The Happier Dead (19 page)

But the sun on the skin was not interested in the intellectual, any more than the sound of the wind in the trees, or the laughter of a girl he heard somewhere on the towpath beside the canal, out of sight.

These were influences that did not announce themselves at the door of the conscious mind, but slipped in through the secret tunnels in eyes and ears and nose, so that even as Oates was condemning the whole scene, he caught himself thinking how lovely it would be to bring the boys here for a swim. This was how the spa achieved its effects – it made traitors of the senses, and through them the emotions, and only when those two were conquered was it strong enough to advance on consciousness. Oates hated the spa and everything it stood for, and yet he found himself trailing a wrist in the cool water. He pulled his hand out, and looked up to see the Superintendent watching him, a faint smile playing around his lips.

As they moved further up the river they came to an isolated stretch of slow-flowing green water, where the trees grew thick along the banks and dipped their branches beneath the surface. Oates tried to match his conception of the spa’s external dimensions with its internal geography, and decided they were in one of the long arms stretching away from the dome in either direction. The arms had been less than half the height of the main dome, which meant that the ceiling of the cavern in which he travelled was no more than four hundred metres above his head. He craned his neck back and shielded his eyes with his hand. There was nothing but the purple ozone of the sky, shading into pink the colour of a seashell at the horizon. Over the peaceful fields, swallows traced their intricate trajectories.

They passed a herd of cows grazing in a broad field. One of them had fallen into the water and was unable to climb back out onto the steep bank. Several of its fellows stood waiting for it on the solid ground, chewing in placid sympathy. The groundsman spoke a spell into the mike in his cuff as they went by, and as the boat neared the next bend in the river Oates saw a green Land rover speeding over the field towards the distressed animal. As it bumped to a halt, a man climbed out holding a boltgun.

They had been travelling for perhaps twenty minutes when they finally came to a halt beside a low jetty. There was a second groundsman waiting for them there. He hailed his fellow and caught the tossed line as they idled to the planks. He offered his hand to Oates. Oates ignored it and clambered onto the grass unaided. The Superintendent took the proffered hand, and thanked the owner with exaggerated courtesy. They walked about two hundred metres from the bank to a fence, and as Oates watched he noticed the most extraordinary thing. Hanging suspended as if in thin air there was a neon-green sign bearing the legend ‘EXIT’ in capital letters. Its presence in the air was such an affront to logic that Oates blinked to try to unsee it. When he opened his eyes however the sign remained; even in the depths of this dreamworld, fire safety regulations were strictly applied.

At the fence one of the groundskeepers stopped. He put out his hand, and the fence and part of the view beneath the exit sign swung open to reveal the concrete corridor beyond, the walls painted an institutional green. The air in that tunnel was a couple of degrees cooler than in the field, and the sound of distant machinery was audible somewhere down the length of it. From more than five feet away, the walls simply refused to disclose their presence. Just as he was about to pass through the door, Oates thought he detected a flicker in the spire of a church topping the trees in the distance, and he noted how the dead leaves and a crisp packet were piled against the bottom of the fence with a symmetry inconsistent with its visual dimensions. Still as he stepped through the door, he felt he was walking through a hole in the universe.

Inside the corridor with the summer field closed behind them, the sound of machinery was loud enough to make you raise your voice. One of the porters told them they were near the turbine house that kept the river gently flowing, and the sounds in the walls came from the giant drill-shaped pumps churning the water. Oates excused himself to go to the toilet, and once inside a cubicle he pulled a fifty pence piece from his pocket. His hands were shaking a little when he flipped it the first time, and it slipped through his fingers and plopped into the streaked bowl. He ran his fingers through his hair and stared for a few seconds down into the foul water. He reminded himself that he didn’t really believe in luck, and went back out to where the others were waiting without having completed his ritual.

