An Empty Death
Authors: Laura Wilson
Also by Laura Wilson
A Little Death
Dying Voices
My Best Friend
Hello Bunny Alice
The Lover
A Thousand Lies
Stratton’s War
Dying Voices
My Best Friend
Hello Bunny Alice
The Lover
A Thousand Lies
Stratton’s War
An Empty Death
LAURA WILSON
Orion
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Orion Books,
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK company
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Laura Wilson 2009
The moral right of Laura Wilson to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to
actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 1 4091 0710 1
Typeset at The Spartan Press Limited,
Lymington, Hants
Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural,
renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable
forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to
conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
To Freeway, basset hound and beloved friend, 1998-2008
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Jane Burch, Jade Chandler, Tim Donnelly, Stephanie Glencross, Jane Gregory, George Harding, Liz Hatherell, Jane Havell, Elizabeth Hillman, Maya Jacobs, Fenella Mallallieu, Jemma McDonagh, Claire Morris, Sebastian Sandys, Gillian Sheath, June and William Wilson, Jon Wood, Daphne Wright and Gaby Young for their enthusiasm, advice and support.
‘A man’s alter ego is nothing more than his favourite image of himself.’
Frank W. Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can
‘The version of ourselves we present to the world bears no resemblance to the truth. There isn’t one of us who could afford to be caught. That’s all life is. Trying not to be found out.’
Willie Donaldson s Diary
PART I
One
J
une 1944, Fitzrovia: the night was bright - a bombers’ moon - but the planes were far away. The other side of London, the man thought. He glanced round the rubble-strewn site. Five or six houses must have been knocked out, because all around him were crumbling interior walls with tattered wallpaper, torn-out fireplaces with weeds sprouting in hearths now for ever cold, and window frames, some with the grey remnants of slashed curtains, the harshness of their destruction softened by the pale light. The edges of ill-secured tarpaulins flapped in the light breeze, and nettles pushed their way through mounds of plaster, glass and broken woodwork. The man could even make out the looming bulk of the Middlesex Hospital across the way.
une 1944, Fitzrovia: the night was bright - a bombers’ moon - but the planes were far away. The other side of London, the man thought. He glanced round the rubble-strewn site. Five or six houses must have been knocked out, because all around him were crumbling interior walls with tattered wallpaper, torn-out fireplaces with weeds sprouting in hearths now for ever cold, and window frames, some with the grey remnants of slashed curtains, the harshness of their destruction softened by the pale light. The edges of ill-secured tarpaulins flapped in the light breeze, and nettles pushed their way through mounds of plaster, glass and broken woodwork. The man could even make out the looming bulk of the Middlesex Hospital across the way.
It was time to die again. That was how he thought of it - dying and being reborn, at the same time. He always felt a sense of loss at such times, although he couldn’t have said what it was that he was losing. He’d been relieved - delighted - to walk away from his first life, to cease being the useless, despised failure who got everything wrong. The selves that came after, personas of his choosing, had been more successful, but it was never enough. This one would be different. He’d wanted to be a doctor ever since he was a child, and now he had a name - a life - ready and waiting for just this opportunity. This was simply the penultimate step in his plan. He hadn’t expected it to happen quite like this, but that did not matter.
He stared at the corpse at his feet. The blood on the face had congealed. The body had, simply and with silent finality, stopped working. He’d seen hundreds of cadavers since he’d started his job in the hospital mortuary, but as most of them had been dug up from the ruins and carted in, they hadn’t been fresh. Good job he’d made the most of the chance to study anatomy at first hand, even if a lot of the specimens were pretty mangled - crushed, or with missing limbs, or even, in some cases, decapitated. He’d pieced his knowledge of anatomy together with each human jigsaw, and, once acquired, such information was never wasted. He was already well prepared, but there was a great deal of work still to be done. He’d start tonight.
Best not hang about. If anyone saw him, his new life would be over before it had even begun, and this one, he knew, was going to be the best yet. ‘Goodbye,’ he murmured to the body. It was no longer a man in the sense of being a person; it was merely a vacuum, a space that he would fill. The original owner had no use for it, or - more importantly - for his job any more, so what he was about to do wasn’t stealing; it was simply retrieving something that had been discarded. True, the discarding hadn’t been voluntary, but it was too late to worry about that now. After all, he couldn’t bring the bloke back to life, could he? Nevertheless . . . ‘Thank you, Reynolds,’ he muttered with a moment’s awkward reverence. ‘Much appreciated, old chap.’
Then he turned away, entirely indifferent to everything but the inward surge of excitement and certainty that told him he was, once more - as he had planned all along - the sole controller of his fate. Buoyed with a new sense of purpose, he walked, as quickly as he dared, across the rubble and down the moonlit street. In the distance - somewhere north-east, he thought - bombs were falling.
Two
T
ottenham: the siren woke them at nearly two. Stratton, startled from sleep, sat up too quickly and whacked his head on the low ceiling of the cage-like Morrison shelter that sat in the middle of their front room. ‘Bloody—’
ottenham: the siren woke them at nearly two. Stratton, startled from sleep, sat up too quickly and whacked his head on the low ceiling of the cage-like Morrison shelter that sat in the middle of their front room. ‘Bloody—’
‘Sssh . . .’ said Jenny, his wife.
‘Sorry, love, I didn’t mean to—’
‘No, really, sssh . . . Lie down. Listen.’
It was the tell-tale chugging noise - two-stroke engine gone wrong - of one of the new flying bombs. ‘It’s coming here,’ whispered his wife, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. ‘It’s right on top of us,’ he heard her mutter. ‘Keep going, don’t stop, don’t stop . . .’
Stratton held his breath. Chug-chug-chug - And then it cut out. There was a second’s silence, into which he heard Jenny murmur, ‘Oh, God.’ Stratton held her hand as tight as he could and turned towards her, shielding her rigid body with his - the thought for all the good it will do flashed through his mind but if they were going to go then at least—
The enormous bang rattled the doors and windows as the house seemed to shiver, rock, then settle back once more. There was a crash from the kitchen - plates, perhaps - and Stratton saw a white haze, like November fog, overtake the blackness in the room as plaster drifted down from the ceiling.
Stratton and Jenny remained where they were, silent, for a couple more minutes. ‘Lucky,’ said Stratton, disengaging himself from his wife and stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Looks like we’re still here.’
‘That means somebody else probably isn’t,’ said Jenny, grimly. Then, turning to him, she clutched his shoulder. ‘What about Doris? It could have been over there.’
‘Wait.’ Doris was Jenny’s favourite sister. ‘I’ll see if I can see anything.’
Stratton slid out of the Morrison and fumbled in the dark for his torch, which he took to the front door. It was a clear night and, a couple of streets away, he could see a column of smoke rising through the dark blue sky. ‘Looks like Larkin Avenue.’
‘That’s close. We’d better go and see. Come on.’ Jenny got up and started banging about trying to find her slacks and jumper. ‘Put some trousers on, at least. You can wear them over your pyjamas. And take your coat . . .’
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