conscience he had ever had had been removed from him over the past weeks as effectively as if by a surgeon’s knife.
Nor had there been any further outburst from Lilian. She had behaved quietly, fetched the children from school, given them tea, played board-games with them and put them to bed. Both had gone without fuss. They were still taking the mild relaxants the doctor had prescribed to help them over the shock of their mother’s death.
Lilian had then cooked supper for herself and Graham. The meal had been consumed in silence, the television tactfully on to provide an alibi for the lack of conversation. After washing up, Lilian had retired for an early night.
Her behaviour had been exemplary. And if her expression had been too martyred or she had drawn too much attention to how good she was being, such gestures were so much part of her normal repertoire that Graham had long since learned to ignore them.
No, it was something that she had said in the afternoon’s confrontation that had disturbed him. Not the moment when she had accused him of Merrily’s murder; in retrospect he had rather enjoyed that. Her coming so close to the truth gave him the
What had upset him was the moment when she had described him as ‘mad’.
The word hurt and unsettled him. The slur of mental illness had never before been cast on him. He remembered acquaintances at university and at work who had ‘cracked’, proved unequal to the system and gone under. He had always felt mild contempt for them and a righteous sense of his own immunity from their disease. His behaviour had always been logical and positive; it was not in his nature to brood or feel self-doubt.
At least it had not been in his nature until recently. The compound batterings of losing the job and committing the first murder had rocked his equilibrium for a time, he was prepared to admit that; but he now felt back on an even keel, perhaps more logical and positive in his approach than at any previous time in his life.
What worried him was the knowledge that a frequent symptom of mental illness (madness, call it by another name, he knew what he meant) was delusion, a conviction held as strongly as in sanity, but a conviction based on a scale of values that are false.
He questioned himself about this. Certainly he had changed. Two months previously he would not have contemplated murder, yet now he had committed it twice without remorse, and drew strength from what he had done. Was that madness?
He knew there was a school of thought that classified all taking of human life as aberrant behaviour. But that was surely just a moral viewpoint, circumscribed by the great taboo which surrounds the crime. He, Graham Marshall, by his initially inadvertent breach of that taboo, had transcended such inhibited thinking. He knew he could commit murder and gain satisfaction from doing it, so his recent actions were no less logical and positive than his behaviour had been for the rest of his life.
Besides, he thought, giving himself the final warmth of comfort, if what he had done was madness, surely it couldn’t make him feel
No, if he couldn’t sleep, it was simply excitement. And strain. The athletic metaphor returned to his mind. He had given of himself in the big event, he had won, and he must expect some reaction. He needed to wind down, take it easy, as he selected his next challenge.
In the short term what he needed was a large Scotch.
On the landing he heard moaning from inside the bathroom and threw the door open.
The noise was coming from Lilian, who lay in the bath.
Graham’s first shock was the sight of her naked body, and its similarity, in shrivelled parody, to Merrily’s. To the body that was now compounded to a little scattering of dust.
Then he saw the redness in the water.
He raised first one limp hand, then the other. On each wrist a narrow slit trickled blood.
But the cuts barely scraped the skin. Her arteries were in no danger.
God, if that was her idea of a cry for help, it was hardly worth answering.
‘I’ll ring the doctor,’ he announced, fully aware that she was conscious. At the door he turned back suddenly, and was rewarded by the sight of her open eyes. Their expression was of sheepishness at having been caught out.
Downstairs by the phone was a note in Lilian’s handwriting. He didn’t bother to read it.
Bloody amateurs, he thought as he dialled the doctor’s number, I’m surrounded by bloody amateurs.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Graham looked across his desk at Terry Sworder with distaste. The young man had chosen to come into the office in an open-necked tennis shirt under a hooded cotton zip-jacket like a tracksuit top. A soggy little cigar dropped from his lip. Graham pitied the lack of style. In the days when he himself had sought to shock management by dressing boldly, it had been done with a sense of elegance; he had never been merely scruffy. Graham had passed comment on the inappropriateness of the costume when Terry arrived, but been told that ‘Bob’s taken me off normal Personnel stuff at the moment. Wants me to check some of the projections we’ve run through the computer for this survey.’
‘What survey?’ Graham had asked.
‘Basic staffing survey. Model for Human Resources Requirements in the late ’Eighties. Bit hush-hush at the moment. Management don’t know it’s on,’ Terry had replied gnomically.
Graham had not enquired further, recognising one of his own tactics, the deployment of a verbal smoke- screen to obscure issues. But he knew that the survey would be looking for ways of cutting staff in the Department.
Presumably it was the survey that was keeping Terry Sworder preoccupied, unaware of his superior’s scrutiny. Sheets of concertina’d computer papers spread across his desk. These he pored over, stopping occasionally to use his calculater or jot down a note.
Graham pointed his foot towards his opponent, back with his favourite fantasy of the loaded shoe. A slight pressure of the toe and, in Graham’s imagination, Sworder flicked back with the impact of a bullet in his neck. Red from the exit-wound splattered the wall-planner behind and the young man’s body twitched backwards twice before slumping still over his papers. Blood spread slowly across the tightly-massed figures.
But the fantasy failed to bite. Like pornography to an adolescent who has lost his virginity, it was no longer adequate. Reality had diminished its effect.
Graham’s thoughts wandered off briefly in a more pleasing direction before he reined them in. No, he had no reason to murder Terry Sworder. That would be stupid, tackling the symptom rather than the disease.
Robert Benham was his enemy, Terry Sworder a mere irritant. The young man was only being used by his master to get at Graham, to undermine his confidence and status in the company.
Graham smiled as a new thought formed warmingly in his mind. Using Terry Sworder was a game at which two could play.
Crasoco’s staff management system, like that of many other large corporations, relied on annual interviews. Each member of staff, above a certain level, had a confrontation once a year with his immediate boss, who would read a report on the individual’s work. This was a device to give the illusion of open management, an opportunity for commendation or criticism from the senior party, and the airing of any grievance by the junior. The report would then be placed (confidentially, the story went) on the individual’s personal file. In this way honesty and democracy were in theory upheld.
In practice, the system was toothless. Though appeal procedures existed, few staff members would risk making waves by too overt complaints or criticisms, which were bound to reflect on the senior who was interviewing them. And, for their part, the bosses, except in cases of total incompetence or insubordination, tended to moderate any criticisms they might have of their staff. At a time when the management was known to be on the look-out for staff reductions, Departmental Heads had no wish to help them in their search. Any suggestion that
