Shooting in the Dark

audiotape.
    Inside it felt dark and oppressive, like the House of Usher. Angeles could have walked straight to the spot where Geordie sat, so strong was the emanation of his disbelief and his grief. He was like a cold, raw diamond that occupied the centre of the house, and a low mist of despondency and woe issued from him. His breathing was four-four time, largo.
    From the mumbled voices she discerned two policemen in the room and one woman apart from herself and Janet. One of the policemen was extremely tall and there was an embarrassed catch to his voice, as if he would easily bubble over into laughter. All of them hugged the room’s periphery, anxious not to be contaminated by Geordie’s despair. Only Sam had moved in there with him and he must have wrapped his arms around Geordie because there was the rocking sound echoed in the cushions on the couch. Sam’s voice whispering, Geordie, over and over like a mantra, Geordie, Geordie.
    She felt a hot flush of tears behind her eyes as the bloody pity of it all touched her.
    ‘Can we go outside?’ she whispered, and Janet led her through the kitchen. The remains of last night’s meal lingered in the air: olive oil, garlic, tomato. A door led them into the garden, where frosty fingers made them both shiver.
    ‘Maybe this is not such a good idea?’ Angeles said. ‘We’ll be all right for a few minutes. I can hardly bear to be near Geordie when he’s like that.’
    ‘Does anyone know what happened?’
    ‘Ralph was crucified against a tree in the garden. The man next door found him and came round to tell us. Geordie heard it happening last night.’
    ‘Crucified?’
    ‘His hands were nailed into the trunk,’ said Janet. ‘It was horrible. We couldn’t get him down. Geordie started to fade when he saw him. I was frightened. I thought he might disappear.’
    Angeles reached for her and Janet took a step forward into her arms. They clasped each other for a full minute. Angeles hummed a Klezmer chant, something she had heard on one of her outings with Felix and which suddenly seemed apt for the occasion. Janet stiffened and then relaxed, let the music seep into her. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Angeles said. ‘In the West people sing when they’re happy, but Jews and Slavs sing when they’re unhappy.’
    ‘It’s so beautiful,’ Janet said.
    Angeles didn’t answer. But, yes, she thought. If you have a soul and you hear music like that, you can only be moved.
     

47
     
    Sam had taken Geordie to the morgue, waited while he identified the body as his brother, Ralph, then he had driven him back home, picked up Angeles and taken her back to his own house. ‘What a day,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting JD at five.’
    Angeles felt the protruding digits on her wristwatch. ‘You’ll be late,’ she said.
    ‘I’m going on the bike.’ He threw the car keys on to the table.
    ‘You’ll be even later, then. Why the bike?’
    ‘JD’s got a lead. I’ll tell you when I get back.’ He dragged his bike out of the garden shed and pedalled into the centre of town.
    Something else she’d said on the ride back from Geordie and Janet’s house. ‘He watches people but he doesn’t see them.’
    ‘How d’you mean?’
    ‘He watches me, but it’s like he’s looking at a picture. He doesn’t see the me that I see me as. He sees something static, something that he’s brought with him. It’s the same with Isabel and Ralph; he couldn’t have killed them if he’d seen them. You can only destroy people if you’re blind to their hopes and aspirations and weaknesses. A successful murderer is someone who can’t see. He looks but he misses the point.’
    ‘Yeah. Guys like this are obsessed with themselves. They see others, but they only see them as distinct from themselves. They don’t invest us with human characteristics. They see objects.’
     
    JD was leaning against a brick wall behind Pavement, his bike parked on the kerb. He was smoking a small J, the whiff of weed almost visible in the frozen atmosphere. ‘You’re late,’ he said.
    ‘You’re stoned,’ Sam replied.
    ‘Yeah, I’m stoned, but at least I’m here.’
    ‘I got involved,’ Sam said. ‘They found Ralph’s body nailed to a tree in Geordie’s garden. They think he’d been pumped full of something they use to cull elephants.’
    JD whistled. ‘He was a big lad,’ he said. ‘But not that big.’ He took another toke on the J and his eyes shone