Why We Die (2 page)

When he woke, he forgot for a while that he was dead. Everything felt still and muffled. Noise grumbled elsewhere – the rattling of a breakfast trolley; a synchronized murmur of voices – but it felt dubbed; artificially added to satisfy those hungry for detail. All that counted was the body he remained sealed in: limbs like concrete; head broadcasting action from a distant war. The pounding of mortar bombs hitting sand with the dull rhythm of a heartbeat. Slowly, facts percolated while he lay motionless: the first, that the light was on. It burned directly on to his closed eyes, brighter than the average sun. The second, that he was fully dressed; on top of, not under, the covers.

Tim was dead, of course. Except he wasn’t. Pieces of yesterday evening came back, and he imagined gluing them together like you might a favourite vase – entering the room, sitting on the bed, opening the Macallan. Fantasies he’d entertained while doing these things returned now with the heft of memory, as if he’d actually been dancing with Emma that recently; as if they’d made love – that recently. As for drinking the whisky, memory shuddered at the notion, and backed away. Like his favourite vase, memory wasn’t holding water any more. But Tim didn’t need memory to know he’d punished the bottle. Eyes closed, he could feel it poisoning his system. Eyes open – when he dared – he could see it, three-quarters empty, on the bedside table.

Next to the bottle of amitryptilline he’d not even opened.

He groaned, and alarmed himself with the noise . . . As if he’d just disturbed something nesting in its pit. He was the pit. This was the pits. Words that dizzied him, chasing their own tails round his mind: he made it to the bathroom, but just barely.

Tim wasn’t keeping count, but it was two hours later he checked out of the hotel, doing so with a heavy sense of shame, as if he’d abused the premises somehow – sneaked in a prostitute, or accessed a pay-per-view that would have the staff sniggering in his wake. He barely glanced at the bill, though it was a lot more serious than it would have been if he were dead. Standing at the desk, watching the woman process his credit card, he almost excused himself –
I was here once before. With my wife. The weekend we married
– but recognized that for what it was: yesterday’s alcohol talking. The remains of the Macallan, he’d left on his bedside table. The drugs, he’d flushed away – a corner had been turned, and he wouldn’t be trying that exit again. Plans were not to be trusted. A sudden jump in front of a heavy vehicle might work, but anything more considered, he was bound to fuck up.

That afternoon, safely home in the small terraced house Emma wouldn’t be returning to, he went to bed again: slept the sleep of the newly suicided between sheets unwashed in a month. When he woke, it was just before 5 a.m. His limbs were heavy and his stomach still churned, but mostly with hunger. He ate a bowl of cereal, then sat in his tiny back garden while autumn flexed its limbs, trying out a variety of small cloud-formations before settling for plain blue. He smoked cigarette after cigarette until they were all gone, and their fumes infused his skin as if he were toxic.

The following morning, Monday, Tim called in sick, but got up in the afternoon anyway and washed his bed linen. He showered, and afterwards spent a while staring into the bathroom mirror. Lately he had been avoiding his reflection, the way he might cross a road to avert an encounter with a former friend, one who’d been out of touch too long for conversation to be anything but awkward. Now, though, Tim stared, as if indifference had crossed into hostility. ‘You worthless shit,’ he said to the familiar face with its few new creases; with the mole just under the jawline which had never bothered him, but did now. ‘You pointless jerk.’ He wondered what Emma would say if she could see him. But tears were sealed inside him so tightly they might never work their way out. He’d have to crack and fissure like a wrecked kettle for that to happen.

He slept. He woke up. Everything that had already happened for the last time happened again . . . He dressed, ate breakfast, and left for work; was caught once more by the lights at the junction, and then was delayed again near the shopping drag, before the long dip towards Oxford city centre.

An ambulance was parked by the subway, and some- body was being loaded into the back; there were policemen everywhere – Tim counted twelve, though he might have missed a few – blocking pavements; stringing yellow-and-black crime scene tape around the jeweller’s. Cars were waved past one at a time. Stuck in line, Tim tuned the radio to the local station and picked up a story about an armed robbery so recent it was barely over. A passer-by had been shot: unconfirmed reports suggested he was dead. And this is how it happens, Tim thought; this is how it
really
happens. Unplanned, unexpected, when you were on your way somewhere else – death is not a rehearsal. Like the T-shirts say about life, only with more of an edge to it. Death is not a rehearsal.

