Death of a Perfect Mother by Robert Barnard Page A

over, heard him say through the haze of beer and song and smoky bonhomie:
    â€˜Look, I’m sorry, you boys, I’ve just had a message—you’d better—well, you’d better cut off home—it’s rather serious—it’s your mum—she’s—’
    â€˜Ill?’
    â€˜Well, sort of, but worse. I’m sorry, lads. They say she’s dead. I couldn’t hear right well, you know, not through all this. But they said she’d been killed.’
    Brian felt Gordon keel over towards him, crumpling at the knees and up the strong trunk of his body. Then with a powerful effort he righted himself, clutched on to the table uttering great racking sobs. Suddenly he cried ‘Killed!’ and then shoved his way bodily through the crowd and out of the bar door. Brian ran in his wake and followed him in his first fast sprint up Balaclava Road. Two hundred yards from the pub Gordon stopped by the lamppost and heaved mountainously and noisily. And as Brian caught him up and stood over him, helpless, Gordon gazed at him through his heaving and retching, his face blotched hideously red, his eyes wet with grief and disappointment, and said:
    â€˜Some bastard’s gone and done it instead o’ me. She was mine. I had it all worked out, you know that, down to the last detail. Some bastard’s got there first. Now I’ll never be able to throttle the life out of her.’
    â€˜Come on,’ hissed Brian, shaking himself into takingcontrol. ‘He said she’d been killed. He probably meant an accident. Don’t crack up.’
    And with a last mountainous heave and a shake Gordon did seem to get a grip, stood up, took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Then he took off like a professional sprinter up the dark road. He faltered a little as they ploughed their way through the blackness of Snoggers Alley, and Brian caught him up so that together they could run the last stretch home.
    Home. Lill’s nest for her boys. But now transformed with lights, with two large police cars outside, and with a little knot of shameless neighbours and their children, watching the comings and goings. They made way for Gordon and Brian, gazed at them with ravenous, awkwardly respectful curiosity, stayed silent as they pushed their way through the front gate.
    And Brian’s most abiding memory of the day was the open front door, the hall blazing with light, and Fred meeting them, his skinny frame racked with sobs, his face red with rage and grief, tears running down his wrinkled cheeks, his voice cracked with shock and outrage.
    â€˜Somebody’s done her in,’ he shouted. ‘Some bugger’s been and killed our Lill.’

CHAPTER 8
THE MORNING AFTER
    Morning. Waking. A dull sense of activity around the house. A sense of policemen in the house. Heavy feet and low, muffled voices. The aftermath of a murder.
    Brian struggled to consciousness through a thick blanket of reluctance, hangover, and sense of impending disaster. It was seven o’clock. He had had, perhaps, fivehours’ sleep. He and Gordon, long, long after midnight, and after questions dimly understood and haltingly answered, after cups of thick black instant coffee, had staggered up the stairs and—silent, almost, uncertain where they stood—had thrown themselves on to their beds and sunk into welcome, immediate oblivion.
    Or not quite oblivion. Brian had had terrifying dreams of Lill, blue, strangulated, hideous, dead but still active, stalking the house where once she had reigned, intent on revenge. He knew too that Gordon had cried out in the night, without knowing how he knew. A sharp cry of pain or triumph. Lill was there in his sleep too. Of course she was. What else could one expect? Demons are not to be exorcized so easily.
    In the next bedroom Fred, similarly wafting towards consciousness, turned his meagre, flannel-pyjamaed frame over in the bed and felt the space where Lill always