An Untidy Death

by Simon Brett

  ‘And I’ve been with Ben long enough,’ she went on, ‘to know that he does come out of that place. Eventually. It may take a long time, but he does come out. But while he’s down, while he’s in there, I feel terrible and I feel it’s my fault.’

  I had been in exactly the situation she was describing, but not for long. When I first saw Oliver depressed, I had blamed myself, thought I was doing something wrong, thought that it was me who was bringing him down. I hadn’t spent time with anyone who behaved like that before. But then, after a while, I rationalized that he was a man suffering from an illness called depression. If I wanted to spend time with him, I’d just have to take on board that that was a part of the man I loved.

  But how could I say that to Tracey? She was in her early twenties; she was finding her own identity. It would be desperately unfair for me to put pressure on her.

  ‘And it messes with my head,’ she repeated. ‘It makes me feel inadequate, kind of sucks all the confidence out of me. I don’t know what to do. Ben and I have a good patch and everything’s fine. Then he goes into this dark place and it all falls apart. The we get back together and it’s OK for … I don’t know, a short while, and then … I don’t know that I’m strong enough. Sometimes I think the most sensible thing I can do is just to walk away.’

  Everything within me was screaming for her not to do that, but I knew I couldn’t voice that thought. It would be unfair on the poor kid. This was something the two of them had to work out for themselves.

  Instead, I said, ‘You know by now that Ben suffers from depression, don’t you?’

  Tracey sighed. ‘Yes, he’s talked about it endlessly. It would be so much easier if it were a physical illness, something disabling, something that stopped him from, I don’t know, getting upstairs or … That I think I could cope with. I’ve tried to understand what’s going on with him but, never having suffered from depression myself, I find it difficult to get a handle on the condition.’

  Again, she could have been echoing my own words. ‘In Ben’s case it’s hereditary,’ I said.

  She looked at me in amazement. ‘Surely not you?’

  ‘No. His father.’ A silence. ‘Has he talked to you much about his father?’

  ‘Hardly at all. Ben’s said he’s dead. That’s all.’

  Well, I wasn’t about to tell her that Oliver had committed suicide, was I? That would have increased the pressure on her even more. If Ben wanted to volunteer the information, no doubt he would find the right time to do it. Though I was beginning to wonder how much more time he and Tracey would have together.

  What she said next confirmed that anxiety. ‘The thing is …’ Tracey began. She wasn’t finding the conversation easy. ‘The thing is … that all I wanted to be for Ben was a girlfriend. I do love him … but I didn’t sign up to be a nurse … or a therapist … or a psychiatrist …’ She winced. ‘… Or a mother.’

  ‘He’s already got one of those,’ I said wryly.

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry if that sounded rude.’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘So … You won’t tell him you’ve met me, will you?’

  ‘If you don’t want me to, I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘OK. Well, Ellen, can you do this for me? Say to Ben that I’ve contacted you by phone – which is true – and that I told you he wasn’t responding to my attempts to contact him.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘If he wants to see me again, he must ring me … and we’ll see where we stand.’ She stood up. ‘Now can I pay for the coffee?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort it.’

  ‘Well, nice to have met you.’

  ‘And you, Tracey.’

  As she departed, her frizzy hair bouncing with the motion of her lithe body, I felt a huge respect for her. What she had done, actually meeting me face to face to voice her concerns about my son, must have taken a great deal of courage. But I also felt a huge sadness, because I didn’t think I’d see her again.

  Worse than that, I didn’t think Ben would see her again either.

  Things were good at Dodge’s place. Ben had painted some great cartoons on a tiny desk that Dodge had made. It would make some child very happy. The style reminded me painfully of Oliver’s work. Ben was pleased with what he’d done, and even more pleased that Dodge had commended it.

  Dodge himself was up and about. Given the state of his bruises, I couldn’t accurately state that he had more colour, but he was definitely in less pain. I didn’t feel bad about leaving him on his own this time. It was left open as to whether Ben would go back to do more painting the next day.

