Spicer hugged himself and shook his head slowly.
‘What it’s like on those wards. People like you think people are in a coma or out of it. That’s what you see in films. Someone dies and everyone’s sad, or someone opens his eyes and everyone’s happy. That’s just Hollywood bullshit.’
Williams was surprised to see a sudden crescent of bright tears in Spicer’s eyes. They tipped over his lower lids and he brushed them angrily away, then stuck his hands back under his armpits once more, as if to protect them as he went on.
‘But some of them only emerge halfway. Halfway between life and death. Like zombies. Sometimes they can only blink. For the next forty, fifty, sixty years, they only blink and look at the ceiling. Sometimes they sing the same song until they die. Ask the same question. Sometimes they scream until their throats bleed. Sometimes they tear their hair out, or their eyes – or try to bite you or strangle you. Sometimes they cry and beg you to let them go. Beg you.’ He punched the table with the side of his fist, making the head wobble. Emrys Williams briefly put out a hand to steady it; and thought of doing the same thing to the boys when they were younger. A touch of acknowledgement and of reassurance.
‘Killing them is not the sin; keeping them alive is the sin.’
Spicer jutted a challenging chin at Williams and White, but when they said nothing, he wiped his eyes again and sighed deeply.
‘One of them was always ranting and raving. Crying. Violent. Always lashing out. He broke my fiancée’s finger. They had to cut her engagement ring off. I only gave it to her the night before, and she was so happy. Then she came home the next day and her finger was black and twisted and her ring was in pieces and she cried and cried.
‘I had the ring repaired but she’s only recently been able to wear it again.’
‘So you killed Mr Galen for breaking your fiancée’s finger,’ said White carefully.
‘No!’ Spicer shook his head. ‘His name was Attridge. Charles Attridge.’
Williams glanced at DCI White. Who the hell was Charles Attridge?
But Spicer went on, ‘His family were relieved when he died. They thanked me for everything I’d done. They understood. Nobody understands. Until they have to go through it themselves.’
There was a silence that somehow made the Spartan interview room seem just a little bit sacred.
‘And what about Mr Galen here?’ asked White quietly.
There was a long hesitation before Spicer said, ‘He saw me do it.’
Emrys Williams’s gut twisted.
Spicer went on in a dull monotone. ‘And then… and then he started to emerge.’ He blew his nose between his finger and thumb. He looked around, then wiped the resulting clear mucus across the front of his own sweater with a resigned shrug, and added, ‘Started to talk.’
Williams felt his throat tighten with tears, and was grateful he was not leading this interview. Samuel Galen had not been put out of his misery – Sam Galen had been murdered in cold blood just as recovery was within his grasp. Emrys Williams was not a wildly imaginative man, but even he felt sick at the idea of the fear, the sheer terror Galen must have felt, when he realized that he was about to be murdered – and couldn’t lift a finger to stop it.
‘So you killed him?’ said White quietly.
‘Yes,’ said Spicer.
‘With a peanut?’
Spicer nodded.
‘Answer verbally, please. For the tape.’
‘Yes,’ said Spicer. ‘With a peanut.’
‘And what about the dissection?’ asked White. ‘How did that come about?’
Spicer sighed. ‘That was just bad luck. I didn’t even know until we uncovered the head. It was a shock. A terrible shock. I could barely even touch him after that.’
He folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead on them like a man exhausted. He spoke but his words were muffled, and White and Williams both leaned in a little to hear him.
‘I did feel bad. I told him I was very sorry.’
Then he raised pleading eyes to the two detectives. ‘But what was I supposed to do?’
Spicer dropped his head on to his hands again, and wept.
52
EMRYS WILLIAMS STOOD under a streetlight on the glistening pink avenue outside the police station, and checked his watch. He only had an hour before his next shift started.
He didn’t mind. He was on an adrenaline high, and felt happier than he had in many years.
What a night and day and night again! Every part of it seemed bright and vibrant in his memory, filled with shining images of discovery and justice. Williams wished he smoked. Now would be the perfect time to light up and savour.
Across the Boulevard de Nantes, he could hear the sounds of liquid celebration, and he smiled, even though he didn’t know who’d won.
A white cockerel with a small French flag knotted around its neck strutted towards him from the direction of the stadium. He leaned down in a wide-armed but half-hearted effort to catch it. It eluded him with ease and a squawk, then resumed its jaunty journey to who knew where.
His phone shook in his pocket and he checked the messages. Shelli (with an i) had left several about a cruise to Mexico she’d seen online.
He didn’t call her back. He didn’t want to share this with her. She wouldn’t understand.
Because she didn’t care.
The realization didn’t hurt him, so he obviously didn’t care either. He would go home soon and tell her it was over. No hard feelings.
He was moving on.
Just the thought gave him a thrill inside.
DCI White had shaken his hand for far longer than was merely formal, and if he’d been clapped once on the shoulder by passing colleagues, it had happened twenty times. Even the forensics lads had been uncommonly chatty when they’d come to reclaim the head of Samuel Galen.
Only Patrick Fort had been unimpressed by Emrys Williams’s extraordinary accomplishment. When Williams had opened the cell door and told the boy that his story had been checked out and that he was free to go, Patrick Fort had simply shrugged and said, ‘I told you so.’
Williams had laughed then, and now laughed again softly at the memory, as the golden moon rose slowly over the city.
Soon he would start his shift, and work and life would go on, but nothing would be the same. For the first time in years, he had a sense that life was still his to be lived.
He was too young to be a fat old man.
This is how things change, he thought.
THIS is how things change.
53
THE FUNERAL WAS only delayed by two weeks, because David Spicer had pleaded guilty at his very first court hearing, and the head of Samuel Galen was released to the family.
By then, Patrick had run out of rent money, but not out of goodwill, and Kim, Jackson and Lexi let him stay on the couch for free so that he would be able to attend the service.
It took place on the first weekend in April, when the verges were still sunny with daffodils and the sky was seaside blue.
It was also Grand National day, but – by his standards – Patrick barely made a fuss about missing the world’s most famous steeplechase for the first time he could recall. And the last, he vowed silently, as he watched post-time roll around, right in the middle of ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’.
Despite the fact that Sam Galen had died almost nine months before, the church was full, and heady with the scent of spring flowers, with no accompanying smell of shit.