Cross Country Murder Song (15 page)

What happened? he said. The policeman was detached and remote, he was still like a cat, he said nothing.

I was here, he said softly, and the colour came flooding back into the policeman's eyes as if he were focusing for the first time.

Sir, the policeman said, lifting the tape and stepping under it, did you say you were here? The policeman gently placed his gloved hand on his wrist and let it stay there.

I'm not going to run away, he said, but he didn't know if that were true. I was here looking at the house a few days ago and Mr Raven . . .

You knew Mr Raven, said the policeman; he stepped closer and tightened his hand a little around his wrist.

He came to the door, he said. He was sweating, there was tar on his hands. There was someone moving around inside. We heard them coughing and there was someone standing out in the yard. He tried to point to the back of the house to indicate where he meant, where he'd dreamt of playing ball, but the policeman held his arm tightly.

We? the policeman said.

The realtor, he said. She wanted me to rent the place, my wife had thrown me out, I needed somewhere to live.

He was crying suddenly, leaning against the policeman for support, his body convulsing and shaking until he felt empty. The policeman gently pushed him back onto his feet and then led him to the police car that was parked two spaces from his.

He saw Julie Ledger through the glass and in spite of himself felt his heart lurch. The detective opposite him followed his gaze.

Cute, the detective said. Is that why you didn't report what happened at the house, too busy sniffing around after her?

No, he said, but he meant yes. We were looking at houses, he said.

Tell me again, said the detective, how you heard something, someone maybe, hit the wall of the house, saw blood on Mr Raven's hands . . .

I thought it was tar, he said.

You thought it was tar, said the detective. What did you think you heard hitting the wall, the bucket the tar came in?

I didn't know what it was, he said.

You said you wanted to go to the back of the house to check what was going on. Why didn't you? said the detective.

We had another house to see, he said, but he had no resolution left, he felt shallow and ashamed. He'd felt the life going out of that house and into the sky and had done nothing about it. Instead he'd followed Julie Ledger to her car, driven to the next apartment which he neither liked nor wanted but had signed off on regardless as Miss Ledger had intimated (he imagined, had he imagined it?) that doing so might mean that their mutual business was out of the way and any more time they spent together would be purely for pleasure.

She'd driven him to her office, his eyes roaming her body with every carefree mile, where he'd signed the six-month lease and then she'd walked him to where his car was parked at the rear of her building. The wind had picked up and caused her shirt to pull tightly against her, he felt thrilled standing there as if he could lean in and kiss her and she'd return it, her warm mouth on his. Instead, she brusquely shook his hand, thanked him for his business and hoped that he'd be happy in his new home. It was then he saw the glinting engagement ring come to life on her finger.

Your ring, he said stupidly as his face got hot.

I never wear it when I'm working, Miss Ledger said brightly. Imagine if I lost it looking round a property, I'd never forgive myself. She smiled and it was a smile that said our business is finished here, go away, you're staring and it's creeping me out.

You thought you saw someone in the garden, said the detective.

I don't know, he said, it was more of a feeling. He felt useless thinking it, let alone saying it.

So you didn't see anyone in the garden, said the detective, but you said you thought you did?

A man came into the room and handed the detective a folder. She's got nothing, he said, indicating Julie Ledger beyond the glass and then looked at him for a moment.

Not according to our friend here, said the detective and waved the folder in his direction. Both men smiled and the man who'd brought the folder in left, he held the door open briefly and he could hear an electronic typewriter clatter and ping and someone ask for coffee, black, and then the door closed and it was quiet again.

You're dead from the eyes up, were the last words she said, that's when Mr Raven hit her. She bounced off the wall and crashed into the couch, but then came up fast attacking his face with both hands. They struggled for a moment and he could feel the sweat forming on his neck. He pulled his hand back and hit her in the side of the head and she staggered, gave him a murderous look and sank to the floor, blood gathering around her nose and lips.

In the last year of their marriage she'd taken lovers, as had he, as their marriage had waned and their sex life had shrunk. When they'd first bought the house they couldn't decide what colour to paint the bedroom so they'd daubed different colours on the wall, it was, they'd admit, a horrible mess, but they couldn't bear to paint over it. So for months they lay beneath a blur of colours and a jumble of half-hidden words, it was like sleeping as the walls exploded silently around them. Together they'd been as brilliant as those colours, now they were bleached like bones. They'd get drunk and talk about it some nights, wonder at the vagaries of love that had drawn them together and was now pushing them apart. They agreed to rent out their home and spend some time apart, hoping that in the spaces they left that love would flood in and buoy them both up again, the current causing their respective crafts to tip towards the other.

Then one night the phone rang and it was a man's voice. He was drunk and demanded to know where she was.

