The Liverpool Trilogy (132 page)

‘Blood and Sahara,’ Tess muttered. ‘I thought she’d wake up a bit at a time, not like a train screeching through a tunnel. Go and see if she’s all right. Go
on.’

Don stayed where he was. ‘What? Everybody but the pope’s in that little room. It’ll be worse than the Saturday crush at the Odeon. Anyway, it’s none of our business, is
it?’

‘She looks like me.’

‘And?’

‘Ask the Collingfords – if they’re still here.’

‘I don’t know the bloody Collingfords, do I?’

‘But you can ask is she all right, offer them a cup of tea, seeing as that nurse who fancies you gave you the freedom of the kitchen. Yes, Lucy. I’ve seen her looking at you like a
starved cat staring in the fish pond.’

In the end, he did as he was told and approached a very sad man in the corridor. His two women companions seemed to have deserted him. ‘She wanted someone called Roy,’ the sad man
said. ‘But Roy’s in hospital, too. The police doctor said he wasn’t fit to be let home, so he’s had to be . . . well . . . certified. When Mrs Allen’s mother told her
he’d been certified . . .’ His voice died.

‘I’m sorry,’ Don said lamely. ‘The whole ward heard the scream and they’re all worried. Can I get you a cup of tea? They’ve a few biscuits in the kitchen,
too.’

‘No thanks. My daughter’s gone to bring the car a little nearer, and my mother’s in the ladies’ room. We came just to bring flowers, because we were due to meet for a
business discussion, and we found out about this terrible attack.’

‘And she woke?’

The man nodded, then adjusted a pair of very mobile spectacles. ‘She asked for this Roy. Her mother said he was in hospital, and poor Mrs Allen screamed. I hope she hasn’t damaged
herself further. I think she believed that Roy had been hurt by the man who hurt her, but that’s not the case.’

‘So she knows he’s not hurt?’

The glasses slipped again. ‘The truth’s bad, too. Telling her he’s judged insane hasn’t done any good. She’s trying to get out of bed to go off and find him. Ah.
Here come my ladies. Thanks for talking to me, Mr . . . er?’

‘Compton. Don Compton.’ He stood and watched while three sad people walked away. It was a frightening world. But he had to go back and report his findings to the wife. If he
didn’t, he would be paying in pasties and paint for some considerable time to come.

The scenery had changed dramatically, suddenly, and more than once. There had been a kitchen, a brutalized woman – his woman – then a police station. She had
followed him to the police station. A corner-of-the-eye job, Rosh lay on the floor of the interview room, only to disappear when Roy moved his head to get a fuller view of her.

He had been in this place before to answer questions about his dad. Someone mentioned that. ‘Where is Rosh?’ he asked. ‘Is she in the other room?’ But he knew she
wasn’t in the other room, because she kept coming and going on the floor here, didn’t she? Then there was him, Clive bloody Cuttle with his cutlery – Cuttle and cutlery? What an
appropriate name the monster had. He was appearing and disappearing in a corner. His item of cutlery was a sharp, vicious vegetable knife.

They told him Rosh was in the Women’s Hospital in Liverpool.

‘I killed him,’ he said. ‘But I keep seeing him.’

They knew Roy had killed him, and they said so. ‘He’s not here. He’s on a slab somewhere.’

‘What’s he doing over there in that corner?’ Roy asked. There was a huge carving knife through the man’s neck, and it had stuck in the wall behind him. But when Roy
turned to look, the apparition did a disappearing act.

They brought tea. And more tea. ‘I went for chips,’ he told them.

So they brought him chips.

‘I don’t want them,’ he said. ‘I want the real Rosh, not the one who keeps coming and going. And that thing in the corner’s back, too.’ He was strangely calm.
‘Green glass.’ What came in green bottles? Was it wine?

‘Yes, we know, lad.’

More of them arrived. Solid, real, clothed in navy blue. Whispering. Why were they whispering? They had news. ‘Is she dead?’ Roy shouted.

A young one entered; he was wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. A weeping policeman? Was he real? Yes. No light passed through him. ‘She’s alive,’ a constable answered.

Handkerchief. ‘It was on the floor,’ Roy announced. ‘And the stuff smelled sweet, the stuff he used to make her sleep. He had a handkerchief.’

‘We know.’ The man who spoke had three stripes on his sleeve and very sad eyes. ‘These officers here found things in his flat, Mr Baxter. As you can see, my lads are upset
about what they discovered. Shoeboxes with names on. Those names and the contents of the boxes were the property of missing women. You stopped him. You wiped out a one-man plague.’

‘Is she dead?’

‘No. They’re mending her. She’s young and healthy and they can get plenty of blood into her. Your Rosh is in the best place, son. Good nurses, brilliant doctors –
it’s second to none.’

Roy’s eyes moved sideways, though his head remained still. ‘Why is he still hanging on the wall like one of the ten green bottles? He used a green bottle, you know . . . And why is
Rosh on the floor here?’

‘Because you can’t get what you saw out of your head. And you can’t forget what you were forced to do.’ The pavement outside the police station was three-deep in
photographers. The nationals were arriving, too, since this broken man was a hero. ‘It’s not murder, Mr Baxter; it’s rodent control.’

‘I’m a Catholic.’

