The Chosen Dead

by M. R. Hall

  ‘Michael? It’s Jenny. Are you free this evening?’

  ‘Mmm? I think so . . .’ His voice was still thick with sleep.

  ‘Sorry. Have I woken you?’

  ‘It’s all right, I should be up. I’ve got a round trip to Le Mans.’

  In the height of summer he was at his busiest. As a pilot for a small commercial firm, when he wasn’t flying jockeys between race courses, he was ferrying wealthy businessmen and their over-indulged families between their summer playgrounds and the city. It was hardly the adrenalin rush he had experienced in his twenty years flying RAF Tornadoes, but it had its dramas. When the phone rang at unexpected times, she would often find herself worrying that it was a call to say his Cessna had failed to arrive at some obscure airfield, that he was missing.

  ‘You won’t be able to come to dinner then?’

  ‘I didn’t know I was invited.’

  ‘I’m picking Ross up from university today. He’s staying for a couple of weeks. I thought you might start getting to know each other.’

  Jenny waited for his excuse, expecting him to avoid anything that sounded like a dangerous step on the road to commitment.

  He surprised her. ‘Sounds good to me. Is eight all right?’

  ‘Great.’ She hesitated. ‘And you’ll stay over?’

  ‘With your son there?’

  ‘He won’t mind.’ She added, ‘It’s been ages.’

  ‘Nearly two weeks.’

  He’d been counting. She was touched.

  Jenny had arranged to collect Ross from the Goldsmiths student halls at four, and planned to spend the early afternoon shopping for clothes in Covent Garden, a luxury so rare and indulgent, the prospect felt almost sinful. She told herself she would be looking for a suit to replace the tired two-piece she wore to court, but as she headed out onto the motorway, she was already putting together the outfit she would surprise Michael with: she pictured herself slim, stylish and elegant, looking ten years younger. Absorbed in the fantasy, she didn’t notice the miles passing. Alison’s several phone calls barely registered as she enjoyed the heady rush of a day unchained from the office. Freedom. As she approached Heathrow the phone rang again. She glanced at the caller display, expecting another query from Alison designed to make her feel guilty for deserting her post, but it was a number her phone didn’t recognize.

  ‘Hello. Jenny Cooper.’

  ‘Are you the woman who left a message this morning?’ The man spoke with a thick, deep South African accent.

  ‘I’m the Severn Vale District Coroner. Who am I speaking to?’

  ‘Harry Thorn. I worked with Adam Jordan.’

  ‘Ah yes. I did leave a message.’ She proceeded delicately. ‘I presume you’ve heard what’s happened to him.’

  ‘Of course. What do you want from me?’

  ‘I spoke with Mrs Jordan yesterday,’ Jenny said tactfully. ‘I’ll be conducting an inquest into her husband’s death. When you’re able, I was hoping to meet with you – to get a picture of what he’d been doing recently, his state of mind, whether anything had been troubling him. Might tomorrow suit you?’

  Thorn said, ‘I’ve no fucking clue why he jumped off a bridge, if that’s what you’re fishing for.’

  ‘I appreciate now’s not the time.’

  Thorn gave a low grunt. ‘Your office said you’re in London today. Why don’t we get it over with?’

  ‘If you’re sure.’ Jenny felt her day darken. ‘Where will I find you?’

  ‘15a Quentin Mews, off Portobello Road.’

  Jenny’s hazy memory of Portobello Road was of the Saturday antiques market, the narrow street crammed with stalls selling Victorian prints, cracked china and the kind of old trinkets that used to fill her grandmother’s house. But on a weekday it was almost deserted. All that remained of the market was a handful of fruit-and-vegetable stalls.

  Quentin Mews was off the poorer, dirtier end of the street within yards of the Westway, the thundering flyover that carried four lanes of traffic between White City and Marylebone. Picking her way over its rough cobbles in her narrow heels, Jenny realized that the outward scruffiness was an illusion. There were no electric gates guarding the mews entrance or neatly clipped bay trees either side of the front doors, but money, even the kind that tries to hide itself, has a smell, and it leached out of the artfully soot-stained bricks.

