Kill [redacted]

Anthony Good

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786495693
• eBook ISBN: 9781786495686
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

'Provocative and compelling, it is a spectacular debut' - Daily Mail
____________ Is murder ever morally right? And is a murderer necessarily bad? These two questions waltz through the maddening mind of Michael, the brilliant, terrifying, fiendishly smart creation at the centre of this winking dark gem of a literary thriller. Michael lost his wife in a terrorist attack on a London train. Since then, he has been seeing a therapist to help him come to terms with his grief - and his anger. He can't get over the fact that the man he holds responsible has seemingly got away scot-free. He doesn't blame the bombers, who he considers only as the logical conclusion to a long chain of events. No, to Michael's mind, the ultimate cause is the politician whose cynical policies have had such deadly impact abroad. His therapist suggests that he write his feelings down to help him forgive and move on, but as a retired headteacher, Michael believes that for every crime there should be a fitting punishment - and so in the pages of his diary he begins to set out the case for, and set about committing, murder. Waltzing through the darkling journal of a brilliant mind put to serious misuse, Kill [redacted] is a powerful and provocative exploration of the contours of grief and the limits of moral justice, and a blazing condemnation of all those who hold, and abuse, power. ONE OF THE BEST DEBUT NOVELS of 2019 (the i )

The last words I said to my wife: “Please don’t leave.”

It was an argument. She left. Those were the last words.

Angela wants to know more. She always wants to know more. Now she asks me to write about it – not just talk. She thinks I’ll be more forthcoming, perhaps.

I said to my wife, “Please don’t leave,” while we were arguing, and she said she was going to be late and so she had to leave, and she did, and on her journey she was killed by an explosion on the Underground.

Apparently my last entry wasn’t enough. So I’m tasked again with writing another entry on the same subject.

Clearly, I don’t have a talent for confession.

Dear Angela,

This is my fourth attempt at writing this letter. It is NOT a “Self-Expression”.

There is a man I hate and I want to talk about him. But you have to know my reasoning first. I can’t skip straight to the end, though I think about it every day. Because I want you to hate him, too. I want you to understand my reasons, and agree. I’d like you to try to refute my reasons, and fail. I’d like you to try very hard. I want you to admit that I’m right. But you wouldn’t let yourself – would you?

This letter isn’t going well.

I missed last week’s appointment with Angela – to my surprise, she rang me. In truth, the phone ringing was surprise enough in itself.

I don’t find Angela attractive. Is that the truth or am I writing it to hurt her?

The truth is I haven’t had a sexual thought in years. I look forward to discussing these points on Wednesday.

And again, the old topic:

Angela asks for the details, for the content of the argument, the time of day, how the morning had started, the first sign of disagreement, was it me or my wife that started it – is that my guilt, for starting the argument, for being angry the last time I saw her? – or is it that she was angry with me, she started it and was angry with me and that’s my guilt, that I can never re-live the last part and have her not-angry with me, that we were denied any reconciliation? –

The explosion nearly split the train carriage in half. It put a hole in the top and bottom. If I’d wanted to, I could have gone to court and listened to their explanation of precisely where my wife had been sitting, or standing, when the explosion occurred. I could have listened to them describe the injuries she incurred, in the long list of injuries that day. Well, I didn’t.

Will you try to get rid of this anger? I ask.

(She doesn’t respond. Her silence is greater than mine.)

I’m not sure I want it gone, I say.

Perhaps I’m free-associating, now, I tell her. Can you be free-associating while talking about it?

(I keep pausing like this, as if she’ll answer.)

I’m trying to work out my anger. I know it has an object. An objective, maybe.

I look at her directly, which she doesn’t like, I don’t think.

There’s a real person that I’m angry at. I can tell you his name, what he looks like.

Then I stare at her, just to measure her curiosity. To measure her technique. There are silent ones and chatty ones, and Angela seems like something else. Like both, or neither. It can’t be productive to be comparing her like this, so much, in my mind.

“Who is it?” she asks, and I wonder whether it’s curiosity or technique guiding the question – my neurosis or hers?

█████████,I say. It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud in many years. █████████, I say again (though I don’t know whether that’s neurosis or technique either).

I wait to see if she’ll ask a question. I practically will a Why? from her lips, which never comes. I scratch my face, cover my open mouth.

I don’t think it’s fair, I say. What happened to my wife.

Not just my wife.

My daughter.

Myself.

My father.

Paul, of course. And his family.

If you were to ask me, I say, that’s where this sickness has come from. You probably think of it like that, as a sickness. An acting out of something or other.

She writes something down. If it was one of the other ones – one of the other therapists – I’d guess it would involve the word transference. That’s the catch-all. But who knows what Angela’s writing? It could well be the necessary ingredients for her dinner.

Are you even listening? I ask.

She looks at me.

“To every single word,” she says.

She told me to stop endlessly referring to the process of my therapy. She banned me from using her name, which seems an ineffective prohibition. I won’t stoop to giving her an alias. She told me I’m frightened (she may have used the word scared at some point, as well) of engaging with the tasks she sets.

I pretend to believe in Good and Bad, Right and Wrong – but what have I really done? I’ve been subject to the most heinous injustice, and what do I do? – I mope, watch daytime television, attend endless therapy, sit at home, break things, act like an adolescent.

The fact is, someone caused it. Someone did this to me. It was wrong.

Is my anger at myself? At my unhappy victimhood?

