The Coldest Blood

The Dolphin Holiday Camp, Sea’s End

Thursday, 29 August 1974

The dagger lay on his naked thigh, its blade as cold as a rock-pool pebble. Lying back in his bunk, he raised the weapon with one hand and splayed the fingers of the other across the muscle of his upper arm, stretching the suntanned skin taut as a drum. Outside, the water of the saltmarsh slapped against the Curlew ’s hull, rocking him on the incoming tide.

He tasted salt on his lips as he bit down on the leather belt in his mouth and pressed the dagger’s V-shaped point into the biceps, wincing at the gritty sound of the metal penetrating the flesh. He knew he mustn’t scream, but his stomach rolled at the thought of what must come next.

The holiday camp was a mile away but he’d seen kids wandering at dusk in the marsh, four of them, torches dancing amongst the reeds. No one must hear. No one must know.

He held his breath and bit down again on the strap, drawing the blade through the skin, revealing a hint of the meat of the inner arm, a single artery exposed, then severed. Blood flowed like poster paint, dripping from his elbow, as the pain – sudden and electric now – jolted his nervous system and made him drop the dagger and cry out, despite himself.

He gagged on the strap, wanting to weep, and spat it out. ‘Two more,’ he said. A jagged S, like a lightning bolt. Three cuts. But he knew he couldn’t see it through, not then, so he lay flat, matching his breathing to the slow cadence of the sea beyond the dunes, and for comfort placed a hand on the cold metal of the box at his side, a finger outlining the double locks.

If he could just do this, he told himself, it would be perfect. Not for the first time in the twenty-three years of his life he felt God-like, weak with control. Nothing could stop him if he had the courage to finish it; so he felt for the blade again.

But the touch of the metal brought him to the edge of unconsciousness. He reached out for the warm wooden ribs of the old boat: it had been his home for thirteen days now: but he would be rid of it soon enough.

The sounds of the coming night began. The distant jukebox at the camp drifting on the wind, and the tinny loop of metallic tunes from the funfair.

In his mind he danced with her then, beneath the dubious glamour of the glitterball, his thigh gently kissing her crotch with the beat, her lips braiding his hair.

He smiled, for he’d be dead soon, and they’d be together.