If It Bleeds

by Bernie Crosthwaite

  I opened the curtain. Harrison was still there.

  “I’m going to speak to the ward sister then we’re going home. So… see you around some time.”

  “I can wait. I’ll help you take Dan home.”

  “There’s no need. I can manage.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  Then Harrison did something I’d never seen him do before. He smiled. And that was truly scary.

  *

  To be fair, Harrison made a real effort to be helpful, carrying the plastic bag containing Daniel’s clothes and books to the car and chatting to him on the way home in a slightly more fluent version of his usual Neanderthal. They sat together on the back seat while I drove in lonely splendour at the front like a taxi driver. I was preoccupied with my thoughts while they were discussing classic album covers. The names floated over me — Sergeant Pepper, Velvet Underground, Joy Division. But I listened intently when they began to talk about Lara.

  “The police came to the hospital a couple of times.”

  “You were her boyfriend. The odds are you did it, aren’t they?” I glanced in the rear view mirror. Harrison hardly blenched. “I mean, I know you didn’t, but from their standpoint…”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Do they really think you killed her?”

  “Probably.”

  “Tough shit.”

  I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Don’t be ridiculous. Daniel had nothing to do with Lara’s death!” The ceramic bracelet lay heavy in my pocket. Lara had given it back to him and he’d forgotten, that was all. Perhaps the clasp had broken and he’d offered to mend it. Absorbed in this thought, I didn’t realise the car was veering across the road.

  “Mum, watch out!”

  I swerved back just in time. The driver of the white van that shot past me raised two fingers, his face contorted with rage and spewing silent obscenities through his side window.

  “Hey, Daniel, that would have been ironic, wouldn’t it?” I said as lightly as I could manage. “A few days ago I saved your life. Today I nearly got you killed.”

  For some reason neither of them seemed to find it hilarious.

  *

  Daniel had invited Harrison in before I could stop him.

  “It’s getting late,” I protested. “You should be in bed. I know how hard it is to get any proper rest in hospital.”

  “Chill, Mum. I’m feeling fine. I’m not even tired.”

  The two of them disappeared upstairs. In no time I could hear the fast heavy rhythm of one of Daniel’s favourite CDs. The high-energy metronomic repetitions began to give me a pounding headache.

  I went to the kitchen and made tea — black because I still had no milk. I sat at the beaten-up pine table, sipping the bitter brew, trying to make sense of the last few hours. A series of freeze-frames clicked round my brain — Father Thomas’s haggard face, the pentagram round Harrison’s neck, the cool stones falling into my hand from Daniel’s pocket.

  Trying to examine each thought logically, I concentrated first on the priest and his uneasy relationship with Lara. Something troubled me about that. I drummed my fingers on the kitchen table. Of course. Patricia Ramsey had said that Lara went off the rails from the age of sixteen, which meant it all went wrong after the abortion, not before. The pregnancy wasn’t the result of promiscuity, it was the cause. So why had Father Thomas lied, suggesting that Lara had had so many lovers she couldn’t be sure of paternity?

  Father Thomas with his handsome face and muscular body, not to mention his ability to manipulate an audience… Had Lara once thought the priest was wonderful? Had he taken advantage of that? A celibate man with an abiding image of a young girl’s beautiful hair…

  If the priest had broken his vows and fathered a child, was he capable of turning his back on the sixth commandment too? Illicit sex and murder were not the same thing at all, but perhaps part of the same continuum, the slide away from God. Not small transgressions either. If Father Thomas was a sinner, God would get her own back and make him pay, big time.

  And if there was no God, I’d have to do it instead.

  But there were other people I needed to think about. Harrison, for one. He wore a pendant that was the same design as the marks scored on Lara’s chest. Coincidence? He knew her, he may even have slept with her, and he knew her current boyfriend. The more I thought about it, the less like coincidence it seemed. There had to be a connection here. I tipped the cold tea down the sink. I was trying to find Lara’s killer, and guess what, Harrison had inveigled his way into my house. He was upstairs right now. Another coincidence?

