The Wanderer (6 page)

However, despite these distractions, memories of the hellish night remained; a splinter, left unattended, begun to fester. There was one evening, when, at the end of a meal I’d enjoyed with Rachel, at a cheap, but good, French restaurant, I became distressed by a turn the conversation took and nearly drove her away. We’d eaten well and drunk a bottle of wine. After dessert, while we awaited coffees, Rachel took my hands in hers.

‘Strange. I’ve worked with you for a long while, but I’ve only got to know you in the last few weeks,’ she mused.

I grimaced, partly mocking, partly in earnest. ‘You’re not
regretting it, are you?’

‘Shut up! I just mean we wasted a lot of time.’

At this moment our coffees arrived. I spooned sugar into mine, stirring vacantly.

‘I guess we have,’ I said, staring down at the scum whorling on the surface of my espresso. ‘It’s just, I didn’t think you liked me, not in that way.’

Rachel pursed her lips, wrinkled her nose, petulant.

‘Well I did. Would’ve thought it fairly obvious.’

‘Not to me.’ I sipped my coffee.

‘That’s because you’re an idiot,’ she said, grinning.

‘Fair enough. Still, things have happened at the right time.’

‘I suppose.’

Rachel looked away, bit a fingernail, said, ‘Are you keeping something from me?’

‘What?’

‘Not maliciously,’ she went on, ‘but because, I don’t know, you’re scared of my reaction.’

‘There’s nothing. Really.’

‘But I might be able to help,’ she sighed, staring up at the light fixture. Then, looking down, ‘Your hands. You’ve got to be careful.’

I glanced down at them. They were dry and cracked, boiled-ham pink. I’d been scouring them often.

‘They’re fine. Just get like that when the weather turns cold,’ I lied.

She winced. ‘Look after yourself. I worry.’

‘Well don’t,’ I said, vehement.

‘What?’ She sounded hurt.

I almost raged then, but damped my ire.

‘I just mean there’s no need,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

Rachel nodded, turned the conversation to a less fraught topic.

After the meal, Rachel stayed at my flat. We spent nights
together often, which I was glad of; when alone awful thoughts kept me from sleep.

(Soon it will be dark; the moon is setting out to sea, casting a wavering grey path on the water. Would that I could walk down it into eternity’s repose. Instead, I will sleep fitfully on the grease-stained blankets I’ve laid out in the wheelhouse of this ship. The moon was waning gibbous when I began this account, now it is in its first quarter; it seems a fortnight has gone by, though, due to listlessness and the unvarying routine of my labours, I’ve not been aware of the passage of time – I’m grateful to that wan satellite for alerting me to it.

In fact, I’m thankful for more than that. All my writing has been done by moonlight: I’m wary lest the devil seeking me be close at hand, so lie low during the day, in the wheelhouse. It is always in murk, its windows are filth-caked, and I’ve no means of making light, bar an electric torch, whose batteries I wish to save, and flame, and one of my reeky hog-fat and bulrush tapers would soon choke the place with smoke; and when it’s been too dark to work outside, during the new moon and on overcast nights, I’ve been loath to show, on deck, a light that might be seen for miles around.

During the time I’ve been writing this account, little has happened, save in my head and on the page, but perhaps I should give a brief portrait of my day-to-day life. The barbarians round about avoid me, perhaps suspicious of my pallor and stature: their skin is a healthy dusk due to constant exposure to the torrid sun – I burn, but do not tan; and, as men no longer attain the height they did in the past, I’m head and shoulders above even the tallest of their race. I have several times been ashore to forage for roots and tubers, or to hunt down and kill, with a spear bodged by binding a carving knife to a sturdy branch with twine, one of the small reddish pigs that wander abroad. In a clearing, a little distance from the hulk, I have a fire pit. There I’m able to boil water dipped from the river, make it
safe for drinking, and cook my food, hopefully without drawing my enemy’s notice: the rising smoke is lost among the sooty streaks of the local natives’ many fires. In some ways, I’m glad life’s dull; every evening I continue my narrative from where I left off the previous morning, and nothing distracts me from my task. But, though things are quiet, they are fraught – I am sore afraid of being found. Indeed, I believe the last truly restful night’s slumber I had was in Rachel’s arms, long ago. Our relationship was a time of calm, of blithe forgetting. But it was soon at an end: a buried evil will always claw its way to the surface.)

