Short Story: Shame The Devil

Short Story: Shame The Devil

1:

‘Billy has a stammer. A real nasty one. He once told me his father used to put out cigarettes on his naked leg if he made a mistake whilst reciting his Hail Marys. Bill’s always blamed his father for his stutter.’

Two crackling neon tubes directly above me are playing havoc with my eyesight as they bathe the room in harsh lighting. As I raise my hand and pinch the bridge of my nose, a migraine's brewing, and it’s going to be a doozey; it still can’t distract me from the tangy copper smell of blood on my hands. The crimson spots may well be drying (turning terracotta brown in places) but the stains are still fresh enough to reek. I wish I knew where the blood came from; it could belong to Sandra, or could even be my own. It could even be Bill’s … but seriously, I doubt that.

‘You’re absolutely sure, that’s the last thing you remember?’ The copper asks, not even lifting his head to look at me.

‘Yeah, I’ve already told you, he had Sandra’s hair twisted in his hand before yanking her head back. They both looked towards me; an expression of shear animal aggression painted on his face, but she looked at me pleading for help, begging for me to do … something, but of course, I did nothing but watch and listen: “You’ll thank me for this eventually, Jack …” That’s what he said as he cut Sandra’s throat with that rusty knife from the brown leather bag. The next thing I remember is you two bursting through the front door and arresting me.’

Slate grey walls feel as if they are slowly encroaching upon me, why are these interrogation rooms so bloody small? The atmosphere’s arid to the point of desiccation; my throat’s as dry as dust. I need a drink, a breath of fresh air, but I know that neither of these is going happen … not until I remember what happened after Sandra was attacked.

The young detective sitting on the other side of the narrow steel table in the middle of the room looks at me impassively as he notes down the end of my statement for the second time whilst simultaneously pressing the pause button on the tape machine. Fine blonde baby hair covers his pate, and the reflection in the mirror behind reveals even this scant covering is starting to fail him, his shining bald patch a possible cause of self-consciousness. He’s wearing a cheap suit, an ugly tie, and I can tell he doesn’t like it; ambition is dripping out of every single pore, but his aesthetic failings will always leave his taller, more handsome colleagues with an advantage he will never be able to overcome, I give him a smile … sucker.

Finally, finished writing he puts the plastic pen in his mouth and starts to chew on the end, it’s a nervous habit, a bad one, a dead give-away that he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying, but he doesn’t think he’s wasting his time, he’s waiting for me to break.

The older man’s standing behind me; he’s very tall and broad, a little overweight but he’s carrying it well: the archetypal police officer, he’s a one-dimensional cliché; everything his younger companion isn’t. He pulls out a strip of nicotine gum – I’m an ex smoker, I appreciate the tension relief it provides – from his pocket, pops two pieces out and slips them into his mouth, he really should only take the one.

A huge mirror’s dominating the room – a two-way mirror? – I can almost feel hidden eyes peering at me through the glass, only a small crack in the corner twists the image; like a stage ... no, television, it plays out the scene in front of me with a picture that somehow doesn’t appear real; more like a poorly concocted imitation for a post watershed cop drama, set in a tiny slate-grey interrogation room; I’m the protagonist, covered in blood, a long cut evenly stitched across my brow. Those unforgiving sharp and popping neon lights give all three of us long, unhealthy, dark-shadows under bloodshot eyes, and sallow complexions.

‘Hey, you shouldn’t take too many of those nicotine chews, man; they’re gonna give you hiccups.’ I direct my advice to the larger policeman – given his demeanour I presume he’s the boss – standing behind me, still only visible in the mirror. My advice seems to go unheeded as he grins at me sarcastically with a piece of gum clenched between his front teeth, before starting to chew the nicotine substitute – chomping it up real good. Give it about … oh, five minutes and he’s gonna pay: it's only a matter of time.

