Ian McEwan - Nutshell

Then Claude and the police are before us.

‘Trudy — may I call you Trudy? Such a terrible time and you’ve been so helpful. So hospitable. I can’t—’ The chief inspector breaks off, her attention distracted. ‘Were these your husband’s?’

She’s looking at the cardboard boxes my father carried in and left under the bay window. My mother gets to her feet. If there’s to be trouble she’d better use her height. And width.

‘He was moving back in. Leaving Shoreditch.’

‘May I see?’

‘Just books. But go ahead.’

There’s a gasp from the sergeant as he goes down on his knees to open the boxes. I’d say the chief inspector is squatting on her haunches, not a robin now, but a giant duck. It’s wrong of me to dislike her. She’s the rule of law and I count myself already in the court of Hobbes. The state must have its monopoly of violence. But the chief inspector’s manner irritates me, the way she riffles through my father’s possessions, his favourite books, while seeming to talk to herself, knowing we’ve no choice but to listen.

‘Beats me. Very, very sad … right on the slip road …’

Of course, this is a performance, a prelude. And sure enough. She stands. I think she’s looking at Trudy. Perhaps at me.

‘But the real mystery is this. Not a single print on that glycol bottle. Nothing on the cup. Just heard from forensics. Not a trace. So strange.’

‘Ah!’ says Claude, but Trudy cuts across him. I should warn her. She mustn’t be too eager. Her explanation comes out too fast. ‘Gloves. Skin complaint. He was so ashamed of his hands.’

‘Ah, the gloves!’ the chief inspector exclaims. ‘You’re right. Clean forgot!’ She’s unfolding a sheet of paper. ‘These?’

My mother steps forward to look. It must be a printout of a photograph. ‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t have another pair?’

‘Not like these. I used to tell him he didn’t need them. No one really minded.’

‘Wore them all the time?’

‘No. But a lot, especially when he was feeling down.’

The chief inspector is leaving and that’s a relief. We’re all following her out into the hall.

‘Here’s a funny thing. Forensics again. Phoned through this morning and it went right out of my mind. Should have told you. So much else going on. Cuts to front-line services. Local crime wave. Anyway. Forefinger and thumb of the right glove. You’d never guess. A nest of tiny spiders. Scores of them. And Trudy, you’ll be pleased to know this — babies all doing well. Crawling already!’

The front door is opened, probably by the sergeant. The chief inspector steps outside. As she walks away her voice recedes and merges with the sound of passing traffic. ‘Can’t for the life of me remember the Latin name. Long time since a hand was in that glove.’

The sergeant lays a hand on my mother’s arm and speaks at last, saying softly in parting, ‘Back tomorrow morning. Clear up a last few things.’

AT LAST THE moment is on us. There are decisions to take, urgent, irreversible, self-damning. But first, Trudy needs two minutes of solitude. We hurry down to the basement, to the facility the humorous Scots call the cludgie. There, as the pressure on my skull is relieved and my mother squats some seconds longer than is necessary, sighing to herself, my thoughts clarify. Or take a new direction. I thought the murderers should escape, for the sake of my liberty. This may be too narrow a view, too self-interested. There are other considerations. Hatred of my uncle may exceed love for my mother. Punishing him may be nobler than saving her. But it might be possible to achieve both.

These concerns remain with me as we return to the kitchen. It appears that after the police left, Claude discovered that he needed a Scotch. Hearing it poured from the bottle as we enter, a seductive sound, Trudy finds she needs one too. A big one. With tap water, half and half. Silently, my uncle complies. Silently, they stand facing each other by the sink. Not the moment for toasts. They’re contemplating each other’s errors, or even their own. Or deciding what to do. This is the emergency they dreaded and planned for. They knock back their measures and without speaking settle for another. Our lives are about to change. Chief Inspector Allison looms above us, a capricious, smiling god. We won’t know, until it’s too late, why she didn’t make the arrests just then, why she’s left us alone. Rolling up the case, waiting for the DNA on the hat, moving on? Mother and uncle must consider that any choice they make now could be just the one she has in mind for them, and she’s waiting. Just as possible, this, their mysterious plan, won’t have occurred to her and they could be one step ahead. One good reason to act boldly. Instead, for now, they prefer a drink. Perhaps whatever they do obliges Clare Allison, including an interlude with a single malt. But no, their only chance is to make the radical choice — and now.

