Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  Did she want to make the effort? For a while, this past year, life had ganged up on Zoë Boehm. She supposed she’d let things slide. It was certain she didn’t have a trove of receipts she could wave in the taxman’s face . . . Zoë had been flying under the radar so long, she got a nosebleed signing official documents. Waking up to a demand like this might be just what she needed, if you went in for that tough love crap. Mostly, though, she wished the taxman’s spotlight had passed over her without registering the bump.

  ‘Are you working at the moment?’

  It was on her tongue to tell him to mind his own business, but by entering his office she’d made it his business. ‘I had a call on my way here. A job, yes. I’m not sure what yet.’

  ‘It might be an idea to take it. Regardless.’

  Regardless . . . That was a good word. It implied that consequences were things that happened to other people – though looking at Damien Faraday, it was possible that that was true. Events might slide off his basted surface. If she were a cruel woman, she’d be wondering what he looked like with a pair of those bird thermometers stuck into him; the kind that pop up when the turkey’s done.

  ‘Ms Boehm?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Filthy lucre, eh? Where would we be without it?’

  ‘I’ll keep you informed.’

  With it, without it: she was on the street five minutes later. If she charged as much as Faraday did for doing bugger all, she’d not have required his advice in the first place. Another paradox there, but not as big a problem as remembering where she’d parked . . .

  Except her memory wasn’t that bad. She’d parked exactly where she thought she had, and the space remained exactly as she’d found it: a nice vacant kerbside stretch barely halfway over the No Parking line. It was only the car that was missing, and no matter how many times she turned and stared along the row of vehicles behind her, it didn’t reappear when she turned back. Her car was gone.

  Some crime scenes looked the part: broken glass and fractured furniture; the sense of something large having passed through, thrashing its tail and not giving a damn about the chaos. Others, eerily still, were often the ones where the most violence had taken place; violence carefully considered in advance, and focused entirely on its victim. Sometimes death was a private creature, and kept itself to itself. Zoë had seen a room once where a murder had taken place, and it simply looked recently vacated. She’d not have been surprised if the unspilled coffee cup on the table had been warm.

  The jeweller’s shop she stood in now was more akin to the former than the latter, though it had not been laid waste, exactly. Two men had entered, and with threats and visible weaponry had taken what they’d come for. Harold Sweeney had been left shaken but unharmed. Little damage had happened indoors; the violence – the ripped bone and cartilege; the spilt blood – had taken place on the pavement outside, and pavements didn’t retain event-memory. Harold Sweeney’s, though, was working overtime:

  ‘I’m unlocking the door, and first thing I know they’re breathing down my neck, closer than my shadow. Looming up out of nowhere.’

  The nowhere in question being a white BMW parked round the corner; stolen that same morning, and later found abandoned in the railway station car park.

  ‘And they were armed,’ Zoë said, to remind him she was there. He’d slipped into a fugue state; had travelled back in time three days, and was reliving it breath by breath.

  ‘The tall one.’

  ‘How tall’s tall?’

  ‘Taller than me.’

  This wasn’t as helpful as he might have liked to imagine. Harold Sweeney wasn’t one of life’s giants; nor did he especially make up for this in other departments. Under the shop’s dim lighting – the mesh-inlaid windows blocked out the morning – his skin had a sallow sheen, as if he didn’t venture aboveground often, and his suit smelled like it had been rinsed then hung to dry in a smoke-filled room. Two smallish triangles of hair sprouted at his cheekbones. Presumably he thought this looked good, or that you weren’t allowed to shave there. Either way, a second opinion would have helped.

  But it was a job, Zoë reminded herself. Whatever he wanted, he’d be paying for it. And money would be useful, any time soon.

  Sweeney had called just before her appointment with Faraday. Of course, she hadn’t known then that she wouldn’t have a car come eleven o’clock. She’d had to wait twenty minutes for a bus up the hill, time she spent reporting the theft on her phone. More officialdom. Was she sure she’d left it where she thought she had? Only she’d be surprised how many wom – how many people reported their cars missing, only to remember later where they’d actually parked.

