The Life of Death

by Lucy Booth

  He moves through to the kitchen, puts together a packed lunch. He’s got to eat while he’s working, right? If they ask who it’s for? And more than anything, he’s got to fill these minutes, these hours while he waits. Has to do something to drown out the little voice echoing through his head ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy …’

  As he leaves the house, Dave from number 35’s head pops up above the roof of his car.

  ‘Morning, Ian! Early start, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, um, got a job up Bakewell way. Thought I’d try and get an early start. Make the most of the afternoon, you know …’ He swings open the car door, trying to cut conversation short before it can turn to the inevitable. ‘C’mon, Bella. In you get, girl.’

  ‘That Ellie going missing’s a bit weird, innit? Just “poof ”, disappearing into thin air. Tell you what, Ian, some sicko’s probably got her. You never know where they are, do you? Probably one been living here for years and they’re never gonna tell us about it, are they? ’S only our kids at risk. This bloody country. Bring back hanging, I reckon. Eh, Ian? Ha, bring back hanging?’

  ‘Yeah … Hanging … Bloody paedos. Hanging round schools. Our kids. Hanging.’

  Stop rambling, Ian. Just shut up. Get in the car and go.

  ‘Maybe we should talk to the police. Ask if there’s anyone we should be looking out for. They must know who has a record.’

  ‘Good idea, Ian. We can always rely on you for an idea, can’t we? You not helping with the search today, then?’

  ‘Not this morning. Get this job out the way and hopefully get back in time to help this afternoon. Hope they find her before then, though. Poor little thing. Must be terrified. Anyway, better crack on. See you later, Dave.’

  ‘Aye – see you later.’

  And Dave stands back, watches as the car backs out of the drive and makes its way off the estate, swinging left on to the Bakewell Road. Gets in his car and heads off to the office, oblivious to the U-turn Ian’s making further up the road, car accelerating in exactly the wrong direction.

  And on the other side of town, in a static caravan stuffed with police officers, Sergeant Neil Edwards spots this U-turn on the cameras watching the roads out of town.

  ‘Sir? Sir? I think you’d better have a look at this …’

  19

  IT’S A SUNDAY. ACID-GREEN SPRING LEAVES FLUTTER against a brilliant blue sky and through the open sash windows Tom can hear the sound of picnicking parties heading for the Heath on the first warm day of the year. A knock at the door. Earlier than usual. Muffled voices. Whispering.

  Tom stands in the kitchen. Eyes the locked door warily as if the hinges are going to burst of their own accord and open him up to the outside world. He sinks against the cabinets as they bang a couple more times. Alex again. And Janey. Back for another try. The banging. The shouting of his name. The whispered congress between the two in the hallway. Tom presses himself up against the back of the door. Watches them through the peep-hole, huge heads on tiny bodies. Alex has always hated his nose and the fish-eye lens makes it look enormous. Tom smiles to himself. A tiny, inward smile, but a smile nevertheless. A crack. A chink. A breakthrough. As they turn to leave, he reaches up to the latch. Turns the key in the deadbolt. The warped bodies in the hallway stop in their tracks. Turn back to the door that has stood so solidly shut for the past month. It swings open slowly.

  Tom stands in the doorway. Can’t speak. His stubble’s grown to a beard and his hair stands on end. Skin is grey, dull. His eyes are tired. Hooded. Alex smiles at him. ‘Mate …’ Janey doesn’t hold back. Runs full at him and throws her arms around him.

  ‘You idiot!’ she sniffs. ‘You bloody idiot.’ She bursts into tears, wiping her nose against the front of his T-shirt. Punches lightly at his chest with a balled fist. He lifts his arms. Wraps them around her in his first proper human contact since … well.

  ‘I know,’ he mutters into the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just …’ The smell of her shampoo makes his head spin. The soft skin of her upper arm against his fingers makes him want to grab at her. Dig his fingers in and never let go. He takes a deep breath. Steadies himself.

  ‘Pint?’ Alex asks. Jerks his head in the direction of the street.

  Deep breath. ‘OK.’

