by Maynard Sims
'I don't think you love me, do you?'
The man settled back into the cushions on the sofa and held the glass to his forehead. He closed his eyes as if he never wanted to open them again.
From the television the well-spoken woman said, 'A police spokesman denied that the arrest and subsequent release on bail of an unnamed man in his thirties was an indication that the investigation has stalled.'
'But you do have loved ones? Eh, Roger? Someone who cares for you... someone you want to be with.'
'I am a poor man, sir. But in the things that matter in this world, I am as rich as the richest man could hope for.'
The man opened his eyes, drank some more whisky, and glanced at the television. His face crumpled for a moment in distress.
'That's good. Don't call me “sir”. My name... my real name... is David.'
'David.'
'So, Roger, who loves you? Do you love them in return?'
'My mother is a wonderful woman.'
'No woman will ever love you like your mother.'
'And I am fortunate to have the love of a good woman, and the family approves of her, and she will be my wife, so I am doubly blessed.'
The man swallowed the last of the whisky from his glass. He reached forward and poured himself an even bigger measure from the bottle.
'I had a woman I loved.'
'That is good...'
'She's dead.'
The informed female voice from the television said, 'Although police have refused to name the man, sources close to the investigation have suggested he was someone known to the last victim.'
'I am truly sorry to hear that. You have my sincere condolences.'
'I admire your sentiment, Roger, but as you aren't anyone I know, and you aren't even using your real name, I'm afraid your sympathy doesn't comfort me much.'
'My name is Amrit. It means immortal in Hindi.'
'Pleased to meet you, Amrit.'
'Did she die recently? Your loved one?' The original professional manner had softened, and the question was asked tactfully, gently.
'Yes. She was my wife. Amy.'
'I am very sorry to hear that. You sound quite young... I am thinking she was young, too...'
'She was. Far too young to die.'
'I am only ringing you up to ask you about your power supplier.'
'Power... like electric and gas?'
'That is correct. We have several good deals...' His voice tailed off. 'I do not think you want to hear about switching energy supplier.'
The man finished the whisky and reached for the bottle. He paused with the bottle halfway between him and the table, holding it in mid-air and looking at it as if seeing it for the first time.
'I don't mind, Amrit. Cold call or not. I don't really care. After tonight, it won't matter. Nothing will.'
'You must not talk like that. Grief is a terrible thing to cope with.'
The man laughed coldly. 'You sound concerned. Are you going to tell me that time is a great healer? How about the stages of grief? Know those?'
'I would not presume to be so bold. The loss of a wife will not be something you will ever get over.'
'How would you...'
'When my father died, my mother went into mourning, as is our custom, but we still wait for her to come back to us.'
'How long ago did...'
'My father died nine years ago. My mother has never recovered.'
The man tipped the bottle and filled the glass so full that it overflowed, spilling whisky onto his legs. 'You're not making me feel much better.'
'The point is not to give you false comfort. The point is that my mother is still alive. Life does go on.'
The woman on the television seemed louder, more definite. 'Sources close to the investigation have given this station information that suggests the same man may be re-arrested on the basis of new DNA evidence that has come to light.'
The man drank long and hard, whisky dripping down his chin and staining the shirt.
'Is that Coronation Street you are watching?'
'Nice effort for knowing English TV, Amrit, but no, this is real life, not a soap opera.'
'How did... how did your wife die? Was she ill?'
The man snorted a derisive laugh. 'She was a runner. Fitter than me by a few miles. Track, road, even did marathons.'
'Fit people get sick.'
'Never had a day sick in all the time I knew her. A cold sometimes, but she just shrugged it off. Physical fitness was her hobby... more than that, it was her mantra.'
'An accident.'
'How she died? Yes, it was an accident. I didn't mean... It was all a dreadful accident.'
'What didn't you mean?' A veneer of caution had entered his voice.
'What?'
'You said, “I didn't mean”. What didn't you mean to do?'
The man swallowed some more whisky. 'I didn't mean to kill her.'
He threw the glass at the television, where it smashed and pieces fell to the carpeted floor.
The television screen was unbroken but smeared with whisky.
The woman didn’t pause. 'Evidence suggests the three murders may be linked, a development denied by official police sources.'
'I didn't mean to kill any of them, not really. My wife found out I was seeing someone else. I tried to explain that I had already dealt with that problem... I only meant to scare her off, but I got so angry...'
'Sir, David. Are you confessing to...'
'That's rich isn't it, Amrit? You ring up, call a number on a list your company has paid for, think you'll be getting a punter for your energy switching. What do you get? Some man thousands of miles away telling you they killed three women, but they didn't mean to do it. Funny, when you think about it.'
'I think perhaps you should speak with the police.'
'When her sister saw me... standing over the body... it would have been okay if she hadn't screamed.'
'You sound as if you have been drinking. Perhaps in the morning this will all seem...'
'I've drunk almost the whole bottle, Amrit. Whisky. I expect you have no idea what that feels like. Against your religion, and all that.'
