Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul that when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impress'd with your Personality?
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
i
The policeman is very friendly. He wants to reassure me, make sure I don't feel threatened or uncomfortable, and so every time I show him I know how to speak, he gives me a congratulatory smile, to show how pleased he is with me.
The room is meant to be unthreatening as well. We're both seated in comfortable armchairs, so even though we're in an interview room at a police station, with a camera in the corner observing everything, it has a cosy feel to it.
“Are you sure you don't want a drink?” he says. “Water? Coffee? Anything?”
“No, I'm – I'm fine. Thank you so much” I say, and he smiles. Well done, his smile says. Well done. I smile back, to show how reassured and comfortable he's making me.
“What I'm going to do, I'm going to record this interview,” he says. “And that's just to save me having to write everything down. So I can focus on what you're saying. Okay?”
I give a timid little nod.
He presses a button on a small device and speaks into it, giving the date, time and location and his name, detective inspector Steven Knight.
“Can you say your name please?” he says.
“My name's Dave Marsh. David. David Marsh.”
He smiles. I smile back. My hands are still clasped in front of me, but now they're shaking a little less.
“Now, Dave, what we're going to do – if you're ready, if feel able to go through with this right now – we're going to go through the events of the night, starting at the end. And I know that's the most distressing part. But what we're found is that people often remember more details if we go through things backwards. So we'll start with what happened in the house, and then I might ask you questions about what happened before that, and in the days and weeks leading up to it. Are you okay to do that? We can stop at any time.”
“I'm okay.”
“Great. That's great Dave. So tell me... tell me what you saw when you went into the house.”
“Well, er.... the door was open. Because I'd never been there before.” When people are in shock, they often speak in non-sequiters. Detective Knight doesn't mind. He keeps smiling. “I think... I think the man was already dead when I got there. If I'd gone in earlier...”
“Okay, Dave. Just stick to what happened.”
“Idris was there.”
“This is Idris Bawa.”
“Yes. Idris was there. His stepfather was on the ground. Idris was still hitting him, over and over, even though he was on the floor. And the woman – I had never seen her before, I didn't know who she was. She was kind of just cowering in the corner. But when I got there, I think it gave her confidence, and we both tried to tackle him together, to pull him off. But he was... he was enraged! And he just turned to the woman – it could just have easily been me – he just turned to her, and he held her head in his hand and he... took her neck in the other and he...”
“He broke her neck?”
“It was so horrible, detective!”
“He broke her neck?”
“Yes. I heard it snap. Just... snap.”
“What did you do then?”
“I... It's weird – I don't exactly remember everything I did. It's like it was a dream, and I can't quite remember the details.”
“That's okay Dave. You're doing really well. Try to remember as much as you can for me.”
I take a couple of deep breaths.
“I remember there was a full moon.”
“Mm hm. But what did you do after Idris killed the woman?”
“I... I remember I had my arms around his neck, and I was... er... I went to a self defence class when I was younger, and... actually it was mainly women there, I stuck out a bit. I was about the only man in the class. But the instructor, the instructor, she, er, she showed us this move... you put your arms around him, like this.”
“So you put Idris in a choke?”
“Yes,” I say. “That's what I did. I didn't even think about what I was doing. I don't remember planning to do it, I just remember doing it. And I'm astonished it worked, because well, you've seen how big he is.”
“And then?”
“Well, that's when the police arrived. More or less. I might have stood around for a short while, just... just not knowing what to do.”
“How much time would you say elapsed between you entering the house and the police arriving?”
“I... I really have no concept of it detective. I'm so sorry, I really do want to be as helpful as I can.”
“And the front door? The door you'd come in from? Was it open or closed at this point?”
“I'm afraid I don't remember details like that inspector.”
“Okay. Um... My colleague tells me that when he arrived on the scene, you had mud on your clothes. On your hands. Is that correct?”
“Yes. Yes, that's right. I ran into the garden. I thought I was going to throw up. And I just fell down on my hands and knees on the garden and I retched. But nothing... er... nothing came out.”
“The front garden or the back garden?”
He stopped smiling a while ago. It wouldn't have been appropriate, given what I was telling him. But until now, he had still seemed friendly. Why did he seem less friendly when he asked that?
“It was the back garden,” I say.
“So rather than go out through the front door you had just come in from, you went all the way through the rest of the house...”
“Yes. That's because...” I stop, close my eyes. I take some deep breaths, and put my hands together in front of me, a little like I'm praying. When I open my eyes, he's sympathetic again. He can see how distressed it's making me, remembering what I've been through. “Because by that time, I was behind him. I can't quite remember how I got in that position. But to go back to the front door, I would have had to step over the... the bodies. And I couldn't face doing that. So I just felt myself about to retch, and I just ran in the other direction.”
“Okay. Thank you for going through that. I understand it was difficult for you.”
“There's something else I remember. It's about Idris.”
“Okay.”
“He... when I went into the house, I actually didn't recognise him. Even though that makes no sense. I actually didn't know who it was. Because his face. It was so unlike him. If you'd ever met him before, inspector, you'd know he was always the loveliest, friendliest person. However big he was. The kind of person... he wouldn't hurt a fly. Always smiling. He smiled more than you do. And then, in the house, with his stepfather, it was just a complete transformation. I literally didn't know who he was. And driving to the house, there was nothing to indicate he was going to change like that. In the car on the way there, he was cheerful as he ever was. We were both telling jokes and laughing in the car.”
“Did you ever see any indication that he felt any kind of hostility towards his stepfather?”
I close my eyes, and think back to the time in the beer garden.
