‘Obviously they couldn’t do that as a punitive measure, and apparently it wasn’t justified in view of her progress.’
‘You mean they thought she’d been cured?’
‘At least to the point where she was no longer regarded as a threat to society. There may also have been other considerations we don’t know about. The authorities may have been given a quiet word that Oona would be taken in charge by Rosalind, and that the two intended to leave Britain permanently. It might even be that the twelve thousand pounds Rosalind received was provided by some wealthy do-gooder for just such a purpose.’
‘I suppose that is possible.’
‘By all accounts, her record at Low Newton was adequate. No major infractions, no trouble-making or violent behaviour. But it showed no special achievements of any kind. She took classes and received passing grades. She saw counsellors, social workers and psychologists, the usual battery of experts. We couldn’t see any of their reports, obviously, and we didn’t come across any public comments about her by any of the personnel at Low Newton. It was all done very quietly, her release. No doubt they hoped to avoid re-inflaming public opinion about her, and for the most part they succeeded. I assume that Oona slipped out of the country a short while later with Rosalind.’
‘She must have done,’ Oliver said.
‘Yes. Well, I think that’s about it, in brief. You’ll find more details in the news reports, but do bear in mind they’re not always completely accurate.’
‘Of course. Thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful, and at such short notice.’
‘Thank you.’ Mr Pond handed Oliver a slip of paper. ‘This is our bill, if I may.’
‘Certainly.’ Oliver took out his cheque book on the Coutts account that he still kept open in England.
Mr Pond smiled. ‘I would like to ask you something in turn.’
‘Yes?’ Oliver said warily.
‘This is your business and I have no wish to pry, but as I’m from Newcastle, and I do remember this case, I can’t help feeling a tiny bit curious about Clare Oona Muir. If you happen to know, would you mind telling me what she’s doing now?’
Oliver laughed. ‘She’s a fortune-teller.’
Mr Pond blinked, and then realized that, in fact, Oliver was perfectly serious. Now he looked somewhat disappointed, but he shook his head and smiled. ‘Is she, by God. Well, well. It’s a wonderful life, isn’t it?’
* * *
Oliver didn’t open the folders until he had poured himself a large duty-free Scotch and was settled comfortably in an armchair in his hotel room. He propped up his feet on the bed, lit a cigarette, set Pond’s reports aside without even glancing at them and turned immediately to the photocopied newspaper clippings.
The first photograph of Oona took his breath away. Her eyes dominated in cold newsprint, as they did in life, staring evenly out at the world, too open, too knowing. Too unforgiving. Oona might have been only eleven years old at the time, but those eyes must have unnerved a good many people when she forced the country to sit up and take notice.
She was so far ahead of him.
Her hair was surprisingly short in the picture, trimmed in a Rubber Soul mop-top, the fringe neatly parted in a tight inverted V in the middle of her forehead. It was quite thick and full but nothing like the mane she now possessed.
Oona’s face was younger, but not much. The Oona he knew had hardly aged in ten years, in spite of all she’d been through. It was a personal snapshot, not a police or newspaper photograph, Oliver realized. She looked as if she had applied a bit too much make-up to her face. Her lips were rather dark and full, her eyes shadowed. A girl trying to look like a young woman, and she still had that quality today. The photo had probably been taken at a party or some other such occasion.
The rest was suddenly uninteresting to Oliver and he quickly scanned the contents of both folders. Details, details, but none of them essential. He didn’t care if the home secretary had had a hard time deciding what to do with Oona. Oliver could go back over all that some other time, but he could see that Mr Pond had given him an accurate and thorough summary of the case.
He turned again to the first photograph of Oona.
Oliver gazed at the grainy black-and-white image. He wanted to cry. She was so beautiful. She would be perfect for him, the ultimate Myra. If only they had met at the right time, if only a few things in his life were different, and in hers. If only this and if only that, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck it.
Was it too late?
