Cruel Pink by Tanith Lee (uplifting book club books TXT) 📕

anything on it. Cleanish water also runs from the taps. Perhaps the fishing man would have called them ‘faucets’, in the American way. Because I’d thought later he did have a faint US accent, under and around, sort of tangled up in his London English one.)

He would be perfectly safe in the cellar. For now, or forever. He wouldn’t even be on his own. There were the rags and whitish ribs and splinters of a few more expersons. In winter the cellar was nearly as cold as the fridge. Even in summer it wasn’t too bad. Or, enough not to upset me, I suppose. As I said, the smell doesn’t trouble me. So, it is the smell of death and decay. They too exist. They underline all things, just as does the scent of sap and vegetable growth, and of flesh that is living, whether animal, avian or human.

After I kill I always feel improved. I feel—satisfied. As if I’d cleaned the room, (which I seldom do), or cooked a wonderful meal, (which I never did or do or, presumably, ever will do.)

And the moment when I actually kill When I squeeze the trigger of the gun, or employ the knife or other sharp weapon, or strangle with a cord or my bare hands—which, with some of the less strong, (normally women), I can adopt occasionally as my method. I’ve used other means too; there seems no point in boringly listing each and all here (I may change my mind.) But I think my—targets, shall I say?—their type, something I see or detect in them, makes me decide how I should accomplish their individual murders. Just as I know when I notice them, or meet them they, this one or that one, is to be killed by me—the idea of pre-arrangement I mentioned previously. I can walk through crowds all day and find no one that’s suitable. It’s happened. Now and then it’s happened on and on, and I begin always to be slightly uneasy, as if never again will I be able to find someone to kill. A year or so ago I was like that for almost four months. This wasn’t good for me. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t wake up properly, either. I hardly went out in the end.

Then one morning a man went by me near the remains of Marks and Spencer’s, (in the likewise remains of the old High Street), and he was the one. And it was simply all there again. The relief nearly made me shout aloud. I was so happy. Him in fact I shoved in the canal at the deepest stretch, up past the railway bridge. He couldn’t swim, as I’d learned, and I’d partly stunned him, too. I watched him drown. I couldn’t stop smiling. He was one of the best, I have to say, but that may only have been because of the enforced abstinence that was the prologue.

That night after the fishing man, and knowing he was there below, in the cold autumn pantry of the cellar, I heard a plane go over. You rarely do now, do you, and then generally only by night. I wondered where it was going, but it hardly mattered. Yet… there was a kind of half-musical balance for a few seconds, the upper melody of the engines overhead, and me lying on grandmother’s bed—the central theme—while below the darkened strings of my latest victim’s deadness formed the base, the percussion, steady and solid as an ancient, ticking clock.

Curious, night thoughts.

Rod:

5

I made notes on the train. I always make notes. They’re useful, I find, or at least they pass those spaces when there is nothing to do. I looked out of the train windows as well, and when the trolley came round with all that rattle and pretence of a sudden party, I bought a black tea and a shortbread biscuit. It’s an hour’s journey out of London. She lives in Brighton, my aunt. Vanessa, she’s called. I believe after Ms Redgrave. When I was a lot younger I used to ask myself if I’d have liked Aunt Vanessa better if she were Vanessa Redgrave. But probably not, if she still acted like my aunt.

When I arrived at her house near Kemp Town, it was about twelve forty-five, a quarter to one. I say about, my watch was playing up. It tends to do that on or after a train journey, even of twenty minutes. Most machines play up when I use them. At work it’s our department’s running joke. My computer always goes wrong, and the laptop, well, Forrel actually accused me of sabotaging it. But normally someone just says ‘Poor old Rod. He can’t even get a dog to obey him.’ I don’t, incidentally, have a dog. In a flat, anyhow, animals aren’t a wise choice.

6

Vanessa was in her scrubbed oak kitchen, preparing lunch, which consisted as usual of some cold bought meats and a lot of bright green supermarket salad. She doesn’t drink, but always offers me a glass of wine. Sometimes I say no. But I thought I’d accept this time.

“It’s not good for you, you know, Roderick.”

“What isn’t, Auntie?” I still call her that, because she once said I should, and she had never amended her edict.

“Alcohol, Roderick.”

She’s sixty, if I have the math right, but looks a bit a younger, slim and bright-eyed from all the salads and yoga classes, with bobbed grey hair that bounces irritatingly with health.

The wine came in a shiny glass that could hold a decent amount, if filled up, but she as ever failed to fill further than one third of the way. It was white, the wine, Sicilian according to the bottle, before she recorked and shoved it in the fridge. As if any minute the Continence Police would arrive. If she doesn’t drink herself, I often wonder why does she do it up—she wouldn’t be offering me any more, I know