by Kevin Brooks
Did that really happen?
It was hard to imagine now.
On the bedside table was a nightlight, a packet of cigarettes, an ashtray and a pint glass half-filled with dusty water. The ashtray stank. There was a bureau on one side of the room and a wardrobe by the window. A trail of discarded clothes led from the bed to the wardrobe – pants, socks, a vest, crumpled trousers and shirts. A polystyrene burger box lay half-hidden beneath a dirty vest. Two halves of a burger bun, hard and stale and burgerless, crusty and forgotten.
I stood up and went over to the bureau. A dinner plate and knife and fork sat on top, encrusted with remnants of dried food. The orangy-brown smear told me it was baked beans mopped up with a slice of bread. The bureau was locked. I reached for the knife and jammed it into the bureau door and levered down. The door snapped open. Inside, it was a mess: loose papers scattered all over the place, a handful of letters, leaky pens, a folded chequebook and cashcard, a spilled ashtray, more biscuit crumbs, a whisky tumbler, a scratty old tin box ...
I sat down and went through the papers. It didn’t take long, there wasn’t much there – unpaid bills, old insurance stuff, birth and marriage certificates, a medical card. I sorted these into a pile and turned to the letters. There was one from a woman called Maeve. Stapled to the top was a cutting from a lonely hearts magazine: EASY GOING 50’S FEMALE, slim and attractive, seeks younger male, 35-40, for dances and drinks. Photo appreciated. The letter from Maeve thanked Dad for his offer, but no thanks.
The rest of the letters were all from Malcolm G Elliott, Solicitor, and told the story of Eileen Pig, deceased. Apparently she was Dad’s aunt. She’d emigrated to Australia about forty years ago and no one had seen or heard from her since. She’d died in some kind of home. A touch insane, by the sound of it, which was probably why she’d left Dad the money. And that was about it, end of story. I don’t know why I’d bothered, really. I secured the letters with an elastic band and tidied them away, then nosed around through the rest of the stuff. The chequebook was half full. I leafed through the stubs, curious to see what he’d written cheques for, but Dad’s writing was illegible. The only one I could make out was in my handwriting: Beer Tent – £7.50. The cashcard was still valid. The ID number was written on the back in felt-tip pen. Good thinking, Dad.
The tin box was full of old photographs. Most of them were of Dad when he was a young man. In a pub with his mates, red-eyed, raising his glass to the camera; at the beach with a gormless-looking girlfriend; having a laugh, sticking a cigarette up his nose. There were none of me. And just one of Mum, a faded wedding photograph folded away at the bottom of the tin. Mum and Dad cutting the cake. I took it out for a closer look. Mum looked nervous. She was only young. About eighteen, I suppose. Her wedding dress didn’t seem to fit properly and her veil was all cock-eyed, but she still looked nice. Shiny black hair, pale face, dark eyes, that slightly crooked smile ... she was beautiful. Dad was dressed in a too-tight suit, his face half-shadowed, and his hair slicked back with enough oil to fill a barrel. He looked like an East End gangster. There was empty space all around him, as if no one wanted to get too close. An exclusion zone. Even Mum was leaning away from him as he lurched towards the camera with a boozy leer on his face stabbing into the wedding cake with a long carving knife.
It felt strange, holding the photograph in my hand, feeling the dull shine of the paper, gazing into the depths of the image. That’s him, I thought. That was Dad. Then, all those years ago. Is it the same person? Was it the same person, the same thing? And where was I in that time before I ever existed. Where was I then? What was I? Was I nothing, no thing at all? A non-existent thing? How could that be?
I put the photograph back in the box and shut the bureau.
Alex turned up a little later, about ten o’clock. By that time I’d done the washing-up, cleaned the kitchen floor, cleared away Dad’s beer cans from the night before and emptied the ashtrays, hoovered, and sorted out all the washing. I was sitting in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. I had the radio on, Radio 4. I wasn’t really listening but it was nice to hear the sound of quiet voices instead of the local radio racket I had to put up with when Dad was around.
