Why We Die

by Mick Herron

  The café floor was white lino squares, checked with seemingly random reds. But nothing was random. The placement of each red tile dictated the pattern around it, the options decreasing with every choice made . . . If Baxter hadn’t worried that Arkle was losing it; hadn’t decided to protect him by calling it a day – even though they had nowhere near their target amount – things would have continued as normal. Katrina would have carried on being Baxter’s wife, and carried on convincing him that life could be better without Arkle and Trent – that two could live twice as cheaply as four; or exactly as cheaply, perhaps, but for twice as long. Once they’d arrived at the right magical number (a million had a ring to it) they should cut their losses, the losses being Arkle and Trent. What she hadn’t reckoned on was how deeply Baxter’s bonds to his so-called brothers went . . . So when the maths didn’t work, the bottom line appeared instead. One could live much more expensively than two, because there was no division involved.

  Some bonds had to be cut cleanly, the way losses should be.

  This time, when she picked up her cup, it was too cold. That familiar Goldilocks feeling. She drank it anyway, and continued staring through the window; something tickling her ear she couldn’t put a name to . . . A mosquito in the room. A bluebottle at the window. A police siren . . .

  Katrina put the cup down as quietly as she could. This happened every day in the city; hell, every half-hour. There was always an emergency somewhere; that was practically a definition of London. Handbag snatchers, muggers, pensioners stuck up trees. There was no reason a passing noise should have anything to do with her . . .

  And it didn’t. The wailing hit a peak then took the slow slide into distance, cutting off abruptly as it reached a destination, or cornered a building large enough to swallow it. Katrina still had a finger locked around the handle of her cup. As she eased it free, she knew how stupid she’d been: if anyone had the slightest notion she was here, they wouldn’t be sending cars screaming after her; they’d be waiting in corners. Which was why she was watching the street; alert for the studied indifference of the far-too-casual passer-by. Alert, specifically, for Zoë Boehm. But seeing no one who didn’t belong.

  Enough. She’d be here all day if she didn’t take a grip, and too much care was as dangerous as too little – sooner or later, the man on the counter would wonder what the lady with the bruise was waiting for. Hoisting her bag, she made her way to the door, noticing how warm the café had been when the chill outside hit her.

  It wasn’t a great distance, the alleyway over the road. At its end was the back yard she’d expected; a grim sunless area where a drain gurgled in a corner, and a black door was covered by a metal grille, like something out of Prohibition. A buzzer beside it looked too shiny for the brickwork. She pressed it anyway. After a moment it awoke in a crackle of static, and a voice said, ‘What?’

  ‘Dennis?’

  ‘What?’

  She said, ‘I’m Zoë Boehm. Looking for Dennis,’ and released the button.

  That night she’d spent at Zoë’s, in the spare room, she’d gone through the filing cabinet; Zoë’s dead husband’s records. The cabinets were unlocked, and Zoë had put her there – Katrina didn’t need asking twice. Information was hard currency, and provided you hid it in your head, you could carry it over any border there was.

  My specialty’s finding people, Zoë had told her. Not helping them disappear.

  But I bet you’ve got contacts.

  And Zoë hadn’t denied she had contacts, or that Joe had had contacts, and this was where they’d be: alphabetically sorted into drawers. He’d shelved Dennis under ‘Identity’. Katrina bet Joe had sorted his socks by the day of the week.

  When Zoë had left to make her phone calls, Katrina had phoned Dennis from the flat: You’d be Zoë, then, he’d said.

  That’s right. And you’d be Dennis.

  (What was one more name among many? Kay, Katie, Katrina. Find The Lady – you overturned a name to see what it uncovered . . . )

  And here he was in the flesh: a big man in black jeans and white T-shirt, which might have been XXXL, but didn’t cover his stomach. He was mostly bald with a fraying grey beard, and his eyes’ paranoid glint matched the grille over his door.

  She said, ‘We spoke on the phone.’

  ‘I know.’

  So what was he waiting for, she wondered.

  After a while, he said, ‘The way Joe spoke, I thought you’d be taller.’

