Peter May - The Killing Room

He had only recently gone on-line, discovering that he could stay easily in touch by e-mail with his daughter in China. All it took was a click of the mouse. But, then, beyond his initial enthusiasm for the Internet, he had not had much to say to her, and his e-mails had tailed off. She wondered what use he had made of the Net, and booted up his browser, a piece of software that connected him to the worldwide web, allowing him to visit any one of millions of Internet sites around the globe. The default page that it took her to was the HomePage of his Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Down the left side of the screen were four tabs, like name tabs on folders in a filing cabinet, which is what they were — or, at least, their electronic equivalent. While she waited for the UIC HomePage to load, she pointed the on-screen arrow to the HISTORY tab and a file opened up as if she had drawn it out of a cabinet. This showed the last five hundred Internet sites her father had visited. She went to the top of the list, the last site he had gone to on the day before he died. It was something called Aphrodite Home Page . She clicked on the Internet Explorer icon beside it and within seconds the screen was wiped black, and photographs of naked women began downloading under headings like SAMANTHA — Click me to watch live , and JULI–I like women .

Margaret’s face flushed red. A mixture of shock, embarrassment, revulsion. She went back to HISTORY and downloaded the next address on the list. More pornography. ASIAN BABES DO IT FOR YOU . Skinny Asian women with silicon boosted breasts revealed parts of their anatomy that Margaret had only ever seen on the autopsy table. She felt sick. Her dad was accessing pornography on the Internet. Her dad ! She could not reconcile this with the sweet, gentle man she knew as her father, the most scrupulously fair and honest man she had ever known. But, then, she thought, had she ever really known him at all? Why would he want to look at filth like this? Men, she knew, had needs that women simply didn’t understand. But her dad ?

She didn’t hear the door of the den opening and was startled by the sound of her mother’s voice. ‘What are you doing, Margaret? Everyone’s asking where you are.’

Margaret was flustered, as if caught in some illicit act. She quickly moved the arrow to shut down the computer before her mother could see what was on the screen. ‘Nothing,’ she said guiltily. ‘Just going through some of dad’s stuff.’

‘Well, there’ll be plenty of time for that,’ her mother said. ‘You have guests to see to.’

Margaret bridled. ‘They’re not my guests,’ she said. ‘You invited them. And, anyway, they seem to be having a pretty good time through there, drinking dad’s Scotch. They won’t want me spoiling their fun.’

Her mother sighed theatrically. ‘I don’t know why you bother affecting the grieving daughter. You had no time for him when he was alive. Why start pretending now?’

Margaret was stung, both by the unfairness and by the truth of her mother’s words. ‘I’m not pretending,’ she said, fighting back the tears. She hated her mother to see any sign of weakness in her. ‘I loved my dad.’ She hadn’t realised just how much until she had received the phone call in Beijing. ‘But don’t worry. I won’t cause any posthumous embarrassment at your funeral by pretending I ever felt anything about you.’

She saw the colour rise on her mother’s cheeks and experienced an immediate stab of regret at her cruelty. Her mother had always had the knack of bringing out the worst in her. ‘In that case,’ her mother said coldly, ‘perhaps you’d be better not going.’ She turned back to the door.

‘You never loved me, did you?’ The words were out before Margaret could stop them, and they halted her mother in her tracks. ‘That day my brother drowned. You wished it had been me and not him.’ Her mother turned and flashed her a look. Things that had never been said, feelings long suppressed, were bubbling to the surface. ‘You spent your life wishing failure on me because I could never live up to the expectations you had of him. Your boy. Your darling.’

Her mother’s jaw was trembling. Her eyes filling. But like her daughter, she would show no sign of weakness. ‘I didn’t have to wish failure on you, Margaret. You brought all the failure you could ever need on yourself. A failed marriage, a failed career. And now an affair with some … Chinaman.’ She said the word as if it left a bad taste in her mouth. ‘And don’t talk to me about love. You don’t know the meaning of the word. You were always so self-contained. So cold. All those people you cut open. Just so much dead flesh to you. You never needed anything from anyone, did you? And never gave a thing of yourself.’

Margaret’s eyes were burning. Her throat felt swollen. She wished she had never come home. Was it true? Was she really so cold, so ungiving? Her mother had always been squeamish about her decision to become a pathologist, but she had never realised just how much it disgusted her. The words hurt. She wanted to hurt back. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘that’s because I took after you. You were always the Queen of Frost.’ She paused. ‘And maybe that’s why dad had to go looking for his sexual pleasures on the Internet.’ As soon as the words were out she regretted saying them. But there was no way to take them back, and she remembered the lines from one of her father’s favourite poems — The moving finger writes: and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it .

All the colour that their argument had raised on her mother’s face drained out of it. The carefully controlled façade slipped, and she looked suddenly haggard and old. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked quietly.

Margaret found she couldn’t meet her eye. ‘Nothing, Mom. We’re just being stupid here. Trying to hurt one another, ’cos dad’s gone and left us and who else are we going to take it out on?’

Her mother nodded towards the computer. Her voice had become very small. ‘He spent hours in here on that damned thing.’ She looked at Margaret. ‘Your father and I hadn’t made love for years.’ She became hesitant. ‘But I had no idea …’

Margaret closed her eyes. There were things about your parents you’d rather you never knew.

‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’

Margaret opened her eyes and saw a young man standing in the doorway. For a moment, in the semi-dark, she had no idea who he was. It was his voice which sparked off the memories of those pre-graduation years. ‘David?’

‘That’s me,’ he grinned. ‘Thought I’d show my face. You know, for old time’s sake. But, hey, you know, if this is a bad moment …’

‘Of course not, David.’ Margaret’s mother had immediately recovered herself, slipping back into the role of the bravely grieving widow. ‘But if you’ll excuse me, I really should be seeing to my guests. I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted. It must be quite some time.’

David nodded. ‘Almost ten years.’

‘I’ll speak to you later, then.’ The widow smiled and was gone, leaving Margaret and this ghost from her past standing in the silence of her dead father’s den.

‘Ten years?’ Margaret said, for something to say. ‘You sound like you’ve been counting.’

‘Maybe I have.’ He stepped into the room and she saw him a little more clearly. Sandy hair, thinning now, a lean good-looking face, strong jaw, well-defined lips. David Webber was tall and powerfully built. She remembered those arms holding her, his lips on her neck. And unaccountably she burst into tears. ‘Hey,’ he said, and immediately he was there, those same arms drawing her to him, and she surrendered to the comfort of his warmth and strength and made no effort to stop the sobs that broke in her chest.