Death of a Salesperson (6 page)

So the Mumfords had found they could do without him.

Eventually it was time to go home. On the bus to the airport Albert hung back, and selected a seat well away from Terry. At the airport there was a slight delay, while the plane was refuelled and cleaned, and restocked with plastic food. In any case, Albert knew that there he would not be able to escape the Mumfords entirely.

‘Do you think you could just keep an eye on Terry for one
min
ute while we go to the Duty Free Shop?' his mum asked. There was something in the tone of voice as she asked it, as if she knew he had considered their earlier request an encroachment, and she regretted having to ask again so obviously selfish a person.

‘Of course,' said Albert.

‘I'll tell you how she died,' said Terry, as their heavy footsteps faded away across the marble halls.

‘I don't wish to know.'

‘Yes, you do. She was lying up there, and Wayne and I were playing in my bedroom—
quiet
ly. How can you play quietly? And we were pretty fed up. And she called out, and called, and called. And when we went in, she said she'd got stuck on one side, and couldn't get over, and her leg had gone to sleep. She hadn't had her afternoon medicine yet. And while Wayne pretended to push her, I got the bottle from the cupboard, and I emptied some of it into her glass, and then I put it back in the cupboard. Then I went and pushed with Wayne, and finally we got her over. She said she was ever so grateful. She said, “Now I can go off.” We laughed and laughed when we got back to my room. She went off all right!'

‘I'm not believing any of this, Terry.'

‘Believe it or not, I don't care,' said Terry. ‘It's true. That's how the old pig died.'

‘It's an awful swindle in there,' said the Mumfords, coming back from the Duty Free Shop. ‘Hardly any cheaper than in England. I shouldn't bother to go.'

‘I'll just take a look,' said Albert, escaping.

Albert did not enjoy his flight home at all, though he bought no less than three of the little bottles of white wine they sell with the meal. He was examining the story and re-examining it with the brain of one who was accustomed to weighing up stories likely and unlikely (for Albert worked in a tax office). On the face of it, it was incredible—that a small boy (or was it two small boys?) should kill someone in this simple, almost foolproof way. Yet there had been in the last few years murder cases—now and again, yet often enough—involving children horribly young. And in England too, not in America, where people like Albert imagined such things might be common occurrences.

Albert shook his head over the stewed fish that turned out to be braised chicken. How was he to tell? And if he said nothing, how terrible might be the consequences that might ensue! If adult murderers are inclined to kill a second time, how much more likely must a child be—one who has got away with it, and rejoices in his cleverness. Even the boy's own parents would not be safe, in the unlikely event of their ever crossing his will. What sort of figure would Albert make if he went to the police
then
with his story. Reluctantly, for he foresaw little but embarrassment and ridicule, Albert decided he would have to go to them and tell his tale. In his own mind he could not tell whether Little Terror's story was true or not. It would have to be left to trained minds to come to a conclusion.

At Gatwick Albert was first out of the plane, through Passport Control and Customs in no time, and out to his car, which was miraculously unscathed by the attentions of vandals or thieves. As he drove off towards Hull and home, Albert suddenly realized, with a little
moue
of distaste, that his holiday had had its little spice of adventure after all.

• • •

‘Well!' said Terry's dad, when the police had finally left. ‘We know who we have to thank for
that
!'

‘There wasn't much point in keeping it secret, was there? He was the only one Terry talked to at all. And he seemed such a nice man!'

‘I'm going to write him a stiff letter,' fumed Terry's dad. ‘I know he works in the tax office in Hull. Interfering, trouble-making little twerp!'

‘It could have been serious, you know. I hope you make him realize that. It could have been very embarrassing. If we hadn't been able to give him the names and addresses of
both
Terry's grannies . . . Oh, good Lord! What
are
they going to say?'

‘The police are going to be very tactful. The Inspector told me so at the door. I think they'll probably just make inquiries of neighbours. Or pretend to be council workers, and get them talking. Just so's they make sure they are who we say they are.'

