by David Mark
Down the corridor.
I knock on the door until my hands hurt and hiss Kerry’s name through the hinge and the crack at the base, but there’s no answer and no sound. I tell myself she must be asleep still, but it’s common sense tinged with panic and I’m running through all sorts of hysterical scenarios in my head when the maid comes along with the trolley and loans me her pass-card, and I swipe the lock and it doesn’t work, then swipe it again, and the light by the handle turns green and I push the door open and hold it with my foot, and pass the card back to the maid with a grateful smile and a wink that will keep her going ’til lunchtime, then turn into the room, and see my sister laid out on the bed in the thick white dressing gown, with her eyes wide and staring at me and a goatee of blood and froth around her chin and mouth. The veins in her face are purple and pronounced against the clammy white pallor of her skin. Legs, like lengths of rope, stick out from the robe. One skinny arm hangs over the edge of the bed, clawed hand almost reaching the carpet. The other is at her side, open handed, displaying the polythene bag she has found in my coat pocket. A ‘comments’ card she has ripped in half and rolled into a tube to snort the poison while she waited for her brother to return and make it all right, has unrolled itself and lies, curved like a bridge, on the pillow next to her face.
Around her, across the bed, the floor, the pillow, the cabinet, are £20 notes. Each rectangle of paper touches the corner of the next, forming a pattern that looks like a child’s depiction of a giant snowflake. They have clearly fallen at random, fluttering down from the sky like dead leaves, after my sister, the only girl I ever really loved, found an unopened packet of cash and a bag of powder in her big brother’s pockets, thought her life was about to change, and threw it in the air as she bounced on the bed, excited as a little girl on Christmas Eve, then celebrated with a goodbye toot of poisoned crack; falling into death on a mattress of money.
And I cry until there’s nothing left.
49
An hour goes by, and I get up and take a piss, and squeeze an entire miniature tube of toothpaste into my mouth and swill it out repeatedly, brushing my teeth with my thumb, feeling my tongue go numb and tasting coppery blood through the minty foam; looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror every time I raise my head from spitting, and never once seeing myself whole. Always disjointed. Fragmented. Sometimes just eyes and a mouth, sometimes a bruise and a sneer. Now just a faceless head. Now an open mouth with a grinning gecko on its tongue.
Back to the bedroom, and Kerry.
I open the bedside table, and there on Gideon’s favourite story, is the gun.
I pick it up and hold it on my palm, as though weighing a fish.
I place my other hand on top of it, as if making a benediction.
Feel its weight, enjoy its power.
Hear its song.
I hold it in my right hand and with my left, pull its twin from my waist.
There is no explosion, no riot of colour, no chorus of circling demons holding ribbons of flesh and banners of bone. But the sensation of metal in my spine and steel in my fingers grows harsh and hard as I close my palms around the two handles, flick the bullets from the clip, take the clip from my pocket and divide the rounds between the two handguns.
It feels wonderfully precise, all oil and grease and smoothness, and I feel good doing it, the way you feel when you sharpen a pencil with a knife or saw a bit of wood in half without straying from the pencil line.
I lie down, and remember…
*
June 1991. The day of the shoot.
When I first pulled the trigger.
Kerry asking Mam why the sky was azure blue overhead, but clear by the time it reached the grass.
Mam and Kerry sitting on a blanket at the top of the east field. Kerry in a Liverpool shirt with a gymkhana rosette stuck on the emblem and big pink knickers, slurping home-made lemonade from a beaker. Mam, brown hair tied back, in a floaty gingham dress and bare feet, shielding her eyes from the sun as they stared down at the shooting party below.
Me, watching it all a few feet away, staring at the collection of rich bastards drinking Pimm’s and carrying shotguns and adjusting the angle of their peaked caps, muttering about what an oaf Blake was until he waddled in their direction and they greeted him with smiles and sweaty handshakes. They seemed absorbent. They seemed to have sucked up the water in their last cool bath and retained it in vast rolls of soggy flesh, like camels.
