The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘Thank you, Ma.’

  ‘Of course I shall instantly admit to my own involvement if there’s the remotest chance of you being charged.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Clement said, assuming an air of confidence. ‘The police will see straightaway that there’s nothing to be gained from proceeding with the case.’

  ‘Promise me that, like it or not, you’ll take Gillian’s advice. You know how headstrong you can be.’

  ‘Headstrong? Me?’ he asked with a smile. ‘Don’t worry, I promise I’ll be as good as gold.’

  ‘Make sure he sticks to it,’ she said to Mike, as she stood on the steps seeing them off. Touched by her concern, Clement gave her an especially warm hug and climbed into the car, waving furiously until her receding figure was blurred by tears.

  To his surprise, his sense of loss grew sharper the further they drove from Beckley until, by the time they arrived home, it had completely overwhelmed him. Unable to stop shaking, he agreed to go straight to bed, grateful for Mike’s solicitude as he brought up soup, fruit, hot whisky, and finally himself, slipping beneath the sheets to make first soothing, then passionate love. Fully recovered the next morning, he felt an irresistible urge to clear out the attic, greeting Mike on his return with three large piles, labelled Friends, Oxfam and Dump.

  After lunch they drove to Cheapside, where they were shown straight into Gillian’s office which, in its oak-panelled sobriety, brought back memories of his housemaster’s study at school. Gillian, a huge woman who avoided all exertion, beckoned them to chairs beside her desk. After reiterating her condolences and saluting the historic association of the Granvilles and the Wrenshaws, she explained that she had spoken to the police but learnt little of note. The coroner would hold an inquest, which he would immediately adjourn pending the outcome of the criminal investigation. There was no requirement on any of the family to attend.

  ‘Then will they release my father’s body?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the extent of their inquiries.’

  ‘How extensive can they be?’ Mike asked. ‘Clement was the only witness.’

  ‘I’m afraid they’ll cast their net wider,’ she said, munching through the plate of fig rolls that her secretary had brought in with the tea. ‘The nurses. Doctors. Housekeeper. Marta. Susannah. Carla. That friend of Marta’s who’s staying.’

  ‘Valerie Sinclair? She’s loopy,’ Mike said. ‘No one could take her seriously.’

  ‘Let’s hope not, since I gather she was there when Clement made some form of confession.’

  ‘And will do again,’ Clement said.

  ‘Clem!’

  ‘As your lawyer, I firmly advise you against it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mike said. ‘He’s given us his solemn oath. Discretion and valour and all that.’

  Clement nodded but, away from Beckley and his mother’s anxieties, he felt a compelling need to speak out. His efforts at secrecy were not merely futile but wrong. Having fulfilled his pledge to his dying father, he had a duty to proclaim what he had done for the sake of others in a similar predicament.

  For all his brave words he knew that he could be punished for breaking the law, but he took heart from the long line of rebels and visionaries who had defied unjust laws, stretching back to Magna Carta. Besides, once the full facts of his father’s condition were known and a succession of doctors and nurses had testified to his desire to die, any prosecution would be quietly dropped. His father had spent his life fighting against the forces of unreason. What a golden opportunity to carry on the fight after his death! He closed his eyes and pictured the columns of newsprint, far friendlier than those for the Pier Palace Christ or The Second Adam, in which experts and pundits would acknowledge the justice of his stance. He anticipated the opinion polls: In a recent survey, ninety-eight per cent of those questioned endorsed Clement Granville’s actions… until a painful recollection of the Deedes and Zvi tendencies caused him to reduce the percentage to eighty-nine. Even if, through a gross misuse of resources, the case came to trial, no jury would ever convict him. Given five minutes in the dock, he would persuade them of his fervent belief that love was more sacred than law.

  His chance to speak out came sooner than expected. The following morning, after Mike had left for school and while he was trying to decide whether he felt ready to return to the studio, he received a visit from two policemen investigating his father’s death.

  ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’ll be happy to talk to you. You may be surprised at what I have to say.’ After leading them into the sitting room, he described in detail how he had helped his father to die, grateful to be in London rather than Beckley as the officers probed his motives.

