Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  He found himself looking at a screen telling him that the page he wanted couldn’t be found, and swore loudly. Then noticed he was being scrutinized by a black kid who looked about eleven or six or something. ‘You got a problem?’

  ‘You ever used a computer before?’

  It was lucky Arkle was a creative genius, because anyone else would have smacked the kid. Maybe four foot high: it wouldn’t have needed a big smack. Baggy T-shirt; pair of jeans he might grow into if he lived another six years. Which depended on him not bothering Arkle any more.

  ‘You’re doing it wrong,’ the kid said.

  This was constructive?

  ‘You’re supposed to use commas,’ the kid said.

  Now he fucking tells him. Arkle typed Where, is, Helen, Coe?, and got the same mad list he’d got before.

  ‘Not them kind of commas,’ the kid said.

  Arkle looked at him. ‘You work here?’ he asked.

  The kid stared. ‘I’m nine,’ he said.

  Arkle had been bigger than that when he was nine, definite. ‘And?’

  Turned out there was an electoral register site. Arkle fed the kid Baxter’s credit card number, and the kid did the rest.

  Ten minutes later, forty quid and a credit card lighter, Arkle and Trent were back in the van. Trent looked more alert now. Maybe the nap had done him good.

  Arkle said, ‘You gunna whinge the rest of your life, or give me a hand here?’

  ‘I’m feeling better,’ Trent said.

  He still sounded like he was chewing mothballs, but it was supportive not to mention this.

  ‘Cause we got a list of Helen Coes twenty names long. It’ll take a while to work round them.’ He pulled out, and someone behind him tooted angrily. This happened: people saw a white van, they hit the horn. Plain bad manners. ‘And every hour wasted . . .’ He paused at a junction and lost his thread. ‘Is an hour wasted,’ he finished.

  Trent asked, ‘We got an A–Z?’ and it was the first time in a while Arkle had heard him say we.

  ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘And we got Baxter’s phone,’ said Trent. ‘We can work something out.’

  iii

  It was part of the deal: the whole of the deal, in fact. As long as she was here, she had to answer questions. All the Chronicle wanted was her story. What Katrina wanted was somewhere to hide.

  A chair, a stool and a man by the door . . . She felt like Goldilocks, in a dwelling short one bear.

  And here was Mummy Bear, her chief interrogator:

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘A year. A bit more than.’

  ‘Had you known him long?’

  ‘Since we were teenagers.’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  Once upon a time there were three boys, and their names were . . .

  ‘Katrina?’

  Katrina, eyes fixed on the window – through which she could see only the raggy tops of exhausted trees in the square opposite – said, ‘There was a place the kids used to hang out. Not a club. Just a public space, the top of the High Street.’

  ‘He was a skateboarder, was he?’

  Katrina said, ‘Well, he followed it.’

  What he did was follow them. It wasn’t hard to work out who had money. Baxter, Arkle and Trent had it down to an art: they could shake a ’boarder down in a lot less time than it took to learn a double flip-back. And were good at ensuring nobody complained afterwards.

  Complaint meant official intervention. First time that happened, the boy in question broke both legs the following week, and told anyone who asked, and a few who didn’t, he’d fallen off his skateboard.

  Kay had heard about the brothers before she laid eyes on them.

  ‘I’d have given them the money twice over,’ somebody said. ‘Just to make him stop looking at me.’

  Him was Arkle, of course.

  ‘The brown one, though. Funny thing is, he’s kind of nice.’

  Which should have been news, but wasn’t, somehow – the brown one was a thug, who robbed other kids and damaged them if they squealed. This should have shown on the surface; he should have had stupefied eyes and a fixed lip-curl; a face waiting for a tattoo to happen. Instead he had white teeth, open features, and a smile that suggested, if it was up to him, you’d be friends, and happy to share your wealth. All this, Kay put together from secondhand details, as if she were colouring by numbers without having been told what colours the numbers meant. So why wasn’t this news? Because it was there in countless films and numberless books. The good-looking bad boy. The one who stole your heart along with everything else he could get his hands on.