Traffic began to move, and Tim moved with it: slowly down the hill, and into the heart of the city.

ii

Some nights, there was a problem with the rats. The problem was, there were no rats. While Arkle stood in the centre of the yard, the only noise came from the road; a passing taxi’s heavy-clutched grind, baffled by the high wooden gates which hadn’t been opened in a year. And even that was blotted by the underfoot crunch of sand and pebble; the carefully graded piles of which had leaked from their enclosures and drifted to the centre of the yard, where it would have taken an expert to tell them apart, though the old man would have managed all right – on a lightless night would have done that with his feet: just the odd taxi for a soundtrack, and no rats in evidence at all.

Though Arkle could imagine the little bastards cowering in the darkness, waiting till he’d gone.

He’d borrowed Baxter’s fancy watch. It withstood pressure fifty metres underwater, explained due north, and, more relevantly right now, lit up when he pressed a button: 10.45. Price was due at eleven, which realistically meant he might turn up within the next three hours. After one last look around – the weapon heavy in his hands: he hated it when he came out shooting, and found nothing to shoot – Arkle trekked back up the metal staircase to the temporary cabin that had perched there twenty-five years, a big tin coffin on a stepladder. Through its grimy window the portable’s blue flicker leaked. Arkle’s boots on the stairs made that dull thudding sound you got in submarines.

When they’d been smaller, Trent had worried about that, and also about the missing slats – you could see right the way to the ground. Trent was worried he’d fall through the gaps.

‘No one in recorded history,’ Baxter told him, ‘has ever had that happen.’

‘You don’t know all of recorded history.’

But Baxter was pretty sure he’d have been informed.

At the top Arkle stopped and looked back. He wore a long black coat, and even in the dark his shaved head shone, as if recently charged. The lights of Totnes stretched up the hill, the chains they made broken where buildings or trees interrupted them. Somewhere out of sight, beyond where the streetlights dipped into invisibility, Kay’s old man still lived: a confused idiot last time Arkle had seen him. Years back you could have laid a garden rake against his backbone, touching all the way. It was one of those lessons life taught: that getting old was just another way of fucking up.

So: he placed his weapon on the flat roof. When he pushed the door it jammed briefly, and when he put weight on it, the office shook. Inside, Baxter and Trent perched on wooden stools that were just this side of fire-wood, watching the TV buzzing soundlessly in its corner like an electric aquarium. Despite the hour, Baxter looked – as always – splinter-sharp: tonight a dark grey suit over a collarless white shirt, no tie. He looked like a posterboy for something expensive but ultimately soulless, like alcohol-free lager, or a New Labour policy initiative. Trent, though, looked like Trent. When you saw those newspaper articles about Britain today, how everybody was getting rounder and pastier, it was quickest just to think about Trent and nod.

But then, Trent had always had a problem. Fifteen years back, Arkle’s first impression was Trent was terrified all the time. He’d thought there must be something basic, something all-encompassing, that gave Trent the willies 24/7: hair, shoes, the weather, paving stones. Turned out, he was frightened of Arkle. So at least the little mutt had some brains.

It was Baxter who cleared this up. ‘He’s worried you’ll forget your lunch one day, and bite his head off to keep you going.’

Arkle tried to imagine this. ‘Does he think I’ll chew clean through, or just scoop the insides out?’

Baxter had never had problems being scared of Arkle; or more likely, Baxter had quickly got used to not showing fear. Probably before he was three. Baxter was light brown, so when it was summer, looked like he had a really good tan. But when it wasn’t, you knew there was mixed blood going on.

‘Is your dad a brown man?’ Arkle had asked him, back then.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Why don’t you know?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘That all you fucking say?’

And Baxter had fixed him with huge oval eyes, dark as chocolate. ‘Don’t know.’

These days, Trent wasn’t as scared of Arkle as he used to be, because Arkle had learned how not to put the fear on, which was energy-saving. Also, Trent was hungover. You could always tell when Trent was hungover; his hangovers clouded round him like a separate weather system. Trent reckoned he was a champion drinker because he drank so much, but this was like thinking you were a champion boxer because you got punched lots. Right now, he looked recently mugged.

