The kettle boiled and he poured the water over the granules and reached inside the fridge for the milk. It was fortunate for Martin that he liked his flat, seeing that it had become his prison. He was a tidy person too. The rubbish was always taken out, the floor was swept now and then, and the washing up tackled as soon as a meal was finished. If the flat was badly in need of decoration, that was not because Martin loved squalor, but because the prospect of choosing new colours, making some sort of statement of personality by replacing the anonymous, dirty cream, terrified him.

  He had lived in this flat for nearly ten years. It had been his declaration of independence from his parents and, at the time, he had imagined the wild sexual scenes he would stage, finally freed from their prying. But, of course, it had not worked out like that. And, after one incident, when a very handsome, muscular mixed-race boy had threatened him and stolen his wallet, he invited no-one back at all. Well, not till Kim. But, at least, with his long tenancy, he had got to know the landlord, who seemed to like a quiet, steady, untroublesome tenant and showed no interest in pushing his rent up above the rate of inflation.

  Martin liked the crumbling grandeur of the square. And, even in his bleakest moments, he had always believed that his flat was securely his and would always stay so.

  Until about two years or so ago, that was. In a way, it was a pleasing sign that some new people had moved into the square. They’d bought one of these big houses and got on with the business of doing it up. Martin liked watching the builders at work, muscular young men some of them, and, when they started to fill up skips with rubble and discarded household objects, it was good to feel they were making a clean sweep of somebody else's life. And Martin had found himself the wood for a couple of bookshelves in one of the skips. Just the way Kim had found that rope.

  It didn't occur to him in the early days that, if any more houses were done up, the square would become more desirable and the value of his house might increase so much his landlord would be tempted to sell it over his head. The idea had crept up on him gradually, and there was still no hard evidence that the landlord was proposing this. Besides, Martin knew that, as a sitting tenant of ten years' standing, he could not easily be shifted. Nevertheless, it started to prey on his mind. And now with each renovation and each smart new car parked in the street outside, he felt less and less secure. These people had so much and it would be easy for them to take away the little he had.

  What really triggered off his fear, however, were not the early arrivals, mostly on the other side of the square, people who packed their children into cars to drive them off to nursery school every morning. They were too remote and their concerns too different. Besides, they were still in a minority and had failed to make a serious dent in the square’s basic squalor. What really changed everything was when a man called Mr Gardiner moved into Number 15 next door six months ago. In the early days when he was still trying to be friendly, he'd introduced himself to Martin as Alan. But Martin always thought of him as Mr Gardiner, and, anyway, it pretty soon became clear that Mr Gardiner wasn't interested in him or anything to do with him, however many times he smiled or said hello in the street. Mr Gardiner had too many smart friends of his own.

  Mr Gardiner was probably in his early forties. He was in remarkably good shape so he could actually be older than that, and Martin knew, though Mr Gardiner was only some seven or eight years older than Martin, he had had a far fuller, more exciting life, still did. He was very sporty, Mr Gardiner, always going out with a squash racket tucked inside his holdall or putting on running shorts and taking a jog round the adjoining streets. Martin despised jogging and thought this complete affectation, but he could not really avoid acknowledging to himself that Mr Gardiner, with his strong tanned legs and thick chest hair poking from the top of his sweat shirt, did not look as ludicrous as he should during this silly ritual. Indeed, he actually looked rather sexy; if you liked that sort of thing.

  Mr Gardiner had already gone completely gray, whereas Martin himself still had hair almost jet-black, but, such was the unfairness of things, Mr Gardiner looked wonderful with his full head of curly grey hair. It was distinguished without being ageing. And Mr Gardiner had the satisfaction of knowing that he would hardly age in appearance seriously now until he was in his sixties, while Martin was condemned to a contemplation of the gradual increase in the tiny white hairs, just beginning to pepper his lank black ones. If his dad was anything to go by, he could well be bald in his fifties as well.

  What Mr Gardiner did for a living remained a mystery to Martin. But he knew Mr Gardiner made a great deal of money. You could see it in his clothes, you could see it in his car and you could see it in all the smartly dressed friends driving up to spend the evening. When they arrived, they often looked as if they felt they'd just made an expedition into darkest Africa.

  "Trust Alan to choose to live in a dump like this," a loud-voiced woman had shrieked to her companion, one evening, quite early on, as they got out of their car. "Alright, if you've got Alan's money to do the place up," her companion had returned, smirking, "you've got to admit it's a house with possibilities." The woman looked round the square for a moment and then said, "I still wouldn't live here for all the tea in China." And then they had gone in.

  If Martin could have been a sniper with a gun at that point, like in some of the videos, he would have shot the woman from his window right between the eyes and watched a satisfying little red hole appear there.