  15a was at the far end of the cul-de-sac, the house furthest from the street. She rang, and waited for some time for Harry Thorn to come to the door. Closer to fifty than forty, he stood barefoot in jeans and a crumpled linen shirt; his thick grey stubble was longer than the hair on his broad, sunburned scalp. He was tall, with square shoulders that suggested he had once been well built, but his muscles had withered onto a bony frame, and his yellowing eyes were those of a man whose lifetime of hard living was fast catching up with him.

  ‘Jenny, is it?’

  She nodded. ‘You’re Mr Thorn?’

  ‘Harry.’

  He turned and led the way through the short hallway into a compact sitting room with French windows that opened onto a tiny courtyard barely big enough to hold a table and two chairs. A set of louvred doors divided the room from a galley kitchen. Thorn had been smoking marijuana; Jenny could smell it on his clothes, as distinctive as leaves on an autumn bonfire. He pressed a heavily veined hand to his forehead as he surveyed the furniture: a low-slung sofa and several African floor cushions, none of it appropriate for conducting a formal discussion.

  ‘Guess we’d better sit outside.’

  Jenny heard footsteps from the floor above, then music: a slow heavy bass rhythm that pulsed through the whole house.

  ‘Will you turn that damn thing off, Gabra,’ Thorn yelled. ‘I’ve got a meeting here.’

  ‘Fuck you, Harry,’ a relaxed female voice called back.

  He waited, looking thunderous. When she had made her point, the woman upstairs lowered the volume slightly.

  Thorn shook his head. ‘Sorry about her. She can be a pain in the ass.’

  Jenny said nothing and followed him outside, where they sat on iron chairs at a marble-topped table.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Thorn took a soft leather pouch from his shirt pocket and proceeded to roll a joint.

  Jenny glanced away, thinking her time would have been better spent shopping after all.

  ‘What can I tell you?’ he said.

  ‘Were you close to Adam Jordan?’

  ‘Shared a tent with him for the last year, and most of the two years before that.’ He twisted one end of the cigarette paper and put the other to his mouth. Jenny noticed the tremor in his fingers as he struck a match.

  ‘Sounds like you were somewhere pretty remote.’

  ‘South Sudan. I guess that’s about as far off the trail as you can get outside of the Sahara.’

  ‘Putting in irrigation, I hear.’

  ‘No,’ he corrected her. ‘We subsidize the kit, show them how to dig the trenches, hook it all up to a well. They do the work.’

  ‘Helping them to help themselves.’

  ‘Only way.’ He dragged the fumes into his lungs and held on to them, the tight lines on his forehead starting to slacken as the dope seeped into his blood.

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘Like a dream – until some bastard comes along and rips it all out again.’

  ‘Who would do that?’

  ‘That’s Africa. Tribal factions slitting each other’s throats since the dawn of time. It’s like a bad habit.’

  Jenny felt his anger buffeting against her like a hot wind. She waited until she sensed the flare of emotion had burned itself out.

  ‘Something must keep people like you and Adam Jordan going back.’

  ‘You get to save a few, sometimes even a whole crowd. It’s a numbers game: life in your average East African village is plentiful and cheap.’ He leaned back in his chair and slowly blew smoke towards the sky like an offering. ‘
If you’re keeping more above ground than beneath, you’re ahead.’

  Jenny said, ‘Did Adam enjoy his work?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. He’d talk irrigation like a born-again talks Jesus. He was going to help them bypass all the industrial crap we’ve been through the last two hundred years and lead them straight to eco-paradise. I’m not making fun of the guy – it’s what you need out in the field to keep going: a vision.’ His eye was caught by something inside the house. ‘Shit.’

  Jenny glanced round and saw a tall, slender woman strolling naked across the sitting room. She was beautiful and graceful, her skin the colour of oiled ebony.

