The Big Snow

by David Park

  He locked the door behind him but didn’t put on the light and as he stepped into the house its damp coldness filmed his face, but it was the stir of his fear that made him shiver and he clutched the torch more tightly, holding it stiffly in front of his chest while he advanced into the hall. Dark little runs and starts of shadows searched for shelter from the skittering intrusion of his light and as they fled he was conscious of the sound of his breathing and the inexplicable tremor of sounds that emerged from the skein and fabric of the house that seemed to gulf above him. Part of him wanted to run back into the space of the night, part to throw on every light in the place, but, hesitating for a second at the entrance to the front room, he took a deep breath and stepped forward. His light hit the mirror, waking it from its sleep to blink and stutter into fuzzy yellow flower heads of reflection. He tried not to look at himself uncertain about what he might see and as the damp seeped deeper inside him he played the torch round the room in slow arcing sweeps.

  Nothing appeared to have changed in the physical sense but there was a feeling of time having slipped away, carrying him ever further from that moment when he had seen her for the first time and, like his thoughts about the snow, it brought a belief that time was inexorably separating him for ever from what he wanted to hold on to. He moved slowly about the settee like a ghost, his memories lighting its buttoned folds and sometimes he touched it – where her head had rested, where he remembered the stretch of her arm – to absorb what was beginning to fade from him. He let his hand touch other things – the edge of the sideboard, the cream tiles on the fireplace, the red-faced dial on the radio – and then he sat in the chair Gracey had sat in. For a second he switched off the torch and let the darkness sweep in around him like a night tide and there was a sweetness in it that made him reluctant to break away again.

  But there was work to do and it was that knowledge which eventually pushed him from the chair and into his search. Despite what swirled inside his head, he did it methodically, area by area, room by room, looking in the places he had already rehearsed in his head. He kept scrupulously to the plan, going first of all back through the places he had already searched but coming at them from a different angle and all the time trying to detect a secret place where something might be hidden. It helped him to think of himself as a boy, remember the secret world he had lived in and the type of places he concealed things, but despite his meticulous search he found nothing, and the more he looked, the more the house confirmed his first impression of it existing in a limbo devoid of the personal accumulation that marked most people’s existence. He left the wardrobe to the last and, as soon as he began to open its door, the metal hangers trembled into sound as if in a little trill of expectancy. The spray of light from the torch and the gentle brush of his hand quivered the dresses into a momentary life which made his heart beat faster as he inhaled what remained of her scent. Pretending only to calm them, he touched each in turn, running the cloth through the length of his fingers and then as something suddenly broke inside him, he buried his face in the blue dress that hung at the front.

  She was beautiful when she wore that dress. Beautiful for him. He slumped on the bed, facing the open wardrobe and let the torch rest on the quilt. It was coming to the end. Soon the snow would be gone, a memory melted away into nothing, uncovering the old ugliness that had been transformed and freed from itself with the soft brush of its lips. Lips he would never kiss. It was coming to an end and there was nothing he could do to stop it slipping away. And what would be left of him? He shivered in the cold and felt the weight of his future settling about him. There was nothing he could do. It was over. So why wouldn’t the voices leave him alone? He heard their broken trails of whispers snaking out from the shadows and the empty rooms below. He turned the ring on his finger hoping he might be able to step inside the shield of its circle, and laid his head on the pillow. Never loud enough to hear what they were saying, always just out of reach – that’s what he told himself – the words crumbling and fragmenting before he could ever fully grasp hold of them. But now they were growing louder, more insistent, and he was frightened that they would form into the words he didn’t want to hear.