You know me, Oliver thought, but now I know you, and nothing will ever be the same. You never had a proper father, but that wasn’t the real problem. It was your mother, wasn’t it? She was never there for you, even when she was there. Everything else in that household was probably bad enough, a kind of swirling chaos of pain and fear, hatred and need, but your mother was the centre of gravity, the black hole at the heart of it all.
That’s why you used the word mother so many times and in so many ways in your psychic rants. They were only marginally about me or Carrie, or the O’Donnells. They were really all about you and your mother. I know, love, I know.
Oliver forced himself to stop grinding his teeth. He took a long drink of Scotch, drained the glass and poured another. He felt as if an iron bar had been removed from somewhere inside his chest, a dead weight he’d been carrying around all his life. Oona was like him. She knew.
It was different but the same. Oliver’s mother had always been there, suffocatingly omnipresent. He had watched her slowly wear down his father, sanding him away like a piece of wood until there was nothing left but dust. It was just the little things, the million daily little things that cumulatively add up and make human life intolerable. The only justice came when his father’s heart finally gave out – on the M5 at 110 m.p.h. Oliver’s mother had died at the same time. He liked to think that, somehow, the old boy had done it on purpose.
But the price was too high. No man should have to yield his life to escape. Why did his father stick with her? Why not just leave, separate, divorce? Had it been for Oliver’s sake?
No. Please, no.
You’re so beautiful, he thought, staring at the photograph. Oona had been out for more than three years now. So why have you stopped? It’s Roz, your surrogate mother. Roz had Oona trapped in that psychic racket. Scream for a bit of affection, bleed for the money we live on. And beat your brains out because Roz won’t let you do the one thing you want to do and need to do and like. She even has you convinced you’re helping people. It’s that much easier to sell torture and slavery if the victim actually thinks there’s a point to it. But it was sick, that’s all.
How could he kill her now?
Oona, if I could save you would you come with me?
Be my my my my my Myra?
* * *
He couldn’t stay in. This information made him restless and excited. Oliver had a burger at a place down the street and then continued on to the Edgar Wallace pub, just off the Strand. He’d read a number of the Wallace thrillers and mysteries when he was about twelve or thirteen – his father had had a whole shelf of them. They would probably seem simple and rather silly now, but at that age Oliver had fallen in love with the image of a vanished London conveyed in the books. It was the London of the 1920s, by turns glitzy or grey, gaudy or drab, swathed in cold wet fog. A London somehow always exotic, and wonderfully dangerous.
Forty miles and a lifetime away from the house in Aylesbury, where he’d been raised by a quiet stamp-collecting accountant dad and his – and his dad’s wife.
Oliver had been dreaming of London for years, long before he finally got to the city. And it had been great for a while, but then New York drew him. Perhaps that had been the mistake. He could move back. Carrie would do it. But then what?
He had a wife, work, a range of business activities, a whole life – apart from himself. It was dangerous to imagine he could somehow scrap all of that – with Oona? – and merge with himself to be re
born, complete and fully realized. No, no. That way was the path to chaos and collapse. He could kill them all if he had to – Carrie, Marthe, Becky, Roz and even Oona. That would be an astonishing feat. But a greater admission of failure was hard to conceive.
And what would be left of him then? His true self, pure and supremely unconstrained? Or nothing at all?
The Edgar Wallace was somehow comforting, as always, but too quiet just now. Oliver finished his pint and caught a cab to the Miranda club. It was quiet there too, but the usual late-evening crowd was starting to drift in. Soon he would be able to feel at peace in their midst, blurred and anonymous.
Perhaps Marthe was the best he could hope for, after all. A ferocious lover, not a placid wife. A partner in lighting up the dark, who shared his monumental secrets. Marthe had a talent for it, no question. But there was something missing in her. She was not the perfect Myra.
He knew what it was. Marthe was too much like him. Unique, different if not special, talented, bright, sui generis. In sum, she was not ordinary enough and never would be.
