Love Story, With Murders

by Harry Bingham

  Back in the club, I spend enough time to be sure I’m not missing anything. To make certain I’m leaving on my own terms. Mostly, though, it’s a good discipline for me. Training. Learning to reverse that grey, upward draining. Bringing myself down from the snow line, toward the trees, and through them down to the valley floor.

  No drugs. No doctors. No dramas.

  Just me.

  It helps that Khalifi is here too. His energy. His dead presence. That makes it easier. I don’t know why.

  I buy another drink. Go crazy. Order a white wine spritzer, which is mostly spritz and only a splash of wine. I’m even feeling confident enough to risk a few sips.

  To the barman, I say, ‘If the punters want to spend time with the girls – you know, get to know them, have a kiss and a cuddle, a proper chat –’

  He interrupts me. ‘Not here. Strictly verboten.’

  ‘But then where? Is there a place where people go after?’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe. Different places.’

  He feels uncomfortable saying what he’s said and I don’t push it.

  I spend my hour in the club, then leave.

  Taxi home.

  By sheer chance, it’s the same taxi driver as before. He says, ‘Did you have a nice evening?’

  I say, ‘I did.’ And before we even get as far as Croescadarn Road, I find that if I drive the end of my house key hard into the upper part of my foot, I can feel it bruising muscle, injuring bone.

  It hurts. I can feel it hurting.

  I stay that way, pushing with the key, feeling the pain, until the taxi’s headlights wash up against my own front door.

  23

  Undress. Wash a bit. Brush my teeth. Put Kay’s dresses back on hangers that they’ll probably never leave again.

  It’s long gone midnight. On Planet Buzz, we’d have had sex and fallen asleep by now. On my planet, things aren’t so simple.

  I think vaguely about having a joint, but only because I think about them quite often. But I had one earlier, a big one, and a non-emergency smoke now would be a serious violation of my own house rules. The only rules I never break.

  Go down into the kitchen. Leave the lights off. I like the dark.

  The streetlights outside and that friendly green oven clock give enough light for me to find my way around.

  Swing open the fridge. Have I actually eaten anything today? I can’t remember.

  My fridge is more interesting than Buzz’s. Less food, yes, but more going on at the microbiological level. There is a half-eaten nut yogurt, whose mould has now grown higher than the carton itself. Long filaments of moss-brown hair. I drink a bit of orange juice, then swing the door shut.

  I’m barefoot and I can feel the floor.

  I’m not tired.

  Other people get tired predictably. Buzz is wired up like some old-fashioned bomb. When the hands of the clock reach a certain point, something triggers unstoppably. By ten, he’s yawning. By eleven or eleven thirty, he’s in bed and fast asleep.

  I sleep okay most of the time, but I don’t have those rhythms. That predictability.

  I slept better when I kept a gun in the bedroom.

  For no particular reason, except to do something, I make a cup of peppermint tea. Take it upstairs.

  Get into bed.

  No lights inside the house. The glow of streetlights through gaps in the curtains. I imagine lying here with a gun in my hands, a firing grip, barrel pointing straight at the bedroom door. Chest height. Lethal, at this range.

  The thought game relaxes me. I don’t know why.

  It’s half past one in the morning.

  I reach for the phone and call Ed Saunders. A clinical psychologist who once cared for me when I was a teenage nutcase. Who became my lover – not then, but later. Professional boundaries all very much respected. And who is now my friend.

  The phone rings and is answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  The voice of a sleepy man.

  ‘I just wondered whether you’ve checked your smoke alarm recently? Did you know that a working smoke alarm halves your risk of death by fire?’

  ‘Oh God, Fi.’

  ‘In a strikingly high proportion of households, smoke alarms are present but nonfunctional, because the batteries have either been removed or are dead.’

  ‘Look, is this about something or did you just want to chat?’

  ‘Um, we could just chat, if you liked. Since we’re both awake.’

  There’s some grunting on the other end of the line, then, ‘Look, I’ll call you back.’

  A few minutes go by.

