دومین قاتل

Chapter 10 The Second Murder

Guy took the train for Great Neck that night. He had the gloves and his own small gun in his pocket. Bruno’s gun was too big. It was raining when Guy got off the train at Great Neck. There was the bus, like Bruno had said in all his letters. Guy remembered all of it.

At Grant Street he got off the bus and started to walk. There was the tree and the street light, and there was the white wall of Bruno’s house. Guy felt like an actor in a play he’d already done hundreds of times.

Guy walked fifteen steps along the white wall, then he put up his hands and jumped on to the top of the wall. He looked down and saw the wooden box. There were no lights on in the house. Guy jumped down on to the box, landed without a sound, and ran across the grass towards the back door. He went up the six white steps near the back of the house and opened the back door — he didn’t need the key.

The kitchen was dark. Guy walked across it and then went towards the back stairs that the servants used. Bruno had told him not to use the house stairs because they all made a noise. But Guy had to be careful here, too. He missed step three, step four and step seven on the back stairs because they made a noise.

Outside the door to one of the servants’ bedrooms the floor made a noise, and at the same time Guy heard a clock - it was midnight. He stopped. The servant was on the other side of the door. The noise of the clock went on and on — could the servant hear? Now he remembered, Bruno had said, ‘. . . between eleven and midnight.’ Was this why?

Guy felt very hot. Slowly, he opened the door into the part of the house where the family lived.

‘I’ve been here before,’ Guy thought. ‘I’ve done all this before.

I know everything about this house.’ Again he felt like an actor in a play who did the same thing night after night. None of it was real.

Guy closed the stair-door quietly. And there, just there, very near, was another door - and behind that door was Guy’s father. He walked quietly towards the door, and slowly opened it with his left hand. He held his gun in his right hand.

The bedroom was dark, but some light came through the window. It was only half open! Bruno said his father always had the window fully open.

‘Because of the rain,’ Guy thought. ‘But how will I get out?’

Now Guy could see Bruno’s father in his bed, sleeping quietly.

There was the round, dark shape of his head.

‘Ha-ha-ha-a!’ came through the window.

Guy shook with fear. A woman was laughing somewhere outside.

‘This man, this man is alive,’ Guy thought. ‘He could laugh, too, he could . . . No, don’t think. Don’t think. Do it now! Do it!’

He fired the gun. Nothing happened. It was all a dream, all a play, nothing was real! Guy fired again. Nothing . . . He breathed slowly and fired again. The room tore with a screaming sound. He fired a fourth time and the screaming sound came again, as if the world had burst.

‘Kagh!’ said the man in the bed, and his head moved.

Then Guy was running across the grass, but he didn’t remember how he had got there. He ran like a man in a bad dream who runs and runs but cannot move.

‘You!’ A man’s voice shouted behind him. It was the servant.

Guy stood in the shadow by the white wall.

‘You!’ the servant shouted again. Guy’s hand shot out and hit him on the chin and the man fell to the ground.

Guy jumped over the wall, but it was very dark and he didn’t know where he was. He tried to be calm, then he heard a police car very near him. The blue light moved over him for a few seconds.

‘Where am I?’ Guy thought. ‘I can’t remember . . . Where must I go?’

The blue light burned his eyes. He turned and ran away, then some trees caught him. The branches scratched his face and he pushed them away with his hands, but there were hundreds of them.

He couldn’t see, he couldn’t think. He felt his own blood warm on his face and throat.

Finally, Guy got out of the trees and saw a road and the lights of a town. He walked slowly along the road. He still had his gun, but his gloves were torn to pieces. They were probably in the trees behind him. He was too tired to go back and look. He wanted to walk and never stop.

♦

The next day Guy looked at his face in the mirror. It was covered in scratches, and so were his hands. His body was heavy and tired. He thought he could never sleep enough in his life.

Guy read the papers. All the stories about the murder said the murderer was a big, tall man, nothing like himself. But it said the bullets were very small and Guy knew he had to throw away his gun. While he was reading, the doorbell rang.

‘Hello, Guy. Guy! How did . . .?’ It was Anne. ‘Oh, Guy, what happened to your face? Your hands!’

‘A fight. It was nothing,’ he said. ‘In a bar, a . . . Anne?’

Anne didn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘But Guy, that letter, the fight you had in my garden that night, and now this . . . What’s happening?’

He felt frightened, then he started to cry and couldn’t stop.

Anne put her hand on his shoulder, but she didn’t try to hold him.

‘If I tell her the truth,’ Guy thought, ‘she’ll never touch me again.’