While I enjoyed that lull, London was harrowed by some random cruel assaults. Victims were badly beaten, by a cudgel or similar weapon; few survived, and those that did couldn’t describe their assailant, having been struck down from behind. Witnesses were appealed for, but none came forth. Despite an increased police presence on the streets, the spate went on. People were afraid to walk the streets after dark.

One evening, I’d been out drinking in Soho with an old university friend. We left the pub at closing time. Drunk and less cowed by the attacks than most, the terror kindled by the demonic Punch and Judy show dulling other fears, I decided to walk to Trafalgar Square, from where I could catch a bus to Rachel’s house south of the river. My friend was travelling in the opposite direction, and, more wary than I, hailed a taxi. We made our farewells, then I set out, threading my way through the labyrinth east of Carnaby Street. There were a few other brave or foolhardy folk on the streets: a suited man, on the way home, I supposed, from a late night at the office; a Chinese restaurateur carrying a brace of ducks; a hot-dog vendor; and a group of American tourists.

Then, on Wardour Street, I heard, raucous and baleful, Punch’s traditional brag. It came from a dark alley on my left. I peered into the gloom, but could make nothing out. I called out,
and, overhead, a curtain was drawn, and light spilled down. Sprawled, face down, on a heap of black plastic bags beside a large kitchen bin, was a man wearing chefs’ whites. His skull had been staved. A clear fluid ran from his ears and nostrils, pooled, nacred, in the folds of the refuse sacks. He convulsed, mewled low. By his outflung right hand, which held a smouldering cigarette, was a ram’s skull, with involute horns. Swagged with fruit and vegetable peelings, it looked some pagan fetish. Then the jerky rise and fall of man’s shoulders petered, and he fell still and silent, slumped. Matter glugged from the head wound. I staggered back, stumbled, fell, scrabbled away.

After lying, retching and gasping, on the pavement a while, I called the emergency services from my mobile. I explained what I’d seen to the operator. Two uniformed officers arrived only a couple of minutes or so later. While one went to look at the corpse, the other questioned me. She was young, younger than me, yet composed, efficient. I gave an account, in response to her prompting, of what I’d heard and seen. She glared at me when I described the hoarse yell. After I’d told all, she walked off, to talk into her radio, then returned, stayed with me. At some point, I began shivering with shock and cold, and, escorting me to a nearby bench, she sat me down, fetched a blanket.

Not long afterwards, a senior officer drew up in an unmarked car. He was middle-aged, slightly balding, had a neatly trimmed moustache. After briefly looking at the body, he asked me to get in the car, drove me to a nearby police station. I sat in the passenger seat next to him. On arriving at the station, he took me through the reception, along a series of corridors, resembling those of any modern office building, drab carpet, thin partition walls, grainy fluorescent lighting, and into a small interview room. It was sparsely furnished: a plain wooden table, on which a cassette recorder sat, three plastic chairs, a filing cabinet.

‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything? Cup of tea, coffee?’

I rarely drank tea, but felt like one then. I nodded.

‘Which?’

‘Sorry, tea.’

‘Milk, sugar?’ he asked, glancing down at my trembling hands.

‘Yes, both, please.’

‘One or two?’

‘One or two what?’

He smiled.

‘Sugars.’

‘Oh. Two please.’

He nodded, left the room. Awaiting his return, I sat, mused, decided to say nothing of the horrors of the dire Punch and Judy show. After a few minutes, the officer came back into the room with a woman who was slightly older than him, had wiry grey hair, wore glasses.

‘Sorry, forgot to introduce myself before,’ the man said. ‘Oliver Hardy.’ He grinned. ‘Eccentric parents. This is my colleague Amanda Hayworth. What’s your name?’

I told him, he nodded, they sat down, and Amanda pressed record on the tape machine. They questioned me at length about my discovery of the victim, and my whereabouts earlier in the evening. They were official, but kindly. Then, when they had nothing further to ask, they left me alone for a few minutes.

On their return, they sat down at the table again, without a word, pensive. Amanda rubbed her eyes under the lenses of her glasses, then looked intently at me.

‘Your notice was drawn to the alley by a cry of “That’s the way to do it!” Is that right?’

I nodded.

‘Any guess as to the meaning of those words?’

I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair under her scrutiny.

