The Discourtesy of Death Read online

  They were seated at a small table in a quiet nook far from any windows. Warm light flickered on the flagstones. The walls carried prints of paintings, evocations of rural life when windmills ground local wheat into flour. Horseshoes and black implements from a farrier’s yard had been fixed to the beams and stonework. Anselm pursued his point:

  ‘You can’t kill someone without the dead body answering back. There are signs left as clues for the trained eye. Sometimes they’re minuscule. But they can’t be removed. It’s a real problem.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘Someone very powerful in our society helped Peter Henderson.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A doctor.’

  Mitch arched a brow. ‘You mean that Peter Henderson came to a chummy arrangement with a GP to finish off his wife?’

  ‘Just look at the implications of what we know already,’ rejoined Anselm, patiently. ‘Jennifer Henderson is dead. Someone says she was murdered. If that is true, then a doctor must have written out a false death certificate attributing cancer as the sole cause. Any expression of doubt would have generated an investigation by the coroner, which would have opened the door to the police. For all I know the doctor was blackmailed, threatened or tortured according to a new morality – I really don’t know. The fact is – accepting the allegation in this letter – Jennifer Henderson was buried, along with the true cause of her death. Only a doctor has that kind of power. And it saved Peter’s skin. As the author of the letter says, without evidence, there’s no crime; without a crime, there’s no suspect.’

  Mitch savoured his beer as if it was a touch too bitter. ‘Doctors can be fooled, you know. There are some pretty weird herbs in an English country garden.’

  ‘And they all leave weird signs on a body.’

  Mitch didn’t seem impressed, but he moved on. ‘If he killed his wife, why throw the brick?’

  ‘That’s the key question. The experts only gave half the answer because they only knew half the facts.’

  ‘You have something to add?’

  ‘Yes. In my line of work, one gets to recognise … the signs … though, interestingly enough, you come out of it strangely unmarked.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Guilt. I’m not talking about the shame stoked up during infancy by your parents, that unhinged priest or the culture you’re born into, I mean the primitive reaction to what we do; that turning in the stomach … it’s impossible to avoid.’ Anselm drank some beer. ‘Peter Henderson was accused on air of having no conscience. He walked out of the studio. And then he found himself trapped. All he could do was look around. And what did he see?’

  ‘A kid with nerve.’

  ‘No, Mitch,’ replied Anselm, confidently. ‘He saw himself.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘A window is like a mirror. It is unforgiving. Peter Henderson was staring at the man who’d killed his wife. That’s why he reached for the brick. He couldn’t take the shattering simplicity of self-accusation.’ Anselm came closer to the table. ‘It’s why I don’t think the writer of the letter is mistaken. The allegation of murder is the only compelling explanation for Peter Henderson’s behaviour. That’s why he rejected any mercy from the court. He wants to pay because he knows he’s guilty … only he can’t own up. The price is too great. How do you explain yourself to your son?’

  Mitch nodded thoughtfully. ‘So you’ve all but wrapped it up, then. Two years ago Jennifer Henderson is murdered by her apparently loving husband, assisted by a compliant doctor. All you need to do is find out how and why, and that will give you the evidence, and the evidence will give you proof of the crime.’

  Anselm returned the nod, noting – uncomfortably – that Mitch’s summary had a slight jingle about it, as if the configuration of data had been ever so slightly predictable. The Prior seemed to appear at Anselm’s shoulder, congratulating him once more on failing to appreciate why the important is important.

  ‘Would you like me to improvise with the facts?’ offered Mitch, sympathetically.

  Anselm didn’t. ‘Please do,’ he said, warmly.

  Mitch picked up the letter and read it once more as if to make sure of where he was going. Then, placing it to one side, he said: ‘I see the plan for a second murder.’

  8

  It was almost midday. Time for a pint before lunch. Only Michael had no appetite. He walked along Southwold beach close to the daisy chain of small, wooden beach huts. They were brightly coloured, the paint fresh or peeling, the aggression of the sea air seeming not to tolerate any intermediate state of decline. The wind pulled at Michael’s hair and lifted the flanks of his overcoat. He was rehearsing – yet again – his encounter with the proud trader.

