Michael Dibdin - The Dying of the Light

The room was in chaos. Blood-stained clothes lay strewn about. There was more blood on the walls, as well as on the overturned chest of drawers and the broken chair. The floor was littered with shards of glass. A cold draught swept in through the smashed window, making the curtains flap wildly. But Rosemary barely noticed any of this. All she could see was the body outstretched on the bed, roped to the frame at wrist and ankle, covered in gashes and abrasions, the skin deathly pale, the torn clothing blotched with blood.

The man’s mouth was bound with sticking tape, but his eyes were fixed on Rosemary’s with manic intensity, and his whole body seemed to resonate with the eerie moaning. But before Rosemary could think what to do, let alone do it, she heard voices nearing along the corridor outside. With a helpless glance at the man she hurried out, closing the door quietly behind her, and slipped into Dorothy’s room just before the two speakers reached the doorway.

‘Shame he didn’t break his damned neck while he was at it,’ Anderson was saying. Injured’s no good to me, Jim. I need them dead.’

‘You want the police called in?’ replied a man Rosemary recognised as Dr Morel. “They die in bed is one thing, but I can’t just rubber-stamp something like that. Should have put bars on the windows.’

‘It all costs money, you know. Besides, it doesn’t look good.’

‘And how good do you think this looks? An ex-Battle of Britain ace trying a stunt like this at eighty something. People are going to wonder why he bothered.’

‘No they aren’t, Jim. Because they aren’t going to find out, as long as you keep your mouth shut.’

‘And then to set the dog on him…’

The voices became muffled as the two men entered the next room and closed the door behind them. Rosemary walked slowly over to the window, hugging the green cardigan to her chest. The walled kitchen garden below was now overgrown with brambles whose long tendrils had matted together to form an impenetrable mass of spiny undergrowth. A narrow path of concrete slabs had been kept open, leading from the back door to a doorway in the wall. Halfway along it was a rough clearing where Anderson’s Doberman was normally kept tethered. Now its orange nylon cord lay limp on the ground amid the dog’s massive droppings.

The murmur of voices was still audible next door, although only the occasional word was intelligible from where Rosemary was standing. She tiptoed over to the bed, crouched up on it and put her ear to the wall.

‘Jesus Christ almighty!’ Morel exclaimed. ‘Do you file that hound’s teeth or what?’

‘Klaus is an attack dog,’ replied Anderson haughtily. ‘His jaws are the result of generations of selective breeding.’

‘Pity they forgot to leave room for a brain.’

‘It was his own fault, Jim. If Klaus hadn’t got him, he’d probably have been hedgehogged by some passing motorist.’

‘All I’m trying to say is you can’t run a place like this by yourself, Bill.’

‘Letty’s not just a pretty face, you know.’

‘I mean someone human. And preferably with a few relevant qualifications.’

‘It all comes down to money,’ Anderson sighed. ‘Speaking of which, what’s the good word in re the Davenport?’

Rosemary jerked her head away abruptly from the wall. She got down off the bed and crossed to the chest of drawers on the other side of the room, where Dorothy’s meagre stock of personal possessions were displayed. There was a small statue of a lighthouse inscribed ‘Land’s End’, a faded photograph of two solemn children holding hands, a set of miniature spirit bottles in a wooden case, a Chinese fan with a broken gilt clasp and a spray of dried poppies. There was also a brown bottle with a typed label reading The Mixture Mrs D. Davenport To be taken as directed Do not exceed the stated dose. A transparent plastic spoon was attached to the bottle by a rubber band, its bowl lightly stained with a blue smear.

Taking the bottle in one hand and holding the cardigan under her arm, Rosemary walked quietly to the door. In the cubicle leading to the corridor the voices once more loomed up at her.

‘…out of the question,’ Morel was saying. ‘I’ve read the consultant’s report, Bill. The only way she’s going to leave hospital is in a bag.’

‘Fine, but when?’

‘That’s hard to say. Could be a few months, could be a year. Someone our age you’d be talking weeks, but the old last longer, funnily enough. The metabolism’s running down, you see, so even a rampant malignancy like this takes a while to run its course.’

‘So what if she tells the nurses about our chum here? If this gets in the papers…’

‘Don’t fret, Bill. She’ll be out of it on pain control most of the time, plus with the staffing levels these days no one has the time to stand around nattering.’

‘All the same, I’d be happier if she stayed here.’

‘No can do, Bill. Once the machinery’s been set in motion…’

Rosemary ran as fast as she dared along the corridor to the landing and clattered downstairs. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she noticed that she was patting the back of her right hand, which held the medicine bottle. That gesture had been the closest her mother, an undemonstrative woman, had ever come to physical intimacy, and then only on very special occasions when she had felt it necessary or desirable to reassure the child-in much the same way that she kept a small bottle of brandy on the top shelf of the cupboard in the bathroom ‘for medicinal purposes only’.

Rosemary turned briskly away. That was quite enough of that. She wasn’t having mirrors going soft on her. Shiny, hard and shallow was how she wanted them, reflecting her as she was, as she appeared to be, an elderly maiden aunt whose emotions were under perfect control at all times. It was a relief to return to the lounge and find the other guests all in their places: the colonel with his newspaper, the peeress at the piano, the clergyman buried in his book, the lovebirds using the jigsaw as an excuse for their proximity, the invalid widow swathed in her blankets, the Jew on the phone. Only George Channing, the corned beef millionaire, appeared to be missing.

Rosemary slipped into the chair beside her friend.

‘We must talk, Dot!’ she said urgently. ‘Here, put the cardigan on. I’ve been a fool, Dot. No, not that button, there’s one right here at the bottom. We’ve been totally and utterly wrong all along, and I almost didn’t realise the truth until it was too late! Quick, take your medicine and then I’ll explain.’

She held out the brown bottle to Dorothy, who shook her head.

‘It’s eased again.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ll keep it until I really need it. What were you saying about being wrong?’

Rosemary leant forward and regarded Dorothy earnestly.

‘Our fundamental mistake all along has been to assume that there was a logical motive for each of the murders which have taken place so far,’ she said. ‘We’ve taken it for granted that Roland Ayres and Hilary Bryant were killed for revenge, or for their money, or to silence them. Now a third member of our little group, George Channing, has become the target of a seemingly senseless act of…’

Dorothy twisted impatiently in her chair.

‘Why is Dr Morel taking so long, Rose?’ she broke out. ‘Don’t they know how hard this is for me? Why can’t they just tell me and have done?’

‘Pull yourself together, Dorothy Davenport!’ snapped Rosemary. ‘We’re facing a ruthless and cunning killer who has already struck three times, and while I don’t yet know who he-or she-may be, I do know the identity of his-or her-next victim.’

Dorothy smiled wanly.