‘He’s around the midway mark,’ he said. ‘Please, please don’t rip it.’
I scanned through the horrible texture of newspaper, hating the dry, velvety feel of it on my fingertips as I passed through the mundane local journalism. School fair, school play, new community hall, school presents gender-flipped nativity, school faces dozens of complaints, and then I found him. There were some six or so other people in the photo, all pensioners. But there he was on the left, unmistakable. Either the years had been kind to him, or the photo had been put through Photoshop: he was rocking a full, thick head of hair like some kind of wannabe silver fox. It was funny: even in the monochrome paper, I could still make out that bronze ring on his little finger. I bet part of them all felt a little bit pleased that they had managed to get away with it.
I must have let my feelings make their way to my face, as Angus’s face shifted into a scowl in response.
‘Don’t you do it. Don’t do it. If you do it, you’ll be the stupidest person in the history of the whole planet. So just don’t.’
‘I’m not going to do it,’ I said calmly and serenely back to him. ‘Do you really think I’d be that idiotic?’
He waved his hands up in exasperation before slapping them against his face.
‘Well, come on, Fran, it’s not like you went and killed O’Neill now, is it? With no planning or prep. I could have at least helped.’
‘How could you have helped?’ I asked, feeling the repressed pangs of infuriation begin to ascend. I had been here twominutes, and I was already fed up with Angus always pretending he was this wise old sage when he barely knew how to work the microwave. ‘You could have brought a stack of papers to mop up the blood, right? That would have been your contribution to the whole thing, I bet.’
‘Oh, piss off,’ Angus said, storming out of the small kitchenette and towards his bedroom, where he slammed the door shut behind him.
Of course we had argued. Every time I’d come over recently, we’d seemed to argue. Maybe we were more like brother and sister than we thought, or maybe if we hadn’t gone through so much shared trauma, we would have killed each other ages ago.
‘Don’t walk away, come on,’ I yelled pleadingly. ‘I’m only joking.’
I closed the paper and placed it back on the pile as neatly as I could, careful not to add any flame to the fire as I began to walk to his bedroom, ready to execute the whole ‘apology’ act that I knew he needed. But just as I did that, he marched back in, grabbed the paper, and inserted it into its proper place in the middle of the pile, which I, of course, had failed to do in my foolish ignorance.
‘Are you going to get your job back?’ I asked after him as he angrily sauntered off again, trying to organise something that clearly bothered him in one of the other stacks.
‘No,’ he grunted.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not going back to cleaning supermarket floors. It’s degrading.’
‘Oh, come on, you cannot take some kind of high ground here,’ I groaned at him. ‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with supermarket work.’
He wasn’t having it. I knew he didn’t actually find the work degrading; it was just another excuse so he could stay insideand not do anything other than get papers delivered, watch TV, eat food, and then go to sleep. Sure, he had trauma to process, but I’d gone through everything he had, and I was a functioning member of society.
Angus was still silent. He just kept on fiddling around with his newspapers, using his index finger and thumb to gently manoeuvre each sheet into its right place, ultra-careful not to crease or rip.
I knew what would get him talking to me, so I slipped my hand into my jeans pocket, closed my fingers around the small plastic bag, and yanked it out. Angus watched me in his peripheral vision, clearly aware of what it was before his eyes had even properly focused on it. He stopped his ameliorating and walked – still with more than a hint of sulk – over to me to inspect.
I passed him the bag that still had a few smudges of blood inside and he felt around the plastic-encased ring. His eyes were transfixed on it, mesmerised.
‘You want me to hold this one with Macleod’s?’
‘Surprisingly, living next door to the murder I committed means it’s probably best that I don’t have any evidence on me,’ I remarked. ‘So I would consider it a big personal favour if you could hang onto it for the time being.’
He gave a grunt as he continued to inspect every tiny scratch of the ring through the plastic bag.
‘Would you have done it?’ I asked him. That stopped his trance. He placed his hands in his pocket with the ring, performed his signature sigh, and pursed his lips together.
‘No.’
‘What would you have done?’
‘I don’t know, reported him to the police or something. I wouldn’t have killed him in broad daylight like you, you lunatic.’
‘I mean, I gave him a choice?’ I said, trying to ignore the irritation I felt at being called a lunatic.
‘You only did that to make yourself feel better. You really think you wouldn’t have still killed him if he said he’d go public with what they did to us?’
