Grave Truths

by Anne Morgellyn

  ‘Surely not? But that’s outrageous.’

  ‘Surely yes,’ I said.

  ‘You should come and work for me, Louise. You’re wasted at that place.’

  ‘That’s kind and I might consider it,’ I said. ‘I want to finish my counselling training before I move on.’

  ‘But you could work that in with a job for me. We need a special person, skilled at talking to the bereaved. I’d make it worth your while. I’ve mentioned you to Jake De Groot in Utah.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ I murmured. ‘All I wanted was a rose bush.’

  ‘Well, let me put one in the garden here for you. Bring your man down here – he can choose his own spot. There’s no charge.’

  I thanked him, albeit dejectedly, and took two of my pills. I doubted that the Byrne Memorial Gardens would satisfy Roy Woods, but it looked as though it was going to be the best that I could do for him. I was lying down on my bed, waiting for the drugs to take effect, when I saw him peering in at me through the open window.

  ***

  Chapter 12

  ‘Hello, Louise,’ he said, amiably enough. His face looked calm, almost reposed. Had he taken medication, I wondered, something to calm his demons?

  I sat up carefully, trying to mirror his benign expression. ‘I didn’t hear you ring the bell,’ I said.

  ‘No, I thought I’d give you a surprise.’ He had pulled himself up onto the ledge and was squeezing his large body under the sash frame. Then he dropped with a soft thud onto my bedroom floor. ‘My my, grandma,’ he said. ‘What big eyes you’ve got. My mam had a bed like that.’

  ‘You managed to get round the back,’ I said stupidly, thinking of the high wall and the spiked railing the landlord had promised us would keep out the unwanted.

  ‘Easy as pie. I shinned up church roofs as a lad to pinch the lead off. Maybe I’m not joking, what do you think?’

  I pulled myself off the bed, wondering if this was the first time he had seen me in it. He was scaring me now, but I thought I had better not show it. ‘Have you seen Dr Veil yet?’ I asked.

  ‘What for? He said I’m better. Better bitter batter, what’s it matter? I told you, Sam gave me an honourable discharge.’ He reached into the inner pocket of his outer parka and handed me a large brown envelope. ‘I want you to read this,’ he said. ‘You told me you liked listening but I’ve written it all down to make it quicker.’ He pursed his lips and screwed his eyes into those hard black points. ‘Paperback writer, hey? Read and inwardly digest.’

  I stared balefully at the envelope as he walked confidently through into my kitchen.

  ‘Are you reading it, Louise?’ he called.

  I jumped to it, too frightened to disobey. There were five closely written pages. The script was flowing, though he had kept carefully within the lines of the cheap notepaper. Panic started to bite me before I had even finished the first page. I bit my lip and tried to think. The phone was just to hand, I could call the police, or even Dr Veil, but how long would it take for them to get here?

  ‘Have you finished it yet?’ Roy called. ‘The kettle’s boiled.’

  I made myself read on, no longer curious. I didn’t want to know what he had done. Now I would have to learn to unknow. His words made a grille that shut him out from the world, but brought him closer to me.

  Dear Louise,

  You wanted me to unburden myself, so here it is. I went to see my mother on the 26th of August 2002 at 10.05 in the morning, that being the day she died. I called round there to check on her because I knew she wasn’t living well. She’d lost the use of her hip and gone to pieces. Like I told you before, there was no love lost between us and hadn’t been for many many years, but I liked to keep an eye on her. Those friends of hers weren’t much good. There was one woman used to go and visit my mam just to see what she could get out of her. She had a lot of what she called antiques but it was a load of old junk really. Anyway, I thought they were ripping her off.

