Birds sang in the branches overhead, their chirping rising as they tuned up for the morning courtships. When Doyle looked up it seemed as though the overhanging branches had twined together to create a fretted vault above the grove. Between the two, the vault and the song, the place had the air of something almost sacred about it apart from the fact that scratchy police radio messages cut through the sanctum sanctorum.
Charlie Adams was going through the folded clothes, searching the pockets.
Stepping back from the Scene of Examination, Doyle spoke into his radio: "Delta One. Situation Report. Okay, Brenda, it appears to be a suicide by hanging. I'll need the Super over in Hexham informed as soon as possible. Over." His voice was too loud for this place. Too matter-of-fact. Behind him, he heard the beginnings of a low grumbling: engines labouring down the steep forest track. Engines meant ambulance, meant paramedics and pathologist and eventually S.E.P.: Someone Else's Problem.
"Got something Barney," Charlie Adams called. He was thumbing through the contents of the dead man's wallet. "Here we go," Charlie said, reading the details off the dead man's driving license. "Monk Sanders. Address: 36, Stonecroft Bridge. Age: forty-one."
The birds had stopped singing and the engine's grumble had quietened to a respectful silence, leaving mortality's hush to take possession of the grove once more.
Doyle turned in time to see three men lumbering shoulder to shoulder down the sloping incline of the grassy bank.
They carried a fibreglass coffin between them.
- 26 -
Doyle couldn't help but laugh, not so much at the joke as at the sight of two men perched on top of a fibreglass coffin eating corned beef sandwiches and telling jokes whilst the pathologist worked his way over the hanging man. Doc Herber, a bespectacled man, wiry with a face twenty years older than his body, came across with an aura of shabby intellect.
"Definitely dead," he pronounced, probing at the ligature with the rusted blade of his penknife.
"We'd worked that one out for ourselves, Doc. You know how it is, find a fella hanging by his neck in the woods, looks like he's been hanging there for most of the night and you think: 'Hey now, he sure looks dead to me.'"
"Very good, Officer Doyle." Herber continued, the sarcasm lost on him. The cause of death appears to be asphyxiation. The time, I'd estimate to be around three this morning, give or take. I'll need to open him up to be more precise."
"Suicide?"
"Now who's asking the stupid questions, Doyle? I take it you haven't found a note?"
"Not so far. Sam, Charlie, I want you to round up the girls who found our man. Get statements. Usual procedure, bring in the parents or legal guardians. Charlie, while you're at it, call in an updated Sit. Rep.. Andy, you two," Doyle said, waving for the two comedians to come over. "I guess it's time we earned our money. You want to drag the box across whilst I cut him down?"
"Sure."
"Elspeth, you might want to take a couple of shots of the body after we've cut it down."
"No problem."
Doyle looked at Monk Sanders’s suspended body.
"Bit squeamish are we?" Doc Herber asked. The pathologist prodded the body so that it revolved in a lazy circle at the end of the taut rope.
"A bit," Doyle admitted. "But I guess it comes with the territory." He traced the line of the rope up from the noose around Monk's neck to where it looped around a high limb. A limb too high to reach. He worked the edge of his knife against the rope, cutting above the knot to preserve the ligature.
The dead man's legs buckled and his body pitched forward face first into the dirt.
Doyle knelt down beside the corpse.
"Herber?"
The wiry man crouched down on the other side of the corpse. "Yes?"
"Want to give me a hand lifting our friend here into the coffin? Get hold of his legs, there's a good man. Elspeth, you want to take those pictures now?"
"Will do, Sarge."
Humming Whistle While You Work the S.O.C.O. fired off three shots as they lifted the body. The dead man's head lolled back on its torn neck muscles, his mouth gaping wide. The whites of his eyes stared out from blood-leeched sockets. Something dredged the lower regions of Doyle's stomach. Then the body was up and being man-handled into the fibreglass casket.
It took them twenty minutes to haul the heavy casket back to the waiting meat wagon. No one ever mentioned how incredibly heavy dead meat was.
