Days 19-22
4,928 words in this post / 30,708 words total.
50. Fork, a Montage
Simon, Sean and Steve crept up on the house. “They must have had it done this morning,” Simon said, about the window at the front that he’d spotted was broken last night.
“Let’s see who’s in anyway,” Sean said. The three men went up to the door, Simon rang the bell.
Inside, Valerie was on her second glass of wine. The kitchen door was still locked and by now she was singing along with the radio so loudly that she wouldn’t have heard the doorbell even if the kitchen door was wide open.
“Nobody home?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” said Simon.
Steve prodded at the wooden panel over the window. “Doesn’t look too solid, this,” he said.
Simon and Sean had a good look around. The road was deserted and no-one seemed to be watching from the windows of the neighbour’s houses. “Go on,” Simon said. “Do it.”
Sean looked at them uncertainly. “Hold on a moment,” he said. “The point of this was supposed to be that it would be easy… Straight in, straight out, no hassle…”
“That’s exactly what it is,” said Steve, pulling the panel clean away with a single tug and a deep grunt. “See?” he added, clambering onto the frame. “Straight in, no hassle…”
Simon followed, pulling Sean by the sleeve behind him. “Okay, Okay,” Sean said. “I’m coming….”
“Are you coming or what?” said Jim, ushering Camille along.
“He’s not here, Jim. It’s not even open, look…”
The three siblings were outside the Dublin Castle. It was 12:30. “I don’t know…” said Jim. “Maybe we should try the hospitals? Or the police, even?”
“That seems a bit premature,” Camille said. “I mean, on any other day, we wouldn’t have thought twice about Rowan not turning up at home, would we? How often does he do this? Every other night, at least.”
“How would you know? It’s not like you’re ever home, either,” Sara said, lighting a cigarette.
“Fuck you,” Camille said. And then: “Give me a cigarette, would you?”
“Yeah, me too,” said Jim.
Sara opened her pack and held it out to them both. “What about the World’s End?” Camille said.
Valerie was singing along to REM, now on her third glass of wine. The vegetables were coming along nicely, thank you, and so was everything else. The potatoes would crisp up perfectly, she just knew it. It was that kind of a day. It struck her as curious none of the kids had been down yet… She should go and check on them, probably. Make sure they were all present and correct!
“It’s like Christmas come early,” said Steve, who had just found some jewellery in and old ornamental wooden box above the fireplace.
“You’re not wrong,” said Simon, who was packing Jim’s laptop into his rucksack.
“Let’s check upstairs,” said Sean.
Valerie thought she probably should check upstairs, just to be sure. She checked the clock: perhaps it might be an idea to put the gravy on first…
“I’m starving,” said Jim.
“Shit!” said Sara.
“What?”
“We’re supposed to be home…”
“The meal,” said Jim with dismay.
“I call her,” said Camille.
The phone rang in the front room. Simon, Sean and Steve stood rooted to the spot for a moment. “Don’t be stupid,” said Simon, gathering himself. “Just ignore it…”
Steve wasn’t one for ignoring anything—he ripped the cord clean out of the wall, and stuffed the telephone into his bag. It had to be worth a tenner at least.
“I could have sworn that was the phone,” Valerie said to nobody in particular.
“No answer,” said Camille. “She’s probably cooking.”
“We should head back anyway,” said Jim.
“I think she’d rather we found her youngest, don’t you?” said Sara, eyebrow raised.
“Fucking hell,” said Sean. “How many bedrooms are there?”
“Looks like five to me,” said Simon. “Sean, you take that one… Steve, you take that one… I’ll have a look in here.”
Valerie opened the kitchen door. She didn’t notice the draft that came through the house through the gap in the temporary boarding Frank Wellington had put up. Neither did she notice the muddy footprints, or the missing trinkets. She was drunk now, and thinking about lunch, how lovely it would be to have the whole family together.
She called out for her children when she reached the top of the stairs. “Sara,” she called. Then, “Camille.” No answer. “Jim?”
Slowly, in unison, three of the bedroom doors opened.
51. Stairs
The three men stood before Valerie, as surprised to see her as she was to see them.
