Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2

by Louise Welsh

  Jacob said, ‘We’ve already lost two people. I haven’t shared this with the others, but I suspect that Henry may have chosen the same path as Melody.’ Father Wingate crossed himself. Jacob gave him an impatient glance and continued, ‘Belle is demoralised, Will depressed. Raisha keeps her own counsel, but it is obvious that she’s suffering. Who knows how many people are hiding in the woods and villages around here, tormented by grief? The sweats could be followed by an epidemic of suicide. We need to come together if we are to have any chance. A harvest is necessary for our survival, but it will also draw people to us and give them hope.’

  Hugh was on the edge of his vision, just out of sight, but Magnus knew that no matter how quickly he turned his head, his cousin would be gone. He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, defeated.

  ‘I’ll help you harvest three fields. That will be more than enough for your needs. Then I have to go.’

  Jacob gave him a grim smile. ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘God requires a harvest.’ Father Wingate smiled beatifically. ‘And we are all His children.’

  The three of them shook hands. Magnus remembered his slashed tyre again and wondered if it mattered that the soldier had not repeated the old priest’s assurance that he was not a prisoner.

  Raisha was standing in the hallway. There were fields waiting to be surveyed, equipment to find, jobs to be assigned, a harvest to plan. Raisha held out her hand, Magnus took it in his and she led him upstairs to his bedroom.

  Twenty-Six

  It was late by the time Magnus visited Jeb. He was surprised to find him propped up at a small table in his sickroom, a few pages of paper splayed in front of him, his injured leg set stiffly on a low chair. A single candle glimmered waxily from a saucer. Jeb looked up. His face seemed old and hollow by its dim light. He turned the pages face down.

  ‘Want to sign my cast?’

  Jeb tapped his leg lightly with a pen and Magnus saw that it had been plastered.

  ‘I guess it’s important to keep the old traditions alive.’ Magnus took the pen from him and tried to scrawl his name on the plaster cast, but it was not quite set and the nib sank into it, leaving a shallow dent. He perched on the end of the bed. ‘Maybe later, when it’s dried.’

  Jeb rested a hand on top of his papers. ‘You going to be around that long?’

  The candle wavered in response to a faint breeze reaching in through the open window. Magnus stared into the blackness beyond. He could see nothing, except the reflection of the candlelight in the glass pane.

  ‘It seems so, since you told them I might be useful.’

  ‘What did I say you’d be useful at? Fucking their women?’

  Magnus felt his face flush. ‘Helping them get the harvest in.’

  ‘Shit, I let slip about your croft, didn’t I?’ Magnus nodded and Jeb said, ‘Sorry.’ He grinned. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the religious. Not even a day off for the end of the world.’

  ‘I guess that’s the point. They don’t want it to be the end.’

  ‘Strange, when they believe they’re in for pie in the sky.’ Jeb scored a finger across his plastered leg and looked at the white powder caught beneath his nail. ‘Do you ever think what a stroke of luck it was for you and me? A shame millions died, but the sweats did us a good turn.’

  ‘I had a warm-up gig at O2 lined up.’ Magnus wished he had not been reminded of his big break. It belonged to another life.

  Jeb glanced at the door and then said in a low voice, ‘You had a smashed-up face and an imminent rape trial. Entertainers have a bad rep. You could have been looking at a long sentence.’

  This must be how long-married couples felt, Magnus thought. They had been over it before and there was no point in discussing it further. He said, ‘If you were a policeman, how come you ended up in prison?’

  ‘It’s old news.’

  ‘All the same …’ Magnus let the threat hang in the air.

  Jeb stared at him. ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘They have a right to know.’

  Jeb sighed. He lifted the pages from the table and turned them over so Magnus could see the scrawled handwriting, the crossed-out lines and scribbled deletions. ‘I was trying to write it all down. I don’t know why. Scared I’ll forget who I am, or maybe just too much time on my hands. I wasn’t doing very well.’

  ‘Perhaps you need to say it out loud.’

  ‘To someone with a sympathetic ear?’ Some of the fight had left Jeb, but his voice still held a challenge. ‘Aren’t there enough priests in this house?’

  Magnus grinned. ‘Too many.’

