An Empty Death

by Laura Wilson

  He crushed his cigarette out and leant against the wall, eyes closed and face turned upwards to the meagre sunlight. ‘MB, ChB,’ he murmured to himself, remembering the moment when, in the safety of his room, he’d taken Dacre’s papers from his pockets and scattered them across the bed: birth certificate, school certificates, degree certificates – he’d been right about St Andrews. There were even some letters to his mother, written from university. Handy, those, since he’d never been anywhere near either St Andrews or Dundee, which was apparently the home of the medical school. They’d be useful for background colour, if he ever got into a conversation about it. There was nothing a university man liked more, he’d learned, than a good chinwag about the dear old college with another graduate. He’d been caught out that way once before, and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. He’d send off for a prospectus too, to be on the safe side.

  He’d already made up a new ID card for Dacre. The next thing he needed to do was to open a bank account in Dacre’s name, and then there was the question of the medical discharge certificate. The hospital was bound to ask why he hadn’t been called up – which was ironic, considering that the real reason was because he was, officially, dead, and you couldn’t get more medically discharged than that. How to go about it? He heard a creaking noise and, opening his eyes, he saw, slouching through the door from the emergency operating rooms, the rotund form of a hospital orderly. ‘Sorry to disturb you, mate. Got a match?’

  ‘Here.’ As the orderly bent his head to light his cigarette, Todd realised that the answer had been provided. Had been there, in fact, all along, right under his nose.

  ‘Deep in thought, were you? Looked like you was concentrating on something.’

  ‘Nice to have a bit of peace, that’s all.’

  ‘Work in there, do you?’ The orderly jerked his head in the direction of the mortuary.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Blimey. Wouldn’t fancy it myself. That what happened to your hand?’ He gestured at the pink scar that circled the base of Todd’s right thumb. ‘One of ’em sit up and have a go at you?’

  Todd shook his head. ‘Dog bite. When I was a kid. It’s not so bad in there, you know. You get used to it soon enough.’

  ‘You’d have to. Not that it’s all fun and games where I am, mind. Been on my feet all morning…’ The orderly rattled off a litany of complaints and Todd nodded sympathetically, his mind racing. Something about the orderly’s face, with its meaty flesh and bulbous nose, put him immediately in mind of his landlady’s son, Jimmy, a thickset twenty-year-old layabout with – according to his mother – a weak heart that prevented him from fighting (or, as far as anyone knew, doing anything except ambling down to the pub on the corner). Jimmy must have a medical discharge certificate, if he could only get hold of it…He hadn’t needed one for Todd, as the Administrative Department had been happy to accept his explanation of call-up deferred on compassionate grounds (they’d been so pleased to have an applicant who wasn’t either a dribbling half-wit or as old as Methuselah that a vague explanation about a mentally-defective brother had sufficed, backed up by the promise of a confirming letter in the post, which, despite the fact they’d never received it, was never asked about again).

  ‘…so I told him,’ said the orderly, ‘it’s not my job to bugger about with nitrous oxide. Those young doctors think they know it all.’

  ‘Which doctor was it?’

  ‘Betterton. But they’re all as bad as each other.’

  ‘Are there many, then?’ asked Todd. ‘I’d have thought they’d have been in the army.’

  ‘Only three – Dr Unwin’s another, and Dr Wemyss – though, come to think of it, he’s all right, really. Got money, he has, but he doesn’t swank about it. Nurses flirting with him left, right and centre, though – he could have his pick. Look, mate, I’d better get back. Nice talking to you.’

  ‘Right you are. See you.’

  Todd paused outside the door of the main room. He could hear the sound of people moving about, and Byrne’s voice dictating monotonously to Miss Lynn. After a minute straining his ears for details, he gave up and went through to the refrigeration room to clean up after Mrs Lubbock. Betterton, Unwin and Wemyss, eh? He’d be on the lookout for them. His first aim was to find out where they drank. Meantime – through the half-open door he eyed a group of nurses walking down the corridor towards their quarters, discreetly appraising, and rejecting, faces, breasts and legs – there was the matter of choosing the right girl.