“W-Who are you?” Valerie asked.
Simon stepped forward. His tone was relaxed, cocky. “Look, I’ll be straight with you. We’re here to rob your house. You can either let us get on with it or we can hurt you.”
“What are you doing?” Valerie screamed, noticing the things the men were holding. “Those aren’t yours! Those are ours!”
“Shh!” Simon said.
“Fuck this,” Steve said, stepping forward.
Just then, there was a noise at the front door. A moment later, it opened. Janice had a key; she’d let herself in. “It’s just me, Val!”
“Help!” yelled Valerie. “Help!”
All three men lunged forward, but Sean was nearest. He put hand over her mouth, but he lost his footing: he and Valerie were flung forward, down the stairs. Head over heels they went, hitting the floor at the bottom with a bone-chilling crunch.
In the kitchen, the bell rang; the chicken was ready.
Steve and Simon looked at each other in horror. “Run, Steve” Simon hissed. “Run.” Together the two men stormed downstairs, pushing Janice out the way, bounding over the body of their friend and Valerie, and out the front door.
Janice ran over to her Valerie, screaming. Just then, there was a yell from behind her. It was Rowan. He carried a dead duck under one arm. “What did you do?” he shouted at Janice.
“Nothing…” she said. “I—”
“Get out of the way!” he screamed. He bent over his mother, feeling for a pulse. “Who the fuck is he?” he added, pointing at Sean.
“A—a burglar, I think…” said Janice, who by now was shaking violently. “Is she—”
Rowan felt Sean for a pulse. “Bastard!” he screamed.
“What is it?” Janice said, paler than ever. “Is she—?”
52. Valerie and Sean: One Version of Events
Janice leant over Rowan and felt her friend for a pulse: there was nothing… no, maybe there was something… she couldn’t be sure. If it was there, it was faint. She began a shambolic attempt at CPR, trying to mimic what she’d seen on TV. A few moments later she checked for a pulse again. “Nothing,” she said, teary-eyed to a distraught Rowan.
Rowan checked for himself but it was true, there was nothing.
Valerie Barrett was well and truly dead.
In one swift, fluid motion, Rowan twisted Sean’s neck. There was an audible snap.
53. Valerie and Sean: Another Version of Events
Janice leant over Rowan and felt her friend for a pulse: there was nothing… no, maybe there was something… she couldn’t be sure. If it was there, it was faint. She began a shambolic attempt at CPR, trying to mimic what she’d seen on TV. A few moments later she checked for a pulse again. “Nothing,” she said, teary-eyed to a distraught Rowan.
Rowan checked for himself but it was true, there was nothing.
Valerie Barrett was well and truly dead.
In one swift, fluid motion, Rowan rolled Sean away. There was an audible snap.
54. Guilty
The police and ambulance arrived at the same time as Sara, Jim and Camille. Rowan did what he could to explain what had happened. While he was talking, the fire alarm went off: the chicken was burning, the vegetable pans were overflowing with boiling water, the cook was dead.
Janice wouldn’t be calmed. The four Barrett siblings tried, the Ambulance man tried, the policewoman tried. She was absolutely hysterical. “I saw my best friend die,” she screeched. In the end, the paramedic had to sedate her.
“Thanks,” said Jim. He meant it.
The four Barrett kids stood outside the house while the police cordoned it off with yellow “crime scene” tape. They placed numbered cards all around and took lots of photos. Neighbours came out to watch, and the Barrett siblings could do little more than join them: passive observers. Not one of them cried. It was as if it had happened to someone else: to someone else’s family; to someone else’s mother. The four of them chain-smoked, and watched. Every now and then the policewoman—who called herself a ‘family liaison officer’—whatever that meant, would come and talk to them. She asked them if they had anywhere to go, if they had anyone who should be contacted. None of them really spoke to her; they just smoked and shook their heads. “Whenever you want to talk,” the officer said, “I’m here.” But what each of them knew, standing there in the encroaching darkness, smoking, with a vicious wind that stole the fire from their matches and the colour from their lips—what each of them knew was that there wasn’t now, nor would there ever be, anything of value to say about this night.
