Assassins and Victims

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘Get up on your feet,’ she said.

  At last I rose. I took a snotty old handkerchief from my pocket, held it tightly to conceal the stains, and blew my nose with a great display of sadness.

  ‘You are weak and I do not trust you,’ she said.

  Had I been overdoing it? ‘Why? Why don’t you trust me?’

  She didn’t answer. She held back the blind and looked out into the darkening street.

  There was a long silence while I considered my next move. Force? Only in the last resort. Only when love failed me.

  The silence was broken by a noise from the back yard. There was the cry of a human voice and the roar of the dog. I hadn’t seen her come to life so quickly before. In a flash she was across the room and into the hallway. I followed her out. She pulled open the door to the yard, muttering to herself in Italian.

  In the yard was an astonishing sight. Eric was circling the snarling dog, from time to time putting the boot in at the animal’s head. I was so amazed by this that for a moment I couldn’t move.

  Bella screamed. I rushed into the yard and gripped Eric by the shoulders and threw him against the wall. He looked at me dazed. His face was covered with blood. His jacket was stained and dirty. He was almost unrecognisable. The vacuity had gone from his expression: in its place was a look of terror and anguish. I almost felt pity for him.

  While he lay there I turned to look at Bella. She was bending over her dog, stroking and whispering. The dog seemed only to be suffering from shock and, of the two, Eric appeared to have come off worse in the encounter. His trousers were ripped where he had been bitten and his legs were splashed with blood.

  I bent down beside him.

  I whispered to him, ‘You bloody great idiot. Say nothing. Just keep quiet.’

  But he didn’t know what I was talking about. His breath smelled of whisky. Poor bastard. He had come to the end of his tether.

  Bella came rushing across. She stood looking down at Eric for a moment and then she spat on him. He got up, very slowly, and then moved towards her. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. One word of recognition from Eric and I could kiss Bella’s bed and the dream of her flesh that had sustained me for the past week a final farewell. They looked at each other. Eric was trembling and she had an almost savage look of hatred on her face.

  I gripped Eric by the arm. As I did so Bella brought up her knee and forced it sharply into his groin. I could feel the shock of the pain run through him. She did this two or three times before I realised what was happening.

  I moved towards the house, still holding Eric.

  ‘Murderer,’ Bella was saying. She was standing behind me, trying to get at Eric’s body. ‘Murderer. Bloody murderer. How could you could you could you –’

  I got Eric into the hall. He was silent, but his eyes were open. He had gone beyond the point of pain, when the system has absorbed all it can take.

  I propped him up against the wall.

  She had scissors in her hand. I didn’t know where she had got them from, but there they were, flashing in the dim hall, flashing down through the air towards Eric.

  But not towards his face. Not towards the most natural point of attack. They were dipping in a lower arc, moving to a point between his legs. I shoved my arm forward and the blades scraped over the side of my wrist. She dropped the scissors and stood there looking shocked and hysterical. It was then I became aware of the fact that she had intended to stab him in the testicles. I felt nausea inside.

  Eric looked at me.

  He said, before I could stop him,

  ‘Matt, please don’t let her kill me. For God’s sake, don’t let it happen.’

  I put my hand across his mouth. Stable doors and bolted horses. I glanced at Bella. Had she heard? She was staring blindly at a point just over Eric’s head. She must have heard. She must have heard him, understood the recognition in his voice. But she showed nothing.

  ‘Matt,’ he said again.

  I started to move him towards the front door before further damage could be done. But by then it was too late. I opened the door and pushed him out into the street. He slid down the steps and turned and looked at me, but in the poor light I couldn’t see his expression. And even if I had seen it, I doubt whether I would have understood it.

  I closed the door. Bella had gone into the yard. I went into the sitting-room and lit a cigarette. I felt my nerves begin to play, tingling. When she came back she didn’t look at me. She sat down and stared calmly at the wall. It was the kind of calm that comes before a storm. It was the kind of silence in which you can read all sort of things. Hints, threats, unspoken words.

  ‘Is the dog all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice flat.

  I looked at her. Why had she tried to stab him in the balls? Did it make sense? Instinctively, you go for the face in such situations. It’s the first thing you think of marking because the face is vulnerable and has expressions that you might want to destroy. But what sort of instinct had led her to want to hurt him there?

  She was looking at me.

  ‘Why did he call you Matt?’

  ‘He must have been mistaken.’

  ‘No, he looked as if he knew you.’

  ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life,’ I said.

  ‘I do not believe you,’ she said.

  Savage bitch. I sat down beside her. When I took her hand it was cold and perfectly still. Was that what she wanted – the castration of the male species?

  We didn’t say anything for a long time.

  And then I said, ‘No, he was mistaken. Anyway, my name’s Edward Carson. I don’t know anyone called Matt.’

  She looked at me wearily. There was nothing expressive of life in the dead face.

  ‘Like him, you want to harm my Rex. Isn’t that true? Isn’t there some sort of scheme between you?’

  I laughed. ‘You’re joking.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I find it difficult to believe now.’

  I said, ‘That’s your trouble. You don’t want to believe anything.’

  She looked at me blankly.

