Nobody True (44 page)

Anyway. Time to move on. Nothing left for me to hear, I had the answer I’d sought. Have to return home, see for myself if Prim and Andrea were okay. My wife—who’d deceived me. My daughter—who wasn’t truly mine. Oh Hell—!

What did it really matter? I still loved them both. Yeah, even Andrea. Our marriage may have been a lie, but there’d been good times, great times. (Maybe love was growing stronger too, moving in to fill those gaps from where the negative vibes were absconding.) And nothing ever—ever—would diminish my love for Primrose. No, that couldn’t change.

So. Time to go.

I started to drift away down the street, oblivious to the rain and the bustling uniformed figures around me. Started to drift away, but something stopped me, something said among the small group I’d been eavesdropping on. Something said by Coates.

“She should’ve stuck to knitting scarves,” Coates had said.

Commander Newman, who had taken a couple of strides towards the gtp entrance with Chief Superintendent Sadler by his side, stopped short and turned round to Coates and Simmons. The two detectives were following so close behind they almost bumped into the senior officers.

I turned to look at Coates as well.

“What did you say?” the commander demanded, his expression severe. Sadler looked puzzled as he took in the detective constable.

“What did you say, man?” Newman glared at Coates with steely eyes.

“Er, we found a whole pile of badly knitted scarves when we searched the flat. Long ones, all dark. A few balls of wool and more knitting needles. She must have had an obsession for needles.”

Sadler cut in. “What the bloody Hell are you talking about Coates? Who’s this she?”

“Her, Sir.” Coates looked confused as he pointed back at the dark shapes lying in the street “Moker.”

“Moker?” It was Newman again, his eyebrows arched, but his jaw set firm. “Do you mean to tell us that Moker—” now he was pointing at the bodies, “—Moker,” he repeated, “is—was—a woman?”

“Uh, yes, Sir.” The detective constable was distinctly uncomfortable. “I thought you knew. Alexandra Moker. That was the full name on the electoral roll and driving licence. We found tampons in her bathroom but not much other woman’s stuff though.”

I was stunned. I stood rigid, light rain falling through me. Moker had been a woman. It was unbelievable. Did it make any difference? Yeah, it did to me. Somehow it made the misery she’d had to bear all her life even more poignant. Call me a sucker, call me old-fashioned, but I’d always had a great respect—and a soft spot—for women, young or old, fat or thin, pretty or—or not pretty; I’d always cherished women. Even my mother had not managed to change my regard for them. To me, women were vulnerable, they needed protection. Not politically correct these days, I know, but they’d always be the weaker sex (physically, I mean, not mentally, not even emotionally) to me. I’d always open a door for one; I’d always give up my seat for one. Believe it or not, I used to stand up most times a woman or girl entered the room. An anachronism? Maybe I was, but I’m not around anymore to be called names. Besides, nearly every woman or girl I’d ever known seemed to appreciate my regard for them.

So that probably was why finding out that Moker had been female hit me hard. God, what had life been like for her? And had her physical appearance driven out all her femininity? I mean, just the way she walked! And I thought she was just plump when I saw her naked chest! What was God’s great plan for her? My spirit—literally—my spirit sagged. I couldn’t move so had to listen to Coates as he continued.

“Those telephone books, by the way,” the detective was saying. “We wondered about them when we searched Moker’s flat. You know, without a proper mouth there could hardly be any two-way dialogue, plus there wasn’t a phone in the flat anyway. James True’s wife—widow—told us Moker never said a word when she attacked her and her daughter, she just made kinda grunting noises and snorts.”

Sadler, no doubt still digesting the startling news of Moker’s gender—I’m sure there can’t have been many female serial killers in the annals of crime—spoke curtly to Coates. “What’s your point?” he snapped.

Simmons came to his colleague’s rescue. “We also found unposted letters in the flat. Poison-pen letters, no two alike, every envelope addressed differently and to both men and women. We reckon she chose them from the telephone books and got some kind of perverted kick out of sending them. They were pretty horrible. Sick, I think you’d call them. You know, sex stuff.”

