Stanley Klepp deceased (2)

Two whole days passed before the world was appraised of Klepp’s death; he’d lain there untouched, undisturbed, and only the persistent chirruping of his alarm clock -- an unholy and querulous two-second-long drone, followed by three hasty congregated beeping sounds: beeeeep…. bip,bip,bip: beeeeeep…..bipbipbip: beeeeep…. bipbipbip alerted anyone to anything untoward at all

-- he could well have stayed there for years -- his downstairs neighbour, Ira Knowlesworthy, gradually becoming aware of not just an indecipherable, remote and unplaceable background noise that slipped in and out of her consciousness, but more of an actual audible sound that sat somewhere in time and space, and one whose location she’d be able to identify with some certainty if she put her mind to it. At first she set herself to scouting generally around the whole of her flat, but on producing no positive result, she was minded to be more rigorous in her approach, so she went back to her bedroom first, intent, alert, determined, then the lounge, followed by the bathroom, the toilet, the airing cupboard, she even pressed her ear to the wall of the kitchen to see if there wasn’t something coming from inside the cavity, then she checked her front window in the lounge listening out for a car alarm on the main road, no nothing, it was coming more out the front door was it?, no, then back to her bedroom again in case she’d missed it the second time, still nothing, until, when, on the point of giving up and letting it be, defeated and mystified in the hallway, it dawned on her that the sounds were coming from Stanley Klepp’s upstairs.

Perhaps she hadn’t want to admit to herself that he was responsible, and perhaps she’d really known it all along; long gone were the times when she’d venture up intrepidly to ask him, politely, to turn his music down, again, which he played at unsympathetic volumes and quite late into the night, only to be met by a gruff rebuff, so she preferred to seek out Alvin Parkash in the first instance, porter and head of the tenant’s association in Flat 1, rather than risk the ignominy yet again. She was downstairs just as he was setting foot outside the block’s front door, but once privy to the legitimate municipal cause for concern, he was happy to put off his outing; he considered it within his remit to ensure that everything ran smoothly as far as the block was concerned. It was now three thirty; any natural light that had filtered through the long glass columns in the door was now becoming ever fainter, so that Parkash had no option but to press in the concave plastic timer switch just to get a clear sight of Knowlesworthy’s face. She seemed agitated as she told him about the noise coming from Klepp’s flat; there was always something coming from upstairs, she said, but this time it wasn’t Beethoven or footsteps but a beeping, and it had been going on for days. When stood at the threshold -- there was, incidentally, no discernible sign that this was number five, nor had there ever been one -- Parkash couldn’t initially hear anything at all -- was she now suffering from Parkinson’s or Tinnitus? -- but as he pressed his left ear to the grain of the wood, he could sure enough hear a beeping sound exactly as she’d described it, at which point it became obvious to him that this was only an alarm clock, and after a considerable amount of knocking, striking the door with the soft flesh of the underside of his fist, and thrusting his mouth right into the envelope hatch so he could shout ‘Mr Klepp’ repeatedly at such intensity that if Klepp were in, there could be very little chance that he wouldn’t hear or wake up even if he’d been sound asleep, receiving no answer, he therefore had difficulty in expunging the image from his mind of Klepp’s body slumped in his red velvet recliner, head flung to one side, or alternatively, a shocking and scrawny apparition of nakedness recumbent in the bath. Why should he necessarily be dead though? Perhaps he was away for the weekend, although Parkash had never known him to leave the flat for an extended period over the course of the last five years other than when he’d been hospitalised with severe food poisoning in 2008. There was no other sensible course of action than to get hold of the keys and have a look, even though this felt like a bit of an intrusion and almost as if he were setting out on a course of conduct that could only confirm the worst possible verdict.

With a purposeful yet overridingly anxious feeling, he made his way back downstairs, instructing Mrs Knowlesworthy to wait there for him, as he’d be back in just a couple of minutes and unconsciously he felt nourished by her presence and moral support. But as he fingered around in the kitchen draw, groping for the familiarity of the stainless-steel key housing which held all the individual flat keys, those to the hall cupboard and the garage, he suddenly remembered that Klepp had been the only resident not to provide a set when Parkash had taken over from Flat 3 five or so years ago. As he checked each key assiduously, his suspicions were confirmed. Not only that, but there was no one who held a set, as Klepp had no known surviving relatives and no friends or acquaintances either. He stopped and thought to himself for a moment. Could they try to get access from the back garden and break in through one of the windows? But this was just too risky and unwieldy, and he was no longer a young man with a head for adventure. He preferred therefore just to keep it simple and call in an emergency locksmith, who’d hopefully be able to get in in a matter of minutes. But when it became clear that his assumptions had been way off he was a little peeved, as the locksmith pointed to the three locks declaring that this middle one was a very rare one from America called Schlage, pronounced Sh’-lugg in his indistinct northern accent, notoriously difficult to pick, perhaps not even doable; whilst the other two Chubb mortice locks were no picnic either. This didn’t take into account any bolts or latches that Klepp might have fitted to the rear of the door; not to be negative or anything but he could well be at it for a good few hours, it was hard to say as there was always an element of trial an error involved; and since Parkash still held out a possibility in his mind that Klepp might not be in the flat or less likely, but still possible, still alive, he just asked the locksmith if he could break down the door instead. Despite having just actively dissuaded Parkash from favouring picking as the sensible option, the locksmith revealed that he wasn’t keen to break the door down either; he really just wanted to go home; this was not something that he usually did, the only options would be a battering ram or an axe, and since he wasn’t a member of a police drugs squad, he was sorry but he didn’t know what to advise. Parkash was tenacious and impressed upon him the importance of getting in quickly; the locksmith said he could just buy an axe at a local hardware store, to which suggestion Parkash pictured the damage and imagined how Klepp would certainly claim the charges back from the management company but then he eagerly assented to which the locksmith just looked blankly ahead of him, understanding that Parkash meant that he would supply the axe, then Parkash suddenly thought of a drill, I don’t have a drill either, the locksmith said, but Parkash then remembered with a disproportionate amount of glee that he had one downstairs in his boiler cupboard, and when he got it, the man reluctantly started to drill around the locks to try to break through and Parkash had successfully corralled him into doing something he really didn’t want to do. The work was heavy, laborious, disruptive, noisy and very messy and continued for some time.

