The Murder Code (32 page)

On the night my father died, I told the policeman who interviewed me—Franklin—that I’d stayed in our bedroom: that John had gone downstairs and unlocked the gun cabinet by himself, dragged the shotgun upstairs alone, and that I hadn’t seen what happened in my parents’ bedroom shortly afterwards.

Of course, that was a lie.

The gun cabinet was gone now—everything was. The downstairs room, like the rest of the house, had been stripped bare. The floorboards were exposed, broken in one corner, and the walls were pale, with permanent shadows of mould cast on the plaster. The remains of the fireplace formed a broken black mouth in the pale wall, the floor in front speckled with flecks of wallpaper and wood, as though the house had begun eating and spitting itself out.

But standing in the doorway and looking through the lounge doorway, I could still remember where everything had been. Memory added fixtures and fittings to this empty space; it superimposed furniture, and leached colours on to the grey shell. A ghost of an old life, flitting—briefly—across the world. A room seen through a window, passed by at speed.

I shook my head and moved back into the hall. It smelled of mildew and earth. Bubbles of moisture had formed on the walls and hardened like pearls. An empty doorway revealed the corpse of a kitchen, recognisable as such only from the square stains where cupboards had once clung to the walls. Behind me, daylight leaned in through the open front door, but didn’t reach the staircase I was looking up. The landing above was dark, and somehow both empty and full; the wooden stairs themselves looked precarious and soft.

I tested each step, all the way to the first floor.

With the far window exposed, the corridor up here was like a dark, weathered tunnel. Doorways led off at various points down the hallway, the first to what had once been a bathroom, the second to the bedroom I had shared with John, the third to what had been my parents’ bedroom.

There was no heartbeat here, not like in my dream, but the air had a pressure that might have been mainly inside my head. I hesitated. Then I walked all the way along to the last doorway.

Just as I had that night, all those years ago.

I’d gone downstairs with my brother.

I’d been there with him when he lifted the shotgun from the rack. He’d carried it himself—that much was true—because he didn’t want my fingerprints on it. He kept telling me to go back into our dark bedroom, but I wouldn’t, and it annoyed him. Perhaps he thought I was undermining him—that this was his action, one he should be doing alone, and there was me, trailing him like an equal partner. Saying nothing, because I hated our father and I wanted him to do it.

And yes, I followed him into our parents’ bedroom.

The door creaked slightly, but neither of them woke. Our father was snoring softly, lying on his back with one beefy arm thrown above his head. Even in the gloom, I could tell his mouth was wide open, slack. Our mother was curled up on her side of the bed, her back to him and her legs drawn up, as though she was trying to get as far away from him as possible.

It happened quickly. I think John was scared that he wouldn’t be able to go through with it if he faltered, or perhaps that our father might sense us there and wake up. If he had, I doubt John would have done it. Our father would have taken the gun off him, and God only knew what would have happened next.

John lofted the shotgun awkwardly, and somehow got it pointing at an angle down into our father’s face. He paused, suddenly unsure of himself.

Do it,
I whispered.

Do it, John.

And then he pulled the trigger. The room immediately transformed into a judder of noise and smoke and vibration. The impact lifted the barrel vertical and knocked my brother backwards with the force. Below us, my father’s face and head had been replaced with nothing. The rest of him didn’t even move; he died instantly where he lay, his arm remaining where it was. Our mother jerked awake with a screech and nearly fell out of bed, blood spattered all over her bare back.

That’s all I really remember. I was back in my bedroom, sitting alone, when the police arrived.

Looking back, I suspect Franklin had known I was present at the murder, but both John and I stuck to our stories closely enough for him never to be able to prove it. Why did I lie? I’ll never be sure, but I think I did it for him—for John—because he so desperately wanted to have done it by himself, without my help. He had wanted to protect me, and I, in turn, had played the role required of me. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I was below the age of criminal responsibility. So John was charged and sent to a remand centre for eight years; I was fostered. Due to press interest at the time, both of us received new and separate identities.

