Corpsing

by Toby Litt

  The air in the overheated car was choked with Josephine’s perfume: Poison.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Let me at least park somewhere,’ she said.

  We drove into a side-street of white stucco houses.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, after she’d switched the engine off.

  As she turned to face me, I saw that the lower rims of Josephine’s eyes were moist and pinkly red.

  ‘This isn’t very easy for me,’ she said.

  ‘You said on the phone it was to do with Alun.’

  ‘Before I say anything, I just want to remind you what you said about the flat.’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘You said that you might not want to keep it.’

  ‘And you still want it?’ I asked, unnecessarily. ‘

  Of course I do. It’s very important to me.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  Josephine ran her hands up and down, in semicircles, round both sides of the steering-wheel. I started pulling at the Velcro of the courier bag – thinking how cool it would feel to pull the gun on her.

  ‘I knew all about Alun,’ she began. ‘Lily told me she was seeing him. She told me quite early on. Just after it started, I think. They even came round to my flat for dinner. It was charming – to see them playing at being a couple. To be honest, I thought Alun would be far better for her than you ever would. He’s a proper man. But it was obvious enough that he was never going to leave his wife. Lily couldn’t see that. She believed anything and everything he said. He lied to her constantly.’

  ‘Like a proper man,’ I said.

  ‘When Alun came along to the funeral, I could see that he was feeling terribly guilty.’

  ‘He was at the funeral?’

  This was news to me.

  ‘He hung around at the back, but, yes, he was there.’

  ‘Did you invite him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dorothy wasn’t there, was she?’

  ‘Of course not. Anyway, I went up to him and told him that if he ever wanted to talk, he could call me.’

  The air in Josephine’s car was becoming oppressively cloying.

  ‘And he called,’ I said.

  ‘It didn’t take him long. We’ve talked quite a lot, since then. Dorothy doesn’t know about it. There are quite a few things that Dorothy doesn’t know.’ Josephine smiled a disgustingly prim little smile.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Will you at least sell me the flat?’ she said.

  I looked at her. It seemed as though she’d been rejuvenated by something, since the last time I saw her.

  ‘I’ll put it on the market. I’ll tell you when.’

  These were meaningless promises. I could promise to give her the flat, and it wouldn’t make any real difference. I didn’t know where I was going to be, come tomorrow evening. And between then and now, I certainly wasn’t paying a visit to my solicitor.

  Josephine breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, for what seemed like a long time. I noticed that she was gripping the steering-wheel to stop her hands from trembling quite so obviously.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, after a pause.

  Well?’ I said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Alun was feeling guilty that he hadn’t told Dorothy about Lily being pregnant. He genuinely doesn’t know whether you or he was the father. But Lily did tell him that she was pregnant. He spoke to her, once more, one last time. This was after they were meant never to speak again, after he’d promised Dorothy. He spoke to her on the phone. That was when Lily told him about the baby. It was Thursday evening, the day before she died. He described her to me as totally deranged. He said it scared him. Because of this, he told her he couldn’t ever see her again. Until that point, he’d been thinking of carrying on behind Dorothy’s back. He did love Lily. But, in the end, her weirdness scared him off.’

  I felt as if my insides were about to burst out, like a television exploding – sparks and dust.

  If Josephine was telling the truth, Alun had managed to keep Dorothy ignorant of Lily’s pregnancy right up until the moment I wheeled my way into their dressing room at the Barbican. Everything he’d done after that had been acting: his immediate response, the books on his bedside table. Bizarrely, I admired him for this. And I’d thought I was the one his performance had been for. In a way, he must have been very grateful to me for telling Dorothy first – before the trial. I couldn’t really see what he’d had to gain by not telling her. Then I remembered how Vicky had come round to mine to tell me off after a supposedly distraught Alun had visited her. Perhaps that performance, too, had been for Dorothy’s benefit. Surely he’d already told the police about speaking to Lily one final time? Probably he, and they, were only upset because I’d found out.

  Who did Lily think the baby belonged to?’ I asked.

  ‘She wanted it to be Alun. She hoped it was Alun.’

  When did she tell you all this?’

  ‘She phoned me up, the morning she died.’

  I remembered the call from the phone bill.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘That isn’t very much. That’s hardly worth a flat.’

  ‘I don’t know how to say this. The last time I spoke to her, Lily seemed to be very fatalistic. Everything in her life seemed to have come to an end. She’d thrown you out, and good riddance. She’d finally decided to give up the cereal advertisements. She knew she wasn’t going to have this baby. Alun had said that he couldn’t see her again, so she thought that was over. Plus, at the very end of our final conversation, she was talking about having a new will made. One in which I was beneficiary, in which I got the flat.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘The more I think about it, the more I’m sure she knew what was coming.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I said.

  ‘She blamed you. She said that if she hadn’t been pregnant, Alun would have kept on seeing her.’

  ‘That’s not logical.’

  ‘Well, that’s the way she saw it. He’d said goodbye for ever just after she told him about being pregnant. That’s when she must have made the connection.’

  ‘He said she sounded deranged.’

