Death of a Murderer
Contents
1
When the news came through on the car radio, Billy sat quite motionless, unable to do anything but listen. He was parked on Norwich Road, outside a place called Glamour Gear. Lying on the seat beside him, sealed in an envelope of transparent plastic, were the ballet shoes he had promised to collect on his way home. The windscreen was starting to mist up, but he could still see out. An ordinary street in an ordinary English town. Friday afternoon. Lights on in all the shops, the pavement wet with rain…
He didn’t have any particular thoughts about the woman’s death. He didn’t feel sorry, or relieved, or cheated. It was vaguer than that, and more powerful. The woman had been involved in the murder of at least five people, three of them young children, and she had been feared and hated ever since. Children had been savagely abused in front of her by her own boyfriend, and she had gone along with it; she had even, possibly, tortured one of them herself. The victims’ bodies had been buried on a high, desolate moor to the east of Manchester. It had all happened years ago, in the sixties, but people had never forgiven her for what she had done. Never forgiven, and never forgotten. And now she had died, of natural causes, in a hospital twenty miles away. It was one of those heightened moments when you make a mental note of your surroundings, and yet the whole thing felt oddly muted, scaled down, like watching an explosion through a telescope. Certainly, it never occurred to him that her death might affect him directly; he had no idea, at that point, that he was about to become part of the story.
The phone rang three days later, on the Monday evening, while he was watching a TV programme about the mystery of the pyramids. He would be leaving for work before too long, so he let his wife, Sue, take the call.
“Yes, he is,” he heard her say. “I’ll just get him.”
Eyes bright, almost silvery, she held the phone out to him and mouthed the words
It’s for you.
These days there was an exaggerated quality about her that he found bewildering: she would get excited over nothing, and angry over nothing. They had been together for fourteen years, married for ten, and yet he seemed to see her less clearly now than he had at the beginning.
Moving across the room, he took the phone from her and turned towards the window. Though it had already been dark for several hours, he parted the curtains and put his face close to the glass. He could just make out the dim shape of his car, and the low brick wall beyond.
“Billy Tyler here.”
“Billy? Are you all right?”
He had expected it to be one of his colleagues from the police station, but the voice on the other end belonged to Phil Shaw. Billy had acted as Phil’s probationer when Phil joined the force in 1992, which meant he’d had to show Phil the ropes, to guide him through those tricky first few weeks. He had known even then that Phil had a good career ahead of him. They’d got on pretty well, though. He used to have Phil over to the house for takeaways—curries in the kitchen, with plenty of cold lager—or if the weather was fine he would light the barbecue. Now, ten years later, Phil was a detective sergeant.
“You’ve seen the news?” Phil said.
“Hard to miss,” Billy said.
Over the weekend, he had bought most of the papers, and they had been full of articles about the woman. They had referred to her as “a sick killer,” “a monster” and “the devil” her name, they said, was synonymous with evil. Many of the front pages had reprinted the picture that had been taken when she was first arrested, the picture that had captured so much more than it was intended to, not just the woman herself but the nature of the crimes as well, the atmosphere in which they had been committed. There she was, perfectly preserved, despite the thirty-six years she had spent behind bars: the sixties beehive hairdo, the sullen, bruised-looking mouth and, most potent of all, that steady black stare, so full of defiance and hostility, so empty of regret. There, too, was her boyfriend, the psychopath from Glasgow, who had initiated her into a world of pornography, sadism and murder. And there were the victims. Those little faces—for they were never blown up large, like hers. That old-fashioned, ham-fisted black-and-white. They were lost in time, it seemed, as well as to their families. On Saturday, the
Sun
had published a partial transcript of the sixteen-minute tape that had been played in court. It was a recording of the torture of one of the children, and it had shaken even the most cynical of reporters. Billy would have been nine when the trial started, and, naturally enough, the details of the crimes had been kept from him. All the same, he thought he remembered grown-ups talking in shocked whispers and glancing at him across their shoulders—his mother’s best friend, Betty Lydgate, and Auntie Ethel, and Mrs. Parks from next door—and a chill seemed to hang over that part of his childhood, as if, for a while, the sun had been obliterated by dark clouds. After reading the transcript, Billy went for a walk in the woods behind his house, a cold wind rushing through the trees, but he couldn’t rid himself of the woman’s voice.
Hush hush. Stop it or I will forget myself and hit you one. Will you stop it. Stop it. Shut up.
Phil Shaw was saying something, though. Billy heard the words “supervise” and “operation,” and now, for the first time, he understood why Phil might be calling.
“We need you tomorrow night,” Phil said.
He was giving Billy the job of guarding the woman’s body. It would be her last night in the mortuary, he said. The funeral was scheduled for Wednesday evening, though no one knew that yet; that information had not been released. He was sorry, but Billy would have to work a twelve-hour shift. They were short on numbers. Still, at least there’d be some overtime in it.
“Will you be there?” Billy asked.
“I’ve been here since 4 a.m. on Friday when they realised she was going to die.”
Billy could imagine the grim smile on Phil’s face. Phil might sound calm, even matter-of-fact—one of his strengths was that he never lost his composure—but he would be feeling the strain. It was such a sensitive situation. There was so much that could go wrong.
They talked some more about what was being planned and what would be required, then Phil gave Billy directions to the hospital, which Billy jotted down on a notepad next to the phone.
“What is it?” Sue asked, the moment he hung up.
He decided not to tell her, not just yet.
“I’ve got to work a seven-to-seven tomorrow,” he said, then he went and sat in front of the TV again.
His programme about the pyramids was over.