Regardless, I’ve never forgotten that look on Franklin’s face. An expression that said that when he looked at me, he saw it in me—something evil, malformed and wrong. Not just an abused, scared little boy, but something worse. Something of my father in me. And although I got away without any official sanction, I’ve lived with the implications of that look ever since.

I’ve lived with telling myself, over and over, that it couldn’t be true. That I wasn’t like my father. That everything has a human explanation. That there is no evil.

Standing in the doorway to my parents’ bedroom now, I looked at the dim wine stain of blood that remained soaked into the back wall. And then I moved back down the hallway towards the second doorway along: to my old bedroom. I hesitated at the frame, a part of me not wanting to peer in, but then I did.

The first thing that struck me was how small it was.

Could two boys have ever slept comfortably in here? It seemed impossible to imagine now. Even without the furniture, it was little bigger than a cupboard: a dark, windowless cell. But we
had
slept in here, and it was in here that we had woken up that night, and the rest of my life had begun to unfold.

Despite my best efforts, a part of me had remained here ever since, and in that interview room with Franklin. I’d never quite believed the things I’d told myself; I’d protested too much. But now … that could change, couldn’t it? Franklin hadn’t recognised me as an adult. And this room, in reality, was empty. There were no ghosts here. No pale children huddled, shivering, where a bed used to stand. No sobbing black-and-white woman to come screeching at me for failing to save her.

It was a space to be filled, as and how I saw fit.

So I thought:
I’m not evil.

I won’t necessarily be a bad father.

I won’t necessarily have a bad son.

I stood there for a few more moments, filling that nothing, and then I left.

As I walked the rest of the way back along the hall, carefully down the stairs and out into the dull grey daylight, I thought about Rachel—about the list of characteristics on her dating profile that had first attracted me, which I’d talked about in the therapy session. There had been something else on that list that I had not mentioned. Two details she’d given that at the time had been the most important ones of all.

Children, she’d written: no.

Want children: never.

I’d always had that safeguard in place. Until she changed her mind so vehemently last year, that is, and I’d been forced to make a choice: confronting my fears of becoming a father and what that might mean, or losing the woman I loved and needed more than I could ever explain. I hadn’t been able to bear the thought of either thing, and balancing them had been pulling me apart ever since. Pulling us apart.

It’s like there’s something he wants to say and won’t.

Yes. It had been like that.

But maybe, soon, that could change.

I
T HAPPENED IN THE
middle of the night.

I don’t know for sure what I was dreaming, only that it was something about James Miller. In part of it, he was coming slowly and steadily towards me at the side of the Hawthorne Road. Holding that hammer, with that look on his face. There was nobody else around, and this time, I couldn’t find my gun.

‘Andy, Andy, Andy.’

I woke up suddenly in the dark bedroom, struggling to make sense of what was happening. It was Rachel tapping me on the shoulder, frantically.

‘What?’

‘It’s happening. Oh God.’

‘I’m awake.’

I was—instantly. I sat bolt upright in bed. Rachel was sitting on the edge, her eyes wide and bright even in the darkness.

‘How far apart?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. I’ve been awake for a while. Four or five minutes?’

‘Okay.’ I reached out and touched her face, did my best to smile. ‘It’ll be okay. I’m here and I’ll look after you. It’ll be okay.’

‘All right.’

I swung out of bed, found my trousers on the floor. We’d done the inventory already, but I did it again in my head, suddenly unable to find everything. The suitcase was packed, waiting in the spare room. There were two other bags we needed. Nothing else. I grabbed a shirt from the wardrobe and flung it on.

‘Oh God.’

Rachel knelt down and leaned over the bed. I massaged her back as best I could the whole time. I felt about as redundant and powerless as I ever had in my entire life.

‘It’ll be all right,’ I said.

‘I can’t do this.’

‘You can.’

‘I
fucking can’t
.’

‘I’m going to phone the hospital.’ My mobile? On the floor next to the bed. I grabbed it, then put my hand back on her shoulder. ‘You
can
. You’re the strongest person I know.’