  ‘That’s the truth.’ Jeb reached beneath the table and brought out a bottle of whisky. He nodded to a shelf above the bed. ‘There’s another glass over there.’

  Magnus got up from his seat. Things were easier between them now. Perhaps it was their shared experience and imminent parting, or maybe being newcomers to Tanqueray House had united them in a way that saving each other’s lives had not. A small stack of paperback novels sat beside the glass. He said, ‘Has Belle been looking after you?’

  ‘You’d make a good detective.’ Jeb poured himself a tot and passed the bottle to Magnus who did the same. ‘Belle’s a nice girl. She isn’t used to being on her own and she’s trying to be brave about it. Helping me helps her.’

  There was truth in what Jeb was saying, but the convenience of it made Magnus uneasy. He picked up one of the paperbacks to look at its title and saw a revolver secreted behind the pile. He lifted it by the barrel.

  ‘Did Belle bring you this too?’

  Jeb took another sip of his drink, hiding his expression behind the glass. ‘Like I said, she’s a nice girl. I told her I needed something to protect myself with and she gave me that. It’s okay for you, you’re heading into the blue yonder. I’ve no chance of running away if anything kicks off.’

  There was truth in what he said. Magnus slid the gun back into its hiding place and replaced the book on top of the pile.

  ‘You still haven’t told me what you were in for.’

  Jeb took a sip of his drink. Magnus thought he was going to refuse again, but he met his eyes and asked, ‘What if I say I’m in for murdering the woman I loved?’

  ‘It depends on circumstances, I suppose.’

  ‘And what if I tell you a bundle of lies?’

  ‘I’ll have to trust my own judgement on that.’

  Jeb’s stare was level. ‘I thought I could leave all this in Pentonville, but it’s on me like skin. If it’s going to come out, maybe it’s better I tell you than someone else.’

  ‘I’ll be gone soon. I’ll keep it to myself.’

  ‘If you don’t, you know I’ll find you.’ Jeb looked up towards the far corner of the room. His hair had grown out of the suede head he had worn in prison and was twisting into loose curls that gave his face a softer appearance. ‘I said that I was innocent. That’s not strictly true. I’m not a sex offender and I didn’t do what they put me away for, but I deserved to go down.’ Jeb’s defensiveness was still there, but it had flipped to an insistence on his guilt. ‘My trial was all over the papers, it was three years ago, but a lot of people still remember’ – he paused and corrected himself – ‘remembered, my face. There were two photographs that they used, one of me in uniform, smiling like every mother’s dream. It was taken by a photographer for a local paper on a school outreach visit, not long after I completed training. My hair’s long in the other one.’ He touched his curls. ‘And I’ve got a scruffy beard, like a tramp that’s not had any attention from the Salvation Army in quite a while. There’s a stupid expression on my face, as if I’d just sucked up an exceptionally long joint, which is exactly what I’d done.’ Jeb came to a stop, as if he could see the photographs in front of him.

  Magnus said, ‘You don’t sound like ideal police material.’

  ‘I was superb police material. Perfect for what they wanted at any rate.’

  ‘Which was?’

 
‘Being a lying bastard.’ Jeb knocked back the last of the whisky in his glass and freshened it with more from the bottle. ‘I was an undercover police officer. Serpico, that was me, all cock and beard.’

  Magnus took the bottle and poured himself another measure. A memory stirred. A documentary about police officers who had formed relationships with some of the women they were meant to be keeping under surveillance. One of them had had a wife elsewhere, a legitimate family.

  He said, ‘Were you married?’

  Jeb gave a tight smile that hid his teeth. ‘No, but you’re on the right lines. My job was to infiltrate a group of environmental activists. I had to immerse myself in the organisation, dress like them, talk like them, act like them. I thought I was James Bond, though Bond wouldn’t be seen dead in the grungy crap I wore undercover.’

  It fitted with Jeb’s shape-shifting personality, his swing from prison inmate to keen-eyed strategist. Magnus tried to keep his voice light. ‘No nightclubs and casinos then?’

  ‘No, but there were beautiful women. The main difficulty of infiltrating a network is that you come from nowhere and have to get people to accept you straight away. The easiest way to do that is to become involved with someone already on the scene, usually a woman.’ Jeb made a face. ‘If I’m honest it was always a woman.’

