Rottenhouse (13 page)

Now Simon was no detective but to him
the cause of death was pretty obvious and he peered in closer, some
cold and wretched part of him taking hold, and felt his own eyes
wince in pain as he looked at the hilt of a knife sticking out of
Stevie’s right eye socket.

The current didn’t push that all the
way in. A hand did that. A strong hand.

‘
God-damn,’ Simon
wheezed, ‘what the hell did that?’

He could hear Lucy greedily drinking
from the bottle of water and though he wanted to turn and see that
she was alright his morbid curiosity took over and his eyes
remained firmly fixed upon the knife jutting out from Stevie’s head
like a murderous exclamation mark.

Lucy stopped drinking, the bottle of
water expanding with a crack and exhaled. She let out a deep
satisfying belch, took another swig, and then poured the rest into
her hands and splashed her face with it.

Simon watched in wonder as the water
started to lift the corpse a touch and as if it were still alive
Stevie’s arms floated further to the top of the water; the cuts and
bruises from the night before a fresh bright red against his pale
dead skin. Behind him, what felt like miles behind him, Lucy
mumbled something that he couldn’t make out nor cared to. There was
an urge inside of him. An urge he had felt before but in completely
different circumstances and it troubled him. It intrigued him.

They leak. They bleed. They don’t stop
once they started

Simon’s foot twitched at the thought of
the small hands as they wrapped around his bare skin trying to drag
him down into that eternal black nothingness.

‘
You listening to me!’
a voice from beneath a mile of ocean said, ‘I’m going to get my
dad. Stay here and make sure…make sure… Just stay here,
okay?’

‘
Okay.’ His own voice
was as far away as Lucy’s and he turned and watched her run back
toward the house, her hair a mad twist of wet hay. On the soft
breeze he caught the scent of fresh sick and he spat into the
water; the white frothy head of the phlegm mixed in with the red
tinged water like satanic cordial.

‘
You aint going
nowhere, are ya Stevie? Looks like you had yerself an
accident.’

Stevie bobbed and nodded as the fresh
water continued its ceaseless efforts in trying to drag the body
further downstream.

10

Simon took a step back, transfixed on
the body for a moment longer. Then a familiar, but surprising urge
took over and he grabbed his camera. He took seven shots. Three
were full frame close ups of the face, two were of the whole morbid
scene, one was taken upstream; the body almost hidden away which
would make for an odd treat for the viewer as they scanned the
image. The final image, the one Simon got that ear burning
sensation over, he shot with the camera on top of the tripod so
that he could slow the shutter speed down and thus giving the water
a mystical, floating look, as it lapped over the body of Stevie
Johnson.

11

The camera was quickly put away and the
tripod folded back up as if it was never thought of as he heard
footsteps walking across the wooden bridge.

He wasn’t really traumatised by what
lay in the stream, taking those pictures had proved that, but now
that the adrenaline was wearing off Simon was slowly realising that
what he was seeing here was not only a murder, but a murder that he
had some prior knowledge of. His heart skipped a beat and all of a
sudden it was a hotter day than it had been two minutes ago. He was
next to a dead body. A murdered dead body for Christ’s sake, and
here he was taking pictures like he was on some kind of busman’s
holiday. What the hell had he’d been thinking?

Another one of those wretched black
crows cackled overhead. Simon watched it swoop down like a fighter
plane on some low level bombing run. The crow spotted him, the body
bobbing in the water too, and then the bird turned and headed off
toward the village screaming bloody murder.

Simon heard a large
splash of water as Stevie’s body slipped a touch and now the water
level was up to his chest. Sooner rather than later the whole body
would be under and taken away on the current. An image of himself,
diving into the water and trying to rescue a dead body flashed
before him. There would be questions no doubt.
He
would be questioned by whatever
called itself the police around here.