  In the Yeti on the way to Chichester, I told him that Tracey had contacted me, and spelled out her ultimatum.

  Ben said nothing.

  During the journey, my mobile rang. I didn’t answer it while I was driving. Ben was too low to pass his usual comment on my old-fashioned distrust of technology.

  I returned the call when I got back to the house. It was Detective Sergeant Unwin, the policewoman who had contacted me about the fire risk in Ingrid Richards’ flat. Her tone was businesslike, but serious.

  ‘I’m afraid I need to talk to you again, Mrs Curtis. There’s been a new development in the case.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Ben didn’t say whether he was going to contact Tracey or not and, though I felt a desperate urge to encourage him to do it, I knew I had to keep quiet. Nagging had never helped with Oliver either. Like his father, Ben had to come to a decision in his own way, in his own time. But that doesn’t mean I found the waiting easy. With either of them.

  When we got back to the house, he went straight upstairs, still not having spoken since we left Dodge’s. I tried to persuade myself he wanted privacy to call Tracey, but I knew that wasn’t it.

  I went and did a bit of tidying-up in the kitchen and thought about what I’d cook us for supper. But I was really killing time until the police came.

  Detective Sergeant Unwin had said it would be best if she and another officer came to the house. As soon as possible. Made me think that, with the ‘new development’, the case had become more serious.

  Funny, from our first phone conversation, I’d pictured her as large and overbearing, but in the flesh Detective Sergeant Unwin was tiny, birdlike. Though that actually didn’t stop her from being overbearing. Her sidekick, Detective Sergeant Gupta, was a good head taller, with short-cropped black hair. Neither was in uniform, but their similar black trouser suits made them look as if they were.

  They both refused my offer of tea or coffee. They sat side by side on my sitting-room sofa, with me perched forward in an armchair opposite. I felt unreasonably nervous. Gupta had an iPad. She would be taking any notes that needed taking. It was clear from their body language that Unwin was the boss.

  ‘Thank you very much for seeing us, Mrs Curtis,’ she began.

  It wasn’t one of those ‘Call me Ellen’ moments, so I just said, ‘No problem.’

  ‘You were extremely helpful during our first conversation and there are a few details of what we discussed then that I’d like to explore further.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’ve explained to Detective Sergeant Gupta how you came to be involved with Ingrid Richards, how you were assessing the fire risk at her premises.’

  That wasn’t entirely accurate but not worth arguing about.

  ‘I’ve also told her it was your view that the deceased was aware of the danger, but you thought she could manage the risk.’

  Again, I could have taken issue about the detail but didn’t.

  ‘All of which would be fine,’ Unwin continued, ‘had the situation remained as it was when we last spoke. But we do now have different information. We have the results of the post-mortem on Ingrid Richards’ body and they reveal that, as well as a lot of Jameson’s whiskey, she had ingested sleeping pills that evening. Zopiclone, to be precise. The pathologist could not be certain but, from the residue found in her stomach, he got the
impression that the pills had been ground up, presumably for ease of swallowing with a drink.

  ‘Now, this news does rather change our perspective on the case.’ She could say that again. My mind was instantly buzzing with new possibilities, but I didn’t think it was the moment to say anything, as she went on, ‘While it does not rule out accidental death, it does also open up the possibility of suicide … or even foul play.’

  Detective Sergeant Unwin focused her small eyes on me. ‘So, Mrs Curtis, when you visited Ingrid Richards, did she by any chance mention whether she was in the habit of using sleeping pills?’

  No difficulty with my answer. ‘She did actually bring up the subject, yes.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She said that the life she’d led, the stress she’d been under in conflict zones throughout her adult life, meant that she could sleep anywhere. In fact, she said: “I’ve never had any need of sleeping pills.”’

