Remember Why You Fear Me (4 page)

That night Harry slept rather better than he thought any murderer had a right to—so soundly, in fact, that he was only woken up by frantic hammering at the door. He opened it in his pyjamas, so bleary that for the moment he forgot about the corpse on the kitchen floor.

Outside there were five people, each of them holding death envelopes.

“No,” he said. “No, no, no.” And he closed the door on them.

But they didn’t go away. They were staring death in the face, they were frightened—but each of them knew that their lives had to end somehow, and destiny had chosen them to be at the hands of Harry Clifford. The cat was very excited when he showed them all, one by one, into the sitting room, and with heavy heart read the grisly instructions within their soft little brown envelopes. There were two drownings, which Harry conducted in the bath one after the other—only realizing as he lugged the swollen corpses into Mary’s bedroom afterwards how heavy bodies became when full of water. Another one had his head caved in with an electric iron, and since Mary had been the one to take charge of all the practical details in their marriage, it took Harry a full half hour to find the right cupboard in which she’d kept it. There was another stabbing to be performed, but this one was quicker than the day before’s; Harry had learned to keep his eyes open this time. And there was a hanging, which caused both Harry and his victim no end of problems.

“Did you bring a rope?” asked Harry.

“I didn’t know I needed one,” said the rather shy teenager, blushing through a wall of spots.

“I don’t just have a rope lying about,” said Harry. “If you want me to hang you, the least you could do is bring your own equipment.”

In the end they decided that the shower curtains could be taken down, wrapped tightly around the youth’s neck, and with some care he could be suspended over the upstairs banisters until he expired. Then Harry cut the body down, dragged it to Mary’s bedroom, and laid it alongside the five people he had already killed. Mary’s room seemed the best place for all these strangers; it was a place he’d had little cause to visit over the last two years of his marriage, not since Mary had asked if he could move into the spare room. He surveyed his handiwork for a moment, all six bodies lying higgledy-piggledy across Mary’s bed and by the dressing table at which she used to do her make-up and hair. Then, without a hesitation, he closed the door tight, went to his own room, packed a rucksack, and left the house.

The next day he was on the Cornwall coast, walking along the cliffs, watching as the sea crashed into the rocks. He began to feel normal, human. He waved politely at the passers-by, managed a smile, as if he too was simply out for a gentle stroll without a care in the world. One kindly looking old man, walking his Jack Russell, said good morning.

“Good morning,” said Harry.

“Here on holiday?” asked the old man.

“Yes,” said Harry. “I think so. I don’t know. Maybe,” he said decisively, “I’ll live here. Yes.”

“Well, it’s a beautiful part of the country. I’ve always loved it, man and boy. I say,” said the old man confidentially, “I do believe you’re supposed to push me off the cliff.” And he produced the telltale envelope. “I’m sorry,” he said, with genuine sympathy. “I can quite see how that would disturb your walk.”

Harry pushed him over the side, and his body span all the way down, glancing off the odd rock. Neither of them were quite sure what to do with the little dog, so the old man kicked him off the edge before he took his own fall. “He loved me, I know it,” he said with tears in his eyes. “It’s what he would have wanted.”

If these death envelopes were going to follow Harry wherever he went, he supposed he might as well go back home and live in comfort. The cat was pleased—he hadn’t been fed for nearly a day, and was starving. And the people
did
keep coming. Sometimes as many as twenty could be found in the morning, sick with fear, clutching their little death sentences. “It’s all right,” he said to them, soothing, calm. “We’ll make it okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” And, as the weeks went by, and the corpses began mounting in his ex-wife’s bedroom, he realized that he meant it. All this death, there really
was
nothing to be afraid of. If he’d found a purpose in life, at long last, after so many years of not even bothering to look, then this was it—he could make sure that these poor souls shuffled off this mortal coil in as humane and tender a way as possible.