That was what made the real Myra Hindley – and the barbaric child-killings, the Moors murders, that she participated in some thirty years ago in Manchester with her crabbed little pea-brain of a man, Ian Brady – so fearfully compelling, so significant in the annals of crime. Myra was as ordinary as a block of wood but she had gone all the way down to the bottom of the deepest trench in the deepest part of the deepest ocean, where all of the great transactions in the secret agenda of the true soul are conducted. Myra had been there. She knew.
Oliver sipped his drinks, smoked his cigarettes, and watched the dancers stripping. A fair crowd for a week night. He felt a growing sense of confidence and certainty. He was touching down, feeling solid ground beneath his feet again, and it was good. He was lost in the club, the crowd, the babble and music, the bodies and heat, the joyful pointlessness of it all – all of which, for reasons he never understood, made him feel safe.
* * *
Alone, later in his hotel room, he took out the photograph of Oona. Slum goddess of the far north. Oliver could love her, she was perfect: ordinary but fearless, damaged but pure. Oh, yes, he could save her, and love her, and they could go on to write their own occult history between the lines of life. But that was only a dream. A connection missed. The beautiful terrors never to be achieved. Oliver’s heart ached. Too bad. But fuck fuck fuck it all anyway. Oona had challenged him.
* * *
‘This floor is cold.’
‘Why not?’
‘What do you mean, why not?’
‘It’s a floor. All floors are cold.’
‘A mattress would help.’
Marthe snorted. ‘Too soft.’
‘Well, some extra blankets, then.’
‘If you want.’ Obviously she didn’t.
‘I love you,’ Oliver said.
‘Jerk-off.’
‘Fuck you, bitch.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Bored.
‘Shit-eating cunt.’
She smiled. ‘Yes?’
‘Why am I being nice to you?’
‘Because you’re stupid. Asshole.’
‘Arse.’
‘Stupid.’
He pushed the second vibrator into her, ramming it with the heel of his hand. Marthe winced and let out a squeal. ‘This is your arse,’ he said, slamming it again, forcing another yelp from Marthe. ‘Understand? Not your ass, your arse.’ She was down on her belly, hips raised. He reached under to make sure the other one wasn’t going to slide out. Then he crawled around, kneeling in front of her. He grabbed her by the ears, twisting her hair, roughly yanking up her head at an uncomfortable angle. ‘You were saying? Eh? What were you saying, cunt?’
‘Faggot.’
He almost slapped her. ‘No, no,’ he said, grinning.
That annoyed her. ‘English faggot.’
All right, bing, a little slap, a teaser. Then another one, harder, and again and again, and so on, until he forced her mouth open and she loved it. Ram on.
He liked her purple eyes. Marthe had taken to using coloured lenses ever since that time he came on her face and it burned her right eye so painfully she had had to go to the doctor. Burning the eyes was not a very good idea.
The body, yes. Later he would kiss her scar tissue. Three horizontal lines burned into the skin between her tits. Six more down the lower left side of her back. Four on the right shoulder and two on the sole of each foot. Oliver had done them, branding Marthe with the fire of love. She liked it – no, she loved it. The searing, the stink, and then the splash of Cristal to purify the wound. But where next? Perhaps the back of her neck, or the soft skin behind the ears. Just above her bush, or maybe beneath each tit. There were so many possibilities. Marthe would choose the site. It was her body; it was her rite.
* * *
He always felt strangely sad when the time came. It wasn’t because he cared. He did, but not very much. Oliver felt that it had something to do with the underlying tidal sadness of life itself. The usual thing.
He was already rehearsing the phone call.
The fucking floor was so cold. He pushed up from the ratty blanket and poked Marthe. Enough of this dozing in the post-fuck haze of temporary respite. The energy was coming back to him now and he needed to move, do, make happen.
‘Are you ready?’
