The first thing I found was the can, crushed and half-buried in humus. Then a hint of bone – I drew my fingers through the soil and found the long outline of it. Then-
My fingers brushed something metal.
I dug into the chill soil, heart beating faster, wondering suddenly what I’d missed, all those years ago. Having a premonition of what it must be, knowing that I ought to have come down here to Janey’s body, thirty years ago. I would have seen it then, sticking from her back, maybe.
A knife. An old, ivory-handled knife.
I remembered tea that day. Mam spreading blackcurrant jam on white bread with one of a set of knives. Wedding presents cast haphazardly into a drawer in a whole range of different sizes and shapes. One would not have been missed.
Sitting back on my haunches, I tried to reconstruct that afternoon. I’d been in my room doing homework and stopped to watch Janey from my window with dad’s binoculars. I’d heard mam below in the kitchen. Hadn’t I?
If only I’d kept watching Janey, instead of going back to my homework. If I’d watched all the time I might have seen mam. I might have seen her kill Janey. All those years, I’d been satisfied with hints and innuendos. And she must have been laughing all the time, knowing I could have had evidence, but didn’t.
Crouching there, holding the dirt-encrusted knife in my hand, fuming at my impotence, I knew one thing.
Mam had won and there was nothing I could do about it.
ENTANGLEMENT by H. P. Tinker
… A series of unexplained deaths rippling across a city paralysed by overly-ambitious copycat serial killers, bi-curious junkies, homeless Santas… 197 exchange students killed in simultaneous unrelated coffee table incidents… a travelling salesman mutilated in his bed surrounded by obscene cuddly toys… art critics butchered amidst some of the countries most innovative new buildings… a motivational dog-trainer garrotted in her car by a 5-inch child’s lariat… several hundred random business journalists killed by lethal injection… the city a vast amoral jungle of blue-haired gamblers and punk rock scholars… out on the Sheik-infested streets a thousand tragically sassy beauticians, Rembrandt scholars who don’t like Rembrandt, religious activists sexually haranguing timid agnostics… the atmosphere of each day eerily in keeping with the vapid production values of the entire Sussudio period… Q surrounded by photographs, articles, graphs detailing these sly, wittily constructed deaths: dismembered ex-girlfriends, decapitated nuns, disembowelled cardiologists, violently violated violinists… Q pondering the dark methodologies at work, regularly raising both eyebrows simultaneously…
… unshaven in blue underpants, organic cotton, knitted stripes – no logo of any description – Q squinting at cold black newsprint, reading about the death of a former chess champion. Several witnesses saw him fall “almost cheerfully” – after straightening his bowtie, tossing himself from the roof of the building… an ever-increasing grin widening across his face… on impact he was “practically having sex up against a tree for five to ten seconds.”
Q circles the paragraph in bright red ink.
In some advanced technological epoch – Q thinks to himself -perhaps people will wonder why we bothered to circle such articles in bright red ink. Q filing away the latest of the latest unexpected demises… a light-bulb salesman ripped apart by a gaggle of lions… renegade schoolgirls exploding into young pieces, their charred remains evenly distributed across the piazza…
“… my files cannot possibly take the strain of this increasingly worrying information,” realizes Q. “Soon I’ll be requiring an all-new filing system…”
… cryptic messages arriving – from disparate loners: infertile child psychologists, lunatic travel agents, broken down housewives, fairly lethal sounding Hispanic 52-year olds… the latest: Mrs A, a glamorous cripple in a dark suit, pale tie, gold shoes, legs splayed about a mile wide: “I must interject into your investigation in my customized wheelchair,” she states earnestly, like Kate Bush. “My husband is listed as missing in the places where they list such things – and that’s a distressing state for any husband to be in…”
“… regarding your husband-”
A: “I fear he’s gone, forever into the overbearing darkness, more overbearing darkness than I had personally bargained for. Having dreamed all my life of romantic trajectories, I now find myself in a full-length narrative of angry policemen, would-be assassins, pre-teen suicide bombers, nothing remotely romantic about it-”
Q: “The rediscovery of a missing husband rarely represents an enormous cause for celebration… but if you have any supplementary information that might shed light on your husband’s disappearance…”
A: “Well, there is one thing – probably not important…”
Q: “No, please tell me. Even the smallest grain might prove central…”
A: “Well, people do say he bears an unnatural resemblance to Kris Kristofferson…”
… into his Dictaphone: “- as events turn ever more torrid, I am proud that I have not betrayed myself, not once – well, maybe once – but never twice and, in a corrupt and immoral age where inconsequential dialogue has become the order of the day, that seems important…”
… Q waking, the smell of maple syrup thick in both nostrils. In a city of foetid fragrances, the mysteriously saccharine odour rapidly hits local radio. One listener describes the smell as “oddly flavoured coffee”, another: “rather like maple syrup”. A well-spoken spokesperson from the Office of Emergency Aromas asserts: “We are fairly confident that the odour is no way dangerous and that citizens of the city can continue with their usual patterns of early morning business and communication…”
Stepping outside, a gigantic billboard overhead reads: “… THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT FULLY COOPERATE HERE…”
… an unexpected sight greeting Q along the angular carpeting scheme of Mrs A’s apartment: an arm reaching outwards, two fingers raised like a gesture, or sign – or salute; or symbol. Mrs A impaled on the far wall by several metal hooks. Dark scuffs on the linoleum resembling less of a struggle, more a dance of death, possibly the Foxtrot. Why were murdered women often tortured and mutilated horribly in this fashion? asks Q. As if simple murder wasn’t enough for them? Was the secret cousin of some rich and powerful people involved? Who else would be up to the task of nailing somebody’s wife to a wall with so much obvious enthusiasm? Recent events unusually frozen on the face of Mrs A in the form of a happy expression… but - given the circumstances - was there really anything to be quite so happy about? Q taking samples of her nightwear away – for special analysis – under his jacket…
“… even previously thick-skinned police sniffer dogs have taken to contemplating their own mortality,” Q notes, alone in his office with cheap bourbon, sour conclusions, false assumptions, vague deductions, a Dictaphone, some even cheaper bourbon… the telephone spluttering in the ever-dimming dimness. Q picking up, as is his custom. A voice answering like a deceased banker dredged hissing from a lake, some time last May. “When an unhappily married woman is unexpectedly crucified,” advises the voice, “her husband is generally called in for questioning…”