A Death of Distinction

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Tell me the truth,’ he demanded, ‘that’s all I want. Am I adopted, or what?’

  She was sensible enough to give him a painfully whispered answer, to beg his forgiveness. ‘We should’ve told you ... we always meant to ... but it wasn’t a story for a young child ... then somehow ...’

  Through stiff lips, he asked, ‘What do you mean, not a story for a young child? Why not? Who am I?’

  But she’d passed beyond him, spent, and though she lingered for several days, she was never able to speak coherently again.

  Marc went to their double funeral, a quiet ceremony attended only by himself and a few shocked friends. There were no relatives, and for the first time his total lack of any aunts, cousins or grandparents struck him as peculiar. He’d always been told that both June and Frank were orphans, and accepted it, but now he wondered if that were false, too. He endured the ceremony with stoic indifference, which his parents friends remarked on as courage. It was anything but. Those two people, whom he’d loved and trusted, had suddenly become nothing to him. They’d lived out a lie, and had forced him, unwittingly, to live one, too. They’d robbed him of his birthright.

  Who am I?

  The question had hammered and throbbed in his brain until he’d thought he was going mad. Why had they kept the facts from him? He’d always thought they were truthful, sensible people, who would surely have recognized the well-publicized dangers of not telling a child he was adopted. Remembering June’s last words, he could only conclude bitterly that there had been something too shameful or disgraceful about his birth to discuss.

  He looked now at the patient on the bed, at Flora. She looked so pale and pure, like a nun, with the coif-like bandage around her forehead, and he felt another stab of pity for her, and an impulse to touch and comfort her, an innocent, accidental victim, through no fault of her own. Then a different, painfully pleasurable but unwelcome emotion took him by surprise as he found her looking at him with wide, hazel eyes.

  With long working hours and all his spare time occupied with what had come to be an obsessive search for his true identity. Marc had found little time for women – or to develop personal relationships at all, for that matter. He had rather a lot of acquaintances, but almost no real friends. His intensity was inclined to put people off from getting too close, and if they had, he wouldn’t have reciprocated. He’d had brief encounters with women but nothing more. The deep stirring of sexual desire he felt now as he looked at the innocent, virginal figure in the bed, the urge to touch and fondle her, filled him with self-disgust. He drew back. Emotional complications he could do without. He had enough on his plate at the moment. She had to remain what she was, a stranger to him.

  ‘Are you a doctor?’ she asked suddenly, aware of his intense scrutiny.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Marc said.

  Far from it, really, though he would like to have been, if the long years of training before he would be qualified hadn’t deterred him. He’d been working as a hospital porter when he’d heard about Operating Department Practitioners, or ODPs, as they were known, who worked in the operating theatres and assisted the surgeon and the anaesthetist. The idea appealed to him immediately, and it turned out to be almost as good as being a doctor: he’d studied subjects allied to surgery and anaesthetics during his two-year training, which wasn’t too long, though it was rigorous and needed a lot of study and application. But because this was something he really wanted to do, he’d passed both practical and theoretical exams with flying colours and would soon be on the second grade, a senior ODP, and could, theoretically, rise to Assistant Chief, or even Chief, though he wasn’t sure he wanted that. It involved too much administrative work for his taste, whereas he enjoyed the practical side – setting up the technical equipment, checking that the ventilators were working, even monitoring the patient, occasionally, when the anaesthetist was called away. He liked the responsibility and power it gave him, particularly the feeling of having control over life and death: if he were to make a mistake, or failed to anticipate the anaesthetist’s needs, if he allowed his attention to wander, no doubt about it, the patient could very easily die.

  7

  Josie Davis, small and very slim, with short, bleached, neatly cut hair, wearing tight jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, was whipping round the weekend chores with her usual brisk efficiency.

  Every Saturday morning the small house was blitzed from top to bottom, windows cleaned, floors vacuumed, furniture dusted and polished, while the week’s washing was whirling around in her new combined washer and tumble dryer. Nobody was going to get the chance to say she didn’t keep her home nice, though it was bloody hard work, keeping it spotless and looking after the children, besides working full time in the mail-order office. But if she hadn’t had the job, never mind that it bored her out of her mind, there wouldn’t be a house, not to mention the little luxuries she felt they were all entitled to. They’d taken on a bitch of a mortgage, dependent on their combined wages, hers and Barry’s, to buy it. The house was brilliant, a new one on a small estate, better than the last grotty old shack – or anything she’d ever lived in before.

