Death of a Murderer (6 page)

12

He couldn’t remember actually meeting Raymond Percival. There had been no fanfare, no shaft of light, no thin blade through his heart—nothing to let him know how deeply he would fall under Raymond’s spell. He thought they must have been in the same year at school, but it wasn’t the classroom that Billy saw when he brought Raymond to mind. He didn’t see a uniform either. Somehow Raymond always appeared in the clothes he put on after school, or at weekends. It was the late sixties, and Raymond dressed in long-sleeved T-shirts that were too tight under the arms, usually with a picture of an album cover or a group on the front. He wore flared jeans too, often with a triangle of fabric sewn into the lower leg to make them wider still. His hair was cut shorter than everybody else’s, a style that only came into fashion more than twenty years later, in the early nineties. Ahead of his time, Raymond was. Naturally.

The first conversation Billy remembered had to do with fathers. As a boy, Billy would never admit that his father had walked out—he had invented an alternative reality involving things he didn’t understand, like record deals and gigs—so when Raymond asked him whether it was true that his father was a musician, Billy gave his standard reply:

“He plays jazz. I don’t see much of him, though. He’s always away, on tour.”

Raymond sent him a look that tilted through the air towards him like a flying roof-tile in a gale. “I heard he left before you were even born.”

Perhaps because he was so shocked, Billy reverted to the truth. “So what? Have you got a dad?”

“He’s a nobody,” Raymond said. “I’m never going to be like him.” He kicked a stone into the gutter, then said, “Anyway, he’s dead.”

“I think my dad might be dead too, actually.” Billy had no reason to say that. It just came out.

“Do you care?” Raymond asked.

Billy shook his head. “No.”

Raymond seemed to approve of Billy’s answer. The speed of it. The frankness.

Raymond’s father had died of cancer, but Raymond wouldn’t talk about it except to say that he’d like to fucking blow up ICI. His father had worked at ICI for thirty years. His uncle still did, and now he had cancer too. One evening Raymond took Billy into a field that overlooked the plant. A few horses stood about, tearing at the grass with big stained teeth; against the mass of spotlit pipes and tanks, they looked incongruous, primitive, oddly out of date. Coming to a halt in the middle of the field, with Castner Kellner and Rocksavage glittering below him and the River Mersey in the distance, Raymond threw his arms out wide and made a loud exploding sound. The horses scattered, eyes rolling, their hooves thudding across the lumpy turf. One of them almost ran Billy down. He murmured in protest, but Raymond was hunched over with his hands wrapped around his head, and Billy understood that debris from the dynamited factories was falling from the sky. If you said ICI had brought jobs to the area, Raymond would tell you it had brought pollution too. If you mentioned the recreation club and the sports facilities, he would smile sourly. “That’s just guilt,” he’d say. He was unshakeable. Raymond always slept with his windows shut on account of the toxic gases that were released into the atmosphere at night. He didn’t trust anything that was produced locally. He only ever drank soda water, which he stole from the Co-op, and he refused to eat fruit and vegetables unless they came from somewhere far away like Israel or Costa Rica.

One particular afternoon from that time stood out in Billy’s memory. He would have been about fourteen. It had been a hot, sticky couple of days in an otherwise dismal summer, and when Raymond turned up at Billy’s house, he didn’t have a shirt on, only a pair of mulberry-coloured loon pants, the backs frayed where they dragged along the ground. Raymond’s dogs swirled about on Billy’s small front lawn, growling and snapping at each other. One of them was called Cabal, which had been the name of King Arthur’s dog. The other one was John. John the dog. Raymond thought that was funny. When Billy answered the door, Raymond held up a plastic bag and swung it from side to side. The contents clinked. Billy knew then that they would be getting drunk together. Raymond would have conned somebody into buying alcohol for him, or maybe he’d been shoplifting again. If you stole something and got away with it, you were innocent. That was Raymond’s philosophy. You were only guilty if you got caught, and Raymond never got caught: people would look into his face and see nothing but honesty in it.

