Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  Her third-floor room was at the back, and looked down on an actual lane, much favoured as a shortcut by those heading to or from a local club – Heaven, or Paradise, or possibly The Sweet Hereafter: something, anyway, that promised more than it could deliver. No cars used this – three concrete bollards blocked one end – but revellers’ noise woke her on her first night, and she got out of bed and stood by the window, while scattered groups of people wandered past, heedless of the sleeping houses around.

  Jonno said, ‘Probably best not to stand by the window, know what I mean?’

  ‘Is my room wired for vision?’

  He flushed. Twenty-two, he flushed easily. If Katrina had been of a mind, she could have made his daylight hours hell.

  ‘There’s a loose board,’ he said. ‘Just by your window? It creaks.’

  In addition to being twenty-two, Jonno had a receding hairline he disguised with a buzz cut. Girls were growing taller, and men were growing bald. To compensate, he nurtured a goatee. Without it, Katrina would have pegged him at fourteen.

  ‘Who do you think might see me?’

  ‘Better safe than sorry, know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘It’s not terribly complicated.’

  He looked at her blankly, no idea what she meant.

  Jonno was a staff writer on the News Chronicle, or so he’d told her. Jonno, in truth, was a gopher on the News Chronicle: a newish daily yet to claim a grip on a readership, but whose proprietor had always wanted a newspaper to play with, and was throwing money at it like it was a snowball fight. The experienced journos he’d hired were snatching the cash, beefing up their expenses, and keeping in touch with the hirers on the broadsheets. Tyros like Jonno were fetching sandwiches and telling their mates they were Press.

  The actual writer on Katrina’s story was a thirty-year veteran called Helen Coe: a big-boned ex-smoker whose light was fading fast – while the more cliché-prone in her trade succumbed to drink or quit to write The Book, Helen was gradually giving up the struggle to remain awake twelve hours at a stretch.

  ‘You know how many council meetings I covered, way back when?’

  A lot, Katrina guessed.

  ‘Felt like all of them. Stayed awake, too. But these things catch up.’ She was fifties, with mad grey hair and thick glasses; she wore a tatty green cardigan, and a belted brown raincoat for outdoors. ‘After that, I covered Westminster, then a crime beat. Half my career happened way past bedtime. No wonder I’m knackered.’

  ‘You never considered another line of work?’ Katrina asked.

  ‘And miss the glamour?’ Helen spoke without apparent irony, but in the light from an unwashed window, the room had the charm of a prison officers’ social club. ‘You know why most politics happens at night? So MPs have an excuse for a London flat. Gives them the opportunity to shag their research assistants.’ She paused. Jonno blinked four times in quick succession. This was code, Katrina decided, for No way is my career going to be like this. Not even in a joke. ‘If they all went home to their wives at night, you think the transport system would be quite so far up hell’s back passage?’

  She seemed to expect a reply.

  ‘Some MPs are women, I’ve noticed,’ said Katrina.

  ‘That’s very sweet, dear.’ Helen shifted on her stool. There was one usable chair in the room: a straight-backed armchair whose padding was a distant memory. Katrina had this. Jonno stood sentry by the door, a post from which dispatch was as regular and inevitable as Helen Coe’s need for refreshment. ‘Halfway chance of a decent pension, and I’d be into the sunset.’ She yawned, without bothering to hide it. ‘Then Jonno’d have to write your story. And Jonno has a degree.’

  Katrina looked at Jonno. ‘I’m sure you’ll make a very good journalist.’

  ‘And I’m sure he’ll make a very nice cup of tea,’ said Helen. ‘Soon as you like, dear.’

  Jonno left.