  She said, ‘Is it true most policemen are failed traffic wardens?’

  ‘I think you’ve got that the wrong way round, ma’am.’

  ‘My mistake.’

  Traffic wardens were a possibility, of course, but not a major one. In London, lorries with winches removed offending cars, but somebody had to examine the target for pre-existing damage first – she’d watched wardens with clipboards jotting down bumper scratches, to ward off later litigation. But that didn’t happen in Oxford yet, and besides, she’d only been with Faraday half an hour. Nowhere near long enough to catalogue her car’s damages. The policeman-shaped dent in the offside front panel was a page in itself.

  And there was probably some law of modern life operating here: everybody gets a divorce, everybody gets their car stolen. Zoë had never been divorced, though that was largely a matter of timing. Now she’d had her car stolen, and while she couldn’t say she enjoyed the feeling, the timing wasn’t so bad here either. Like her marriage had been, her car was a wreck. But unlike her marriage, she was going to need to replace it.

  Back to the present. ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘He was taller than me too.’ His vision was sharper suddenly; the eyes had a spark to them. ‘I’ve heard all the short jokes.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘The second one, he could give me an inch, tops. The first was about six foot.’

  ‘And they were wearing stocking masks.’

  ‘I doubt they walked up the street like that. Must’ve pulled them over their heads as they came up behind me.’

  Zoë glanced through the dismal glass at what could be seen of the street. If their car had been round the corner, they’d had to cover fifty yards to get here: further than anyone would want to travel with a stocking mask on.

  ‘I doubt that too, Mr Sweeney. Did they speak at all?’

  ‘Bare minimum. They knew what they were after, and didn’t waste time discussing it.’

  ‘And what did they take?’

  They both looked at the main counter display, whose glass was gone, though slivers remained in the crevices of the dusty velvet inlay. This was moulded to hold necklaces and bracelets. The wooden pegs were presumably mountings for rings.

  ‘Everything from there.’

  ‘Do you have –?’

  But he was already giving her a typed list: one prepared for police and insurers.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He said, ‘Do you know much about the jewellery trade, Ms Boehm?’

  No: do you know much about the private detective business? But there was no sense antagonizing a potential client; besides, yes – everybody knew about the private detective business. ‘Just what everyone knows.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You sell expensive stuff. What’s on your mind, Mr Sweeney?’

  ‘Much of what passes through my hands is never actually offered for sale to the public.’

  ‘I see,’ said Zoë, who didn’t.

  ‘It’s a nice city to do business in, Oxford. There’s a lot of overseas visitors, a lot of tourists. People on holiday like spending money. Main reason they leave home in the first place. You can make a nice piece of change off the holiday trade . . .’

  Zoë could see a but coming before it cleared the horizon. ‘
Except this isn’t really Oxford, is it?’

  ‘This isn’t really Oxford.’

  It was Oxford, of course, but it wasn’t. Oxford, for the tourist trade, was half a square mile – built largely of Cotswold stone – around which visitors could wander, asking where the university was. It was a stop en route to Stratford, around which they could also wander, asking where the Globe was. But Sweeney’s jeweller’s was well outside that zone: was up the big hill, past the house where a famous fat crook once lived, and nestled between a chemist’s and a charity shop on the road to London. Passing trade was exactly that: passing. Oxford was a nice address, but nicer the less you knew about it.

  ‘I do a lot of selling on. To bigger fish in the trade, you know?’ Whose shops, presumably, boasted loftier addresses and kerb flash.

  ‘Selling on of what?’

  He shrugged. ‘People die. Their relatives sell their jewellery.’

  ‘Where are we heading here, Mr Sweeney?’

  ‘It’s what you might call a grey area.’

  For a moment, she thought he meant Headington.

  A shadow stopped outside the window, examined its contents for a moment, and moved on. Uncommitted interest. Sweeney got a lot of that, no doubt. Zoë had had a certain amount herself, when she ran an office: people dropping in to run hypotheticals past her; hoping she’d indicate an easy way they could find out what they wanted to know, and save them the expense of hiring her. Time-wasters were less of a problem since she’d quit the premises, though the species hadn’t been eradicated entirely. Cold calling had brought it to something approaching an art form.

  She tapped the paper he’d given her. ‘You gave the police this list of the stolen valuables.’ She was starting to sound like a box that required ticking.

  ‘I gave the police a list of the stolen valuables that were officially in my possession.’

  More shadows passed, this time without stopping. The dark blue rumble of a London-bound bus growled to a halt at the lights. Zoë – who’d been making occasional notes on a pad – put both it and pen in her pocket. Her jacket was dark denim, and hugged a little tighter than she’d like. The black leather one she’d had for years, she’d recently lost.

  ‘There is, shall we say, a slight discrepancy between the actual value of what went missing, and that which I’m able to claim on the insurance.’

  ‘It sounds like we’re pushing the envelope here, Mr Sweeney.’

  ‘I don’t plan to hire you for moral guidance.’

  ‘What do you plan to hire me for?’

  ‘I want you to find these men.’

  ‘It’s a police matter, Mr Sweeney.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘A serious one. They might have stolen your goods, but they also shot a man on their way out.’

  ‘And for that alone, they deserve locking up. But if the police catch them, and I have to say I’m not wholly impressed with the available statistics, it isn’t going to help me much, is it?’

  ‘Because you lied about what they took.’

  ‘Because I was unable to furnish them with a full inventory.’

  At this point, she supposed, she should be thinking about the ethics of her job . . . Instead, she was thinking about her tax bill, and the shallow grave of her current financial position. She was thinking about a cheque she’d written yesterday – to Vicky, her local teenage webhead, who’d unscrambled Zoë’s software – and wondering if it would bounce. She didn’t want to piss Vicky off, who’d no doubt left trapdoors in the system, and would rescramble it without a moment’s thought . . . Joe, her former business partner – her former husband – would be approaching high dudgeon about now. Joe had never lacked principles. Common sense, yes, but not principles. But the thing about Joe was, he was dead. Argument from him could be postponed indefinitely.

  ‘So you want me to find them. And then what?’

  ‘Then nothing. All you need do is tell me where they are.’

  ‘And you’ll ask them nicely for your jewels back.’

  ‘There are . . . people I can turn to. Who would ask them for my jewels back.’

  ‘Nicely or not.’

  He inclined his head slightly.

  ‘These people. They’d be your trade connections, would they?’

  ‘Yes. That’s who they’d be.’

  ‘So why don’t you use them to trace these guys?’

  He said, ‘I’d much prefer it if they didn’t know the stock was missing.’

  ‘Because then they might think you were unreliable.’

  ‘We’re all at the mercy of forces beyond our control,’ he said. ‘The small businessman more than most. It’s sometimes difficult for the bigger fish to see that.’

  ‘Are we talking stolen property here, Mr Sweeney?’

  He said, with a passable attempt at dignity, ‘We’re talking about property without, perhaps, the full complement of paperwork.’

  ‘Provenance and the like.’

  ‘Have you ever filled in a form incorrectly, Ms Boehm? It’s easy to make mistakes. It doesn’t necessarily make you a criminal.’

  Zoë became aware of a clock ticking while she swallowed that one.

  ‘I’d hate to think you were using me to set up another robbery,’ she said at last.

  ‘It’s not stealing to take back what’s yours.’

  ‘It’s not the repossession worries me. It’s how violent the process might get.’

  ‘The tall one shot a passer-by. You’re worried about what happens to him?’

  ‘His conscience is his problem. It’s mine I’m worried about.’

  He said, ‘In your line of business, I’d have thought a conscience a luxury item.’