  ‘But she was very calm the next day when she spoke to me. Calmer, in some ways, than I’d ever heard her.’

  I dismissed my memory of Lily’s manner at Le Corbusier.

  Josephine continued: ‘Her exact words were, “I’m not going to have the little bastard. It’s caused me enough trouble already.”‘

  Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

  ‘Drive me home,’ I said, quickly.

  ‘I think Lily was glad to be killed. I think, somehow, she knew what was going to happen in the restaurant. I think Dorothy’s little plan backfired. I think Alun told her about it, and by the time she spoke to me she had decided to turn up anyway.’

  ‘You know all about Dorothy?’ I said, stunned.

  ‘Yes,’ said Josephine.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Some of it Alun told me, some of it I worked out for myself.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Not a lot, so far as I can see. They said the investigation was ongoing.’

  Josephine tried to take my hand.

  ‘Look, Conrad, Lily wanted to die.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’

  ‘Let me finish: I think she invited you along deliberately. As far as she was concerned, what was going to happen would solve all her problems at once.’

  I got out of the car and walked away.

  Behind me, I could hear Josephine starting to sob.

  I wasn’t going to listen to that kind of madness.

  80

  Our first audition was due to take place at four. We were giving the actors half an hour each. I hoped to be able to get rid of them faster than that. The scene they were to
play was simple enough. Their character, Johnny, had been kidnapped. The kidnappers made Johnny phone his parents and tell them to do whatever they (the kidnappers) said. It was a scene comprising maximum emotion and minimum subtlety. But it did – even though I say so myself – have a certain truth to it.

  A couple of the earlier actors did a passable impression of terror. I enjoyed torturing them. Importantly, Anne-Marie got used to the whole set-up: the threats, the screaming; the way I tied them up to help get them into the role. With each of the actors, I did a little improvisation: I made them – as an exercise – pretend they were talking to their own mother. Most of them were delighted with this.

  Everything was set.

  Laurence, due at six, arrived five minutes early. Anne-Marie answered the door and led him in, just as she had with all the others. Anne-Marie was behaving very well. Laurence was wearing black.

  ‘You?’ he said, surprised.

  He shook my hand, gripping it slightly too tightly and for a moment too long.

  ‘You know each other?’ asked Anne-Marie.

  ‘We’ve met,’ I said.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t want to sway you either way,’ I said. We’ll talk about this later.’

  ‘You should see it at our house,’ Laurence said. ‘It’s mad – photographers everywhere. My parents almost didn’t let me out. But I lied. I told them I was –’

  ‘What is this?’ said Anne-Marie, sharply.

  ‘Shall we get on?’ I said.

  Laurence sat down on the sofa and I gave him a couple of pages of script to read through.

  I was seated opposite, in one of the two non-matching armchairs. In between us, on the brown carpet, was a low glass coffee-table stacked with fashion magazines. Underneath this was the courier bag, which now contained the Gruber & Litvak, the live bullets, the pollution masks and the rope.

  Anne-Marie perched herself dubiously on the left arm of the other armchair. She wasn’t happy with this new situation, but that didn’t matter so long as she behaved.

  ‘Hmm,’ Laurence said, not even half-way down the page. ‘This is good.’

  ‘I think it could do with some improvement,’ I said. ‘Let’s do a read-through, just for the words. No emotion.’

  He did it. Raving, really.

  ‘This time,’ I said, ‘try it with this blindfold on. Loosen up. Try to go completely over the top.’

  He went. All the way.

  Anne-Marie looked a little uneasy, even though she’d seen this with all the others. She was watching me almost as closely as she was watching Laurence.

  After he had finished his run-through, I sat back for a moment or two – as if to ponder, in a directorial-dilemma kind of way.

  Eventually, I managed to drag something up from the depths.

  ‘How do you think we could change it to make it more real? What would you say to your parents?’

  Well,’ he said, ‘I call my mother mummy’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is that what you’d call her if you had a gun pointed at your head?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘I just call him dad.’

  ‘Let’s try it,’ I said. ‘But hang on.’

  I took the blindfold off, then got the rope and tied his hands together behind his back.

  I pointed two gun-fingers at him.

  ‘Mummy? Hello… Mummy… Mummy, listen – I’ve been kidnapped. No, this isn’t a joke. They’ve got me here: they’re here right now – pointing a gun at my head. Please! Agh! Don’t! Alright. I’m trying. Mummy, you’ve got to do exactly what they say, do you get it? Exactly. You must not call the police. Or anyone. Just do what they say.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Stop.’

  I picked up the phone, shielded the number, dialled Alun and Dorothy’s.

  Hope they’re in. Hope they’re in.

  But where else are they likely to be, with the nation’s press on their doorstep?

  And didn’t Laurence just say they were at home when he set off?

  It began to ring.

  ‘Hello,’ said the phone.

  They’re in.

  I reached into the courier bag and pulled out the gun.

  ‘Mummy?’ said Laurence.

  I pointed the gun at Laurence’s head. I shoved the receiver into his face.

  ‘Once again,’ I said. ‘With feeling.’

  Laurence began the speech.