No police round ere, lad. Don’t need
it

Surely not? But then again, Mr
Rowling’s complete denial of a drink driving law made Simon think
that there probably wasn’t a police force around here and that
they, by some weird set of coincidences, managed to fall outside
the umbrella of the modern world in more ways than he thought
possible.

A few heavy heartbeats later Lucy and
Mr Rowling were standing next to him and both seemed out of breath.
Lucy was as pale as the body floating in the stream next to them
whilst her dads face was bright red and his cheeks were puffing. He
not only looked tired from the quick walk he had just made, he also
looked flustered – unhappy – but not concerned or distraught which
was what Simon had expected.

You’re a fine one to
judge, Simon,
he thought to himself,
you’ve just spent the last twenty minutes taking
pictures of that poor bastard as he floated on a watery
deathbed.

It would have been an odd sight to
anyone passing by; two people dressed for the summer in shorts and
t-shirts stood next to a man seemingly set for a cold winters day,
as Mr Rowling was wearing thick beige trousers and on top a green
sweater made out of the thickest wool Simon had ever seen.

‘
Can’t believe it.’
Lucy whispered, ‘He’s just dead. Dead. I was just coming
home.’

‘
Alright, Barbara.
Calm down. You’ve seen dead animals before. This aint no
different.’

‘
No different,’ Simon
spat, ‘No different. There’s a guy dead in the water not five feet
away with a knife sticking out of his face.’

‘
Simon.’ Lucy
whispered as if that would calm him down. Simon quickly looked at
her and his eyes said all she needed to know and she shrank back a
little so that the two men were between her and the stream and the
body.

‘
That aint no animal,
Mr Rowling. That’s Stevie Johnson. You know him, yeah; he’s that
poor bastard that was beaten half to death last night.’

‘
Simon, don’t make
yerself a spectacle.’ Mr Rowling said calmly. ‘And watch yer
language, too. Nowt the time for such a like as that.’

Simon shook his head and threw his arms
out to the side like a child at the end of a particularly random
tantrum.

The sounds of a thrumming engine made
all three of them turn toward the bridge and the road that lay just
beyond.

‘
That the police?’
Simon asked.

Lucy shook her head and he could see by
the look on her face that she was ashamed of that fact.

‘
No. Then who is it?’
Simon said.

Mr Rowling put his hands deep into his
pockets seemingly unconcerned that there was a body of a man
floating dead in the water just outside from his home. Simon
couldn’t tell if he was deep in thought or just had plain ignored
him; Mr Rowling’s only sign of life at that point, with his back
turned to Simon so that he was facing the sound of the engine, was
that of his body heaving with every staggered breath.

Lucy stood there like a scarecrow.

Simon was just about to ask who the
hell that it was coming up the road in what sounded like a van from
the 50’ss when there was a squeal of brakes and the thrumming
engine ceased in a couple of cancer ridden coughs.

‘
Don’t need
police,
Simon
.
Never have, never will. We stick together here and do things how
they should be done, yaknow what I mean.’ Mr Rowling said as in the
distance whoever was in the vehicle got out and closed the doors
behind them sending nesting birds flying into the unbroken blue
sky.

12

‘
Best yago back
tahouse, you two. Leave this to us now.’ Mr Rowling picked up
Simons back pack and handed it to him. Simon had no intention of
leaving and so he took the back pack but straight away handed it to
Lucy.

‘
I’m staying, Mr
Rowling. Lucy, you can go back. I need to be here.’

‘
Be here for what,
Simon?’ Mr Rowling asked.

There was a tension in the air. A
static built up, and Simon could feel it like you can feel the
electricity coming from overhead pylons. There was a sound to this
tension and it filled Simon’s ears like a white noise.

‘
I don’t know Mr
Rowling. Curiosity. A sense that there has been a crime and that I
am a part of it. I don’t know.’

‘
We don’t need you,
Simon.’

‘
Yeah, come on, Si,’
Lucy said, ‘Come back to the house with me. Leave that to Dad and
the others.’

‘
I’m staying, Luce.
This aint right.’

