The Unblemished (8 page)

'I'm just going out for a few minutes. Then we'll have dinner,
okay?'

Claire regarded her with incomprehension, as if her mother had
asked her to do something immoral or had spoken in a foreign
language. Sarah brushed her fingers against her forehead and left the
room, hesitating a moment at the threshold before turning the key in
the lock. As she walked along the road leading out of the village,
guiltily enjoying this moment of freedom, she felt bad about shutting
her daughter in. What if there was a fire? What if Claire wanted to
nip down for a glass of milk and found herself imprisoned? She might
freak out, throw herself through a window. Sarah angrily shook away
these thoughts, annoyed that her daughter's behaviour was turning
her into such a drama queen. She had once never had nightmares, or
black thoughts about depression, disease, or death, but now the
moments before sleep seemed to be filling up with misery. She would
see herself toppling off the roofs of tall buildings, or falling in front
of express trains as they passed through stations. She watched herself
be eaten by thin, rabid dogs. She observed a madman in a scarlet
mask gutting her with a bowie knife. It seemed to be a price she must
pay for relaxation, no matter how feeble.

She found the junk shop on a lane so small it didn't have a name.
A porch was filled with dusty paperbacks for ten pence each. Inside
was all dust motes and worn floorboards. More bookcases were lined
along flaked, peeling walls but were so obscured by old furniture that
she couldn't read the spines. A bowl of cat food was positioned by the
door. Clutches of tarnished silver cutlery were held together with
elastic bands for £5 a pop. Chipped saucers cradled mismatched nuts,
bolts, screws and nails, or defunct currency, or marbles, thimbles,
buttons, matchbooks. There was no great care given to any of the
artefacts, no sense of order, yet Sarah got the impression there was a
lot of affection for what was being sold, and guessed that the owner
knew where everything was to the last inch. The smell was that
ancient, musty aroma of steady, incremental deterioration.

She loved the place. In the far corner, a counter separated a small
office from the rest of the floorspace. On it were positioned a vintage
cash register and a tiny brass bell, for customers to ring. It was getting
near six and she guessed the junk shop would close soon. True
enough, as she reached out for the bell, a tidy man with a small goatee
beard, maybe just this side of sixty, ducked out of the office, his
hands holding two lever-arch files, a bunch of keys dangling from his
mouth. He was wearing a grey cable-knit sweater, a pair of black
jeans and a stone-coloured woollen beanie. His eyes crinkled a little
when he saw her; he held up a forefinger. He placed the files on the
counter and retrieved the keys.

'Yes, miss?' he said. She decided she liked him instantly, and not
just because he might have a job for her. His face reminded her of her
father's, lined but pleasantly open, still retaining a childish quality.

'You must be Ray.'

'I must be.'

'My name's Sarah. I'm, uh, a friend of Nick Skeaping. He said you
might have a job for me.'

Within five minutes they'd shaken on her appointment. She was to
begin the next day. 'This means I get to go fishing with my boy
without feeling guilty about shutting up shop,' he said. She was only
sorry that he wouldn't be around to chat with during the workday.

On the way back to the hotel she bought a bottle of Cava to
celebrate. Work, a roof over their heads, a young man flexing his
muscles for her, the sea. It had taken a day for her to swing between
the scales of no hope and promise. She wanted to get drunk and
dance with Claire. Hug her until she popped. Emboldened by her
good fortune, she was adamant that she would get the girl right again.
Claire could help in the junk shop, creating a proper inventory.
Together they would breeze through the place and freshen it up, give
it some youth, some vibrancy. Hard work might be just the panacea
Claire needed.

A dozen steps short of the hotel she felt her chest leap into the back
of her throat. A police Rover was parked next to the Alfa Romeo. A
police officer was inspecting the car, leaning in close to the passenger
window to have a look inside.

She could come clean, have it out with Manser through the courts,
perhaps escape without punitive measures being taken against her.
But she knew she was stupid to hope. She had no evidence against
Manser. If they both walked free, he would kill her, maybe even on
the steps of the court buildings, and then Claire was his to ruin how
he liked. It didn't matter that she would lose the car. It had done its
job for them. It was just another thing from her past that she had to
turn her back on – something she was getting used to, but she hoped
it would be the last thing she was forced to abandon.

