'I'm not certain,' Helen replied, too concerned to find some solid ground in this sea of doubts to waste energy scoring points.
'All right, forget the tale - ' Trevor said, deserting his food for another glass of red wine. ' - What about the teller? Did you trust. her?'
Helen pictured Anne-Marie's earnest expression as she told the story of the old man's murder. 'Yes,' she said. 'Yes; I think I would have known if she'd been lying to me.'
'So why's it so important, anyhow? I mean, whether she's lying or not, what the fuck does it matter?'
It was a reasonable question, if irritatingly put. Why did it matter? Was it that she wanted to have her worst feelings about Spector Street proved false? That such an estate be filthy, be hopeless, be a dump where the undesirable and the disadvantaged were tucked out of public view - all that was a liberal commonplace, and she accepted it as an unpalatable social reality. But the story of the old man's murder and mutilation was something other. An image of violent death that, once with her, refused to part from her company.
She realized, to her chagrin, that this confusion was plain on her face, and that Trevor, watching her across the table, was not a little entertained by it.
'If it bothers you so much,' he said, 'why don't you go back there and ask around, instead of playing believe-in-it-or-not over dinner?'
She couldn't help but rise to his remark. 'I thought you liked guessing games,' she said.
He threw her a sullen look.
'Wrong again.'
The suggestion that she investigate was not a bad one, though doubtless he had ulterior motives for offering it. She viewed Trevor less charitably day by day. What she had once thought in him a fierce commitment to debate she now recognized as mere power-play. He argued, not for the thrill of dialectic, but because he was pathologically competitive. She had seen him, time and again, take up attitudes she knew he did not espouse, simply to spill blood. Nor, more's the pity, was he alone in this sport. Academe was one of the last strongholds of the professional time-waster. On occasion their circle seemed entirely dominated by educated fools, lost in a wasteland of stale rhetoric and hollow commitment.
From one wasteland to another. She returned to Spector Street the following day, armed with a flashgun in addition to her tripod and high-sensitive film. The wind was up today, and it was Arctic, more furious still for being trapped in the maze of passageways and courts. She made her way to number 14, and spent the next hour in its befouled confines, meticulously photographing both the bedroom and living-room walls. She had half expected the impact of the head in the bedroom to be dulled by re-acquaintance; it was not. Though she struggled to capture its scale and detail as best she could, she knew the photographs would be at best a dim echo of its perpetual howl.
Much of its power lay in its context, of course. That such an image might be stumbled upon in surroundings so drab, so conspicuously lacking in mystery, was akin to finding an icon on a rubbish-heap: a gleaming symbol of transcendence from a world of toil and decay into some darker but more tremendous realm. She was painfully aware that the intensity of her response probably defied her articulation. Her vocabulary was analytic, replete with buzz-words and academic terminology, but woefully impoverished when it came to evocation. The photographs, pale as they would be, would, she hoped, at least hint at the potency of this picture, even if they couldn't conjure the way it froze the bowels.
When she emerged from the maisonette the wind was as uncharitable as ever, but the boy waiting outside - the same child as had attended upon her yesterday - was dressed as if for spring weather. He grimaced in his effort to keep the shudders at bay.
'Hello,' Helen said.
'I waited,' the child announced.
Waited?'
'Anne-Marie said you'd come back.'
'I wasn't planning to come until later in the week,' Helen said. 'You might have waited a long time.'
The boy's grimace relaxed a notch. 'It's all right,' he said, 'I've got nothing to do.'
'What about school?'
'Don't like it,' the boy replied, as if unobliged to be educated if it wasn't to his taste.
'I see,' said Helen, and began to walk down the side of the quadrangle. The boy followed. On the patch of grass at the centre of the quadrangle several chairs and two or three dead saplings had been piled.
'What's this?' she said, half to herself.
'Bonfire Night,' the boy informed her. 'Next week.'
'Of course.'
'You going to see Anne-Marie?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'She's not in'
'Oh. Are you sure?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, perhaps you can help me...'She stopped and turned to face the child; smooth sacs of fatigue hung beneath his eyes. 'I heard about an old man who was murdered near here,' she said to him. 'In the summer. Do you know anything about that?'
'No.'
'Nothing at all? You don't remember anybody getting killed?'
'No,' the boy said again, with impressive finality. 'I don't remember.'
Well; thank you anyway.'
This time, when she retraced her steps back to the car, the boy didn't follow. But as she turned the corner out of the quadrangle she glanced back to see him standing on the spot where she'd left him, staring after her as if she were a madwoman.
By the time she had reached the car and packed the photographic equipment into the boot there were specks of rain in the wind, and she was sorely tempted to forget she'd ever heard Anne-Marie's story and make her way home, where the coffee would be warm even if the welcome wasn't. But she needed an answer to the question Trevor had put the previous night. Do you believe it?, he'd asked when she'd told him the story. She hadn't known how to answer then, and she still didn't. Perhaps (why did she sense this?) the terminology of verifiable truth was redundant here; perhaps the final answer to his question was not an answer at all, only another question. If so; so. She had to find out.
Ruskin Court was as forlorn as its fellows, if not more so. It didn't even boast a bonfire. On the third floor balcony a woman was taking washing in before the rain broke; on the grass in the centre of the quadrangle two dogs were absent-mindedly rutting, the fuckee staring up at the blank sky. As she walked along the empty pavement she set her face determinedly; a purposeful look, Bernadette had once said, deterred attack. When she caught sight of the two women talking at the far end of the court she crossed over to them hurriedly, grateful for their presence.
'Excuse me?'
The women, both in middle-age, ceased their animated exchange and looked her over.
'I wonder if you can help me?'
She could feel their appraisal, and their distrust; they went undisguised. One of the pair, her face florid, said plainly: 'What do you want?'
Helen suddenly felt bereft of the least power to charm. What was she to say to these two that wouldn't make her motives appear ghoulish? 'I was told... she began, and then stumbled, aware that she would get no assistance from either woman. '...I was told there'd been a murder near here. Is that right?'
The florid woman raised eyebrows so plucked they were barely visible. 'Murder?' she said.
'Are you from the press?' the other woman enquired. The years bad soured her features beyond sweetening. Her small mouth was deeply lined; her hair, which had been dyed brunette, showed a half-inch of grey at the roots.
'No, I'm not from the press,' Helen said, 'I'm a friend of Anne-Marie's, in Butts' Court.' This claim of friend stretched the truth, but it seemed to mellow the women somewhat.