Nine Lives (4 page)

Next door, a woman appeared at an upstairs window. ‘Stop that racket,' she yelled, and she slammed the window down as the sheep bleated for the last time.

Neil Clarkson waited. He was afraid to ring the bell again. The door sported a wide letter box. He hesitated before
lifting the flap. She might catch him, and he knew she overvalued her privacy. But he would risk it. He looked around. There wasn't a soul on the street, and the woman at the window had no doubt gone back to bed. Gingerly he lifted the flap so that it was only half ajar. But it was wide enough to stun him. He dropped the flap in panic. Even through that narrow aperture, it was clear that she was dead. He thought it might be wishful thinking on his part, so he looked again, this time lifting the flap to its limit. And there indeed she lay, spread-eagled on the floor and laced in blood. He dropped the flap again and wondered what to do. But first he had to deal with the extraordinary feeling of relief that overcame him. Of bliss almost. At last he was shot of her. No longer did he have to grapple week after week with his broken relationship with his father. It was
his
father, and he could feel what he wanted about him. It was none of her business. And never had been. She had tried to divert him from blame, but over the years she had cunningly nurtured that blame in order to keep him by her. For the first time in so many years, Neil Clarkson felt free and with only a slight nudge of shame, he celebrated her passing.

But he couldn't leave her lying there. She deserved to be reported. He needed a phone. He would call next door, he thought, but not the side of the rattling window. The other side might be more welcoming. He pressed the doorbell and was rewarded with an ‘Oranges and lemons' rendering, and he wondered whether the whole neighbourhood had reverted to second childhood. The door was opened immediately, but only by an inch or two, chained as it was to the lock.

‘Yes?' the woman asked.

She looked wide awake and Neil was glad he hadn't roused her from her bed. He hadn't rehearsed what he would say, and as the words came out of his mouth he realised how blatantly he was incriminating himself.

‘There's a woman dead next door,' he said. ‘I saw her through the letter box. Murdered. There's blood. I've got to use your phone.'

The woman's eyes widened in horror, and she gave a little scream. Then a louder one, and she slammed the door in his face. So hard, that it set off ‘Oranges and lemons' once again, proving a faulty connection. He waited until the bells of St Clement's had pealed their last and he put his ear to the door. The telephone must have been in the hallway, for he heard the woman loud and clear.

‘He said someone's been murdered.' Then a pause. ‘Tall,' the woman said. ‘Nondescript really.'

Neil was offended. And fearful too. He had to report the murder personally to put himself in the clear. He rushed around the square and found a telephone box on the corner. The police answered immediately, and he gave them the same unrehearsed story he had spouted on the neighbour's doorstep. When asked for his name, he gave it gladly and then offered to stay at the address until they arrived. He put down the phone with a certain relief, and with little thought, though with a certain trepidation, he dialled again. This time his father's number. It had been almost five years since they had spoken. The very last time, he had put the phone down on his father in mid-sentence. But sentence enough to express his parental disappointment with his son. He wondered whether his father had pickled the remains of that sentence over the years and would now spill them out, hearing how ragged the words were, how hurtful, and
above all, how pointless. He listened to his father's ‘Hello?', and in its tone he heard the years that had passed. And his tongue froze in overwhelming regret. He simply couldn't respond. He knew he was not ready. But he had made a start, and that cheered him a little. In time he would talk to him, visit him even. He put the phone down. It was a start, he kept telling himself.

He heard the sirens and he knew he had to return to the scene of the crime and to assume a mournful air, as befitted the occasion. No one need know how inside his heart half leapt with joy.

A crowd had already gathered at the end of the street, pyjama-clad for the most part.

‘There he is,' a voice shouted as he made his way through the crowd. ‘That's him.' The woman who had slammed her door in his face was enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame.

Neil felt the accusing stares around him. He might as well be in the dock. He made his way to the policeman who stood at Miss Mayling's door, and announced himself as the telephone caller and the discoverer of the body.

‘They'll need you to make a statement,' the policeman said. ‘I'll get the Inspector.'

