Nobody True (24 page)

I stayed in that frightening and depressing place for the rest of the night, watching the disfigured man, listening to his guttural breathing, seeing him sort through his pile of newspaper clippings, avoiding contact with him as he paced the room in his dark raincoat. Occasionally, he would return to the table and pick up the accounts of my murder as if they had some special significance to him (and I realized it had, for, if the police were right, this was one of the murders he did not commit). His breathing became heavier and more coarse each time he scanned the cut-out pages, and he would throw them back onto the table, his anger barely contained, only to pace the floor again for ten minutes or so, then pick the clippings up once more. It was a pattern that went on for some time and it confirmed in my mind that he really was deranged. I could only keep to one shadowy corner, ready to move each time he approached, afraid of him even though I knew I could not be harmed anymore, freezing each time he seemed to look directly at me, as if he sensed I was there. At these moments, he himself, would become very still, and his protrusive eyes would beam their curiosity and malice. I felt as though I were looking into the eyes of evil incarnate and I never held their gaze for long, always averting my face and cowering, ready to make a break for it should he advance any further.

He never did though. Instead, his shoulders would slump and he’d continue his pacing or return to the table with its wild spread of newspaper articles and dirty bowl and blender jug, which he had not yet bothered to clear away. I’ve no idea how long it was before he decided to turn in for the night, because I seemed to be losing track of time in some small way, but eventually he turned out the feeble light in the main room and went through to his bedroom. I had no wish to be present when he undressed—what other horrors might his naked round-shouldered body reveal—so I remained in my corner, which was now pitch black, the only light coming from the open doorway. After some thumps—probably shoes being dropped—and some groans—were other, hidden disfigurements causing him pain?—I heard him urinating (presumably a toilet or bathroom adjoined the bedroom), then a flush. Padded footsteps as he returned to the bed, then the creak of old springs.

I listened as he grumbled to himself, once in a while his voice rising to an angry unformed roar, and eventually there came the unlovely sound of his snoring, a rasping squeezed exhalation followed by a rough droning intake of breath. I explored the rest of the flat in the darkness (the bedroom light had been turned off just before he’d climbed into bed and the only illumination came down from a street light on the pavement above the basement steps), but found nothing of importance, nothing that might reveal this man’s identity. Dishes and plates were stacked up unwashed in the sink, the plastic bin beneath it overloaded with rubbish, some of which—a milk carton, half an egg shell, an empty tin of beans—had spilled onto the floor. Going back to the main room I forced myself to sit on the lumpy, magazine-strewn couch, its outline only just discernible in the weak light from the basement window. Again, I was grateful that I no longer had a sense of smell.

I suppose I fell into a deep sleep, because the next thing I knew there was grey twilight showing through the grimy glass of the window and my host was shuffling about the room. It looked as though he was preparing to leave. With dismay I realized I must have slept or blacked out for a whole night and most of the next day.

27

I followed him up the stone steps to street level. He wore the same dark raincoat and scarf muffler as yesterday, only those bulging eyes barely visible in the shadow of the hat’s brim. It was a drizzly and apparently cold autumn morning, for other pedestrians wore raincoats or topcoats, one or two carrying open umbrellas. I had no idea what time it was, but it felt like late afternoon. God, had I been asleep (or just oblivious) while he dressed and took meals, unaware of me as I’d been unaware of him?

His shoulders hunched even more than usual, as if shrinking into himself so as not to be noticed, he made his way along a line of vehicles parked in resident-only bays, and I followed two feet behind him, the light rain passing right through me. He stopped by an ancient Hillman Minx, a grey tank of a car that must have been manufactured in the last century’s fifties. The wheel arches were rusted, the door panels pitted and scored, the windows as grimy as those in the flat we’d just left, smeared arcs caused by wipers relieving the windscreen of some of the dirt. I noticed there was a parking permit stuck to the inside of the windscreen, but when I peered closer it gave no owner’s name, only the vehicle registration.