***
I saw Idris straight away. He wasn't exactly the kind of person you could miss, being a good head taller than anyone else around, and well built to match. He was sitting alone at a table near the back of the beer garden, looking, for the first time ever since I'd known him, extremely unhappy.
“This is a bit downmarket for you isn't it? I didn't think this was your kind of place,” I said, after we'd greeted each other. He scowled, something I'd never seen him do before, and which looked unnatural on his normally cheerful face. “Everything all right?” I said. “You sounded a bit worried on the phone.”
“Look at this,” he said, and showed me a message on his phone.
Whos that nice looking girl you had with you. Maybe you could introduce her to me. May as well earn your allowance for once in your life. Weather here very good.
“What's this?” I said.
“It's from my stepdad,” he said. “He saw me drinking with her at the weekend in the marketplace. He came over and said hello.”
“I know. I was there, remember? He was leaving for Spain that evening, if I recall.”
“Oh. Yeah. I got this a couple of days later.”
“So he sent it from Spain? Not very nice, is it? Or is this his idea of a joke?”
He scowled again, and showed me rest of the message thread.
The next message, from Idris, read: haha thats lauren, ive told u about, you can meet her when ur back if u like
And then: Ill hold you to that. Introduce us one evening, then make excuses and leave. I want to be left alone with her.
“Sounds like a bit of a randy old sod,” I said. “Is he always like this?”
“No,” said Idris.
In the next message, Idris had simply written: r u serious?? And the reply had come: Do this for me and you get to keep your allowance. Let me down and you can fend for yourself.
“Jesus,” I said. “I can see why you were upset.”
“I tried to phone him, but he wouldn't answer.”
“Do you think he's serious? About cutting off your allowance? I thought you told me that was your mother's money, not his.”
“I don't know whether he's serious, but he could. I think. If he wanted to. He controls the money. She left it to him.”
Idris was talking loudly enough to turn heads. It wasn't necessarily a sign of agitation – Idris always talked too loud, and very occasionally someone around him nervously asked if he could keep it down a bit, at which he usually shouted a friendly apology before carrying on his conversation at exactly the same volume.
There were three more messages left. The first: Well? Whats it to be? Will you set this up? Or will I cut you off?
The second: i cant believe ur asking me to do this, i dont know what to say to u
The third: Screw you then. You always were a useless sack of shit. Dont worry ill find some other way of finding her when i get back.
“What a bastard!” I said. “I thought you said he was a nice old man. Whenever I've heard you talking about him you've been eulogising about him. Has anything like this happened before?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Think hard.”
“I mean, he's got angry occasionally, but...”
“When?” I said. “What about?”
“I don't know! Stupid things! People get angry sometimes. Nothing like this! Never like this!”
“Damn, man! I wish I knew what to suggest. So when is he back from Spain?”
“Weekend after next,” he said, taking his phone back from me. “I'm going to call him again.”
I put my hand on my arm. “No, no! That sounds like a bad idea.”
“Why? If it goes badly, you can back me up. You'll be able to say I did nothing that was out of line.”
“I don't know what you think that'll achieve. No, seriously Idris, I think it's a bad idea to phone him. Listen... listen... It sounds like he's... Whatever mood he was in when he wrote those messages, he's probably still in that mood. Give him a little time to calm down. If you phone him now, chances are you'll make things worse.”
He was looking at me sceptically, but I knew he trusted my advice.
“Idris, trust me on this. It's a bad idea to phone him now. Leave it at least another day or so. Chances are, if you talk to him after he comes back, he'll apologise for it all.”
“So that's your suggestion? I should leave it 'til he comes back?”
“Idris, I don't know what to say. It's a shitty situation to be in. That might be the least-worst option.”
We discussed it for a bit more, but neither of us came up with a better idea of how he should deal with it, so that's how it got left. We ate, talked about other things, but he was a long way from his usual genial self; he hardly listened when I was speaking and he often broke off mid-sentence and just stopped talking. The only thing I was able to do to put the familiar smile back on his face was ask him to recite a piece of poetry. He was very keen on poetry, and was in the habit of declaiming a poem or part of a poem at the drop of a hat. “Go on,” I said. “Do The child who went forth.”
Getting Idris to recite poetry was always a sure way to cheer him up. I think one of the reasons he valued me so much as a friend was simply that he liked having someone who appreciated listening to his recitals as much as he enjoyed giving them.
“There was a child who went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon, that object he became.” he said, in a voice that could fill a theatre, chopping the air with his hand as he went. “And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day.” As he spoke, people at the surrounding tables started to glance and glare at him, amused or annoyed. “The early lilacs became part of this child, and grass, and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover.”
When he came to a finish, a few people applauded. I think the applause was supposed to be sarcastic, but Idris, who had never been a person with a keen sense of irony, beamed. However briefly, he was his old self once more.
***
“He always... I don't know what the word is... eulogised his stepfather, but recently they had fallen out in a big way, and you didn't have to know him very well to know the relationship had soured,” I say. Inspector Steven Knight manages to smile encouragingly and frown sympathetically at the same time. His mouth does the smiling, but his eyebrows are creased into a frown. “I don't think they were really very close. He once said he only saw him every few months. Maybe even just a couple of times a year. But although they weren't close, they were... I mean, the relationship was deep. There was love in that relationship, Steve. If he talked about him, it was always with reverence. He respected him greatly. So it was a huge shock when suddenly... boom! The love was gone, and there was anger in its place. I met him at a pub for lunch and he talked about him and he seemed to hate him now. All of a sudden.”
“Do you know what it was they fell out about?”
