The Twisted Heart (20 page)

‘Any good?'

‘Very disappointing, because it looks just like the world as seen by everyone else. Come on, lunatics! Try a bit harder! Anyway, strangely enough, I had an exceptional one of those laugh-out-loud-in-a-library experiences that I mentioned to you before. In fact, yes, prepare to be staggered.'

‘By you,' said Joe, ‘I'm prepared to be staggered.'

‘Sort of by mistake,' said Kit, ‘guess what I found? Only Charles Field's actual daily log of his investigation into the Eliza Grimwood murder: Charles Field—Bucket—the actual police inspector in charge. Can you believe it? When I tell you it was handwritten, of course it was, because this was before typewriters. But it's just such a thrill to hold these things for real, God; the real, real thing, the paper he breathed on; his own hand. The Home Office evidently called in his notes when they started receiving false confessions to the murder, then omitted to return them again. But they weren't listed in the PRO catalogue, so I found them there entirely by surprise. I almost
didn't
find them because I was just muddling through the rest of these boxes for fun. I mean,
Charles Field
: I can't tell you how brilliant this is. This, I can really make use of in my thesis.'

‘A bit of a coup, then.'

‘Actually,' said Kit, trying to look modest, ‘it is. I wasn't there long enough to decode all the handwriting, but from what I was able to glean in the time, it indicates that the police had absolutely no extra, secret evidence against anybody.'

‘Right.'

‘They were utterly foiled. Which isn't all that helpful regarding the murder, but does prove Field to have been
an out-and-out liar when he talked about it to Dickens. I'll have to go again and work through the thing properly, but I had to get back here for dancing, as you know. Anyway, I've been conked out ill in bed half the week,' she said.

‘I'm sorry to hear it.'

‘Headaches.'

Their bus was crawling down the Cowley Road, past Chinese stores, Russian stores, tattoo parlours, wig shops, sex shops, Bangladeshi restaurants, bead stores, all muddled up with government and other outlets seeking to service variously bungled lives.

‘Yes?' said Joe.

‘And I've stopped going to the cinema,' said Kit.

‘Is that a good thing?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I've had a stupid week,' said Joe. ‘One of my students pissed all over this girl's door: quite a good mathematician. I've had to have endless meetings about it. Her parents want him sent down. I thought I'd already had my quota of this kind of idiocy for one term; but no.' 

When they reached the bottom of the Cowley Road, Kit suggested they get off the bus again and walk. They waited for the rear doors to open, then stepped out into the frosty darkness. Cold as it was, they dawdled their way towards The Forfeit, by no means overly keen to arrive.

‘Can I run a thought by you?' said Kit, as they paused to look from Magdalen Bridge down into the chilly river waters.

‘Not by any remote chance to do with Eliza?' Joe asked,
entertained when her body language confirmed that his suspicion was correct.

‘You know your comment, “Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence”?' she said. ‘Can I tell you some more?'

‘Sure, go ahead.' They started walking again.

‘Because, you know, I still feel,' she said, ‘if nothing else, that there's just too many of them.' She sighed. ‘Anyway, Bill Sikes, remember after he clubs Nancy to death he's plunged into a terrible state of “dread and awe”, goes off for a couple of days, is completely unhinged, comes back still mental, and is desperate to know whether or not her body has been buried yet? And when he's told it hasn't been, because the inquest isn't yet complete, he bursts out,
why
do they keep such “ugly things” above ground? Yes? Well, how ugly? one might ask. Or, putting it another way, what sort of shape do we think he left Nancy's corpse in by the time he'd finished? Because, note that when her friend Bet has to go and identify it, what she sees drives her stark, raving mad. She begins banging her head on the floorboards, and is hauled off to be straitjacketed in a lunatic asylum. You remember that?'

‘I do—remember.'

‘So, you have to imagine that the corpse is in a truly horrendous and horrific state, yes?—if Bet goes mad at the sight of it? Okay, so bear with me. Sikes then tries to escape a mob that forms, “hurling execrations” at him, by climbing out onto the roof of the building he's in. And, to wrap up, he then by convenient accident slips off the tiles with a rope around his neck and hangs himself. We're agreed about all this?'