It was close to seven as Parkash pushed open the beaten, battered door past the hacked-up door frame and crept stealthily into the flat almost as if he might disturb Klepp if he made too much noise; it felt to him like he was treading on sacred ground without permission and that he still owed it to Klepp or some other supervening entity to conduct himself with the utmost of respect. He couldn’t get his head round this inexplicable contradiction that though he couldn’t possibly imagine Klepp to be dead, since he’d never seen a dead body before, or seen Klepp dead, nor was Klepp particularly frail -- yes he was slender and wiry, but as Parkash remembered him, he was tough and combative -- there were these incontrovertible signs that Klepp was in the flat and couldn’t be stirred. He’d been inside this place twice before, once to inspect for alleged storm damage several years ago -- none was found -- and more recently when Klepp had asked him work out why he couldn’t receive a television signal anymore; this was because the analogue signal had been discontinued and Klepp’s TV couldn’t pick up digital. Klepp had really known all along but couldn’t bring himself to shell out the hundred quid for a new set. The place was set in darkness, cold and damp; Parkash arced his left arm behind him and over his shoulder and felt about for the light switch on the wall next to the door frame; the energy-saving bulb gave out no more than a paltry glow. The noise from the alarm clock now seemed much louder: beep-bip-bip-bipping, even more persistently as if exerting an ineluctable force drawing them towards it. The cobalt-coloured carpet of the narrow corridor was not flush to the underlay and bulged up in places, parts of which also bore the severe discolorations of damp; deep yellow stains edged by a dirty black smudge. Klepp had really let the place go. The master bedroom was on the left at the end and the light was off; again Parkash felt out for the thin sort of curlicue-shaped switch set on the old-fashioned plastic moulded switch plates, but his hand skirted the roughness of the protruding bristles of the wallpaper behind the plate as he missed the exact point before he eventually got it. As they shuffled inside, they felt the breeze coming from the small open window. There was a very slight sour odour, unidentifiable and unfamiliar, which seemed to waft on the air arising then falling. Parkash braved a surreptitious glance at the bed just to confirm his suspicions; the body looked both more serene and alive then he’d imagined, but without taking in any more than this, since his priority was to turn the bothersome beeping off, he went over to the alarm clock, but to his shock, his hip brushed against something tangible and it was Klepp’s right hand which was still hanging limply over the front of the chest of draws as if to stop someone turning it off -- perhaps he’d tried to at the very last moment yet hadn’t quite managed it -- so Parkash had to manoeuvre himself around the arm to reach the on/off button. Taking a deep breath, he now allowed himself a good look. The body was naked apart from a pair of white Y-fronts; it was open to the air in its entirety bar the left foot which was under what part of the unruly concoction of sheets still lay on the bed; what struck him first and foremost was Klepp’s jaw, the mouth horrifically agape in such a pronounced fashion, as if he’d done his utmost to swing his head back at the last moment to draw in any last vestige of breath that would sustain him; then he took in the pallor of the skin; there were not the usual hints and specks of redness on the surface which signalled life, health and movement; there was more of a green colour, and a quality to it which made it appear almost translucent. He walked around to the other side of the bed and pulled the sheets and the blanket back from the floor and over Klepp’s whole body, but not face, careful not to brush his own vivid flesh against the jaundiced tautness of Klepp. The sour smell once again wafted up into his nostrils. Relieved to some degree, he strangely felt also a pang of deep sadness; this was it and a life was over; sadness that he couldn’t discuss the situation with the man himself, since he had an inkling in this moment that such could be the highest means of communion between two people, and he felt that if he were somehow able to acknowledge the sanctity of the moment in conjunction with Klepp, there could be a palatable sense of resolution, and a meaning made of death. As he turned his face up from the bed, his eyes met the forlorn figure of the locksmith, immobile and utterly silent; he’d wanted to help but had been overwhelmed by the situation.