The doll who ate his mother: a novel of modern terror Read online

  George Pugh mopped his forehead. The new projectionist, Bill Williams, was worse than his predecessor: no experience, and slow to learn. The experienced men went to the theatres that were secured by distribution chains. Independents such as the Newsham had to make do with what they could get.

  And we will, George thought. His mother had, with worse staff, in their second cinema. All her days had been as hectic as the one he’d had today. He shook his head, admiring her. Today—first he’d had the list of all the confectionery prices that should have been increased on Monday. He’d had to calm down Mrs. Freeman and work out the increases with her; she still wasn’t happy with decimal coinage. Then next week’s posters had come in, misprinted. He’d been half the afternoon trying to convince someone at the printer’s, a dimwit he’d never spoken to before. “One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,” he thought, remembering Hamlet.

  This fellow Edmund Hall had rung up that morning. He was a writer in need of help for his new book. “I’d prefer not to say more until I see you.” If he was really a salesman he’d get a kick where it would do the most good. George would have put him off once the woes had started treading, but hadn’t known where to reach him. He supposed he’d best see what the fellow wanted. The girl on the screen was dying prettily; he’d be able to lock up soon. There seemed to be nothing but death in the last few films he’d shown.

  Mrs. Freeman was chatting to a friend as she counted the confectionery takings. No wonder she had to do her sums again so often. “He just bit my head off,” she was saying. “That’s nothing new. I think he’s just using his mother’s death as an excuse.”

  She was talking about him. “When you’ve finished that,” he said coldly, “tell Mr. Williams to come in at eleven tomorrow so I can talk to him.” She gazed at him, horrified that he’d heard, as he strode toward the man and woman waiting by the doors.

  The man was tall, broad, red-haired; he looked very sure of himself. She was a young woman, about twenty-five, five feet tall or so, rather petite. Her legs were a little short, but shapely. She wore a smart blue cardigan over a faded summer dress, as if she’d determined to be smart at the last moment, too late. Her brown hair was cut very close, as if she’d wanted to forget about it; her small face looked timidly mischievous, rather afraid of being itself. It reminded George of his daughter Olivia in her first days at school. If she was applying for a job he’d be disposed in her favour so far. Now they were turning toward him.

  “Mr. Pugh?” the man said. “I’m Edmund Hall. This is Clare. She’s helping me.”

  Mr. Pugh’s dark suit was sharply pressed but paler than when new; one button on his shirt pretended to be like the others. Clare could imagine him as a schoolboy, his loose-limbed frame squeezed awkwardly into a desk, his shock of hastily parted auburn hair standing among the heads, his long, somewhat horsy face gazing up at her, not down as now. He blinked through his horn-rimmed spectacles, squinting impatiently at Edmund as he might have squinted at a blackboard. The lines of strain which overlaid his young face were fifty years old, maybe more.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked Edmund.

  He glanced at Edmund’s card as if it were an unnecessary distraction. “Shall we talk in your office?” Edmund said.

  “I’ve got to see the building cleared. What did you want?”

  “Two things. I want to write a book, with your help. And I want to help catch the man who caused your mother’s death.”

  Girls were emerging from the stalls, dabbing selfconsciously at their eye makeup. “Did you enjoy the show? Good night,” Mr. Pugh said. “You want to write about the man who killed my mother, do you? Killed her,” he repeated savagely. “Not ‘caused her death.’”

  “It was a terrible business, Mr. Pugh, I agree. But I don’t think he actually murdered her, did he? I understood she died of heart failure.”

  “Then you know more than the coroner. The inquest isn’t until tomorrow.”

  Several young girls with fingernails like spatulas of silver plastic ran out of the stalls, pursued by a waft of the national anthem. “You’ve got an urgent date, have you?” Mr. Pugh said. “Betty and Anne and Linda. And I’m surprised at you, Andrea. Have a bit more respect next time, or you don’t come in here again.”