As we moved past the front room into the kitchen, Alex glanced through the door and then looked away. I turned off the radio. She put her bag on the table and sat down with a sigh.
‘This is ridiculous, Martyn. All of it. It’s ridiculous. You can’t go on like this. You’ve got to call the police. You can’t just pretend that nothing’s happened.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s going to blame you for your dad’s death. It was an accident. You didn’t mean it. The police will understand that. All you’ve got to do is tell them what happened.’
We were back on the same old stuff again. I said, ‘And how am I going to explain why it took me so long to report it? It’s been over twelve hours, now.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t know ... you panicked, you didn’t know what to do, you were frightened ...’
‘Traumatised?’ I suggested.
‘Right, you were traumatised. People do all sorts of strange things when they’re in shock. It was a terrible experience. You were too shocked to think straight.’
‘For twelve hours?’
‘Why not?’
I looked at her. ‘And what about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘What are you going to tell them?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If I call the police they’ll want to talk to you. They’ll want to know why you didn’t report it. They’re going to find it hard to believe we were both too shocked to do anything.’
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s not fair!’
I shrugged. ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? Put yourself in their shoes. There’ll be an autopsy. They’ll know that Dad died between eight-thirty and nine in the evening, yesterday, and they’ll know that you were here—’
‘How will they know that?’
‘They’ll ask you.’
She licked her lips. ‘I could lie.’
‘Then I’d have to lie.’
She stared at me with those big brown eyes. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. I looked away and went over to the kitchen window. The sky was dull and silvery-grey. The colour of Inspector Morse’s hair. I grinned to myself, remembering my dream. Where were you at eight-thirty this evening? Watching television. Watching what? Watching you.
‘What are you going to do, Martyn?’
I turned to face Alex. For the briefest of moments I didn’t recognise her, she was a stranger. But almost immediately the illusion lifted. It must have been the light or something. She was nervously twisting a strand of hair in her fingers. ‘What are you going to do?’ she repeated. ‘You can’t just ... what are you going to do with your dad? You can’t just leave him where he is ... Martyn?’
I went over and sat down. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I told her. ‘Maybe we could just put him somewhere.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just put him somewhere,’ I shrugged. ‘Somewhere he won’t be found.’
She looked at me incredulously. ‘Put him somewhere? What do you mean? Put him where?’
‘I don’t know. Anywhere. A river, lake, in the woods. A gravel pit.’
She sat back in the chair. For a while she didn’t say anything, just stared at the table. I waited. Eventually she said, ‘You are joking, aren’t you? I mean, even if you did put him somewhere, someone’s bound to find him sooner or later.’
‘Probably.’
‘So what’s the point?’
I smiled. ‘He’s a drunk, Alex. Was a drunk. It wasn’t unusual for him to go off drinking for days at a time and not come back.’
‘So?’
‘So, all we have to do is get rid of the body somewhere, then, in a day or two, I’ll call the police and tell them Dad’s been missing since Wednesday. I’ll just say
he went out in the evening and never came back. Even if they do find him, they won’t suspect me, will they? I’m just a kid.’
Alex smiled dubiously. ‘So, all we have to do is get rid of the body? That’s all, is it? Easy as that. Just get rid of the body.’
‘Why not?’
‘Do you realise what you’re saying?’
‘Have you got a better idea?’
She leaned across the table and looked me in the eye. ‘Tell the police now, Martyn. Tell them what happened, just tell the truth.’
I could feel the breath of her words on my skin, a faint whisper of something sweet. I looked at her. ‘If I tell the truth,’ I said, ‘I’ll have to tell them everything. I won’t be able to keep you out of it. Is that what you want?’
‘No, but ... I don’t know.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t call the police. Not now. It’s too late. Too late for both of us. And anyway—’
‘What?’
