the tenancy agreement: chapter 12

2005

November

Tom was vacuuming the sodden salt from the carpet. It was so wet and thick that it didn’t suck up easily, crystalline clumps breaking apart and darting across the carpet. It smelt like day-old raw meat shaken into washing up liquid. When he finally got the salt up the stain underneath was still there. It had faded from red down to a deep brown like a birthmark, as prominent as it had been the day before. Somehow more so with its dull tones. Greg, Joe and Jonathan were sitting on chairs around him with a plastic bag full of cans of lager at their feet. Despondent, they looked at the stain. A black eye on the face of the carpet. It said murder like a newspaper headline. Tom pushed the vacuum cleaner to one side and opened a can.

“That looks much better,” said Joe. They had to smile. It really did look shit.

“Yeah,” said Tom. He had spent most of the afternoon with an Irish girl he had met a couple of years earlier at a house party, kissing on the floor of her bedroom. Just half-hearted. To pass the time. Easier than conversation. They had always sort of wanted to fuck but it had never got around to happening. They tried it once drunk but it hurt. Her legs were a bit bowed and her feet pointed inwards. Her face was composed of sharp angles. She had invited him up to her room after a concert but they’d only talked about air travel. White walls and fairy lights. By that point too nervous or indifferent to do anything else. He imagined her cunt but it wasn’t with desire. And the white Gaelic skin that led to it. “I would say we’re going to lose our deposit but we killed our landlord yesterday.”

Greg smirked over his ring pull.

“Could be worse,” he said.

“Much worse,” said Jonathan.

“It’s fine,” said Joe.

“Completely,” said Tom.

They all four took a pull on their beers. It looked like a synchronized act. Measured and precise. A modern callisthenic ritual.

“Where’re Ezra and Conor?” said Jonathan.

“Ezra’s in there,” said Tom, gesturing towards his bedroom. “Haven’t seen Conor all day.”

“Probably went out,” said Greg.

Jonathan stood up and went and knocked on Ezra’s door.

“You want a beer?” he said.

They came back in together, Ezra opening a can. He looked at the stain and shook his head.

“Who put that salt down there?” he said after three, four mouthfuls. He drank beer from the corner of his mouth. You could see it pouring out of the can between his parted lips. Dissipating specks of foam in his beard.

“Me,” said Tom.

“It looks bloody awful.”

“I know. I thought salt was supposed to help with red stains.”

“It does,” said Joe.

“Yeah, it does,” said Ezra. “But only if you put it down straight away, and only if you haven’t made a soaking mess of fairy liquid and shit beforehand.”

“We had to do something,” said Tom.

“And now we still have to do something,” said Ezra.

“That’s enough,” said Greg. Bored of it.

“It does look terrible,” said Jonathan.

“And we’re out of salt,” said Tom.

Ezra drained his beer and opened another. Looked at the four of them as he took the first swallow.

“To be honest it’s not the carpet we should be worrying about,” he said eventually.

“What do you mean?” said Joe.

“It’s probably the body in the basement we need to deal with.”

“We’ve discussed this,” said Greg. “We don’t know what to do with it.”

“We need to do something. Tom’s right: it will smell. Very soon. And if anyone else comes knocking looking for a missing man, I don’t want to be the one trying to explain what the stench is.”

He had read about a research centre in the USA where they have corpses laid outside on a patch of grass behind security fences so they can assess the stages of decay and decomposition. And an immortal jellyfish, turritopsis nutricula. When a corpse is embalmed they place a modesty cloth over the genitalia. Dead on a table and they have to hide the sex organs. Sanitize my dead parts for the good of yourselves, your vision! Perhaps a limp penis makes it too personal. The horror of an exposed, coarsely hirsute declivity. Too dirty. Insufficiently presentable.

“Okay. What do we do?” said Greg.

“We tidy up,” said Ezra. He rested one hand on his knee. “Simple.”

“But what are we going to actually do?” Aggression felt bloated under the surface of Greg’s patronising emphasis.

“I say we get the body back up here, wait until later and then take it somewhere and bury it,” said Jonathan.