  Edmund said, “I understood there weren’t any marks of fatal violence on the lady. Please don’t think I’m trying to defend the man in any way. I’m as anxious to see him caught as you are.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Dodd. No, I agree that word wasn’t necessary, but of course we can’t interfere with the films. Did you enjoy it, Mrs. Kearney? Better than last week’s? Good. Good night.” Clare was expecting the rest of the crowd when the front doors swung back squeaking behind the last. “Why?” Mr. Pugh demanded of Edmund.

  “Why—”

  “You know what I mean well enough. Why do you want him caught?”

  “Because I believe society must be protected. I say so in all my books. We must consider the victims first, not the criminals. And even more important, the potential victims.”

  Mr. Pugh was heading for the stalls; they hurried to follow him. “Bring that to the office when you’ve finished,” he said to the lady counting money in the kiosk, and straightened her tiers of chocolate bars—unnecessarily, Clare thought. He held the stalls door open with one foot for the duration of a stride; Edmund had to run to take advantage.

  “You’ve had books published, have you? Such as what?”

  Edmund listed them. His voice returned muffled down the long narrow auditorium, with a kind of frustrated echo. The single slope of seats was dim; above it a spread of tobacco smoke drifted reluctantly away, toward the ventilation. At the screen, curtains twitched and fidgeted, rattling; the projectionist peered through his window, trying to settle them. Mr. Pugh tugged vigorously at the chains of the exit doors. “You’re not telling me you’re protecting society with books like those,” he said.

  Clare realized how easily she had let Edmund persuade her; he had no room for faint amusement now. She felt wickedly pleased. “With respect,” he said, “you haven’t read them. They’ve been praised by criminologists.”

  “Experts,” Mr. Pugh cursed.

  They emerged from the stalls as he hurried into his office. Clare heard the lady from the kiosk saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pugh. I didn’t mean what I said. It was a dreadful thing to say.”

  “All right, Mrs. Freeman. Thank you for waiting.”

  A few of the lines on his face had softened. Clare saw Edmund note that too. Edmund motioned her to the vacant chair, then stood gazing down at Mr. Pugh across the desk. “In my own defence,” he said, “I must say nobody has ever accused my books of inciting crime. Not like some of the films nowadays. Aren’t there some films you wish you didn’t have to show?”

  “Of course there are.” He checked the lady’s calculations rapidly. “But they’re what the public wants these days. You can’t go against the public.”

  “Well, that’s it. You show them because it’s your job.”

  “That’s right. My job,” he said, locking the safe. “There’s place and means for every man alive.” Isn’t that right?”

  “Sorry?”

  “_All’s Well That Ends Well_. We can all see what my job is.” He glanced sharply at Edmund. “But I still don’t know what job you think you’re doing.”

  “I believe I’m helping people understand what makes a criminal. And I think that may help prevent crime.”

  “Understand?” His voice boomed in the small office; Clare started. “You want me to understand that animal? You want me to understand the man who could do that to an old lady?”

  “I know exactly how you feel. If it had been my mother I’d want to meet the man who did it face to face.”

  “But it wasn’t your mother, so you write about it. I don’t want to catch him. I wouldn’t trust myself. It’s the job of the police to catch him. You help them if you want to protect society so much.”

  “
We will be helping them, by pursuing an independent line of enquiry. We’ll tell them as soon as we have something worth telling. But I have to make a living too, you know. I don’t always like what I have to do—you should be able to appreciate that. I have my job to do, just as you do.”

  Mr. Pugh squeezed his bottom lip forward thickly, shaking his head. He reached for the phone and dialled. “Yes, it’s me, dear,” he said. “In fifteen minutes. Bye-bye now, dear. Bye-bye.” It was clearly a ritual. “Sounds as if you’re doing everybody’s job to me,” he told Edmund. “Coroner, detective, God knows what. Just tell me this: what made you pick on my mother?”

  He was tidying his desk, though it was neat already. “It wasn’t only your mother,” Edmund said. “There was another incident, just as tragic. Someone caused a car crash almost outside where your mother lived. We’re sure it was the same man.”