- 27 -
Ben Shelton was dragged awake by the scrappy feel of Scooby's rough tongue and hoary old breath tickling his face. Disturbing images fluttered through his groggy mind like ash puffing up off an autumn bonfire. His sleep had been deep without being restful, plagued instead by murky dreams which, once awake, he could not recall. He sat up slowly, knuckling his gummy eyes and shaking himself like a dog. Scooby skittered back, his forelegs trembling on the unsteady mattress. The old dog looked tired as he padded forward again and nuzzled Ben's hand. He waited to be patted.
Ben stroked Scooby's head absently. “Yeah, you're a good dog, Scoob, the best. Go check on the mail while I take a wee, will you?” Scooby bounced off the bed and trotted across the bedroom floor, nosing open the door before disappearing through it.
His bed sheets were crumpled and twisted around him, moulding to the shape of his body. Ben pushed them away, feeling hemmed in by their closeness. His room smelled; the pungent aroma of nightmares still clinging to the muggy air. Wriggling out of the blankets’ restrictive clutch, he slipped out of bed and padded over to the open window. The air breezing in was so thick it felt as if he could mold it between his fingers like silly-putty. Below his window birds bickered listlessly over a few scraps on the bird table, the rising sun sapping their energies. Ben yawned and stretched. Ignoring his dressing gown, he went along the landing to the bathroom.
As always he groaned at his reflection. Every morning it was the same. His skin seemed so colourless as to be transparent, allowing the night's growth to show through blackly. Gloomily, he urinated, washed his hands, then lathered up for the ritual of the morning shave, scooping warm water onto his face before working the shaving stick into a foam. When he raised his head and looked in the bathroom mirror again he could barely make out his reflection beyond the outline of an amorphous pink smear through the clinging film of condensation that clouded the glass.
Back in his room, Ben switched off the radio-alarm. It wasn't due to go off for another fifteen minutes, but he didn't feel like getting back into the sack. Instead, he pottered around the bedroom, pulling out a fresh cotton shirt and a pair of black chino's for the day ahead, and then went downstairs for breakfast.
The kitchen was large and light, the view from its long window as blandly cheerful as a picture postcard. As Ben poured milk onto his shallow bowl of muesli, he heard bumps and snuffles and padded pawsteps on the linoleum behind him. Scooby sidled up to him, brushing his fur against his bare legs to collect an absent scratch behind the ears as he dropped the mail on the floor. The dog waddled slowly down the kitchen, presumably to see if there were any scrapings he had overlooked in his yellow bowl.
Ben picked up the mail, wiping it with a dry cloth. A catalogue from Innovations - they were plugging an orthopaedic stool this month - and the sickly green-tinged envelope of his monthly credit card bill. He tossed both, unopened, onto the bench, and, carrying his muesli, went through to the breakfast area.
Out of habit, he took a detour to switch on the stereo, bringing the volume down a peg as he remembered his brother Mike was asleep upstairs. Joe Morris’ innocuous manila envelope sat on the unit, beside the small CD rack and a paperback copy of some bloated heroic fantasy.
'What the hell, huh Scoob?' Ben muttered. Using the old Labrador as an excuse for talking to himself was rapidly becoming second nature. He picked up the envelope and went back through to the breakfast area. Eating muesli with one hand and leafing through sheets of bonded A4 with the other, he immersed himself in the darkly humorous world of Joe
Morris’ Spin Dizzy Angel. He read slowly, every now and then massaging one or both temples with his fingertips. It took him twenty minutes to read it all, and when he finished he looked up uncertainly, aware that eyes were watching him through the stereo's perfect swell of Bluesy music.
Across the room, Scooby mirrored the look. Mike Shelton shuffled through from the family room.
“Sleep well?”
“Like one of the damned, little brother. Oh, for the comfort of a bed like that every night.”
“Glad to oblige, weren't we Scoob?” On cue, the Labrador barked his agreement, his stump of a tail wagging.
“Now that's what I call a good dog,” Mike said soothingly. He squatted on his haunches, shuffled forward and took Scooby's head into his big hands, stroking him for a minute or more. “Any good?” Mike asked, meaning the fifteen or so white sheets of paper on the bench.
