A Death of Distinction

by Marjorie Eccles

  She looked too young to be anybody’s mother, let alone the mother of a grown man, though he recognized his own bone structure and colouring in her narrow, dark face, and knew exultantly that his own blood and genes and chromosomes were hers, too. She was still a beautiful woman. Her hair, which she was growing again, was sleek and dark, without a hint of grey. She was slim – perhaps too slim, he thought, professionally critical – and made even her cheap, chain-store clothes look elegant. Even without hearing her faint accent, the slight pedantry of her speech that persisted despite all the years in England, anyone would guess by the way she looked that she was French, he thought – it must be that Parisian flair they spoke about.

  He reminded her, very aware of the time, ‘Shouldn’t you be on your way? It’s nearly ten.’

  ‘Yes. I have left you some soup and rolls for your lunch.’ She indicated a carefully prepared tray he could see sitting on the two-foot-square work surface next to the sink. ‘And there is fruit in the fridge.’

  ‘I’ll wait and have it with you. I don’t want to stop for lunch anyway.’

  He meant to work painstakingly, taking his time. He was always careful and precise when he needed to be. He would do everything perfectly, no lopsided or unsafe shelves – but even if the job went quicker than he anticipated, he intended still to be here when she returned, he wanted to see her face when she saw the shelves. Maybe he could use any spare time for a kip ... you never got enough sleep, working the emergency rota.

  ‘Don’t wait,’ she said. ‘You will be hungry before I get back. I don’t finish until half past two.’

  He hated the idea of her job: waitressing, fetching and carrying, having to wear an overall and a cute, silly hat on her head. It was demeaning, cleaning up the sordid debris of other people’s lunches – even if Catesby’s restaurant was in a classy department store and though she’d recently been promoted from clearing tables in the self-service to the waitress-service area.

  ‘I don’t mind waiting, I had a big breakfast,’ he lied, as she slipped on her coat. He could always nip out for a pizza if he couldn’t last out. ‘And I’m not due back on duty today. Bye, Marie-Laure.’

  She didn’t like him to call her Mother, or Mum. Nor did she kiss him before she left, but she touched his shoulder, which was an improvement on previous farewells.

  He listened to her quick, light footsteps on the stairs and heard the front door close before turning to start on the shelves.

  The small room quickly became very stuffy and within ten minutes he’d worked up a sweat. He stuck it for a while longer then, looking at his watch, pushed up the sash window which overlooked the street where the betting shop, the Halal Meat Emporium, the Pizza Hut and a small branch of the Bank of Ireland jostled each other, and countless overflowing black plastic dustbin bags lolled together along the pavement edges. He let in a rush of knife-edged air, breathed in the smell of diesel fumes and fried onions, heard the noise of traffic and the dustbin lorry grinding away further up the road, the hiss of air brakes. The Town Hall clock sounded the quarter and, simultaneously, he heard the bang in the distance – or rather, the loud crump, the thud of an explosion. Minutes later, through the open window, he heard the wail of police and ambulance sirens.

  3

  Reverberations from the explosion were heard miles away. The sound was muffled in the crematorium chapel, not easily identifiable, but several policemen stirred uneasily.

  The service was nearly over, the coffin with its simple white cross of flowers, borne in by four stalwart constables, would in a few minutes disappear through the curtains. The chapel was full, with family and friends and row upon row of police: uniformed and plain clothes, top brass and other ranks, as befitted the funeral of a detective superintendent. Even the Chief Constable was there, out of sympathy for the widow and family, and to pay his last respects to a well-liked colleague.

  Forty-seven. Christ, that was too young to die, thought Mayo, still numb with shock. To die of a heart attack or anything else ... especially a man like Howard Cherry, careful of himself in every way – a non-smoker, a moderate drinker, a man who’d watched his health as carefully as he’d watched every step of his career moves, each one mapped out from the day he entered the Force.

  ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery …’

  The last, at least, not true of Cherry, a man content with the career he’d chosen, and one who’d enjoyed a joke as much as any Yorkshireman allowed himself to. Mayo had known him all his working life. They’d started out in the same West Riding Force, become separated, and then found themselves by coincidence once again working together, here in the Midlands, in Lavenstock – Cherry as superintendent, CID, Mayo as chief inspector. There’d been none better to work for than his old friend. Not perfect, a bit of a bastard on occasions, truth to tell, over order and discipline. But fair. He’d earned the respect, if not the unreserved liking, of every man and woman on the station.

  His marriage – to Anne, now facing a bleak future – had been happy enough, among the tide of police marital disasters, to cause comment and even envy. He’d left a youngish family: sixteen-year-old Melanie, now in tears enough to start the next Flood, poor lass. The twins, Adrian and Michael, hefty seventeen-year-olds, already tall like their father, pale with the effort of trying not to break down. Mayo, a big man with crisp dark hair, a square chin and a tough reputation, looked down at his feet, finding himself more than a little choked, too. A private funeral, with a memorial service later, wouldn’t that have been less harrowing? Although there was something to be said for having it over and done with.

  For some inexplicable but possibly private reason, ‘Angel Voices Ever Singing’ had been chosen to be sung as the coffin slid through the curtains and Howard Cherry went to his last rest, and when the final cheerful notes died away, Mayo followed the procession of mourners out of the chapel into the bright, scimitar-sharp morning.

  Waiting for a word with Anne, he tried not to make it too obvious that his eyes were all for Alex, Sergeant Jones, standing some yards from him across the sea of wasted blossoms, the funeral tributes, spread out on the forecourt. She wore her uniform well, managing to make its mannish outlines look elegant, an emphasis to the creamy skin, dark blue eyes and sleek, short dark hair, precision cut under the uniform hat. She hadn’t, through protocol, been sitting with him in the crematorium chapel and had evidently decided it would be circumspect to keep up the formality in the circumstances. Though there couldn’t be many now who didn’t know of their relationship. Their eyes met, and she smiled, and his heart, as usual, turned over.

  Anne came across immediately she saw him. He kissed her, pressing her hand and murmuring words of sympathy. The usual platitudes were not enough, never could be, of course, but they were sincerely meant, and what else was there to say?

  ‘Thank you,’ she answered, dry-eyed and outwardly calm, as if they’d really helped. And they did. He knew that from his own experience when, years ago, his wife, Lynne, had died. They spoke a little more, then, as he was turning away, she added quietly, ‘Take it, Gil, the promotion. It’s what he would have wanted.’

  Someone had been indiscreet. Cherry himself? Few others could have known how long he’d been dithering, uncharacteristically, over whether to go for it or not. It didn’t matter now.

  He’d made his decision some time since, gone through the rituals and the necessary procedures, even anticipated relocation and all the problems that would bring. But Cherry’s death meant that a detective superintendent was now immediately necessary to keep the CID department functioning and here he was, in the right place at the right time. His meeting late yesterday with the DCC had set the seal on his new role as Superintendent, CID, Lavenstock Division. He’d never have chosen to achieve higher status this way, it felt too much like stepping into a dead friend’s shoes. But he’d found out long ago that you couldn’t pick and choose, rewards were dished out with one hand and taken away
with the other.

  A flurry of activity had broken out by the parked cars. One of his sergeants, Martin Kite, came running up to him and spoke hurriedly. Other men were already rushing to their cars, the Chief Constable was turning to see what was wrong. Radios squawked as vehicles sped through the spruce, well-barbered crematorium grounds. Mayo turned apologetically to Anne Cherry.

  ‘I’m sorry, there’s been an incident ... I’m sorry, Anne.’

  She watched them go. It seemed, somehow, an appropriate postscript to the funeral.

