Divorcing Jack (8 page)

I crossed the road to a phone box and was pleasantly surprised to find it in working order. I phoned Patricia. Her dad answered. He said she wasn't in and after some persuasion he told me she'd said she was going down to Belfast to collect some things but not to tell me if I phoned.

The pizzeria's twenty minutes turned out to be forty-five and even then they didn't look particularly concerned. Hey, sometimes you've got to wait for quality,' a spotty guy behind the counter said when I complained. When I was going out the door I heard him say quietly, 'And sometimes you've got to wait for shite too,' but I was too hungry to punch his lights out. And too small.

On the corner of Margaret's street a small, thick-set man with a thick moustache and short black beard stopped me and asked for a light.

'Sorry, I don't smoke.'

'Never worry, mate,' he said, moving past me with a curly, annoying grin on his face, 'stunts your growth anyway.'

Margaret's front door was slightly open. I pushed it and walked into the darkened hall. I shouted: 'The pizza man's here!' Up the stairs and headed for the kitchen. There was no reply. I turned the light on in the lounge and stopped dead in my tracks. It had been turned upside down. Seats ripped, drawers emptied, records out of their sleeves strewn across the floor. Margaret's portrait had been slashed and hung in tatters from the wall. I dropped the pizzas and ran up the stairs in the dark to Margaret's room.

It was lit by the dull orange glow of her heavily shaded bedside lamp. Margaret was in bed, the thin cotton sheet pulled up around her neck, just as I'd left her. Her eyes were focused on the far wall, on nothing.

I said: 'What the fuck's going on?'

Her eyes shifted to mine, her lips parted slightly and she made the nearest sound possible to a human whimper.

I ran to the bed. As I touched the side of it her face contorted in pain.

'Jesus, Margaret, what's ... ?'

I pulled the sheet back. She was naked underneath. Her upper body was soaked in blood. It oozed from three or four black-tinged holes. I felt her whole body vibrate. I tried to pull her to me, hold her safe, but it was like trying to pick up a spider's web intact, blood fell everywhere and she let out a little helpless cry. I let her back softly onto the pillow, her eyes wide now, pleading hopelessly. She raised her arm slightly, touched me, pulled me lightly towards her. She kissed my cheek. Lips hard, cold. Her head moved sideways to my ear and I could barely hear her whisper above the tom-tom thump of my own heart. 'Dan

Barely a voice at all.

'Dan ... div ...'

Another tremor shook her.

'Margaret ... shhhh ... let me get...'

'Dan ... no ... no...' And her words were slurred. 'Dan ... divorce ... Jack ... divorce ... Jack...'

And then her head fell back and she was silent. She took a couple of shallow breaths. And then she was dead.

I stared at her for I don't know how long. I pulled the sheet back up over her, tucking it in under her chin so that only her calm, white face showed. Her eyes were closed and she looked like she was only asleep.

Suddenly my whole body was shaking uncontrollably, great rolling waves of shock that rocked the whole bed. I gripped the side of it till they stopped, my blood-soaked hands putting eerie prints on the sheet.

I stood up but my legs buckled under me and I crashed to the floor unconscious.

I thought people only fainted in films. And then it was only women.

I don't know how long I was out. I didn't dream. I was still on the floor beside Margaret's bed. For a brief moment I hoped it had been a dream, but then I saw Margaret's face again and the tears began to roll down my cheeks. I scurried away across the floor and into the bathroom.

I was sick in the washbasin, retched until there was nothing left to come up, then washed my face. I sat down on the toilet seat to stop myself shaking. Margaret was dead in the other room. Dead in the other room. Dead. Dead. And then I heard it.

A soft, stealthy creaking from the stairs; soft, but not soft, like a dormouse in jackboots. In my rush to be sick I hadn't turned the bathroom light on and the hall was still in darkness. The bathroom door was three quarters closed. The only light came faintly from Margaret's room. I could barely make out a small shadowy figure making its way cautiously up the stairs.

I tried desperately to control the vibrations that were racking my body, my leg was tapping against the cool ceramic of the toilet bowl like some kind of spastic Morse code, shouting out, HEY, I'M IN HERE. My breath only came in rasping flurries, welcomed on each occasion by a manic waving of my arms like a mime artist on acid.

