Rook & Tooth and Claw (9 page)

He went to the bedroom and dragged the quilted
cotton cover off the bed. It was bright red, which would help, in case Mrs Vaizey’s stomach-lining burst. There were maroon pools of blood inside it, as well as viscous yellowish fluids and a half-digested spaghetti bolognaise.

He spread the bedcover on the floor next to the couch. Then he laid his hands on Mrs Vaizey’s remains, and gently rolled them toward the edge. They were so disgusting to touch that he had to stop for a moment, and close his eyes, and take five or six really deep breaths. He hadn’t realised that they would still be warm, and how much all of her limbs and organs would roll and slither together when he started to move her.

But, mercifully, the stomach remained intact, even when it dropped on to the floor with a dull, soggy thump.

He rolled the bedcover around it, and tied each end with cord. Then he went back to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands until they were sore. He could see himself in the mirror next to the telephone, but he thought he looked like a stranger.
He
didn’t dispose of dead bodies, not Jim Rook, the teacher. He spent his evenings marking papers or going to concerts or meeting his friends – not trussing up the mutilated remains of old ladies.

He called his father in Santa Barbara. “Dad? It’s Jim. Yes, I know, I meant to call you back but everything’s been so hectic since yesterday. No – well, the police have one boy in custody, but I’m not at all sure he’s the one who did it. No.”

He paused, and then he said, “Listen, Dad, is it okay if I borrow the boat tomorrow evening? Well, just for three or four hours. Well, I’ve met this girl and I thought it might be romantic to take her out for a picnic on the
ocean. I think I need to take my mind off things. Okay. Fine. No, that’ll be fine.”

He hung up. He hated involving his father in getting rid of Mrs Vaizey’s body, but he couldn’t see any other way out. If he tried to bury her, there was always a chance that somebody would dig her up, and he wouldn’t be able to feel safe for the rest of his life. But scattered in the ocean, her remains would be lost forever; and he thought that somehow it would give her back the dignity and peace that Umber Jones had so savagely stripped away from her.

For now, he dragged Mrs Vaizey’s remains into his small spare bedroom and pushed them under the bed. In the small hours of the morning, he would carry them down to his car and lock them in his trunk.

He took the cushion covers off the couch and took them down to the laundry in the basement. They weren’t badly stained, but even the smallest trace of Mrs Vaizey’s DNA could prove fatal. As he switched on the machine, Myrlin Buffield came in, from Apartment 201, carrying under his arm a purple plastic basket crammed with withered shorts and misshapen T-shirts.

“Hi Myrlin,” said Jim, attempting a grin.

“Hi yourself,” he replied. He began to stuff his clothes into the next machine, but every now and then he gave Jim a sneaky little sideways glance.

“What?” asked Jim, after a while.

Myrlin shut the washing-machine door. “Was your apartment on fire before?”

“On fire? Of course not. What do you mean?”

“I happened to be passing and I smelled this strange like
burning
smell.”

“Oh, that!
That
burning smell! I was burning some incense, that’s all.”

“Incense?” said Myrlin, darkly, as if to say, “Everybody knows why people burn incense.”

“I’m into this meditation thing,” Jim told him. “Tibetan transcendental yogarology. You have to burn incense to get into the mood.”

Myrlin slowly scratched his behind and continued to stare at Jim like a baleful child. “You know that there are
rules
in this apartment block?”

“Against Tibetan transcendental yogarology?”

Myrlin lifted an imaginary roach to his lips and deeply inhaled.

“Against drawing in your breath?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” said Myrlin.

“I wish I did, Myrlin. I really wish I did.”

He went back to his apartment with his damp cushion-covers. He locked and chained the door behind him and stood for a moment with his back against it. The shock of what had happened to Mrs Vaizey had left him feeling exhausted, and his hands were still trembling. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a large whiskey, which he drank without taking a breath.

He poured himself another one, but he didn’t drink it immediately. Instead, he opened up the kitchen cabinet and took down the bag of memory powder that Uncle Umber had given him. He found a small knife and cut the hairy, waxy cord that fastened it. Inside, when he unfolded it, there was about a tablespoonful of fine brownish dust, as soft as ground cinnamon, with a pungent aroma that reminded Jim fleetingly of something from his childhood. He tried to focus on it, but it was gone, and he was left with an unexpected sense of loss.