‘Ahh … Jack, can we go over this one more time? There are still a couple of points I’m not quite sure about yet.’ The young one sitting in front of me asks, whilst wiping a weary hand across his face, shining with the sweat of the incessant inquisition. He removes his jacket, folding it carefully, as not to reveal the maker’s label, and hangs it over the back of his chair. I knew it was a cheap suit, but I’m not about to antagonise the man, he still has that glint of ambition in his eyes; ambition can make you do crazy things, and I’m not about to add fire to his aspirations.

‘Of course, I don’t mind at all, just for clarification of course?’ I reply, insisting there’s no end to the assistance I’m willing to give to the Police. Why should I object to going over the facts yet again? I’m not the killer, but I don’t think they want to believe me, in fact, I think they would do anything to prove I’m the man that killed Sandra.

(So I suppose … third time lucky?)

2:

‘I first met Billy in the children’s home when I was nine.’

‘I never met my father, and Cancer took my mother away, so when I was in the home I was angry … no, that’s a lie, I was furious: one way or another, I was abandoned by both of them. The other children wanted nothing to do with me. Some of them were institutionalised as babies, and most knew each other intimately; they were more like a gang than a family … to them I was just a curio – a weirdo, a little nut-job to rip at when they got bored torturing each other, and they ripped at me daily.’

‘Then Billy turned up.’

‘He walked up the winding metal staircase into the orphanage all alone, holding a huge brown leather bag scorched by fire. Next to the handle, it had a single word, Bill, burned into the leather.

'He couldn’t speak, or rather wouldn’t speak, when he arrived – not a single solitary word, but I understood him … there was an unspoken connection, I think it was the mutual hatred of our families that drew us together. So, there you had it, I acted as his translator, and he protected me; it was the perfect symbiotic relationship: it benefited us both equally.

‘Inseparable, we went everywhere together. He was far bigger, and stronger than any other child of his age. He often silenced the daily playground abuser with a vicious counter attack of unexpected ferocity. He always had a temper that was explosive in nature, and sadistic in practice. When he was older he told me every punch and bite had been meant for his father, but god help those that got in his way.

'It was only during night he’d make any noise. From his thin chapped lips I would hear crying – no not crying ... baying like a trapped wolf, imprisoned, lost. One evening I found him cowering at the bottom of my bed like a beaten dog, shivering with fear, I let him under the covers and he wept for hours; we slept together like that right up until I left the home.

‘When finally he did speak, and even then only to me, he spent hours telling me in jagged dialogue everything about his father, the abuse, both violent and sexual; his life had been an endless conveyer belt of torture, the kind of which both of us were still too young to comprehend … ’

The small copper’s looking at me, with an exasperated expression plastered firmly in place. With an almost effeminate flick of the wrist he holds up one of his small stumpy hands for me to stop but instead I can see his bloody bitten fingertips, he hasn’t been biting his nails since the interview started several hours ago, so this is a long term affliction, one he’d been trying to quit but—.

‘Jack, we’ve been over this twice before; can we speed this up a bit … fast-forward past your time at the orphanage, and focus on the day of the murder.’ As he speaks, he’s making a windmill motion with his sausage like index finger as if to say speed-it-up sunshine.

‘Okay-okay … fine, it all started on a Monday morning a few months after I lost my job, Sandra was at work – she was pretty pissed with me, I’d lost my temper again and punched out the prick I worked for. She never did understand how angry these idiots made me – stupid orders followed by even more obtuse threats when their daft projects hit the buffers: Morons … the lot’a them. Then Billy showed up again.’

3:

In truth – not that I’m about to tell my inquisitors – I’d been sitting in bed, mulling over Sandra’s latest castrating tirade against my poor judgement and unemployable character (why had she married me? I’d asked myself, considering she never stops complaining). My head was splitting; the mind numbing pain had been there ever since the argument, I always get a migraine when I lose my temper, even when I was child I suffered with this affliction. When I closed my eyes, all I could see were lights flashing on the inside of my eyelids, a sure sign that the migraine had some distance still to run, like northern lights flickering in the darkness of night. My suffering compounded abruptly when the intercom to the security door at the front of the building made its presence felt by screeching for my attention.