For all of their differences, in that respect they were all of the same mind. Each recoiled from the reality of the event, yet also embraced it—it was easy to get carried away with the buzz of activity that surrounded them and their house, but each time they took more than a passive interested they were reminded once again of the root of the excitement: their mother, who died unfulfilled, lonely, and before her time.
It was Camille who finally voiced the only question that mattered. When the officer next came over to offer tea, support or tranquillisers, the eldest daughter of the late Valerie Barrett leant in close and asked, “When are you all planning on leaving..?”
55. Alone
Steve and Simon stopped running at the end of the next street.
“Do you think he’s dead?” said Steve.
“How the fuck would I know?” said Simon, lighting a cigarette. “Want one?”
Steve’s hand wasn’t steady enough; he couldn’t take a smoke, couldn’t even take the pack. He’d seen the dead body of anyone he knew before. Not that Sean was necessarily dead. People had survived worse… “There was a guy I heard about once,” he said. “A friend of a friend, you know. His name was Tim Richardson, he was a scouser, I think. Anyway, this guy Tim, he was in a plane, flying somewhere out east; China or something. About halfway into the flight there was some turbulence. Nothing too bad at first, but over the course of half an hour, it got worse and worse. Suddenly, the plane started dropping straight out of the sky… thirty five thousand feet, thirty thousand feet, twenty five thousand feet… just like that; like a stone. At about five thousand feet, the pilot managed to pull up, but not enough: the plane still came down, just not as hard as it could have done. There were two hundred people on that plane, Simon—and Tim fucking Richardson survived!”
Simon didn’t say anything for a moment. He stood, smoking, mulling the story over. Then he said, “Steve… What the fuck has that got to do with Sean?”
“I’m just saying, people have survived worse…”
“Did Timothy Richardson fall down the stairs in that crash?”
“No, but—”
“Did he end up wrapped round someone as if he was in some kind of old woman porn?”
“No.. Simon, I was only—”
“And what about everyone else on the plane?”
“Died, I think…”
“Fucking great, that is, Steve. So what’s the conclusion? Sean’s got a one in two hundred chance of surviving?”
The argument was redundant, of course. Sean was already dead; having suffered a broken neck at Rowan’s hands—either accidentally or on purpose, depending on what way you looked at it.
56. Jim, explained
What remained of the Barrett family had shaken off Janice and gone to the pub. The sat at a quiet table outside in the cold. Camille had complained but not vigourously. They all wanted to smoke, anyway.
To take their mind off things, they talked about Jim’s dice. He was rolling a pair of dice over and over on the table.
“So what’s the odds of rolling seven, then?” Camille asked.
“About one in six,” Jim said. “Under controlled circumstances.”
“What does that mean?”
“You always have to take into account the observer effect…”
“What’s that?” asked Camille.
Rowan was tapping his foot loudly under the table. Usually this would have infuriated Sara, but today she let it go. None of them had the energy for confrontation. Jim and Camille were talking on autopilot; Rowan and Sara were listening on autopilot.
“Let’s say I was going to follow you everywhere, to study your behaviour,” said Jim. “If I tell you I’m going to watch everything you do, you wouldn’t behave the same way as if you didn’t know I was watching you, right?”
Camille shrugged. “Obviously.”
“So the odds of you… I don’t know… walking around naked would be reduced, right?”
“You’re my fucking brother, you pervert!”
“It’s just an example, Camille… Anyway, the point is: the probability of you doing or not doing things would change because you know you’re being watched. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s the same with dice.”
“Dice can’t know they’re being watched,” said Sara. “What a stupid theory…”
Rowan stopped tapping his foot for a moment. In a sudden motion, he picked up his glass and threw it into the side of the pub. It smashed, pieces of glass flew everywhere.
Jim, Sara and Camille looked at him, open-mouthed. Rowan relaxed, looking at them as if nothing at all had happened.
“What the fuck was that?” said Sara.
Rowan raised his eyebrows and looked at her. “I was just wondering…” he said. “I was just wondering… when your mum gets murdered, and you go to the pub, is it more normal to roll dice and talk about stalking people, or to smash glasses.”