‘Don’t know. But it’s Punch’s refrain in the traditional puppet shows.’

‘Do those shows have any particular significance for you?’

‘No.’

Oliver grunted, scraped back his chair, got up, left the room without a word.

Amanda frowned, then smiled a thin smile. When Oliver returned a minute later, he was clutching my satchel; I realized then I’d left it with the uniformed police woman, forgotten it.

‘Is this your bag?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

Reaching into it, he took out a slim paperback. It was
That’s the Way to Do It!: A History of the Punch Tradition
.

‘Well?’ Oliver demanded, brandishing the book.

I blurted everything. The detectives heard me out, sceptical grimaces on their faces. Then they asked me to wait a moment, left the room. I sat waiting, listening to the tape recorder’s low whirr, regretting, bitterly, my outburst.

When they came back in, Amanda sat down, fixed me with a glare, while Oliver remained standing, at her shoulder. They’d clearly been wrangling, my guess was Oliver had been urging good sense, while Jane insisted on following protocol.

‘We’ve discussed your statement,’ she began. ‘Do you think you could show us the crypt you talked about?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you aware hindering a police investigation is an offence?’

‘Yes, I am.’

Amanda nodded, removed her glasses, pinched her nose between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand.

‘Alright, then. Shall we go?’

The short drive to Spitalfields passed in silence. I was sat in the back of the car, separated from the detectives in the front by a metal grille. When we arrived at Christ Church, my companions took a bolt-cutter to the padlock securing the gate. We entered the graveyard, I led them to the mausoleum, we entered, went down to the burial chamber. Oliver and Amanda
probed the thick darkness with torch beams. The place was as I remembered it: the bones stacked in an alcove, tumbled on the floor, the sarcophagus. There was nothing in the crypt with which to prise up the lid, so Oliver went back to the car to get a jemmy. Once he’d levered it off, set it on the floor, Amanda shone her torch into the stone coffin. Inside lay a yellowed skeleton wrapped in a mouldering shroud, with, in its ribcage, two rats feeding on the carcass of a third. After shooing the rodents and moving the bones, Oliver groped for a secret entrance, but found nothing.

Both detectives were now convinced I was delusional, but still Amanda insisted on following correct procedure. She called out a team to dig beneath the crypt. Their van arrived soon after, and they trooped into the mausoleum carrying picks, shovels, a pneumatic drill. I waited in the car, nervous and exhausted, fell in an out of a doze, dreamt of a formal ball in a vast, richly appointed hall – chandeliers, armchairs,
chaise longues
, plush upholstery, gilt-framed mirrors – at which elderly folk waltzed with dread olden things. It was a while before Amanda came out, looking haggard, to tell me they’d found no stairs, no underground passageway. I began to bawl.

The detectives drove me home. Oliver walked me to the door of my flat, gave me a leaflet listing the telephone numbers of several counselling services. He said they wouldn’t be pressing charges, but that I was required to seek some kind of help, that they’d check up. As soon as I’d locked my front door behind me, I screwed the leaflet into a ball, threw it into a wastepaper basket. I then went through to my living-room, flung myself down on the couch, fell into a stupor.

Sunlight, spilling through a gap in the curtains, woke me, the following morning, from a bad dream. In it I wandered the aisles of a huge deserted library, looking at the titles on the spines of the volumes on its shelves, unable to make out a single word.

Once fully roused, I went to the front door, stood rattling it; it
was several minutes before I could convince myself it was securely bolted. Then I walked round the flat, pulling all the curtains closed and putting on all the lights. I turned up the heating, switched on my television and both my radios, unplugged my telephone from its wall socket, then found some parcel tape to muffle the doorbell’s clapper, seal up the letterbox, and cover all the flat’s ventilation grilles with. Afterwards, I stripped, had a scalding bath, scrubbing myself till my skin was an angry red, bleeding here and there, then I dried myself, got dressed, went through to the kitchen, poured out a mug of whisky, drank it at a single draught.

Of the two days that followed, I remember little, just fleeting impressions. I do know I didn’t leave my flat, not once. I contacted no one. I allowed myself only snatches of sleep, drank whisky to dull my brain, coffee to sharpen it, ate little, just handfuls of dry cereal from the packet, toast, soup from the carton, cold, and watched television, fleeting through channels with the remote, hoping to forget in the drift of that cut-up.