by Unknown
'A parasitic limb.'
'A paia-what?'
'A limb. Part of a twin that never formed right. You'd call it a Siamese twin. It's not weird, Finn. Whatever your face is saying, it really isn't that unusual.'
'Not unusual?''
'No.' I clicked the video off. 'It's not. There are kids born like this every year.'
His eyes got even wider, filtering all the information. Then the clouds parted for him – and he got it. 'Shit, shit, I mean shit I've just come in!' He sat down abruptly on the sofa, staring at me in awe, his hands on his temples, like he was trying to keep his brains from falling out of his skull. 'Holy fucking Christ. You're clicking her, aren't you? That's what this is. You're dicking her.'
'Yes,' I said quietly. 'Yes, I am.'
4
When he'd gone I went to bed. It was still daylight. I took my clothes off and I lay on my back, watching the grey sky out of the window. After a while Angeline came in from the garden. She'd taken off her coat and scarf and was wearing a belted olive-green cardigan. When she came into the room I rolled on to my side, my head resting on one hand, looking at her.
'Hi.'
'Hi.' She'd come up because she knew I was there. But she was timid. It was new to us, this. It hadn't really sunk in. 'Well,' she said, when I didn't say anything. 'I'll – I'll come to bed.'
She undid her belt and cardigan and dropped them. Underneath she wore a skirt and a thin-strapped vest, showing her narrow shoulders. She took it off, unzipped the skirt and stepped out of it, and then she was naked, wearing only a pair of grey knee-high socks. You could see the long muscles in her legs even though she wasn't moving.
She gave a small laugh. Shy. She stayed for a moment or two, resting her left foot on the right. She knew I was looking at her body. Peeping from behind the calf was the end of the extra limb, tapering unevenly to the battered, deformed foot resting against her ankles. I pictured its roots high up inside the smooth basket of her stomach: a bundle of limb, bone and sinew packed away inside it. Something else living inside her. I looked at her belly, at the little crease above her pubic hair.
'Well?'
'Well what?'
'I've been thinking about it all day.'
'Finn?'
'What did he say?'
'He said.' I scratched my head. Tried not to smile. 'He said he loved it.'
There was a pause. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. She got into bed, pulled the cover up and mirrored me, her elbow on the pillow, her head resting on her hand, holding my eyes, fighting to keep a smile off her face. We looked at each other without speaking. In the slanting light from the window I could see microscopic details of her face: fine downy hairs, cushiony diamond creases of the skin. Last night we'd sat here on the bed for two hours. She'd been half turned from me and the limb was lying on the sheet between us. She let me examine it. I'd held in my hand the pea-sized nodules inside the skin where toes were meant to be. I'd moved them around, letting them click and grind against each other. I'd rested my hand over a swollen place half-way up the limb, where the flesh strained against the skin: a weird tension of muscle tethered to bone. A knee.
'And did he think it was weird? Me, I mean. What did he think?'
'He thought you were beautiful.'
'Beautiful?'
'Yes.'
There was a pause while she bit her lip, fighting the smile. 'What? Really? Beautiful?'
'Really.'
'My God,' she said, and now the smile came, breaking out, showing her small teeth. 'I can't believe it.' She shivered, half laughing, lifting her shoulders and squirming in delight under the covers so that her cold knees touched my legs.
'Excited?' I said.
'And scared. Really excited, but really scared too. Both.'
We'd talked about it: about how much she needed people to know all about her. I had to remember she was nineteen years old. Just nineteen. And I was thirty-eight. I'd forgotten what it was like to want normality the way you want a drug. For her being public, very public, was the fastest route to normality she knew. Didn't matter what I thought. In a closed-off section of my calloused old head I sort of knew I had to put my unease to one side. I nodded, tried to smile. Tried for more enthusiasm.
'It's going to be three months,' I said. 'So, not long.'
'Not long?' She grinned and shivered again. 'Three months seems like for ever.' She shuffled towards me, pushing her face close to mine, her swimmy eyes magnified so I could see my own face in them: grey, drawn, not at all certain. 'For ever,' she murmured, tilting her face sideways and putting her mouth over mine, the breath from her nose warm on mine. Her hand came up, fumbling round my neck, pulling me closer.