  ‘What you seem to be suggesting,’ one said, ‘is that a person’s value depends on his mental or physical health. But everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.’

  ‘And in the eyes of God which, I might add, are a good deal sharper. But, if we’re to respect every human being, then we must respect my father’s wish to end his life.’

  ‘Except that he wasn’t the one who ended it. You were.’

  ‘He’d made his feelings abundantly clear to anyone who listened. My mother. The nurses. Even my sister.’

  ‘Have you never made a decision and then changed your mind at the last minute?’

  ‘My father no longer had a mind to change. Believe me, I appreciate the need for safeguards as much as the next man. But we’re not talking about a totalitarian state eliminating a dissident or even an overzealous doctor assisting a patient. This was a highly intelligent man making a judgement about his impending lack of judgement. He wasn’t a burden. He didn’t fear that he was a burden, except to himself. He’d become an affront to his own faith in humanity. You might say he was no longer in a position to be affronted. That was his point.’

  ‘But we can’t get away from the fact that you killed him.’

  ‘Freed him. I see it as the equivalent of helping a blind man across the road.’

  2

  Having made his statement, Clement heard nothing more from the police. After four days he rang Gillian, who explained that they were still gathering evidence. He was amazed that they could find enough people to question, his father’s world having shrunk so dramatically towards the end. They had spoken to his mother, Mike and Carla, all of whom claimed to have been astounded by his confession, his mother’s silence secured by the fear of incriminating him. They had spoken to the Shepherds, Karen and Valerie. It was a fair guess that they had also spoken to Ruth and Linda, Shoana and Zvi. Meanwhile he took heart from Gillian’s assurance that, in a case of such media interest, the police would consult both the cps and an expert barrister before deciding to prosecute and, until then, he should carry on as normal.

  That proved to be surprisingly easy. Inspired by the van Eyck altarpiece in Ghent, he decided to paint a series of panels for his father’s coffin. With his mother’s encouragement, he commissioned Robin Barford, a neighbour in the studios, to carve an oak frame to display them. He chose six key episodes from his father’s life: singing in the choir at Winchester; sitting in the cockpit of a Spitfire; leading a rent strike in Clapham; processing past the West Front of Wells; defending Spirit of the Age at Synod; attended by an angel on his deathbed. It would be an opportunity not only to honour his father’s memory but to work unconstrained by any thought of criticism. The coffin would be on show at the funeral and then locked away in the family vault, to be glimpsed through the grille, a rare note of colour amid the dusty greys and browns that had struck such a chill in him as a child.

  He was engrossed in the Wells panel, enjoying the challenge of depicting a façade that amounted to a who’s who of medieval Christianity on a panel twenty-eight inches by twelve, when he was distracted by the entryphone. Convinced that no cold callers, whether fresh fish salesmen, Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Greens, would be so insistent, he answered it with a grumpy ‘Yes! What?’ only to modify his tone on learning that it was t
he police. Two officers, one familiar from his previous visit and the other a Sikh, came up to the studio.

  ‘Clement Granville?’ the Sikh officer asked, with disturbing formality.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Edwin Granville. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.’

  Clement’s first thought was for the painting, as he gazed at the cathedral’s solitary tower and longed for an hour’s grace to add the second. Recognising that he was in shock, he asked simply for a few moments to clean his brushes. At a nod from his colleague, the Sikh agreed. While Clement picked up a rag, the policemen stood by the door, showing as little interest in the room as if they had tracked him down to a warehouse. It was as though they were afraid of lighting on an image that would require them to treat him with respect.

  They led him outside and, to both his relief and dismay, none of his neighbours was passing. The only witness was a young mother with two howling children, on whom the police car acted as a timely deterrent. He sat in the back with the Sikh, who resisted all attempts at conversation, refusing even to reveal where they were heading, as though he were a schoolboy to relish the surprise. Prompted as ever by memories of Morse, he claimed the right to make a phone call, which was denied. Twenty minutes later they arrived at Albany Street station, where he was bustled into a small room, reeking of stale tobacco, and officially charged. After handing over his belt, keys and valuables, which were sealed in a plastic bag as at a mortuary, he was at last allowed to ring Mike, only to be diverted to voice mail. Loath to leave a message, he called Carla and, ignoring her audible panic, told her to contact his mother and Mike and to ask Gillian Wrenshaw to come to the station at once.

