The Chalk Man

by C. J. Tudor

  They seem to consider my question and then Danks closes his notebook.

  “A body was found today that matches the description of your friend, Mickey Cooper.”

  A body. Mickey. I try to force this information down. It sticks in my throat. I can’t speak. It’s hard to breathe.

  “Are you okay, sir?”

  “I…I don’t know. It’s a shock. What happened?”

  “We recovered his body from the river.”

  “I bet he’s all bloated and green and fish have eaten his eyeballs.”

  “Mickey drowned?”

  “We’re still trying to establish the exact circumstances of your friend’s death.”

  “If he fell in the river, what is there to establish?”

  Something seems to pass between them.

  “Old Meadows Park is in the opposite direction to your friend’s hotel?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “So, why was he there?”

  “Maybe he decided to walk a bit farther to sober up? Or maybe he went the wrong way?”

  “Maybe.”

  They sound skeptical.

  “You don’t think Mickey’s death was an accident?”

  “On the contrary, I’m sure that’s the most likely explanation. However, we do have to explore all other options.”

  “Like?”

  “Is there anyone who might have wanted to do Mickey harm?”

  I feel a pulse begin to beat at the side of my head. Anyone who would have wanted to do Mickey harm? Well, yes, I can think of at least one person, but that person is hardly in a position to go running around parks at night, pushing Mickey in the river.

  “No, I can’t think of anyone.” In a slightly firmer voice I add, “Anderbury is a quiet town. I can’t imagine anyone hurting Mickey.”

  They both nod. “I’m sure you’re right. This is probably a very sad, unfortunate accident.”

  Just like his brother, I think. Sad, unfortunate and a little too much of a coincidence…

  “We’re sorry to have to bring you this news, Mr. Adams.”

  “It’s okay. It’s your job.”

  They push their chairs back. I stand to show them out.

  “There was one other thing?”

  Of course. There always is. “Yes?”

  “We found an item on your friend that was a little confusing. We wondered if you might be able to shed some light on it?”

  “If I can.”

  Furniss takes a clear plastic bag out of his pocket. He lays it on the table.

  Inside the bag: a piece of paper with a stick hangman drawn on it, and a single piece of white chalk.

  1986

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  My dad used to say that sometimes to my mum when she didn’t believe he could do something. It was an in-joke, I guess, because she would always look back at him and say, “No, me of no faith.” And they would laugh.

  I guess the point was that my parents weren’t religious, and they were pretty open about it. I suppose that’s why some people in the town viewed them with a bit of suspicion, and why a lot took the side of Reverend Martin over the clinic. Even those who supported Mum didn’t want to come out and say it; it was like they would be disagreeing with God or something.

  Mum grew thinner that autumn, and older, too. It had never really occurred to me until then that my parents were older than other parents (perhaps because when you’re twelve, anyone over twenty is pretty ancient). Mum hadn’t had me until she was thirty-six, so she was almost fifty.

  Part of it was working extra hard. She seemed to come home later and later each night, leaving Dad to cook tea, which was always interesting, if not always edible. Most of it—I guessed—had to do with the protesters who still circled the clinic’s entrance every day. Now about twenty of them. I had seen posters, too, in the windows of some shops in town:

  CHOOSE LIFE STOP THE MURDER

  SAY NO TO LEGAL MURDER

  JOIN THE ANDERBURY ANGELS

  That’s what the protesters called themselves, the Anderbury Angels, which I suppose was Reverend Martin’s idea. They didn’t look much like angels. I always thought of angels as serene and calm. The protesters were red-faced and angry, they shouted and spat. Looking back, I guess, like a lot of radicalized people, they believed they were doing the right thing, for some sort of higher purpose. So much so that they could excuse all the wrong things they did in their cause.

  —

  It was October by this point. Summer had grabbed its beach towels, buckets and spades and packed up for the season. The chimes of the ice-cream vans had already been replaced by the spit and bang of illicitly bought rockets; the scent of blossom and barbecues by the more acrid smell of bonfires.