They had set up an interview room complete with a camera so that the Superintendent could watch the questioning from outside. Ali Farooz was waiting there, and when Oates came in he greeted him as casually as if the Inspector had just popped out for a few minutes at the end of their last interview, and was now returned. This caused in Oates a momentary disorientation. The discrepancy between the events of the last couple of hours in his own life, and the changelessness implied by Ali’s greeting was unsettling. He felt a weird conviction that nothing had happened to him at all – that he had ceased to exist the moment he left Ali’s room, and was popping back into existence now on re-entry. It was an absurd idea, but it enthralled him, and he knew it would pass not with rational thought, but with the lapse of time.

To gather himself he sat in silence for a few moments at the little desk between them, and pretended to study the custody log. Ali waited. They had moved further into the building so that the sound of machinery was deadened by the supervening walls. Despite the silence, Oates thought he could still feel some deep subsonic vibration in the ground as the giant turbines built the summer river a turn at a time.

“So then, Ali. I trust you’ve been looked after.”

“Yes thank you, Inspector, I have been most well looked after.”

“Has anyone been in to see you?”

“Lots of people. They have been very kind. I have seen a doctor and a lawyer and some of your friends. And one of my friends brought me a change of clothes and my toothbrush.”

Ali smiled politely. Oates nodded. He got the message. Whoever had been in to nobble Ali, it would be no easy matter to identify him. The message could have come from anyone. If Ali had seen him coming, there was no point in being subtle.

“I know you didn’t do it, Ali. Whoever killed Prudence Egwu was right handed.”

He gestured to Ali’s left hand, and Ali moved it under the table.

“Now I think you know who killed Prudence Egwu. I’d like you to tell me who that was.”

“Why would I say that I had done something which I had not done?”

“Come on, Ali. You’re not stupid. You’ve been in this country half a decade. You’re telling me a clever man like you, a political man like you, doesn’t read the papers, watch the news? You know what an Eddy is don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes I know what is an Eddy.”

“Well that’s what I think you are.”

Ali stared a him for a few seconds in disbelief. Then he leant back in his seat, and burst into a rich, deep laugh. The boom of it filled up the room as the mighty pumps did in their distant atrium.

“What’s so funny?”

Ali’s laughter was almost hysterical. He doubled over in his chair, and shook his head. He squeezed tears from the corner of his eyes. Oates wanted to get up, walk around the table and smash his head. All the respect, all the strange affection he had felt for the man at the conclusion of their first interview was for a moment subsumed by rage at being laughed at. He thought again of the young man he had killed a few hours before. He felt angered on Dwayne Jeffries’ sbehalf.

“Please Inspector, I do not mean to make fun. Only you see I have spent altogether in my life some time in rooms like this one, answering questions. In the first part of my life, it was policemen trying to make me to admit to things I had not done. They put pins under my nails and they kick me until I say I had done all kinds of things. And now in this country, I am being told to deny the crimes to which I have confessed.” He was still breathing hard from his laughing fit.

Oates didn’t want this man’s history. He didn’t want to be mollified by the fact of his suffering. He wanted the truth. He wanted the truth from him as a hungry man wants the meat from an animal. He couldn’t give a shit what happened to him after the truth was out of him. He could be discarded, and Oates could get back to his family. He stayed silent and stared at Ali.

“Even let us say you are right,” Ali said, “I would not know who had done this thing. I would know only who had invited me to take the blame.”

“And who was that?”

“If someone lies to the police, that is an offence, is that not so?”

He looked at Oates, waiting for an answer, and Oates nodded his head and folded his arms across his chest.

“That is what they call wasting police time, yes? Perverting the course of justice? And for an offence such as this, one could also go to prison for some time. Only when one got out of prison, there would be no reward at the end. Let us say that a man does what you are suggesting, and accepts that he will take the blame for something in return for something else. Well, if he cannot any more take the blame, he will not anymore expect his payment. But that does not mean he would want to go to prison just for the hell of it.”

“We can make a deal, Ali. If you tell us everything and tell us now, I will do everything in my power to make sure you get off.”

