Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  ‘Yes, but I’ve no idea where. Sorry.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  He was young, seemed pleasant enough: T-shirt and stubble, the just-been-surfing look. He said, ‘Anything else I can help you with?’

  Zoë wondered if he was coming on to her. She quite genuinely lacked the equipment to be sure.

  ‘You know the Dunstans? From the yard along the road?’

  ‘You press?’

  ‘Would that make a difference?’

  He shrugged. ‘Takes all sorts. Nicest guy I ever knew had a press card.’

  ‘Blimey. Anyway, no, I’m not press. I just need to speak with them.’

  ‘They drink in here, or did. You know Bax is dead?’

  ‘I read.’

  ‘He was the normal one. The other pair . . . I don’t like to see them coming in. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to bar them.’

  ‘I’ve seen Arkle in action.’

  ‘You’ll know what I mean then. It’s not like he loses his temper. It’s more like lost temper’s his default option.’

  ‘Seems to have been Baxter’s problem too.’

  The young man shrugged.

  ‘Or you think wife-beating’s just a foible?’

  ‘Fuck, no. Just didn’t seem the type, that’s all. Kay comes in sometimes. Came in. I never thought she looked . . . You know.’

  He seemed uncomfortable. And no: Zoë didn’t know. Not exactly.

  She said, ‘Did she watch him closely? Or would she talk to other regulars? Did she talk to you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘When he was around?’

  He thought about it. She liked him for doing that. He considered it, rather than just batting away whatever she was getting at.

  At last he said, ‘I see what you mean. Yeah, maybe. I can’t be sure, not now. But maybe you’re right, she only talked to me when he was out of the room.’

  It was Zoë’s turn to shrug. ‘Doesn’t prove anything, really. I was just . . .’

  ‘No, it’s a good point. You’re saying, I didn’t think he seemed the type, but that’s just because I thought he was an all right bloke. But if I’d watched properly, I’d have noticed she was scared of him.’

  Okay: he was definitely coming on to her.

  She said, ‘Anyway. Do you have any idea where I’d find Arkle now?’

  ‘Home address? Sorry. He’s not the all-back-to-mine type.’ He scratched his stubble. ‘Not that anyone would go.’

  ‘Thanks anyway.’

  ‘You’re not the first to ask today.’

  ‘Who else has been in?’

  ‘Like I said. Press.’ He paused to check nobody needed a drink, then said, ‘Funnily enough, I know where she lives. Kay. Where she used to live, I mean.’ He seemed to think this needed a reason. ‘Her dad used to be an undertaker. He buried my gran.’ He gave Zoë an address at the top of the High Street. Her grasp of the town’s geography was enough to give her the basic picture.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  He said, ‘Why don’t I buy you one?’

  ‘I have to go. Sorry.’

  And for almost a minute, she really was.

  Passing an open café, she saw through its window a payphone and directory, so went in and jotted down the addresses of the four Dunstans listed. Outside, she sat on a bench and collated the addresses against her map, then worked out the quickest route round all four. At each, she would check for signs of Sweeney. What these might be she didn’t know, so it would be simpler just to get on with it.

  Maybe she’d snatch him from the jaws of Arkle. Maybe as she did so, he’d notice he owed her five thousand pounds.

  The first address washed out. She’d barely arrived when a car pulled up and disgorged about fifteen pre-teen squabbling boys, herded by a fraught mother and a man who looked like he wanted to get straight back in the car. They disappeared into the house, and all the lights went on. Zoë scratched it from her list, and left.

  On the corner, checking her map, she found she wasn’t far from the street the barman had mentioned: where Katrina, or Kay, Dunstan had lived. If she ignored this now, she’d have to come back later when nothing else panned out. This had happened too often for her to dismiss. So she followed the street round to where it ended at a railed-off dead drop, twenty yards or so below which a big road skirted the town centre. Traffic squirted along it heading west, and she watched tail-lights forming ever-receding patterns for a moment, before turning to check house numbers.