Everyone agreed that they didn’t know, but neither seemed like such and unreasonable alternative.
57. Rowan’s brain
Rowan became concerned that he might have a repeat of the other night’s episode, when he began speaking his thoughts aloud instead of thinking his thoughts inside his head. He suspected it might be happening already.
“Already,” he said. “Hard to tell.”
As the others carried on talking about Jim’s dice theory, Rowan continued to think about what was right and wrong, given his circumstances. It was the first time he had given any thought at all to right and wrong in a long time, and he wasn’t quite sure where to start. He thought about what had happened with his mother’s murderer—it felt good to know he was dead, there was no denying it. Was that wrong? Surely not. Every fibre in his body screamed it was right. No, more than right; it was his duty to feel a sense of justice…
“Justice,” he said. “Simple.”
Justice. The word stuck in his mind like a splinter. He may not know much about right and wrong as other people saw it, but he knew all about justice and he knew all about being justified. He had a clear idea of those words, a definition, even: Justice was any action he exacted on the world that made him feel calmer; the action therefore was its own justification.
“Justification,” he said. “Of me.”
Sara looked at him quizzically.
“Am I saying this out loud?” Rowan asked, calmly enough.
Now all three looked at him.
“Shit, I am, aren’t I?” he said.
They sat there in silence, the four of them, all equally uneasy.
“I should go,” he said. “Should I go?” he added. “Yes, I should go,” he said.
“Er.. Rowan,” Sara said, putting an arm on his shoulder… but he brushed it off.
“I’ll see you later,” Rowan said.
And then, he was gone.
58. Sara’s Brain
For as much as she liked sitting outside the pub, in the bitter chill of the late afternoon, Sara was in no mood for company.
What did it mean, that she had a dead mother? A murdered mother! Attention, that was for sure. There would be a lot of attention. Janice would be in touch. Perhaps she’d begin to see herself as something of a matriarchal figure. Sara could imagine her with Rodger, “Oh, those poor kids, they need someone.” That’s what she’d say. Janice the fucking hero would ride right in… It was laughable.
On the upside, this whole ordeal had to be worth at least a week off work. The temping agency would understand; Mark Selwyn would understand. Perhaps they’d pay her for time off. Compassionate leave, she could call it. She’d have to say she was arranging the funeral, but there’s no way they’d ask her to prove it. “Excuse me, Sara, can you show us the Co-op’s name on your bank statement, please?” No chance!
Then another thing occurred to her: money. What if there was an inheritance? It would be a real opportunity… She could go away somewhere and not have to worry about working. She would go and see the northern lights first, definitely. By herself.
Yes, she needed to be by herself more. Starting now. She stood up: “I’m going to the toilet,” she lied. She was at the other end of the street in minutes.
59. Camille’s Brain
Jim was chatting away happily, but Camille had totally lost the thread of what he was saying. She thought that she knew when to nod, and tried to smile a little every now and then, but if she was honest she would say that she wasn’t interested in the conversation they were having and, furthermore, she didn’t really feel very much like smiling, what with their mother being dead as a result of murder only hours before.
Camille wasn’t stupid, but neither did she have the capacity of her siblings to think through the potential consequences of her mother’s death and what the future implications were. Not without prompting at least.
But Jim’s ramblings were making an impact on her, unconsciously. What he had said about following people, about watching people, had got her thinking about reality TV. In turn, reality TV had got her thinking about celebrities. From there, her thoughts had moved onto fame, and her looks, and the chance that she too might make it onto TV one day… and then it occurred to her.
Her mother was dead as a result of murder.
That wasn’t an everyday situation, especially as the murderer—or one of them at least—was also dead himself. It was a big story. It would get in the papers, on the local news. Maybe it would get in the national news.
And that meant interviews.
As Jim talked, Camille practised the kinds of facial expressions she might be required to do if she were interviewed about her dead mother. She moved her eyebrows down into the sincerity V shape. She realised that conveniently, this expression could double as grief, or deep thoughts. That was important, the deep thoughts expression. Otherwise, people could think she wasn’t really focused on what she was saying.
