She scribbled a note on the small pad beside the phone and listened to the last message.
It was from her publisher.
They loved the book, there were just a couple of points they’d like to discuss if she had the time tomorrow. Could she ring the senior editor?
Thank you. End of messages.
Perhaps they were going to tell her the publication date, she mused. Inform her when they were going to pay her the remainder of the advance. She’d already spent the first part. The flat had needed decorating and it had come in handy for that. The publisher seemed to have a great deal of faith in the book though: ‘true crime’, they had told her, was a big seller. With her background in journalism she had the contacts. The book had been relatively easy to write and she’d finished the first draft in under three months.
Mind to Murder was Cath’s examination of some of the twentieth century’s most notorious murderers and, more to the point, the public fascination with them.
What was it about people like Brady and Hindley, Peter Sutcliffe, Charles Manson, Dennis Nilson, Fred West and dozens of others like them that the public found so intriguing?
Cath had already been commissioned to write a second book along similar lines about violence in the movies, but that was a long way off. She hoped the two non-fiction books could be a stepping stone to what she really craved: to have a novel published.
She pressed Rewind and listened to her brother’s message again.
He sounded fine. Chirpy, in fact.
Surprising, considering the circumstances he was caught up in at the moment.
She glanced at her watch and wondered whether she should ring him now, then decided against it.
She went into the kitchen and switched on the ghetto-blaster, which was propped on top of the microwave: the sound of Clannad filled the room. Cath filled the kettle and switched it on, dropping a tea bag and some milk into a mug which she first rinsed beneath the tap.
While she waited for the kettle to boil she walked back into the sitting room, glancing at the silent TV screen, watching as the bridge the Wild Bunch had rigged with dynamite exploded, sending Robert Ryan and his bounty hunters into the river below.
Cath stopped for a moment, struck by how incongruous the brutal image was with the lilting sounds drifting from the kitchen.
From the top of the television two photos stared back at her.
One was of her parents.
They had emigrated to Canada six years ago.
Cath hadn’t seen them since. She spoke to them every two or three months. They seemed to be enjoying themselves there, both retired. And they were proud of her achievements. Proud of both their children.
She wondered what they would have thought of Frank’s situation.
It was he who looked out at her from the other photo.
Five years older than Cath, he was powerfully built with a bushy moustache, flecked with grey like his hair.
In the picture he was sitting on a park bench with her, smiling happily, his arm around her shoulder.
The photo had been taken about eight years ago, the day after she began working for the Express, and shortly after he’d secured the deputy headmaster’s job at the school where he taught.
Happy days.
And now?
She crossed to the photo and picked it up, studying his features more carefully.
It was obvious the photo was old.
Frank was smiling.
He had something to smile about.
Cath heard the kettle boiling and set the photo back in position atop the television.
She’d spoken to him three days ago. His message seemed to imply there was something new to report.
As she headed back towards the kitchen she wondered what it could be.
It had got to the stage where she feared his calls.
Ten
The silence enveloped James Talbot like a shroud.
He pushed the front door shut behind him, muttering to himself as he stepped on the letters lying on the mat. He picked them up and carried them through into the sitting room, dropping the mail onto the coffee table without even glancing at it.
Christ, he needed a cigarette!
Instead he crossed to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large whiskey, swallowing most of the soothing liquid in one gulp.
The cabinet, like most of the furniture in the house, was old. Some was in need of repair, some of replacement. It was like stepping back into the fifties, walking inside the place. A huge mahogany chest of drawers stood against one wall, the dark wood matching the coffee table and also the small table upon which the television was perched. The electronic contraption looked out of place amidst such relics of the past.
The walls needed a lick of paint too.
Talbot could remember that sickly shade of magnolia from when he was a small child.
His father had painted the whole bloody house in that colour.
His father.
Was it really twenty-six years since he’d died?
It seemed like an eternity. Sometimes it felt as if he’d never even lived.
Like a fading photograph, the image of his father had slowly grown more and more faint in Talbot’s mind, until he could barely recall the man’s features.
He heard shouting outside and crossed to the window, peering out to see a group of young lads passing by, chatting loudly and animatedly.
The street was littered with pieces of crumpled paper and rubbish, blown about like bizarre tumbleweeds as the cold breeze swept through the streets.
The streets always looked like this after a match.
From the front window of the house in Gillespie Road, Talbot could see the
outline of Arsenal’s stadium.
His father had taken him along to matches when he’d been a child, at first too young to realise what was
going on, aware only of the crush and throng of so many bodies packed into terraces. Then, as he’d got older, he’d travelled the short distance to the stadium for every home game. Then he’d started going to away games too.
It gave him an excuse to get out of the house for a few hours.
To get away.
To be alone.
Strange, he’d always thought, to seek solitude amongst thirty thousand people, but it seemed to have the desired effect.
And then he would return.
To the smell of the drink. The shouts and screams.
The blood.
Talbot swallowed what was left in his glass and poured himself another. He crossed to the sofa where he flopped down on the large flower-patterned seats, rolling the whiskey glass between his large palms, gazed at the letters on the table, as if the very effort of reaching for them required some superhuman feat of will.
He took another sip of whiskey and tore open the first.
Phone bill.
He put it to one side.
A couple of circulars.
He tossed them into the bin beneath the table and picked up the last envelope.
Crisp. Pristine white. It seemed to gleam in his hands as he tore it open, noticing that his fingers were trembling slightly.
He pulled out the single typed sheet and unfolded it.
The heading on the paper stood out starkly: Litton Vale Nursing Home.
He sighed, wearily, and began to read.
Eleven
It was far too beautiful a day to be surrounded by death, Andrew Foster thought as he trudged up the narrow gravel path which led off from the main walkway.
It had been on a day like this, a day of clear blue skies and gentle breezes, that death had first touched their lives, and the memory seemed to grow stronger with each successive visit.
Croydon Cemetery was bathed in the soft warming rays of a sun which had risen proudly to take its place in a sky the colour of washed denim.
The scent of flowers, some freshly laid, wafted on the breeze. The scene was idyllic, even down to the birds perched in the leafy trees whistling happily, oblivious to the misery below them, unaware that for every joyful note they uttered in those branches, a tear had fallen below them: tears of pain, helplessness, regret and anger.