Death Toll

‘cell’, and he’d built the others out of cans he’d ferried down from the defects store — cans without labels, cans past their sell-by date, dented cans. Wheelbarrow loads of them. He’d built two walls six feet high, a foot deep, and although they ended short of the ceiling he didn’t care — he still felt boxed in, safe. He’d decorated the walls with posters discarded by the office publicity boys who’d been looking for ideas: a wisp of steam rising from a bowl of chicken soup, another for corned beef: the can tilted to let the fatty meat slide out in a neat cuboid of solid flesh. Shaw noted one detail the old man didn’t mention. On the concrete wall hung a mirror. And another — identical, full-length — hung from the tin-can wall opposite. If the old man positioned himself in the centre of the room he could see his own back. He imagined Tilden reviving his painted lady, watching the withered muscles bring her alive.

Because he’d taken on the furnaceman’s duties he was the only person who ever saw his world. He was a forgotten man. And that had been perfect too, because they’d just let him stay. If he’d lived upstairs, in the flat, they’d have had to retire him, but down here they could just let him be. They’d cut his money, and his rounds, and left him on part-time. Cheap security. ‘Pin money’, the man in the office had called it; from the petty-cash box, paid out in a small brown envelope, and anyway, he had his pension. In the day he slept and read his books. Or he wrote letters to the family he never saw, or read their replies, plump with snapshots. He had a TV, rigged up by the man in maintenance. He watched the news, aware the world was changing without him, and so fast that he’d never catch up.

Tilden rose from his chair and sat on the bed, leaning back on a pile of pillows without cases, and his trouser leg rode up to reveal a pale ankle above which had been tattooed a curled serpent. Valentine said he’d need to put some shoes and socks on, and the old man looked genuinely terrified at the thought — because it was the first time he’d thought it through, realized that they could take him away, take him outside.

Shaw caught Valentine’s eye and shook his head. Then he sat next to Tilden. ‘Tell me about Nora, Alby. She doesn’t sound like your kind of woman.’

Tilden looked up at the stained concrete ceiling. ‘It’s easy to speak ill of her. To be bitter. I try not to do that. I married her for lots of reasons, none of them good enough, so whatever happened is down to me as much as her.’ He sat up, put his head in his hands, then laughed to himself, patting his knees. ‘Bea’s out of a different pod — I loved that kid. She was just a child when I met Nora — but you could see she was going to break hearts.’ Shaw could see the memory had driven away the reality of the moment, and he sensed Tilden was in control of the illusion, and that was why he was still sane — because he could live in a world in his head.

‘Latrell’s heart, for one,’ said Shaw, leading him on.

‘I liked him,’ said Tilden, smiling openly now. ‘He used to chew gum and leave it under the edge of the bar. Nora used to loathe that. She had that …’ he searched for the word, ‘ability. To hate small things.’

‘He was black — that bother you?’ asked Shaw.

Tilden rubbed a finger into the parchment-like skin on the top of his hand. ‘No. It made me like him. Bea used to hold him close, you know — in the bar too. Just so people could see their skins touching, the white and the black — the clash of it. I liked that because it meant they didn’t care what people thought. And that makes you strong.’

Suddenly animated, he leant forward. ‘I went to see them.’ He searched his memory and was delighted to find the right fact. ‘In 1961. The ship was in at San Diego — a refit. We had a month, so I got the Greyhound to Hartsville. Three days — you believe that?’ He chopped the air with one hand, vertically. ‘Like an arrow, the road. I got off in this town. You think Lynn’s the end of the line — Jesus! Talk about one horse — they couldn’t afford a horse. I walked to the drugstore, kind of a corner shop for the whole town. That moment — when she first saw me, at the counter. You can tell a lot in a moment like that, when you’re an unexpected guest.’ He nodded to himself. ‘She was pleased to see me. That doesn’t happen a lot, does it?’