‘Sure, why not.’
Oliver picked up the knife as he got to his feet. He took a few steps to the chair where Becky was bound hand and foot, waist and neck, the ball gag tightly in place. Her eyes were open wide and she looked like a manic animal. Oliver hadn’t seen her blink once since she got there. Quite right, too.
Marthe got in place on her knees in front of Becky. Oliver knew exactly where to slide the blade so that it went in quickly, straight to the heart.
Becky-Becky Something-Something.
Marthe gasping and chirping in the spray.
Oliver went to the telephone and tapped out a long series of numbers. Bing bing pop bang click click click ding dong. To his great delight, the voice that answered was Oona’s.
‘Oi,’ he said. ‘Do you know me?’
Hesitation. ‘Oliver?’
‘Very good. I take it you’re all rested and recovered now, after your recent ordeal.’
‘How’s Germany?’
Oliver laughed. ‘You tell me.’
‘Someone is dead.’
Good. She knew, but she didn’t know.
‘You seem to be functioning quite well.’
‘Who is it?’
‘It would be easier to list the living.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Is Roz there?’
‘No.’
‘Great. This is for you alone.’
‘What?’
‘Do you understand? You alone.’
‘Yes. What is it?’
‘I know all about you.’
A very long, very gratifying pause at the other end.
‘No.’
‘Yes. It’s quite a story, isn’t it? The whole world would love to know. But I can save you from all that. We have to talk. In person. Alone.’
At Swim
Oona hung up and looked down at Roz. ‘He knows.’
Roz had a dab of shaving cream on her nose. ‘And I suppose he wants you for himself.’
‘Something like that. But he’s got it all wrong.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘He wants me to meet him at Heathrow.’
‘You can’t go there. I’ll see to it.’
‘But I want to.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Roz said. ‘You couldn’t do it. You have no idea how to negotiate with a man like that.’
‘You mean any man.’
‘You mean you care?’
Oona shrugged. ‘No, not really.’
‘All right then.’
‘Roz.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t go.’
�
�Better than waiting for him to come here.’
‘Don’t leave me alone.’
‘Only for a day or two.’ She kissed Oona’s belly. ‘You’ll be fine, you know you will.’
‘Not alone, please.’
‘It’ll be all right. You’ll see.’
‘No, no, no…’
‘Ah. You want his wife to stay with you.’
Oona smiled.
* * *
‘It doesn’t feel like it’s over,’ Carrie said. ‘It’s been a while since the last event, but I don’t have the feeling that I have come through something and understand it.’
‘Because it’s unfinished.’
‘I think so,’ Carrie said. ‘That must be why.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘What does it all suggest to you?’
‘We do this through you,’ Oona said, looking sad. ‘What do you think it could mean?’
‘At first I thought it was about my father, or Oliver. But the next events didn’t have anything to do with them.’
‘No?’
‘Until our last session with you,’ Carrie said. ‘Then, what you were saying matched the previous incident. I heard my father speak again, but most of it seemed to be about Oliver.’
‘Yes.’
Carrie frowned. ‘Was it something that happened in the past or something that could happen in the future? Was it literal, or metaphorical? A warning, in general terms.’
‘It could be just as it seems.’
‘Can you tell the difference?’ Carrie asked.
‘Sometimes.’ Oona lit a long thin cigarette and took a sip of her vodka. ‘You know inside.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Maybe you do.’
‘Oona, I’m just not sure about it.’
‘What did Oliver say to you after the last session?’
‘Oh.’ Carrie looked embarrassed. ‘He said that some of the things you said were lines from songs by Morrissey, and maybe the Sex Pistols. And that Mr O’Donnell had told him that some of it came from a book by Sir Walter Scott.’
Oona laughed. ‘I bet they’re right. What else?’
‘He said that he’d been to India before we were married, and he had an argument with some man, but that’s all there was to it. He never went to those places you mentioned.’
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