Why We Die (18 page)

‘Yes. I saw him scatter a crowd the other day. A bull couldn’t have done it more effectively.’ Katrina waited, but Helen didn’t elaborate. ‘Go on.’

‘He’s probably a sociopath. Seriously. I don’t think he quite believes in other people, and he certainly doesn’t care what happens to them.’

The look on Jonno’s face was now that of a man contemplating somebody he knows he’s superior to, who luckily isn’t there.

‘And this is the family you married into.’

‘I wasn’t marrying Arkle.’

‘But they sound a unit. Did you really think they’d stop being one afterwards?’

Katrina said, ‘Why are you so interested in them? They’ve nothing to do with what happened to . . . us.’

Happened to Baxter, she meant.

Helen Coe said, ‘I saw your brothers-in-law the other day. They’re . . . intriguing.’

‘Nice word.’

Jonno said, ‘This Arkle sounds like the kind of bloke penicillin was supposed to eradicate, know what I mean?’

‘When your opinion is called for,’ Helen said without looking round, ‘I’ll be
sure
to let you know.’ To Katrina she said: ‘Arkle was in a state. I don’t suppose you’re in his top ten right now.’

‘I never was.’

‘Another reason for hoping you’re not charged with Baxter’s murder.’

Katrina laughed: a full-out laugh which surprised all of them. It didn’t last long.

In the silence which followed, she said: ‘Do you seriously think Arkle’s going to give a damn what the police or the courts decide? As far as he’s concerned, it’s a closed issue. His brother’s dead. I’m to blame. End of story.’

The creaking noise the others heard while digesting this was a floorboard relaxing.

Helen said, ‘Yes. Well. You’re safe now.’

‘That’s good to know.’

‘Nobody knows you’re here.’

The doorbell rang.

iv

When Trent squinted he could just about achieve normal vision, and he was grateful for this; partly in a non-specific way that things hadn’t turned out worse, but partly too to Arkle, who could have hit him harder if he’d wanted. Trent knew this because Arkle had mentioned it once or twice.

‘It’s pretty tough,’ Arkle had said, ‘but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it serious damage.’

Trent rubbed his head in agreement. Serious damage. Something might have come loose inside; be floating unanchored, even now.

‘As it is, it’ll probably need adjusting. You might have thrown the aim off. Just the slightest kink’ll do that.’

‘Sorry,’ Trent mumbled.

‘Yeah, well. You’re my brother. Doesn’t matter how often you fuck up. We’re tied by blood.’

Some of which had dried by now, leaving an almost-black stain on Arkle’s crossbow’s stock.

It had been a long day. They had a list of addresses, a map and a phone, and with patience might have found Helen Coe without moving an inch. But things were never easy. Directory enquiries squirted out most of the phone numbers, but three remained unaccounted for; of the numbers available, another three didn’t answer, and two hung up on Arkle. ‘Does this silly bitch expect me to come knocking on her door?’ he wondered, when a voice declined to tell him whether she wrote for the
Chronicle
. No: what the silly bitch expected was, he’d fucked off once she’d cut the connection. Trent decided not to tell him this. ‘Let’s do the unknowns geographically,’ he said.
Geographically
was his longest word in days, and it came out funny. Nearest first is what he’d meant.

Geographically, though, left a lot of ground to cover.

So here they were, parked half-on/half-off a stretch of pavement lined with a row of black, Trent-and-a-bit high railings, on the other side of which city-type undergrowth scrabbled for life. Across the road were some tall, shabby but expensive houses; old enough to have kings’ names attached – Edwardian, Georgian, whatever – instead of Wimpey or Barratt, like the estate they’d checked out earlier further west; an area hemmed in by highrises, whose balcony railings were painted bright primary colours. It had been like looking at a stack of children’s playpens, piled higher than a beanstalk.

. . . Trying to move around London had been like driving through quicksand. Everything was a bastard, and their map didn’t understand that you couldn’t get anywhere without being diverted, or pitched into no-go zones. Arkle’s patience lasted as long as a Christmas cracker, and Trent’s thirst was growing. All he’d had to drink was a bottle of water.

He could foresee days of this – backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, wearing deep grooves in their out-of-date map. Don’t try telling Arkle how to do things, though. Arkle was the brains, now Baxter was history.

