A Shock to the System Read Online Free PDF Page B

felt weak and out of control.
    He was past the pub and on to the bridge before he realised that the old man was still following.
    â€˜Guv!’
    The closeness of the voice was a shock and he gave an involuntary half-turn before striding on. He had an impression of a fuzzed outline of rags.
    Next there was an arm on his sleeve. Graham swung round in fury. The lights of Hammersmith were behind the old man. He was still just an outline and a smell. Nothing.
    Graham felt huge, unfocused by the alcohol, a cartoonlike bulk looming over the stooped figure.
    â€˜Guv, can you spare us a quid? Please. I made a mess of my life. But I only have to look at you to see you’re a success.’
    Had he chosen any other word, the old man would have lived.
    But suddenly he was everyone who had ever deceived Graham Marshall. He was Eric Marshall, he was George Brewer, he was Robert Benham. He was provocation beyond human endurance. And he had to be obliterated, removed from the face of the earth.
    All the fury of Graham’s disappointment, of his forty-one wasted years, went into the blow, as the ridged umbrella handle smashed down on the faceless head.
    With no sound but a little glug like a cork coming out of a bottle, the old man crumpled to the ground.
    Graham looked round. There was no one on the bridge and, for the moment, there were no cars.
    He looked at the umbrella handle, fearing the viscous gleam of blood. But the overhead lights caught only on the ridges of polished wood. It was unmarked.
    Instinctively, Graham bent down and, without feeling the body’s weight, picked it up and tipped it over the parapet of the bridge.
    He was walking again before the small splash sounded.
    He was inside the house before the realisation of what had happened hit him.
    In the bathroom, as he raised the toothbrush to his lips, he suddenly knew he had committed murder.
    He doubled up, vomiting into the basin.
    â€˜Oh God,’ Merrily’s little voice drawled behind him. ‘Have you had too much to drink?’

CHAPTER FOUR
    Graham Marshall passed a terrible night. The alcohol put him off to sleep quickly, but he awoke within an hour, sweat prickling along his hairline and soon drenching his nightshirt. The duvet pressed down damply as if to smother him, and the undersheet ruckled into torturing ridges. His arms started to tremble uncontrollably.
    Merrily slept on beside him, unperturbed, the evenness of her breathing a continuing reproach. ‘The sleep of the just.’ The phrase came jaggedly into his mind – the sleep enjoyed by the righteous, by those good citizens who were not murderers.
    His teeth started to chatter. He twitched noisily out of bed. Part of him wanted to wake Merrily, not to tell her what had happened, but just to have some reaction, some comment on his nervous collapse. The rhythm of her breathing broke, but settled almost immediately back to its infuriating regularity.
    He looked at her outline, padded by the duvet, and felt unreasoning hatred. ‘The sleep of the just’ – again the phrase gatecrashed his mind. But it was the injustice of her sleep that hurt him. She had not had to suffer the provocation that he had. She had not had to murder an old man.
    He lurched out of the bedroom. The skin felt tight and tingled on his scalp; he had a clear image of his brain drying up, shrivelling, sucking the flesh inward.
    He went downstairs to the sitting-room and had a large Scotch, which he knew was a bad idea, but at least controlled the shaking for a moment.
    All too quickly the thoughts returned.
    He had committed murder.
    A new inward trembling started, sending out fierce little shudders from his stomach, as the reality took hold of him.
    What he felt was simply fear. There was no remorse – certainly no guilt – for what he had done. The old man had insufficient identity for him to feel such personal emotions.
    And certainly Graham’s agony had no moral cause. Abstract