Artefacts of the Dead

by Tony Black

  ‘Sounds beyond glamorous.’

  ‘It’s beyond the beyonds . . . Nobody goes to Mossblown unless they have to, and even then you’d try to avoid it if you could.’

  The traffic lights turned to green and the left lane cleared enough for Valentine to put the foot down. They’d passed Tesco and were well on their way to the bypass before the weather turned again. He put on the wipers and wound up the inch or so of window he had left open to the elements.

  As they reached the Whitletts roundabout the traffic started to slow again; it seemed as good a time as any for Valentine to broach the subject on his mind.

  ‘Sylvia, about that little chat we had earlier . . .’

  She turned her head towards him. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I know you think you saw something, and I know you think you’re helping me, but . . .’

  She interrupted his flow of words. ‘There’s always one of them, isn’t there?’

  He glanced towards her. The expression she wore was the one he expected, a mix of disappointment and sadness tinged with no little hurt. ‘I’m grateful to you for your concern, obviously . . .’

  ‘Oh, obviously.’ The tone lapsed into polished sarcasm; the change didn’t suit her.

  The lights on the roundabout were red; he came off the accelerator and pressed the brake. As the car slowed to a halt the tension inside was building to the level of nuclear fallout. ‘All I want to say is, let me deal with this in my own way.’

  She poked her jaw out and looked towards the wet fields in the distance. ‘And you’d like me to mind my own business, I suppose.’

  ‘Sylvia . . .’ He didn’t think he had said anything to merit this reaction; were they talking at cross purposes, he wondered?

  She turned to face him as the car came to a halt. ‘It’s OK, boss, I know when to bite my tongue.’ She looked away again. ‘You’ve no need to worry about that . . . Consider your wee secret safe with me.’

  43

  Clare Valentine removed her wedding ring for the first time in nearly twenty years and stared at the white band of skin beneath. It seemed a strange sight; the pale, sagging skin that usually sat beneath the band of gold looked surreal exposed to the wider world. She grasped the ring between finger and thumb and held it up to the light, and myriad tiny scratches glinted before her eyes. Each scratch was a memory, an experience, and whether they were worth recalling or burying deep in her unconscious didn’t matter: they were still there, they existed – perhaps more than she did now.

  Clare returned the wedding ring to the dresser beneath the window and stared at it from the stool where she sat. It looked so insignificant, tiny. Just a piece of metal, really. But what significance they attached to it. She could remember the day she and Bob picked the wedding bands from the jeweller on New Market Street. She had thought about white gold, but on her finger it didn’t look substantial enough. Her mother had a wide gold band that signalled solidity. She wanted that too.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit big?’ Bob had said. ‘Like something to go through a bull’s nose . . .’

  She smiled at the memory. There were many more like it, still stored away, secreted in the strangest of places, surfacing when you least expected them.

  How could she bury those memories? Did she want to?

  Clare turned away from the window and half-rose from her seated position, then decided to sit down again; as she slumped back to the stool she sighed heavily. She felt weary, tired, more so than she had ever felt; it was like all vitality had been drained from her, sucked away to who knows where. She dropped her face into the palm of her hands and started to cry. The sobbing lasted only a few moments before she shook herself back to the reality of her bedroom and escaped the youthful flashbacks to better times. She didn’t know how she had come to feel this way, how everything had changed, but changed it had.

  Clare pushed herself from the stool and made her way to the wardrobe. There was not much left to pack: two cases full already was more than enough. There was just her coat, and she could wear that; nothing else would fit in her luggage. As she stared at the two full, bulging suitcases on the bed, they seemed to press on her mind, light the landing torches that were summoning in a descending guilt. She turned away sharply and touched the side of her face.

  ‘Get a grip . . .’

  The girls were older now. They were hardly children – more like young adults. They would understand. She knew they would. They might shed a tear for her the first night she was away, but that would be all. She’d seen their friends talking about their parents’ separations like it was a trip to the supermarket; it was all just another rite of passage these days. But the guilt was still there, no matter what she told herself. There would be no more family Christmases, no more family birthday celebrations . . . no more family. Because, and she made no mistake, that’s what Clare knew she was doing: destroying her family.

  She flicked her fingers away from her face and tried to ball a fist. It was a pathetic-looking symbol of anger, but she felt the need to press it into her thigh and attempt to spark some dudgeon.

  ‘You did this, Bob . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Not me.’

  As she released the fist, she tapped the sides of her face and stared into the mirror. Her make-up had started to peel away from the edges of her eyes, thin flakes that failed to adhere to the thinner folds of older skin. She shook her head and patted at her cheeks. It would have to do; she would have to do because there was no other Clare Valentine on offer, and that was another blindingly obvious fact.

  She turned back to the bed and latched her grip on the handle of the suitcase. It was heavier than she imagined, or perhaps she was weaker. Clare knew she was weak, but that wasn’t why she was leaving her husband. She was leaving Bob because she was strong, because she couldn’t bear what their marriage had become and how he had changed. She could no longer look at him and feel the same way: that she was somehow a part of him, a part of his life, like they shared something together. She felt lost to her husband, like she no longer recognised him. Who was he now? Who was Bob Valentine? There was a time when she could have reeled off a list of lengthy answers, but not now. She no longer understood him. He had become an automaton, a mere ghost in their lives. He went to work and he came home and inhabited their life like a stranger to her. She couldn’t believe how many tears she had shed over his injury; he had died . . .

