by Unknown
'Shit.' I took a step back. I steadied myself on the banisters behind me. 'Shit—' I dropped my head and stared at the floor, the blood pounding in my face. Tried to gather the right words. 'Listen ...' I went, but my voice came out slushy and flat – like I was drunk. 'Listen. I'm sorry – I'm sorry. You've got me wrong. I love my wife. I really love my wife...'
2
In my last year at university there was a book doing the rounds of the halls of residence: The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Written by a Californian academic who went by the unlikely name of Brenda Love ('Yeah, right,' said all the undergrads, 'like that's her real name'). It was on everyone's must-read list. 'It's, like, crammed to the ears with mind-boggling things to do with your todger,' Finn told me, when he sent me a copy from the States. The closing line of the section on zoophilia (or bestiality, if you want its common-or-garden name) was the one all the undergraduates kept whispering to each other, creasing up about: 'Sex with a partner that has little intelligence, superior strength and who panics easily, is risky ...'
Page 298: Zoophilia
Zoophilia involves sex between humans and animals and generally takes more forms than does sex between humans. Some of our ancestors felt that sex with animals held a magic power...
There are different kinds of zoophiliacs, and if you really think your head's on tight enough you can track down that encyclopedia and read all about them: androzons, avisodomists, bestial-sadists, formicopbiliacs, necrobestialists, ophidicists. But the one I kept thinking about time and again was the 'gynozoon'. A Roman obsession this, a gynozoon was a female animal trained for sex with a human male.
At university I'd read The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices from cover to cover, taking it all in: guys who can't get off without electric shocks, or armpit sex, or licking their partner's eyeball. (Making it up? I wish I was.) There was still a copy of that book somewhere in my study in London, but I hadn't thought about it for years. Not until now. Now I thought about it over and over again until my head was thumping. I kept thinking about the gynozoon. A gynozoon.
Page 92 I: Dysmorphophilia
Dysmorphophilia: (dys: abnormal. morphe: form. philia: attraction) Those who are sexually aroused by deformities in their partners. It's linked to acrotomophilia and apotemnophilia and for some dysmorphophiliacs the strong sense of compassion or fear may condition them to ... confuse this excitement with sexual arousal. Others feel emotionally secure or in control when their partner does not have the ability to leave them for someone else. Others need to nurture or rescue a sex partner to feel love of bonding and some are simply attracted by novelty...
I walked out of the rape suite and into the pouring rain and I didn't have a clue where I was going. I just put the car into gear and went, not thinking about the turnings I was taking, half blind to my surroundings. I wanted to be out on the road, Lex and Angeline behind me. When Lexie called I switched off the phone, threw it on to the passenger seat and went on driving. On and on and on, dodging trucks and coaches, the Massive Attack CD in the deck playing until it was making a hole in my head. I didn't even notice when the rain eased off, changed to drizzle, when the passing cars switched off their headlights, and the weak autumn sun burned out from the clouds. It didn't cross my mind I was heading west. It was only when I'd been driving for two hours and saw a sign I recognized that I slowed the car down and woke up a bit. The post office at Ardfern. I was on Craignish Peninsula. The hairs went up on the backs of my hands. Something had led me back here, like it was the most familiar place I could turn.
I drove on a little further, slower now. I hadn't been here since the night I came back and picked up our stuff. The bungalow drive was barer now autumn was here, more visible from the road. I turned up it, leaning forward to study the bungalow as it evolved out of the trees, all shut up and dull-looking, its windows filthy from the earlier rain. This was the last place I'd slept a night through – instead of lying there like a torture victim, thinking either about Malachi Dove or about his daughter. The bungalow hadn't changed much.
Half-way up the track I stopped the engine. I chocked the wheels and stared out of the windscreen. Now I didn't have the mindless business of driving to deal with, I started to shake. It was early afternoon and the storm must've gone west to east, because the sun was reflecting little dewdrops of rain in the trees like diamonds. Across the loch a flash of coloured light came from the shore. I stared at it, thinking about Lex standing in the rain in Dumbarton, crying as I drove away. I balled my fist, rested it on my temple, wanting to hit myself, wanting to knock the thoughts out of my head.
