Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  All this stuff, I allowed it to happen, so what does that make me? A coward? And why didn’t I tell somebody, instead of lying about these stupid injuries I kept sprouting, covering them up with paint and powder? I think about it now – non-stop – and I wonder if what I really wanted was for somebody to find out without me having to tell them. For somebody to know there was no door I kept walking into. Maybe what I was hoping for was a knight on a silver steed. Not to carry me away. But to slay the dragon.

  He didn’t come, of course. And because there was no door, I couldn’t walk through it. So I stayed and it kept on happening. Because I let it happen, yes. Because I was ashamed enough to let it keep happening. As if it were my fault. But then, that’s what we’re told, isn’t it? We’re told that women in that position think it’s their own fault. So when we’re in that position, we think it’s our own fault.

  Helen stood and turned the machine off. The room felt smaller, its walls bearing in. She went and poured another drink. For a couple of days, she’d been talking to Katrina – asking the usual questions; the ones where you hoped a story would eventually appear, even if you had to change the words to help it come. But these words flowed without Helen’s intervention, and now she understood that Katrina would have been better off talking to anyone but her. Even this policeman whose name nobody could remember. Because every time Katrina looked at Helen, what she saw was somebody who’d insisted I’d have nailed his balls to the ironing board . . . I’d put a man’s lights out before I let him hit me twice.

  She emptied her glass standing by the sink; in a kitchen in which no man had ever hit her. What did she know, really? When had she decided she was the judge? She didn’t notice pouring another drink, or drifting back into the other room, but that’s what she did; and sank into the sofa again, and turned the recorder on.

  You’re going to ask about the police now, aren’t you? About why I didn’t go to the police. Do you mind if I make a very particular observation here? Don’t make me fucking laugh. There. Let’s move on.

  I think one of the reasons I didn’t walk was, I was scared. Not just of him, I mean. I was scared of the world, of what might happen to me out in the world. I’d married a man I thought loved me, and he was hitting me black and blue. What other wrong choices would I make? The next man to say he loved me might have a toolkit under his bed.

  There was someone in a hotel, though. I talked to him. I thought he knew what I was trying to tell him, but I suppose he had his own troubles. If I’d been drowning, he’d have reached out. But he didn’t know I was drowning, so what did I expect?

  Silence fell. It took Helen a while to remember that it was a recorded silence; was merely being repeated now. The silence she was listening to had already been broken.

  And they could find this man, she thought, if they tried hard enough . . . It was in a hotel bar in Oxford. His name was Tim. Hotels offer papertrails; even Jonno could follow one. And a stranger Katrina had talked to about her bruises: that might play in court. The impartial witness – it was always good to have one on your side. Unless he turned out a complete bozo, of course, and believed she’d walked into a door. And the odds on a random man not being a complete bozo weren’t so strong you’d bet your future on them.

  Besides, if he was going to be a witness for Katrina, he couldn’t be part of any story Helen would write. Not before a trial, anyway.

  Even as she had these thoughts, she was wondering how far she was straying from the line she’d once been told it was the journalist’s duty to walk.

  But Katrina was talking again.

  Arkle’s last words, leaving the van, were, ‘This won’t take a minute. Don’t go anywhere,’ which was a joke, because where would Trent go? If he wandered off he’d get arrested or possibly taken to a zoo – it hadn’t been a good move, taking the bandage off. But there was no talking to some people. This usually pissed Arkle off, but Trent was his brother, so he made allowances.

  It was taking more than a minute, though, and he was getting wet.

  This was despite the cap, which he was wearing because Coe had seen him once already; she’d been watching when he’d scattered the journalists outside the yard. But what had she seen? A bald guy . . . As well as the cap he was wearing a pair of shades: in the rain, at night. Still, this was London. What counted as a disguise everywhere else, round here they wore to go shopping.

  As for the plan, it had been pure simplicity: he’d come across the road, talk to Helen Coe, find out where Kay was squirrelled. If the front door hadn’t been locked, he’d be back in the van by now. Instead, he’d had to improvise. This had involved an expenditure of £6.95.

  And then a shape appeared in the lobby of the building: all macked up, umbrella hanging from its arm like a giant bat. Arkle, who’d been lurking at the foot of the steps, bounded up them just as the man pushed through the door; just as he stood there holding it open – his automatic politeness allowing Arkle into the building, even as his city instinct kicked in, causing him to say: ‘Who you for?’ Or words to that effect.

  Arkle showed him the £6.95 box. ‘Pizza.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘Davies. Flat seven.’

  The man nodded, turned on his way. Pizza: like some kind of magic key. Abracadabra, and hold the anchovies.