  Ten

  Stratton, at the station, stood in front of DCI Lamb’s desk while his superior, looking more like George Formby than ever, went through a series of facial contortions. Anyone would think, Stratton reflected wryly, that he’d asked the man to solve some impossible philosophical conundrum, not provide a few blokes for a search team.

  ‘This,’ Lamb jabbed his desk with a forefinger, ‘isn’t officially a murder enquiry, Stratton.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘We’re very busy at the moment.’

  Yes, sir,’ said Stratton, wearily.

  ‘There’s a lot’ (jab!) ‘to be attended to, and I don’t’ (jab!) ‘want’ (jab!) ‘anything overlooked.’

  ‘No, sir. But Dr Byrne seems to think it wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘Seems to think?’

  Stratton thought he might as well opt for a bit of arse-covering. ‘He suggested the search, sir.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Not until we have the results of the post-mortem.’

  ‘Yes, but what did it’ (jab!) ‘look like to you?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, sir, without some more information. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘you’d like to take a look yourself, sir. Give us the benefit of your opinion.’ This was definitely pushing it, and Lamb gazed at him warily for what felt like about five minutes. Stratton, straining every nerve in an effort not to shout ‘oh, fuck off’, forced himself to meet his superior’s eyes with what he fervently hoped was the guileless and sincere expression of one seeking assurance.

  ‘I hope we can trust your judgement,’ said Lamb. ‘I’m sure we can spare one or two chaps if you think it’s important.’ The implication that Stratton would be for the high jump if it turned out not to be important buzzed in the air between them like an angry wasp.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Take Watkins and Piper’ – two reservists, fair enough – ‘oh, and,’ Lamb gave Stratton a look of pure malice, ‘Arliss should be about somewhere.’

  Stratton’s heart sank. Arliss had such a knack for cocking things up that if there was anything there to find, he’d miss it, and Lamb bloody well knew it. ‘Thank you, sir. We’ll get started immediately.’

  ‘I take it you haven’t spoken to the family yet?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Better do it yourself, if you can. And be careful what you say – we don’t want to alarm them if it’s not necessary. Where are they?’

  Damn, thought Stratton. ‘I’ll have to ask the hospital, sir.’

  ‘Do that. If they’re out of London, better get the local chaps to have a word. Otherwise…’ he waved a hand. ‘You know the drill. Use a car if necessary. I need you to sort this out – if there is anything to sort out – as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

  Watkins and Piper set off smartly in the direction of the bomb-site, with Arliss trailing them at an unenthusiastic distance. Stratton accompanied them and gave instructions to search the area thoroughly for anything that looked suspicious. Like most people, he supposed, he hated hospitals. He could never enter one without remembering how, when he was six and his mother had died, his father had stood, humiliated, before the almoner, twisting his cap in his huge farmer’s hands as he tried to explain how they couldn’t afford to pay the bill.

  Dismissing his memories with an effort, he went to find the Administrative Department, where he spoke to a woman with thick, round spectacles
who kept repeating, ‘Dead? Dead?’ in outraged tones, as if dying were some particularly disgusting contravention of the Hippocratic oath.

  She took Stratton to see the Senior Registrar, a man with a voice so upper class that it sounded as if he were being slowly strangled with piano wire, who had an empty sherry decanter and an antelope hoof with a hinged lid (Stratton thought it might have been a snuff-box) on his desk to denote his vertiginously high status. After explaining the situation four times in slightly different words, he managed to elicit the information that Dr Reynolds was married and lived in Finchley.

  On the way back to the station, he paused for a quick word with Ballard at the bomb-site (nothing to report), and, returning to West End Central, asked the desk sergeant to organise a car. After a few minutes of fuss and harrumphing, a Railton saloon and a driver appeared, and Stratton was borne off to North London in the company of Policewoman Harris, chosen on the grounds of her kind face and sensible demeanour.

