Mice

39

Although Mum did her best to disguise it, I saw the shock register on her face, a crease like a crack in a wall breaking across her forehead, a sudden slacken ing around her jaw. We’d always assumed the burglar had been alone. It had never entered our heads that he’d had an accomplice. But that was exactly what the grotesque clown in our kitchen was saying.

‘I want to know everything,’ Mum said, recovering remarkably. ‘I want you to tell me everything that happened that night.’

‘You want to know everything,’ the fat man repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘And why’s that, then?’

‘So that I can move on, so that I can put it all behind me. I have to know everything that you can tell me about that night.’

‘Everything, eh? No details spared?’

‘Everything.’

‘And then we’ll go and get the money?’

‘And then we’ll go and get the money.’

‘OK,’ he said, but for the first time a suspicious look clouded his features. He glanced at Mum and then at me as if he felt he might be walking into some sort of trap. What he saw must have reassured him, because the look disappeared as quickly as it had come. After all, what possible threat could there be from this neurotic, mousy woman and her neurotic, mousy daughter? He wiped his hands on his thighs and raked a little more phlegm up from his throat, which he was content to swallow this time.

‘All right. Let’s see — I bumped into Paul Hannigan in the pub that night. It was a Monday. Monday, April tenth. I didn’t know him that well — I’d bought some knock-off from him and he’d come back to my flat a few times, but I wouldn’t say we was close. More acquaintances, like. He’d only been down this neck of the woods a few months. He’d been in prison up north, and he said he’d moved down here hoping his luck would change.’

His luck changed all right, I thought to myself. But it had changed for the worse. It had changed for the worst.

‘After closing time, he came back to my flat and we carried on drinking. We really gave it one that night. We got through the best part of a bottle of whisky and a bottle of vodka and God knows how much we’d had in the pub beforehand. Anyways, he kept going on about how desperate he was for money. He said he had an idea for a job, but he needed a car, and because he knew I had a car he kept on nagging me to come in on it with him.

‘His idea was to rob a secluded house in the country. He said that houses out in the country were easier to rob than houses in town — they had old windows that were easy to force, they often didn’t have alarms, and there were no nosy neighbours nearby to call the police. Like I say, I didn’t know him that well, and to tell you the truth I wasn’t over-fond of him. There was something about him that weren’t quite right. He had a bit of a screw loose somewhere, he talked a load of old rubbish most of the time. He was a real loose cannon, you know, always flashing this big hunting knife he carried around with him everywhere. He tried to tell me he’d been inside for murder, that he’d cut someone up who’d double-crossed him, but I knew from other people that he’d only been inside for drug dealing.

‘Anyways, he kept on nagging and nagging me to come in on this job with him. He kept on about the antiques that people kept in these country houses, and that if we got lucky we could find something worth a fortune and we wouldn’t have to worry about money for a good long time after that. Anyways, I was so drunk I ended up saying I’d go with him. We agreed that if anyone in the house woke up he was just to tie them up, there wasn’t to be no violence. I found some old rope in the cupboard under the sink and we had a snack before we set off because we was both starving by that time.’

A snack. Paul Hannigan’s last supper. I remembered the loud, sour belch. Sorry, ladies. . I shouldn’t have had them eggs. Them eggs was off.

‘Paul wanted to drive. He said he knew where to go. I didn’t mind ’cause, to tell you the truth, I think I was in a much worse state than he was. I’d drunk so much I could hardly see straight, let alone drive in the dark.

‘I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I kept dropping off to sleep in the car. We seemed to be driving for ages, going round and round all these twisty country lanes. . and then Paul spotted this place.

‘We parked out the back there.’ He gestured vaguely with his thumb in the direction of the lane, where I’d first seen the car from my bedroom window. ‘It was late, round about three-thirty. The plan was that I’d stay in the car and keep lookout while Paul did the actual robbing. I was to honk the horn three times if anyone showed up. Paul got out the car and I saw him slip through the hedge back there and into your garden.’

He knew the date, he knew the time, he knew where the car had been parked. He wasn’t lying. He really had been there that night.

‘I waited in the car for ages but I was so drunk I couldn’t stay awake. I was woken up by the sound of some girl screaming and Paul shouting — it sounded close, like they was outside in the garden. I got out the car to see what the hell was going on and went through the hedge the way I’d seen Paul go. I could see right into the kitchen — I only stood there for a few seconds but that was long enough for me. I saw Paul chasing her over there — ’ he nodded his head in my direction — ‘round and round this table.’ He prodded the table three times with his stubby index finger as if to prove the veracity of what he was saying.

(Stabbing and slashing at the burglar’s back. ‘We’re playing musical chairs now! We’re playing musical chairs now!’ The flailing knife snagging his neck and loosing a geyser of bright arterial blood.)

‘She was screaming her head off and I could see she was covered in blood,’ the fat man went on. ‘I figured she’d disturbed Paul while he was robbing the house and he’d gone psycho and started cutting her up with his hunting knife. I thought the kid’s parents would come running downstairs to help her any second and Paul’d kill them too. I remember thinking to myself: He’s got the bloodlust on him. He’s gonna kill everyone in that house. He’s gonna cut them all up. There’s gonna be a right royal massacre.’

The fat man raked up a little more phlegm with a few short, violent pig grunts and slid his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

‘Well, basically, I panicked. I mean, a bit of robbing’s one thing, but I didn’t want to get caught up in no murder. I decided to get out of there sharpish-like.

‘But when I got back to the car I remembered that Paul had taken my car keys with him. I’ve never learned how to hotwire a car; nicking cars ain’t my thing. But the screams coming from the house were bloody shocking, so I just legged it back the way we’d come. It was as black as a witch’s hat out here that night, I can tell you, and I got myself well and truly lost in all them lanes, but I just kept going. All I knew was I had to get as far away from this house as I could.

