Invisible Blood Read online

  “But you’d heard of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What had you heard about him?”

  “He was a priest.”

  Spenser frowned and sat back in the chair, her sharp suit buckling outwards between the buttons, showing a pink nylon blouse underneath. Claire thought Spenser knew it was visible and probably hoped it looked sexy. It was disconcerting. She was not a sexy woman. She was all defences and corrugated iron.

  “You’re not helping me very much, Claire.”

  “Why would I?”

  “I’m defending you.”

  “I don’t need defending.”

  “Then you’ll die in prison.”

  Claire smiled at that. “I’m dying anyway. Stage four. It’s in my lymph nodes.”

  Spenser was shocked at that. She bundled up her notes and went away, undoubtedly going to check out the veracity of what Claire had told her.

  But Spenser didn’t stop coming to visit. She tried to weave it into the mitigation case. Briefly, she tried to convince Claire that they should claim that she wasn’t herself and defend the murder on the basis of diminished responsibility, but Claire said, “I’m guilty. I want to plead guilty. I don’t want to put his mother through a trial, she’s done nothing to me.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He must have done something.”

  “I’d never met him before.”

  “Then why kill him?”

  Claire sat back and read the yearning on Spenser’s face. This is why she was here. She wasn’t here for Claire’s defence. Spenser was here for answers. She wanted the story to make sense. It bothered her enough for her to turn up for these fruitless meetings. The need for order. The need for narrative closure. But it didn’t make sense to anyone but Claire and God. No.

  “Look,” said Spencer, “you’re not mad. You’re previously of good character. You’re not familiar with prison. You’re ill and you need treatment. I know you’ve investigated experimental treatment in the past, and you can’t pursue that in here, so why?” Spenser sat forward again. “I’ve interviewed very high-powered people in that charity and they all say that Father Halligan was a blameless man. That he never abused anyone. His pupils have written open letters talking about how much he helped them.”

  “Fine.”

  “The consensus is that he was a good priest, a good person.”

  “Was he?”

  They looked at each other. Spenser found a fresh tact. “We have been investigating your past too, Claire.”

  Claire felt her stomach tighten.

  “You had quite a hard time of it, didn’t you?”

  No, she wanted to say. No, I didn’t. I thought I had a hard time of it, but no. I didn’t have a hard time. I only thought that I had.

  “With your parents, your father murdering your Mum.”

  Shut up.

  “I believe there was a long history of domestic violence?”

  You don’t know.

  “I have—” she opened a file in front of her “—a report here about the time your father broke your Mum’s jaw. The police report said there was a child present?”

  The file had a police incident picture of her mother with a grotesquely swollen jaw, two black eyes and a crust of blood around the left side of her mouth. She was lying down in the hospital bed, her eyes swivelled sharp to the right, and Claire remembered that she’d been looking to Claire’s father who was sitting there, tight-lipped and furious. It took her back to the night, to the intrusion of the cops, to the questions and the refusal to understand that all of it was a conversation her parents couldn’t have any other way. Maybe they shouldn’t have been talking to each other at all then, that was a legitimate point, but it wasn’t about her Dad hitting her Mum. It was about them hitting each other and him winning all the time.

  She didn’t want Spenser to know how the photo made her feel. She tried to seem uninterested, but she overcompensated and was slouching so much that her foot slipped and she nearly slid off the chair.

  “Where is your father now?”

  “Dead.”

  “He died in prison?”

  “Mh-hm.”

  Spenser closed the file and put it away, watching Claire to see the effect it had on her. Claire tried not to react, but her eyes followed it into Spenser’s briefcase and stayed there as Spenser put all of the other papers in there too. The table in front of them was clear. Claire thought she was leaving, but she wasn’t.

  Spenser laced her fingers together and leaned on the table.

  “Claire,” she said quietly, “my job here is to present facts to the court in your defence. You’re pleading guilty and now they want to hear about mitigating factors. You know what ‘mitigating’ means?”