  * * *

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Michael stared at the kindly old man, unable to respond.

  ‘You can have some of these tomatoes, if you like. Half price. Local produce. No chemicals.’

  He wore a cloth cap the colour of heather in bloom. It threw a mauve shadow over his face from the fluorescent strip lighting in the middle of the ceiling. But Michael could still see his eyes. They were brown with green specks. His life wasn’t passing across them. Just a faint hope that he might sell some of the veg that were losing their sheen.

  ‘They’re fruit, not vegetables. Did you know that?’ He smiled as he’d smiled long ago. ‘Everyone thinks that tomatoes are vegetables. I put them with the fruit and everyone tells me I’m losing my marbles. But I’m sharper than they are. Tomatoes. They belong to the nightshade family. Originally from Peru … not these, of course. I get them from a market gardener near Bramfield. He actually talks to them. Says “Good morning”. Are you all right?’

  Michael swayed, his hand still behind his jacket.

  ‘Problems with the lower back?’ The old man removed his cap and slapped his thigh. ‘Me, too. I wear a corset now. Still gives me gyp. Especially getting out of bed. You have to put up with it. None of us are getting any younger. Some carrots? They’re a vegetable. From Iran. If you plant them side by side with the tomatoes, the tomatoes go raving mad. Odd, isn’t it? You don’t look too good, to be honest.’

  Michael steeled himself and with one, swift movement he gave a tug and whipped out his hand.

  The old man frowned and said, ‘Fruit or veg?’

  They both looked at Michael’s outstretched arm, his fingers gripping a wallet pulled from his back pocket.

  ‘A box of matches.’ Michael’s voice was low and it cracked.

  ‘Sorry. Don’t sell them any more.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I used to … before my wife got cancer. She’s fine now. It wasn’t the matches, of course. Benson and Hedges. Her lungs were smoked like kippers from Craster.’

  ‘Sherbet lemons,’ whispered Michael.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Sherbet lemons. Two ounces.’

  ‘Good God … but I’ve gone metric. Well I never. You’re one of the few Englishmen to cross the threshold since we surrendered to Germany. I held out for as long as I could but in the end they took me to court. Not the Germans. The council. Do you want to sit down?’

  They both looked at Michael’s shaking hand.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘If I’d been in Number Ten, we’d’ve stayed imperial. And I’ll tell you something else. I’d’ve kept the ten-bob note and the shilling, too … along with the tanners and threepenny bits. But I’m just a nobody. I don’t even run Number Nine St George’s Green any more. They confiscated my scales. Said I’d have to go to Brussels to get ’em back. Two ounces of sherbet lemons coming up. And don’t you worry: I could judge the weight in my sleep. There’ll be no charge. Hang on a minute … you don’t take them for old gyp, do you? I’ve never heard of that one. Beats a corset, I can tell you.’

  Waves rushed onto the shore, stealing back the broken shells and sand.

  Michael had been examining the replay ever since their friendly confrontation.
Like Foreman watching Ali after the Rumble in the Jungle, he was trying to work out what had gone wrong. The whole thing was meant to have been over and done with in a jiffy. Hand in, hand out … nice and steady.

  You move quickly. There’s nothing to hold you back.

  But there was. He’d been stopped in his tracks. As he’d reached the pavement, feet away from the unsuspecting patriot, Michael had shifted zones of time and place. He no longer saw the old man in a brown apron …

  He was at a farm gate in a remote valley, part of the Blue Stack Mountains of Donegal. He saw the rutted pathway winding down to a stream lit by a summer moon. He saw the cottage surrounded by ling and bell heather. He saw the smoke rising from a stub of chimney. He saw the low orange light giving shape to a small window. He saw the two other gates – three in all upon the track – between him and the man whose death could change everything for the better. Instantly – with an explosion of speed and remembered anxiety – he was on the far side of all the barriers … at the farm door … it was opening … he saw the puzzled dog at the far end of the corridor, he heard the thunk-thunk of a grandfather clock, he heard the moan of a kettle …

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The farmer had used the same words as the trader … he’d looked at Michael with that same strangely infant surprise, and all at once Michael was back on the pavement in Southwold, arm behind his back, one hand on his wallet.

