“It was me,” I say, after a minute, or maybe five, or ten. “It was me that found them.”
I stop staring at the ceiling. Nothing’s big enough to block out all the pictures popping into my head, anyway. Where I’m sitting now, on the sofa near the lounge door, is just about the same angle I saw the whole scene from, back then.
There’s Dad sitting where Gail’s sitting, looking all calm and like he’s just taking a catnap, except for the white foam on his lips. There’s Mum, halfway across the floor with her fingernails dug into the carpet. Probably crawling to the door once she realised what he’d put in her drink.
7
I SEE FRODO as soon as I walk into the reference room, upstairs in the library. He’s sitting hunched over in front of a computer, right in the corner. Me and him, we’re in here all the time. I haven’t got the internet at home and Frodo isn’t allowed it, since that time he downloaded basically all of Hollywood and then sold it on scratched DVDs in the covered market. He’s leaning so close to the screen that them crazy-wild curls of his are stuck to it with static. If I touched his scraggly beard, or his hessian hoody, I’d get the mother of all electric shocks.
Seeing him brings it all home. Suddenly it’s like I see the cause and effect of what’s happened the last few days, mapped out right there in front of me. All the links between people, like they’re attached with rope. The bothy attached to Gail, Gail attached to Lee, Lee attached to Frodo. Them two were always good mates, going back years. And now Lee isn’t no more.
I got no idea what I could say to make things better, so I don’t go over to Frodo and I don’t say nothing.
The lady at the desk gives me a proper scowl.
“You know you’re not allowed to take anything out until you return those outstanding CDs,” she says. She’s not even trying to keep her voice down.
I give her a nice smile, all the same. It’s not like they’ll be getting a search warrant to fetch them CDs back. But she’s right about them being outstanding. One of them was a ‘War of the Worlds’ collector’s edition, and I didn’t pay jack shit.
I put on my ladylike-polite voice. “It’s actually the microfiche I’m after.”
I can’t tell if she’s impressed at me using the right word. Either way, she sighs and starts rooting in the cabinet behind the desk. She don’t even ask me which date or which newspaper or anything.
I take the slide, which is already covered with my grubby fingerprints. I head on over to the special projector-thing, cue it up and there it all is.
I’m not really reading the words, but the word accident still jumps out all the same. What did Auntie Alice say to the police to make accident their considered opinion? I know there’s nothing in the newspaper article that’ll give me any more of the truth than I already got. It’s all lies. No, it’s the photos that I come here to see. There’s truth in them photos, alright.
It always bothers me that the pictures of Mum and Dad are in separate ovals, with separate captions, like they didn’t even know each other. There are millions of photos of the two of them looking happy together, so why couldn’t they have picked one of them? It’s like the journalists was saying, ‘Look, there was always something not right about them’ or whatever. Still, Mum looks pretty. Sunburned, too, because that one was taken in the south of France just before she dunked herself off of a canoe that wasn’t even meant for grown-ups. The photo of Dad was an old one, even back then. He’s got one of them wide collars he used to have, and his shirt and cardie are both different shades of brown. Worse still, he don’t look no fun, which if you ask me is fucking criminal, because he was a hoot, day in, day out. If they’d asked me I would have given them a photo of him playing at being the Tickler or laughing at one of my shitty jokes or dressed up as Dracula at Halloween. Maybe not the last one.
Even though I don’t really want to, I slide the microfiche projector thing way over to one side, past the block of text about the crime scene and about Mum and Dad’s jobs and loved ones and their awful messy relationship. And there’s the picture of Auntie Alice, speckly with newsprint dots. Her photo was bang up to date, taken just outside her house on Aynam Road. Probably from across the road, mind, because there’s a car partly blocking her face and she’s holding up a magazine to block most of the rest of it. So I’m looking through that little gap and I’m trying to see what her mouth’s doing and what her eyes are doing and what that all means about what her mind’s doing.
It kills me that nobody cares no more. It kills me that Gail remembers the story from back then, but can’t remember who did what or even much want to find out.