This is what I have to do:

Delineate the Causes.

Identify the Principal Actors.

And then?

The People Who Matter to Me

My wife

My daughter Amy

Paul, a former pupil and family-friend

Paul’s family

Frank (aka Frankie), a close friend of mine

Angela, my therapist, for whom I’m writing this list

My wife played the piano. She earned money, sometimes quite a lot, writing jingles for advertisements, mostly. She had a deep respect for her clients, who would often make very odd requests. Sometimes she’d be paid as an arranger. She would take a melody and make it fit a variety of timespans – five seconds, fifteen seconds, thirty, forty-five, etc. Often, this work came to her after it was abandoned by the original composer, who no doubt felt such a procedure denigrated their work. Sometimes she’d have to make an old jingle sound more modern. In these cases, I remember, she had learned to do very little: the client, for whom she had great tolerance, would never want to deviate from the original work, but nevertheless would want to get their money’s worth. She’d usually change the key or the time signature or remove some extraneous notes or make a particular chord louder (or softer). She would complete her changes in an afternoon, but deliver the manuscript many weeks later. These briefs were the most handsomely paid.

She’d sit and play into the evening. If I was lucky, I’d arrive home to her playing and I’d soften my entrance. I’d defer our usual kiss – instead I’d go to my study and put away my bag, whatever folders I was carrying. Only once did I indulge myself by going to the bedroom and lying down, listening with my eyes closed.

If she was playing haltingly, repeating chords or phrases, I’d know she was closing in on her goal. But if I was lucky, she’d be very far from it – utterly lost, even. When she had no idea what to put into her thirty or forty-five seconds, I might sit in my study, above her, and listen as she invented whatever pleased her. It’s difficult for me to imagine those times.

The old piano still stands there – the upright she intended to replace with a baby grand (a full grand was too immodest for her liking) were she ever to become a millionaire. Sometimes I go to that old piano and lift the fallboard, and poke a key, with no intention except to hear a note. It sounds bright; I can’t tell if it needs tuning or not, but of course it must. I imagine I can play a single chord. I imagine my hand in the right shape.

If I’m in a particularly self-pitying mood, I’ll open the lid of the stool and stand one of her manuscripts on the music tray. I sit, and pull the stool closer, as if I might play. Then I look at her handwriting, at the dots and lines and numbers and crossings-out.

On my blackest day, I turn to her last manuscript – it is unfinished. I look at where the pencil marks stop.

Paul

He was one of my students. He was a Year Seven and I barely had cause to ask his name, being that he appeared a quite solemn and well-meaning boy, except that his shoes were not correct.

Regarding the school uniform I was always to-the-letter. In my brief career as a policeman I had the same attitude – enforce the small things, was my motto. The small things make a character. What I mean is that it’s the everyday details that accumulate and begin to shape us. They are the life-changing things we can control. The life-changing things we cannot control come in the form of tragedy (a car crash) or fortune (winning the lottery) and both tend to destroy rather than build character.

On average I stopped half a dozen boys on account of improper uniform every day. Mostly it was the shoes. Young men have a thing about shoes just as strong as young ladies, and for very much the same reason. Shoes were the main way these boys compared themselves with each other. Apart from the usual acts of intimidation, of course.

And so it was one day I came across a young, solemn Year Seven whom I addressed for his non-regulation shoes. They were black AstroTurf football boots with defiant white trim.

His excuse was first-rate: they didn’t have the right shoes yet. They being his family, of course. I liked, and was intrigued by, that “yet”. He said it very meaningfully. I asked him why not – he said his mum hadn’t got round to it.

This excuse, or similar, was fairly old even two decades ago. When confronted by Authority, boys will seek to hide behind Propriety – this often manifests itself in raising Ethnic boundaries, or, failing that (in young Paul’s case), luring authority into the sensitive area of Family, where it must tread very carefully and usually make a hasty retreat.

I said I expected him to have proper shoes next week, and he nodded.

I asked him if that would be a problem, and he said, No, sir.

Then I told him to fix his tie, and he looked down at his chest in crooked appraisal. So I adjusted his tie for him and dismissed him with a pat on the shoulder.

When I discuss my retirement, it’s in guarded language. I speak about it defensively, as if about a mistake.

Angela tells me – reassures me? – one of the reasons for the long course of my therapy is the need to disentangle two kinds of loss. This is Angela’s scheme: that the root of my emotional malfunction is the double-whammy of losing my job and losing my wife in fairly close succession.

She asks me how I’d planned to spend my retirement, and I believe it’s just a way to underline her point.

Dear Angela,

This is my fifth attempt at writing this letter. It is NOT a “Self-Expression”.

There is a man I hate. You have to understand my reasoning. I can’t skip straight to the end, though I want to. Because I want you to hate him t

Dear Angela,

This is my sixth attempt at writing this letter. It is NOT a “Self-Expression”.

I thought I was above hate all my life, and now look at me.

One teacher – at wits’ end, shortly before his resignation – asked me:

“I’m paid to teach them, am I to police them as well?”

Of course! Police them foremost! How else will we teach them? We flatter ourselves when we talk of our roles as Teacher and Headteacher – better call ourselves Constable and Superintendent instead.

He told me he respectfully disagreed. To which I said no he didn’t, he disagreed and saying the word respectfully was neither here nor there, respect wasn’t something you issued from your mouth.

And then I said,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Kill
• Acknowledgments