  The late Dr Reynolds’s home was larger and handsomer than he’d expected, and Stratton wondered if he’d had a private income as well as his doctor’s salary. God, he hated this part of the job: that split second before you said the words when they guessed from your face why you were there, and you’d have given anything not to say it and they’d have given anything not to hear it, then the bewildered denial, the growing comprehension, the wait for the anguished spasm of the face, the tears…The worst thing about it was having to perform the roles of unwilling participant and professional witness at the same time, sympathising while probing at grief to check its authenticity. Christ.

  Shuddering inwardly, he pressed the bell. As he stood waiting, Harris by his side, he made the necessary mental adjustments, tuning himself, like a wireless, to the right level of spontaneity and compassion. A quick look at Harris, who was staring fixedly at her shoes, told him that she was doing the same.

  Mrs Reynolds was a large-boned, fair woman. Her pale blue eyes widened when she saw them, and, before Stratton had a chance to introduce himself, she gabbled, ‘It’s Duncan, isn’t it? He telephoned to say he’d be late – after ten, he said – but he didn’t come home. I’ve been frantic – I telephoned the hospital last night, but they didn’t know. What’s happened to him?’

  ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Reynolds,’ Stratton began, ‘that we have some bad news…’

  Eleven

  Half-past eight. Stratton checked his wristwatch as he stood in front of the door of the Swan pub in Tottenham. The top part had a panel of multicoloured engraved glass, criss-crossed with tape. Stratton peered between the head of a thistle and the leaves of an improbably solid-looking red flower, hoping not to spot the bulbous form of his brother-in-law Reg Booth. He needed a drink after the sort of day he’d had, but having to endure Reg’s company would be too high a price to pay for it. Relations with Reg, which had gone back, more or less, to normal, since his son Johnny’s near brush with a spell in borstal, had become sticky in recent weeks. This was partly due to the fact that Reg, ten years older than either Stratton or Doris’s husband Donald, persisted in playing the schoolmaster or elder statesman or field-marshal or whichever other authority figure took his fancy, and also due to the reaction of Stratton and Donald to the news that Reg had had his right buttock punctured by a bayonet during a Home Guard exercise. Learning of this, they had choked with the effort of concealing their laughter, and, undeterred by the combined reproving stares of Jenny, Doris, the invalid himself, and his long-suffering wife Lilian, the pair of them had bolted from the room to Stratton’s garden shed where they could roar in peace.

  It would just have to be his arse, thought Stratton, as he squinted into the gloom. Stratton didn’t know the individual responsible, but Reg was so irritating that he wouldn’t mind betting it wasn’t, as claimed, an accident.

  ‘Is he in there?’

  Stratton turned to see the tall, skinny form of Donald, who was peering over his shoulder. ‘Christ, you made me jump! I can’t see him, but…’

  ‘Want to risk it? Safety in numbers.’

  Stratton shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Come on then, before they run out. I’ll get them.’

  Stratton went in and found a corner table. A few minutes later Donald joined him, looking apologetic, with the beer. ‘Halves only, I’m afraid. It is Thursday.’ Supplies of beer, which had become increasingly erratic, usually ran out before the end of the week.

  ‘Oh, well. We’ll just have to make them last. Cheers.’

  There was no point in asking Donald if he had any spare razor-blades, thought Stratton. His brother-in-law being fairer skinned than he, the poor chap’s chin had now reached the consistency of raw sausage.

  ‘I’ll bet it’s watered,’ said Donald, peering suspiciously into his glass.

  Stratton, who had heard this many times in the past couple of years, wondered if this was actually true, or just part of a general nostalgia for when life’s necessities and pleasures weren’t rationed, curtailed or simply ‘off’.

  ‘Bad day?’ asked Donald.

  Thinking of Byrne and Lamb and Mrs Reynolds’s face and the fruitless search of the bomb-site, Stratton said, ‘I’ve had better. People keep pissing on my head and telling me it’s raining.’

