Killing the Beasts (33 page)

Chapter 22

September 2002

The mirrors in Tom's house weren't working properly. As he passed in front of them, he could only make out a blurred figure, details indistinct and hazy. He dropped the remains of the Chinese takeaway onto the other cartons filling the sink and shuffled through to his front room. Sitting in his tracksuit bottoms, he logged on to their joint internet bank account for the third time that day. Her last withdrawal was still from yesterday – another £500 counter transaction.

He brought up the account's summary for the past few weeks, going over the numerous withdrawals that she'd made. It was the only evidence he had that she still existed. His last remaining form of contact.

Then he heard a key in the lock. He fell onto all fours, crawled quickly across the floor and peeped over the windowsill. It was her! He could see her through the net curtains, struggling to get the door open, several empty boxes at her feet. She tried the door again, looking exasperated that it wouldn't open.

He remembered he'd left his key in the lock. Afraid she would give up and go away, he jumped to his feet and hurried out of the room. Eagerly he turned the key, then was hit by a sudden wave of anxiety as he yanked the door open.

'Tom,' she said, looking him up and down.

'Charlotte.' He tried to smile. She was staring at his chin. His hand went up and he scratched at the thick stubble. 'You've come back.'

'Yeah – I need some things, that's all.'

Tom chose to ignore her comment. She was back; that was all that mattered. They would be a family soon. She turned round, gave a quick wave to the large silver vehicle parked on the road outside, then picked up the empty boxes and stepped inside. He saw her looking around with a disgusted expression. He supposed the place did look a bit of a tip. As he hovered at her side, his hand repeatedly went up to his mouth, then veered nervously off to tug at an earlobe.

'I need a few bits and bobs, personal items,' she announced.

'Why? Are we going somewhere?'

'No, we're not. They are my things, for where I'm going.'

He stepped backwards, searching for what to say.

'It smells in here,' she said, not looking at him. 'Hasn't Mrs Hanson been?'

'I sent her away. I didn't want her poking around with the vacuum while I was at home.'

She nodded. Climbing the stairs, she walked briskly along to the bedroom where she began taking clothes out of the wardrobe and laying them on the bed. Tom watched from the doorway in silence. Finally he stalked back downstairs, found the little bag and took a pinch of powder. Standing in the kitchen, he waited for the drug to make him feel stronger. By the time he could feel its effects, she was coming down the stairs, a pile of dresses, shirts and skirts over one arm.

'Where are you going with those?' he called as she walked out of the house.

'A friend's,' she answered, not breaking her step.

He brooded in the kitchen, working up the courage to ask exactly what she was planning.

Next she came down the stairs with a box full of shoes and carried them out to the car.

He slid through into the front room and peered out the window. But whoever was waiting in the driving seat of what looked like a Land Cruiser was obscured by the trunk of a tree. All he could see was a pair of large hands on the steering wheel.

Back in the house she walked quickly through to the kitchen, took the keys for the garage and walked back out.

Tom lingered in the front room, listening as the garage door was unlocked and raised up. A minute later she came back into the house, her tennis rackets cradled in the crook of an arm, a pile of chewing gum packets balanced on the face of the uppermost racket. Pausing in the hallway, she called, 'Tom? Where are you? Can you hear me?' Behind the door, he stood absolutely still, watching her through the tiny crack.

'Fuck him,' she whispered nervously to herself, and walked into the front room.

He stepped out from behind her. 'What are you doing?'

Letting out a yelp of terror, she nearly jumped over the sofa, packs of gum flying everywhere.

'Jesus!' she said, one hand reaching into the pocket of her body warmer. He stood still, staring directly at her. When he made no attempt to move closer, she took her hand back out. 'You made me jump,' she said warily, backing away.

'What are you doing with that chewing gum?'

A momentary look of guilt, followed by an irritated expression. 'I was just taking a few packs. You've got a bloody mountain of the stuff in the garage.'

'You opened one of the boxes?'