Neither Newman nor Sadler wanted him to elaborate and Sadler made it clear. “Enough of that for now. Let’s get into the building and see if Oliver Guinane is inside. He might be lying dead for all we know.”

Without a further word from any of them, all seemingly lost in thought save for Coates who began to whistle quietly, they made their way towards the agency building. As they entered the glass doors of my old agency, I saw one of the cops Simmons had sent in earlier coming from the lift. He saluted the commander and began telling the group something, a finger jabbing upwards as if to indicate the top offices. I hoped they’d managed to bring Ollie round. I also hoped he wasn’t badly hurt.

Although I’d turned to watch Newman and his detectives enter the building, I still hadn’t moved from the spot. Maybe I was bewildered by what I truly wished was the last revelation in a very traumatic week.

Moker. Alexandra Moker. A woman. Even when I’d used her body for my own purposes I didn’t have a clue. Was there supposed to be a difference, should a cuckoo spirit feel the physical variation between a man or woman without sight of those differences? I honestly had no idea, and right then it was of no great importance to me. I just wondered why I’d so naturally assumed Moker was a man.

I remembered the mortuary earlier that day—God, was it the same day? All right, it might be after midnight, but it was still today’s night as far as I was concerned. When, alone in the mortuary, Moker had molested a female cadaver, did that mean she was a lesbian? But then she had commandeered a young woman that evening and gone off with the debauched men for sex. There had also been a previous female victim. My guess was that her sexuality meant nothing to her because there had probably never been an opportunity to make love with either male or female. Despite her necrophilia, I still felt pity for her.

It occurred to me that my confusion over her sex was for a far simpler reason. When she had arrived at the morgue, her boss had asked whose grubby apron had been left in the corpse room, and her co-worker, who was about to leave, had pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Moker and replied; “Alec’s”.

Only he hadn’t said “Alec’s” at all. He’d replied “Alex”, short for Alexandra. That’s how I’d made the mistake in the beginning; also I’d expected the serial killer to be a man, as had the police themselves. She even walked like a man!

My melancholy gave way to numbness. Moker had been a monster in every sense of the word. But her life had been miserable, her birth had been hideous. No excuse for the odious things she’d done, but… but…

I would have wept for the woman called Alexandra Moker that night. But lately, I’d wept too much.

46

After returning to Primrose and Andrea and making sure they were okay—they were both asleep in Andrea’s and my bed, front door securely locked, a policeman keeping guard on the doorstep, the bedroom door locked too—I wandered. And have wandered ever since.

Literally as a lost soul, I drifted through the city, day and night. I observed people, almost living their sorrows with them. I eavesdropped on conversations and heated debates, even watched couples making love (no pervy sexual thing for me this last one, because sex or desire no longer played any part in my make-up; rather it was a personal wish to see men and women bonding in the most intimate way possible, a need to feel their commitment to one another at its strongest—yet too often all I sensed was their lust). I think I was just searching for love in this sad old world of ours and, yes, I did find it and it wasn’t rare. It was in most people, young and old—especially in these two extremes, in fact—and in those of middle years as I had been. Sounds corny, I know, but it was a great comfort to me.

I experienced everything in a fresh and new way, and every detail was of interest to me. It was the same feeling you get immediately after you’ve recovered from a serious or debilitating illness, only this was a hundred times more intense. I sat in parks and watched people, muffled up in the cold, pass by, momentarily sensing their feelings, their thoughts. I was especially fond of watching children in school playgrounds, because their unbounded zest for life when they were playing touched me deeply. If only you could see their colourful and vivacious auras.

