Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So is it okay? I have to do it anyway. But is it okay?’

  ‘Yes, Tim. It’s just . . .’ She half-laughed, or perhaps half-sobbed; something, anyway, that tore Tim three ways at once. But how many times could he tell her? The only future she had was if they buried her past, and however dismal a prospect that was, they’d survive. It wasn’t as if she was heading for prison. She had done nothing wrong. She had defended herself. And he tried to explain all this once more with his eyes, because words wouldn’t come; he was awkward and inarticulate again: a boy on one end of a sofa, with a girl on the other and the world in between.

  But women, the world reminded him, always know which move to make.

  Katrina’s eyes were wet when she said, ‘Could we stay this side of it a moment longer, Tim? Just hold me for a while before you call?’

  Could he? He could. He put her mobile on the sofa, and took her in his arms.

  Holding her – she felt slight, vulnerable – was coming home. To feel someone else’s bones beneath their skin, to feel them move between your limbs . . . To have all this taken away from you, and then brought back: it was coming home. He closed his eyes, she shifted in his arms, and his heart opened like a parachute. There was a reason for this. When he looked down, his eyes met the blunt handle of the knife protruding from his chest where she’d left it. So this is why we die, Tim thought. Oh. Katrina stepped away as he fell, and watched until she was sure he was dead. When she’d killed Baxter, she’d made the mistake of pulling the knife free, and had ended up washed in his blood. That didn’t happen this time, but there was no shortage of the stuff, all the same.

  Once Tim was done, she stepped over him to tug at the curtains where they didn’t fit. There was little chance of anybody peeping through – they hadn’t chosen the cottage for its busy location – but you took no chances. She couldn’t think of any way Zoë might find her – for some reason, it was the very specific Zoë rather than the generalized police she was worried about – but there were always exits left uncovered, and no point relaxing yet. She’d drag Tim out of sight of windows, curtained or not, then carry the money upstairs, where it too would be safe from view.

  There is always a moment when the heart stops in perfect time with the brain – when all falls blank and quiet, and the body’s on its own. When Arkle came back, Zoë’s body was abandoned for that split second at the top of the stairs; stuck and solitary, no clue what to do. And then whatever it was within her that habitually overrode fear kicked in – her sense of self, or her pigheadedness, or perhaps her fundamental belief that it was wrong that the thugs, creeps and stalkers of the world should hold sway. So she rolled out of his line of vision even as he registered events, and was flat on the floor when his first bolt hammered into the wall behind her at stomach height.

  And then there was quiet . . . Only the gentle rain of plaster dust flaking down.

  Until she heard him move.

  It might have taken seconds . . . Arkle could have been up the stairs in seconds, leaving the tiniest splinter of infinity before he put his next bolt wherever he wanted. But he wasn’t; he was crossing the hallway, to where lay a chance of an angle on some part of her head.

  Zoë tried to flatten herself further . . . Aiming for the instant diet: lose a stone in seconds.

  Trent grunted, and a shudder passed through him.

  Arkle said, ‘It’s like I’m the only one I can trust round here. Do you get that a lot? Nobody doing what you tell them?’

  In case he took silence as provocation, she replied, ‘You can’t really blame him. I lied.’

  It was surprising how steady her voice was. As if somebody else had charge of it.

  ‘You told him you weren’t going to trick him?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘That’s the oldest one there is,’ he said, with genuine wonder in his voice.

  Zoë didn’t dare raise her head, didn’t know what he was doing . . . A picture flashed through her, of him sighting down the stock of his bow . . . Of one injudicious glance, and his next dart sailing through her open eye . . .

  . . . Inches from which lay a bundle of newspaper clippings, their upside-down headlines swimming in and out of the recognizable alphabet: Gτ H E o V ∑ . . .

  And now something had found its way into Zoë’s side – something sharp and painful enough to pierce her as surely as anything Arkle sent flying up the stairs.

  He said, ‘The money wasn’t there.’

  ‘. . . I guessed.’

  ‘You knew.’