It kills me that Auntie Alice is out there, walking around, chatting, laughing, making out like nothing ever happened.
My whole body’s shaking.
Enough of all this.
I yank the slide out of the machine. It makes this nasty loud squeak. The desk-lady looks over, but I just smile at her. Then I peer down at the slide and see the scratch running all the way across it.
Just as well, I guess. It ain’t healthy, coming back to look at all this again and again. And now I can’t.
Still, it’s not like I’m suddenly feeling all zen about it. My cheeks are hotter than ever. I only head over to Frodo because I want something to take my mind off what happened to Mum and Dad in 1999. And maybe I’m feeling kind of mean inside, a bit.
He flinches when I plonk myself down in the seat next to him. His computer screen’s black, but not turned off, because I can see green text up top. I almost laugh at that. So the dark web really is dark.
There’s some woman sitting opposite, looking up and down between a book and her computer screen, like she’s trying to read both of them at once. I start talking to her instead of Frodo, which is a mess-with-their-heads trick I learnt from detective shows.
“I heard there’s a Blighter somewhere nearby,” I say to her, just like that.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Frodo’s ginger curls bobbling around. He’s shitting himself, I bet. Probably still trying to piece together all them dark-web clues, not knowing that old Owen did it already and look where that got him.
The woman gives a tight sort of smile. She’s nervy, but friendly-looking, like a primary school teacher or a Welsh person.
“Up at Glasgow,” I say. “The roadshow.”
She loosens up a bit. “Oh, I wanted to go too.”
“Wanted? I thought they was chucking tickets at anyone who’d have them.”
She puts her book down. “Maybe so. But I don’t think it’s even worth trying to get up there, not now. All the blockades on the Shap Road are causing awful delays, they say.”
There’s Frodo getting edgy again, beside me.
“First I’ve heard of it,” I say.
“I heard they’ve been ordered by the Department of Agriculture,” the woman says. “Something to do with the livestock. Same as before, I suppose. Foot and mouth.”
I grin. “Same to you.”
The woman doesn’t much like that, I guess. She harrumphs and then gathers up her books and shuffles off to another desk.
“It’s a cover-up,” Frodo whispers. It’s just me and him in the dark little corner now.
I’m watching my step now. Maybe he does know where that bothy Blighter is, after all.
“The government thinks they’re getting scarce,” he says. He’s still facing his computer screen and not looking at me, but I can smell his fusty smell. “Now that things are going to pot in the US.”
He glances over at me for a second. I shrug.
“You haven’t heard?” he says. “That Blighter the Canadians were hiding in Saskatchewan, it was a big one. Really, really big. Nowhere near the ones down in the Med, but bigger and better than any of the others they’ve found so far in the Americas.”
I’m getting interested, so I don’t stop to tell him there’s only one America. “What about it?”
“Well, the US proved it landed on their side of the border. Or s
aid they proved it, anyway.” Frodo loves this X-Files sort of business. “So the standoff isn’t a standoff any more. The first shots were fired an hour ago, according to Twitter. And it’ll ramp up, too. You know what this means, Becky.” He narrows his eyes, watching me up close. “War is what it means.”
I take a deep breath, but I’m not sure if it’s to show I’m sad about the war or to show I don’t care. I remember all over again about what happened to Lee. If Frodo knew about that, he’d be way sadder than about some random Canada people getting shot.
“If only they knew,” Frodo says, hardly more than a whisper.
“Knew what?”
He points at the dark screen. The dark web.
“That they’re not scarce at all. There are more out there. Blighters. More than you’d believe.”
His voice trails off. He’s watching the desk-lady. She’s speaking on the phone and making a serious face. She glances up at the two of us, just for a second, then away again.
I freeze.
“Hey, Frodo,” I say.
But when I look over, he’s already gone, leaving just his fart smell. He really is a filthy fucker. The fire exit door snicks closed behind him.
