Why We Die (13 page)

‘Yes . . .’

‘You a friend of hers?’

‘We met just once . . .’

Not often enough to know that everyone called her Kay.

Arkle glanced through the window. Kay’s father was still staring into nowhere. He was riding his own mental iceberg these days, ninety per cent of it lost from view. ‘She doesn’t live here. Didn’t you know that?’

‘I was passing through town. I looked her up in the phone book.’

‘You got her father.’

‘Are you . . .’

‘I’m her brother-in-law.’ Actually, that sounded kind of strange. He said it again: ‘I’m her brother-in-law. This’s her old man’s place.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass.’

He looked relieved, for some reason, that Arkle was the brother-in-law.

‘Passing through on your way where?’

‘Oh, uh . . . St Ives.’

‘From?’

‘Oxford.’

Arkle stared hard, waiting for him to embellish that, or perhaps change his mind.

‘We met the other week. She was staying at a hotel? With her husband?’

Statements turning into questions, as if he could feel the ground giving way beneath his feet. Oxford was beyond coincidence, but whoever this guy was, he wasn’t copper.

‘What’s your name?’

Which was when Whitby had told Arkle his name was Tim Whitby, looking relieved saying it, as if the social formula offered protection. Maybe, in Oxford, it was only people who didn’t know your name you had to worry about.

‘You drove here?’

‘I’m parked down the hill.’

Arkle said, ‘The old man’s a fruitcake. Should be living in a tree.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you a lift back. Drop round Kay’s on the way, see if she’s in.’

‘Kay?’

He smiled. ‘Katrina.’

Whitby burbled in the car, though he might have been acting; might have been, if not copper, some kind of investigator: private or insurance. But Arkle didn’t think so. He was too nervy, too retail – like someone who approached you in shops, asking if you needed help. Besides, he was hardly under cover: he’d already told Arkle about meeting Kay in the Oxford hotel . . . Which had been Baxter’s idea, of course. Whoever booked into an upscale hotel to case a jeweller’s?

‘That’s what makes it smart,’ Bax had said. ‘Kay’ll come too. Cover.’

Which was when Arkle asked him straight out: How much did Kay know?

‘I told you. Nothing.’

‘Right.’

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me?’

Did he believe him? Didn’t he believe him? How come those two questions meant the same thing? Arkle didn’t know whether he trusted Baxter any more, but he knew he didn’t trust Kay, because she was the reason he didn’t know whether he trusted Baxter any more.

Whitby was still burbling: ‘We got talking. She mentioned she lived here and like I said . . . I was passing through.’ It sounded like he was on a looped tape, a tape Arkle broke by braking. ‘. . . Why are we stopping here?’

‘She didn’t tell you about the family business?’

‘We didn’t get on to that.’

Arkle was already on the pavement. Whitby had no choice but to follow. They went through a door set into the wooden gate, Arkle holding it open like Whitby was a treasured guest instead of someone he’d found snooping round old man Blake’s. ‘Sand and gravel,’ he said, pointing. ‘Not much gets built without one or the other.’

‘It all looks . . .’

‘Abandoned?’

Whitby gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘A bit.’

‘Yeah, well. He was a good businessman, the old man, but he had this weak spot.’

‘What was that?’

‘He died. Whole place went straight to fuck after that.

’ Whitby stared at him a couple of seconds. ‘Are we near the car park? I’ve not got a great sense of direction.’

‘You don’t want to see Kay?’

‘I’d better be going.’

‘Long way back to Oxford, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Except I thought you were going to St Ives.’

‘. . . I’m on my way back.’

‘That’s not what you said.’

‘I think it is.’

Arkle said, ‘Yeah, maybe, who cares? What did you and Kay talk about?’

‘This and that . . . I don’t remember.’

Arkle said, ‘You drive two hundred miles and you don’t remember why? One of us must be a fucking idiot, and know what? You think it’s me.’

