The Evil Inside (20 page)

So poor old Lee Harvey Oswald was really just the MacGuffin?

And Jack Ruby was no gem.

The great white hope of Hyannis Port, little Jack Kennedy had been America's bouncing baby boy.

But they terminated him.

While Sinatra howled with glee under that ‘Old Devil Moon'.

It was certainly an interesting theory.

And no less plausible or unsavoury than anything that had happened to me, or I had had to endure, lately.

Or long ago, for that matter.

I hear a scrubbing, scratching noise from the room I share with my little sister, Lorraine.

I push open the door and there is a shocking smell.

It almost knocks me out.

My mother is on her hands and knees with a soapy bucket beside her, scrubbing my sister's shit off the wall. Her cot is also caked brown with it while Lorraine herself is over in the corner rocking and humming and rubbing shit all over herself.

‘Guy – get out!' my mother barks. A squadron of flies are dive-bombing her.

I stand dumbfounded – and suddenly nauseous.

My sister rocks and laughs and draws a shitty smiley face on the wall.

‘Get outtttt!' my mother screams, throwing a filthy rag at me.

Despite a quick, desperate rubdown, little pieces of the shit remain on my shirt and my schoolbag and when I get to school that day, the class clown pinches his nose in an exaggerated manner and stage-whispers to all the other kids:

‘Phew, Guy! What did you have for breakfast this morning?

‘“Snap, Crackle, Shit”?'

 

It's a drizzly Sunday lunchtime.

Early 1970s.

We pull up in my father's old green FJ Holden. He turns the radio off. ‘Happy Together' by The Turtles.

It's been a long drive.

Leaves, papers and mosquitoes litter the big stagnant puddles in the pebbled car park and the grounds have obviously seen better days and not enough gardeners recently.

I look up and take in the biggest, weirdest looking building I've ever seen.

To my nine-year-old eyes, it looks like the Brothers Grimm have designed it.

Blood-red bricks. Shuttered windows like rows of closed eyes. A bent weathercock on the roof, listing into the wind.

We're here all because of a pissy yellow vase.

My grandmother's vase.

My mother's favourite.

My friend Timmy and I are horsing around with my second-hand Sherrin football in my lounge room after school.

It's where my mother sits to smoke her Winfield Blues and listen to Shirley Bassey and Roy Orbison and cry into her Cinzano Bianco when my father goes away on his ‘work trips'.

Her grandmother's vase sits on the middle of the mantelpiece: pride of place.

Why we're even in that fucking room, I'll never know.

Anyway, the inevitable occurs – doesn't it always? – and suddenly the vase lies in a thousand screaming pieces.

‘Don't worry,' I tell Timmy. ‘I'll say Raine did it. She breaks everything anyway.'

My sister's name is Lorraine.

We call her Raine.

And so here we all are at the living hell known as:

B
ONNIE
B
ROOK
:

I
NSTITUTION FOR THE
I
NTELLECTUALLY &

P
HYSICALLY
D
ISABLED
.

Saying goodbye to my kid sister, Raine.

Actually, my father doesn't even say goodbye. He is leaning against the curved bonnet of his car, rolling a cigarette, facing away from the building.

He is now whistling ‘Happy Together', but very slowly.

Raine kicks and screams as my mother drags her by her hair across the car park and up the steps. My special little sister gives me a final ‘how could you do this to me?' look before she's swallowed up by the big, red nasty building. The clouds clash their cymbals and rain starts to fall like giant panes of glass smashing.

It's the last time I ever see her.

A few weeks later, my father drives away in his beloved green machine and never comes back either.

I had to see Dr Blakely immediately.

I had to tell her about all this stuff really, really badly.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Russell,' her PA kept saying. ‘I can't help you. The airline strike is still going on in Bermuda and she can't get back till next week at the earliest.'

Next week?

The world could change a lot in a week.

It could change in a New York minute.

*

Saturday 5.35 p.m.

I was giving rock and roll a rest and enjoying Bach's
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, tapped out by Glenn Gould, when there was a loud rap at the door.

Bill had once mentioned to me that Lee Harvey Oswald's mother's maiden name had been Marguerite Clavier. Pity she hadn't produced a better tempered son.

‘And apparently she was a real piece of work, too,' Bill had gone on. ‘Some psychiatrists around at the time suggested that Oswald killed Kennedy just so he could get away from his crazy, interfering old mother!'

There was a second loud rap. I wasn't meant to collect Callum from Michael until six, so I tiptoed grumpily down the hallway, dodging the rubbish bags, newspapers and stray toys. I opened the door.

 

 

UNIDENTIFIED MURDER VICTIM

NEW YORK CITY, NY

May 12, 2000

 

Victim – Jane Doe

 

DESCRIPTION

 

DETAILS

 

The intact body of the victim, a white woman aged between 22 and 30 years, most likely 23 to 26 years old, was discovered in Lower Ground Level Room #4 in the ‘Hell or High Water' Night Club, 419 W 13
^th
St, NYC at approximately 2.10 a.m. on May 12, 2000. The victim was nude and – subject to autopsy results – appears to have been strangled with her black underpants.

A reward of $5,000 is available to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the death of this unidentified victim.

Anyone who has seen or has information pertaining to the identity or death of this Unidentified Murder Victim, please contact Detective John Winslow at NYPD Precinct 6 at 233 West 10
^th
Street (212) 741- 4811 or your nearest FBI Office.

‘Ever seen her before, Mr … ah …' Detective Angelo Barino licked his thumb and flicked his notebook back a couple of pages. ‘ … Russell?'

No. But I felt like I'd seen his face a thousand times before: on
NYPD Blue
, on
Law and Order
, on
Homicide: Life on the Street
.

