rain stings
Like needles
Night coming on
Empty road
No shelter
But itâs the same
For both of us
And I know something
You donât
Iâm here
Not far behind
Morduch doesnât know
Where you are
But you made a mistake
In telling me
You donât remember
Telling me
But you did
And when I catch you
Iâll do to you
What you did
To my wife
(Murdering bastard!)
That will be my homage
To her memory
I swear it
Wherever you go
Iâll be close behind
Every day
A bit closer
But youâll never know
Until the minute
The moment
Iâm ready
Then you âll hear
Your heartbeats
Thudding louder
But it will really be
My footsteps
Thudding nearer
And you wonât know which â
Is it your heart beating?
Or my footsteps?
Heartbeats or footsteps?
Better be careful, Holford
Very very careful
Listen
Those heartbeats you hear
Could be my footsteps
Listen again
When my footsteps stop
So will your heartbeats
Confusing isnât it?
You want the footsteps to stop
But not your heartbeats
Never mind
Confusion will end
Very soon
Then
(Murdering bastard!)
So will you
3
I was lying in a narrow channel: the soft warm bed seemed to suck me down. My mouth felt sore. I touched it gingerly but there was no dried blood. Someone had washed it off â perhaps the same person who had stripped me down to vest and underpants.
The bed was so luxurious that I never wanted to leave it.
No early-morning bell, no thump of feet in the corridor. Just the muted twitter of birdsong and the sun shining through the thin curtains. My clothes lay neatly folded on a chair in the corner. I dressed and pulled on my boots. The room was tiny and bare, just the bed, upright chair, a small varnished dressing-table with an oval mirror, a bedside lamp with a fringed shade and a carpet faded in patches by sunlight.
For a minute the view from the window held me. Green and glittering light from the regimented ranks of conifers marching down to the lake. Beyond the lake a purple and gold hillside rose in a gentle curve, sinuous as a womanâs shoulder. A small plane droned out of sight somewhere, and from downstairs I heard a manâs voice.
I eased the door open and stood on the landing with its single strip of carpet, wedged in by a wall of books that came shoulder-high. I glanced at the top row of titles.
Sex Energy
by Robert S DeRopp.
Body Has a Head
by Gustav Eckstein.
A Guide to the Nervous System: Altered States of Awareness
. Graham Locke was speaking on the telephone in the hallway below. Distinctly I caught the word âpoliceâ and my hand tightened on the banister rail. I thought: heâs older than I am, weaker, thereâs no need for anything drastic. A quick sharp blow to the back of the neck.
I edged forward to look down on his wild grey head and tested the top step with my weight. It was awkward. The space was taken up with books. I felt hemmed in. I moved down a step and my eye drew level with a bundle of magazines tied with string. On the tattered, flaking spines I read:
Police Gazette Vol IV Nos 16, 17, 18, 19
 â¦
âIâll certainly do what I can but I canât promise anything,â Graham Locke was saying into the big black bakelite receiver. He must have heard the stairs creak because he turned and smiled, the dead eye knowing more than he did, staring up with cold accusation, his expression split in two.
ââYes, I will, if at all possible. But pre-1919 are the rarest, I suppose you realise that. And theyâre very reluctant to break up a set.â
He flapped his hand as I came down, waving me through to the kitchen, nodding at what the other person was saying, and I went past him and along a short passage to an open door. Diane Locke was sitting at a long rectangular wooden table, wearing a blue towel dressing-gown and reading the
Spectator
, licking crumbs of toast from her fingers.
Her face was clean of make-up,
Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner