The Face That Must Die Page 3

  Fanny pointed at the other ground-floor flat. “I forgot to tell you,” she whispered, “I saw Mr Nameless Bell at work the other day.”

  His was the only doorbell that lacked a name. “You’ve found out where he works?” Cathy hissed. “Is he a spy?”

  Fanny thumbed tacks into place. “No,” she said mournfully. Her words threatened to collapse with laughter. “He works in Woolworth’s.”

  “ Oh dear.” Cathy couldn’t control her voice, which broke into a jumpy shout. “I thought he must be at least a detective.”

  They fled upstairs, giggling. The last of the babies were drying. “When’s your exhibition?” Cathy said.

  “ Next week. They’ve given me the whole of the Bluecoat Gallery.”

  “ That’s good.” Fanny’s grimace made her ask “Don’t you think so?”

  “ I don’t know. I hope so. I just don’t know if it’ll reach the people I want to reach.” She sounded embarrassed and self-deprecating as she added “Come and see it if you want to.”

  “ Thanks, Fanny. We will.” The smell of curry drifted downstairs, mixed with a hint of cannabis. “I must go and give himself his dinner,” she said.

  She’d reached the top landing when Fanny called “Cathy!” She looked down unwarily. The fall plunged away beneath her; the walls shifted, the stairwell gaped like a throat.

  “ I’m awfully sorry, I forgot to ask if you had any raisins. This exhibition has me all jumbled up.”

  The moment had passed, and Cathy felt better for having survived it. “I’ll send Peter down with them,” she said.

  The girls and Peter were reading his comics. They glanced up to see who Cathy was. She felt like an intruder. Sometimes, in unguarded moments, she wondered if Peter preferred them to her. This year she’d cooked her first full Christmas dinner – but he’d seemed more interested in going next door to smoke.

  Grumpily he undertook to deliver the raisins. “And then your dinner will be ready,” she said.

  The girls looked up, in case that included them. At last they wandered out, saying “See you later, Peter.”

  Not here, if Cathy could help it. They cluttered the flat. They weren’t worth resenting: Sue had a big bum that flopped from side to side as she walked, Anne’s hair was like a thatched crash helmet. But she could stand seeing less of them. Were they trying to turn the top floor into a commune? It annoyed her to have to ask persistently for things they’d borrowed. On Christmas Day her mother had come for dinner; on Boxing Day she’d invited her father. Even on Christmas Day, when Peter’s parents had come too, he’d kept sneaking next door.

  When he returned from Fanny’s she said “When are we going to see the Halliwells?”

  “ Yes.”

  She hadn’t time to be infuriated. “I want to see them on New Year’s Eve. We’ll go out for a meal, just the four of us.”

  “ It’ll have to be somewhere cheap.”

  She was looking forward to seeing her friends, and didn’t feel like arguing. “Did you like Fanny’s painting?”

  “ It was all right.”

  “ She wants us to go to her exhibition.”

  “ Oh Christ, you didn’t say yes, did you? They’re all a con, those exhibitions. Full of posers pretending they know what they’re talking about.”

  But it was Fanny’s. Her look of reproof must have reached him, for to break her silence he said ‘‘Anything interesting happen today?”

  Interesting? She was no longer sure. She’d meant to tell him how the park had looked that morning, grass and bushes painted with light and rain – everything had glowed, and the tears it brought to her eyes had made the landscape crystalline – but he seemed to resent her ability to see these things without drugs.

  “ Nothing special,” she said, hoarding the memory. “Come and help carry the plates.”

  When she brought the rice from the kitchen he was peering through a crack in the curtains, like someone made wary by loneliness Before she could join him, he let the crack fall closed. “Just some guy watching the house,” he said. “Probably one of Craig’s boyfriends. I thought he might be fuzz. He’s gone now.” Perhaps he was reassuring himself as he said “Nothing to worry about.”

  ***

  Chapter III

  Lime Street Station was thick with queues, sluggishly advancing on the ticket windows while trying to avoid the rain that dripped through the roof. Horridge edged towards the bookstall. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.” Sometimes he had to shout. He felt absurd and irritable, as though caught in a dance in a dream.