. . . And with that thought had come the image of Baxter, lying dead on the kitchen floor. Kay had taken a knife and stuck it in his heart, like something from a rock and roll song. To stop him hitting her, the newspapers said, or that’s what they said
she
said. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? Bottom line was, Baxter remained dead. And now Arkle wanted Kay dead too, and Trent didn’t think that was such a poor idea. As far back as he cared to remember, Baxter had been his big brother, and while Arkle had protected Trent from the rest of the world, Baxter had protected him from Arkle. And now he was gone. No, Trent had no problem with Arkle’s objective; he just thought it would be handy if they could do it without getting caught. Not using a van with Dunstan & Sons on its side panels might be a step in the right direction.

But now, anyway, they were parked half-on/half-off a stretch of pavement, and the next potential Helen Coe lived right across the road.

‘I did the last one,’ Arkle told him.

Trent could hardly talk. Well, he could talk, but it was a long shot anyone but Arkle would have the faintest idea what his noises meant.

‘We share them between us, it’ll take half the time.’

It needed Baxter to pick the holes in that one, but Bax was way too dead to be any use now.

He got out of the van, though. Arguing with Arkle generally didn’t make it past his brain’s suggestion box. Big soft raindrops were starting to fall as he crossed the road; were hitting the tarmac with fat plopping noises, as if a swarm of frogs had been tipped from an overhead cradle. As he approached the house, he caught his reflection in a window, and wondered for a moment what that freak was up to – the lopsided, squat accident whose face looked like someone had tried to force it through a sieve . . . Some of this, but not enough, was the crazy-mirror distortion of flawed glass.

Trent climbed three steps to the front door, and rang the bell.

v

The doorbell rang, and it was a policeman. The police knew Katrina was here, of course – she hadn’t been charged yet, but it was a speeding certainty she would be: only the nature of the charge remained to be determined. ‘A matter of forensics,’ this particular policeman told her. ‘Of seeing how the evidence holds up.’

Helen Coe snorted. ‘A matter of politics, more like. Charge her with murder, there’ll be public outrage. You’re aware that
that
has been in every paper in the land?’

That
was Katrina’s face, or the red-and-ochre bruise decorating it: an angry smudge that changed its shape depending on the light – now forensics, now politics.

‘If I could have five minutes with Mrs Dunstan?’

Ms Blake, Katrina didn’t say.

Helen Coe left, muttering. Jonno went with her.

The policeman, who had red hair but whose name always seemed to leave Katrina’s mind as soon as enter it, had come a long way to talk to her, and wasn’t happy about it. ‘It used to be the law ran the country. Not the media.’

Katrina knew who she was with the police. Knew who they expected her to be. So she didn’t reply to this.

‘But that’s what happens when a newspaper boss is mates with a Chief Constable.’ Once he’d got that off his chest, he felt better. ‘How’s your face?’

‘Improving. Thank you.’

He glanced about. ‘They treating you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘There’s a few things I need to go over. About the morning your husband died.’

‘Again?’

He said, without apology, ‘That’s how it works.’

She was remembering a children’s game, Murder in the Dark, in one of whose variations the designated detective asks everyone the same questions over and over. Whoever gives inconsistent answers was the murderer.

‘I understand.’

He bent and picked a folded newspaper from the floor, then collected what had been lying underneath it. ‘It seems the guardian of the free press forgot something.’ He showed her Helen Coe’s palm-sized dictaphone. ‘Wouldn’t want her to waste her batteries.’

He turned it off.

Coe was spitting feathers by the time the policeman left: who did he think he was? (He thought he was the police.) Whose story was this anyway? (It was Katrina’s.) And wasn’t it way past lunchtime?

Jonno already had his jacket on; was already out of the door.

‘How cooperative were you?’ Helen asked.

‘You weren’t listening?’

‘You heard the man. He wanted to speak to you alone.’

And to be fair, when the policeman had checked, neither Helen nor Jonno were at the keyhole.

Katrina said, ‘I answered his questions.’

‘The
Chronicle
’s paying for an exclusive on this.’

Katrina stared at her.

‘Yeah, all right. Can’t blame me for getting irritated.’ Helen Coe ran fingers through her hair, in case it was settling down. ‘It seems we’ve spent a lot of time talking, and nothing much gets said.’