Trudy raises an arm to forestall a third. Claude is more steadfast. He’s in strict pursuit of mental clarity. We listen to him pour — he’s having it neat, and long — then we listen to him swallow hard, that familiar sound. They might be wondering how they can avoid a row just when they need a common purpose. From far away comes the sound of a siren, an ambulance, merely, but it speaks to their fears. The latticework of the state lies invisibly across the city. Hard to escape it. It’s a prompt, for at last, there’s speech, a useful statement of the obvious.

‘This is bad.’ My mother’s voice is croaky and low.

‘Where are the passports?’

‘I’ve got them. And the cash?’

‘In my case.’

But they don’t move and the asymmetry of the exchange — Trudy’s evasive reply — doesn’t provoke my uncle. He’s well into his third as Trudy’s first reaches me. Hardly sensual, but it speaks or sinks to the occasion, to a sense of an ending with no beginning in sight. I conjure an old military road through a cold glen, a whiff of wet stone and peat, the sound of steel and patient trudging on loose rock, and the weight of bitter injustice. So far from the south-facing slopes, the dusty bloom on swelling purple clusters framing receding hills and their overlapping shades of ever paler indigo. I’d rather be there. But I’m conceding — the Scotch, my first, sets something free. A harsh liberation — the open gate leads to struggle and fear of what the mind might devise. It’s happening now to me. I’m asked, I’m asking myself, what it is that I most want now. Anything I want. Realism not a limiting factor. Cut the ropes, set the mind free. I can answer without thinking — I’m going through the open gate.

Footsteps on the stairs. Trudy and Claude look up, startled. Has the inspector found a way into the house? Has a burglar chosen the worst of all nights? This is a slow, heavy descent. They see black leather shoes, then a belted waist, a shirt stained with vomit, then a terrible expression, both blank and purposeful. My father wears the clothes he died in. His face is bloodless, the already rotting lips are greenish-black, the eyes, tiny and penetrating. Now he stands at the foot of the stairs, taller than we remember him. He’s come from the mortuary to find us and knows exactly what he wants. I’m shaking because my mother is. There’s no shimmer, nothing ghostly. It’s not an hallucination. This is my corporeal father, John Cairncross, exactly as he is. My mother’s moan of fear acts as an enticement, for he’s walking towards us.

‘John,’ Claude says warily, on a rising note, as if he could wake this figure into proper non-existence. ‘John, it’s us.’

This seems well understood. He stands close before us, exuding a sweet miasma of glycol and maggot-friendly flesh. It’s my mother he stares at with small, hard, black eyes made of imperishable stone. His disgusting lips move but he makes no sound. The tongue is blacker than the lips. Fixing his gaze on her all the while, he stretches out an arm. His fleshless hand fastens on my uncle’s throat. My mother can’t even scream. Still, the illiquid eyes remain on her. This is for her, his gift. The remorseless, one-handed grip tightens. Claude drops to his knees, his eyes are bulging, his hands beat and pull uselessly at his brother’s arm. Only a distant squeaking, the piteous sound of a mouse, tells us that he’s still alive. Then he isn’t. My father, who hasn’t glanced at him once, lets him drop, and now draws his wife to him, enfolds her in arms that are thin and strong, like steel rods. He pulls her face towards his and kisses her long and hard with icy, putrefying lips. Terror and disgust and shame overwhelm her. The moment will torment her until she dies. Indifferently, he releases her, and walks back the way he came. Even as he climbs the stairs he begins to fade.