Fu blinked. The voice. At once distant and present, telling him a maggot had slunk into his head. In through His ear and onward to His brain. He’d been less than careful, and the thought of church had given it entry at last. A snicker initially. Then an outright laugh. Then the echo of pray, pray and pray.
And, Finally looking for a job, are you? Where d’you expect to find one, stupid git? And you get out of the way, Charlene, or do you want some of this for yourself?
It was yammer and yammer. It was shout and shout. It sometimes went on for hours at a time. He’d thought He’d finally rid Himself of the worm, but thinking of church had been His mistake.
I want you out of this house, you hear? Sleep in a doorway if that’s what it takes. Or don’t you have the bottle for that?
You drove her there, blast you. You did her in.
Fu squeezed His eyes shut. He reached out blindly. His hands found an object, and His fingers felt buttons. He pushed them indiscriminately until sound roared forth.
He found Himself staring at the television set, where a picture came into focus as the voice of the maggot faded away. It took Him a moment to understand what He was looking at: The morning news was assaulting His ears.
Fu gazed at the screen. Things began to make sense. A female reporter with wind-tousled hair stood in front of a police barricade. Behind her, the black arch of the Shand Street tunnel gaped like the upper jaw of Hades, and deep within that piss-scented cavern, temporary lights illuminated the back end of the abandoned Mazda.
Fu relaxed into the sight of that car, released and released. It was, He thought, unfortunate that the barrier had been set up at the south end of the tunnel. From this position, the body could not be seen. And He’d taken such pains to make the message clear: The boy doomed himself, don’t you see? Not to retribution, from which there had never once been a realistic hope of escape, but from release. Until the end, the boy had both protested and denied.
Fu had expected to wake from the night with a sense of disquiet, born of the boy’s refusal to admit his shame. True, He hadn’t felt any such sense at the moment of his death, experiencing instead the momentary loosing of the vice that had His brain in its grasp, tighter and tighter with each passing day. But He had assumed He’d feel it later on, when clarity and personal honesty demanded that He evaluate His choice of subject. Yet upon waking He hadn’t felt anything remotely like unease at all. Instead, until the arrival of the maggot, well-being had continued to suffuse Him, like the sense of repletion after a good meal.
“…not releasing any other information at the moment,” the reporter was saying earnestly. “We know there’s a body, we’ve heard-and let me stress that we’ve only heard, and it has not been confirmed-that it’s the body of a boy, and we’ve been told that officers have arrived from the Met police squad already investigating the last murder in St. George’s Gardens. But as to whether this latest killing is related to the earlier murders…We’re going to have to wait for word on that.”
As she spoke, several individuals came out of the tunnel behind her: plainclothes cops by the look of them. A dumpy woman with pudding-basin hair took some direction from a blond officer in an overcoat that had the look of old money about it. She nodded once and headed out of sight, whereupon the officer stood in conversation with a bloke in a mustard anorak and another with concave shoulders and a crumpled mac.
The reporter said, “I’ll just see if I can have a word…,” and advanced as close to the barricade as she could get. But every other reporter had the same idea, and so much jostling and shouting ensued that no one got an answer to anything. The cops ignored the lot of them, but the telly cameraman zoomed in anyway. Fu got a good look at His adversaries. The dumpy woman was gone, but He had time to study Overcoat, Anorak, and Crumpled Mac. He knew He was more than a match for them.
“Five and counting,” He murmured to the television. “Don’t touch that dial.”
Nearby, He had a cup of tea that He’d made upon waking, and He saluted the television with it before He replaced it on a nearby table. Around Him, the house creaked as its pipes supplied the old radiators with water to heat the rooms, and He heard in those creaks an announcement of the maggot’s imminent return.
Look at this, He would instruct as He pointed to the television where the police discussed Him and His handiwork. I leave the message, and they must read. Every step of it planned in exquisite detail.
The stertorous breathing behind Him, then. That eternal signal of the maggot’s presence. Not in His head now, but here in this room.
What’re you doing, boy?
Fu didn’t need to have even a look. The shirt would be white, as it always was, but worn at both the collar and cuffs. The trousers would be charcoal or brown, the tie knotted perfectly and the cardigan buttoned. He’d have polished his shoes, polished his specs, and polished his round bald head as well.
The question again: What’re you doing? with the threat implicit in the tone.
Fu made no reply since the answer was obvious: He was watching the news and experiencing the unfolding of His personal history. He was making His mark, and wasn’t that exactly what He’d been instructed to do?
You best answer me when I speak to you. I asked what’re you doing and I want a reply.
And then, Where the hell were you brought up? Get that teacup off the bloody wood. You want to polish the furniture in your spare time since you’ve got so much of it? What’re you thinking about anyway? Or are you out of practice in that department?
Fu fixed His attention on the television. He could wait him out. He knew what came next because some things were written: bran in warm milk, soaked into slop, a glass of fibre dissolved in juice, those prayers sent heavenward for a quick movement of the bowels so he wouldn’t have to experience said movement in a public place like the gents’ loo at school. And if movement was achieved, a triumphant notation on the calendar hanging inside the cupboard door. R for regular when regular was the last thing a maggot could ever hope to be.
But something was different this morning. Fu could feel him charging, a horseman directly from Revelations.
Saying, Where are they? What’ve you bloody done…I told you to keep your filthy mitts off. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I expressly tell you? You turn off that God damn telly and look at me when I’m talking to you.
He wanted the remote. Fu would not hand it over.
You defying me, Charlene? You defying me?
What if He was? Fu thought. What if she was? What if they were? What if He did? What if everyone did? Amazingly, He found Himself unafraid, wary nevermore, utterly at ease, even a bit amused. The maggot’s power was nothing in comparison with His own now that He’d finally taken it up, and the beauty of it all was that the maggot had no idea who or what he was dealing with. Fu felt such a presence in His veins, such capability, such sureness and knowledge. He rose from the chair, and He allowed His body to come into its fullness, undisguised. He said, “I wanted and I took. That’s what it was.”
Then nothing. Nothing. It was as if the maggot read Fu’s power. He sensed a sea change.
“Good on you,” Fu said to him. Self-preservation tended to gain you very high marks round here.
But the maggot couldn’t leave it completely alone, not when his way of simply being had long been so thoroughly ingrained in him. So he watched Fu’s every move and he waited, eager for an indication that it was safe to speak.