  ‘Why don’t you leave me alone? Why don’t you go? I do not know what you want here. There is nothing for you here.’

  Just like that. I could feel my frustrations somewhere inside me, shadows behind dark glass. But I couldn’t get up and leave the way she wanted me to. I’d gone too far along this particular road to make a detour at this stage. Apart from anything else, I felt angry with her. Whether it had something to do with the scene that had just taken place, or whether it was because of her continual refusal, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I took hold of her hand.

  ‘You have to believe me,’ I said. A desperate last fling, a last attempt to remain civilised.

  ‘Leave me,’ she said. ‘Let me go.’

  But why should I remain civilised when she wasn’t so far from the jungle herself? I remembered the scissors swinging down wildly on Eric. Was that civilised?

  I pulled her blouse open. She started to move away from me. I got hold of her waist and dragged her down on the sofa. My time was running out, had almost run out. My patience had snapped long ago. She was throwing her hands against my face, striking me. But I could suffer that.

  She managed to get her knee into the pit of my stomach and for a moment I rolled away, winded. She rushed out of the room and into the hall. I followed her just in time to see her vanish into the bedroom. Before I could get my foot in the door, I heard the lock snap.

  I stood there for a bit, looking at the thick door. It was best to be rational. I could not have persuaded her, in a year, to come out to me – therefore, I had to get in. I kicked the door a couple of times but nothing happened, except that I wrenched my ankle.

  ‘Please,’ she said from inside the room. ‘Please do not come in.’

  I didn’t listen. There wasn’t time. Part of me was saying, leave, leave now. But I had no time to listen to that either. I pu
shed my shoulder against the door.

  ‘I have bolted the door,’ she said. ‘You can never break it down.’

  I rushed at the door again. My rage was increasing with every minute that I wasted, battering my body against the stubborn bloody wood. I stopped and looked round for something to use. In the silence I heard her scream a couple of times.

  I found an axe in a cupboard at the end of the hall. It was a heavy instrument and the blade was rusty. But it would do far more than I could manage with my shoulder. She screamed while I banged the wood with the axe. She didn’t stop screaming. She wouldn’t stop. I wanted to get in there to make her stop. And then the bloody dog was howling from the yard.

  Every so often I thought, Why am I doing this? But I’d gone beyond the point of asking myself stupid questions. I wanted the woman. I wanted to make her stop screaming. There were no answers to such questions anyway. I only knew I had to get through the door.

  The wood began to splinter. Her screaming stopped. I could hear her sob. Christ, was she that afraid? I could hear her sob and beat her hands against the wall.

  I drove the axe clean through the panel. And then, with a couple more blows, the whole panel came away. I could see into the room.

  At last I could see into her bedroom.

  There was only a small, dim lamp burning by her bedside. She was lying hunched up on the bed, her hands stuffed into her mouth, staring at me with a wild fear.

  But it wasn’t at her that I was looking. It wasn’t at her. My eyes were drawn to a point beyond her head, to the other side of the room.

  I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t take in what I saw.

  On top of her furniture was a large glass jar. Inside the jar, suspended in liquid, was a white object covered in tattoos.

  I stared inanely for a long time. The axe had fallen to the floor. Everything else suddenly didn’t matter. Everything had become concentrated on that object, that white object, covered with pictures, in the glass jar.

  I started to say something. But as in a dream when it’s a matter of life and death that you speak, I could say nothing.

  I turned and ran down the corridor away from the broken shards of the door. I pulled my coat from the peg and ran into the street.

  I didn’t stop running until I got to Cricklewood Broad-way. A taxi. I had to get a taxi. I had to get to the airport. I stood on the kerb, feeling numb.

  I stared at the passing traffic.

  The taxi I wanted didn’t come. Instead, a large black Ford drew up beside me and I stepped forward, thinking only of putting a great distance between myself and Cricklewood, before I realised my mistake.

  By then it was too late to turn and run again. By then it was too late.

  7

  Bella Peluzzi

  When I hear the axe falling against the door I am frightened. I dare not think what he will do if he comes into the room. I cannot go back over all that again. I hear the axe breaking the wood into small splinters and I think, If he comes into the room I will die. I have already felt his hands on my body and his flesh against my mouth. I have seen his eyes on me when he did not think I was looking. He had followed me around the room, wanting to touch me. If it had not been for my fear that he might take Rex away from me, I would not let him into the house. Now I understand. He is not what he says he is. He is not interested in taking Rex away. He is only interested in getting through the door to me. I scream, but still the axe is falling time and time again against the wood. And then I see the tip of the blade come through. When I see it, I can scream no longer.

  I close my eyes. When the noise of the axe stops there is a long silence and I look to see what he is doing. There is a hole in the door. In the hole is his face. But now he is no longer interested in me. He is looking at something just behind and above me.

  And then I realise that he has seen Antonio’s arm.

  For a minute he does nothing. The mouth hangs open with shock. Then he turns and runs down the passage and goes out of my sight. I hear the front door slam. Now what? Has he gone to the police? I do not get up from the bed at once because I feel weak and cannot trust my body to move. But he has gone and that is one blessing. There is no danger from him. For some time I lie there looking at the ceiling. My lamp throws a circle of pale light upon the plaster. And then I get up.

