Death dap-20

by Reginald Hill

But, do what she might, shards of china, household dust, carpet fluff, and all the cosmetic debris of her bedroom had been inseparably commingled in the pan while traces of ash remained beyond the reach of bristle in cracks and crannies from which it could only be summoned by Gabriel's trumpet on Judgment Day.

  Or a Hoover if you couldn't wait that long.

  This was the gallows humour with which she diverted herself as she went about the task of vacuuming her room. What else could she do? Sing a hymn? Speak a prayer? No, Serge would have found the absurdity of the situation hilarious and she would not let him down by relapsing into maudlin solemnity.

  In fact, come to think of it, Serge would have found the whole business of keeping his ashes in a jar on her bedroom shelf ridiculous. 'Abso-fucking-lutely typical!' she could hear him cry. 'I always said you were made for the stage. You're a true-born drama queen!' Well, the accident had ended her career plans. Not much future even in this age of teleprompts for an actress whose mind went blank not just of her lines but of language itself whenever she walked onstage. But, oh! how small a price this seemed to be to pay for causing the death of her closest kin, her dearest friend, the better half of herself. And the Furies had thought so too, pursuing her to the frontiers of madness – no, beyond – in their quest for retribution. She should have been warned. The records of history and of literature are unanimous. Only the detail varies of the horrors that invariably attend all man's attempts to raise the dead. That period of her life seemed to her now like a journey through a Gothic landscape by night whose veil of dark was torn aside from time to time by brief jags of lightning to show sights that made the returning blackness welcome. That journey was over, thank God, but the past was not another country which you could simply leave behind. Travel as far and as fast as you could, there were parts of it you dragged with you. Only Hat offered her any hope of freedom. With him she found complete if temporary oblivion. In him she regained all she had lost and more. The half of herself that died with Sergius had been the irreplaceable closeness of kin, but in Hat's embrace she found a new completeness of kith which promised to make her whole again.

  But the Kindly Ones know their stuff. Guilt, horror, self-loathing, these are coals of the selfsame fire. Heap them high and they can get no hotter. There is a deep which has no lower; a worst where pangs wring no wilder. So what's a frustrated Fury to do?

  Aeons past they had learned their answer.

  You don't pour water on a drowning man, you show him dry land.

  Waking in Hat's arms, for a moment she could look ahead to a green and pleasant landscape whose rolling hills were bathed in golden sunshine. And then a band of white-hot metal snapped around her skull and her head was twisted round till she saw once more what it was she trailed behind her.

  She was a murderer; worse, a serial killer, one of those monsters they paraded before you on tele-documentaries, inviting you to marvel how ordinary they seemed, to speculate what warped gene, what ruined childhood had brought them to this monstrosity.

  She had killed nine people – no, not that many – the first two, the AA man and the boy with the bazouki, she had only assisted at their deaths, which she had taken as signs that she was on the right track – a track which had led her beyond all mathematical equivocation to seven indisputable murders, by knife, by poison, by gunshot, by electrocution…

  Deluded (it was a delusion. Wasn't it? She knew that now. Didn't she?) into believing that through an alphabetically signposted trail of blood she could come once more to her dead brother, and talk with him, and give him back something of that lost life her wilful selfish stupidity had stolen from him, she had done these dreadful things. And not unwillingly, not under constraint, but eventually with eagerness, with glee even, revelling in her sense of power, of invulnerability, until the trail led her to her last victim, her boss at the library, Dick Dee, a man she liked and admired.

  That was torment enough to give her pause. And when she saw the imagined signs pointing clearly towards the man she was coming to love, to Hat Bowler, she began to wake as it were from a dream, only to find herself pinned by black memory in a nightmare.

  Was atonement possible? Or – God forbid – relapse?

  She did-not know. Nothing, she knew nothing… sometimes even the horrors seemed so far beyond her comprehension that she almost believed they had indeed been a dream… she needed help, she knew that… but who was there to talk to? Only Hat, and that was unthinkable.

