and on like. Couple of years. Just - somebody, you know - we’d walk out to where there was some green, you know, and he set snares, for rabbits, he said, but he never caught nothing. Birds - prop a box on a stick. Nothing ever came into the box. Anyways.
‘I was, maybe, fourteen. I was fourteen. He got himself a girl for walking out, he did. He made jokes about her to me but they walked out. Elinor Grimble. She was fat, not a pretty girl, glad even to have him, I suppose. He told me things about her - said he, you know, did things to her—’ Mulcahy looked up to make sure that ‘did things to her’ was understood. ‘She let him do things, if you follow.’
Denton wondered if Mulcahy’s was some sort of sexual insanity. The kind of man who bothered women? Some form of compulsion, like exhibitionism? A number of the books on Denton’s shelves were about such men.
‘He said - he said I could watch if I wanted. There was a place they went to outside of town, down a railway cutting, a kind of little grove sort of, trees. In there. So I hid there and he brought her and they were in the trees and she let him, you know - he put his hands on her, you know, up top. And she didn’t like it, I could see, but he got quite excited, and when she said that was enough, stop, and so on, he got more excited and more excited and he hit her.’ He didn’t look at Denton but seemed lost in the tale - and excited by it. ‘He hit her.’
Too late, Denton had a sick sense that he was being used. Like being forced to watch a man masturbate.
‘He got rougher and took some of her, you know, her upper clothing off, and she got nasty and he hit her again, and that went on, I mean him hitting her, and he took out his pocket-knife and he cut her.’ Mulcahy paused. The idea of cutting a woman seemed to astonish him. He was sweating. With his eyes closed, he said, ‘First, he did it to her. He violated her. And while he was still - you know, he was, um, inside of her, he cut her. Throat.’ His voice was hoarse.
‘All right, all right—’ Denton stood.
‘And then - it was awful, oh, God! - he went to stabbing her and cutting her and him half-naked, his thing hanging down, cutting her and cutting her—! He cut right into her female place and cut through the skin of her belly and then he reached up inside and—!’ He was bug-eyed. Shaking with what seemed like real fear now, but somehow excited. ‘It made me puke!’
Mulcahy must be eased out; even a little man could be dangerous if he was crazed. Mulcahy was, he saw, using him to arouse himself - maybe hoping to arouse him, too. Perverse. He went to the door.
Mulcahy didn’t seem to notice him. ‘Then he run off. Right off. Disappeared.’
‘So you were well rid of him.’
‘Not half.’ Mulcahy’s voice was a whisper. ‘I didn’t hear nothing for six years. Then—Then comes a letter from Germany with bits of newspaper in it - that funny-looking lettering. They was about three murders. Women. I knew it was him.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t see how you could know that.’
‘Couple more years, I got a letter from France. Nothing but clippings - more women cut up, murdered. Then Holland!’ He looked up. ‘He was keeping me up to date, see?’
Denton had his hand on the doorknob. ‘I’m afraid this is all the time I can give you, sir.’
‘My mum was dead by then, nothing to hold me. I moved on to a couple of places, and the letters they stopped. Couldn’t find me, and good riddance! I was free of him, see? And then, tonight—’ He put his face in his hands. ‘Tonight - oh, my dear God! - I’m walking on the street and—’
‘Well, sir, you know, we see people who look like people we used to know, but—’
A crash sounded from below and the house shook. Denton heard the sergeant curse. Mulcahy jumped to his feet, shouting, ‘It’s him—!’
Denton strode to the dumb waiter. ‘Sergeant - sergeant, you all right?’
‘What d’you think, bloody silver tray on my head?’ Over the words was the sound of running steps on the stairs, two at a time, going down,