A Certain Justice

by P. D. James

  And then they heard Ashe’s voice: “You heard what she said. She’s staying here.”

  He had come up silently. Now he moved towards them out of the dimness of the cottage into the sunlight and she saw in his hand the glitter of a knife.

  After that it was a confusion of horror. Coley made a move to shield her, then rushed at Ashe. But the reaction was a second too late. Ashe’s hand jerked forward and the knife sank into Coley’s stomach. Wild-eyed, rooted with horror, Octavia heard his cry, a low shuddering cry between a grunt and a moan. Then, as she watched, the red stain spread over his vest and he sank almost gracefully to his knees and keeled over. Ashe bent over him and drew the knife across his throat. She saw the great rush of blood and it seemed to her that the dark eyes, still with that look of pleading, gazed into hers and slowly dulled as his life drained away into the sandy earth.

  She couldn’t scream. Something had happened to her throat. Instead she heard a high-pitched wailing and knew that it was her voice. She stumbled into the cottage and threw herself down on her sleeping-bag, twisting and turning, grasping and tearing at the cotton. She couldn’t breathe. She gave great wrenching sobs that tore at her chest but still there was no air. Then, exhausted by the paroxysm, she lay panting and sobbing. She heard his voice and knew that he stood above her.

  “It’s his fault. He shouldn’t have come. He should have left me alone. Come and help me shift him. He’s heavier than I thought.”

  “No, no. I can’t. I won’t,” she gasped.

  She heard him moving about the room. Turning her head, she could see that he was collecting some of the tins.

  He said: “I’ll need these to weigh him down. I’m taking the heaviest. I’ll get him away from here, down the path into the reeds. I’ll fetch his clothes later. Don’t worry. We’ll have enough food to see us through.”

  Now he was lugging the body through the cottage. She shut her eyes, but she could hear every gasp of his harshly drawn breath, the drag of the corpse. And then she found enough strength for action. She scrambled to her feet, ran to the water and waded in. But he was too quick for her. Before she could recover from that first stinging cold on her legs, his arm was out to jerk her back. She had no strength to resist as he pulled her out on to the bank, dragging her back into the cottage through Coley’s blood. He carried her, half fainting, and propped her against the wall, then took off his belt and, twisting her arms behind her, bound them tightly. He bent over Coley’s body and removed his jacket belt, then came over and fastened her ankles.

  In a voice which was curiously gentle, almost sad, he said: “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Octavia was crying now, crying like a child. She could hear his laboured breathing as he dragged the body through the cottage and out towards the path between the reeds. Then there was silence.

  She thought: He’ll come back and kill me. I tried to run away. He won’t forgive that. I can’t appeal to his pity or his love. There isn’t any love. There never has been.

  He had bound her left wrist tightly over the right but she still had movement in her fingers. Now, still sobbing, she began to work the little and third fingers of the right hand round the ring and at last got sufficient purchase to slide it off. It was strange that the falling of so small an object should release such a flood of relief. She had freed herself from more than a ring.

  Fear was like a pain. It swept over her, receded into a few minutes of blessed peace, then returned stronger and more terrible than before. She tried to think, to plan, to scheme. Could she persuade him that running away had been instinctive, that she had never meant to leave him, that she loved him and would never betray him? But she knew that it was hopeless. What she had seen had killed her love for ever. She had been living in a world of fantasy and delusion. This was reality. It would be impossible to pretend, and he knew it.

  She thought, I won’t even be able to die bravely. I’ll scream and plead but it will make no difference. He’ll kill me like he did Coley. He’ll push my body out among the reeds like his and no one will ever find us. I’ll lie there until I’m bloated and stinking and no one will come, no one will care. I won’t exist any more. I never have existed, not really. That’s why he could deceive me.

  From time to time she sank into a brief unconsciousness. Then she heard him returning. He was standing over her, looking down, not speaking.

  She said: “Please let me lie under the sleeping-bag. I’m so cold.”