Lucy moved over to Simon but he
mirrored that move in reverse and held out his hands to stop
here.

‘
Just go back to the
house.
NOW!’

Lucy, her mouth
an
O
of shock,
almost dropped the backpack. She looked at her dad, hoping that he
would help her, perhaps persuade Simon to see sense and leave it
alone. But Mr Rowling did no such thing and Simon saw a wry grin on
the face of the old man. It was as if he appreciated the fact that
Simon had raised his voice to a woman.

Been a man about it, Simon, aye – a MAN
about it

‘
Do as he says,
Barbara. Don’t argue wihim. Now off yago.’

With a dejected look, but a somewhat
relieved one too, she walked toward home ignoring the two men that
she crossed paths with on the way back.

Mr Rowling took a hand out from his
pocket and rubbed his furrowed brow.

‘
Always wanted
argument, did Barbara. Like her mother. She took bit a training did
Margaret, yaknow what I mean?’

‘
Training?’

‘
Aye lad,
training
. They need to
know their place in things. You’ll understand soon enough. Once you
have been under cosh for a few months.’

‘
But Mr Rowing, I have
been with your daughter for over three years. We have lived
together for two. She has a temper, a wicked one granted, but I
don’t mind it. It makes her different. Not a robot. Are you not
interested in what’s floating in the stream?’

That blank angry look came upon Mr
Rowling. ‘Southerners.’ He proclaimed as he looked about his feet
and then, as if he were some great detective from an old novel, he
busied himself looking at the ground, seeking out clues whilst he
waited for his two friends to arrive.

13

It seemed as though
many hours had passed since Simon was atop the valley, taking happy
snappy shots of Rottenhouse and the surrounding areas.
Relativity
, he supposed.
That odd rule of science that states that we, that, them,
everything, is governed by not only speed, but large heavy objects
too, and the gravity they emit. It was all very complicated, this
relativity business, and it hurt Simon’s head just thinking about
small portions of it, but not as much as it would pummel the heads
of the two hulking, broad shouldered and thick necked man-gorillas
walking towards him.

One he had met before, in the Club last
night, a tall skinny chap in brown overalls and a white shirt, his
name was Pickering. The other man he also knew, but was unsure of
his name; it was either Lewis or it was Bobbie. He was no longer
wearing those ridiculously undersized garments; they had been
replaced with a simple pair of blue jeans and a navy blue t-shirt.
Though they fitted well, his fat belly still protruded like a giant
tumour.

Both men were sweating
heavily and they looked concerned, especially Lewis, in fact Lewis
looked sick with it. There was muffled talk between the two of them
which came to a halt as soon as they reached Mr Rowling. The two
men walked passed him, Simon gave a H
ey
remember me from the station yesterday, you fat pig, remember how
you ripped me off?
look, but Lewis just
walked on by, didn’t even give him a cursory glance.

‘
Thanks for coming.
Where’s plastic?’ Mr Rowling said shaking both men’s hands one
after the other.

‘
In van.’ Pickering
answered and then wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand.
‘Hot one,’ he continued and then looked at Simon. ‘Whats he doing
here?’

‘
Neveryou mind that,
you just think about getting him outta water.’

The four men walked
over to the edge of the stream though Simon didn’t make it the full
distance, he had seen enough of the bobbing and nodding body to
last a lifetime
plus you have the photos
to look at you sick shit!
Splashes of water
could be seen rising and through the rushes and the tall grass the
body of Stevie peeked through like a gruesome game of a
peek-a-boo.

Mr Rowling and his cohorts stood in the
same place Simon had been in and they each looked down into the
water; the sun sparkled off of the water and reflected on their
faces and in their hair.

None of them gave the
impression of being shocked. There was no expletive gasps or loss
of bodily functions be it in the pants or up from the throat. It
was all so
normal
.
Like the beating last night, or the way in which Mr Rowling had
driven home the night before drunk; it was all so run of the mill
bordering on the boring for these people.