The Face That Must Die

Chapter III

Lime Street Station was thick with queues, sluggishly advancing on the ticket windows while trying to avoid the rain that dripped through the roof. Horridge edged towards the bookstall. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.” Sometimes he had to shout. He felt absurd and irritable, as though caught in a dance in a dream.

Police were patrolling, and seemed on the lookout for someone. They needn’t look at him. Overhead the names of destinations clicked and changed, as though on a game board. Light exploded silently in a photo booth. Above the squealing of metal on rails a great vague voice boomed, echoing within the long iron shed. Horridge could never see where its owner was hiding.

He hurried past the Gents’. It was too public: there were always men watching surreptitiously, or moving behind him – and always a stench like perfumed urine, which must cling to one’s clothes. He’d use the toilet in the cinema. He bought a newspaper: sHocK REvELATIoN IN LIVERpooL mURDER hUNT, its headline said.

The pavements looked slippery and unstable, glittering and wriggling with rain. Light lay glistening outside a pub, like slops. He hurried up the street beside the Odeon. Side streets made him nervous. Submarine glows drifted before him to be engulfed by the multicoloured glare of London Road.

The Odeon’s four cinemas were offering a Peter Sellers comedy, a Disney full-length cartoon, Murder by Death and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That was the one he wanted to see. Horror films took you out of yourself – they weren’t too close to the truth.

Children raced about the foyer, knocking squat ashtray pedestals awry; others stood screaming, lost or frustrated. Children clamoured for sweets and hot dogs and Pepsi-Cola. A salesgirl watched two boys furtively handling bars of chocolate. Horridge gave his ticket to a harassed usher, who tore it and gestured him vaguely onwards, frowning at the children.

No time to use the toilet. He wanted to reach Screen 3 before the show began; he didn’t like groping about in the dark. Once he’d touched a face, and a tongue had stirred like a worm within the cheek. After the blaze of the foyer the passage was dim. The large Screen 2 was in the middle; 3 must be on the left.

The small cinema was bright and empty: not even an usherette to be seen. Good – there would be nobody shouting and laughing at the monsters as a proof of masculinity. His seat creaked in the silence. Were they waiting for the cinema to fill? Wasn’t he enough of an audience?

Beneath the red lights, the blue-green pelt of the floor and the seats threatened to turn violent. Floor and seats were tilted slightly to the right, though the screen was horizontal. He felt seasick. He shook open the newspaper, loudly and furiously.

The man whose mutilated body was found in a Liverpool flat was a male prostitute, police revealed today.

That made him more sick. He didn’t want to read on. But he must know all.

The body of Norman Roylance (21) was found in a cupboard in his flat in Toxteth, Liverpool, on December 24. He had been bound and gagged. Police say that there were more than 30 razor wounds on the body.

In a series of shock revelations, police gave us details of Roylance’s life as a homosexual prostitute since the age of 15. (Full story on page 2.)

Last month, also in the Toxteth area, the body of a young homosexual as found in a flat. He had also been bound and mutilated, and his body had been locked in a cupboard.

Police are anxious to interview a man in his forties. He is described as being of medium height and stocky build. From descriptions, police have been able to issue this identikit portrait.