  Of course, now she thought about it, none of those stories ended happily.

  ‘And did you think you could change him?’

  ‘Change him?’

  ‘That’s the usual pattern, dear. Women choose men hoping they’ll change. Men choose women hoping they won’t.’

  Helen had taking to pacing the room, smoking imaginary cigarettes – tucking her biro between her lips; breathing out clouds of invisible ink.

  ‘Well,’ Katrina said. ‘I didn’t suppose he’d be pinching skateboarders’ lunch money all his life. But I expect he’d have reached a similar conclusion on his own.’

  ‘You thought he’d graduate to mugging grown-ups?’

  ‘I thought he’d grow out of it. It wasn’t like he’d had the best start in life. Shuffled from one foster home to the next. When Roy Dunstan adopted him, it was more for the sake of the firm than anything else.’

  ‘Seems odd he chose a mixed-race kid, then. If he was after surrogate sons.’

  ‘That was his wife’s idea. I never knew her. Baxter said she was a good lady.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to have affected them much, does it? What did she think of their thieving?’

  ‘She’d died by then,’ Katrina said. ‘Like I say, Bax didn’t have the easiest of childhoods. None of them did.’

  And maybe that was a connection Helen would want to know about; maybe she should talk about dead mothers. She could say a bond developed because both were motherless. Baxter, in fact, had lost mothers several times over: first the real one, an anonymous teenager he never hungered to know more about; then various foster mums, among them some real demons. And lastly Mary Dunstan, who had been kind to him and his new brothers, but who had died within two years of the adoptions. Her heart, a rock for others, had proved unreliable in the end.

  But she didn’t say any of that, because it would have been a lie. Or rather, would have been such a small part of the truth, but sounding so big and meaningful, that it would have allowed Helen to think she’d found the key to her whole story.

  And what was the rest of the truth? That she had been attracted to Baxter because he was beautiful – the word itself: he wasn’t good-looking, but beautiful, and it didn’t matter how many muggings he participated in, how many threats and menaces he casually dispensed, he’d had looks that could stop a teenager’s heart. Her own was no more reliable, in its way, than Mary Dunstan’s.

  The deal was, she’d give the Chronicle their story. But stories were, by their nature, untrue.

  Once upon a time . . .

  ‘Tell me about his brothers.’

  Katrina said, ‘What do they have to do with anything?’

  ‘At the risk of sounding unsympathetic, dear, can I remind you of one detail?’

  (Helen Coe might look like Denholm Elliot in drag, but she had a core of pure steel running through her.)

  ‘We own you. The News Chronicle owns you. Which, for current purposes, means I own you. And if you do not give me a full and detailed answer to every question I ask, I will rip you up and flush you down the nearest drain. Are we agreed on that?’

  ‘I can walk out of here any time I like.’

  ‘And what happens when you’re arrested again? Because the police aren’t finished with you yet. And next time, you won’t have a friendly newspaper batting for you. You ever seen foota
ge of lions on a gazelle, dear?’

  Katrina didn’t answer.

  ‘Start a feeding frenzy among the press, you’d change places with the gazelle. Believe me. I’ve seen people chewed up so bad, what was spat out afterwards didn’t look organic, let alone human. And these were folk who’d merely put their genitals where they shouldn’t, dear. They didn’t murder anyone.’

  ‘Neither. Did. I.’

  ‘Really, dear? That’s interesting.’ Helen pulled back the lace curtain, and looked down on the street below. Then let it drop. ‘Why don’t you tell me all about it? Start with his brothers.’

  ‘Trent,’ she said, ‘would have been the runt of the litter. Whatever litter he came from.’

  Trent, she didn’t say, spent his teenage years waiting for the next hammer to fall. At the time of life when how you looked determined your worth, he was designed to be a cast-off: sniggered at in the school corridor, laughed-out-loud at in the gym. Except he hadn’t bothered a lot with school, and nobody was going to so much as chuckle with Arkle nearby, which was always.