‘Yes. You've reminded me I wanted to point out to you that he falls thirty-five feet, as specified by Dickens, which without
question in reality would cause your head to be torn off. But hey, never mind. Let the fucker dangle, as Dean would say.'

‘Yuk, I didn't think of that,' said Kit. ‘Thanks.
Yuk
. So anyway, now we come to Eliza's murder. I'm not saying anyone made this fit a pattern, I'm not saying that, because I don't see how they could have. But consider that when she was killed it was very hot weather, so her corpse rotted. We know this because, when the inquest jury was reconvened after five days of Charles Field gathering useless evidence, the jurors were unable to examine the new wounds that had been found on Eliza's torso, after her underclothes were removed, because, after five days of heat, these stab wounds had become undetectable due to having putrefied,
deliquesced
—I mean, obviously this was before scene-of-crime photographs, it was before photographs, so you just left the corpse where it was until you'd finished the inquest. So anyway, yes, for rising a week she was left to decompose in her bedroom, while Hubbard, the main suspect, her cousin-lover-pimp, was under house arrest in the same house, and on suicide watch because
he
was going mad. Think of the smell, by the way. And he was eventually implicated as the murderer by an anonymous letter that looked like it had inside information in it, but which the press speculated the police had sent to themselves. Anyway, whatever, it enabled them to
get
him, as it were. But the accusations couldn't be made to stick in court. The magistrates said Hubbard must be allowed to go free. And the governor of the prison where they were holding him, Horsemonger Lane Gaol, let him escape out of a back window, apparently, because a mob had gathered at the
front, and was “hurling execrations” again, according to
The Times
, and there was this fear he'd be pulled to pieces. I mean, I'm not saying anything, except, doesn't this sound, in its main points, strangely similar to—'

She broke off as Joe took her arm to guide her safely through the traffic and over the street.

‘Drat, blast and bother,' she said, when they got to the other side, smiling round at him blithely. ‘You still don't find this all a bit close?'

‘Kit?' said Joe.

‘Yes?'

‘This isn't exactly a change of subject, but I'm curious, do you want to be an academic?'

She took a deep breath. They were nearly at the pub. ‘Not especially,' she said. ‘I'm not thinking ahead about it, really. I don't really know. I don't want to
be
anything, particularly. I just like thinking about things, except when I don't want to think at all; which is why dancing is so brilliant, for example. Thank you for this evening. Why did we leave? We just—
did
?'

Joe shook his head as though he didn't have an answer.

‘I don't know what else kind of thing I could do to earn my keep, though,' she said.

‘You could join the police force.'

She laughed a lot at this suggestion. ‘I could compose their anonymous letters for them, right? I'd enjoy that,' she said, adding, as an afterthought, ‘You're lucky you have a good job.'

‘Ah,' said Joe, ‘what does that mean?'

As they walked in through the door, into the stale air of
The Forfeit, Kit squeezed Joe's arm, acknowledging an intimacy now to be suspended. 

‘Hello, beautiful.'

‘Graham.'

Up stood a tall, middle-aged man who looked as though he'd been forced to grow used to being portly. He kissed Kit and stroked her cheek. ‘Okay then? You doing all right?'

‘Great, yes, I am. This is Joe, Graham. Graham, Joe.'

Graham stretched out a manly hand. ‘Mate. Good to meet you. Been dancing, I hear. What's anyone having?'

‘Have you eaten?' Kit asked him.

‘Had a bite in town. A tasty baguette,' he said. ‘All right, actually. Nice. I liked it. Grilled brie with, what d'you call 'em? Can't remember. Tasty, though. Nice place too.
Cranberries
, yes. I liked it. What about you two? Order you something? Take you out? What does anyone prefer?'

‘We'll wait,' said Joe. ‘We'll eat later.'

‘Sure?'

‘We're fine. We'll eat later,' he said.

‘Well, so, what's anyone having?'

Joe asked for a pint; Kit for a glass of wine. She realised it felt funny to her not to be sitting at the table at the back. 

While Graham stood jovially chatting to the barman, Kit said, ‘I'm so sorry you have to do this.'

‘Not at all,' said Joe. ‘How could I possibly object?'

She shrugged her acceptance of this reply. ‘You know I told you Michaela had been getting at me a lot recently?' she said.

‘Yes.'

Why had she embarked on this? Kit folded her hands together, then continued, ‘It wasn't really about my clothes.'

