Cowards Die Many Times

by Peter Hey

  Thomas had his head leant against the carriage window, wafts of steam from the locomotive drifting past. His eyes were looking downwards at the long, straight line of Third Avenue below. They were looking, but not seeing. As the train chugged northwards the scene became a patchwork of newly completed tenement blocks in brownstone or brick, wooden shanties squatting on vacant lots, and open land, sometimes waiting to be raised or lowered to match the grade of the street. Out towards the East River, away from the transport system that was driving speculative development, building was sparser, with isolated factories, yards and gasworks dominating the landscape.

  Once Thomas might have been eagerly dissecting the view, imagining it captured on his photographic plates. Today he was lost in the darkest of thoughts. They were interrupted when the train pulled into the East 106th Street station and he had to force himself to disembark. He slowly descended the steep, covered staircase down to ground level, fellow passengers impatiently pushing past. The voices were Irish, Yiddish and Italian but he heard none of them. He walked the two blocks to First Avenue, before turning northwards. Somewhere beneath his feet he crossed the old Harlem Creek, but that one-time obstacle to northerly progress had been buried and would soon be forgotten.

  Looking down 109th he saw his destination, stretching into the Harlem River, the short pier where he had set foot on the mainland for the second time. The first, at the old fort of Castle Garden some eight miles south, had been the briefest of landings before he was shipped off to a fever ward, isolated on Ward’s Island across the water from him now. When he left that place and the ferry brought him the short distance to this point, he had been a different man. The typhus had been purged from his body and he had been glad to be alive. For the first time in his life, he had been in love. And passion’s unfamiliarity had made a weak man weaker and a fool more foolish.

  The wooden jetty beckoned him and he couldn’t resist its call. He found himself at its tip, staring across the narrow strait. The water was a cold, impenetrable grey, its surface chopped and lively in the cutting wind. A man who flung himself into it would not last long, particularly one raised far from the sea, whose thrashing limbs would drag him under rather than keep him afloat.

  And there, imposing and proud, stood the Emigrant Hospital, its wards stacked into five parallel wings each redolent of a cathedral nave fronted by twin towers that held water cisterns in place of bells.

  That was where he had met her for the first time.

  His eyes dropped towards the seawater fizzing and slapping at the planks beneath him. This was the scene of his worst crime, for which he knew he must be forever damned. He had pushed her and the tidal currents had taken her. They had dragged her fragile body out towards the ocean through the confluence of Harlem and East Rivers cruelly known as Hell Gate, to be washed ashore on another of New York’s Islands of the Undesirables. He looked south but its narrow profile could not be made out in the murk and mist. When she had been taken ill after their baby’s birth, one of the so-called doctors had suggested her transfer to Blackwell Island’s lunatic asylum. It was a bitter irony that she was found close by its doors as if begging posthumously for its dubious ministrations to relieve her torments.

  At that moment, he wanted to follow after her, his guilt too heavy to bear. But his body resisted, locking rigid, unable to throw itself forward. As always, it seemed he didn’t have the courage, not even for the ultimate act of cowardice. He heard himself cravenly making excuses. What would become of his daughter? He had abandoned his other children. He must not repeat that sin.

  But there was someone who knew his secret and her silence had a price. He would pay it. He deserved punishment in this world as well as the next.

  Stolen goods

  ‘Well thank you so much for the day out. I thoroughly enjoyed it,’ enthused Betty as she opened the car door outside her house.

  Jane smiled. ‘No, thank you again for coming and showing me around. It really was a great help. There are lots of background things that seem much clearer now.’

  ‘Anytime. I mean that. If you want a partner in crime for your future genealogy cases, I’m your woman. I’ve found it all very exciting.’

  Jane hesitated before answering. ‘I’ll bear it in mind. But I do already have a partner. It’s just he’s otherwise engaged right now. I guess he’s one of those silent partners.’

  As she said the words, Jane felt the joke falling flat, to her ears at least. She wondered if she was the one being silent. Tommy was uncommunicative by nature, but she hadn’t tried to contact him for some time. She really ought to find out how he was coping.

