A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

what kind of man this was.’

       Leave us alone.

      ‘I’m expecting his sister for tea. Perhaps we could talk later?’

      ‘This is a discussion we must have, Mr Mercer.’

      For a while I didn’t think she would come. I made coffee and tidied up a little. I could still hear the tap running through the wall, and I guessed from the tiny scraping sounds that she was picking up the cutlery and trying to replace the drawer. Eventually she turned off the tap, and a minute after that she was sitting at our kitchen table.

      Her name was Rose, and her hands shook as she drank her coffee. Her lower left arm was covered in silver bracelets, which glinted as she moved: a soft metallic sound, like breath. Why hadn’t I noticed before?

      I suggested she speak to the police. I hoped they wouldn’t reveal that I was under suspicion, because there was something genuine about her, and I wanted her to like me. Even in her grief she was sweet and self-deprecating and funny.

      ‘Was it you who found him?’ she asked after a while.

      ‘Yes. And my son. We were looking for the cat.’

      She nodded as if that explained it.

      ‘Thanks.’

      We sat and drank coffee in silence. Then she asked if I minded if she smoked. ‘In the garden, I mean. Would that be OK?’

      ‘You don’t need to go in the garden.’

      She produced a packet of Kensitas Club and offered me one. She took out a silver lighter and tried to light my cigarette, hand shaking.

      ‘You’re not really a smoker, are you?’ I said.

      ‘It’s that obvious?’

      ‘Girls like you don’t smoke Kensitas Club.’ I sniffed the cigarette in my hand. ‘And these are stale. You nick them from a party?’

      The sadness lifted from her, and she smiled, making light.

      ‘Busted.’ A glint in her eye. More than just a nice English girl, then.

      ‘Want a proper cigarette?’

      ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

      I lit two cigarettes at the stove, handed her one. She gripped the cigarette like a pen, took a drag, watched the smoke as it curled upwards. She was nothing like Millicent but she had something of the same underlying strength, some quality that made me feel I could trust her, almost as if we shared a secret, though if you had asked me to define what I liked about her I would have struggled, would have worried that you thought I was attracted to her.

      ‘Was it awful for you?’ The aching sadness was back. ‘Did it look as if he was suffering? I mean, of course he was suffering. He had to be to do that. But how did he seem?’ I could feel her struggling for the words. ‘Did he look all right?’

      ‘I think it was OK. He looked OK.’ I thought again about that rictus smile. Of course it was awful. The erection. The violence of it. Of course he didn’t look all right. But the poor man was someone’s brother. He was Rose’s brother.

      ‘He looked dignified. He looked peaceful.’

      He looked murdered.

      ‘You’re a good man, aren’t you? Was it really not awful?’

      ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not good. Other people are good. And it wasn’t awful.’ I was lying to soften the blow.

      ‘You are good, you know,’ she said. ‘There’s kindness in your voice.’

      She got up, asked if she could use the lavatory. Of course, I said, of course. I hoped we had shut the bedroom door.

      When she came downstairs I could tell she had been crying.

      ‘He really wasn’t a bad man,’ she said. ‘It’s important you understand that.’

      ‘Why would I think he was a bad man?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You might. For what he did.’

      I told her I understood, although in truth I did not.

      ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the coffee, and for the cigarette.’

      ‘Coffee and cigarettes is pretty much all I’m good at.’

      ‘Don’t forget kindness.’ She took my hand in hers, then stopped as if embarrassed. ‘Will you come to the funeral, Alex? He didn’t know so many people. Bit of a loner.’

      ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

      Then she kissed me on the cheek and was gone.

      I sat down at my computer at the kitchen table.

      Max came home at four. He commented on the smell of cigarette smoke, made his own sandwich, and went up to his room. Then he came back down and asked me for five pounds.

      ‘What do you want five pounds for?’

      ‘We don’t have any milk.’

      ‘Milk doesn’t cost five pounds.’

      ‘OK, two pounds then.’

      ‘All right, Max. Here’s two pounds.’

      ‘Thanks, Scots Dad.’

      ‘There’s nothing mean about me giving you two pounds to buy milk.’

      ‘Do you want the change?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘OK, Dad. You’re not mean at all.’

      I ruffled his hair.

      ‘Want me to come to the shop with you, Max?’

      ‘No, it’s OK.’

      I rang Millicent again. Left the same message again. Added that I missed her and wanted her to come home, then felt foolish and tried to rerecord the message. The answering service cut me off.

      Max came home with a small carton of milk and a packet of Maltesers.

      ‘I don’t remember saying you could buy those, Max.’

      ‘You didn’t say I couldn’t.’

      ‘I said I wanted the change.’

      ‘Here.’ He handed me seven pence. ‘Do you want some Maltesers?’

      ‘Yeah. All right.’

      I pushed my computer to one side. We sat at the table drinking milk and dividing up the Maltesers. Max got a kitchen knife and cut his Maltesers into halves, and then into quarters. He sat dissolving them on his tongue, then sticking out his tongue to show me.

      ‘What do you want for supper?’

      ‘It’s Mum’s turn to make dinner.’

      ‘I’m making it tonight.’

      ‘Fish and chips. From the fish and chip shop, not home made.’

      ‘OK.’

      ‘Can you give me the money, and I can buy it?’

      ‘Later, OK?’

      ‘OK, Dad. Dad?’

      ‘Max?’

      ‘Aren’t you going to eat your Maltesers?’

      ‘You have them, Max.’

      ‘OK. Dad?’

      ‘Max?’

      ‘Tarek said you’re going to send me to a psychiatrist.’

      ‘Why did he say that?’

      ‘I told him what I saw.’

      ‘Well,