'You stupid fucking arse.'
I hadn't seen her cry in years. It was the kind of crying you do after a shock, the same kind of crying I did after the massacre. I'd never wanted to see her doing it. Never had. I looked at the phone on the passenger seat. What did I do now? Did I just turn round, pick up the phone and say, I'm sorry, babe, been meaning to mention it to you for months – our marriage is in the toilet. Or did I lie? It was going to have to be a lie. I'd have to lie to her. I reached for the phone, was about to pick it up, when something made me stop. Something I hadn't registered properly till now. I dropped my hand and slowly, very slowly, a thought racing over me like a shiver, I raised my eyes back to the loch.
The point of light was still there. Sunlight reflecting off a window. I stared at it, my thoughts going dead slow, dead cautious. There were some cottages over there, just a few clustered round the shore. They were due south, on the other side of the loch, where the land curved round to face the peninsula. Suddenly, without knowing how I knew, I realized I was looking at Ardnoe Point. The place they found the dory.
I opened the car door and got out, buttoning my jacket, staring at the light. I'd been there once, with Struthers, three days after the massacre, just to have a look. Wasn't much to see: a few cottages, a beach that wasn't a beach at all, just a tidal mud-flat, marshy, matted with eelweed stretching dimly out to the water, one or two pieces of police tape still snagged in the weeds' clumps. The boat had been lying on its side, not tied up – another reason Struthers thought Dove had floated up here by accident, then bailed out. We'd talked about it a bit. What we'd never realized was how, if we'd just turned a bit to our right, we could've seen the bungalow across the loch.
I leaned into the car and pulled out the roadmap from the webbing at the back of the passenger seat. I opened it on the roof of the car and studied it closely, my elbow on it, looking up from time to time at Ardnoe Point, still glinting in the distance. No pen in my pockets so I used my thumbnail to make a mark on the map – a neat cross over Ardnoe Point. Then I walked backwards a few paces, going up the track until I got to the place in the bungalow gardens where you could see inland, over to where Loch Avich must be. The bothy, the place I'd gone with Danso that night, trying to work out what Dove was planning, was in the mountains over there.
I stood for a few moments, letting my thoughts slosh dreamily around. Ardnoe Point was to my left. The bothy was behind me and to my right. And the shopping centre at Inverary was ... I snatched up the map. It took me a moment to focus. When I did my heart started to beat, very slow and deliberate, in my chest.
I will run rings around you. I will, in the final hour, will run rings around you.
The bungalow. When I looked at the four points, Ardnoe Point, the bothy, Inverary and Pig Island, they made a circle round Craignish. Round the bungalow. I slammed my hand flat on the map, my heart thumping hard. For the last week Malachi had been circling the bungalow. He thought we were still there. I raised my eyes, scanning the horizon, the trees, the bungalow behind me with its blank windows.
Where are you now?
Just like it wanted to answer my question, a car on the road slowed to watch me. I closed the map very slowly, staring at it. It was an English car, dark blue. A cold line of fear traced its way up my spine, into my hair: the car stolen from the Crinian car park was a dark blue Vauxhall. I was at least two hundred y
ards away but I could tell it was a bloke driving it – a bloke with sandy or blond hair and dressed in something pale: a golfing sweater, maybe. Shit, I thought, my heart thudding, my limbs going a bit numb. Is that you? Is it?
I opened the door and threw the map inside, trying to look calm. The car didn't move. I took the keys out of the Fiesta's ignition. Staying casual, even though I was shaking, I turned and began to walk towards the road. I was going to speak to him. Just talk. That's what he wanted. A flock of birds twisted and banked in the flat blue sky above us, menacing as a stormcloud, and from somewhere distant came the thin, briny cry of a curlew. I didn't look up at the sky – just kept walking, my paces even, measured, my breathing steady.
As I got nearer I could see that what I'd thought was sandy blond hair was a baseball cap, pulled down close over his ears, and just as I was about to get a good view of the driver he floored the accelerator and sped away. I broke into a run, skidding in the gravel, stopping at the centre of the road, feet planted wide, staring at the dwindling dab of darkness on the road: vanishing to the south, in the direction of Lochgilphead, away from Craignish Point.