  ‘Arkle, though – he’s the oldest – Arkle kind of imagines himself the alpha-male in any gathering.’

  Arkle, she didn’t say, would have been left on a hillside in some societies; those that would sooner make the odd small sacrifice than nurture their own destruction.

  ‘Imagines?’

  ‘I’ve always thought your true alpha-male had rather more going on up top.’

  Jonno, from his doorway watchtower, allowed himself a quiet smile.

  ‘He’s not a clever man, then,’ Helen said.

  ‘He’s cunning. And he may not be a man of ideas, but the ideas he does have, he grips pretty tight. He’s not somebody you want to get in the way of.’

  ‘Yes. I saw him scatter a crowd the other day. A bull couldn’t have done it more effectively.’ Katrina waited, but Helen didn’t elaborate. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s probably a sociopath. Seriously. I don’t think he quite believes in other people, and he certainly doesn’t care what happens to them.’

  The look on Jonno’s face was now that of a man contemplating somebody he knows he’s superior to, who luckily isn’t there.

  ‘And this is the family you married into.’

  ‘I wasn’t marrying Arkle.’

  ‘But they sound a unit. Did you really think they’d stop being one afterwards?’

  Katrina said, ‘Why are you so interested in them? They’ve nothing to do with what happened to . . . us.’

  Happened to Baxter, she meant.

  Helen Coe said, ‘I saw your brothers-in-law the other day. They’re . . . intriguing.’

  ‘Nice word.’

  Jonno said, ‘This Arkle sounds like the kind of bloke penicillin was supposed to eradicate, know what I mean?’

  ‘When your opinion is called for,’ Helen said without looking round, ‘I’ll be sure to let you know.’ To Katrina she said: ‘Arkle was in a state. I don’t suppose you’re in his top ten right now.’

  ‘I never was.’

  ‘Another reason for hoping you’re not charged with Baxter’s murder.’

  Katrina laughed: a full-out laugh which surprised all of them. It didn’t last long.

  In the silence which followed, she said: ‘Do you seriously think Arkle’s going to give a damn what the police or the courts decide? As far as he’s concerned, it’s a closed issue. His brother’s dead. I’m to blame. End of story.’

  The creaking noise the others heard while digesting this was a floorboard relaxing.

  Helen said, ‘Yes. Well. You’re safe now.’

  ‘That’s good to know.’

  ‘Nobody knows you’re here.’

  The doorbell rang.

  iv

  When Trent squinted he could just about achieve normal vision, and he was grateful for this; partly in a non-specific way that things hadn’t turned out worse, but partly too to Arkle, who could have hit him harder if he’d wanted. Trent knew this because Arkle had mentioned it once or twice.

  ‘It’s pretty tough,’ Arkle had said, ‘but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it serious damage.’

  Trent rubbed his head in agreement. Serious damage. Something might have come loose inside; be floating unanchored, even now.

  ‘As it is, it’ll probably need adjusting. You might have thrown the aim off. Just the slightest kink’ll do that.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Trent mumbled.

  ‘Yeah, well. You’re my brother. Doesn’t matter how often you fuck up. We’re tied by blood.’

  Some of which had dried by now, leaving an almost-black stain on Arkle’s crossbow’s stock.

  It had been a long day. They had a list of addresses, a map and a phone, and with patience might have found Helen Coe without moving an inch. But things were never easy. Directory enquiries squirted out most of the phone numbers, but three remained unaccounted for; of the numbers available, another three didn’t answer, and two hung up on Arkle. ‘Does this silly bitch expect me to come knocking on her door?’ he wondered, when a voice declined to tell him whether she wrote for the Chronicle. No: what the silly bitch expected was, he’d fucked off once she’d cut the connection. Trent decided not to tell him this. ‘Let’s do the unknowns geographically,’ he said. Geographically was his longest word in days, and it came out funny. Nearest first is what he’d meant.

  Geographically, though, left a lot of ground to cover.