The figure drew nearer. Margaret was dead. Margaret was dead and I knew in every inch of my shuddering body that I was next, this dumb spinning top of a body was going to die on a toilet seat in his lover's house.

And then I was up from the seat, possessed of a madness born of desperation, determined to go out fighting, a last gasp at life that was about to be taken from me for a reason I would never know. I felt the hot blood course in my veins, all that vibrating shock distilled now into a surge of vengeful violence. I flung the door open and with arms flailing like Chinese table tennis bats plunged into the darkness.

We collided at the top of the stairs, he with a high-pitched wail of shock, me screaming a death scream, and we tumbled together, his taut body cushioning me down to the bottom steps where I bounced off him and thumped against the door.

I lay there for a moment in stunned silence, then pulled myself into a crouch ready to plunge back into the fray. But there was only silence.

I hissed into the darkness, 'Come on then, you fucker!' All the time waiting for the flash of a gun and the searing heat of a bullet that would finish me the way it had finished Margaret, but the only response was a low growl from the kitchen.

After a few moments I stood up and carefully crossed to the lounge door and pushed it fully open; the light blinded me and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust.

A dark form lay motionless at the bottom of the stairs, folded uncomfortably, like a widower's sandwich.

I approached cautiously. Prodded. Poked. Got a look at the face. Dead. It looked like a broken neck.

I walked into the lounge and sat amongst the chaos in the chair by the record player. The smell of the pizza made me feel sick again.

My head was pounding. I was soaked in sweat and I could feel the dull throb of panic creeping into my body. Visions from the last few days flashed through my mind: fucking up my interview, meeting Margaret in the park, getting beaten up by my wife, making love to Margaret. Upstairs Margaret was dead, shot, murdered in the space of a few minutes while I was out buying food.

I sat and thought of lovely Margaret. I had heard the last words she would ever speak, she had died in my arms. I wondered what she would think of me now, would she still love me now that I had pushed her mother down the stairs and broken her neck?

I woke up in a room with two corpses and a radio alarm which almost delivered a third.

Seven or eight times during the night I lifted up the phone to call the police, only to put it down again. What could I say? Uh, my girlfriend has been murdered and I've killed her mother by mistake? I knew that every minute I put off phoning them I was getting myself into deeper water, but I could see no way out. If I admitted one I'd be a dead cert for the other. There was no way they would accept her mother's death as an accident. I'd reported enough courts to recognize a crap story when I heard one. Why hadn't her mum just said something instead of sneaking up barely lit stairs? Just hello, anyone there? Just called her daughter's name like any reasonably sane individual would do? She must have taken for her role model those dizzy blondes who always entered dark caves in horror movies when the obvious route was to get the hell out.

Some time around midnight I lifted the pizza from the floor and picked my way through the mess of the lounge. The kitchen had been turned over as well. Patch was out of his basket, ears pricked, snarling, advancing slowly but aggressively towards me. He was limping. He'd been whacked but he wasn't in a mood to appreciate being alive.

I stuck out a finger towards him and shouted with as much viciousness as I could muster, 'You fuckin' move and I'll kill you!'

He stopped. The ears went down. He sat. All bark no action. I went to the back door to let him out but then stopped. Who could tell what was outside? A sensible killer would be long gone, but since when were killers sensible? He could be lurking in the garden, or out front, waiting for a chance to kill me as well and then I cursed myself for switching the kitchen light on and alerting him to my presence, and then I cursed myself again for being so bloody stupid because I knew if he had wanted to kill me he'd have killed me by now. And then I thought what I hadn't dared to think and the thought put me into a kind of daze and I opened the back door slowly to let Patch out, then closed it and locked it.

Patricia. My Patricia. Not my Patricia.

Patricia had always had a violent streak.

Patricia had attacked Margaret's house.

Patricia was not home when the attack took place.

Patricia wouldn't have a notion where to lay her hands on a gun.

I love Patricia.

I betrayed Patricia.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Who was Jack and why was he getting divorced?

