by Unknown
I blinked very, very slowly, letting my eyes stay closed for a few seconds until my heart calmed down. Then I opened them again. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt; her arms were bare and unexpectedly muscular. She was still looking at me, but her throat was working as if she was trying hard not to be sick or to cry.
'The rest,' I said hoarsely. 'Take everything off.'
She pulled off the T-shirt, raising her arms, giving me a flash of underarm hair. She was very thin with small breasts and waist, but her hips were really wide and layered with muscle. She was wearing a greying, lace-trimmed bra that looked as if it had been washed about a hundred times. She unhooked it and let it drop to the ground, showing me her tiny breasts. I had to fight not to lower my eyes.
'And the – the skirt.'
She unzipped it and stepped out of it, kicking it aside. She wasn't wearing underwear. It was just her legs, thin and a bit scarred round the knees, and her dark pubic hair, but she didn't try to hide herself. She was looking me right in the eye. The blood raced to my face.
'Turn round,' I whispered. 'Turn round and face the bed.'
She didn't move. We stood there for a long time, holding each other's eyes, and I had this sense we were teetering on an edge, that this could go either way. Something in my head was screaming for it to stop, stop.
'I said, turn round.'
The room was silent. Downstairs the washing-machine went into its final spin and that was the only noise, apart from us both breathing. Then Angeline swallowed. I could hear it, could hear all the ligaments and muscles clicking together.
'Whatever,' she said tightly, tears welling in her eyes. 'Whatever you tell me – I've thought about it. And I'm not going to have an operation. I'm not ashamed.'
And before I could answer she took a step away from me to the bed and turned and suddenly there it was, all displayed in front of me. I put my hand on the doorframe to steady myself, my eyes wide and fixed. The tail – except I knew it wasn't a tail – came out of her spine like a giant tree root. It went out backwards a little, then hung down slightly to the side.
A collection of calcifications in the pelvis, a single deformed long bone erupting from the sacrococcygeal region. Parasitic ...
Her hands hovered in the region of her back for a second, then she raised them – straight up in the air so there was nothing I couldn't look at. I could see now, now that I knew, I could see clearly that it wasn't a tail but a deformed leg.
Parasitic. A parasitic limb ...
There was a thick, visible vein that ran along the top of it, down to the swollen tip, which must have been a crude, spade-shaped foot. I pictured what I knew was inside her: half a twin with its mouth open, drinking Angeline's blood, yawning and hiccuping and baring its bloodied teeth the way a baby does in the womb. I pictured her heart pounding, thinking of it working hard to feed her twin. I wanted to hit her. I wanted to pull at the leg, tear it out of her. It was unthinkable Oakesy could fancy her. With her looking like this ... how anyone could want to ...
I bit down hard on my tongue, a bud of blood welling through my teeth until the urge to hit her went.
'Duplicata incomplete,' I said, my voice coming out louder than I'd expected. 'Duplicata incompleta. Incomplete separation.'
There was a pause. Angeline's arms seemed to waver a bit, as if they were suddenly heavier. But she raised them up again, trembling with the effort. 'I'm not going to have an operation,' she said, in a small, strained voice. 'I'm not like this because of anything I did and there's nothing—'
'A parasitic twin. No head. No heart.' I paused to let this sink in. 'Just that leg and a few vertebrae sticking up inside you.'
She sagged. She made a noise in her throat, then her whole body seemed to convulse. She toppled forward on to the bed, rolling away and trying to gather the limb up to her at the same time. Self-pitying tears ran down her face.
'Don't cry!' I was the one who should be crying. Not her. 'Stop it. Stop it now.' I took a few steps forward so I was standing above her, looking down at her body, her scarred legs. 'Stop it!'
But she was sobbing, her forehead hard against her knees, which were pulled up, showing everything down there, everything normal at the front – labia majora with a sprinkling of hair. (Don't forget I'm a professional – that's why I can be so pragmatic about it.) Her hands were clasped round the leg, holding it tight against her bottom: it ran straight against her thigh, then hung a little, stiff and scaly, as if it wanted to droop to the bed but couldn't. I crouched down so I was eye-level with her vulva, smelling its faint peppery odour. When she realized I'd moved she opened her eyes, meeting mine, and tried to sit up, this panicky look on her face. But I didn't give her time to speak. I got on the bed and pushed at one thigh, pressing it out to the side and putting one knee on it to hold it there. The other I forced down so I could see everything.