I closed my eyes and kissed her. I reached under the covers and dragged her body hard towards me, thinking if I pressed her stomach tight enough to mine the anxiety would go away and I'd stop thinking, Three months, three months is nothing. And they still haven't found Malachi...
5
We were in Finn's office when we got the news. That was the irony. We were actually signing the book deal. Angeline was sitting neatly at Finn's desk, wearing a coat I'd never seen before with embroidery on the sleeves and fake fur round the collar, and she was dead excited and flushed. I was next to her, wearing this huge sweater because I was cold all the time, these days, and trying not to think about this sick feeling in my stomach. Finn had been brokering the contract for days, and although it wasn't the total off-the-scale deal he'd hoped for, it wasn't bad. 'Enough to keep you in Newkie Brown for a couple of years.' And I was going to be paid separately for the photos too, so that was a little icing. Still, my guts were in knots over it. Just three months.
'Now,' Finn said, 'initial these pages and sign here – on the last.' He handed Angeline this big show-off fountain-pen. She was going to be joint signatory on a clause that tied her into publicizing the book. 'Because,' said Finn, pushing up his sleeve to bare his suntanned arms and the dingy old Glastonbury braid, 'you are the best-kept secret, Angeline, after where Saddam hid all that uranium – which, as we all know, was up Tony Blair's arse.' He winked at her. 'The press are going to be all over you. We're going to make sure we play it right.'
There were a few moments' silence. The winter sun came through the giant arched window and on to her curly head as she leaned over the contract. No one spoke. The only noise was the scratching of the pen. She lifted her head and handed it to me and, with a moment's hesitation, I pulled the contract over and signed quickly, turning the pages and initialling fast before I changed my mind. There were ten pages and it was the exact moment I lifted the pen off the paper that the mobey rang in my pocket. It was Danso.
'Joe,' he said, 'where are you?'
'London.'
Sitting at the desk opposite, Finn was looking at me, silent.
'Got your car?'
'Yes.'
'OK. Would you do me the honour of getting into that car, and bringing that lass with you?'
A beat of unease went through me. 'Yeah,' I said cautiously. 'Probably could, if you tell me where you are.'
'Dumfries, just over the border.'
'Dumfries? And what's in Dumfries?'
There was a pause. When he spoke his voice was low, excited. 'Joe, we think we've got him. We really do, Joe. We think we've got him.'
Dumfries in southern Scotland is a good hundred miles south of Pig Island. It lies near the English border on the Solway Firth to the west of Lockerbie. They'd picked him up at eleven o'clock the night before in a forest two miles outside the town and now he was lying on a mortuary block in the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.
It took me and Angeline five hours to drive there, and it was dark when we arrived, but Danso was waiting for us outside the undertaker's loading bay, looking calm, a little pleased. He came forward to open the car doors. Angeline had been shivering with nerves most of the way but when she got out of the car she managed a small smile.
'Hello there, lassie.' Danso he
ld out his hand to her, slightly surprised to see her so confident. 'You're looking very bonny, I must say. Suits you, does it? London?'
She shook his hand. 'I suppose it must do.'
Struthers came out of the hospital mortuary, pulling on his coat, and when he saw her he paused for a second, a little flush coming to his face. 'Hi,' he said hurriedly, when he realized we were all watching him. He wiped his hand furtively on his trousers and gave it to her to shake, his eyes on her face. 'It's been a long time.'
She had changed. It had happened so gradually I hadn't noticed it. But now, seeing the men following her with their eyes as she made her way to the lighted building, I could tell she was a different woman entirely from the one they'd first met shivering with fear at the Oban station. She'd left the embroidered coat on the back seat and was wearing a tight, ribbed sweater and a greyish skirt. She'd put her hair back in a beaded slide she must've got from Lexie's drawer. She looked like she was going to a dinner party. Struthers kept shooting glances at the skirt out of the corner of his eyes as we went into the building.