  And what about Lara’s boss, Craig Gilmore? His behaviour had suggested he had something to hide. Father Thomas, Harrison, Craig Gilmore…

  But had Lara definitely been attacked by a man? I reminded myself that even DI Laverack admitted the killer could have been a woman. After all, there was no evidence of a sexual assault on Lara, and Lee hadn’t been sure if the figure loitering outside Lara’s flat had been male or female. Annie’s tearful face swam into view. Had she loved Lara enough to kill her when their friendship faded? And what about Patricia Ramsey’s disappointment in her beloved daughter? But she was Lara’s mother, for god’s sake. Could I kill my own son if he’d done something wicked? Never.

  Daniel. It was time to think about him.

  I took the bracelet from my pocket and examined the clasp. Nothing wrong with it. So why had Lara given it back to him? Or had he taken it, after he’d…? Suppressing that idea, I leaned over the sink, overcome with nausea. Another thought rammed its way in. What if more than one of them — say, Father Thomas and Craig Gilmore, or Annie and Harrison — were in it together? I began to laugh hysterically to stop the terrible images forming in my mind. Two against one? Lara wouldn’t have stood a chance. I tried to breathe deeply but ended up hyperventilating, panting as if I’d just run ten miles. It was ridiculous. What possible connection could there be between any of them? Lara. She was the connection. But that got me precisely nowhere.

  I made fresh tea to steady myself. Drinking it made me feel a little better. I even smiled wryly as I sipped it. Two days ago no one had any idea who could have killed Lara. Now suspects were falling out of the trees like ripe fruit.

  It seemed to have gone quiet upstairs. I went into the hall and listened. There was music, but more subdued this time, something much more mellow. I could also smell smoke. My hackles rose.

  I marched upstairs and went straight into Daniel’s room without knocking. The room had the same exploded look as when we left it two days ago. Clothes, artist’s materials, books and CD cases lay in random tangled heaps. An incense cone burned in a saucer, giving off a heady sickly odour that didn’t quite mask the smell of smoke. The noxious fumes emanated from the figure that lay prone on the bed. It wasn’t Daniel — he was stretched out on the floor, as still as a corpse.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  Harrison’s head rose stiffly from the pillow

  “Chill, Mum,” Daniel murmured from the floor. His eyes stayed closed. Whatever Harrison was smoking, Daniel was passively imbibing it too.

  “Put that spliff out, Harrison. Don’t you realise how bad it is for Daniel’s breathing?”

  “OK.” Slowly, almost insolently, he stubbed the joint out in the tin box resting on his chest, no doubt saving the stub for later. Then I remembered something I needed to ask him.

  “By the way, what did you do with that print of mine, the one you put on the wall in Photographic, where it looks as if the river’s for sale?”

  “What?”

  I couldn’t decide if his blank stare was genuine puzzlement or a put-on.

  “The one you said was complete balls.”

  “Coho- thingy?”

  “Cojones, yes. Where is it?”

  “I haven’t touched it. Why?”

  “I was looking for it today.” I didn’t add that I was clearing my desk, though I knew I’d have to tell Daniel about my resignation so
on. “It wasn’t there.”

  “Perhaps it fell off. I only used blu-tack.”

  “Then who took it?”

  “How do I know?”

  Exasperated, I marched across to the window, letting in an icy blast of night air. Cold air was bad for asthma but not as bad as smoke. In any case, under the incense and weed, the room smelled rank — paint, papier-mâché, old socks, stale sheets.

  “Why don’t you two go downstairs while I fumigate the room and change the bed?”

  Daniel peeled himself off the floor. Harrison followed him sluggishly. They shambled downstairs.

  I must have tugged the sheets off the bed, dumped them in the linen basket, fetched fresh ones from the airing cupboard, but I don’t remember any of it. I made Daniel’s bed on automatic pilot, only coming back to domestic reality when I had to decide whether to put an extra blanket under the duvet. It was another bitter night and after the fug of a hospital ward I didn’t want him to be cold.

