Secret Story

by Ramsey Campbell

  Patricia met her mother’s eyes and lifted her glass high. “Valerie,” she agreed loudest of anyone, and was sipping her Chardonnay as Walt said “And Patricia, for doing so much more than anyone has a right to be expected to do.”

  She could tell that he’d worked on his phrasing, but she sensed that it made her fellow diners almost as uncomfortable as she felt. She spoke before it could revive the nightmares that she didn’t have every night now—wakening to find her head wrapped in tape when it had only strayed under the bedclothes, or feeling water close with infinite slowness over her bound body, or opening her eyes to see Dudley grinning down at her. “I should never have got myself into that situation. I wouldn’t make much of a detective.”

  “But you were there as a journalist. I don’t know any reporters that would have put themselves through that.”

  “She didn’t have a choice,” Valerie said. “She was there as a victim.”

  Patricia laid one hand on her mother’s and gazed along the table. “No, I was there as an idiot.”

  “Sounds like you’ve come out of it feisty at any rate,” Walt said. “I’d say anything positive we can salvage from that whole sad business is worth having. Do you all know about Vincent’s new project?”

  “Nobody’s mentioned it to me,” David Kwazela said with enough hauteur for his entire African community.

  “He’s found a way of dealing with the issues his other film would have brought up.”

  Vincent pushed his spectacles closer to his eyes. “I’ll be questioning them, anyway.”

  “Tell him about it, Vincent,” Walt said and sat down.

  “I’ll be investigating how Dudley Smith is becoming a cultural icon. Somebody’s set up a web site about him, the Scouse Slayer. People think he killed more people than the police are letting on. The new thing at school is kids saying they’ll send each other a killogram. The council’s trying to stop a stall in Church Street selling mugs with his face on them that say Dud the Lad . . .”

  “How are you going to investigate all that?” David Kwazela interrupted.

  “And other things as well, like how fiction and reality depend on each other. I think maybe it’ll be a new kind of film. I’ll be filming parts of the script we had and intercutting them with reconstructions of the actual events and interviews with the relatives if I can get them. They ought to agree when they hear what my approach is.”

  “Don’t you think it could still be controversial?”

  “I hope.”

  As David Kwazela stuck out his bottom lip and took his gaze elsewhere, Vincent said across three intervening diners “I definitely need to film you, Patricia. It won’t be complete without the survivor. I thought I could show how that last weekend might have seemed to him and how it really was for you. I’d use an actress if you didn’t want to go through it all again. So long as you can talk about it.”

  Patricia sat up straighter, because everyone was either watching her or avoiding it. “I don’t know what I could say that would be any use.”

  “Try saying you encouraged Dud.”

  Walt stood up again as the speaker advanced. “Monty, we thought you weren’t coming.”

  “I’ve been drinking with some of me mates that write pomes. That’s why you reckoned you could say anything you like about Dud, was it?”

  “I don’t believe we’ve been doing that.”

  “That’s a rhyme. Watch out or you’ll end up a poet.”

  “Excuse me,” Valerie said before Monty had quite finished. “May I ask how you think Patricia encouraged your son?”

  “You did and all. And you, Vince. I’m surprised at you. You started out like a true Scouser and then you wanted to make a film about one that’s a criminal, like people don’t reckon we all are.”

  “I wouldn’t have without Dudley, you know.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You could have tried to get him to write something healthy but you made him worse.”

  “I don’t see how anybody here can be said to have done that,” Valerie objected.

  “Forgot Shell Garridge already? I thought she was one of your mates.”

  “I wouldn’t have said she was responsible for, if you’ll forgive me, what he was.”

  “Me neither. Never did. They’re making out now he may have killed her too. Killing anybody’s out of order, but how could he have done it to someone like her if he’d known what he was doing? If he did it shows he was totally warped in the head.”

  Patricia was thinking that her experience did, and trying not to let the memories spring up at her, when Monty said “Still, I don’t reckon anyone’s to blame so much as his mother.”

  “You don’t,” Valerie said and kept her eyes on him.

  “She killed him, didn’t she? Killed both of them. If you ask me that’s because she couldn’t stand the guilt. Used to take drugs, maybe that’s why. Pity about her, I’m not saying it’s not, but I wish she’d left him so he could have got some help.”

  “Unless it was Dudley who killed them,” Patricia felt bound to propose.

  Monty let her feel his stare before he said “I’m not that convinced he killed anyone.”

  “Are you suggesting she made up what he did to her?” Valerie demanded. “Or are you trying to blame her for that as well?”

  “I’m sure he can’t be,” Patricia said. “Anyway, the police are certain about Dudley. They managed to retrieve the dates on his computer.”

  This was addressed to Monty, who redoubled his stare. “I don’t need you to tell me. Doesn’t prove that much. He never wrote that crap about Shell Garridge, that’s for sure. That was his mam. She hid it from everyone, even him.”

  She was wondering if there was anything truthful to be said that might leave him feeling less robbed of his son when Monty turned on Vincent. “I’m betting you’ll believe whatever makes you the most money. Thank shite I haven’t got to work with you any more.”