‘Anyways, I found my way out onto the main road finally and ended up walking all the way back to town. It must’ve taken me close on three hours. As soon as I got in I called the mobile number I had for Paul. It rang and rang but there weren’t no answer.’

(Soft, muffled, a series of musical notes like a bird or maybe even an insect. It stopped and then a few seconds later it started again.)

‘I was expecting Paul to turn up at my flat at any minute all covered in blood, saying he’d done something terrible, and asking me to hide him or help him to get out of the country. But he didn’t show up. I called his mobile again, but now it was switched off. I left loads of messages, but he didn’t call me back. I kept the local radio on all day expecting to hear that there’d been a bloodbath in a house out in the country, but there was nothing about no killings. All I could think was that they just hadn’t found the bodies yet. As it got later, I started to think he must have done a runner in my car. Too scared to come back here in case the police were waiting for him. I figured he was probably miles away by now, lying low up north.’

It was a strange sensation to hear my own murder being described; it made my arms come up in goose bumps. And I couldn’t help thinking that it could so easily have turned out that way. If we’d said the wrong thing while Paul Hannigan was holding us at knife point or if we’d tried to make a run for it, everything the fat man thought had happened so easily could have — and on the Tuesday morning Roger would have found Mum and me butchered like cattle on a slaughterhouse kill floor.

‘I was a bloody fool to get involved with a kid like Paul Hannigan. I knew he weren’t right in the head. Now I was worried sick that if the police caught him I’d get dragged into it and end up facing murder charges. As well as all that, my car had all my work tools in it — I’m a plumber, see — so I couldn’t work neither till I got it back. And I couldn’t exactly call the police and report it stolen, could I?’

He laughed and looked up at Mum as if expecting her to laugh along with him, but she remained stonyfaced.

‘Anyways, the next day there was still nothing on the radio about no murders and there was nothing the next day neither. I figured that if Paul had killed someone out here, the police would’ve found out about it by now. Why weren’t it all over the papers and the TV?

‘And that’s when I started to think that maybe I’d got the wrong end of the stick and there hadn’t been no killing. I called Paul’s mobile again and again but it was always switched off. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided it was best to do nothing — just sit tight and wait and see what happened.

‘And then on the Friday morning I got a call from the police. My first thought was, they’ve caught Paul and he’s gone and grassed me up. Now I’m gonna get done as an accomplice to murder. But it was nothing like that. They said they’d got a complaint from the Farmer’s Harvest restaurant about a car that had been left in their car park. They said they’d run the number plate through their computer and it had me down as the owner and would I move it sharpish-like. And that was that! Nothing about Paul. Nothing about no murders.

‘When I got down to my car I found it unlocked with the keys still in the ignition. Everything had gone from inside it! Everything except for the bag of dope Paul had with him that night. My work tools and my anorak had gone, my road atlas, Paul’s trench coat that had been on the back seat — ’

I saw Mum tense. Her left foot, which had been unconsciously tapping to a manic rhythm while she listened to the blackmailer’s tale, had suddenly stopped moving. I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking exactly the same thing: Did he know about the gun? But it was clear from the way he blithely carried on talking that he didn’t.

‘ — everything had gone! I couldn’t figure it out. Why would Paul leave my car there? Why would he leave it unlocked and with the keys still in the ignition? He’d left a hundred quid’s worth of dope in the glove box! He’d taken my work tools, even though they weren’t worth nothing to him! Why hadn’t he called to tell me what had happened? What was he playing at?

‘I asked around, but no one had seen him or heard from him. It was as if he’d just disappeared into thin air. The whole thing was doing my head in, I tell you. So the next day, the Saturday, I drove back out here — to Honeysuckle Cottage.’ He said the twee name with infinite contempt. ‘Thought I’d take a look around. I reckoned that was the only way I was gonna get to the bottom of all this.

‘I parked up round the side there, close under the trees so’s I couldn’t be seen. I hadn’t been there five minutes when I saw the two of you come out of the house. I recognized the girl from that night, and I could see she was as right as rain. I watched you get in your car and drive away — I was worried for a second that you were gonna turn up where I was and see me, but as luck would have it you went the other way. I followed you all the way into town and when you stopped at the supermarket I parked up behind you and went in too — discreet like — I didn’t want you to catch on. I watched you do your shop, trying to overhear what you were talking about, trying to see if I could pick up a clue to what happened out here.’

The thought of this sinister clown following us through the labyrinth of country lanes, shadowing us up and down the bright aisles as we filled our trolley, watching us select our most intimate personal items — soaps and shampoos, Tampax and toilet rolls — filled me with revulsion. I remembered the dream I’d had the night after we’d killed Paul Hannigan: the car parked in the narrow lane that began to follow the van taking us to prison, the shadowy figure behind the wheel. Who’s that? Mum had asked me in the dream. It’s the watcher, I’d replied. Was it possible I’d known all along that Paul Hannigan hadn’t been alone, but at a level so deep in my subconscious it could only reveal itself in a dream?

‘Like I say,’ he went on, ‘I couldn’t work it out. I’d seen your girl covered in blood, I was sure Paul had been doing her in. Now here she was, out shopping, all hunky-dory. And Paul had disappeared off the face of the earth. No one had seen him, no one had heard from him. None of it made any sense. And when I tried his mobile, the line was just. . dead.’

(The strange grimace on Mum’s face as she’d beaten the mobile into a masticated pulp.)

‘And that’s when I started to think that maybe you two had done something to him.’