'No,' she sobbed, her hands reaching up to me. 'Please—'
But I pushed her hands away. Her vagina gaped a little. I saw a little bit of moisture there, glinting silver at me, and then I saw her smooth reddish perineum leading back, ducking away to a V shape, and behind it the flat slab of the tail, a faint pucker running along it, like the seam that leads down the underside of a scrotum. Then, and I don't know what made me, but then I inserted two of my fingers into her vagina. She gasped, but I pushed my fingers in deeper, digging them in, the idea flashing through my head that if I only dug deep enough I'd find whatever it was that Oakesy wanted. And if I found it, I'd pull it out of her, and give it to him, wrapped in a bloodied handkerchief.
'Get off. Get off me.'
She grabbed my wrists and tried to twist away, her feet scrabbling on the bed. But I followed her, moving my fingers from her vagina to her anus. I thought of membranes tearing as I pushed my fingers up there, feeling her muscles clamp on me, feeling the smooth insides of her even though she was scrabbling at my wrist, digging her nails in. The twin was in there somewhere – I pictured its face, hands, fingernails, gut, spine, all concertinaed down to a bundle of bone and muscle the size of a foetus inside her pelvis. Maybe I was going to brush against a nose or an ear. Poke my nails into its eyes.
'Get off me!'
She rolled away and my nails raked along the inside of her as my fingers came out. She let out a long gasp and rolled out of my reach, clamping her hands between her legs. I stood back, sweating and trembling, breathing hard, my head pounding.
'He's disgusted by you. Do you know that? You make him sick.' The tears were rolling down my face. 'He said that the first time he saw you he went away and puked. Did you know that?'
'No.' She lay weakly on her side, shivering and crying. 'He didn't say that.'
'Yes.' I looked down at my fingers, splayed out, sticky and shaking. 'That's what he said. Believe me.'
I went woodenly to the bathroom and washed my hands, using hot water and lots of soap, my teeth chattering as if I was freezing. I knew I'd crossed a line. I knew I couldn't go back. I kept washing and washing and washing until my hands were raw and the urge to cry had left me. Then I went into the bedroom and changed my trousers and blouse. I've made up my mind. It's time to go to London. I haven't got anything to show Christophe – but if I don't see him, talk to him, I'm going to go crazy.
Oakesy
1
People get lines in their head like a record, grooves they move along when they think they know everything they need to know. They stop trying. With Lexie, I thought I knew her so well I'd stopped thinking about her in the right way. That was why I never expected what I found when I got back to the rape suite that day.
It took two hours, dawdling along the tourist roads, stuck behind caravans chugging out sooty fumes, testing strategies as I went, the Massive Attack CD ramming itself into my head. I'd thought about Lexie so much I should have felt better when I pulled up outside the rape suite. Instead I felt like the king of all shits, caught flat-footed, and busy eating myself alive from the inside out. I couldn't go in. I had t
o sit for a long time, my hands on the steering-wheel, staring at the lines of grime under my fingernails, my thoughts inching laboriously into opening sentences, mentally walking myself into the house, mentally sliding into the conversation. The storms had passed. The streets were wet, glistening in the late sunlight, but the curtains in the living room were closed and I pictured her sitting in there, bolt upright in one of the blue Formica chairs, staring at me when I came in. Angeline would be upstairs.
When I'd been there for five minutes and I still couldn't think of an opening sentence, I started the car and moved it forward a little, coming to a halt at the crossroads. I looked left, right. The police surveillance car was in its usual place, facing me about ten yards to the right, parked casually, just far enough along for the officer to see the front of the rape suite. The sunlight bounced off the windscreen and for a second or two I didn't realize there were two people in the car. Then a cloud rolled across the sun, the light dimmed, and I saw Angeline in the passenger seat, a handkerchief jammed into her eyes. The officer had his arm across the back of her seat. Not actually touching her, but only inches away.
