Death of a Murderer

19

He couldn’t remember leaving the hospital, but clearly he was no longer there. He didn’t panic, though. He wasn’t even anxious. Instead, he seemed to give himself up to his new surroundings. He was sitting at a wooden table. In front of him was a tin ashtray and a lighted candle in a red glass dish. Near the ashtray was a small dark ring where somebody had put a drink down. The brightly coloured paper-chains that looped above his head told him that it would soon be Christmas. People stood in groups all round him, talking and laughing. It was the saloon bar in a pub, he thought, or the private-function room in a hotel. Or, possibly, it was the back room in a working-men’s club. What had he come here for? And who with? He didn’t know; he had no memory of having arrived. There was a loud crackling sound, then an early Beatles number blared out of the speakers that were mounted on brackets halfway up the wall. He recognised the song. He even knew some of the words. A young woman in a floral print dress leaned down and spoke to him, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Was she asking him to dance? He watched as she stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and turned away from him.

As he sat there, enjoying the music — it was years since he had listened to the Beatles — a couple stepped out on to the dance floor. They were young, no more than twenty or twenty-one. The man wore a grey suit with wide lapels. His complexion was pasty, and there was something loose and twisted about his mouth. The girl’s hair was a bright-blonde beehive, and she was dressed in a pink sleeveless blouse, a white skirt decorated with small pink squares, and white-leather boots that almost reached her knees. They danced rock-and-roll-style. The man held the girl at arm’s length, bringing her in close and twirling her round, then allowing the gap between them to open up again, but no matter how fast they moved, no matter how recklessly they whirled and spun, his right hand never let go of hers. The contact was always there.

Once, though, halfway through a song, the girl spoke into the man’s ear, then broke away from him. Walking to the edge of the dance floor, she picked up a cigarette that was already alight, tapped a length of ash off the end of it and brought it to her lips. The man watched her from where he was, feet shifting in time to the music, loosely clenched hands held close to his chest. A lock of hair fell across his forehead. He reached up to push it back. The girl took a long, slow drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke in his direction. Almost immediately, she inhaled again, the tip of the cigarette a vivid red now. She lit a new cigarette from the old one, which she crushed out beneath the heel of her boot, then she rested the new cigarette on the rim of an ashtray and moved back towards her partner, smoke pouring from her nostrils. They went on dancing as before, stepping close to each other, then stepping back, the distance between them tense and yet elastic, the connection plain for all to see…

Then, without any warning, there was a shriek as the needle was roughly snatched from the record. Someone switched the house lights on. The young couple came to a standstill, his right hand gripping hers, their faces motionless, and bleached of all expression by the harsh white glare. It was so quiet that Billy thought he could hear them panting. Smoke lifted casually from the cigarette she’d balanced on the ashtray.

Billy half rose out of his chair, unable to work out where he was or what had happened. The green of the mortuary doors, the smudged white of the fridges. The intermittent beeping of the answer-machine…Ah yes. Yes, of course. He grinned almost foolishly, then blinked and rubbed his eyes. What time was it? Three minutes to midnight. Lowering himself back down into his chair, he waited for somebody to come and relieve him.