Well-Schooled in Murder (39 page)

Rain began to fall in earnest as Kevin Whateley passed beneath Hammersmith Bridge onto the Lower Mall. Showers had been threatening all day, and the air had been heavy with humidity. But the sporadic drops that generally presage coming storms had not begun to sprinkle pavement and pedestrians until Kevin emerged from the tube at half-past five to tramp towards the river. Even then it seemed that the weather would not actually break. But as he made his way down Queen Caroline Street, the wind picked up force, clouds scudded across the sky, and within moments a prodigious downpour had begun to glaze both streets and pavements with a fine sheen of water.

Emerging from the shelter of the bridge, Kevin lifted his face to the pelting rain. It came from the northeast, chilled by the unforgiving winds of the North Sea, and it felt like countless icy rifle-driven needles, burning and stinging his cracked and weathered skin. The pain was good.

Beneath his arm he carried a slab of pink marble lightly veined with cream. He had seen it leaning against a large block of granite yesterday morning, earmarked for a memorial to be placed in the small church next to Hever Castle. He had kept his eye on the marble throughout the day, had determined the best time and the best manner in which to pinch it with no one’s being the wiser. In the past, he had often taken discarded pieces home from the memorial works. Most of his sculptures had been created from these cast-offs, bits and pieces ruined by the careless handling of a drill or the slipping of a chisel. This, however, was the first time he had taken a stone in pristine condition. Had he been caught in the act, it might have cost him his job. It still might, once a search of the dusty warehouse and work yard proved the marble was missing. But Kevin didn’t care whether he was given the sack or not. All the years of toil at tombstone carving had been endured for Mattie. For his benefit, for his welfare, for his future. Now that he was gone, what did it matter where or even if his father worked again?

Rain made the marble slippery. Kevin shoved it more forcefully under his arm. Above him, the tall black streetlamps shattered the dark with a light that the raindrops diffracted like prisms. He passed beneath them, slogging through puddles in his heavy boots, mindless of the cold, heedless of the water that soaked his head and shoulders and seeped into his clothes. He was thoroughly drenched by the time he arrived at his cottage door.

It was unlocked, not even completely latched, and without loosening his grip upon the stone, Kevin shouldered the door open and stepped inside. His wife, he saw, was sitting in the old plaid chair with Mattie’s picture on her lap. She stared at it without looking up. In front of her on the coffee table, a plate held some half-eaten sandwiches and three ginger biscuits. The sight of these stirred Kevin to unaccountable anger. That she could even
think
of food…that she could even want to make herself a sandwich…He felt bitter words of castigation rising in his throat, but he forced them down.

“Kev…”

It made no sense that she should sound so weak. She’d been keeping her strength up good and proper with her sandwiches all the day, no doubt. He passed her without speaking and went to the stairway on the other side of the fireplace.

“Kev…”

His feet thudded against the bare wood. His sodden clothes dripped water everywhere. Once, the marble slipped and gouged the wall. But he continued to climb, past the first-floor landing and on to the second floor to Matthew’s bedroom, a small room under the eaves with a single dormer window through which muted light glimmered from the embankment outside and fell upon the sculpture
Nautilus
which Kevin had carried to this room on the previous night and placed on Matthew’s chest of drawers. He couldn’t have said why he had done so, only that it seemed fitting that the room be made as much Matthew’s as possible now he was gone. Bringing
Nautilus
up was the first step. Others would follow.

Gingerly he lowered the marble slab to the floor, resting it against the chest of drawers. Straightening, he was confronted with
Nautilus
again, and he reached out to touch the stone. He ran his thumb along the curve of the shell, closing his eyes at the feeling of its smooth, cool surface. He traced the entire shape of the mollusc, coming to know the difference between the finished shell and the roughly hewn marble that surrounded it.

It’ll be like a fossil, Dad. D’you see in this picture? Like something you’d dig up. Or find embedded in the side of a cliff. What d’you think? Is it a good idea? Can I have a bit of stone to do it?

He could hear the voice, so loving, so clear. It was as if the boy were with him in the room, as if he had never left Hammersmith at all. So near to him now. Mattie felt so near.

Kevin fumbled for the pulls on the top drawer in the chest and jerked it open. His hands were shaking. By clutching onto the drawer, he stopped them from doing so, but that action did nothing to quell his ragged breathing. The rain was beating against the cottage roof, gushing through drainpipes, and for several moments he concentrated on these sounds, allowing them to drive everything else from his mind. He sought control, finding it in focusing on a thin stream of air that seeped from beneath the closed window to cool the back of his neck.

Blindly his hands felt through the few objects in the drawer he had pulled open. He lifted them out, examining them, folding and refolding them, smoothing creases away. Everything was old, no longer used, inadequate or unworthy to be taken to school. Three tattered jerseys Mattie would wear when scouting along the banks of the Thames; two pairs of underpants with elastic gone bad; a miniature railway sign; an old pair of socks; a cheap vinyl belt; a misshapen knitted cap. Kevin’s hands dwelt longest upon this last object, picking at the ridges of wool. Effortlessly he pictured Mattie wearing it, pulled low upon his brow, his eyebrows hidden and his nose scrunched up against the scratch of the material upon his skin. Winter, it would be, when the wind howled off the river and beat against the walls. But they would be out in it, the two of them, bundled into their pea jackets, heading for the dock.

Dad! Dad! Let’s take out a boat!

In this weather? Y’re daft, lad
.

