Chalk Dust & Broomsticks, Chapter 18

Gerald decides what to do with the dead body.

Chapter18 - Gerald deals with the dead body.

Flashback - during the Christmas holidays, 1998/99

I ought to ring the police, thought Gerald. I could still pretend that I'd only just discovered it, but I can't face all the questions. I know I had nothing to do with it, but they will assume that I did and they will talk me into saying something I don't want to say, even though I am innocent of everything except the reporting. First I have to get in there so I'm going to look for the key. If I can't find it maybe I can take the one that Althea has. She's not here at the moment so I could sneak into her office and take the key without her noticing it. That sounds right. That's what I'll do.

Gerald had had a lifetime of making excuses, like most family men so he set about going into the head's office to find her key. He had a key to her office so that was no problem, but he didn't want to get caught by one of the staff so he waited until after he'd had his dinner and the school was quiet and then he unlocked the door and went in. Althea kept her keys on a hook behind the door, under where her coat usually hung and relatively out of sight. Gerald found it quickly enough, released it from the others on the ring and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he left the office, closing and locking the door and proceeded to walk along to the boiler house room, which was in the small building with a high tower, attached but separate from the main one. He unlocked the door there and went in ....

The heavy iron door of the boiler house groaned on its hinges as Gerald stepped inside. The air was thick and stagnant, smelling of old soot, industrial grease, and a sweet, cloying scent that made his stomach do a slow, uneasy roll. He fumbled with the light switch, but nothing happened. Figures, he thought. Bulb's gone. Or the damp's got into the circuit again.

He clicked on his heavy-duty flashlight. The beam cut through the dark like a blade, illuminating the dancing dust motes before landing on the heap in the centre of the concrete floor.

"Right then," he whispered, his voice sounding small against the towering shadows of the furnace. "No more looking through windows. Time to be a man of my word."

He set the flashlight on a workbench, propping it against a rusted vice so the light flooded the central floor. He walked toward the body. It lay on its front, a tangle of limbs that looked like a discarded marionette. As he reached down to turn it over, a spill of long, silken dark hair caught the light. It was beautiful hair, the kind that belonged on a shampoo advert, not on a cold floor in a primary school basement.

With a grunt of effort, Gerald rolled the body over. It was a woman, but he didn't recognise her.

It was Alex, Althea's shadow for the last two months, but Gerald didn't know her. He had never had cause to speak to her, but he had seen her around the school on the odd occasion, more recently. Alex and Althea were seen conspiring together, especially after the staff Christmas party when things had seemed so jovial. Now, her eyes were half-open, clouded like marbles, and her mouth was fixed in a silent, jagged 'O'. There was a wound on her head as if she'd been hit with something and bruises on her neck; dark, purple imprints of hands that had squeezed the life out of her in a frantic, desperate struggle.

Gerald sat back on his heels, his heart hammering against his ribs. He knew Althea and Alex had been close, too close, some said and he knew they'd had a row that had turned the air blue in the staff room just before the holidays. He looked at the bruises. This wasn't the work of a burglar. This was a crime of passion, a moment where the heat of an argument had boiled over into a cold, permanent silence.

He thought about the police. He thought about the sirens, the yellow tape, the journalists trampling over the flower beds, and the children, his "kids", seeing their school turned into a morgue. He thought about Althea, the formidable headteacher, ruined and broken.

"A quiet life," he muttered, standing up and heading for his locker. "That's all I'm after. If I tell them, the school dies. If I do this... well, only Alex is gone. And she's already gone."

He opened his private locker and pulled out the canvas roll. It unrolled with a heavy, metallic clink. Here were the tools of his old trade: a ten-inch breaking knife, a heavy-duty meat saw, and a cleaver with a blade so thick it could split a spine without a second swing. He'd spent twenty years at the butcher's block before coming to Primrose. To him, flesh was just a medium, and bone was just a boundary.

He dragged a heavy, reinforced plastic sack, the kind Althea must have used to move her friend across the dark playground, to the centre of the floor. He noticed the scuff marks on the concrete. She must have struggled, dragging the weight of her friend while clutching his key. He felt a flash of irritation. So that's where my key went.. It was ironic, really. He was using her master key to dispose of the body she'd hidden using his.

He knelt at Alex's feet. He didn't look at her face again. He couldn't. Instead, he focused on the anatomy.

"Find the joint, Gerald," he coached himself, his voice a low, rhythmic drone. "Clean lines. No hacking."

The first cut was through the expensive wool of her dress. The blade hissed as it parted the fabric, revealing the waxy, pale skin of the thigh. He worked with a cold, clinical precision. He found the hip socket by touch, his fingers dancing over the cold skin with the memory of a thousand carcasses. A quick, deep slice to part the muscle, a decisive twist of the knife to sever the ligaments, and then the saw.

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

The sound was amplified by the hollow tower above. It was a wet, grinding noise that would have turned a weaker man's stomach. Gerald just breathed through his mouth, his eyes narrowed in the gloom. The bone was thin, a woman's bone, and the saw tore through it in seconds.