“Where do we take it and bury it?” said Greg. Sharp-voiced. “We haven’t got a car and I don’t think they’ll let us take him on the night bus.”

“What about the park?”

“It’s a public park,” said Ezra. “How are we going to have time to dig a grave in a public park, much less not get noticed doing it. It’s not going to happen.”

“What about the river?” said Joe. Pillaging his brain for the city’s natural resources. It had hidden death for centuries. Swallowed it in its concrete and its topography. A city built around death. “Walk him down to Greenwich and just dump him in the water.”

“Do-able but not ideal,” said Greg. “Fucker’ll end up floating up somewhere and they’ll have him identified and be knocking that fucking door down.”

“And then how will we explain the stain?” said Tom. He lit a cigarette. “That’d be a lot of red wine.”

“Look, carrying him anywhere has got to be a bad idea. This may be London but you can’t just carry a dead body around, even here. People notice that kind of thing. Notice it and don’t like it.” Ezra was massaging one temple as he spoke. His fingers crackled over his hair.

“Then what do you have in mind?” said Joe. “The garden?”

Ezra raised an eyebrow. His mouth formed a smile from its sneer. An involuntary motion.

“You’re serious,” said Greg. “You want to bury our landlord in his own back garden?”

“Why not? It makes perfect sense. As Joe said himself, half of the hole’s already dug, and it’s near enough six feet. We just need to bang him in there” – he clapped as he said it, emphasizing the simplicity – “and fill it in.”

“It’s private, I suppose,” said Jonathan.

“Entirely. And the neighbour’s will be glad to see the back of that fucking hole.”

“I’m not sure,” said Tom.

“I’m telling you, it’s the safest option,” said Ezra. “The police don’t just dig up a garden because a grown man goes missing. They need suspicion, and why the hell would they assume a few university kids would wind up doing some massive murder burial cover-up thing? They wouldn’t, is the answer.”

He took a cigarette from Tom’s packet and lit it. Satisfied suck. His lips clicked around the butt. He looked at Joe. For consensus.

“Beats carrying him around London,” said Joe.

He looked at Greg.

“I haven’t got a better idea,” said Greg.

He looked at Jonathan.

“We need to get him out of that basement,” said Jonathan.

He looked at Tom.

“Okay, I’m in,” said Tom. “But there’s something else I think we should take care of.”

“What?” said Ezra.

“Hands. And teeth.”

“Jesus that’s fucking sick,” said Greg.

“What do we have to do?” said Joe. Sounded interested. He was big into fishing and slaughtering animals for meat, acts tinged with the seed of psychopathy. It sat uncomfortably with his vocational urbanity. He justified it by eating them, but anyone could see it was about more than food. When he had been on holiday in Africa he had reverted to a primal state. The rumour was that he smoked street heroin in his hotel room and then tried to hunt birds bare-chested with a bow and arrow. Climbed trees in torn bootcut jeans and tattered suede boots. Scared off the birds with the glare of his sunglasses.

“Cut them off and knock them out. Makes it a bit harder to identify.”

“He’ll be buried,” said Ezra. “There’ll be no identification.”

“Just in case. We’re not going to live here forever, and I don’t want this coming back and fucking me in ten years. It’s a shit job but we get it done now and that’s it, it’s dealt with.”

Greg gave a measured snort. He wanted clean hands but there was blood in his veins. His fingernails were tainted.

“Well I’m not doing it,” he said. He put a few fingers into his pocket.

“We’re all fucking doing it,” said Tom.

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“We’ll do it Greg,” said Jonathan. “We can do it.”

“It seems unnecessary,” said Ezra.

“Just humour me. I think it’s the best idea. It severs something.” Tom blinked when he spoke. His life felt small before him. “Weirdly makes it faceless. An end to personality. A lot of people see the soul in the hands, like they’re the most personal thing we have.”

“Agreed,” said Joe.

It was dark out. Ezra stood up, put his empty can down on the table.

“Now?” he said.

They all stood up.

“Shit, let’s get this done quickly,” said Greg.