As if in some awful act of sympathy, the sky had turned out in
similar colours to those erupted from the grave of Leonard
Wright. Precious little, in a body two weeks dead, contains any
vibrant hue; the mush spread around the disinterred corpse bore the
monotone consistency of wet newspaper. Despite that, the bite marks
were still visible.

This was how Bo envisaged it, as he took refuge in Sammy Dyer's
Volvo, not for the first time wishing he owned a car of his own, rather
than the motorbike. From where Bo was sitting he could see Sammy,
occasionally leaning over the porridge of the body. His camera flash
went off intermittently, moments of bright excitement to lift what
was otherwise a terribly grey kind of crime.

His own fingers itched to be holding a camera out there with his
friend although he wasn't sure how equal to the task his stomach
might be. Sammy was the unshockable type. He had once brought to
a party a sheaf of pictures he had taken at the home of a suicide. The
victim had shot off the top of his own head, somehow preserving
the face beneath it; the brain was photographed where it had landed,
ten feet away on a bookcase, like some unusual grey knick-knack.
The young man's expression was what stayed with Bo. He looked as
if he had just been told a joke he couldn't quite understand.

Bo wound down the driver's window. He could hear the sound of
the shutter release even from here, such was the respectful quiet, and
it carried a strangely queasy note that he had never noticed before.

The camera captured its undignified rectangles of atrocity, which
would have to be experienced again, later, in the darkroom as they
surged out of the developing chemicals. Well, they would if Bo was
doing the work. Not for the first time did he rue the many opportunities
he had had to switch to digital equipment, as Sammy had done.
Bo's argument that prints from film contained better detail was
wearing thin, especially with the new breed of cameras that were being
introduced. And the downloading of bits on a computer screen would
be a lot less personal, a lot less in your face. He wouldn't have to get
his fingers wet. But then, his way meant that you were always holding
something incontrovertible. Computers were unreliable things.
Data
loss
was a phrase he had heard more often than he felt comfortable
with. And he loved all the paraphernalia that the geeks didn't get to
play with: the little plastic tubs that contained the film, the glassine
bags, the stop baths, the stirring rods and lint-free cotton gloves, the
stainless steel tanks, the offcuts of cardboard he used for dodging and
burning; but most of all he loved the hands-on element of it all, the
excitement of manipulating an image, watching it ghost out of
the developer.

Thinking of Keiko while he watched Sammy tiptoe around the
grave and its dispersed resident was no help. He imagined that what
was being photographed was her, under that maddeningly soft, warm
skin. Eventually, she was this. But minus the bite marks, he hoped.

Sammy spent another twenty minutes documenting the attack,
while black clouds built up behind him. When he'd taken more
pictures than seemed necessary, he stowed the camera in his bag and
left the forensics team to their painful deconstruction of the crime
scene. Laurier and the other police officers were drinking tea from
paper cups. The Detective Inspector poured Sammy one from a Bob
the Builder flask, which was gladly accepted. Bo got out of the car
and ambled over. No tea was offered. There were a few perfunctory
introductions but nobody was really paying attention. It was a nasty
morning and even these hardened coppers were cheesed off with how
low people could get.

Bo looked back over his shoulder at the white figures bent over the
spoilt body. Beyond them, like targets lined up on the wall, the head
and shoulders of a dozen rubberneckers. They were hunched, almost
fearful beneath the slate-coloured scudding.

'Any ideas?' he asked. 'What about the bite radius?'

Laurier's cup froze on its journey to his mouth. '
Bite
radius? What
the fuck are
you
? Richard Dreyfuss?'

'I was just –'

'– being a knobend. That's what you were just,' Laurier said.

'I was just showing an interest. Trying to help.'

Laurier's face screwed up as Bo talked. Bo realised he'd be better
off not saying anything. This was a man who would take the piss out
of his own mother. 'You're a photographer. You take pictures. That
is help enough. Try not to have a brain while you do that. Your
opinions are as much use as a eunuch's cumbucket.'

