The Magus of Hay(132)
Kapoor froze the tape.
‘Reverse it, please,’ Gwyn Arthur said.
Bliss said, ‘What’d he say? Sacrifice? He say sacrifice?’
‘No – further back, boy. I want us to hear that laughter again.’
Merrily watched the crinkly, shiny blackness unfurling from the woman, rippling in the half-light, the blood – dear God – sucked back into the throat.
‘All right.’ Gwyn Arthur raising a hand. ‘Stop. Now run it again.’
She kept her eyes closed, this time, all the way through concentrating on prising the words from the hiss and the laughter.
Bliss recoiled.
‘What happened there?’
‘Blood-spatter, it is, on the lens. There, see, someone’s trying to wipe it away.’
Merrily’s gut knotted.
‘I ain’t watching this again, all right?’ Kapoor said. ‘Don’t wanna be remembering this forever.’
Out of the video, more laughter. Eruption of glee.
‘Definitely a woman’s laugh,’ Bliss said. ‘Where’s the woman?’
‘Behind the camera? Is the woman recording it?’
‘What’s this? Oh, Mother of God. This is thirty years ago?’
Merrily opened her eyes to the point of the knife, wiped clean of blood, quivering above the top of the lolling head. To the descent of the point. To the welling blood between the hair and the flesh and the bone.’
‘Merrily, is this the woman in the photo? Gorra be.’
Wavy lines, a buzz. Merrily let the breath come out, began to lever herself out of the chair. Saw Gwyn Arthur’s sorrowful smile.
‘Not over, I’m afraid. Break in filming. No actual editing here, just stop-start. But we should take a small break, too.’ He signalled to Kapoor to pause the machine. ‘You caught those words, either of you?’
‘I think,’ Merrily said, ‘that he was saying, I sacrifice you…’
‘Yes.’
‘… in the name of my father.’
‘I doubt even Sir Charles would thank the boy for that.’
‘I’d guess means his… forefather.’
‘The rest,’ Gwyn Arthur said, ‘takes place in the bathroom. Fortunately, not a long sequence.’
Immediately,
Thack, thack, thack.
The audio was perhaps worse than the visuals. From behind closed eyes you were imagining it in full light. Merrily opened her eyes to the camera zooming in and pulling back, like a crow ripping at roadkill. White enamel, red enamel. Liquids jetting up at the lens, and the glee this evoked splintering through the static and this time nothing could wipe it away.
‘It’s inhuman,’ Merrily said.
Stupidly inadequate.
The last shot before the end of the tape was in perfect focus, the black plastic killer standing up, arms out, triumphant. Chest like a butcher’s display tray, a blade in a red hand, only spots of yellow. In the other hand, something like a small red squid.
‘Oh God,’ Bliss said.
‘All right.’ Gwyn Arthur Jones was out of his chair. ‘Shut it off. How many copies so far, Mr Kapoor?’
‘One DVD.’
‘You have a VHS recorder of your own, don’t you?’
‘For transferring match tapes to DVD. It’s at home. You want me to fetch it?’
‘Would you do that? This is important. We could use at least one copy on VHS. I want to do something.’
Kapoor shrugged.
‘I’ll go now. Could use some air.’
When he’d gone, Bliss leaned back against the closed door.
‘Let me ask this again. You’re saying that all this happened over thirty years ago and this bloke is long dead. Is it possible he isn’t?’
61
Look what you made me do
BLISS WAS ON his feet, hanging his jacket over a vacant chair, his left eye weeping down his cheek.
‘I can’t go to Brent with this. This is about… what was that word you used about Rector?’
‘Frannie—’
‘Atonement. I need this bastard.’
‘At the cost of sacrificing your career?’
‘What’s a career?’
Look, Frannie, without sounding like a bereavement counsellor, whatever the poor kid did—’
‘Whatever she did, Merrily, she did so she could put something useful on me desk. So I’d remember her name. Me. The battered friggin’ hero.’
‘There’s a flaw in that.’ She’d been ready for this, knowing it would come at some point. ‘Suppose you’d said, “Don’t count on any help from me, Tamsin. Stick to chasing drink-drivers and shoplifters.” You know what she’d have said to herself, Tamsin being Tamsin? She’d have said, I’ll show this bastard who should be chasing shoplifters…’