Jim looked up at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Camille was pleased: he took from her expression exactly what she hoped. He saw a distraught, broken daughter; traumatised by the untimely death of her mother, haunted by memories of what it was like before, when the family were together, when things were different, when the five of them were happy and—
“It’s just…” he broke off. “Well, the shock can do it to people, I suppose…”
“What?” said Camille, dipping her eyebrows, performing to the camera in her mind.
“Have you wet yourself?”
60. Jim’s Brain
Camille wasn’t taking it well, Jim thought. She’d left, and he was alone in the pub with nothing more than his dice and his pint.
He rolled the dice over and over; shivering in the cold. He thought despondently about Camille’s reaction to his probability theory. It seemed that more often than not, when he talked, he talked to himself. The people around him—what few there were—did nothing to validate him; they neither affirmed nor criticised him in any meaningful way. Sitting by himself in the beer garden where Sara had been just a few days before it slowly dawned on him that really, despite his three siblings, he was very much alone.
This was driven home especially when he thought of his dead mother. She hadn’t understood him, not really, but at least he had understood her. She had been his bridge—the thing that linked him back to the world and emotions of other people. But now she was gone. And without her, a host of other connections to the world fell away too. Already the idea of getting a job was forgotten. He wouldn’t work in a video shop. Not now, not ever.
He imaged his skin as a brick wall, standing between him and the world. He imagined his eyes as windows, from which he could see all and judge all objectively: It was almost a physical experience. Jim Barrett, in losing his mother, was becoming untethered from the world itself.
Panicking a little, he pulled his jacket closer around him. But it did nothing to help. Just like the family he had always been surrounded by, it was a false protection. From his deepest thoughts—like those on probability that he’d been expounding earlier—to his most trivial desires, he could see no parallel in other people. What did Camille know about the joy of learning? What did Rowan know about morality? What did Sara know about passion? Nothing! But Jim… He knew of nothing else. These things were his world, and his world was in his head, and the door was now closed.
He finished his beer in silence.
61. Over The Next Few Days
Over the days that followed, the reality of a murdered mother began to sink in for all of the Barrett kids. The initial feelings they had experienced became tinged with a genuine sense of loss. There was nobody to cook, nag, do the washing or wake them up in the morning. There was a vacuum, no doubt about it, a hole in their lives. Each of them quietened a bit—Camille even refused to speak to the press, choosing instead to spend time in her room sketching her thoughts, trying to make sense of the muddle in her mind.
She wasn’t the only one who kept to her room. Jim, of course, spent time with his dice; Rowan just drank and smoked: beer after Marlboro after beer; Sara spent much of her time lying naked on her bed with the window open, allowing the cold wind to tease her skin.
On the fifth day, Janice arrived. It was important to her to know that the kids were all okay. She brought Rodger with her. Despite the gravity of the situation—her best friend murdered! She, first on the scene! Nearly brutalised herself!—she wore her usual type of clothes: a garish green top on this occasion, with a long flowery skirt. Rodger wore a more formal suit. It was very dark and against the dulled English backdrop it achieved the effect of making him look even shorter, an impressive feat.
“Hello!” Janice called out. There was no answer so she stepped into the house. It was the middle of the day, but the place was almost pitch black. Every curtain was pulled and the lights were off. She found the nearest switch and flicked it on. “Oh my God,” she said, gripping her little husband’s arm. “Would you look at this place!” It certainly was a mess. Pizza boxes littered the hallway floor. It appeared as if the food had been eaten upstairs and the empty boxes thrown down afterwards. There were also empty drinks bottles—everything from lemonade to beer to vodka—dirty laundry, at least two dozen letters, of which some looked to be very important, and all kinds of other mess. “But… it’s only been a few days…” Janice said to Rodger, absolutely stunned. Then, shouting, she said, “Hello! It’s Janice! Is anyone home?” There was still no answer. “Oh dear God,” whispered Janice. “You don’t think… what if they came back?”
“Who?” said Rowan, appearing from the kitchen. He looked awful: unshaven, half-dressed, hangover eyes.
“The men who broke in…”
“Men?”
