by Ruth Rendell
He didn’t move, although he was conscious. A hand turned him over, a sharp-toed boot kicked his ribs. He made no sound, but lay there with his eyes closed. The boy was standing over him, breathing heavily, making sucking sounds of satisfaction and triumph Then he heard footsteps pounding away towards the hut and the barrier and there was a terrible deep silence.
Arthur hauled himself up, clinging to the wings of both cars. His face was wet with blood running from his upper lip and his head was banging as it had never banged from desire. He forced his eyes into focus so that he could see the shining, sleeping cars, the glittering, frosted ground. No attendant coming, no one. He crawled between the cars, clutching here at a wing mirror, there at a door handle, until at last the strength that comes from terror brought him to an upright stance. He staggered. The icy air, unimpeded, was like a further blow to his face. He tasted the salt blood trickling between his teeth.
Still the hut was empty, the path between cinema and shops deserted. Covering his face with the clean white handkerchief he always carried, he made himself walk down that path, walk slowly, although he wanted to run and scream. Kenbourne Lane. No crowd was gathered, no huddle of passers-by stood staring in the direction taken by a running boy with golden hair. No one looked at Arthur. It was the season for colds, for muffled faces. He went on past the station until he came to Grainger’s gates. Thank God they weren’t padlocked but closed with a Yale lock. Holding up the handkerchief, he unlocked the gates, the conscientious surveyor who works Saturday nights despite a cold in the head. They closed behind him and he sank heavily against them.
But he must reach his own office. There, for a while, he would be safe. The little house of glass and cedarwood was an island and a haven in the big bare yard. He crawled to it because his legs, which had carried him so well when their strength had most been needed, had buckled now and were half-paralysed. From the ground, slippery with frost, he reached up and unlocked the door.
It was cold inside, colder than in the open air. The Adler stood on the desk, shrouded in its cover; the wastepaper basket was empty; the place smelt faintly of bubble gum. Arthur collapsed on to the floor and lay there, his body shaking with gasping sobs. He staunched the blood, which might otherwise have got onto the carpet, first with his handkerchief, then with his scarf. As the handkerchief became unusable, black with blood, he heard the wail of sirens, distant and keening at first, then screaming on an ear-splitting rise and fall as the police cars came over the lights into Magdalen Hill.
21
————
West Kenbourne was populated with police. It seemed to Anthony, returning from the airport in Perry Mervyn’s car, that every other pedestrian in Balliol Street was a policeman. Since they had turned from the High Street up Kenbourne Lane, he had counted five police cars.
“Maybe someone robbed a bank,” said Junia.
It was half-past eleven, but lights were still on in the Dalmatian and the Waterlily and their doors stood open. Police were in the pubs and standing in the doorways, questioning customers as they left. From behind the improvised fence that shut off the waste ground, the beams from policemen’s torches cut the air in long pale swaying shafts.
“Must have been a bank,” said Perry, and he and his wife offered sage opinions—they were in perfect agreement—as to the comparative innocuousness of bank robbery. It could hardly be called morally wrong, it harmed no one, and so on. Anthony, though grateful for the lift, wasn’t sorry when they arrived at 142 Trinity Road.
He thanked them and they exchanged undertakings not to lose touch. Anthony supposed, and supposed they supposed, that they would never meet again. Waving, he watched the car depart, its occupants having declared they would drive around for a while and try to find out what was going on.
Nothing was going on in Trinity Road. A hundred and forty-two was in total darkness. He went indoors and walked slowly along the passage towards Room 2. The police hunt afforded him no interest, brought him no curiosity. Nothing was able to divert him from the all-enclosing grey misery which had succeeded disbelief, anger, pain. The wedding, the happiness of Winston and Linthea, had served only to vary his depression with fresh pain. And in the airport lounge, where they had sat drinking coffee, a horrible aspect of that pain had shown itself. For that busy place, with its continual comings and goings, was peopled for him with Helens, with versions of Helen. Every fair head, turned from him, might turn again and show him her face. One girl, from a distance, had her walk; another, talking animatedly to a man who might be Roger—how would he know?—moved her hands in Helen gestures, and her laugh, soft and clear, reached him as Helen’s laugh. Once he was certain. He even got to his feet, staring, catching his breath. The others must have thought him crazy, hallucinated.