  Getting back to that last visit. When I didn’t see her out and about for about five days, I decided to pay her a call. Mam opened the door and saw me standing there. I won’t tell you what she said. She wasn’t going to let me in at first, but I got in anyway and I had a bit of go at her about the way she was living. It was like a pigsty in there – you must have seen how it was. Mam was never exactly house proud, but she did have basic standards till her hip and her eyes started playing her up and she couldn’t do much anymore. She never wanted me around, dirtying the house up, but there was catshit in the hall. Now I’m allergic to cats and when I saw that thing of hers come running out at me, I picked it up by the scruff of the neck and shoved it in the cupboard under the sink. She saw me do it – mam could see very well when she wanted to – and set about me. That’s a phrasal verb: to set about someone. I know that from when Sam Veil got me to train as an EFLing teacher, an EFLing Elf. But I couldn’t carry on with it because of my records. Anyway, I digress. To continue with the confession, mam set about me with her stick and I pushed her off. No, I didn’t, I pushed her because she was getting on my nerves. I’d have pushed her anyway. There was blood on me and I wiped it off with one of her scarves. I took it out with me and gave it a wash in the gents toilet at Covent Garden. It came out all right. I left mam to it. I knew she was beyond help.

  Well, I saw the post-mortem report. That fat woman showed me a copy of it at your office. It said mam died of a stroke. Maybe she did, but I was it. I was the stroke, a stroke of luck maybe because she couldn’t carry on like that, not for much longer.

  I’m telling you this, Louise, because you wanted to know, and you are going to help me plant that rose bush. I’m handing that over to you now because I’ll be turning myself in. It was me who killed her, me alone, no voices in my head, no mirror mirror on the wall. Mam could be a very charming woman when she wanted to be but I always got on the wrong side of her, maybe because I couldn’t find the good one. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself for killing her. I’ve hit her before, in self defence, because she was setting about me. When I was fourteen years old and getting too big for my boots, or so she said, she broke a water jug over my head to put me to rights. Well, I was a big lad by then and I’d learned how to defend myself. I hit her in the face, which is something you should never never do to anybody, especially not a woman and your mother into the bargain. It was after that she had me sectioned. But she started it. She always started it. She was always going on at me. Never good enough, you see.

  I went to see Sam Veil the night after she died. That is, I was going to go in and see him till I saw you coming out of his house, then decided against it. Sam always said I should write things down, write what I meant to tell my mam without actually sending the letter. I never saw the point of that and nor could he. If the truth be known, I think Sam Veil could never fathom the slightest thing about my me and my mother. Oh he thinks he has the big angle on me, of course. We spent a long time talking in his office – arguing mostly because I wanted to come off the drugs. There used to be some big old trees in the garden – millenium oaks, they were, and they chopped them all down to make room for Veil and his gang to park their Jags. I’ve spent more than thirty years of my life in institutions of one kind or another, including school and the army, though they soon wanted shut of me. With records like mine, it’s hard to find an opening, unless you do some catatonic sort of job. I always quite fancied working in a record shop, or libary. When they opened The Beatles Museum back home, I was first in the queue, but no chance. I’ve written to Sir Paul as well, but he never answered. I’d like to think John would have answered. My working class hero, something to be.

  I’m going straight to the police after I’ve seen you read this. I have to know that you will carry out that request for me, about my mam’s memorial. It was good of you to offer. I like you, Louise. I like you very much. You’re what mam might have called a good girl, too good for me at any rate.

  Very Truly and Sincerely yours,

&nbs
p; Roy Woods.

  Slowly, I folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. Roy was standing in the doorway, pursing his lips at me. I got up and joined him in the kitchen.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked, standing there holding the teapot.

  ‘No tea for me, thanks, Roy. I need a drink of water.’ I stood gulping it down at the sink. ‘I made some enquiries about the rose,’ I gasped, wiping my mouth. ‘A friend of mine can help – a professional contact.’ The hissing of the sea was in my ears. My mouth felt full of cotton.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘But what did you think about my letter?’

  ‘You said there was blood on the wall,’ I said, the devil being in the detail. ‘But she didn’t fall near a wall, Roy. We found her next to the wardrobe.’