  I try pointing my pretend gun at a pretend person behind the bedroom door again, but this time it doesn’t do much for me. Then Ed calls back. He’ll have slapped cold water on his face, rinsed his mouth, got himself something to drink.

  ‘Is it tea or whiskey?’ I ask.

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘Good.’ Whiskey indicates that he’s having a rough time or I’m being extra awful. Tea is good. ‘How was your day?’ I say. After one o’clock, people are bad conversationalists, I find. They need warming up.

  Ed sort of answers, but doesn’t say anything interesting. I try again, but Ed’s not Mr Sparky no matter how much I try.

  Eventually, he gives up and says, ‘How was your day?’

  ‘I went to a lap-dancing club and bought a dance for twenty quid.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘She had her bum in my face. She told me I could touch her.’

  ‘Well, for twenty quid –’

  ‘And when I was there, I was completely dissociated. When I ran a bath beforehand, I couldn’t tell if the water was hot or cold. I couldn’t feel a single thing.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Fi.’ He’s awake now. I can see him sitting up in bed, gripping the phone.

  He comes over all Clinical Psychologist. How long was I dissociated for? How completely? Do I have anyone with me? Have I remembered my Survival Plan?

  Survival Plan: one of the things that idiots with clipboards get you to do when you’re locked up in their care. But Ed wasn’t an idiot. And I needed all the help I could get.

  I answer his questions. Degree of dissociation: very complete. Duration: very short, a few hours. Presence of Buzz: negative. Survival Plan: don’t need it.

  Then he asks the Big One, the question he’s most worried about. ‘Negative affect? How was your mood?’

  ‘Negative affect, Ed? Fuck’s sake.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Were you depressed? Did it go dark?’

  ‘Not really.’ I try to explain how it felt, but it’s like describing red to a blind man. Or a blind man describing a watermelon to the sighted. You can shuffle partway across the bridge of meaning, do your very best to link hands through the darkness – but in the end, the effort only serves to prove that you’re you, they’re them. You might brush fingertips, but you’ll never merge, never join.

  I know what he’s asking, though, and why he’s asking it. My thing, my Cotard’s, arises when two lethal forces come together. Dissociation plus depression. Dissociation removes me from my feelings. It numbs me. Depression paints the entire world in charcoal greys. Put the two together and you have the teenage me. A girl who couldn’t feel herself existing. A girl who saw the worst, assumed the worst. In herself. In everything.

  For two years, I believed myself, quite literally, to be dead.

  And because I know what Ed is asking, I know what he needs to hear. I say it.

  Yes, I dissociate a fair bit still. But I’m not depressed these days. I stay positive. It’s very rare that I creep even up to the edge of full-blown Cotard’s. When I lose touch with my feelings, I remain okay. I remember my exercises. I stay close to Buzz. I keep it together.

  I also grow marijuana in my potting shed and have an illegal handgun stashed in a Pembrokeshire sheepfold.

  I don’t say that last bit, though.

  I do say, ‘Ed, why do you think it happened? I mean, I was okay. I was h
aving a nice day. My version of nice. A bit crazy, but no crazier than normal. Then I realised that the logic of my investigation would take me to a lap-dancing club. Dad’s club, in fact. For some reason, that did it. I drained away. Emptied out. I haven’t been that nuts since I was at Cambridge.’

  Ed doesn’t like it when I call myself nuts but, yah-boo, it’s allowed. Like when gay people call themselves faggots.

  Ed doesn’t rehash that argument, just says, ‘Do you think it was the sexual aspect? Or the fact that your father owned the club?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What was it like when you were there? Did seeing the lap dancers bring up anything for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did it get worse once you were inside?’

  ‘No.’

  There’s a pause. I don’t know who started it, Ed or me. But I know why it’s there. Cotard’s Syndrome, my illness, is the big, ugly mother of all psychological conditions. It’s usually lethal. A large majority of those who suffer from it attempt suicide. Many succeed. I came very close, not once but often. Forget the logic of it – why do people who think they’re dead need to kill themselves? – just stay with the fact. Cotard’s is generally lethal. And I had Cotard’s. And the condition is almost always associated with early childhood trauma. And the first two and a half years of my life are a total mystery.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘early childhood trauma. What does that mean? Really?’