  Police were patrolling, and seemed on the lookout for someone. They needn’t look at him. Overhead the names of destinations clicked and changed, as though on a game board. Light exploded silently in a photo booth. Above the squealing of metal on rails a great vague voice boomed, echoing within the long iron shed. Horridge could never see where its owner was hiding.

  He hurried past the Gents’. It was too public: there were always men watching surreptitiously, or moving behind him – and always a stench like perfumed urine, which must cling to one’s clothes. He’d use the toilet in the cinema. He bought a newspaper: sHocK REvELATIoN IN LIVERpooL mURDER hUNT, its headline said.

  The pavements looked slippery and unstable, glittering and wriggling with rain. Light lay glistening outside a pub, like slops. He hurried up the street beside the Odeon. Side streets made him nervous. Submarine glows drifted before him to be engulfed by the multicoloured glare of London Road.

  The Odeon’s four cinemas were offering a Peter Sellers comedy, a Disney full-length cartoon, Murder by Death and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That was the one he wanted to see. Horror films took you out of yourself – they weren’t too close to the truth.

  Children raced about the foyer, knocking squat ashtray pedestals awry; others stood screaming, lost or frustrated. Children clamoured for sweets and hot dogs and Pepsi-Cola. A salesgirl watched two boys furtively handling bars of chocolate. Horridge gave his ticket to a harassed usher, who tore it and gestured him vaguely onwards, frowning at the children.

  No time to use the toilet. He wanted to reach Screen 3 before the show began; he didn’t like groping about in the dark. Once he’d touched a face, and a tongue had stirred like a worm within the cheek. After the blaze of the foyer the passage was dim. The large Screen 2 was in the middle; 3 must be on the left.

  The small cinema was bright and empty: not even an usherette to be seen. Good – there would be nobody shouting and laughing at the monsters as a proof of masculinity. His seat creaked in the silence. Were they waiting for the cinema to fill? Wasn’t he enough of an audience?

  Beneath the red lights, the blue-green pelt of the floor and the seats threatened to turn violent. Floor and seats were tilted slightly to the right, though the screen was horizontal. He felt seasick. He shook open the newspaper, loudly and furiously.

  The man whose mutilated body was found in a Liverpool flat was a male prostitute, police revealed today.

  That made him more sick. He didn’t want to read on. But he must know all.

  The body of Norman Roylance (21) was found in a cupboard in his flat in Toxteth, Liverpool, on December 24. He had been bound and gagged. Police say that there were more than 30 razor wounds on the body.

  In a series of shock revelations, police gave us details of Roylance’s life as a homosexual prostitute since the age of 15. (Full story on page 2.)

  Last month, also in the Toxteth area, the body of a young homosexual as found in a flat. He had also been bound and mutilated, and his body had been locked in a cupboard.

  Police are anxious to interview a man in his forties. He is described as being of medium height and stocky build. From descriptions, police have been able to issue this identikit portrait.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

  He stared at the sketched face. The flat eyes were neutral as a corpse’s, but that was only slyness: they were hiding what lurked within them, as well they might. The face looked too small fo
r the head. By holding itself stiff it hoped to conceal its real nature. In the flesh it wouldn’t look exactly like that. That was its trick, to avoid being recognised! The empty eyes stared up at him, daring him to imagine their thoughts.

  Shuddering, he turned the page. Its rustling was loud as an insomniac’s blankets. Where the devil was the film? ONE YOUNG MAN’S LIFE ON THE STREETS was spread across page 2, but he felt queasy enough without reading that – if it was the truth. Who said the young man had been a prostitute? A victim, more likely. Young people weren’t homosexual until they were corrupted – nobody was born that way. Horridge had his own idea about the murders: the man interfered with his helpless victims before he killed them. If he was a homosexual he was perverted enough for anything. Killing on Christmas Eve showed how unnatural he was. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

  He started. His neck felt spied upon. As he jerked round, a head dodged back from the projectionist’s window. He’d paid to watch, not to be watched. He flourished the newspaper and read at random.