  ‘You did it more than once?’ Magnus had pulled on different personalities for his routines, but he had shed them when he came off stage. He tried to imagine how it would be to target a woman because of who and what she knew; to live with her and make love to her as someone else. ‘Didn’t you feel like a whore?’

  Jeb put a hand over the candle flame and a shadow hand appeared huge and black on the wall. He took it away and looked at Magnus.

  ‘I was a police officer, an undercover police officer.’

  ‘And you could switch it on and off?’ Magnus disliked the echo of the Kirk in his own voice, the black-suited minister passing judgement from the pulpit. ‘Have sex with some girl and then report back on what she was up to?’

  Jeb shrugged. ‘Like I said, I thought I was James Bond. These people were talking about bombing laboratories, assassinating scientists, setting free animals that had been infected with deadly strains of viruses.’ There was warmth in his voice now. ‘Fuck, for all we know it was someone like them who set off this whole bloody disaster.’ He realised that he was close to shouting and looked at the door. The house was still, but he lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I was flattered to be chosen. Our handlers made us feel special. We were in the know. Of course we didn’t know the half of it. They targeted us the same way they taught us to target the people we were surveilling.’

  The shell of aggression Jeb had worn in jail was fractured. For the first time since Magnus had known him he looked sorry for himself.

  ‘We were encouraged to identify vulnerable people in the movement. Cherry fitted the profile. She was a single mum struggling to make ends meet. Her passion for animals had tipped into radicalism and she’d joined a group who thought people involved in animal testing were akin to the Nazis. She was also gorgeous: big eyes, lots of red hair, petite. She looked like a Disney princess, but there was a bit of steel in Cherry. I liked that from the start. She was also unstable. I spotted that at the start too, but I thought I could handle it.’ Jeb took another sip of his drink. ‘I was arrogant enough to think I could make it into an asset.’

  Magnus said, ‘When did she find out you were a policeman?’

  Jeb gave a sad half-smile. ‘When I told her. These operations don’t just last for a couple of weeks, a few months, they stretch on for years.’ He shook his head. ‘I should never have chosen a woman with a child. Cherry had episodes. She may have been schizophrenic, but she was too mistrustful of doctors and hospitals – they were Nazis too – to get a diagnosis. Her daughter was called Happy. She was one when I met her, three when I decided I couldn’t stand it any more. It was partly down to her that I came out. She was a little sweetheart. Happy by name, Happy by nature. Cherry and I were squatting in a tower block that was due for demolition. It was a dump and Cherry insisted on a flat on the fifteenth floor, even though the lifts weren’t working, because fifteen was her lucky number and she could keep a lookout on who was coming from up there. She thought people were spying on her.’ He gave a small smile. ‘What did they used to say? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you? It was squalor, but Happy didn’t mind. Who knows how she would have turned out, but she was the most even-natured child I ever met.’

  Jeb had made no effort to check up on Cherry and Happy after the escape from Pentonville. Magnus looked into the blackness beyond the window and thought how strange it was that he could still feel saddened by the deaths of two people he had never met.

  ‘You said it was partly Happy that made you come clean. What were the other reasons?’

  Jeb took another sip of his drink. He rubbed his cast gently with his fingertips as if to soothe the itching flesh beneath it.

  ‘No one ever gave a direct order, but I began to realise that our handlers wanted us to do more than surveillance. The group I was with were disorganised. They were full of big talk, but they lacked leadership. I’m not saying they weren’t committed or that they would never have done any harm. I learned the truth of that to my cost. What I mean is that they hadn’t done any real damage yet. There was a power gap and one likely lad in line to fill it, a guy called Andy Cruikshank. He was a nasty piece of work. Cherry genuinely cared about animals, Andy just wanted a cause. It wouldn’t have mattered what it was, home rule, nuclear disarmament, anti-capitalism: Andy would have found a way to turn the fight violent. As far as I was concerned he was our man. Remove Andy and all you had was a bunch of hippies dicking around, but my instructions were to cultivate him, become his right-hand man, see how far he would go. That included making suggestions for possible moves if his imagination failed him.’

  ‘They were turning you into an agent provocateur?’