  This brought a gasp from Detective Sergeant Gupta, followed by a look of reproof from her senior. In the police force it was unprofessional to betray such instinctive reactions.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure about that, Mrs Curtis?’ asked Unwin.

  ‘Those were her exact words.’

  ‘Hm. Interesting.’ The two sergeants exchanged a look. ‘Particularly interesting because Ingrid Richards’ daughter told us this morning that her mother had been taking Zopiclone for years.’

  Things didn’t look good for Alexandra. What she had told me about staying in her car in Brunswick Square after seeing Ingrid on the evening of her death seemed deliberately to have ruled out the possibility of anyone else visiting. At least till after midnight.

  And then Walt had volunteered, amongst a lot of other stuff that I really didn’t want to know, that Alexandra had been a habitual user of sleeping pills. Zopiclone, to be precise. He had seen it as his duty to ‘wean her off them’, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t still got a supply.

  Unwin had said they’d spoken to her ‘this morning’. Where had that been, I wondered. On the phone? In Hastings? At a police station? And, as the case against Alexandra seemed to be building up, would she have been allowed to leave the police station?

  I couldn’t help remembering one of the first things Alexandra ever said to me. ‘My mother’s going to kill herself. If I don’t kill her first.’

  Was it possible that the boost of her new relationship with Walt had given her the confidence to remove the person who had so overshadowed her life? The person who had taken all the oxygen, eclipsed her own personality?

  By bizarre synchronicity, just as these thoughts were going through my head, I had a call from Alexandra Richards.

  I couldn’t stop myself from asking, ‘Where are you calling from?’

  ‘Home. Hastings,’ she replied on a note of bewilderment. I suppose it had been an odd question. She wasn’t to know I’d been visualizing her in a police station under arrest for murder.

  But her thoughts proved not to be a million miles away from mine. ‘I’d been wondering if you’d heard from the police?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Detective Sergeant Unwin and Detective Sergeant Gupta came to see me. They’ve only just left.’

  ‘They came to see me this morning.’

  ‘At home?’

  ‘Yes. What did they ask you, Ellen?’

  The enquiry sounded excited but not paranoid. I didn’t get the impression that Alexandra felt threatened by anything the police had said to her.

  I told her that the sergeants had asked me about Ingrid’s use of sleeping pills. I also reported what her mother had said on the subject.

  To my surprise, this didn’t seem to faze her. ‘Oh, I’d always assumed she did take them. I thought it was a hereditary thing, sleeping badly. Something I’d got from her.’

  Alexandra was full of contradictions. At one level, she seemed to have hated her mother. At another, she seemed desperate – as she had with the folder marked ‘Alexandra’ – for anything that implied some closeness between them.

  ‘I presume,’ I said, ‘that the police asked you again about the events of that Tuesday evening, the night Ingrid died?’

  ‘Oh yes, we went all through that.’

  ‘Did you tell them about you staying in your car outside the flat till after midnight?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she replied blithely. ‘They reckon I was probably the last person to see her alive.’

  Her tone suggested she didn’t see how guilty that made her sound. Surely it was only a matter of time before the police came back to her with a more targeted interrogation?

  ‘So, everything you told them was the truth?’ I asked.

  ‘Well …’ she responded, almost coyly. ‘Everything I told them was the truth. But I didn’t tell the whole truth. There were some details that I didn’t think they needed to know.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘For instance …’ She sounded on the edge of schoolgirlish giggles as she said, ‘I didn’t tell them what I saw when I drove away from Brunswick Square that night.’

  ‘So, what did you see?’ I asked patiently.

  ‘I had my headlights on full because there were no other cars on the road and, as I moved out of my parking space, I saw, only a couple of parking spaces away, Walt’s car.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And he was sitting in it.’

  ‘Do you know how long he’d been there?’

  ‘No. But, needless to say, Ellen, I felt wonderful.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it showed how much he loved me.’