  Once Katrina had called the police, events had occurred both very swiftly and alarmingly slowly. She was taken to a succession of rooms in a large police station, where cop-show reality swallowed her up – fingerprints and photographs; questions and more questions. She surrendered her clothes, and was given a medical examination by a male doctor in the presence of a female officer. The left side of her face was paid careful attention. ‘Tell me how this happened?’ She told him, then told him again. Her new clothes were baggy grey coveralls, and felt like a replacement identity; in this role, she’d carry out useful but uncomplicated tasks, such as cleaning floors or unblocking drains. The attending female officer remained impervious throughout, and Katrina attempted a similar detachment. What happened to my face is part of somebody else’s statement. And what happened to her dress sense was somebody else’s wardrobe. A switch had flipped inside her, allowing a pragmatic, purely functional Katrina to take over; who responded to a prod, but otherwise might have been laminated. Meanwhile, phone calls were made and a lawyer appeared. Possibly in a puff of smoke: she didn’t notice. The plan was to get through this while noticing as little as possible, though all the time in the cold hard centre of her being, she wrapped layer after layer of unfeeling around the knowledge of what she’d done.

  When she needed the toilet, she was accompanied. Washing her hands, she stared into the mirror – the face staring back was a party-mask.

  ‘Slight fracture,’ the doctor had muttered, taking notes. As if he were talking to himself; and Katrina merely an onlooker at her own examination.

  Now, looking into the mirror, she murmured, ‘What is your favourite colour?’ Purple or blue; black or crimson?

  ‘What?’

  ‘Purple,’ Katrina said. Then: ‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’

  She was taken back to the room she belonged to, and the questions began again.

  All that had come to an abrupt end, she told Helen Coe.

  ‘Oh yes. You know how things go in waves, dear? Reality TV, boy bands, Tory leaders? You’re riding the zeitgeist. The appeal courts have been backed up for months releasing battered women who’ve crossed the line.’ She reached into her bag for a cigarette, before remembering she didn’t smoke. This happened a dozen times a day. ‘Before they charge you with something that’s going to be trampled underfoot by the Law Lords – always supposing you’re convicted, dear – the CPS are going to be looking very carefully at the alternatives.’

  ‘Which is likely to be?’

  ‘Wilful misuse of a kitchen implement, if the Chronicle’s got anything to do with it. Mind you, you’re not out of the woods yet. You know what it means, dear, having a newspaper on your side?’

  ‘It says nice things?’

  ‘If you’re lucky. But it also means the others are going to be kicking seven kinds of shit out of you.’ Helen almost leaned back, then recalled she was on a stool. ‘You noticed the small print? If you’re convicted, we won’t be paying for your story.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Another good reason for being innocent.’

  Sometime during the second day of police, Katrina had been shown a tabloid, and found it used the word ‘murderess’; the inverted commas a standard defence against libel action. That -ess troubled Katrina. Actress, stewardess, waitress – all had shed their suffixes; succumbed to the gender-neutral. So why did murderess still have that cachet? Because it was sexy, the idea that women were dangerous. It gave men the notion that taming remained incomplete.

  She had the feeling that sharing this with Helen Coe wasn’t a good idea.

  So here she was, anyway, in what the Chronicle’s crocodiles probably termed a safe house: a barely furnished three-storey in an area that would be on its way up just as soon as it touched bottom. She felt like she’d wandered into an urban fairy tale. There was just enough of everything for all of them, provided Jonno didn’t mind going without – there were mugs and plates for three, but they were short a knife and fork. Plus, of course, he had nowhere to sit. Not that Helen would have let him sit much.

&nb
sp; On the first evening, when it became apparent that Helen wasn’t staying – no offence, dear, but they don’t pay me enough – Katrina had wondered if this was going to be stage two of the nightmare: stuck in a rambling flophouse with a kid who hadn’t been alone with a woman yet. That was before she discovered how easily he blushed.

  Once Helen had gone he told her, dead serious, ‘If you hear anybody at the door in the night, stay put. I’ll deal with it.’

  She asked who it was likely to be, this late-night caller.

  ‘Probably no one.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s drinkers and druggies about, know what I mean? It’s the square over the road, they congregate there.’

  It occurred to her that he was expecting rival journalists to turn up and spirit her off. ‘Jonno? If I hear anything in the night, I’ll stay where I am.’

  Because if he was her protection, she’d be better off hiding under a duvet.