  He turned the ring again on his finger and then, dipping his hand deep into his inside pocket, pulled out the photograph he had taken from Beckett. He laid it on the bed so that the beam of light passed over its surface, and for a second wondered if the light could burnish it into life, but then moved it into the shadows. The whispers were louder now, rising up to his room on the break of his mother’s voice and there was nowhere for him to hide. They pounded in his ears like the surge of a fierce sea and he wanted to scream for them to stop but knew there could be no respite. Take away the pain. Take away the pain. And the words are laced with a curse and slew of brittle words that make them break and break so the pieces can never be put together again. Take away the pain. You can do it. And maybe it’s right and maybe it’s the only way to take away the pain, the pain that can’t be borne any longer.

  Always cold to the touch but snug in the palm of the hand. As if it belongs there. As if it recognizes the hand that clasps it. His hand moved it through the beam of light and the barrel darkened into an inky blackness. He slowly shaved the stubble on his cheek with it, then pressed its ridged end along his cheekbone. Take away the pain. Please, please take away the pain. And the voice is pleading louder than he’s ever heard it before and he doesn’t know any more if it’s his mother’s voice or if it’s his own. It flows about him and then it’s inside his head and coiling tighter and tighter until it’s more than he can bear and he lets his lips kiss the barrel and then he opens them and it’s inside his mouth. His hand is shaking, tightening, for maybe it’s the only way. The only way to stop the pain: the only way to finally step inside. To enter the world in a moment. Finally to enter.

  It’s the door. And it had to be in a dream of what had happened before because in his head a key was scraping in the lock and turning with the sound that he recognized. His hand trembled as he took the gun slowly and carefully out of his mouth and laid it on the bed, trying to still the breath that rushed from every corner of his being and wanting to burst into a shout that he knew he couldn’t stop if he were to let it start. He seemed to step outside himself in the moment, to be watching and listening to everything he did and thought, and that feeling of detachment brought a flush of control that calmed him into thought. Part of him didn’t want to touch the gun again but he made himself pick it up, and with the other hand switched off the torch. The last thing he saw before the darkness swooped around him was the light rustle of the blue dress in the wardrobe and it was as if she was stepping towards him and in the darkness he carried the print of that image. Stepping towards him with her open arms. Taking him home.

  He stayed on the bed and did nothing but listen to the slight crease and press of feet below. There were hardly any sounds but, like a stone dropped in water, the presence of another rippled out through the house, and something was stirring and scratching at the silence. He prayed that Gracey had got it right, that this was the moment when panic had pushed Newburn into something stupid, and he prayed too, that he wouldn’t make a mess of it, that he wouldn’t let it slip through his hands as he had done before. But he had to be patient, for he knew that if it was Newburn he had come to find something, and if he could let him find it before he took him, everything could be right, everything brought to right.

  He stood up, slowly and lightly balancing his weight and holding the gun down the seam of his trousers as if it was an extension of his arm. Whoever was in the front room was using a torch – sometimes the light skittered through the open door and into the hallway. There was the sound of a drawer opening and the contents being rattled about with rising frustration. As the noise of the search grew louder and more frantic, he felt his patience tighten into a panic that he would be left chasing shadows once more, and he began to edge step by step towards the top of the stairs. The concentration on moving s
ilently made him suddenly feel frail, bereft of solidity, and he wished that his arrival at the foot of the stairs would coincide with the bulk of Gracey bursting through the back door, but he knew that he was on his own, that no help was about to arrive. It was down to him now.

  The stairs seemed steeper in the dark and, pressing one hand to the wall, he moved down them step by slow step, trying to test each one before he gave it his weight. The wall felt cold, as if damp buried in the plaster was trying to break out and he saw a little flutter of his breath fan the air in front of his face. There was something that sounded like furniture being moved and for a second he hesitated and strange thoughts ran across his mind and in the mesh of images the person he was about to confront changed again and again. So once it was Gracey, his open overcoat flapping about him like black wings, and once it was Beckett, his eyes like a camera pushing and prying into every secret place. Despite the cold he could feel sweat in the palm of his hand as he gripped the gun. The light from the torch splayed out into the hall and back inside the room and then it was more than he could bear and almost tripping over a missed step he stumbled into the room and shone his torch into the face of the man standing there.