I’m just about to leg it myself when Hutchy runs into the room. He’s all red-faced and puffed out and his police jacket’s crooked like he just threw it on. The desk-lady points over at my corner and seems surprised, but when Hutchy clocks me sitting here, he only looks awkward. Then he’s off again, sprinting back the way he came.
8
SOME NEW GUY, Carl, is behind the counter at Down to Earth Records. He keeps shooting me looks while I’m pottering about. Every so often I pull out a record sleeve and hold it up to the light, making out like I’m a real buff. It seems to keep him happy.
Still, I’ve been in here for like nearly an hour, killing time. Much longer and I might actually have to get that copy of ‘Master of Reality’ that’s begging to be bought, although it’s probably scratched to buggery and it’d sound shite even if not, coming out of Dad’s gramophone cabinet. It’d sound even worse, maybe, than this techno Carl’s playing, which is making the time drag more that it needs to.
“Anything you need?” Carl says. I guess it maybe is getting weird, just me and him in the poky little shop.
I pull out a record at random. I must have some kind of gift, because it’s a beaut. Only a Focus ‘best of,’ sure, but ‘Hocus Pocus’ is the first track and there’s no beating that. Me and Dad used to mime-yodel along to it for laughs.
I hold it out to Carl. “Stick this on, would you?”
He looks down at the sleeve and makes a face like I’ve just handed him a plate of smeared turd.
“I am considering purchasing it,” I say.
Carl scowls but takes it. The techno stops, thank Christ, and then there’s the gritty scratch from the vinyl. I get back to prowling along the shelves, but now my head’s bobbing. You know what? This song actually does fucking rule. Soon enough I’m air-drumming along, then when it gets to the widdly bits I have to do a bit of the guitar, too. It’s pretty hard work, all in all.
Trouble is, I still can’t clear my mind out, not totally. I’m here for a reason.
My laps around the shop keep taking me over to the door. It’s raining outside.
And there she is, bang on time.
Auntie Alice’s work backs onto the same alleyway as Down to Earth, and that’s where her boss makes the smokers go. Looks like she’s the only one who hasn’t already switched to vaping, because she’s out there on her lonesome. She’s sheltering from the rain in the overhang of the entrance to a closed-down pub. The see-through hood of her pac-a-mac makes her red hair blue. The display in the record shop window is partly blocking my view of her, and she looks like that old microfiche photo.
The door slams behind me, cutting off ‘Hocus Pocus’ at the leprechaun bit.
Auntie Alice sees me coming. After a few seconds her smile goes all wonky, like she thinks maybe I’ll knife her.
“You’re ready to talk?” she says. “Finally?”
“Shut up,” I say. “Don’t say nothing.”
So she doesn’t, except with her eyes. They’re exactly the same as Mum’s eyes. All concerned, but I-know-best.
I can’t help thinking this might be partly about Gail. She remembered all about Mum and Dad, but not about how Auntie Alice was mixed up in the whole thing. That ain’t right. That’s like forgetting all about Jack the Ripper or Harold Shipman or Hannibal Lecter. Bad people got to be remembered, otherwise they’re basically getting away with what they done, in the long run.
“I know what happened,” I say. “I knew about you and Dad even back then. Giggling in the bedroom while Mum was away working, and you thought I was feeding the ducks or at youth club or whatever.”
Auntie Alice tilts her head, which is just what Mum always did. If she keeps doing stuff like that I’ll cry, or maybe worse.
“And here’s another thing,” I say, “I was the one who dobbed you in to the police. And if they’d had any sense of fucking justice they’d have locked you up or, I don’t know, pulled you behind a horse or something.”
She makes a frowny sort of smile. “Can I speak now?”
I spread out my hands.
“I know,” Auntie Alice says.
“You know what?”
“Well, about you talking to the police about me, for a start. I don’t blame you for that. They were very understanding about my involvement, about the delicacy that was needed. But they certainly shouldn’t have said it was an accident, Becky. They just shouldn’t have. That was wrong and, I suspect, it was mainly for their own benefit. Less paperwork.”
