I Was Dora Suarez (24 page)

‘Where the hell is he taking them from?’ I shouted.

‘He’s up on the rooftop opposite. Spavento’s place has three big windows, and from where my boy is he can cover them all.’

I said: ‘Are you in contact with him?’

‘Yes,’ said Cryer. ‘By walkie-talkie. I’m down in the street. So what do we do?’

‘Keep on doing exactly what you are doing till we get over there, which’ll be as quick as it takes four wheels,’ I said. I added ‘What’s Spavento doing right now?’

‘Wait,’ said Cryer. There was a pause while he contacted the photographer on the roof. When he came back on, he said: ‘Nothing. He’s lying on a bundle of old rags in a corner, staring up at the ceiling; he’s using a black Adidas sports bag for a pillow.’

‘Christ, where is this photographer of yours?’ I said. ‘In the room with Spavento or something?’

‘You know it makes no difference,’ said Cryer. ‘With the lenses we use it’s as if he were.’

I said: ‘Where do we find you when we arrive?’

‘Public call box halfway up College Hill.’

I said: ‘Right.’ I said to Stevenson: ‘This is it. Come on, let’s motor.’ As we started downstairs I said to him: ‘No chance of any of our people being over there, is there?’

‘How could there be?’ said Stevenson. ‘Nobody knows where Spavento is except you, me and the press.’

‘It’s the press that bothers me. Anyway, thank God for that – I don’t want a single leak here.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll explain later.’ We reached the Ford in the police park and got in.

‘I’ve got reasons of my own,’ I repeated, ‘I’ll explain later.’

We had reached the south side of the river when Stevenson turned to me suddenly and said: ‘By the way, you’ve got a serious-looking bulge in your right-hand pocket. You’re armed, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am for once.’

‘When did you draw the pistol?’

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s my own pistol, a .38.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s none of my business, but you know it’s against the law for you to be carrying anything other than a police weapon when you’re on duty.’

‘I know what the law is,’ I said calmly. I added: ‘What about you?’

He said, ‘No, I’m clean the way you usually go. I hate fire-arms.’

I said: ‘So do I, but this is different.’

‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why is it different? Spavento’s neither more nor less dangerous than any other maniac.’

‘That’s not it,’ I said. ‘This is just different. I repeat, I’ll explain to you later, when we get down there.’

He said: ‘You’ve not treated this case the way you treat other cases – not since the first moment you were put on it. Can I ask you, just between ourselves, as two men, why that is? Is it the victim that’s different?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes. For me Suarez is totally, utterly different.’

‘But why?’

‘I can’t tell you why,’ I said. ‘To me she’s not just reference A14 stroke 87471, she’s just different.’

‘Just Suarez?’ Stevenson said. ‘What about 87472? What about Mrs Carstairs?’

‘She too, of course.’

‘But it’s Suarez, really.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s Dora, yes.’

‘Dora?’

‘I don’t want to go into it any more. Please don’t try and make me.’

‘Be careful,’ Stevenson said.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘There are plenty of careful people around – too many.’

We didn’t speak any more for a while but drove on down the South Circular, making for the Lovelock Road turn off which led to College Hill. Dora was in my mind – Dora’s box, Dora’s book, the photographs of Dora. It suddenly started to pour with rain.

‘I wish you’d tell me what you were going to do,’ said Stevenson.

‘I will in a minute.’

‘Do you know yourself?’

I said: ‘Yes.’ A light turned amber and we sat in a silence broken only by the dirty rain pelting on the dirty windscreen.

‘I wish I understood.’

‘You understand all right,’ I said. ‘Anyway part of it – the part about realising how it was for Suarez, being axed to death; I’m convinced her arm was cut at the shoulder like that as she reached out to try and plead with her killer. The rest of it, thank God, she
knew nothing about – being drunk from, masturbated into; and all that the very night you had decided to kill yourself anyway.’

‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ he said.

‘We can never suppose in our job,’ I said.

