Corpsing (27 page)

First, I went shopping: to a cycle-equipment place just south of Sloane Square. Inside, it smelt freshly and wonderfully of rubber. Without wasting any time, I bought myself a very expensive bike – a Trek Death-Raider. (Everything was to be fitting: Synecdoche City.) I also bought a cycling top, shorts and shoes that were as close to the hitman’s as possible, mirrored shades, a Day-Glo helmet, a pack of three pollution masks and a large courier bag.

In the shop’s covered-in-decals changing room, I tried all of it on. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was – for the first time in months – delighted with what I saw. The thing I liked most about these clothes was how modern and efficient they made me feel. Lycra. Nylon. Viscose. None of these fabrics had existed before this century. Christ, even bikes had hardly been invented back then.

I couldn’t help comparing my half-wasted legs to the solid bike-powering machines of the hitman. But that didn’t matter. By assuming this costume, I was drawing closer to something: closer to the man who had turned me into what I had become. He’d done this almost entirely, but not single-handedly. Really, it had been a team effort: Lily in life and death had contributed just as much: Lily and her deadborn, deathborn baby.

Looking at myself, I felt the kind of power that the hitman must have felt – sexing himself up for the kill.

His plan was obvious now. He could become just one among a dozen bike couriers, nipping between film companies in Soho. He would blend in, morph out, kill someone, kill another person, morph back in again, blend.

His plan – his failed plan.

After getting changed back into my normal clothes, I went up to the counter and paid. I put it all on my credit card. Next month’s bill was going to be fun. Not my problem, though – by then I intended to be living on the state: prison food, prison wages. Either that or dead.

‘Don’t you want a bike lock?’ the grungy assistant said.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Don’t need one.’

I left the bike behind. I would pick it up on Friday, the day I needed it. They’d have it ready, fine-tuned.

‘What’s up? Have you decided to talk?’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘What about?’

‘Something.’

‘I’m interested,’ she said. ‘In anything.’

We arranged to meet in an hour.

Next, I took a cab to Le Corbusier and made the booking for Friday evening – in person. Nothing substantial had changed: nothing that would destroy the symmetry of my revenge. The layout of the tables was identical. The maître d’ wasn’t around, but my favourite waiter was.

‘You remember,’ I said. ‘I wanted a booking.’

‘Of course,’ Michael said. ‘How are you?’

‘A lot better, thanks.’

‘When for?’

‘Friday evening. Eight o’clock. And I’d like… my usual table.’

‘The reservation…’

‘Isn’t in my name. It’s Pale, Dorothy Pale.’

I wasn’t risking Alun’s name: and Dorothy was the one I wanted the police to identify, straight off. Dorothy was to make the first editions and the mid-evening news.

‘For two?’

‘For two.’

‘She’s the actress, isn’t she?’ Michael asked.

‘Yes.’ I said. ‘A close friend.’

As he wrote her name in the reservations book, I was conscious of his being unusually conscious of me. An idea occurred: he might be useful. I decided to chance it.

‘I’m busy for the next couple of days, but how would you like to go out sometime – for a drink?’

He looked at me – our relationship changing in a way he seemed to have hoped for. His eyes were twinkling and his voice went up a couple of notes.

‘That’d be lovely.’

‘I’ll give you a call.’

‘Okay.’

He pulled a card out of his back pocket and gave it to me. Beneath his name was the single word
ACTOR.

‘See ya soon.’

I hated being cruel. It had just been an experiment. After it all went down, he’d probably understand.

Ah, his little face!

I felt like a very minor celebrity, hitting on groupies – obvious but sometimes fun. And, god, the guy had seen me being shot. He’d been around for the blood. In fact, actually, he’d saved my life. I owed him a drink if nothing else.

I spent a few minutes looking over the back entrance to Le Corbusier. Nothing special. It would do.

Sheila was a frowzy blonde woman, with stained teeth and the general atmosphere of knowing how if not to dominate then at least to exist alongside men. She had been submerged in a tobacco cloud of masculinity for so long that her arms and legs had thickened, her voice deepened, her manner altered, her values adapted. Her earrings were as unfeminizing as those of a female body builder. She wore too many large gold rings upon her fingers – suggesting a sentimentality that might come in handy when interviewing the bereaved. Even at a supposedly left-wing paper like the
Mirror
these working-class talismans (like a lucky-charm bracelet clinking up against the Queen’s white satin gloves) would hold her back: she needed to minimalize her lifestyle to maximalize her potential. A career adviser would have told her these things. (A career adviser would probably have warned her off the news desk.)

