A Shock to the System

He hastened to qualify this. ‘Not you, of course, Graham. Always had great respect for your application and sheer bloody graft.’

Patronising, almost like a school report. Makes the most of his limited abilities. Again, Graham knew he had said the same to candidates he had beaten in previous contests.

‘But what I want to do is get a new attitude going, really shake people up a bit. Stop them thinking they’re on to a cushy number and can just wind down to retirement. Get some concept of productivity into the Department.’

‘Yes. Sure,’ Graham agreed enthusiastically. Just as enthusiastically as he had endorsed George’s plans in the past.

Robert reached into his pocket for a box of small cigars and proffered them. Graham refused. Robert took one and replaced the box. Instinctively Graham found the gold lighter in his hand, cocked and ready. God, so quickly he was slipping into a subservient role to his new boss. He hated himself for it.

‘Won’t necessarily be popular, what I’m suggesting, Graham, so I’m going to need a lot of support. And advice. Lots of areas of the company I know nothing about, so I’m going to be relying on your experience, consulting you a lot.’ A pause. ‘If I may, Graham.’

So ingenuous. So magnanimous. So humble.

Just as he would have been, if he had got the job.

‘Of course,’ said Graham. ‘Anything I can do to help, Robert.’

The drinking session went on for a long time and it was half past eleven when Graham lurched off the Tube at Hammersmith.

He was, he realised, very drunk. Fiercely he clutched his umbrella’s ridged handle. His briefcase had been left in the office. Graham had been intending to take some work home that evening, but it was too late for that. Anyway, what was the point of doing extra work now he wasn’t going to become Head of Department?

What was the point of anything?

The injustice of Robert Benham’s appointment rose like vomit in his throat as he went through the barrier, with a reflex flick of his season to the ticket-collector.

There were few people about. It was chilly. Rain fell outside the station. He crossed automatically to the subway that led to Hammersmith Bridge and Boileau Avenue.

Rain had trickled down the steps, forming wide puddles, which he sidestepped with the rigid concentration of the very drunk.

The old man was slumped against the tiled wall at the foot of the steps leading up to the pavement.

Graham Marshall hardly noticed the shapeless figure. There were often down-and-outs in the subway. His own thoughts were too turbulent for him to be aware of anything else.

As Graham drew alongside, the old man straightened up.

‘Spare us a quid, guv.’

Graham caught a sour whiff of stained clothes on unwashed flesh as he continued on his way up the steps. He felt the rain as he emerged, but did not put up his umbrella. The handle remained clenched rigidly in his hand.

He was some way along Hammersmith Bridge Road before he realised the old man was following him. There was a peculiar slap-slap of feet in ill-fitting shoes on the wet pavement.

Graham lengthened his stride. Headlights of the occasional car crossing the bridge laid ribbons of white on the shining black road. Traffic hummed and swished on the flyover above, eliminating the slapping sound of the feet.

‘Hey! Guv!’

He strode on, unaware of the rain or his legs automatically tracing their daily route home. In spite of its fierce tension, his body felt weak and out of control.

He was past the pub and on to the bridge before he realised that the old man was still following.

‘Guv!’

The closeness of the voice was a shock and he gave an involuntary half-turn before striding on. He had an impression of a fuzzed outline of rags.

Next there was an arm on his sleeve. Graham swung round in fury. The lights of Hammersmith were behind the old man. He was still just an outline and a smell. Nothing.

Graham felt huge, unfocused by the alcohol, a cartoonlike bulk looming over the stooped figure.

‘Guv, can you spare us a quid? Please. I made a mess of my life. But I only have to look at you to see you’re a success.’

Had he chosen any other word, the old man would have lived.

But suddenly he was everyone who had ever deceived Graham Marshall. He was Eric Marshall, he was George Brewer, he was Robert Benham. He was provocation beyond human endurance. And he had to be obliterated, removed from the face of the earth.

All the fury of Graham’s disappointment, of his forty-one wasted years, went into the blow, as the ridged umbrella handle smashed down on the faceless head.

With no sound but a little glug like a cork coming out of a bottle, the old man crumpled to the ground.

Graham looked round. There was no one on the bridge and, for the moment, there were no cars.

He looked at the umbrella handle, fearing the viscous gleam of blood. But the overhead lights caught only on the ridges of polished wood. It was unmarked.

Instinctively, Graham bent down and, without feeling the body’s weight, picked it up and tipped it over the parapet of the bridge.

He was walking again before the small splash sounded.

He was inside the house before the realisation of what had happened hit him.

In the bathroom, as he raised the toothbrush to his lips, he suddenly knew he had committed murder.

He doubled up, vomiting into the basin.

‘Oh God,’ Merrily’s little voice drawled behind him. ‘Have you had too much to drink?’

CHAPTER FOUR

Graham Marshall passed a terrible night. The alcohol put him off to sleep quickly, but he awoke within an hour, sweat prickling along his hairline and soon drenching his nightshirt. The duvet pressed down damply as if to smother him, and the undersheet ruckled into torturing ridges. His arms started to tremble uncontrollably.

Merrily slept on beside him, unperturbed, the evenness of her breathing a continuing reproach. ‘The sleep of the just.’ The phrase came jaggedly into his mind — the sleep enjoyed by the righteous, by those good citizens who were not murderers.

His teeth started to chatter. He twitched noisily out of bed. Part of him wanted to wake Merrily, not to tell her what had happened, but just to have some reaction, some comment on his nervous collapse. The rhythm of her breathing broke, but settled almost immediately back to its infuriating regularity.

He looked at her outline, padded by the duvet, and felt unreasoning hatred. ‘The sleep of the just’ — again the phrase gatecrashed his mind. But it was the injustice of her sleep that hurt him. She had not had to suffer the provocation that he had. She had not had to murder an old man.

He lurched out of the bedroom. The skin felt tight and tingled on his scalp; he had a clear image of his brain drying up, shrivelling, sucking the flesh inward.

He went downstairs to the sitting-room and had a large Scotch, which he knew was a bad idea, but at least controlled the shaking for a moment.

All too quickly the thoughts returned.

He had committed murder.

A new inward trembling started, sending out fierce little shudders from his stomach, as the reality took hold of him.

What he felt was simply fear. There was no remorse — certainly no guilt — for what he had done. The old man had insufficient identity for him to feel such personal emotions.