  ‘Conrad,’ said Anne-Marie, ‘what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Exactly what I planned to do; exactly what you helped me do. Now shut up.’

  ‘That isn’t a real gun,’ Anne-Marie said. ‘It can’t be a real gun.’

  ‘What?’ said Laurence, breaking the script.

  I could see he was thinking of attacking me, even though his hands were tied behind his back.

  ‘Don’t move,’ I said to Laurence. ‘Keep going.’

  Laurence kept going.

  I pointed the gun at Anne-Marie’s belly.

  ‘This is a real gun with real bullets. No thanks to you.’

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Next to him.’

  Anne-Marie edged her way round the coffee-table and sat down beside Laurence on the sofa.

  Laurence finished his speech.

  ‘Much better,’ I said.

  ‘Mummy, please,’ said Laurence. ‘It’s Conrad. He’s got a gun.’

  I tapped him sharply on the head with the receiver. ‘That wasn’t in the script,’ I said. Was it? Who said anything about improvisation?’

  ‘Conrad?’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Oh my god,’ said Anne-Marie, her eyes all of a sudden wide. ‘It’s a real gun.’

  ‘Alright, Dorothy,’ I said. ‘Let me tell you what you’re going to do, and – more importantly – what you’re not going to do…’

  For once, Dorothy listened.

  After I’d made it quite clear what she had to do to see her son alive again, I put the phone down on her in mid-sentence – a minor pleasure, but sweet.

  ‘Conrad,’ said Anne-Marie, ‘what are you going to do?’

  ‘I have big plans.’

  ‘Oh shit – that gun’s really loaded.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please don’t point it at me.’

  ‘Never should have trusted you, should I?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Laurence. ‘Is Mummy in on it? Is Mummy part of the audition?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mummy’s part of the audition.’

  ‘It’s a great script.’

  ‘Stop creeping, you little shit. There’s only a minor part in it for you – unless I do some seriously major damage to your head.’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ shouted Anne-Marie.

  I aimed the gun at her eyes.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she said. Then she started laughing, although it was obvious that laughing was something she didn’t want to be doing. Each ha ha ha convulsed her upper body like a sob. Her eyes watered up, but these were physical not emotional tears.

  ‘Please don’t point it at me,’ she finally said.

  ‘Lie down on the floor.’

  Like a hard slap, this killed her laughter.

  ‘I’m lying down now,’ she said.

  And she was.

  ‘Put your hands behind your back.’

  ‘I’m doing everything you say.’

  Now she was behaving like the perfect little hostage.

  ‘You know I’ll kill you if you try to stop me.’

  ‘I believe you, Conrad.’

  Speaking my name – calmly, gently, reassuringly.

  With the rest of the rope I tied her hands and feet together.

  ‘That’s not too tight, is it?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I tightened it some more.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said.

&nb
sp; ‘I’m going to gag you. In a moment or two. Not right now.’

  She didn’t respond to this.

  I stepped over Anne-Marie’s hog-tied body so that I stood in front of my other hostage.

  ‘Open wide, Laurence,’ I said, nudging the gun barrel against his lips. He opened up: total cock-mouth.

  ‘Nod once for yes, twice for no. Did you ever fuck Lily?’

  He nodded once.

  ‘God!’ said Anne-Marie.

  ‘You did?’ I asked.

  Once.

  ‘When? When you were on the Strindberg tour?’

  Once.

  What about afterwards? Back in London?’

  Twice.

  ‘And just before she died? Are you sure you didn’t fuck her then?’

  Twice.

  I got closer, staring into Laurence’s dilated pupils. He could still be lying, I thought. Probably not about having had sex with Lily. This was no time for adolescent bravado. But he might still be reluctant to admit the possibility of fatherhood. Maybe he thought I’d blow the back of his head off if he said he’d made Lily pregnant.

  ‘Did you know that your father fucked her?’

  Once.

  ‘So it wasn’t just the tabloids?’ said Anne-Marie. ‘He really did?’

  ‘Lots,’ I said. ‘Lots and lots.’

  Laurence was choking: on the barrel and on his fear of the barrel. I didn’t want to get too much saliva on the gun, so I pulled it out – lightly tapping his teeth. He coughed a little, as if he’d half-swallowed a pube.

  ‘My dad doesn’t love my mummy,’ he said.

  What a shame.’

  ‘Conrad,’ said Anne-Marie. What are you doing?’

  ‘Gagging you,’ I said, turning round.

  From the courier bag I took out the three pollution masks I’d bought in the bike shop. They should work perfectly – no choking to death, no shouting for help.

  For the first time Anne-Marie looked totally afraid.

  ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you. I love you.’

  ‘Hold still’

  Her mask went on first, easy. I fastened it tight. Her eyes bulged as she deprived herself of air by fighting for it too hard.

  ‘Deep slow breaths,’ I said.

  She gave me one of her don’t-patronize-me looks.

  I strolled back to Laurence, got right up close.

  He whimpered, shaking little shakes. Snot had started to run from his nose down on to his black long-sleeved T-shirt. The band, I noticed for the first time, was called Slayer. He’d had his sixteenth birthday only a month or so before. Poor darling. Poor…