  But he was glad he hadn’t had to say Coe’s name. Coe’s name might become an unpopular association, depending on the next twenty minutes. Coe was in flat five, according to the tenants’ board by the lift; two names above the Davies Arkle had picked at random. Of course, if that had been Davies leaving, things might have become tetchy . . . But here was Arkle, in the lobby, facing the lift. Arkle didn’t believe in lifts, so took the stairs instead. Under his arm, the pizza cooled, and he wondered if its oils were seeping through the box and staining his coat . . . The image in his head was from a film he’d seen once, in which blood soaked through a ceiling. He couldn’t remember what had caused this exactly, but it could have been one of a number of things. Some of them came to mind as he climbed.

  ii

  There was a board that if she stood on, Jonno would hear it, and wonder what she was doing – Jonno was in the room directly below; the one they did the talking in, furnished by a chair, a stool, a space by the door. Jonno slept in a sleeping bag, which was always gone by the time Katrina rose in the morning. What hour he got his head down, she didn’t know, because each evening, as soon as Helen Coe had yawned her last and left for home, Katrina made her excuses – the appropriate journalistic term – and came upstairs; frightened that if she spent much time in Jonno’s company, she might discover she liked him, or something equally dreadful. Might talk to him. The possibilities weren’t precisely endless, but were worth avoiding.

  Tonight, she sat on the edge of her bed and brushed her hair.

  She supposed, if anyone were to catch her doing this, they’d take it as an admission – of guilt, or just of numbness. You didn’t kill a man, particularly your husband, and then brush your hair a few days later. It indicated that you gave your grooming a higher priority than you’d given his life. That was the line she walked now. Her future rested on the opinions of others; something it was important to bear in mind, even when alone.

  There was a mirror on the wobbly table next to her bed, but she didn’t use it – she already knew what her face looked like. Only in the evening did she take the painkillers she’d been prescribed. The same onlookers might interpret that as a penance, though again, they’d have been only partly right. Not taking painkillers was a way of maintaining focus. Maintaining focus was a necessary part of survival.

  She finished, and laid the brush down. It was quiet now, but the late-night revellers would be around soon: teeming in gangs to the nightclub; smooching back in pairs, if they were lucky. Heaven, Paradise or The Sweet Hereafter – something like that; a name with pleasant associations, which traditionally you had to be dead to enjoy.

  A car alarm sounded, then choked off. Katrina undid the
latch and opened the sash window. A breeze met her, tasting faintly of petrol and newly laid tarmac. The drop to the ground three storeys below was deep but seemed climbable, with frequent windowsills and jutting brickwork for hand- and footholds. Not that she intended to make use of them. It looked doable, but being wrong would be a swift messy business.

  And Katrina knew about death, of course. Death had been her father’s business partner. In any other line, your father’s business partner could be relied on for a favour; in this instance, Katrina preferred him at arm’s length, though he’d visited lately – had been in her kitchen, the morning Baxter died.

  Did you think you could change him? Helen Coe had asked.

  Katrina had forborne from pointing out the obvious: she’d changed him, all right. He was different now.

  That’s the usual pattern, I’ve heard. Women choose men hoping they’ll change. Men choose women hoping they won’t.

  Though Baxter, as it happened, had been changing anyway.

  She pulled the window mostly closed; drew the curtain. Immediately, rain pattered the glass. Perhaps she should take her clothes off, get under the covers, turn out the light. It wasn’t late, but she felt exhausted anyway; drained by the constant vigilance her situation demanded. But if she lay down in the darkness, thoughts of Baxter would invade . . . If she asked, Jonno would go and find her a bottle of something, which might help. But even aside from other considerations – the degree to which this would impair her focus, for instance – drinking with Jonno on the premises was not a great idea. She sat on the bed and closed her eyes. Bax arrived immediately.

  They were in the kitchen of their flat, and he was telling her about the change of plan; about Arkle, who’d always been close to the edge (did she really need Baxter to tell her this?). Though he didn’t tell her Arkle had shot a man with his crossbow, and she didn’t tell him she already knew.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Trent about it. The other day, in the pub.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He thought I was suggesting we squeeze Arkle out.’

  As if he would. This made-up family, however out-of-order to outsiders, was bound together with bonds of steel.

  She opened her eyes. There was somebody coming up the stairs: it could only be Jonno – it had to be Jonno. Someone knocked on her door: ‘Katrina?’ It was Jonno.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I just wondered . . .’

  The way his voice trailed off was a way of telling her communication would be easier if she opened the door. But no way was Katrina opening the door.

  ‘. . . I was just wondering, you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, Jonno.’

  ‘Only . . .’

  She waited.

  ‘Only there’s been a lot of noise out front. Cars coming and going.’

  ‘I’m fine, Jonno.’

  ‘. . . Okay.’

  For a while, the only sound was that of Jonno not going anywhere.

  ‘. . . Katrina?’

  ‘What is it, Jonno?’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  There quite probably was a God, she decided, but he was taking the piss.

  ‘No thank you, Jonno,’ she said.

  For a while longer Jonno hovered on the landing, carefully balanced on the one board that didn’t squeak. And then she heard a sigh, which might have been the boy expelling breath, or the woodwork relaxing. The next thing was, he was making his way down the stairs. By this time Katrina was standing by her bed, her right hand making a tight perfect fist around nothing. In her left she held the little bedside mirror.

  Black and purple, crimson and blue. Politics, forensics.

  Your husband did this to you, is that right?

  Yes.

  On the morning he died.

  There had been something in the policeman’s voice; not doubt, precisely; more what you might call open-mindedness. As if he were not immune to the possibility that other scenarios existed.