  ‘No, Arkle. She tricked me too.’

  ‘I always knew she was a bad one.’

  The thought of Arkle passing moral judgement would have been funny, if she wasn’t lying at the top of the stairs, wrists bound behind her back.

  It was a shard of vase. The object biting into her side. With a little wriggling, she could get it into her hands . . .

  Arkle said, ‘Did she have a key all the time then?’

  ‘There must have been two. One for her, one for Baxter.’

  ‘And she took his from Bax’s body.’

  ‘I guess . . .’ Zoë had hooked her feet around the toilet doorframe, and was easing the rest of her body that way. The shard of vase scraped with her, snagged on her top.

  ‘That makes you an idiot, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You might say so.’

  She couldn’t tell what he was up to: priming his bow or just folding himself in righteous anger . . . Which was something Zoë was starting to develop herself. This had been the plan: Katrina got here first, grabbed the key, then took half the money from Big Red Box, leaving enough to satisfy the law. Then she’d send the cops . . . Once the key turned out to be still in the frog, Zoë’d known Katrina had fooled her, which meant she’d fooled Tim too, from the moment they’d met . . . For a second, the possibilities of treachery revealed themselves as a long long corridor, at the far end of which lay a body. What all this meant for Tim, she didn’t want to think about.

  Daring to roll on to her side – becoming a larger target – she groped behind her and located the fragment of vase; took as tight a grip as she could manage between finger and thumb, and began sawing at the twine binding her wrists.

  Arkle said, ‘Funny, really. She fooled Baxter. You fooled Trent. It’s like it’s only me nobody’s fooling, but I’m still standing here without the fucking money.’

  ‘A real heartbreaker.’

  ‘You didn’t kill Trent, did you?’

  ‘No, my hands were tied. All I did was knock him unconscious.’

  ‘They still tied?’

  ‘You want to come and find out?’

  There was a thud two inches above her head, as a second bolt buried itself in the wall.

  He said, ‘I’ve got four of these. Reason I’m still playing is, I only need one.’

  Zoë’s numb fingers fumbled the shard.

  ‘So you’ve no clue where she’s gone?’

  Again: nearly funny. She was lying here while he took potshots, and she was supposed to share information . . . ‘She might be anywhere, Arkle. She’s a rich woman.’ Her scrabbling hand found the fragment again.

  Trent groaned once more and stirred. Head down, Zoë couldn’t see, but could sense him trying to pull himself up . . .

  Arkle said, ‘Trent? You okay?’

  Okay or not, he wasn’t answering yet.

  Then Arkle said, ‘The way I see it, my money and the woman who killed my brother are getting further fucking away every second. And you’re not helping.’

  Sawing again, Zoë felt her numbed fingers pick up a rhythm . . . How long did it take to sever a length of kitchen twine with a broken vase? . . . Or rather, if X was the time so required, and Y how long it took a man with a crossbow to climb a flight of stairs, what was Z going to do about it? Not that algebra had ever been her strong point.

  She said, ‘You seem very sure we’re on different sides here. She fooled me too.’ Tr
ying not to let her efforts break her speech into separate gasps.

  ‘And kept you from getting your hands on my money.’

  Well, yes. He had a point.

  . . . Zoë felt something give behind her, a sudden loosening, only it wasn’t twine; it was her fingers . . . Slick with blood, they’d dropped the tool again. And her heart slipped with it, because time was getting away here; Arkle was playing, but she doubted his attention span ever cleared cruising speed. And Trent was shifting too, like the bit at the end of the scary film where the villain lurches upright, and the violence begins again.

  In a garden once, Zoë had found a dead duck behind a bush: it looked intact – eye, feather, beak – but when she shifted it with glove and shovel, it proved light as a blown egg. The organs that had anchored it to the land of the living had been subtracted. This evisceration was what death’s hungry agents did; and the same harvest death claimed from the body, fear of death stole from its energies: sapping its vitality, pruning its enthusiasms . . . Fear was performing those actions now. Everything was draining out of her along with the blood trickling from her finger-tips, where the shard of vase had bit.