He looked at Shaw and guessed he’d led a different type of life. But Valentine nodded. Tilden leant back, finished.

‘But Latrell drank,’ he said. ‘He drank with me. But he didn’t enjoy it and that’s a bad sign. If you drink like that, you hate yourself.’

Valentine sipped from a bottle of water he’d bought from the factory canteen.

‘Why didn’t you go home in 1999, when you came out of Lincoln?’ asked Shaw. ‘You could have gone back to the Flask.’

Tilden looked at his body, the frail bare feet, and then at the unmade bed, the sheets a dirty-water grey.

‘I didn’t want Lizzie or Ian to see me. I didn’t want that life again. I can write — they send pictures. They don’t know, but I see them sometimes, outside, on the riverbank.’ He took in a lungful of air. ‘And I need this …’ He looked around at the artificial cell he’d created.

‘You don’t go outside?’ asked Shaw.

‘At night, sometimes.’ He nodded, as if that decision was still in his power.

‘When did it start? The illness?’

‘At sea,’ he said. ‘When my ship sank. In the raft. I thought I would die. We all did. We were powerless,’ he said. ‘I thought that at any moment I’d just stop being alive. The cold, perhaps. The cold was dreadful. That’s how I see and feel the outside now — as that bitter cold. There was nothing to do in the raft so we just sat in the mist. You could sense …’ He held both hands out, then over his head, as if delineating a sphere which surrounded him. ‘This space — around us, hundreds of miles of nothing. Thousands.’ He looked at his hands. His eyes filled with genuine fear. ‘I had nothing to do. Nothing for my hands to do. It makes you realize what you are. Just a piece of things. Then the dawn came, and we saw the ship.’

‘The Stanley?’ asked Valentine, the old man’s confessions making him sweat.

‘Yes. The Stan. And then I was back in charge — of them, of me, inside the ship. On the bridge I could see outside — but not be outside. It was perfect, and my hands were busy. But when we got home, I didn’t want to get off.’ He laughed. ‘But they made me. They wanted to give me a medal.’

He looked down at his chest, his chin down, as if the medal was there.

Shaw stood, walked to the wall and picked one of the cans out, like a brick. It was a rusted tin of Olde Lynn Fish Soup. He put it on the table by Tilden.

‘Freddie Fletcher’s dying too.’

Tilden examined the poster opposite — it was for condensed milk, the product falling in a solid white cascade.

‘But John Joe Murray’s alive and well,’ said Shaw.

That made the old man’s eyes flicker, once to Shaw, once to Valentine, and then back to the falling waterfall of sweet milk.

‘You put poison in the cans — all of the cans. How did you know it was going to kill only them?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t think it would kill any of them,’ said Tilden. ‘It was a punishment — a childish punishment. They’re closing the factory so I don’t care. I thought …’ He nodded, excited. ‘I thought you’d catch me. I can go back to jail.’

He smiled, but then seemed to remember what Shaw had just told him. ‘Dead, Sam? Dying, Freddie?’

Shaw nodded.

‘It’s almost biblical, isn’t it? It must be God’s will. Then again, I don’t believe in God any more.’

‘There are two things I don’t believe in,’ said Shaw. ‘God. And coincidence. I think you meant to kill them, and only them. I just don’t know how.’

‘I want to go back to jail now.’ Tilden’s voice was aggressive, suddenly belligerent. He looked round the room as if trying to decide what he should pack first.

‘Why did you want to punish them?’ asked Shaw.

‘Because they killed Pat. I loved Pat. He would have made Lizzie happy, and that’s all I ever wanted. All I want.’ He looked at both of them in turn. ‘I don’t want to see her now. At all. Or Ian. They’ve got a picture of me — in the sea, up to my chin; Cape Town, 1971. I want them to remember that — not this.’

‘How did you know they killed Pat?’

‘I didn’t, not until you found Pat’s body. We just knew those three went to wait for him that night.’

‘We?’ asked Shaw.