The catch gave way. Mr. Rellik didn’t even have time to cry out. The door swung open and he was thrown out. Out into the night and the rain. My father must have speeded up without my noticing because we were doing almost sixty then and it seemed that the wind plucked Mr. Rellik away. He hit the road in a spinning, splattering somersault. And it was worse than that. Although I hadn’t seen it, a tractor trailer had been coming the other way, doing about the same speed as us. Mr. Rellik fell under its front wheels. The truck made mincemeat of him.
My mother screamed. My father stopped the car.
The tractor trailer stopped.
Suddenly everything was silent apart from the rain hammering on the roof.
My father twisted around and stared at me. The side door was still hanging open. “What . . . ?” he began.
Quickly I explained. I told him everything. The name on the window. The lies Mr. Rellik had told. The things he had said to me. The blood on his hand. The knife. My mother was in total shock. Her face was white and she was crying quietly. My father waited until I had finished, then he reached out and laid a hand on my arm. “It’s all right, Jacob,” he said. “Wait here.”
He got out of the car and walked up the road. I could see him out of the back window. The truck driver had stopped on the hard shoulder and the two of them met. There was no sign of Mr. Rellik. He must have been spread out over a fair bit of the A12. It had been horrible, what had happened, but I wasn’t afraid anymore. I had done what I had to do. I’d saved both my parents and myself. We should never have stopped.
My father walked back to the car. The rain had eased off a little but he was still soaking wet.
“He’s going to call the police,” my father said. “We’re nearly there, so I said we’d go on. He’s going to give our information to the police.”
“Did you tell him what happened?” I asked.
“Yes.” My father got back in behind the steering wheel. My mother was still crying. “He knows you did the right thing, Jacob. Don’t worry. We’re going to leave now.”
We drove for another ten minutes and then, just past the first sign for Woodbridge, we turned off down a narrow lane. It twisted through woodland for about a mile and then we came to a high brick wall with spikes set along the top. We stopped in front of a pair of metal gates with an intercom system just in front. My father leaned out of the car window and said something. The gates clicked and swung open automatically.
I knew where we were. We had come to Fairfields. The East Suffolk Maximum Security Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
My father had to tell them what had happened, of course. He’d agreed on that with the truck driver. This is where Mr. Rellik had come from and we had just killed him. In self-defense. They had to know.
I asked my father if that was why we had come here.
“Yes, Jacob,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”
We drove toward a big Victorian house with towers and barred windows and bloodred bricks. I could see how the place had gotten its new name though. It was surrounded by attractive gardens, the lawns spreading out for some distance underneath the high-voltage searchlights. Before we had even stopped, the front door of the house opened and a bald, bearded man in a white coat came running out.
“Wait here,” my father said again.
I waited with my mother while the two of them spoke but this time I managed to hear a little of what they said. My father did most of the talking.
“You were wrong, Dr. Fielding. You were wrong. We should never have taken him . . .”
“None of us could have known. He was doing so well.”
“He was fine in Southwold. He was fine. I thought he was . . . normal. But then . . . this!”
“I don’t know what to say to you, Dr. Fisher. I don’t . . .”
“Never again, Dr. Fielding. For God’s sake! Never again.”
The two men came to the car. My father leaned in. “We’re going in with Dr. Fielding,” he said.
“All right,” I said.
My mother didn’t look up as I got out of the car. She didn’t even say good-bye. That made me a little sad.
Dr. Fielding put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go inside, Jacob,” he said. “We have to talk about what happened.”
“All right,” I said.
Later on, they told me that the hitchhiker’s name was Mr. Renwick and that I had misheard him. Apparently Mr. Renwick was a gardener who had been working outside Lowestoft. His car had broken down and he had managed to hitchhike as far as Southwold, which was where we’d picked him up. They told me that it was mud I had seen on his wrist, not blood. And that when they had scraped him off the tarmac he had been holding not a knife but a cigarette case.
That was what they told me, but I didn’t believe any of it. After all, they also told me a lot of lies after my brother, Eddy, fell under that train. They even wanted me to believe that I’d pushed him! Nobody ever understood.
So here I am, back in my room, looking out of the barred window at the same old view. I had such a nice day in Southwold. I just hope I won’t have to wait another nine years before they take me out again.
The Sound of Murder
I.
Her name was Kate Evans. She was thirteen years old, small and slim with long dark hair and a pale, rather serious face. She was in her last year at Brierly Hall, a prep school in Harrow-on-the-Hill, just north of London. Her best subjects were English, history, and geography but she was pretty good at anything so long as it didn’t involve figures. She was popular with both the teachers and the other children. There was only one thing that made her different from everyone else at the school. Kate Evans was deaf.
It had been an accident of birth. Her mother had caught the measles while she was pregnant and the doctors had been worried even before Kate arrived in the world. They had known almost at once that something was wrong . . . or at least, not quite right. Kate wasn’t completely deaf. She could hear some sound but speech in general was just a blur to her. The medical name for her condition was sensorineural deafness. Part of her ear, the bit called the cochlea, wasn’t working properly. She could hear a telephone ring or a dog bark but she couldn’t hear a whole lot else.