He pinched a little of the powder between his finger
and thumb. So this was the drug that could enable you to remember people and events and places that you had never known. He wondered what it would be like if he could remember being wealthy, with a twenty-bedroom house in Bel Air and a pair of matching Maseratis; or his affair with a ravishing French movie actress in Provence, days of sun and kisses and chilled rosé wine. Or if he could remember seeing his dead brother Paul only last weekend, for a game of tennis and a long walk along the shoreline.

If you could remember it, did it matter that it hadn’t happened?

He drew out a chair and sat down. He decided to remember something comparatively modest – something which could be easily tested. He decided to remember that Susan Randall had kissed him and told him that she had fallen in love with him the moment she first saw him. I mean, that would be harmless, right, because she obviously quite liked him anyway.

He held the dust up under his nostrils and cautiously sniffed. Then he sniffed again, more sharply this time. He sneezed, and sneezed again, and then he clamped his hands over his face. He felt as if he had breathed in spice-flavoured fire. It burned his sinuses and made his eyes feel as if they had swollen up to three times their normal size. He sneezed yet again, and stood up to get himself a glass of water from the sink.

He saw the sink. He reached out for the tap. But then suddenly the world was at a different angle, and the floor was tilting. He tumbled over sideways, hitting his shoulder against the table, and lay on his back sweating and trembling. He thought he could hear voices. He thought that there were other people in the room, people with dark faces and dark suits and sunglasses. He thought
that he could hear drums; or maybe he could only
feel
them, throbbing through the floor.

He was aware of a sudden wind, blowing through the room, and a whispering voice that said, “
Ah, oui… il est triste … il est solitaire … ha-ha-ha … un spectre qui se glisse le long des allées ses pas l’ont conduit… de son vivant, ha-ha-ha
…”

He thought that there was somebody crouched down next to him, staring him right in the face. A black man, with pitted cheeks and a high sheen on his forehead. A black man with eyes that were filled with blood.

He heard a bell ringing, shrill and urgent. He sat up, shocked. At first he didn’t know where he was. He felt as if he had been away for years. But then he managed to grab hold of his chair, and ease himself up. The bell was still ringing and it was his doorbell.

For a moment the bell stopped, and somebody started knocking. Then the knocking stopped and the bell started again. Then there was ringing and knocking together.

With his arms held out on either side to balance himself, he made his way to the front door and opened it.

It was Mrs Vaizey’s son Geraint, a short bullet-shaped man with greasy black curls and a bright red face. He was wearing a jungle-patterned shirt and huge Bermuda shorts. “Hey, I’ve been ringing for five minutes,” he protested.

“How did you know I was in?”

“That Myrlin geezer told me. He said to keep on trying on account of you might be taking some kind of trip or something.”

“That Myrlin geezer should keep his nose out of other people’s business.”

“I’m looking for my old lady,” said Geraint, trying to
peer past Jim’s shoulder into his apartment. “You seen her, or what?”

Jim could never understand how a civilised, well-educated woman like Mrs Vaizey could possibly have given birth to a coarse, overweight loudmouth like Geraint. Geraint ran a video rental store, with a big line in horror and violence.

Jim shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday – sorry.”

“Myrlin said she might of come up here.”

“Well, Myrlin’s wrong, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t know … she’s not in her apartment and look at the time. Add to that her door wasn’t locked. She never goes out late.”

“Maybe she went to the 7–11.”

“Yeah, right, and maybe she went on a six-week hiking tour to Guatemala. She left her door unlocked, for Christ’s sake, and a salad on the table.”

“If you’re worried, why don’t you call the police? She could have had a memory lapse or something … she could be wandering around anywhere.”

There were beads of clear perspiration on Geraint’s upper lip. “I don’t know … maybe I should just go look for her. What can the cops do that I can’t?”

“Well … I hope you find her. She’s probably okay.”