Bo reached out and poured himself some tea from the flask.

Nobody objected. Possibly because it tasted like piss anyway. He
turned his back on Laurier and strolled away, trying to look as
though Laurier's lack of generosity had nothing to do with it.

Bo finished his tea in Sammy's car, watching the brutal tableau
become softer with the steam as it clouded the window. Just before it
was obliterated completely, Bo reached out and swiped clear a path
with his sleeve. He had noticed something, despite only vaguely
observing what was happening in front of him, as his mind still
fretted over Vero and the constant pains in his hand. He had noticed
a figure, off to the left of the ghouls trying to find something to spice
up their table talk that evening. Tall, with glasses that caught the light
and turned his eyes to silver coins. A beaten corduroy jacket and a
brown leather document holder clasped primly between both hands.
Something about him seemed familiar, but not in any way that was
comforting. There was threat and reverence lifting off that figure.
Even at a distance where he couldn't be sure, Bo thought the other
man was keeping an eye on him.

He swallowed the rest of his tea and got out of the car. He reached
for his Nikon and fired off a couple of shots. Immediately the figure
turned and walked away. By the time Bo reached the spot where the
figure had been standing, he was gone.

Feeling strangely embarrassed and cheated, and somehow prickly
with proximity, as if the man were still there in some unexplained
way, he returned to the Volvo, where Sammy was stowing his
equipment, and said his good-byes. He got on his motorbike and
started the engine. He drove back to his flat automatically, and would
have been incapable of relating any of the mundane incidents that
occurred between Kensal Green and Shepherd's Bush had he been
asked.

He had not disclosed to Keiko any of what had happened, and
certainly nothing of his suspicion that he was being followed. He
didn't want to alarm her, believing there to be shadowy figures
capering in the streets outside her window. He wondered if he was
going insane. He rubbed the raw, purpuric weals on his hands and
decided no. Keiko had not discerned any difference in his behaviour,
and she knew him better than anyone.

His front door closed behind him, Bo made his way immediately
to the rear of his apartment where his dark room was positioned. It
was a cramped area, little more than a reclaimed nook beneath the
stairs, but he had sealed it off well and rerouted a couple of pipes to
give him access to cold running water.

He set up his developing trays and switched on the safelight.
Unloading his camera, he thought of the way the man at the wall had
seemed imprinted over the scene, an all too obvious addition. He
appeared too glossy, super-real. Bo scrutinised the negative for the
frames he needed and fastened it into the holder. Once he had
exposed the negs to light, he began the process of developing prints.
He moved quickly and easily in the hot, cramped space, his mastery
of the tools he used so complete that he worked almost on autopilot.
Once he had a batch of half a dozen prints ready, he switched off the
safelight and ducked out of the chamber. He poured a glass of milk
and seated himself at the kitchen table, then scrutinised the prints for
some hard evidence of the strangeness he had experienced. He didn't
have to look too hard.

The area where the man had stood was smudged, as if he had
fingered the surface emulsion of a Polaroid before it had fully dried.
He couldn't understand. The shutter speed had been 1/250, fast
enough to freeze action. Weirdly, the teeth and eyes were discernible,
almost violently so, pin-sharp and acid white. What made Bo's skin
contract, a shudder work its way up from his guts, was the way they
appeared separate to the skull in which they were housed: the teeth a
clenched bar, the eyes shockingly round.

The mark of a fine picture
, he thought.
If I move around the room
those eyes will follow me.
He snorted laughter, but it didn't last long.

He forced his chair back and it scraped on the lino; milk sloshed over
the lip of his glass.

He didn't begin to feel better until he'd substituted the milk for a
hefty measure of vodka from the freezer and secreted the prints in an
envelope that he shut away in a desk drawer. He submerged himself
in a hot bath, slid
Hunky Dory
into the CD player. He tried Keiko's
number and couldn't get through. A wall of static. Ditto the mobile.
He thought about going round there anyway, but it was getting late,
and it was foul outside. She could call him for a change. She could
come here.