'No, it was open already. Jesus, keep them if they're that precious.' She walked over to the corner of the room and picked up a sculpture of a dolphin she'd made at art college. Tom stood where he was, one hand fiddling with the drawstring of his tracksuit bottoms, a frown on his face. Keeping her eyes on him, she skirted round to the door and back out of the house.

Next foray she came back down the stairs with all her bottles of perfume and toiletries. He stood in the hallway. 'I don't understand. Where are you going with that stuff? You're coming home soon, aren't you?'

She tried to get past him without replying, but he blocked her exit.

Charlotte said nothing. Instead she headed back into the front room, crouched at the video cabinet and flicked through the cassettes and DVDs inside. She dropped
It's a Wonderful Life
,
The Wizard of Oz
and
Pretty Woman
into the box.

'I've also made enquiries about nurseries, 'Tom continued. 'There are some very good ones in the area.'

Suddenly she swept Tom's collection of videos onto the carpet. The violence of her action caused him to sit down suddenly on the sofa. 'Tom!'she yelled, her voice quickly dying down to a whisper. 'There is no bloody baby.'

A slither of Tom's brain understood the words, but it was out weighed by the far larger part of his mind that was in total denial.

'Where've you been, anyway? I've been so worried about you.'

'You what?' She looked at him uncertainly.

'Where've you been?'

'Tom, are you hearing me? There is no bloody baby.'

'I was worried about you.'

Confused, she raked strands of blonde hair from her face. 'Well, don't be,' she replied, getting to her feet and walking through to the dining room. She placed the box on the dining table, opened up the dresser's top drawer and started dropping her silver napkin rings into the box. Next she pulled open the second drawer, lifted the napkins out and froze. 'There's a gun in this drawer.'

'Yes, 'Tom replied.

'What's it doing there? Is it real?'

'Yes. It's to protect us. There are dangerous people out there, Charlotte. We have to be more careful, especially with the little one on the way. I've been thinking about babies' names.'

Very slowly Charlotte slid the drawer shut, then moved round towards the door, reaching into her pocket again as she did so. 'There is no baby,' she repeated.

'Oh, but there is. You're pregnant, Charlotte.'

'It was terminated. Last month.'

Tom's head dropped forwards, as if the muscles in his neck had suddenly dissolved. He looked towards his hand and began picking at the seam on the backrest of the dining chair. 'No baby?' he whimpered. His thumbnail began to go white as he dug it with ever growing force into the leather. 'No baby?' His breathing was deepening and picking up in speed, his mind shrinking from her words, desperate to find some way to make them manageable. Suddenly he had it. He looked up at her with tears in his eyes. 'Get out. You're not Charlotte. You've been sent to impersonate her. You're not Charlotte. Get out!'

'Charlotte?' came a voice from the doorway. Tom heard an Australian accent.

Leaving her box on the table, she edged round the wall and ran from the room.

Across the road Creepy George placed his camera on his lap, tilting it forward so he could see the viewfinder. He'd got several good shots of her as she ferried the boxes into the back of the jeep and many at the point when she had leaned forwards to slide them inside the vehicle, bottom poking outwards as she did so. He reached over to the glove compartment and removed a packet of gum from the box he'd stolen from It's A Wrap a couple of months before. Folding a stick into his mouth, he began to ruminate on what was going on.

Inside the house Tom couldn't move. Her words bounced around his head like a pinball, lighting up every part of his brain so there was nowhere dark and comforting for him to crawl. The only way he could make everything all right was to remind himself her words were fake, spoken by something that looked exactly like his wife. Perhaps a robot.

He needed some sort of sense in his world. He could feel the threads of reality unravelling in his fingers, everything becoming disjointed. He looked towards the door, saw his feet moving beneath him. Was he awake? He looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Tick tock, tick tock. He turned on the taps. Water flooded the takeaway cartons. Soon he saw steam. He held a hand under each jet of water, felt sweet and sour. No, hot and cold. He held up his hands, looked at their backs. Both were bright red. Holding them against his cheeks, one was hot and one was cold. Had Charlotte just been? He wasn't sure. He turned off the taps and went into the front room. An ornament was gone. There was mess on the floor – chewing gum and videos. He thought she had been, but he was so confused.