“It was money. At least, it was, you know, at least partly to do with money. He got an allowance from his stepfather every three months, and it was quite a substantial amount of money. His mother had been rich, I think, and when she died, the stepfather inherited everything, but he made sure Idris was comfortably off. There was this allowance. But then, he was threatening to cut it off, and Idris was furious about it. It was horrible to see. He had always been such a positive person, but it affected everything. You can ask anyone who knows him. Positive Idris was gone, and he was moody and gloomy all the time. And I thought it was such a shame, because they had had such a wonderful relationship, so much respect for each other. That's why I wanted to help him patch it up.” I raise my hand up to my mouth. My lower lip is trembling slightly.
“It's all right Dave,” says Inspector Knight.
“No it's not! It's not all right! I mean, I drove him there. I really thought I was helping. I wanted to see them make it all up. So I persuaded him to see his stepfather again. He had just come back from Spain. And I drove him there, and I... Oh God! It didn't help, did it? It's all my fault, isn't it!It's my fault!”
My hand is shaking now, my eyes are darting left and right, my lip is properly quivering. I look like I'm on the verge of tears.
I'm pretty sure I do. I wish there was a mirror.
ii
Okay, here's how you walk into a club. First thing you got to do, you got to talk to the bouncer. Shake him by the hand if you like, grip his shoulder, look him in the eye, tell him how sharp he's looking, strike up a conversation. Get his name, and use it. Tell him he has the best job in the world; other people pay money to spend time in a place like this, he gets paid. Tell him how few bouncers actually understand that their job is to enhance the tone of a place, but he not only understands, he does a stellar job of it. Forget for the moment that his qualifications and skillset have only been enough to get him a job standing outside a door looking at people's shoes; you want your tone of voice, your expression, your whole body language, to tell him how happy you are to have found someone you can respect and treat as an equal. Like talking to anyone. After a bit of small talk, ask him if the owner of the club is in tonight. If he can point him out to you, then great; otherwise, get him to tell you where he's going to be, how to recognise him.
Once inside, scope the place out, notice but don't ogle any talent, make a beeline for the club's owner. Your approach with him is much the same as with the bouncer, but make sure you're conspicuous. You want everyone, patrons and bar staff, to see that you're on friendly terms with the boss. Perhaps drop the mildest of hints that you're looking to invest a substantial amount of money in a new project. That way, if he's looking for money, or has any kind of project planned that needs financial backing (he almost certainly does), he'll want to butter you up, and he'll be treating you like an important person. And believe me, the staff will notice that, even if it's subconscious. They'll start treating you like the most important person in the place, and in turn, the club's patrons – including the talent – will notice and register you as someone important.
Ask the owner what drink he'd recommend, the speciality of the house. Then, when you order it, point out the owner to the barman or -woman, use his name, say that he specifically recommended this drink. Use the right wording – 'John said I should ask you to get me a whiskey sour' – and the chances are they won't ask you to pay for it. Then you're ready to start mingling.
It was one of those nights that I first met Idris. And Lauren of course. Mustn't forget her, even though she is, frankly, rather forgettable. They'd seen me talking to the bar owner, get free drinks from the bar, they'd seen the confidence with which I talked to everyone there, patrons and staff, and the warmth and respect I received from everyone. They knew I was someone important before I got near them. Idris had been watching me from the get-go, desperate to talk to me, find out who and what I was, but I teased him. If it hadn't been for Lauren, I wouldn't have been interested in making his acquaintance in the first place, but on my initial scope of the place I had marked her down as the most attractive prospect there, and so the pair of them were my target, even though I took my time getting around to them. I don't like to go straight in, especially if the person or group I'm targeting has noticed me. I find it's better to circle around them, talking to everyone else in the vicinity, whetting their appetite. By the time I got around to Idris (I ignored Lauren initially, of course) he'd seen me talking to everyone around me, seen the amount of mutual respect going around, and was gagging to be a part of it. He had made several attempts to draw my attention, all of which I had pretended not to notice (which was implausible, him being the size of a small dinosaur) so when I did finally deign to notice and address him, he grinned so wide that the rest of his face almost disappeared. If he'd had a tail, he'd have been wagging it.
I did the usual. Asked him interesting questions about himself, made him feel good about his job (he was lab assistant in a high school science department, which didn't quite tally with his expensive taste in clothes and drinking venue.) I did a couple of routines to make him and his girl laugh. It quickly became apparent what the score was with Idris and Lauren. They weren't actually in a relationship; he was clearly interested, but she was not. All of which would make prising her away from him all the easier. When I acknowledged her properly though, and took a good look at her for the first time, it was a distinct let down. Back in uni, we had a phrase for those kinds of women: good from far, but far from good. They doll themselves up with sexy clothes that let you see just the right amount of leg, or maybe a little bit of cleavage. They're not actually very attractive, but they've hidden their faces in an inch or so of cosmetic products, so you have to get quite close before you realise. It's a phenomenon that's all too common these days, and I despise it as I do all forms of false advertising. I kept on with the pair of them though, because by this time I had started to take a dislike to Idris – he was just too cocky, too full of himself – and I decided it would be worthwhile to sleep with Lauren just to knock him down a peg or two.
I roped in a couple of semi-attractive girls I'd been talking to earlier ('Hey Jess, Ellen, come and talk to my friend Idris. You said you liked brainy men; he's a scientist.') in order to distract him while I went to work on Lauren, who, it transpired, was pretty vacant. (My favourite thing to do with Lauren once I got to know her better was to tell her jokes, emphasising random lines as if they were the punchlines, so that she laughed sycophantically in all the wrong places, not wanting me to think she hadn't understood, and anyone listening in thought she was a moron.)