He went to bed, having had to abort his viewing of the late film,
something starring a woman who looked familiar but whose name
meant nothing to him. He couldn't concentrate. The colour of the
night was too strong outside the windows, even after he had turned
on all the lights and shut the blind. He felt the bald glare of those eyes
through the thickness of the manilla envelope and the woodchip of
his Ikea desk, the yards and walls that separated them from him lying
here under blankets that would not get warm.

He thought about getting up for toast, or more vodka, or to switch
the heating back on, but he knew that to do that was to be sidetracked
further. He might not get back to bed for another hour or so. Often he
found himself pottering about the flat at a ridiculous time when all he
had meant to do was double-check the door was properly bolted.
There were newspaper articles to distract him, or he'd idly switch on
the radio and find himself absorbed by some music, or a news bulletin,
or a book about Paul Strand or Emmet Gowin.

These thoughts, and others – Keiko nude, pulling him down on to
a beach towel furnished only with a bottle of sun lotion and a packet
of condoms; the kitchen from his childhood with the shadow of his
mother falling on a shaft of sunlit floor; sitting on a rock eating
sandwiches with his dad, neither of them talking, but sitting close,
smiling at each other now and again as they shared the view over
Ullswater, knowing they were in the middle of a Good Time –
amalgamated in his mind as he turned inward, towards sleep, and
then his mobile phone purred into his ear from the side of the bed and
he was snapped awake, trying to recognise the unfamiliar number
displayed on the screen.

'Hello?'

'It's you.'

Bo couldn't explain the sudden loss of moisture from his mouth,
or why his tongue seemed to now fill every available space within it.

'Who is this?'

'You thought it was a dream.
We
thought it was a dream too. We
could never have believed there would be a door made available to us,
so soon after the last one shut.'

'Who the – what are you talking about? Who
is
this?'

'One of many. Come to the window.'

He stood before the blinds for an age while the voice on the phone
exhorted him breathlessly,
wetly
, as though through a mouth heavy
with saliva, to
do it, do it, do it, do it
... He saw a hand rise up in
front of him – surely not his own – and draw back the fabric.

The man was standing in the flowerbeds beneath the window.
There was no phone in his hand, no Bluetooth earpiece. When he
spoke, his lips did not move but a viscid curtain of spit fell from them
constantly, like a roll of unravelling cellophane. A sigh lifted from
him as Bo appeared. Some compulsion forced Bo to place his right
hand flat against the glass.

The man on the ground nodded and said:
Come over to us quickly.
Bo waited for him to go, unable to make his voice work, though he
didn't know what it was he wanted to utter, and the man shaped to
leave but did not depart. Not in any conventional way at least. He
became dismantled, piecemeal, like something made of salt, or sand,
blown away by the wind. When only a thin cast remained, he opened
that reluctant mouth of his and showed Bo what was crammed
within.

He could see what Keiko was trying to do, and he wished he could
respond to it, but what he had seen over the previous twenty-four
hours had turned him inwards. He was trying to burrow into himself,
to read his body's secrets, worrying if maybe this strange dislocation
he was feeling was cancer, and the oddities he had witnessed were
how it introduced itself to his brain. He had not yet told Keiko of his
fear because he knew she would usher him to the doctor and he was
not yet ready to know, either way.

He thought that seeking refuge in Keiko's arms would help him
shrug off all these threatening feelings. Already he had forgotten
about his stand, his determination that she should contact him. His
flat had been too small and too large all at once. He hankered after
some company, and hers was the best kind he knew.

They hardly spoke at all, at first, when he arrived. She bathed him,
played him music, rubbed oil into his shoulders and back. But her
closeness put him in mind of the shadow that had been following him
and a lonely walk through a city he no longer recognised or understood.

'Stop it, please,' he said now, as Keiko ran her fingers down his
spine. Her breathing had grown ever more ragged, and she was intentionally
brushing her breasts and thighs against him as she worked his
flesh. He knew she wanted to fuck, but it wasn't in him. Desire had
been tied up into a knot that refused to come undone. Usually her
ministrations would be enough to help him relax, but now he saw he
would have to hurt her in order to find the solitude he craved. He
should never have come here. And, as if she read this in him: