Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

“I really must insist.” He held out his hands as if to demonstrate how, once he crossed the yards of carpet, he would grasp her or the chair. “I’m truly sorry for any error.”

“You think that should make up for it, do you?”

“To be truthful, I don’t know what more you could expect.”

He didn’t believe he had been found out, she saw — perhaps the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “Maybe you will when you see your mistake,” she said and made her arms relax, because her breasts were aching as they hadn’t since they were last full of milk.

“It’ll be easiest if you tell me.”

“You think I should make it easy for you, do you?” Her mouth had begun to taste as foul as her thoughts of him, and she would have swallowed more than the taste if her glass had been within reach. “Try this for a hint. Maybe you should have kept your mother out of my way.”

“You’ve drifted away from me altogether. Let me suggest in your interest as much as mine — ”

“Or found a way to stop her talking. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

“Some understanding can usually be reached if it has to be. I assume that when you decide to let me go you won’t be telling — ”

“Like Laura never did.”

“Well, really, Mrs Maynard, I must say that seems rather an unfortunate — ”

“Unfortunate!” Claire ground her shoulders against the chair rather than fly at him — ground them so hard that either the chair or the doorway creaked. “That’s your word for it, is it? How unfortunate would you say she looked the last time you saw her?”

He took a breath to give Claire yet another swift response; then his mouth sagged before clamping shut. He rubbed the side of one hand across his lips, and she imagined how he might have wiped his mouth as he sneaked away from the golf bunker. She stared at his face to see what would come out of it next, until he spoke. “It was you.”

This was far less than the response she wanted, in fact nothing like it, and she continued to stare at him. “It was you who kept ringing off, wasn’t it, till I was there to answer. What didn’t you want my mother to hear?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have rung off. For all I know she’s good at keeping secrets, especially if she thinks she’s protecting her son.”

“Why should she think — ” His eyes wobbled and then steadied as though Claire’s gaze had impaled them. “My God, that was you as well. You didn’t just call us.”

“Seems as though I might as well have.”

“You tried to put the police onto me.”

“If only they’d done their job properly. You wouldn’t be here now. You’d be somewhere, but I’d have to put up with that being less than you deserved, I suppose. Only you are here, just the two of us for the moment, so — ”

Gummer turned to the window as if he’d observed someone — Wilf? The street was quiet, however, and it occurred to her that he was considering a means of escape. She lurched out of the chair and grabbed the bottle of gin by its neck. “Don’t bother looking there. You’re going nowhere till I’ve finished with you,” she said.

“Mrs Maynard, I want you to listen to me. I know you must — ” He was almost facing her when he stopped and rubbed his lip and gave her a sidelong look. “Finished what exactly?”

“Guess.”

“I don’t believe I have to. Profitable was what you said this was going to be when you rang, wasn’t it? If I may say so, God forgive you.”

“You mayn’t. You’d better — ”

“Whatever you think about me, you were her mother, for heaven’s sake. You’re expecting me to pay you to keep quiet, aren’t you? You’re trying to make money out of the death of your own child,” he said, and let his mouth droop open.

It was expressing disgust. He was daring to feel contemptuous of her. His wet mouth was all she could see, and she meant to damage it beyond repair. She seemed less to be raising the weapon in her hand than to be borne forward by it as it sailed into the air. His eyes flinched as he saw it coming, but his mouth stayed stupidly open. She had both hands on the weapon now, and swung it with all the force of all the rage that had been gathering for months. “Claire,” he cried, and tried to dodge, lowering his head.

For a moment she thought the bottle had smashed — that she would see it explode into smithereens, as bottles in films always did when they hit someone on the head. Certainly she’d heard an object splintering. When his mouth slackened further and his eyes rolled up like boiled eggs turning in a pan she thought he was acting. Then he fell to a knee which failed to support him, and collapsed on his side with a second heavy thud. As if the position had been necessary for pouring, a great deal of dark red welled out of his left temple.

When it began to stain the carpet she thought of moving him or placing towels under his head, but she didn’t want to touch him. He was taken care of. She peered at the bottle, and having found no trace of him on it, replaced it on the sideboard before returning to her chair. She supposed she ought to move the chair out of the doorway, not least to bring her within reach of her drink, but the slowness that had overtaken her since the night she’d found Laura’s body was becoming absolute, and so she watched the steady accumulation of the twilight.

In time she had a few thoughts. If Mrs Gummer was awake she must be wondering where her son was. She’d had decades more of him than Laura had lived, and soon enough she would learn he was only a lump on the floor. Claire considered drawing the curtains, but nobody would be able to see him from the pavement, and in any case there was no point in delaying the discovery of him. The discoverer was most likely to be Wilf, who would still have to live here once she was taken away, and she oughtn’t to leave him the job of cleaning up after her, though perhaps the carpet was past cleaning. When she narrowed her eyes at the blind mound of rubbish dumped in her front room, she couldn’t determine how far the stain had spread. It annoyed her on Wilf’s behalf, and she was attempting to organise and speed up her thinking sufficiently to deal with it when she saw him appear at the gate.

It wasn’t guilt which pierced her then, it was his unsuspecting look — the look of someone expecting to enjoy the refuge of home at the end of a long day. He couldn’t see her for the dimness. He wasn’t as keen-eyed as a patrolman should be, Claire found herself thinking as she stumbled to face the chair and drag it out of the doorway. That was as much as she achieved before he admitted himself to the house. “Claire?” he called. “Sorry I was longer than I said. Some old dear thought a chap was acting suspicious, but when I tracked him down would you believe he was one of our patrol. Where are you?”

“In here.”

“I’ll put the light on, shall I? No need for you to sit in the dark, love.” He came into the room and reached for the switch, but faltered. “Good Lord, what’s. who. ”

Claire found his hand with one of hers and used them to press the switch down. “My God, that’s Duncan Gummer, isn’t it?” he gasped, and his hand squirmed free. “Claire, what have you done?”

“I hope I’ve killed him.”

Wilf stared at her as if he no longer knew what he was seeing, then ventured to stand over the body. He’d hardly begun to stoop to it when he recoiled and hurried to draw the curtains. He held onto them for some seconds, releasing them only when their rail started to groan. “Why, Claire? What could — ”

“It wasn’t half of what he did to Laura.”

“He — ” Wilf’s face convulsed so violently it appeared to jerk his head down as he took a step towards Gummer. Claire thought he meant to kick the corpse, but he controlled himself enough to raise his head. “How do you know?”