  From below, Arkle said, ‘There’s a stain on the wall above your head. Can you see it? About the size of a penny.’

  She said, ‘So what?’, her voice not much more than a whisper.

  ‘So this.’

  And another thump, like a nail being driven straight into her mind – down into its dark places, where things she couldn’t put a name to crawled. It was a noise that, if you’d been on the other side of it, would have been the last you heard.

  Arkle said, in a bright conversational tone, ‘I’ve only got one left, but we both know I can put it wherever I want. And after last night . . . Putting another hole in another woman isn’t going to make much difference.’

  Not to him.

  She said, ‘I don’t know where Katrina is.’

  ‘Then you’re no use to me, are you?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to stand up.’

  ‘You’re going to shoot me.’

  ‘If I want to do that, I’ll do it anyway.’

  ‘Not from there.’

  ‘I can see the top of your head through the banister. You want proof?’

  She didn’t.

  ‘So . . .’

  Zoë got to her feet.

  She almost stumbled, standing; it wasn’t easy, any of this – being in fights; suffering frights. A woman her age shouldn’t be having this kind of fun. She staggered on reaching her feet; banged backwards into the wall, hooking her hands rather neatly round the bolt buried in it, though that was no use to her . . . Too smooth to fray the twine that held her wrists. Her vision swam, then cleared. Trent was trying to get up; pushing against the floor on arms that trembled as they took his weight. She still had a pain in her forehead from butting him. It was true: acts of violence damaged both parties. Though with a little practice, it would have hurt Zoë a lot less.

  The newspaper clippings that had slipped from the crashed bookcase lay at her feet. The topmost headline read ABUSED WIFE’S MURDER CONVICTION QUASHED.

  Arkle said, ‘Catch,’ and tossed something up the stairs at her.

  The apple bounced off her knee, and rolled through the open toilet door.

  She watched it wobble to a halt, and said, ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding.’

  ‘It was you gave me the idea.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I’ve no idea where she’s gone. Where the money is. That storage place? She might even have been lying about –’

  ‘I’ll find her.’

  ‘So find her. But don’t play stupid games.’

  Games whose losers wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Fear of death had gripped her again, and was rapidly starting to squeeze. And something clutched her leg too; she almost screamed – but it was Trent, grabbing at whatever was nearest.

  She pushed with her knee and he fell back, but reached his feet with the help of the banister. He was shaking his head now; either trying to rattle confusion loose, or just denying any of this was happening. When he focused, he was looking directly at Zoë. ‘Have too,’ he said.

  ‘. . . What?’

  ‘Done that before.’

  ‘Get the apple, Trent,’ Arkle told him from the foot of the stairs.

  It was one of those His Master’s Voice moments: with no fucking idea what Arkle was on about, Trent looked for the apple anyway. And Zoë . . . Zoë didn’t move. The knots at her wrist hadn’t budged an inch, and Arkle, down below, was smiling at her; bow in his hands, primed and ready to fire.

  The landing wasn’t too deep . . . He couldn’t hit her below the knees, but other than that, she was open country.

  And something slowed inside her; her internal clock, she thought – this, too, was what fear did: it made the bones heavy, so they ached to stop; to come to a halt against a flat surface, and put up with whatever was about to go down.

  Trent put a hand on her shoulder to steady himself, then placed the apple on her head as carefully as if it were a joke they were both taking part in . . . As if it were as important to her as to him that it didn’t slip and fall.

  Arkle said, ‘This is going to be so cool.’

  . . . And Zoë didn’t have words . . .

  Trent moved aside. Arkle raised the bow.

  Old man Blake appeared behind him, and struck the back of his head with the hood ornament from the hearse.

  Arkle crumpled from the knees up in a manner that might have been comical if – well, no, Zoë later amended; in a manner entirely comical, in fact. The look on his face was one there isn’t a word for. When his body hit the floor, it was as if all the air his presence had sucked out of the surroundings came rushing back at once.

  The old man said, ‘Katie? Are you all right?’