When Arkle slammed the door it rattled the window: reminded everybody they were one small accident away from being bounced like a can of marbles.

‘Price showed?’

Arkle barely got halfway through patting his pockets, looking over his shoulder, before Baxter said: ‘Christ, enough, okay? Just thought his car might have pulled up.’

As often happened, and for no reason he could put his finger on, Arkle’s mood lifted, tension leaking out of him exactly as if there’d been rats to shoot. Everybody had their own way of dealing with the climbdown after a job. Trent got drunk. Baxter – Baxter was wrapped pretty tight; probably had ways of letting off steam Arkle didn’t know about. Probably involving Kay. Arkle didn’t drink, and rarely touched women, but he had his moments. ‘He’ll be here. It’s early yet.’

Baxter put his hand out.

Arkle tossed him his watch back.

On TV, a guy with a dark suit, bow tie and American teeth was displaying an empty top hat to a studio audience: you could almost taste the rabbit. It was funny how stuff that was naff ten years ago was cool again – Arkle rated TV magicians below radio ventriloquists. That guy who hung himself in a glass box over the Thames? They should have seized the opportunity and microwaved the prick.

But to be friendly, he said: ‘Why’s it quiet?’

‘Sound’s buggered. He just made a car disappear, though.’

Arkle was staring at him.

‘What?’

‘It’s fucking TV, Bax.’

‘And?’

‘You watched
Superman
last week. You think that guy can really fly?’

Trent said, ‘That was a film.’ It came out
fi
llum
. He sounded like his throat needed rodding. ‘This is telly.’

‘You probably have a point. I wonder what it is.’

‘They said it was real. No mirrors or nothing.’

‘And if Price offers magic beans, you’ll believe him?’

Trent said, ‘Films are made up. Telly isn’t,’ but said it largely to himself, so Arkle didn’t let it spoil his newfound well-being.

Baxter said, ‘I’ve never worked out whether I prefer you in a good mood or a bad one. Or what the difference is.’

Arkle rose above this. Baxter had occasions when basically he was just going to grumble, but the office was Arkle’s space, and he wouldn’t be crowded out. Baxter didn’t like it, there were other places he could be.

Most of which were cleaner. Apart from the TV, the room – the crow’s nest, the old man had called it – held a metal table, the stools Baxter and Trent were using, a chair which was Arkle’s, a filing cabinet stuffed to buggery with invoices, receipts, catalogues,
paperwork
– not a scrap of it less than a year old – and one of those hatstands with horns, had to have fallen off the back of a lorry. And every last inch of everything, Baxter excepted, covered in dust. That was a rule: you couldn’t run a gravel merchant’s without a lot of airborne particles invading your space. The surprise was how Baxter avoided it; like he actually repelled the stuff.

The TV buzzed on wordlessly. Dust – dust would be doing that; choking its workings, so the words tangled up inside, and never got loose. Not that some dickhead with an undone bow tie had anything Arkle wanted to know.

‘He’ll be here soon,’ he said, just to be saying something.

Baxter grunted.

‘Price.’

Baxter grunted.

‘I’ll be outside.’

Arkle scooped the weapon off the roof on his way down the stairs.

Big clouds shifted overhead; the moon a bright edge behind them – a silver thread knotting in the middle. He could hear his own breath; hear his clothes rustle as he lifted the weapon to his shoulder and waited. Something would happen. His eye and the weapon were ready; a conjunction that demanded a third party: a victim that didn’t know it was willing yet. Above him the crow’s nest creaked, but Arkle was focused now; was all vision and trigger finger. Any moment now, the last living rat would show its whiskers. And half a second later he’d be on it, in it, through it . . . The rat would never know life was over. The last thing to pass through its mind, Arkle’s steel bolt.

iii

Death was on her mind when she heard about the money. Death and taxes: the two great constants, the latter somehow guaranteeing the former – nobody could afford to live forever. The interest alone would kill you.

‘Four thousand, seven hundred?’

‘Four thousand, seven hundred and thirty-one.’