  ‘He didn’t mention you were morbidly obese, either.’

  ‘It’s glandular.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yeah, I got glands keep demanding more food.’

  ‘I heard that happens.’ She was slipping into Zoë’s speech patterns, as if an imitation of a woman he’d never met would convince him that’s who she was . . . A scratching noise made her turn, but it was only a cat, its paws clicking on a drain cover. The look it granted her was part contempt, part indifference; all cat.

  When she looked back, Dennis had unhooked the grille, and was pushing it open. She had to step back sharpish.

  ‘Get a lot of unwanted visitors?’ she asked.

  His raised eyebrow suggested he’d never encountered any other kind.

  Dennis’s hallway was surprisingly bright, surprisingly clean, as if its main aim was to dispel the image he radiated of a bear disturbed in hibernation. Once he’d closed and locked the door, he led her into a white-walled, windowless room which must have been his office, the clues being a lot of electronic equipment and the absence of comfortable furniture. The only decoration was a framed print of a naked blue woman, conjured from a few swirls of paint. Matisse, Katrina thought. A memory swam away from her, as if it belonged to somebody else.

  He said, ‘You bring photos?’ He held a hand out: a meaty paw. ‘From before that happened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He grunted. Her injury might have been a pain if it showed up on the photos, his manner implied; but otherwise, she could merrily bleed to death. Once she was off the premises.

  Taking the photos, he sat at his desk; sliced them into individual shots, then took a bundle of papers from a drawer – her new identity, she supposed. For something to say, she said, ‘You can add the photos afterwards, can you?’

  Dennis didn’t feel the need to confirm that. ‘You might want to sort my money out,’ was all he said.

  He bent to his tasks; adding her portrait to those parts of her paper identity that required it, while she bent to her bag; took out the envelope she’d prepared. Three thousand pounds was a lot, but you had to pay for the best . . . Odd that she trusted dead Joe, whom she’d never met, to come up with that. Perhaps because he’d married Zoë. She didn’t give the envelope to Dennis, but stood holding it, staring at the print on the wall . . . Which reminded her of Tim, who lay dead in the cottage, bundled into a cupboard under the stairs. This had not been an easy manoeuvre. The dead were uncooperative – his very weight had been a reproach. But what had he expected? Tim had had the air of a man who thought he’d entered a love story, though you’d have imagined life had taught him better than that. He’d loved his wife, after all, and look how that ended.

  From an early age, Katrina had known death was coming. The knowledge had lit her father’s every working day . . . She had not wanted to kill Tim, but hadn’t wanted to give up the money, either. Tim had been an impartial witness, that was all; a man on his own in a hotel bar, who could be counted on to notice her bruise, not quite hidden by make-up. Except he turned out drunk, which wasn’t ideal . . . With only limited time while Baxter was casing the jeweller’s, she’d made do with what she had, and look what happened – Tim had turned out a knight in shining armour, when all she’d needed was a stable-boy. You couldn’t rely on appearances, and that was the truth.

  Other witnesses she’d chosen to her cosmetic damage included a local shopkeeper (always keen to study her legs, but less so to look her in her bruised eye), a taxi driver, a librarian, Trent �
� a risk worth taking; she could handle Trent – and her father. She’d become expert at applying the artificial bruise, then stripping it away. As soon as Baxter’s back was turned, she became his abused spouse. And never said a word about it, in case it leaked back; she’d always just walked into a door. A code not hard to break, if a little effort was put in.

  Dennis was speaking. She blinked: ‘What?’

  ‘You want to know your new name?’

  A moment of rebirth . . . She supposed she did want to know. It was information that might come in handy. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Emma,’ he said. ‘Emma Standish.’

  Emma, she thought. Well, Tim would have appreciated that, wouldn’t he?

  Kay, Katie, Katrina, Emma . . .

  She looked for a response, but he wasn’t waiting for one; he’d returned to his task of gluing pictures to pieces of card before running them through a laminator.