2
“It’s just a job,” he told Sue as he left the house on Tuesday evening. “It’s a job, that’s all.” But when he saw her mouth fold down at one corner he knew that he had failed to convince her, and he, too, felt that his words had fallen short, that there was something basic, something significant, that he hadn’t managed to convey. He couldn’t delay any longer, though, or he’d be late.
He turned the key in the ignition with the door open on the driver’s side, hoping she might relent at the last minute and give him her approval—he hated leaving for work with an argument hanging in the air—but once he had fastened his seat-belt and shifted into gear he had to shut the door and ease the car out of the drive. What else could he do? Although she was standing only a few yards away, she still hadn’t said anything. Her head was lowered, and the brass coach-light on the porch behind her prevented him from reading the expression on her face. Indicating left, he pulled out into the road, and in less than five minutes he was on the A14, heading west.
As he drove, he glanced at his mobile from time to time, but it stayed quiet. He followed a white van for several miles, the words greyhounds in transit painted on the back. Where was the nearest dog-track? He couldn’t think. The night was bleak and raw. Wind hurling the trees about. It seemed like an eternity since there had been any warm weather, but it was only November.
He yawned loudly, not bothering to cover his mouth. Usually, when he was working a night-shift, he slept from about nine in the morning until three or four in the afternoon, but that day, for some reason, he had woken at one, and even though he felt exhausted he couldn’t seem to fall asleep again. On going downstairs, he had found Sue in the lounge, fitting a photograph of their daughter, Emma, into a frame, and it was then that he told her what he would be doing. Hopelessly mistimed, no doubt, bungled, in fact, but he would’ve had to mention it sooner or later. They’d never kept too many secrets from each other—and besides, it was unusual, wasn’t it? It was like being part of history.
When Sue heard the woman’s name, her reaction was immediate and vehement. “Don’t go, Billy. Stay here, with me.” He was so surprised that he couldn’t think of anything to say—and she was already inventing excuses for him. “You could call in sick. There’s that flu bug going round.” But he hardly ever took time off because of illness—not like his old mate Jim Malone, whose nickname, tellingly, was “Virus”—and anyway, he didn’t feel he could let the sergeant down, not at this late stage. Losing her temper, Sue told him that he only ever thought about himself. He was pig-headed. Blind. She didn’t mind him sitting in a mortuary. He’d done that kind of thing before. What upset her was the contact with evil, the soaking up of some dark influence—the shadow that might cast over their lives. She had always been full of superstition, but where in the past it had been just one aspect of her character, a thread that zigzagged through her, an endearing quirk, now it had become the prism through which she viewed the world, and he began to wish he had dreamed up a decent lie for her, something out of the ordinary and yet believable—a prison riot, a strike, a demonstration. He had been caught off guard, though. He’d been too slow. Once again, she asked him whose body he would be dealing with, obviously hoping that she had misheard or misunderstood, and that he would come up with a different name this time, one that meant nothing to her. When he repeated what he had said, struggling to contain his irritation now—“I already
told
you, Sue”—she had tugged on his arm, reminding him, uncomfortably, of Emma, and there had been tears in her eyes, something that often happened if she was frightened. He didn’t respond, though, and she whirled away across the room. She stood facing the window, with her hands knotted at her sides. He could see the patch of fuzzy hair at the back of her head, the legacy of a car crash she’d had the year before, and there was a moment when a crack opened in his heart, and he almost went over and took her in his arms.
All right, love. I won’t go.
It would have been so easy.
Later, when he was in the kitchen, making his sandwiches, she attacked him again. By that point she had worked herself up into a state of outrage. How could he possibly justify what he was doing? Why was he prepared to put his whole family at risk? What sort of person was he? He couldn’t believe the extent to which she had blown the danger out of all proportion, and yet she spoke with such conviction that he was beginning to doubt himself.
“All I’ll be doing is sitting in a room,” he said.
“Yes, but it’s
her,
isn’t it?” She wouldn’t say the woman’s name; she didn’t want it in the house. “What she did—” She shuddered. “It’s not healthy to be close to something like that. It’s just not healthy.”
Some
thing,
he thought. Not some
one.
“But she’s dead,” he said.
She shook her head slowly, a gesture she would use whenever he was clearly in the wrong.
“I can’t afford to be superstitious, Sue, not in my line of—”
“I read something in the paper yesterday. Apparently, twenty funeral directors have refused to handle the body.
Twenty funeral directors.
Now why’s that, do you think? Are they superstitious too?”
“That’s different.”
“And what about the crematoriums? How many of them said no?” She let out a dry laugh. “I’ll be amazed if they manage to dispose of her at all.”
Billy sighed and looked away. In the next room, Emma was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, watching
The Sound of Music,
the volume turned up far too loud.
“Can you make it quieter, Emma?” he called out, but she didn’t hear him.
Well, perhaps it was for the best, he thought. At least she wouldn’t realise they were arguing.
“It’s not about superstition, Billy,” Sue was saying. “It’s about keeping your distance. It’s about not letting the wrong things rub off on you. You should know all about that. You’re a policeman.”
“I won’t see her,” he said. “I won’t even set eyes on her.”
Sue’s head snapped in his direction, as if he had finally come out with something truly horrific. Her lips tightened and then shrank, and she looked down at the kitchen floor. She seemed to be staring right through the tiles to what lay immediately beneath: the foundations of the house, the dark, damp earth—the end of everything.
“It’s my job,” he murmured.
In the lounge, Julie Andrews was singing that famous song about the hills being alive.
Not long afterwards he had to leave. Sue followed him outside, but she didn’t wave him off, or even say goodbye. She just stood on the gravel in her ribbed sweater, looking cold.