  Mr. Pugh held open the front doors of the cinema for them, and switched off the lights. “Yes, my mother mentioned it,” he said. “I’m sorry someone was killed. But I’ll lose no sleep over a car crash.” He gestured at the cars hurtling by beneath the sodium lights of West Derby Road. “Let the buggers—excuse me, my dear—let the drivers kill each other off. The air might be a bit cleaner. The sooner they have to use bicycles the better.”

  Clare watched Edmund timing his move exactly. He waited for Mr. Pugh to lock the doors and turn before he said, “Clare was the driver in that crash. Her brother was killed.”

  Mr. Pugh swung around to her; his face was the face of a schoolboy who had betrayed his awkwardness and youth. “My dear, I am sorry,” he said. “I wouldn’t have upset you for the world. I won’t try to excuse myself. But I’m under a bit of a strain at the moment, as I suppose you are, my dear.”

  “Don’t worry. I know what you must be going through. You can call me Clare if you like,” she said, as a token of forgiveness.

  He smiled but withdrew a little; she knew he wanted to escape them, to hurry home. “My name’s George,” he said, rather unwillingly.

  “Like my guitar.” She smiled at his puzzled frown. “I’ve a guitar called George,” she said. She thought he looked faintly insulted. “He’s a very good guitar,” she said reassuringly.

  His frown was fading, and she was about to say, “We mustn’t keep you,” when Edmund said, “Perhaps you’ll let Clare tell you the background to this business.”

  He’d told her she might be able to help him with Mr. Pugh; now she saw how. “What background?” George said.

  “The history of the man who killed your mother.”

  “I’m walking home through the park,” George said discouragingly.

  “We’ll walk along with you, if we may.”

  “Suit yourself.” George hurried away beneath the railway bridge beside the Newsham; a train went over like thunder.

  Clare was about to protest when Edmund said, “Please, Clare. It’ll come better from you. You said yourself it sounds just like a story when I tell it. If George still doesn’t want to help then, we won’t need to bother him further.”

  “I don’t want to bother him at all,” she said, resounding from the bridge.

  Abruptly George turned back to them. “Go on, Clare,” he said. “Tell me if he wants you to. I suppose I ought to know, since you do.”

  Beyond the bridge and the police station lay the park. The sodium glow drained from George’s back; Clare hurried to overtake him. Overhead opened the deep blue sky, hung with large white clouds almost as still as the small clear new moon.

  George left the park road for the main walk through the trees. The tall windows of the Park Hospital blazed; the lake stretched their lights into thick pillars, supporting a slab of darkness on which the reflection of the hospital rested. “Building up the suspense?” George said. “Are you a writer as well?”

  “No, a teacher. Sorry, I was thinking how to start. The man we’re after,” she said, “we think he used to go to St. Joseph’s School in Mulgrave Street. It was supposed to be quite a good school in its day. But now they’re pulling all the houses down round there.”

  A duck jeered raucously on the lake, flapping its wings like a wet coat. There was no need to put off what she had to tell. It was only like telling the kids a story. It should be easier, since the policeman had been to question her today about the man who’d caused the accident. He’d looked uneasy, as if he hoped she wouldn’t ask his reasons. She’d realized they had connected Rob’s death with George’s mother’s. She had begun to feel someone else might be guilty instead of her, after all. He was finding out for her whether they intended to prosecute. “There was something obviously wrong with the boy before he did anything,” she said, and glanced at Edmund as if he should have noticed.

  As she talked George glanced about constantly, at the trees. She looked, and saw what perhaps he was seeing: great feathers against the sky, conical leafy beehives as high as a house, swelling billows like smoke from a factory chimney, a bent old man scratching his armpit beneath a covering of shaggy lumps of dust. Beneath she could make out the winter patterns, thick vertical piping, candelabras sprouting candelabras sprouting candelabras, intricate webs of twigs gliding over one another and changing, all standing still against the sky—until a branch stood still almost into her face and she slipped on a twig. He must walk home this way every night, looking at the trees.