  Jane’s thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing on the dashboard. She glanced at its screen, but the number was withheld.

  ‘I’ll be off and let you answer that’. Betty waved a quick goodbye, shuffled out and shut the door.

  Jane lifted the phone from its cradle. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Ms Madden?’

  ‘Yes. Who is this please?’

  ‘Oh, hi again, Ms Madden. It’s PC Kahn. I came round to your house after your recent break-in?’

  ‘Hello, Zahid. This is a pleasant surprise. Don’t tell me you’ve caught the bastards?’

  ‘Not as such, but I think we’ve managed to locate your property.’

  ‘What, the TV? How do you know it’s mine?’

  ‘Well… We were attending a stolen motorbike that had been left down an alleyway round the corner from where you live. An elderly lady came out to speak to us and said someone had dumped a new-looking TV and a couple of half-full bottles of alcohol in her wheelie bin. She thought it was odd.’

  ‘Presumably the TV’s all smashed up?’

  ‘No, Ms Madden. We’ve haven’t tested it, obviously, but it doesn’t look too bad, a bit of a scratch maybe. It’s the same model as yours and, well, there was the bottle of gin and the bottle of vodka... It seemed too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘Why would someone go to the trouble of breaking into my house and then just chucking everything away?’

  PC Kahn seemed to take the question as being rhetorical. ‘When would it be convenient for me to come round so you can identify your stuff, Ms Madden?’

  Twitching curtains

  Jane watched the police car drive away. The property was returned and the case closed. The TV was working and only slightly battle scarred, but the potentially tainted booze had already gone down the sink. It seemed a pointless crime and the insurance would not cover anyone’s time or inconvenience. Fortunately, there was no anxiety or distress to be added to the unpaid bill. Jane’s only emotions were irritation, confusion and anger at herself for not properly securing her home.

  PC Kahn had opined that the young housebreakers had lost their nerve or had been compromised in some way and didn’t want to be caught in possession of stolen goods. Maybe they intended to return for their loot and had not yet had a chance.

  ‘The council won’t be collecting the rubbish until next week. You could mount surveillance on the wheelie bin where they dumped the stuff,’ suggested Jane, thinking aloud rather than being serious, or flippant.

  ‘We don’t have to resources to do that sort of thing, Ms Madden. It’s hardly… Well, I know every crime has a victim and having one’s home invaded and defiled is no laughing matter, but it’s not exactly… There was no physical violence involved, no element of hate crime… I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Of course. I was just joking. No, not joking, just postulating that in an ideal world with limitless police officers, that might give you a collar. I completely understand you, and I, have to be a bit more realistic.’

  ‘Indeed.’ PC Kahn rubbed his nose as if stalling while he thought of how to make his exit. ‘From a practical viewpoint, you have your crime reference number. Your insurance company will reimburse you for the damage to your property. I’m sure they’ll advise the installation of better locks.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ agreed Jane defensively. ‘I
’ll make sure I’m better protected in future. I do know it was a crime waiting to happen.’

  PC Kahn’s tone was hovering somewhere between admonishment and doubt. ‘Well, I would have thought, as an ex-police officer…’

  Jane was on her front doorstep reliving the conversation as the car reached the end of her road and turned the corner. It had suddenly occurred to her that the young Asian constable might have suspected her of an attempt at some kind of minor insurance fraud. But surely she would have added a non-existent diamond ring to the haul if that was the case? The potential slur made her want to track the culprits down herself and she briefly considered parking near the now infamous wheelie bin and keeping watch herself. The trouble was she wasn’t exactly sure which one it was and the exercise would, in truth, be an awful lot of hassle with very little chance of reward. Even if she did find some youths going through the bins, they’d easily make up excuses. And it probably wasn’t an altogether sensible exercise for a woman on her own.

  She was about to go back inside when she saw a curtain twitch across the street. Mrs Metcalfe had no doubt been avidly watching the coming and going of police cars and imagining all kinds of juicy gossip. Jane’s grandmother hadn’t been particularly fond of her nosey neighbour. Jane herself wasn’t overly concerned what Mrs Metcalfe thought or said, but decided to cross the road anyway. It she wasn’t going to do her own stake-out, she could at least carry out a house-to-house enquiry.