Two men waited in a wallpapered side-room: the family liaison officer and the pathologist, dressed in a suit and tie, his reading glasses tucked into the breast pocket. They stood to introduce themselves to Angeline, explaining who they were, why they were there, what was going to happen next. The procurator fiscal has asked me to perform a postmortem ...
Danso waited a moment or two, then put a hand on my arm and beckoned me back into the corridor where we couldn't be heard.
'Joe,' he said, closing the door behind us, 'just needed to say something. This character we've got on a slab, he's carrying no ID. The doctor's thinking he won't be getting any prints because of slippage.' We stood against a painted pink panel on the wall, our faces sick-looking in the fluorescent lights. 'Do you know what that is? That's when the skin starts to slide off.'
'Decomposition?'
'Aye. And you can't get a print off it.' He went and peered through the glass panel into the waiting room. Inside, Struthers had brought Angeline a cup of something and was standing facing her, not speaking, just watching her with this arsey smile on his face. 'Discussed it with the chief. We're going to back ourselves up before we go public, get DNA. But that'll take till next Monday and, the idea goes, this is the quickest way for us to get the PM done.' He cleared his throat. 'But, look, when I say there's slippage on his fingers ...'
'Yes?'
'There's some on his face too – that's what I'm trying to tell you. I almost called and said, "Forget it, we'll wait for the DNA." Not sure I want her to go through this.'
We both watched Angeline through the glass panel. She was standing in the middle of the room, holding herself straight, listening to what the pathologist was saying. She was holding the drink in both hands. Usually her hands would be hovering self-consciously behind her. The back of the skirt stood out from her small waist like a bustle.
'But you know what?' Danso said, smiling slightly. 'You know what? Not sure now what I was worried about. The way she looks right now she could handle anything.'
The smell in the mortuary was nothing like I expected. It was fresher and sweeter, even tame in its way. Even the viewing room didn't smell of death. It had the whiff of a newly cleaned industrial kitchen, vases of fresh yellow flowers in each corner. Seven or eight seats were arranged round the walls, a Bible and a blue box of paper tissues on each one, and along the far end of the room, side on, a linen-covered shape lay on a trolley. A mortician in a white coat stood next to it, watching as we all filed in. His hand was resting on the white-and-blue-striped towel that covered the corpse's face.
'You're aware of the circumstances of the discovery of this body,' the pathologist said. 'You know there could be some discolouration on his face. If this is your father he might not look exactly the way he did when he was alive.'
'I know.'
He nodded, studying her carefully.
'Well now,' he said. 'You take your time. Look for as long as you want and if you need a break we'll take you out and you can have a breather. Come back inside later. We've got all the time in the world.'
'I'm ready.'
I held my breath, my heart knocking at my ribs. The mortician folded down the towel. Dove lay on his back, just his face showing, the sheet pulled up to conceal the rope he'd hanged himself with. The first thing I thought was, Christ, he's thin. He must've lost about five stone. He looked totally different: his jaw was so far relaxed it melted into his chest, his jowls drooped in folds, touching the sheet. His thick fair hair was reduced to sparse patches on the skull and his skin had lost that burned-looking red colour – even under the skim of makeup the mortician had used you could see it was yellowish-brown, the weight of it pulling at the rest of his face so you could see the sharp bone in his nose. I stared at him, not blinking, listening to my breath going in and out. In my head I'd been here, in this mortuary, a hundred times, looking at his dead body.
'Angeline,' said the pathologist, clearing his throat, 'are these the remains of your father, Malachi Dove?'
She turned to me, her hand over her mouth. I put my arms round her and she buried her face in my chest. 'My God, my God.'
'Angeline?' said Danso gently. 'What's happening with you, pet?'
'Yes,' she muttered, nodding into my sweater. 'Yes. It's him.'
'Are you sure, lass? You sure you don't want another wee keek just to be sure? You can take your time. He's lost some weight – living rough all this time.'
'Doesn't matter,' she whispered. 'Doesn't matter.'
'Doesn't matter?'