  So here they were, parked half-on/half-off a stretch of pavement lined with a row of black, Trent-and-a-bit high railings, on the other side of which city-type undergrowth scrabbled for life. Across the road were some tall, shabby but expensive houses; old enough to have kings’ names attached – Edwardian, Georgian, whatever – instead of Wimpey or Barratt, like the estate they’d checked out earlier further west; an area hemmed in by highrises, whose balcony railings were painted bright primary colours. It had been like looking at a stack of children’s playpens, piled higher than a beanstalk.

  . . . Trying to move around London had been like driving through quicksand. Everything was a bastard, and their map didn’t understand that you couldn’t get anywhere without being diverted, or pitched into no-go zones. Arkle’s patience lasted as long as a Christmas cracker, and Trent’s thirst was growing. All he’d had to drink was a bottle of water.

  He could foresee days of this – backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, wearing deep grooves in their out-of-date map. Don’t try telling Arkle how to do things, though. Arkle was the brains, now Baxter was history.

  . . . And with that thought had come the image of Baxter, lying dead on the kitchen floor. Kay had taken a knife and stuck it in his heart, like something from a rock and roll song. To stop him hitting her, the newspapers said, or that’s what they said she said. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? Bottom line was, Baxter remained dead. And now Arkle wanted Kay dead too, and Trent didn’t think that was such a poor idea. As far back as he cared to remember, Baxter had been his big brother, and while Arkle had protected Trent from the rest of the world, Baxter had protected him from Arkle. And now he was gone. No, Trent had no problem with Arkle’s objective; he just thought it would be handy if they could do it without getting caught. Not using a van with Dunstan & Sons on its side panels might be a step in the right direction.

  But now, anyway, they were parked half-on/half-off a stretch of pavement, and the next potential Helen Coe lived right across the road.

  ‘I did the last one,’ Arkle told him.

  Trent could hardly talk. Well, he could talk, but it was a long shot anyone but Arkle would have the faintest idea what his noises meant.

  ‘We share them between us, it’ll take half the time.’

  It needed Baxter to pick the holes in that one, but Bax was way too dead to be any use now.

  He got out of the van, though. Arguing with Arkle generally didn’t make it past his brain’s suggestion box. Big soft raindrops were starting to fall as he crossed the road; were hitting the tarm
ac with fat plopping noises, as if a swarm of frogs had been tipped from an overhead cradle. As he approached the house, he caught his reflection in a window, and wondered for a moment what that freak was up to – the lopsided, squat accident whose face looked like someone had tried to force it through a sieve . . . Some of this, but not enough, was the crazy-mirror distortion of flawed glass.

  Trent climbed three steps to the front door, and rang the bell.

  v

  The doorbell rang, and it was a policeman. The police knew Katrina was here, of course – she hadn’t been charged yet, but it was a speeding certainty she would be: only the nature of the charge remained to be determined. ‘A matter of forensics,’ this particular policeman told her. ‘Of seeing how the evidence holds up.’

  Helen Coe snorted. ‘A matter of politics, more like. Charge her with murder, there’ll be public outrage. You’re aware that that has been in every paper in the land?’

  That was Katrina’s face, or the red-and-ochre bruise decorating it: an angry smudge that changed its shape depending on the light – now forensics, now politics.

  ‘If I could have five minutes with Mrs Dunstan?’

  Ms Blake, Katrina didn’t say.

  Helen Coe left, muttering. Jonno went with her.

  The policeman, who had red hair but whose name always seemed to leave Katrina’s mind as soon as enter it, had come a long way to talk to her, and wasn’t happy about it. ‘It used to be the law ran the country. Not the media.’

  Katrina knew who she was with the police. Knew who they expected her to be. So she didn’t reply to this.

  ‘But that’s what happens when a newspaper boss is mates with a Chief Constable.’ Once he’d got that off his chest, he felt better. ‘How’s your face?’

  ‘Improving. Thank you.’

  He glanced about. ‘They treating you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘There’s a few things I need to go over. About the morning your husband died.’

  ‘Again?’