13. Escape

We turn to see what the suspicious David Rozelle is up to...

13. Escape

David Rozelle knew that somewhere along the line he just might have done something others might count as being wrong.

It had been so right in his own mind, though, to start with. Living at home with his elderly parents and watching the way they succumbed to the ending of their days with a horrible kind of awareness of the inevitability of death.

But that had been years ago and he knew he’d done the right thing. They were both miserable, but pretended, probably for his sake, that they weren’t. But there’s no way they could have been happy that their worlds were shrinking like they did. .

It had started with people they knew, forgetting their names, and he hated the way when they referred to someone they knew perfectly well as old what’s his name… They didn’t know the names of their best friends, for goodness sake! Along with any grasp of memory, they were gone. As if they’d never been.

So he’d helped them, hadn’t he? It had been so natural and right and proper, taking them one at the time on a trip to the lake, the same one they’d taken him to when he’d been a little boy and had a boat to sail on it, a small toy boat with a battery operated little motor. But those days had been a long time ago.

Then, one day he’d come home from the school where he worked with the remove class and mum had smiled at him and said “excuse me, young man, but who are you?”

And she had screwed her face up in concentration. She hadn’t known who he was! Her own son! So he’d said to her, “mum, you must know me…”

But she hadn’t. He had been able to tell from the puzzled look on her face, so he had done the only natural thing and taken her to the small lake the other side of the town. She had liked that. She loved being driven places in his car, it had been an adventure that excited her and made her gabble nonsense.

Once at the lake he had found a small inlet before burying an old kitchen knife he usually carried with him just in case, and pushing it into her flesh, as hard and as far as it would go, and it was either good fortune or skill, he didn’t know which, but she had taken one look at him as if she realised what he was doing, and gasped no, David… And she had died there and then, blood oozing from her, red blood, and he had buried her in the soft loam of the shores to the lake, buried her wonderfully deep so there would be almost no chance of her old flesh resurfacing and she could rest for ever in the kind of peace she had wanted all her life.

Dad had .looked for her, the silly old man. “Where’s mother?” he had asked in that pathetic whining voice of his, so he had taken him to the lake as well, to a different part of it, well away from mother, to where they had sailed the boat when he’d been a nipper, and dad had wept real tears when he saw the blade in David’s hand and begged for mercy, had even apologised for being a father because fathers do things that maybe they shouldn’t when boys are naughty, until he’d felt the very sharpness of it as David had used every ounce of his strength to push it towards the old man’s heart.

He’d changed homes soon after, and moved as a lodger into the house next door to where the pretty young woman lived. The old couple who lived there didn’t seem to mind having an unexpected lodger, more fool them.

He was there because of the girl.

He’d spied on her for some time. He’d noticed her walking to the supermarket where she worked, had trailed her invisibly, had watched those legs as they moved through the streets of Brumpton, had heard the lilt of her voice as she had sung little melodies to herself. Oh, how he’d wanted to grab her by one arm and tell her the truth, that he loved her with a passion so great it might be making him mad!

But he hadn’t done that because it would be foolish, wouldn’t it? Instead he had moved to live with the old couple who reminded him of his parents only they weren’t quite lost in the chaos of forgetful old age, and everything he’d done since then was decent and wholesome.

Until she, the old woman whose house he shared, had upset him. She had taken him to one side and asked him what he wad doing in her house. Of course she knew! Hadn’t he told her? Hadn’t he threatened to tell her husband about their affair if she didn’t remember.

It had made him angry. He could see history about to repeat itself, and in order to make quite sure that it didn’t he had taken the thick as dried dung Amanda Clitheroe onto the old rubbish dump behind the school, the one the council said it was going to turn into a playground or park or something like that, and sweet little thick Amanda hadn’t know why she was there with him, just that he’d chosen her, and hadn’t even known when the knife, the same one with his father’s blood staining it, slashed her useless flesh to pieces. He buried her there, a hunk of human rubbish deep in the remains of older rubbish that the council had been tipping there for as long as he could remember. She was gone, to have sweet new grass growing from the seed that the council had scattered there. She was feeding that grass. Her flesh was the substance that the council sent its tractor to mow when it grew proud and strong.

But now David Rozelle had a problem.

Somebody had seen him tip the old man onto it out of the blue wheelie bin, and watched as the stupid body rolled towards where little Amanda lay if she hadn’t decomposed already.

It was the silly lollipop man who ought to know better than challenge him. He’d sideld up to him and whispered about money and the police in one sentence. He had no intention of being charged with anything as horrible as murder and he didn’t haver much in the way of money! Teachers don’t, do they? All he’d done is help the souls of the worthless on their way to the hereafter. He should be praised for that!

He’d seen to the lollipop man, of course he had, arrangeing to pay him in the staff toilets, but it was getting to be too close to him for some bright policeman not to put one and one together and somehow unexpectedly arrive at two. So he’d done the most sensible thing he could imagine doing and simply walked out of the school. He’d just done that without even saying goodbye to his class of thickies. Nobody would see him because he had the knack of seeming invisible. A shadow of a man raising not the least bit of interest in the minds of the plebs who passed him by.

He was going to find the girl with the magical legs, the one who lived next door to where he’d lived until the rightful owners of the address had earned a place in the hereafter, and he was going to take her with him to his old home and the shadowed memories of his parents who were resting beneath the lake. He was going to be her lover. Maybe even her husband.

But first he must find her.

And wasn’t he lucky! Born lucky, that’s what he was, born on the right side of the sheets, whatever that might mean.

There she is!

Going up those steps, only three of four of them, but where to?

No! There’s a smartly painted sign and it says BRUMPTON POLICE.

So what’s the b***h doing? Has she worked out what he’d done to help the old folks he’d called his parents, on their way to glory? Why else would she be going there, and with such a determined tread?

He must get away. As far away as humanly possible and forget her legs! And her hair, her glorious hair… forget the fantasy of running his fingers through it and being overcome by the sweetness of its fragrance…

He must escape.

© Peter Rogerson 01.06.24