  She was hoping to get the ironing done before getting the bus into town to shop for some clothes – you couldn’t go on wearing the same things day after day in the office, the other girls would look down their noses – and to buy some ready-prepared meals from Marks. Dear, but you had to pay for conveniences when the twins let themselves in from school all they had to do was to microwave boeuf bourguignon or chicken tikka masala to eat while they watched Neighbours.

  She rubbed the windows even more vigorously, cheered by the idea that she might buy herself something smart this afternoon that she could wear that night. Being Saturday, they’d a sitter coming in so that she could go down the club with Barry.

  Busy, busy, busy, every weekend the same.

  So she wasn’t exactly delighted to see two men walking purposefully up the path beside the handkerchief-sized lawn. Especially when she recognized them immediately for what they were.

  She told them grudgingly that they’d better come in, evidently on tenterhooks that the neighbours might see and hear. It was a fear Martin Kite often played on to his own advantage – getting the door banged in your face earned you no medals. He smiled seraphically in the face of her scowl and allowed her to lead them indoors.

  Two neat little girls of around ten, as like as two peas, slightly darker editions of their mother and dressed almost identically to her in jeans and T-shirts, with knowing little faces and gold sleepers – smaller versions of their mother’s earrings – in their ears, were doing what looked like homework on the table in the dining end of the living room.

  ‘Go out and play,’ their mother ordered, ‘this won’t take long. Don’t forget your coats.’ They exchanged sulky looks, but after a silent debate, did as they were told, and presently could be seen, clad in shell-suit jackets in vivid fluorescent colours, rather desultorily bouncing a ball about on the front lawn. Smart wench, this, approved Kite, knew how to keep her kids in line, at any rate – he should be so lucky with his own lads. DC Farrar was thinking he wouldn’t have argued, either. Sharp-faced madam, Josie Davis, with a tongue to match.

  ‘Dex? You mean Derek, I suppose? Well, I don’t know why you’ve come here!’ she bridled, taking a cigarette from a half-empty pack of Rothman’s King Size and snapping a lighter to it. ‘Think I’d have him back, after what he’s done?’

  ‘Any idea where he is?’

  ‘Should I have?’ she countered, dragging on the cigarette with hard, angry little puffs.

  ‘If you don’t, I don’t know who would.’

  ‘Why don’t you try his mother?’

  The two detectives exchanged glances, immediately realizing the mistake that had been made. ‘We should’ve known you’re too young to be his mother, love,’ Farrar said, favouring her with one of his knock-’em-in-the-aisles smiles.

  She gave him the once-over. Didn’t half fancy himself, t
his one. Though come to that, she might have fancied him, too, in other circumstances. She laughed. ‘What gave you that idea? If that nasty little sod had been mine, I’d have done something about him before he ended up where he did. I’m only his stepmother, thank God.’

  ‘This was the address he gave his probation officer when he was released – where he said he was living.’

  ‘What of it? He doesn’t have to report no more.’

  Kite was looking hard at Josie. He wasn’t as baby-faced as she’d thought, even if he did look like he couldn’t hardly knock the skin off a rice pudding. Sergeant then, was he? After a moment, she shrugged.

  ‘Well, he did come here, then. It was his dad let him, not me. Stopped for a bit, and that was enough for all of us, even Barry. He didn’t like the discipline and we didn’t like him, know what I mean?’

  Kite nodded. The picture was clear enough. ‘Where’s your husband – Barry, is it?’

  ‘What d’you want him for? He can’t tell you no more than me.’

  ‘He’s Dex’s dad, isn’t he? He might’ve told him where he was going.’

  ‘Pigs might fly! And I don’t want you bothering Barry, specially at work. They don’t like coppers snooping around down the garage ... Why can’t you leave us alone? What d’you want to come bothering us for, just when we’ve got our lives sorted!’