  Conyhall Young Offenders’ Institution had started out as a gentleman’s residence – a stately Gothic pile built a hundred years ago to replace an earlier, Elizabethan manor house, considered by its Victorian owners to be unfashionable. The family had been of some standing, consequently the house was large, almost a mansion. It had previously stood in many gracious acres, on Lavenstock’s outskirts, but as the town grew in size, so Conyhall’s grounds became reduced, sold off piecemeal for the semi-rural housing estates which now almost surrounded it. Twenty-five years ago, the house and most of its contents had followed, put on the market to pay off death duties and to allow the incumbent heir to continue to live the jet-set life he felt was his due. The sale completed, he had departed smartly to make a large hole in the proceeds, leaving behind only a few marble nymphs and some urns in various niches and interstices of the building, plus several time-obscured and unremarkable oil paintings in the hall to add gravitas to what was then to be a local detention centre. What had now come to be the Conyhall Young Offenders’ Institution.

  Several acres of land still remained behind the main house, with a small lake providing a home for a few ducks, and within the perimeter fence, separated from the housing estates by a belt of trees, was an area of kitchen garden to help support the prison, plus soccer and basketball pitches. The original house was now the administration section, and alongside was a motley collection of purpose-built accommodation blocks, kitchens, workshops, etc. Lying beyond the wire was the Elizabethan Home Farm, which had escaped the restoration of the big house and was now the governor’s private home.

  Before the others were down to breakfast, on the morning after the celebrations at the Town Hall, Dorothea Lilburne was out in her garden, on her knees in the beech coppice, dividing snowdrops.

  The swelling buds of the ash trees were black against the light, pearly sky, early daffodils danced, crocuses spreading purple, gold and white across the grass. It was a perfect morning, though still bitterly cold for mid-March, and she was glad of her padded body warmer. Snowdrops, she thought, lifting the bulbs tenderly, were probably her favourite flower. Fair Maids of February ... She had twelve different kinds, double, single, some pink-flushed, scented, or tipped with yellow. So pretty they’d looked, a few weeks before, carpeting the ground beneath the trees with the meek, drooping white chalices hiding their delicate green stamens, but they were in danger of becoming overcrowded. There wasn’t much nourishment between the gnarled, twisted, surface roots of the beeches, and they were vying for what there was of it with the naturalized daffodils and fritillarias.

  ‘Wouldn’t move ‘em if I was you, missis.’

  Tom Barnett stood sardonically regarding her efforts. With his shambling figure, his spade over his shoulder, ill-shaven, with a knitted cap pulled down over his ears and mud-caked gumboots, he looked like some oversized and disagreeable old Nibelung. ‘Snowdrops is like you and me – older we get, less change we like.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish!’ Dorothea answered coldly. ‘If you catch them after they’ve flowered, before the leaves or bulbs have the chance to dry off, they’ll transplant well enough.’

  ‘Oh ar. Have to see, then, won’t we?’ Parting his lips in a knowing grin, he clomped off to dig the vegetable plot, which was the only sort of gardening he thought worthwhile, and the only reason he was employed – for that, and to trim the hedges and cut the lawns. And even there, a conflict of interest arose between her own preference for gently curving borders and his conviction that they should be ruler-straight.

  Dorothea rammed her handfork into the hard earth. Tom Barnett was a miserable old grump who didn’t know the first thing about flower gardening. Which didn’t stop him having a lot to say about it. She hadn’t yet forgiven him for digging up what he swore had been a moribund shrub which nothing could save, when she’d been away once, and planting a row of onions in its place. She still mourned the little Judas tree, grown from seed, not dead, merely a reluctant specimen she’d coaxed along for years.

  And how dare he put her in the same age bracket as he was?

  You get back to your cabbages and leave me to my flowers, she thought huffily, nettled because he might well prove to be right: beautiful as they were, snowdrops were temperamental creatures, often sulking if they were disturbed. She’d planned to put them where they could colonize the empty space left by the crinum lilies, which hadn’t survived a hard winter followed by this terrible wet spring, and she wasn’t going to let the likes of Tom Barnett put her off. Firmly dealt with, they would thrive. She rose rather stiffly from her knees to cart down there the now-full trug. As she did so, the telephone rang, and went unanswered. Jack must have finished his breakfast and was probably in the shower, and Flora, who, after the late night last night, had announced she wasn’t going into her shop that morning, would be fathoms deep in sleep. Reluctantly, Dorothea turned to go and answer it.