And among them, bowing, scraping, almost curtsying, scampered my father. Handing out drinks. Fetching and carrying. Waving instructions to the beaters in the woods. Never looking up. Knuckles white and cheeks pink. Scurrying wherever Blake pointed his flabby finger.
Me, watching.
Tuning out Kerry’s laughter and Mam’s giggles and jokes.
Ignoring their pleas for me to come and sit with them.
Watching, as the fat men took their places and raised their guns and the air was suddenly alive with flapping and feathers and calls, and bang after bang after bang.
I could smell blood and gunpowder even before it drifted across to me in a ghost of smoke that danced for a moment with the lady in the ballgown before it floated on and over the slopes.
I stayed until they had taken their six shots each, and stood as the last of the pheasant thumped onto the hard earth.
Then Dad put down his gun. Slotted it into the spike on the ground, and strode onto the field to collect the dead birds.
And then I stood, and felt so many eyes upon me and tentacles like cobwebs on my skin, and I felt the dry, rasping kiss of the lady in the ballgown upon my cheek, and I walked down the slope and into the throng of fat men, and I smelled the sulphur and saltpetre and the feathers and the blood and I ignored the hellos of the fat fools and brushed past hands that tried to ruffle my hair and dogs that whined as I passed, and I picked up Dad’s gun, and felt its weight, familiar and pleasant and powerful and so full of promise.
Reaching into the pocket of my dark trousers.
Pulling out a cartridge.
Cracking the gun and breathing its sharp, metallic tang.
Slotting in the cartridge.
Snapping it shut.
Walking, calmly, to where Blake stood, surveying his empire, sweating on his lands.
Standing three feet in front of him, eyes locked.
Watching the puzzled look spread across his jowls, as though he were stifling a burp.
Hearing the cackles.
The excited hissing and yelping of the demons who dance on his shoulders.
Seeing the lady in the ballgown and the look of ecstasy, of unsullied lust on a face that was no longer beautiful.
Hearing my dad shouting my name.
My own voice.
Saying “I’m better than you.”
Her, moaning in ecstasy.
Raising the gun.
Pulling the trigger.
Bang.
Hearing the screaming start.
The thud as he collapses back.
The wet blood sizzling as it hits the sweat of my brow.
And feeling the ground lurch.
As I begin to fall.
50
9.38 a.m.
Out the door and into the swirling rain.
Through the barriers, the dust and the diggers, the yellow road signs and blinking lights. Newspaper under my arm, keys jangling in my hand, two hanguns tucked in my waistband.
Three bounds, up the stairs, a turn of the key, along the corridor, another turn, and I’m back in the flat.
He’s still lying there, is Petruso. His blood has run as far as the kitchen, and shards of glass and fragments of skull float like islands in the deep claret sea.
The other man lies where he fell, by the bedroom door.
I lean down, and pick up the picture of Jess and me. Hold it close to my face, as if I can breathe her in. I put it in my inside pocket. Flop down on the sofa and open my phone.
Close my eyes and ho
ld back tears as I scroll through the numbers and select the name I should have called days ago.
She answers on the second ring, her voice tremulous and small.
“Owen,” says Jess. “Owen, what’s happening?”
Her voice is a blanket. I tie myself up in it, and feel as if swaddled.
“I’m so sorry, Jess,” I say, and am stunned by the honesty of the statement. “I miss you so much.”
She pauses, then the words come out in a rush. “I’ve had so many messages. Saying things about you. Saying you’re in trouble. Lenny won’t leave me alone, she thinks you’ve done me in, and she’s twisted my brain around so I don’t know what I’m thinking and she says you’ve been manipulating me and treating me wrong and maybe you have and maybe you haven’t but I can’t stand this being apart when I can feel how much you need me there with you, and it wasn’t meant to be like this, Owen, it wasn’t…
“Where are you? People have been worrying.” Then, truthful: “I’ve been worrying.”
“I needed to get away. To think. To decide what I really want.”