  Down to the local. A typical London pub straddling the corner of a busy crossroads. Wooden picnic tables flank either side, hanging baskets bloom and burgeon overhead. They perch on the end of a bench, amber pints glinting in the sun, crisp packets spread out on the table to share. Alex and Janey chat, allowing Tom his space. It’s enough that he’s made it outside. He can’t concentrate. Can’t catch the words that trail through the air in front of him like smoke. One minute they’re there, the next minute they’re gone. Vanished for good and he can’t remember for the life of him what they were.

  He shakes his head. Doesn’t even try to keep up. Closes his eyes and turns his face to the sun. Smiles at the babble of voices that wash around him. It’s good to be out.

  He feels a nudge in his ribs. Opens his eyes to see Alex and Janey are looking at him, eyebrows raised in a mutual question. ‘Well? What do you reckon?’

  ‘Umm … well … I …’

  ‘To-om! Do you want to come or not?’ Janey’s looking at him expectantly. Eyebrow cocked, grin wide.

  Fuck. He really needs to listen. ‘Come to … ?’

  ‘Nekros … ? They’re re-forming. For one gig only. Finsbury Park in July. It’s going to be epic! We got tickets and they were like gold dust and Alex spent all day on the website the other day and WE got them. And we got one for you. We can’t go without you! Will you come?’

  The surrounding babble of voices bubbles into a flood. Blood rushing in his ears. Passing traffic deafening. Nekros. A rock band from the seventies. They had one cheesy ballad. One cheesy ballad that was theirs. His and Kate’s. The last song of countless nights at uni, swaying slowly under sweeping lights.

  He shakes his head. ‘I … can’t … it’s … me and Kate … it was …’ It’s playing in his head. The chorus looping around and around. ‘Don’t walk away, don’t turn to say …’ He squeezes his eyes shut. Drops his head to his knees. Breathe, Tom. Breathe.

  ‘Oh. Shit. Mate. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. Of course not.’ Alex glances at Janey over the top of Tom’s head. Fuck. She’s frozen. Staring at Tom. Unable to move.

  Mortified.

  Tom stands. ‘I’m going to …’ He lets the sentence hang. He needs to be alone. Alex and Janey have no words. They can only watch as shoulders slump and shoes scuff their way home to an empty flat to slam the door shut and settle the lock back into place.

  Sleepless night has followed sleepless night for month upon month. Watching the figures on the alarm clock click and flick. I visit every night now, and tonight’s no exception. Curl up in the leather armchair in the corner of the bedroom to watch over him as he finally falls into a restless sleep. Legs kick off the duvet and hands bunch pillows under his head. Lips mutter her name in the dark.

  Tonight it’s worse. As he lies in the dark with the lyrics to their song playing on repeat in his head, worming their way into his brain however tightly screwed his eyelids, however close he holds his palms over his ears. It becomes too much to bear. I can’t watch this again, for another night to be followed by another and another, unchanging. This never-ending, all-consuming pain and fear and desolation.

  So I creep in. I can’t help myself. Climb onto the bed, onto her side. Slipping under the heavy duvet to rest my head on her pillows. I lie on my side straight in the bed, not touching him. He’s lying flat on his back staring at the ceiling. Profile outlined by the green highlight of the alarm clock. Slowly, gently, I reach out a hand to rest it lightly on his chest. Feel the rough texture of chest hair under my fingertips. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t know I’m there. I shift myself over on the mattress, until the length of my body fits against his. Rest my head against his shoulder. And as we lie there, watching the green digits that light the
room, 01:43, 02:17, his lids droop, breath slows. And together we sleep.

  I wake to birdsong and dappled light. The room is bathed in the soft green light of new leaves. Tom is wrapped around me, stretched diagonally across the bed. His leg is thrown over my hips, his arm lies over my chest, curling around my cheek to where his fingers knot in my hair. For the first time in weeks he’s not been awake to see the sunrise, and as I slip out of the bed, allowing him to curl into the warmth I leave behind, still he sleeps. I want to stay here, with him, together alone. But I have work to do. Abhorrent, hateful work. But work that will bring me here to him for good.