  An old man had been mugged by a gang of girls. That was what came of this Women’s Liberation.

  He heard the doors open. Someone was coming to double the audience! But it was an usherette. “Can I see your ticket, please?”

  He always kept hold of his ticket; nobody was going to accuse him of not having paid. Did she mean to tell him he was in the wrong seat and herd him into another?

  “ Which film did you want to see?”

  Good God, didn’t they even know what they were showing? “The horror film,” he said with brittle civility.

  “ You’re in the wrong cinema. This is Screen 4.”

  If he argued they would start the film without him. He hurried down the passage, feeling hot and prickly. Illuminated numbered arrows pointed the way to each cinema. Well, he couldn’t be expected to notice everything.

  They were still showing the adverts. A lit bust, the head and shoulders of an ice-cream girl, hovered above her tray. He muttered his way along a row, touching hair that twitched away, cloth that squirmed; a pool of tobacco smoke drifted sluggishly about his face. A soft-drink carton crunched beneath his heel. At last he reached the unoccupied seat.

  He felt hemmed in by shoulders. What was drooping over the seat in front? As the screen flickered, it shifted. It was the empty head of a duffle coat. He settled himself, pressing his knees together so as not to touch anyone. At once the film began – and he found that it wasn’t a horror film at all.

  Was it supposed to be a musical? He’d been lured in under false pretences. It began with a wedding, everyone breaking into song and dance. Then an engaged couple’s car broke down: thunder, lightning, lashing rain, glimpses of an old dark house. Perhaps, after all – They were ushered to meet the mad scientist. Horridge gasped, appalled. The scientist’s limp hands waved like snakes, his face moved blatantly. He was a homosexual.

  This was a horror film, all right – far too horrible, and in the wrong way. Horridge tutted loudly, but the voice continued shrilling, the hands unfurled like unnatural flowers of flesh. The homosexual had surrounded himself with friends. Horridge could hardly tell them apart, nor did he want to: they were all the same species of filth.

  The scientist created a muscle-man. Wouldn’t it tear him apart if he touched it? The film refused to let that happen. Horridge complained, and was told to be quiet. How could anyone be interested in this unless they were homosexuals themselves?

  They must have known what the film was. Shoulders pressed against him, soft but muscular. He grew clammily warm all at once; the cinema was stuffed with flesh, the air was clogged with smoke, not all of which smelled like tobacco. Someone was thickly perfumed. Perhaps if he kept quiet they wouldn’t bother him. His wet hands gripped his trembling knees.

  What would they dare to show next? The homosexual was seducing the girl. How could she let such uncleanliness near her? Horridge closed his eyes, sickened – but at once he opened them, sure that he’d felt hot flesh edging closer in the dark. The homosexual was in the boy’s room now. His silhouette moved on the curtain of the bed. Good God, they couldn’t be about to -

  He sprang to his feet before he knew he meant to. A sound filled his mouth like vomit. Nothing could make him sit through more of this. He forced his way out, struggling past legs, ignoring protests. He was trapped in a cage of flesh. Just let one of them touch him – they wouldn’t touch anything else for a while. When he reached the doors his hands were shaking. He stumbled into the passage, among burly dark red pillars.

  His nervousness hurried him to the Gents’. Someone was emerging. As he stood aside fretfully, he glimpsed the figure’s long hair. He retreated, but he hadn’t mistaken the sign: GENTLEMEN. He glared at the other, whose hair cascaded down his back and was spangled with rain.

  He limped to the urinal stalls, a row of hollow oval heads, their lower lips protruding. As he stood at one, feeling at the mercy of his bladder, someone padded softly in. Did he hesitate behind Horridge before moving on?

  Horridge ought to have used one of the cubicles. He didn’t like the threat of being watched. He tried to hurry himself, but there seemed no end to the nervous flow. Unease gripped him by the back of the neck and forced his head to turn.

  Had the man just turned away from watching? Horridge stared at the back of the head. In the clinical light the clipped tufts of black hair looked too vivid, unreal. The large square head was perched on the folds of the hood of the grey duffle coat.

