“ Of course he will.” Fanny was smiling, and seemed eager to be active. “Well, I mustn’t keep you. Thanks a lot, Cathy. You’ve made me feel a great deal better.”
Cathy couldn’t return the compliment. She climbed the stairs hastily, before the time-switch overtook her. Her steps sounded isolated; the emptiness of Mr Craig’s room seemed to have affected the house. Which room hid his persecutor? Whose face was a mask?
Peter came home shortly after she did; she heard him go into the main room. She turned down the moussaka on the stove, and followed him. He was sprawled on the bed, reading The Savage Sword of Conan. “Oh, hello,” he said as though faintly surprised to see her but hardly caring.
“ Don’t read for a minute. I want to talk to you.”
“ Oh, Christ. Can’t it wait? I won’t have a chance to read this tomorrow if we’re going to see my parents.”
“ Well, they are your parents.” She sat on the bed and captured his irritable hands. “Just listen,” she said, and told him Fanny’s tale.
As soon as she’d finished, he pulled his hands away. Had he been impatient to do so? He didn’t like her to touch him so often now. Had marriage separated Ben and Celia too? “So what do you want me to do about it?” he said to her story.
“ I’m not sure. What do you think we ought to do?”
“ Nothing. Bugger all, that’s what I think. She just wants you to do something so she doesn’t have to. What are you suggesting, we go to the police?”
She hadn’t considered the notion seriously – but perhaps it might be safest, at that. “Well, no chance,” he said. “There’ve been too many fuzz around the house. You start inviting them up here, just watch them sniff out my dope. They’ve got me paranoid enough.”
“ We ought to start looking for a house of our own.”
“ Sometime. No point until I’ve finished University. Listen,” he said, taking her hands, “don’t get paranoid. We’ll be all right here for another year or so. Nothing else is going to happen. It’s a good house.”
So he did know how she felt, and was actually responding. He stroked her hair as she rested her cheek on his chest. She didn’t want to move, for their shared moments were becoming rarer – she wasn’t sure why. Did that happen in all marriages? She’d have to move soon, to tend the moussaka.
“ Hey, listen.” He patted her cheek. “Christ, I’ve just had an idea.”
She sat up eagerly. “You say old Harty’s leaving,” he said. “I’ll bet he was the guy who set the fuzz on Craig.”
She sagged a little; she’d hoped he meant to talk about moving. “Just think about it,” he urged her. “He didn’t seem too upset on Friday night, when you think what he must have seen. I’ll bet he was glad someone got Craig.”
Perhaps he was right, or perhaps the caller had been the other man on the ground floor: he was anonymous enough. Both ideas depressed her. “I’ve got to look after the dinner,” she said, standing up.
“ Smells good.” Had that cost him an effort? He seemed disappointed that his theory hadn’t cheered her up. “Things are going to be all right,” he insisted. “Let’s just stay away from the law, okay? We won’t need them.”
Chapter XIV
Today the sun was bright between the tower blocks. Even the blocks looked clean as bone. Glass gleamed like jagged dew among the grass blades. Passing cars exploded silently with light, and touched off explosions in the windows of flats. It was warm enough for Horridge to go out without his coat and buy a new one.
On Saturday morning, when he’d risen from his soundest sleep for years, he’d thought of continuing to wear the reversible, tartan outwards. Craig’s blood would be a secret badge of his achievement. But when he’d slipped his arms into the sleeves, the coat had felt clammy. He’d struggled out of it and had hung it in the wardrobe. To throw it away might have attracted attention.
He went downtown to the Army and Navy Stores, which seemed least expensive. Government surplus raincoats – pale, almost white – were selling cheap. He tried one on, and found that it made him look like a detective in an old film. That amused him: now that he didn’t need to play detective, it was a good disguise.
He bought the coat, then limped in search of newspapers, taking care not to buy more than one at any stall. He wandered amid the crowds for a while, enjoying his disguise, until a twinge of nervousness urged him home. Suppose someone broke into his flat while his documents were in the wardrobe? Besides, he had to find out what lies the newspapers were telling about him today.
He spread the new ones on the table, together with the earlier reports. Today the lies, where there were any reports at all, were lurking inside the papers. On Saturday there had been headlines so large and black they might have been shouting at illiterates, which no doubt they were. NEW RAZOR HORROR. ANOTHER HOMOSEXUAL SLASHING. NEW LIVERPOOL SLASHING HORROR. They sounded like slogans for trashy films.
His anger was mounting. He’d paid good money to read this rubbish about himself – to see his exploit served up as entertainment to the mob. But the reports were worse. Today’s said only that enquiries were proceeding, but the earlier ones had had far too much to say. He scrabbled papers aside, and found the worst:
Police today issued a statement about the murder of Roy Craig, of Aigburth Drive, Liverpool.
It was revealed that Mr Craig was well known in Liverpool’s homosexual community. For this reason
What community? Where was it supposed to be? Lurking in some dark place, afraid to venture out into the light – its members knew that if decent people knew about it, they wouldn’t let it exist for long. Community, indeed! Animals couldn’t form communities!
For this reason, police are considering the theory that his death was a “carbon copy” murder, inspired by the murders of two homosexuals in Liverpool last year.
What were they trying to insinuate? That Horridge couldn’t think for himself? That he was a homosexual? They’d better be careful what they were saying! He hurled the newspaper to the floor, but it floated down lazily, mocking him. He grabbed the day’s Liverpool Daily Post. What had they to say for themselves? Before he could find a report, the editorial caught his eye:
Often, in its demands that crimes should be solved instantly or always prevented, the public seems to forget the difficulties under which our police labour. Undermanned, with a multitude of taxing and often thankless tasks
He restrained his fist before it had crumpled more than a corner of the page. How much had the paper been paid to say that? They were all in it together, insinuating filth about him. He knew what the so-called difficulties of the police were: that they were incompetent, or worse. He’d read enough lying for today. He swept the papers together in a heap. Had some pages sneaked into the wrong papers? It didn’t matter; they were all the same. He was snatching up pages that had escaped the heap, and piling them indiscriminately on top, when he saw the report that he had missed in the latest batch:
Police are still investigating the murder of a Liverpool homosexual on Friday night. Later that night, on Princes Avenue in Liverpool, an unprovoked attack was made on a coloured man by three youths. He was cut about the face with a razor, and later had to receive seven stitches. This incident occurred about a mile from the scene of the murder.
Horridge stared at the cramped box of print. He felt as though its frame had closed about him. What were they trying to do? “Unprovoked attack” indeed – what had a foreigner been doing out so late, unless he was up to no good? Yet that thought didn’t prevent the report from distressing him. They’d made him sound like a young thug, terrorising people. Was that how his achievement sounded?
His fist thumped the table; the newspapers trembled. No, by God. He was no thug. He was one of the few who still stood up for what was right – and he’d write to them to tell them so. No; letters could be traced. He’d phone them.