  Metal Mickey hung out with us less. He had changed since his brother died. Or maybe we just didn’t know how to act with him anymore. He was colder, harder. He had always been snide and sarcastic, but now he was even more caustic. He looked different, too. He had grown (although Metal Mickey would never be tall), his features had sharpened and his braces had come off. In a way, he was no longer Metal Mickey, our friend. Suddenly, he was Mickey Cooper, Sean Cooper’s brother.

  If we were all a bit awkward around him, he and Hoppo seemed particularly at odds. It was the sort of building antagonism that simmered away slowly but was bound, at some point, to boil over into a full-blown fight. And it did. The day we got together to sprinkle Murphy’s ashes.

  Hoppo hadn’t buried him after all. His mum had taken Murphy’s body to the vet’s to be cremated. Hoppo kept the ashes for a while, then decided he wanted to leave them in the spot where Murphy used to lie, and where he breathed his last, in the park.

  We arranged to meet up at the playground at eleven on a Saturday. We sat on the roundabout, Hoppo clutching his little box of Murphy, all of us wrapped up in duffel coats and scarves. It was cold that morning. Bite-through-your-gloves and snap-at-your-face cold. That, and the fact that we were doing a pretty grim job, had all of us feeling down. When Mickey rocked up, fifteen minutes late, Hoppo leapt up.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  Mickey shrugged. “Just had stuff to do. Now there’s only me at home, Mum has me doing more chores.” He said it in his usual combative kind of way.

  It sounds cruel, but everything he said always went back to the fact that his brother was dead. Yes, we knew it was sad and tragic and all of that, but I suppose we just wished that he would stop going on about it, every minute of every day.

  I saw Hoppo sag a little and relent. “Well, you’re here now,” he said, in a tone that should have smoothed things over. Like Hoppo always did. But that morning Mickey was having none of it.

  “Dunno what your beef is, anyway. S’only a stupid dog.”

  I almost felt the crackle in the air.

  “Murphy was not just a dog.”

  “Yeah? So what could he do? Talk, do card tricks?”

  He was goading Hoppo. We all knew it, Hoppo knew it, but just because you know someone is trying to make you mad doesn’t mean you can stop yourself rising to it, although Hoppo did a good job.

  “He was my dog and he meant a lot to me.”

  “Yeah, and my brother meant a lot to me.”

  Fat Gav climbed off the roundabout. “We know, okay. This is different.”

  “Yeah, you all give a shit about the fact that a stupid dog is dead, but no one gives a shit that my brother is dead.”

  We all stared at him. No one knew what to say. Because, in a way, he was right.

  “See. None of you can even talk about him and yet we’re here because of some stupid, dumb, flea-ridden mutt.”

  “Take that back,” Hoppo said.

  “Or what?” Mickey grinned and took a step closer to Hoppo. Hoppo was a lot taller than Mickey; stronger, too. But Mickey had this crazy light in his eyes. Just like his brother. And you can’t fight crazy. Crazy always wins.

  “He was a stupid, dumb, flea-ridden mutt who shat himself all t
he time and stank. It’s not like he would have lived much longer anyway. Someone just put him out of his misery.”

  I saw Hoppo’s fists clench, but I still don’t think he would have actually hit Mickey if Mickey hadn’t reached forward and knocked the box out of his hand. It hit the concrete floor of the playground and broke open, ashes flying up in a small cloud.

  Mickey scuffed at them with his feet. “Stupid, dead, stinking old dog.”

  That’s when Hoppo charged forward with a weird, strangled cry. They both fell to the ground, and for a few seconds it was nothing but flailing fists and wrestling in the gray dust that used to be Murphy.

  Fat Gav stepped in to try to break the fight up. Nicky and I followed. Somehow we managed to pull them apart. Fat Gav got Mickey. I tried to hold Hoppo, but he shrugged me off.

