Page 72 of Close to You
I close the boot and look back along the road, wondering if it was roadkill, after all. Or even my imagination?
I get back into the driver’s seat and continue along the road. My neck is throbbing from the cut but I try to ignore it as I continue on.
It’s hard not to have the twinge of remembrance as I pass the rugby club. David had a vasectomy in the days before our party and spent the evening limping around, saying it was a running injury. Then he said he wanted to have children. I have to blink it away, because, for now, I can’t personalise what’s happened. I need to act first.
The gate to the car park at Little Bush Woods is up and it’s apparently too cold for any potential doggers to hang around at this time of year. There’s a big sign saying that the park closes at five during the winter – but it’s not as if there’s anyone to enforce it. The car park is deserted.
I’m glad for the semi-regular weight training as I heave David out of the boot. His body feels heavier than it did when it went in. I suppose that ‘dead weight’ is a literal thing, not simply a vague saying.
I end up dropping David’s body on the floor, largely by accident because of his bulk. I grab the end of the sheet and drag him across the car park. There’s a charity clothes bin that I’ve never noticed before, though the lid has been levered apart and is hanging open. Random pieces of clothing are strewn across the weed-ridden tarmac.
It’s far easier to drag David than it is to carry him. I pull the sheets along the trail, stopping every few minutes to catch my breath. Half an hour on a treadmill cannot prepare a person for this.
It isn’t long until I get to the bridge. The moon is engulfed by clouds and yet the light is still managing to cast a bluey glow across the water.
Raindrops start to ripple across the lake as I drag David’s body onto the bridge. It’s gentle at first, the merest of pitter-patters, and then, as quickly as it started, it’s a deluge. My hair is plastered to my face as the water soaks my clothes to my skin. It’s only now that I realise I’m not wearing a coat. Not that it matters – everything I’m wearing will be burnt within a day or so.
I continue heaving David across the bridge until we’re in the middle. It was only a few months ago that we were here. I can picture David and myself, leaning on the rail, as he said he thought we should try for children. It feels like another lifetime.
David’s body is left on the sodden wood as I rush back to the car, from which I retrieve the string, scissors and bricks. The bin bag can go in a builders’ skip somewhere, or one of those bins outside a supermarket. It’s not as if anyone’s going to go hunting through it.
When I get back to the bridge, the signs warning of deep water are being battered by a thunderous blast of rain. David’s cocoon is still in the centre, but I cut away the sheets and toss them to the side, until it’s only me and him. I look at his waxy face and there’s a part of me that still expects him to sit up. When I roll him onto his side, there’s a second in which I wonder if his leg twitched. I stop and watch, waiting for it to happen again. I have to convince myself that my mind is playing tricks.
My fingers are trembling as I thread the string through the holes in the brick and then loop it around David’s legs. I wrap it around over and over, passing it through the brick each time until the ball of string is half gone. I’ve never been great with knots, so I tie it like a double-knotted shoelace – except that I keep tying it until there’s no string left. I repeat this with the second brick, attaching it to his midriff.
His skin is clammy and wet and I constantly have to stop because, every time I touch him, I’m convinced he’s still alive. He doesn’t move, no matter how many times I pause. In the end, he’s left with a pair of bricks knotted to his body.
‘David?’
The lashing rain almost hides the words and he doesn’t respond.
‘David?’
There is no comeback, so I prod him with my foot, before rolling him onto his back. His eyes are closed and I can’t bring myself to open them to check whether there’s anything there. I know there’s not – and yet that niggle of doubt won’t leave me. The blood is being washed away by the rain to the degree that I can see the slash close to David’s ear from where the pot hit him. It’s not as large as I thought it could be. I had a bigger cut last year when we went hiking in the Peak District and I snagged my bare leg on a thread of barbed wire. I suppose I have a bigger gash on my neck now – although it isn’t as deep. I thought it would look far worse than it does.
‘David?’
I stand and take a breath, peering out across the rippling lake. The raindrops make it look as if the water is alive, as if something is going to breach the surface with a monstrous roar.
All it takes is a nudge with my foot.
That’s it.
David rolls off the bridge, momentarily snagging on one of the posts before I push harder. He slides under the water almost instantly. There might be a flurry of bubbles, but I can’t know for sure because it’s obliterated almost instantly by the raindrops.
I watch for a few seconds, still expecting him to burst back up, like the shark inJaws, or the one we once thought lived in this lake. The rain is so hard that it’s painful to stand in the open; like being smashed over the head repeatedly. The irony of that is not lost as I turn, scoop up the bloodied sheets and then run back to the car.
Thirty-Four
THE NOW
I’ve often wondered where the clarity came from on the evening that I got rid of David’s body. Whether, somewhere deep down, I had been thinking about it for a while.
His lies were big and small – some that mattered, many that didn’t – and I think there was a part of me that always knew he had a loose relationship with the truth. If he ever had a storage unit full of collectibles, then I never found any information about it within his possessions. The police have never mentioned it, either. There was almost no money in his bank accounts and it was far eclipsed by the amount he owed on credit cards. He came into the world with nothing and he left it in more or less the same fashion.
I wait in the car park of Little Bush Woods, wondering if I should have come here direct from the police station. I have no reason to think they’re following me, though if they are, I’ve led them directly to where I dumped David. I could be out for a walk, of course.
There is still an hour or so until the park closes, although I suspect the barrier will remain raised. I wait in the car for five minutes, wondering if someone will follow me in. A marked police car would probably be excessive – but there are no other cars anyway.