He put his key into the door lock. But before he could enter Room 2 the front door opened and Li-li came in, carrying Arthur Johnson’s washing bag.
“Have you been carting that round all night?” said Anthony disagreeably.
“Is not all night. Is only twelve.” She waved the bag at him. “There, you shall take it to him now. He will be so pleased to have it safe.”
“Knowing him, I should think he’s nearly gone out of his mind worrying about it. And you can take it to him yourself.”
But, as Li-li with a pout and a giggle disappeared round the first bend of the stairs, Anthony thought he had better follow her. He caught up with her as she was mounting the second flight.
“He’ll be asleep. He always goes to bed early. Leave it outside his door.”
“O.K.” Li-li dropped the bag on the landing. “Nasty, nasty, to be old and go to bed at midnight.” She gave Anthony a sweet provocative smile. “You like some Chinese tea?”
“No, thanks. I go to bed at midnight too.” He walked into Room 2 and closed the door firmly. It was some time before he fell asleep, for Li-li, preparing for her journey on the following day, revenged herself by packing noisily, banging her wardrobe door and apparently throwing shoes across the room, until after three.
———
Arthur heard the police get Grainger’s doors open half an hour after he had hidden himself in the office. He saw the beams of their torches searchlighting the yard. They came up to the office and walked round it, but because the door hadn’t been forced and no window was broken, they went away. He heard the gates clang behind them.
His lip had stopped bleeding. When it was safe to get up from the floor, he wrapped his handkerchief in a sheet of flimsy paper and thrust it into his coat pocket. Very little light was available to him, only a distant sheen from the lamps of Magdalen Hill. He didn’t dare put the light on or even the electric fire, though it was bitterly cold. His scarf was patched and streaked with blood, but not so badly stained that he couldn’t wear it. It was of the utmost importance to leave no blood on the haircord or as fingerprints. But the yellow twilight was sufficient to show him that the haircord was unmarked. He licked his fingers till they were free of the salty taste.
Then he lay down again on the floor, sleepless, letting the long slow hours pass. His ribs ached on the left side but he didn’t think the kick had broken a bone. Outside they would comb the whole area. When they couldn’t find him they would leave the area and look further afield. Perhaps they wouldn’t come to Trinity Road at all.
Would it never get light? Light would show any passer-by his injured face—if only he had the means to see how injured it was!—but a man walking solitary in the dark small hours would attract more attention. When the yellowness retreated into the milky grey of dawn, he dragged himself to his feet and looked out of the window on to the deserted yard. His body was stiff, every limb aching, and a sharp, fluctuating pain teased his left side.
His watch had broken in the fall and the hands still showed twenty past nine. It must now be about eleven hours later than that. His watch had broken but not his glasses, which remained intact in their case. He put them on, although they were reading glasses that threw the world
out of focus, but they would help disguise his eye. As to his lip—he licked a corner of his scarf and worked blindly at the cut, wincing because the rough fibres prickled the edges of the wound. But the morning was very cold and now he saw that a thin sleet had begun to fall, little granules of ice that melted as they struck the ground. The kind of day, he thought, when a man with a muffled face is accepted as normal.
Shaking a little, controlling his shaking as best he could, he went out of the office, locking the door behind him. He had left no vestige of his presence. As he approached the gates, the falling sleet thickened into a storm. Snow, the first of the year, swirled about him, flakes of it stinging his lip. He pulled the scarf up to cover his mouth and, with lowered head, took what was a kind of plunge into Magdalen Hill.