  Jane rang the bell and the door opened almost immediately. Mrs Metcalfe had lived opposite since Jane had been a little girl. She had seemed elderly even then; she appeared little altered by the passing years, though her quiet, portly and bald husband had died several years back. Jane had occasionally smiled at her in the street, but seldom said more than hello.

  ‘Mrs Metcalfe, I hope you don’t mind me coming over?’

  ‘No, not at all. It’s Jane, isn’t it? How are you coping without your grandmother?’

  ‘It’s been a while now. I miss her still, but life has to go on. Look, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve had the police round?’

  Mrs Metcalfe avoided eye contact and blushed slightly. ‘‘Erm... I did see the car parked outside.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve had a break-in. Through the dining room doors round the back.’

  ‘Oh dear, how frightening!’ Mrs Metcalfe looked genuinely anxious. ‘And this used to be such a nice area.’

  Jane realised she ought to say something reassuring. ‘It was my own fault really. Flimsy security. Your double glazing is only a few years old, isn’t it? Assuming it’s the same at the back, they’ll have put in proper multipoint locks. I’m sure you’re nothing like as vulnerable as I was.’

  ‘Oh, I hope not dear. I’m a woman on my own, of course. Since Jim died.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m not sure if my gran ever told you, but I was a police officer myself for a while, down in London. If ever you’re worried about anything, just give me a knock. I’ll try to help if I can.’

  ‘Thank you, Jane. That is kind of you. Did they take much of sentimental value? That’s the worst, isn’t it? My cousin lost her father’s medals. They were practically worthless. Financially, I mean.’

  ‘No, they didn’t take anything that mattered. Just a TV and that’s been found and the police brought it back to me.’

  The old lady raised her eyebrows. ‘So they’ve apprehended the culprits?’

  ‘Not as such.’ Jane felt disappointed she couldn’t be more encouraging. ‘The TV was dumped and a member of the public reported it. It still works though.’

  Jane knew she had inevitably inherited many of her grandmother's prejudices but found herself softening towards this lonely old woman, nosey or not. She tried to phrase her next question tactfully.’

  ‘I know you... live in the front. I just wondered if you’d seen anything suspicious. It would have been on Friday. I don’t know… Dodgy kids hanging about near my house, a man or men maybe. God, it could easily be a gang of women these days.’

  Mrs Metcalfe turned her eyes upward as she thought. ‘The only man I’ve seen is your boyfriend. Yes, I think he was there on Friday.’

  Jane frowned with confusion. ‘My boyfriend? I don’t have a boyfriend.’

  ‘Well, he… what’s the expression these days?’ Mrs Metcalfe pulled a worried face before tentatively continuing. ‘He was black. Well, a bit black. Afro American. No, not American, Afro Caribbean maybe. Or mixed, erm…’

  ‘Mixed race?’ offered Jane.

  ‘Yes. A very nice-looking boy, anyway. I saw you getting in a cab together a while back, going somewhere fancy. He was in a dinner jacket and you had a lovely frock on. You made such a handsome couple. You need someone tall, don’t you, and he looked just the right height for you. And he seemed kind somehow. I remember thinking he had the look of my Jim about him. Not that there was a physical resemblance, obviously, but Jim was, well, a really nice man.’

  Jane briefly turned towards her house to visualise the scene. ‘That was Tommy. He’s a friend, not a boyfriend as such.’ She paused as she processed what was being suggested. ‘Sorry, you’re saying you saw him as recently as Friday?’

  ‘Yes. I remember thinking your car wasn’t there and he must have missed you. I’ve seen him a couple of times in the last week or two. There was one time he seemed to have inadvertently thrown a letter or something into your recycling bin. I’ve done it myself more than once. He was having to sift through all the bits of paper.’