  The cell officer escorted him downstairs. Unlike his colleagues, he turned out to be both affable and chatty. He locked him up and returned with the offer of a cup of tea, which Clement refused, regretting it moments later, when he sat in stony silence on a bottom-numbing bench and stared at the unrelieved expanse of off-white wall, his only stimulated sense that of smell. Gagging on the residual stench of Vim, vomit, and sweat from the recent occupant, he gave way to despair. His certainty that his release was a mere matter of time was threatened by the removal of his watch. He envied Carla, who could use the lack of distractions to help her meditate, whereas he had never felt more earthbound.

  He was roused by the return of the cell officer with a florid young man wearing a houndstooth suit, correspondent shoes and an extravagant buttonhole, who introduced himself as Dunstan Livesey, solicitor.

  ‘Where’s Gillian?’ Clement asked, terrified that she might have abandoned him.

  ‘In bed at home after an op to fit a gastric band. She’ll be back at her desk next week. I’m holding the fort till then. Fear not, I’ve been well briefed.’

  ‘So perhaps you can tell me why I’ve been charged with murder?’ Clement asked, offended by Dunstan’s brashness. ‘Gillian was adamant that, at the very worst, it would be aiding and abetting a suicide.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what we hoped,’ Dunstan said smoothly, ‘but the fact that they’ve rejected it suggests they mistrust your motives.’

  ‘That’s preposterous! Under my father’s will, I stand to inherit a large estate and a great deal of money. He had a few months at most to live. Why should I jeopardise it all by murdering him?’

  ‘It’s not for me to speculate. My job is to ensure that you have the best possible defence. Though I should warn you there’s been a slight hiccup. The police have refused to grant bail; they want to take you before the magistrates in the morning.’

  ‘Why? Do they suppose I’m going to rush to the nearest old peoples’ home and bump off the residents?’

  ‘It might be better not to make a fuss,’ Dunstan replied, with the air of a man who would send back a bottle of house red if it were insufficiently chambré. ‘We’ll have you out first thing in the morning. In the meantime, is there anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘No, thank you, you’ve been very helpful,’ Clement said, conscious of his urge to escape and reluctant to detain him. ‘Oh yes, of course, my pills! It’s vital I have my pills.’

  ‘You’re on medication?’

  ‘I have HIV,’ he replied, wondering where Dunstan had been last autumn.

  ‘The police can be very suspicious of pills.’

  ‘I’m not Hermann Göring! Would you please ring my boyfriend and ask him to bring in my combination therapy as soon as he can?’

  The need for the pills gave an edge to his anxieties, and he tortured himself with the consequences of a single missed dose. Finally the duty officer came in and, disproving Dunstan’s predictions, handed him a small box. As he gazed at the six life-saving tablets, he felt faint, not just from relief but from the connection to Mike. Picturing him counting them out with supreme care, his eyes began to mist. The Atazanavir was meant to be taken with food but, for once, he would have to compromise, his momentary regret at rejecting the glutinous cottage pie checked by a glance at the seatless lavatory and encrusted rim.

  Sometime in what he took to be the early hours, but the duty officer assured him was half-past ten, the light in his cell was dimmed and he lay down on a bench as narrow and hard as a luggage rack, pulling the threadbare blanket over his chest and resting his head on a pillow that felt like the remnant of a dormitory fight. No matter how he arranged his limbs, he was unable to relax. A raucous lullaby echoed from the next-door cell and he reconciled himself to a sleepless night, only to find himself jolted awake the next morning when the cell officer brought in a transport café breakfast. Hunger banished all qualms and he attacked it so greedily that he buckled the blade on his plastic knife. Despite the glaze of grease on everything from the toast to the tomatoes, it tasted surprisingly good. He had just finished eating when the officer returned to take him to the washroom, producing a sponge bag, razor and change of shirt, which were further evidence of Mike’s concern. He was then loaded into a van alongside a rancid man with a briary beard, whom he took to be his neighbour of the previous night. Far from bursting into song, he communicated solely by a series of snarls and growls, responding to their escort’s curt commands with garbled curses.