  Still he didn’t reply, but he lifted her in his arms, set her down by the empty grate and pulled the sleeping-bag over her. Then he left her again. She thought: He can’t bear to be here with me. Or is he deciding what to do, whether to kill me or let me live?

  She tried to pray, but the words learnt at the convent came out in a meaningless jumble. But she did pray for Coley. “Eternal rest grant him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.” That sounded right. But Coley hadn’t wanted eternal rest. Coley had wanted life. She wanted life.

  She didn’t know how long she had lain there. The hours passed. Darkness fell and Ashe returned. He came quietly and her eyes were closed, but she knew he was there with her. He lit three candles and then the stove, made coffee and heated some beans. He came over to her, propped her upright and fed them into her mouth bean by bean. She tried to say that she wasn’t hungry, but she swallowed them. Perhaps if she let him feed her he would feel some pity. But still he didn’t speak. When the candles burned out he got into his own sleeping-bag and soon afterwards she heard his regular breathing. For the first hour he turned restlessly, muttering, and once he cried out aloud. From time to time in the hours of that seemingly endless night she would drop into a fitful sleep. But then the cold and the pain in her arms would waken her and she would lie quietly sobbing. She was eight years old again, lying in that bed in her first boarding school, crying for her mother. The sobbing was curiously comforting.

  She was woken by the first light. She was conscious first of the terrible cold, the icy compress of her wet trousers, of the pain in her strained arms. She saw that he was already up. He lit one candle, but it was only when he bent over that momentarily she saw his face. It was the same face, stern and resolute, the face she thought she had loved. Perhaps it was the softness of the candlelight that for a second gave it a look of terrible sadness. Still he didn’t speak.

  Her own voice came out in a plea between a sob and a gibber. “Please light the fire, Ashe. Please. I’m so cold.”

  He didn’t reply. Instead, he lit another candle, then a third, then sat with his back against the wall looking into the flames. The minutes passed.

  She said again, “Please Ashe. I’m so cold,” and heard the tears in her voice.

  Then he moved. She watched as he went to the shelf and began tearing the labels from the tins, crunching them in his hands. He laid them in the grate. Next he went outside. She could hear him moving about among the bushes, and within minutes he was back with an armful of twigs, dried leaves and larger pieces of bough. He went over to what had been the window and tore at the rotting wood of the lintel. A spar of wood cracked and came apart in his hands. And then he moved across to the fireplace and began building his fire methodically, with loving care, as he must have done when he first came here with Coley. He placed the smallest twigs round the paper, then built up a pyramid with the bark and stouter pieces of dead bough. Finally he lit a match and the paper flamed and caught at the twigs. Smoke billowed into the room, filling it with its sweet autumnal smell, then rose up the chimney as if it was a living thing and had found the way out. The whole room was full of the crackle and hiss of burning wood. He lodged the piece of window lintel across the grate and that too caught fire. The glorious warmth came out to her like the promise of life and painfully she edged her way towards it and felt its benison on her cheeks.

  Ashe went across to the window and again tore at the lintel, then he returned to the fire and crouched there, carefully tending it, as if, she thought, it were a cere
monial or sacred flame. Some of the wood was damp. Her eyes smarted with the smoke. But the fire strengthened, the little room became warm. She lay silently weeping with relief. She was safe now. He had lit the fire for her. Surely that meant he didn’t mean to kill her? She lost account of time, lying there with the fire on her face as, outside, the wind gusted and the fitful autumnal sun laid swaths of light over the stone floor.

  And then she heard it, faint at first and then approaching in a rattle until it circled overhead, seeming to shake the cottage. Hovering above them was a helicopter.

  8

  He heard them coming before she did. He came over and lifted her to her feet. Standing behind her he commanded: “Hop to the door.”

  She tried but couldn’t move. The warmth of the fire had yet to reach her feet and the strap had made them numb. She sagged against him, every muscle drained of strength. With the knife in his right hand, he grasped her body with his left and lifted her before him out of the cottage into the bright morning air.

