wet glass. The way he would scratch at Yvonne’s back sometimes, when they were in bed together, each sharpened caress making her arch and shriek above him, and the way afterwards she would peer over her shoulder to see the marks he’d left on her, and laugh proudly, and call him a mean bastard, smiling as she said it, and roll off the bed to look for their cigarettes. The sight of her skinny arse as she walked away from the bed like that. Fucking, what was it. The two of them smoking together then, and later, once she’d left, the two of them smoking apart, in rooms a hundred miles away, their fingers yellowing and the memory of each other flaring to life each time they lit up, no matter what they did to avoid it, the drinking and whatever else. The way memories like that end up a part of you, and then pop out again with some movement or some bang on the bone. For example what. For example the number of times, years after she left, he would take his first drag on a cigarette and then find himself holding it out in mid-air, offering it to someone who wasn’t there. Who hadn’t been there for years. For example the way, in those first few months together, she’d only take a few drags before stubbing it out and wrestling him on to his back for another go. Fucking Yvonne. Where did she come from. Where the fuck did she go. And the blood beneath his fingernails that time, the only time. When he lashed out at her by mistake. He’d only wanted to warn her, but she’d moved at the last moment, and he’d caught her awkwardly, caught the skin just by her eye with his fingernails, felt the skin tearing he thought. And there was the blood on his nails, a tiny spot, a tiny fucking damn spot. It was only the one time, weren’t it. And it had been more or less a mistake. The pain in his head. Just a slap, fucking, not even a slap. Because if she hadn’t moved at the last minute. But the way she’d looked at him then, like something had closed off inside her. And her cheek, around where he’d caught her. Red. The ragged edges of the broken skin. The way she said You bastard, without smiling, without room for him to say anything back. Running the taps in the bathroom, and the smell of cigarette smoke curling out while he stood there and knocked on the door. Her muffled voice telling him he had to go and collect Laura from the school because she wasn’t going in this state.

Only the one time. Weren’t it.

There are things we didn’t know before, and we know them now. How but. These things coming to us slowly, surely, rising to the surface like bruises and scars.

Never seen him still like this before. Have you. Even when he was asleep he was all fidgeting and scratching and muttering on, rolling over, pulling at whatever jacket or blanket he’d hauled over himself when he crashed to the floor. And when he was awake he never sat still. Never left the flat but he couldn’t stop moving. Getting a drink, rolling a fag, going over to the window, going for a piss, scratching and talking and waving his arms around to make a point. Telling someone to clear their shit up, telling someone to get him some snap. Telling a story or just sitting there shaking and trembling like there was a current running through him, waiting for a drink. So maybe this is some kind of peace, this stillness he’s got himself now. Maybe you can call it that, at least.

Remember his fingernails though. Do you. Cracked, yellow, bitten-down. And now they’re clipped off and dropped into clear plastic pouches. Put them under a microscope and see what stories they tell. And Laura’s fingernails, that first time she came knocking on Robert’s door, remember Heather couldn’t stop looking at them, couldn’t believe them, long and clean and curved at the ends. Polished. The fingernails of a girl with a clean bathroom where there are handcreams and nail scissors and emery boards and a neat row of clear and coloured varnishes lined up on the shelves. Sort of made Heather think of when she was younger, like much younger, when she first went out on the road with the band, when she was still looking after herself. Laura had ripped her jeans and put on these big clumpy boots but her nails still gave her away. The look on Robert’s face when he woke up next morning and saw her there, and then the look on his face when she went straight off again. Sort of like he couldn’t tell if he’d dreamt it or what. Those perfect fingernails, those long white fingers, clean fingers, Heather had wanted to take the girl’s hand and hold it against her face. Had a feeling like that would be nice. Laura had that effect on people, then. It was unsettling. They weren’t used to it. Wanted to put one of those clean white fingers in her mouth. The taste of it.

The older man, the doctor or whoever he is, speaks to a younger man who writes his words down on a whiteboard on the wall, and a woman with clipped-back hair and black-rimmed glasses starts to cut into Robert’s clothes. Black fleece, the doctor says, greasy stains to cuffs and neck, cigarette burns or similar on chest area, large rip approximately, what, one hundred and seventy millimetres, running up from left waist. The photographer leans in to get pictures of all this, and someone else places a ruler next to the rip in Robert’s filthy clothes.

