In case I was recognized, I thought it safer to go by underground, rather than taxi or bus. I took the tube train to Tower Hill. Overground it was a dull wan day. The Tower of London, with its newly scrubbed beige stone, looked like a child’s cardboard toy. The Thames, beyond the deserted building sites, was opaque and grey. The sky moved at an identical slow heavy pace above it. I walked down the Highway, where there were no shadows.
I crossed under a subway which was lit by a neon light, my feet echoing down the tunnel. It was like walking through a tomb. I was half-way through it, when a figure appeared at the other end. At first I thought it was a dwarf, he was walking so hunched and keeping so close to the side of the wall. However, he straightened up as he came towards me. He was about my height.
It was only as he passed me, that I heard a click. I thought it was the snap of someone’s fingers: I felt the cold touch of metal pressed intimately against my neck. I put down the bag.
In spite of the apparent directness of his lavender blue eyes, I felt as if he were staring right through me, that he wasn’t looking at me at all. Those eyes didn’t see straight, they saw the world in disconnected shapes. They told me I was going to die. I thought of Justine. He put his other bony hand out and traced a pattern round my face with his fingers, a pattern that only he could understand.
However, as he drew the design on my face, a dull glimmer of recognition appeared in his gaze. Still with his flick-knife against my throat, he said,
‘Haven’t we met before?’
I almost wanted to laugh. I had never seen him before in my life. But he had smelt the connection, seen my affinity with death engraved in my face like initials carved in stone. He lowered the knife. Shrugging his shoulders, he continued his journey down the subway and round the corner, the sound of his footsteps receding into the distance. I put my finger to my throat and came away with a single drop of blood. I felt exhilarated, as if I had passed some kind of test.
Picking up the bag again, I walked back under the subway and took a detour out onto the barren wasteland that separated the Highway from the river. The glass and steel of the Docklands glimmered in the distance. The bag became increasingly heavy and I had to keep stopping to regain my breath. It was now 5 p.m.
FIFTY-FOUR
The area was desert, the ground consisting of dry earth and the odd piece of discarded machinery. There were no birds here, no insects, no sound, except for the ever present hum of London’s traffic, like a Greek chorus. The only movement was pieces of litter and old newspapers that fluttered in the wind. The sky above was white and unforgiving. From inside the bag on my back, I could hear the dead man’s thoughts whispering to me, to the hesitant rhythm of my walk.
What I thought was flat land to the river turned out to have a slight dip in it which was invisible until I was upon it. In the small ash-white valley two youths and a woman were boiling a saucepan of water on a wood fire. They had set up home here: makeshift tents and boxes and empty cans were strewn about them. Through the flickering flames of heat the river shimmered like a mirage.
The group stood up as I approached.
‘What have you got there?’ the young woman asked.
Her voice managed to sound intimate and insolent at the same time. She had too much space in the centre of her forehead – enough room for her cunning and stupidity.
‘A dead body,’ I replied.
They laughed, and, suddenly disinterested, returned to watching their fire.
Ten minutes later I had reached the edge of the river. The group of teenagers had disappeared out of sight again into the dip behind me. The water was black and glittering as if scattered with diamonds. With a last surge of energy, I hurled the bag far into its depths, and watched it gulped down. The simplicity, the order to the deed struck me.
I returned to Kensington Gardens, ecstatic but tired, and quickly bathed and changed again. I could not bear to be dirty or feel unclean: the blood-spattered flat strangely did not bother me.
Lethe lay curled in the corner, thin and neglected. I was conscious, since the murder, of moving with more grace. I put the photograph of Justine up on the mantelpiece, next to the doll and underneath the portrait. The blood on the photograph was proof that I had done what had been requested. Jack’s blood represented Justine’s life. I picked up the doll and turned her upside down: she made a mewing sound.
FIFTY-FIVE
During the next few days I went about my daily business, but with the uncanny feeling that I was in some way sorting out my affairs before beginning a long journey. I sorted through papers, sifted through art catalogues and went to the occasional auction at Christie’s. However, all the time I was waiting for a sign.
The final night that I spent in my flat I dreamt I was driving up the avenue to the house again. The maze is still to the right as I approach the house. Someone is looking at me from the window above. I get out of the car and this time, as I approach, the door mysteriously opens. I then seem to split into two people as I watch, from a position high up in the sky, myself walk inside the house and disappear, the door shutting behind me. The Gothic house stands completely still in the sunlight. The person standing watching at the window has also gone. The scene now is devoid of humanity. I can see no one in the house and the car stands empty on the driveway. Except that I know that I am now inside the house, and another person is in there, waiting.
FIFTY-SIX
I was woken up from my dream by the sound of the phone ringing. The luminous dial of my alarm clock read 3 a.m. Immediately alert, I picked up the receiver.
‘It’s Justine. Have you done it?’
For a moment I couldn’t think what she was talking about.
‘Yes… Yes.’
‘Have you got any proof? To show him?’
‘Yes, a photograph. Of you. It’s covered in his blood.’
‘Thank you,’ Justine said. ‘I will never be able to thank you enough.’ Her lack of anguish over Jack’s death only seemed to point to the seriousness of her position. It made me take the abductor’s threat to her life more seriously. The abductor’s identity and my own separated out again.
‘Does the person who’s kidnapped you know that you are talking to me?’
‘He’s standing beside me. I’m just repeating what he says. Like a ventriloquist’s doll. He wants you to come out here. As soon as possible. He wants to meet you. He thinks that you are both one of a kind.’
She gave me the address, which was out of London, in the country.
‘I’ll be there by tomorrow evening. Are you alright?’ The phone went dead.
I couldn’t go back to sleep: I would be seeing Justine tomorrow. What to do then, how to rescue her, would depend on my wits and ingenuity. I had come this far and I had no intention of failing now.
FIFTY-SEVEN
The next morning, I realized without a shadow of a doubt that I would be leaving my flat, forever. Justine would now be enough. My flat seemed like a dead religion, a church empty of significance. The paintings, the statues, the patterned tapestries all seemed irrelevant. They were hollow artefacts, even the portrait of Justine had shrunk to a simulacrum. I was about to own the real thing. I packed a suitcase of a few clothes, and some money. Lethe looked on indifferently from the corner which she had not stirred from in days.
I kept the methylated spirit underneath the bathroom sink. I unscrewed the lid and took the bottle through to the drawing-room where I splashed the spirit over the blood-stained sofa, the carpets, the Chippendale chairs, the walls, Jack’s blood-stained portrait of Justine. The strong succulent smell made me feel light-headed. I went up to the doll I had placed on the mantelpiece and soaked her dress in the inflammable liquid. I struck a match and set fire to her. The flames engulfed the doll immediately, the plastic face concaving, as if at first she were about to burst into tears, then into irreparable deformation. The photograph of Justine, propped up beside the doll, melted into streams of red and gold. The flames quickly licked upwards towards the portrait of Justine above the mantelpiece. I saw her smiling at me between the flickering flames as the paint dripped off her face.