‘. . . You’re not her brother-in-law, are you?’

‘What?’

‘Look, if you’re her husband . . . We just talked, okay? That evening, in the bar? Talk, that’s all we did. And I was passing, so I thought I’d say hello . . .’

Arkle stared at him, then started to laugh. ‘You think I’m Bax?’

‘. . . I just want to go find my car. That’s all.’

But Arkle was on a roll: this guy thought he was
Bax
? That hadn’t happened before. ‘Watch,’ he told him. ‘You think Bax could do this?’ He crossed to the metal staircase, Whitby’s eyes on him every step. It was like snakes and rabbits. There was always somebody in control, somebody who was lunch. Arkle plucked the crossbow from behind the bottom step: it was already prepped and loaded. Bax was smooth, everybody said so, but no way Bax was in this league. When Arkle released the bolt it whipped past Whitby’s head with inches to spare, and buried itself in the wooden upright of the nearest sand container. Whitby looked ready to puke.

‘I hardly ever miss what I’m aiming at,’ Arkle said.

Whitby said nothing.

‘Course, I sometimes hit other things too. If they’re in the way.’

‘You’ve made your point.’

‘What point’s that?’

‘Whatever you want. Can I go now?’

‘Just when we’re starting to have fun?’ Arkle slotted another bolt, and began to wind it. ‘You had any more thoughts about that conversation yet? The one you had with my
sis
ter-in-law?

‘I’ve already told you –’

‘Because I’m having trouble believing you came all this way just to see how she is.’

Whitby said, ‘Okay, that’s it. I’m going through that door. Don’t try to stop me.’

‘Yeah, right. And how fast do you think you’ll get there?’ Arkle asked. ‘This fast?’

The bolt hit the gate at Whitby-head height, and if it didn’t go right through, there wasn’t much of it left showing.

Arkle said, ‘I want you to imagine for a moment what that must have felt like for the gate.’

Whitby looked like he was going to speak, but didn’t. His fists, which had clenched, had loosened again; his mouth was open, but not in a smile. Perhaps his teeth would drop out. And this, Arkle realized – fitting another bolt – this was better than back in Oxford; those precious seconds when he’d known he was about to fire at the uniformed idiot. Because this target knew it was happening . . .

And whatever had brought Whitby here, whatever he had going with Kay, what mattered more was that nobody knew where he was now. This information worked its way through Arkle, starting at his fingers and branching out into the usual parts. The big question mark over the money would be addressed in due course, and whatever Kay and this guy had been planning, well, Arkle would get round to that. But there was fun to be had first.

Whitby said, ‘Let’s just stop this now, right? Before it goes any further.’

st
–
st
–
stop
: your genuine fear-stammer.

‘You reckon? What kind of brother would I be, I didn’t get upset about you hanging round some hotel with his wife? In Oxford, right? She was in Oxford?’

‘So was he.’

‘You saw him?’

‘I – no, but he was there, she said he was there –’

‘Oh, right. That’s what I’m supposed to believe, like I’m some fucking idiot or something. Bax takes his wife off for a weekend, then leaves her hanging round the hotel Saturday evening. That sound remotely plausible to you?’

‘I –’

‘You what?’

‘I never said what evening it was.’

Arkle was about to reply, but wasn’t sure what to say, and if there was one thing Arkle didn’t like, it was being made stupid. So he decided to loose another bolt instead, glance one off Whitby’s shoe – well,
glance
: it would probably sting a bit. And he could see in Whitby’s eyes that Whitby knew it was coming; knew it as soon as Arkle raised the bow, and Arkle in turn knew Whitby was measuring the distance to the exit – call it five yards. He thought he could get five yards before Arkle shot his bolt? Let alone the extra seconds for fiddling with the lock, pulling the door open? There was positive thinking, then there was plain religion. But what option did Whitby have? I removed his options, Arkle thought. The pleasure he’d felt earlier crawled through him again, as something the size of a tennis ball sailed over the gate, over his head, and bounced ten yards distant, and he span just like that – like he was automatic; pivotal – and hit it on the bounce. The bolt carried it maybe ten yards, and buried it in a drift of sand.

