Yeah. Right. I let him down and that makes me worse than him. Ten times worse.
And that’s the way it’s going to stay. If I can’t be better, I’ll be worse. No way he’s going to get the drop on me. No way he can take me down. And I slip the kitchen knife between his ribs and he stares wide-eyed and gives an odd little gurgle and slips down the length of me, like an old pair of jeans shucking off. And then he’s lying on the ground and there’s a smear of blood down my T-shirt.
Simple as that. No big deal. And you know — no fun at all. It’s all shite. But at least I don’t feel guilty any more. What’s to feel guilty about? Keeg got left behind and I didn’t. I look at the three yobos. They’re still staring at Keeg’s body with the knife in it.
“So he got in and killed the guard,” I said. “Then he panicked and did for himself. Right?”
They hop down from the walls, pause, nod. Then they’re sauntering away towards the gate as if nothing has happened. So long, Keeg. So long, mate. No offence, but you’re just history.
I bend to wipe the knife clean of my fingerprints and close Keeg’s hand around it.
And why didn’t I get caught? Keeg took the cameras out of course, when he did for the guard. Just like I knew he would. So no one would see what happened. He knew tonight was the night we sorted it.
In the dark room, the moon stripes the polished floorboards. I look out of my window at the courtyard. Empty. Just a new guard in the security cabin, a cat prowling round the flowerbeds.
Empty.
I did what was necessary. It was always going to come down to me and Keeg facing off. And there could be only one winner.
But that’s the point. He’s dead, just a pile of ashes scattered for the dogs to crap on. And without him, I’m nothing. Just another fucking bag of shite with nowhere to go. We were two sides of one coin and I destroyed it.
In a way, he won.
I’m going to go get myself someone. A wino maybe or a Big Issue seller, or a foreign student who doesn’t know where the hell he is. Someone to kill some time. Someone to kill.
Hey, Keeg, this one’s for you.
The Woman Who Loved Elizabeth David
Andrew Taylor
On the evening that Charles died I actually heard the ambulance, the one that Edith Thornhill called. I was putting out the milk bottles on the porch. I didn’t take much notice. Our house was on Chepstow Road and so was the hospital; we often heard ambulances.
He died on the evening of the day the rat-catcher came — the last Thursday in October. Our house was modern, built just before the war, but in the garden was a crumbling stone stable. Charles planned to convert it into a garage if we ever bought a car, which was about as likely as his agreeing to install a telephone. In the meantime we used it as a sort of garden shed and apple store. Almost all the apples had been ruined by rats in the space of a week. Hence the rat-catcher.
Charles was late but I had not begun to get worried. After he closed the shop, he often dropped into the Bull Hotel for a drink. Then the doorbell rang and I found Dr Bayswater and Mrs Thornhill on the doorstep. I know Edith from church, and Dr Bayswater is our doctor.
“I’m sorry, Anne,” Edith said. “It’s bad news. May we come in?”
I took them into the lounge. Edith suggested I sit down.
“Charles? It’s Charles, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid he’s dead,” Edith said.
I stared at her. I did not know what to say.
The doctor cleared his throat. “Coronary thrombosis.”
“A coronary? Do you mean a heart attack? But he was only forty-eight.”
“It does happen.”
“But he doesn’t have a weak heart. Surely there’d have been some—”
“I’d seen him three times in the last month.” Bayswater examined his fingernails. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“Of course he did. But that was indigestion.”
“Angina. Some of the symptoms can be similar to indigestion.”
The doctor and Edith went on talking to me. I didn’t listen very much. All I could think of was the fact that Charles hadn’t told me the truth. Instead of grieving that he was gone, I felt angry with him.
My memory of the next few weeks is patchy, as if a heavy fog lies over that part of my mind. Certain events rear out of it like icebergs from a cold ocean. The funeral was at St John’s and the church was full of people wearing black clothes, like crows. Marina Harper was there, which surprised me because she wasn’t a churchgoer. Charles had an obituary in the Lydmouth Gazette. It was not a very long one. It said that he came of a well-respected local family and referred in passing to Nigel.
It was unfortunate that Nigel, Charles’s younger brother, was in Tanganyika, looking at some sawmills he was thinking of buying. I never really understood what Nigel did for a living. Whatever it was, it seemed to bring him a good deal of money. Once I asked him and he said, “I just buy things when they’re cheap, and sell things when they’re expensive. Nothing to it, really.”
I sent a telegram to Dar es Salaam. Nigel cabled back, saying he would be home as soon as possible. He and Charles had always been very close, though Nigel was my age, a good ten years younger than his brother. He was also Charles’s executor.
In the meantime, everything was in limbo. Until Nigel came home, I could have very little idea of what the future held for me. I did not even know whether I would be able to stay in the house. In the meantime, the shop — Butter’s, the men’s outfitters in the High Street — was left in the charge of the manager, a man who had worked for Charles and his father for many years.
What struck me most was the silence. In the evenings, when I sat by the fire in the lounge, there was a quietness that I could not drive away by turning on the wireless. After a while, I stopped trying. I would sit in my chair, with a book unopened on my lap, and stare at the familiar room which had grown suddenly unfamiliar: at my mother-in-law’s dark oak sideboard, which I had always loathed; at the collected editions of Kipling, which Charles and Nigel had laboriously assembled when they were boys; at the patch on the hearthrug where Charles had left a cigarette burning one Christmas-time.
I don’t know when I realized something was wrong. I think the first thing that struck me was the key. When the hospital sent back Charles’s belongings, the contents of his pockets had been put in a separate bag. There was nothing unexpected except for the key. Charles had other keys in a leather pouch with a buttoned flap — keys for the house, for the shop. This key, however, was loose — a Yale, made of brass and obviously quite new. I tried it unsuccessfully in our only Yale lock, the one on the old stable. I took it down to the shop, but it didn’t fit any of the locks there, either.
On the same morning, I went to the bank to draw some cash — something I had to do for myself now Charles wasn’t here. The cashier said the manager would like a word. Our account was overdrawn. The manager suggested that I transfer some money from the deposit account.
As I was walking down the High Street on my way from the bank to the bus stop, Mr Quale was sweeping the doorstep of the Bull Hotel.
“Morning, ma’am. Sorry to hear about Mr Butter.”
“Thank you.”
“Very nice gentleman. I saw him just before it happened.”
“How did he seem?”
“Right as rain. He’d been in for a quick drink — left a bit earlier than usual. Thought he must be in a hurry for his supper.”