'You are confusing Hinduism with Islam. We can drink alcohol, so long as we can accommodate it within our faith. The question for Hindus is how does the use of alcohol fit in with its sense of dharma and how does it affect us karmically?'
'I used to believe in Heaven. I was never religious, not so you'd notice. Now I hope that Hell is a myth, as well. I killed my lover and her sister but I didn't mean to do any of it. I tried to explain to Amy, but the look on her face... I just wanted her to love me again.'
'Is there someone I can call for you, David? A friend, relative?'
'I have everything I need.'
The man reached across and picked up the almost empty bottle of whisky. In doing so, he knocked over a pill bottle. Dozens of small, white pills cascaded out onto the table top, and onto the carpet.
'I think I should call someone.'
'But you did. You called me. And I am internally grateful.'
'I mean someone to help...'
'Don't you think you've helped? You've had my energy needs in mind and here I am burdening your conscience with my guilt. If only I could feel guilt... all I feel is sorrow.'
'Sorrow is a normal emotion...'
'Sorrow for me. Self-pity. This has ruined my life, Amrit. No, there's only one way out.'
'No! Don't do anything like that.' The words were shouted into the telephone.
The man dropped to his knees on the carpet and began to collect the white pills into his palm. He held the telephone against his ear with his shoulder.
'Too late for any of that.'
Through the closed curtains, a flashing blue light suddenly shone into the dimly lit room.
Outside, in the street, sirens wailed, getting closer and closer, louder and louder.
'Too
late for me.'
The man began to shove pills down his throat. He let the telephone drop to the floor. He held the bottle to his lips and took a long swig from it. Then he swallowed more pills.
The doorbell buzzed.
Again and again, insistent buzzes like a bee trapped behind glass.
The man slouched back against the sofa. He took more pills and drank more whisky from the bottle until it was empty, and then he threw the bottle onto the sofa. He picked up the telephone. 'Still there, Amrit?'
'I am. Are you okay?'
'I will be. If they give me the time I need.'
'Don't be foolish. There is always a way out.'
There was a crash from the hallway just outside the room as the front door was smashed in.
Loud voices invaded the stillness as people ran into the house.
'I hope you have a good life with your chosen woman. Treasure her.'
The living room door was smashed in, and it bounced against the wall. Loud voices shouted rudely, aggressively, into the room.
'Police. Hands on your head. Get down.'
'Goodbye, cold caller Amrit. Time for me to go.'
The man switched off the telephone and placed his hands on his head.
Armed officers forced him to the floor and pulled his hands behind his back, where they gripped them with handcuffs.
'Looks like he’s taken plenty of these.' A police officer held up the pill bottle.
'And probably all of this.' The whisky bottle was held aloft.
'Get the paramedics. We want this bastard alive.'
RESTITUTION
The first time I saw Melinda laugh out loud, she was already dead. That might seem a strange thing to say, but it’s the truth. When she was alive, she may have been walking, talking, even attempting to relax when she thought no one was watching, but deep inside her body, death had taken hold and was working its evil magic, so that her breathing had a finite amount of days left; her shy smile would be seen for just a few more fleeting months; her eyes would bear the scared and rather haunted appearance that I had come to recognise as her true self, for a lessening amount of time.
We shouldn’t really have met at all. Although, once she was dead, I suppose all bets were off and she could do what she wanted. I certainly didn’t seem to have the resources to prevent her visits, though I was going to try my hardest from now on.
I’d left university with a respectable 2:1, nothing spectacular, and given the amount of debt that I was left with, as a result of tuition and maintenance fees, it might be suggested the three years could have been better spent. My parents seemed to consider I should have tried harder. They worried each term that I would throw it all in, and when the time was over and the results were in, they didn’t even try to hide their disappointment at my achievements. Get a job now was their encouraging cry.
I began work at the local social services as a last resort, having received rejections and a simple lack of response from all the other jobs I applied for. I had thought a degree would give me some kind of elevation into at least the interview stage, but I was wrong. It seemed that a degree in history wasn’t exactly what the banks, solicitors, even the accountants, were looking for. No one was, as it turned out – not the publishers, museums, nowhere. The social services took me because I was so desperate, I’m convinced of that.
The interview invitation came as a surprise. I was late getting up that day, deliberately ignoring the increasingly irritated and impassioned pleas from my mother to ‘get out of bed.’ Living with my parents, after the years away from home, was proving difficult for all of us, but I can only explain how it felt for me, what my experiences were, and they were mind-numbing, freedom-suffocating, and stress-inducing. I suppose it was the same for them. I didn’t ask.
When I came downstairs, both my parents had already left the house to go to work. ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees,’ as my mother would constantly remind me. My father would contribute his own brand of advice along the lines of ‘I was married by the time I was your age.’ Which proved nothing, and helped no one, but didn’t stop either of them sharing their accumulated wisdom from their drawn-out years of pinched life.