  ‘Fi!’ Ed’s voice is warning me. Cautioning me.

  I don’t feel cautious.

  ‘Okay, let’s just pretend I’m a copper. Let’s just say I might have some expertise in criminal investigation. We normally try to make connections. Sift through piles of data and see if we can make something in Pile A match something in Pile B.’

  ‘Yes, and let’s just say that my day job involved clinical psychology . . .’

  I interrupt. ‘A girl with Cotard’s. You’d probably guess that sexual abuse had been involved somewhere along the line, right? Only a guess, but a pretty damn strong guess, right? Then – bam! – twenty-something years later, that girl enters a lap-dancing club and experiences a very powerful, temporary increase in her symptoms. A fucking lap-dancing club, Ed. Tell me what the other options are!’

  ‘You really want to know?’ He’s heated now. Not angry exactly – Ed is a bit too English to get properly angry – but heated. He says, ‘You have no idea. You think you do, but you don’t. Sexual abuse is one way to screw up a child, yes. But there are others. Neglect. Drug addiction. Physical abuse. Injury to the brain or brain stem. Inflammation or infection of the brain or brain stem. You. Just. Don’t. Know.’

  ‘She had her bum in my face, Ed. And I was nuts. Totally dissociated. Not like some rinky-dink teenage self-harmer who screws around with razor blades and listens to Kurt Cobain. The only reason I wasn’t playing with blades myself is that I was way beyond that point. I was so far past that point that I wouldn’t even have got a kick from cutting myself.’

  ‘Oh, okay, so that’s your argument, is it? And yes, you can present as evidence the fact that you had a weird evening tonight. But then again, I could present as evidence the fact that you do not seem to be very screwed up around sex. When we were together, the sex was about the most normal thing about you.’

  I’m about to respond. Pressured speech is the clinical term. Where the speaker is so driven to talk that they can’t listen. Can’t even get their own sentences out properly. I’m there, in that place – and then I’m not. As though I’m worn out by the day, the night, the argument. By myself.

  So I just say, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Those things cut both ways, you know. You don’t know, Fi. You really don’t.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I’m not normally this humble. This submissive. But he’s right. I know he is. I could find five facts that argued for the sexual-abuse theory. Five that argued against it. An unresolvable argument.

  ‘I think I’ve always been waiting for The Clue,’ I say. ‘I wanted some kind of eureka moment, one that would unlock the past.’

  ‘Fi, do you remember Brian from the hospital? The guy with the beard and the acid burns.’

  Yes, I remember Brian. A schizo. He was always having eureka moments. Two or three a day when he was fizzy. He’d lean in, with his bad teeth and stinky breath, and explain his latest vision. One of those visions resulted in him pouring battery acid down his face. Hence the burns.

  Ed goes on talking and I say stuff back at him, but I know he’s right. The eureka moment won’t come. And if it does, it can’t be trusted.

  We talk a bit more. Ed yawns. Maybe just a yawn, maybe a ‘shut up and let me go back to sleep’ signal. Either way, I’m good as gold. I say, ‘You sleep well, Ed.’

  ‘Thank you. You too.’

  We say good night and hang up.

  I let the room drift back into silence. I raise my nonexistent gun at the nonexistent intruder and fire off six rounds. Two groups of three. Chest and head.

  Lower the gun.

  Why do I miss having a gun with me? Why does the possibility of violent response to intrusion feel good? Why did my brain go AWOL today?

  Ed’s right. You can’t trust eureka moments. But that doesn’t make the questions go away. The questions are real.

  I fire off another five rounds. Gently, though. Accuracy, not speed. Squeezing the trigger, not pumping it.

  Then call Ed back. He mumbles something into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Don’t talk, Ed. I don’t want to wake you up this time. Not really. Just thank you. Thank you for being you. Sweet dreams.’

  He mumbles a mouthful of nothing and I hang up.

