Dancing Towards the Blade and Other Stories (7 page)

‘We’re going to have to call it a night, folks.’

I looked up and the woman behind the bar was pulling the empties towards her. I opened my mouth to speak, but she shook her head and even now I’m not quite sure what she meant by it. I glanced at the bill and put thirty dollars on the bar and when the woman had taken the cash away, Ellen began talking again. It was not much above a whisper, but this time I caught it easily enough.

‘I can’t be alone,’ she said.

‘You’ve got your family,’ I said. ‘Your mother’s upstairs.’

‘You know I don’t mean that.’ Her eyes were wide suddenly, and wet. ‘You want me to beg?’

‘No, I don’t want that,’ I said.

She and her mother were sharing a room, so we went to mine. There was not a great deal of choice in the mini-bar, but she didn’t seem too picky, so I told her to help herself. She took a beer and a bag of chips and we sat together on the bed with our feet on the quilt and our backs against the headboard.

The window was open a few inches and the traffic from I-45 was just a hum, like an insect coming close to the glass every so often and retreating again.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to feel,’ she said.

‘Afterwards?’

She nodded.

I remembered her face when she’d been talking in the bar. The way she’d talked about wanting it to hurt. ‘Pretty good, by the sound of it,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I’ll feel good … and
relieved
. I mean how I’m going to feel when I’m watching it happen, though. It’s not something everyone gets to see, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Probably something you never forget, right?’

She made it sound like she was going whale-watching. She slid down the bed a little and kept on closing her eyes for a few seconds at a time.

‘You think you might feel guilty after?’ I asked.

Her eyes stayed closed as she shook her head. ‘Not a chance.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Why the hell should I feel guilty when he never did?’

‘You know that for sure?’

She opened her eyes. ‘Well, it wasn’t like I was visiting him every week or nothing, but I don’t think a man like that has any normal human feelings.’ She took a swig of beer, ignored the dribble that ran down her neck. ‘He wrote us a letter a month or so back and he said he was sorry, all that shit, but it’s easy to come out with that stuff when you know the needle’s just around the corner, right? Probably told to do it by his lawyer. So they’ve got something to show when they’re pushing for a stay, you know?’ She tried to brush away the remains of the chips from her shirt. ‘Said he’d found God as well.’

‘I think that happens a lot.’

‘Yeah, well, tomorrow he’ll get a lot closer to Him, right?’

‘You religious?’

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘So this isn’t a problem for you?’

‘Why should it be?’

‘What happened to “thou shalt not kill”?’

‘Shame
he
never thought about that.’

‘He obviously didn’t believe in anything back then,’ I said.

She shook her head again and screwed her face up like she was getting irritated. ‘Look, it isn’t me that’s going to be doing the killing, is it?’ She raised the bottle, then thought of something. ‘Okay, smart-ass, what about, “as you reap, you shall sow”? It’s something like that, right?’

I nodded. ‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘Right.’ She turned on to her side suddenly and leaned up on one elbow. She slid a leg across the bed and lifted it over mine. ‘Anyway, what the hell are we talking about this stuff for?’

‘You were the one started talking about God,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well, there’s other things I’d rather be talking about.’ She blinked slowly which she probably thought was sexy, but which made her seem even drunker. ‘Other things I’d rather be
doing
.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I know that’s what you want. I saw you looking in the restaurant.’

‘Yeah, I was looking.’

‘So?’

‘You’ve had too much to drink.’

‘I’ve had just enough.’

I smiled. ‘You won’t feel good about yourself tomorrow.’

‘I’ve got more important things to worry about tomorrow,’ she said. She put a hand between my legs. ‘Now are you going to get about your business, or what?’

I did what she was asking. It didn’t take long and it was pretty clear that she needed it a damn sight more than I did. She cried a little afterwards, but I just let her and I’m not sure which of us got to sleep first.

I left early without making any noise, and when I turned at the door to look at her wrapped up in the thin hotel sheet, I was thinking that, aside from the fact that I
am
crazy about nachos and salsa, almost everything I’d told her about myself had been a lie.

God only knows why they call it ‘The Walls’. They’re thick enough and tall enough for sure, but the men behind them have got a damn sight more to worry about than what’s keeping them inside.

The Huntsville Unit in particular.

One of the deputy wardens led me across the compound from the Visitor’s Waiting Area and in through a grey metal door. They try to keep the families separate until the last possible moment, which is understandable, I guess, and even though there was only me and some crazy woman who’d been writing to Anthony for the last few years, we had our own escort. The prison chaplain would be a ‘witness’ too, of course, but I guessed he had no choice but to be kind of neutral about what was happening, so he didn’t really count.

The deputy warden’s highly polished shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor as we walked toward the room next to the execution chamber. Then he opened the door and politely stood aside as I walked in.

The place was pretty crowded.

I knew there would be a few State officials as well as representatives from the media, but I hadn’t figured on there being that many people and it took me a few seconds before I spotted her. She was sitting on the front row of plastic chairs, her mother on one side of her, the other older woman and her psycho brother on the other side. Like everyone else, she’d turned to look when the door opened and I saw the colour drain from her face when I nodded to her. Her mother leaned close to whisper something, but she just shook her head and turned round again.

I walked towards the front of the room and took a seat on the end of the second row. We sat in silence for a couple minutes, save for some coughing and the scrape of metal as chairs got shifted, then one of the officers ran through the procedure and raised the blind at the window.

Tony was already strapped to the gurney.

There were three men inside the chamber with him and one of them, who I figured was the warden, asked Tony if he wanted to say anything. Tony nodded and one of the other men lowered a microphone in front of his face.