He said, ‘Fuck! Did you see
that
?’ but when he turned Whitby was gone, and the door was hanging open.

Arkle walked over, but the street was empty.

After a moment, he closed the door and crossed to where whatever it was had landed after he’d hit it on a reaction shot. He’d feel that one in his muscles forever – one perfect fluid moment in which target and bolt were connected; like there’d been an inevitable conjunction waiting to occur, which couldn’t have happened through anyone but Arkle. This was Olympic standard. Olympic, hell. Miracle standard. They should hand out the Nobel for a shot like that.

Precisely what he’d hit, he didn’t know yet.

The end of the bolt protruded from the sand an inch or two, and he pulled it clear like a sword from a stone. Brushed wet sand from the lump at the end, only now beginning to wonder who’d thrown it over the gate in the first place . . .

A fucking apple.

For no reason he could positively identify, the Lone Ranger tune started skipping through his head.

Without a plan, he climbed to the crow’s nest. Being here by himself always tugged at something inside Arkle he didn’t understand and wouldn’t know what to call, except that he felt more at home here than he did at home, and guessed the others did too. Just one more thing binding them together; another reason he couldn’t allow them to fall apart. The money, he remembered. He was supposed to be considering the money; what Kay knew about it; whether – more to the point – she could get her hands on it. Whether this Whitby was part of some scheme to do that. And if Whitby was actually from Oxford, or if finding him again would be trickier than that.

The light filtering through the meshed window had a greasy, secondhand texture, and the air tasted of whatever Trent had eaten lately: something fast and fried, and already cold by the time it got here.

The phone rang.

Afterwards, it would seem of great significance that when he heard the news he was in the crow’s nest, where he, Bax and Trent had spent so much of their shared lives together . . . It was Trent. Trent sounded sober. That was a first.

‘It’s Baxter.’

Arkle said nothing.

‘He’s dead, Arkle.’

And still he said nothing, as if this were the simplest way of undoing whatever complicated misunderstanding had infected Trent.

‘It was Kay.’ There was a curious vacancy in Trent’s voice, a vacancy which found an echo in Arkle’s heart. ‘She stabbed him, Ark. He’s dead . . .’

The greased and heavy light clouded over, leaving Arkle in the dark.

Chapter Five

i

It was a long drive home, and if Zoë had known it was going to end with her being dead, she’d have pulled into a layby and avoided it altogether. Life was too short to approach death head-on. On that journey, you took any diversion available – marriage, travel, children, alcohol. At the very least, you stopped to admire the view.

The moors folded over themselves deep into the distance, and wherever one fell from sight, another rose. Their only limit was the horizon. All the evidence suggested they kept happening the far side of that, too.

After the harried man had escaped the yard, the pair of them had raced down the street together like an elopement in progress, Zoë’s heartbeat underlining their urgency. If the apple hadn’t worked, she’d have had to do something else – and even with a gate between them, his attention elsewhere, shaven-head Arkle looked bad news; like somebody who’d squeeze whatever trigger was offered, for the pleasure of the damage it would cause. So she’d have had to do something, and had no idea what, though it would probably have involved being on the same side of the gate as him . . .

Thanks to the apple, that hadn’t happened.

They’d hared round two corners, Zoë and the man in white chinos and black jacket, before looking back. But nobody was following. She slowed, stopped and rested, heart hammering. When she closed her eyes, a picture from her past exploded in her head: that moment she’d been pulled clear of the canal just before her lungs burst, then plunged back in again, and held under.

She was being talked to:

‘. . . Thanks.’

Zoë, without opening her eyes, said, ‘Don’t tell me. You just popped in there, asking for directions.’

He didn’t say anything.