Some animals sensed me, others didn’t. Cats were particularly sensitive to my presence whereas most dogs became confused, often afraid. Birds deliberately ignored me when I sat on park benches, coming close to peck at insects or any breadcrumbs they might find, yet never invading my space. It was as if they were aware of me, but it was of no concern to them, I was neither a threat nor a means of more food.*

*Incidentally, animals also have souls. I’ve watched them leave the bodies of dogs and cats run over in the streets (happens a lot in the city) or when they die naturally (cats nearly always find some secluded spot to die in, whereas dogs like to have their owners close by). And their little souls don’t rise up into the “heavens”, but, like ours, they evaporate just moments after leaving the dead body (if they don’t, if they drift away rather than vanishing, then a new ghost has been created). Yep, there are ghost-animals too. It’s the same with people, which is why ghosts always seem melancholy—they’re lost, you see. Other ghosts, like my father (I learned all this from him when he next came to me), come back from another dimension, but only to visit and never for very long. Anyway, it was he who explained how animals and human souls vanish rather than rise as if on a journey to the sky. The only exceptions, he told me, were birds, whose small spirits did float skywards, but only because that was what they knew best.

One day, I dropped by Westminster Cathedral. It must have been a Sunday morning—I’d lost all sense of time by then—because a High Mass was in progress. When I walked out later I found I was relieved of the guilt, baggage—never a burden, but ever a nag—I’d carried around with me as a pathetic Catholic (in common with many other Catholics) for far too many years. I’d discovered that pomp and ceremony were not essential to belief, although the ritual and symbolism were necessary for many and essential for some. Individual or collective worship were both right—naturally a combination of both was the ideal because neither one precluded the other—and a person was free to choose without persuasion or dictates by those who had set themselves up as conduits to God.

I don’t know how I realized this, it was just a reverse epiphany that suddenly cleansed my mind and lightened (enlightened?) my soul. One moment I was unsuccessfully aligning myself with the other worshippers and respectfully following the service, trying to get closer to God for obvious reasons, the next it was as if a great grey cloud had been lifted. Suddenly I knew that my way, and the way of millions like me, was okay. God was accessible to us all without intermediaries.

(However, there was one lovely thing that happened during the church service. Every worshipper’s aura spread to their neighbours’ and when the priest held high the little round wafer called the Host, all the auras joined together as one. The golden brilliance was too pure and dazzling to look at directly and I had to cover my eyes. More vivid than the sun, it was wonderful to be in its presence. It’s a pity it isn’t perceptible to the living.)

I continued to follow people home to see how they lived, haunted one or two bars at night, and generally drifted from place to place. I never visited another séance parlour again; I knew they would make me feel uncomfortable after that last time. Because it would torture me so, I also stayed away from Andrea and Primrose for a while, my mother too, but for different reasons.

Another day, taking a break from my roving, I hung around a picturesque graveyard, maybe with the idea of meeting some friendly ghosts. (I was never tempted to visit the crematorium’s “place of rest”, because there was no grave, just a tiny plaque with my name on it, among many on a wall, the ashes in a closed recess behind. Nothing sentimental there then.) I found a bench by a gravel path deep inside the cemetery and sat looking out over the many headstones and tombs, angels with high wings and outstretched arms, white crosses stained by lichen, one or two plots well tended, many others sadly neglected. With its Gothic mausoleums, markers and occasional monuments, the place had a quiet brooding atmosphere, which I found peaceful rather than sinister.

It was here, while hoping for a little peace and quiet from the harsh world outside, with the sun high in a clear azure sky, that my father came to me for the last time.

He was standing beneath an old oak tree whose thick leafless branches still managed to cast him in shadow. How long he had been standing there, I couldn’t be sure, for only when I sensed that eyes were watching me did I glance in his direction. At first, he was merely an insubstantial shadow among others, but as my gaze became more intense, his form took on a clearer definition, although his lower legs and feet remained invisible.

I didn’t move, I just stared back at him, wondering if I should join him beneath the oak. After a while, it was he who came to me.

By the time he reached me, he was fully formed, so much so that he could have been a normal man who’d stopped for a chat. He stood on the gravel path that ran between the plots, smiling down at me, and he wore the same clothes as on the previous occasions he’d appeared to me: old-fashioned double-breasted suit, too creased to be smart, and plain white shirt, dull, red tie. For the first time I noticed his shoes, brown brogues with swirls of tiny neat puncture patterns decorating the upper leather; they were slightly creased also, but at least polished.