  I go into the back yard. Rex is lying by the wall, asleep. He could be a child, easily. He is sleeping so peacefully, except that sometimes he trembles. But he has had a fright. I pick up the bowl with the bones and empty the bones into the garbage can. And then I return to the house. There is nothing to do but sit in the front room. I look at my family pictures.

  At least Edward Carson has gone. When he touched me I could not bear to feel his skin against mine. I could not stand the thought of our flesh coming into contact. When he touched me, held my hand, placed his fingers on my knee, I could see the pores of his body opening up, each pore a large hole filled with his sweat. I felt ill when he touched me. But he is gone, and will not be coming back.

  But the police may come. He may go to the police and tell them what he has seen. I do not want them here.

  I put a record on the gramophone. Tosca. When the music is in the room everything is different. All the nerves go out of the world, it is like light shining in the dark. I do not think Edward Carson understood my music. He did not realise the soul in it. To him, it was just noise. But that was only because his mind was small and he could not think of anything else but my body.

  Even Antonio did not like my music. But he was similar in many ways to Edward Carson.

  When I listen to the music sometimes I think about Antonio. I do not think of our life together. Instead, I remember our wedding. Oh, it was a beautiful wedding. The night was warm, we made our vows, there were lamps burning in the twilight, and later, when it was dark, they shone down through the warm blackness, surrounded by night moths. Everyone was dancing and drinking. Even the old women were laughing. Even the widows who had come just to weep over what was past were smiling, a little drunk.

  It was a beautiful wedding. It was spoiled when I allowed Antonio to kiss me. We had never kissed before, although he had tried often. But always my mother had been there, watching over us. She worried about me. I was marrying too late, she would say. That is her photograph, sixth from the left beyond the flowers.

  I let him kiss me in the darkness. I did not mind his hands around me or even his legs pushed in against my body. It was fine until I felt his mouth open and my own lips drawn inside his mouth, and his tongue pushing forcefully as if he wanted me to open my mouth for him. I felt sick then. When he knew that something was wrong, he let me go. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Ah, you know so little, you have a lot to learn, my girl. But I will teach you, wait and see.

  But it is not good to think of such things. Antonio is dead. I listen to the music. When it stops I go into the kitchen and make coffee. Then I take the coffee into the front room again, what the English call the parlour. I sit down, after turning the record over.

  My mother used to say, You are a dreamer, girl. Your head doesn’t sit properly on your shoulders. There is a great distance between your body and your brain.

  She wanted me married. Sometimes she arranged for young men to call, even to court me. But they called once, most of them, and never came again. I thought then that it was because my mother insisted on watching everything that went on. She did not let me out of her sight when I was with a young man. Only Antonio persisted and that was because he had lived such a dissipated life, no other woman in the neighbourhood would have him. Besides, he was not a handsome man. His body was thick and flabby and his face was scarred and pocked.

  The music fills the room. It relaxes me, it floats over me like soft, warm water. I close my eyes and drift with it. Then, when it is finished, I go through to the bedroom. I will have to repair the hole in the door. But it is better to have that small inconvenience than to have suffered Edward Carson�
�s body … I dare not think about that now.

  There in the glass jar is Antonio’s arm. I used to have all of him in jars once. Now there is only the arm. It is the left arm.

  I lie on the bed and gaze up at the ceiling. I will not sleep. I do not sleep much at nights. My heart is beating quickly, because of the things that have happened tonight. I think about Edward Carson. Perhaps even now he is talking to a policeman. Will I have to go away? Will I leave here? But it is so difficult to find a suitable place in London where I can keep the dog. No, I will stay.

  Antonio gave me the dog as a present. At first we called him Pippi, but we changed the name when we came to London – for our fresh start, Antonio had said. Let us make a fresh start together, you and I. Our life up to now has been hell. We will begin again.

  It is sad and a little funny that the dog he gave to me as a gift of love, he should despise so deeply himself. But then there is no such thing in the world as love. There are situations when people say Love to each other, just as Edward Carson said it to me, but it does not mean anything. It is an empty thing to say. Edward Carson always said empty things.

  I look at the hole in the door. Now I do not feel so safe. Before, I would draw the bolts, turn the key, and pull the chain into place, and the room was safe for me. It was the only place where nothing threatened me. Now, because of the hole, it feels different. But I will buy some wood and make it safe again.

  Antonio used to say that I could do more practical things than he ever could. I should have been a man, he used to say, because I was so good with hammers and saws. Perhaps there is some truth in that. Anyhow, to-morrow I will put some wood over the hole in the door, and the room will become what it was before.

  With my eyes closed, I find myself thinking about Antonio. Sometimes in these thoughts, although I try to resist them, I feel a little guilty. Did I do the right thing? But that is a foolish question. I did the only thing I could do. I would have done the same thing with Edward Carson, if he had persisted. Once I even did. Once I put some of the same stuff into his food as I used to put in Antonio’s. Not much, only a little. Only enough to cause him bellyache. But I stopped doing it. It was something to do only as a last resort, as they say.