  So forget the future, she had no future, she had exchanged it for the past. Hardly a fair swap, screamed the Furies. We want change! But it would have to do. We creep under what comfort we can find in a whirlwind.

  Getting rid of Sergius's ashes wasn't a step forward, but it was a step in that marking of time which kept her in the present.

  Ashes to ashes… dust to the dustbin. That was the obvious way to dispose of them. But she found herself unable to do it.

  Instead, holding the bag tight against her breast, she crossed the narrow road and pushed open the squeaky gate into the churchyard. Ahead loomed the tower, black on dark grey against the wintry sky. This was an old burial place. Here a marbled angel folded her grieving wings, there a granite obelisk pointed an accusing finger at the sky, but for the most part the memorials were modest headstones, many so flaky and lichened their messages to the living were almost impossible to trace with finger or with eye. Few were of such recent vintage that family members still kept them tidy or laid anniversary flowers. A cold wind whispered through the long grass and a hunting cat miaowed an almost silent protest at her for interrupting his patient vigil, then sinewed away.

  Distantly she could perceive the glow of the populous city and hear the chitter of its traffic, but these lights and sounds had nothing to do with her. She stood like a ghost in a ghostly world whose insubstantiality was her proper medium now. Some memory might remain in this other place of that other place, but the laws of physics by which mortals walk and drive and fly over the earth and by which the earth itself and all the planets and all the stars swing round each other in their crazy reel, were the dreams of an amoeba. She felt as if she could float up through the looming tower and with one small step be on the invisible moon.

  You stupid bitch! she said to herself in an attempt at a rescuing anger. Getting rid of Serge's ashes is meant to be a move away from all this crazy crap!

  And with a series of movements like an orgasmic spasm, she shook the dust out of the Hoover bag.

  The wind caught it and for a moment she could see the fine powder twisting and coiling in the air as if trying to hold together and reconstitute itself in some living form.

  Then it was gone.

  She turned away, eager to be out of this place.

  And shrieked as she saw a figure standing beside an ancient headstone which leaned to one side as if something had just pushed it over to open a passage from the grave.

  ‘I’m sorry,' said a voice. 'I didn't mean to startle you, but I was worried… are you all right?'

  Not Serge! A woman. She was relieved. And disappointed? God, would it never stop?

  'Yes, I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be? And who the hell ire you?'

  Speaking abruptly was the easiest way to control her voice.

  'Mrs Rogers… I think we're neighbours… it is Ms Pomona, isn't it?'

  'Yes. My neighbour, you say?'

  Her eyes, accustomed now to the dark, could make out the woman's features. Mid to late thirties perhaps, a round face, not unattractive without being remarkable, her expression a mixture of embarrassment and concern.

  'Yes. Just since last week though. We haven't met but I saw you going into your flat a couple of times. I was just walking down the lane now and I saw you… I'm sorry… none of my business… sorry if I startled you.'

  She gave a nervous smile and began to turn away. Not once had her gaze gone to the Hoover bag – which must have been quite an effort, thought Rye. You spot someone emptying their vacuum cleaner in a churchyard, you're e
ntitled to wonder if there's anything wrong!

  'No, hold on,' she said. 'You're going back to Church View? I'll walk with you.'

  She fell into step beside Mrs Rogers and said, 'My name's Rye. Like the whisky. Sorry I was so brusque, but you gave me a shock.'

  'I'm Myra. I'm sorry but I thought that anything in a place like this… even a polite cough's going to sound a bit creepy!'

  'Especially a polite cough,' said Rye, laughing. 'Which flat are you then?'

  'The other side of you from Mrs Gilpin.'

  'Ah, you've met Mrs Gilpin. No surprise there. Not meeting Mrs Gilpin is the hard thing.'

  'Yes,' smiled the other woman. 'She did seem quite… interested.'

  'Oh, she's certainly that.'

  They had reached the gate. Across the road they saw a figure standing at the front door of Church View. It was Hat.

  Rye came to a halt. She wanted to see him but she didn't want him to see her, not coming from the churchyard with a Hoover bag in her hand.