Sheila looked harassed but was trying to suppress any hint of impatience. She was clearly angry with me for not having chosen to speak to her at a time when the story was hot. Now that I’d
changed my mind, she was flattered that I’d chosen her. (Even though, in print, the
Mirror
had offered me the chance to put my side of the story – blank cheque.) She was, however, or so I thought, angry at herself for even being flattered. She wanted to be hard and neutral, but couldn’t: this was
her
story – she’d been first to arrive on my doorstep and last to leave. Righteously did she deserve it; passionately (though not too deeply) did she desire it.

The waitress brought our orders. Sheila had capitulated in the face of Irish coffee and a large Danish.

A Dictaphone sat on the table between us, half-covered by a copy of the
Sun.

‘How much are you thinking of?’

I hadn’t thought of money at all. However, the grander gesture, of not taking any or giving it all to charity,
did
– on the moment – appeal.

‘This isn’t an interview,’ I said. ‘You can quote me on it – but only on Monday. If you don’t agree to that, we stop talking now.’

‘I need to know what
it
is first.’ She offered me a cigarette; lit one for herself; ash flew over her Danish; she tutted; hips-lips, lips-hips.

‘It’s a story – a new story. A new spin on an old story.’

‘Listening,’ she said.

And I told her as directly as possible: ‘When Lily was killed, she was six or seven weeks pregnant.’

‘Oh my god.’ She bit down upon her thumbnail.

‘I found this out from Asif. He didn’t tell you, which surprises me: I guess he thought there was still a chance he could keep his job.’

‘He’s lost it now, you know. From what I’ve heard he was very pissed off with you.’

‘I wonder, do pathologists have to respect confidentiality – no disclosure of what passed between doctor and corpse?’

‘Anyway,’ she said, smiling now she knew there was a story.

‘I wanted to find out if I was the father. It was a boy. You
would want to know, wouldn’t you? Anyway, I don’t think Asif knows: the DNA stuff was done by the police forensic people. So the police
do
know – and they won’t tell me. I think a bit of pressure from you might speed them up.’

‘Well…’ Sheila said. ‘Don’t overestimate –’

‘I just want to know who to mourn, whether to mourn.’

‘You say you want to know who the father was. But why? Isn’t it certain it was you?’

‘No,’ I said, neutrally. ‘It’s not.’

‘I see.’

‘Lily was having an affair – several.’

‘With who?’

‘Alun Grey, and several more. But he’s the only real possibility – I’ve checked the others.’

‘Who’s he?’

Yes! Not tabloid-famous now, but he would be – soon.

‘The actor – Shakespeare.’

‘The one you kept going to see at the theatre?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Damn,’ she bit hard on her thumb. ‘I knew I should have checked that whole thing out. I suppose you were turning up just to piss him off?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Are you sure I can’t quote you?’

‘Not till after the weekend.’

‘Why not?’

‘Do you think you’ll be able to find anything out?’

‘The Met can be a bit leaky, now and again. At worse, we might be able to force a press conference out of them – make them look shitty and mean. You might need to do a bit of crying for the cameras. If you really want to play the victim, that is.’

‘I don’t want to have to do anything. That’s your job.’

‘We’ll be back on your doorstep.’

‘I’ll only speak to you, Sheila.’

She opened her handbag and pulled out a crumpled contract.

‘Sign this,’ she said.

‘In the politest possible way,
fuck off.’

‘It was worth a try.’

I took a sip of my cappuccino, then asked: ‘Where do you think you’ll start?’

‘Asif. The hospital. Then try and get the Met to spring a leak. Then I’ll publish.’

‘When?’

‘If no-one else gets it… this Thursday.’

‘Don’t worry, contract or not I won’t talk to anyone else.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, about to start flirting, but giving up the attempt as she wouldn’t have done a few years earlier. Now the next question came blankly, almost without interest: ‘Why me?’

‘Because you’re a woman,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t see too many more of those outside my door.’

‘Right.’

‘Have you ever been pregnant?’ I asked.

‘I had an abortion about ten years ago.’ Courageously matter-of-fact.

‘Then you know how I feel. Oh, Lily was going to have the thing aborted anyway – but don’t print that.’

‘Wow,’ Sheila said. ‘Are you alright? You don’t look too well.’