Neil waited, turning to return the crowd's stare. He had nothing to hide and he wanted them to be aware of it. Shortly after, the Inspector arrived and they were seen to have words together. Neil's address was taken and when all was written down, the Inspector shook his hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Clarkson,' he said. ‘We may need to be in touch.'

Neil made his way through the crowd, his father's ‘Hello' echoing in his heart.

Miss Angela Mayling was childless, unmarried and lived alone. No known relatives. When Neil Clarkson read these
details in the evening paper, he was not surprised. She was lonely and unhappy, and no doubt in the course of her interminable therapy, she had transferred her own lack of self-esteem to her patients. They were as much her crutch as she was theirs. It occurred to him that perhaps all shrinks worked in this way and that all of them needed a shrink of their own. A pure one, one untrammelled with personal baggage. But where was such a one to be found? Impossible, he decided. The entire profession was a swindle. And not only a swindle, it was close to a crime. Then he nurtured his delight in Miss Mayling's departure but he could not entirely erase a trace of regret that she was no more.

He went to her funeral, of course, and was saddened by the poor turn-out. Most of the congregation were police officers hoping for clues. They had expected perhaps that her patients would attend – they'd scoured her list and interviewed them all – but no patient would publicly declare himself as one who needed to be seen to. There was a modicum of shame attached to that need. Neil had already been ‘outed' as the patient who had discovered the body, so he had no qualms about his presence at her funeral. He had had little respect for her, but the little that he had he would pay, and as her coffin sailed into the fire he felt an unmanufactured tear on his cheek.

He followed the progress of the police investigations in the papers. There had been house-to-house inquiries, but no witness had come forward. Miss Mayling lived in an area favoured by the retired who were wont to lie abed, and at seven-thirty in the morning, the time the coroner hazarded she had met her death, the milk bottles still sat on the doorsteps and the papers and post still jutted from the letter boxes. The paperboy and the milkman had made
their calls at six-thirty, while Miss Mayling was still in the land of the living. Her regular patients all had confirmed alibis at the time, and the police drew a blank. Eventually, the murder of poor Miss Mayling slipped off the front pages and eventually did not merit even a back page reference. Neil Clarkson too lost interest and noted, with some delight, how much money he managed to put by. His father's ‘Hello' still interrupted his dreams, and in the small hours he stifled a longing to hold Miss Mayling's helping hand.

On hearing of Miss Mayling's passing, DI Wilkins, like Neil Clarkson, was hopeful. He had immediately travelled to Birmingham, convinced now that he was dealing with a serial killer. The pattern was the same. Psychotherapist; untraceable patient; garrotting with a guitar string. None of these factors was easy to investigate. Especially the last. There were thousands of guitar players all over the country and even a non-guitar player could have access to strings. He wished the murder weapon could have been a string from a zither, a viola da gamba or even a harp. That would have narrowed the field a little. So he could not count on the guitar string as a reliable clue. Neither could he rely on finger- or fibre-prints. There simply weren't any. Neither was there any sign of forced entry. Poor Miss Mayling, like the previous victim, had invited her assailant into her own home. The similarities were hard to ignore but his serial-killer theory was only a hunch. He had nothing to substantiate it. And even less when, a week or so later, a prostitute in Soho was found murdered in a similar manner, a guitar string looped around her neck. But that could have been a copy-cat murder, Wilkins thought. He would not so easily abandon his serial theory. But he left Birmingham with
little evidence that supported his opinion. The usual call for witnesses went out, but with no reliable response, and Wilkins' dreams were orchestrated with chords from a plaintive guitar.

Me again …

Me again.
Ver-ine.
I went straight to the glass partition and waited for him. I put my hand on the glass, spreading my fingers. I wanted him to see it as a sign of welcome, one that he could match with his own. He smiled as he sat in front of me, and I knew his first words.

‘I am innocent. You know that, don't you?'

I nodded my head even before he had finished. It would be his eternal prologue, and I wondered if my nodding could last as long.