‘So am I, but I’ve shed no tears when somebody I arrested went to the gallows. Cuttle would have killed her. You stopped him, and you stopped him killing somebody else after Mrs
Allen.’

‘So she’s not dead?’

‘She’s not dead.’

‘How do you know she’s not dead?’

‘Because they told me they’d every hope of getting all the glass removed and of making her whole again. They’ll sedate her for a few days to keep her still and numb the
pain.’

They were alone now, just Roy and the sergeant, plus transparent figures that seemed to come and go as and when the urge overcame them. ‘They aren’t real, you know,’ Roy said.
‘As long as I know they’re not real, I’m all right. Right?’

‘Er . . . yeah, I’d say so.’

The see-through figure in the corner raised two fingers in a lewd gesture. Roy shot out of his chair and ran towards Clive Cuttle. Real or not, he needed ten shades of waste matter knocking out
of him.

When the police doctor entered, Roy’s knuckles were bleeding.

‘What’s that wall ever done to you?’ the new arrival asked. So Roy clouted him as well.

Dragged by the sergeant back to his seat, Roy fought to regain a level of steady breathing. The one-eyed medic sat next to the sergeant’s empty chair. ‘Keep hold of him,’ the
doctor recommended. ‘I’ll have a shiner tomorrow, and I don’t want another.’

The heroic killer of Clive Cuttle was asked questions about the date, the year, the Prime Minister, Rosh and her children, their address, his address.

‘What are you writing?’ Roy demanded.

‘About your state of mind,’ was the reply.

‘State of mind? State of bloody mind? I haven’t got one. I’ve a mind, but not a state of.’

‘Then why did you hit me?’

‘Perhaps you’ve a face only a mother could love. Or I’m having a nervous breakdown – how the hell should I know? You’re the doctor.’

‘And you’re not aggressive by nature, are you?’

Roy shrugged. ‘I suppose not. But I killed him. I knifed him so hard, he was pinned to the floor. I can still see him over there in that corner.’

The doctor sat back. This was no psychotic; Roy was a man who had been driven to the edge and beyond. ‘Every normal person, Mr Baxter, including you, me and the sergeant, is capable of
killing under certain circumstances. Cuttle’s final victim is the woman you love, I take it?’

Roy nodded. ‘Even if it hadn’t been her, what he was doing sickened me.’

‘And you’re having a bloody awful reaction. You need a rest. Peace, quiet and relaxation. Will you go hospital voluntarily?’

‘No. I want to be with Rosh.’

‘You can’t be with her. She’s in a hospital for women only. Look, I’ll be straight with you. The images you’ve seen in this room tonight are created by your brain.
It’s acting like a cinema projector, and this is, I hope, a temporary situation. But I can’t let you wander off, you see. I can’t allow you to pick up pieces until you’ve
put down the burdens you’re carrying now.’ A suicide attempt could not be ruled out; if Rosh Allen died, this man would make sure he joined her.

‘The kids need me. She’s not dead, is she?’

‘She’s alive, Mr Baxter. Look at me. Look me in my one eye. If you go home and carry on seeing Cuttle, how many more people will you punch? For your own safety and for the sake of
others, you must go to Whiston tonight. You’ll be assessed, helped, then sent home to look after the people close to you.’

Anna’s arms were folded tight across her bosom. ‘Anyone would think a king was coming to dinner. Don’t forget the little ermine cape, now. You look like a
Christmas tree dressed by Alice. Remember? She hung so many ornaments on one side that it fainted.’

‘Shut up, Mother.’

‘As for when he’s home to stay – well, I don’t agree with your plans.’

‘I’m not leaving him on his own overnight.’

‘Then we’d best find out when he’s coming out of the hospital, and get the wedding booked for that day.’

Rosh continued to apply mascara. If her mother didn’t shut up soon, there would be another episode in this house. Roy couldn’t come home and face a wedding on his first day. He had
saved her life and had paid for it by falling apart. She owed him everything, and he’d already won her heart on the very night that . . . just before it happened. An involuntary shiver passed
through her body.

‘And you might not be fit yet for . . . messing about.’

Sometimes, just sometimes, Rosh felt like crowning her mother with the cast-iron frying pan. ‘Take the three of them to the cinema like you promised. I’ll not have him
mithered.’ The kids had taken some comments and questions at school and in the neighbourhood. There was no way of shutting them up, not after what they’d been through, and they might
just push Roy over the edge again. Especially Alice, who now talked at the speed of an express train. The press had been tethered; even now, reporters were forbidden to waylay the young Allens, but
plenty of local people had kept the fires burning.

‘If it wasn’t for the shop, I’d move,’ Rosh announced. ‘It has to be just the two of us tonight, Mam. Shall I drop you off at the cinema?’

Anna shook her head. ‘A walk will do us good. Go on. Go and fetch him.’ She was so proud of this beautiful daughter. Like most strong Irish girls, she had healed at a miraculous
pace. After the initial shock about Roy’s condition, Rosh had shunted her thoughts into some kind of order and resumed her focus. Having progressed weeks later to a walking stick, she had
passed her driving test in a month before turning her attention to something she called pelvic floor. Pelvic floor involved little yelps of pain, a lot of determination and a screwed-up face, but
she persevered.

‘As soon as Roy’s home, we’ll get that shop started up,’ Rosh said. ‘I’ll employ temporary help until Roy’s ready.’