“If there was a man with the power to offer such a thing as eternal life, that man would also have the power of death in him. Would you not say this?”

Oates did not reply. Ali watched him for a few seconds, and nodded slowly at this confirmation of his thinking.

“And would you not further say that if this man was betrayed, he might take the trouble to find out who had done this thing, and to pay him back?”

“We can protect you, Ali.”

“I tell you again what I told you before. I really did go to see Mr Egwu like I said. I really did go up and see him after dinner.”

“This is a one time only thing, Ali. If I walk out of this room now, you won’t have another chance to tell the truth and get credit for it.”

Ali said nothing, but raised his palm to Oates, as if all the answers he might seek were written in the dark lines of the unexpectedly pale skin. Oates pictured the scene as it would appear to the Superintendent on his little coloured screen. He reached around to the back of the camera, and switched it off. Then he went over and locked the door.

“Have you ever heard of something called the Tithonus Effect?”

“I have heard of this, yes. This is the thing these people come here to make better.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know nothing.”

Ali looked down and away from him, and Oates was certain that he was lying. He leant forwards across the table, and gripped his lapels.

“I killed a boy today. He wanted to get hold of some papers on the Tithonus Effect. Why would anyone die for something like that?”

Ali did not seem at all surprised. There was no resistance in his torso, he simply allowed his shoulders to be pulled forwards over the table.

“I am sorry, Inspector. I do not know anything about it. Only this one thing. When I was at first school, the teacher she used to tell us about Hell. She say it was a burning lake of fire and we would go there if we were bad. And the worst thing about Hell, it is forever. She told us to imagine the wing of a butterfly, brushing a ball of steel as big as the earth. The time it would take to wear away the ball of steel with the butterfly’s wing, that was not even one million part of the time we would spend in Hell. When she told me, I had nightmares for months. My mother, she even complain to the school. I used to lie awake in my bed at night, thinking about it. This Tithonus Effect, I am thinking it is Hell. And the people who go there, that is where they deserve to be.”

The handle to the door turned, and finding it locked, a firm knocking followed. Oates stood up from the table, and flicked the switch to turn the camera back on.

“We’ll find this guy, Ali. And when we do he’ll throw you in as part of his plea-bargain.”

“That is the way things go for people like me, would you not say, Inspector?”

Oates unlocked the door, and stormed out past the waiting groundsman. He slammed the door behind him, leaving Ali alone in the room with his hands folded before him on the desk.

“S
OMEONE’S GOT TO
him. I need to find out who spoke to him, who moved him down here. All that stuff about perverting the course of justice, he’s smart but he’s not a bloody lawyer. Someone’s been in to put the frighteners on…”

“I find that highly unlikely,” John said, watching the still figure on the monitor, “All the conversations he has had since being brought down here have been recorded. And I didn’t hear him say a single thing a man couldn’t pick up from watching the news and crime drama on the television.”

“You asked me to handle this, sir, because you wanted to know whether or not he was an Eddy. And I’m telling you I think he is.”

“I asked you, DCI Oates, because I value your judgment, but I do not think it infallible. Whilst you were pursuing your own investigations in London, Sergeant Bhupinder was engaged in the rather more old-fashioned process of actually interviewing witnesses. Stuffy and conventional I know, but we aren’t all blessed with your levels of intuition. It appears that one of the guests saw Ali walking up to Mr Egwu’s room shortly before the murder took place. He couldn’t sleep and was smoking a cigarette out of the window.”

“He’s already said he went up there, first to carry the case then to argue with Egwu about the money.”

“This witness further indicated that he heard the sounds of an altercation some moments later. The timings coincide with the scenario put together by the Oracle. You know how I loathe the predictable, but I don’t think we should be seeking out originality even at the expense of the truth, do you?”

“I want to speak with this bloke.”

“Which bloke?”

“The one Bhupinder interviewed. This witness. I want to hear it from him.”