‘Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions,’ Katrina told her.

‘Maybe you’re not answering them properly.’

Katrina didn’t have an answer for that, true. She said nothing.

Helen Coe asked, ‘Why did you marry him?’

‘Why does anybody get married?’

‘Try not to look on this as a conversation, Katrina. Try to think of it as an opportunity to get your side across.’

‘He won’t be putting his side now, will he?’

‘There’s people’ll do that for him.’

A thought occurred to her. ‘Are you on my side, Helen?’

After a moment, Helen said, ‘This is my job.’

‘What about the
Chronicle
? Is the
Chronicle
on my side?’

‘Of course. Now, always and forever.’

‘Your apprentice has gone for pizza. You can tell me the truth.’

‘You’re not a stupid woman, dear, so don’t pretend to be. We’re a newspaper. Whose side we’re on depends on how many copies we’re selling.’

‘So long as we both know where we stand.’

‘Good. So. When did he start hitting you?’

A question like any other, from a list to be completed.

‘Katrina?’

‘Not till after we married.’

‘That right?’

‘You think I’d have married him if I’d known he would hit me?’

‘I don’t know. When was the first time?’

Katrina glazed over. The past was to be looked at darkly. You did not easily start turning stones when you knew that under one of them, something ugly hid.

She said, ‘It was quite soon after. Soon after we were married. I forgot to do something, something really stupid. I forgot to pay the paper bill. Which meant one of us had to go out again, though we’d both been out already . . .’

The windowpane rattled at a gust of wind. Fat raindrops pattered on the glass.

‘I’d have gone myself,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think it was that big a deal.’

After a moment, Helen asked, ‘Where did he hit you?’

Katrina touched her cheek. Purple or blue; black or crimson.
What is your favourite colour?

‘Jesus,’ said Helen Coe. She stood, and noticed she’d been sitting on her dictaphone. Perhaps it had been an accident she’d left it there, thought Katrina. Either way, she switched it on now. To celebrate the event, the pair fell silent.

Tick tick tick. Tock tock tock. In a matter of weeks, the trees across the road would have scattered their leaves on the pavements; making an untidy slippery mess; choking and gagging the storm drains. Puddles would flood the kerbs, while the grass behind the railings grew brown, and tried to dig its way back inside the earth. All as a way of underlining that time went on, regardless of what you did with it. But Katrina would be long departed before this came to pass. She hoped.

‘Did you tell anyone?’

‘Then? No.’

‘How about later?’

‘Only much later. And it was nobody important.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t remember. And I didn’t really tell him, anyway. It was just . . . We were talking. I think he might have guessed.’

Helen said, ‘This really isn’t going to work unless you start being a little clearer.’

‘It was in a hotel bar in Oxford. His name was Tim. Bax was . . . out on business. We got talking. I had a bruise, not as bad as this, but . . . He couldn’t not notice.’

‘And you told him your husband did it?’

‘No. But I think he guessed.’

He might have guessed. He had seemed sympathetic; the kind of man who might have seen a little further than his own ends required . . . On the other hand, he had turned out to be very drunk. Not noisy, stupid, scene-making drunk, but bottom-of-a-deep-dark-hole drunk, and unlikely to clamber out on his own. Perhaps, once his clouds had cleared, he’d remember their conversation. But she wouldn’t bet on it.

‘What about friends?’

‘What about them?’

‘Didn’t you tell anybody else?’

‘Everybody I know knows Baxter. Knew him.’ Tenses were dangerous: now and then they came out wrong. ‘I told some people I’d walked into doors.’ Which was what everybody said when they’d picked up extracurricular bruising. It was part of the social code, a notch above
We must get together really soon.

‘Did his brothers know?’

Katrina said, ‘Arkle’s just barely aware the world keeps turning when he’s asleep. Trent . . . Trent knew. I think he knew.’

Trent had seen her once, with a bruise in place. She was reasonably certain, anyway, that he had seen her, while sober enough to know what he was seeing.

Helen was pacing the room again. Downstairs, the door opened and closed: that would be Jonno, back with the pizzas. The thought of eating – especially of eating pizza – filled Katrina with disgust. Lately, nothing but takeaway food. Her digestive system must be starting to resemble an overstuffed binliner.