They walked in single file down the hallway to the basement. It hadn’t taken long for everything to become normal, the shock of the murder engulfed in the movements of their still occurring lives. Moral concerns soon become practical. There was resignation not remorse in their complaints. It was like they had broken a window or left the tap running. Life itself a disposable commodity of occasional convenience. Start of a century. Defend our awful selves.

“So what’s the plan?” said Jonathan at the door.

“We get down there, get him up here, cut his hands off and smash his teeth out and then bury the bastard in the swimming pool.” Greg spoke like he was reading from an instruction manual. Following line diagrams for a flat-packed wardrobe. Key actions circled and magnified.

“What shall we do with the... trimmings?” said Ezra.

“We can burn the hands next time we have a fire,” said Tom. “And just hide the teeth.”

“Hide?” said Ezra. Tom nodded. “Okay.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” said Joe, to Tom.

“I watch films.”

“Well let’s go,” said Jonathan.

“Right,” said Greg.

“Here we go,” said Ezra.

“To the basement,” said Tom.

“Down the hatch,” said Joe.

Nobody moved. They nodded like they were party to a critically decisive action but their eyes hugged the floor that their focus stayed flat down upon.

“Fuck it,” said Greg. He pulled the basement door open. It reeked of piss but none of them noticed. Didn’t notice Conor’s dressing gown, soaked and screwed in a ball amongst all the other clothes on the stairs. He moved his foot towards the top step. Tom grabbed his arm. Hissed loud whispers into his ear.

“Wait, wait,” he said. Greg jumped. Playing for time. Not the fucking basement. Just the thought of the smell was like something solid stuck in the throat. Choke on the possible, the prospective. Choke on an uncertain olfactory outcome of a future event. Please give me the Heimlich manoeuvre.

“What?” he said.

“I think we better get him into the bath. To cut him up I mean. We don’t want to fuck up the carpet any more than we have already.”

“That’s it?” said Greg. Frown spread over his face like make up.

“Yes.”

“Well for fuck’s sake, don’t make me jump like that. We’ll get him out of the fucking basement first, then we’ll worry about getting him up the stairs.”

“Okay,” said Tom. “Sorry. Let’s go.”

Greg went down a few steps. Why wasn’t there a light on the stairs? Someone must have moved the torch. Carpet felt damp under the soles of his trainers but he paid no attention. Looked back at the other four, still stood like exhibits peering through glass at his stuttered descent.

“Look you’re coming down here too,” he said. “I’m not doing this on my own.”

They do. Looked at each other and then Joe started to follow Greg, and the others fell into line with the measured slow progress of a silent carnival parade. An Alejandro funeral. Smelt less than they thought it would. Maybe the door kept it in. Maybe the decay was slower than they’d imagined. It’d hit them when they pulled the door. Dead atoms breathed into the lungs – they’d feel the end inside them. Taste death on their flat tongues with the clarity of a prophet’s vision. Death waited in carpets rolled in basement tunnels. Until then it just smelt vaguely like piss, a passing waft. Was that how it smelt, a whole life reduced to the odour of a common excretion, a crucial body function? They crept down the steps as though they might wake him up.

Lucas Manckiewicz
Son, brother and man
Who fell asleep
A night or so ago.

The unmade headstone. The unmarked memorial. It would only exist in the knowledge of their actions. They stopped at the bottom. Their breaths were loud and heavy with nerves. The electricity meter clicked through quantifiable units.

“So,” said Greg, “we’ll pull him out of here and get him up the stairs. Agreed?”

Mumbled assent. Hard to motivate for this kind of thing. Not a lot to say.

“Typical fucking Conor,” said Ezra. “Missing the difficult bit.”

“Where is Conor?” said Joe. A night off coke had made his voice sound younger.

“I don’t know. I saw him this morning.”

“He’s probably off with his other friends,” said Jonathan.

“He’s got the right idea,” said Tom.

