Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

The last name on the list sounded like a little old lady: Edith Soames. All right, I know it's a dead end, Delorme told herself. There isn't a chance in hell that Todd Curry or Katie Pine was killed by some little old lady, but sometimes you just go with what you have, you take a flier, you see what happens.

The Soames address was just two blocks east of the house Delorme had grown up in, and she was sidetracked for a few moments by nostalgia. She drove past the rock cut where at the age of six Larry Laframboise had given her a split lip. On the corner was the North Star Coffee Shop where she had overheard Thйrиse Lortie- formerly a friend- saying Lise Delorme could be a real slut sometimes. Half a block farther: the park bench where Geoff Girard had told her he didn't want to marry her. She recalled the sudden heat of tears streaming down her face.

She drove by her old house and tried not to look, but at the last minute she slowed the car and stared. The place looked more rundown than ever. She and Geoff used to sit on that dilapidated front porch for hours, feeling each other up under a blanket. One night her father had come out and chased him halfway down to Algonquin Avenue, sixteen-year-old Lise screaming at him the whole time. It was on that porch that she had first had sex- with another boy, not with Geoff. Maybe Thйrиse Lortie had been right.

Well, her father was long gone- vanished out west to Moose Jaw or somewhere, and her mother was dead. Geoff Girard was married and father to about fourteen bright blond children out in Shephard's Bay. The house had long ago been divided into apartments, as had most of the old houses in the neighborhood.

The Soames house was as rundown as the rest of the block. The facade of fake red brick had blackened with age and was peeling around the windows, which were the heavy ancient storm variety. Delorme had a sudden memory of her father teetering on a ladder with one of those huge windows clutched in his hands. When traffic went by, they rattled.

The door opened, and a little old lady was helped onto the porch by a woman in her twenties, perhaps a granddaughter or a visiting nurse. Their progress was hampered by heavy winter coats and the old woman's terror of slipping on the icy steps. The young woman steadied her elbow and frowned impatiently at the faltering steps.

Delorme got out of the car and waited for them on the sidewalk. "Excuse me," she said, flashing her badge. "I'm working on a string of burglaries in this neighborhood." It was true that Arthur Wood had looted several apartments in the area, but Delorme didn't mention that the burglaries had occurred three years previously.

"What's that?" the old woman yelled. "What's she saying?"

"Burglaries!" the younger one shouted back. She made a face of helplessness at Delorme, a face that said, Old people- what can you do with them? "We haven't had any break-ins," she said.

"Have you seen anything unusual? Vans hanging around? Strangers watching the street?"

"No. I haven't noticed anything strange."

"What's that! What's she saying! Tell me what she's saying!"

"It's okay, Gram! It's nothing!"

Delorme gave them the ritual warning to keep their doors and windows locked. The young woman promised they would. Delorme felt a twinge of pity: a bad case of eczema or some other disease had damaged her face. Her skin looked as rough as elephant hide, and there were raw patches, as if it had been scrubbed brutally with wire wool. The woman was not ugly, but the hangdog look and the averted eyes spoke of an inner conviction that she was. The world was unlikely to offer her anything other than this crabbed existence with her aged grandmother, and the young woman knew it.

"What's she saying? Tell me what she's saying!"

"Come on, Gram! The store'll be closed by the time we get there!"

"Tell me what's going on! I like to know what's going on, Edie!"

So, the younger one was Edith Soames. Well, as grandmother and granddaughter they might both have that name; it made no difference. A lonely young woman had once borrowed from the library one of the most popular records in the country, a record thousands of people had bought or borrowed or taped; it meant nothing.

Delorme left them to their slow struggle toward MacPherson Street. It would have been so nice to report to her suspicious partner that she had made some headway. But Delorme turned the corner, swerving a little on the icy road, certain that the morning's progress amounted to exactly zero.

ERIC Fraser opened the side of his brand-new hot-off-the-truck Sony video camera. He put in a tape, fresh from a shrink-wrapped pack of three- courtesy of the Future Shop's five-finger discount- and slapped the side of the camera closed. He told Edie to just act natural, to pretend he wasn't there, but it seemed to make her all the more nervous.

"Why do you want a tape of me doing dishes?" she whined. "Can't you wait till I'm doing something more interesting?" She was scrubbing vigorously at the bottom of a saucepan. "I haven't even brushed my hair."

As if brushing her hair would make some incredible difference. He wanted to test the camera before putting it to use in the field. On location, so to speak. The last tape had been very poor quality- the lousy camera he'd used had pretty much ruined it.

He opened the lens to its widest angle, taking in Edie, the cupboards, even the back door with its cracked window, its view of the scraggly, snowy tree. Can't beat the Japanese when it comes to cameras; the lens was first-class. Sound was supposed to be good, too. Eric had read up on the specs.

Edie was plunging the dishmop in and out of a glass so that it made exaggerated sucking noises. It made Eric want to hit her. Sometimes I don't know why I bother, he said to himself. I swear I don't. This was the running commentary Eric Fraser carried on with himself all the time. Yet it was hard to resist Edie's sheer worship of him; he had never experienced anything like it. And if she didn't look the way he wanted her to look, well, he told himself, maybe I shouldn't even think of her as a woman. I should think of her as a pet, some kind of reptile.

"Eric, we already talked about this when we taped… you know. When we taped-"

"Todd Curry getting his brains beat out. It's just words, Edie. You can say them." He hated it when she went all mealymouthed.

"We can't be making movies of this stuff."

"Stuff. What stuff? Say the words, Edie. Say the words."

"I thought we agreed it's a surefire way to get caught. We talked about it. I thought we agreed."

"What stuff, Edie? If you can do it, you can say it. What stuff? Say the words. I'll quit talking altogether, if you're going to get all mealymouthed."

"Stuff like Todd Curry getting his brains bashed out. Stuff like Katie Pine getting suffocated. Like Billy LaBelle. There. Are you satisfied?"

"We didn't tape Billy LaBelle. Thanks to you letting him choke on his fucking gag."

"I don't see why that's my fault. You're the one who tied him up."

Eric didn't push it; Edie's face, that patchy hide, had gone tomato red. Such a turn-on to hear her say the words. Suffocated. Bashed. Eric basked in the sounds for a few moments before speaking again. "People want to see violence, Edie. They have a need to see violence. They've always had a need to see violence. Just like they've always had a need to inflict it." Inflict. He turned the lovely liquid sound over in his mind. Inflict.

"We can't keep going on camera, Eric. And you certainly can't show the film to anyone. It's insane."

Inflict. Inflict. So lovely and liquid on the tongue, Eric couldn't stop repeating it to himself.

"How long can we keep films of this stuff- these parties. It's just so risky."

Eric was opening the camera, now, extracting the videotape. There was an input for a stereo microphone, and his thoughts turned toward music. What would be the proper accompaniment? Heavy metal? Something electronic?