This Is How You Die Page 2

  I lost my patience but I answered their questions, despite none of them being relevant. They also asked if I had anyone else to look after me, and at that I shrugged.

  “Grandparents?”

  I had one surviving grandparent. She was a borderline invalid who relied on a succession of caregivers just to take a shit in the morning.

  I shook my head.

  “Any family friends or godparents we can leave you with in the meantime?”

  My father had plenty of friends, but I didn’t like any of them and none of them liked me.

  “No.”

  “No one at all?”

  I looked into his eyes and sighed inwardly. There was one person—a despicable, worthless human being. He seemed to like me and he certainly liked my father, but I didn’t like him. Nor did I respect him.

  “My father’s brother,” I said regretfully.

  The police officer’s eyebrows rose in confusion. “You mean your uncle?”

  “If you prefer to call him that.” I didn’t. I didn’t want to think of him as my anything, but I had to acknowledge that, as the only surviving member of the family who still had control of his bladder, and one who my father—for whatever reason—respected, he was my guardian.

  I gave them his number and they said they would get in touch. They repeatedly offered to put me up for a night or two at a hostel, to get me out of a house where the floor was still stained with the blood of my dead father and the air was still warm with his dying breath, but I refused. I didn’t want to go anywhere.

  In any other town, and with any other police force, they might have taken me to get the support I refused. At the very least they would have waited to ensure that I was safe in the company of social services. But in Whitegate, where the police rarely went out of their way to uphold the law and were often the ones breaking it, things worked a little differently. Still, at least they pretended to care.

  ——

  The police were gone for an hour before I finally stood and took my eyes off the blood-stained floor. I made myself a cup of tea, which I drank standing over the sink, staring into the back garden.

  The grass was perfectly manicured, tended by my father’s own hands. He was out there most nights, planting, seeding, or harvesting from his small vegetable patch, pruning and picking at the flowers that ran an aesthetically pleasing border around the meadow green grass, or enjoying the heat and the fruits of his labor while sipping a beer on the deck.

  I drained the contents of the cup and traced my father’s last steps through the house. At the top of the stairs, the door to his office was open, an office that he locked when he wasn’t inside and sometimes even when he was, an office where he spent the majority of his time, hiding away in the darkness, while I studied the stream of flickering blue light that whispered underneath the door like an spectral cipher.

  “Every man needs a room to himself,” he told me once. I had my bedroom, which he made a point of never entering, and he had his office. “The rest of the house is for both of us.”

  It felt a little treacherous entering his office, but I was intrigued. I had only been in on a few occasions over the years and had never been invited. It had looked very plain on those occasions, just like any office of a man who really doesn’t need an office.

  I crossed the threshold with a sense of achievement and took in the sights I had previously been reprimanded for witnessing. There was nothing grand about the office, nothing out of the ordinary. Far from the bachelor pad I would have expected it to be, the office had no visible bottles of alcohol sitting proud and half empty. No porn magazines stacked high beside a box of tissues. No football memorabilia or framed pictures of overpriced and unachievable cars. It was simple, boring. The room was tiny. The smallest room in our semi-detached house. The window was tucked away in the corner, small, dusted and covered with a thick curtain that blocked out any light and any intrusive eyes. Against the back wall was a short desk, on top of which sat a computer with a screen so heavy it bent the wooden desk. Many times I had heard him tapping away at the keyboard. I never asked him what he was writing and he never volunteered to tell me. In a time before the Internet became a social norm and an accepted technology for what seemed like every single household on the planet, and long before chat and instant messaging became popular, I could only assume he was keeping a diary, typing out notes for his job, or maybe even writing a novel.

  The swivel chair in front of the desk sank with a pleasant sigh when I sat down. Reams of paper gathered dust in the corner. Pens cluttered up the desk. Sticky notes scrawled with illegible words were strewn about. Junk mail sat unopened. Two empty pop bottles lay under the bottom of the desk.