  ‘Will you put some clothes on, Gabra, for Christ’s sake,’ Thorn shouted.

  Ignoring him, she continued into the kitchen. Her voice travelled through the open window. ‘You two want something to eat? I’m making eggs.’

  ‘I want you to get fucking dressed.’

  Jenny shrugged, as if to say she had no problem with Gabra going naked if that’s how she liked it.

  ‘I must be getting old,’ Thorn said. The tension lines reappeared on his face. He sucked hard on the joint. ‘What else?’

  Jenny said, ‘Any indication as to his recent state of mind?’

  ‘He was a serious guy. Motivated. Had a Master’s degree in environmental science. The kind who’s always in a book or at his computer. Drank a little beer but never so much as you’d see any change.’

  ‘Was he happy?’

  ‘He seemed to be. We had a good project, left a village with green fields where there’d been a dust bowl. We had to quit a little early because of some local trouble, but that’s how it goes. It doesn’t get much better than that out there.’

  ‘You didn’t notice anything upset him?’

  Harry thought about it and shook his head. ‘Not in Africa. He couldn’t wait to go back. We were due in Chad next month.’

  ‘On a similar project?’

  ‘Bigger. A real game-changer – five thousand acres.’

  Jenny ran through her mental checklist of issues to cover in suspected suicides. ‘Any financial problems that you were aware of?’

  Thorn smiled. ‘Hand to mouth, like we all are. No bastard chooses this life for the money.’

  Jenny thought his answer odd. Small as it was, Thorn’s house wouldn’t have come cheap. ‘You’re sure he hadn’t got into any kind of trouble—?’

  ‘I’m the one who gets into trouble,’ he glanced towards the kitchen, ‘not Adam.’

  ‘What about his marriage?’

  ‘Karen’s a good woman.’

  Jenny detected a note of hesitancy.

  ‘Is there a “but”?’

  ‘Look, no one’s going to pretend that a man away from home most of the year is going to live like a monk, but as they go, I’d say Adam came as close as damnit.’

  ‘He had lovers?’

  ‘No, not like that.’

  ‘Then like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he screwed the odd girl, maybe he didn’t – I wasn’t watching that closely. But if he did, it was no big deal. Look, you’re asking me why this serious, good-hearted man I worked with jumped off a bridge – I have no goddamn idea.’

  ‘Was he the kind who might have carried a lot of guilt if he had done something he regretted?’

  ‘I never saw Adam get into anything he would regret. He didn’t take risks. He was a planner. No . . .’ Thorn seemed to search through his foggy memory, then shook his head. ‘If something was weighing on his mind, I’d say it went way back. Way back, before anything I could tell you about.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about his past?’

  ‘I’m not the type people confide in,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t want that shit when I’m working. Or any time,’ he added, with a glance towards Gabra.

  Jenny had already seen enough of Harry Thorn to agree with his self-assessment. She imagined his answer to most of life’s problems would be to get stoned and feel the relief of not being dirt poor and trapped in a fly-blown African village. Her gut instinct told her that Adam Jordan would have needed more than that: he was an idealist, still hoping to leave the world a better place than he had found it.

  ‘Do you want to see some pictures of the last project?’ Thorn asked.

  ‘Thank you. I’d like that.’

  He heaved himself out of his chair and disappeared inside.

  As Jenny waited, she couldn’t help sneaking a glance at Gabra. Standing at the stove frying eggs, she was as content in her body as it was possible to be. Jenny found herself momentarily entranced by the curve of her neck, the tautness of her small breasts, the sheen on her flawless skin.

  Gabra looked round and smiled out at her. Quietly, so that only the two of them could hear, she said, ‘Something you should know about Harry – he’s not as tough as he makes out.’

  Jenny said, ‘I guessed that.’

  The naked woman returned calmly to her cooking.

  When Thorn reappeared with a handful of photographs, he didn’t seem to want to talk any more. He sat in silence rolling another joint, leaving Jenny to make of them what she would. The pictures were of him and Adam in a Sudanese village in which large, family-sized huts really were made of mud and thatched with straw. In two of them Adam was surrounded by laughing, skinny children, grinning broadly. His eyes seemed to shine out at her like points of light. She noticed the villagers wore a mix of traditional dress and Western clothes; many of the adults had ceremonial scars on their foreheads. Some of the men had picks and spades; others carried hunting bows. It seemed a place in flux, caught between two worlds, like the men who had come to help them.

  Jenny said, ‘Has Karen Jordan seen these?’

  Harry Thorn shook his head. ‘Take them. And tell her I’m sorry. I truly am.’

  Jenny hardly recognized the smiling, confident young man who greeted her outside the student halls. During his two years at university Ross seemed to have gained all the confidence she associated with his father, while managing to avoid acquiring his arrogance.

  ‘Hey – you’re looking well.’ Ross leaned down and hugged her, then kissed her cheek.

  ‘Wow, I’m privileged,’ Jenny said. She couldn’t remember the last time he had been so affectionate.

  ‘It’s the end of term – I’m feeling good. Go with it.’

  That was fine with her. After six years during which she had feared their relationship had broken irretrievably, there were finally signs that the damage was being mended.

  Loading his luggage into the boot of her car, Ross said, ‘Where are all the bags? I thought you were hitting the shops.’

  ‘Change of plan.’

  ‘Working too hard?’

  ‘Don’t worry – I’m learning.’

  She smiled and won one back from him. It was warm and trusting, the smile he had given her as a little boy.

  As they pulled away and headed west through the hectic traffic, Ross said, ‘You’re sure you don’t mind putting me up? I know you’re busy.’

  ‘You can stay as long as you like – it’ll be fun. How’s the new girlfriend – Sarah?’

  ‘Not that new – six weeks. She’s fine, and her name’s Sally. She’s gone to stay with her dad in Brighton for a bit – it’s complicated.’

  ‘Aren’t all families?’

  ‘Not like hers. He left her mum for another guy.’

  ‘All right, I concede. That beats even us.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell Dad. God knows what he’d say to her.’

  Jenny felt a guilty satisfaction at the thought that for the first time since she and David had separated, Ross might be seeing her as the closer ally.

  ‘I’d like to meet her. She’s welcome to stay any time.’

  ‘Cool. She’d like that.’

  Jenny waited for his mood to dip, as it so often did when they were alone together, but against her expectations Ross remained upbeat, giving her a full unprompted rundown of his term’s activities, his spell as an intern in
a City bank and the complex love lives of his flatmates. As they made their way across St James’s Park and Hyde Park Corner towards Knightsbridge, Jenny allowed herself to believe that he was letting her back into the life he had excluded her from since the day she’d left the family home. They felt like friends again.

  London’s green western fringes were finally dissolving into the Berkshire countryside when Jenny found the courage to edge the conversation around to the subject of her own faltering love life. ‘Did I tell you I’m still seeing Michael?’

  ‘I think so,’ Ross said vaguely. ‘He’s the pilot, right?’

  ‘He used to be in the Air Force.’ She was a little hurt by his evident lack of interest. ‘I know you’ve only met him once, so I thought it might be nice if he came over this evening and said hello.’ She braced herself for a negative reaction, but again he surprised her.

  ‘Sure. No problem.’

  ‘Really? I can put him off to another day.’

  ‘What do I have to say? It’s fine.’ He touched her arm as if to reinforce the point, and Jenny couldn’t believe her luck.

  It was one of the few precious summer evenings when the air was perfectly still and warm. Waiting for Michael to arrive, Jenny and Ross sat outside at the weather-worn pine table, drinking wine and talking about his plans for the future. His tutor had suggested business school, and hinted that if he studied hard enough he might even win a scholarship. It seemed so recently that he had been a surly sixteen-year-old on the brink of throwing away his education, but having struck out on his own, he seemed to have found a passion. His innocent hunger for life was infectious.