Wine now: I drank the cold wine from the bottle while the fire burned, destroying our past for us, my daughter’s and mine. When the fire looked like dying of exhaustion under its ash I threw some eau-de-vie on it and raked the slabs of half-burned paper and material with a hoe they call a harpe round here to give the fire more air. When everything was burned I knew I had done right as I reeled away. I knew Charlotte could never, and would never, come back. Life had never permitted her any fairy-tales, not with me as her parent: and it never would. I cried with fury and despair and loneliness as with a last gesture I threw on her old gumboots and school satchel, and burned her exercise books with their drawings of frogs and flowers, and the scraps of poems she had copied out with Madame Castan:
‘Jamais, jamais, tu ne la rattraperas!’
I have to explain what the agony of her loss means—she was my heart, my soul, my other self. But I could never possibly have told her so, and so I lost her. Once I knew I was going to lose her, I suddenly preferred to lose her at once, not wait. I rushed onto the loss. I sent everybody away, then went away myself. Ah, existence is like water, it is everywhere and yet it flows away. They say I have Polish blood on my mother’s side. When I came back, as I had to, I burned everything that had belonged to her. Are the English inhuman? While I was in England my brother said I shouldn’t take everything so seriously. But if you don’t take love seriously, what do you take seriously? Belong-ings? Money? Property?
I put the fire out in the evening. I wonder how much of this I can really stand?
After a pause on the tape Staniland answered himself:
Only so much, of course. I’ll find out when the time comes.
He had found out all right. I put Staniland’s tape down on the floor. I wondered how much Bowman, or the two PCs, or the pathologist, or anyone else, would have understood of them.
I wondered how much I really understood.
5
Bowman had given me the wrong address for Staniland. It wasn’t the Battersea address on the national insurance card they had found on him, but the one on the letter from a bank saying they’d be really very glad if he’d drop in pretty well at once and see them about his overdraft. It was dated only a fortnight before his death, and the address it was sent to was in Lewisham, the clock-tower end of it. I had found the letter mixed in with his papers.
I started to think about everything I knew of Staniland so far, beginning with his being smashed to pieces. He was fifty-one. He was balding. When they washed the blood off him, he had nice hands (you could see from the one he still had the shape of) and had perhaps been attractive to women. Too attractive? But he didn’t read like a love-’em-and-leave-’em specialist. The fingers on that hand—his right—were stained with nicotine. He was a drinker, too—you could tell that from his nose, and from his problems, as shown up in what he had recorded. Not an alcoholic, though; his handwriting was too precise, the letters as a rule well-formed for a man who had written quickly, and well-spaced between the lines, the lower loops never entangling themselves with the upper loops of the line below. It was an educated, reflective, intelligent hand that didn’t go with the cheap suit he was found in.
What the hell had the man been doing?
Bowman hadn’t found any money on him. He was on welfare. That didn’t mean he was broke, though; plenty of people these days fiddled the rules; they had to, to survive. Besides, there was the letter from the bank—he must surely have had money in it once, even if he only owed it when he died.
I kept shutting my eyes till it was late enough on in the morning for me to go out and get information, trying to visualize Staniland and how he had lived. A writing man. A self-confessed failure, tortured by the loss of his daughter. A man who had lived abroad, probably for a long time (I should have to listen to all his tapes to verify that, but there were so many of them that it would take time), an educated man.
I rang Bowman and got him at home just as he was leaving for the Factory.
‘Staniland,’ I said.
‘Well?’
‘Why did you give me that address in Battersea when he lived in Lewisham?’
‘I didn’t know I had.’
‘Surely you knew the address where your blokes had picked up his gear from,’ I said. ‘His papers and tapes and so on.’
‘Why? Is it interesting?’
‘You’re a cold-hearted bastard,’ I said. ‘What he taped you could listen to for a thousand years and have no pity for him.’
‘Cut out the Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a conference at ten for a million-pound breaking-and-entering. Anyway, did I play any of them? Did I have time? You’re joking.’
‘I’ll make you wish you never had,’ I said, ‘if I don’t get better cooperation from you than this.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Less of the casual cut and thrust, slap and tickle—more dedication to fact, like we learned in police college, week two.’
‘Okay, okay. Is that it?’
‘It is this time. But we’re supposed to be one solid force.
‘That’s why it’s called a force,’ I said. ‘And the next time you just throw any old unverified blag off on me over a case I’m handling, you might just have a stumble on your next flight to the top.’
He said incredulously: ‘Are you telling me? Me? A chief inspector?’
‘Yes, I’m telling you,’ I said. ‘Murder outranks rank, so watch your step.’
‘Why don’t you watch your blood pressure, Sergeant?’ he said, and put the phone down.
I looked at the dead receiver for a while.
Before going out, I thought some more. It wasn’t a routine killing—not a skinhead rolling and mugging job. Hatred—evil that Staniland had evoked in someone—had caused those deliberate, frightful injuries. Earlier in the morning I had heard on one of Staniland’s tapes:
You can go on for a long time explaining what life means to people, but do you still not understand that you’re never going to get out of this alive? The question is, though, how are you going to die? Everyone has to face that. The problem is, how to do it consciously, deliberately, plan it up to the last moment, and record everything. The best thing would be if I could record what happened at the last moment, and after that moment. But someone else will have to fill that gap—if it’s ever filled.