I’m watching her face, her watery eyes and big slack lips, and I’m still so shook up that the words don’t hardly sound like words.
She’s still going on. “I know about the other thing, too. That you saw what was happening with me and your dad. And it’s all true, at least as far as that goes. I’m not proud of it. But you have to realise, Becky, he was a—”
“A what?”
He was a stand-up guy, until he started carrying on with Auntie Alice. A brilliant person to watch crap comedies with. A hilarious dancer, even if he was getting too old to pull off the moves.
“He was a hard man to say no to.”
“He wasn’t yours, though, was he? He was Mum’s. He was mine.” My hands are shaking now. I grab one with the other and dig my nails right in. Just like Mum’s nails, digging into the carpet.
Auntie Alice nods.
“And he weren’t a murderer until you turned him into one,” I say.
She pulls her hood back. She always wore too much make-up, and now mascara’s streaked all over her cheeks even though she’s not even standing in the rain.
“That’s what you really think,” she says. It’s not even a question. “That I made him kill your mum.”
All the thoughts I ever had about the whole sorry business are whizzing around inside my head, too fast for me to grab at. And Auntie Alice is smack-bang in the middle of all them thoughts. She’s dancing with Dad, watching films with Dad on my fucking sofa, whispering to Dad in bed, telling him to man up and do it. Kill the bitch, she says. Even giving him the poison weedkiller from her gardening side-job. And Dad all upset and confused and doing it, actually doing it, and then ending up offing himself, too.
Auntie Alice reaches out like she’s going to make a grab for me, shuffling forwards with her arms straight out. I just freak. I jump backwards and my back hits a sharp bit of the wall.
I stare at her, like it was her who smacked me.
I see my fist fly up before I’ve even thought the thought.
Now it’s her who’s jolting around. She whacks into the doors of the closed-down pub, making them rattle. Both her hands go up to her face, her shaky fingers cupping a circle around her cheek, like she can’t bring herself to touch where I hit her. Her lips are all twitchy like she’s going to bawl. The whole thing is
making it harder to hate her, which in a way makes me hate her more.
There’s only one way to deal with this sort of scene.
I pelt down the alleyway and only start breathing again when I’m like a mile away.
9
THEM BLIGHTERS ARE on TV again.
The sound’s turned off, so the only noise in the little lounge in my flat is Gail’s blubbing. She stopped trying to hide it a couple of minutes into the news segment.
I’m watching all them American politicians standing behind desks and talking straight to the camera. They’re making excuses, just like Auntie Alice did. They look all pretend-surprised, like they never expected that shooting missiles would wind up with anything being dead. ‘Who me?’ says the President, probably.
Soon enough, the news switches over to showing the other folks. There’s like a million Canada people and they’re all wearing black. Some are inside some church or other, but most of them are watching on a massive TV outside in the rain. And now there’s some guy in a suit who’s maybe the king of Canada or whatever, and he looks like he can’t hardly say nothing at all, he’s so choked up.
It seems like everyone’s pissed off, one way or another. I can tell the news segment’s nearly over because it’s been ages since an ad break and I could do with a wee. And it’s only now, right at the end, that they actually show the Blighter. First we get to see it back in its prime, if that’s the right way to describe a massive slug. It’s that same zoomed-in video from just before the standoff at the border. If the sound was turned up I bet there’d be sad piano music, a Meatloaf ballad or something. Gail manages another sniffle.
Then we get the money shot. Now the Blighter’s slumped on the back of a huge truck, being dragged back to the wilds of Canada now that the Americans owned up about pilfering it the other night, and then all that shooting and shouting and then look what happened. To be honest, a Blighter looks pretty much the same dead as it does alive, except maybe a bit saggy off to one side. I’m sort of disappointed. When they said it’d been shot I expected it to be properly in bits, or at least with a hole you could see, and then maybe they’d have some video of it going down like a bouncy castle with a puncture. But no. Maybe that’s just the way it goes. Dead things are just like alive things, except without a future.
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