  “I know what ‘mitigation’ means.”

  “Okay. I want to know if you think there is some reason for the court to make your sentence shorter.”

  “No.”

  “The doctor here told me that your cancer is terminal. You’ve got four months, he says.”

  Claire didn’t feel herself standing up. She didn’t feel her arms rise in front of her, she didn’t feel her fingers as they laced through the dry hair at the side of Spenser’s head or her shoulders as she slammed the face into the table.

  She did feel prison officers grab her and lift her and lay her on her stomach. She did feel the weight of a knee in the small of her back. The taste of hot dust was deep in her lungs, scorching her throat. She felt hot vomit come up through her oesophagus, burning her mouth and the cheek that lay on it.

  When they got her up she glimpsed Spenser at the scratched window in the interview room. She was bleeding from her forehead and her hair was a mess, but her expression was beatific. Claire knew she would never see her again and not because she’d attacked her. Spenser had no reason to come back. She got what she wanted. She understood. The story made sense to her now.

  * * *

  Claire had just received the final diagnosis. The three doctors sat on a settee, elbows on knees, nodding. It was unanimous. Nothing more could be done. A box of tissues sat on the table in front of them. The top tissue stuck vertically out of the hole at the top. A prompt. Now is the time to cry. This is the weeping time.

  Claire didn’t weep. She said okay. She nodded too.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Okay.”

  They gave her numbers, Macmillan Cancer Support, a counsellor, a support group.

  Okay.

  But they could see she wasn’t okay. Maybe they could see the anger in her, the phosphorus burning on the surface water, the sense of injustice.

  Did she have someone who could come and get her from the hospital? She lied. I have a friend waiting outside. One of the doctors wasn’t sure that was true and offered to walk with her to the car park. I want to be alone. They couldn’t argue with that.

  She walked home in the rain.

  She had spent the last eight months on her knees in the chapel praying. She’d become a daily communicant, attended the rosary and prayer groups, did a daily round of prayers. Please, God. Valerie, her friend from chapel, had told her that “please, God” was short for “if it should please you, God”. It didn’t mean please, God, gimmie. God wasn’t Amazon. He didn’t just deliver what you wanted. Claire understood that, she did; she was praying for the fortitude to cope with whatever God put in front of her. But in this one instance she thought God might understand. Her life had been so grim, so unremittingly hard and knock-filled, that she did mean please, God this time. Let me live. Let me thrive. It’s so unfair. But God ignored her.

  Days later, not answering her phone or opening the door to the Macmillan nurses, she went out. It was raining. It was cold. She was in the street and stopped, thought she might just stay here until it was over, in this Godless place. Then God sent her a sign.

  “Come with me. I’ll make you a cuppa.”

  A lady, quite old, genteel, had seen her
in the street and recognised her from chapel. Claire knew the face but couldn’t remember her name. Maybe she’d never known it.

  The woman took Claire to her house that was nearby. It was a bungalow with peonies bursting around the door and a mother-of-pearl name plate. She peeled the wet coat off her, hanging it on a radiator to dry. It was a nice house. Tidy. Lots of religious imagery and cushions.

  “There now.” She gave Claire a hot mug of tea, a half cup because she was shaking quite hard. She cut her a slice of dense fruitcake and placed a napkin on her knee to catch the crumbs.

  “Your eyes are tinged yellow,” she said to Claire. “Are you ill?”

  Claire nodded.

  “You’ve had a shock, haven’t you?”

  She nodded again.

  The lady made her drink her tea and gave her another half cup. Kindness from a stranger, coming at a brutal, lonely time, felt like the hand of God on her back. She looked around the room. Doilies. A cat curled on a chair. Framed pictures of family. A cared-for garden through the back window. It was nice.

  Would Claire like another slice of fruitcake? It was very heavy, sunk in the middle, and she had to use a big, white-handled carving knife to cleave the slice apart with the tip and then saw at it. She put it on the napkin on Claire’s knee. Claire could feel the heft of it weighing down on her leg.