Tony turned his head as far as he was able and said how sorry he was. For what he’d done, and for all the shit he’d laid at his own family’s door down the years. He finished up by saying that he wasn’t afraid and that everyone on the other side of the glass should take a good look at his life and try to learn something. I’m not quite sure what he meant by that and, things being how they were, it wasn’t like I had the chance to ask him.

He closed his eyes, then the warden gave the signal and everything went quiet.

Three drugs, one after the other: the sedative, the paralytic and the poison.

It took five minutes or so and Tony didn’t really react a great deal. I saw his lips start to go blue and from then until it was finished, I paid as much attention to
her
face as his. She knew I was watching her, I could tell that. That I was thinking about all the things she’d said, and the things she’d asked me to do to her the night before at the Huntsville Palms Hotel.

Wanting to see just how good she felt about herself the next day.

I left the room before she did, but I waited around just long enough to get one last look at her. Her face was the colour of oatmeal and I couldn’t tell if her mother was holding onto her or if it was the other way around. I guessed she was right about one thing; that it would not be something she would forget.

I had to shield my eyes against the glare when I stepped back out into the courtyard and walked towards my car. I drove out through the gates and past a small group of protesters with placards and candles. A few of them were singing some hymn I couldn’t place and others were holding up Tony’s picture. Later on, I would be coming back to collect my brother’s body and make the arrangements, but until I did, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Right then, all I wanted was to get away from The Walls and drive south-west on I-45.

To get another look at that big beautiful lake in the daylight.

Now read the beginning of

the new Tom Thorne novel

The Dying Hours

How much blood?

When he’d finally found the right website, once he’d waded through all the mealy-mouthed crap about having something to live for and trying to seek some kind of professional help, once he’d found a site that really told him what he needed to know, that was the one question they hadn’t answered. All the other stuff was there: How and where to cut, the bathwater helping when it came to raising the body temperature and engorging the veins or whatever it was. Keeping the flow going …

It was irritating, because once he’d decided what he was going to do he was keen to get everything right. To have all the information at his fingertips. So, how much blood did the body have to lose before … the end? Pints of the stuff, presumably. It certainly looks to have lost a fair amount already. He watches the clouds of claret swirl in the water, sees it sink and spin until finally there isn’t an inch of water that isn’t red. Until he can’t see the knife on the bottom of the bath anymore.

Shocking, just how much of it there is.

He thinks about this for a few minutes more and finally decides that in the end, it doesn’t really matter. He might not know exactly how much blood will need to be lost, how many pints or litres or whatever it is now, but there is one obvious answer and it’ll certainly do.

Enough.

Not painful either, at least not after the initial cuts which had definitely stung a bit. He’d read that it was a pretty peaceful way to go, certainly compared to some and they weren’t an option anyway. This was perfect. Messy, but perfect.

There’s another question he’s been wrestling with on and off since he’d made his mind up and as far as he knows there isn’t any website that can give him so much as a clue with this one.

What comes afterwards?

He’s never been remotely religious, never had any truck with God-botherers, but right now he can’t help wondering. Now, sitting where he is. Christ on a bike, had the water level actually
risen
? Was there really
that
much blood?

So … the afterwards, the whatever-ever-after, the afterlife.

Nothing, probably. That was what he’d always thought, just darkness, like when you’re asleep and not dreaming about anything.

No bad thing, he reckons, not considering the shit most people wade through their whole lives, but even so, it might be nice if there was a bit more going on than that. Not clouds and harps, choirs and all that carry-on, but, you know … peace or whatever.

Yeah, peace would be all right. Quiet.

He looks up when the man in the bath, the man who is actually doing all the bleeding, starts to moan again.

‘Shush. I’ve told you, haven’t I?’

The man in the bath moves, his pale body squeaking against the bottom of the tub. He begins to thrash and cry out, blubbing and blowing snot bubbles, spraying blood across the tiles and sending waves of bright red water sloshing out on to the bathmat.

The man watching him adjusts his position on the toilet seat and moves his feet to avoid the water. ‘Take it easy,’ he says. He gently lays his magazine to one side and leans towards the figure in the bath. ‘Why don’t you calm down, old son, and have another mouthful of that Scotch?’ He nods towards the bloodsmeared bottle at the end of the bath. ‘It’ll help, I read that. Just have another drink and close your eyes and let yourself drift off, eh?’ He reaches for his magazine.

‘Soon be over, I promise …’

PART ONE

CROSSING THE

BRIDGE

ONE

Tom Thorne leaned down and gently lifted the small glass bottle from the bedside table. It was already open, the white cap lying next to the syringe, a few drops of cloudy liquid pooled beneath the tip of the needle. He raised the bottle and took a sniff. The faint smell was unfamiliar; something like sticking plasters or disinfectant. He offered it up to the woman waiting behind him, raised it towards her face.

‘What do you reckon?’

He had spent the last half an hour taking a good look around the house. In the bathroom he had found plenty of medication, but that was not particularly surprising given the ages of those involved. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed and there were no signs of forced entry, save for the broken window in the back door. That was down to the woman now taking a good long sniff at the bottle, a young PC named Nina Woodley. She and her partner had been the first officers at the scene after the dispatch had been sent out.

‘That’s insulin,’ Woodley said, finally. ‘My brother’s a diabetic, so …’

Thorne put the bottle back. He pulled off the thin plastic gloves and stuffed them back into the pocket of his Met vest.

‘Thing is,’ Woodley said, ‘it’s normally prescribed.’

‘So?’

‘There’s no label on the bottle.’

They both turned as the bedroom door opened and one of the PCs who had been stationed downstairs stuck his head around it. Before the officer could speak, the on-call doctor pushed past him into the room; young, rosy-cheeked and rugger-bugger-ish. He spent no more than a few minutes examining the bodies, while Thorne watched from the corner of the room. Downstairs, Woodley hammered a small piece of MDF in place across the broken window while another PC made tea for everyone.