Now she opened them. ‘Oh, God. Tell me that didn’t happen.’

‘I was looking for somebody,’ he said at last. ‘I found him instead.’

‘Right.’ She tested her legs: reasonably steady. What was the matter with her? All she’d done was throw an apple and run. But even with the gate between them, that man had scared her. She’d recognized something dark in him, and knew that whatever she’d thrown to distract him – a kitten, a child – he’d have shot without thinking, and congratulated himself on his reflex. Her legs were okay now. It would be an idea to put space between him and her.

On being asked a third time, she registered what the question was.

‘Boehm. Zoë Boehm.’

They weren’t far from the car park, and judging by the relief on his face, he was parked here too. Belatedly, she asked his name: Tim Willerby, Wallaby, something like that. Who had come looking for someone and found Arkle instead, but had walked away intact. She should have advice to offer (don’t go into deserted yards with strange men) but that was ridiculous: he wasn’t much younger than her, and a little shopworn himself – hollow round the eyes; creased at the edges. Old enough to know better, in other words. She had rescued him, but only because he’d happened to be there. It wasn’t a big deal. Goodbye, Tim Willerby/Wallaby, she thought, and they parted in the middle of the car park. All of a sudden, she couldn’t leave this town fast enough.

It was a long drive home, and it ended with her dead.

Her first-floor flat shared a downstairs lobby, where mail, mostly junk, accumulated on a small table. This afternoon a posh cream envelope awaited her, along with a hand-delivered card, taped to a copy of the local paper. She carried both upstairs. It felt like she’d been away forever: her rooms had shrunk in her absence, and mustiness tinged the air. She flipped the light switch in passing, but nothing happened.

It was an immutable law that bulbs only went when there was no spare on the premises.

She swore, but quietly, under her breath. No big deal. Sitting, she thought about getting up again and pouring some wine, but if she started now she’d drink all evening, and this would leave her wrecked. Not that she had plans demanding sobriety . . . Best to sidestep the issue and read her card, which turned out to be cheap and sombre: embossed bouquet on white background, with
Deepest
Sympathy
in raised gilt lettering at its foot. Inside, in a script she didn’t recognize, was scrawled
Sorry to hear
you
’
re dead
.

For a moment Zoë felt nothing – very specifically nothing. She could feel nothing’s edges, the space nothing occupied. Nothing threatened to expand and swallow her whole. Nothing, for a while, verged on everything. Then she forced herself to blink, and the shadows receded.

She looked again at the envelope, but it gave no clues; just her name in block capitals, black ink. It didn’t matter. Clues only work when you’re already looking where they point, and this had Bob Poland written all over it. Putting it aside, she picked up the newspaper it had been taped to. A clammy knowledge of its contents was already clawing at her, the way the man in the Poe story scratched at his coffin lid, as if this would make the slightest difference.

Her name was there in the middle section, under Death Notices.
Suddenly, unexpectedly. No
fl
owers, by request
. Bastard. She threw the paper aside, her inner debate about wine forgotten, but the first thing she found in her kitchen was a pool of water on the floor by the fridge, and this time she swore out loud, already knowing what would happen when she tried the light switch – nothing. She tried anyway, just as somebody knocked on her door. Zoë marched out; took the stairs two at a time; threw the door open so fiercely, it was a wonder it didn’t splinter. The man on the other side took a step back, frightened. He lived downstairs.

‘Zoë?’

‘Dave.’

‘You’re alive.’

‘It would seem so. Has somebody been here?’

‘A policeman. Jesus. He said you were dead.’ Dave shook his head: he was thirty-four, and wore a beard. Death was a big thing. ‘A car crash?’ He made this a question. If anyone ought to know about her death, it was Zoë. ‘He said there’d been a traffic accident?’

‘And he had ID, right?’

‘It looked real to me.’

And you’re an expert, she managed not to say. ‘So you let him in.’ They kept each other’s spare keys, which until now had seemed a good idea.