  ‘You can have some of these tomatoes, if you like.’

  The beach huts had names. Enticing names, commemorating a loved one, proclaiming a creed, giving a view onto life, tantalising the curious with an enigma. Private jokes, too, Michael suspected. The huts fronted the beach, seeming to talk to the sea and the children on their knees in the sand. Jenny had liked to read out the names, walking a few steps and then stopping, ignoring the pull from her father’s hand. Michael had gone half mad. It had taken an age to go anywhere. He’d had to find roundabout ways of getting from one end of the beach to the other. He wanted that time back, now; to linger and hear her voice: ‘QUEENIE … SUMMER’S LEASE … ALBERT …’

  Michael’s eyes blurred. Tears spilled onto his cheeks. He looked around at the deserted beach, the immense blue sea, the chain of huts on either side. He felt utterly alone … abandoned. Jenny had gone, leaving behind the sound of these other names. His voice burst from his lips. ‘Why? Why? Why?’

  Why had Jenny ever met Peter? Why had she fallen? Why had she been left … a crumpled marionette?

  ‘LIFE’S A BEACH.’

  Only it wasn’t. After leaving hospital Jenny had looked just the same. All the strings had been in place. None of them had been tangled or frayed. But there was no life in them. Her limbs wouldn’t move. God had refused to pick up the handle to which all the threads had been attached. She’d just been dropped in a heap among the toys that weren’t much fun any more.

  ‘RETURN TO SENDER.’

  Michael read the nameplate out loud several times, joining his voice to the memory of Jenny’s. After reflecting for a long while, staring at the blue lettering above the entrance to the hut, he moved on, wiping his face on a sleeve. At last he recognised what had gone wrong the night before. There was no point in watching the replay any more. He knew what he had to do. He had to go back …

  Michael had come to Southwold intending to stick on the surface and go through the motions … touch that gun … get used to its weight again … feel a trigger on his index finger. Fend off any memories. He’d planned to rehearse the operation: to walk through the streets while armed (not an easy task when you think everyone can see what you’re doing, when you expect to be stopped by the police at every corner); to approach a target as if it were Peter; to pull out his wallet instead of the gun. He’d hoped the shaking would stop after a week or so. That he’d manage to defeat the old hesitation, the crippling last-minute wavering that he’d been warned to avoid. But he couldn’t even bring his arm from behind his back … because every time his hand went near the Browning, he was back in Donegal, by the first of three gates.

  But now he understood.

  If he was going to hold that gun again, he had to deal with 1983. He had to go back to that shocking meeting with a traumatised, sobbing priest in Belfast … where it had all begun. He had to walk down that rutted pathway to the farm. He had to face everything that his later breakdown had concealed. It was the only way to steady his hand. Ultimately, as a final blazing purification, he would have to listen to the tape. He’d have to press play. He’d have to hear the clang of a pot or a pan.

  By the same token, if he was to pull the trigger, looking Peter straight in the eye, Michael had to revisit his memory of Jenny’s voyage from distress to calm and the anger he’d felt at Peter’s treatment of his daughter. It was the only way to summon the belief that he must act once again against his most basic inclinations … with the same depth of conviction that had enabled him to creep along a furrowed trail in the Blue Stack Mountains.

  Michael paused. He was astonishingly calm. The recognition of what he had to do – handling the past in order to handle the future – had brought a numbing inner peacefulness. He breathed in the moist air. He gazed over the sea, listening to the rush of shingle, the sand and stone sucked off the shore. He turned round and stared at the beach hut immediately behind him. He frowned as if a foreign voice had interrupted a dream:

  ‘WHOA STOP.’