I’d climbed out of bed, and went to the hallway, the buzzing now sounding almost rhythmical, as the visitor kept his finger on the button; he was seemingly intent on drawing my attention at any cost. I firmly made up my mind not to travel the five floors down to take them on, head-on, ripping 'im a new one, if he was just a member of the postal service desperately trying to make a delivery. But I made no such promise for religious or political campaigning: They would be lucky to make it out of the building in one piece.

Lifting the handset from the receiver on the wall, I spoke even before the cigarette-stained mouthpiece came close to my face.

‘Who’s there?’ I said, almost screaming with the pain in my head thundering over my temples.

‘J-Jacky boy, how are ya?’ I knew the owner of the voice better than my own, the stutter was as bad as ever, and I’d pressed the entry button on the phone instinctively before a single word passed my lips.

‘Bill, I’m well … but it’s still good to hear your voice. C’mon up, I can’t wait to see you.’ There was a laugh from the other end of the line before he responded.

‘And I w-wouldn’t miss it for the w-world.’ My head felt better, I could see without the lights interrupting me again. It felt like the pressure had finally escaped.

Only a few minutes later my old companion sat opposite me in the kitchen – he’d hardly changed at all since the last time I saw him, on the day I left the children’s home – on the day I left him! He needed a haircut, it was hanging down on his shoulders in long unwashed rat-tails, like a rocker on the tail end of a club tour; the skinny ripped jeans, and leather jacket remained in place, although they were hard-worn and dirty. He was still carrying the same beaten-up brown leather bag that he had all those years ago, it must have held something important (knowing Billy, probably everything he owned), because as he sat down at the kitchen table, the bag rested on his lap and he held onto it like a security blanket. He looked drawn and tired, I offered to make him something to eat or a drink, but he shook his head and turned them both down, content to sit and watch as I sipped a piping hot black coffee.

‘So what brings you round here, Bill?’ He looked at me his eyes fixed in an unflinching stare, he let out a long mournful sigh before replying; his stutter – along with his nerves – were starting to subside, but he still needed a moment.

‘Jacky, times h-h- haven’t …’ he sighed and composed himself before he begun again. ‘Times haven’t been treating me so well … I could really do with a favour, a really big favour.’ He said in a soft emotional voice, I hadn’t heard him sound like that since his first words in the orphanage.

‘C’mon Bill, you know anything I can do to help you out I will, what is it that you need?’

‘I need a place to stay Jack, not for too long, just a couple of days … I can sleep on the floor, the couch, anywhere you want; I just don’t have anywhere else to go.’ There was a dry rattle of desperation in his voice; it resonated from his throat like sandpaper on an empty tin can.

‘Don’t say another word, mate, of course you can stay here, we’ve got a spare bedroom …’ I thought for a moment before continuing, I had to tell him about Sandra, she was going to go nuts when she found out he was staying with us ‘… Bill you know I’ll do anything for you but I’m married, you’ll need to … how can I put it, keep your head down when she’s at home.’ He nodded once, and gave me a sheepish half grin, that soon broke into an all out beaming smile; he shook my hand now nodding enthusiastically.

‘Thanks mate, I owe you … I owe you big time.’

We sat silent for a few minutes, me still sipping at the black coffee now cool enough to taste, him clenching his hands nervously, dirty fingers intertwining, then releasing. He finally looked up at me with his ice blue eyes in a persistent stare before asking an unexpected question.

‘So, what’s Sandra’s problem?’

‘Ohh, she’s just pissed at me, she ... hey, you guys have never met, how did you know her name?’ I asked as he shifted around uncomfortably in his chair. He looked down at the table, wearing a wry smile before replying.