The whole dreadful mosaic was in my head, my saying to the crew of the morgue ambulance, yes, I’ve finished now, you can take them away, taking a last look at Suarez in what was left of her new dress as they covered her and put her on the stretcher; at the two overturned bottles of wine which were to have been her send-off to the other world, at her new shoes lying in a corner, at the magazine lying open at the advertised holiday in Hawaii. There, too, in my head as I drove through the heavy, early-night traffic was her uninjured arm, stark white, which appeared to be waving us all freely onward into a different world; and there were her thighs again under the thin material of her dress, too heavy and out of proportion to her now, swollen on account of the blood which, because of the position she had died in, had drained down into them. There was the tightly-clenched little fist that belonged to her bad arm, the one half hacked off; there were her black eyes eternally devouring the secret of an empty corner.

Off the South Circular Road I started reading off the names – Neanderthal Avenue, Sobers Street, Gunters Passage. I said to Stevenson: ‘Lovelock Road ought to be third on the left after the next set of lights.’

Cryer came on; I always gave him the frequency. He said: ‘Where the hell are you?’

‘Nearly there,’ I said. ‘Why, what’s happening?’

He said: ‘How can I start explaining to you what you’ve never seen before?’

‘Your feller still up on that roof?’

‘Yes.’

‘His nerve holding out?’

‘Just about.’

‘What’s Spavento doing?’ I said.

‘You might call it some kind of training,’ said Cryer.

I could hear his voice shaking even over the radio. ‘We’re coming,’ I said, ‘we’re two minutes away.’

‘You’re going to have a nightmare job.’

‘I was constructed to have nightmares,’ I said.

‘Don’t drive up all the way to the factory,’ Cryer said, ‘Mike says he seems like nervous, uneasy. There’s an Indian take-away fifty yards before on the left as you come up off the South Circular, you can’t miss it, I can see it from the roof here, it’s all lit up.’

‘We’ll meet you there,’ I said. ‘What does it look like in Spavento’s room?’

‘Horrible,’ said Cryer. ‘It’s unbelievable what he’s doing – anyway, Mike says it’s too disgusting to print, and it’s a story I couldn’t write for the paper, it belongs in Krafft-Ebing country.’

I saw the take-away and said ‘Don’t bother, we’re here. Come down to the caff, Tom.’

The killer was looking carefully round the very edge of the middle of the three glassless windows of what had been the old machine workshop down into the street. He didn’t know why, but he was nervous. He told himself he was really well hidden out and so had nothing to worry about, but it didn’t help; instinctively he was sure something was gliding over him.

He was taking the fifteen-minute break from training as he did every three hours, timing himself with his plastic multiprogramme wristwatch, and had just now balanced the trainer neatly in its corner, noting that the rusted spokes were satisfyingly covered with his blood – he was only sad that there was no one on the dishes placed around the workshop to watch him perform. He put his thick lips to his blood as he placed the trainer against the wall burned grey by fire; then, having looked out of the window, he moved slowly backwards and stood where he could see the street from a point in the workshop that lay in deep shadow, where neither daylight nor streetlight ever reached.

He was in very great pain after the last session, but he nodded slightly to himself about that, knowing that the pain was necessary – as with creation, destruction overrode every other desire. He opened his fly, that he had only just zipped up, and looked down at himself in there for the sheer pleasure of it; in the middle of the mat of blood that lay in the crotch of his sporting joggers now there was practically nothing left of that at all, just red shreds. Pain was a liking which you grew to love.

‘I’m really honed now,’ he whispered. ‘Honed.’

Some hours before he had felt it imperative that he should go down to a boozer called the Double Barrel not far off in Oakley Grove, and so he had put his running shoes on, the new spiked ones that he had found for himself over in Brent Cross, paced himself over there and trotted in. Neither people nor alcohol had ever interested him, but he was often, though outwardly impassive, excited to see the effect that both had on others, and himself on them. He could never share their lives – the very idea of being involved with others made him shudder, though he had a series of carefully observed copies which superficially worked to attract a victim. He could be entrancing, serious with his good looks; only it was death to peel off the image, even to interrupt or in any way trespass on him, as thirteen dead people could tell if they could tell. He had been constructed to remain outside in the dark, alone; so he avenged himself by seizing one of these creatures from time to time as the ferocity of his desire seized him, and when his training permitted. Because of this self-punishment, when he did attract and ensnare a victim, any form of death was allowed.

He also killed for a living; look at Roatta. Like everyone else, he had to live.

Just now he had looked down at his new car parked in the street – he had wrecked the Fiat and dumped it. The replacement was a nice Volkswagen Golf, 1988, suburban-villa clean, silver grey. It had been standing opposite the Double Barrel and he had watched the owner, minor businessman by the look of him, go in there and order what looked like a glass of Chianti at the bar in a haw-haw chummy voice.