  Later, after she’d been woken by the revellers, she lay staring at the ceiling, remembering some parts of the past few days; forgetting others. Her face throbbed. But if not for that, she wouldn’t be here at all. She’d have been charged with murder. It was one thing describing how you’d been struck, hit, beaten, but without the bruises, it could just be a story. Baxter, dead on their kitchen floor, might have been a sweet innocent; his brothers, grieving lambs. She shuddered. If there came a knock on the door in the dark, rival journalists wouldn’t be on her mind. She’d be thinking Arkle; she’d be thinking Trent. Blood revenge would draw them here. And of course, there was also the money . . .

  They were not supposed to know she knew about the money, but they’d know. Arkle, anyway, would. From the first time she’d laid eyes on him, he’d had a way of staring straight through her, as if already wishing she weren’t there. He’d seen her as a threat, which was almost funny, because it was impossible to be in Arkle’s presence without knowing where the real threat lay. That phrase about a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma might have been coined for him, except for riddle, mystery and enigma read aggravation, hostility and blunt instrument.

  For as long as Katrina had known him, Arkle’s appetites had been diminishing. He drank no alcohol; never ate a decent meal. But he was eaten up by hunger all the same. It just lay in less obvious directions.

  Two days after the Oxford weekend she had read about the robbery there, and had known, even without the significant detail, that the trip had been reconnaissance. This had not come as a surprise. Some things Bax had told her, others he tried not to, and it was an aspect of his masculinity that he’d imagined that the things he didn’t tell her, she didn’t get to know about. As if she were shrouded in ignorance, and her only light shone through holes he punched . . . Among other things, he’d told her where the money was. Which he hadn’t told Arkle or Trent.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Arkle’s a little . . . unsteady.’

  He was telling her?

  ‘Arkle’s a little impulsive. He can only focus on one thing at a time.’ This was delivered with an air of interested detachment, as if Baxter were narrating a documentary. In a way, he’d spent a lot of time doing that: providing the voiceover for whatever Arkle was up to. ‘He prefers it this way. Trust me. Keeps his issues from being clouded.’

  Though it didn’t take much to cloud Arkle’s issues. The significant detail in the newspaper report was that somebody walking past the target at the wrong time had wound up with a bolt in his leg.

  Katrina closed her eyes, blotting out the ceiling, but not thoughts of Arkle, or Baxter. Arkle was straining at the leash. That’s what that detail meant. Was probably frothing at the mouth, in fact. Firing his crossbow at a warm two-legged body would have been the highlight of his day.

  Arkle: hostility, aggression, blunt instrument.

  Baxter: simply dead.

  All three had been adopted – strange that they’d forged such a unit. Or perhaps it was inevitable, after years of being harried from pillar to post, that they’d drop a common anchor in the first available harbour. No wonder Arkle had always looked at her as if she were a pirate – he wasn’t a man for whom romance figured on the agenda. Arkle understood the nature of alliance, but hadn’t quite sussed out what was in it for Bax. What turned out to be in it for Bax was a knife in the heart.

  A passing car threw shadows across the ceiling, and when it stopped she knew they’d come for her. But they hadn’t. It was lost, that was all; a lost car having to stop and reverse, because of the concrete bollards at the alley’s end. After a while her pulse steadied. This room – bare floorboards, a narrow bed and a thin curtain; one wooden chair on which she’d draped a change of clothing – was sanctuary for now, courtesy of the News Chronicle, but it wouldn’t remain so for long. She wasn’t sure how they’d manage it, but they’d find her. Sooner or later, they’d find her.

  And Arkle’s appetite was just starting to wake.

  ii

  Arkle and Trent. Arkle and Trent. Arkle, Baxter and Trent . . .

  Baxter had been the smart one, able to work through the logistics of a given situation to the satisfaction of the important parties. And Trent generally managed to do what he was told. He could, for instance, carry heavy stuff a lot further than you’d imagine, given what a fucking dwarf he was. As for Arkle . . . Arkle, to get to the point, was a creative genius.