  “He sat on the bus with this absolutely horrible look of anticipation,” she said. The story was reaching for her; she glanced about uneasily. Three tower blocks twenty-two storeys high squatted together close as witches on the far side of the green, beyond the trees. Light leaked from scattered windows, diluting each block grey as mist; the huge threatening shapes dissolved luminously into the sky. She thought of Dorothy, gazing down.

  “And this boy Cyril kept on teasing him. That may have been what pushed him over the edge.” Behind her rationalization the luridly orange face loomed toward her. Toward the tower blocks, beneath foliage that glowed dimly like sprouting clouds, an owl called plaintively; George glanced toward it. Perhaps he was an amateur naturalist; perhaps that was why he walked through the park.

  They passed a shuttered kiosk, its green paint raw with slashes of red graffiti. A man came striding round it, nearly knocking Clare down, snarling, “I know what I mean, don’t I?” to nobody. George caught her elbow, steadying her.

  “She sat with her back to him and told the headmaster about him. She wouldn’t even look at him. “Have you any children? I thought so. Could you do that to one of yours?” But she hated herself for dreading, deep in her mind, that the woman might have had a reason.

  They walked around the stone rim of a pond; the water sounded as if it were discovering that it had blubbery lips. Trails from streetlamps shivered in the pond; shadows of branches lay still along the trails of light. A few ducks floated, as if in a bath. Clare felt Edmund pacing behind her and George, like a chaperon.

  “And after he’d caused the accident,” she said, “he stole part of my brother’s body.” This part was more like a story, she’d heard it so many times. Suddenly, as she became more conscious of Edmund, she wondered why he was so anxious to involve George.

  George’s spectacles blinked as a car went by on the park road. He was looking at her for the first time since she’d begun. He hadn’t really wanted to hear at all. Why had Edmund made her trouble him? It must be a masculinity thing. Because George had been difficult, Edmund was determined to overcome him, to give himself a sense of power.

  “I’m sorry about your brother. At least you weren’t hurt. No, I go this way,” George said as she continued walking forward.

  Clare looked where he was pointing. If he lived near the tower blocks, why had he come the longest way through the park? She gazed, bewildered, at the long dark curve of houses surrounding the green. She gazed at the streetlamps planted widely along the dark curve, each revealing part of a tiny house and sometimes of a tree: shrines of light, mysterious and calm. Calm. At once she knew
why George had wanted to walk alone through the park on the night before the inquest on his mother.

  Edmund was strolling toward George. She said, “There’s one other thing we know. The boy’s name was Christopher Kelly.” She would have liked to grin viciously at Edmund. “Even the police don’t know that,” she said.

  “He’s certain to have changed his name,” Edmund said hastily.

  “The police still ought to know,” George said.

  “We can follow it up as quickly as they can. We’ve agreed not to tell them until we’ve finished our enquiries,” Edmund said, glaring toward Clare, who was hiding in the shadows near the pond and feeling as she might if she’d distracted the villain in a wrestling match. “I ask you as a gentleman not to reveal what you’ve heard,” Edmund said.

  “I can’t promise that. Why should I?”

  “Because you won’t be helping the police at all. You know they’re undermanned. If they have to put someone on our line of enquiry, they’ll be taking him off something else. That’s why we will be genuinely helping them.” George was hesitating, gazing down the road like a runner anxious for the start. “At least think it over,” Edmund said. “I can tell you aren’t an impulsive man.”

  George said nothing. He wasn’t going to win, Clare thought, disillusioned.

  “Thank you for being so patient,” Edmund said. “Perhaps I could have a word with you tomorrow. I’ll be at the inquest. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  “I can’t stop you.”

  “You aren’t forbidding me to be there, are you?”

  Wearily George said, “No, I’m not forbidding you.”

  He hurried away down the empty gleaming road, beneath the crescent moon. Edmund began to walk back toward the Newsham, to their cars. Incredibly, he seemed triumphant. “I don’t think he’s the sort who’ll tell,” he said, and she could hear that he was forgiving her. “I don’t think we’ve anything to worry about.”