‘You’re the first person I’ve told.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she smiled. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

We stood up together.

‘Aren’t you going to have that?’ I asked, pointing to her untouched Danish.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not hungry any more.’

As I stood there, holding on to a rail of stainless steel, I expected to feel some sort of connection with the people around me. All of us had gone out to do a day’s work, all of us were returning home more slowly and uncomfortably than we would have wished. Instead, I felt an almost total separation from, and – I have to say it – superiority to, every single person in the carriage. They merely had jobs; I had a mission.

For the first time, I realized how real criminals felt. (Strict in my definition, I felt that I would only become a real criminal myself after I’d shot Dorothy. Buying the gun wasn’t enough.) It wasn’t just the fact they committed crimes – took something without paying for it, left someone permanently injured. It was also that they walked around, day to day, with the quiet knowledge of what they’d done. Of course, given this knowledge, they were always going to feel superior to all the tax-paying, law-abiding John and Jane Dohs surrounding them. Those with the knowledge were different. They had something extra. They had seen beneath the surface. They knew how the thing really worked. They were outlaws. And so was I.

Standing there, among the dead-faced strap-hangers, I thought about my beautiful gun – and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

Anne-Marie was in the living room, watching TV.

‘Pack up,’ I said. ‘We’re moving out.’

‘I’ve phoned all the actors,’ she said.

‘We’ve got to go.’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’

‘You phoned all of them?’

‘Yes. They’re coming at the times you wanted.’

‘Great. Get packed.’

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘I’ll tell you when we get in the car,’ I said.

She didn’t oppose me – nurse-humouring a fractious patient. Of course, because she didn’t live with me, she hardly had any stuff to get together. And all I cared about was my gun.

Still, packing up took me about an hour. I finished with a suitcase full of clothes, many of which I might never wear again. There were the other usual holiday things: alarm clock, shaving kit, medicines. I also fetched a length of good strong rope from the garden shed. Anything else I didn’t have but needed I would buy.

We carried the bags out and stowed them in the boot of Anne-Marie’s car.

Anne-Marie got in the driver’s seat.

As I walked back towards the flat, I looked around for any of the familiar following-me cars. They weren’t there – not on my street, anyway.

I locked the front door.

‘Before we drive off,’ I said, after I’d sat down in the passenger seat, ‘I want to tell you that I think we’re going to be followed – and you’re going to have to get rid of them.’

Anne-Marie looked round as obviously as any person could.

‘Don’t!’ I said.

‘Please don’t patronize me,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do, then?’

‘Just drive off. We’ll see first.’

It was nine o’clock already. One last time, I tried to think of anything I might have forgotten, anything I might have left behind. But there was nothing.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

I was slightly disappointed not to see any of the parked cars pull out behind us.

‘Keep going,’ I said.

‘What else am I going to do?’

Our tail joined us on Mortlake High Street.

‘Go left here,’ I said, to confirm – and confirmed it was.

‘That Mercedes is the one following us,’ I said.

‘No-it-isn’t,’ said Anne-Marie.

‘Try driving in circles for a bit,’ I said.

Anne-Marie went twice round the next big roundabout. The Mercedes followed us all the way. Anne-Marie was convinced.

‘Who are they?’ she asked.

‘Friends of my friends from yesterday afternoon,’ I said. ‘Or the police. Or journalists. I don’t know any more – and I’m almost certain it doesn’t make any real difference. Now, do you think you can get rid of them?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Notting Hill. Lily’s old flat.’

Anne-Marie smiled. She liked the idea of being able to get in amongst all Lily’s old stuff.

‘Come on,’ I said.

She tried a few tentative manœuvres – accelerating away from traffic lights, stopping to fill up on petrol. Nothing seemed to work. Then she said, ‘Who do you think they’re following, the car or you?’

‘Me, I’d say.’

‘I’ll drop you at the next Underground. Give me a ring on my mobile when you get to the flat, and I’ll come over.’

‘What if they keep following you?’

‘I’ll just go home – you can still phone me.’

I almost loved her, then.

At the next Tube station, Anne-Marie slowed the car. I got out and rushed in. I didn’t look back.

Later, Anne-Marie told me that, at the exact moment I bolted, the Mercedes had been unsighted by a bus. The men in the Merc (who she described as ‘thugs’), didn’t notice that I was gone until a couple of hundred yards later – by which time I was safely on a Tube train.