  Because there were so many glamorous women arriving at Mr Gardiner's for parties and dinners, and he could be seen on the front door, kissing and calling them darling, Martin had not at first thought of Mr Gardiner as homosexual. Then gradually it dawned on him that all the women left at the end of the evening, either in pairs (lezzies, he deduced, not having, to his knowledge, ever met one) or else with men, boyfriends or husbands, while one of the younger men (not necessarily the same one and not every time, but always handsome) stayed behind with Mr Gardiner.

  And, one evening, coming back from a walk, he had looked into a first floor window and seen Mr Gardiner and a young man kissing. They’d quickly drawn the curtains so perhaps they’d guessed someone was watching. He’d been annoyed at the time but at least there was no longer any doubt. As time went on and summer came, various young men could be seen out in the small front garden clearing up or cleaning windows. If it was hot, they took their shirts off and when they did that, Martin hated Mr Gardiner even more.

  However, in the last couple of months, he’d seen some stormy scenes at a couple of the parties. He'd watched a man rush out of the house obviously very upset. He was half way down the path before Mr Gardiner had come out of the house to try and stop him leaving. But the man had called Mr Gardiner a bastard, pushed him aside and gone on his way. Mr Gardiner had looked very disconcerted and Martin had enjoyed that.

  Another time, he'd seen a beautiful young woman in a black evening dress, clearly the worse for wear, have a stand-up row with a big, tall, suited man, probably her boyfriend. He wasn’t able to hear clearly what she said but her language was foul for such an elegant woman and he was sure she wasn’t being very complimentary to Mr. Gardiner. So perhaps Mr Gardiner's life wasn't so perfect after all. Just a lot better than Martin's.

  Work on the house went quite slowly. There were no professional decorators. Everything was done by Mr Gardiner and his changing work force of young men and they only seemed to tackle a small part of the work at one time. Besides, Mr Gardiner often seemed to be away for quite lengthy periods of time. Whether he was lucky to have very long holidays or whether he had to travel widely for his business, Martin had no clear idea. Mr Gardiner certainly often returned with a disgustingly healthy tan when everyone around him (particularly, of course, Martin) was pallid and ill-looking.

  Martin moved back to the chair near the window and sat down. He had his table set there so that, while he was eating, he could look out, without it being too obvious. Not that there was much going on now. There never was around Sunday lunchtime. Everybody was either still asleep, attending church or seeking for bargains in the crappy local street market, which the newcomers thought was “full of character”.

  An occasional pair of stray dogs sniffing each other, or a truant schoolboy noisily kicking a drink can round the square, was about the limit of Sunday morning entertainment.

  Last night seeped back into his mind. There was no stopping it.

  He thought about watching his video again. But he didn’t think anything would drive Kim out of his mind. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to try.

  Then, as he took a first sip at his coffee, his heart stopped a beat. It was as if somebody had heard his guilty thoughts. He heard the sounds of a car entering the Square. He looked out. The car had stopped just outside Mr Gardiner’s house. It was a police car.

  Martin leaned forward. Two police officers got out of the car. They walked towards Mr Gardiner's house. As they came up the short path to the front door, the younger of them, fresh-faced, no more than twenty, glanced up at Martin's window.

  Without being sure whether he had been seen peering down or not, Martin ducked back. That upward glance by the young policeman affected him as if the policeman had actually caught him masturbating in front of Johnny's image. Or knew everything he knew about Kim.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Julian got out of the car and lifted the latch on the familiar front gate. He walked up the path past the immaculately maintained front garden to the door of the semi-detached suburban house with its window boxes and polite notice discouraging itinerant vendors from knocking.

  He took a deep breath and rang the bell. Every Sunday afternoon between two and four Julian visited his mother. It was an unchanging ritual, only interrupted by serious illness. Of course, he had thought about cancelling. Even now he contemplated running back down the path.

  Not that his mother had ever insisted he was obliged to turn up now, or indeed at any other time. That was not her style. If pressed to comment, she would probably have told him not to be so silly.

  But, even at the ripe old age of forty-seven, Julian just knew that the guilt he would feel if he didn't turn up would quite outweigh the usefulness of the time saved in not going. Besides, his visit might stop his brain picking over the images that had deprived him of sleep.

  The front door opened.

  “Julian, you look terrible. You haven’t even shaved. Whatever is the matter?”

  He muttered something about over work. His mother pursed her lips. As he entered the sitting room, he awaited the killer comments.

  “You used to take such pride in your appearance when you were younger. It used to make your father and me smile. Don’t your clients mind?”

  “Mind what, mother?”

  “How you look.”

  “I wouldn’t go into work like this, mother.”

  He could see what his mother was thinking. He could come to see her looking like a wreck but not his precious clients.

  Other people's mothers, he knew, seemed perfectly reasonable human beings. It was impossible to grasp why they reduced their children, even their grown-up children, so easily to rage, despair or incoherence. Mrs Bryant was no exception. Widowed now for over five years, she was, to all appearances, a remarkably even-tempered, wryly humorous bird-like little woman, who, in her late seventies, managed extremely well on her own, with a little domestic help just once a week. She had not declined into passive, resourceless old age. She still retained a strong interest in the world around her, always read the papers and did the crosswords, went away on guided coach tours with a woman friend or two twice a year and had just started a course in how to use an Amstrad word processor.

