by Baker, John
There is so much that should be obvious, but few people actually see it. Why do we insist that perception and memory are like data stored on a hard disk? Why do we think of them as akin to a copying process or a photographic image? Nothing could be further from the truth. Perception is a process which interprets an event in the outside world, and memory is always either deteriorating or reconstructing, attempting to fit images and interpretations into a scheme which feels right.
Many of my colleagues did not understand this. They believe that crime can be controlled by means of education, or that it will respond to some form of psychotherapy or counselling. I fought them for all of my professional life.
I would be a good eye-witness, because I have trained myself to be observant.
I am the watchman.
The woman fought like a tiger. When I got home I hardly recognized myself. My face was scratched and bleeding, the skin torn in vertical lines by her manicured nails. Her teeth had almost severed my right thumb; she had bitten down to the bone just above the knuckle and I had to swab it with iodine and wrap it in swathes of bandage to stop the flow of blood. A kick in the balls is never good news, but she had been particularly vicious and they had swollen up like tennis balls. I crept into bed, my head aching, and let myself drift into a numbing sleep.
Miriam was not well pleased when she came home from work and discovered the state of me. What could I say? My injuries had obviously been inflicted by a woman.
Her eyes flickered as she focused on the bandaged thumb then travelled back to my disfigured face. ‘What happened?’ she asked, her voice quietly controlled.
‘Accident,’ I said weakly, knowing I had no hope of getting away with it.
Miriam said nothing. She turned away from me and walked out of the bedroom. I waited but she did not return.
Eventually I got myself out of bed and hobbled through to the kitchen, where she was sitting on the high chair. ‘I’m sorry, Miriam.’
She made me wait a full minute before she opened her arms and took my head against her scrawny breasts.
‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ I said.
‘Who was she?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Nobody. Someone I met in a bar.’
Miriam knows how to be silent. She understands the power it gives her. When I looked up there was not a hint of amusement or forgiveness in her face. Her jaw and bottom lip were, if anything, pushed even further forward than usual. Her eyes were like the points of black pins when she looked at me.
‘I’m really going to make you suffer,’ she said.
I nodded. I knew she would.
Miriam has been silent since then. She wants the punishment to fit the crime. She needs time to think. When she’s ready she’ll tell me what she wants to do, and I’ll submit to it. We have a democratic relationship. We are a modern couple.
In the meantime I nurse my injuries and crouch in that delicious space of doubt and uncertainty created by the silence of my vengeful woman.
I choked the life out of the blind woman.
I played back the tape and heard her death-rattle. She expired beneath me like a balloon being let down.
This has been my prayer: Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me. Because the truth of the matter is, I really didn’t want this job. It was not my choice; I was mission-oriented. Later, if it all comes out, if the monsters who run the media get their hands on it, they’ll label me psychotic.
I really don’t want that to happen. I want truth to happen. I want light to happen. I want justice.
A crime is a social or political concept. It is nothing more than that. A crime in Pakistan is not necessarily a crime in England. The people who do the ruling want us to believe that crime is more than that. That crime is something defined by the Divine. But it isn’t. It is man-made, and often only a tool that the power brokers use to maintain the status quo.
I didn’t want to kill again. That is what my prayer was about. But my God did not take the cup away. It was mine to drink.
Another thing. They’ll bring into dispute the level of my intelligence, maybe suggest that I am sexually inhibited. They’ll question my early life, how I was disciplined as a child, the order of my birth. The psychologists, my friends and colleagues, will gather around like vultures.
I find this prospect disturbing. Psychology, for many of them, is a guessing game. What they will never understand is that I am of good intelligence, a skilled professional. I am not a random killer. I watch and I wait. I plan.
Also, they’ll suggest that I am socially immature, when the contrary is the truth. I do not live alone, Miriam and I are an emotional unit. I am socially competent, from a good home. My father’s work was stable, and, had he lived, he would have been recognized as a hero.
He was a hero.
They don’t understand. That is the first point. The second is that they don’t want to understand these things. They, the press, the media, are mere propagandists for the ruling elite. They uphold the laws of the land, and their job is to undermine anything that threatens those laws. I carry a divine truth within me and therefore I am anathema to them. They will tear me limb from limb.
Oh, I can hear them already... a failure of empathic bonding and attachment... resulted in the child becoming emotionally detached...
I want one thing to be quite clear. I was not abused as a child. There was no question of anything like that in my background. My father was a good man who served the community. I will do anything to preserve his memory.
I don’t mind if they say I’m suffering from some kind of mental illness. I know why they have to say that. Because if they say I’m sane, and they believe that they are sane also, then there is something that they have to share with me. In some respects, they reason, we are alike, and if we are alike, then they might also be led to take life.
But the mental illness theory doesn’t hold water. Why do they say that people with mental illnesses commit murder, when everyone knows that people suffering mental illness are much more likely to harm themselves?
Look at the thing objectively. Frederick and Rosemary West were responsible for the murder and torture of at least twelve young women. The Wests were evil people. I fail to see how anyone can compare the acts that they committed with what happens between me and Miriam. OK, so the new studded belt is a tad more savage (let’s not mince words) than the hairbrush was, but this is something that happens between consenting adults in the privacy of their own home.