  Vincent gave the cluttered table his attention, widening his eyes so vigorously that his spectacles slid down his nose. “I’m off back to drink with some real people,” Monty announced. “If any of youse want to join me, come ahead.”

  When he’d finished observing the general discomfort he made his way with studied dignity to the exit and stalked away along the dock. By then Walt had cleared his throat. “I guess we can understand how he feels even if we don’t agree with everything he said. But you carry on doing what you do best, Vincent, and Patricia, I hope you will too.”

  “What are you thinking that is?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think it could be. I was talking over some ideas with a publisher in London, and the one she liked best was a book by you.”

  “What about?” Patricia said and immediately knew.

  “All your encounters with Dudley Smith. We agreed nobody living could have more insight into him. You could interview people if you like, but it’s your story. The only thing is she’d want the book as soon as possible, while he’s hot.”

  Patricia was quiet long enough to suggest she was considering the proposal. “Thanks, Walt, but it isn’t for me. I don’t want to write, I want to survive.”

  “Can’t you do both? Mightn’t one help the other? If it isn’t for you it isn’t for anybody.”

  “You wouldn’t have time, would you, Patricia?” Valerie intervened. “You’ll be too busy with your other work. She’s just been made the Merseyside correspondent for Northern Girl,” she informed the diners with some pride.

  “Isn’t that the magazine you’re working for now?” Vincent enquired.

  “That’s Northwest. Patricia’s being independent.”

  “Sounds that way,” Walt said.

  Patricia didn’t know how censured she was meant to feel. “I’ll talk to you for your film, Vincent, but that’s going to have to be all.”

  His was by no means the only face that grew sympathetic, which seemed almost as burdensome as Walt’s disappointment. “Thanks for everything, Walt, really,
” she said, easing her chair backwards. “Good night, everyone. I think I’d better walk this off.”

  “Would you like me to come with you?” Valerie said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  She didn’t, but her mother took it as an appeal. She caught up with Patricia in the colonnade outside the restaurant, alongside which the water in the Albert Dock appeared to have borrowed a heavy sluggishness from the overcast September night. “Do you want to talk?” Valerie said.

  “Not particularly. I’m just thinking.”

  Her mind was busy, at any rate. She was remembering how Dudley had dogged her along this route after the casting session. Might he have been intending her some harm if Vincent hadn’t called him back? It needn’t trouble her: she had eluded him. Around her the night was no darker than it ought to be. Beyond the Albert Dock she waited for the green man to seize illumination from his red counterpart, and then she crossed the six deserted lanes of the road, only to hesitate outside James Street Station. “Shall we walk to the next one?”

  “Whatever’s best for you, Patricia.”

  She’d followed that course to leave Dudley behind, but that wasn’t the memory she was determined to outstrip. She strode along Castle Street and past the town hall, hardly glancing at the skeleton that peered out of the shadows of a metal robe. Echoes of their footsteps kept her and her mother company across the quadrangle and the roads beyond it, and the escalator that climbed to the unstaffed ticket barriers, and both escalators that led deeper than the street. She wasn’t in a story about Moorfields, Patricia told herself when she heard feet running down the metal stairs at her back. “Don’t look,” she murmured. “Don’t bother looking.”

  She wasn’t speaking only to her mother, who retreated from beside her to the next step up. She was making way for the runner, of course; she didn’t need to protect Patricia. The youth clattered past them, his ears hissing and pounding with headphones, before Patricia could be sure of the legend on his T-shirt. She had to glance around at him when she reached the platform, because he was loitering in the tiled white passage. His scrawny chest did indeed say BRING BACK MR KILLOGRAM.

  Why was he lurking behind her and her mother after having run past them? Because his train hadn’t arrived yet, she supposed—certainly not because he had ambitions to shove them under it—but she couldn’t shake off the notion that he might be imagining some such deed in memory of his apparent hero. She felt the first cool breeze of the day on her face as a train approached. She rested her gaze on the slogan before searching his eyes. “Why would you want to?” she said.

  The headphones hissed so loudly that he must be deaf to any other sound. For a moment it reminded her too vividly of the water that had closed over her ears and the rest of her face, and she couldn’t breathe. Even if the youth didn’t understand her, she had clearly antagonised him. He glanced from her to Valerie, two women alone on an underground platform with nobody else in earshot, and she glimpsed someone altogether too reminiscent of Dudley Smith spying from deep in his eyes. Then the New Brighton train drew alongside the platform, and he swaggered onto it to plant his heels on the seat opposite him.

  Valerie didn’t speak until the rumble had died away along the tunnel like the last trace of a storm. “It’s like Walt was implying. Dudley Smith is just the latest fad. He’ll be forgotten soon enough.”

  “I hope so.”

  Valerie scrutinised her expression and reached out a hand in case Patricia wanted to be touched. “Are you all right?”

  “I will be.” The exchange reminded Patricia too precisely of another, and she tried to leave it behind. She gazed into the tunnel as the darkness began to rumble again. “Here it comes,” she said. “This is our story now.”

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgment

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue