Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  . . . His mind drifted. Concentration was hard to come by these days. His mind, in fact, didn’t drift: it took a predetermined route he was helpless to forbid. It began at his feet, stepped into the main road, and instantly hurled away into the traffic like a paper bag in a slipstream; whistled past shops so they blurred into a single endless mall: one huge window, plastered with insincere offers. Then on to the ring road: past estates bridges garden centres; skirting small communities long islanded by traffic. Through green lights red lights amber; over roundabouts; shaving corners. On to the London road, and a sudden shift of gear before rocketing away to what waited: a long sloping curve towards the motorway . . . And here, at this junction, somewhere under the road’s ever-scribbled-on surface, there would be skidmarks still. Like the plastic slate he’d drawn on as a child, which could be wiped clean repeatedly but retained every mark on its backing board: an incoherent mess of squiggles, each of which had meant something once . . . The skidmarks he was thinking of were Emma’s. What they meant was, she had lost control. They meant she was never coming back.

  He did not know how many cars used that stretch of road every day: easily thousands, though; tens of thousands. And he did not know how many people died on the roads every year: but hundreds, tens of hundreds. That vaguely appreciated big number was not information consciously acquired; it was simply part of the condition of life. In a motorized society, there will be a certain amount of collateral damage. Tim had always known that, just as he had known that every time he picked up a newspaper, he’d find some version of that same story. But he hadn’t expected to find himself in it, and Emma gone.

  But death was the smart bomb. Death could unerringly pick an individual from a crowd and obliterate her so particularly, so precisely, it was amazing any memory of her survived. As for those closest, they were left wondering what happened; the smoking crater beside them all that remained of their recent companion. And those approaching sirens heralded emergency counsellors, come to cut the survivors from the wreckage of their emotions.

  Tim wished he had a cigarette after all. But the nearest pack would be across this busy road: a rushing metal river he didn’t care to step in once, let alone twice.

  She had lived for two days. This was not precisely right. The quick, the true, the ugly fact was, she had not died for two days. Which was when Tim, who had not slept during that period, gave permission for the machine to be turned off: the machine being all that was keeping Emma breathing, though in his stricken exhausted mind, the machine was Emma by then; he was giving them permission to switch Emma off. And afterwards, he slept.

  ‘There is no sense in which you are responsible for her death. None at all.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She had the bad luck to be on the same stretch of road as a drunken –’

  ‘I know.’

  These were the words of friends, and were meant to help.

  ‘There was no chance of recovery. It wasn’t that it was the kindest thing to do, it was the only thing to do.’

  Consolation, though, wore off. People trod round him on eggshell feet, then gradually normalized, as if his own rate of recovery were somehow equivalent to theirs.

  But there was no way of measuring the speed he was moving at. And as for time, it was ever-divisible. Even seconds broke down into smaller units, which frequently snagged on events like a loose thread – pauses in conversation seemed to last for days. Responses had once come automatically. Now he had to sift everything twice: what had been said, the available replies, which he should choose . . . Grief was slow-motion. This was what was meant by funereal pace.

  And because there was so much of it, time was impossible to ignore. Clockwatching became obsession. It was as if he weren’t just passing time but accumulating it: one more thing he had to carry through the day. What would he do with all this time he was gathering? He’d find some way of killing it . . . Work became purgatory. He had always enjoyed his job, or more accurately, had enjoyed the knowledge that he was useful; that he could garner a salary for the time spent doing it. Now, it was barely credible they still paid him. What was it he did, exactly? There was a shop, and it sold electrical goods. Part of a nationwide chain, with a turnover in the mid-millions. Twelve staff under him; more at weekends; and God only knew how many above, when you took the national hierarchy into account. Once, he’d seen himself climbing this pyramid – but then once, he’d been good at what he did. Once, he’d been on first-name terms with his staff, even the Saturday part-timers. Lately, he kept forgetting what Jean was called. Once, he’d filled the store: it was his territory, and everybody breathing was a potential customer. Now, he’d become two-dimensional: he took up space, and wasted time.

  Time, which passed so slowly.

  A horn sounded somewhere behind him, and he came back to the present, looked at his watch. It would be lunchtime within the hour. He’d better return to his desk.

  Where he dealt with invoices; returned a phone call; fended off Jean, who had logged his temporary absence: ‘Are you sure you’re –?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She looked doubtful.

  ‘I’ll be taking a day’s leave tomorrow. Wednesday. Could you put that on the roster, please?’

  ‘Doing anything nice?’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said, ‘Will you close the door? I need to make a phone call.’

  So that was that.

  Tiger, tiger, burning bright . . .

  And that was something else that popped into his mind every time he recalled that evening. The line, of course, he remembered from school: Tyger, tyger his textbook had read. There was more to poetry than spelling. Blake had been the poet’s name, and still was, because fame was a kind of antidote to death – your name lived on. But only kind of, because you were still dead. He didn’t know why it kept ringing in his head, and could only imagine that it was his brain’s way of preserving a memory he didn’t know he had – her name was Katrina. Her name was Katrina Blake.

  It was not surprising, perhaps, that his subconscious had had to resort to subterfuge to preserve such shards. Saturday would have been his and Emma’s tenth anniversary. The hotel was where they’d spent their wedding weekend.

  . . . Katrina Blake, then. What was she doing in his dreams? And where had her bruise come from: oh, right, the cupboard door. Tim tried to retrieve exactly what she’d said about that, but all he could recall was that it had been a long detailed answer to a question he hadn’t asked. A prepared story; one he’d failed to respond to adequately.

  I think some of us are just accident prone, she’d said.

  And had gone on to talk about her husband.

  No huge leap in logic was required. It needed a leap in emotional understanding, that was all: a jump back in time to a point where this had been a language he’d been versed in; one he’d spoken at home – the ability to understand what was meant when a subject was talked around, not over. The ability to read between lines, and interpret silences. So say it was true, say it was so – say her husband beat her up. Why, then, would she talk to a strange man in a hotel dining room? Tim wished his recall extended beyond that bruise, that dress; the vague recollection of a voice deeper than expected.

  Do you come here often? Had she really said that?

  Tim thought he’d remember if she had looked at him with those forgotten-coloured eyes and said, ‘Help me. Please. My husband beats me up.’

  And what business was it of his anyway?

  But that was a question for another time. Meanwhile, there was the other fragment that had pushed its way to the surface of his mind; the one he’d found there when he’d woken – Had she come far?

  Totnes. Do you know it?

  He didn’t. He did. He’d never been there. He knew where it was.

  Voices from the staff room told him the shift was changing. It must be the lunch hour. For the first time in a while, Tim Whitby felt the stirrings of appetite; something that reached beyond the body’s a
utomatic response to time passing. For the first time in a while, he had a plan which stretched beyond the first drink of the day.

  He would go to Totnes. He would find Katrina Blake.

  He would do this tomorrow.

  Meanwhile, he’d have lunch.

  Chapter Three

  i

  Men are good at watching and waiting. Zoës, less so. With men, it was doubtless something primitive; a lonely instinct programmed for the forest, where the ability to remain motionless and alert meant the difference between feast and fast. With Zoë, it was straightforward biology: she wasn’t designed for taking a leak in a bottle. So she’d done the next best thing, and lied.

  ‘It’s for the council. They’re actioning antisocial driving.’ Actioning was a good local government word, like prioritize or backhander. ‘I’m taking notes of illegal turns, double parking. Horn-blowing.’

  ‘People emptying ashtrays on the kerbs?’

  ‘I’m prioritizing that.’

  ‘Filthy business. Well, if you’re out there all day, you’ll need to use the facilities, won’t you?’

  This was in the Cancer Relief shop opposite Sweeney’s, and the woman was so sweet – all pink wool and white hair; a charming stereotype – Zoë might have felt bad if it hadn’t felt so good. She refused a cup of tea for obvious reasons, and returned to the car, reminding herself to jot down numberplates if any of the cited infractions occurred. Pink wool, white hair – the old duck might be Miss Marple, and come checking.

  The car in question was from her local garage; lent by Jeff, who’d tended her Sunny through most of its recent illnesses, and who had accepted its demise with equanimity. ‘I’d have given it six months, max.’

  ‘Thanks for the sympathy.’

  ‘Yeah, well. You weren’t planning on putting it out to stud, were you?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But I hadn’t organized a Viking funeral either.’

  He’d showed her some used cars, and they talked money without finding common ground. Insurance companies were mentioned, and their famous reluctance to pay out on policies. Zoë had been prepared to whistle this theme, but Jeff explained he had work to do.

  ‘And you’ll only be happy,’ he said, ‘when they give them away with boxes of cornflakes.’

  ‘It’d have to be the supermarket brand,’ Zoë said. ‘Lend me a car, Jeff?’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘. . . Couple of years?’

  So now she had a Beetle until Wednesday – an orange Beetle. ‘Sometimes I have to follow people,’ she’d reminded him. ‘Have you anything in taupe?’

  ‘I’m straight, Zoë. I’ve never heard of taupe.’

  The orange Beetle worked, though, despite being sticky on hills. And it was somewhere to sit while she watched Sweeney’s. Watched and waited . . . She’d brought a bag of apples along. Since giving up smoking she’d been hungry all the time, and rumour had it apples were healthy.

  This was Monday morning. In Sweeney’s shop, there’d been no activity since nine thirty, when he’d opened. It was now pushing twelve. Divide the business rates by the pre-noon profit, and you could see why Harold might have been tempted off the straight and narrow . . . A lorry passed, chugging exhaust fumes, while on the pavements parents pushed prams and buggies, stopping to compare children every so often; a demographic varied by the odd group of students flexing their youth – talking too loudly; fondly imagining the interest of others. In the doorway of a boarded-up shop, a woman of indeterminate age huddled in a blanket, swearing at an ancient enemy who wasn’t there.

  A creep in a used-car salesman’s coat with a face that belonged on Gollum oozed past.

  There was nothing new here. Zoë had seen this before. Life was a series of vanishing circles that sucked you in faster, the smaller they got – life was a whirlpool. Life, in fact, sucked. She couldn’t remember the first time she’d sat in a car, watching the same door never open, waiting for the same face never to appear . . . She could hazard a guess, though, that the job had involved something unpopular: another bill to pay; another court appearance. She’d pretty quickly grown used to being unwelcome. It must have wreaked havoc on her character, though nothing like the damage it did to her opinion of other people’s . . . It was possible there were trustworthy souls out there, but a glass wall had dropped between her life and theirs. When she’d been those students’ age, one million and twenty-five years ago, she’d no doubt had a vision of how life would be – so what happened? It must have had something to do with Joe, her late husband, whom she didn’t miss. She rarely thought about him, and even when she did, he was still dead. There was nothing new there, either.

  Puffed-up contrails crosshatched the sky, as if something large and bored were about to play noughts and crosses.

  To work. Sweeney, in Zoë’s view, was dirty; or perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, merely grubby – the difference being, how rough you played. Either way, she was ninety per cent sure, he was a trafficker in stolen goods. As for his ‘trade associates’, they’d be his fences, and ugly pals like that weren’t in the game to shore up a failing business. She wasn’t surprised he didn’t want them knowing he’d been ripped off. She wondered, though, that it hadn’t occurred to him they’d been the ones doing it.

  She plucked another apple from the bag. She was approaching her limit already – would wind up with stomach cramps if she didn’t watch it – but she was so damn hungry, or at least, so damn needed to be doing something with her hands . . .