While Idris tried his best to impress the two girls, I was busy actually impressing Lauren. I found out about her aspirations to start an art magazine, I acted impressed, and gave her motivational soundbites to show how much I believed in her. I talked about Frida Kahlo, to show how sensitive and feminist I was and I went through the 'taxi driver' routine to show her what a funny guy I was. By the end of the night she was, perhaps not infatuated – not quite yet – but she was pretty taken with me, and I was anticipating bedding her within a week or so.
She was an early leaver, and since it hadn't taken Idris long to scare off the two girls, I ended the night alone with him at the bar, enjoying the best drinks the bar had to offer and not paying a penny for the privilege. All in all, it was an entertaining evening, no more... until I got Idris onto the subject of poetry. Hilariously, he had been trying to impress the two girls by booming a poem about the beauty of the female body at them. I asked him about that, and that's how he came to mention that his step-father was very much a literature buff, and had obtained as investments valuable first editions of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, parts of which he'd memorised, and which is what he'd been reciting from. Jude the Obscure was, according to Idris, worth in the region of seven thousand pounds, which was impressive enough, but Leaves of Grass was reckoned to be worth an extraordinary thirty thousand. Which made me reassess what I thought about Idris. He wasn't just a big, loud, pussy-whipped idiot any more; now, he was a man who knew a man who had nearly forty thousand pounds' worth of rare books, just lying around in his home. And that made it very much a relationship worth pursuing.
***
“Now Dave, you've been really helpful,” says Inspector Steven Knight. “I appreciate all the help you've given me. I realise it's been distressing for you, having to relive all of it. There's just one more thing about last night that I'd like to ask you, and then we'll move back and I'll ask you some questions about Idris, your relationship with him, how you got to know him, these kinds of things.” He smiles.
“Okay, inspector.” I smile too. How friendly we both are.
“The thing I want to clarify is about when you overcame Idris and rendered him unconscious.”
“As I say, my memory of that is a bit blurry.”
“That's okay Dave. I just want you to answer a simple question, and if you don't know the answer, we'll move on.”
“Fine.”
“How long would you say Idris was unconscious for?”
“I... I mean, he was still out when the police arrived. Like I say, I don't have a good estimate of how long that was.”
“The choke you described that you say you applied, that will typically cause someone to lose consciousness very briefly, maybe just a matter of seconds. I don't know if you were aware of that.”
“Fortunately I've never had cause to use it before. I wasn't even sure it would work in the first place.”
“So while Idris was lying on the floor, he wasn't necessarily unconscious all that time.”
“It could be. I'm afraid I couldn't say for sure,” I say.
“It wasn't a question. I was telling you. While he was lying on the floor, he probably wasn't unconscious all that time.”
“I see.”
“Is there anything more you'd like to tell us?”
“Um... not that I can think of.”
“In fact we've talked to Idris, and what he says tallies with that. He says he regained consciousness after a very short time.”
“That's interesting. Although, how can a man know how long he's been unconscious for, Steve?”
“Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about what happened last night?”
“No, I don't think so. I'll let you know if I think of anything.”
“You do that Dave. For now, let's move on to the victims. You say you didn't recognise the woman in the house.”
“I'd never seen her before. I don't know if she was a friend, a lady friend...”
“But had you seen Idris' stepfather before?”
“Only once, and quite briefly.”
“Could you tell me about that Dave?”
***
The only time I saw Idris' stedpdad – alive, that is – was one afternoon when I, Idris and Lauren were sitting in the marketplace having a drink. Idris was doing most of the talking, fondly imagining me and Lauren to be listening to his shit, rather than playing footsie under the table. A more observant man would have picked up on signs that I was fucking Lauren already, but Idris was never that smart.
Idris stopped mid-sentence, and then let out a shout that temporarily stopped all other conversations happening in the marketplace dead. “Dad!” he shouted.
Lauren and I turned to see a short man with a beard and a hat stepping towards us.
“Hello son,” he said, and having checked out Lauren and ignored me, he shook hands with Idris over the table.
The conversation didn't last more than thirty seconds, and consisted only of pleasantries, but he did mention that he was flying to Spain for a few days the next day. And then he left, and that was it.
Idris and Lauren and I carried on drinking, and that evening, I found myself at Idris' flat watching films with him. I was pleased to have finally seen the stepfather, as it gave me a valid reason to make him the topic of conversation. I wanted to probe if there was any chance of getting invited to his house, or at least to find out where his house was. Unfortunately the answer seemed to be a pretty solid no. But after Idris fell asleep halfway through Dawn of the Dead, I got to looking at his phone, (no one ever bothers to hide how they unlock their phones, so all you have to do is watch how they do it and remember it) and I came up with a scheme – something of a half-arsed scheme at first, I'll admit. Idris generally communicated with people through WhatsApp, but the stepdad wasn't on his list of contacts, unless he used an alias. I went through most of the conversations on WhatsApp, and managed to rule out almost all of them. It seemed likely that the stepdad just wasn't on WhatsApp.
I looked through the SMS messages, and it seemed most of their communications were via SMS, although even then, they didn't get in touch very frequently. I looked through the call log, and the number of phone calls they had made to each other were almost nil. Very well. It wasn't a clear plan – far from it, but while Idris snored, and the zombies groaned, I deleted his old man from the list of contacts, and changed my name on his phone from 'Dave' to 'Dad'.
It was hardly a foolproof plan; there were any number of things that could go wrong. His dad might get in contact, either by phone or SMS, while he was in Spain, and he'd notice that someone had monkeyed around with his phone. He might look back through his previous SMS messages and wonder why the ones from his stepdad weren't labelled 'Dad' any more. But in a way, that was part of the plan's charm. A plan that was sure to succeed would have been boring.