‘
My
mother will find out,' said Mrs Mumford, with conviction and foreboding. ‘She's got a nose! . . . And how am I going to explain it to her? I'll never forgive that Wimpole!'

Later that night, as they were undressing for bed, Terry's mum, who had been thinking, said to Terry's dad:

‘Walter: you don't think we ought to have told them about Wayne Catherick's gran, do you?'

‘What about her?'

‘Old Mrs Corfitt, who lived next door. Should we have told them that she died of an overdose?'

‘No. 'Course not. What's it to do with Terry? They said the old lady got confused and gave herself an extra lot.'

‘I suppose it would just have caused more trouble,' agreed Mrs Mumford. ‘And as you say, it was nothing to do with Terry, was it?'

She turned out the light.

‘Well,' she said, as she prepared for sleep, ‘I hope next time we go on holiday Terry finds someone nicer than
that
to make friends with!'

T
he coming of Breakfast Television has been a great boon to the British.

Caroline Worsley thought so anyway, as she sat in bed eating toast and sipping tea, the flesh of her arm companionably warm against the flesh of Michael's arm. Soon they would make love again, perhaps while the consumer lady had her spot about dangerous toys, or during the review of the papers, or the resident doctor's phone-in on acne. They would do it when and how the fancy took them—or as Michael's fancy took him, for he was very imperative at times—and this implied no dislike or disrespect for the breakfast-time performer concerned. For Caroline liked them all, and could lie there quite happily watching any one of them: David the doctor, Jason the pop-chart commentator, Selma the fashion expert, Jemima the problems expert, Reg the sports round-up man, and Maria the link-up lady. And of course Ben, the link-up man.

Ben, her husband.

It had all worked out very nicely indeed. Ben was called for by the studio at four-thirty. Michael always waited for half an hour after that, in case Ben had forgotten something and made a sudden dash back to the flat for it. Michael was a serious, slightly gauche young man, who would hate to be caught out in a situation both compromising and ridiculous. Michael was that rare thing, a studious student—though very well-built too, Caroline told herself appreciatively. His interests were work, athletics, and sex. It was Caroline who had initiated him into the pleasures of regular sex. At five o'clock his alarm clock went off, though as he told Caroline, it was rarely necessary. His parents were away in Africa, dispensing aid, know-how and Oxfam
beatitudes in some godforsaken part of Africa, so he was alone in their flat. He put his tracksuit on, so that in the unlikely event of his being seen in the corridor he could pretend to be going running. But he never had been. By five past he was in Caroline's flat, and in the bedroom she shared with Ben. They had almost an hour and a half of sleeping and love-making before breakfast television began.

Not that Michael watched it with the enthusiasm of Caroline. Sometimes he took a book along and read it while Caroline was drawing in her breath in horror at combustible toys, or tut-tutting at some defaulting businessman who had left his customers in the lurch. He would lie there immersed in
The Mechanics of the Money Supply
or
Some Problems of Exchange-Rate Theory
—something reasonably straightforward, anyway, because he had to read against the voice from the set, and from time to time he was conscious of Ben looking directly at him. He never quite got used to that.

It didn't bother Caroline at all.

‘Oh look, his tie's gone askew,' she would say, or: ‘You know, Ben's much balder than he was twelve months ago—I've never noticed it in the flesh.' Michael seldom managed to assent to such propositions with any easy grace. He was much too conscious of balding, genial, avuncular Ben, grinning out from the television screen, as he tried to wring from some graceless pop-star three words strung together consecutively that actually made sense. ‘I think he's getting fatter in the face,' said Caroline, licking marmalade off her fingers.

• • •

‘I am not getting fatter in the face,' shouted Ben. ‘Balder, yes, fatter in the face definitely not.' He added in a voice soaked in vitriol: ‘Bitch!'