  ‘Oh my God . . .’

  She had said the words but didn’t quite believe them.

  It was true, though, Bob had died. Somewhere after that knife entered his heart, the old Bob had left. She didn’t know this man that floated in and out of their home like a shadow. He stared at her, but she stared through him. Night after night he came home and there was no talk outside of work, no compassion, no shared sense of themselves. She’d lost Bob, and she knew it.

  The suitcase made a loud thud when it slid off the bed and onto the carpet. She stared at the other case and knew it would make a similar noise; she couldn’t alert Bob’s dad to her leaving because she couldn’t stand the explanation she’d have to give. Clare rolled the first case to the side of the bedroom door, glanced to the other, and pledged to come back for them both soon. In the hallway she wiped at her eyes and tried to assume a plausible smile. It felt painted there, but it would have to do. There would be a lot of times ahead when she would have to force herself to face people, she knew that, but she didn’t want to contemplate the consequences of her actions until she had struck the final blow.

  Clare descended the stairs and made her way through to the living room, where the old man was sitting. The television was silent; the only sound was from the goings of the builders in the neighbour’s garden.

  ‘I think they must be putting up the Taj Mahal next door,’ said Bob’s dad.

  ‘Aye . . . Lucky them.’ Clare moved towards the window and peeked through the blinds. A dumper truck laden with concrete slabs was being manoeuvred into the driveway accompanied by a persistent and repe
titive beeping noise.

  ‘I was saying to Bob . . . I’ll not be under your feet much longer.’

  Had her husband put him up to this? He was always very good at reading the advance signals of her intentions, but she didn’t think he had been paying that much attention lately.

  ‘What? Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I mean, it’s been very nice of you and all that, but you need the space and the girls need their rooms. You’re a family, after all and I’m just a visitor.’

  Clare felt his words were so pointed they might have been scripted. Her lip trembled and she fought to prevent a single teardrop being released from her eye. She touched the window ledge and tried to hold her composure as she spoke towards the blinds. ‘You’re part of the family!’

  There was a gravid pause. ‘Not really.’

  Clare turned round and wiped her eyes. She knew at once that her father-in-law suspected something wasn’t right.

  He lifted his desultory gaze from the carpet and fixed his eyes on Clare. ‘Is everything all right, my dear?’

  ‘Oh, yes . . . Quite all right.’ She’d managed to inject some steel into her voice, from she knew not where, but her gratitude was boundless. ‘Look, why don’t you nip down to the Spar and get yourself a paper?’

  ‘Och, I’m not bothered about a paper, love, there’s very little reading in them these days.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, stretch your legs then, the fresh air will do you good . . .’ She turned back to the window again. ‘It’s a lovely day.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  The old man raised himself from the sofa and strolled through to the kitchen. As Clare turned, she caught sight of him removing the cap from his jacket pocket and manoeuvring it into place on his glabrous head. When he had wrestled the jacket on and negotiated the awkward zipper, he turned and tapped the tip of his cap to her.

  Clare waved and listened for the sound of the back door closing. She let Bob’s dad get to the end of the drive before she moved from the window and went into the kitchen to retrieve the telephone. She was fighting a deep pang of conscience at the way she’d pushed the old man out the door, but she knew she couldn’t face the recriminations right now. She didn’t want to have to justify her actions to anyone and even though she knew the opposition he would have put up would have been slight, she just didn’t have the strength to face it. The truth was, if she could be persuaded otherwise, she might not go. But her mind was set.

  Clare removed a piece of paper with the telephone number for Station Taxis on it; the bigger black cabs would be better for getting the luggage loaded in a hurry. She dialled and ordered the cab and was told to expect it in ten minutes. She looked at her watch and nodded, then made her way onto the stairs and to the bedroom once again. She collected her coat first: putting it on was an act of resolve. But the second case was even heavier than the first. She couldn’t believe how heavy they were, but it was too late to start unpacking; the castors screeched as she rolled the case through the bedroom door and bumped each step of the staircase on the way to the front door. She repeated the action for the second case and then, feeling warm from her exertions, removed her coat and placed it on top of the luggage.

  As Clare sat on the end of the staircase, a sudden rush of emotion engulfed her and she burst into sobs. She couldn’t bear to look at the house she had shared with Bob and her children all these years. She knew it would be her last chance, though, so she forced herself, still sobbing, to take in the familiar sight of the hallway with the hanging mirror and the new rug she had just bought for in front of the door. She could see through to the living room from where she was, and the pictures of the girls in their school uniforms seemed to scream to her from the top of the shelving unit. Her nails started to tap off her lips. She hadn’t realised how hard this was going to be – would she spend the whole day in tears, or the rest of her life?

  Her tears were heavier now; she could feel them on her cheeks and at once she knew she must be a sight. Clare moved to the bathroom, ran the taps and splashed water on her face. She was drying her eyes on the hand towel, smearing mascara on the white cotton, as the doorbell went.