He decided to charge his victims a small fee. They were all too eager to pay, he discovered—it wasn’t as if they could take their money with them. And with the cash he bought lots of painkillers, the strongest that could be purchased over the counter. When all’s said and done, if your way out of this world is by having a hammer turn your skull to splinters, then a preparatory swig of a couple of aspirin is unlikely to do much good. But Harry realized it was a
psychological
help, that his patients felt it was altogether a far more professional operation. “Thank you, doctor,” said one gratefully, just before Harry bludgeoned him with a saucepan, and Harry felt an indescribable swell of pride.

He even hired a secretary to take care of them all, to ensure that he disposed of them in order and in good time. He chose the secretary he’d once worked with, the one who so brightly had realized her death was at the thrust of a toyboy. She was no longer so bright or cheery. “I’ve not even had a sniff of sex in ages,” she complained. “What if this toyboy in sixty-seven years’ time is the next bit of sex I get? It’s a mistake,” she concluded, with a wisdom that Harry had never expected of her, “to see in the way you die an explanation of how you live. The fact I’m going to die bonking a Brazilian does not mean I’m a great lover. Death is just another bit of stuff that happens.”

And then, one day, just suddenly, it all stopped.

“A quiet day today,” the secretary told Harry, when, by noon, no one had knocked at the door. But it was a quiet week as well. At the end of the month, with no patients calling, Harry paid her off. She said she was sorry the job was over. “I felt we were doing some good.” Harry told her he was sorry too.

But, surprisingly, sorrier still was the cat. The ginger little tabby had been a great favourite with all Harry’s victims, taking their minds off the operations ahead of them. It’d enjoyed parading around the waiting room of a morning, checking out all the newcomers, and allowing itself to be stroked and petted and made a fuss of. Now the cat would stare out of the window, eyeing anyone who walked up the street—and visibly sagging with disappointment when the passer-by wouldn’t stop at the house. The cat’s fur grew matted and coarse, it no longer washed itself. It had no interest in eating, it had no interest in anything. It was beginning to pine away.

Harry could see his cat was dying. And it seemed to him an extraordinary piece of cruelty that he should never know exactly when the cat was to die, when its suffering was to stop. The cat would lie, listless, looking at him with pleading eyes. Harry recognized the look; it was the same expression he’d seen in Jeffrey White’s when he’d bled to death in the kitchen all those months ago.

Harry cradled the cat in his arms, and stroked its fur. He’d never liked the cat, and the cat had never much liked him—but it purred for Harry now, and Harry was touched. The cat heaved with a huge sigh that seemed to echo down its thinning body, and then gave the gentlest of mews. And Harry knew there was no person more humane than him to end the poor cat’s life, and that the cat knew it too, he’d seen the fact of it countless times in this very house. Because Harry was the greatest killer of all, and he
was
special, and that’s why he’d been singled out, that’s why he couldn’t die, why they wouldn’t let him die, he had a job to do. He wrung the cat’s neck so quickly the cat would never have known. And he carried its frail little body up to Mary’s room, and left it with all the other corpses.

And then he sat down and cried. He hadn’t cried for any of these deaths, he hadn’t found the time. But he cried now, and he cried himself asleep.

The next morning he started when he heard something at the door. Still dozing in the armchair, he sprang to his feet. Ready to welcome another client, to practise his expertise with gentle care.

But instead, lying on the doormat, was an off-brown envelope.

Numbly he picked it up. And opened it. And read it.

“HENRY PETER CLIFFORD” said the stamp.

And, underneath, just the one word:

“Cancer.”

And that was it. Not even a date. Not even the recognition that there should have been a date. Just this one word, this ordinary death, this trivial death, laughing at him.

He turned over the card. And, in the same handwriting he’d seen before, in ballpoint pen: “Sorry. We lost this behind the sofa cushion.”

Harry sighed. He put the card back in the envelope for safe keeping, laid it gently down upon the hall table. He wondered what he should do with the rest of the day, the rest of his life. He couldn’t think of anything.

So he went upstairs to bed. Drew the curtains. And, lying in the darkness, explored his body for a lump.