  Taking in the puffy, beflowered three-piece suite, the state-of-the-art music centre, the twenty-seven-inch telly, the frilly Austrian blinds, Farrar said, ‘Down the garage? Which one?’

  ‘If I told you, you’d know, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, give us a break.’

  ‘Don’t you sweetheart me!’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Tell you what, though. I can give you her address – his mother’s – yeah, you go and pester her. Not that he’ll have gone to that cow if he’d any sense.’

  When they’d gone, she picked up and dialled. ‘Barry? Guess who I’ve just had here. Yeah, they’re on to him – what have you two been up to, the pair of you? What? No, I bloody didn’t, but I will if they come here again. I’m not letting that little bleeder mess things up for us again, so you’d better be telling me the truth.’

  ‘Well,’ said the major from the army bomb disposal unit, ‘there you are, can’t have it clearer than that. All the Provo IRA trademarks, though now we’re all friends ...’ He shrugged eloquently. ‘Doesn’t rule out other subversive organizations, mind, animal liberation weirdos, or even some maverick IRA bugger – somebody who knows what it’s all about from the good old days. They knew how to pack a bomb – though clueless, you wouldn’t believe it, sometimes, I tell you. If I were you, I’d be looking for somebody with access to several pounds of Super Ajax, Swiss-made detonators and a helluva grudge. And the ability to put it all together in a plastic lunchbox with weedkiller and sugar.’

  ‘Commercial explosive, hm? And Continental detonators? Not something you buy over the counter.’ Mayo looked across the desk at the young man. ‘We’re not talking amateurs, then?’

  ‘Doesn’t follow. The stuff’s easy enough to get if you’ve the right sort of friends. And most of the components you can buy anyway from any electrical store. But take it from me, this was no Mickey Mouse box of tricks.’

  ‘And the know-how?’

  ‘Elementary chemistry. Plus a lot of care – unless you want to spread yourself all over the ceiling.’ He laughed, this clean young man whose everyday business was dealing with death and destruction, who came within a hair’s breadth of his own death every time he defused a bomb.

  ‘So it wasn’t simply a warning –?’

  ‘It was meant to kill, all right. Fixed to the underside of the vehicle, wired up to go off immediately the car was vibrated in any way.’ He described the mercury tilt switch which had been used, sensitive to any movement of the car, to the rocking of the suspension when anyone lowered themselves into the driving seat, which would have activated the chain reaction which exploded the bomb.

  ‘All this from the debris,’ Abigail said. ‘Rather you than me.’

  ‘Piece of cake, this one. You should see some of ‘em.’

  He was tall and fair and ruddy, his cropped hair as short as his clipped speech. His smile was bright as a toothpaste ad, as white as his certainties. He adjusted his black beret to the correct straight line above his eyebrows and left them without any room for doubt.

  Nearly everyone was already there in the incident room – the team assigned to the inquiry, around thirty men and women – constables, three sergeants and two inspectors. The hum of conversation died, computer screens were abandoned as Mayo took up his position facing them, the window behind him thrown open in a vain effort to clear the air of the cigarette smoke that rose to the ceiling and hung in a carcinogenous pall. The gesture failed to make any impression on the serious smokers. Mayo called the room to order.

  ‘Right, let’s see what we’ve got, then.’

  Six-thirty in the evening of day two of the investigation. Not a lot achieved as yet, but the initial turmoil settling down into ordered chaos. Not a lot of hope that much would be achieved quickly on this one. Plenty of enthusiasm, though. Nobody liked the idea of a murder, especially a cold-blooded bombing that could rip apart flesh and tissue, wipe somebody off the face of the earth in a split second, and they were all out to get the bastard who’d done it.

  ‘That feminist animal liberation group in Hurstfield we had trouble with some time since,’ Mayo said, after repeating what the major had told him. ‘Ted? You were looking into that, weren’t you?’