The man unlocked the car door and climbed in, so I passed through the rear passenger door and settled into the wide seat. Like his home, the interior was untidy, bits of paper and debris—a lidless can of frost spray, a battered A to Z, an empty milk carton, used straws—littering the floor both front and back. The leather upholstery was split in places and a soiled rag lay on the passenger seat beside the driver. The man ducked low, pushing something underneath his seat, tucking it away out of sight; I hadn’t registered the fact that he had been carrying something under his arm as he’d made his way to the car, and it was this that he was concealing. Something inside the cloth-wrapped bundle clicked, a recognizable sound. He’d brought the knitting needles with him.

Before I could wonder why, he pushed the key into the ignition and switched on the engine. It moaned its reluctance to start and he made another two attempts before the engine finally turned over and settled to an uneasy murmur. Immediately he pushed the gear lever—so ancient was the Hillman that it was a column shift on the steering wheel—into first, then pulled away from the kerb; it was only when we left the sidestreet and turned into the main road that I realized I’d got my timing wrong, for the pavements were busy with people, all the shops and offices lit up, the road itself crowded with traffic. It was early evening and not the afternoon. How had I been asleep so long? Why hadn’t his movement in the flat aroused me earlier? Then again had I really slept that long, or was this merely another slippage in time? There was no way of knowing; I wasn’t yet familiar enough with my condition to be able to tell. All I knew was that at certain times I fell asleep, or simply blacked out, so that my spirit, soul, consciousness, whatever I was, rested, or renewed itself, I did, in fact, feel a little fresher each time I “awoke” so I could only assume that even my state required its rest and replenishment. It seemed mundane, but I supposed that incorporeal existence paralleled normal life to some extent, the mind continuing to follow a familiar pattern. Maybe in the unknown you instinctively comforted yourself with the known, or perhaps a lifetime’s habit was hard to break even in death.

As he drove on, it took only a few minutes for me to realize we were in the Shepherd’s Bush area and I watched people going about their business, unaware that some strange kind of ghost was travelling through their midst. How I envied their humdrum lives, how I wished I was part of the system again, a living, breathing person with all the problems, heartaches and joy that went with the human condition. The world I now lived in was no fun at all and I began to wonder if I was in purgatory, the stage between life and death that some religions—especially my own—told us we had to pass through before reaching our paradise (or heaven, as we called it). And if that were the case, part of my redemption might lie in preventing this monster from murdering more innocents. What the hell, I had nothing else to do with my time, and I could no longer be harmed myself, so why not go along with it? It certainly seemed important to the spirit I now believed to be my father. How I could stop the sick lunatic I had no idea, but hoped that something would present itself along the way.

My thoughts returned to the driver of this clapped-out vehicle and I studied the back of his head from the rear seat. His low snuffles were occasionally interrupted by deliberate snorts, his reaction to other drivers who irritated him with their careless manoeuvring. Again, the sickness of his aura disturbed me as much as the man himself, the muddy radiation sending off dispiriting vibes that I felt must surely unsettle the living people he came in contact with. It’s odd that some individuals can take an instant dislike to certain other people they’ve just met, which can only be put down to the chemistry between them. I now believe that dislike or aversion had more to do with the sensing of aura than any chemical reaction (maybe it amounted to the same thing, who could tell? Certainly not me); probably, the opposite was also true, attraction being just as easily influenced by a compelling aura. Maybe this was the answer to the mystery of “love at first sight”.*

*Again, I remembered—I was too distraught to register anything as subtle as auras at the time—how Prim’s muted radiance (although it still contained vibrant flashes within its down-toned glow) had intermingled with Andrea’s, who tried to console her, their light becoming part of a whole. It had also been visible when Primrose had sat on her granddad’s lap on the day of my funeral. Unfortunately, I recalled witnessing a different kind of interaction when Andrea and Oliver had kissed so passionately in my home later that same day: through their dulled colours, small vibrant charges had flashed from each of them.

