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One for You

Norm Hudson

    I’ve never been sensitive. Sensitivity isn’t part of my job. That’s what made the job easy. That and my experience. And this job was going to be easy. It was silent and quick and there was no way they could trace it back to me. I dropped the letter I was holding and started towards the kitchen. Each footstep made my head pound. I hadn’t had much sleep. Not for weeks. I walked towards the sink, stood to one side and tilted the slats of the shutter slightly so I could see out. The light outside was blinding but I could still see him. He was there like I knew he would be. I’d been watching him for weeks. There was a distant crack of a rifle. And he reacted like I knew he would. The hunting season was in full swing. I smiled.
    Not that way, mate, I thought. You’ll not die that way. I’ve got something better in store for you. But the hunters would be useful. They’d get the blame. It couldn’t work out better.
    I put on the rubber gloves and opened the fridge door. The minced lamb meatballs I’d cooked for our evening meal the night before were sitting on the foil in the almost empty refrigerator. I pulled them out and laced them with the Lanate I’d bought. I was glad the agricultural pesticide was so readily available on the island. No questions asked. It made my job easier.
    Welcome to Cyprus, I thought, Island of Love, as I wrapped the meatballs in the foil and carefully placed them in a plastic bag. A traditional Cyprus offering. The gift of food. He’d accept it like he’d accepted other gifts from locals. My vigil had not been for nothing. I imagined him eating my offering, shivering and falling down. An agonising death. But no more agony than he and his kind had inflicted on me. My eyes returned to the letter that I’d dropped among the pile of others on the desk as I left the flat with my minced meat offering wrapped in a plastic carrier bag. Soon it would all be over. One for me.
    The flat was silent on my return. I crossed to the desk and picked up the letter I’d dropped. I wondered briefly what made normally law-abiding people go to such terrible lengths to rid themselves of a nuisance. But I already knew. It had all started the day Jenny left. Leaving me with Lucy. And sleepless nights. One for you, Jenny. That’s when he’d started bothering me. A selfish, insensitive, racist, male chauvinist workaholic Jenny had called me that final day. Male chauvinist because I’d wanted her to stay at home and look after our eight year old daughter. Racist because she said I couldn’t understand her British culture, so different from my Greek Cypriot one. And insensitive because I didn’t show any feelings. Workaholic? I looked down angrily at the piles of paper on my desk. Stress. Stress had finally signalled the end of my marriage. And left me with a nuisance. Lucy. A nuisance and an inconvenience. How could I do the job with her around?
    I pulled off the rubber gloves and bent under the desk to throw them in the bin. Something blue lay on the floor. I picked it up. The blue Smartie Lucy had given me that morning before she left for school.
    “One for you. one for me,” she’d said shyly, placing the blue one tentatively on top of the mound of paperwork on my desk as if she was unsure of my reaction..
    An unexpected wave of love had engulfed me. I’d snorted. I was getting soft. I couldn’t afford to let sentiment cloud my job.
    Kids! I’d never had much time for them. And no experience of them. Noisy. Messy. Best kept in their place or got rid of. Like animals.
    The door banged. I started. Years of training. Ears alert.
    She walked into the room. A small, carbon copy of her mother. Maybe that’s why I was so tough on her.
    “You’re late!” I said gruffly.
    She looked wounded at my stern voice. I didn’t let it get to me.
    “I’m sorry. I went round to a friend’s.”
    “Don’t make it a habit!” I said.
    I didn’t want her making friends. It would make my job tougher. And being a policeman was tough enough. I smiled. That’s why they wouldn’t suspect me.
    He deserved it anyway. Him and his kind. For all the sleepless weeks he’d given me.
    The smile made Lucy braver.
    “Did you get my Smartie?” she said.
    “Yes, thanks,” I said curtly.
    She looked crestfallen and lowered those dark sweeping lashes so like her mother’s.
    “It was nice of you,” I heard myself say.
    Was I getting soft?
    Her eyes lit up.
    “You always tell me to share everything,” she said excitedly.
    “That’s right,” I said.
    At least she’s learning something off me, I thought. More than her mother ever did.
    She never learnt I had my job to do. And for years it had been easy. Until she and her kind descended on us. Foreigners. They had no understanding of the Cypriot way of life. All these stupid reports about suspected deliberate dog poisoning. And they expected me and my officers to investigate them. With our scarce resources! Didn’t they know how expensive and time-consuming forensic analysis was? And they were to blame themselves. Abandoning dogs and leaving them to roam the streets when they returned to their native country, unaware what the summer heat can do to some dogs. No wonder the dogs attacked people. Not that my own people were blameless. Chaining animals up in yards or locking them in cages with little exercise resulted in aggressive animals that barked incessantly and terrorised neighbourhoods. No wonder some local Cypriots had taken to deliberately poisoning dogs in parks, outside schools and even by throwing poisoned food into private gardens. You couldn’t blame them. Things like that could drive normally law-abiding people to terrible lengths to rid themselves of a nuisance. I knew.