It was like... I've never had a girlfriend I haven't cheated on, ideally with someone close to her. It adds an element of excitement to the relationship, knowing that at any given time she might find out. It was the same with Idris' phone. He might easily have found out what I'd done, and that the messages I was going to send him over the next couple of days weren't really from his stepdad. That made it exciting. I'd have to stop seeing him and probably Lauren too, but that was okay. Idris was a tool and Lauren was pretty crap in bed; I was just about done with the pair of them anyway. And all right, I wouldn't get anywhere near the first editions, but that had only ever seemed like a pipe dream. So although it was a bit of a gamble, I didn't really feel like I was gambling very much.
iii
The night after Idris' stepdad came back from Spain, I met Idris in Gray's. I had arranged to meet him there because I knew they turned a blind eye to people doing drugs in the toilets; I had a small bag of speed in my pocket, and as much of it as possible was going to disappear up Idris' nose. He'd already had one drink by the time I got there, but I was going to ensure he had plenty more before we drove to his stepdad's house. The trickiest bit was likely to be how I got to his phone again without his noticing. I was anticipating the old man calling the police after Idris had been and robbed the books off him, and by the time they were in the picture, I wanted to have deleted the texts I'd sent him and changed my name from 'Dad' back to 'Dave'. I was going to have to look out for a chance to make him get his phone out, and somehow try to ensure he left it out when he went to the toilet.
“Hey, Big Man, you look nervous,” I said.
“I sent him texts, and I phoned him several times,” said Idris.
“Yeah? So what did he say?”
“Didn't answer the phone. Didn't respond to the texts.”
“Oh no. Can you show me what you texted him?”
He handed me the phone, and I perused his pleas to his stepdad. I didn't give him the phone back.
“I mean, there might be an innocent explanation,” I said. “Maybe he forgot to take his phone off flight mode or something. But look, I tell you what's going to happen. We're going to go over to him, and we're going to be as nice as pie, right? And the chances are he'll be as nice as pie back, and everything'll be peachy.”
“Haven't been able to get through to Lauren either. I sent her a message, she swore at me and blocked me. I don't understand what's happening.”
“Hmmm. That's... Oh, there's one thing: You did definitely say he was coming back today?”
“Yes. Today.”
“And... how do you know that?” I said.
“That's what he said before he went.”
“Oh. I guess it must have been someone else then. Listen, let me get you a drink.”
“What must have been someone else?”
“It's just... I thought I saw him in the marketplace two days ago, talking to -” my hand shot to cover my mouth, and I broke off, looking shifty.
“Talking to who?”
“I thought I saw him talking to someone, but, you know, I only saw him briefly that other time, and it was probably someone else entirely.”
“Who was he talking to?”
“It was... it was Lauren,” I said. “She was talking to some old dude and laughing like a drain. I thought it was him, but maybe it wasn't. I ran into her later and I should have asked, but I... I didn't.”
“He told me he was coming back today.”
“Listen, man... I don't want to add to your troubles, but... er... I know you're into Lauren, but I think maybe you should stay away from her. She's not your friend.”
He said nothing. I shoved a drink towards him, but he didn't acknowledge it.
“Look, I was in two minds as to whether I should tell you this,” I went on. “But I think you need to know. She's spreading some pretty nasty rumours about you. She told me... Like I say, I ran into her a couple of days ago, and she told me... I mean I don't believe this at all, but she's calling you... she's calling you a rapist.”
The shock on Idris' face was almost cartoonish.
“I mean, she didn't say you'd raped her. But she said, when you were younger, there was this girl... I don't know, I didn't stick around to hear the details, I just told her to fuck off and I walked away. But it's totally stupid. I don't know why she's saying it, but I can't think how she'd think I'd believe it. She's known you for years. So I'm supposed to believe she's known you for years and it's only just started bothering her now?”
“She said I raped someone?”
“Idris, that was a bit loud. The entire bar's looking at us now.”
“She said I raped someone?”
“Look, no one who knows you will believe it.”
“Fuck! Fuck!”
“But all the same, let's hope she didn't say anything like that to your stepdad. But you know, even if she did, I don't think he'd believe her either.”
He was looking at me aghast. He may or may not have heard what I said. He may or may not have been about to punch my lights out. It was hard to tell. Then he said, very very slowly, with pauses between each word: “Unless... it was... him... who... told... her.”
My eyes widened. My jaw dropped and I gasped. “Oh my God,” I said quietly.
***
“Idris is under the impression that his stepfather was carrying on with a lady by the name of Lauren Fleming,” says Inspector Knight.
I give a little sigh. I look bewildered. “I thought I had talked him out of that idea,” I say.
“Where might he have got the idea from? Any idea?”
“I'm afraid I might have inadvertently put the idea into his head. I mentioned that I had seen her talking to some old guy and he leapt to the conclusion that it was his stepfather. I tried to tell him it wasn't him, it was someone else, and I thought I had persuaded him.”
“He is also under the impression that his stepfather was slandering him to Miss Fleming. Saying he had committed rape.”
“I heard that rumour, but I disregarded it. He definitely isn't the kind of person to do something like that.” And then a look of shocked realisation comes over my face. “Although, before last night I would have said he's not the kind of person who could commit murder either.”
“My colleague has had a brief preliminary talk with Miss Fleming.”
“Already? Inspector, I do hope she doesn't need to be dragged too far into this whole business.”
“She says you told her about this rumour.”
“I do remember we discussed it.”
“When was this?”
“Just a few days ago. We discussed it, and I came to the conclusion there was probably nothing at all in it. I thought she probably thought the same.”