That’s all those times he fell asleep with a fag on the go, the drinks he spilt over himself. That’s the fight he had with Steve a couple of months back. When he pulled away from Steve and his fleece ripped up the side where Steve was holding it. Weren’t hardly a fight though, it was mostly just holding on, banging heads and swinging elbows and holding each other up. Didn’t come out of much and didn’t look like it was going that far until Steve took a bite on Robert’s ear. Remember that. Just leant round and took a bite, and once Robert had pulled away and made sure his ear was still there he kicked right off. Didn’t he. Remember. Weren’t much of a fight after that. A man the size of Robert, once he puts his mind to it he’s like a what is it a force to be reckoned with a force of nature. Pushing and punching Steve out through the front door and down the steps and shouting all this stuff like You fucking headcase you cunt you can fuck right off and all that. Kept putting his hand to his ear to make sure it was all there or something and spitting out blood where Steve had caught him in the mouth. Rolling up his hat and holding it against his ear. Someone found H and brought him out, and someone else got Steve’s coat and threw it over him where he lay, and Robert started looking up and down the street like he’d only just realised he was outside. Was the first time he’d been outside for a while, and it was the last time until those blokes with the stretcher and the black van carried him out.

Reckon that was the last time Steve was there anyway, unless. Unless what. Some things we don’t know yet. Steve and H stumbling off down the street without looking back, Steve pulling his coat on and rubbing at his knuckles where he’d caught Robert in the mouth. Robert backing away into the flat going What the fuck was all that about and looking for another drink. Pushing his hat back over his head. The two of them picking away at each other all day but it still seemed to come out of nowhere. Robert saying something about Steve never being a real soldier and Steve standing over him going Say that again, and Robert standing up and the two of them going at it. The closeness of them, in that moment, breathing into each other, the sharp smack of knuckle on bone and their faces pressing and scratching together, the smell of drink and cold sweat and the first taste of blood in the mouth, the unfocused stare in the eyes. The dense metallic ring of each punch as it fell. Steve’s teeth biting on his ear, and the crunch of pain that followed. Steve saying, even while Robert was knocking him out of the door, Don’t you ever say that about me again, that was nothing mate, you say that again and you see what happens, I was a soldier you bastard, I served my country you bastard. Lying curled up at the bottom of the steps going I served my country, and Ben hurling his coat down over him and laughing and telling him to shut up. Booting him one in the ribs just for fun. Robert touching his ear and turning away into the flat. Don’t mean nothing now. But if he knew. If Robert knew, if he’d taken the trouble to ask, if he’d given Steve the chance to tell him all the things he’d seen and done when he was away with the army, then he wouldn’t have said that, he wouldn’t have dared, it wouldn’t ever have occurred to him to say something like that. Steve’s done his time and that’s the God’s honest truth. In Belfast, peering out through the letterbox windows of the Land Rover, rocks and bottles raining down, his gun heavy in his lap and the taste of bile in his mouth, ready to rattle out through those back doors and take up positions, waving shields and sticks and shouting Get back, get back, you bastards, get back. Petrol bombs splashing and flaming around their feet, stones and lumps of iron falling from the sky. Gunfire. From nowhere, from bloody everywhere, gunfire. Scanning the rooftops, the windows, the alley-entrances. More gunfire, and a man down beside him, Craigie, his leg ripped open and blood gushing out on to the road. I mean just literally gushing. The shouts of Man down, and idiot whooping in the crowd, and our guns raised in their faces Now will you bloody get back or what, bloody get back. And down in Armagh, wading across sodden meadows and scrambling through ditches, rainwater gushing into drains and culverts like the blood from Craigie’s leg on that road and in the back of the Land Rover and some poor bastard had to swab that out when it was all done. Never told me I’d be doing that. My country lied to me. If Robert had known any of that, if he’d ever listened, if anyone ever listened, he wouldn’t have made something of it like that, he wouldn’t have said what he did. If he knew. Would he.