  Newburn flung his hand across his face as if the light had stung his skin, but before he had it covered Swift saw the dark splay of lines on his cheek. Then, as he raised the gun with one hand, his hand holding the torch fumbled for the light switch but failed to find it at first and so for a second he had to move the light away from Newburn. ‘Stand still or you’re a dead man!’ he shouted, his voice sounding strange and unfamiliar. When the electric light came on, it flickered a little before stuttering into brightness that hurt the eyes. Newburn didn’t raise his hands but stood perfectly still, and Swift didn’t know if the paleness of his face was caused by fear or merely the sudden wash of light.

  ‘For God’s sake put that thing down before you shoot me or shoot yourself,’ he said, his body flexing out of its previous stiffness. His hand combed back through his hair as if he was suddenly conscious of looking dishevelled.

  ‘Don’t move unless I tell you.’

  ‘Are you supposed to wave guns at people?’ Newburn asked, slipping into an almost casual tone. ‘I take it you know who I am?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Swift said. ‘You’re the man who killed Alma Simons. Killed her on the same settee you’re standing beside.’

  Newburn glanced at it for the briefest moment, then returned his gaze to Swift, and when he spoke the words were bevelled by a thin edge of laughter. ‘That’s a good one, son, I’ll get a few laughs out of that when I tell it. Best one I’ve heard in a long time.’

  ‘Will your wife be laughing when you tell her you’re being charged with the murder of a woman who was carrying your child.’

  Newburn’s hand lightly touched the side of his mouth then pulled away as he said, ‘Don’t talk shite, son, no one’s charging me with anything.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Swift asked, suddenly conscious of the need to ask the right questions, say the right things.

  ‘I’m involved in housing in this city, as I’m sure you know already, and after your questions earlier I wanted to see the place where this thing happened. There’s going to be an enquiry and I wanted to take a look to see if I could find any answers. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. But I think you should put that thing away before it gets you into trouble.’

  Swift didn’t move or lower the gun. ‘And is that why you came here in the middle of the night with a torch? You can talk to me as if I’m a fool, if you like, but I know why you’re here as well as you do.’

  Newburn’s hand circled his wrist. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about but I don’t think I’m saying any more to you without my lawyer, and I’d say that if you had a case against me you’d have charged me before this.’

  Swift could feel it slipping away from him. The gun was heavy in his hand ‘Why did you kill her?’ he asked, stiffening his arm again. ‘Was it because she was going to have the baby? Were you frightened your wife was going to find out?’

  ‘I don’t know anything you’re talking about, but the word on the street is she was a whore. Had half the city sniffin’ round her. So they say, anyway. I wouldn’t know.’

  Swift stepped closer and his hand holding the gun was shaking a little. He felt his fingers tightening on the torch until he was holding it like a club and his trembling arm wanted to swing itself back and strike the man standing there, but he stopped dead and tried to steady his breathing. For a second it felt the beat of his heart was so loud that Newburn must hear it but he stood there at the end of the settee and stared impassively, if he were experiencing nothing more than a little inconvenience, a minor discomfort that would soon be rectified in the light of day. For some reason Swift flicked on the torch and watched as it shone on the arm of the settee in front of Newburn. It was where he had been standing when he had shone the torch on his face. In the seconds after he had smoothed his hair back. Because he had been bending over? Swift stared at the settee and when he glanced at Newburn, he, too, was looking at it. The last place. It had to be there. Whatever it was had to be there. With the gun he motioned him to move back and after he had stepped towards the sideboard Swift began lifting the seat cushions, feeling each one with his hand – something he had already done – and slipping his hands along the back of the settee where it met the seat.

  ‘Lookin’ for loose change?’ Newburn said. ‘If you’re short of a bob or two, I could maybe help you out. It wouldn’t be hard to fix things up.’