“So can you tell me why you broached the subject in the first place?”
“I don't remember who broached the subject,” I say.
“Well she says she had never heard it before you told her about it.”
“Oh. I suppose it must have been me then.”
“Would you like to tell me where you heard this rumour from?”
“It's just one of those rumours that circulates. People get jealous of people, people spread rumours.”
“Who did you hear it from Dave?”
“I'm not sure I remember.”
“But you remember that you heard it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must remember who you heard it from.”
“Um, okay,” I say. “It might have been the barman at Gray's.”
“What's his name?”
“Andy.”
“So it was Andy who first told you this rumour?”
“I said it might have been.”
“Yes,” he says. “And I'm asking you to clarify that. Was it him?”
“Um, yes. I guess it was.”
“It'll be interesting to hear what he has to say. Tell me about the garden.”
“What?”
“The garden at Idris' stepfather's house. Tell me about it.”
“That's quite an abrupt change of subject. Is that a technique from the copper's handbook? Chapter on how to disorientate witnesses?”
“If we search the garden thoroughly, what will we find, Mr Marsh?”
“I was Dave a second ago.”
“What's in the garden?”
I consider saying: There are some lovely roses, Inspector, but decide against it. Instead, I look baffled and say: “I don't really understand what you're asking me. It was dark, and I was only there briefly. Could you... I wonder if you could clarify what you mean?”
He just looks back at me, waiting. I say nothing.
iv
“You okay big guy? You gonna go through with this? Not thinking of backing out are you?”
Idris' eyes when he turned his head to me were as bright as the full moon shining in through the sunroof. They were slightly unfocused too, so he wasn't so much glaring at me as glaring through me.
“Listen,” I said, leaning closer so that my shoulder touched his. “He thinks you'll back down. He knows how angry you are because he knows how badly he's fucked you over. Okay? He knows he can't do that to someone without them wanting to hit back, but he thinks you're the kind of person who'll back down. The kind of guy who'll have doubts at the last minute. I don't know why he thinks that, because I know you and I know that's not who you are at all. But he's counting on you being someone who -”
I stopped, because I suddenly saw there wasn't any point. It wasn't his eyes that told me he wasn't listening, wasn't even hearing what I was saying; it was his hand, scrabbling at the door behind him, trying to find the handle. I think it was then that I started to have qualms about how much alcohol and amphetamines I'd poured into him.
I reached past him and pulled the handle for him – the light in the car didn't turn on as the door opened – but then I grabbed his arm as he was turning to get out. The state he was in, he was in danger of forgetting why we were here.
“Listen big guy, this isn't just about confrontation, remember? You say what you've got to say to him, do what you've got to do, but you get those first editions, okay? Otherwise what's the point? He'll lick his wounds and then he'll laugh and he'll say: Well I still got the prick's money, didn't I?”
He pulled away from me and marched off towards his stepfather's house, moving slightly too fast, and lurching suddenly forward every couple of steps so that he looked like an old film reel that had been sped up and kept jumping. He disappeared round the side of the house, and a second or so later his stepfather heard him pounding on the door. I know his stepfather heard it because I was parked three houses down the road, and I heard it loud and clear. Then the pounding stopped, and there was silence.
And then there was more silence. I sat back in there seat. There was nothing to do now except wait. I was nervous in case the old man denied everything – well he would really wouldn't he? I guess it wasn't that I was nervous about, but the fact that it really was difficult to anticipate the extent to which Idris would let him speak, or be compos enough to take in what he said. It was exciting, actually. Perhaps he would come out with two valuable first editions in his mitts, perhaps he would come out with murder in his eyes and I'd have to scarper. I reckoned it would be the former. And if his old man called the fuzz afterwards, it'd be easy enough to conjure up an alibi (Oh God Lauren, do you know what he went and did? And I was with him earlier in the night! Everyone saw me leave with him! What if they think I had something to do with it? Lauren, you got to help me out here) and I figured Idris would want to protect me, after all I'd done for him. So long as no one saw me here, everything was peachy! In fact, if Idris did get a bit carried away and ended up in jail for ABH or something, that could work in my favour: he wouldn't be around expecting a share of the money after I sold the books.
I had been watching the corner of the house intently without realising I was doing it, until there was a sharp rap at the window the other side of the car. I turned away from the house – it wasn't going anywhere – and looked at the figure outside the car. It would have been very obvious to him that I had been watching the house. Shit! So much for not being seen!
“You're not leaving that car there in my drive!” he said.
“What?”
A face so saggy it could have been made of melting wax appeared at the window. It had a bobble hat on. “You are not leaving that car in my drive!”
“No, I'm not leaving it here, it's all right.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“It's okay, I'll move it.”
Except I didn't move it, because at that moment there was the sound of a man shouting from the house on the corner. They were not happy shouts.
“What the hell's going on?” said the man outside the car window.
There was a bang from inside the house. If only the wind had been blowing the other way, we might not have heard any of it.
“What is this? I'm calling the police!” He had his phone in his hand and was backing away now down his drive.
“No, no!” I said, opening my car door. “It's all right, it's his son! Nothing's happening. It sounds like their just having a bit of an argument! Everything's fine.”
With the impeccable timing of a TV fucking sitcom, the word 'Help' came from the house – the loudest and clearest sound yet.
Half out of the car, with the most reassuring smile I could muster, I said: “No, it's okay! I'll... I'll...”
and then I abandoned whatever I had been going to say and ran towards the house.