He was perfectly cast: the dirty grey-brown moustache, deep pockmarks and yellow teeth were all very convincing.

Detective Barino and his partner were standing in my living room waving an artist's impression of a pretty girl under my nose.

Barino's partner – a skinny younger cop with freckles and a crew cut – picked up the base of the broken vase. I'd sticky-taped Mia's note to it for good measure. He was turning it over in his hands, trying to read it.

‘No,' I finally answered. ‘But what's her name, and tell her if she's free next Saturday night, I'm not doing anything.'

‘At the moment, her only name's Jane,' Barino growled. ‘And she'll be spending this and every other Saturday night with some maggots in her dirt-brown bed.'

His breath smelled like the ashtray at an all-night poker game.

‘Oh, sorry,' I said, genuinely remorseful. ‘I only looked at the picture, not the words.'

I noticed Barino's hands were shaking a little. And his skin seemed sallow. Yellow and liverish. His partner noticed the shaking hands too and seemed a little embarrassed by them.

Barino walked over to the window, pulled open the curtain, looked down and sighed.

‘Would you like a drink, detective? I was about to have one myself.'

He sat down heavily in an armchair. ‘Speaking of drinks, Mr Russell, this woman was murdered at the Hell or High Water Club in the Meatpacking District a few weeks ago. We know you were there that night because we've got your credit card details and got you on cameras on both the ground floor and the Upper Deck.'

‘Poor girl,' I said. ‘I do remember hearing an ambulance as we were leaving that night. I was with some Australian friends.'

Barino flicked his notebook again. ‘Ah yes: Mr Jim O'Leary and Ms Nadine Prior. They were staying at the Chelsea and flew back to Australia two days later.'

He'd done his homework all right. I hoped there were no cameras in the rooms at the Chelsea.

He continued. ‘Anyway, this girl was killed in the basement section of the club. In the area they call Davy Jones' Lockers. Did you happen to visit that downstairs area on the night in question?'

Me vs. the human bulldog.

‘Not at all,' I said. ‘I didn't even know there was a downstairs section.'

Barino squinted at me like he was lining me up through a gun sight. ‘Well the thing is, they have hidden cameras in those rooms down there. And whatever sick things happen there, they turn them into tapes and sell them to sick fucks who like looking at other sick fucks doing sick fuck things. They even got an asshole albino down there with an eye-patch selling drugs.'

There were little beads of sweat glistening on Barino's moustache. His partner, meanwhile, was taking a keen interest in my reference library.

‘We're getting very close to recovering the tapes from that night. So if you did happen to be down there, we'll soon know all about it.'

I sat down myself. I could really use a drink now.

‘But why do you think I have anything to do with it?'

Barino laughed like a pig and leaned forward aggressively. ‘Oh, no particular reason, Mr Russell. Just routine and all that. But rumour has it that you recently lost your job because you'd been acting strangely at work. “Unstable” was how your friend Terry there described you.'

Terry the fucking Terrible.

‘And your wife has left you, and even left the country. And she's moved your son over to your boss's house for safekeeping.'

‘Not true. Callum still spends at least two nights a week here with me. He's downstairs right now watching TV. The desk clerk will be bringing him up in a few minutes.'

‘And you still seem to be spending an awful lot of time down at the Hell or High Water.'

He was smiling like a madman. I was surprised he hadn't blamed me for Esmeralda's coma as well.

‘What have you got to say about all these things, Mr Russell?'

I swallowed spit. The beer was calling my name from the kitchen.

‘I'd say you've got yourself a really hot new screenplay idea: you should write it up and make a million dollars, Detective Barino.'

Barino shook his head in disgust. He snapped his notebook shut and stuck the bitten-down pencil back behind his ear like a cheap cigar.

He waggled a chubby finger at me. ‘I'll be seeing you again very soon, Mr Russell,' he said as his partner snapped a photo of me.

‘You can bet your life.'

After the cops left, I went up to the roof to suck down a Stuyvesant.

Barino was right: things seemed to be going in only one direction for me. And I could hardly deny that the situation was escalating.

Maybe the tide was turning at last.

Maybe the time for swimming around in circles was over.

Maybe, to put an end to all this, I would have to become a Big Fish after all.

I would have to show some heart.

If it's to be, it's up to me.

I'd done it before, long ago.

*

What the bloody hell have you been doin' out there?

You're a disgrace.

You'll never be anything.

You're useless.

I can't stand you.

I step forward with a great big smile.

What are you—?

But before my mother can get her very last question out, I've lassoed the towel round the backs of her fat purple-veined legs and pull it towards me in one fierce, swift action and with all my might.

Her legs slip out from under her and she goes down like a nine pin, bashing her head on the stained tile wall and then again on the edge of the bath on the way down.

Perfect.

She's now lying motionless, but face up on the bottom of the bath with a small but powerful geyser of blood from the back of her head spurting vivid jets of red into the otherwise murky water. Her head and hair are covering the plughole so hardly any of the water is draining out.

Perfect.

These are delicious, exquisite moments. I want them to go on for ever.

Eventually, I lift her head up out of the water, grab a flannel and shove it into her gloriously silent mouth.

I wait till her face and neck are blue.

‘By the way, Violet,' I say in case she expires before I get the chance to tell her, ‘Raine never broke your fucking vase. It was me.'

She waves one of her arms like a lunatic and tells me with her eyes that she has one last thing to say. She can't seem to move anything else.

I remove the flannel from her mouth and she fountains up a gutful of alcohol. I bend down to the edge of the bath, still careful not to get too close.

I cup my ear down to hear her last wheezy words as I force her head on its side and turn the taps back on.

‘You'll …pay … for … this …'

She gives a final vengeful snicker before I submerge her one final time.

‘… You'll see.'