  20

  I KNOW THAT IN TAKING THIS ONE LIFE, I AM automatically signing a warrant on another. I know that in three months I’ll be sitting on a metal-framed bunk, knees drawn up against my chest while Ian swings by the neck, legs kicking in mid-air to search out a chair knocked sideways, eyes bulging, his face turning purple.

  Sitting on that narrow bunk when the first warder finds him and the alarm is raised and prison officers flood into the tiny cell to cut him down and lay him flat and push futilely against a stiffening ribcage.

  I know that he never wanted to be here. That he never wanted to have those thoughts that have lingered for years. Never wanted to be sitting in a darkened room in the middle of nowhere with the shallow, shuddering breaths of a seven-year-old for company. He fought those thoughts. Fought them every day, year after year. Until I came along.

  But now, what option is there but to get rid of her? If he lets her go and she blabs they’ll lock him up for sure. And he’s heard what they do to men like him in prison. To the nonces. The paedos. The kiddie-fiddlers. The lowest of the low. But he can’t keep her for ever – the police aren’t going to give up looking. One of these days there’ll be a police dog at the door whining and whimpering like a bitch. Scrabbling and scraping at the door. Growling between gritted teeth. Biting at his heels while he’s led away, head hanging, arms cuffed behind his back. The shame. The out-and-out shame of it.

  If he gets rid of her somehow, though, if she becomes the case that never gets solved. If he shuts her up once and for all. Buries her in the woods. Shallow enough to manage by himself, deep enough to hide her for ever. If he does that, if he gets away with it, then he can live his life and no one will be any the wiser.

  Enough of this dilly-dallying, Ian, this shilly-shallying as the days pass and the clock ticks. Time is running out for both me and Ellie. The two-week limit He gave me is fast approaching – it took a week to psych myself up to find my perfect stooge, to summon up the courage to take her. And four days in this hole leaves us with only three days to finish the job.

  As the sun sets on another day of searching, Ian sneaks back from town to the watermill. Pockets of his huge parka stuffed with what he could find in the cupboards. A packet of biscuits. Lump of cheese. Two apples. Bella sits next to him on the front seat, studiously ignoring him and staring out of the window at the passing countryside.

  I’m waiting with Ellie while he arrives. Waiting in the damp, in the dark and the dank. Moss-slimed walls drip, drip, drip in the half-light as the wind whistles and whispers to us through cracks in the lichen-smeared windows. At the sound of the car pulling up outside, at the sight of searching headlamps sweeping across the sodden walls, she stiffens, shrinks back against the upright of the chair.

  Screws her eyes closed. If she pretends to be asleep, maybe he’ll leave her alone this time. He cried yesterday and the day before. Why would he keep doing something if it makes him cry? He apologises to her again and again and again. But why would he keep doing something if it makes him so sorry?

  The thing is, though, in this slimy-smudged, darkened gloom, he doesn’t touch her. Not in that way. He doesn’t do those things he’s planned, that have so haunted his daydreams and nightmares. And he hasn’t. Not yet, not since he first tied her to that chair. And he won’t. Because every day, as he unlocks the door, the doubts kick and spit at the pit of his stomach. As Bella bustles past him to hurry along and lick tears from a smeared cheek, his mouth fills with saliva and he feels the retches rising. As he locks the door and leans back against it the words he has practised in his head, so jolly and forced, leave him. Trail away – a breathed, unspoken wisp of air. His limbs go heavy, paralysed by fear, by guilt, by the memory of an uncle’s exploring fingers burrowing under a lumpy duvet. His nostrils fill with the sharp scent of urine and squalor, the muddied stench of caked faeces. They overwhelm him, these sights, these sounds, these smells.

  He slumps against the strutted wooden door. A wail, a moan. The phantom feel of fingers from thirty years ago pressing at soft skin and stroking at silken hair makes him wonder for the umpteenth time what he has done.

  So while he wants to do something – to touch her, to love her, to make her his own – mind trumps muscle and for the time being at least she is safe from his darkest thoughts.