‘. . . I’m really sorry, Zo.’

‘Don’t call me Zo,’ she said. Then, seeing his face, said: ‘Look, it’s nothing. Really. Practical joke, that’s all.’

‘He wasn’t a policeman?’

‘He’s retired. He likes a bit of a laugh.’

‘He said you were dead,’ Dave repeated. ‘That’s supposed to be funny? Your friends play real rough, Zoë.’

‘So do I,’ she told him.

She thought at first he’d managed to cancel her utilities, but she’d overestimated Bob Poland: he’d sliced her plugs, removed her fuses, reached his limit. Making out she was dead, leaving her flat a stone cold tomb – he didn’t get cleverer than that. Blunt weaponry was more his speed. And she felt her anger harden to a cold knot, and knew she’d make him pay for this, first chance she got.

Meanwhile she retreated to her local pub, which had drums and trumpets fixed to the walls, and player-piano music on the ceiling, and ordered a large white wine she almost finished before reaching her table. There was nothing like being reminded about one bastard to make you forget another. Poland’s intrusion had pushed Arkle to one side, but now she was sitting quietly with alcohol thank God in front of her, the morning returned into focus, and her conclusion was immediate: no way did she want to tangle with Arkle. He’d toyed with that man like a cat with a cornered sparrow. Zoë didn’t know if he’d have shot him or not, but she wasn’t about to replay the experiment with herself in the target role, just to find out.

Zoë drank wine, and thought about Win. Win thought the Dunstan brothers ripe for robbing, and her logic was the same as her boss’s had been when he’d set the Dunstans on Sweeney – who could they tell? Where this collapsed was in expecting Arkle to pout, fume and forget it. He presented with the self-control of a heat-seeking missile, and last thing Zoë planned to do was light a fire in his vicinity.

It was too late to do anything about plugs and bulbs; too early to go to bed, but suddenly that’s what she wanted to do anyway – close her eyes and put it all out of view: madmen, bastards, carnage on the roads. She had another drink first. The pub was filling as the nearby publisher closed its doors, and the ambient chatter of bookpeople masked her inner tension. Think about good things. Think about seeing Sweeney tomorrow: making her report, taking her money, pulling down the curtain. Bob Poland was a story for another day, and Arkle was history, clear and simple. Win’s dream of untold booty – whatever the Dunstans had stashed from their thieving outings – was only a pirate’s dream of other people’s money. Sweeney’s promised bounty, on the other hand, she’d earned. Take the money, pay her debts – she need never see or think about these people again. The next best thing to a happy ending was an ending.

She finished her drink and went home, where it was dark and comfortless. And when she turned on her portable radio, she found that Poland had thought of this too: he’d removed its batteries. No light, no sound; no calming voices on Radio 4, murmuring secular certainties. ‘Fuck you,’ she said out loud. Did he think this would bring her to her knees; make her feel she was peering over the edge of an open grave? Zoë was too solidly of the here and now to be frightened out of it by that creep. Even an angry, vindictive stalker was only a stalker: sooner or later, you scraped him off your shoe.

By light that swam through the window, she noticed, lying on her sofa, the other letter; the one she’d forgotten about after opening Poland’s. It could be good news. It was, of course, a bill. Damien bloody Faraday –’for consultation’. For being told, in other words, what she already knew: that she owed the Inland Revenue more than she could currently repay. Her fridge remained disabled, but she retrieved the half-empty bottle of wine from it anyway; finished it in one large glass, and went to bed.

Thursday morning – crack of nine – she was outside the Cancer Relief shop again. No Miss Marple yet; no sign of Sweeney. She turned her mobile off, in case Jeff rang asking for his car back, and browsed
The Independent
: train fares up, military scandal, human cloning. Somebody got murdered, too:
Totnes
caught her eye, but before she could read further there was a tapping at her window, and she looked up expecting Sweeney. But no. It was Miss Marple.

Zoë wound the window down.

