out the cold but to make sure that none of his glee drained away. Mightn’t there be a back way out of the house? At this moment Craig might be making his escape! For the love of heaven, why didn’t one of them go round the back? He squirmed on the bench, restraining his urge to do their job for them.
The door in the porch faltered open. When he saw Craig being escorted into the darkness within, Horridge closed his eyes gently and grew calm. Only once before had he felt so secure – in his grandparents’ cottage in Wales.
Some time later he heard the front door open. He let his eyes widen. No need to pretend to be asleep. He was greedy for the sight of Craig’s arrest.
The policemen were emerging from the porch, but Craig stood in the inner doorway. Was he resisting arrest? Then why was he smiling? Was he so brazen that he could still smile? Not until Horridge realised that the policemen were apologising did the truth seize him like paralysis.
It was as though the arrest had been turned on him – for one policeman was striding straight towards him. Horridge’s legs shook; if he stood up, they would give way. If he fled, his limp would deliver him to them. He closed his eyes, pretending sleep, but his eyelids twitched violently. The policeman halted just beyond the pavement and gazed at him. Horridge couldn’t catch his breath; the gaze was interminable, agonising. Then the policeman kicked the fragments of the broken bottle into the gutter and returned to the car.
When the car had moved away, Horridge sat trembling on the bench, like an alcoholic tramp bereft of his drug. His mind felt empty and aching as a belly purged by sickness. Suddenly he realised that Craig could see him. The creature must be supremely confident now. Suppose he pursued Horridge home? Horridge jerked himself to his feet and fled towards Lodge Lane.
A bus was halted at the stop. While he limped towards the doors, the driver gazed at him as though he were a second-rate comedian. Horridge wouldn’t have put it past him to drive off at the last moment – but he only made the engine roar impatiently.
Horridge clambered aboard panting and thrust the fare at the driver. The man only stared, waiting until at last he saw the notice: EXACT FARES PAY HERE
This driver does not accept money
That was a joke: never accepted what was offered, more like, with all their strikes and union meetings. As Horridge fumbled for the right change the driver watched indifferently, smug and stolid behind his official notice. He’d have liked to wipe the smugness off the man’s face. At last he found the change and dropped it in the slot. Finally satisfied, the bus leapt away – but before he reached his seat Horridge had to stumble back, having forgotten to claim his ticket from the machine. He could never remember how to behave with this new system. They couldn’t leave anything alone.
Around him passengers babbled. Nobody took any notice of him. Couldn’t they see what he had been through? He felt as though he was in a madhouse. Was the whole world mad? Nobody seemed to care that a killer, perhaps a madman, was loose.
But of course the killer was a homosexual, which made everything all right. You mustn’t do anything to upset homosexuals. Homosexuality was the most natural thing in the world: at least, that was what the government and the media – and now, apparently, the police – would like everyone to think. Horridge wouldn’t have believed that the police, the so-called guardians of the law, could be so corrupted if he hadn’t seen it for himself. They’d been quick enough to take him away on suspicion of burglary, but they mustn’t touch Craig, oh no – not when he was a homosexual. After all, he’d only killed two people. Perhaps they were homosexuals themselves. What sort of identification might have been hidden in the folder which one of them had shown Craig?
When the bus reached West Derby Road he jabbed the bell-push viciously: pity it wasn’t an eye. As the door faltered open, he glared at the driver. The man thought himself so secure, perched in his official box. He needed to be put in his place. But suppose Craig were trying to catch up with Horridge, to find out where he lived? He stepped hastily down.
He waited beneath what remained of a bus shelter. People hemmed him in with incessant vapid chatter. How could they prate such nonsense – unless they had something to hide? It must be meant to disguise their thoughts. Everyone was conspiring, or deluded by conspiracy. Only the other day he’d heard the latest filth that they were trying to make people swallow: that everyone was homosexual, whether consciously or not. He wasn’t to be brainwashed into thinking that of himself. On the other hand, he was sure there were more homosexuals than would admit to it. Today’s little spectacle proved that Craig had friends in high places.
A grubby bus to Cantril Farm arrived. Its grimy windows looked painted with fog. Downstairs people were smoking, despite the notices. You could get away with anything these days.
He sat, cramped into himself by the oppressive babbling. Friends in high places! They called that filth friendship! And their arguments were so pitiful. They tried to make out that because animals did it, it was natural: they wanted to behave like animals. They were a cancer on the human race. Perhaps their behaviour was the source of cancer. So much money was spent on cancer research, yet nobody thought to look at the obvious. Couldn’t they see that filth must breed worse filth? What men and women did together was bad enough.
The bus groaned through Tuebrook, past ragged gaps where streets had been ripped out as though they were infected teeth. Homosexuals must be close as Jews, protecting one another from normal people. Something had to be done about them before they took over completely. They ought to be put on an island where they couldn’t contaminate anyone else – except that that was too good for them: no doubt they’d enjoy romping about naked all day.
Here was West Derby Village, blurred by the coated windows. Among the gleaming semi-detached houses, creamy white stone lions flourished flags on the gateposts of a park. The first time he had ridden this route, having accepted rehousing in Cantril Farm, that glimpse had delighted him. Cantril Farm had sounded like countryside: he’d thought that was where he was going.
Melwood Drive was lined with trees that soon fell behind, making way for council flats followed by an army barracks. At least there couldn’t be any homosexuals in there: soldiers were men. Nevertheless the sight depressed him. The long low buildings with their regimented windows reminded him too much of Cantril Farm.
And here it was: home. He sniggered bitterly to himself. Within seconds Cantril Farm had closed around him, nothing to see in any direction but pebble-dashed walls, anonymous boxes for keeping people in, nothing to distinguish them but graffiti thick as vines. Over the lower roofs, tower blocks stood like guards. The estate looked like its purpose: to make everyone the same. Its name had tricked him into living here. It would be a good place to imprison all the homosexuals. That would soon teach them how to behave.
Over Christmas there had been no buses. He had been trapped in Cantril Farm. Yet compared with his situation now, that had been easy to bear. Never before except in nightmares had he felt so helpless. Frustration oozed through him like poison; its sourness filled his mouth. He gripped the bar of the seat in front of him until his whitened fingers trembled. What could he do in order to fight the unfairness of things? He was being carried back to prison, where Craig ought to be.
Chapter VI
As Horridge pulled out the stack of newspapers, something rattled deep in the chest of drawers.
He started; the newspapers jerked in his hands. The chest was suddenly as ominous as it had seemed when it had stood in his parents’ bedroom, made dimmer by the huge shadows of the tassels on the lampshade. Those shadows had never been quite still. They’d hovered round the bed like a restless audience.
He had often wondered uneasily what his parents had kept in the looming chest next to the bed. After their deaths, when he’d dragged the chest away from the wall it had revealed its own shape on the aging wallpaper, like a patch of grass beneath a stone.
He laid the newspapers on the floor, then he inched out the bottom drawer. Perhaps the sound had been caused by something fallen from a drawer – but what could it be? Might it be a rodent, lurking in the darkness? The idea made his room seem unclean.