  “Still, I suppose if work is that demanding, I should be grateful you’ve made it over to see me. You know you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “Of course, mother. I’m here because I want to be.”

  It was the traditional exchange. Most people thought Mrs Bryant was wonderful, not just for her age but as a specimen of the human race. Julian knew it was a thankless task trying to persuade them otherwise. The evidence was not in his favour.

  How could he explain that even now he felt a failure when he sat before her? Discreetly she would mention contemporaries of his who had achieved glittering careers, often in the media and satisfyingly visible on television or else with civil service jobs of vast prestige and enviable pensions. Julian could still be reduced to silent fury by this line of apparently casual chatter.

  “Sit down, Julian, do stop dithering around.”

  They settled into their usual armchairs facing each other on either side of the recently installed gas coal effect fire.

  “I’ve got everything ready. There’s nothing which needs doing. I do hope you like Victoria sponge. I couldn’t get your favourite fruit cake.”

  And then, of course, there was his elder sister, who had done a great deal better with the less promising cards Fate had dealt her. She was married (still married) to a husband with his own business, with a worthwhile part-time job herself with Help the Aged, and best of all, she had two children one of each sex, both now doing brilliantly at university. Or so his mother said.

  They’d never discussed why Julian had never married. The subject was lightly alluded to as if it was an odd oversight of Julian’s which meant that he’d never really got round to it. Occasionally Mrs Bryant alluded to “queers” to show her modernity but no obvious connections were ever made.

  “Pour the tea, Julian. Don’t let it get stewed. Julian – are you listening?”

  It was back. A darkened bedroom. A torch picking out the slim hairless body of a young Chinese man sprawled across it, hands tied brutally behind his back, a band of white material pulled tight round his neck, red welts across his buttocks. The foot sprawling out in a last desperate attempt to prevent annihilation.

  Sitting here over the tea-cups in Mrs Bryant’s bright, well-appointed lounge with its tasteful flock wallpaper and Willow Pattern plates on the walls, Julian wanted to scream. In fact, he wanted to get up and shake his mother by the shoulders and tell her what he’d just been through.

  “Mother, I went round to rape somebody and somebody else got there first and strangled him.” He imagined her face polite, attentive but taking nothing in. No, he would never tell her anything. Not even if the police came for him. Well, maybe before the police came for him because the papers would make it sound far worse. He’d do it then. If he knew they were closing in. But not before.

  He forced himself to pour the tea as he always did. Milk in first. Strainer over the cup before putting in the tea. His hand was shaking. With an effort of will he kept it under control and his mother didn’t seem to notice. Except that with the second cup he managed to spill a little tea over the white doily spread over the tray. Even then his mother merely tutted.

  He was in the car, weeping. He drove wildly out of the square. He was back on the main road but the lights and the late night revellers were too much. He veered off at random into another side street and found himself miraculously in a quiet and deserted square, more derelict and abandoned than even Argrove Square.

  He stopped the car, dried his tears and took deep breaths. His brain was working very slowly. The shock had frozen it. But now he forced himself to try and think wisely and sensibly. The key. He had to get rid of it. He could hardly go back and replace it where it was. The list? Well, that could wait. It might be useful. It was better in his hands. But the key?

  He felt a sudden surge of energy. He opened the car door and got out. There was a drain nearby. Before he had time to think any further, he slipped the key out of his pocket and dropped it down the drain. Nobody had seen him. One less problem.

  “Julian? I am talking to you, you know. I’m sure it’s very boring hearing about how I spend my days. But you might make an effort to look interested. Because the way Mrs Clarke next door has been behaving is so strange, it’s worthy even of your attention. She’s out there talking to her dead cats.”

  “Of course, mother. I am listening.”

  As he watched the key drop down into oblivion, he became aware of his responsibility. In so far as he was thinking at all, he had been thinking only about escape, about putting a distance between him and what he had seen. But there was a body lying there. The body of a beautiful young man who had been viciously murdered. He couldn’t leave Kim there. It could be days, weeks, before he was found. That tortured corpse would begin to smell.

  There was a phone box on the corner. Miraculously it hadn’t been vandalised. He fumbled for coins then remembered that he didn’t need them for a 999 call. As the phone started ringing, he realised he didn’t know what he was going to say.

  When the operator answered, he gave the Argrove Square address, then he said there’d been an incident and he thought the police should investigate. Questions followed. He wanted to tell her that it was murder and they should hurry but after murmuring something about looking in the bedroom, his nerve failed him and he put down the receiver. He was shaking when he got back into the car. He was still shaking when he got back into the flat.

 

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