“I’m going out for a bit,” Billy called back into the darkness of the house. He heard his mother’s voice, but Raymond was already turning away, so he shouted, “See you later,” and then slammed the front door shut. Once on the pavement, he glanced up and saw a bent head in the upstairs window. His brother Charlie, reading. Charlie’s A level results were due any day now, and they were all expecting great things.

That afternoon Raymond and Billy did what they usually did. To get to the park, most people would have walked along the road, a distance of less than a mile, but Raymond and Billy would cut across the open fields, which took them past the brine reservoir. Billy was fascinated by the warning signs—drowning hazard, corrosive liquid—and he was drawn, too, by the mysterious square brick huts. As for Raymond, he had his own personal agenda. The reservoir belonged to the company he held responsible for his father’s death, and he would be muttering threats and curses as they approached the padlocked gates. He seemed to like this route to the park. It kept his hatred fresh.

There was a place where the path narrowed, and they had to walk in single file. Raymond went first, the dogs running on ahead. A high hedge shielded them from the sun; the air cooled suddenly. As he followed Raymond, he noticed the paleness of Raymond’s back, more like the inside of something than the outside, as if the skin had already been peeled away and this was the fruit, the goodness, the part that you could eat. He felt himself blushing, and he lagged behind, feigning interest in a discarded cigarette packet.

Later, they lay side by side on the warm grass. They started with barley wine. There was a kind of thickness to the liquid in those small brown bottles; you could taste how strong it was. Drink three and you’d see double. They drank two each, then switched to vodka.

“You want to do something?” Raymond said.

Billy was staring up into a sky that was so smoothly blue, so absolutely free of clouds, that it made him feel dizzy, and when he heard the words “do something,” his heart turned over.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

And then, when Raymond didn’t speak, he said, “Like what?”

“Come on.” Raymond got to his feet. Two fingers in his mouth, he whistled to the dogs, then he began to walk.

“Where are we going?” Billy asked.

Raymond didn’t answer.

They circled back past the brine reservoir and ducked through a wire fence, coming out on to the footpath that led to Raymond’s house. When they arrived, his sister, Amanda, was lying on her stomach in the front garden, reading a comic. She was wearing a lime-green bikini and sunglasses with pink plastic frames. She was only eleven, but she already had breasts.

“You’re burning,” Raymond said as he passed her.

Amanda gave him a V-sign without even lifting her eyes off the page.

Billy grinned, but she didn’t notice. They were all the same, he thought, these Percivals…

Once they had locked the dogs in the back yard, they got two bikes out of the shed and cycled down the hill to Weston Point. They had to wait at the level crossing while a train laboured past. Billy counted eighteen wagons, each one filled with chemicals. The gates lifted, and the two boys cycled on. The village streets were deserted. All the shops looked shut, even though they weren’t. You could feel the heat rising off the tarmac in ghostly waves.

They hid their bikes in the gap between a fence of concrete slats and an old free-standing garage, then they scaled a wall and dropped down into a jungle of bindweed, lavender and nettles. Billy had climbed into other people’s gardens before, with Trevor Lydgate, when he was younger, but this felt different. There was something driven about Raymond, something merciless. Billy looked towards the house, with its black windows and its untended garden, and wondered what Raymond had in mind.

Crouching low, they crossed the lawn, and when they reached the house they flattened themselves against the wall, their palms and shoulder blades pressed against sun-toasted brick. They must look as if they’d been caught in an invisible force field, Billy thought. Like people in a science-fiction programme. Turning his head sideways, he met Raymond’s gaze, and they both began to laugh. And once they’d started, they couldn’t stop. They bent double, gasping, trying not to make a sound.
What if someone comes?
Billy kept thinking, but that only made it worse. In the end, Raymond brought out the vodka. He took a long swig, then offered it to Billy. Billy swallowed some. It was warm and slightly oily, and he shivered as it went down.

