Death's Sweet Echo

by Maynard Sims

  When morning came, he was confused to find that he was lying fully clothed on the bed, the sunlight pushing through the window, which he didn’t remember having left open the previous night. His head ached, which he put down to the whisky he’d drunk on the train. There was something about the journey that he couldn’t bring to mind. What was it? There was some trouble with people staring at him, was that it? He shook his head; his thoughts wouldn’t keep still long enough for him to pinpoint what he was fumbling for. He gave up and went into the bathroom.

  He stripped off his clothes and was pleasantly surprised that the shower was modern and refreshing. He dried his body with a large towel, and if he gave a second thought about the shampoos and shower gels that were distributed around the blue-and-cream room, the matter was soon dismissed. There was a toothbrush and toothpaste by the sink, and when he opened the mirrored cupboard on the wall he found his shaving equipment. He lathered his face and began the meticulous task of shaving.

  Movement in the periphery of his vision distracted him, and he nicked his chin. The cut was deeper than he hoped it might be; the blood dripped quite freely. It pooled on the floor tiles and quickly formed a small puddle. He didn’t want to stain one of the towels, so he ran downstairs to the kitchen and tore off a few sheets of towel roll. When he ran back into the room, he cried out at what he saw.

  The cat was licking up the blood from the floor. Its pink tongue was lapping at the puddle, in the manner that cats do, and when it sensed Randolph entering the room it glanced up imperiously. Blood stained the whiskers and the soft skin around the mouth.

  ‘You…’

  Randolph was horrified. He strode forward and kicked the cat with a hard blow from his left foot. Even though the foot was naked, it caught the cat unawares, and flung it against the panel of the bath. Stunned, it gave Randolph time to move to it, pick it up and tear angrily at it with his fingers and nails. The cat scratched back, and caught the skin of the back of his hands, and once his cheek. He reached behind him and caught hold of his razor. Using it as a weapon, he attacked the cat until the struggles weakened and then stopped.

  He looked at the blood on his hands, and on the bathroom floor. He couldn’t quite bring to mind how it had happened. Then he saw the bloodied mess in his hands, and he dropped it as if it was hot and burning him. He ran his hands under the cold water tap, but he needed more kitchen roll to mop up the blood everywhere else.

  When he walked back into the bathroom, he didn’t understand how most of the blood had drained away. He stared at the tiles, which had been coated red with quite a large amount of blood, both his and the cat’s. As he stared, so the tiles soaked up the liquid, as if they were made of sponge. The blood stained the ceramic for a short while, and then it was as if there had never been any blood. The floor had drunk it all up.

  He finished shaving, tidied up his cuts and scratches with some plasters from the cupboard, and went back to the bedroom to dress. In the room he had used last night, he found all the drawers and wardrobe space was filled with his clothes and sundry things. That was odd, wasn’t it? He hadn’t asked the agents to unpack his boxes, but clearly someone had. That must be why the bathroom felt so familiar to him.

  Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, he made some coffee in the kitchen and took the jug and mug out onto the small patio in the garden. The early morning sun was flickering through the trees, shifting patterns of shadows over the stone slabs and the dark wood table where Randolph sat.

  The grass was in need of the mower, but the flower beds were in full song, with the roses especially fulsome. He drank one mug of hot coffee and poured another while he lit a cigarette. He hadn’t expected to find any, but there were a couple of packets on the table in the lounge, so there was no point in letting them go to waste. There was a lighter too, a fancy one, not one of those disposable types people tended to use. It was a bit of a surprise that the people before him had left such personal stuff, but beggars can’t be choosers. He hadn’t really remembered that he smoked.

  As he looked out over the peaceful garden, something began to irritate him. He couldn’t quite find what it was, so he did what he often did when the thoughts he wanted wouldn’t line up properly: he ignored them, and looked away. There was a boat on the river, he could just see the ruddy faced man steering it. That was it, the roses.

  The roses were far too cheerful. This wasn’t a time for celebration, this was a moment of mourning. He had lost it all and there they were with their red and yellow and orange and God knew what fancy colours flaunting in front of him as if they didn’t have a care in the world. He’d show them.

  In the garden shed to the side of the house, he found what he was looking for: a sharp pair of secateurs. He didn’t bother with the wicker basket that he might have used to keep the debris together and tidy. He marched up to the rose bed and casually and brutally cut the heads off each one. The flowers dropped like soiled confetti to the earth, the red petals looking like blood, the orange and yellow as if bits of the sun had broken off and had been trampled on. By the time he had finished he was panting, out of breath.

  He went back to the table, sat and picked up his mug of coffee. The sun didn’t seem quite so bright now; perhaps it had shifted in the sky, or perhaps a cloud had scurried across and masked it. The garden was subdued; it seemed to be in shock at the devastation. Randolph thought the discarded rose petals made an abstract shape on the rich, dark earth. He might take up painting, now he had more time on his hands.

  There were things he needed to do. A car was essential out here. What to do about that? Attached to the cottage was an old-fashioned garage, with double doors that opened out and were wide enough for a car to be kept safely when it wasn’t being used. Wondering whether it would be big enough for the type of car he imagined he would buy led him to investigate the garage.