No! Let’s do it! Say we can! Dad? Dad! Say we can!

Kevin squeezed his eyes shut, as if doing so would put an end to the voice that rang in his ears so joyously, over the sound of the rain, over the groan of the wind, over the rush of water down the eaves to the pipes. Woodenly he turned from the chest of drawers and made his way to Matthew’s bed. Mindless of his wet clothes, he sat on the edge, reaching for the pillow which he held to his face. He breathed in deeply, longing to catch the scent of his son. But the pillowcase had been laundered—the sheets as well—and if they smelled of anything, it was of the odour of lemons, an olfactory residue of the detergent Patsy used.

Kevin felt the surge of a grievance at this. It was as if Patsy had known their son was going to die, so she had busied herself in getting everything ready, laundering his bed linen, sweeping out his room, folding his clothes into the drawers. Damn the woman’s determination that life be neat and tidy! Had she not been so concerned that everything be scrubbed—including Mattie himself—there well might have been something left of the boy in this room. Even some scent of him. Damn her to hell.

“Kev?” She stood in the doorway, a lumpy shadow in a rumpled dressing gown. The hem was uneven, pulled up on one side above her knee. The front gaped, sagging open with the weight of her breasts. Stains marred the silk. It was not at all the same garment that Matthew had given her just this last Christmas.

Colonel Bonnamy and Jean said you’re to have this, Mum. They said you’d fancy it specially. Do you? Do you fancy it, Mum? I’ve got these slips as well, you see. But I couldn’t quite tell if they matched the dragons
.

Kevin searched for a hardness within himself that would prove impenetrable to the force of memory. The boy was dead.
Dead
. Nothing could bring him back.

He saw his wife take a tentative step into the room.

“Police were here again,” she said.

“What of it?” He heard his anger.

“Mattie didn’t run off, Kev.”

Kevin thought he discerned some relief behind her words, some cessation to pain. He couldn’t believe it. That she had actually allowed a paltry piece of news to make a difference in the fact that their son was dead. Not just gone away to school. Not just on a visit to a friend’s. But dead. Gone. Part of forever.

“Did you hear me, Kev? Mattie didn’t—”

“Blast your soul, woman! Do you think I care? What bloody difference does that make to what’s happened?”

She flinched but continued to speak. “We did tell the police that he wouldn’t run off, didn’t we? We were right, Kev. Mattie wasn’t a runner. Not our Matt.” She took a second step into the room. Her slippers flopped hollowly against the bare wooden floor. “They found his clothes at the school. So they think he was still there when he…when he…”

Kevin’s muscles contracted. His chest tightened. Behind his eyes, the pressure built. It throbbed in his brain.

“Police know all about Matt. They guessed it from him not knowing his colours somehow. They know he…he…they know he wasn’t ours, Kev. I told them how we came to have him with us. About Mr. Byrne. About—”

He broke. “Wasn’t ours? Wasn’t
ours
? Who was the boy if he wasn’t ours, woman? Matt’s birth is none of their business. D’ you hear me, Pats? None of their fucking business!”

“But they need to know as much—”

“They need to know bloody nothing! There’s no point, is there? The boy’s gone. He’s dead. He’s never coming back! And nothing some poncey police detective does will ever change that. D’you hear me?
Nothing
.”

“They have to find out who murdered him, Kev. They must do that.”

“It won’t bring him back! Damn you to hell, don’t you see that? Have you lost what little sense you had? Bloody fool!
Fool!
”

She gave an inarticulate cry, the sound of an innocent animal being struck. “I wanted to help.”

“
Help?
Christ Jesus, woman, you wanted to help?” Kevin clutched the pillow. Still dirty from the memorial works, his hands created dark smudges against the pale linen. As did his work jeans on the counterpane.

“You’re dirtying up Mattie’s bed.” Patsy sounded querulous and old. “It’ll have to be changed now, won’t it?”

Kevin’s head flew up. “Why?” he asked, and when she didn’t respond, he began to shout, the question ugly with violence suppressed. “Why, Pats?
Why?
”

She didn’t reply. Rather, she took a step back towards the door. Her hand reached up for the back of her neck. It was a gesture her husband recognised well, a prelude to pretended confusion, a prelude to escape. He refused to allow it.

“I asked you a question. You answer me.”

She stared. In the shadows, her eyes were dark depressions in her face, unreadable, lacking feeling and depth. That she should stand there and talk about dirty bed linen…that she should even care to think about laundry right now…that she should make sandwiches, drink tea, talk to the police…and all the while their son’s body lay in storage in Slough, waiting for dissection, giving its beauty to the knife.

“Answer me, woman.”

She turned to leave. He surged off the bed, crossed the room in three steps, grabbed her arm, spun her to face him.

“You don’t walk out when I’m talking to you. You don’t ever do that. You don’t
ever
.”

She jerked away. “Let me alone!” Spittle spewed from her lips. “You’re mad, Kevin. Sick and mad and—”

He struck her across the face with his open palm. She cried out, struggling to free herself from his grasp.

“No! Don’t you—”

He hit her again, fist closed this time, feeling the sharp, brutal contact of his knuckles slamming against her jaw. Her head snapped back. She would have staggered, would have fallen against the door, but his grip upon her arm didn’t break.

She cried only, “Kev!”

He shoved her into the wall, butted his head against her chest, savagely pounded her ribs. He ripped open her dressing gown, beating her thighs. He clawed at her breasts.

He filled the air with curses as foul as he could make them. But he did not cry.