  The desk unit, a cheap and weighty construction, was supported by four heavy drawers, two on either side. I was disappointed to find the first of these empty. There was a bottle of whiskey in the second, and it was half-empty. It cheered me up to see that. At least there was some sense of normality in what my father had been doing here. The whiskey looked expensive and old. A crystal tumbler had been turned upside down over its top and a few drips had leaked from the glass and dried on the bottle. He had drunk from it recently. Maybe it was the last thing he had done.

  There was also a picture in the drawer, creased, worn. I picked it up and straightened it out. It had been taken ten years ago on a sun-drenched holiday to the south of Spain. Mine and my mother’s first trip abroad. Our only family holiday, discounting the miserable rainy summer in Scarborough I spent with my father a year after she left.

  In the picture, I was sitting happily between my parents, their arms sloped over my tiny shoulders, our eyes, alive with happiness, staring into the camera, caught in mid-laugh. The picture had been taken by a fellow tourist, a stranger whose face I can’t even remember, yet one that had been part of the happiest moment of my life.

  In the third drawer was a Polaroid camera and a few cartridges. I picked up the heavy camera and felt its weight. This hadn’t been the camera he had used all those years ago—that had been disposable, cheap; those pictures needed developing. I took my picture, expecting the camera to fail. It startled me when it flashed.

  A little photo jutted out, a blurred picture of my nonchalant expression in transition. I stared at the little image without emotion. I shook it a little and blew on it, actions I had seen on television but never performed myself. The photo was clear before long. The camera definitely worked.

  I put it on the desk and rummaged in the drawer some more, but there was little else of interest. I tried to open the final drawer but it resisted with a shudder. Like the others, there was a lock in the top right corner, a small pinhole mechanism, but unlike the others, this one had been engaged.

  The lock was there for the illusion of safety more than anything else, something to make the home-office user think their junk was worth securing. I gripped the handle with both hands and pulled. The small slip of metal holding the drawer in place bent and snapped with a pathetic whine before the drawer sprang open.

  There were a few floppy disks inside, along with a small ring-box. My dad still wore the ring my mother had given him when they shared their vows; he hadn’t seen the need to take it off. He hadn’t had any serious relationships since, certainly nothing worthy of a ring and a proposal. I opened the box to discover a small key, nestled into the grove where a ring would usually go. Not sure what my father’s cryptic plan was, I took out the key, pocketed it, and dropped the empty box back into the drawer.

  I wasn’t interested in the floppy disks just yet; my curiosity could wait. It had been a long day. I slammed the bottom drawer, watched the wooden frame bounce against the broken lock, and then removed the whiskey from the top drawer. Using the glass my father had probably held that afternoon, I poured myself a large measure. I had only drunk on two previous occasions and both of those had been with my father. When I was thirteen, we had shared a beer during one of the England football team’s many failings. I didn’t like football and
I don’t think he did either, but he had been caught up in the moment down at the pub, his friends cheering behind him.

  The second time was just last year. My fifteenth birthday. Trying to make up for the lack of a party—something I didn’t want and had no friends to invite to—he took me out for the day, culminating in a pub lunch and a couple of pints. He practically had to carry me home after my second pint, but the day hadn’t been all that bad.

  My first few sips of the expensive whiskey were hard to swallow and made me gag and cough simultaneously, but after that it became easier. I could feel the fluid tracing a line of warmth to my stomach, the aches and pains of the beating and everything else fading away under the amber glow.

  I finished the glass within twenty minutes, already intoxicated. I put the bottle back in the drawer, reclined in the chair with my feet up on the desk, and fell into a much appreciated sleep.

  ——

  I woke with a start, the chair turning and twirling at my sudden movement.

  I checked my watch. I had been asleep for four hours. The sun had already dipped over a graying horizon, leaving nothing more than an afterglow to light the skies. There was a sour taste in my mouth and a pain above my right eye. I cleared my throat, clawing and coughing until a sticky block of saliva dislodged itself.