'No. It's him. I'd know him anywhere.'
'You all right?' After the viewing Angeline went to get a cup of water with Struthers and I went outside for a ciggy. Danso came to stand with me, his hands in his pockets, looking out at the car park, the ferroconcrete fire escape that led up to the Pathology Unit. 'Don't look happy to me.'
I shook my head. I took a drag on the ciggy and looked up at the stars. It was a clear night, just a few clouds, horror-movie clouds, floating across the sky. 'I've been waiting half my life for this.'
'Aye. I'll bet you have.'
'And you know what's weird?' I turned my eyes sideways to him. 'What's weird is I never pictured it like this. Always thought it'd be different.'
'Different how?'
I gave a short, dry laugh. 'Don't know. S'pose I couldn't ever get rid of what he said: "My death will be memorable." Do you remember? "Memorable."' I turned to look at the mortuary. The windows threw square panes of light on to the gravel. 'Not like this.'
'You mean you thought it'd be staged?'
'Yeah.'
'It was.'
I blew out some smoke. 'It was?'
'Yeah.' He pulled a clear plastic wallet of photos from inside his coat and handed them to me. 'Not supposed to show you these, OK?'
I put the ciggy between my teeth and held up the photos so the light from the lit walkway overhead fell on them. At first I thought I was looking at a bundle of clothes caught in a tree. Or a parachute tangled up. Then I recognized hands, and I could make out the outline of a body among all the material, stiff like a scarecrow, the head flopped down on to the chest.
'Rope round here,' Danso said. 'Round the trunk. Jumped out of the tree, rope broke his neck. The branches caught his arms. This stuff here is some groundsheet he had wrapped round him – been living up there rough for weeks.' He paused. 'Look at him Joe. He looks just like an angel, doesn't he?'
I didn't answer. I was staring at the groundsheet, the way it extended from the outspread arms like wings.
'An angel. That groundsheet was flapping like mad in the wind. Put the creeps up the lads – you could hear him before you saw him. Blak-blak-blak coming out of the trees. And smell him too.' He sniffed the air, like the smell was still in his nostrils. 'And smell him.'
I handed him the photographs, flicked away the ciggy and sat down, back against the big door the undertakers used, elbows on my
knees, head down.
'Joe? You OK, son?'
I nodded, but I didn't look up. I was staring at the ground between my feet, pictures going across my head like a train: Finn's ma; me and Lexie; the evil way Dove dissolved out of the trees and lay on top of me. Danso wanted me to jump up and punch the air or something. I knew that was what he wanted – it was what I'd always pictured too – but I couldn't do it. All I felt was this great fucking ocean of tiredness open up inside me, and spread and spread, until I knew I was tireder, much tireder than I'd ever been in my life.
6
In London spring was on its way. There were winds and floods. Half of East Anglia and Gloucestershire was under water and Londoners sat glued to the television, watching cars floating down high streets like driftwood, thanking God they lived in a city civilized enough to have a flood barrier. The back gate had been forced open again. I put it down to the high winds, but the neighbours said it had happened in their gardens too, and probably a tramp was living in the neighbourhood. Nobody had seen him, but they were sure he was there. Everywhere he left trampled lawns, scraps of tissue and Twix wrappers that had to be picked up on gardening forks. He was using the back alley to sneak into gardens at night, trying to find a warm place to sleep. Some of the other gardens had the locks broken off their sheds.
The world didn't seem real to me. With Dove gone, it was like the plug had been pulled on my life. The tiredness thing wouldn't let up. I slept long stretches, nine, ten hours, but I'd wake up tireder than before and end up asleep at my desk, hands flopped on the keyboard, sending long strings of letters on to the screen. It crossed my mind to see a doctor, but I kind of guessed what the answer would be – Have you been under any stress recently, Mr Oakes? And then it would come out – Lexie dead, the way I didn't feel better that it was all over, worry about the book. Before I knew it I'd be in counselling, clutching a Seroxat script. So instead I kept going, pushing forward like I was under water, ignoring this perpetual drag on me.