  The house she was looking for stood next to the drop, and even in artificial light had an air of neglect; its paintwork scuffed and worn; its wooden porch a ramshackle add-on. It was in darkness, but the front room curtains hung open, and a glow within suggested light at the rear. For no reason she could pin down, a shiver tickled Zoë’s spine. Then a reason materialized.

  Parked on the kerb opposite was a van she recognized – a shaven-headed man with a smile tight as a shark’s.

  Her mind flipped back, and she was outside the gravel yard again, watching Arkle torment Tim Willerby/Wallaby – would he really have put a bolt through him? Zoë couldn’t know. But Arkle’s smile suggested he’d do pretty much whatever he wanted, which was reason enough to give him a wide margin. Enough, in fact, to turn and walk away, but even as this sensible approach suggested itself, Zoë was trying the wooden door at the side of the house; pushing it open to find a passage leading to the back. The way was partly blocked by a hedge which hadn’t been shaved in a while, but she squeezed past with minor scratches, and reached the far end to find a hearse staring at her . . .

  This was not the happiest surprise to encounter in the moonlight. Kay Dunstan’s father, though, had been an undertaker. The barman had told her that. The car was a tool of the trade, not a horror movie prop. She wasn’t going to find Sweeney stretched out on its rear shelf.

  Zoë let her heart climb down to normal before registering everything else: the stone frog next to the overgrown pond; the dilapidated shelter under which sat a freezer, a wardrobe, some other odds and ends. Hardly ideal homes and gardens, but she was more interested in the light spilling on to the crazy paving from a recessed window. Falling to a crouch, she peeped round. Inside the house, an old man sat on a chair in the middle of a room. Of his companions, one had a bandage wrapping his head, and the other was Arkle.

  It took most of Zoë’s nerve not to scoot away. But she was invisible: dark night, light on; the most they’d see through the window was their own reflection. So she stayed where she was, pointlessly eavesdropping – she heard nothing bar traffic. Arkle was pacing, talking; bandage-head, who must be Trent Dunstan, was slumped against the far wall. As for the man in the chair, he’d be Kay Dunstan’s father, and was somewhere else altogether – his attention fixed on a spot on the wall, as if a secret window blossomed there, the view from which was all-absorbing.

  Perhaps the key element in the scene was that Arkle didn’t have his crossbow with him.

  And at that moment Arkle turned and looked into the night, and stared directly at her. Zoë immediately forgot what she knew and ducked round the corner, her heart racketing against her ribs. What was it with this guy? She’d seen big; she’d handled mean. But she didn’t think she’d ever looked at anybody before and seen straight through to the darkness within. He was all silhouette; the kind of shadow children fear lurks under beds and in dark nooks. That would grab them if their bare foot hit the floor.

  A noise behind her froze the blood in her veins. Then she clenched her fists; forced herself to her feet. Nobody appeared. She counted three, and risked a look round the corner. Arkle had his hand raised, but as she watched, he let it drop. Old man Blake didn’t appear to have moved a muscle, or possibly even breathed, in the intervening period. Nobody was looking through the window. Feeling better? her inner Zoë asked. Her pulse slowed. ‘Much,’ she muttered. Why are we still here, remind me? But that was one she couldn’t answer. There was no sign of Sweeney, and whatever was
happening in the house was none of her business.

  If Arkle’s here, her inner Zoë remarked, then he’s not at his own place.

  Which meant, she translated for her own benefit, that looking for Sweeney at the Dunstans’ would be a lot safer than hanging round here. So would returning to Dunstan & Sons, and shinning over the gate: the fact that Sweeney wasn’t visible didn’t mean he wasn’t in there somewhere. Maybe in that tin cabin, handcuffed to a radiator. Or underneath a mound of sand. Beyond the reach of help: she hoped not. Or beyond the reach of his cheque book: yeah, thanks. Shut up.

  One way or the other, time to go.

  iv

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Arkle asked. He was looking out of the window.

  What Trent could mostly hear was the noises in his head.

  Arkle turned to Blake. ‘What about you? Anything reach your eagle ears?’

  Bit of humour here: the only thing that had reached Blake’s ear the past half-hour was his own finger. And that was uncharacteristically energetic.

  Before today, last time Arkle had seen old man Blake had been months ago – not to speak to; just to watch from over the road as Blake meandered out of a shop and stopped dead, as if he’d lost track of what to do next – for fuck’s sake, Arkle had thought, you’re retired: what’s to forget? Get up, put your trousers on: you’re already halfway through your day. That was when he’d had his thought about growing older: that it was just another way of fucking up. Blake had puzzled his way into the café next door after a while. Possibly not where he’d intended to go, but a good place to regroup.

  And now he was a room ornament, staring at a wall, and nothing Arkle said was bringing him back.

  ‘That murdering bitch of a daughter of yours,’ for instance. ‘She killed my brother.’

  Blake had raised a polite eyebrow, as if Arkle had mentioned a common acquaintance who was in satisfactory health, sent good wishes, and hadn’t killed anyone.

  By now, hours later, raising an eyebrow would have ranked as a special effect.

  Arkle looked at Trent. ‘Any ideas?’

  But ideas didn’t figure on Trent’s current agenda. That was what two-and-then-some bottles of vodka did, though admittedly the blow Arkle had fetched him with the crossbow must have smarted.

  Forgive and forget, though. Arkle had forgiven Trent for needing to be hit, and had largely forgotten about it.

  Since then he’d nursed Trent tenderly – bandages, ointment, toast – and explained what they had to do next. Grief had been moved to the back burner. It was just the two of them now, and it was important they had a workable plan. Which would have been much easier if Baxter had been around to talk it through, but that was upside-down thinking. If Baxter was around, this wouldn’t be happening.

  To Trent, Arkle had said: ‘Our brother’s dead. What we have to focus on is what happened to the money.’

  Trent mumbled something that might have been ‘Banker.’

  ‘That’s right. He was our banker.’ Jesus. They weren’t kidding when they said it killed brain cells. ‘And we don’t know what he did with the money. Remember?’ He made Trent eat more toast. ‘But Kay does.’

  Trent groaned. That would be the hangover kicking in. One of the best things Arkle had ever done was not drink any more. He’d had a tendency to lose control after a drink or two.

  ‘I’ve an idea which way to go on this.’

  His train of thought was broken by Trent being sick. Once he’d cleaned him up a bit – Trent looked like a lopsided panda; it was funny, really – he continued:

  ‘Her old man. If she blabbed to anyone, it’ll be him.’

  Trent was sick again.

  When you were down to your last brother, it was awesome how fucking tolerant you had to be.

  After a few hours in old man Blake’s company, though, one thing was clear – any information that had found its way into his head lately wasn’t getting loose without a struggle.

  ‘Does he actually ever leave the house, you think?’ Arkle had pretty much given up addressing Blake directly: he was talking to Trent, or talking to the air. Current state of play, there wasn’t a lot of difference.

  But this time round, Trent answered. ‘Paper,’ he said.

  Which was a start. Today, Trent’s vocabulary had consisted of ‘fugle’, ‘drosh’ and ‘wodka’, and this was after he’d finished throwing up. ‘Paper’ was at least English, even if Arkle didn’t have the first clue what he was on about.

  ‘Paper,’ he repeated. You did this with budgies and parrots: they said something and you said it back, to make them do it again. Pretty soon they wouldn’t shut up saying it, and you could pretend they were talking to you. That was the theory. Arkle, frankly, didn’t have the patience. ‘What the fuck you on about?’

  Trent pointed.

  The paper. Today’s paper was on the floor by Blake’s chair, which meant he did actually leave the house, or at least left his chair. All of which indicated that the ambient temperature was drying Trent’s brain out, but otherwise didn’t help.

  He had another go. ‘Your daughter. Kay. Remember her, old man?’ Not on the evidence. Something occurred to Arkle: something he should’ve thought of already. ‘Katie.’ Old man Blake called her Katie, not Kay. There was a flicker of recognition. ‘Katie Blake. Are we getting somewhere?’

  But whatever light switch had flipped in Blake’s head flipped back again, leaving them all in the dark.

  Arkle tried once more. ‘When she came round, what did she talk about? . . . Hello? Anybody there?’ He reached a hand out, intending to knock Blake’s head – not hard: just getting his attention. But he let his fist drop halfway.