  It was accessible from the front, but also through a narrow door from the lounge. It was locked, but the key was on a nail next to it. He unlocked the door and felt along the wall for the light switch. When the lights came on, they reflected back from the gleaming blue metallic paint of a BMW 4x4 vehicle that was pretty much brand new. Well, that can’t be right, surely the agents haven’t allowed the previous owners to leave their car behind? He should give them a ring. He pulled out his mobile phone, and then he had a better idea. The keys were in the ignition. He would drive into Kingsbridge and ask the agents what they thought they were playing at.

  The car easily navigated the steep hill back up to the main lanes and from there it was an easy drive of less than half an hour along the A381. He passed through familiar villages, Harberton, Harbertonford, Halwell, before he managed to park just a few yards from the estate agents’ offices. When he went in, he spied straight away the man he wanted to speak with.

  ‘Ah, Mr Randolph,’ said Clive, the estate agent.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Everything okay out at the cottage?’

  Randolph was aware that the rest of the staff were staring at him, and he began to realise that this was how things were going to be from now on. Even here in rural Devon they read the papers, saw the news on TV and computers. He was notorious now, a celebrity of sorts. He should mention that to his agent when she visited. There might be a lucrative future in those reality shows he detested.

  ‘To be frank, I’m not happy.’

  Clive’s face pulled into an unattractive expression that he might have hoped suggested empathy and concern, but which alluded more to constipation. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Tell me what’s wrong and I’m sure we can sort it out for you.’

  ‘Well, for starters, I asked for the boxes of my stuff to be delivered, which they have, but I didn’t instruct that they should be unpacked and set out over the place. That’s going a bit beyond orders.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I understand.’

  ‘Not only that, but they seem to have left quite a bit of their own things behind.’

  �
��Left behind… who has?’ Clive was genuinely puzzled. He hadn’t seen Randolph in quite a while, and while he knew there were always two sides to every story, he hadn’t expected to see that much of him any time soon, either. Some people were more brazen than he would have been under the same circumstances.

  ‘And to top it all, they’ve left behind a perfectly decent car.’

  ‘A car?’

  Randolph pointed vaguely through the window in the general direction of the BMW. ‘It’s out there. I drove it here.’

  ‘Cathy, do you think you could make Mr Randolph a coffee?’

  ‘I don’t want coffee,’ Randolph said. ‘I want to know what you’re going to do about it.’

  Clive looked about him, as conscious of the staff watching the interaction as Randolph was. He pleaded with his eyes to his second-in-command, Sandra, to help him out.

  ‘Is it a dark blue one?’ Sandra said.

  Clive looked at Randolph, and Randolph looked at Sandra.

  ‘Is what blue?’ Randolph asked.

  Sandra stood, politely, and shuffled to the side of her desk. ‘The car. BMW. 61 plate. Automatic. Leather interior. Sports trim.’

  ‘What? I don’t need to know the specifications.’

  ‘That’s the car you’ve driven here, though, isn’t it?’ Sandra had moved closer towards the two men, emboldened now by her knowledge of the vehicle. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  Randolph suddenly felt his head contract on the left side of his temple. Not now, not a migraine now, when he had so much to do.

  ‘You ordered it from us, all part of the house-hunting service; I remember Clive, I mean Mr Jenkins, here, saying that at the time.’

  Randolph felt as if his head was going to explode. ‘I can’t deal with this now. You haven’t heard the last of this. I shall withhold your fees until this mess is all sorted out.’ With that he stormed out, leaving the glass door to the office wide open.

  Clive walked across to close it. ‘He paid his fees years ago,’ he said quietly to no one.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Sandra asked, but no one bothered to respond.

  Randolph drove back, through and out of Totnes, until he came to the bend in the road before entering Buckfastleigh, where he stopped to eat at the Dartbridge Inn. He drank two pints of beer, which was unusual for him, and ate three courses. By the time he paid his bill, he was feeling full and uncomfortable.

  He got back in the car and couldn’t remember how he’d got here. He knew the pub, had visited before, several times. Perhaps it was one of those times when the brain goes onto auto-pilot and gets you somewhere without the conscious mind realising it, or even being a part of the process.

  He drove back to the cottage. When he got there, he was annoyed to find a car parked across his front gate. An Audi sports model. He just about had room to squeeze his own car onto the drive, where he left it, not bothering to garage it. The front door to the cottage was open again, and this time he was truly angry. Was the place never going to be his, private and personal?

  ‘Who the hell is in here?’ he demanded as he strode into the lounge.

  ‘That’s a hell of a greeting if I ever heard of one.’ It was a female voice, deep, and with an American twang that suggested plains and horses.

  Randolph paused and surveyed the room. She was seated on the sofa, a glass of wine in her hand and a mobile phone in the other.

  ‘I was just about to call you,’ she said, nodding down at the hand carrying the phone. ‘Guess I don’t need to.’

  ‘Rachel. I wasn’t expecting you.’ Was I?