  On the morning he died. That’s right.

  Perhaps you’d better tell me about it.

  . . . It was a cold sunny morning, a proper autumn morning. Wednesday. I was downstairs first. He . . . he was having a lie in. That usually meant I had a couple of hours to myself. Especially those mornings when we’d made love the night before.

  And here, listening, Helen heard Katrina pause, as if the detail struck home as she spoke it aloud . . . The tape whirred; one silence captured and broadcast into another. Helen could almost feel the story cohering in Katrina’s mind: that this man had been her husband; that there’d been happy times. That they’d shared a bed, shared the act of love. And this same man who’d abused her, whom she’d killed on the morning she was about to describe, had been inside her with her consent just hours before . . . Despite everything, there had been two lives involved here, and now there was only one.

  I’d showered and dressed. There were things I had to do that morning, I can’t remember what. You’d think the details would be tattooed on my memory. But whatever they were they involved leaving the house, and I suppose I must have been smartly dressed, because he came downstairs before I’d left, and the first thing he asked was, why was I all dolled up?

  That was his expression. All dolled up.

  There are moments when what’s coming next is all too clear. When a fridge powers off, the ear catches its hum just before it coughs into silence, or so the brain pretends. Something of the sort, Helen picked up in Katrina’s voice now. There’d been a moment of realization, a second or so after the ordinary morning switched off, that events had just jumped track; that what was coming was brutal, but had to be lived through. It started when Baxter spoke. Katrina had yet to say his name.

  We were in the kitchen. I’d washed up, and everything was where it should be . . . Cutlery in its drawer, mugs on their tree. Glasses in the cupboard. We have one of those wooden blocks, do they call them butcher’s blocks? Whatever they call them, we’ve got one of those. Blocks for sliding the kitchen knives into. They’re all slightly different thicknesses, so each has its own slot. I always used to think this silly thing when putting them away, that it was like the sword in the stone, only backwards. That if I could put each one into the right slot first go, I’d be . . . a princess. Queen of England. They were all in their slots. I didn’t get them all right first go, though.

  He was waiting for an answer, so I told him I wasn’t dolled up, I was going out, that was all. I’m not sure why I said this. It was one of those . . . Sometimes you try to pretend everything’s okay, in the hope that everybody else will join in. That’s how marriages survive, even the ones where nobody’s hitting anybody. By both partners pretending everything’s normal, that nothing terrible’s happening.

  But he was shaking his head before I’d finished, as if I’d already failed the test. As if I hadn’t even managed to write my name at the top of the paper – Kay. That’s what he called me. Never Katrina. Kay.

  . . . I’ve just thought of one of the things I had to do that morning. I had to renew the TV licence.

  Maybe I mentioned that to him. I don’t remember.

  . . . You’re job’s quite tough, isn’t it?

  Helen found herself nodding in agreement; kept nodding until, like an alarm clock interrupting a dream, a male voice broke in. What it said, she didn’t register. Yes or no, or something less committal: just a punctuation mark in Katrina’s monologue . . . This was between Katrina and the policeman. Helen hadn’t been there, and she barely felt here now. When the policeman had said whatever he said, Katrina continued:

  I expect there’ve been times you’ve known violence couldn’t be avoided, that it was your duty to confront it. And that the best you could hope was, it would be over quickly, with no permanent damage done . . . But you’re a man. Probably you have different ideas about your role in a violent situation. All I’m saying is, I knew what was coming. Not its specifics, but the general outline . . . Things were familiar. Already familiar, and they h
adn’t started yet.

  It would be good to be able to say that a difference came over him. That there were two of him, that he was taken over by some – inner demon, some Hyde. But he wasn’t. He was just himself. The same man I’d married, without wanting him to change.

  And he didn’t say another word. You’d think he’d need to rev himself up, wouldn’t you? To change gear, to give some acknowledgement this wasn’t ordinary, wasn’t what everybody did, you didn’t just wake up, get dressed and smack your partner round. But that’s what he did. No pretence about regrettable necessity or painful duty or . . . It was just what he did next. In between combing his hair and putting the kettle on.

  Helen stood abruptly, and pressed pause. For a moment there was silence, and then the usual noises intervened: the slap of rain against her window; the buzz of electricity making her flat work. Somebody walked past her door in what sounded like workboots, but were probably de rigueur clubwear. She had intended to listen to the tape right through, and then bed: ten hours’ sleep. Now she wasn’t sure. Not sure she could stand the rest of it; not sure she’d sleep afterwards, either. Luckily, there was always the third option: the drink you poured while you made your mind up. Helen was out of ice now, and almost out of tonic, but she didn’t let these things stop her. Before she knew it, she was back in her chair with a fresh glass; before she’d noticed what she was doing, she was reaching for the pause button . . .

  Somebody knocked on her door.

  ‘I didn’t order pizza.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Do I look like I can’t remember whether I ordered pizza?’

  Hell, she looked like she couldn’t remember last time she changed her shoes: with her mad hair, and a cardigan probably saw service in the Crimea. She was blinking fiercely, and Arkle remembered she’d been wearing glasses when she’d drawn her curtains earlier. She wasn’t wearing them now.