I played that part again. For a moment I wondered if he meant suicide. But however Staniland had met his death, it certainly hadn’t been that way. Besides, I didn’t think that that was what the passage meant. I reviewed what little I knew; the salient point was that he hadn’t been killed where he was found. He couldn’t have walked. It always came back to murder.
As if by telepathy, the pathologist rang.
‘I’ve done the autopsy.’
‘Well?’
‘His blood group is O negative … Look, what I really want to say is that he was even worse hurt than we thought when he came in. Both legs were broken, not just one—a fracture of the left kneecap, he couldn’t have walked on it, as well as the multiple fracture of the right tibia. There’s bruising to the medulla too, something I missed at first. Dislocation of the left shoulder, third and fourth ribs cracked on the same side.’
‘Christ, what did they do?’ I said. ‘Drop him from a building? An aircraft?’
‘No, no,’ said the pathologist, ‘it was a beating all right. I’d say you were still looking for that hammer, though the ribs and the kneecap might have been a kicking. Someone had a go with a knife, too; there’s a long gash up his right arm that would have had to be stitched. So, hammer, knife and the boot—there would have had to be at least two of them, you can bank on that.’ He stopped for breath.
‘Anything else?’ I said.
The man coughed. ‘Well, lab tests show that he didn’t die very quickly.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘They started with the fractures at the extremities, the fingers and hand, then the legs. Then
he was hit in the right eye—it was nearly closed, you remember—there was extensive bruising. Then there was the knife wound. It looks to me as if it was thrown, the knife. Probably a flick-knife or kitchen—heavy, at any rate—say a twelve-centimetre blade. They, er, rather worked him over.’
‘What actually killed him?’
‘Oh, the blow to the brain, frontal lobe, without a doubt. Loss of consciousness aggravated by extensive bleeding. The fractures, shock. Then coma and death. That’s all. I’m getting my report ready for the coroner now.’
‘Thanks, you’ve been a great help.’
‘No I haven’t,’ said the pathologist, ‘so don’t try and fool me.’
‘All right, I won’t.’
‘Come round any time you feel I can’t help you some more,’ said the pathologist. He was young, like he said, and laughed in his nose the way people do when they feel they’ve made a terrifically good joke.
I put the phone down. I felt sick, as if I had taken the beating. I put my head between my knees till the greyness in front of my eyes stopped and the buzzing in my ears cleared. I’d listened to hundreds of pathologists’ reports, but none of them had ever affected me like this.
When I felt better I found that I had been staring at a page of Staniland’s writing that I must have kicked aside with my foot where it lay on the floor. It was in a dreadful ballpoint scrawl and read: ‘I never ever want to see Barbara Spark again, she’s bled me to death. My heart’s empty, my brain’s empty, she laughed at me the last time I had an orgasm.’ The next paragraph must have been added later; anyway, it had been written with a different pen. ‘How can anyone so beautiful be so bloody? How can any love as intense as mine die against this ice?’ There was a scribbled footnote:
It makes me feel as if I were a woman writing like that, or Barbara herself—a tart, frigid with guilt or terror, wanting sex and loathing it simultaneously. Has my passion turned me into her? What are you trying to do, Charlie? Destroy yourself? Don’t tell me you planned this! Death, yes—but love, passion, jealousy of a passing footstep in the street outside, this consumption of the blood, never. Fifty-one, fifty-one, and clowning to hide your grief and rage! You can’t satisfy her? How can you satisfy a beauty that vanished as you entered it?
The clown falls on his nose to a burst of laughter.
It’s ridiculous to say that he showed signs of a disintegrating personality, I thought; the man was perfectly sane. He was too sane, even.
I got a Nicholson’s street guide out from under a pile of books in the corner and pinpointed the address at Romilly Place where Staniland’s bank manager had sent the letter. Then I got up and tipped everything that was in the battered suitcase which contained all that was left of Staniland out onto the floor. Underneath the masses of paper there were eight more cassettes. I picked one up at random and put it on. A hasty, troubled voice which I realized must be Staniland’s said:
‘Oh, God, I want to fuck you!’
And a woman’s voice replied wearily: ‘Must you use that word? Why are you such a bore, Charlie?’
There was a scream of agonized tape and nothing more on that side; I took it off, but not before I had played it over a few times more. Distressed though it was—and probably not sober—Staniland’s voice was like his handwriting, intelligent and direct.
I put on the other side of the cassette. Staniland said:
I had a bad night in the Agincourt again; the Laughing Cavalier was in as usual. He always has a go at me, but I drink until I don’t care. What does Barbara see in him? I see her looking at him when I glance at her in mirrors; she drags on a cigarette and gazes at him without expression from under her fat white eyelids, her legs crossed on her stool, sensuous and neutral. I’d do anything, anything, to keep her out of the place. But if she decides she wants to come that’s the end of it—you can hardly argue that a girl who works the clubs should keep out of a public house.