“You told nobody? Just ran?”
“My mind was everywhere. I couldn’t tell Lenny. You know how she feels about you…”
“She really thinks I hurt you…”
“Owen, that’s crazy.” There is real shock, there. Incredulity. “That’s crazy. You won’t even hug me too hard for fear of breaking me!”
“Mud sticks.”
Silence. Tears, and snot. The air heavy with the enormity of it all. Then I say: “You answered my call. I wasn’t sure…”
“It’s what I’ve been waiting for.”
“I need to see you. There are things I need to tell you. Things I want you to hear from me and nobody else.”
“I knew you would call. Eventually.”
“I suppose I knew you would answer.”
“I told you I would. I told you all you had to do was find it in yourself to let me in. To think about what you wanted and decide if it was me…”
“It shouldn’t be me making this decision, Jess. It shouldn’t be me agreeing to love you. You shouldn’t even breathe the same air as me. I’m poison. You’re an angel…”
“No, Owen! No.” There is anger, and hurt. “I’m not. I’m a woman. A grown up. Not a child. Not a pet. Not an angel. I’m not here to be protected and pretty. I love you and ache for you and want you, but I can’t grow old with a projection. A character. The bits of yourself you let me see. I want it all. Better and worse. Sickness and health. Darkness and light.”
“You made that one up.”
“I was going to put it in our vows.”
Silence, again. I want to climb inside the phone. Be kissed. Held.
“I told Len you’d gone to Nottingham. Was I right?”
“No. I’ve been at Bridlington. Crappy bed and breakfast. Just been sitting in my room, staring at my phone, trying to work it all out.”
I feel bubbles in my blood. Almost intoxicated by the nearness of our embrace. Giddy and girly with the sensations of being loved, properly. Suddenly feeling able to offer the same in return.
“I’ll come to you.”
51
Ten minutes later.
Up and out, with a bounce in my stride.
Dropping today’s Hull Daily Mail, with its picture of a good-looking, smirking journalist and Tony H’s by-line, onto the mangled mess of Petruso’s head.
MAN WHO KILLED AS A CHILD HELD OVER DOUBLE MURDER
Exclusive
By Tony Halthwaite
A MAN who killed a Yorkshire landowner with a shotgun when he was just nine years old is being held on suspicion of the horrific double murder at the Humber Bridge Country Park, the Mail can reveal.
The bodies of Darren Norton and Alfred Prescott were discovered on Monday morning at the popular beauty spot in the heart of East Yorkshire. Mr Prescott, from West Yorkshire, had been beaten to death and Darren, a city man, had been shot.
Owen Lee, 29, was arrested at the Sandringham Hotel in the city centre last night by well-known policeman and the detective in charge of the case, Det Supt Doug Roper, following assistance from this newspaper.
For more details, turn to page 2…
I do. I turn it slowly, wondering which words I would have cut from the intro if I’d been sat on newsdesk when Tony filed the piece. Good tabloid read, I admit.
Lee, who lives in a city centre flat and who recently broke off his engagement to a long-term partner, is a reporter with the Press Association and had been covering the case for the news agency prior to his arrest.
He shocked other reporters at a press conference at Priory Road police station yesterday with an outburst aimed at Det Supt Roper, 39. He fled the scene when the girlfriend of one of the victims was brought in to read a statement. It is understood by this newspaper that the witness is Lee’s sister, Kerry Lee, and that the two had an especially close relationship.
The Hull Daily Mail can exclusively reveal that Lee spent many of his teenage years in a succession of mental hospitals, seeing his family only at weekends and attending a special school, before eventually joining his family in Scarborough, where he changed his name and gained a place at university due to good ‘A’ level results – secured while just 13 years old – and a high IQ.
Lee was committed to an institution by mental health chiefs following the death of respected landowner and fishing fleet owner, Tom Blake, 58, on the Drayton Manor estate, near South Cave, in 1991.