  Emma Standish went back to studying the Matisse, Baxter on her mind now more than Tim. If he’d listened to her – if he’d appreciated that it was her he was married to, not his not-even-blood-brothers – she could have shelved her make-up with no harm done. Same applied to Tim. All he’d had to do was understand that settling into his cosy electrical-goods-supplier life wasn’t as appealing as he thought it ought to be. However well researched her abusive husband story – however solid her chances of acquittal – there was little point persevering with it once she had the money in her hands. Difficult to explain to somebody who thought happy-ever-after involved holding hands into the sunset. Why did men think women the softer sex, when the evidence pointed otherwise?

  Dennis was done now: standing waiting. She gave him the envelope and stood while he unsealed it and counted its contents; one big gorilla-thumb peeling through the notes like a banker’s. Watching her money in his hands, Katrina wondered how many days’ freedom it represented, and whether there were alternative ways of settling up with Dennis . . . Whether he’d open easily, given the right tool. Baxter had folded like a deck of cards; Tim had expired like a sigh. Bulky Dennis would be a different proposition; and besides – besides, Katrina wasn’t a killer. She was a woman with contingency plans, that was all.

  He handed her the bundle he’d put together – passport, driving licence, birth certificate; a slew of credit and loyalty cards. Maybe not such a bad deal after all.

  ‘There’s open accounts on the plastics,’ he said. ‘You owe a couple hundred. Here’s your address.’ He handed her a scrap of paper. ‘That’ll work for a month.’

  ‘Do you get many repeat customers?’ she asked.

  He caught her drift. ‘This is quality paperwork. How smart you are’s up to you.’

  ‘And Emma Standish is virgin, is she?’

  ‘How long do you think I’d last, I was into recycling?’

  ‘Just checking.’

  ‘Like I said, you have to be smart. Real smart is checking before you hand over the money.’ What he’d done with the cash, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t visible any more, though. ‘If we’re done, I can let you out.’

  ‘You’re a charmer, Dennis. Joe forgot to mention that bit.’

  ‘He gave a different impression of you, too.’

  Toting the bag, she followed him through the hall. He closed the grille and shut the door behind her without another word.

  The cat was still in the yard, though what it thought it was doing there was anybody’s guess. It stopped examining its underbelly long enough to watch Katrina head back to the street, then returned to its slow auto-caress. When the drain gurgled again, it paid no mind.

  The street looked every bit the same to Emma Standish as it had to Katrina Blake. Being a different person wasn’t the big deal the makeover magazines made out; on the other hand, she’d shed more pounds in fewer minutes than any of those ever promised. But now she had to keep a grip on her next move, which was leaving London.

  A quick departure needed a taxi. This meant heading for the main road; leaving the backstreet with its market stalls, its café windows, its youths in hoodies. Threading among them, her canvas bag marking her a tourist, wasn’t calming; Katrina had to remind herself she’d walked these streets already without being robbed . . . But the fact that something hadn’t happened once didn’t mean it would keep on not happening. Picking up her pace, she reached the corner, and walked into someone coming the other way . . .

  . . . A woman, though Katrina took her for a man at first – mostly for her size. Few women bulked up like this: broad shoulders, branchlike arms, thick legs; all encased in black leather, as if some vaguely unhealthy role-playing was scheduled for the near future. But her skin was pale and babysoft; her lips full roses; her eyes brown and damp. Her buzz-cut hair so blonde it was colourless.

  ‘Emma?’ she said.

  And her voice high-pitched: a cartoon awaiting a paintjob.

  Then what she’d said struck home . . .

  Katrina’s grip tightened on the canvas bag. But it was the kind of grip you take in a dream, where it doesn’t matter how firm your grasp, the dream’s grasp is firmer, and nothing short of waking loosens it. Katrina tried, but didn’t wake. The cartoon woman spoke again: ‘I’ve been waiting.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ Katrina managed. ‘My name’s not Emma.’

  ‘Then that’s a fucking expensive bunch of waste paper you’re carrying.’

  Katrina turned, but the woman took her by the elbow.

  ‘It’s like the song says, isn’t it? Who you gonna call?’

  And it was: it was just like an old song. One of those where the winner takes it all.