Kate had learned to lip-read but she didn’t really need to. When she had started at Brierly Hall, she had been given a special hearing aid that fitted behind her ear and that had two settings. It could be used for day-to-day conversation. And it could also be plugged into a box, a little larger than a pack of cigarettes, which Kate carried in her top pocket. This was for use in class. Whoever was teaching the lesson carried a second box, this one attached to a radio transmitter. The teacher spoke. The sound was transmitted across the room. Kate heard. It was as simple as that.
It was so simple, in fact, that Kate never thought of herself as deaf or disabled or even particularly different. The hearing aid even had certain uses. During more boring lessons—math with Mr. Thompson, for example—she could surreptitiously turn down the volume so that she no longer had to listen to him. It was also possible—if she was asked something and couldn’t think of the answer—to play for time by pretending that the device was broken. Most of the teachers were too delicate to pursue the matter any further and so she nearly always got off the hook. And sometimes the machine did malfunction, with unusual results. One summer she had picked up popular radio stations, which certainly livened up the day. Another time, it had been snatches of police radio communications. This had been alarming at first but the broadcasts became so interesting that soon everyone was pestering her to tell them what was going on in the fight against North London crime.
Brierly Hall wasn’t a boarding school. Every afternoon Kate was picked up by the au pair, a German girl called Heidi, who spoke English that was so mangled that it was almost impossible to understand—with or without a hearing aid. Both Kate’s parents worked. Her mother was a computer programmer. Her father had something to do with finance—bonds and equities and that so
rt of thing. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters and she sometimes wondered if her parents had decided to stop having children when they had discovered that their first one wasn’t perfect. She had never asked them. They were so busy, so wrapped up in their own worlds, that they never had a lot of time for her. They were kind, loving. But distant.
Kate didn’t mind. She had plenty of friends. She was doing well at school. And at the time of her last year—the Christmas term—at Brierly Hall, she was definitely enjoying life.
But that was the term that the new French teacher, Mr. Spencer, arrived. And it was with the coming of Mr. Spencer that the whole nightmare began.
II.
To start with, he looked just like all the other teachers who had chosen to lock themselves away in the secluded world of Brierly Hall. He wasn’t exactly young anymore but he wasn’t particularly old either. He seemed to be stuck somewhere in between. He was wearing an old-fashioned sport jacket, corduroy trousers, white shirt, tie (striped, of course), and a V-neck sweater. All of his clothes looked well lived in. He had dark eyes, dark, curly hair, and a beard. Although he was a physically large man, there was something about him that made him look beaten down, defeated. His shoulders were hunched. His eyes blinked frequently. He didn’t smile.
Kate saw him on the first day of the semester. She was walking down the corridor with her best friend, a boy named Martin White. He and Kate were just passing the staff room when the door opened and the new teacher came out and hurried past them on his way to class. He didn’t speak to them but his arm briefly touched Kate’s shoulder and it was then, at that moment of contact, that it happened.
Kate’s hearing aid malfunctioned. There was a loud whistling in her ear; so loud that she actually recoiled, her hand stretching out and her face contorting. The sound cut right through her head. She could feel it even after it was gone.
“What is it?” Martin asked. He had seen Kate double up.
“Feedback.” Kate took a deep breath. Fortunately, it seemed to be over. She tapped at her ear. “I’ve never had it so loud. Just my luck if my hearing aid’s acting up on the first day of class.” She looked back at the new teacher, who was just disappearing through a set of double doors. “Who’s that?”
“I think it must be Mr. Spencer. Or Monsieur Spensaire, perhaps, I should say.”
“The new French teacher.”
“Oui, oui!” Martin sniffed. “He looks even more boring than the last one.”
Their old French teacher, Mr. Silberman, had announced his retirement the term before—much to the relief of almost everybody. He must have been at least eighty years old and was one of the only teachers who regularly fell asleep during his own lessons. Kate had been hoping for a younger, sexier replacement. Her first glimpse had left her distinctly disappointed.
And it was strange the way her hearing aid had reacted when he touched her. The piercing feedback. It was almost as if . . .
No. She put the thought out of her mind. Mr. Spencer hadn’t caused the problem. It had simply happened when he walked past.
She met the new teacher for a second time that afternoon. French was the first lesson of the day. Mr. Spencer had taken over Mr. Silberman’s old classroom and had already removed the posters showing the different varieties of French cheese, which at least proved he had a bit of sense. But as he took their names, handed out the new textbooks, and did all the things that teachers always do on the first day of classes, he seemed about as cheerful and lively as a French dictionary. He even forced them to sit in alphabetical order. Mr. Silberman had never done that.
He was, of course, wearing the radio transmitter that allowed Kate to hear him. He had slipped the box into his top pocket and clipped the microphone to his tie. But throughout the lesson, the machine malfunctioned with a series of hisses, bleeps, and squawking noises that had Kate reeling. She was relieved when the final bell went off, even if it added to the headache she’d already gotten. It was about the only thing she heard properly.
