‘Yes,’ Alice replied, ‘I’m one of his colleagues.’
‘He’s out at the moment, but he’ll be back shortly. You could wait here if you like?’
‘How shortly is shortly?’
The woman looked at her watch. ‘Oh, within the next five minutes or so, I expect. I haven’t seen him this morning, he wasn’t here when I arrived, but he’s bound to be back before one o’clock. He knows that I have a hair appointment at half past, and he left a note saying he’d gone to the bank to get my money. I’m Sue by the way…’ she held out her damp hand, ‘and I clean for him once a fortnight.’
Sitting at the kitchen table, exchanging occasional words with the cleaner, Alice felt ill at ease, apprehensive about what was to come. In the meanwhile, the situation seemed more than slightly surreal, absurd. Here she was being offered tea while the cleaner busied herself sorting the underpants of a putative murderer into piles of coloureds and non-coloureds. On the other hand, Alice also felt reassured by her homely presence, the smell of washing powder and the ordinariness of her domestic routines. As long as Sue was present then she was surely safe, whatever she was going to see, and whatever Oakley observed in her.
At the sound of the front door opening Alice rose, but found herself waved back to her seat by Sue and thought better of her initial movement, maybe it would not be him anyway. Two voices in conversation could be heard from the hallway, the woman’s tone rising as if in surprise, followed by sympathetic clucking noises, then Simon’s voice and, finally, the ominous click of a key being turned in a lock. And at that final noise her heart began to hammer frantically in her chest, as if trying to beat its way out of her body through her rib cage. Now she was on her own with him and, for some reason, he had blocked her escape. As he walked through the doorway he looked her straight in the eyes, watching her watching him.
On his cheek there was a small, almost invisible scratch, dried blood still on it.
Holding out his jacket for him, she asked, as casually as she was able, ‘How d’you get the cut, Simon?’
His hand went up to it and, still feeling its texture, he replied, ‘Shaving, this morning.’
She looked at his face. Evidently, he had not had a razor anywhere near it since the previous day, dark stubble still covering his cheeks and chin, and the cut was at least an inch above the highest point of any beard growth. For an instant, he shielded the injury, hiding it playfully with his palm before letting his arm drop, and smiling.
‘Your jacket, Simon,’ she said, thrusting it towards him, praying that her hand would not tremble and betray the fear that she felt weakening her. But, ignoring her wishes, it shook violently, and as it did so his eyes remained on hers, until, eventually, he took the garment from her The first thing he did was to search the pockets, and from the right one he extracted the smiley badge.
‘And the cross?’ he said slowly.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Come, come, Alice. You know there should be a crucifix in there. But, I have to say, you’re slipping up.’
‘I’m still not with you.’
‘Well, I’ll explain shall I? You’ve given me back the badge – the very thing I cut myself on when I was getting rid of Ms Wilson. Obviously, I took it away with me… you would wouldn’t you? But, unfortunately, I’d left a little calling card on her jacket. Still, we explained it away didn’t we? And you can imagine how pleased I was with that cut at the scrappie’s. I knew it would cover a multitude of sins, if I had slipped up again, I mean.’
Alice said nothing, and her silence seemed to annoy him.
‘Are you afraid of something, Alice?’ he asked in a mocking tone. ‘Me, perhaps? You and me together, by ourselves, in my house?’
‘No,’ she lied, ‘but I am cold. I’ve been out in freezing weather searching around Leith and Portobello for…’
‘Muriel. That’s her name, apparently, if you can believe a thing they say. And you found her, I suppose – at the end of the prom? I somehow thought I would have a little longer, a day at least. But, then, you’re sharp, eh? And now you’re scared of me, too.’
From her chair she glanced up at him, still at loss for words, unsure how his mind was working.
‘Yes, Alice,’ he said, again looking her straight in the eyes. ‘You are right. I did do it.’
‘Why?’ Her voice sounded weak, exhausted and old. And she knew she had wandered out of her depth, into realms far beyond her understanding.
‘You would like there to be a reason, wouldn’t you? You want… you need… the universe to be well-ordered and logical, and everything in it, too. But, suppose it isn’t like that? Maybe it’s completely unpredictable, uncontrollable whether by you or anyone else. And monsters don’t always look monstrous, do they? Myra’s image… quite ordinary when divorced from her history, I expect. You, of all people, should appreciate that, being in the force I mean.’
She nodded, her mind having shifted onto other things, concerned to conceal the fact that she was raking the room with her eyes, searching it for anything she could use as a weapon. After all, it made no sense for him to confess and then let her go. Her gaze alighted on a meat tenderiser resting on a chopping board and, transfixed by it, she did not hear his last few words.
‘Alice!’ he said sharply.
She looked up at him again, and seeing that he had her attention, he continued. ‘It is a possibility – complete disorder, I mean. But people like you have to make connections, false connections of course, but ones that provide you with comfort and an illusion of order. Otherwise you couldn’t cope, eh? But that’s not how life really is. Think about it, if I’d stopped at two, an innocent man would have borne the blame, wouldn’t he? Cruelty regularly rewards kindness and evil often blooms from good roots, doesn’t it? Look at me, eh? You liked me, maybe considered me a friend even? But I’m a bad, bad man.’
She shook her head, unable fully to comprehend what he was saying, but desperate to keep him talking while she tried to calm herself, make some kind of plan. ‘Maybe, or maybe there’s no such thing. Some people are born blind, eyeless, without retinas or optic nerves. Perhaps others arrive in this world without normal consciences, souls or whatever. Without pity…’
He laughed uproariously, confident, at ease with himself and everything under his control. No stammer troubling him now. ‘So, no-one’s to blame, eh? That’s lucky for me. No one should be punished either, just treated perhaps, an odd view from a policeman. Good news, I’m sure. And, presumably, the more heinous the crime…’
‘The more abnormal the perpetrator,’ she interrupted him, catching his drift, ‘the less their culpability. Because then they are clearly sick, not bad.’
‘And this line, Alice, between normal badness and abnormal badness, where is it drawn? Where do you draw it?’ he asked, walking to a knife-block on the kitchen unit and coolly, in front of her unblinking eyes, drawing out a black-handled knife.
‘A little biff to the wife and you’re responsible, but gouge her eyes out and you’re not?’ he continued, beaming at her and waving his weapon about. Then suddenly he stopped, stood still, and felt the point of the blade with his fingers.
‘Anyway, you said you’d like to know the truth Alice? Why I did it, I mean? Are you quite sure you want to know?’
‘No, I don’t want to know,’ she said quietly, and she meant it. She no longer wanted to know the truth, even if he was privy to it and prepared to share it with her, and neither seemed probable. If she was about to die, such knowledge would do her no good, and survival with it would be no boon. Too much reality for anyone. But it was a rhetorical question. He was not interested in her wishes, had rehearsed his justification far too often for there to be no performance.