‘I saw her n-name on the mail lying by the front door. You know me Jacky, out of the two of us I was always the observant one.’

I laughed and there the conversation had ended, he moved into the spare room, and Sandra never even mentioned him; he was as quite as a mouse … that was until she rattled his cage.

4:

Tap-tap-tap.

The young detective impatiently bangs his ballpoint pen on the metal table making a loud rhythmical clang; then he puts the lid-end into his mouth, a substitute for the chewed fingers that, I surmise, he’s trying to avoid. The detective constable pacing behind me has his nicotine gum, and the boy in front has his chewed pen; there are way too many crutches in one room. Finally, he drops the pen to table with a bang, and begins questioning again.

‘Enough skirting around the issue Jack. Let’s move onto the day of the murder … how exactly did the argument start?’ The little cop facing me asks; he doesn’t seem interested in the big picture, only the nitty-gritty. Strangely, I admire him for his directness, if we had started this way we might have finished this fiasco, hours ago, and they might be on the hunt for Sandra’s killer.

Before I resume, the young copper wipes the sheen from his brow again, the room still has no air, and the crackling neon above is starting to fade. As I look up at the tubes, each end has turned from a vivid white light to a dirty dark brown; they’re going to give out pretty-soon.

‘I never tired telling Sandra how beautiful she was: stunningly beautiful legs, tanned skin, and long blonde hair the colour of a cornfield at sunrise; she gave off an air of ditziness that lulled you into a false sense of security … and vulnerability, but If you didn’t know Sandra, her explosive temper would take you by surprise; she could shock you into silence, or worse. I mean … I’m not a violent man, and even I was forced -- on occasion -- to reprimand her, sometimes even preventively.’

I take a deep breath; my lips so dry and cracked are strangely the antithesis to my palms, clammy and cold. Beads of sweat drop onto the table as the rage of recollection starts to get my blood boiling again.

‘As so often happened between us, the argument started over something small and inconsequential; my lack of work and the constant sponging money off her. The subject seems so predictable; yet as usual, I didn’t see it coming. It was seven thirty and she was getting ready to leave; straightening her hair made a long golden trail flowing down her tanned back. I lay in bed watching as she dressed; the way her hair hung down her naked spine always got me aroused. I’d been drinking late into the night after she went to bed Billy had woken up, and we’d talked into the early hours of the morning.’

The policeman behind me sighs; I could swear it’s with exasperation, but I continue unheeded they asked to hear the whole thing again, so they’re going to bloody listen.

‘I’d been hungry so I made myself something to eat – my foolish mistake was not cleaning up after myself. She saw the kitchen and flew into a rage, her anger had nothing to do with the mess I’d left, I was well aware of that; it was her excuse to start an argument … she wanted to know why I wasn’t up looking for work.

‘I tried to explain that I’d been up talking with Billy but she just … wouldn’t … listen. All she kept saying was, I was a useless prick, I was sponging off her, and she wanted me out of the flat. Believe me … please believe me, I did everything I could to stop her, but she just kept on pushing, constantly pushing, on-and-on, over and over again. I left the bedroom to get away from the argument and walked through to the living room, but she followed me, shouting all the way down the hallway.’

The policeman in front of me asks a question, but I ignore him; this is my chance to speak, and I’m not about to let him stop me.

‘As I sat on the coach she stood above me yelling. The pain in my head was excruciating, I wanted to cut the pain out, I wanted to take a knife out of the kitchen and blind myself, to get to the centre of the pain. I had to get away from her; unfortunately, it was at the wrong time for Sandra.’

‘So what did you do to let out all this pent up tension?’ The detective in front of me asks finally gaining my attention; he seems to have regained his interest, and the notes are again starting to flow of the end of his well-chewed pen. ‘Did you attack her at this point?’ he waits for a moment to see if I respond, I’m tired of the whole pointless punch and Judy affair, so I just look at him directly and keep my silence.