  Swift made no response, except to glance at him every few seconds to check that he hadn’t moved. The lights flickered. He found nothing. He set the still lit torch on a cushion as his hand continued to slide. It came to the arm where her head had been and his fingers felt nothing as they ran along the narrow seam, and then, as he turned his eyes to Newburn, he touched what at first felt like merely a pin or the head of a tack. Then prising the seam wider he shone the torch in and saw that what he had touched was the broken metal clasp of a watch. Taking a bunch of keys out of his pocket, he hooked the end of one through the broken links of the bracelet, and pulled it slowly out, as if drawing some silver fish from a dark sea. It must have come off in the struggle and then been pushed into its hiding place by the final twists and squirms of her body. He held it in his hand long enough to read Newburn’s name engraved on its back and the date of its presentation from his colleagues in the City Hall. Swift threw back his head as something fountained and gurgled in his throat but as he did so the lights flickered again, then stuttered into darkness, and as he grabbed for the torch Newburn’s fist smacked against the side of his head and sent him sprawling face down on the settee. A blow to the back of his head almost knocked him senseless, but even in the spinning, swirling blackness his hands held tightly to both the gun and the watch and as he tried to shake his brain clear, then stumbled to his feet, he heard the clatter of Newburn’s feet bursting out through the back door. Like a dog emerging from water, Swift again tried to shake the pain from his head and straightening slowly, dizziness making the yellow shadows of the room flare, he searched for a balance, and despite the pain found himself smiling and repeating ‘Yes’ over and over again.

  He stowed the watch in an inside pocket and shone his way out of the room, through the hall and into the kitchen. After the darkness of the house, the moonlight seemed to call him forward and he stumbled into the silver sheen of snow, holding the torch in one hand and the gun in the other. As he ran through the doorway into the entry, he slithered and almost lost his balance, but the surge of cold air and the rush of adrenalin started to clear his head and everything in his body felt alert and focused. Newburn had cleared the entry but as Swift broke into a run it felt as if his presence lingered in each step he took and the blue scrunch of snow was printed with the desperation of his flight. Then when he reached the end of the entry and carried on into the middle of the street, he was momentarily blinded by the screa
m of headlights as Newburn’s car bore down on him and, after starting to raise the hand holding the gun towards the shadowy smear of windscreen, he let it fall again and flung himself into the bank of snow that smothered the kerb. The car passed in a black blur and, when it reached the corner of the street, slid and quivered for a moment as the wheels sought traction, then righted itself and vanished.

  A few seconds later Swift was turning the engine of his own car and cursing it as it reluctantly kicked into life, but soon he was pushing the accelerator to the floor and making the gears squeal and complain. The main road was clear and he could see Newburn’s tail lights in the distance but he felt strangely calm and all his concentration was given to driving – he had never gone so quickly and wasn’t sure of what the car was capable. The road was still icy in places but there was no way of knowing where until it was too late, so he had to be careful to avoid too-sudden breaking and judge corners accurately. He was moving gradually closer, close enough for Newburn to see him in his mirror and his hands gripped the wheel more tightly. For a second he thought of Gracey and wished he was sitting in the car beside him, then in his imagination saw him as a humped shape under the tight press of white sheets and woollen blankets. He heard, too, the rattle and snuffle of his breathing, the creak and groan of the bed. Gracey was safe in the world of his dreams, and as he drove Swift momentarily longed for the weight, the ballast, he would bring to this moment, but while the engine roared and rasped in his ears he knew that this was the thing he had to carry through on his own. And as he watched the tail lights ahead he thought of the gun he carried in his pocket and constructed in his head the scenarios that would allow him to use it. Maybe it was only right, maybe it was the only way. Any other way and there was still the chance that Newburn would walk away. He remembered what Gracey had said about power and contacts and he knew no one else could know the goodness in Alma Simons that he knew. It was an unequal contest which maybe only the gun could bring to balance.