Little Fingers! (34 page)

I think that
it is a safe bet to assume that no-one has ever experienced this,
but we all peddle it, first and foremost to ourselves. We
determinedly suspend disbelief in order to build the energy and
optimism to remain in the game.

Many criminals
are just sad and unfortunate individuals, even more stupid, and
bungling, and shambolic than I am. Some, however, are true masters
of deception. I have often observed that in everyday life we tell
many lies. We tell other people lies, or fashioned versions of our
truth. However, we tell many more lies to ourselves. A successful
liar is someone who has told himself the lie before he attempts to
convince anyone else, and he has believed it. We are all adept at
deceiving ourselves first and foremost, which is why we cling to
life.

And what is
the truth? The truth is like taking out a bunch of OAPs with
cataracts, and asking them to describe the world. Through the fog,
they earnestly attempt to tell you what they believe they are
seeing, but their observations are viewed through the lenses of
their experiences, and they are heavily influenced by both the
passionate and the sceptical commentators heckling and contesting
from the side.

So, life is
the same for all of us, Julia. You are not unique. In truth, it is
not worth living for any of us, but we persuade ourselves to bear
with its continuous worry, stresses, daily insults and oppressions
in the bleak, unfounded, optimism that tomorrow the promise will be
delivered. We have deserved it for coming so far. We have paid our
dues, now give us the pension.

Every time
until now, I have been an onlooker, or even a ring-master, for the
broil of the crime story of the moment. Safe behind my barrier of
microphones, I have been the man doggedly tracking down the
wrong-doers. Occasionally, the press has turned on me in
frustration at my slow process, but it has attacked my competence
not my integrity.

This time, I
am the story. Despite being brought up in Hanburgh, despite being
fully aware of Dr. Berringer's antics, why did I do nothing? What
happened to you in that cell? Was it suicide, or was it an
execution to cover our tracks, perhaps ordered by the Home Office?
So far, the newspapers have focused more on the moral corruption of
the police than on my personal responsibility, but the police
committee is clearly trying to edge it that way, the “rotten apple
in the barrel” defence.

They obviously
know nothing about our relationship and, for my sins, I am toying
with the idea of using it to regain an element of human sympathy -
“the tortured discovery of Inspector Plod: his long-lost son became
a woman and a serial murderess, and died tragically in his arms in
a lonely police cell, having confessed all.” I'll only use it if
the police commission succeed in frying me, if then. It will be a
tricky, double-edged line of defence.

And so to you,
Julia, on the day of your bodily release from this earth, the day
when you are reduced to dust so that you can fly away. I need to
return the compliment, and write a shorter love letter to you, for
that is how I interpret your submission, as a love letter to your
father despite being overtly unaware of my identity.
Subconsciously, I think you realised who I was, and that I
recognised you too through your disguise. You designed your
writings to be an oblique confession, secreted, as with much of
your life, behind an elaborately woven miasma of lies - a
confession that only I would be capable of interpreting, a private
bond between us.

What can I
say?

My first
impression of you too was as a shadow through the glass, which was
fairly appropriate given that I was there to arrest you for one of
the most gruesome murders I have ever investigated. My one concern
was that I could not understand how a woman would have the strength
to deliver such a blow. It was a man's blow.

The minute I
caught a glimpse of your face, you captured my interest. I hid it.
I walked straight past you into the sitting room. You were right, I
already knew the house. I used to attend Robert Markham's birthday
parties as a child. They used to be great parties. I wasn't used to
being invited to houses like that. It was wonderful to have so many
rooms to hide in when it came to playing sardines. The Markhams are
an exceptionally friendly family too, fallen on harder times, I am
afraid.

So, at that
stage, I was probably more at ease in your house than you were. I
do not know whether your mother ever went to those parties. I
cannot remember her there, and she tended to be resolutely
memorable wherever she was. Mary Knightly was there at least once
or twice, though, I recall.

It is strange
walking into a house you are familiar with only to discover it to
have been totally disguised, and betrayed, by the new occupants.
Not only are most of the fixtures and furnishings apparently out of
place, the whole atmosphere changes. Luckily, when I visited
Hanburgh House that day, you had barely moved in, so it more
resembled an empty house being worked upon.

The first time
that you meet someone whom you believe may be the one responsible
for the crime, you are asking yourself all the time “Is it
him/her?”, “Is it him/her?”, “Is it him/her?”, especially for more
important cases, and even more especially if you are me (a very
committed tracking angel, even after all these years). I could name
a whole roomful of police professionals who probably don't do
anything of the sort. They simply stand there and listen. That may
even be the better way, but I am a hyperactive questioner. I need
to provoke a reaction. You can metaphorically wait in ambush for
the criminal to mix up his facts and disclose himself. I attack to
drive people off-balance. Sometimes they fall over, as you did
literally. I play it pretty rough.

I couldn't
work out at all where you were as I was questioning you. I could
not settle on a clear view. I thought you were dangerous, perhaps a
little unhinged. Mary Knightly later described you this way, and I
agreed with her. You were self-evidently extremely clever, and
trying to use your intelligence to unnerve me. This made you a
potential serial killer. Psychopaths and sociopaths enjoy toying
with their pursuers like that, teasing them, provoking them,
proving to themselves that they can outwit them. However, they go
out of their way to create opportunities to humiliate us, and you
did not do that. Your approach was more defensive. Where I attacked
you, you snapped back, to hurt. And I still could not understand
how a woman could have split Tom Willows in two.

