Blind Date (38 page)

“Can we get this woman, Patsy watsername, to identify him?”

“Yes.”

“But
what about Emma Davey? Can we get the boy?”

“No. Lizzie says don't involve the boy. It's too long ago. He didn't see anything.”

He had a peculiar tick to his left eye when he knew he was lying. The other man did not know him well enough to notice.

“So, unless this Michael sings, we're a bit stuck on that one, aren't we?”

“She should have killed him,” Jenkins muttered without irony. “Fucking Lizzie should have fucking killed him.”

“L
et me see my boy, please.”

“No, madam. He is not a boy. He is over thirty years old.”

“If I tell you something, will you let me see him?”

“Depends.”

“My son, well, he knew Emma Davey. We both did. She took pity on us, used to ask us round. Well, not so much Michael, as me. To make up for the fact that her family had been so … unkind … and…”

“And what?”

“Nothing. Only I never let him go there without me. But he might have gone. All by himself. She didn't want him, you see: he didn't understand someone asking him in and not wanting him. I was always afraid he might find out, if he went by himself. Can I see him, please?”

“Can you tell us why your son might have attacked Joseph Maxell? Or Elisabeth Kennedy?”

“I've no idea. Who's Joseph Maxell? A friend? Friends fall out. I don't know about Elisabeth. She was always a naughty child. Not as pretty as her sister.”

A
fter dark, Michael Jacobi began to
sing. A confused rant against fate and parenthood, until the nurse put him to sleep. She could not believe that a man with his eyes could be guilty of more than pride. “Look, I'll be good, like a little girl,” he shouted. “Don't send me away. I should mean to burn her.”

I
n the shop, Audrey and Donald sat and debated the merits of going away. Not immediately, of course: not until the weather really turned sour and the wind and rain, which had begun the afternoon before, began to show signs of serious cold instead of mere inconvenience. The change in weather was good for trade. Stragglers took shelter, abandoned the edge of the water to look for compensation, crowding in among the furniture removed from the pavement. The wooden board they placed outside each day had fallen over twice, with a resounding crack. When the door was shut, the ping of the bell each time it was opened grated on Donald's ears and made him feel like a bus conductor. Three people had inadvertently knocked bits off the chandelier, which they had tried, in vain, to hoick closer to the ceiling: three others had expressed interest in buying it, giving him the great pleasure of saying it was not for sale. A man could get sick of the human race for disturbing his afternoon snooze.

Every year on the brink of autumn, they talked about going away. Either for Christmas, for November or some other indefinable period when it was cold, to the Bahamas, the Caribbean, southern Spain or the Canaries, purely for the warmth. The subject and the planning occupied hours: the travel agent was denuded of brochures, and yet, somehow, they never quite went. At the end of it all, there was a distinct lack of interest in foreign parts for anything other than an alternative climate, as well as the strong, understated feeling that if they went
away for any period long enough to be worthwhile, they might miss something. The chandelier had not yet been cleaned. It no longer seemed important. Young Matthew's interest in it seemed to have died once he had completed the reconstruction. Yesterday he had talked of nothing but the computer his father was going to buy, the imminence of the new school term (yughh!), and, with a glee which bordered on smugness, the prospect, not yet definite, that his aunt Elisabeth might be returning home for further convalescence. There had been another… accident, which served her right for going away.

Matt was sceptical about the convalescent bit: she sounded fine on the phone, only a little weary. There was a debate going on in Granny's house about whether he should have Lizzie's room, with his own, far smaller one, reserved for the guest. He was not totally averse to the idea. Everyone, suddenly, wanted to keep him close. They were hiding something, treating him like something precious and he did not mind.

Daddy came and fetched him, took him for a walk, which was a strange thing for Daddy to do. Daddy not only talked about the computer, but about the boat they might get in the spring. Spring was another lifetime away: it had no relevance. They walked on the cliff path, almost blown away, laughing about it. “We can't afford a boat, Daddy.” Well, no perhaps not a big boat, but they could hire a little one. Matthew said he would rather have a proper dog. As big as he was. “Mummy had always wanted a proper, big dog, hadn't she?”