  ‘Me, too.’ Donald, exempt from the forces courtesy of a perforated eardrum from a childhood bout of scarlet fever, had closed his camera shop the previous year, and was now working for a light engineering firm. (Reg, too old to be called up, never let his two younger brothers-in-law forget he’d served in the Great War, with every third sentence addressed to them beginning, ‘Of course, in the last lot…’)

  ‘Here.’ Stratton fished out his cigarettes. He only had two left, so – unless Donald had some – it meant doing without the last one before bed, which he always enjoyed, but it was worth it for the company.

  Donald looked into the packet. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, taking out his own, ‘I’ve got a few.’ Seeing the look of relief cross Stratton’s face, he said, with a sort of gloomy satisfaction, ‘I know. Bloody awful.’

  They smoked in companionable silence, with Donald, who was facing the right way, keeping an eye on the door in case Reg should appear. After a couple of minutes he glanced over at the nonactivity at the bar and said, ‘Probably be too late now. He won’t get a drink if he does come in, so he’ll bugger off.’

  ‘Shouldn’t serve him anyway,’ grumbled Stratton. ‘Not his pub.’ Reg lived two streets away from Stratton and Donald and usually frequented the Marquis of Granby, but patronised the Swan just often enough to make constant vigilance a necessity. ‘I didn’t expect to see you, though.’

  ‘Bit of a turn-up at home.’ Donald grimaced.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘That woman you dug out last night – Mrs Ingram – Doris brought her back from hospital to stay with us.’

  ‘Why on earth would she do that?’

  ‘No known relatives, apparently, and the husband’s in the army. She’s in a bad way; Doris can’t get anything out of her.’

  ‘Shocked, you mean?’

  ‘She’s that all right. Doris said she didn’t speak all afternoon, and she didn’t seem to understand a word that was said to her. The doctor had a look at her – said she just needs a rest. Then she started repeating things.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Doris asked her if she wanted a cup of tea – I was there – and she sort of…screwed her face up, as if she was trying to make sense of it, and then she said, “Cup-tea, cup-tea,” like a parrot. Doris asked her if she wanted to lie down, and she came back “lie, lie, lie”. And when they went upstairs she went to the bathroom, picked up the nailbrush, and started trying to clean the basin with it. Daft behaviour.’

  ‘Sounds like shock,’ said Stratton. ‘Takes people different ways. Terrible, losing your house like that – and she’s all on her own. Still, she’s bound to recover once she’s had a bit of a rest. How’s Madeleine liking her job?’ Donald
and Doris’s pretty sixteen-year-old daughter, having returned from evacuation in Essex, had started work in a factory that made seats for Lancaster bombers.

  ‘Loves it. So far, anyw—Oh, Christ.’

  ‘He’s not, is he?’ asked Stratton, whose back was to the door.

  ‘Just come in. He’s on his own.’ Their brother-in-law, bulging in Home Guard khaki, was making his way to the bar. Donald put his hand in his pocket and, taking out his penknife, weighed it in his palm, then rolled his eyes horribly and let his tongue loll out of his mouth.

  ‘Everything went black, Your Honour, and an impulse came over me,’ murmured Stratton.

  ‘Wish we knew the bloke who speared him in the arse,’ said Donald. ‘I’d buy him a pint.’

  ‘If you could get it,’ said Stratton, keeping one eye on the bar. ‘Look, she’s not serving him.’

  Donald followed his gaze. ‘She’s not put the sign up, though.’ The sign was a piece of wood that hung, all too frequently nowadays, above the bar, chalked with the words ‘Sorry, No Beer’.

  ‘Look away.’ Stratton hastily produced a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper, and both men bent over, pretending to study it.

  ‘Think he’s seen us?’ muttered Donald.

  ‘Dunno. He might pretend he hasn’t now she’s refused to serve him,’ said Stratton, considering that the loss of face might mean a hasty retreat. ‘Don’t look up, for God’s sake.’