  Jane’s mind instantly went back to the suspiciously targeted spam she’d recently received purporting to be from her new energy supplier. She’d been half-convinced someone had found an item of correspondence, but had blamed herself for not having a working shredder. Buying a new one had seemed an easy, lazy way of putting the problem aside, filing it under ‘done’ rather than thinking it through properly.

  With some discomfort Jane pressed further. ‘Are you sure it was Tommy, not just someone who looked like him?’

  Mrs Metcalfe thought for a while and then nodded. ‘Despite my age, I’ve got good eyes. I had my cataracts done three years ago and it was wonderful. And yes, I’m pretty certain it was him. Same build, same colouring, same gentle face. He’s had a haircut, of course…’

  The red light

  Jane couldn’t sleep. She’d been working late again, typing up her notes from her visit to Blackwell Holme. She wanted to document her thoughts and observations while they were still fresh in her mind. Rather than sitting downstairs staring at her amateurish repairs to the French windows, she had taken her laptop up to her bedroom. Stripping off, for once she just threw her clothes in a heap on the floor. She put on her most comfortable M&S pyjamas, and propped up on pillows in bed, she tried to produce a structure and prose that she felt an educated man like her client, Dr Guy Ramsbottom, would be able to read non-judgmentally. Unfortunately, it had been a long day and her ability to write sentences in anything like decent English seemed to have deserted her. The more she tried, the more laboured her language seemed to become.

  At just past one, she gave up. The information was pretty much there, and revitalised by a good night’s rest, she hoped she would easily be able to tidy it up in the morning. There was also the chance her unconscious brain would process the facts – people, places, dates – and she would awake with new insights, or perhaps new questions, that eluded her in her increasingly tired state.

  Exhausted as she felt, her mind refused to switch off. She had been trying to get into the head of Thomas Ramsbottom and now he refused to leave hers. Another man also kept elbowing his way into her thoughts, however much she tried to push him out. Mrs Metcalfe was obviously mistaken about seeing Tommy hanging around her house. He had said his work had brought him up north recently, but if he had tried to call on Jane at home, he would have said something. But if not Tommy, who was the tall, thin, short-haired lookalike who had supposedly been through her paper recycling? Was it really possible he had specifically wa
nted to target her with a malicious email? Why would it be worth his trouble? Internet fraudsters surely relied on targeting the masses, counting on the small percentage who were ill-informed, gullible, forgetful or just plain stupid. Jane wasn’t any of those but she was a nobody: she wasn’t rich; she wasn’t powerful; she wasn’t a celebrity with potentially dark and dirty secrets that could be sold to the tabloid press. Why would she be singled out? It didn’t make sense.

  And it also didn’t make sense that the same man could have then stalked her house, waited until she was out and broken in to steal a television and two half-full bottles of booze that he promptly chucked away? Jane wasn’t used to feeling scared, but the more her tired thoughts looped around the idea, the more uncomfortable and threatening it all seemed.

  She began to realise it was a mistake to work into the early hours without allowing herself time to unwind and relax. She thought about getting up and having a glass of wine, but decided that drinking yourself to oblivion was a lifestyle choice best avoided. It would also entail getting out of bed and going downstairs and her body at least didn’t feel like it had the energy. She desperately tried to distract herself with mundane and happy thoughts, but it didn’t work.

  She rolled over and looked at her bedside clock. The glowing red numerals said 03:56. She couldn’t believe she’d been awake for nearly three hours and suspected she had dozed for a while but woken up again. For some reason, her eyes were drawn to the colon dividing hours from minutes, and the twin LEDs seemed to swell and brighten with the focus. And then she saw there was another smaller pinprick of glowing red, offset to the right. Her curtains were heavy and blocked almost all of the street light outside. Her eyes took time to adjust to the gloom and she realised the mysterious third dot was coming from the top of the dark, oblong shadow that was her laptop. That made sense: she had brought it up with her and hadn’t turned it off, relying on it slipping into sleep mode, its artificial intelligence untroubled by overwork and imagination. But then again, that didn’t make sense: its status was signalled by the subdued white power symbol she could also see below the keyboard.