  ‘Disbanded, after we nabbed the ringleaders.’ This was Carmody, long face lugubrious, plodding and patient as ever. ‘And not started up again, as far as I can find out.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. But by the very nature of the crime we can’t overlook terrorist involvement, local or otherwise. In the absence of any sort of claim, it’s beginning to look remote. But we need a result on this one, quick, always bearing in mind it could be the start of a series of attacks directed against specific targets. There’s been a lot of call lately for stiffer sentencing for young offenders, for instance, we all know that, and this might have been some loony sort of opposition to it. So regarding Conyhall, how’re we doing on the interviewing there. Inspector Moon?’

  ‘Still going on. Every inmate’s being questioned, all the prison officers, and the civilian staff. Any recent releases will be seen, plus any earlier ones, if any look like being worth checking on. Especially Derek Davis, when we find him, known to have made specific, personal threats against the governor.’

  ‘Davis. Yes, but he’s a long way from being the only one who felt he’d a score to settle.’

  Though it had to be said, that of all those so far interviewed, nobody had evinced a particular hatred of Jack Lilburne. Not that there hadn’t been a few who had the obvious if unexpressed wish to see off all persons of authority – the filth, judges, magistrates, screws in general. But shock, genuine or otherwise, had been expressed at the attack on the governor.

  ‘The general consensus of opinion among the Young Offenders’ Institution population,’ Mayo said drily, ‘seems to be that he was “all right”. Which I suppose means he was probably held in fairly high esteem. We can’t take it for granted, though. And this brings me to the next thing – that from now on, we concentrate on Lilburne himself ...’

  ‘Sir,’ Jenny Platt put in diffidently, her face pink under her curly brown hair. Mayo always expected her to put her hand up before speaking out at these meetings, which was odd, because she was neither shy nor incompetent; on the contrary, though young, she was one of his best officers. ‘What about that scrap of paper, sir? The one we found in Lilburne’s breast pocket?’

  ‘Glad you mentioned that, Jenny. I was coming to it later, but we can just as well talk about it now.’

  Scattered among the macabre bits of Lilburne’s person had been shreds of clothing, and at the bottom of what had once been the breast pocket of hi
s suit had been found a scrap of crumpled paper, folded and creased, as though it had been pushed down by his wallet. It could have been there some time and was probably of no importance now, though presumably it had meant something to Jack Lilburne when he put it there in the first place. All the same, it had been subjected to the usual tests. It comprised the last few lines of a page of typing – typed, not produced on a daisy wheel, dot-matrix, bubble-jet or laser printer, which was of itself significant. In this age of computers, typewriters were fast becoming as obsolete as LPs and treadle sewing machines. It wasn’t even typed on an electric typewriter.

  ‘Anything else, Dave?’

  Dexter, the Scenes-of-Crime sergeant, never overoptimistic, said economically, ‘It was a very old portable, manual Olympia 66. Flaw in the alignment, and the shift lock doesn’t depress properly so that the caps are above the line. Several worn or damaged keys – distinctive, if we find the original to compare it with. The paper was good quality typing paper, eighty-gramme bond.’

  The typing had read:

  ...what you said. You might at least see me. I’ll be in the coffee shop at the Hurstfield Post House at eleven on November the 20th, if you can bring yourself to admit that I’m right, though I don’t expect ...

  The page ended at that point, and a question mark had been pencilled in the margin, on the bottom line. ‘For Lilburne to check his business diary, to see whether he was free?’ Mayo asked.

  ‘At eleven o’clock on November the twentieth, according to his secretary, Lilburne was with his area manager,’ answered Kite, on the ball, as usual. ‘Had lunch with him and was with him until half past two. But we don’t know how long that paper had been in Lilburne’s pocket, of course. Might have been November the twentieth the previous year.’

  Mayo acknowledged this was possible. ‘It was obviously a personal rather than a business letter, and it’s not much, but there’s an aggrieved tone about it that does indicate perhaps everything in the garden wasn’t smelling of roses – which brings me to what I was going to say: that from now on, we concentrate on Lilburne’s personal life. I want everything we can get on him – and I mean everything. Right from where he was born to how often he changed his socks. Talk to people, see what they thought of him. Go through his past with a tooth comb. See what he did before he came to Conyhall. Dig up the dirt, if any. Everything so far indicates that Jack Lilburne was a well-respected and well-liked man, with an apparently blameless life, but nobody’s that perfect. There must have been something.’