  ‘The element of surprise. Isn’t that what we always used to use as our first weapon of defence?’

  ‘I don’t think I need to worry about any of that now, do you?’

  She swallowed some of the white wine. ‘Guess not. Want one?’ She indicated the wine bottle and a second glass. She poured it without waiting for his response, and handed it to him.

  ‘Guess you’re wondering why I’m here in deepest, darkest Devon?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’

  ‘Things haven’t been easy, since… well since you left. Plenty of flak, I can tell you. I managed to quell some of it, of course, but Clarabel has been a woman scorned and loud with it. As for your former colleagues, well…’

  ‘I know what I wanted to say,’ Randolph interrupted. ‘Reality TV.’

  ‘So now you’ve said it. So what?’

  ‘I’d be perfect for it. Don’t you think? Fallen from grace, articulate, damaged possibly. The public love that kind of thing. The Jungle, Big Brother… there are lots of…’

  Rachel drained her glass and reached for the bottle. ‘The public loathe you. I’d have more chance of getting a TV deal for that bloke that killed those three kids.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘That’s what reality is. Real reality, not some TV bullshit.’

  He noticed his glass was empty, and held it out for a refill. She saw that his hand was shaking, but wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘I haven’t heard from you in months…’

  ‘I only got here last night.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know what, I’ve had enough of this. Call yourself my agent? I don’t need you, I can…’

  ‘You can fuck off, Richard, that’s what you can do. Sticking by you like I have has caused me nothing but grief. I’ve lost some good clients, and some even better contacts, and for what? To find you wallowing in your own self-pity.’

  Randolph threw his glass of wine in her face. ‘Get out.’

  She wiped her face the best she could and brushed past him to get to the door. There she turned and spoke to his back. ‘I hope the next time I see you in the newspapers won’t be your obituary, because that’s the way you’re going.’

  He sat on the sofa, still warm from her body heat. He was confused for a moment, as there were two glasses on the table, but he let the thought drift away. He finished the bottle and went to fetch another from the chiller-cabinet in the kitchen. He kept quite a nice ‘cellar’ here, the reds stored in the utility room on specially constructed shelves.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep but he must have done, because he woke suddenly, a crick in his neck, slumped on the sofa, his trousers wet from the spilled wine glass in his lap. Night had crept in, long shadows laid across the carpet, the air in the room cooler. It was time for bed, but he wasn’t in the least bit tired. He stood and walked slowly into the reading room.

  Through the window he saw the moon, low slung in the black sky, full and round, shining like a beacon onto the back garden, and reaching up to him. He held out his hand as if to touch the moonlight, and was startled when his hand hit the glass of the window. He slumped onto the sofa, buried his head in his hands and wept.

  He couldn’t say how long he stayed like that, but when he raised his head up he didn’t recognise the hands he stared at, with the scratches on them, the nails bitten to the quick, the wrists scarred with what seemed to be old cuts.

  There were so many thoughts jumbled in his brain. His head still ached, and the drinking hadn’t helped that at all. His mind was like a fog, impenetrable, his attempts at navigation towards rational thought helplessly lost in the dense grey mass that felt as if someone had taken part of his mind away.

  He didn’t have the energy to rise from the sofa. He needed coffee, but the action of walking to the kitchen was beyond him. He would sit here a bit longer. Watch the moon getting closer. Listen to the ticking of the clock, resolutely counting off the seconds of his life.

  Choices had been made, a long time ago, and he couldn’t turn back time and change them now. He had done what he thought he needed to do, and if it was wrong he only had himself to blame. Everything they had all said was true. Except none of them knew the truth. None of them could even suspect the full extent of the error of his ways.

/>   ***

  Priestley stopped talking and took a long pull on his cigar. He refilled his glass with some port and sipped it. While he was doing this, he avoided eye contact with Pulford, and both men were aware he was doing just that.

  For his part, Pulford ate some more cheese. It was going to be difficult to be the first to disturb the silence. Usually between them the quiet interludes were of the companionable kind, and neither found it awkward in the least to sit without speaking for long periods of time. This felt different.

  In the end it was Pulford who spoke first, as it should be, as Priestley had dispatched his story at length and it had clearly affected him greatly. ‘We both knew Randolph, of course.’

  ‘You better than I, I think.’

  Pulford nodded, and then realised that Priestley was not looking at him but instead was intent on some far away horizon. ‘I did know him well, when we were younger. I was at Cambridge with him. I wouldn’t say we were close friends.’

  ‘By all accounts, he never had too many of those even when times were good for him.’

  ‘He was a bit of a loner. I would not have had him down for politics, but then again he was a rabble-rouser of sorts, a good debater, and he did enjoy the finer things in life.’

  Priestley tore his gaze away from the far distance and brought his mind back into focus. ‘You hadn’t seen him for some time?’

  ‘No. His world and mine were very different and although I kept up with his career in the papers, I never had cause to make contact.’

  Priestley drew long and hard on his cigar and watched with satisfaction as the ash fell silently and as if in slow motion to the floor. ‘These really are rather fine.’