  His eyes were growing darker now. He set the teapot down with a crash upon the table. ‘You better believe it,’ he flared. ‘You know what she did to me? She chucked away my collection. I spent hours collecting that down Abbey Road, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and fucking hours. The Abbey Road Studios, right? You know the picture on the album sleeve, the band crossing over on the zebra? I used to go through Paul’s dustbins.’ Pride snaked over his face like a sunbeam. ‘I had bank statements, a torn up letter from John – can you imagine that, can you imagine that, from the man who wrote Imagine? Imagine that.’ His eyes were wet now. ‘I was in a caravan in Wales the day John died,’ he went on brokenly. ‘I only found out the following day. I had no radio. John Lennon gets shot and I miss it. Imagine that. The worst day of my life.’

  I wondered at the depth of my shock. I sat down weakly, clutching at the table. I wanted it to act like a barrier now. I wanted to build walls.

  ‘Imagine,’ he said, his eyes on a distant cloud. ‘Imagine if John had lived. He’d have got back to me.’

  ‘I saw it on breakfast TV,’ I said flatly. But I hadn’t cried. Not that I had anything against John Lennon. I just hadn’t known him personally. He hadn’t reached out and touched me in any particular way, not in this way, anyway, not like Roy Woods. ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked at last.

  ‘I thought I’d spelled it out.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew you’d let me down, Louise. You can’t help it.’

  Adreneline was coursing through me like a magic bullet. ‘You know what this will mean, Roy?’ I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. ‘Not just for you, for me, for everyone involved? There’ll have to be an inquest …’ But how could there be an inquest? Edith had been cremated. Perhaps he was delusional. Perhaps that was it: a delusion, like the idea of John Lennon getting back to him. The devil was in the detail.

  ‘You say you saw a copy of the PM report,’ I went on. ‘The pathologist is an expert, top of the tree. He said it was stroke, Roy. That’s why she fell, against the wardrobe.’

  ‘I’m telling you, I pushed her. I wanted to kill her.’

  ‘Let her rest in peace now, Roy. You said she was in poor shape …’

  ‘She could have lived a good few years, amongst the catshit. Not that it would have done her any good.’

  ‘But where can this go, Roy? The police will want to check it out, of course they will, but where’s the evidence? Your mother’s flat was gutted. It’s your word against … well, it’s just your word. Maybe we should call up Dr Veil.’

  ‘No, ta.’ Roy was looking at the tea leaves at the bottom of his cup. ‘The thing with Sam is he likes to play God and all that, but he doesn’t want his only son rising up again when it comes to the crunch. He was like that when I was in The Nunnery. I was all right in there,’ he said angrily. ‘Apart from the medication and the smoking. The fucking smoking made me sick.’

  ‘If you tell him this, about your mam, I’m sure he’ll want to help you.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Louise, he wouldn’t want to know.’

  ‘Why would he be like that? Besides,’ I went on, ‘he’ll have to know. You’re his patient.’

  ‘Not any more. He thinks they work him too hard for his seventy grand a year.’ He started rocking backwards and forwards again, the flimsy chair beneath him creaking uncertainly. ‘Will you come to the nick with me? We’ll go there now.’

  ‘I’ll come, yes. Yes, of course.’ I was glad to get him out my house. But what could I add to the story? I had seen Edith’s coffin go through those purple curtains. One sees so much, she had written to the gorgeous girl, if one is observant. But maybe it was best to close your eyes.

  ‘I thought I’d go to Hampstead nick,’ Roy said, making no attempt to get up. ‘They know me there.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’ I challenged. ‘Are you quite sure you want to go ahead with this? You know the police won’t thank you for wasting their time.’

  ‘I won’t be wasting their time.’ He started rocking again.

  ‘But there’s no evidence …’

  ‘That’s their job,’ he said. ‘To get at the facts.’

  ‘She was cremated, Roy. The flat has been cleaned out. Think what you’re admitting to. It’s horrible. Maybe you feel bad about not being there for her, when she died and …’

  ‘I was there when she died.’

  ‘But they’ve only your word for it,’ I told him.

  ‘And yours,’ he said, his eyes shining.