  “Why were you standing in the rain all alone? You must feel awfully sad.”

  “God let me down,” said Claire.

  The lady nodded as if she understood. “Hmmm. Well, that’s not good.”

  “I know,” said Claire, putting her teacup down on the saucer. “It’s not good.” She felt understood. It was a sign.

  “I’ve felt let down, sometimes, but I came to understand that God gives us what we need, not what we want. Prayer helps me.”

  “I see you at Mass all the time.”

  The lady put her hand on Claire’s forearm and smiled. “And I see you. Would you like to pray together?”

  Claire’s face soured. She would give nothing back, not now, God could take nothing else from her. She had given and given and given and got nothing back. In fairness, Claire should take something from him.

  The lady saw her face and was afraid of her. She withdrew her hand and the warmth on Claire’s forearm evaporated.

  “God has taken everything from me,” said Claire. Then they sat quietly as she ate the chewy fruitcake.

  When she had finished eating the lady tried to reach out to her again.

  “My son is a priest, you know,” said Mrs Halligan. “Just back from the missions in Sudan. Would it help, at all, if he came downstairs to speak to you?”

  THE WASHING

  CHRISTOPHER FOWLER

  The first time the bell rang, Linda was supervising the packing of the last of the crates. The front door of the flat was wedged open, so she was surprised that someone had bothered to ring at all. Spain, she thought, wiping her hands and heading along the corridor, they’re more formal here than at home. Their circumstances are different.

  The man standing before her was sixtyish, sturdy and balding, with a wart the size of a marrowfat pea on the side of his nose. He wore a dark grey suit with a formal waistcoat and a watch-chain, and must have been boiling. He regarded her over the top of his half-moon glasses and did not smile.

  “You are new,” he said in heavily accented English. He pointed accusingly at the door. “This is wrong.”

  She looked at the wet paint in surprise. It was a warm brown, the colour you’d get if you mixed plums into chocolate.

  “We just painted it,” she explained. “It’s the same as all the other doors in the building.”

  He was taken aback by her English accent. “It is not like the others at all, Madam. It is the wrong colour. It must be repainted at once.” He managed to suggest that there would be dire consequences if it wasn’t.

  “The painter assures me it will dry lighter,” she replied cheerfully.

  “No, no, no.” He wagged a nicotine-stained finger at her. “It is not right. Did you check your lease for the correct colour reference?”

  “I don’t think so.” Miguel had taken care of the rental agreement. She had not been shown the paperwork and knew there would be an argument if she asked to see it. The best thing with men, she found, was to give in and agree. It usually worked with Miguel.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I will have it repainted.”

  He left without another word. Five minutes later, he returned to issue another statement. “Your removal van is blocking my car.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  He pinned her with a gimlet stare. “Two sorrys is two too many.” With that he turned and vanished into the gloom of the landing.

  The stairwell was unlit. Already she had miscounted the steps and fallen both up and down them. The building was over a hundred years old. Even on the brightest summer day the flat was so dark that she had to put the lights on. The sun reached a peak of fierce intensity at 4:00 pm, when the shops were only just opening after their siestas and the breeze from the sea had burned away, leaving hot dead air behind.

  There were no cooling ceiling fans because they were not needed; the building’s thick brick walls and lack of internal light kept it naturally cold. After the removal van had gone, she set about tidying up and putting away the crockery. Unwrapping her mother’s coffee cups with great care, she set them out along the kitchen dresser. She had hoped Miguel would help with the unpacking, but he regarded the home as a woman’s domain and avoided all forms of household maintenance, as if helping would somehow impugn his masculinity.

  * * *

  The days passed more slowly than they did in England, where the solstices offered fewer than five hours of daylight and five hours of darkness at their extremes. Here it was always summer. 4:00 pm was the hour for staying out of the searing sunlight and tackling household chores as slowly as possible. Miguel did not get home until 8:00 pm, which meant that the afternoons would become interminable if she failed to find a way of occupying the time.