‘Hmm … okay, how did you respond to her verbal attack?’

‘I left the room for a few moments, it wasn’t for long, just to the kitchen for ... well, you know, just for a bit of privacy … to calm down. How was I supposed to know that Billy had woken up and gone through to the living room? As I went back to face up to the inevitable onslaught from her, I saw Billy’s old leather bag, the bag he always carries with him lying outside the front room door, it was wide open. It might sound strange, but I’d never seen inside that bag before; even after so many years. Inside there was a multitude of old kitchen and garden implements; they were filthy, they looked as if they hadn’t been touched in years.

‘When I finally plucked up the courage to walk into the room I saw he was holding her by the throat … her eyes – I’ll never forget her eyes – the terror that was on naked display in front of me. He’d taken a large rusty knife out of the bag and was holding it against her jugular. I tried to get him to let her go … you must believe me I really did, I pleaded with him, but all he would say to me was. “You can’t let her speak to you like that Jacky, you’re one of the good people, and you can’t let her say those things.”’

The notes continue to flow out of the policeman in front of me as I rattle on, whilst behind me, sighs from the mouth of the older policeman hiss their snake like disapproval of every word I say. I quickly glance into the mirror as I take a breath; the scene in front of me has changed from my previous telling. The copper behind me is smiling, not at the back of my head but at me in the mirror, there’s a dark malevolence in his eyes that reminds me of … I’m not sure, but it’s painfully familiar; I’ve not seen it from him before, there is very little left of the bumbling performance he’s been turning in since they dragged by blood covered body into custody. Has it all been an act? I continue.

‘Sandra was desperate. She was pleading with him to let her go. She just kept looking up at him repeating over, and over again. “Why are you doing this? We were only having an argument...” My head was killing me as I pleaded with him to let her go but he just kept taunting her, offering her freedom, and then withdrawing the offer just as quickly. By now she was begging for him to let her go, the tears were running down her cheeks as he kept her transfixed on his face, then my face she seemed to be looking at both of us.’

The laugh behind me was audible, but I chose to ignore it, I could feel the old coppers eye’s burning into me from his reflection in the mirror. But it was nearly over I would soon be able to stop.

‘I tried to stop him but he threatened me, I grabbed an old box cutter from the bag and I tried to convince him to let her go … for a moment I thought it was going to work, she got away and I struck him across the face with the knife cutting his brow, as we rolled on the floor. But he’s stronger than me – a hell of a lot stronger than I am ­­­­– he knocked the knife out of my hand, and grabbed her again … ’

I had to stop for a moment, to take a deep breath this final part was so painful, the image of her face still so fresh in my mind.

‘He h-held her … kneeling in f-front of him, unable to move with the knife pressed so tightly against her skin that even the slightest increase in pressure would have sliced her neck wide open and made her beg for mercy … he made her beg over and over again. Then he turned to me, smiled, and killed her.’

5:

‘So, that’s the way it finished. He killed Sandra and I passed out; the next thing I remember is the two of you bursting through my front door.’ The older detective, still pacing behind me laughs yet again, before the younger man facing me casts him an angry glance, I’ve changed my mind, this high flying young copper is the Boss, the one behind me is a grizzled old bitter copper that resents being the subordinate … well, screw him.

‘I’ve already told you, I … Did … Not … Kill … HER!’

The scene in the mirror, which had been like a perfect television picture on my arrival, has changed, the crack in the corner seems – however impossible – to be getting longer. It’s now stretching the image of the older detective, turning him into a bizarre gargoyle like caricature of himself.

I can feel a piercing, stabbing pain behind my eye as my anger at him is getting out of control; the migraines are starting again, they’re making the questions almost physically painful to answer as if there’s a thumb is inside my head, pressing on my eyeball the moment I open my mouth to give an answer.

‘This room’s too small, I have to get out, I have to; I can’t breathe.’

