The Collected Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell Part 84

"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 acc.u.mulation 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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d, 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?"

"His mother lied about his alibi. Either she said she was awake when she was asleep or she knew he wasn't at home when he said he was, when - when he . . ."

"All right, love. It's all right." Wilf veered around the body and offered her his hands, though not quite close enough for her to touch. "How did you find that out?"

"She let it slip one day and he tried to shut her up."

"Why couldn't you have told the police?"

"I did."

"You - oh, I get you." He was silent while he dealt with this, and Claire took the opportunity to retrieve her gla.s.s, not to finish her drink but to place it out of danger on the sideboard. Gummer's body seemed such a fixture of the room that she was practically unaware of blotting out her sense of it as she picked up the gla.s.s. The clunk of the tumbler on wood recalled Wilf from his thoughts, and he said almost pleadingly "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What would you have done?"

He stepped forward and took her hands at last. "What do you think? When the police didn't listen, probably the same as you. Only I wouldn't have done it here where it can't be hidden."

"It's done now. It can't be helped, and I don't want it to be."

"I wish to G.o.d you'd left it to me." He stared around the room, so that she thought he was desperate for a change of subject until he said "What did you use?"

"The gin. The bottle, I mean. It did some good for a change."

"I won't argue with that."

Nevertheless he relinquished one of her hands. Before she knew what he intended, he was hefting the bottle as though to convince himself it had been the weapon. "Don't," she protested, then saw her concern was misplaced. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Your fingerprints would be on it anyway."

"So would yours."

"What are you getting -"

"Just listen while I think. We haven't much time. The longer we wait before we call the police, the worse this is going to look."

"Wilf, it can't look any worse than it is."

"Listen, will you. We can't have you going to prison. You'd never survive."

"I'll have to do my best. When everyone knows the truth -"

"Maybe they won't. You used to think he was sniffing round you. Suppose that got out somehow? I know how lawyers think. They'll twist anything they can."

"He wasn't interested in me. It was Laura."