  After the call had ended, I found myself wondering whether Alexandra could really be as naïve as she appeared to be. Didn’t she realize that what she’d just told me placed Walt firmly in the frame as a suspect? She reckoned he’d followed her from Hastings to Brunswick Square because he didn’t want her to have any secrets from him. He wanted to know who she was visiting there. She said at that stage he knew nothing about Ingrid’s existence, so he was checking up on his girlfriend’s movements to see if she was visiting another lover. She found that very flattering. And she considered it was a demonstration of his love.

  My reading of the situation was that, although Alexandra hadn’t mentioned Ingrid, Walt could easily have found out about her. He and Alexandra were cohabiting, for God’s sake. I’d actually observed his lack of inhibition about going through her papers. There was bound to be something in the Hastings house that referenced Ingrid Richards.

  A cynic – which I wasn’t usually, though with Walt I was once again prepared to make an exception – a cynic might very quickly have put him on the list of potential murderers. I couldn’t forget his claim to being ‘someone who could sort out her problems with her mother, once and for all’.

  I didn’t think it would be long before Walt was on the police radar.

  NINETEEN

  That Monday evening, Ben went all quiet on me. He did come out of his room for supper, which he ate in complete silence. I knew better than to try and initiate conversation. He refused my offers of wine or whisky and went back up as soon as he’d finished. When I called after him, offering another expired Zopiclone, he didn’t reply.

  Probably because of that and a mind full of other things, I didn’t sleep well. When I did finally get off, I woke up soon afterwards, trembling and sweating from a recurrent dream that hadn’t troubled me for some months. Hadn’t troubled me to the extent that I’d made the foolish assumption I was over it for good.

  But no, the dream was back with its full, terrifying power. I’m seated, strapped in, one restraint tight across my stomach, the other diagonal, cutting a sharp line between my breasts. Even though I’ve had the dream so many times, I always start in ignorance. I don’t know where I am or why I’m there. That only adds to the horror.

  Then, gradually, in that strangely distorted timescale of dreams, I realize I’m in a car, locked in a garage. There’s a mouth-drying smell of petrol. And then, as I try t
o counteract that with a gulp of fresh air, I suddenly know that what I’m breathing is not air. Not that mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, argon and other gases which sustains life. No, I’m inhaling something noxious, something that will choke me and cause every organ of my body to close down.

  Every time, just before asphyxiation overcomes me, I wake up in a smothering twist of sweaty bedding.

  And I wake knowing that, at moments of stress, I am doomed in dreams to relive the circumstances of Oliver’s death for the rest of my life.

  I felt terrible, but when I made it down to the kitchen on the Tuesday morning, Ben looked much worse than I did. He was fully dressed, and his hollowed eyes suggested he hadn’t slept at all.

  ‘I need to go back to Nottingham,’ he said.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes, Ma. Got that “Riq and Raq” project to finish.’

  ‘Of course.’ There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask, but I stuck with: ‘What do you want for breakfast?’

  ‘Bacon and eggs, maybe? As you see, I’ve made coffee.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I cooked his order, bulking it up to a Full English. The least I could do was to see he went back to Nottingham well fed. I guess we did talk a bit over breakfast. He asked automatic questions about Fleur and Jools, but he wasn’t listening to the answers.

  I couldn’t resist saying, ‘You know, if you want to stay longer …’

  ‘I know. Need to get back to face the things that need facing.’

  I so wanted to ask if that meant facing Tracey, but I curbed the urge.

  After he’d finished eating, I offered to run him down to the station.

  ‘I’ll walk it. Do me good.’

  He went up for his backpack. I stood waiting for him, awkward in my own hall.

  He didn’t resist the big hug I gave him, but his body felt tense as coiled metal.

  ‘I know there are lots of things you want to say, Ma, but I know what they are, so you don’t need to say them.’

  ‘Right. Well, can I just ask you to text me or something to say you’ve arrived safely in Nottingham?’

  ‘I’m only going on a train, Ma. It’s not an expedition up the Amazon.’