I took the solicitor’s letter from my pocket and laid it on the table. Alex looked at it, looked at me, then started to read. I stood up and went over to the window. Yellowy bits of cloud had crawled into the sky. It looked like a dirty handkerchief. I wiped a cloth over the draining board and stared through the glass. This house, this place where I lived, this street, this town; I hated it. Dirty-grey. Dark and cold, everything too close. All the people living in dull acceptance of their misery, their drab surroundings. I hated it.
‘Thirty thousand pounds,’ Alex said quietly.
I turned to her and smiled.
Look, he was already dead. I couldn’t change that. I didn’t mean it to happen, it just happened. It happened. All I was trying to do was make the best of it. I wasn’t harming anyone. I wasn’t hurting anybody. You can’t hurt the dead, can you? I was just looking out for myself, that’s all. What’s wrong with that?
There’s a deep, water-filled gravel pit hidden away down the end of a narrow track at the old quarry on the other side of town. The place is abandoned. No one ever goes there. There’s a pub about half a mile away. That’s how I knew about it. Dad had left his wallet in the pub one night and the next day he’d sent me round to get it. I had to get a bus. On the way back, the next bus wasn’t for over an hour, so I decided to start walking. About half a mile up the road I came across this narrow track. Thinking it might be a shortcut I climbed the gate and followed the track down, but after a few minutes I realised it didn’t go anywhere, just ended at this old gravel pit half-filled with stagnant black water.
‘See,’ I explained to Alex, ‘even if they do find him, they’ll assume he was in the pub, got drunk, then got lost walking home and fell into the gravel pit ... bashed his head on something when he fell.’
We were in my room, sharing a plate of cheese sandwiches. Stormy light filtered in through the window, highlighting clouds of dust particles that danced in the air as I walked to and fro.
‘We’ll need a car,’ I said. ‘Or a van or something.’
Alex was quiet. Thoughtful.
‘What about your mum’s car?’ I suggested. Alex wasn’t old enough to drive but she sometimes ‘borrowed’ her mum’s car. It was one of those old Morris Traveller things, a muddy-brown van held together with rust and dirt.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’ She was sitting on the bed putting some kind of cream on her lips. She put the tube back in her bag and reached for a sandwich. ‘The car’s at the garage until tomorrow,’ she explained, taking a bite.
‘Tomorrow night, then.’
‘It might not be ready. If it needs a lot of work ... I don’t know if Mum can afford it.’
‘You’re forgetting something,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I’ve got thirty thousand pounds. I’m rich. I’ll buy you a new car.’
Alex sighed. ‘But the money’s in the bank, in your dad’s account.’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve got his chequebook and cashcard ... I’m sure we can work something out.’
She shook her head. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ I reached for a sandwich. ‘So, what about the car?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to find out what Mum’s doing. Friday, maybe Saturday. I’ll have to let you know.’
We ate in silence. I liked to watch her eat. She took tiny little bites and chewed each mouthful about a hundred times before she swallowed it.
‘What?’ she said, noticing me staring.
‘Nothing.’
I went to the bathroom. When I came back Alex was still working on the same sandwich. I stood at the window. Heavy black clouds were looming in the distance, heaving themselves slowly through the sky like walruses crawling up a beach. Across the road, the woman from number seven was coming back from the shops, struggling up the pavement with a carrier bag dangling from each hand. She was about sixty. She always wore bright pink lipstick that smudged all over her teeth, and her dim eyes were decorated with thick daubs of purple eye-shadow. Dad brought her back to the house once, after they’d met down the pub. She was drunk, laughing like a hyena at everything Dad said. She’d started dancing at one point, doing the can-can, pulling up her skirt and flashing her long grey knickers ...
‘Damn,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Aunty Jean.’
‘What?’
‘Aunty Jean’s coming round tomorrow. I just remembered.’
‘When?’
‘Four o’clock.’
‘Can’t you put her off? Say you’re ill or something?’