  I sat down on the bed. I still hadn’t faced up to the possibility that my son was a killer. And here I was, worrying about keeping him warm. Then I reflected on what they always said about even the worst criminals — at least his mother loved him.

  Sixteen

  Daniel was lying on the sofa watching the late-night news. His eyes were heavy and dark-lidded. He was clearly more exhausted than he liked to admit. There was no sign of his friend.

  “Has Harrison gone?”

  “No, he’s in the basement.”

  “What!”

  “I told him about your darkroom and he —”

  “You know I don’t allow anybody down there, not even you. I’ve got negs drying and stuff everywhere and all those chemicals.”

  “I could hardly stop him, could I?”

  I ran along the hall and yanked open the door that led down to the basement. My feet thumping on the concrete steps must have announced my arrival, but when I threw the lower door open Harrison was poking through my things on the dry bench as if he had every right to be in my private domain. I got the impression he was looking for something and trying to disguise that as idle curiosity. Despite his denial I was pretty sure he had removed the river print. Was he trying to find the negative so that he could destroy that too? And why did it matter so much?

  “Harrison — out!”

  “Great place,” he muttered. He carried on examining everything as if he simply hadn’t heard me ask him to shift his arse. I breathed in the woodpulp smell of soaking paper that pervaded the room and tried to stretch my patience. Then I noticed he had placed his tin box and lighter on the bench. If he tried lighting up in here I would lose it completely.

  “Where do you get your chemicals from?” he asked.

  “I buy them wholesale from a specialist. Now will you please —”

  “I’ve always wanted to do this kind of photography. At college we only did a few sessions in the darkroom and I’ve forgotten nearly all of it. Most of the time we just used computers.”

  “I’m not surprised. Doing it the old-fashioned way is fiddly and takes ages.”

  “It’s better, though.”

  “Yeah, the results can be fantastic. But a decent digital camera is just as good.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  I had to think about that. “I guess I like the long slow process. It’s satisfying, and to be honest, I always find it really exciting.”

  “Show me.”

  “Come on, Harrison. It’s late and I’m knackered. This hasn’t been the best day of my life, as you well know.” In fact, he didn’t know the half of it — the unorthodox use of the elevator, the visit to St Bridget’s, the jumble of fear and suspicion that had assailed me ever since, not least the possibility that Harrison himself had killed Lara. I held the door open pointedly, desperate to get out of the room. Usually it was my haven. Now it seemed to me a chilly windowless box, a perfect trap. “And for the record, I wasn’t fired. I resigned.”

  “Whatever.” Harrison picked up an expensive Leica camera and nearly dropped it.

  “Be careful! That cost a fortune.”

  He put it down with exaggerated reverence. “Can you handle colour prints down here?”

  “Yes. But I don’t do them very often. You have to work in the pitch dark. I prefer developing black and white film. It’s that thing about watching the image gradually emerge, like clearing steam from a mirror.”

  “I’d like to do that.”

  “Another time, perhaps.” I jerked my head at the open door. He ignored me.

  “No time like the present.”

  Was there a hint of menace in his tone? Why hadn’t I kept quiet about the pentagram? I’d put Harrison on red alert. Now I had to go into reverse and reassure him by my manner that I had no doubts about him, apart from regarding him as being lazy and useless, and he knew that already.

  “All right. What do you want to know?”

  “The whole process. Have you got some film you need to develop?”

  “I suppose so.” I closed the door and plunged us into darkness for a split second before switching on the safe light, a naked red bulb that made the room glow ruby.

  I picked up the Leica. “There’s a finished roll in here.” I unloaded it, then demonstrated how to get it into a developing tank, a cylinder about the size of a very large thermos.

  “You have to work blind inside a changing bag.” This was a cloth bag with little elasticated armholes in the sides. I held it up. “You can see why it’s known as granny’s knickers.”

  Harrison looked doubtful. I imagined his acquaintance with female underwear was limited to the G-string and the thong.