She was the first to stand up and was already making her way to the door when Mr. Spencer spoke. There were just two words but this time she heard him quite clearly. She stopped dead in her tracks. She was certain the words were addressed to her.
“Rotten cow!”
Kate turned around. She was blushing—though whether with embarrassment or anger she wasn’t sure. Mr. Spencer was standing at his desk clutching a pile of books. For the first time she noticed that the backs of his hands were covered in dark hair. “I’m sorry, sir?” she said.
He looked up. “What is it, Kate?” he asked. He knew her name. But of course, new teachers always remembered her name first.
“What did you say?” Kate asked. She was aware that she sounded angry. Everyone had stopped what they were doing. They were all looking at her.
“I didn’t say anything,” Mr. Spencer said. He smiled at her. “Did you hear everything all right during the lesson, Kate? I did mean to ask . . .”
“Yes . . .” Kate stammered, suddenly unsure of herself. Could she have misheard him? Or had the two words come from somewhere else—like the radio or the police reports? But no . . .
“Rotten cow.”
She had heard him. It had been his voice.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Mr. Spencer was still smiling. The smile changed his face. He looked a whole lot more human.
Kate turned and left the class.
III.
The next day, the problems with the hearing aid were even worse. And it wasn’t just the distortions. While Mr. Spencer took the class through a fairly simple comprehension test, all Kate heard was a barrage of swear-words. They came into her ear from nowhere. Nasty, jabbing words that she would never have dreamed of using herself. She remembered how she had picked up those radio stations the summer before and wondered if the same thing wasn’t happening again. But these words weren’t out of any radio station. Nobody would be allowed to say things like this on the air.
She did the best she could with the comprehension, but knew that she’d missed at least half of it and probably mistranslated the rest. She handed in her paper with a heavy heart, and as her fingertips approached those of Mr. Spencer, she was rewarded with another scream of static and interference. She wondered how she would get through the rest of the day.
And yet the strange thing was that, after French, the hearing aid worked perfectly. She had no problems in math or history and it was only in the corridor just before lunch that the receiver started acting up once again. Even as she felt the hiss rising up in her eardrums, Kate was turning around. And sure enough, there he was. Mr. Spencer was ambling into the staff room, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. She watched the door close. The hissing stopped.
That afternoon, after lunch, she told Martin what had happened. Martin was a good-looking thirteen-year-old with blue eyes and straw-colored hair that hung in his eyes. He was always number one in PE but even his best friends had to agree that he wasn’t particularly bright. For a long minute he thought about what Kate had said. “Are you telling me,” he said, “that there’s something about Mr. Spencer that sets off your hearing aid? That he’s . . . like . . . transmitting signals or something?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Kate replied. “But it’s never happened to me before. I wouldn’t have said it was possible!”
“I did once hear about this man who kept on hearing concerts,” Martin said. “I mean, he got voices and operas and classical music in his head and it was driving him mad. He was going to commit suicide. But then they found he had a filling in his back tooth and it was picking up radio stations.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Kate asked.
Martin shrugged. “I was just trying to be helpful.”
The afternoon seemed to stretch on forever. Kate didn’t have any more French lessons and she didn’t get any more interference, but even so, she found it hard to concentrate. It was like being on some sort of ghos
t train. As each minute ticked by, she was expecting something to jump out at her—a swearword, another electronic scream. By the end of the day her nerves were shattered and she decided she’d have to talk it over with her parents. She was beginning to feel almost nervous. She couldn’t understand it but she was becoming afraid.
Heidi came for her at four o’clock. The German au pair was always smiling and friendly but sometimes Kate suspected that she didn’t understand a single word. She drove a red Nissan and Kate was just about to get in when a single faint whine in her ear made her stop and turn around, already knowing what she would see.
And there he was. Mr. Spencer had just come out of the school with a pile of books under his arm. He was walking toward a waiting VW Golf, and as he reached it he must have stumbled, because suddenly all the books slipped from under his arm and fell to the ground. At once the door of the Golf opened and a woman got out. It had to be Mrs. Spencer; a thin, bony woman with hair between brown and gray tied tightly behind her head. Everything about her was tight. Her clothes—a cable-knit sweater and jeans. Her eyes. The way she moved.
She was saying something to her husband and he seemed to be apologizing. They were too far away for Kate to be able to hear but she found herself doing something she had been told she should never do, something she knew was wrong. She lip-read the conversation.
“. . . so clumsy! Just get a move on, George. I haven’t got all day.”
“Yes, dear. Sorry, dear.”
“You’re a complete waste of time! A boring little man in a boring little job. Have you got them all?”
“I think so, dear.”
Kate blinked and looked away, immediately guilty about eavesdropping. But even without sound, even from this distance, she had been able to detect the venom in the woman’s voice. And once again she thought about the two words she had heard in the French lesson.
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