    There was the distant crack of a rifle. I waited for the incessant sound of barking that had kept me awake for weeks. There was nothing. I smiled. One for me.
    “Oh, don’t smile!” Lucy said. “Those hunters are horrible people!”
    Not so horrible, I thought. They’d get the blame for the death of next door’s dog. That would take the pressure off me.
    Some people didn’t want the hunters and their dogs on their property. Some people even wanted to sell new dogs to the hunters so they poisoned their old ones. Not that that was my idea. I just wanted to get rid of a nuisance. And those letters – those things that had caused me all the stress - had given me the idea.
    “Why?” I said, playing along.
    “Because they’re cruel to animals,” she said.
    “Sometimes we have to be cruel,” I said.
    “What do you mean?” she asked.
    “Sometimes we have to get rid of things that annoy us.”
    Her eyes narrowed knowingly.
    “You mean like mummy?”
    “No, that’s not quite what I meant,” I said slowly.
    “But she annoyed you, didn’t she?”
    Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, I thought, but all I said was,
    “Sometimes.”
    “Is that why you got rid of her?”
    She was annoying me. Kids are annoying. Probing into what doesn’t concern them.
    “I didn’t get rid of her,” I said solemnly. “She left.”
    It was brutal. I could have softened the blow. Maybe that’s why she was brutal back.
    “Do I annoy you?” she said
    I looked down at the clone of my wife.
    It was just as well she didn’t give me a chance to reply. I might have regretted what I said. I told you. Kids are annoying.
    “Like that dog next door barking does,” she continued.
    “Sometimes,” I said a little too swiftly. She was irritating me. Like her mother.
    “Maybe he’s trying to tell you something,” she said.
    “Who?” I replied, quite losing the thread of the conversation.
    “The dog next door. Maybe he’s trying to tell you there are bad people about.”
    I thought of the pile of letters. And I thought of the Lanate. And the likes. And those that sold it. And those that let them. And then I dismissed the thought. I couldn’t afford to be soft. Not in my job.
    “Can we lay off the dog?” I said.
    I’d had enough.
    “Why?” she said. “Is it annoying you?”
    No longer, I thought. No longer. No more endless barking. No more weeks of sleepless nights. One for me.
    “Yes. And you’re annoying me. Asking all these questions and coming home late.”
    “Maybe I’m like the dog,” she said.
    She was really annoying me now.
    “What do you mean?” I said.
    “Maybe I’ve been trying to tell you something.”
    “And just what is it you’re trying to tell me?”
    My tone was patronising. Sarcastic even. Bed. That would get rid of her. And tomorrow? Boarding school might be an option. That would take another problem off my hands.
    She bit her lip.
    “I’ve been to see him.”
    “See who?” I said absent-mindedly.
    I was already thinking of all those letters on my desk. And that problem.
    “Next door’s dog,” she said.
    My blood ran like ice through my veins.
    “Next door’s dog?” I repeated.
    “Yes. That’s why I was late.”
    She couldn’t have, I thought. Next door’s dog was dead.
    I tried to keep my voice even.
    “You’ve been next door,” I said slowly.
    “Yes,” she said. “I go there every day to ask him what he’s trying to tell me.”
    “What he’s trying to tell you?” I repeated, my voice a curdled croak.
    She nodded.
    “Yes. Though he wasn’t able to tell me today. He was a bit poorly. But some kind person had left him meatballs to cheer him up. He wouldn’t eat them at first. But I played that game with him.”
    “Game?” I heard myself say as if from afar.
    “That game you taught me. One for you. One for me. We had one each. It was fun. You know how I like meatballs. And he did too. He really wolfed them down.”
    “Wolfed them down,” I repeated in a daze.
    The pack was howling.
    “Yes. You see it’s all about understanding,” she said in her little still voice.
    “Understanding,” I repeated like a robot.
    I’d never understood Jenny. I’d never understood foreigners. I’d never understood my own people. And I’d never understood animals.
    But now I understood. Lucy had eaten the meatballs I’d laced with Lanate.
    There’d be no bed. There’d be no boarding school. No nuisance. No inconvenience. There’d only be a slow, agonising death.
    I looked at her. For the first time.
    “I knew you’d understand,” she said. “That’s why I kept this for you.”
    She brought the hand she’d kept hidden from behind her back and opened it like a flower coming into full bloom. Sitting in the palm of her hand was a folded piece of silver foil. She carefully peeled away the edges. In the middle sat one solitary meatball.
    She extended her hand in offering.
    That’s what made it easy. It was silent and quick and there was no way they could trace it back to me.
    “One for me,” I said, raising the meatball slowly to my lips.
    I’ve never been sensitive. Like I said sensitivity isn’t part of my job. But experience can change you.
    That’s why I smiled as I bit into the meatball. My eyes met hers. Complete understanding.
    “One for you,” she said.

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