“Surprisingly so,” Ben brought his hands to the sides of his head again and started massaging his temples slowly, thinking about the nuts and bolts behind the story he had just read. A headache was building and the day hadn't come close to beginning yet. A juvenile car thief walking through the darkened streets of a bleak, lonely cityscape, teased and taunted by childish voices he can't place, until he finds himself under a dry bridge, face to face gunslinger fashion with a dark man. Only the dark man leaches light from the world around him until he seemingly scintillates with its vibrancy, and the car thief is confronted by a horrible white faced thing that mimics and then kills him, melding into his mirror image. There was the hint of an allegory masquerading in the story's clothing. Of course, it had the flaws of a lot of juvenile work, the heavy-handedness of youth, but it was good. Better than good. There was a black humour buried in its narrative heart that made it pleasantly readable.
Ben stood up. “So, what have you got planned for today?”
“Nothing special.”
“Thought any more about what I said last night?”
“A bit,” Mike said, noncommittally.
“No rush, I'll see you tonight, until then: Me casa es su casa and all that.”
Ben went upstairs, dressed and pulled his things together, then hurried out to the Bug. He shouted goodbye to Mike and Scooby, then hopped inside, gunned the engine and started off for the university. He was going to be ridiculously early, but that was better than bumming around the kitchen for another twenty five minutes wondering how to talk about money with Mike.
With the windows rolled down and the radio playing Snow Patrol quietly, he reversed out of the drive and took the series of turns out onto the High Street. He could feel the air clearing out the cobwebs inside his head.
Reaching into the glove compartment, he pulled out an old pair of polarised sunglasses; the sun was hovering brightly on an angle that caught every ray on the windscreen, refracting them into a bleeding rainbow of blinding glares.
All at once Ben stopped, standing on the Bug's brakes. Across the street, where the trailing edge of Dipton Wood mingled with the old houses, not far from the Arches, Westbrooke's twin tree guardians, he saw the opening of the forest track that curved up to Garrets farm. Staring at the gritted road suddenly brought back at least one of last night's dreams with startling clarity.
He had been locked in a bare attic room, and through the window's grime he could see a man hanging from the twisted limbs of an old oak.
Of course, now he remembered, and it was as if a door had been opened inside his head and it all came flooding back.
* * * * *
After a fruitless hour spent lecturing to a handful of reprobates, Ben decided it was time to call it a day. He ducked into the faculty office, making the necessary arrangements to have his 4 O'clock seminar covered by a stand-in, then, answering the call of his stomach, headed off in the direction of the refectory for a late lunch.
A few classes were still in session and Lipman Hall possessed appalling acoustics that seemed to amplify every little sound, especially on the stairwells, so he climbed down with excessive caution, quietly humming The Twilight Zone's theme tune. The off-key notes echoed eerily in the cramped stairway, bouncing off the whitewashed walls. The air was dusty but pleasantly cool.
Beneath him, he heard a chorus of giggles and the wheeze of a fire door's hydraulic arm opening and closing, leaving him alone again.
Back outside, in the suntrap of the quadrangle he took his usual perch on the redbrick wall that encircled the broad trunk of some nameless tree (of knowledge, he had always supposed) and tried to read. He was distracted by a couple of skateboarding freshers and a low-flying Frisbee clattering into the sacred tree, inches above his head. Both pastimes deserved to be consigned back into the hell that was the 1980s, he thought to himself, watching the boards skid along the rim of bars. Everyone seemed to be taking full advantage of the mini heat-wave. A squirrel munched on an acorn, reminding him of his resolution. A couple of shorts and t-shirt clad girls walked hand in hand up the library steps. Finally, he slipped the unopened book back into his case, and headed off towards the stifling heat of the refectory. A city starling called, flitting from eave to dusty eave in an attempt to avoid the uncomfortable touch of the sun.
The refectory's entrance was on the first floor of the Student Union building. He pulled open one of the row of glass doors, then stepped aside to allow slowly departing students to drift out. Inside, he managed a smile for Sarah Fletcher, who was heading his way with a tray of salad, coffee and cold meat.