They sat in the lea of the wind, a place Matt had found and showed his father with diffident pride. “I know this place, all these places, much better than you, Daddy.” “I know you do, Matt.” “Mummy and Auntie Lizzie showed me some, but mainly I found out by myself.” How strange he was,
alien child, to seek solitude, when all the others sought the crowd. “Got something to tell you, Matt.” Plucking at a daisy and putting it down. Picking a blade of grass, slitting it and blowing so that it sang.

“What?”

“They think they've found the bad man who killed Mummy.”

“Oh.” There was a long pause.

This was worse than pulling a plaster off a wound, worse than telling the child that the dentist was fun. It reminded Steven of all the tasks he had abdicated when Emma had died and he had been cocooned in his own grief. Blaming the boy.

“What's he like?”

Now what did that mean? Did he mean, is he big, tall, black, white, a member of the same species as us, or what? Would it make sense to say that the man might once have been a boy who ran this path like a sure-footed dog, with a mother, barking at his heels, “Come back, come back, don't fall,”? A boy with the same interest in pebbles and stones?

“Well, he's about the same age as me. Only he has a very sick mind and a lot of dark hair and he isn't very tall.”

Matthew nodded, as if that information was adequate. “Yes. That one. He came to our house, sometimes. He came here, last week.”

Steven had the sensation of being suspended over a snake pit, clutching nothing but a frayed rope. Angry and hurt at the same time. All those people, coming to his house when he was away from it, working to pay for the roof and the walls. Emma's coterie, the antidote to her boredom and the outlet for her energy. So many, Matt could only remember a few. Quite right he would be confused. All those deadbeats, moths to a flame. No,
no, Emma was a saint. He had to remember that. “That last day, Matt … oh I know you've been asked a thousand times and it doesn't matter, not really.”

“
You
never asked me, Daddy. It was never you who asked.”

“Didn't I?”

Another body blow. “Oh well. I just wondered if you could remember if it was a man a bit like that when you opened the door. Blue eyes. Smiley sort of man.”

Matthew considered for more than a minute while his father held his breath. Then he shook his head. He was trying to look for the right answer before he gave it, and then opting for whatever he could find.

“I didn't answer the door, Daddy. Remember it has that glass bit, quite high up? Mummy looked when I had my hand on the door. Then she told me I could watch my telly upstairs. I liked playing on my own, Daddy. I often went upstairs when people came. So I went. I didn't see who it was, Daddy, I didn't, I didn't.”

“Course you didn't. Jolly good thing.” Steven patted his son on the back, feeling he was being rather over-hearty, then left his hand resting on the boy's shoulder for the sheer pleasure of it. Unusually, the touch was not resented, or shrugged away with the customary irritation. They were getting chilly. Steven stood up and hauled the boy to his feet.

“Did she say anything else?” he asked as they set off back down the path with the wind in their faces. Matthew wrinkled his nose, spread his hands, which were grubby from the ground, and wiped them on his shorts. The shorts fitted him better when the pockets were not weighted down with pebbles.

“Yes. I think so.”

“Now what was it? Did she say, fuck off?”

This attempt at levity raised the ghost of
a smile. They were having chips and hamburgers and all the things which made Granny shudder, for tea.

“No, don't be silly! She wouldn't say that!” He stopped and concentrated, as if he could not remember it with such crystal clarity. He stuck his finger in his ear, to aid concentration.

“She said, ‘Oh bother. Bother, bother, bother, it's that old cow again.' That's what she said.”

“We shouldn't call people ‘old cows,' Matt.”

“Mummy did.”

“T
hank you, Mr. Jenkins, for your trouble. You may go now.”

Yes, sir, you arsehole.

“What about similar fact evidence, sir? This man, Michael, cannot tell a lie, sir. He can hide things, but he cannot tell a lie. So, he admits to Angela Collier, although he can scarcely say why. It's the same modus operandi, her and Emma, exactly. On all fours with it. A stolen kiss, rejection, he goes ape-shit, stamping out the fear in their eyes. That's what he said. He couldn't bear it. ‘Like being hated all over again,' he said. But he's still a well-trained boy, worries about the mess and even more, he doesn't want to see the eyes. He covers the face and the head, smash it, finish it with feet. Washes the bottle in bleach or some such, washes the shoes. Same. Charge him on both: he did both.”