‘I rang the council.’

Now why wasn’t that a surprise?

‘And they said they’ve nobody surveying antisocial behaviour. Nobody at all.’

‘And did you complain about that?’

‘Complain?’

‘Council tax the way it is, you’d think they could afford a little antisocial targeting.’ Anti-antisocial, she meant. She wound the window up before this could be pointed out, and decided that waiting round the corner might be quieter – where the Dunstans had lurked, in fact. It was coming to something when you had to take parking tips from a bunch of armed robbers.

Once there she felt restless, so got out and walked the block. The streets were busy now. All the other shops were open. Zoë felt, or possibly imagined, the gimlet stare of white hair/pink wool upon her, and wondered for a moment what it would be like to be that age. Then realized she was looking no more than, say, twenty-five years into her future, and tried to shut that channel down . . . Too late. What would she be doing in twenty-five years? Without a serious upturn in economic status, she might not be working in a charity shop, but she’d be buying her outfits there. This was not a good vision. She walked on, browsing windows, but found herself looking back every two minutes, because it stood to reason that one particular pair of minutes would be the one in which Sweeney appeared.

Except none of them were. And though she waited a full hour past Sweeney’s usual opening time, for most of that, she’d known in her bones he wasn’t coming.

ii

Arkle, blind with fury, mad with loss, roared like a blood-red sunset on one of those plains he’d dreamed about. From the darkness something answered: echoing his pain, telling him to shut up, who knew?

Trent said, ‘That copper? The one with red hair?

’ Arkle’s noise might have meant yes, he knew the one; no, he didn’t care.

‘He said it would have been quick. He said Bax didn’t suffer.’

Trent didn’t feel drunk, which was alarming. He’d been drinking all day. If he wasn’t drunk, he’d possibly turned some evolutionary corner.

‘I said, didn’t suffer? She stuck a fucking kitchen knife in him. That’s gotta hurt.’

He was sitting at the foot of the metal staircase, washed in the light of the last unburnt-out overhead lamp, and his eyes were red and aching. Around him lay torn, wadded copies of newspapers, most of which had had something to say about Bax, about Kay; all of it liberally sprinkled with inverted commas. ‘Abusive.’ ‘Self-defence.’

Last time he’d seen Kay, she’d had that shiner decorating her face: what they call a mouse. Even a mouse’ll roar, if you poke it hard enough.

Arkle was back and forth, back and forth. He looked like he was wearing a mask again, except this mask was fashioned of anger, grief and fury; the three of them working his features, making him their puppet.

What Trent mostly felt was numb.

There’d been coppers, naturally – a whole day’s worth – and while they’d started out sympathetic, this had changed yesterday evening, when something tribal had occurred. Attitudes hardened, and things became more recognizable. From the unfamiliar role of innocent bystander, Trent had been shifted to his usual position of being somebody he probably shouldn’t be. In a way, this was a comfort. Baxter was still dead, but at least Trent was still Trent, whom policemen eyed with suspicion as a matter of course, if only for being Arkle’s brother. And Arkle was a walking war zone.

Look at him now. Back and forth, back and forth. There’d been journos buzzing round like flies on meat. At the police station, Trent and Arkle had been ushered out of the back door to avoid them: a courtesy allowed on account of their brother being the meat, despite the newfound suspicion he might deserve to be. But journos tracked them to the yard anyway, and stood outside the gates, rattling the woodwork. This was what it must be like, the wrong side of a zoo. When their noise penetrated Arkle’s grief, he’d gone out and flattened the nose of the first to reach him. There’d been a scattering, as if news were breaking elsewhere. In the midst of it, Trent noticed a woman watching from over the road: late fifties, mad grey hair and thick glasses; wearing a belted brown raincoat, from under which tufts of a tatty green cardigan poked. Bag lady, he’d thought. Astonishingly, she’d yawned. He’d turned to check on Arkle, and when he next looked, she was gone.