‘Jack, calm down, I’m sure we’ll find Billy as soon as we can … there’s just one thing, do you happen to remember his second name?’

‘Yes of course his … his name is – ’

But I can’t remember … I remember him being introduced to me at the orphanage, I remember him sitting next to me at school as the register was called, I remember him being with me every moment, of every day, until I was adopted. But now I can’t remember his name. It’s gone; it’s left a glaring hole in my memory. I might be feeling embarrassed, but there’s no point in lying, as my mother always said, “while you live, tell the truth and shame the Devil!”

‘I’m sorry. His name seems to have … slipped my mind.’ There was no other way to put it to them. I find that I’m scratching my cheek, thinking desperately, trying to piece together one of those hundreds of occasions the two of us had sat together, and I heard Bill's surname. The younger cop is smiling, it’s a sickly sweet, “I’ve got you,” smile that again only provokes more anger from me and more pain from the headache. But the older one standing behind me isn’t laughing – he’s not laughing at all – he just looks angry, as angry as I am when he starts shouting.

‘Look … enough! I’ve heard enough! I want to speak to Billy, now!’ He’s shouting, bordering on screaming, I’m looking at his face in the mirror, and his eyes are glowing like fire.

‘Don’t you think I’d tell you where he was if I knew? H-He’s killed my wife!’ I shout back stumbling over my words before the detective facing me slams the report he’s been cradling onto the table, the impact shifts the steel furniture sharply on the tile floor making the high-pitched screeching sound of metal against ceramic.

‘This has to stop, Jack. This has to stop, we’ve been going over the same details for days since you killed her; it’s time for the truth.’

Days? He said days, but I’ve only been here for a couple of hours.

6:

The little crack in the mirror’s lengthening as the smaller detective continues to shout. Hands are over my ears, I really don’t want to listen, but his voice is getting louder. So is another voice it’s shouting inside my head, battering to get its way out, turning my own voice against me so even it’s becoming my enemy. The walls aren’t grey anymore; they’re getting darker, closing in: the mirror’s no longer a mirror, it’s a window, and I’m watching the events from the darkness on the other side of the pane.

The younger detective’s only getting started; he’s shaking the file in my face on the other side of the glass with a newfound vigour.

‘That’s it, your file Jacky, or to call you by your full name John William Booth; there is no Billy … because you’re Billy! You lived with Sandra in a one bedroom apartment; there was nowhere else for another man to stay.’

‘N-No, that’s impossible, I-I’ve known Billy most of my life.’

‘Mr Booth, you were never in an orphanage, you were in a mental institution … you killed your own family when you were just nine years old. Your father was a drunk, a sadist that used to burn you with a lit cigarette when you didn’t do exactly what he told you to do, and your mother was no better, she used to sit back and watch as you were tortured, whacked out of her skull on heroin.’

‘NO.’ The man in the mirror shouts.

‘Mr Booth, you set the fire, and then you watched the house burn; that was when you started calling yourself Billy … “Billy’s the boy that does the bad things” … that’s what you said to the police that found you at the scene.’

‘Th-that’s impossible.’ He’s still waving the file in my face, I want to whack it out of his hand, rip it to shreds, and ram it down his whining self-satisfied throat.

‘Billy, the boy that took over when you couldn’t cope. Billy, the man that took over when you cut Sandra’s throat. When we broke into your flat – after the neighbours heard her screaming your name and called us – Billy, the psychopath that answered our questions, through you, when we found you alone … sitting … holding Sandra’s severed head. So, how’s about Billy comes out to play again, so we can finally finish our questioning.’

‘I’ve told you … N-NO! I didn’t k-k-kill her, I couldn’t have. B-Billy killed her! He always does the killing— ’

The mirror-window cracks from side to side, and falls to the floor shattering into innumerable pieces as I sit in the darkness of my mind, alone … waiting for my next chance to answer the question.

Where’s Billy?