What we do could be identified as one of the paraphilias, because it involves a degree of physical suffering. And it is certainly sexually exciting. But it doesn’t involve necrophilia or zoophilia or paedophilia.
And, this just for the record, I have never buggered Miriam. I don’t have an anal fixation or incestuous desires.
21
Sam arrived at the house minutes before the police or the ambulance. Janet was standing by a table in the garden, hugging Echo to her chest. There was a broken syringe on the path outside the patio.
‘Where?’ he asked, and Janet nodded towards the patio door.
JD was kneeling by the body of Angeles, which he had placed in the recovery position. The front of her blouse had been torn away in the struggle and one of the buttons had rolled under a chair. Sam moved quickly to her side.
‘I think she’ll be OK,’ JD said. ‘She’s breathing now and she’s got a strong pulse.’
Sam looked at him, saw the sweat streaking his face and neck. ‘Has she said anything?’
JD shook his head. ‘She’s been out of it all the time. Could be drugged.’
Angeles had the imprint of the attacker’s hands around her neck. The bruising was extensive, beginning under her chin and spreading out in dark waves over her shoulders and down the front of her chest. The fingers of her right hand bore traces of blood, and Sam wished beyond hope that she’d marked the bastard for life.
At least she won’t be able to see what he’s done to her, Sam
thought, conscious that he was seeking a palliative. The drone of an approaching ambulance whirled into the spaces of the room. He remembered, as a boy, looking at his distorted reflection in the back of a spoon. And the pane of glass in his bedroom window which had carried a flaw. Angeles had never experienced these things. Never played games with the visual world. And she would not have seen her attacker.
When she recovered she would describe to them the way he felt, how he smelt. Maybe, with some luck, the sound of his voice. But no, he wouldn’t have given that away. She’d have some sense of what his breathing sounded like, maybe even the taste of the man.
We live in different worlds, he thought. She is confined to a feminine universe of sound, while I am equally trapped in a masculine world of vision. Seeing is like having a gun with a powerful scope. You look down the barrel and focus on the part of the world that you want to isolate. But hearing is the opposite of that. The ear doesn’t go out into the world like the eye, it is more fluid and responsive. It can take its time; doesn’t mind waiting.
Sam and JD stood back while the paramedics took over. As they watched, the police arrived in the form of Superintendent Rossiter and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant Hardwicke.
‘What happened?’ Rossiter asked.
‘Looks like somebody tried to strangle her,’ said the chief paramedic. He helped his colleague lift Angeles on to a stretcher, leaning over to arrange the blanket around her.
Rossiter looked at Sam. ‘You’re never far away when there’s trouble in this town,’ he said.
Sam looked at JD, but he didn’t say anything.
Rossiter raised his voice. ‘I’m talking to you, Turner. I think you’ve got some explaining to do. What happened here?’
The paramedics pushed the stretcher out through the patio door, and Sam followed them.
‘Hey, where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ said Rossiter, grabbing Sam by the shoulder.
Sam shook him off. He looked back for a moment, flexing the fingers of both hands.
‘He wasn’t here,’ said JD. ‘He’s only just arrived.’ Janet appeared in the empty doorway after Sam had followed the paramedics down the side path. ‘I found her,’ she said. ‘Then I rang Sam and called for the ambulance. He can’t tell you any more than we can.’
But Rossiter wasn’t listening. He turned towards Hardwicke. ‘Go after them,’ he said. ‘If Turner tries to get in that ambulance, arrest him.’
‘Yes, gov,’ she said, a smile on her face as if something funny had happened.
Sam, sitting in the ambulance, could see the bruises deepening around the throat of Angeles Falco. He could hear an authoritarian voice, female, on the periphery of his consciousness. The voice was insistent, addressing a part of him, threatening him with arrest if he refused to step down.
The paramedic touched his shoulder. ‘I think it’d be better if you stepped out of the ambulance, sir,’ he said.
Sam looked past the man. Hardwicke was standing on the road, preventing the paramedic from closing the door of the ambulance. ‘I’m only going to say this once more,’ she said. ‘Step down on to the road and return to the house. Detective Superintendent Rossiter has some questions for you.’
He looked at her. Navy power suit, slim skirt and flared jacket buttoned up to the chin, dark tights, highly polished shoes. A small face framed by a thick growth of auburn hair, chopped short. Sam spoke quietly. ‘This woman is seriously ill,’ he said, indicating the prostrate form of Angeles. ‘Get away from the door so we can take her to the hospital.’
Hardwicke began climbing into the ambulance, her face set. Sam raised his voice. ‘You’re making a mistake, here,’ he said. He stood to meet her and recognized the hesitation in her eyes. He quickly turned her around and marched her back on to the road, pushing her gently but firmly towards the house. Then he was back inside the ambulance, pulling the rear doors closed behind him. ‘Go,’ he said to the driver.
Before they turned the corner, he was aware of Hardwicke jumping around in the middle of the road, shaking her fists in anger and frustration. Couldn’t hear her at all, only imagine the expletives. He’d only known Angeles Falco for a short time, but she’d already made him realize that you didn’t hear things, only the sounds connected with their actions. You didn’t, for example, hear angry policemen or women. You only heard them stamping or warning or barking.