The post had arrived and there was a letter for me, which wasn’t unusual given the number of job applications I had sent out. I didn’t open it until I had made my first coffee of the day and was buttering toast. It would only be another letter of regret. It’s us, not you. At this moment in time. They all wished me good luck for the future, which I found hard to accept as being sincere.
I tore open the envelope with the same knife I was using on my food, and so the piece of paper that I pulled out was smeared with some greasy butter and lines of marmalade. It wouldn’t matter, as it would be consigned to the bin as soon as I saw the ‘sorry’ word that I had grown so used to. Except this letter was different. They wanted to see me. There was a time and a date and a definite and almost positive request for my presence. Someone wanted to see me. There were tears in my eyes as I laid the letter down on the sticky tabletop.
***
The youth centre was set up as a kind of drop-in service. There were the ubiquitous table tennis tables and a bar where fruit juices and soft drinks could be had, although I later learned that the more enterprising and rebellious visitors would lace them with vodka poured from water bottles they brought in with them. We, the staff, tended to turn a blind eye to the illicit drinking, unless one of them went a bit too far. Their behaviour was wild enough without letting them get blind drunk as well.
From the outside, the flat-roofed, pebble-dashed building was an eyesore. Though situated where it was, on the most deprived estate in the capital, it didn’t stand out as unusual, or even especially ugly. The most deprived? That was making quite a claim, when I think about some of the horrendous places that we expected our youth to grow and develop. Expectations for many, far too many, was low, even non-existent. Zero prospects led to zero levels of social behaviour.
It had been graffiti-covered, the building, by the regulars. Painted in bright and garish colours in an attempt to beautify it, or at the very least to give it a sort of personal identification, to make it stand out from all the other ugly buildings dwarfed by the rising tower blocks where most of the kids lived.
Gangs from other postcodes had come in and spray-canned tags and simple swear words and threats over the swirls of reds, oranges and purples. Now and again there was an attempt to reclaim the exterior for the youth centre, and a small gaggle of them would drag out pots of paint and some cheap brushes and paint gaiety back. It never lasted, though, and the last time I saw it the black-and-white graffiti swirls were winning.
‘Why do you come here?’ I remember I asked one of three girls slouched in a corner sharing a cigarette.
They shrugged collectively. ‘Somewhere to go.’
‘How’s school?’
The look they each gave me told its own story. Education was compulsory but it didn’t mean they had to learn anything. What was the point, if there were no jobs and even fewer choices or chances? Most treated the daily school routine as a way to meet friends and get away from the drudgery of their lives outside the school gates.
Many were unofficial carers for drug-affected single mothers. Others acted as lookouts for fathers conducting the prime source of revenue on the estate, the selling and distribution of drugs to others no more fortunate than the dealers and the pushers.
The proliferation of the gang culture meant that actual, real conversations with the majority of the kids was almost impossible. The loyalty was to the gang, whatever that meant. Initiations varied, but for the boys invariably included some random act of violence, often on a complete innocent, but usually on a rival gang member. For the girls it was sexual favours. Lines of boys waiting their turn to be serviced by the mouth of the new recruit. I could never understand why the girls allowed themselves to be defiled in such a way, but to hear them speak so eagerly about being a
ccepted into the gang, like it was a family, gave me the closest to an answer that I think I would get.
Melinda was different. Right from the beginning, I could see that. The way she held herself as she walked through the door and across to the music player. A flick of a finger and the track being played ceased and another, presumably one she approved of, began. There were rumbles of protest from the two boys nearest to the music system, but the look she gave them silenced anything other than obligatory mumbles.
To me, she even looked different from the others. Not smarter than them, it wasn’t that. Her clothes bore the same shabbiness and display of cheap materials, but the manner in which she wore them made her stand out. That first time, the memorable moment I set eyes on her, she was wearing skinny black jeans that looked as if they had been washed at least once too often. Faded, for sure, but the way in which they clung to her surprisingly curvaceous legs and buttocks gave them a shabby chic appearance. Of course, if I’d suggested such a thing, I’d have been accused, by her sharp tongue, of being a ‘perv’ or a ‘dirty old man’, all accusations she flung at me later in our relationship. She’d have laughed that off, as well – relationship. She’d turned sixteen that year, but I was an ancient twenty-two.
It was a warm summer, and the sun reached even this forsaken corner of the world, so on her feet she had loose-fitting, ballet-style pumps. They needed a good clean and a polish. Her slinky top was multi-coloured and accentuated breasts that I learned she knew how to use to her advantage if she needed to persuade someone to give her what she wanted. Trouble was, she never really knew what she did want. Perhaps the same as all of us, in our clumsy way – love, security, a future.
It might sound as if I fell in love with her a little bit, that initial sighting. It wasn’t like that at all, not really. I immediately saw a vulnerable young girl, who, despite her outer show of confidence, needed help. I wanted to save her, I suppose. If only she had let me.
***
The interview was arranged for the following Thursday, and, although I tried to play down my excitement – especially in front of my fussing parents – I was secretly so pleased to at last be given a chance that I was having trouble sleeping.