  Downstairs, I took a long drink of water and swallowed two aspirin. I stood over the sink and stared out of the back window, feeling the last dregs of water creeping down my esophagus and into my stomach, lubricating the path the alcohol had scorched.

  I wondered what the key was for, what sort of treasures my father thought it necessary to hide. It wasn’t for a door, a car, or a safety deposit box; those keys would be smaller, newer. This was old and looked like it belonged to a trunk or an old box, but what could possibly be worth locking away? It could have been money, but unless he was avoiding taxes or stockpiling blood money, there was no need for him to hide it. His wife was gone, he had no long-term relationship or an obligatory joint bank account to accompany it. I didn’t have access to his bank account either, so if he was hiding money, he was hiding it from himself.

  For a moment I wondered if he had a gun. Then it dawned on me, breaking through the pain of my headache. What if the box held the secrets to my mother’s disappearance? My father had never really talked about her, vaguely stating that she moved away and probably wasn’t coming back. He didn’t blame me for it and I didn’t blame myself, but I had always wondered.

  I took the key out of my pocket. It was thick and looked like it would unlock the front gates to a manor house. I gripped it in my palm, the steel digging into my flesh.

  I began my search in his office. I took apart the drawers and checked behind them. There was a lot of dust, even some scraps of paper from candy wrappers that had wormed their way into the abyss (more proof of his normalcy), but there was nothing that required a key. Nothing under the desk and nothing hidden discreetly away among the things in or around it. Nothing on the windowsill, where the thick curtain acted as a safe itself.

  I checked the attic, a musty place where I rarely ventured. The light fizzled and popped when I turned it on, giving off a faint burning smell as the intense heat scorched the accumulation of dust that had coated the bulb. There were signs of life up there, droppings from small animals, feathers from trapped and desperate birds. A couple of boxes of old clothes; a box of Christmas decorations; a box of old vinyl records; two jackets, out of fashion long before I was born and probably long before my father was born; a tattered foosball table, lumped into a carrier bag with a set of toy soldiers and a broken toy keyboard.

  I searched for a few hours but found nothing. The attic was joined on both sides by the neighbors’ roof spaces. A small cinder block wall separated them, but anyone with a touch of guile and a modicum of desire could get over it. If they so desired, they could hop from the attic at the end of the street all the way to ours. Because of that, it seemed improbable my father would hide something valuable up there. It didn’t matter if it was locked or not—if someone stole the box, it was still lost to him. I pushed on regardless. By the time I had finished, scouring every inch of the roof space, I was drained and ready for another nap.

  Dejected, I made my way to the kitchen, rifling through the fridge to find anything flat and innocuous I could stick between two slices of bread and call dinner. I made do with slices of watery ham and cheese that was past its use-by date.

  As I bit into the sandwich, I found myself looking out of the window again. There was a small spotlight in the back garden, pinned to the back wall. Its radiant glow lit up the garden like a football field whenever the light was activated by movement; mostly moths and mice. It served its purpose whenever my father ventured out in the twilight hours to putter around his own square of nature.

  I surveyed his hard work as I ate, crumbs showering into the sink, wedges of insipid fare fighting their way down my throat. He had toiled for years in the garden, working his fingers to their muddy stumps, coating his clothes and skin with caked mud and sweat. It all seemed pointless now that he was no longer around to maintain it. I wasn’t a gardener, I didn’t know where to begin. In my hands, the garden would die an unjust and disheveled death.

  At the head of the garden, bordered by a tall fence that marked the end of my father’s patch of paradise, rested a row of blooming flowers, their magnificence caught in the glare of the security light. He had spent many hours making sure the garden bloomed in one shade or another, and now the seeds of summer were ripe.

  The yard was so well manicured and maintained that a small bald patch in its center stood out like a disfiguring scar on a beautiful face.