  Yes, well. It had been lost property not so long ago. Now she’d got it back, she didn’t want any more blood on it.

  Then he said, ‘I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.’

  ‘I’ve heard worse.’

  ‘No excuse.’ He looked up as another shadow passed; fooled, perhaps, by some slight hesitation in its step into thinking it was about to enter, take out its cheque book, make his day . . . It moved on. He looked back at Zoë. ‘There’ll be no vigilantism. Do I look like a soldier to you?’

  ‘Hardly. But your friends sound the part.’

  ‘I might have overstated our relationship. Acquaintances would be nearer the mark.’

  This was getting nowhere. ‘Mr Sweeney, I’m not sure I can help you.’

  ‘Your involvement wouldn’t be great. You find these people, you drop me a line. Anything else, you never know about.’

  ‘Even that far. Finding them? I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘Five thousand,’ he said.

  ‘. . . I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Five thousand pounds.’

  . . . It was, she decided later, the reality of the sum that gave her pause. Twenty thousand and up, even fifteen, she’d be shaking her head, laughing a little, as she made for the door. But five thousand was a plausible amount. It wouldn’t make an especially big pile of notes. She could pretty much see it on the counter in front of her. She could pretty much pick it up.

  She could pretty much wave goodbye to the tax bastards with it.

  ‘Mr Sweeney –’

  ‘That got your attention, didn’t it?’

  ‘Mr Sweeney,’ again, ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. A couple of strangers rob your shop? They could be from anywhere in Britain. Hell, they could have flown in for that matter.’

  ‘Just to rob me?’

  ‘Cheap flights, why not? A day trip from Spain would pay for itself.’

  ‘They weren’t Spanish.’

  ‘I didn’t mean – Mr Sweeney, the point I’m trying to make is, they could be anywhere.’

  ‘The five thousand,’ he said, ‘is a cash offer.’

  And if he was willing to spend five grand getting it back – on even the chance of getting it back – it was a safe bet it was worth upwards of fifty.

  Z
oë tried not to sigh. Money was unsubtle stuff, and led to blunt situations. One of those had occurred just outside this shop: somebody walking past at the wrong moment, and ten minutes later he was being packed into an ambulance while traffic backed up as far as the ring road. Though it was interesting to speculate if that had been deliberate: a bit of random chaos thrown in, to make the getaway easier . . . But she was supposed to be counting reasons to stay uninvolved. Organized or not, they’d shown they were prepared to hurt people. And the big fish, Sweeney’s ‘friends in the trade’ . . . Zoë didn’t want to meet them either.

  ‘I assume you have police connections.’

  This was a big assumption. Some policemen had tried to kill her once, but they didn’t exchange Christmas cards.

  ‘I mean, wouldn’t you be able to –’

  ‘Mr Sweeney, it’s not easy to get details of ongoing police investigations. You’d have to be a lot better connected than I am.’

  ‘Your daily rate. Your daily rate, plus a five thousand bonus.’

  Another ghost passed the window, disappearing without the slightest hesitation. Another cash sale, walking by without happening . . . There came a point where you had to be mad to turn opportunities down.

  Her notebook was back in hand. ‘The bonus happens when I find them. The rate happens whether I do or not.’

  He said, ‘The first one was about six foot. You’ll want to take this down. The other –’

  ‘He could give you an inch, tops,’ Zoë remembered.

  ‘Yeah. A real shortarse.’

  ‘And it was the tall one had the gun?’

  Sweeney said, ‘Gun?’

  ‘They shot somebody. It was on the news.’ Sounding stupid even to her own ears: if they’d shot somebody, it had to be on the news, didn’t it? Had to mean a gun.

  ‘It wasn’t a gun,’ Sweeney said. ‘It was a crossbow.’

  Chapter Two

  i

  Shorn of language, what Price had said was: ‘Fuck did you think you were up to, fuckhead? Did I say shooting was required?’

  Not totally shorn of language, obviously, but cleaner than the original.