“Yes, there were three—”
Janice didn’t get to finish. Rowan pushed past her and ran upstairs. In his room, he got dressed. As soon as he was done he ran back downstairs.
“What did they look like?” he said.
“I’ve already told the police—”
Rowan grabbed her and slammed her into the wall. Rodger looked on anxiously but didn’t move.
“What did they look like?” he repeated.
“Men, I—I don’t know. Twenties? There were two of them. Dark hair. I think one of them said, ‘Steve,’ but I’m not sure. I told the police that, and they said they had an idea of the suspects…” Rowan eased her grip on her. “I’m sure they’ll catch them Rowan,” she added, trying to be reassuring.
“I hope not,” Rowan said, picking up his keys from the sideboard. “At least, not before I find them.”
62. Sara & Jim
Janice knocked on all the doors upstairs but there was no answer so she and Rodger began tidying. “It’s the least we can do for the poor loves,” Janice said. Rodger felt less sympathetic towards them. Why should he help clean the house of a boy who just tried to attack his wife? These kids are freaks, the lot of them.
He said nothing, of course.
Sara and Jim were upstairs in their rooms, awake. They had both pretended not to be there, because they didn’t want to have to speak with Janice. The knocks on the door had, however, re-awoken them to the idea of an outside world. Sara took the initiative and crept along the landing to Jim’s room. She didn’t knock. She didn’t want to make a noise and she didn’t think he would answer anyway, so she just walked in. Jim was sitting at his desk rolling dice. The room smelled disgusting; Sara was sure the place was teeming with life—there was food all over the place, half-drunk cups of tea, it was almost enough to make her turn around and walk out.
“Jim?” said Sara. He brother jumped; he clearly hadn’t heard her come in.
“Oh,” he said.
“How are you?”
“Okay… Yeah, okay… Just working at this, you know…”
Sara looked around a little. “So… do you mind if I sit?”
Jim turned around to face her. “Sure,” he said.
“If you want me to go, I can go…”
“No, no, it’s okay. I was just thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to anyone.. Days, I think. Janice is here, you know. I heard her earlier, she knocked on my door.”
“Mine too,” said Sara. “She brought Rodger I think.”
“I don’t want to see her,” Jim said, just as the vacuum cleaner started up downstairs.
“No,” agreed Sara. “I don’t either.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, until Sara said: “Have you thought much about it?”
“About mum?”
“Yeah…”
“I don’t know. I suppose. It’s more that I’ll expect her to be there, and then she isn’t than I sit here thinking about the fact she’s dead.”
“Like it creeps up on you?”
“I suppose. One minute I’ll be thinking about—I don’t know, the dice, and the next I’ll think, ‘Oh, I haven’t seen mum in a while,’ and then, form somewhere, a voice in my head says, ‘That’s because she has been murdered. You’ll never see her again.’ But it’s not like I sit around thinking, ‘Woe is me,’ or anything…”
“No,” agreed Sara. “Me neither.”
“It’s weird though…” said Jim, scratching his head.
“What?”
“That she got murdered… it’s weird. I mean, it’s one thing to die; that happens to people all the time. But to be murdered… I don’t know… it’s weird. Mum wasn’t the murder victim type…”
Sara chuckled, but understood what he meant. “I know what you mean. I expected her to lose her mind a bit, and fade away… to die of old age, perhaps.”
“I think about it a lot,” said Jim, in the tone of a man confessing.
“Dying?”
“Yeah—Well, about how people will die. You can usually tell.”
“How do you mean?”
“You just can. Rowan, for example. He’ll die young. You can tell.”
“Jim!”
“Oh, come on… you don’t see it?”
“Okay, what about Camille?”
“Cancer, probably.”
“Is that so…” Sara said. “Well, what about me, then?”
“You’re a bit more difficult,” he said. “I think there’s a good chance you’ll live to be old; to die of old age…”
“Well, thanks!”
Jim shrugged. “Hard to say though…”
“And what about you, Jim?”
Jim’s eyes opened wide, his eyebrows moving dramatically up his head in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I’m just asking: how do you think you’ll die?” Sara repeated.
“I thought it was obvious,” said Jim. “It’ll be suicide.”