As he shifted his weight to move to the other leg, his heavy boot kicked something. It was a small, black slab of glass, Alex's mobile phone. It spun across the floor, sliding through the grit and dust until it vanished into the deep shadows beneath the heavy metal workbench. A second later, a gold necklace, snapped during the struggle with Althea, followed suit, the links jingling softly before coming to rest in the cobwebs. Gerald didn't even blink. His world was the circle of white light and the red task at hand.

"One leg down," he grunted, hoisting the limb. It was surprisingly heavy. He walked over to the boiler, the Victorian beast that took up half the room. He turned the gas valve and hit the ignition. Whump. The furnace roared to life, a sudden, angry orange glow spilling from the grate.

He opened the heavy iron door and shoved the limb into the white-hot heart of the fire. The smell was immediate, the sickening, sweet scent of roasting meat mixed with the chemical tang of burning fabric. He slammed the door shut.

Better get a move on, Gerald. Can't have the neighbors wondering why the chimney's smoking at two in the morning.

He returned to the body. The work became a blur of mechanical motion. He removed the arms at the shoulders, then the second leg. He used the cleaver for the torso, the heavy blade coming down with a rhythmic thud-crack as he split the ribs. He was sweating now, the heat from the boiler turning the basement into a literal oven. The steam from the cooling body rose in thin, ghostly plumes, mingling with the soot on the ceiling.

"Nearly there, lovely," he whispered to the air. "Nearly home."

The hair was the biggest problem. It was so long, so thick. It tangled in the teeth of his saw and clung to his rubber gloves like a web. He had to use the knife to hack it away in clumps, tossing the dark tresses into the fire first. They shrivelled and vanished in an instant, smelling like singed feathers.

He worked for nearly three hours. His back ached, and his hands were cramped into claws, but the butcher's instinct never faltered. He didn't think about the woman; he thought about the volume of the furnace. He fed the fire carefully, ensuring the temperature stayed high enough to vaporize everything.

Finally, there was only the head.

He picked it up, cradling it in a piece of the sack. He looked at it for one fleeting second, the dark hair he'd missed, the pale forehead. He felt a pang of genuine sorrow. She'd been a frequent visitor and the kids liked her.

"Sorry love," he said softly. "The school needs its peace."

He tossed the last of her into the flames and slammed the door. He turned the intake to full, the boiler beginning to whistle and groan as it worked to consume the high-protein fuel.

Gerald spent the next hour cleaning. He was meticulous. He used a gallon of industrial bleach, scrubbing the concrete floor until his eyes stung and his throat felt raw. He mopped up the gore, the water turning a dark, muddy pink before he poured it down the chemical drain in the corner. He wiped his tools until the steel shone, then oiled them and tucked them back into his locker.

He stood in the centre of the room, panting, the flashlight sweeping the floor. It was spotless. The bleach had even eaten away the old oil stains. It was cleaner now than it had been in years. He didn't look under the workbench. He didn't see the silent phone or the gold chain. He was finished.

He walked to the door, his legs feeling like lead. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his heavy bunch of school keys.

"Should put that back," he muttered, fingering Althea's key and blinking away the exhaustion. "Go in through the side door, pop it on the hook..."

He looked at the dark playground. The wind was picking up, whistling through the goalposts. He was too tired. He just wanted his bed.

Monday, he decided. I'll do it Monday morning before she gets in. She'll never know I even had it.

Absentmindedly, his fingers worked the metal loop of his own keyring. He slid Althea's master key onto the ring, nestling it right next to his office key. It looked like it belonged there. He clicked the ring shut and shoved the whole jangling mess into his trouser pocket.

He locked the boiler house door with a final, heavy thunk.

As he walked across the asphalt toward his bungalow, he looked up. A thin, pale wisp of smoke was curling out of the high brick chimney, disappearing into the black, starless sky. There was no smell now, just the cold winter air, but he noticed something else too , a ghostly white face looking through the window at the top of the boiler house.

No, it couldn't be, he stood aghast. a ghost? I'm imagining things now.

He reached his front door, stepped into the warmth of his hallway, and hung his coat up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys, dropping them into the ceramic bowl on the hall table. Althea's key sat right on top, gleaming under the hallway light, a bright, brass reminder of the night's work.

He headed for the kitchen to put the kettle on, his mind already drifting to the quiet life he'd fought so hard to protect. Behind him, under a workbench in a locked room, a mobile phone remained dark and silent, and a gold necklace lay in the dust, waiting for a day that Gerald hoped would never come.

Gerald's wife, Jane, used to Gerald spending time away from her in the school, even in the evenings, murmured to him half asleep... "Come to bed Gerald, you're late this evening. Where have you been?" he didn't answer. "Oh and open the window will you! It's hot in here."

"yes dear," he replied.

In her cottage in Woodend, Shirley was also having a hot flush. She tossed and turned in her bed, throwing the duvet off and stretching her foot out to cool it, then feeling cold again and dragging it back. Nightmares wove their threads around her brain, bodies bleeding, burning, crawling around, half dead, screams and shouts and a strip of light whipping in the darkness with a hollow face and penetrating dark eyes.....