Peter James - Perfect People

Halfway up he stopped for breath and looked back down across the vast sweep of the valley, at the farmhouses, roads, lanes, the clock tower of a stately home on the ridge of a far hill. It was half past seven on a Sunday morning, and most people hadn’t risen yet; there was a stillness in the air, almost preternatural. Somewhere, a long way off, he heard the bleat of a sheep. Then just as far off, the bass lowing sound of a cow. High above him up in the sky he could see the vapour trail of a jet heading out towards the Channel.

He could see their own house, looking tiny, in a direct line between himself and the village church. Everything looked tiny from here. Like some kind of toy-world. Miniature fields, miniature sheep, cows, miniature houses, barns, cars, roads, lamp posts, traffic signals, steeples. So small, so insignificant.

Guinea pigs were small and insignificant, too. Their internal organs were tiny, little specks, some of them, you really had to look quite hard to tell what they were. And yet…

No life was insignificant. There were insects you might kill, like mosquitoes, because they were a threat – or a wasp in your babies’ bedroom, or something dirty and uninvited, like a cockroach, and there were wild animals you had to kill because they were a threat to you or your farm, or those you had bred for food and you were going to eat them.

But to kill them out of curiosity?

Sure, in labs. Fruit flies, mice, frogs, all kinds of creatures were dissected in the name of education, in the name of medical research. In order to learn, creatures were killed all the time. That part he had no problem with – not that he had ever liked seeing anything dead, but there was an arguable reason there.

And in truth, casting his mind back to his own childhood, there had been a time as a young boy when he had shot at wildlife with a catapult. Then one day he’d hit a sparrow and killed it outright. He’d watched it drop from its perch onto the grass. He’d rushed over to it and saw beads of blood in its beak. Held its warm body, tried to make it stand up, moved its wings, trying to make it fly away and be better. Then, crying, he’d put it back up in the tree to keep it safe from the cat. Hoping it might get better and fly off.

But it was still there the next morning, cold and hard, like feathers glued to a small rock. Ashamed, he’d carried it into the woods, scooped out a shallow grave with his bare hands and placed a stone and leaves on top of it.

It was normal for children to kill animals, he knew that. It was part of growing up. One of the rites of passage. Probably something to do with the exorcizing of dormant hunter-gatherer genes. But could he have ever killed a pet? Something he’d nurtured, cared for, cradled in his arms, played with, hugged and kissed goodnight, the way Luke and Phoebe had with Fudge and Chocolate?

Something that Dr Michaelides had said was repeating over and over in his mind.

I’m not sure that your children are able to make certain distinctions about some aspects of what constitutes normal behaviour in society.

Was this her way telling them, in a thinly veiled way, that their children were psychopaths?

Back at home, the house was quiet. No one else up yet. Good. The children needed to be punished for what they had done, but how? What would show them that what they had done was wrong? What the hell would get through to them?

Still in his tracksuit, sweaty and cooling down fast from his run, he made Naomi her usual Sunday morning cup of tea, toast and Marmite, and took it up to her, with the newspapers, on a tray.

She was sitting up in bed, watching Andrew Marr interviewing the Chancellor. He picked up the remote, turned the volume down, and, reluctant to spoil her morning, told her about the guinea pigs.

After a long silence, her face pale, she gripped his hand and said, ‘Can we not tell Harriet – or my mother? Can we keep this to ourselves?’

He sat down on the bed beside her, glancing at the headlines of the Sunday Times. ‘I agree, I don’t want them to know.’

‘We could tell them that – that – they left the door open and they ran away – couldn’t we?’

‘I just put the hutch outside,’ he said. ‘Your mother isn’t going to notice anyway. If Harriet says anything, I’ll tell her I put them outside and didn’t shut the door properly.’

‘We need to speak to Luke and Phoebe. We have to explain to them that what they’ve done isn’t right. We have to get through to them, John, we have to make them understand. They have to be punished for this.’

‘Tell me how we do that? Because I don’t know. Dr Michaelides said-’

‘I remember very clearly what she said. But we’re their parents, we brought them into this world, it’s our responsibility. They’re only three years old, for Christ’s sake! What are they going to do when they’re four? Or five? Start cutting you and I open to see what our vital organs look like?’

She went to the bathroom and closed the door. John flicked through the paper, but couldn’t concentrate on any article. Some minutes later she came out, wrapped in her dressing gown, her hair brushed and her breath smelling minty from toothpaste. Her face looked like thunder. She dug her feet into her slippers, went out into the landing along to the box room. Luke and Phoebe sat on the floor in front of the computer, in their pyjamas, close together, peering at a chess game. Without any warning, she grabbed Phoebe’s arm and started dragging her out of the room. ‘You and me are going to talk, Phoebe, if it takes us all day, you and me are going to talk. And your Daddy and Luke are going to talk. If it takes them all day. If it takes them all day and all night.’

‘Luke!’ John said.

Luke, totally ignoring him, pursed his lips and moved the mouse.

Whether it was Naomi’s fury transmitting to him, or his own pent-up anger finally bursting, John grabbed hold of Luke, more violently than he had ever done before, dragged him out of the door and followed Naomi and Phoebe down the stairs.

He pulled his son, who was silent and like a dead weight, across the hallway, through the kitchen and out of the back door, still following Naomi, dragging him across the lawn to the dustbins.

Naomi, still holding Phoebe with one hand, lifted the lid of a dustbin and hauled out a black bin liner. She held it up and stared at John. ‘This it? This the one?’

He shrugged. ‘Might be.’

Releasing Phoebe, who lay motionless and expressionless on the frosted lawn, she unknotted the top of the bag, then tipped the contents out. The carcasses of Fudge and Chocolate tumbled out and lay, among the detritus of their innards, on the grass.

Fighting back tears, Naomi, staring at each of them in turn, said, ‘These were your pets. You loved them. You kissed them. You were meant to be looking after them. You seemed like you loved them. Why did you kill them? Why did you do this to them? Why? Don’t you realize what you’ve done?’

Luke, speaking more lucidly and calmly than either of them had ever heard him, responded. ‘They’re a very low life form.’

Naomi looked at John. John, astonished at his son’s sudden lucidity, but trying to keep his calm, responded, probing, ‘Why does that give you the right to kill them, Luke?’

‘You gave them to us, Daddy,’ he said.

John wanted to cry and laugh. Luke was talking to them! Responding to them! This was an incredible breakthrough – and yet, it was awful. The circumstances were nothing to be happy about. He shot Naomi a look and she acknowledged it with eyes that reflected his own bewilderment. ‘Luke, we gave them to you to look after, not to kill,’ he said.

‘Guinea pigs only live five years anyway,’ Phoebe chipped in.