  Jeb nodded. ‘Spot on. I tried to kid myself, but eventually I decided that the only way out was to tell Cherry the truth. I think I was genuinely in love with her by then. I certainly loved Happy. I wanted to keep them so badly that I convinced myself that everything would be okay if I could just find the courage to tell Cherry everything.’ Unshed tears gleamed in Jeb’s eyes. ‘I had it all worked out. I’d get a dishonourable discharge and sell my flat. I’d bought at a good time and once I’d paid off what I owed on the mortgage there would have been enough left over for a good deposit on somewhere in Wales. I’d taken Cherry and Happy camping there once and they’d loved it. We could have had our own animals, nothing big, a few chickens, a dog, maybe a goat or two, Cherry would have been in her element. And maybe there would have been enough space for her to get properly well.’ Jeb wiped a hand across his eyes and lifted his drink to his mouth. ‘So I told her what I was and what I’d done and as soon as I had, I knew it was the worst mistake of my life. Worse even than getting involved with undercover, because at least that had introduced me to her and Happy.

  ‘She started screaming before I was even finished. It was like a mask had been stripped from her face. All the sweetness and softness disappeared and all the pain came out. She looked ugly, like a witch from a children’s book. It sounds pathetic, Cherry was a small woman, a fraction of my size, but I was frightened. Then she stopped yelling and told me what she thought of me and my kind in a whisper that seemed to drive itself into my brain. It was like she was delivering a curse.

  ‘I know I shouted, because other people told me I did. I wanted to explain why I’d done it. I know I told her that I loved her. But she wouldn’t listen. Then she started shouting again, more than shouting, screaming. I’d waited until Happy was in bed, but she woke up and came through to find out what was going on. She wasn’t used to people arguing and she was frightened. I went to comfort her, but Cherry was screaming so loudly at me to leave that I was afraid that, allergic as our building wa
s to authority, someone might call the police. That was the last thing I needed.

  ‘I went into the bedroom and started to pack my things, though why I would want to take any of that crap is beyond me. I should have walked out as soon as she shouted at me to go, then someone might have seen me. I would have had an alibi.

  ‘Somebody started banging on the door to the flat. Cherry was still shouting at me to leave and screaming that I would never see her or Happy again. I should have ignored whoever was at the door, but I think I wanted someone else to shout at. I opened it and there was Andy Cruikshank. He had a squat a few floors below us. Cherry must have phoned him on her mobile when I went into the bedroom. He should have been the last person I wanted to see, but I was delighted. I punched him in the face. Then I heard Happy screaming. She had been crying before, but this was a different kind of scream, a shout of real terror. It was me she was calling for.’

  Jeb’s voice shifted. His eyes gleamed sad and distant in the candlelight.

  ‘I ran through to the sitting room. Cherry was standing on a chair on the balcony. I yelled for her to stop, but she didn’t look round, just took a step up on to the safety barrier and pushed herself into the air with Happy in her arms. She wasn’t my child, but I loved her. I saw her face looking over Cherry’s shoulder an instant before she jumped. Happy knew what was about to happen and she was terrified. If I had been quicker I could have saved her. I knew Cherry was desperate and hurting, but I stopped to hit Andy Cruikshank. That was all the time it took to kill her.’

  The tears were running down Jeb’s face now. He lifted a hand and wiped them away.

  Magnus kept his voice soft. ‘It’s tragic, but I don’t see how Cherry’s suicide would result in your going to jail. She killed herself and Happy, not you.’

  ‘Cruikshank told the police that I had pushed them both over the balcony. Cherry had told him I was a police spy. He blamed me for her death and he wanted to see me damned. The few people in the building who would speak to the police said they’d heard a man shouting and Cherry screaming that he would never see his child again. Someone even claimed to have seen me do it. It didn’t matter that he was a junkie who had seen a spaceship land on the local play park the week before, he was treated as a credible witness. As for my bosses, as far as they were concerned I was on my own. They maintained they had already decided I was going rogue and were about to pull me. They pretended to think I’d killed Cherry and Happy too. The best they would offer me was a guarantee of vulnerable prisoner status in return for not revealing details of our operation. If I spoke out they would throw me into the general population. I didn’t care much about what happened to me by then, but being a policeman in prison who had spied on his girlfriend and then killed her and her child? I knew enough to know I wouldn’t survive that.’ He looked at the floor. ‘I was a coward.’