He was watching a video of yesterday's love-making on a set in his dressing-room, after the morning's television session had ended. His friend Frank, from the technical
staff, had rigged up the camera in the cupboard of his study, next door to the bedroom. The small hole that was necessary in the wall had been expertly disguised. Luckily Caroline was a deplorable housewife. Eventually she might have discovered the sound apparatus under the double bed, but even then she would probably have assumed it was some junk of Ben's that he had shoved there out of harm's way. Anyway, long before then . . .

Long before then—what?

‘Hypocritical swine!' yelled Ben, as he heard Caroline laughing with Michael that the Shadow Foreign Secretary had really wiped the floor with him in that interview. ‘She told me when I got home yesterday how well I'd handled it.'

As the shadowy figures on the screen turned to each other again, their bare flesh glistening dully in the dim light, Ben hissed: ‘Whore!'

The make-up girl concentrated on removing the traces of powder from his neck and shirt-collar, and studiously avoided comment.

‘I suppose you think this is sick, don't you?' demanded Ben.

‘It's none of my business,' the girl said, but added: ‘If she is carrying on, it's not surprising, is it? Not with the hours we work.'

‘Not surprising? I tell you, I was bloody surprised! Just think how you would feel if your husband, or bloke, was two-timing you while you were at the studio.'

‘He is,' said the girl. But Ben hadn't heard. He frequently didn't hear other people when he was off camera. His comfortable, sympathetic-daddy image was something that seldom spilled over into his private life. Indeed, at his worst, he could slip up even on camera: he could be leant forwards, listening to his interviewees with appearance of the warmest interest, then reveal by his next question that he hadn't heard a word they were saying. But that happened
very infrequently, and only when he was extremely preoccupied. Ben was very good at his job.

‘Now they'll have tea,' he said. ‘Everyone needs a tea-break in their working morning.'

Tea . . .

• • •

Shortly after this there was a break in Caroline's delicious early-morning routine: her son Malcolm came home for a long weekend from school. Michael became no more than the neighbour's son, at whom she smiled in the corridor. She and Malcolm had breakfast round the kitchen table. It was on Tuesday morning, when Malcolm was due to depart later in the day, that Ben made one of his little slips.

He was interviewing Cassy Le Beau from the long-running pop group The Crunch, and as he leaned forward to introduce a clip from the video of their latest musical crime, he said:

‘Now, this is going to interest Caroline and Michael, watching at home—'

‘Why did he say Michael?' asked Caroline aloud, before she could stop herself.

‘He meant Malcolm,' said their son. ‘Anyway, it's bloody insulting, him thinking I'd be interested in The Crunch.'

Because Malcolm was currently rehearsing Elgar's Second with the London Youth Orchestra. Ben was about two years out of date with his interests.

• • •

‘Did you see that yesterday morning?' Caroline asked Michael, the next day.

‘What?'

‘Ben's slip on
Wake Up, Britain
yesterday.'

‘I don't watch breakfast telly when I'm not with you.'

‘Well, he did one of those “little messages home” that he does—you probably don't remember, but there was all this publicity about the families when
Wake Up, Britain
started,
and Ben got into the habit of putting little messages to Malcolm and me into the programme. Ever so cosy and ever so bogus. Anyway, he did one yesterday, as Malcolm was home, only he said “Caroline and Michael”. Not Malcolm, but Michael.'

Michael shrugged.

‘Just a slip of the tongue.'

‘But his own
son
, for Christ's sake! And for the slip to come out as
Michael
!'

‘These things happen,' said Michael, putting his arm around her and pushing her head back on to the pillow. ‘Was there a Michael on the show yesterday?'

‘There was Michael Heseltine on, as usual.'

‘There you are, you see.'

‘But Heseltine's an ex-cabinet minister. He would
never
call him Michael.'

‘But the name was in his head. These things happen. Remember, Ben's getting old.'

‘True,' said Caroline, who was two years younger than her husband.

• • •

‘Old!' shouted Ben, dabbing at his artificially-darkened eyebrows, one eye on the screen. ‘You think I'm old? I'll show you I've still got some bolts left in my locker.'