  “What is the matter with you?” he shouted at Mickey.

  “My brother died, or did you forget?” He stared around at us. “Did you all forget?”

  He wiped at his nose, which was dribbling blood.

  “No,” I said. “We haven’t forgotten. We just want to be friends again.”

  “Friends. Yeah, right.” He sneered at Hoppo. “You want to know who hurt your stupid dog? I did. So you would know how it feels to lose someone you love. Maybe you should all know how it feels.”

  Hoppo screamed. He wrenched himself away from me and threw his fist hard at Mickey.

  I’m not quite sure what happened next. Either Mickey moved, or maybe Nicky tried to step in. Either way, I remember turning around to see Nicky on the ground, clutching at her face. Somehow, in the scrum, Hoppo’s flying fist had caught her smack bang in the eye.

  “You fucker!” she cried. “You stupid fucking fucker!”

  I wasn’t sure whether she meant Hoppo or Mickey, or whether it made any difference by that point.

  Hoppo’s face turned from anger to horror. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Fat Gav and I ran over to try to help her. She shook us off a bit shakily. “I’m fine.”

  But she wasn’t. Her eye was already swelling, ripe and purple. I knew, even then, that this was bad. I also felt angry. Angrier than I ever had. This was all Mickey’s fault. Right then—even though I really wasn’t a fighter—I wanted to smash his face in just as much as Hoppo had. But I never got the chance.

  By the time we had got Nicky to her feet, Fat Gav gabbling about getting her back to his mum’s and putting some frozen peas on her eye, Mickey had gone.

  —

  As it turned out, he was lying. The vet said that Murphy had probably been poisoned at least twenty-four hours before the funeral, maybe even longer. Mickey hadn’t killed Murphy. It didn’t really matter, though. Mickey’s presence had become its own poison, contaminating everyone around him.

  The peas helped Nicky’s eye go down a bit, but it still looked pretty bruised when she set off home. I hoped she wouldn’t get into trouble. I told myself she would probably make up some story to tell her dad and things would be fine. I was wrong.

  That evening, just as my dad was making my tea, there was a banging at the front door. Mum was still at work, so Dad wiped his hands on his jeans and rolled his eyes. He walked to the door and opened it. Reverend Martin stood outside. He wore his vicar’s clothes and a small black hat. He looked like someone out of a picture of the olden days. He also looked really mad. I hovered in the hallway.

  “Can I help you?” my dad said, in a way that sounded like it was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “Yes. You can keep your son away from my daughter.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My daughter has a black eye because of your son and his little gang.”

  I almost blurted out that they weren’t actually my gang. But then I also felt quite proud hearing them called that.

  Dad turned. “Ed?”

  I shuffled uncomfortably. My cheeks flamed. “It was an accident.”

  He looked back at the reverend. “If my son says it was an accident, I believe him.”

  The pair of them stared at each other. Then Reverend Martin smiled.

  “What should I expect? The apple does not fall far from the rotten tree: ‘You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.’ ”

  “Preach all you like, Reverend,” Dad said. “But we all know you don’t practice it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Not the first black eye your daughter has sported, is it?”

  “That is slander, Mr. Adams.”

  “Really?” Dad took a step forward. I was pleased to see Reverend Martin flinch slightly. “ ‘For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.’ ” Dad smiled a nasty smile of his own. “Your church won’t protect you forever, Reverend. Now get the hell off my doorstep before I call the police.”

  The last thing I saw was Reverend Martin’s open mouth before my dad slammed the door shut in his face.

  I felt my chest swell with pride. My dad had won. He had beaten him.

  “Thanks, Dad. That was ace. I didn’t know you knew stuff from the Bible.”

  “Sunday school—some bits stick in your head.”

  “It really was just an accident.”

  “I believe you, Eddie…but…”

  No, I thought. No “but.” Buts were never good, and this one I sensed was particularly bad. Buts were, as Fat Gav once put it, “the kick in the balls of a good day.”