  When the bell rang she knew it was someone from within the building, because the inside door had an old-fashioned clockwork bell. There were twelve flats, but she had yet to meet anyone other than Carlos the janitor and Mr Two Sorrys.

  She opened the repainted door to a slender young woman with cropped hair, a long thin neck and slightly protuberant eyes. At least this one knew how to smile, and what a smile! Its corners seemed to reach her ears. “I am Pippa and I am so sorry,” she began, darting forward to formally offer her hand. “It is my fault. The baby’s sock.”

  Linda shook her hand. “Please, come in.”

  Pippa checked the threshold as one might look before crossing a road, then took an exaggerated step inside. “Oh, this is nice, you have no walls. All this space! We have many more walls, for the children’s bedrooms. I have two boys and a baby girl. You must hear them at night. I hope they don’t disturb you too much.”

  She headed straight for the open windows of the back bedroom. “The clothesline,” she explained, pointing out and down. Each flat had a rack of three clotheslines outside, attached to the wall with metal arms. A pulley allowed the clothes to be moved some ten feet along the side of the flat. Linda followed her neighbour’s pointing finger. “I live above you,” Pippa told her. “I go to peg the baby’s sock and poof—it fell down onto your line.”

  A pink sock not much larger than a man’s thumb had landed on one of her towels. Pippa snapped it up and came back inside.

  Linda had heard that this technique was used whenever someone needed an excuse to visit a new neighbour. “Would you like a coffee?” she asked.

  Pippa threw up her hands in horror. “No, no, I do not want to make you work.”

  “I’m having one.”

  “All right then, just for a moment.” She seated herself swiftly enough and looked around. “It’s nice. You are married?”

  “My husband Miguel is from here,” sh
e explained. “We met in England. He came back to his old job. His company supplies military equipment.” She lit the hob, glad of the company. The building was grave-silent during the day. At night she sometimes heard dinners being prepared on other floors, and tantalising smells of fried fish, pork stews and albondigas drifted up from the courtyard.

  “And you, you could just leave everything and come here?” Pippa asked.

  “I had to give up my job, but yes, I’m afraid there’s no arguing with Miguel. He can be very forceful.” She laughed a little too gaily.

  “Have you met the others?”

  “No, only a rude man who complained about the colour of our door.”

  “Ah yes, he is the prepotente, you know this word? He thinks he is the boss, yes? Because his brother is a friend of the Generalissimo. I am no friend of Franco. One day he will be gone and then we will speak of better times. But the others here, they have been here since la Guerra Civil, they love our great leader, so you must be careful what you say.”

  “Oh, I am an outsider. I try not to get involved.” Linda liked her instantly. Pippa was open and honest, with an innocence that took risks by showing itself. “Who else should I know in the building?” she asked.

  “Come, come.” Pippa rose and headed back to the window. The building formed a large U shape. The apartments opposite were no more than twenty feet away. Twelve racks of washing lines extended from the rear windows. Some bore bedsheets. Others had rows of shorts arranged in ascending sizes. Not all of the lines were used.

  “You must always look at these.” Pippa pointed to the racks. “You may not see anyone on the stairs but you can tell who is in and what they are doing. Look, my two boys.” She pointed up at her own clothesline, upon which were strung two matching football shirts. “And over there.”

  The washing line opposite was full up with stockings, two red blouses, some pairs of frilly knickers, a pretty lace brassiere and a flared white dress covered in blue and yellow irises. Half a dozen paper windmills, red, orange, gold and silver, turned in a flowerpot hooked to the railing.

  “That is the apartment of Maria. She is a dancer at El Nacional. She is so pretty.” She shook out her fingers at the thought. “Muy bonita. But very poor. She needs to find a husband but the attractive ones are also poor, I think.”