  ***

  Chapter 13

  He had a surprising amount of change in his pocket and insisted on buying my ticket up to Hampstead. It was only three stops on the Tube, but the journey took twenty minutes, thanks to some signalling fault. As we sat in the dark tunnel, I felt panic overwhelm me once again. I was sitting next to a madman, a patient at large, who might very well have been a murderer. But was he? He could shin up roofs to steal lead and franchise the military style security fences that my landlord had put up, but was he really capable of killing his old mother? The blood on the wall worried me. He wrote that he had wiped it off, but we would surely have noticed the smears, some sign of panic on the part of a second party, his clumsy attempts to clean up. Blood will out. Blood shrieks upwards and bedews the heavens. Yet I had been suspicious at that flat. I had suspected Edith’s landlord. But why wipe the blood from the wall and not the wardrobe? I sneaked a sidelong glance at Roy, composting morosely in his many layers. The police would have it out of him, I thought. They would know what questions to ask. But Roy’s mind was ordered differently from most, according to the diagnosis they had stuck on him. Roy’s mind, thanks to the phenomena known as schizophrenia, was full of delusion. There were a dozen or so other people in the compartment, all consciously looking past my companion, the strange one, the only problem.

  He dawdled down Hampstead High Street, staring in shop windows. ‘That would suit you,’ he said, pointing out a strapless electric blue dress that looked as though it had been fashioned out of rubber. ‘You can stop at Hammond House for two weeks for what that costs. Still, you’re worth it, Louise. Had I the gold cloths and the silver cloths, the embroidered cloths – I can’t remember how that went now, we learnt it at school. You are treading on my dreams – I remember that bit. Tread softly for you tread upon my dreams.’

  ‘This isn’t real,’ I muttered, walking on.

  ‘Oh yes it is,’ he bridled. ‘It’s real enough. You can’t say something’s not real just because you can’t aspire to it yourself. It’s not the frock’s fault, is it?’

  I didn’t answer. I was making for the sanctuary of Hampstead Police Station. I could see the blue lamp already, reflecting the afternoon sun. I hoped they’d take one look at Roy and call for Sammy Veil, refer him on, as I should have done, as I’d been told to do, except it hadn’t seemed quite fair to pass him about like a parcel, as though I was passing the buck. I hoped that Veil would come and pronounce Roy delusional, because, whatever he had done, I felt he should not be punished. The feeling which had pushed him to making such a dreadful confession would be punishment enough. That feeling, I thought, must be torture. Still, I listened, head bowed, as he
told the desk sergeant that he had come to report a murder. She eyed Roy in a non-commital fashion and told us both to take a seat. My head hurt badly and my hands were sweating. When I had been pulled in once before, for possession of another kind to Roy’s, they had taken me down to Seven Dials. All they need do, I thought, was punch my name in their computer to see my form come up, immutable, refusing to let me move on. Still, it wasn’t as bad a label as Roy had, I considered. At least I had a home to go to and a job offer from an undertaker who was clearly going places. How trivial all that seemed, in the eye of Roy’s torment.

  Eventually, a plain clothes officer came out of the back to look us over. He had straw-coloured dreadlocks and a deep purple leather jacket, maybe so that he could mingle all the more freely with the flotsam and jetsam of North West London. ‘I’m DS Fawkes,’ he said to Roy, tapping the letter, which I had handed over to the desk sergeant. ‘You’re reporting a murder, right?’ Roy nodded. ‘All right, let’s have you round the back then. On your own, please.’ He motioned to me to stay seated.

  Roy glanced back at me as he followed the detective. I wondered if he was regretting it already. Maybe the delusions came and went.

  It was some forty minutes more before the detective sergeant returned. The interview room was empty. No winking tape machine, no ashtray full of dog ends, no Styrofoam cup slopping its sticky contents out onto Roy’s letter, which lay unfolded on the desk.

  Fawkes pulled out a chair for me and sat down, tapping his teeth. His dreadlocks matched his yellow incisors.

  ‘Have you known Woods long?’ he asked at length.