  Instead, he embraces her. Places a chair next to hers and tips wooden legs on their points to lean her body against his. Wraps lumbering great arms around fragile shoulders in a misplaced attempt to soothe, to comfort. But she won’t yield, she can’t. Her body is held in catatonic rigidity, limbs stiff, eyes glazed and unseeing. He tries to stroke away the fear. Tangles thick fingers in matted clumped hair. And he cries. And he whispers. That he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s sorry. Forgive him, forgive him, forgive him. He lulls himself, rocking and murmuring and gazing into the past.

  He revolts me.

  I have to end this. For her sake. This cycle of fear in this damp-walled prison. There’s only one way I can stop it happening. And that’s to end it all. To take his hand and guide it over her face. Pinching closed the small nostrils and covering her mouth with a meaty palm.

  After an hour of this sobbing, this rocking, this snot-smeared apologising, a switch flicks and he comes to his senses. He looks around him into the gloom. As if he doesn’t know why he’s here, doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t know what he’s doing. His eyes are confused, stubby fingers rake through grubby hair and he backs away, stumbling over loose scree on the mill floor. Stumbles and fumbles his way to a corner where his body slumps against the dripping moss walls and the apologies resume. Sobbing and apologising through spit and snot. Apologising again and again and again. Ellie is motionless but for shaky breaths that rock her ribcage. The chair stands upright once again, her head a snowdrop nodding on its fragile stem. A half-eaten apple lies discarded on the floor next to her and her face is turned away from the figure in the corner.

  Vacant eyes stare in sleepless exhaustion as her young mind battles to protect her from the horror with which she is surrounded. She’s cut herself off. Taken herself to another world where she can see the trees and play with her brothers and curl into her mother’s lap for a bedtime story. Her lips are moving in almost silent song and if I strain I can hear the faint melody of nursery rhymes from a happier time.

  I make my way over to Ian through the darkness and light cast by the camping light hung from the exposed beams. He’s curled into a ball and shaking. Whispering to himself over and over again, ‘No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.’

  He sickens me, this curled body in this squalid cell. For that’s what it is, this mill on the stream in this valley no one visits. A cell. The damp, the dark and the dank. The moss-slimed walls that drip, drip, drip in the half-light and the wind that whistles and whispers to us through those cracks in the lichen-smeared windows. It is a prison. Like mine, all those years ago. I know that other world, the one she has retreated to in her mind. Far away from this dirty little room. I know that world and she can’t hide there for ever.

  Come on, Ian. It’s time.

  I haul him to his feet, draping his arm around my shoulder to support a weight buckling on weakened knees. Lead him across the room to where she sits. Head still turned away. She can sense him moving towards her in the dim light. Can smell his unwashed skin. Hear his breath catching. Her lips start to move more quickly, the
nursery rhymes blurt out a little louder, a little quicker, unnaturally quick even for their light-hearted content.

  Bella runs forward to nip him on the ankle and we kick her in tandem. A swift boot in the ribs to send her whining into a corner to watch helpless.

  We reach the chair and lean forward to stroke her hair, hanging limp and greasy over a dirt-smeared face. Her body is rigid with fear. He’s never come back before, never come back for more. He’s always left. After the crying and the saying sorry again and again and again. He’s always left her alone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ellie. I didn’t mean to do it.’

  Tears sprout once more from her eyes. Huge drops that bloom on pale cheeks and drift south. Shoulders shudder and lips move in their silent song. She pulls her body as far away from him as possible against the shackles holding wrist and ankle.

  ‘I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I did it. But, I can’t let you go now, can I? If you go, and you tell your mum and dad, then they’ll come and get me and lock me away for ever. And I can’t do that, Ellie. Do you know what they’d do to me in there? To people like me? You wouldn’t want that, would you? Ellie? You wouldn’t want them to hurt me?’

  He continues his mumbling, his voice shaking, while fingers are fumbling at knots and tape. ‘So it’s better if I just hide you away. Let you go to sleep for ever and ever. Hide you away where no one can find you. And then me and Bella can go back to the way we were. You wouldn’t want me to leave Bella all alone, would you? Ellie? Would you?’

  She’s gasping. Sucking in short, nervous breaths. Tiny body quivering with fear. She’s heard about dead before. Heard about when people go to sleep for ever in heaven and you never see them again. Is that what he wants to do? Make her dead?