It's not him. Of course it's not him.
I stood there, suspended for a few beats of time in a silent bubble of disbelief, that dot of colour disappearing in my retina. Why would he be so casual? It was just a local – slowing down to see if I was on the rob. But my blood was up now. I raced back to the Fiesta, fired it up. Not a chase car, it struggled and whined as I forced it along the road – sixty, seventy, eighty, my heart pounding. Off the peninsula and right along the coast. The car reached a forest, then abruptly, with no warning, swung to the right and we were in the flat marshlands near the river Add. Over a bridge and the road became a narrow canalside single-laner. The Fiesta screamed along it, passing a turning to the right – that way, or stay on this road? – and another, and another. Then a bridge to the left over the canal and a glimpse of red-painted narrow-boats, bikes chained to the roofs. Rusty chimneys puffed woodsmoke into the cold air.
I fumbled the mobey off the front seat and switched it on, my eyes going up and down from the display to the car in front. It chimed out a tune, the screen flaring up. Twenty-five missed calls from Lexie, and before I had time to jam in Danso's number, it jumped to life. Lexie again. I tossed the phone on to the passenger seat, and floored the Fiesta down the narrow lane. I turned another corner and saw, less than a hundred yards ahead of me, a camper-van lumbering along, fat-bellied, taking up the whole of the road, brushing the hedgerows. I jammed on the brakes and came to a halt in the middle of the road, hands clenched on the wheel, leaning forward, my nose almost pressed to the windscreen, breathing so hard I could've run the last few miles. I was beaten. I knew it. These roads were straight and uncompromising, but they were a warren for a chase. Dove could be anywhere by now.
The camper-van waddled and swayed until it was swallowed into the distance. On the seat the mobey rang again. I pulled the car over and waited for Lexie's call to go to answerphone, then I snatched it up and jammed in the number for the Oban incident room. Got Danso to send out a couple of patrol cars. Then I drove around, slowing to peer down any driveway or farm path or layby. Every five minutes the phone rang on the passenger seat, twisting and turning on the upholstery, arsed off I wasn't answering. She wasn't giving up. I couldn't talk to her. Not now. I took a left and continued in an arc over the head of the Crinian canal. After about twenty minutes I saw one of the police cars – unmarked, but you could have spotted it a mile away – cruising slow, predator-wise, in the opposite direction, the driver and passenger both chewing hard, craning their necks and staring, gagging to get into a high-speed chase. I didn't acknowledge them, just drove past, anonymous. I knew it was over. All I could do now was check the same places again and again. The phone began to ring and this time I nosed the car into the hedgerow and snatched it up impatiently.
'Look, I'll call you back.'
'No, you won't,' she said coldly.
'We'll talk later.'
'Fuck you, Joe. We'll talk now. Don't insult my intelligence. Please.'
I killed the engine, pulled the phone out from where I'd wedged it under my chin and clamped it against my mouth so she'd hear me better. 'Lex, we're going to talk, but not now. I'm in the middle of something.'
'I'm going to ask you a question,' she said, in a controlled voice. 'And when you answer it's going to be an honest answer. I want to know the truth. The truth, Joe,' she said emphatically, like it was something I was a complete stranger to. There was a long pause. Then she said, 'Do you love me?'
'I'll come home. We'll talk—'
'I said, do you love me?'
I took a deep breath. In the distance a car pulled on to the road and headed towards me. I stared at it, just a dot, my eyes aching.
'It's an easy question. Not quantum physics, Joe. Do you love me, do you fancy me, do you still want to fuck me, the woman who has stuck by you for years and fucking years while you piss away your degree up a wall, or do you want to fuck some ugly shitty little shitty little bitch cow?' She broke off, breathing hard. I could almost smell her bitter breath down the phone. 'Do you know what's wrong with her, Joe? Do you? Have you got any idea, or are you just content to leave it to me – the one who's actually bothered to get herself some kind of medical training?'
I stared blankly at the road, a tightness straddling my windpipe. I wanted to sort it in my head, find a response, something to say. But I couldn't. Just couldn't get my head to work.