The front door of the house opened straight into a living area. The door had been on a chain, but the chain had been too flimsy to keep Idris out, and now dangled from the open door. There were two people in the room, Idris and an old woman. Or three, if you included the disorganised pile of clothes on the floor that they were looking down at which, when you glanced at it a second time, turned out to have an elderly human body inside it. There was no blood, but the way the body was lying, as if someone had tried to fold it in half and it had snapped, made it very unlikely that it was still alive.
I arrived just in time to see the murder scene become a double murder scene. The old woman turned on Idris, her face contorted with some emotion or other, and with as much speed and force as her frail body allowed, lunged at him. It was like watching a giant tortoise attacking a gorilla, and with about as much chance of a successful outcome.
Idris swung his right arm at his attacker, more like he was swatting her than punching her. His arm rather than his hand hit her full in the face and caused her head to jerk back at an impossible angle. The speed with which she fell was probably the fastest she had moved in a long time. Idris immediately disregarded her, and turned his attention back to his stepfather. He was looking down with an expression like you'd see on a distraught baby. He let out a half-scream that sounded so unlike him, for a second I thought there was another person in the room. He covered his face with his hands.
I glanced behind me to make sure I had not been followed, and closed the door.
I thought things through. It was a bad situation, but it was still possible to achieve a positive outcome from all this. The man outside my car might have been on the phone to the police, but he would testify that the sounds of violence had started before I came to the house. I could not be accused of any crime, and I trusted myself to feel sure that I would be able to come up with a valid explanation for my being there by the time the police arrived. In the meantime, somewhere in this house there were two very valuable books, worth about forty grand between them.
I put my arm out over the body, and put my hand on Idris' shoulder. “Idris,” I said firmly. People respond well to hearing their own names. If you want to control someone or persuade someone, it's often good to use their name as much as you can. He looked at me, and I tried to hold him steady with eye contact, but his eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “Idris, where are the books?” I said.
“He's dead!” he shouted. “He's fucking dead!” He shook my hand away. His face was red and his lips were pulled back. His eyes were scrunched up. It seemed every muscle in his face was contracted. Not only that, he had clenched his hands into fists and he was shaking them in slow motion either side of his head. It was extraordinary; I'd never seen anything like it. Then he just toppled, and sat heavily on the floor. It was pathetic to see how completely this big man had lost control of himself, but in his current state, he was a liability, and possibly even a threat to my safety.
There was enough space in the room for me to go around him, stepping over the old woman. I crouched behind him and applied a choke, with my right arm hooked around his throat and my left across the back of his neck. The point was to cut off the blood supply from the carotid arteries. I had learned this move in a Taekwondo class, and although I had never done it for real, I remembered how it had felt when someone had practised on me; within a second, I had felt myself losing consciousness and had had to signal for them to break the choke. Idris took longer than a second or so, but not long enough to put up much of a struggle. He was heavy, but I held him for a few seconds more, to make sure, then lowered his head down onto the floor.
I really wished that old guy outside hadn't said anything about calling the police, or better yet, hadn't even been there. I had no idea where the books were kept, and I could have done with more time to search the place, without the knowledge that the police might be on their way even now. The possibility that really bothered me was that there might be a safe. Then I'd be screwed, and the thought of going through this whole business, probably being arrested later on, and not getting anything at all to show for it was more than I could take. Trust a fuckwit like Idris to fuck up all my plans for me!
The room I was in had a bookshelf above the television. It seemed an obvious place to start looking. Perhaps he kept the first editions somewhere special, but it was equally possible that he kept them hidden among less valuable books.
The books were in no obvious order. Some were new, some were old, and some were so old that the writing on the spines were faded, and I had to open them up to see what they were. Worse, I had systematically gone through nearly the whole shelf before I noticed there were more books behind them! By the time I had finished with the shelf, I was no closer to finding either Leaves of Grass or Jude the Obscure, and I was beginning to get impatient.
I hurried into the next room, and swore. Bookshelves covered half the room, and once again held books two layers deep. I had just started on the first bookshelf when some instinct drew my attention to a cabinet with glass doors in the corner of the room. Inside it there were some twee china animals and a bunch of decorative plates that a high street charity shop would probably have turned down on the grounds that they were too tacky, but on the lowest shelf, there were a handful of old books.
The cabinet was locked. I crouched in front of it, trying to read the spines. Graham Greene Travels with my Aunt; Shakespeare Sonnets... but the slim volume at the side of the cabinet was harder to read. I squinted at it, and my reflection in the glass squinted back at me. The writing was faint, but the last word on the spine began with a 'Wh'. My reflection grinned widely. The last word was Whitman.
Ha! Too bad the bloody thing was locked.
I looked around the room. There was no obvious key, and there was no obvious place where someone might keep a key. I could kick the glass in, but then that would draw attention to the theft. Broken glass in here could hardly be put down to the violence in the next room... Ah fuck it! I thought, and put my foot through the cabinet door.
I reached in, and ever so carefully pulled the book out. It looked too slim for thirty thousand pounds, but that's what it was. It was old, but in pretty good condition. There was no dust jacket, but the hard cover was engraved with leaf patterns. The name of the title and author were embossed in gold among the leaves. It must have been beautiful when it was new. No sign of Jude the Obscure, but that was okay; this was the more valuable one.
It was tempting to open it up, just to see what a thousand-pound poem looked like, but I resisted that. I wanted to get moving, and besides, it was the book that was worth so much, not the poems. The poems were probably all on the internet for nothing.
The smart thing to do – no, the only thing to do – was to get out to the car, stash it somewhere there where it wouldn't be found on a cursory inspection. If the old guy with the melting face was still out there, I would act distraught – I had a good model in mind I had seen on Law and Order recently, a woman whose child had died – and say, Oh my God, he's killed them! He's killed them both! Have you called the police? I was confident I could make him believe in me.