22
WDS Hardwicke was spitting mad when she returned to the house. JD was reminded of Tinkerbell or Prospero’s Ariel, a silly spirit whose purpose has been crossed.
‘Where’s Turner?’ Rossiter asked, the incredulity in his voice as tangible as fudge.
Hardwicke passed the back of her hand over her mouth. ‘He assaulted me,’ she said. ‘He fucking pushed me.’
‘Where is he?’ Rossiter repeated.
‘He went in the ambulance,’ Hardwicke said. ‘He pushed me on to the road. He’ll be at the hospital.’
‘Have him picked up,’ the detective superintendent said. ‘Put him in the cells and let him stew there. I’ll talk to him later.’
‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ Hardwicke said. She brushed past JD as she made for the door. ‘You’ll be OK here on your own, sir?’
Rossiter looked at Janet and JD. ‘I’ll need someone to take statements,’ he said. ‘Send one of the constables in. Someone who knows how to write.’
A SOCO team arrived with their white plastic tape, their notices and their sterility. There was a police photographer and a couple of white-overalled forensic scientists, both women, who were pissed off because they had missed the body. They cheered up considerably when they found the broken syringe. They commenced to circle around it as if echoing some tribal dance; a rite of fertility in which the syringe was transformed into a sacred and untouchable object.
JD and Janet were ushered into the front hall by the SOCOs, but when Echo began crying Janet ducked the tape and walked back through the crime room to collect her. ‘Jesus,’ said the man in charge of the SOCOs, ‘this job’s impossible.’
Janet sat on the bottom step of the staircase, jigging Echo up and down on her lap. She looked at the young officer who was trying to take her statement. ‘She’s hungry,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to feed her.’
‘This’s not going to take much longer,’ the constable said.
Janet shrugged. ‘She doesn’t understand “much longer”. She’s a baby.’ Janet lifted her jumper and guided a brown nipple between Echo’s lips. She looked at the young constable and raised her eyebrows. ‘Otherwise she’s gonna howl.’
The policeman began writing at speed. ‘You said you heard something when you approached the front door?’ he said.
Janet fussed with her child, taking care to see that both of them were comfortable. When she was ready she returned her eyes to the policeman. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Would you mind repeating the question?’
JD walked over to the front door and looked into the street. It was then that he noticed the slip of paper in the letterbox. The PC guarding the door had a moustache that wanted to emulate Emiliano Zapata’s, but was severely hampered by police regulations. He gave JD a cop stare for a full minute, weighing up the possibilities of JD doing a runner. JD moved his weight from one foot to the other and then back again several times. He nodded at the PC, even attempted a smile, but the cop was having none of it.
When he looked away, surveying the rest of his domain, JD concentrated on getting on to his blind side, using his body to block the cop’s view of the letterbox. Slowly, he eased the slip of paper out and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Might be nothing, of course. But then again, as Sam would say, you never know when the breaks are coming.
There were two scenes of crime in this house. One was official and high profile and surrounded itself with science and team-work. And the other was unofficial and surreptitious and good at keeping its eyes open and looking for the main chance.
‘Don’t leave town.’ That’s what D
etective Superintendent Rossiter told them when they’d finished giving their statements. ‘Don’t leave town.’ He said it without a hint of irony, three flat syllables delivered in that standard officious manner that seems to affect all CID officers.
‘Where does he think we’re gonna go?’ Janet asked when they were on the street. ‘I’ve got a baby here, a husband back home. All my friends are here. I’m not likely to go on a runner to Brazil, wherever it is criminals are supposed to go.’
JD’s laugh was whipped away by the wind. ‘We’re under house arrest,’ he said. ‘I expect we’re the main suspects.’ He reached his finger towards Echo’s hand in the pram, and she grasped it for a moment. ‘But I can’t stay in York. Saturday I’m out of here.’
Janet stopped and looked at him. ‘Where are you going? They’ll arrest you if you do that.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a choice about it. Leeds are at home to West Ham.’
Janet gave him her natural born killer look. ‘Jesus, JD, what’s that? A joke? That woman in there might’ve been killed. She’s stuck in the hospital, Sam’s got himself arrested, the police’ve been using both of us like doormats, and you’re telling football jokes.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this pathologically persisting adolescence. It’s a joke I was going to put in the new novel. I wanted to hear what it sounds like.’
‘A book.’ There was real anger sparking away inside her. Her eyes were like black gems, the flash of them capable of cutting deep. ‘I just don’t find it funny in the circumstances. You can go past Go, collect your two hundred pounds on the way, but don’t come with no more funnies.’ Nothing was more calculated to undermine JD’s confidence than a woman’s wrath. His failures with the female sex were legendary and they were all recalled instantly, en bloc. Dozens of them descended on him, their voices trilling, their rounded bodies vibrating with confused anger. Then the vision died in a wheeze. ‘I found this in the letterbox,’ he said, handing her the slip of paper. Janet took it from him. ‘What letterbox?’