  He remembered the coat that had lain over the seat, head gaping. Had the man followed him because he’d protested at the film? He forced himself to finish, and struggled with the zip, which felt as though it meant to gnash its teeth.

  He shoved at the door to the corridor while he leaned against the inner door. It cost him a few moments to realise that the outer door opened inwards, and to grab the handle. Behind him the inner door halted half-open. It was being held.

  He wrenched at the handle. Between the doors, the vestibule was claustrophobic as an airlock. His nervousness hindered the door. As he dragged it open, a large hand reached over his shoulder and laid itself flat on the wood.

  He saw its hairs, black as an ape’s. He saw the penumbra of moisture which outlined it on the door. It was inches from his face. He limped into the dim passage, clenching his eyes to see, and heard the man padding after him. He wouldn’t be intimidated; the man had none of his friends with him now. He turned and stared straight into the man’s eyes.

  The face looked absurd on the large head: a small patch crowded with all the features, surrounded by luxuriant flesh. It gazed at Horridge for a moment, then it frowned. But it knew well enough why he was staring. It was the face he’d seen outside the house on Aigburth Drive, and spying from the window.

  Was it the dim light that made it look indefinably different – or makeup? There was something about it, something he couldn’t quite determine: something that reached deep into his guts and touched off a slow explosion of fear. As he fled, the threat of a nervous itch swarmed over the whole of his skin. His limp dragged at him.

  He’d grasped the chill handle before he realised that his panic had driven him back to Screen 3. The unnatural voice squealed. He let go of the door as though it were the lid of a box of maggots.

  Behind him, feet padded stealthily over the carpet. Horridge dodged towards the adjacent pair of doors. But was the man pursuing him? Perhaps he was returning to the cinema in search of victims -

  At once Horridge knew. Revulsion surged through him, sweat burst out of his skin, gluing his clothes to him. The dim face that was bearing down on him was the face of the sketch in all the papers.

  An expression was emerging onto the face. It seemed slow as corruption. Though he was fascinated, Horridge shuddered himself free. Before the expression could reveal itself, he hurled open the double doors.

  Beyond them was another airlock. It was full of people, almost immobile beneath a stagnant spread of tobacco smoke. He struggled towards the fa
r pair of doors. The hot thick cloth that blocked his way hardly yielded; people turned slowly to stare at him. He was panting, and deafened by his heartbeats. When he glanced back, he saw that the man was still following.

  Horridge bumped into a stout woman. She raised a hand that could have engulfed his face in fat, and barred his way like a traffic policeman. “You just watch where you’re going. There’s a crippled lady here.”

  He had an urge to giggle wildly. He was being pursued by a murderer, as though he’d become trapped in one of the films – and nobody seemed to notice. But the absurdity wasn’t reassuring, for his plight wasn’t at all like a film: his clothes were sticking to him, his coat felt huge and cumbersome; the smell of his sweat suffocated him, he felt desperate for a bath. Even when delirious, he had never been so conscious of his body.

  He squeezed past the woman, though she shouted “Look at him, what’s he think he’s doing?” He dragged open one of the pair of doors. He hadn’t reached an exit: he was in another cinema.

  The long slope of rows of seats was full of an audience, staring at no film. Beneath red and green lights, the red and green pattern of the carpets jangled. Up the slope illuminated masks came drifting above ice cream trays. At the far end of the rows, he saw a luminous EXIT sign. An usherette touched his arm. “Can I see your ticket, please?”

  The lights were dimming. She wouldn’t have the chance to look too closely. He brandished the blurred sodden fragment of paper hastily at her. At once she said “You’re in the wrong cinema. You want – ”

  He pushed past her and stumbled towards what looked to be an empty row. Darkness flooded the cinema. The usherette was calling “Wait a minute, please, wait a minute!” The curtains parted, and a picture sprang onto the screen: Peter Sellers’ face towered there, pretending to be a French policeman’s. In the jerky light Horridge saw the man with the cramped face say something to the usherette, and come after him.