  Mrs Rogers said, 'Isn't that the detective?'

  'Detective?'

  'Yes, the one who was round earlier asking if we'd seen anyone suspicious hanging around the building over the weekend’

  'Ah. That detective,' said Rye coldly.

  She watched Hat out of sight along the street, then opened the gate.

  'And did you see anyone?' she asked.

  'Well, there was a man last Saturday morning. I hardly noticed him, but Mrs Gilpin seems to have got a closer look.'

  ‘I'm amazed. Look, do you fancy coming in for a coffee? Unless your husband's expecting you’

  'Not any more,' said Myra Rogers. 'That's why I needed to find a new flat. Yes, a coffee would be lovely. Are you planning to use that bag again?'

  They were at the front door and Mrs Rogers looked significantly down the basement steps to where the building's rubbish bins stood.

  'My domestic economy hasn't sunk that low,' said Rye, smiling.

  She went down the steps, took the lid off a bin and dumped the empty bag inside.

  'Now let's get that coffee,' she said.

  Letter 4. Received Dec 18 ^ th. P. P

  Sunday Dec 16th

  Night, somewhere in England, heading north

  Dear Mr Pascoe,

  It was only a few hours since I posted my last letter to you, and yet it seems light years away! Train travel does that to you, doesn't it? Stop time, I mean.

  You will recall I was on the point of leaving Cambridge in the company of Professor Dwight Duerden of Santa Apollonia University, CA. During the drive to London we talked naturally enough about the recent unhappy events at God's, and Dwight returned once more to his theme of good from evil, urging me to at least explore the possibility of completing Sam's book myself and finding a new publisher. He would be returning to St Poll for the holidays, and he promised me again that he would make enquiry of his university press. When we arrived at the Ritz we exchanged addresses and farewells and he instructed his driver to take me anywhere I wanted.

  I had travelled to Cambridge via London, spending the night at Linda's flat in Westminster, and, rather than risk the purgatory of a Sunday train journey, I decided to take advantage of her kindness again, so that's where I told the driver to go. The flat is a hangover from the days when Linda was an MP before she spread her wings and flew to Europe. It's quite small – a tiny bedroom and a tinier sitting room plus a shower – but comfortable enough and conveniently placed. So, having a longish lease, she decided to keep it on as a pied-a-terre. A crone who lives a troglodyte existence in the basement has charge of the spare key and, if you're on the list of favoured friends, it provides a nice central location to lay your head on a visit to town.

  On my first visit, the scowling crone had required three proofs of identity before she would hand over the key. This time I got a friendlier welcome, but I soon realized this was down to the pleasure of telling me I was too late, the flat was already occupied.

  That's the trouble with generous people, they can be so indiscriminate.

  I was turning away when she tried to rub salt in my wounds by making it clear it was no use me dossing down on a park bench and coming back in the morning.

  'It's Miss Lupin's foreign clerical friend,' she said. 'He'll be staying several days.'

  'Not Frere Jacques?' I said. 'Is he in? I must say hello.'

  And I ran up the stairs before she could reply.

  I had to knock twice before Jacques opened the door. He was clad in slacks and a string vest and looked a bit ruffled. But he smiled broadly to see me and I stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. And stopped dead when I saw he wasn't alone.

  There was a young woman sitting on the solitary armchair.

  Now Jacques is a man of indisputable holiness but also a man, if I am any judge, in whom the testosterone runs free, and it wouldn't have surprised me to find that his love of things English included our gorgeous girls.

  But the easy way he introduced me was so guilt-free that I reproved myself for my suspicions, and even more so when I realized what he was saying.

  This lovely young woman regarding me with an indifference worse than hostility was Emerald Lupin, Linda's daughter. Even if innate holiness and religious vows weren't enough to keep the old Adam at bay, surely, being a man of considerable good sense, Jacques wasn't going to take the slightest risk of getting up the nose of one of his movement's most influential patrons!

  It occurs to me that I am assuming in you an at least passing familiarity with the Third Thought Movement, but in case I'm wrong, let me give you the briefest of outlines.