“But if he can't tell a lie in response to a question, why won't he say he killed her?”

“He won't lie: he simply refuses to say anything. Have you ever heard of shame, sir?”

“Look we've got him for Angela Collier. We go for that one first. Similar fact evidence is tricky stuff, and how do we explain the
last episode? Not invited in, a knife, a man before a woman, what's similar about that? Or throwing acid at Kennedy, which he only half admits he did, too. Says it was her fault. Life inside is life inside, Jenkins. At the end of the day, does it matter what the hell he goes down for?”

“Yessir,
with respect.
You don't put him on trial, you never know. Emma Davey's family never know. Lizzie never knows.”

“Oh, she knows all right. What do you want, Jenkins? Another debacle in front of another judge? Another miscarriage?”

They were both exhausted. One man with history, one, far senior, with a future to consider and no real knowledge of this particular past. After forty-eight hours, things began to slip: there was a dangerous complacency after any kind of confession. No-one could concentrate. They all hated hospital corridors, especially after dark when they were full of mumbled nightmares.

“I wish he was dead.”

“He sees no reason to die. He says his mother needs him. I thought it was time to let her in. She seems a nice woman. Cooperative, concerned. Made no fuss about us searching his flat or hers. Nothing of course. She keeps asking about the victims, quite touching really. She cried when I said Elisabeth was up and walking about, but then she weeps all the time.”

“Has she seen him?”

“Like I said, didn't I? She's seeing him now.”

“Alone?”

“Look, Jenkins, we serve the people. We have to be humane. Let her, in everyone's interests, let her. If he sees his mother in private, he tells us more, get it?”

“Arsehole.”

There was a phone ringing as Jenkins ran from the room they had borrowed, somewhere in this modern
rat run, access to different patients in different sanctuaries. This was London: victims and culprits went to the same place with nothing but floors between them. He ran for endless miles, his chest heaving, his heart on fire, stabbing the button on the lift, then the next, waiting for the minutes it took for the doors to open and close, the sweat on him and the high colour frightening the others, tidily dressed and relieved of their flowers after a visit. He burst out at the wrong floor and ran again, slurred to a halt, turned back, tried again. How long, oh Lord, how long. Slow down: count, but he could not slow, even though his speed, compared with the young who passed at walking pace, throwing a curious glance in his direction, seemed curiously akin to theirs. He pushed out of the second lift: by this time, the customers were shouting. It was not the same lift he had come out at before; he felt the same, momentary confusion he had known before, stalled and looked at the numbers on the wall. Lizzie, Lizzie, stay up your tower, don't come down.

Shuffling, now, not running, maybe it had never been what anyone else would call a sprint; he felt like death. There was a good man in uniform standing outside the door, not sitting, but not looking or listening, either. Being humane.

It was a heavy, swing door which seemed to take the final effort to push, more so because there was no handle and he found himself pushing at the hinge. He was alarming everyone: he was screaming. He heard the man under the bell, screaming, “Emma, Angela,” screaming, and the words Lizzie said she had heard Michael say, “I COPIED HER, SHE TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING.”

He burst through the door with the man in uniform behind, trying to grab him back.

A little old lady, with short, stubble grey hair, saying a rosary of shiny stones, dressed in worn tweed
and frayed cardigan. Turning on him sluggishly, as if slow to recognize sound. A trifle deaf, maybe. Her son in the bed, turned from her with his arm hung like meat from a drip, his mouth open in terror; hers, smiling bewilderment, while she put the rosary back in her bag, all done with the minimum of movement. Patience shone from damp and powdered cheeks, through which the moisture from her eyes had worn tracks as deep as furrows. She was not alarmed but bewildered. Even in this soundless room, he could hear footsteps behind his own, also running. Arms beginning to clutch him as he fell with hands outstretched for her papery throat, wavering; screaming in his cracked voice “YOU MURDERING BITCH!” Stuttering, pleading, praying and sweating as they dragged him out and ignored the finger which pointed to the tiny wee knife in the bag they had not searched.