‘She’s not on the phone – well, she is, but she never answers it. She only uses it for making calls. The ringer’s always switched off.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know ... it’s just one of her mad little ways. I think she’s probably scared of talking to strangers.’
‘You’re not a stranger.’
‘But she wouldn’t know it was me, would she? I could be anyone.’
‘You could ring first to let her know.’
It was hard to tell if she was joking or not. Her face looked serious, but she could have been putting it on, acting stupid to trap me into correcting her. She did that sometimes. Then when I did correct her she’d smile to show me she was putting it on, and I’d feel stupid for having believed she could be so stupid ...
I wasn’t in the mood for all that.
‘She doesn’t answer the phone,’ I said simply. ‘That’s all there is to it.’
‘Well, you’ll have to do something, she can’t come round here with your dad lying dead in the front room.’
‘No.’
Things don’t just happen, do they? They have effects. And the effects have effects. And the effects of the effects have effects. And then the effects of the things that happen make other things happen, so the effects of the effects become reasons. Nothing moves forward in a straight line, nothing is straightforward.
The thought of Aunty Jean made my stomach turn. Christ, I thought, imagine it. Imagine living with her. She wouldn’t leave you alone for a minute. There’s no way she’d put up with your odd little ways. What odd little ways? You know what I mean. And you can forget about Alex, too. A girl, Martyn? A girl? How old? Not in my house.
‘I’m not going there,’ I said.
‘What? Where?’
‘Aunty Jean’s. I’m not going there.’
Alex looked puzzled. ‘I thought she was coming here?’
Through the window I watched a bus pull away up the road. For an instant I thought I saw Alex sitting on the back seat. I thought I saw her turn and wave, smiling at me. Then the bus turned the corner and disappeared and I blinked and realised where I was. In this house. In this bloody house. I didn’t have to stay here, did I? I could go somewhere else. Get the money, get out of here. We could go somewhere, me and Alex. Together. Anywhere. We could—
‘I have to go,’ said Alex. ‘I’m meeting Dean at two.’
Dean, Dean, D
ean. Always bloody Dean.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘I’ll try and think of something—’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll come round later. We’ll talk some more. This evening. All right?’
‘OK.’
After she left I just kind of moped around for a while. Dad was starting to smell a bit. Kind of musty. The sort of smell you don’t like but can’t help sniffing at. Mind you, he always did whiff a bit, even when he was alive, so I wasn’t quite sure whether this musty smell was just an ordinary dirty-drunk-person-who-hasn’t-washed-and-has-spent-the-night-lying-in-the-fireplace kind of smell, or if it was the start of something worse. I just didn’t know. Not that there was much I could do about it, anyway. I gave the room a good going over with air freshener, but that only made it worse. The whole house stank of musty flowers. I didn’t want to open the windows in case the smell wafted out. Someone might notice it, someone who might recognise the smell of a dead body. You never know, do you? An undertaker might be walking past.
I went upstairs and put this morning’s letter in the bureau with the others. While I was there I picked up Dad’s cashcard and took a good long look at it. There was a hologram in the corner, a little silver square with a 3-D mug-shot of Shakespeare on it. At least I think it was Shakespeare. A baldy-looking man with a beard and a big white collar. His head zipped around when I moved the card. It was weird. The slightest tilt and his expression changed. From a jolly old chap with a twinkly smile – to a vicious madman with a cut-throat glare. Jolly old chap – cut-throat glare. Jolly old chap – cut-throat glare. Jolly old chap – cut-throat glare ...
I got bored with that after a while and turned the card over. Dad’s ID number was 4514.
Morse would have made something of that.
Then the rain started again. I don’t mind the rain. In fact, I like it. I like the way it pours down from the sky and makes everybody wet and panicky. I think it’s funny. But this was something else. This was BIG rain. It was coming down in buckets. Pounding on the window. Gusting against the glass. Louder and louder. It wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was so loud. So insistent. Pounding, pounding rain. Louder and louder and louder, like a thousand angry fingers rapping on the window.