  ‘Right, taxi . . . Get a grip,’ she told herself.

  As she stared in the mirror, Clare recognised only a passing resemblance to herself. Her cheeks were red and puffy, her eyes spiderwebs of burst capillaries. She looked away; she couldn’t bear to face herself any longer. She’d made her decision and she was determined to see it out.

  As Clare opened the door, she felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. Her quick breath subsided into a mournful sigh as she stared at her father-in-law.

  ‘There’s a taxi here, love . . .’ he said.

  ‘Yes . . .’ She didn’t know how to explain herself. ‘I thought you were going for a paper.’

  He held up a copy of the Daily Record. ‘Builder next door gave me a lift there and back.’ He peered round her shoulder and obviously caught sight of the suitcases. ‘Clare, are you going somewhere?’

  She didn’t know how to reply, didn’t think she had any of the right words.

  44

  It was all a game, life. What other way was there of describing it? He had been in so many strange places, met so many different people, that Valentine had stopped the dissolute notion that there was any alternative. We were born to power or pauper and we had no choice but to accept the hand we’d been dealt and play the cards. He’d heard of the Indian philosophy of lila: life as a divine game, life’s energy in all its guises from man and beast to tree and even stone all containing the same life force and susceptible to its whim. It sounded right, seemed to fit the irrational and erratic pattern he knew so well. But there was something else too, a darker element that came into play. He hadn’t always thought like that, however. Valentine could remember a time in his teens when, drunken insensate by a spirit he wasn’t used to, he’d lain down on a bench in Ayr’s magic circle – the town’s less common appellation for Burns Statue Square. As he lay on his back looking at the stars, he saw Rabbie’s head blocking out the constellation of Orion, or was it the Plough? He couldn’t correctly recall, or care, now, but he had a feeling there was something up there for him, in the stars, beyond the grimness of the town. He knew now he had been wrong, embarrassingly so; the detective had pounded those streets, from brig to bar, for decades and knew there was no cobbled pathway or gilded ladder leading skyward – it was all a fallacy. And it was deceit. A lie told to gullible optimists in their tender youth, just to keep their hand in the game. How else did you explain the disparity between James Urquhart’s fortune and yet another poor lifeless girl’s misfortune? There was no rubric within the game’s rulebook to turn to for confirmation, but he knew the rule existed as a fatalistic law of life on Earth. Those who said otherwise were either fools or had an interest to preserve. There may once have been a greasy pole and it may once have even been climbed by someone who found it led all the way to a new galaxy of riches, but it was now long gone. If the pole existed still, it was truncated, cut down somewhere shy of ground level, as likely a declivity as a divot to remember it by. This pale-white murdered girl never knew of its existence, the town of Mossblown never knew of its existence, he was sure of that.

  The detective crouched low to the ground and took in the tangled mass of thin white limbs, damp now with the downfall of a little rain. She was no more human than the bed of dirt she lay on. No more a life than any of us would be when the blood sat stagnant in our veins, that great pump stilled in our chests, all thoughts, all clocks, halted. He felt cold inside, cold enough for two people – he felt her cold too – but not because of the exposure of her bare flesh to the harsh elements; he felt the coldness of her loss. She had been someone, once. She hadn’t always been so cold; she’d held the flame of life inside her, but it had been extinguished. Snuffed out, brutally.

  ‘Look at those bruises,’ said DS McCormack.

  ‘On the neck or the arms?’ said Valentine. ‘The
ones on the arms are older.’

  ‘She’s a junkie.’

  The term turned a spike in the detective; she was a drug user, there was no mistaking it, but she was a member of the same race of beings as they were. She was someone’s daughter. She’d meant something to someone: if not now, then once. We all had, once.

  He lowered himself on his haunches and picked a wet leaf from the white flesh. The contusions continued down her arm in consistently spaced points. ‘Fingertips, she’s been battered about.’

  ‘Repeatedly, I’d say for some time. Look at the stomach distension, sir.’

  ‘She’s brass, I’ll bet money on that.’ Valentine rose and motioned to one of the uniforms. ‘We got her printed?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Going through now . . .’

  ‘Well, that’s something. With any luck we’ll have her on our books and get a name before too long.’

  DS McAlister and DS Donnelly approached the crime scene. They were ducking under the blue and white tape as Valentine turned away from them to take a closer look at a silver chain around the girl’s neck.

  ‘What’s that, boss?’ said McCormack.

  ‘Don’t know . . . Some kind of pendant.’

  As he knelt down again, Valentine removed a yellow pencil from the inside pocket of his sports coat. He pointed the pencil towards the girl’s neck and slotted the tip beneath the silver chain; as he rummaged for the pendant he saw a tangle of mulch around a silver clasp and then the item was sprung onto her chest.

  ‘A cross . . .’ he said. The detective almost felt like laughing. ‘Where was her God?’

  ‘It’s just a cheapie,’ said McCormack.

  Valentine stood up and rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘Maybe He might have been pissed at her for that?’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, there’s some things worth splashing out on.’