  Dad sighed. “Look, Eddie. Maybe it would be better if you didn’t see Nicky, just for a while, anyway.”

  “She’s my friend.”

  “You’ve got other friends. Gavin, David, Mickey.”

  “Not Mickey.”

  “Oh, have you fallen out?”

  I didn’t reply.

  Dad bent and placed his hands on my shoulders. He only did that when he was being really serious.

  “I’m not saying you can’t ever be friends with Nicky again but, right now, things are complicated, and Reverend Martin…well, he’s not a very nice man.”

  “So?”

  “Maybe it’s best if you just keep your distance?”

  “No!” I pulled away.

  “Eddie—”

  “It’s not best. You don’t know. You don’t know anything.”

  Even though I knew it was childish and stupid, I turned and ran upstairs.

  “Your tea’s ready—”

  “I don’t want it.”

  I did. My stomach was growling, but I couldn’t eat a thing. Everything was going wrong. My whole world—and when you’re a kid your friends are your world—was being torn apart.

  I pushed aside my chest of drawers and prised open the loose boards underneath. I considered the contents inside and then pulled out a small box of colored chalks. I picked up the white and, without really thinking, I started scrawling across the floorboards, again and again and again.

  “Eddie.”

  A tap, tap at the door.

  I froze. “Go away.”

  “Eddie. Look, I’m not going to stop you from seeing Nicky…”

  I waited, chalk in hand.

  “…I’m just asking you, okay? For me and your mum.”

  Asking was worse, and Dad knew it. I closed my fist around the chalk, crumbling it to pieces in my hand.

  “What do you say?”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. It felt like all my words had lodged in my throat, choking me. Eventually, I heard my dad’s heavy footsteps trudge back downstairs. I looked down at my drawings. White chalk figures, scribbled in a frenzy, over and over again. Something stirred uneasily in my stomach. Quickly, I scrubbed them out with my sleeve until the floor was just a misty white blur.

  —

  The brick came through the window later that night. It was fortunate I was already in bed and Mum and Dad were eating a late supper in the kitchen, because if they had
been in the front room, they might have been hurt by flying glass, or worse. As it was, the brick put a sizable hole in the glazing and smashed up the telly but no one was injured.

  Predictably, the brick had a little message secured around it with an elastic band. Mum never told me what it said at the time. She probably thought it might have scared or upset me. Later, she confessed that the note said: “Stop killing babies, or your family will be next.”

  The police turned up, again. And a man came to put a wooden board over the window. Afterward, I heard Mum and Dad arguing in the living room when they thought I had gone back to bed. I crouched on the stairs, listening, feeling a little scared. Mum and Dad never argued. Yes, sometimes they snapped at each other, but not proper arguing. Not harsh, raised voices like this argument.

  “We can’t go on like this.” Dad, sounding angry and upset.

  “Like what?” Mum, tense and taut.

  “You know what I mean. Bad enough you’re working all hours, bad enough those idiot evangelists are intimidating women outside your clinic, but now this: threats against your own family?”

  “It’s just scare tactics, and you know we don’t bow to scare tactics.”

  “This is different. It’s personal.”

  “It’s just threats. This sort of thing has happened before. Eventually, they’ll get bored. They’ll move on to some other godly cause. It will die down. It always does.”

  Even though I couldn’t see him, I could picture my dad shaking his head and pacing up and down, like he did when he was upset.

  “I think you’re wrong, and I’m not sure I want to take that chance.”

  “Well, what would you have me do? Leave my job? My work? Stay at home and climb the walls while we try to scrape by on a freelance writer’s salary?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Couldn’t you go back? To Southampton? Let someone else take over Anderbury?”

  “This was my project. My ba—” She seemed to catch herself. “This was my opportunity to prove myself.”

  “At what? Becoming a hate figure for those crazies?”

  A pause.

  “I am not leaving my job, or the clinic. Don’t ask me.”

  “And what about Eddie?”