I parked the Fiesta and jumped out, crossed the road, knocked on the window. The central-locking system disengaged and the officer shot a thumb over his shoulder. I opened the back door and stuck my head in. 'What's going on?'
'An argument.' He turned to me. He had very messy red hair and I noticed he didn't take his arm off the back of Angeline's seat. She was inclined towards him, as if at some point she might have been crying on his shoulder. She kept pinching her nose, like she was trying to hold something in. She's a cripple, mate ... have you noticed? A cripple. Let me tell you about what she's got under that coat ...
'Two young ladies. Had a wee misunderstanding.'
I got into the back and closed the door. They had the heating on full blast and one of them had been drinking. Or both of them. It stank in there like a south London minicab.
'Well?' I said to Angeline. 'What's happened?'
She shook her head, pressing her eyes with the handkerchief. The sound of her tight breathing filled the car.
'I'll know eventually, so you may as well tell me. What happened?' The officer shot me a glance in the mirror and I caught it, raising my eyebrows calmly at him. If he said, 'Don't be harsh on the lass,' I'd ask him why he had his arm round her and why he had a face like a dog's arse. 'Angeline. I asked you a question. What's been happening while I've been gone?'
She dropped the tissue from her eyes and met my eyes unsteadily in the mirror, this congested look on her face. So, I thought, it's you who's been drinking.
She's no one, Oakes, no one to you. You've known her five minutes ...
'I took some money from your briefcase.' She wiped her nose and began to pull things out of her pockets, placing them on the dashboard in front of her. Two packets of kids' sweets, three miniature Stolichnayas, four miniature brandies and a couple of empty Doritos bags. It all went rolling across the dashboard, into the air vents and on to the floor. The officer had to pull his arm off her seat and make grabs for it all.
'Easy there, hen. Ea-sy.'
'She was in your bedroom and I went into the kitchen and borrowed money from you.' She jerked her chin in the direction of the Spar shop on the other side of the estate. 'Got all of this and some vodka and I'm already drunk. You see?' She pulled a handful of notes and change from the other pocket and dropped it on the dashboard. A five-pence piece rolled off, hitting the gear lever and falling tails up, an inch from my toe into the leather sleeve at the bottom of the handbrake. 'I'm a thief and I'm drunk and I'm probably just like my father because I hate her and I hate you too ...'
'Hey, hey, hen, go easy on yourself.'
He put his hand on her shoulder and she dissolved into tears. I sighed and looked out of the window at the rape suite. What a shitty fucking place to be doing this, a godforsaken abandoned scheme with its crap lying around everywhere, dead lawns and the horizon bruised yellow, like there was a poisonous cloud coming up from the west. A car nosed out of the street parallel to the rape suite, the road that went to the playing-fields. When it saw our car it did a hasty right and disappeared. Fly-tippers. Offload your shite. Come here to Shitening Grove Estate and offload it. Leave it on the tracks. Someone else'll deal with it.
'Wait here,' I told Angeline, opening the door. 'When I come back we've got to talk.' I hesitated then tapped the officer on the shoulder. 'I'm going to be ten minutes. But I'm only over there. I can see you from the front window.'
He started to say something, but I closed the door on him. I stood, zipping up my jacket, turning up the collar and staring across at the rape suite. Like High Noon or something, which is a joke, because when I got over to the house all I was facing off with was stale air and some ageing soft furnishings. Lexie wasn't there. She wasn't in the house.
2
I stood in the living room, blinking at the chairs, the blank TV, the cold kettle. I went up and checked in our bedroom, but she wasn't there. She'd gone. I stood in the hallway for a few moments, my head thumping, thinking, She's left me. Not the other way round – she's left me. Then I went back to the car. This time the officer didn't wait for me to knock. He opened the window and looked at me blankly.
'She's not there.'
Angeline turned, her cheeks red and mottled, and looked past me to the house. 'She was there when I left.'
I put my elbow on the roof and dropped my face into the window close to the officer's. 'Well?' I said slowly. 'What time did she go?'
A line of red appeared across the bridge of. his nose. Another travelled from his neck up to his forehead. There was a few moments' silence, and then it dawned on me.
'Oh, you fucking clown. You left your post. Didn't you?'