I think we must have been driving for ten minutes or so (not being sure of time anymore, I found this hard to judge) when the car pulled into the forecourt of a huge grey stretch of a building, and I just glimpsed the word “HOSPITAL” on a big noticeboard as we passed by. Which London hospital it was I had no idea, but there were two wings on either side of the main block and its façade was grubby with city pollution. My unwitting chauffeur drove around to the back of the grey edifice and eased the Hillman into a crowded staff car park. Climbing out, he took time to check on the wrapped package on the floor, pushing it back further out of sight with the guttural kind of grunt I was getting used to from him. I followed as he slammed the door shut, locked it, and shambled away. He had a peculiar shuffling gait, one hunched shoulder higher than the other, and I wondered what other things were wrong with his body. Certainly his stride was impeded in some way, although his physique looked strong, powerful, those shoulders broad if stooped and tilted, his hands and wrists large, his booted feet also big, suggesting thick legs. His face was almost completely hidden by the woollen scarf and hat, his bulging black eyes peering out from between. Although the covered cavity where there should have been a nose and mouth was gristled and raw, seepage constantly leaking so that the night before he had been forced to hold a large soiled cloth to it constantly, I had the feeling that this was no new injury, if injury it was. He appeared to be too competent with his method of eating for the orifice to have been recently created, placing the straw perfectly into whatever receptacle lay beyond the rough edges, with no hint of pain or discomfort, sucking up the blended food with practised ease. Several people, uniformed nurses, gave him odd glances as he passed by, but none spoke to him. I kept to his heels, wondering if he was seeking treatment at the hospital, or if he was employed there, perhaps as a porter or boilerman, any kind of job that did not involve the public. Cruel as the thought was, I felt pretty certain that his work would not bring him into much contact with the public.

He approached a double door marked “MORTUARY—RESTRICTED AREA”, and pushed one side of it open, passing through and entering a long, wide and dismal corridor, the walls painted a turgid olive green, the lights in its ceiling behind wire guards for some reason, as if the corpses wheeled along this way might rise up and try to break them. I still kept close to him, walking not gliding behind him, as though I remained part of the real world. A man wearing green overalls approached from the opposite direction, a surgeon’s mask, also green, hanging around his neck. He nodded at the man I followed as he went by and was greeted with a muffled grunt that could have meant anything.

Soon we arrived at plastic doors, the kind that overlapped and were easy to push trolleys and gurneys through, and I saw that we were in a long room, floor-to-ceiling white wall tiles and overhead strip lighting giving an air of clinical cleanliness. To one side there was a whole wall filled with refrigerated steel cabinets, the door to each one approximately three feet by two. There must have been at least forty of them. Three stainless-steel tables, carts filled with surgical tools standing next to each one, occupied the concrete floor; only one had a naked body stretched out on its surface. Another man, also wearing gown and mask, as well as latex gloves, was working on the pale carcass.

“Ah, good,” the masked man said, looking up. “You’ve got the evening shift tonight, have you, Moker?”

A familiar grunt from my man.

“Well, there’s not much going on, unless anything fresh is brought in.” The man standing by the dead body pulled his surgical mask free from his face. “This one’s all done, so just clean him up before you put him away for the night. I understand the relatives are coming in in the morning for a last look and positive ID, so make sure you do a good job.”

There was no friendliness in the mortician’s tone as he spoke to the man he’d called… what was it? Moter? No, Moker. I’m sure he said Moker. In fact, he eyed the muffled man with disdain, and I was sure it wasn’t because of the way Moker looked, not in these politically correct times. Moker didn’t seem to be too popular, and I could well understand that. With or without his deformity, there was just something plain unpleasant about the guy.

The mortician began peeling off his latex gloves, studying the corpse before him as he did so, lost in thought for the moment. As he dropped the gloves into a pedal bin, he noticed Moker had not yet moved. He glared at him through wire-framed spectacles.