  The dogs, in whom the telephone always, for some mysterious reason, engendered frenzied excitement, materialized from some far corner of the garden as she hurried towards the house. Nearly knocking her over, they rushed in as she opened the door, barking, scattering the rugs in the wide, stone-flagged hall, which had a door at each end, front and back. Delightful in summer, when one could leave the garden door open and see the long matching borders with the swathe of grass between, but cruel in winter, when the draughts whistled like a whetted knife between the doors.

  ‘Quiet, Sam! And you, Kip!’ She leaned on the door to shut it against the wind, paused to slip off her muddy gardening shoes, and the wretched telephone stopped. Dorothea, who was not the swearing kind, clicked her tongue in annoyance. The old spaniels, disappointed, floundered up on to the cushioned window seat above the radiator, one eye on her because they knew this was forbidden. They were Flora’s dogs, and very spoilt.

  ‘Who was that on the telephone?’

  Jack, now showered, shaved and dressed in his best suit, ready to drive round to his office via the main road for his meeting with Quattrell – Jack who was as fit as a flea but never walked when he could drive – came into the hall as she was shooing the animals off the window seat. She explained what had happened but he was barely listening.

  ‘Enjoy it last night, did you then, hinnie?’ he asked, smiling at her, throwing an arm around her shoulders, using the northern endearment she would only allow in private. Not that she was ashamed of his origins – but there was no need to flaunt them quite so deliberately. She’d once overheard him described as a professional Geordie, and was afraid this could be true.

  ‘It was very pleasant, Jack,’ she answered, lying for his sake, because it had been an evening very special to him, although such occasions were torture to her. She’d no small talk, and was afraid of making a fool of herself by speaking on topics of which she knew nothing. She knew she was thought dull when she failed immediately to laugh at a joke, or see the point of something, but she didn’t catch on quickly, and repartee was beyond her. So she’d gradually learned to take refuge in polite smiles and anodyne remarks, like the Queen, and though she knew her reserve was often mistaken for coldness, she didn’t know how to remedy it. Strange that Jack, who always seemed to be able so easily to recognize inadequacy in the youths in his care, had never seen that.

  He failed to appreciate her lack of response now. ‘Aye, it went very well. Our lassie looked lovely, didn’t she?’

  ‘Flora always looks lovely.’

  But oh, that frock! Dor
othea sighed deeply, though truly it was the least of the things on her mind about Flora. Not to approach Jack with, however, who could see no wrong in his daughter, and certainly not at this time, when he was evidently feeling optimistic, brimming with goodwill for all the world.

  ‘I hope your meeting goes well,’ she contented herself with saying as he picked up his briefcase.

  ‘Oh, it will. I’m sure of that, Quattrell as good as gave me the nod last night.’

  He sounded so confident that she didn’t voice her own doubts about the strident local element who were vociferously opposed to his scheme. The new block, if and when completed, would come within fifty yards of a children’s playground. That it would merely consist of additional offices, and be staffed by civilians, made little difference to the objectors, who were out to make trouble.

  In a rare gesture of spontaneous affection, she kissed him. He looked surprised, but pleased, and patted her cheek. ‘Be back about twelve. I’ll dodge the mess today. Sandwich for lunch, eh? After last night, I’d better be on short commons for a bit.’ He drew in his flat stomach, well aware that he weighed no more than he had when she’d married him, twenty-one years ago.

  Smiling, rattling his keys, he made for the front door, pausing, as she knew he would, to filch the newspaper and read the front page before flinging it on to the back seat of his car and driving off with it.

  He was halted by the appearance of Flora flying down the stairs clad only in flip-flop mules and a short nightshirt with a naughty slogan across the bosom, calling out, ‘Da! Wait for me – I want to ask you something.’ Dorothea tut-tutted as she went out to the car arm in arm with her father, just as she was, barely decent. The front door opened and the garden door, insecurely caught on the latch, burst open as was its wont. Dorothea forgot them both.