I tried writing this on toilet paper but it’s hard writing on toilet paper because the paper’s so thin it breaks. And you can put some sheets together to make it thicker but that’s not much better and you have to write so slowly to keep it from breaking that by the time you reach the end of the sentence you forgot how it started and you forget what it was you wanted to say anyway, and anyway you get through a lot of paper like that. XXXXXXXX
He
caught me, I knew he would, he’s smart like that, I was taking so long in the bathroom that he began to bang on the door asking if I was all right and I said I was all right, and I flushed, but he said if I didn’t open the door he’d break it down and so I did. I should have flushed away my writing first while I was at it but I just didn’t have time to think and he picked it up and he read it and I thought he’d get angry because a lot of it was about him, well all of it really. But XXXXXXXX
he
didn’t say anything bad and he said if I wanted to write he’d get me some proper paper if it meant that much to me. And a pencil too, not a sharp one, he’d seen a film once about how a sharp pencil could be used as a weapon and stuck into someone’s neck and that was funny because I think I’ve seen that film too but I couldn’t remember what it was called, neither of us could, we laughed about that. And I told him I’d never do that to myself, I’m scared of blood, and he looked a bit shifty and said he’d been more worried I’d do it to him actually, and I hadn’t even thought of that and said I wouldn’t, we laughed about that. So XXXXXXXX
he
gave me this pad and this pencil. And told me I could copy out what I’d written on the toilet paper if I liked. But I didn’t want to, he’d been so nice about the whole thing and what I’d said on the toilet paper wasn’t very kind. I didn’t want to write anything for a while, I didn’t know what to say anymore, and he’d ask me sometimes about it over dinner, have you started writing yet, but he said it nicely, it wasn’t a nag and didn’t come out sarky. And so eventually I thought I’d better write something after he’d gone to all that trouble, and so I did, and this is it.

Over breakfast he read what I wrote last night. He said it was very good, but that some of the grammar needed a little work, that it wasn’t always easy to read, and I asked about my handwriting, and he said that was good, and about my spelling, and he said that was good too, it was just the grammar, I could do with a few more full stops. So I’m going to do that. When I remember. I’ll try. He said he’d have to change just one thing, and he crossed out a few words with a pen, and handed it back. And he’d crossed out all the times I’d used his name, he’d put ‘he’ instead, he said that he should never have let me know his name in the first place that was a mistake. So I could carry on writing, but no more names. And I said could I use another name instead, it’d get a bit much calling him ‘he’ all the time, and he said that was all right. And George told me that he was glad I enjoyed the pad and the pencil, that they’d been a present. And that I’d get more presents, so long as I behaved, so long as I did what I was told. I told George I would and he was so pleased. He asked what I was going to write next and I couldn’t think what, and he said I should write about what I know. But I don’t want to write about my life before, if you’re reading this you probably know it already, it’s probably not much different from yours. So I’m going to describe where I am. I don’t like descriptive bits, I’d rather tell stories, but here goes. There are three rooms. (Actually there are more than three rooms, but I only get to go in three of them. There’s the kitchen, but I’m not allowed in there because it’s full of sharp things, George keeps it locked with the bolt he took from the bathroom. And there’s the room which has the front door in it, I don’t go there.) But there are my three. There’s the sitting room which is where we eat our breakfast and our dinner and it’s got a television in it and George watches the news a lot, and sometimes he watches other things too, sitcoms I think because I hear laughter and it isn’t George’s. Then there’s the bathroom, but you know about that, it’s only different now because he took the lock off. And then there’s the bedroom which is where I am now, I spend most of my time here. George keeps it locked but he lets me out when I need to, when it’s time for breakfast or dinner or when I need the bathroom. The walls are a bit old and have wallpaper on which is a bit old and when I get bored I can count the stripes but I don’t need to be bored now because I have the pad and the pencil and I can use them instead. And that’s enough for tonight and I’m going to sleep now, night night.