Blake was killed with a shotgun blast to the face during a pheasant shoot on his land. This newspaper understands that Lee, whose father was gamekeeper on the estate and whose family lived in one of the farm cottages, was said at the time to have harboured a grudge against Mr Blake for his attitude towards his father, and for disciplining him in front of party guests.
He is said to have walked calmly up to Mr Blake carrying his father’s gun, spoken briefly to him, and then shot him.
Because of his young age, Lee was never charged, but the incident made headlines around the world. Lee remained in the care of the mental health authorities for many years, and was only allowed occasional visits to his family’s new home.
After continued scrutiny from journalists, the family changed their name to Lee, from the original, Swainson.
His father, at his home on a run-down estate in Scarborough, last night declined to comment, but appeared visibly shaken. The suspect’s mother died in 2010, and his sister, Lee, 27, is helping police with their enquiries. It is understood Owen disapproved of his sister’s relationship with Mr Norton, a known drug user. The suspect also drives a car similar to that spotted on CCTV at the Humber Bridge car park on the night of the deaths.
Lee was last night described as being a “very dark and brooding person”, who did not get on with fellow journalists, and whose career appeared to have flatlined following a promising start. He was also said to be a very heavy drinker, and is understood to still be on medication to control his mood swings, manic depression and violent temper…
52
Detective Superintendent Doug Roper puts a warm arm around Sergeant McAvoy’s shoulder and raises his coffee mug to his lips. Together, they pretend to have a conversation about the case, while the camera rolls. There is much earnest nodding of heads.
“You ever mention this, and I’ll fuck your youngest,” says Roper, who’s feeling better than ever.
The response is mumbled, made insensible by the sickness in McAvoy’s throat. The fog in his eyes. “You’re worse than he is. Worse than any of them.”
“Nah, sunbeam,” he says, pointing at McAvoy’s computer screen as though discovering a new piece of evidence. “I’m a fucking star.”
“It isn’t your world.”
Roper smiles expansively and gestures at himself. “It’s more mine than anybody else’s.”
He hears Flora shout ‘cut’ and gives McAvoy a smile. “You could still be part of my team,” he says “I would like to keep you
close. You’ve got a future.”
“You haven’t,” says McAvoy, getting up. His skin is goose-pimpled, his face white. He looks like the sole survivor of an atrocity. “You’re going to hell.”
“The place could do with a new broom,” laughs Roper, and pulls on his coat.
A swish of leather, a cloud of Aramis, then back to court.
53
He’s standing in the entrance of the church across the street, zipped up against the slanting drizzle inside a well-worn waterproof jacket. His pale, freckly face as grey as the dreary bricks that frame him.
Hair, darkened by rain, plastered across his forehead, like something plastic has been melted across his skull. His hands are in his pockets and there’s something under his arm. He looks like a farmer, all weather-beaten skin and strong arms beneath cheap fabrics.
The copper.
The barrel-chested Scot who shook my hand and froze at the contact.
McAvoy.
Me, scowling as the big man approaches, fingers becoming fists: not sure if I want him to hit me in the jaw or pick me up in a bear-hug and tell me everything is going to be OK.
He towers over me, looking lost. There are pink spots on his cheeks: spheres of colour against the slate of his face. He looks feverish.
“Mr Lee.”
He stops, falters, battling with himself. I wait, squinting into the cold, damp air, wondering how long it is since any of us saw the sun.
“I think we need to talk,” he says, at last.
“I got the message last night,” I say, not breaking eye contact.
McAvoy looks momentarily pained, as if he’s just heard a story about a cancer survivor being killed in a hit-and-run.
I don’t know why he’s here. What he wants. I know he can’t be allowed inside the apartment – not now, not with the bodies bleeding out onto the carpet.
I test the waters. “Tell Roper I’m on it,” I say, weakly. “Being taken care of. He needn’t waste the manpower.”
“This isn’t Roper,” he begins, then stops himself. “Well, it is. But not like that. This is about him. He’s why I’m here, but he doesn’t know I am.”