‘Oh?'

‘It's about you.'
No, no, no
.

‘Me?'

‘Yes.'

‘What about me?'

‘Don't get cross.'

‘Do I appear cross?'

‘You know when we were in here with Dean and Donald and Pauly?'

‘Yes. They're here now, Dean and Donald are, out the back at one of the tables under a burner.'

‘They're here?'

‘Yes. When you come up the street, you can see the edge of the back patio through the railings down the side of the pub.'

‘Oh. Right.'

‘What about them?'

‘No, yes. No. You know I went to the loo? You probably don't remember, but when I came back—' And
two
, and
three
, and
four
—Graham put their drinks down on the table. ‘Murruh!' he said, spitting out several crisp packets that he'd had dangling by their corners from his teeth, before replacing himself solidly in his chair.

‘Thanks,' said Joe. ‘Excellent.' They opened the crisps. Joe looked at Kit, who had gone silent, then turned to Graham. ‘What brings you to Oxford?' he asked. ‘Kit said you had something on.'

‘Did she tell you what?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Dozy girl,' said Graham affectionately. ‘I'm attending a session
adjunct
to a preliminary Euro-region meeting ahead of a breakaway congress next year of seed crushers and waste grease and oil processors.'

‘Of—sorry?'

‘Seed crushers? Waste oil processors? You know, sunflower, soya bean, linseed?'

Joe glanced at Kit for confirmation that he wasn't having his leg pulled, which he wasn't.

‘I decided last minute I'd get here ahead of time in favour of having to drive down crack of dawn tomorrow,' said Graham. ‘Thought I'd see Birdy here and take my leisure for once. Can't take getting up early any more. Going to kip at a mate's house off the Botley Road. Came by train. Handy for the station. Old friend, lives off the Botley Road. Handy all ways round. And there's always ye olde Cotswolds to fill up the view out your carriage window. What a lovely part of the world that must have been before cars.'

‘Can I just mention that that's rubbish,' said Kit. ‘You have to think of the past as having been excessive hard work and extremely dirty. Think of dreadful infant mortality rates, goitres, bad harvests, deaths in childbirth, stinking rotten teeth—'

‘She's off on one,' said Graham.

‘Birdy?' said Joe.

‘Birdy? Christine. Skinny legs when she was a kid,' said Graham. ‘Radio aerials. Bean stakes. A right little miss, too, sometimes. But yes, seed crushing, all in turmoil right now. Thing is, when I was young, obviously people older than me had authority as far as I was concerned, only natural.
Then I hit my thirties, began to notice that—boy did I notice—certain people were starting to have authority over me despite the fact that they were younger—patronising, you know? Arrogant little twerps in their twenties telling me what to do, in the context of, that things move on and they knew more about it than I did, now. Fat lot of good, all those years of experience; and don't talk to me about palm oil; and anyway, but
now
—' whatever he was thinking about, it was borderline too much, ‘
now
,' said Graham, taking a deep breath, ‘now that I'm firmly into my
forties
—'

‘More like firmly on the way out of them again,' said Kit, with a little sister's grin.

‘Now I'm
this
age, I'm finding people have authority over me
because
they're younger than I am. Not despite—
because
. Which is like, I'm past my shelf life, is the general idea.
Adjunct
session. I tell you, this meeting's not unimportant in respect of keeping my end up, between these four walls, in the revered world of international seed crushing. It's not just going bald,' he waved at his head, ‘it's my private-parts hair's going thin. I cough when I don't need to. Hear myself do it. I drip after I think I've finished peeing. Day I hit forty-five, I said to myself, well done, mate, now you're a has-been. You're a
has-been
. I'm a great believer in carpeying the bloody diem but I thought, this is it. Past your shelf life, a has-been. I knew it. But was I right? I was
not
right. Was that it? That
wasn't
it. By no manner of means, no. And how long did it take me to realise? Till just the other day, when I said to myself, shite, what am I on about? I'm not a has-been. I'm a
hasn't-
been
. I'm a hasn't-been, never-was: a nothing, a resource hog. Willa's doing it at school, resource
hogs. The things they teach them, I'm telling you, steady on! Problem with my wife, Joe—I mean, don't tell the
resource hogs
, will you.'