Just along from the back door, they found an open transom window. The frosted glass told them that it was a lavatory. Raymond heaved himself up on to the window ledge and slithered in head first, his legs wriggling comically for a few moments before they disappeared.
I hope no one’s having a crap in there,
Billy thought, and he had to pinch his arm hard to prevent himself from having the hysterics again. He glanced round quickly to see if anyone was watching, then followed Raymond through the narrow gap. He was stockier than Raymond, which made it more difficult; one of his trouser pockets snagged on the window-catch and ripped. Using both hands, he managed to manoeuvre himself down from the closed lid of the toilet seat on to the floor, landing in a heap at Raymond’s feet. He stood up. The room was only just big enough for the two of them, and he could smell the alcohol on Raymond’s breath.

“What are we doing here?” he said.

Raymond shook his head, then opened the door. They stepped out into a long, thin corridor with brown walls and a floor of cracked linoleum. There was a rack of musty raincoats, and a metal Hoover with a torn dust-bag. From somewhere near by came the squeaky chipmunk voice of a cartoon character.

“‘Sexton’s have solved the mystery of elegant living,’” Raymond said.

Billy stared at him.

“I saw it above a furniture shop,” Raymond said, “in Widnes.”

Later in his life, as a policeman, Billy would often walk or drive past that very sign, and it always reminded him of Raymond. It was as if, in saying the words out loud when they were fourteen, Raymond had erected a memorial to himself.

They crept along the passageway, with Raymond leading. To the right was a parlour that gave on to the back garden. No sooner had Raymond entered the room than he was lifting a silver tankard off the bookshelf and forcing it into his trouser pocket. Billy wandered over to the window. Lying on the table was a black-leather handbag, half-open, with two five-pound notes visible inside. There was some loose change too. Billy held the handbag out to Raymond, showing him the contents, but Raymond was busy peeling a banana. As Raymond came and took the bag, the door behind him swung outwards and an old man shuffled into view. Though it was hard to believe, the old man didn’t seem to realise anyone was there. Seen sideways-on, the top half of his back was curved, like the shell on a tortoise; were he to walk up to a wall, his forehead would reach it first. Billy and Raymond kept perfectly still. If they didn’t move, perhaps the old man wouldn’t notice them at all. In any case, it was too late to hide.

Arms dangling, the man hung in front of a sideboard. His head wobbled slightly, as though mounted on a spring, and he was mumbling to himself. Billy couldn’t make out any of the words. Then, after what felt like an age, the man turned and saw them. His eyes widened behind his spectacles; his mouth fell open.

“Time to leave,” Raymond said.

But somehow they couldn’t even take a step. It was as if they were being told a story, and they wanted to hear more.

The old man staggered towards them. He was shouting, but all the sounds that came out of him were slurred and nasal, and both his ears were full of hair. It was horrible. Just then, a wailing started up, very loud yet strangely forlorn, and it took Billy a moment to realise that it was a siren at one of the chemical plants. They would go off as part of a practice drill, or when a shift ended, but sometimes it meant that an accident had happened. If there was a leak, you had to run as fast as you could into the wind. Raymond had told him that, and he’d got it from his father. Billy wondered which way you were supposed to run if there wasn’t any wind.

The noise seemed to trigger something in the old man. He grabbed a walking stick from the back of a chair and began to lash out in all directions.
Swish—swish—swish.
He didn’t appear to be attacking anything in particular, unless it was the air itself—or perhaps he was signalling his outrage at the presence of intruders. In any case, he was destroying the room. First a chintzy table-lamp went flying, then a shelf of bric-àbrac. The head snapped off a prancing china horse. A shell-shaped ashtray shattered. Billy watched, half-enthralled, as the stick’s black rubber tip arced through the centre light. The shade exploded, and bits of cloudy glass bounced like hail on the carpet.

By now, Raymond had slipped out of the room. Eluding the stick’s wild orbits, Billy followed. Through a half-open door he saw an old woman with thick glasses and very little hair. She was watching
Wacky Races.
When she spotted Billy in the doorway, she waved, not with her whole hand, just with her fingers.

Raymond and Billy cycled back over the level crossing and up the hill, not stopping at all until they reached the park. One foot on the ground and the other on a pedal, Billy could taste blood in his mouth, and his right side ached, but it felt good to be outside again. There had been almost no air in the house, and what there was had smelt unpleasantly sweet, like stale cake.

When they had got their breath back, Raymond offered Billy one of the fivers.