The White Body of Evening Read Online Free PDF Page A

the mob. As the hint of violence rippled out through the crowd, people pressed harder against the narrow bluestone entrance. There were shouts of rage and the muffled sounds of breaking glass as the police attempted to hold the angry mob at bay. Anna moved to the opposite side of the street, looking on with both wonder and horror. Next to her, two elderly women were holding banners that read “An Eye for an Eye” and “A Tooth for a Tooth”.
    “I hope he gets what’s coming to him,” one of them said, leaning close to Anna.
    The two old women had leathery, weatherworn skin. Anna imagined a pair of ancient vultures lingering over the scene of some public catastrophe, croaking the verdict of a terrible, unforgiving law. For a moment the image in her mind obscured the horror of the murder itself.
    “I only hope the man will have a fair trial,” Anna said.
    “What’s got into you? Don’t pity the bugger. Makes me sick the thought of it, what he done with the body.”
    “Molested the corpse,” the other woman said vindictively, as if she would have liked to see the same thing happen to Anna.”The horrid little pervert!”
    The word “pervert” made Anna think of the doctor’s book. She saw the golden claw wrapped around its turquoise orb. An instant later she pictured Albert reading about the murder the evening after the doctor had put stitches in Hamish’s hand. This confluence haunted her, but its logic, so strongly intuited, also eluded her grasp. She felt as if she were trying to pursue the pattern of a dream that had once seemed perfectly plausible, but that upon waking had unravelled itself into a confused and scattered array of fragments, impressions and insinuations that appeared like blurs of light or shapes obscured in the shadows.
    She continued to Spencer Street, pushing against the bodies rushing past her in the direction of the police station, and then turned towards the river. A fishmonger had littered the pavement and gutter with tiny pieces of offal and bone that stank in the hot sun. Before her, the river trembled yellow and brown, and as the ferry groaned across it she thought she could hear the cries of a delirious mob venting its rage in an atrocious act of collective retribution, hacking away at the body of the prisoner until it was an unrecognisable mass of bleeding limbs and the street a sickening shambles.

CHAPTER THREE
    A s Anna grew larger in the final months of her pregnancy, Albert began to hope that the birth of the child would help him effect a positive change of outlook. Anna held his hand on her belly as the child kicked and turned inside her, but he felt the little rumblings with a sense of confusion that fell well short of her own enthusiasm.
    He sat silently next to her, watching her smile as she rested her hand on her stomach.
    “It’s wonderful,” she said to herself.
    Something in the ease of her manner grated on him. She seemed oblivious to him, unaware of just how much he struggled to keep himself together for the sake of the child.
    He stood up and straightened his jacket. “I’m going to be late,” he said.
    She didn’t say anything. She just smiled, or tried to, as he hurried away from her.
    It was a relief to leave the house in the morning. Albert couldn’t wait to exchange the stench of damp for the fresh air of the bay. But as he got closer to work, bumping along through the city with other clerks and shop assistants, all worn out even before the day had really begun, he felt himself tensing up again.
    He hated Citizen’s Insurance. The tedium of it had eaten into him, leaving him bitter and anxious. He had even begun to fall out with Sid Packard as he showed his increasing impatience. The daily routine of checking accounts, balancing books, calculating bills and issuing letters of payment made him ill with its banality. He couldn’t conceal his temper. Sid tried to tolerate this as much as possible, sensing that Albert was not himself, but when he