  Trent stepped in front of her; looked down at the pair below.

  Zoë took a deep breath, and felt the vampire fear lift its teeth from her neck. Bracing herself against the wall, she kicked Trent hard in the small of the back, and sent him flying down the stairs.

  Then she said, ‘Yes, I’m fine. Thanks.’

  Her mobile was in Arkle’s pocket; she retrieved it, switched it on, but before she could call the police, it rang.

  ‘Zoë Boehm . . .’

  ‘Zoë bloody Boehm,’ a voice said.

  ‘Oh, hi, Jeff. Funny you should call. I was just on my way to pick your car up.’

  She hoped like hell it was still there.

  iii

  When you piled all the money your immediate future held into a single bag, for ease of carriage, it was hard not to pack all it had cost into a second; or not exactly a bag; more like a black box – your internal recorder; the one you might wish broke down occasionally, and transcribe white noise in place of grey deeds. But no, those deeds were all there; from clipping newspaper reports about acquittals of abused wives, to practising with make-up in shades of burnt sunset, the better to paint a convincing bruise. And choosing the right witnesses, so if it came to court, you’d not be alone.

  Sometimes you picked strangers in hotel bars, because who was more impartial than a stranger?

  Katrina had always laid contingency plans. It was something she’d learned from her father.

  Now she placed her coffee cup on the saucer in front of her, the lipstick ring on its rim as bright and obvious as a Country song. No matter how careful you were in its application, make-up always gave you away; leaving temporary scars on cheap china, or drawing attention to the fact that your foundations needed work. By and large, Katrina had no worries about her foundations. She wore make-up today for the exact reason she had pretended to wear it on that evening she’d met Tim: to conceal her bruising. Which then had been fake, of course; cosmetically applied, and intended to be noticed. But there was nothing made up about her damaged cheekbone now. This bruise was real, and needed toning down – it was a detail that would figure larg
ely in descriptions . . . In truth, cosmetics weren’t doing much in the way of concealment. She’d have worn a headscarf and sunglasses, but would have looked like a film star shamming anonymity.

  On the street, everything looked the way it had done twenty minutes ago: different passers-by, but doing the same city shuffle. The shops lining the pavement opposite were low-end electrical stores, secondhand CD shops, and outfits with whitewashed windows offering a bewildering array of services, from takeaway delivery to unlocking mobile phones; this last so much in demand round here, you had to wonder how forgetful the locals were. Up the road was a market, where once – in this patch of London shading into the east – you might have bought bread, fish, vegetables, but which now mostly boasted the greetings cards and kitchen knick-knacks trade. Electrical goods in battered dusty boxes were stacked in shop doorways. Somewhere, a stall sold burgers in buns. Katrina imagined the smell of hot fat wafting visibly past the window, like cartoon aromas in Tom & Jerry. She picked up her coffee again, but it was still too hot to drink.

  . . . I walked into a door. That was the common lie she’d relied on in fabricating her backstory, and she’d always known it would hit her in the face eventually, like a dramatic truth. A truth which would then seep backwards, granting her lies retrospective validity: this is real – so everything else must have been real too. Her black box ticked away as her coffee cooled, bringing back those moments during which Baxter cooled like coffee on the kitchen floor, and she slammed a cupboard door in her own face. One moment of white hot pain, she’d expected, and had not been entirely wrong about this. But what she hadn’t been prepared for was the dull ache afterwards, that never went away. Or how livid her face would look – she’d imagined a rich mish-mash of purples and blues that would flower long enough to look good on the photos, then fade picturesquely to a Chanel smudge. And instead here she sat, still looking like someone had hit her with a shovel.

  Over the road, between one of those whitewashed windows and a fast food place – whose logo might be taken, in a hurry, for KFC – was an alleyway leading to a back yard. Nobody had entered or left it while Katrina had been here, and nobody passing had shown interest. Of the cars illegally parked nearby, none had occupants. If anyone was watching, they were too good for her. It was more likely that nobody was watching. But still she sat.