He had looked the Volks over carefully and decided yes, it would do for him – he liked the car. The interior upholstery was pale, but that didn’t matter; he had a special little absorbent mat in his sports bag which would prevent any blood getting on the driver’s seat. He thought of everything.

When the owner of the car drained his glass, stood up and left the pub, the killer let him leave, then followed – he suddenly felt like a bit of motoring, out in the quiet of country places some
where, get his lungs clean. He went and stood over on the pavement not far from the Golf. A half-cut punter, staggering past him, said to the killer: ‘’Scuse me but your balls are bleeding.’

‘Thanks for the good news,’ the killer said.

‘Don’t work the old mechanism too hard.’ The punter laughed, tottering away into the dark of South London, ‘that’s the motto, old boy.’

‘I won’t forget,’ the killer said, but luckily for the old drunk his attention was on the car; he suddenly had to have it.

The man, the owner of the car that the killer was waiting to drive, came over to the Golf. He was about to unlock it – had the keys shining in his hand, in fact – when the killer strolled over on his spiky shoes and appeared beside him suddenly as a shadow, very close – so near that the car owner could breathe him.

‘What do you want?’ the man said.

‘Your car,’ the killer said, ‘luckily for you.’ From behind he locked an arm which felt as if it were made of steel cable round the owner’s neck, taking care that his face couldn’t be seen. The car owner’s face brightened redly under the pressure till it looked like a darkroom bulb. The killer grabbed the keys; then he smashed the owner across the face with the back of his hand, felling him. The killer’s wedding finger carried a ring with a big false ruby stone in it, cut sharp, which he always wore in memory of the bride he had never had.

And now there was the car, parked out in the street, glittering and clean, with only fifty extra miles on the counter that hadn’t been there before, and not a scratch to show for it. He had just been driving around; he had rationed himself a rest from training.

It had been a day of cold bright sunlight, but now College Hill had swiftly darkened into night, and that made the killer feel curiously sad, empty and depressed; he had a horrible feeling suddenly, which he had never had before, that all at once there was no further point to him. He turned quickly to his reflection in a remaining piece of corner window glass for reassurance, but
because of the position of the sinking sun, he somehow could not get himself into focus. He travelled through all his usual magic, his formulae, his women, his killing, his physical beauty – but this time the magic turned him down flat, bypassing him; it seemed to be telling him good-bye, it had gone somewhere new.

Now, feeling out of luck, and against his will, he remembered some words that he wished immediately that he had never heard of but that he must have at some time heard: ‘Sweet Thames run softly, till I end my song.’ By an association that he did not try to place because he was unable to, the rhythm of the words recalled not only the river but also a boat on the water that had a still, painted look about it. There were two people in the boat – a couple – and then by a relentless progression, a tall old clock came to his mind; the clock was broken and there was someone like an old woman who smelled bad lying partly inside it. The memory was fresh, startling and new, and it worried him empty, sick; it made him feel old and ugly, though he had no means of knowing why. It also tore him up inside because he was not equipped to have memories. He could not imagine what memories he would have if he was able to have them.

Again he felt instinctively that he was being watched – the thing he most feared and hated. He slipped sideways on back to the window corner a second time, but he could see nothing unusual either down in the street or across it in the few other windows.

Stripped naked as he was, if you took care not to look at his privates, he still superficially looked good – short, but hard and muscular, a curly-haired beachboy except for the gear he wore across his stomach for his training, which struck a wrong note. He was pouring with sweat after his last session and he was strapped into yet another brand-new pair of racing-cycling shoes, black with bright pink bands this time. The big black mat of his pubic hair satisfyingly stated his maleness, replacing what had once been the shy pinkness of his penis, which, while it still existed, used to hide its tiny head in it, looped permanently sideways; yet otherwise
there was no reason why he shouldn’t be feeling great, thanks to his slow but sure mastery over the rest of himself through training and punishment. Indeed, in an effort to re-create this old sensation in himself he snapped the great leather band strapped around his dark waist with his contorted thumbs, but the sound came back at him from the burnt, blackened walls of the place as a bark of laughter so realistic that he whipped round to see if some joker was actually there.