  The woman was relieving her of her burden, and Katrina’s fingers offered no resistance . . . Who you gonna call? This woman could swat her into the gutter, but didn’t have to. That was the point. She knew everything – even knew Emma, a stranger to Katrina until minutes ago. She had to be Dennis’s accomplice . . . Katrina opened her mouth, looking for words to put everything right, but those words didn’t exist. A threat suggested itself, but Queen Kong was way ahead of her.

  ‘Word from a mutual friend. Mentioning Dennis isn’t a good idea. Where you’re heading, there’s people it’s best not to have as enemies. Understand?’

  Where you’re heading . . . She thought she understood.

  ‘So now we say goodbye.’

  And like that she was gone, and Katrina was alone on a corner; her hands as empty as her future.

  She turned again, because there was nowhere to look but back. And there, standing by his alleyway, Dennis was watching; big arms folded across his bigger chest, the look in his eyes unreadable at this distance. And next to him a woman with dark curly hair, talking into a mobile phone . . . Katrina couldn’t read her eyes either, but had little doubt what they held. They’d be black fire. They’d be red fury. She blinked, and Dennis was gone, returned to his world of made-up people; his duty done to the wife of his dead friend. Not just to take Katrina’s money; but to allow her to think it was over, and she’d won. Which was Zoë’s revenge, of course . . . But Zoë was gone too now, and there was only the crowd milling around the stalls, and the usual market noises, and now, somewhere behind the buildings – round the disjointed corners – something tickling her ear she couldn’t put a name to . . . A mosquito in the room. A bluebottle at the window. A police siren.

  Katrina waited alone on the corner, because there was nothing else she could do.

  iv

  Last time she’d been in a hospital, death had occupied her mind . . . Zoë had been interviewing a man shot in the leg with a crossbow, and it occurred to her that she’d barely given him a moment’s thought since. Derek the Deer Hunter: probably he’d be back in his life by now, boring his local pub stupid with tales of his derring done-to. He’d think he’d cheated death, when in fact death had chosen to ignore him; the big clue to this being, he was still alive. Nobody cheated death. Death was the ultimate stalker: confident and inevitable, where the rest were inadequate perverts. You c
ould run, and you could also hide, but all that meant was, you’d die tired and hidden.

  Like Tim Whitby, though it was Katrina who’d hidden Tim. His body had been found now; she’d told the police where it was. Zoë had no desire to see the place, but in her mind’s eye it was clear enough: a stark grey cottage on the edge of the moors, on which a sky the colour of stone pressed down. She hadn’t known Tim well, but had understood he was nursing grief, and had been a good man, who deserved better. But in the long run, we all get the same. She hoped the sky hadn’t pressed too hard on Tim’s final moments. And that he’d been allowed to die with some illusions intact, even those revolving around Katrina.

  The room she needed was on the fifth floor. Zoë took the stairs, a knee-jerk reaction to being in a hospital, and grudgingly had to admit they were easier than they’d have been six months ago. Which wasn’t much recompense for not smoking, but you took what you could get. When she reached her level she pushed through swing doors to a corridor identical to the one five flights below. At the far end a man sat on a chair, and she headed towards him.

  Thinking, as she did, about the money. Zoë thought she’d made peace with the money, but it still stirred occasionally; reminding her that it was gone, and that whatever she did next would have to involve acquiring some from somewhere . . . But that was a question everybody faced every day. Zoë had debts – and Zoë hated having debts – but worse things existed, among which would have been touching the money Katrina had killed Tim for. Most money came with strings attached, but there was a difference between knowing that and agreeing to be a puppet. And so she thought instead of the empty look on Katrina’s face as Win had taken her money away – a hundred-grand memory, that. Along with the one of Arkle opening his eyes just after the cops arrived, looking like a boy whose toys had been taken away. Trent, interestingly, had looked only relieved . . . And by then old man Blake had resumed vigil in his empty room; studying the wall for the secrets it hid. Maybe surfacing every so often to gaze through the window at the hearse that had once been part of his living, and was now a clue to his future.