I'm her husband, he raged, her husband, but the man had laughed at him and told him what she had said about him behind his back when she was with him, when she was with all the other men. His own affairs simply wearied him, he took no pleasure in it, sex was revenge, but he wasn't sure against whom. Their drunken evenings became binges, their conversations screaming fights until one night she didn't come home. It was midday when she came through the door and the argument started almost instantly. By the time they'd finished fighting she was splayed unconscious on the floor, her leg gathered up underneath her as if she'd been pushed from the balcony of a tall building. Her face was covered in blood, the red seeping into her mouth. His hands were tacky with sweat, make-up and skin. Then the doorbell rang and then his phone and then he was standing at his door trying to persuade two strangers to leave. His head was pounding, the walls pulsed and boomed, he could barely hear what the girl outside the door was saying, the wires overhead sang and then the silence snapped as his wife came spluttering back into life. He rushed to her side and forced his fingers into her mouth and clutched her throat with his free hand until she sank back into blackness then realising the door was still open he flung himself into the space, his heart threatening to burst from his chest. There was blood on his fingers. He could feel it.

Once they'd finally gone, he sat there in the darkness of the lounge, feeling figures moving about outside, saw the shadows pressed against the windows. He went to the bedroom and opened the bedside cabinet and took out the revolver they kept there in case of intruders, placed it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He saw the light leave his body as his head snapped back and he dropped into the corner and out of sight.

He killed her and then he killed himself, while you were outside, said the detective.

I didn't hear a gun go off, he said.

The detective looked squarely at him and tapped the folder's spine on the desk.

Maybe you missed the suicide then, he said, we didn't find those bodies for days. The autopsy said she was still alive, for a few hours more at least, we might have been able to save her. Then he stood up and without looking back he opened the door and left.

That night, wretched and drunk, he called up his estranged wife, but she wouldn't take the call, he got her machine three times and then on the fourth someone picked up and then slammed down the receiver and the next two times he called it was busy. He gave up after that and went back to his seat in the bar. At one point he slid his ring off his finger (now he didn't need it he wore it almost constantly) and approached a group of women sat at a table, but he misjudged the space around them and dipped his head in to their circle too fast with a slurred, exultant, Ladies! One girl's wine sloshed into her lap with the impact and he skulked away as they regarded him in silence. Knowing he shouldn't but not caring, he picked up his car and started the drive home to the new apartment that he hated. He felt queasy and parched. He wound down his window and navigated the darkened streets with a determination that saw him sat low in his seat, hands clenching the steering wheel. His mouth was so firmly set that his jaw hurt.

The black and yellow house came at him out of the darkness.

Police line, do not cross, he said quietly to himself as he stepped over the tape and up the steps towards the door. He stood there a moment, swaying slightly and looked in through the glass pane where Mr Raven had once looked back when he wasn't choking and beating his wife to death. He felt sadness and shame engulf him, felt the weight of his misguided lust settle firmly on his shoulders and he began to sag, he felt his spine buckle and his knees begin to give. The police tape crossed the door in an X as if the occupants were stricken by plague and he pushed against it and felt it move slowly open. Inside the room was dark and he moved clumsily to the sofa and sat down heavily. He looked around in the gloom and wondered where her body had lain as she choked slowly to death on her own blood. How many feet away had he been staring lustily at Julie Ledger as Mrs Raven had coughed and swallowed her life away? He moved to the window that looked out on to the garden at the back of the house and wondered what he would have seen that day if he'd had the wherewithal to enter the yard and peer into their lounge. Would Mr Raven have been bent over his fading wife, his fingers reaching into her mouth or would he have left the room by then in search of his destiny at the end of a handgun? He moved to the bedroom, eyes adjusting to the darkness, hands holding onto the walls. Their bed was unmade and the sight of it made him unspeakably sad, he crumpled against the dresser, catching her hairbrush and knocking it to the floor. Suddenly he felt the warm flush of tears. A voice came from the next room.

Come out of there with your hands up, this is a crime scene, said the policeman from the living room. His gun was drawn and when the weeping figure rushed at him, a shadow among all the other shadows suddenly shouting, I was here, I was here, I was here, he panicked and fearing for his own life he shot into those shadows and the shadow disappeared as quickly as if daylight had suddenly filled the room. The policeman holstered his gun and stood over him feeling for a pulse where there was none. His head was turned to one side and there were still tears on his cheek. The policeman called it in and shaken sat back on the sofa and tried to slow his breathing and the incessant thumping in his chest while he waited for the ambulance and help to arrive.

Out in the yard, Death yawned solemnly, pulled back the heavy folds of his long coat and scratched absently at a gleaming rib; soon, he thought, it'll be time to go.