And yet, as I stepped over the bodies, my immediate plans changed. Two of them were breathing, rather than just one.
I put the book down on the carpet beside the old woman, who felt me beside her and instinctively covered her face in the crook of her arms. I thought about the force with which he had hit her, the way her neck had jerked back. Apparently that hadn't been enough to kill her, even though it looked like it had. It probably felt like it had, to Idris.
I've always wanted to know what it felt like to kill a person; I think everyone does, whether or not they're prepared to admit it. I glanced at Idris, but he was showing no signs of consciousness. I put my foot on the woman's neck, and then raised it so that the side of my foot was pointing down. This was another move I had taken away from my Taekwondo classes, one day when we had been breaking bricks. The way to do it is to bend the leg you're standing on as you strike downwards, so that the whole of your bodyweight goes into the strike. Get the stance right, and the brick breaks clean in two.
I brought my foot down on her neck. If it hadn't been so quiet in there, the little snap! that it made might not have been audible. It didn't seem loud enough or significant enough to signify the end of a human life. I found I wanted there to be more to it than that, but I couldn't exactly complain. I had wanted to find out what it felt like to kill someone, and now I knew. It felt like nothing. Perhaps it was because I didn't know her. Like sex: if you do it with someone you know, someone you think of as a person, and she's shown her personality to you, and you've seen her interact with and be desired and respected by other people, then there's a sense of triumph when you get her into bed and reduce her down to just a fuck toy; but if it's a girl you picked up in a bar or something, then she was never anything more than that anyway, so it doesn't have that same sweet edge. If it had been Idris I had killed, or Lauren, maybe it would have meant more.
Disappointed, I picked up the book again, gingerly, in case it turned to dust in my hands. I heard the approaching car before I reached the front door. It wasn't necessarily a police car... and yet at the same time it absolutely, definitely was. I couldn't say how I knew, but there was no doubt at all in my mind. “Shit,” I whispered.
I wouldn't make it to my car and have time to hide the book, and I couldn't be found with it on me. I couldn't leave it anywhere in the house, because then I wouldn't be able to get back to it later without breaking in. “Shit,” I said again.
The house probably had a back garden. If I somehow hid it in the garden, I wouldn't need to break in at a later date, just climb over a garden fence. I ran through the door at the back of the room into a kitchen. From there, I had to manoeuvre through a tiny dining room, cluttered with furniture, before I got to a back door. There was a plastic bag on the dining room table. I grabbed it. I knew what I was going to do now. I just prayed I had time.
Wrapping the book in the plastic bag, I found a place in the garden where the flower bed was soft. I dug a thin little trench with my fingers, at the edge of a cluster of daffodil bulbs, just deep enough to slide the book in, like I was posting it through an earthen letter box. I covered it with earth. I could see no reason why anyone would think to dig there. Even if something went badly wrong, and the police held me for several days – but why on earth would they do that? – it would be here waiting for me to come back for it.
I was rubbing the earth from my hands when the police came knocking at the door.
***
“Idris has made an admission of guilt,” says Inspector Knight. “But he only admits to one count of murder.” He isn't smiling any more. He hasn't been smiling for some time now. The pause lasts for some time before I realise how long the pause has lasted for.
“You seem to want me to say something to that, but I don't know what,” I say, with a slightly nervous, slightly confused smile. I don't know why I'm still bothering.
“Is there anything you want to say to me?”
“Well if there's anything you want me to tell you, then you can ask me.”
“Idris says he was conscious for much of the time when you were in the house, but he's reluctant to say exactly what happened after you put him in the choke. We'll see if he changes his tune once I've told him that it was you who told Lauren about this supposed rape.”
He's giving me a hard look. He really seems to believe that if he glares at me hard enough, I might confess to murder. If so, then he's even more of a prick than he looks. I say nothing.
“We'll ask the barman, Andy, if he told you anything about Idris raping someone.”
I say nothing.
“We're going to dig up the back garden. Is there anything you want to say?”
“Not really. Thanks for asking.”
“If you've nothing else to tell me, I'll end the interview.” He switches the recording device off, but he doesn't invite me to leave. Instead, he says: “I've known people like you before. Plenty. I expect most people come across someone like you at some point in their lives. You think you're so much cleverer than everyone around you. You're not, and you're actually rather common.”
I don't know what he thinks he's achieving by saying this, but I could be round the table in half a second, before this cunt had time to react. I could break his scrawny arms before he had a chance to cry for help. This piece of shit should be fucking grateful I have self restraint, it's the only reason he's still in one fucking piece. It'd almost be worth it, to see him go from being in control to being helpless and terrified.
“Are you saying I'm under arrest?” I say, but I don't actually care about the answer. If I'm not now, I will be soon.
The thing that matters, I guess, is what a jury decides about me.
Detective Knight stands. “Wait here,” he says. He picks up his shitty little recording device and pisses off out the room, closing the door behind him. He didn't actually answer my question. Did he lock the door, or could I just leave? I stay where I am. I'm thinking.
Would a jury think that a book buried in a flower bed is cast-iron evidence against me? Hardly. Even if they decide the rape rumours originated with me, the worst they're going to do me for is slander. And if Idris tries to pin the murder of the old woman on me... Who's a jury going to believe, a coked-up goon who's already confessed to one murder, or me?
My subconscious has conjured a rhyme out of nowhere, and it runs through my mind unbidden: Inspector Knight, Steven Knight; What a nasty, runty sack of shite...
I may soon find myself in a position where I have to win a jury over, but it's not too bad. Winning people over is what I'm good at.
I fancy my chances.
The end