Anyway, you
were clearly not going to crack, and there was no evidence that you
were any danger to anyone else, so I had to let you go. But I did
still keep coming back to you, partly because you never escaped my
suspect list, partly because I became increasingly fascinated by
you. I am glad now that I did. It was to honour you.

You claimed in
your account of events that I was fantasising about you sexually,
that all I wanted to do was to talk you into removing your clothes
so that I could enjoy you bodily. I can honestly say that this was
never the case. My interest in you was emotional, and indeed
intuitive. There was something between us, and I never discovered
what it was while you were still alive. Through my cataracts, I
could perceive that there was a truth, but I could not decode it.
It never occurred to me that I was spending all this time in the
presence of my son. Equally, I assume, you never realised that I
was your father, although I am convinced that you too were
experiencing the same pull towards me.

And no, I did
not think you had any sexual designs upon me. I have never inspired
that. Late into a drunken party, I once told a girl that I fancied
her, as did the rest of the amateur football team I played
with.

“
Really?” she
said. “They all fancy me?”

“
Every single
one of us,” I confessed, exaggerating somewhat.

“
Oh.” She
seemed appropriately flattered, and bemused that I was telling her,
although she will no doubt have guessed why. “And where do you play
in the team?”

“
Do you know
anything about football?” I asked.

“
Enough.”

“
I play right
back.”

She smirked,
and disconnected from me, as if she had been insulted. “I only go
with centre forwards and goalkeepers,” she announced, and sidled
off.

So there you
are, in the mating game I play right back. If I score, it will be a
once in a lifetime achievement.

So how did I
become your father, you would have been asking yourself (if you
weren't already dead)? Well, that was sort of scoring, and sort of
striking, I suppose.

Your mother,
Lucy, and I had a strange, tugging relationship, similar to us in
fact. We were tied to each other, but never together. We struggled
with the ropes, to be free of them, or to be closer to each
other.

Lucy was a
very dangerous girl, and then woman, when I knew her. She unnerved
everyone. She was the village's rock star, burning towards an early
death, capable of great fun and brutal rebuffs. The one thing she
would absolutely not surrender up willingly to anyone was her body.
Yet she wanted to. She temperamentally couldn't, and she was
increasingly desperate to have the experience. She went out of
everyone's way to experience everything.

I can almost
remember Lucy and her sister, Mary, as very small children, as I
almost still was, before their parents died. While I am not
absolutely sure that it is a true memory, I recall that Mary was
the sweet one, and Lucy was already wild. That is why the
Berringers only adopted Mary. Lucy would already have ripped him to
pieces.

Lucy made a
terrible confession to me that day, just before we made love. Mary
begged her many times to help her against Dr. Berringer, without
exactly telling Lucy why. Lucy was envious of Mary, who was living
in a nice house with a respectable family, whereas Lucy's situation
was what it had always been, except in the additional absence of
her parents. Lucy simply ignored Mary, and let her rot. This is no
doubt why one day Mary got her revenge, enticing Lucy to suffer
just once what was probably a daily ritual for her (as you also
imagined it), to make her understand at last. Mary became a very
bitter woman, and Lucy subsequently exploded.

“
I hate
Mary,” she shouted. “I loathe that little scum. Smirking as she
tricked me into it. A real sneaky little rat. Vermin.” She glared
at me, challenging me to imply that she may have been partly to
blame. “Do you know what it is like when you go through a door, and
it shuts behind you, and you absolutely know that you are about to
be torn apart, fouled throughout, head to toe, and possibly
destroyed? And there was Mary, watching me out of the corner of her
face, measuring the pleasure of her spite. That man coming towards
me like an executioner. The shock as he slips your clothes undone
before you realise he has even touched them. His cold, deliberate
hand. Your freezing, frozen soul. Unable to move. The fear in your
bum, the panic. I watched everything he did to me in great detail,
and from a safe distance. I am sure that he did the same. It was so
precise, so practiced. Mary, over his shoulder, was scared and
happy, and even jealous, I think. Can you imagine that? She was
actually jealous and angry with me. She hated me, just in case he
preferred me. And I think he did. I taunted Mary with that
afterwards. I told her he craved me, but he would settle for her
because at least she was always available. It was a horrible thing
to say, but I think it stopped her procuring anyone else for him.
She couldn't take the competition, silly cow.” She stared me out
again. “So what do you think?”

“
I think it
is horrific.” I said dutifully, trying to fill my voice with shock,
although I must admit that I was more turned on by the
story.

“
Does it
excite you?”

I stood back.
“Of course not.”

“
If I said he
took a film of it all, would you watch it with me?”

“
He took a
film?”

“
Yes.”

“
Have you got
it?”

“
Do you want
to watch it?”

“
No, I
don't.”

“
Everybody
else wants to see me naked.”

I waited. Lucy
was grabbing my shoulders. “You don't?”

“
Not like
that.”

“
And like
this?”

“
Not at this
moment,” I declared chivalrously, hoping that she would not let it
go at that. “Not after that story.”

“
It's not so
bad,” she laughed. “At least I am not still a virgin, unlike some.
Are you still a virgin, John?” She usually called me “Johnny”. The
switching of my name was significant.

“
Yes,” I
admitted.

“
Are you
ashamed?”

“
A bit. I
think I am being left behind.”

“
You are a
very honest boy, John.”

“
I try to
be.”

“
Do you still
want to be a policeman?”

“
Yes.”

“
Do you want
to experience what it is like to be a criminal? A really bad
criminal. One of the worst. Totally safely?”