The whole way to the hospital, that was what I kept telling her and what I kept thinking. Everything about her was strong and tough—she was so single-minded, so determined. Stuff that would faze a normal person, I told her, one hand on the wheel, the other on her thigh, it was nothing to her. She was going to be fine. Other people did this every day, and she was stronger than them, so she’d do it too.

‘I love you,’ I told her.

‘I love you too.’

‘Really love you.’

She looked at me, crying. ‘Really love you too. Watch the road.’

‘Don’t worry.’

It was a half-hour drive, but I did it in twenty. By that time, the contractions seemed to be at four-minute intervals. I parked up as neatly as I could, and helped Rachel inside the hospital and up the stairs to the fifth floor, to the maternity ward we’d been shown in the pre-natal classes.

‘Rachel Hicks,’ I told the receptionist. ‘I phoned ahead.’

Beside me, Rachel started screaming.

‘It’ll be okay,’ I told her. ‘I promise.’

But I think even then I knew it wouldn’t.

Everything else is a blur of memory.

I can hardly bear to think back on it, and I rarely try. Better, I think, that most of what happened is simply lost. There is nothing important there: nothing worth remembering. But some things remain—just glimpses.

The birth suite resembled an elongated bathroom, lined with sinks and mirrored cabinets. My wife lay on an elaborate bed, surrounded by machinery and cables, her brow damp with sweat and her hair plastered to her head. A hatstand contraption beside the bed had bags of misty fluid hanging from it. A midwife monitored our baby’s heartbeat on a green monitor, as a machine skittered and stitched the contractions across an unfolding roll of gridded paper.

The contractions wouldn’t stabilise. They would come at minute intervals, each lasting a minute, and then there would be nothing for five minutes. Every time they upped the chemical to help stabilise them, the baby’s—our son’s—heartbeat thinned and became erratic. In the same way that—once—I hadn’t wanted him to be, it seemed that he did not want to be born.

Rachel kept apologising to the midwives and doctors. I remember that. Even with everything that was happening, she kept saying sorry, as though it was her fault. It wasn’t, and it wasn’t mine either, but it was all I could think. It was going bad, and it was because of me.

‘It’ll be okay,’ I kept saying.

He did not want to be born.

I want you to be born,
I kept thinking.

I do now.

You have to be okay.

Both of you.

The midwife called it: the contractions weren’t right, but it had been going on for too long. It was time for Rachel to push. And she did, for an hour, squeezing my hand so tightly each time, her face red as a clenched fist.

But he didn’t want to be born.

The surgeon used a suction cup on his head, pulling so hard it was like he was doing a tug of war. People had to brace him. I couldn’t watch. And still my son wouldn’t be born. The whole time, his heartbeat was fluttering. They tried with forceps, the ugliest pieces of metal I’d ever seen, as huge and brutal as swords.

I don’t remember what happened next.

All I know is there was blood in the air: I have a vague impression of that. The room was suddenly full of people. I had time to realise they must have been gathered in the corridor out of sight, ready and waiting, and that there were more of them than I could count. I was shoved back against a wall as they moved around Rachel, talking to her, shouting instructions to each other, disconnecting her from everything.

This can’t be happening.

This doesn’t happen.

My wife’s face. Rachel. Looking at me with the purest expression of terror I’d ever seen. I did my best to smile at her, try to be reassuring, but I was too shocked, too scared.

And then they were rushing her—both of them—down towards emergency surgery. I’d never seen anything move so quickly. I chased the bed down the hallway, telling Rachel I loved her, over and over again, holding her hand for as long as I could, But then they disappeared through green plastic curtains and I was left standing there.

I needed some fresh air, which meant I needed my jacket. But that was in the birth suite, and for some reason the nurses wouldn’t let me go back in for it. It was only afterwards that I realised they were scared of what I would see, and what my reaction would be. In the meantime, one of the midwives had to get it for me.

Outside, it was night again.