  And Ed has taught me something. These last few months, I’ve believed myself to be actively investigating my past. Those missing two and a half years. The presumed cause of my teenage Cotard’s Syndrome. But my investigation has been half hearted. I’ve not really tried: haven’t tried the way I normally would on a case I care about.

  I’ve wimped out for two reasons. Partly, I’ve been waiting for that eureka moment, a boom! of recognition. And that’s not how it happens. Not how it ever happens.

  But I’ve also wimped out because of fear. Why did I go nuts tonight? Simple: I was afraid. I’ve chosen never to look under the lid of how my father makes his money, and tonight I did. I took one tiny step into my father’s world – and instantly, my system was so washed through with fear I could hardly move.

  I’m afraid to know who I am. Terrified. That’s why I haven’t really tried.

  The knowledge soothes me. I feel calm and integrated in a way I seldom do. I don’t know what I’ll do with this insight yet, but that’s a question that can wait for another time.

  The room is full of silence now. The hall full of dead intruders. The streetlights glow their unprotesting orange.

  I go to sleep.

  I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

  24

  Barry.

  In the 1880s, the place was nothing. Two or three villages on a muddy shore. Population in three digits. Then those bustling Victorians built docks to carry the coal pouring out of the Valleys. From Senghenydd, Abercarn, Risca, Rhondda, Cwm Cynon, Tondu, Aberbeeg, Aberfan, Morfa. A black tide pouring south. At the outbreak of the First World War, Cardiff was the world’s foremost coaling port, Swansea its foremost steel port. Barry, in between the two, shipped every damn thing it could.

  The black tide built and the black tide killed. It built the Empire. It built Barry. You can hardly find a house here older than 1890. But it also killed. Every mine had its fatalities, every village its memory of disaster. In 1901, the mine at Senghenydd suffered a major blast when gas and coal dust ignited. There were eighty-two men down the mine at the time. Eighty-one of them died. Twelve years later, same mine: a second blast. Four hundred and thirty-nine men lost their lives. A second generation: gone.

  Our cities are built on corpses. Perhaps they always are, but ours are recent.

&nb
sp; Cardiff and Swansea have both found new purpose since the death of King Coal. But Barry – what is it for? The past blows like rubbish in the air, sags like a collapsing door. When we were kids, my dad used to take us to Barry Island, a place of rides and ice creams and fierce Atlantic winds. I used to love it, but somehow even then I felt the air from Senghenydd. Coal-black and a smell of gunpowder.

  The place I want, Barry Precision, is down by the docks. Industrial sheds tamped round a rectangle of water. Slate-green and restless. I park. It’s Sunday and the place is closed. Gates locked by a padlock on a fat chain. Wind, rain, and cold. I’ve got gloves but my coat isn’t particularly warm and I don’t fancy getting out of my car in order to jangle uselessly at the chain. I think I ought to do that, though, so I do. Jangle uselessly. The cold from the padlock penetrates my gloves within seconds.

  Some people, Buzz for example, would know exactly what to do. He has an almost instant mechanical intuition. Say something like ‘See what the silly buggers have done? All we need to do is slip the split pin out of the O-socket, then bend the hasp back – no, the other way – and the hinges should just lift off, like so.’ Mechanical intuition and that unfussed masculine strength. All I see is a tangle of cold metal that hurts my hands.

  I get back in the car. A black and yellow sign on the fence gives the name and number of a security company. I call it. Police, I say. Reports of a break-in. The phone operator, apparently overwhelmed with boredom, says she’ll send someone.

  I wait.

  There’s enough wind that I can hear it whistling in the fence. Over the roof of my car.

  This northern climate is hostile to life. If you fell in the water, how long before you died?

  I make a call to Rhys Jordan.

  ‘Hi, Rhys, are you okay after Friday night? Dad was a bit over the top.’

  ‘Oh, that’s okay. He’s allowed, I suppose.’

  ‘Look, funny question. But a few years back, where did the girls go at the end of their shift? To get something to eat, have a chat, whatever they did to end the evening off.’

  ‘Oh, well, the club finishes around four in the morning. A lot of the girls just go straight home.’