  To begin at the beginning, which in this case is the movement's founder, Frere Jacques. He is a brother of the Cornelians, an Order little known outside the region of Belgium which contains its sole monastery, L'Abbaye du Saint Graal. From various sources I gather that Jacques led an active life as a soldier till he was invalided out of the army seriously wounded during service in a UN peace-keeping unit. Happily for him, and for all of us, his birthplace was close by the Cornelian Abbaye and a relapse necessitated a move to their Infirmary, followed by a long convalescence in their Stranger House. During this time he experienced that sense of peace and acceptance of whatever must come which later he was to formulate into the Third Thought philosophy, and eventually he presented himself to the monks as a candidate for admission to their order.

  Their vote was unanimous. I say vote because the Cornelians are peculiar in that all major decisions are taken by the full brotherhood, one monk, one vote. Indeed they are a very liberal and democratic Order, which perhaps explains why Rome not too secretly hopes they will wither on the vine. Their founder, Pope Cornelius, you will recall, was banished and beheaded after a bitter doctrinal dispute in which he argued the Church's capacity to forgive apostates and other mortal sinners. Not much sign that he'd win the argument today, is there?

  Jacques, not unnaturally, had found himself much preoccupied by death, particularly death unexpected, which it is, he assures me, even in battle. You always think it will be the next guy! He himself had grown up in the heart of the great Flanders killing grounds where it's still not possible to spend an hour digging in your garden without turning up a button or a bullet or a piece of bone, and none of this had put him off joining the army.

  But his own close encounter had been something of an epiphany, and as he worked in the hospice section of the abbey infirmary, it occurred to him that while the patients there all knew that the end was in sight and were preconditioned to try and come to terms with it, for the vast majority of people, it was a bolt from the blue.

  Something happens, we turn out to be the next guy, and which of us is ready?

  What was needed, he decided, was a kind of hospice of the mind, a state of life like his own during his stay in the Infirmary and Stranger House, which admitted rather than ignored death, a condition of mind like Prospero's when he returned to Milan where, he says, every third thought shall be my grave.<
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  Thus was born Third Thought Therapy, whose aim, simply stated, is to give Death his proper standing in our lives, even when youth, health, happiness and prosperity seem to make him an irrelevance. Then whenever he comes, he will not find us unprepared.

  But even Jacques would find it hard to spare a thought for death in the presence of Emerald Lupin!

  I knew Linda had a couple of daughters, but I suppose I'd pictured them as young clones of Linda herself. Don't misunderstand me. Though far from conventionally beautiful, Linda is not unattractive in a formidable way, like one of those pele towers in the Border country which age and weathering have given a Romantic cast. In her youth, however, I would guess that Linda, like a tower newly built, was just plain daunting!

  But Emerald… How shall I convey her to you? Think summer, think sunshine, think golden roses filling the bowers with rich perfume, think soft white doves tumbling through clear blue air – oh, think whatever you judge loveliest and liveliest and most desirable in the worlds of flesh and spirit, and you may get a glimpse of this fair jewel.

  Do I sound as if I'm in love? Perhaps I am. There's a first for everything!

  It was explained to me (in too much detail?) that Emerald too had turned up unexpectedly and found Jacques in occupation. Being family she did not require the intermediacy of the crone but had her own key. She had burst in upon him in mid-toilette, but her natural spontaneity and his Continental sang-froid had lifted them high above embarrassment and they'd settled to a debate as to who should vacate the field.

  I doubt if Emerald would have had any qualms about dispossessing me if I'd got there first. But she was bent on assuring Jacques that London was full of friends gagging to offer her hospitality. I believed it. Who in their right mind would turn her away?

  Another factor in giving Jacques possession now appeared in the form of his personal ghost, Frere Dierick, who was going to bed down in the sitting-room chair. He'd been out viewing the sights and seemed as unimpressed by them as he clearly was by sight of me. But the notebook came out of his robe straightaway to record even the most monosyllabic utterance of his great guru.