There was no one about but a boy delivering Sunday papers. His encounter with the girl-boy in the car park had happened too late at night for there to be anything about it in the papers, and this little boy in thick coat and balaclava didn’t look at him. A man walking a retriever in Balliol Street didn’t look at him, nor did the cleaning woman who was letting herself into the public bar of the Waterlily. She too had a scarf swathing the lower half of her face. Arthur entered the mews as All Souls’ clock struck eight.
Someone had left a newspaper, last evening’s, on top of a dustbin in the mews. He picked it up and tucked it under his arm so that anyone who saw him would think he had been out to buy it. But no one saw him. Li-li’s curtains were drawn. He crept upstairs through the sleeping house. On the top landing, resting against his door, was the orange laundry bag. At some point Li-li had brought that bag up the stairs. Had she knocked on his door? And if she had, would she have assumed he was asleep? Or had she left it downstairs, and had Anthony Johnson, the only other occupant of the house, been responsible for bringing it here? There was no way of knowing. If Anthony Johnson were awake now light would show from his window on to the court, for Room 2 was dark in winter till nine. But there was no cross-barred cast of light to be seen on the green stone. Snow whirled down the well, flying against the cellar door and streaming down it as rivulets of water.
Arthur cut up his handkerchief and flushed the pieces down the lavatory. He washed his scarf and, pulling it out from the lining, washed too the pocket of his overcoat Then, and only then, did he dare look at his face in the mirror.
His eye socket was the colour of meat that has lain exposed, a dark, glazed red, and the lid was almost closed. And his lip was split, a cut running up unevenly at the centre join of the upper lip. He looked quite different, this wasn’t his face, not his this sore, bulbous mouth. Would it scar? It didn’t seem bad enough to need stitching. He washed it carefully with warm water and antiseptic. It couldn’t be stitched. Every casualty department in every hospital in London would be alerted to watch for a man coming in with a wounded mouth.
He mustn’t show himself at all. At any cost, he must remain here, hidden, until his lip and his eye healed. It was hours since he had eaten or drunk anything, hours since he had slept, but he knew he could no more sleep than he could eat a crumb of bread. He drank some water and gagged on it, its coldness burning his throat.
Shrouded by the nightdress frills of the net curtains, he crouched at the window. If the police did a house-to-house search he would be lost. He watched people go by, expecting always to see the piranha face of Inspector Glass. The church bells rang for morning service and a few elderly women went by, carrying Prayer Books, on their way to All Souls’. At lunchtime he put on the television, and the last item in a news bulletin told him, as only this high authority could really tell him, what he had done and where he stood.
“A man was attacked last night in a car park near Kenbourne Lane tube station in West London …” And there, on the screen, was the car park overhung by the ramparts of the Taj Mahal. Arthur trembled, clenching his hands. He half expected to see himself emerge from behind a row of cars, caught by those cameras like a stalked animal. “From the circumstances of the attack, police believe his assailant mistook him for a woman and are speculating as to whether the attacker could be the same man who, for a quarter of a century, has been known by the name of the Kenbourne Killer. A massive hunt in the area has so far been unsuccessful …”
Arthur switched off the set. He went once more into the bathroom and looked in the mirror at the face of the Kenbourne Killer. Never, in the past, when he had thought of the things he had done, had he ever really considered that title and that role as belonging to him. But the television had told him so, it was so. Those marks had been put upon his face so that he and the world should know it. Looking at his face made him cry so he went back to his window where the nets veiled his face. The television remained off, blank, though an early Rogers-Astaire film was showing, until five when there was more news.
An Identikit picture appeared on the screen, a hard, cold face, sharply lined, vicious, elderly. The subject had a hare lip and a blind eye. Was that how he, so spruce and handsome, had looked to the boy with the Citroën? He felt faint and dizzy when the boy himself appeared and seemed to stare penetratingly into his own eyes. The boy put a hand up to that deceiving hair and smiled a little proudly.
“Well, I reckon this guy thought I was a girl, you know, on account of me being skinny and having long hair.”