However, although I was in no immediate physical danger, my anxiety levels increased. I’d escaped, but would Anne-Marie?

She still had all my stuff in the back of her car – including, oh god, the bag with the gun.

I couldn’t spend too much time worrying about that – things would either happen or they wouldn’t. Instead, I concentrated on making my way surreptitiously to Lily’s. As it was clear that no-one had followed me on to the Underground, I took the most direct route to Notting Hill. But once there, I approached the flat in a very indirect and cautious manner. When I was sure that I wasn’t being watched, I snuck in the front door.

After a quick look round to make sure everything was alright, I called Anne-Marie.

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I lost them.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Don’t keep underestimating me.’

This episode seemed to have changed her slightly – she was more in control: of me, of us.

‘You can come over,’ I said. ‘If you like.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Anne-Marie.

She arrived half an hour later, and we carried my stuff in and up.

‘You must feel a bit weird being here,’ she said, looking round the living room.

I explained that most of the weirdness had occurred during my previous visit.

Anne-Marie examined the kitchen just as if she were flat-hunting.

‘You know,’ she said. ‘I never got much sense of Lily from this place. It still doesn’t seem very – you know –
her.’

I resented this observation all the more for recognizing its truth. Lily’s tastes had always come off-the-peg. Whatever was ‘in’ that month, that’s what ended up in our flat. Her flat. It scared me that Anne-Marie could be so perceptive.

‘Lily was very busy,’ I said. ‘She didn’t have much time for home-making.’

‘Busy
isn’t exactly the description I was looking for. I know she was busy.’

We went through into the bedroom.

I lay back on the bed in the hope that Anne-Marie would join me, simplifying things. She didn’t. Instead, she pulled open one of the closet doors.

‘God,’ she said. ‘All her clothes.’

For a moment or two she flicked hanger and thumbed fabric, emitting the occasional hum of approval or whistle of envy. Then Anne-Marie turned round and, looking at me very directly, said: ‘Are you still in love with her?’

All the questions.

I tried to calculate the risks of admitting out loud that I was (crying, losing control, pissing Anne-Marie off); and my moment
of calculation gave me away – gave Anne-Marie time to take advantage.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, sitting down non-sexually on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s not as if I can’t see for myself.’

(Non-sexually. This was about as unsexy as it gets – telling an almost-girlfriend about a dead ex-girlfriend.)

‘Lily was…’

Anne-Marie waited. I knew what she was thinking: I might have loved Lily (might
still
do), but I’d never come close to knowing her. If I had known her, I could have talked about her – and, as I talked, it would have seemed as if Lily were only in the next room; that we could hear her feet squeaking and creaking on the polished pine; smell the sweet smoke of her just-lit cigarette; hear her humming, monotonously, as always. But, in that flat, at that moment, Lily was a completely dead thing – a dead thing dying again – dying through my inability to make her even partially live.

Suddenly, superstitiously, I leapt up off the bed, strode over to one of the wall-closets. Something in me was convinced that behind its blank white door I would find Lily’s upright skeleton – not mouldering or clad with flesh-remnants, but clean and fresh as an anatomical model.

I pulled open the closet door.

The smell of Lily was instantly around and about me: half-alive, half-dead. All of a sudden, Lily was present – present in all her selfishness. (Lily’s selfishness had been her skeleton: it had held all that beautiful flesh in place. If her cheekbones were a photographer’s dream, it was the nightmare below the surface that defined them.) She was present for Anne-Marie, as well; showing up through my distress like bones on an X-ray. Being skeletal had always been Lily’s one true ambition – and now it was doubly achieved: here, in our minds; there, in her grave.

When I turned round, Anne-Marie was looking at me with real concern. I needed to say something, to explain my mad leap.

‘Why don’t you try something on?’ I suggested, as casually as I could.

Anne-Marie got up from the bed and came over to where I was standing.

‘Can I?’ she said childishly.

I hadn’t expected her to want to put on Lily’s clothes.

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘What would
you
like me to wear?’

If I was going to be sick, I might as well projectile vomit: I picked out the ghost dress.

‘Put this on,’ I said, picking the hanger out.

‘This?’ said Anne-Marie, obviously delighted that I’d started with one of the designer frocks.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Right,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Out,’ she said.

The hard floors and bare walls of the bedroom were turning our talk to minimalistic monosyllables.