“Yeah, well fuck Conor,” said Greg, trying to clap them into action. Anxiety made him organised. Fear made him managerial. Both odd traits for a man of Greg’s insubstantial work ethic. He spoke like a marshal at a team building conference. Dulled and nasal. “We’ve still got to get this done. He can clean the carpet. I’m going to open the door.”

They all instinctively moved backwards. Greg flicked on the light switch on the right of the door and then started to open it crack by crack. It would have creaked in a horror film but it was silent. They squinted into the light that swamped the darkness. Blinked their eyes in adjustment. Their presence there felt shameful.

“Oh shit,” said Greg.

Peering into the tunnel. The fuck was he talking about? Followed his eyes and then they saw it. Rug unrolled and thick with blood and flanked by busted furniture and brick dust piles but empty. No body. Unrolled and no body. Wasn’t in the tunnel wasn’t in the basement. No body.

“What the cunt?” said Tom. Unconcealed alarm. The beginning of an asthma episode.

“This is a problem,” said Ezra.

“Where is he?” said Jonathan.

“He’s not here,” said Joe. He stepped onto the rug and walked knees bent down the tunnel. Lifted some bits of wood like a languid search party.

“He must be here,” said Greg. “We killed him and dumped him down here. He couldn’t just get up and wander off.”

“Maybe he wasn’t dead?” said Tom. “You read about it all the time. Bells in coffins. Shredded fingernails. Ah fuck.” Hands gripped on the sides of his head. Felt like he was going to puke. Rich smell of blood. Earthy they say now.

“Wasn’t dead?” said Greg. “You saw him. We kicked his face apart and he slit his throat. He was dead.”

“Then where is he?” said Ezra.

“I don’t know so stop fucking asking me.”

“Maybe he wasn’t dead,” said Tom again. Peering down the tunnel to Joe. Looking for a body. Willing it back. “Maybe we just knocked him out or something. And he got out and...”

“Tom, Tom, he was dead,” said Ezra. “And even if he wasn’t we rolled him up in a rug. How the fuck would you roll your gravely injured body back out of a rug heavy with your own fucking blood?”

“Shit. Oh shit,” said Tom.

“We’re fucked,” said Greg. “This is fucked.”

“A body doesn’t just disappear,” said Joe. His eyes looked tear swollen.

“And no one’s been in here but us,” said Jonathan.

Ezra clicked his fingers, his face stretched into a smile.

“Conor,” he said.

“What about him?” said Greg. “You think he took him with him?”

“Maybe he dealt with it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I have a bad feeling,” said Tom. Jumper soaked with sweat but his skin felt cold. Anomalous body.

“That’s because you killed your landlord and the body’s gone walkabout,” said Ezra. “I imagine a bad feeling’s a pretty natural response to something like that.”

“What are we supposed to do?” said Joe.

“Get the hell upstairs for one thing.”

“A dead body doesn’t disappear,” said Jonathan.

“He was dead, wasn’t he?” said Tom.

“HE WAS DEAD. WE FUCKING KILLED HIM.” Greg was shouting. Confusion made him spiteful. Doom made him violent.

“Then where the fuck is he?”

“I DON’T KNOW.”

“Let’s continue this riveting conversation upstairs,” said Ezra. “There must be an explanation. Bodies don’t just vanish. Let’s phone Conor and get rational. Get philosophical. There’s no need to panic yet. The police aren’t hammering on the door, are they, so I think it’s fair to assume that Lucas hasn’t been staggering around the city and telling anyone who’ll listen exactly what happened to him. All we need to do is think. There’s always a rational explanation.”

“Rational explanation fucking nothing,” said Tom. “A disappearing corpse goes against rational, don’t you think?”

“You’re a shit atheist, Tom,” said Ezra. Gut swollen with the poorly digested memories of his own degree topics. “Let’s just get upstairs before we start jumping to any generic conclusions, shall we?”

He pushed past the others and went up the stairs. He wore cheap white trainers tightly laced on his feet beneath the dress. They made him look like a doctored photograph.

“Come on,” he said from the top step. Greg turned the light out and closed the door to the tunnel. They followed him out and walked their damp piss footprints through the house, the smell of blood still behind them like a shadow.