“What are you, Mr Blue Sky or something? She’s probably lying battered to death in a stormdrain.”

Jim closed the door, and made sure that he put on the security-chain. He gingerly touched the tip of his nose and it was still a little tender, but his eyes weren’t so swollen and he was able to walk back across the living-room without overbalancing. He went into the spare bedroom, and stood for a long time without switching on the light,
because he didn’t want to see what was lying under the bed. But then he had the idea that Mrs Vaizey’s remains might start shuffling out from under the bed on their own, waggling from side to side in his blood-red bedcover like a giant maggot, and he switched on the light instantly.

The bedcover was still there, motionless. He hunkered down next to the bed and prodded it, just make sure, and all he could feel was softness and heaviness.

He left the room and switched off the light. He crossed the corridor to his own bedroom, but then he stopped. He hesitated for a few seconds. Then he went back and turned the key in the spare bedroom door. He didn’t believe in life after death, especially a death as grisly and complete as Mrs Vaizey’s, but then what was the point in taking chances?

He hadn’t meant to sleep. He had meant to wait until there was nobody around, and then take Mrs Vaizey’s remains down to the parking lot. But Geraint was coming and going for hour after hour, and Tina Henstell had some noisy friends in for drinks, and Myrlin didn’t switch off his bedroom light until well past one o’clock, and even then he was probably watching his neighbours from his darkened window.

Jim slept badly and went through hours of frightening dreams. He kept hearing those muffled drums, beating through the house in a rhythm that became increasingly reckless. He felt that he was in the grip of a power that was beyond understanding: a huge malevolence. He saw fretwork balconies and thunderous skies. He heard feet flying through the rainswept grass.

He heard somebody running and jumping close behind him. “
Ha-ha-ha
!
Ha-ha-ha
!”

He woke up just after seven. A big grey quail was
sitting on the rail outside his window, tapping with its beak on the glass. His sheet was all sweaty and wrinkled, and he had been sleeping at the wrong end of the bed.

“Go on, scram,” he said to the quail, and knocked on the window with his knuckle. But the quail stayed where it was, cocking its head to one side.

He climbed out of bed and shuffled out of the room, stretching and yawning. His nostrils still felt a little sore and his mouth was as dry as a sheet of Grade 2 glasspaper. He went through to the kitchen and opened the fridge, taking out a quart of orange juice and drinking it straight from the bottle until it ran down his chin and soaked the neck of his T-shirt.

Wiping his mouth, he saw the little bag of memory powder on the table. He knew that he had tried it last night, but he couldn’t think what false memory he had tried to lodge in his brain. Maybe it didn’t work. If he couldn’t even remember what memory he had wanted to remember, what kind of memory powder was that?

All the same, he tied up the bag and put it on the kitchen counter next to his wallet and his keys and his mobile phone. He had seen what Umber Jones could do when he tried to double-cross him. He didn’t want anybody else to end up devouring themselves; not for his sake, anyway.

Besides, he knew for sure now that Tee Jay was innocent, and if it took one of Uncle Umber’s spells to get him free, then so be it.

He showered and dressed and made himself a cup of what railroad workers used to call ‘horseshoe’ coffee – coffee so strong that a horseshoe would float in it. He wondered if he ought to check on Mrs Vaizey’s remains, but what was the point? She wouldn’t have
moved,
would she? All the same, he thought he ought to drape the spare
bed with a double bedcover, so that nobody could see that there was anything underneath it. Juanita wouldn’t be back to clean up until Monday, but you never knew. The building super might come in for some reason or another. Jim was quite sure that he wouldn’t, but he
might
; and Jim didn’t want to be sitting in college all day fretting about that million-to-one chance of discovery.

He unlocked the bedroom door and cautiously opened it. The red bedcover was hunched under the bed, just where he had left it. He approached it as if he expected it suddenly to move, even though he knew what was in it, and that it would never move again. He sniffed the air two or three times to make sure that it wasn’t smelling. He had smelled a dead body only once before – when an elderly man had died all alone in the next apartment, but he had never forgotten it. It had been a stomach-churning reminder of what he, too, would one day become.