'She's a freak of nature and if you fancy her you are a pervert – and you should be put out of your misery, you fucking horrible, horrible freak—'
'Lex, listen—'
'I'm going upstairs now and I'm going to tell her that she DISGUSTS YOU. YOU get it? And then, when you come back, you're going to go into her room and tell her that SHE DISGUSTS YOU. You're going to tell her you don't fuck freaks.'
She broke down into a series of staccato sobs, her breath hitching and catching. The car drew nearer, the grey sky reflected milkily on its windscreen. My hand was stony on the steering-wheel. Grey. There was a long time while I listened to her sniffle and get herself under control.
'You're not saying anything,' she muttered, after a while. 'You've gone quiet.'
'When I get home we'll sit down and talk about this.'
'No, fuck you, Joe. I'm not sitting down with you and—'
'Fuck you, Lexie.'
She took a furious breath, gobsmacked that I'd answered her back. 'Don't you dare talk to me like that. Don't you d—'
'What? You get to talk to me like that but I can't do the same?'
'I'm not the fucking adulterer in this relationship,' she screamed. 'Being cheated on gives me some rights.'
'I haven't cheated on you.'
'But you want to. Don't you? Don't you?'
I didn't answer. I thumbed the cancel-call button, switched off the phone, dropped it in my lap and put my elbows on the steering-wheel, resting my chin on them. I sat there for a long time, moving my chin back and forward so that the skin wrinkled and stretched, wrinkled and stretched, watching the car draw near and slow to a crawl to pass me: it was a 2.4 family in an SUV, two stocky, buzz-cut kids in the back, battering each other with helium Nemo balloons. Not Dove. Not him at all.
Lexie
1
After the phone call to Oakesy I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering: actually banging against each other. I'd given him every chance – every chance – to weasel out of it. But he didn't. He just went back to that awful guilty silence. I got up and stood at the bottom of the stairs, breathing in and out, trying to stop crying, knowing I was about to do something I'd regret the rest of my life.
Going up to her room was an effort. Every step I wanted to cry. But I wasn't going to let her know that, of course. I stood on the landing outside her door and pushed the tears off my face, taking a deep breath, pulling myself up as straight as I could. I didn't knock – why should I? –
I just pushed the door open and stood there, tall and straight, in the doorway. The curtains were closed and the bedside light was on. She was sitting on the bed with her back to the wall, looking at me in surprise, defensive and wary. Her legs were curled up under her, hidden in a mishmash skirt with grubby-looking patches of Indian silk, Paisley and suede all sewn together. My heart beat really hard when I thought about what was under that skirt. What I knew that she didn't...
A small pelvic girdle with free extremity, adipose tissue, muscles and a rudimentary bowel sac ... That's what I'll be telling Mr Spitz—
'Angeline,' I said. 'I'm going to tell you something.'
'T-tell me something?'
'Yes. Now, take off your clothes. Put them on the floor, then stand in front of the bed and I'll tell you something.'
She stared at me uncomprehendingly.
'I said, take off your clothes.'
'No,' she said faintly. 'No.'
'Yes!' I licked my lips. 'Yes, Angeline, you will because – because I know what's wrong with you. I've been talking to Dr Picot.'
She stopped shaking her head when I said 'Dr Picot'. Her chin went up and her eyes locked on mine.
'I know what's made you like you are. I know what's made you into a ...' I put my hand on the doorframe, digging my nails into the wood. I knew if I didn't concentrate very hard I might cry. Parasitic. Acardiac and anencepbalic – no heart and no head. Parasitic... 'Into a freak. I know why you're a freak. So—' God, I had to gulp the air down to stay in control. 'So – now. Take. Off. Your. Clothes.'
She stared at me, a little pulse beating in the side of her neck, every corner of her brain processing what I was saying. An age seemed to go by. Then, just as I was about to say it again, something happened. She seemed suddenly to collect all her courage. She pushed herself off the bed on to her feet so quickly I took an instinctive step back, but she stopped a few inches in front of me, her arms at her sides, trembling like a leaf, and for a moment I just stared at her speechlessly. Then she pulled off her sweater and threw it on the floor.