‘How are they treating you?' I said into the machine.

He placed his hand to match my own. ‘I miss you,' he said.

I could have done without that so early on in the visit. If he had to say it, he might have saved it till last when our time was up and I would only have had to say, ‘Me too,' and leg it out of there. I smiled. He could make of that what he would.

‘Are they treating you well?' I asked again.

‘I can't complain,' he said. ‘I worry about getting used to it here. And I mustn't do that because I'm not going to be here much longer. I'm innocent. You believe that, don't you.'

I nodded again and I thought that if I visited any more often, my head would drop off. I'd never heard him so talkative. He was ever a man of few words. Perhaps he spent most of his time in silence, and he was using my visit to practise his unrehearsed voice. I didn't know how to respond. Innocent or guilty, he had no chance of getting
out of there. He hoped for a retrial but without fresh evidence, there was no chance of being heard a second time. And as far as everyone was concerned, it was all over and done with, and his fate was sealed.

I had decided to talk to him about the past, to reminisce about the happy times we had spent together. I had to find some subject of conversation. If it weren't for the telephones, I could have just looked at him and possibly held his hand. But you can't stare on the telephone, much less touch.

‘I was thinking of the summer holidays we spent when the boys were little,' I started.

‘I'm innocent. You know that,' he said.

He was clearly not interested in recalling the past and his constant plea of innocence was beginning to get on my nerves.

‘You remember Margate sands?' I persisted. ‘You used to make wonderful castles for the boys. All kinds, with moats and turrets. Even a drawbridge. You were so clever with your hands, Donald.'

The sound of his name surprised me. I had not used it for a long time. Not even to myself. It sounded like the name of a stranger.

‘You were really clever,' I said again. I hoped to raise his spirits by praising him, and indeed he smiled as if it pleased him. I was encouraged.

‘Why did we keep going back to Margate?' I asked him. ‘We could have gone somewhere else for a change.'

‘Margate was nice,' he said. ‘It suited us. Besides the boys liked it.'

I was glad that he was prepared to make conversation.

‘I always fancied somewhere in Devon,' I said. ‘You used to go there a lot.'

I had mentioned Devon quite off the cuff, and I was not prepared for his reaction. Sudden tears rolled down his cheeks. What was Devon to him, or he to Devon, that he should weep for her? ‘What's the matter, Donald?' I said, using the name again to make him less of a stranger.

‘Nothing,' he said quickly. ‘I don't want to talk about it.' That made two subjects he wouldn't talk about, I thought. Devon, and his lonely childhood. I made a note of them both for they merited further investigation. I went back to Margate, which was safer.

‘That pension we stayed in,' I ploughed on. ‘Mrs Price was her name, and she served a wonderful breakfast. D'you remember?'

He nodded.

I decided to itemise the menu. It was something to talk about. But in truth, I was bored with Margate. I was too disturbed by the brace of unmentionables he kept unspoken.

‘Eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, sausages, fried bread, fried potatoes. The whole lot. We got our money's worth there, Donald,' I said.

He nodded again. The man didn't need a telephone. I could just about cope with his nodding and smiling.

Then, suddenly, he began to drum his fingers on the glass, one after the other, as if he were practising the piano. And automatically, I drummed with him, finger after finger. Sometimes he varied the sequence and I followed. Or tried to. It became a game between us, and when I failed to keep up with him, he laughed and slapped the glass in victory. I was glad that we had found something wordless to do, and when the warder interrupted our game he showed some annoyance.

‘One to me,' he said into the phone. ‘I'll keep the score.'

He smiled again, and as he was led away he threw me a kiss, which I returned through the glass. Though with little reason, he looked happy. I think that at last he had something to look forward to. And I would let him win. Every time.

I am cross. Someone has tried to steal my thunder. A guitar string is
my
signature. No one else's. Anyway they caught him. He was tried and found guilty. He's serving life. And serves him right. You don't murder someone just for the kicks of it. You've got to have a pretty good reason. Good motivation. You have to be on a mission. Like me.