  My mouth stopped mid-chew. For someone who had meticulously planted and arranged a flower bed, it seemed anomalous to leave a small patch of dirt untended. The soil looked ready to plant, like the vegetable patch that had recently yielded a promising batch of carrots and was now awaiting seeding.

  I swallowed the moist bread and cheese and retrieved a small trowel that my dad kept under the sink. I turned off the security light, making sure no nosy neighbors could see me. Kneeling in the mud, careful not to disturb the flowers, I hastily dug.

  After less than two minutes of digging, a foot deep in the ground, the trowel crunched against solid steel. I rolled up my sleeves and reached inside the earth until my fingers brushed against the surface of a box. It was thick, solid, and heavy, despite its fairly diminutive size.

  Lugging it across the garden with the support of my stomach, I carried it into the house and plonked it down on the kitchen counter. It braced the surface with a heavy clunk and I just managed to pull my fingers out from underneath before it crushed them. A small worm had attached itself to the side, embedded in a clump of mud that clung to the steel like a scab. It flopped onto the counter, took a minute to gather its bearings, and then wiggled a slow path toward the sink.

  The key fit the box like a rusted glove. I heard a grating sound of defiance when it turned and a rusted groan when it opened.

  I’m not sure what I expected when I looked inside. I prepared myself for a surprise, but when I peeled open the lid and peered in, I felt the contents of my stomach rush to my throat. I moved my head away from the box just in time as a torrent of liquid vomit sprayed across the kitchen surface, bathing the worm and everything else in a bath of regurgitated sandwich and hydrochloric acid, scented with the musty tones of single-malt whiskey.

  3

  The box was filled with manila envelopes, all of which had been scrawled with a single name and sealed. The seal on the top envelope, marked with the name Sandra and penned in my father’s neat hand, had broken and the contents had spilled out.

  The first sight to greet me was a Polaroid picture of a woman. She was young, blonde, pretty, naked, and dead. She was lying stretched out on a carpet that had been dyed red with her blood. Her stomach sliced open, her innards popping out through the bisected flesh. Her large intestine stroked up her body like an a
lien tentacle, toward breasts that had been violently mutilated. Her nipples sliced off.

  I wasn’t squeamish, but I hadn’t expected to see what I had. I had never witnessed anything so grotesque, so violent, not even in films. My stomach hadn’t been prepared.

  I took a few deep breaths, braced myself, and looked back inside the box, fighting away nausea as I rifled through more of the pictures. A lot of them showed her after death, before and during mutilation. The rest were of her when she was alive, spied through the eyes of a voyeuristic lens. Snaps of her shopping; answering the door to a delivery man; having coffee with a friend; looking forlornly out a restaurant window. I’d seen this woman before.

  I tipped out the envelope, spilling the contents into the box. A picture of her laughing with friends; one of her behind a desk; on the phone; eating dinner. Then, flopping out like the prize from a box of cereal, was a tiny, laminated slip.

  It looked like a pair of buttons, neatly encased in their factory-sealed strip. I picked them up and studied them. They were small, off-colored, almost brown. I turned them over in my hand and then placed them to one side. Only when I looked back in the box, back at the picture of mutilation staring at me from the steel base, did I realize the two small buttons were the woman’s nipples. I gagged a little as the acid in my throat threatened to release again, but I managed to keep it down.

  My heart was fluttering, tapping a round of palpitations the likes of which I had never experienced. But none of it was out of fear. It was astonishment, muddled with a touch of pride and respect. Was my father The Butcher? Was it possible that the happy, friendly man who had guided me through my miserable life was the most vicious killer in recent history?

  I ran back into the living room and practically dove onto the couch. Under the seat I found a newspaper, ruffled, creased and ripped in places. I grabbed at it roughly and erratically flicked through the pages until I found what I sought: pages four to eight, a detailed analysis of The Butcher’s victims. There, smiling happily from her passport photo, was victim number twelve, Sandra Goldstein. The same blonde whose disembodied nipples I had just held.