Ben picked up a tepid bowl of vegetable soup, a couple of crispy rolls and a cup of coffee with the consistency of treacle, paying for them at the tills, and then wandered through to the dining area. It was all but empty, the heat having tempted even the most faint-hearted and pale-skinned of the student fraternity out into the great (concrete) wide open. A couple of scruffy looking kids still battled away on the bank of video machines, clocking up consecutive high scores at games that were almost as old as they were.
He spotted Joe Morris out of the corner of his eye. He was hunched over a table, pulling and twisting at a bacon sandwich. Pasty skin showed through a gaping hole in the shoulder of his grey sweatshirt. The sweatshirt itself, with the university's crest fading on its chest, looked as if he had been wearing it for a month; sleeping in it too. The young student seemed oblivious to Ben’s approach. Morris was probing at the bun and reading the cover of a folded newspaper when he arrived at his table.
“Mind if I join you?”
The youth looked up, a startled expression stamped onto his face. Ben watched, suppressing his smile, as it melted into one of recognition.
“No problem, Sir,” Morris said, scooping up his newspaper and brushing a space clear for Ben's soup bowl.
“Ben, please. Now, scolding time; I don't remember seeing you this morning. Something you want to tell me?”
“Uh, no. Sorry, teach. I slept in,” he mumbled self-consciously.
“Well, that’s mildly better than the dog eating your homework, I suppose, as long as you weren’t alone. Sleeping in alone kind of defeats the whole object of being a student, if you ask me. Okay, so I've read Spin Dizzy Angel and I have to say I think it's pretty close to being saleable. There are a couple of places the pacing could be tightened up, but on the whole - nine out of ten and come to the top of the class.”
“Really?”
Ben nodded. “Now, like I said, I can't promise anything, but I've got a couple of ideas.”
“I’m all ears,” Joe said, grinning broadly.
“Well, I'm working on a new piece myself.”
“The novel, right?”
“Yeah, the novel, that's right. Anyway, I wouldn't mind a sounding board for some of the ideas, and I could probably squeeze in a new proof reader, if you're interested, that is?”
“Me? Really?”
Ben nodded again.
“I don't know –”
“-what to say?” Ben finished the sentence for him. “Everyone seems to be saying that these days, must be som
ething in the air. How about “Hell yeah, that'd be awesome." Or words to that effect?”
Joe nodded, grinning like the Cheshire cat.
“Great, now for the other idea. If you don't mind, I'd like to show Spin Dizzy Angel to my agent next time I see her.”
“Mind? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I can't promise anything, but you never know. It might be a start.”
“I don't know what –”
“I know, save it. Just keep turning out the magic and I'll be one happy teacher because you make me look good.”
* * * * *
The growing crowd hooted its uproarious approval as the comic-faced street clown kicked his heel and tumbled, sprawling on the pavement. Shaking his carrot-wigged head, he looked up almost furtively. The red and black make-up circlets puffed around his sad eyes like swollen tears. Passing a chalking pavement artist, Ben slowed his walk to watch the display. Behind him the overhanging redbrick of the bank's walls dominated the street's skyline.
Overhead, a tumultuous gathering of wings, starlings, sparrows and pigeons, banked away sharply, gravitating towards the circling throng hovering above the distant pillar of Grey's Monument.
The clown was up assaying a sketchy bow to sputters of mirth from the children in the crowd. No one seemed to care that the kids should have been in school. A ten piece Hillbilly-Blues band had feet tapping and bodies bouncing in time with their hollering horns and heavy, rhythmic bass strumming. Two dungaree clad girls with short cropped hair, flower necklaces and stark blue-black make-up, swung each other by linked arms, their momentum taking them round faster and faster.
The crowd clapped and hooted while the gambolling clown joined in the jig, hopping from one foot to another, flapping and waving his arms outrageously. After another drum-rattling tumble, he waddled over to his padded bag of tricks.
Sufferer's Song Page 9