  9

  ‘You once said that evidence has more than one interpretation, do you remember?’ Mitch was leaning back, sitting slightly to one side on the short bench. ‘That we had to move the facts around to build the most convincing picture, using every piece on the table?’

  Anselm remembered using the image. It had been a favourite. Now it made him flinch. He’d made so many false pictures in the name of justice. He’d even preferred some of them to the truth. They’d been far more credible.

  ‘First, we’ll assume that Jennifer Henderson was murdered,’ said Mitch, warming to the game. ‘But second, we’ll suppose it wasn’t Peter who killed her. And third, we’ll suggest that the person who did is the author of this letter.’

  Anselm spoke from behind arched hands. He didn’t know whether to be bored or annoyed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’ll now imagine that Peter knows this author. We’ll call him X. We’ll further imagine that Peter knows what X has done because, in a way, X did it for Peter. You see, Peter the philosopher can argue that killing is necessary – even a moral obligation – but he couldn’t actually do it himself. So he turned to someone who could. A relative. A friend. Someone who didn’t like the idea of the cancer and what it can do.’

  ‘What about the doctor?’

  ‘He didn’t like it either.’

  ‘So they’re agreed, all three of them? Peter, the relative or friend and the doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘Do you mind if I finish?’

  ‘Sorry, carry on.’

  Mitch took an injured breath: ‘Now, Peter has just brought national attention to himself by nearly killing a bairn in a Manchester bread shop. Like you say, his conscience has accused him. He’s wondering if the cancer should have been left to do its worst. But X doesn’t agree. And he’s seriously worried that Peter might fall to pieces. He might talk. Which means our killer has to kill again.’

  ‘This is complete nonsense.’

  ‘It’s what the letter might mean,’ replied Mitch, testily. ‘If this guy runs the risk of being exposed, he’ll have to act first. So what does he do? First off, he sends a letter to a well-meaning monk who’ll come running to the destitute and abandoned, because, frankly – thinks X – these otherworldly types are pretty easy to wrap around your finger. He’s confident the monk will believe whatever is written to him in confidence.’

  Anselm mustered some patience. ‘I don’t see how a letter to Larkwood might silence Peter.’

  ‘It wouldn’t. That’s not the point. The only reason yo
u’re drawn into the scheme is to provide an explanation for Peter’s later disappearance.’

  ‘Disappearance?’ Anselm tried to sound engaged.

  ‘Yes.’ Mitch was unmoved by Anselm’s tone. He’d played to many a sceptic audience. ‘Just look at the wording. There’s a flaw. It’s the insinuation of time pressure. You’ve only got “two weeks”. After that Peter Henderson walks free to end his own life. It was written to twist your Prior’s arm. To make him put you on the case. Because X wants a man like you to go searching for evidence of Jenny’s murder … because he knows it isn’t there. But it also reveals the wider game plan: what he intends to do as soon as Peter gets out of prison. For now he just wants to get you digging, knowing that all you’re going to find is evidence of a man’s unredeemed regret. Reasons to substantiate the suicide that hasn’t happened yet.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘When Peter Henderson goes missing and everyone wonders why, you turn up on cue with an envelope and your explanation. Short version: “His behaviour matches the allegation of murder in the letter. He threw that brick out of guilt. I got involved because I feared he might take his life out of remorse.” The Detective Inspector nods and when you’ve gone he says to his team, “We’d better have a word with the doctor.” Which they do and, as you’d expect, the doctor says, “She died of cancer. I should know.” And so they all head back to Martlesham for some instant coffee. Six months later, the police are still looking for Peter’s body and maybe a note for Timothy. But it’s Jennifer’s story all over again. There’s no murder to investigate. The file lies on a different kind of desk. Missing persons. Downgraded in importance. Everyone gets on with their lives … except for a rogue cop with scruples. But X has thought of him, too. And he’s not overly concerned. Because after some soul searching the doubter joins his colleagues in the canteen. Why? He sees the light: there’s no one to catch. Jenny’s killer went and topped himself.’

  With that snappy conclusion, Mitch reached for his drink, took a mouthful and waited.