The interviewer addressed him with earnest approval. “Would you be able to identify him, Mr. Harrison?”
“Sure, I would. Anyway, I knocked his face about a bit, didn’t I? Anyone’d be able to identify him, not just me.”
And now Inspector Glass himself. Arthur shivered because his enemies were being ranged before him through this medium, once so friendly, once the purveyor of his second best delight.
The lips curled back and the great teeth showed. “You can take it as certain that the police won’t rest until we’ve got this chap and put him out of harm’s way. It’s only a matter of time. But I’d like to tell the public that this man is highly dangerous, and if anyone has the slightest suspicion of his identity, if he or she feel they’re only going on what you might call intuition, they must call this number at once.”
The telephone number burned in white letters on a black ground. And the voice of Inspector Glass, the voice of a devourer of men, came heavy and grim.
“At any time of the day or night you can call this number. And if you hesitate, remember that next time it could be you or your wife or your mother or your daughter.”
The diesel rattle of a taxi called Arthur back to the window. Li-li came out of the house carrying two suitcases. There was another gone who might see his face and not hesitate. Snow had begun to fall again through the bitter cold darkness. He watched her get into the taxi.
And now he was alone in the house with Anthony Johnson.
22
————
That Sunday it was nearly noon before Anthony got up. Room 2 was icy and he had to use powdered milk in his tea because he had run out of fresh. The courtyard was wet, although it wasn’t raining, and the triangle of sky had the yellowish-grey look snow clouds give.
It was so dark that he had to keep the lamp on all day. He sat under it, leafing through the draft of his thesis, wondering if it was any good, but into his concentration, or what passed for concentration, fragmented images of Helen kept breaking. He found himself recalling conversations they had had in the past, reading duplicity into phrases of hers that had once seemed beautifully sincere. And this obsession displaced everything else. He sat staring dully at the pink and green translucent shade that swayed with a slow, gentle rhythm in the draught from the window-frame crack, hypnotised by it, subdued into apathy. Soon after five, when he had heard Li-li leave, he put on his coat and set off for Winter’s.
The relief barman from the Waterlily was in the shop, and he and Winter were talking about the police activity of the night before. Anthony had forgotten all about it. Now, waiting to be served, he learned its nature.
“Young fellow of nineteen, stude
nt at Radclyffe College. What I say is, if they will get themselves up like girls, they’re asking for it. Not that he didn’t stand up for himself. Bashed the fellow’s face up something shocking. You see the news?”
The barman nodded. “Funny thing, I got a black eye myself last week. All above board, got it at my judo. But if it wasn’t better I wouldn’t fancy showing myself on the street.”
“You didn’t get a cut lip as well, though, did you? Mind you, that’d be a turn-up for the books, all the locals finding out the Kenbourne Killer’d been serving them their booze.” Winter laughed. He turned to Anthony. “And what can I do for you, sir?”
“Just a pint of milk, please.”
“Homogenised, Jersey, or silver top?”
Anthony took the silver top. As he was closing the door behind him he heard them say something about his hair and prowling stranglers who couldn’t tell the boys from the girls, and who could blame them? He went past the lighted windows of the Waterlily, for only drunks and potential pick-ups go into pubs on their own in the evenings. The snow had settled in little drifts between the cobbles of Oriel Mews, where there was no light or heat to melt it. It floated thinly over Trinity Road, making a thinner, webbier curtain over the draped nets at Arthur Johnson’s window behind which Anthony thought he could vaguely make out a watcher.
Room 2 had grown cold again in his absence. He kicked on the electric fire, drank some milk straight out of the bottle. It was so cold it made his teeth chatter. He crouched over the fire, and into his mind came a clear and sweet vision of Helen as she had been in the summer, running along the platform at Temple Meads to meet his train when he came to her from York. He felt, closing his eyes, her hands reach up to hold his shoulders, her warm breath from her parted lips on his lips. And he felt real pain, a shaft of pain in his left side, as if he had been kicked where his heart was.