  Anyway: the ugly pals were playing rough. Two men (there’d have been a third in the car) had paid an early call on Harold Sweeney, relieving him of loot he kept out of sight of the public. How did they know about the loot? Inside job . . . The ugly pals’ version of victimless crime: one that didn’t involve police. Who wouldn’t have heard about it at all, if D.R. Hunter hadn’t copped it as they left . . . Which was where her scenario might collapse if it weren’t for the desperately-fucking-stupid element – in any group of more than two criminals, one would operate best at room temperature. And when you married poor impulse control to a low attention span, then dumped the mix into a lawless enterprise, someone was going to get hurt.

  Something else worried her. She was pretty sure there was a fictional private eye who drove a cute VW. Probably in California. Jeff might be taking the piss.

  Action happened over the road – a woman paused by Sweeney’s window; spent fifteen seconds clocking its contents, then moved on briskly: either putting all thoughts of jewellery behind her or hurrying to tell someone of her plans, who could tell? That was it for half an hour; thirty minutes during which Zoë tested her logic and found it held. There was no way on earth she was going to find Sweeney’s robbers by looking for them. Sooner or later they’d do it again and be arrested on the job, but that wouldn’t mean Zoë got paid. Meanwhile, she knew something the police didn’t, which was that these guys had known exactly what they were after, and where Sweeney had kept it. Getting a line on who else had known that was her only available starting point.

  She browsed. In the glovebox she found a tube of Polos, an A–Z of Santa Teresa – wherever that was – and a nice pair of nail scissors she put to use: she’d been meaning to buy a pair for ages. Meanwhile, on the radio, an internationally megaselling author explained that he’d chosen popular rather than higher fiction because he’d never write anything as good as Ulysses. Zoë, who’d read one of his books, doubted he’d ever write anything as good as Where’s Spot? In the window of the Cancer Relief shop she caught an image of white hair/pink wool, and pretended to be taking notes.

  Lunch was an apple, followed by a Polo. At one, Sweeney left, to return ten minutes later with a sandwich. Zoë sank into her seat, donning her favourite disguise of trying to look like somebody else, but he didn’t glance in her direction. He seemed curiously shorter today. Money worries, she guessed. Her own loomed large behind her. She could almost hear them squabbling in the back seat.

  Sweene
y had more customers in the afternoon, but none of them excited her. The first, a man in a grey suit whose joints shone, looked more salesman than customer. She could imagine the standoff that must have made. The others were a young couple, early twenties; the male half eager, the way Zoë read it; the woman going with the flow – outmanoeuvred, perhaps, by her own disinclination to cause hurt. A ring was a ring; a bracelet, a bracelet. Sometimes promises were handcuffs. When they left twenty minutes later, he seemed to be halfway through a list of points that needed making: reasons to be cheerful, perhaps. The woman listened, nodded, half-smiled . . . Waited for a break in the traffic through which she could hurl herself, screaming.

  That was about it. Cars ebbed and flowed with the clock: school run, office exodus. Sweeney closed at six, though his enterprise had had a needy, unfulfilled air since four thirty at least. Walking away, he stooped like a man on whom gravity had done a number. For a while, she wondered about following him home; then for a while longer wondered what would be the point of that? Instead, she went home herself: ate a bowl of pasta, drank a glass of wine . . .

  Doing nothing exhausted her. Her body felt like she’d put it through an uphill, dangerous struggle. It craved exercise, she supposed. Weariness was a con her mind was hoping to pull. In another life she’d have gym membership, or a robust callisthenics routine. In this one she had another glass of wine and went to bed.

  Where she slept the fitful, punished sleep such shirking deserved. She dreamed she was cuffed to the steering wheel of an embarrassing German car, while Bob Poland watched through its windscreen . . . Poland was a man best left under his rock. She woke with that thought in mind, and couldn’t sleep again.