I went out into the living room, then through into the kitchen for a glass of water. It was a cup of tea I really wanted, but I knew there was a chance that Anne-Marie would want sex in Lily’s old clothes. The thought of a cup of tea going cold whilst we fucked was somehow unbearable.

I tried to work out why I was doing this, having this done; partly, it seemed to me, for the chance – once again – of humiliating Anne-Marie. I knew, from the way her hips felt in my hands, from her heaviness against and on top of me, that she was several sizes larger than Lily. But if humiliation were my main motive, I should have gone for a frock from Lily’s modelling period. That was when she’d been skinniest. (Most of the weight had been lost down the toilet bowl, but a few pounds had dissolved into the swimming pool.) The ghost dress was loose. It would accommodate and perhaps even flatter Anne-Marie’s curves.

‘Ready!’ Anne-Marie shouted.

I wanted longer to work out how I felt. My emotions were so complicated that I seemed to spend most of my time just spooling through them on fast-forward – checking to see what was on the tape; intending to go back later and watch the whole thing properly.

As I entered, Anne-Marie was inspecting herself modellishly in the full-length mirror.

‘Ta-dah!’ she exclaimed, spinning round to strike a pose: one of her arms up, ostrich fashion; the other punching her hip.

I looked at her, trying to put my face into some sort of unhorrified shape.

There was the sound of thinly stitched seams unpicking. The arm was tearing out at the armpit; a rip was forming a couple of inches beneath Anne-Marie’s left breast, exposing flesh.

I’d miscalculated.

At that exact moment, Anne-Marie looked so pathetic I almost loved her. (That she was prepared to make herself appear this grotesque, and all for me.) She wasn’t a model, never could have been – no-one knew that better than her; she, who’d sat watching nervous schoolgirls turn into psychotic world-famous stick insects. I knew, too: I’d lived with a model. I knew how models related to clothes – how they dived into them as casually as into a hotel swimming-pool; how the fabric swished, watery, into the right shapes – flowing over the hollows they have where most of us have bulges.

Anne-Marie held the pose; held the smile. She had to. Where she was standing (submerged in a dress where Lily once floated), there was no oxygen. She had to hold the smile, the breath. To breathe out would be to bring drowning that little bit closer. And, more practically, breathing out might risk another rip under her other breast.

By default I had become Anne-Marie’s life-guard: either I rescued her, or she would turn blue-lipped and lose the irises of her eyes in the dead heavens of her skull.

I dived in, putting my fingers into the small tear – feeling Anne-Marie’s pitiful white skin against my knuckles – and I pulled the swimming-pool surface apart: giving her room to breathe, allowing her body out into a world of space that wouldn’t satirize it, pulling myself under, pulling her out.

‘Agh!’ she cried. ‘Don’t!’

‘Why not?’

She’d taken her bra and pants off.

There was now a shingle-size tear around Anne-Marie’s middle. The fabric was getting tight and ropey as we pulled against it. It would only rip in one direction – sideways; and we’d done all the sideways ripping we could. To rip more, we needed scissors – or risked bruising and crushed nipples and you-hurt-me recriminations. I paused: a final rescue needed. I pulled my T-shirt off over my head – allowing her to copy. The top half of the dress came off, leaving her semi-bruised by her own struggling fists; as if she’d been fighting or woken up puffy out of nightmare-sleep. As she started to pull the bottom half down, I saw a tear appear around her belly – I pulled it, and – mercifully – we had our first modellish, physical luck in the whole dress scene: it started to peel away in a diagonal downwards strip.

‘Turn around,’ I said.

Anne-Marie started the wrong way but almost immediately corrected herself. I pulled at the dress, extracting it into an uneven four-inch strip – until I reached the harder-stitched hem at the bottom; and Anne-Marie had to step out into my sarcastic arms.

We were laughing, for want of any better or more socially approved response. To tell the truth, we were lost – caught in a moral white-out. There was so much guilt in what we’d been doing, and so much innocence – it was hard to tell which predominated. The whole scene felt so much like the very very end of childhood and the earliest beginnings of middle age (dressing up, fancy dress).

This was the moment we both knew our relationship couldn’t
last – but because of the difficulty and pain we’d gone through together to gain that knowledge, we felt a sudden tenderness for each other.

On coming into the flat we had known we were going to have sex but we hadn’t known what sort of sex it was going to be. Now, we knew: we were going to have the sex of pathos, of anticipated regret.

When we finally fell asleep, it was with our backs to each other – frankly separate.