Simon Lelic - A Thousand Cuts

‘Perhaps you could tell me. Perhaps you could tell me your understanding of events.’

There was another noise, another stack felled. Neither the headmaster nor Lucia paid notice.

‘He was attacked. He was attacked and he was injured. He is in hospital. From what I understand, he is making a full recovery.’

‘He won’t speak. Did you know that? His injuries are healed but he won’t speak.’

‘Forgive me, Inspector. I did not know that you had been charged with investigating the Samson incident as well. You have your plate full. Certainly it explains the delay.’

‘I’m not,’ said Lucia. ‘I haven’t been.’

‘Then it is connected to the shooting? What happened to Elliot Samson is connected somehow to the shooting?’

‘No. Not officially.’

‘But unofficially.’

‘I am curious, Mr Travis, that’s all.’

‘I see.’ The headmaster nodded. His expression was earnest, his manner perplexed. Lucia imagined herself as a pupil, in his office, explaining some indiscretion that could not be explained. ‘And about what, precisely, are you curious?’

‘Well,’ Lucia said. ‘For one thing, I am curious as to your response. As to the school’s response.’

‘The assembly, Inspector. Our ill-fated assembly. I informed you of the topic of that assembly, did I not?’

‘You did, Mr Travis. I wondered, however, what else you had done. What else the school had done.’

‘What else would you have me do? Elliot Samson is a pupil here but that is where our involvement stops. If it had occurred within the grounds, then perhaps—’

‘It happened on the street. On the street outside your school. And it involved your pupils.’

‘You do not know that, Inspector. No one knows that. The Samson boy, as you point out, is not speaking. And unfortunately, there were no witnesses. None that came forward.’

‘None that came forward,’ Lucia echoed. ‘You are sure about that?’

‘You would know better than I, Inspector,’ the headmaster said. ‘But yes, as far as I am aware there were no witnesses. Unless of course your own investigations have uncovered one?’

‘No,’ said Lucia. ‘Not as such.’

Lucia was the only person in London still seated at a desk who did not have to be. She thought about this for a moment. She thought about going to the pub, not doing it, more the concept: going to the pub. She thought about the last time she had gone to the pub in the manner the phrase implied, not as an event she would dither over and dress up for and look forward to. Be let down by.

She thought about calling her father but doubted she had the right number. It was a better excuse than others she had used. She could call her mother. She should call her mother. But the thought of doing so made her feel tired. It made her feel more alone, somehow, than she already felt.

That was unfair. Probably she was being unfair. She was tired already and she was tense and she could hardly blame someone to whom she had not spoken in a month. Talking might help, she told herself. It should help.

She picked up the phone and dialled.

‘Mum. Hi.’

‘Lucia. It’s you. I was thinking it would be your father. This is just the sort of time he would phone.’

‘It’s late. I’m sorry. I thought you’d be up.’

‘I am up. But that’s not the point. The point is, he wouldn’t care if I were up or not. He’d just call and expect me to answer.’

‘I’ll call back. I’ll call you in the morning.’

‘No, no, no. It’s you. You’re not him. You can call any time, you know that. My, but it is late. What’s happened? Has something happened?’

‘No, nothing’s happened. I’m fine. I just called because, well. It’s been a while, that’s all.’

‘Has it? I suppose it has. But the phone rings these days and it’s like someone’s jumped out at me from behind the sofa. Because when he’s desperate he doesn’t let up. He doesn’t give me a moment’s rest.’

‘You know why he does it, Mum. You shouldn’t encourage him.’

‘I have to give him something just so he’ll leave me in peace. If I didn’t, he’d end up on my sofa. Or I’d end up on the sofa, more likely, and he’d take over my bed. And then he’d never go. I’d never get rid of him.’

‘You can’t afford it, Mum. And you shouldn’t encourage him.’

‘He has a plan, though. He tells me he has a plan. The debt – he says there are no debts. He’s starting at zero, he says, but he’s looking up now and he just needs something to get him started. A step up.’

‘A step up?’

‘I’m his stepladder. That’s what he says to me. We had thirteen years of marriage and still that’s all I am to him. Ironmongery. ’

‘He hasn’t got a plan, Mum. He never has a plan.’

‘Talking of marriage, darling, how’s David? Is he there? Let me speak to him.’

‘Mum. I told you about David.’

‘What? What did you tell me?’

‘David and I broke up. I told you that.’

‘No! When? You didn’t tell me. You never tell me these things.’

‘I told you. I did.’

‘You didn’t tell me. What happened? You work too hard, Lucia. You do. The thing with men is, they need to feel wanted. They need attention. They’re like poinsettias.’ ‘It wasn’t that, Mum. It wasn’t anything like that.’ ‘Or maybe it’s just our lot, Lucia. We’re hamsters, that’s what we are. They mate once in a while, you know, but they never commit. They cope, though, just like us. We’re copers, Lucia. You call yourself a May but really you’re a Christie. And Christies cope. We have to.’

Half an hour later, Lucia was still at her desk. She had a report to write. Her hands, though, remained clasped in front of her keyboard. Her eyes focused on the creases on her knuckles.

The sound of voices in the stairwell startled her. Her first instinct was to turn off her lamp, to pretend that she was not there. She forced her fingers on to the keys instead and frowned at her monitor as though it reflected something more involving than an empty page and a blinking cursor. She typed her name, spelled it wrong. She shut down Word and opened a browser window. Her fingers danced in the air for a moment. She typed Samuel Szajkowski into Google and tapped the return key. As the voices grew louder, she studied the results, clicked on a link, hit the back button, clicked on another.

‘Give me five minutes,’ someone was saying. ‘Just fucking two minutes then. Two minutes is all I need.’

She had known it would be him. There had been no possibility that it was not going to be him.

‘Settle down you lot. It looks like someone’s home.’

Lucia picked up the phone again, realised they would have heard her talking if she had genuinely been using it and put it down. There was an emergency exit behind her. She considered it. She actually considered it.

‘Lulu!’ His tie was loose and his shirt had escaped his straining belt line. His cheeks were the fat-scarred dappled red of uncooked hamburgers and even from twenty paces she knew that his breath would smell like an ashtray overflowing with beer.

Behind him there was Charlie and there was Rob and there was Harry.

‘Walter.’

‘Lulu!’ he said again. ‘You’ve been waiting up for me!’

‘How was court?’ Lucia said. She spoke to Harry, who trailed his drinking buddies across the office. Harry hesitated and lost his chance to answer.

‘Waste of time,’ Walter said. ‘Fucking magistrates.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘Two dykes and a faggot, that’s what happened. But what can you do?’ Walter edged closer, rested a buttock on the corner of Lucia’s desk. His wallet strained to escape the well-shined fabric of his seat pocket. ‘Talking of dykes,’ Walter said and he grinned at his tag-along audience. ‘What are you doing here, Lulu? You know the weekend’s started, don’t you? You know Cole isn’t here for you to impress.’