I put the pizza in the microwave to reheat. Then I went out into the hall and lifted the cold body and carried it upstairs to Margaret's bedroom. She was a small woman, but she had the weight of death upon her. I pulled the sheet back and, averting my eyes as best I could, laid her beside her daughter and pulled the sheet up over them entirely. I went back downstairs, let the dog in, found some food for him and then removed the pizza. I found a six-pack of Harp in the fridge and took it and the pizza into the lounge and sat down. My hands were shaking badly but I forced myself to eat and drink. When I finished the last of the beer I took the empties into the kitchen and put the plate in the sink. Patch was looking at me curiously now, his head cocked to one side. I clicked my tongue at him and he growled. Patch, the Jack Russell. Divorcing Jack? Nah.

I opened the fridge again and found the half-bottle of chilled Polish vodka I'd spotted on my first visit. I took it upstairs into Margaret's room and sat down against the bedroom wall and sipped slowly from it until I didn't remember anything.

Then the cool light of dawn was streaming through the spaces around the edges of the ill-fitting hardboard window and a Radio 1 DJ was shouting the news about inflation and I was lying on the floor, my heart steamhammering towards breakdown. When it slowed down I sat back against the wall and cried my eyes out.

It was misty and exactly 7.30 a.m. when I let myself cautiously out of the front door. The street was quiet. The milkman had called about twenty minutes before. He left one bottle. I'd opened the door a crack and watched as best I could the houses opposite until everyone who was going to get their milk early had taken it in. Then I reached out and pulled it in quickly and drank it down. Wiping my mouth, I stepped out and walked towards the main road with my head bowed.

Traffic was still light. The mist put a refreshing chill into my body as I walked. A police Land-Rover passed after about five minutes and my legs almost gave out beneath me; I steadied myself against an uninhabited bus stop until it and my palpitations were history.

It was just over an hour later when I got home. I opened the front door quietly. Three items of that morning's mail were sitting on the telephone stand, all bills.

I called softly: 'Patricia?'

There was no one downstairs. I raced up to our bedroom. I hadn't made the bed since she had left; now it was back in neat order. My clothes had been tidied. The bathroom cleaned.

Back in the lounge I found a note.

I crumpled the note and threw it into the grate; the remains of a fire were smouldering. I looked at myself in the mirror above the fireplace and shuddered. My hair was matted, my face bruised, there was a dark stain on my shirt which I knew was blood but which anyone else might have mistaken for Ribena or, indeed, blood. The stain would have been covered by my coat on my walk through town, but if I'd been a cop I'd have stopped myself for questioning just out of curiosity.

I phoned Mouse at his work. He worked for Short Brothers, making and testing missiles. Last time I'd spoken to him about his job he said his most recent prototype went wonky in the Arizona desert and landed on an extremely rare colony of insects, wiping them out.

I said, 'This is the Insect Protection League.'

He recognized the voice. 'YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO LAUGH ABOUT, YOU STUPID FUCKER.'

'You're telling me?'

'I'M TELLING YOU, DAN.'

'You've seen Patricia?'

'YEAH. SHE CALLED AGAIN LAST NIGHT.'

'What time?'

'WHO CARES WHAT TIME? SHE'S STILL PISSED OFF. SHE'S BEEN TO SEE THAT GIRL OF YOURS.'

'What time did you see her. Mouse? It's important.

'WHY?'

'Will you just fuckin' tell me?'

'DON'T GET STROPPY WITH ME, SON. YOU HAVEN'T GOT THAT MANY FRIENDS.'

'Mouse, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I need to know. Look. I'm in some trouble. It's important I know what time you saw her at.'

'GIRL TROUBLE?'

'No. Yeah. Sort of. Serious trouble.'

'YOU KNOW SHE PUT YOUR GIRL'S WINDOWS IN?'

'I know. What time did you see her?'

'I DUNNO. ABOUT TEATIME. SIX, MAYBE EARLIER. YEAH, EARLIER. I WAS JUST IN FROM WORK. SHE WAS ALREADY BITCHING AWAY TO THE WIFE.'

'When did she leave?'

'NOT LONG AFTER. I DIDN'T GET INVOLVED. BUT THE WIFE SAYS SHE WAS FUMING, STILL FUMING'

'Did she say where she was going. Mouse?'

‘I THINK BACK TO YOUR HOUSE FOR A SHOWDOWN. NO SHOW, EH?'