  “This is the tricky bit. I have to put my hands in the holes… and they’re very cold, which is good in one way — it means I won’t leave fingerprints on the film.” I didn’t tell him that my hands were also clammy with fear and the film was probably ruined anyway. “But it’s not so good in another way because it’s so bloody difficult to get the film in the spiral.” I fiddled for a couple of minutes. “Got it!”

  I pulled the tank out of the bag, the film now safe inside it. I moved across to the wet bench and got ready to show Harrison the next process, mixing the developer with warm water then pouring it into the cylinder.

  “I’ll put the stuff in,” he said, with something close to enthusiasm.

  I held on to the flagon, trying to remember how caustic the chemical was. “No, I’d better do it this time.” I rushed the procedure, turning the tank vigorously like a cocktail shaker to make sure no bubbles spoiled the negs and that each frame was bathed in chemical. I was anxious to get on to the stop bath and the fixer as soon as possible and raced through those too.

  “Now the film has to be washed. But that takes ages.” I lowered the tank into the sink and turned on the tap. “We can leave it there for a while. I’ve got some dry negs over here.”

  I couldn’t afford a drying cabinet so I pegged washed strips of film to an overhead line, each one weighted at the bottom with a metal clip to hold it straight and steady. Even so, they twisted slightly in the air current like fly papers.

  I unpegged a strip at random and placed it on the dry bench. I reached for a pair of scissors.

  “I can do this bit.” Harrison got to the scissors first.

  “OK,” I said slowly, masking my leap of panic with a forced smile.

  Harrison parked his bottom on a stool and followed my instructions carefully, cutting the long strip into shorter strips of six frames each.

  “Now slot each strip onto this grid.”

  He did so, then with laborious care he placed it under the enlarger and printed up a contact sheet while I finished washing the film in the sink and hung up the wet strip in its turn. I kept my eye on Harrison as I washed the tank and spiral, but he seemed to be totally absorbed in his task.

  “Finished.” He held up the sheet of tiny pictures.

  “Good. I’ll put the main light back on, then we can see what we’ve g
ot.”

  I examined the prints through a magnifying glass. I’d taken these just before Christmas. Most were exterior shots of bare trees and rock formations, passions of mine. Then I reared back with shock. The last few showed Daniel and Lara in the back garden, chasing each other, posing with the household gnome, holding each other close and smiling into the camera. They seemed lit up from within, radiant. Maybe it was just the cold air making Lara’s cheeks unnaturally rosy, but I doubted it.

  “I like this one,” said Harrison. He pointed to a picture of the couple in profile, just about to kiss.

  “We can’t print these.”

  “Why not? Nice present for Daniel.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  He sighed, clearly put out.

  “All right. Mark the one you want and we’ll print it up full size.”

  Under instruction he slotted the strip into the neg carrier and placed in the enlarger. Underneath went a sheet of resin-coated paper.

  “Now expose it to the light for precisely fifteen seconds.”

  He counted under his breath. “I can’t see anything.”

  “You won’t, not yet. It’s a latent image. Now for the exciting bit. The pure magic.” We returned to the wet bench. “Watch this, Harrison.” Despite my misgivings I wanted him to see the steam clearing from the mirror, leaving a perfect image.

  After just one minute in the developer the picture began to spread over the paper. But it wasn’t ready yet. You had to judge the exact right moment. I showed Harrison how to agitate the paper then handed him the tongs. “Two minutes should do it, but it might need a few seconds more. You decide.”

  We watched Lara and Daniel emerge. I thought Harrison had messed up by leaving it too long, but just as I was about to speak he lifted the print by the corner and plunged it into the stop bath and fixer. Finally he siphoned it down under the running tap.

  As it swirled under the stream of water I saw that Harrison had made a good job of it. Two young lovers, forever suspended in time, glowing with an unrepeatable happiness. It made me want to cry, but a slight flicker round the lips showed that Harrison was pleased with his handiwork.