He glared at me, grinding his jaws in small, tight circles.
'You left your fucking post.' I slammed the roof of the car, making him jump.
'He came to find me,' Angeline said. She got out and faced me blearily over the top of the car roof. Her breath was white in the cold air and I could see she was suddenly panicky, looking over my head at the rape suite. 'It was my fault. I went for a walk and he came to find me.'
I didn't answer. I looked around myself at the empty streets, the bleak houses and the burning horizon. The curtains closed in the rape suite. I turned and headed for the house, a sweat breaking out over my skin. Angeline limped behind me, unsteady, worried. 'Don't panic,' she said. I could hear in her voice she was as scared now as I was. She was sobering up quickly. 'I'm sure everything's all right. She said she was going back to London. She said she was going. I'm sure she's OK.'
A J-cloth had been hung over the kitchen tap to dry. As I waited for Lexie's mum to answer the phone I watched a drip forming under the cloth, slowly fill until it was too heavy, then drop with a metallic ping into the sink. We didn't get on, me and Lexie's ma. She'd never quite swallowed the fact that her daughter had married me, a Scouser who didn't even make a token effort to conceal his working-class roots. Where she came from, you boasted that the kids had got into Oxbridge; where I came from, you boasted that they'd stayed out of the nick. And another thing, she'd told Lex, I didn't make enough money. Not nearly enough. So you can see it was never going to be the world's best relationship. When the phone rang six times, then shuffled over to answerphone, part of me was relieved. I didn't leave a message. I called the house in Kilburn and left a message: 'Call me, Lex, when you get in.' I hung up and went into the kitchen to make a brew.
The house was silent. Angeline had gone upstairs. Probably knew the stray voltage that would crackle up if we tried to talk just now. I listened for her as I made the tea, threw some milk into the cup, turned to put the teabag into the bin and...
I stopped, the bag extended on the spoon, a little pulse beating in my temple.
Lexie's bag was hanging on the back of the chair.
It was her brown leather Gap bag. Her favourite because it had straps that could make it a rucks
ack or a tote bag. I'd got it for her for Christmas last year – she used it all the time, swimming or shopping or the pub. She was never separated from it.
Very slowly, like a quick or unexpected movement would make the bag leap up and scuttle away, I dropped the teabag into the bin, threw the spoon into the sink, unhooked the bag from the chair and unzipped it with trembling hands. A faint smell of leather and Airwaves berry chewing-gum came up from it, and inside I found a pocket packet of tissues, a half-finished tube of Lockets, her spiral-bound diary and a spare pair of tights, still in their packaging. I fumbled it all out on to the table, my mouth dry. At the bottom of the bag was her wallet. Her wallet, her keys and her mobile phone.
I stared at the phone in my hand, at the zigzaggy signal icon, my pulse falling to a low, monotone thud. The wallet was closed, and when I opened it I found some loose change, our joint NatWest card, a newspaper cutting of her boss, her library card and a tattered picture of me, tanned and with lots of young-man hair, standing on the Tarmac in front of a Boeing 747 at Athens airport on the way back from our honeymoon in Kos.
I stared at the picture, blank and welded where I stood, all the light and sound in the kitchen muffled. Lex, Lexie – you wouldn't have left this if you were going to London ... would you? I went woodenly into the hallway and began to climb the stairs, moving arthritically, clutching the wallet in my numb fingers. I was at the top when I saw Angeline, coming out of the bathroom door. I knew instantly something was wrong.
'Joe,' she whispered, her eyes bright and glittering. 'Joe. Look in the bathroom. I think you'd better look.'
3
'This is a crime scene.' Chief Inspector Danso stood on the landing with his hands in the pockets of his navy raincoat, peering into the bathroom. Earlier when I came upstairs the door had been standing half open, just enough for me to tell that no one was in there. But I hadn't bothered to push it open wide. If I had I'd have seen the shattered glass in the window above the sink, letting in a cold square of greyish outside light, I'd have seen the towels thrown untidily in the bath, the shower curtain ripped from the rings overhead. 'I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call it a crime scene. Let's go downstairs. The Crime Scene Manager'll be here any time now.'
