Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘How old are you?’ Frank asked.

‘What’s it to you, pervert?’

‘Have you been taking drugs?’

‘What if I have? What are you going to do about it?’

‘Where’s my ring?’

He curled his upper lip back and laughed. ‘Bottom of the lake. Or maybe in the garbage. I don’t remember.’

‘Please,’ said Frank. ‘Where is it? It’s all I have left of her.’

‘Tough shit. Get a life, old man.’

‘You don’t understand.’

Daryl stopped pacing and thrust his chin out towards Frank. The tendons in his neck stood out like cables. ‘Yes, I do. You think I’m a fucking retard, don’t you, just like the teachers do? Well, fuck the lot of you. It was your wife’s ring. It’s all you’ve got to remember her by. Read my lips. I don’t fucking care! ’

Blinking back the tears, Frank stuck his hand in his pocket for the gun. He actually felt his hand tighten around the handle and his finger slip into the trigger guard before he relaxed his grip and let go. At the time he didn’t know why he was doing it, but the next thing he knew he was walking down the stairs.

‘And stay away from us!’ he heard Daryl shout after him.

Out in the street, with no memory of going out the door, he found himself on the boardwalk again. It was dark and there was nobody else around except a man walking his dog. Frank went and sat out on the rocks. The lake stretched like black satin ahead of him, smudged with thin white moonlight. Water slopped around the rock at his feet and splashed over his ankles. He thought he could see lights over on the American side.

The next thing Frank knew he was at home and something like a thunderbolt cracked inside his head, filling it with light. It was all so clear now. It was time to let go. He laughed. So simple. From his window, he could see Daryl light another cigarette, hear the loud music. What did his feelings matter to Daryl or his mother? They didn’t. And why should they? Nothing really mattered now, but at least he knew what he had to do. He had known the moment he got close enough to Daryl to see the tattoo of a swastika on his cheek below his left eye.

Even though it was dark, Frank managed to arrange the stuff on his lawn. He was thinking clearly now. His life had regained its sense of continuity. No more jump-frame reality. The memory he had tried so hard to deny had forced itself on him now the ring was gone, the talisman that had protected him for so long. It wasn’t such a bad thing. In a way, he was free. It was all over.

It was a warm night. A raccoon snuffled around the neighbour’s garbage. It stopped and looked at Frank with its calm, black-ringed eyes. He moved forward and stamped his foot on the sidewalk to make it go away. It simply stared at him until it was ready to go, then it waddled arrogantly along the street. Far in the distance, a car engine revved. Other shapes detached themselves from the darkness and proved even more difficult to chase away than the raccoon, but Frank held his ground.

Carefully, he arranged the objects around him on the dark lawn. By the time he had finished, the sun was coming up, promising a perfect day for a lawn sale. Now that everything was neatly laid out, the memory was complete; he could keep nothing at bay.

What a death Joan’s had been. She had spent ten years doing it, in and out of hospital, one useless operation after another, night after sleepless night of agony despite the pills. He remembered now the times she had begged him to finish her, saying she would do it herself if she had the strength, if she could move without making the knives twist and cut up her insides.

And every time he let her down. He couldn’t do it, and he didn’t really know why. Surely if he really loved her, he told himself, he would have killed her to stop her suffering? But that argument didn’t work. He knew that he loved her, but he still couldn’t kill her.

Once, he stood over her for ten minutes holding a pillow in his hands, and he felt her willing him to push it down over her face. Her tongue was swollen, her gums had receded and her teeth were falling out. Every time he smoothed her head with his hand, tufts of dry hair stuck to his palm.

But he had thrown the cushion aside and run out of the house. Why couldn’t he do it? Because he couldn’t imagine life without her, no matter how much pain and anguish she suffered to stay with him, no matter how little she now resembled the wife he had married? Perhaps. Selfishness? Certainly. Cowardice? Yes.

At last she had gone. Not with a quiet whisper like a candle flame snuffed out, not gently, but with convulsions and loud screams as if fish hooks had ripped a bloody path through her insides.

And he remembered her last look at him, the bulging eyes, the blood trickling from her nose and mouth. How could he forget that look? Through all the final agony, through the knowledge that the release of death was only seconds away, the hard glint of accusation in her eyes was unmistakable.

Frank wiped the tears from his stubbly cheeks and held the gun on his lap as the sun grew warmer and the city came to life around him. Soon he would find the courage to do to himself what he hadn’t been able to do for the wife he loved, what he had only been able to do to some nameless German soldier who haunted his dreams. Soon.

By the time the tourists got here all they would see was an old man asleep amid the detritus of his life: the torso of a tailor’s dummy; yards of moth-eaten fabrics and folded patterns made of tissue paper; baking dishes; cake tins; cookie cutters shaped like hearts and lions; a silver cigarette lighter; a Nazi armband; a tattered copy of Mein Kampf ; medals; a bayonet; a German dagger with a mother-of-pearl swastika inlaid in its handle.

It was thepenultimate week of the NFL football pool and Charlie Firth was ahead by ten points. Nothing could stop the smug bastard from winning again now. Nothing short of murder.

Such was the uncharitable thought that crossed the mind of Calvin Bly as he sat with the usual crowd in the local bar watching the Monday night game, St Louis at Tampa Bay. Outside, in the east end of Toronto, the wind was howling, piling up snow in the side streets and swirling it in surreal patterns across the main roads, but inside it was warm, and the occasional single malt between pints of Guinness helped make it even warmer.

There were six of them at the table, the usual crowd, all in the pool. Calvin was second, having come up with a complicated system of mathematical checks and balances that had earned him solid eights and nines all season, plus the occasional eleven. Behind him by six points was Marge, the only girl in the group. Well, woman really, he supposed, seeing as she was in her fifties. The other three, Chris, Jeff and Brad, weren’t even in the running.

‘How’s your mother, Calvin?’ Charlie’s loud voice boomed across the table. Calvin looked away from his conversation with Marge and saw the sneer on Charlie’s face, the baiting grin, the arrogant, disdaining eyes.

‘She’s fine, thank you,’ he said.

Charlie looked at his watch. ‘Only it’s getting late. I’m surprised she lets you stay out this long.’

He laughed and some of the others joined in, but more because it was the thing to do than because they had any heart for it. Truth be told, nobody really found Charlie’s sense of humour funny. Vicious, yes. Cutting and hurtful, yes. But funny, no way.

Perhaps it wasn’t worth murdering someone for two thousand dollars, Calvin thought, but it might be worth it just to clear the world of the loud-mouthed fucker. People would probably thank him for it. Three years in a row Charlie Firth had won that NFL pool, and he hadn’t let a soul forget it. Twice Calvin had come in second, and Charlie wasn’t about to let him forget that either. The teasing would go on well into the baseball season.