  . . . It had seemed simple. He’d come up here for words with old man Blake: find out what Kay had told him; discover what hints she’d dropped. She was a woman, everyone was agreed on that. Women dropped hints. This was practically a natural law. So Arkle had been sure Blake would know what had happened to the money; Arkle was dead certain Kay would have told him. It occurred to him now to wonder about the source of this certainty, and wondering that was like running full tilt into a wall. Why was he sure? He just was, that was all. When Arkle had an idea, the important thing about it was this: it was his idea. If it didn’t work out he was going to have to come up with another one, and it wasn’t like the fuckers grew on trees.

  At his feet now lay the newspaper Trent had drawn his attention to. Arkle wasn’t a big reader – had been known to move his lips while watching TV – but he recognized the News Chronicle from the typeface even before he unfolded it and read Inside! Today! in the colourbar across the top.

  A whole new idea occurred to him, making a noise like the door into the side passage . . .

  ‘Wait here,’ he said unnecessarily, heading for the front.

  Nobody else in that room was going anywhere.

  Time to go . . .

  For Zoë, the next few minutes – which were also her last this side of the coffin – passed with the slowness reserved for accidents, though nothing that happened to her during them was accidental. She did not hesitate after her last glimpse of Arkle through the window – fist raised as if he were about to clout the man in the chair; then dropped, as if he’d changed his mind – but turned to leave; she’d go and make sure Sweeney wasn’t at the Dunstans’ actual address: alive or dead; captive or lurking. It would not take much to dissuade him from thoughts of vengeance, if such possessed him. A clear look at consequences would re-establish common sense. With an amateur like Sweeney, putting the fear of God into him wouldn’t be a problem either. She reached the overgrown hedge and swung round the corner, expecting to push her way through to the door, the street, the outside world. Instead she met a bright light, which she did not have time to interpret immediately, and which was in fact nowhere visible to anybody else – it happened inside Zoë when the blow struck her forehead, and a universe of stars showered down on her: bright blue happy stars that lasted, each of them, a lifetime. But life- times
pass, and so did the stars. They winked out, one by one.

  Next it was dark, and she lay on her back, unable to move for the pain in her head. Somebody had hit her: that much she knew. She’d been hit before, though couldn’t remember having been struck unconscious – it couldn’t be good for the brain; there would be repercussions. And it was so so dark. She tried to move her feet, and barely could, and her immediate thought was that here was the first repercussion – some part of her neural system had fused, and none of the messages her brain sent to her feet were getting through. She’d lie here forever, unable to wriggle or stretch, because her wriggle and stretch commands didn’t work any more. And panic gripped her, racked her like a wave, and she kicked and pushed at the same time, and found resistance all around.

  Probably she shouted. Certainly, at some point, noise was everywhere; echoing minutely in an enclosed space, and her throat was raw and painful . . . She couldn’t move because there were walls all around her; close walls with no give. She could punch and twist forever and make no dent in their permanence. She was in a box, a box not much bigger than herself. It might have been made to contain her. She might have been shaped for this end . . . An image of a hearse flashed through her mind before she went blank again; lost herself in a frenzy of screaming and punching; hurting her soon-to-be-useless hands on walls that didn’t flinch. This was more than fear. It was the last moments of the scariest film she’d ever seen, and it was real. This was Zoë’s coffin.

  And inside it, she knew with perfect certainty, she was going to die.

  Part Three

  The party wall

  Chapter Six

  i

  The house was an end-of-terrace on a road no wider than a lane, negotiating which required diplomacy as much as motor skills – Katrina had already witnessed a breakdown in relations when two cars met head-on, neither prepared to reverse three yards. Opposite was a garden square, surrounded by tall black railings set in stone. Once, you’d have needed a key to get in. Now, all you needed was the usual city armour: an indifference to discarded needles, used condoms, broken glass. When the gentrifying wave washed this far, it would be retoned as a stately pleasure garden, but for now it remained a winos’ dormitory: peace and tidy greenery deep in its past, far in its future.