Later, after a pause, he went on:
I’ve just come in from the Agincourt. The Laughing Cavalier didn’t touch me, although I provoked him again by tying him down in a discussion about class. He took the piss, surrounded by his mates as usual. But he didn’t touch me—there was only that time, a month ago, when he smacked me about with the flat of his hand out in the yard behind the gents. ‘You going to the law about it, then?’ he said when he had finished, stepping back. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m going back inside for another pint. You sure you’ve finished?’ ‘I’ll finish you for good one of these days,’ he answered, turning away.
Earlier in the evening, Barbara had been in the pub with me. But she got fed up around a quarter to ten and left, saying she was going over to a club. Before she went, though, the Laughing Cavalier came up to her and put his arm round her waist, with me right next to them, daring me to do anything about it. He does it quite often, offhand, but it’s enough to wake dreadful pangs of jealousy in me. Does he do it because he fancies her? Or simply because he hates me and wants to needle me?
He’s a horrible man—meaty, big. He’s got a face like a lorry-driver who wants to overtake everything on the road. He’s forty or so, and has orange hairs on his thick arms. When he’s finished putting his arm round Barbara, treating me as if I weren’t there, he lets go of her laughing, and gives her a friendly push on the shoulder. She shrugs, and all his mates laugh too, taking the tone from him. Then somebody buys a round and they all go over to the fruit machine. Afterwards I ask Barbara why she lets him put his arm round her like that; she shrugs again and says, why should she mind? I say, because I mind. She answers, then you should do something about it (smothering a laugh), if I’m your girl. But afterwards, back in our room, she says she’s sorry. I say: ‘Sorry for me, you mean?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Can we make love, do you think?’ I say, getting undressed. ‘Depends, ‘she says. ‘What on?’ ‘Could you get it up?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘I’ve had a lot to drink. I could get it up in the morning, though. I always can.’ ‘I never feel randy in the morning,’ she says. ‘What I’d really like now is a cuddle, Barbara.’ ‘Buy yourself a teddybear, then.’ ‘No, I need to be cuddled by you, badly; nobody but you will do. I love you, and I’m pretty frightened of life just now.’ ‘I know you are, Charlie,’ she says, ‘and it shows.’ What a courtship, I think. ‘I’m too old for you, Barbara,’ I say. ‘Poor Charlie, I’m afraid you are. I only liked it with you when you used to tell me things, when we just used to lie side by side together in the dark.’ ‘But it isn’t enough for me, Barbara, only lying there beside you. I love you too much; I love you with all my being.’ ‘All right, come on, then, let’s see what you can do, if it’ll keep you quiet.’ After a while: ‘Well, there you are, you see, Charlie, look, you can’t do anything.’ ‘I’m trying, I’m trying, just let me try once more.’ So I do, and I can’t get it in, and there’s a long silence from her while I’m trying and a sigh or two, and then in the end she says: ‘Well, it’s hopeless, Charlie. Come on, get off me, face facts.’ ‘It’s the man in the pub, Barbara,’ I say. ‘What about him?’ ‘I can’t seem to get him out of my head while I’m trying with you.’ ‘Are you frightened of him?’ ‘He hates me.’ ‘Don’t provoke him, then, Charlie. Then he won’t go for you.’ ‘If I didn’t provoke him, then he’d know I was scared of him.’ ‘He knows anyway.’ ‘I don’t know why, but he gets between my love for you.’ ‘Go to sleep, Charlie. Please.’
So I go through the motions of falling asleep. I am in agony. Even to talk to myself about it like this is agony. I stare into the darkness all night, with my back towards Barbara, my cock lying useless in my right hand, trying not to let anything show.
I switched the machine off and picked up the street guide again. Tapes? What do tapes mean in a court of law?
6
The Henry of Agincourt public house was in the middle of Greenwich Lane, and very antique it looked, too, compared to the high-rise blocks that surrounded it. A few West Indian heads hung glumly out of the windows in ballooning Rastafarian h
ats, and three men in jeans were watching a fourth dig a hole in the pavement to the strains of a tranny. The pub had painted medieval wooden beams at the front, and the sign displayed the monarch after whom it was named. He was wearing a large crown, a doubtful piece of armour and an expression of quiet, or possibly drunken confidence, and was peering up the road as if he had just seen a lot of Frenchmen. Someone very thin with a pointed iron hat on stood humbly beside him, trying to get his bow and arrow to fire, his metal foot planted on the word BEER.
Inside, the place was built entirely of concrete, which nevertheless bore signs of attention from various demented customers. The bar was narrow, and behind it stood an unbelievably disagreeable-looking stout man, who had to be the governor. It was only a quarter past eleven in the morning; however, as I came in, he was helping himself to a triple vodka, obviously not his first of the day. Someone had recently cut the side of his face open, and the wound still had stitches in it. Apart from ourselves, the place was empty. When the governor saw me he started to shake violently and gulped off the vodka, setting the glass down on the counter with an uncontrollable slam.
He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory 1) Page 3