His mind needed something to latch on to. Something he could reason with. He looked at the video at his feet.
Seven
. With Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. He looked at the packet of chewing gum lying next to it.

Chewing gum. Everything had gone wrong because of chewing gum. Those dots on the streets, making it impossible for him to walk through the city centre. The blobs ejected from people's mouths, coated in saliva, dropping into ashtrays, urinals, the pavement itself. Squashed flat by feet. Clinging to the soles of shoes. Cementing itself to paving stones. Swarming at the bases of bins. Massing by the bus stops. Gradually drying, losing its whiteness. Turning grey, then black, but never dissolving, stubbornly existing like some ancient lichen, surviving the rain and frost and sun. Chewing gum. It was why he had fled the city centre, why he had lost his job.

He focused on the packet, noticed the words 'seven sticks'.

His eyes shifted back to the video.
Seven
. That number again.

Why seven? he wondered, mind scrabbling desperately to mesh something solid out of his fragmenting reality. One for each deadly sin, he knew that. But why seven sticks of gum? One for each day of the week?

Other collections of seven occurred to him. The seven colours of the rainbow. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. His mind flitted about, coming up with the seven wonders of the ancient world. What was it about that number? he wondered, fingertips pressed to his temples.

Tentatively, he edged over to his computer and turned it on. Sitting down, he typed into Google 'the significance of seven'. Results one to ten of more than 1,280,000 hits came up. He started scrolling down the screen.

He read about how often the number features in western culture. Seven days of the week. Seven ages of man. Seven planets in the heavens of old. He browsed through a document that outlined how alchemy was based on seven metals: gold, silver, lead, tin, iron, copper and mercury. Each metal corresponds with one of the seven wandering bodies on which astrology was originally based: the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Tom scanned on down, skimming articles that spoke of other collections of seven – the seven seas, seven league boots,
The Magnificent Seven
.

Tom turned the packet of gum over and over in his hand, his mind seizing on the various occurrences of the number, knitting together some sort of framework, trying to create some stability. As a sense of excitement began coursing through him, he got up and went over to the drinks cabinet. All his whisky was gone, so he pulled out a bottle of tequila.

Back at the computer, he swigged some down, doubling over in a fit of coughing. After wiping the tears from his eyes he found that he'd clicked on a new document. Its title was 'The prevalence of seven in the religions of the world'.

Tom leaned forward, his face now inches from the screen.

*

By the time dawn broke he knew he had to get out. To the side of the computer was a pile of printouts almost two inches thick, each sheet of paper featuring aspects of his new-found knowledge.

He thought about changing out of his tracksuit bottoms, but couldn't be bothered. Rummaging around in his room, he found a pair of white towelling socks, black work shoes and a beige jumper. Finally he put his Timberland jacket on, slipped the gun into the pocket, picked up the nearly empty bottle of tequila and set off for the city centre.

Specks of gum made walking on the pavement difficult. He stepped carefully round them, walking along the grass verges or in the road where the asphalt was newly laid and relatively clean. Cars beeped him and he ignored them.

During his walk in, Manchester had been bathed in a light shower. The rain had made the streets damp, darkening the colour of the paving stones and making the white lumps of gum stand out. He looked at the dots all around, tip-toeing into Piccadilly Gardens like he was walking through a minefield. Sitting down on a bench, he watched the people pass by; office workers walking along with phones to their ears, cups of coffee or carry-out bags from McDonald's in their spare hand.

After nine thirty the shoppers started to appear, heading at a more leisurely pace for the big department stores and expensive boutiques.

Tom crept along, ever careful to watch where he placed his feet. The colourful Commonwealth Games banners and hanging baskets of flowers had long been removed from the lampposts. The building wraps were gone too, derelict structures that had previously been hidden now plain for everyone to see. Craning his neck back, he stared up, saw tiny saplings growing in their gutters, pigeons coming and going through glassless windows.