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Besides all of which, the man hadn’t been stabbed, had he? Unless that was a detail yet to come out.
I took out the knife and pushed the button on the handle. The kitchen light bounced off the blade. It was clean. I closed my eyes and let out a strange sob. It was clean it was clean it was clean, and anyway, I’d only imagined myself as the jump-lead strangler for a few brief minutes of madness, hadn’t I? And I was now putting that down to a hot flash with major side effects.
The police were calling for witnesses. There was a number. I wondered if it was the same one as for Jo. That was two calls I should make. Two calls I wouldn’t make because, really, I had nothing to say. No one had come forward. There had been no one about. If anyone had seen me, they’d have seen no one at all.
The man was discharged the following day. The article was no more than a paragraph in Monday’s update:The homeless man found in a state of semi-asphyxiation near St Michael’s church on Thursday evening was discharged from hospital yesterday. Police are not treating this incident as suspicious.Not suspicious? Were they serious? How suspicious did it need to be? A flaming axe sticking out of his head?
Oh God. I dry-heaved into the sweating palm of my hand. There was a pressure in my forehead, right across the front. Strangled. Almost to death. I ran my thumb softly over the tiny burgundy scuffs on my knuckles. I closed my eyes and willed myself to remember, but… no. Nothing.
A few more details followed. The cemetery strangler victim (my phrase, not theirs) had a name: Henry Parker. No fixed abode, history of mental illness. A footnote even in the local weekly news of a northern industrial town. That made me feel even worse: for his ruined, wasted life, for the crimes I felt sure had been committed against him when he was a child, for those I may or may not have committed myself.
For the invisibility we shared.
I printed the article out on a sheet of plain A4 in the usual way before sliding it into a clear sleeve and clipping it into my file with Jo and the others. It wasn’t knife crime, but violence was violence. I closed the file. It felt like I was shutting him out. Out of sight, out of mind. My eyes filled with tears.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered to him. ‘I’m sorry for what I think happened to you when you were little and what I’m scared I might have done to you the other night. I’m sorry I said what I said to you even though I don’t think you heard me. I wish you peace, I really do, but I know you can’t find it and I doubt you ever will. I wish I could give you some comfort, but I have none to offer, I’m afraid.’
‘Mum?’
Katie was standing at the door looking at me like I’d completely lost my marbles, which it’s possible that by then I had. ‘Who were you talking to?’ She glanced at the dresser, at the clip file, at me. Her eyes filled.
‘No one, love,’ I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘Well, to myself.’ I smiled as best I could. ‘Only way I get a decent answer, isn’t it? Anyway, what’re you up to?’
Her face hardened. She held up a wad of tissues covered in blood. When she spoke, it was with barely concealed fury. ‘I’m moving these. They were freaking Liam out. So disgusting.’
‘Liam.’ Blue Eyes says, making me jump. ‘That’s Katie’s boyfriend?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Katie was holding bloody tissues?’
‘Yes.’
She jots that down. ‘And what was your reaction to that?’
I think back, trying at the same time to breathe my way out of a hot flash I can feel coming at me. My forehead and armpits go from dry to wet in a split second. Focus, Rachel. What was my reaction? I stared at my daughter, that was my reaction. I stared at the bloody mess she was holding up like an accusation or a victory trophy or something, the mess she was now putting in the kitchen bin with a gob like she’d bitten into a lemon. A blunt pain pushed into my sternum.
‘Where did you find those?’ I asked her, although I thought I knew.
‘In the bathroom. On the windowsill.’
‘When?’
‘Now. I mean, they’ve been there for ages but I didn’t think I should have to clear them up as they’re not mine. It’s a bit gross, to be honest.’
‘God forbid you should have to tidy up after someone else,’ I muttered, turning away from her. I had to. I was shaking, but it wasn’t anger. I was worried she’d see guilt in my face. I was thinking about seeing the knife in my bag and thinking it was clean. I hadn’t even noticed those tissues on the windowsill. When had I put them there?HadI put them there? Why not flush them down the loo? And whose was that blood?
I pressed my hands to the dresser top, glanced at my file, away, out into the back garden. I thought I caught a glimpse of the top of a blonde head over next door’s fence. Looked like Ingrid, but that didn’t make sense; she didn’t even know next door so far as I knew, and anyway, I thought, I was pretty sure they were away on a six-month cruise. There was a thrush on the fence warbling its territorial cry, I seem to remember, and remembering that, it strikes me now that it was dusk, not dawn.
‘Sorry, love,’ I managed, still not looking at Katie, keeping my voice as level as I could.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ Her voice had softened, which was worse, somehow.
‘I’m fine. I’m just tired, but I’m fine. Might go and read for a bit.’ Avoiding her eye, grabbing the worktop for support, I struggled out of the kitchen one handhold, one foothold at a time.
‘Me and Thea are going into Liverpool tomorrow,’ she called after me as I headed upstairs. ‘We’re going to get some stage make-up for a shoot.’
‘OK, love!’ I closed my bedroom door behind me. Sat on my bed, quivering, crying, trying to shake off the way she’d looked at me. Holding up tissues like a Medusa’s head, turning me to stone. My tissues. Covered in blood. Been there for… how long? Days, presumably. The knife had been clean. I had seen it in my bag and I had had that thought. I had had that thought then wondered why,whynotice the blade being clean? Why wouldn’t it be?
