Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

They lift him by the shoulders and slide a thick rubber block beneath his back, pushing his chest up and his head back and stretching out his arms, and the woman with the black-rimmed glasses uncoils a length of hose from one end of the table and begins to wash him down, the water streaming gently across his bloated body, down into the gullies which run along either side of the table and into a sink and drain at the far end. The water runs slowly, softly. We wonder whether it’s warm. She rinses him all over, using soap pads to work away the dirt and blood which remains. She begins with his fingers, wiping down to the cleft between each one and across his palms and the backs of his hands, encircling his wrist and lifting each arm as she draws the pads along his forearm and elbow and up to his shoulder. She lowers each arm gently, softly, as if being careful not to wake him. With a clean pad she burrows, delicately, into the thick matted hair of his armpits.

She cleans his chest and stomach, his hips, his thighs and shins and feet, running the pads across his body in broad sweeping gestures. She takes swabs from his mouth and nose and ears, his anus, the tip of his penis. She wipes his neck, his face, his lips, the lids of his eyes. She cleans around his groin, lifting the swollen weight of his penis and his balls while she works around each fold of skin, and then the others help to tilt him up on to his side so she can clean his back and buttocks and the underneath of his thighs.

Nearest he’s come to a bath in years.

Robert and Laura in the bath together. Years ago, before anything fell apart. Laura laughing at the strange black hair sprouting all over him and daring to touch it. I’ve only got hair on my head, she says, looking down at herself, and you’ve got it all over that’s funny. Her small smooth body so strange, her head brimming over with questions and talk, and after they’d gone he tried to remember when she’d stopped talking to him like that, when she’d looked away and not sat in his lap and acted as though he was someone to be afraid around. He’d done nothing to be afraid of. Had he. It was only the way Yvonne behaved, the things she told her. The sight of her shrinking away from him, the shocking way a child can do that, making herself small and out of reach and making his hands hang uselessly by his side.

And remember that second time Laura came home to her dad’s. How she was shocked all over again by how much he’d changed. Remember that. Fatter, redder, more bruised and falling-down. She should see him now. She should but where is she. Would she look at him now, would she shrink away. His skin broken and rotting, his flesh a mottled mess of red and black and purple and cream. His nakedness stripped of meaning. His wounds and scars noted down by people who don’t even know his name.

Feet: advanced state of decay, presumably predating death. Bruising to both shins, knees, upper thighs, hips. Faded scar on right thigh. The younger man writes all this down, and the photographer takes more pictures, and the others crowd around and look.

Blackening of skin to the back of torso, buttocks, and backs of legs, consistent with the subject having remained in a prone position, face-upwards, for a period of days following death. Bruising around ribs. Bruising to left side of face. No scratches or bruises to hands or forearms.

The crowd of them shuffling around his body, peering and pointing as they write these things down. We move closer. We want to touch, we want to touch him. Mike hangs back a little and tells us, by the way, like it don’t mean nothing, that he’s not sure but he maybe might have been the last one there before Robert died. Don’t matter no more anyhow la but it’s just worth mentioning. He tells us he didn’t do nothing or nothing he was just there. He tells us he’s only just thought of it like.

Robert was still in the kitchen when he left so it can’t have been nothing to do with him but it don’t matter no more anyhow. Mike tells us now.

The man with the notebook who looks like a policeman or a detective or something says, So what’s going on with these bruises, Frank? and the doctor says I think I’ll let my very capable junior here answer that. The younger man by the whiteboard looks up and says They’re probably all falls and bumps, aren’t they? The doctor smiles, and nods, and the detective puts his notebook away. From the pictures of the scene, we’re probably going to find that he was an alcoholic, the younger man continues, and alcoholics tend to fall over a lot and bruise very easily. And there’s nothing here which looks like a defensive injury. The doctor, Frank, nods again, gesturing to the younger man and saying This is my junior in whom I am most pleased. They all laugh, and the detective leaves the room. Give me a shout if you find a bullet hole, he says, as he goes.

All of us sitting around with the candles and music and flowers and that, and when it all goes quiet someone says Eh but the undertakers have done a lovely job haven’t they but? He looks smashing and that. He looks better than he has done for years, someone else says, and we laugh, and we think about more of the times we spent with him.

Think about how after the fight that time there was Steve and H stamping off down the street, going That stupid bastard who does he bloody well think he is. Went down to the corner shop by the rec and stocked up on Storm, spent the rest of the week’s giro in one go and lugged it all down to the corner of Barford Street, down to Sammy’s patch, sat on the benches with Sammy down there for the rest of the day. Told him what Robert had said, what had happened, about that bloody little sod Ben running out and joining in, the little sod, what does he even know about anything. Sammy weren’t even listening anyway. Never does. Just sat there drinking a bottle of vodka with no label he’d got from who knows where. Some Polish bollocks, he said, or Russian or one of them. Wouldn’t let Steve have none anyway. Was there most of the rest of the day and he didn’t say much, just Aye pal when Steve kept talking about what Robert had said, how he wouldn’t have said it if he knew where Steve had been and what he’d done, if he really knew what Steve had seen. Saying I’ll tell you what Sammy this is probably as good a time as any to get over to India and track down my brother. I told you about him being over there before didn’t I, I’ve just got to get my passport sorted and get a few things together, it’s been long enough. I’ll get down to Cambridge and get those postcards and things. He won’t be hard to find. I’ll just have to get the money together and get the passport sorted. Seems like a good opportunity. Most Sammy said all day was I’ll tell you what Steve son my eyes are fucking killing me I can hardly see a fucking thing.

Other marks to body: no obvious signs of self-harm, no tattoos, no obvious evidence of injection sites. Visual appearance of body consistent with having remained in situ after death for a period of approximately seven days.

And what if they’d paid this much attention to us all. What if that therapist or whoever had laid Mike out on the table and said Tell me about this bruise here, and this scar, and this blister, and this, what’s this, is this a cigarette burn? Are any of these the result of self-harm, Mike? It depends if you discount self-harm in the wider sense, like as in heroin addiction itself, as in like the associated reckless disregard for one’s own wellbeing. Because leaving that aside there is still cutting with blades and burning with cigarettes and there has been some of that yes. On account of the implants like. Having occasional reason to believe they’ve been misused as in recording certain facts and divulging them to certain agencies. You know what I mean. Burning can sometimes do the job but then sometimes he’s had to go in with a blade and like carve the offending item right out. Didn’t always get to it though pal. Sometimes it just goes deeper. The doctor or therapist going So these acts of self-harm aren’t necessarily on a suicidal continuum. Mike looking at him. The bloke going Have you ever thought about suicide, Mike? I have my friend. I have. Usually when the voices get too bad and there don’t seem like any other way of shutting them up. But also it would show people. That’s what he thinks sometimes. It would teach them a lesson, there would have to be like an inquiry or something and it would show them how bad it was when they didn’t believe him or didn’t listen or didn’t understand. It would show his family or like his friends from school if they even remembered. Or maybe it wouldn’t show no one nothing like maybe they wouldn’t even be riled.