  At the courts, he was led straight down to a cell which was older, colder and dingier than the one at the station. He studied the graffiti on the walls and bench, wondering first at its provenance, given how carefully he himself had been searched for knives, and then at the ubiquity of woz, a word no shorter or easier to scratch than was. After a lengthy and unexplained delay, he was taken up to the courtroom and into a glass-enclosed dock where, overcome by fatigue, he was scarcely able to drag his feet the last few steps. Clinging to the back of a chair, a gesture that he suspected would be misinterpreted, he gazed into the public gallery to find his mother, Mike, Carla, and, to his surprise, Jimmy Naismith. Swiftly turning away, for fear that his mother’s airborne kiss would unnerve him, he fixed his attention on the dais where a single judge on a swivel chair confounded expectations of a bench of magistrates. The clerk read out the charge, which sounded more sinister than it had at the station, and he entered a resolute plea of Not Guilty. After the extensive preliminaries, the proceedings were blessedly brief. Dunstan applied for bail, which the judge granted, stipulating merely that Clement should report to the Albany Street station once a week.

  The security officer led him back to the cells, where Dunstan joined him to wait for the paperwork, after which he was released, taking the lift to the concourse to meet his family and friends. Walking past the overcrowded benches, he detected the same air of resignation and misery as at the Immigration Tribunal, albeit with a broader ethnic mix. He stood listlessly, while his usually unruffled mother hugged him as though he had spent three weeks trapped down a coalmine rather than a single night in a cell. Then, recollecting her own incarcerati
on, he berated himself for his coldness and returned the embrace. Jimmy rushed off to his surgery with the promise that he was with him ‘all the way’. Dunstan went back to his office after claiming that they had taken the first step on the road to victory. Mike drove the rest of them home, where he produced a large tray of Danish pastries, which Clement, already repenting the excesses of breakfast, felt obliged to eat.

  After he had given them a blow-by-blow account of the arrest, regretting for the sake of his story and Mike’s politics that the blows were metaphorical, his mother announced that she had been to see Shoana.

  ‘You rang her?’ he asked, with a sense of betrayal.

  ‘She rang me. She wanted me to understand why she did it. She talked about truth and justice and how the very first commandment was honouring God.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mike said. ‘And the very first crime was killing a brother!’

  ‘Not now, please,’ Clement said, anxious to protect his mother.

  ‘She said that they couldn’t live with the thought that they were covering up the crime.’

  ‘How unspeakably selfish!’ Carla said.

  ‘It seems selfish to us, but for them to see a breach of the Law and ignore it is like… I don’t know… it’s like seeing an accident and leaving the victims to lie bleeding in the road.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Mike said. ‘I’m sorry, Marta. I know she’s your daughter, but anyone can see that she was out for revenge.’

  Despite Mike’s scepticism, Clement found his mother’s explanation all too plausible. Shoana had pledged herself to a sect for whom the Law was an absolute good. To his surprise, he found his bitterness towards her tinged with pity.

  Three days later he returned to court. This time he was represented by Gillian, who, having recovered from her operation, described how the band controlled the volume of food that reached her stomach, which, given the mountain of flesh beneath her smock, struck him as the surgical equivalent of the Mont Blanc Tunnel. After the rigours of the waiting room, the call into court came as a relief. Apart from entering freely with Gillian, Clement noted little difference from his previous appearance. The same air of confusion reigned on the legal benches, where four young women solicitors pored over vast stacks of papers pertaining to clients whom they had barely met. The clerk consulted the usher and various nondescript officials, while the judge, in nominal charge of proceedings, waited patiently for guidance. His ruling, when it came, was short and to the point, as he gave the order to send the case to trial in the Crown Court, directing Clement to attend the preliminary hearing the following week. ‘If you fail to report promptly when required, you will be guilty of an offence and either be fined or imprisoned or both.’