  They were heading into London; Arkle driving, because of Trent’s head. Trent had regained maybe sixty per cent vision, but only in the eye he could see out of, so there was room for improvement. Arkle was optimistic he’d be more or less sighted before long. Meanwhile, on Arkle’s knee lay the News Chronicle he’d taken from old man Blake’s, folded open to the story flagged above the headline: Inside! Today! – a ‘special report’ on ‘wives who kill’. It turned out there was more than one of them. It turned out there was a fucking epidemic: the big surprise was there were any married men still upright. If Blake hadn’t retired he’d be rich on the overtime, shovelling the poor bastards away. It seemed there was a legal defence available – if he left the toilet seat up, you could whack him – and women jailed as murderers these ten years gone were hitting the streets like there was no tomorrow. Kay Dunstan’s name didn’t figure, but more to come was promised . . .

  Arkle, creative genius, could put two and two together. The TV had said a newspaper had bought Kay’s story: that would be the Chronicle. The ‘special report’ was the first in a promised series: keep reading, and he’d end up with the inside dope on Baxter’s killing, complete with smiling photograph. Look at me now, she’d be saying, and she’d be saying it directly to Arkle. Look at me now. Your brother’s dead, and I’m getting paid for the details. Not to mention the rest of the money, of course: the money Bax had been in charge of, and which the bitch had stolen on top of everything else.

  ‘You will ask me nicely if you can give it back,’ he said, and it was only when Trent grunted in reply that he knew he’d spoken out loud.

  ‘How’s your head?’ he asked. This was something he was making an effort at: showing kindness and consideration to Trent. Trent said something in reply, but he didn’t listen. ‘Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I had another idea. You want to hear it?’

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

  Trent really was milking that wound. How the fuck should Arkle know? Was he in charge of geography? They’d know when they reached London because of all the London stuff: Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye. Madame Tussaud’s. Still, he let it pass. ‘What I was thinking, we find one of these Internet cafés, cruise the web. Bax reckoned there’s nothing you can’t find out with a computer.’

  After a while Trent said, ‘Maybe.’

  Count to ten, Arkle advised himself. He reached two, then said, ‘For all the help you are, I should dump you by the side of the road. You want to be dumped by the side of the road?’

  ‘. . . No.’

  ‘And don’t think I’m fucking slowing down, neither.’

  ‘Sorry, Arkle.’r />
  ‘Yeah, sorry Arkle. You think it’s easy, having to make all the decisions? You think I’m having fun?’ He drove two miles in silence. ‘And another thing. You look like a mad panda in that fucking bandage. Take it off.’

  ‘Arkle –’

  ‘Take it off.’

  Trent unwound the bandage. Parts of it stuck to his head, and he removed those bits very carefully indeed.

  When it was a sticky mess between Trent’s feet, Arkle said, ‘There. You look a lot better.’

  He looked like a burns victim, in fact, but changing your mind was weakness.

  Arkle said, ‘We got the name of this paper, right, and we got the name of this journo.’ He glanced down at the paper to remember what it was. ‘Helen Coe. She’s the one writing this story. We need to talk to Helen Coe.’

  He kept driving, and eventually they reached London – Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye. Madame Tussaud’s.

  So they found an Internet café. Arkle didn’t know where they were, exactly, but that was the point of the Internet: it didn’t matter where you were. He paid for half an hour, because how long could it take, then again thirty minutes later, because who knew it would take this long? Kids surfed the web constantly, and Arkle was older than any kid he’d met. But maybe they knew something he didn’t, because when he typed Where is Helen Coe? into a search engine all he got was a list of random websites. He’d be better off wandering the streets, shouting her name. And Trent was a help – was he fuck.

  Trent – slouched next to him – hadn’t touched a drop in days, but smelled like alcohol. It was a big responsibility being the oldest. Arkle had done all the driving, all the thinking, and the best Trent could manage was this shagged-out zombie act. His head was kind of splotchy, too. From a distance it looked like a birthmark, but Arkle had to deal with it up close, and frankly it was making him feel ill.