  And then she both heard and saw. She was too confused to count, but there were so many of them: large men in waders; men in thick jackets and woollen caps; a tall man, hatless, his dark hair stirred by the breeze; and a woman. Those two looked different from how she remembered but she recognized them, Commander Dalgliesh and Inspector Miskin. There they waited, a little distanced from each other, as if each had decided exactly where he should stand, and looked across at Ashe. He jerked her closer to his body, holding her by the belt round her wrists. She could feel against her back the pounding of his heart. She was beyond either terror or relief. What was happening was between Ashe and those watching eyes, those silent waiting figures. She had no part in it. She felt the cold blade of the knife pressing against her chin. She shut her eyes. And then she heard a male voice—surely Dalgliesh’s?—clear and commanding.

  “Throw down the knife, Ashe. Enough is enough. This isn’t going to help you.”

  Ashe’s voice was soft in her ear. It was the gentle voice which he used so rarely but which she had loved.

  “Don’t be frightened. I’ll be quick and it won’t hurt.”

  As if he had caught the words, Dalgliesh called out: “All right, Ashe, what is it you want?”

  His reply was a great cry of defiance. “Nothing that you can give.”

  She opened her eyes as if she needed to see, for the last time, the brightness of the day. She felt an instant of terror beyond belief, the coldness of the steel, a searing pain. And then the world exploded around her in a great crack of sound, the cottage, the reed beds, the bloodstained earth disintegrating in a shrieking of wildly beating wings. With the report echoing in her ears she fell forward with Ashe’s body crushing her own, and felt across the back of her neck the warm pulsating stream of his blood.

  And now the air was filled with masculine voices. Hands lifted the weight of his body from her. She could breathe again. A woman’s face was close to hers, a woman’s voice was in her ear. “It’s all right, Octavia. It’s all right. It’s over now.”

  Someone was pressing a pad against her throat. Someone was saying, “You’re going to be fine.” And now they were lifting her onto a stretcher and she was being covered with a blanket and strapped down. She was dimly aware that there was a small boat. She could hear sharply spoken words of command and warning and felt the boat rocking beneath her as they loaded the stretcher. And now she was being carried, gently swaying, between the reeds. Above her, their trembling heads made a restlessly changing pattern of green, but she could glimpse through them the scudding clouds and the clear blue of the sky.

  9

  It was three days later. Dalgliesh was reading at his desk as Kate came in. He half-rose as she entered, which always disconcerted her. She stood in front of the desk as if she had been summoned.

  She said: “I’ve had a message from the hospital, sir. It’s Octavia. She wants to see me. She says not as a police officer.”

  “Kate, your only relationship with her is as a police officer.”

  She thought: Yes, I know all that. I know the policy. We were taught it in preliminary training school. “You aren’t a priest, a psychiatrist or a social worker—particularly the last. Don’t get emotionally involved.” She thought, too: If Piers can speak his mind, so can I. She said: “Sir, I’ve heard you speak to people, innocent people who’ve been caught up in murder. I’ve heard you say things that helped, that they needed to hear. You weren’t speaking as a police officer then.”

  She nearly said, but stopped herself in time, “You did it once with me,” and there came into her mind a vivid image of that moment after her grandmother’s death in which, sobbing wildly, she had buried her head against his jacket, smearing it with her bloody hands, and he had stood there holding her in his strong clasp among the shouting voices, the commands, the sounds of scuffling. But that was in the past.

  Now he said, and she thought she detected a coldness in his voice: “Saying the comforting word that they want to hear is easy. It’s the continuing commitment that’s difficult, and that’s what we can’t give.”

  Kate wanted to say, “But would you be able to give it even if we could?” and knew that that was a question even Piers wouldn’t have had the courage to ask. Instead she said: “I’ll remember, sir.”

  She was at the door when, on impulse, she turned back. She had to know. Aware that her voice was harsh, she asked: “Why did you tell Piers to shoot?”

  “Instead of you?” He looked at her with dark unsmiling eyes. “Come, Kate, are you really telling me that you wanted to kill a man?”

  “Not that. But I thought I could have stopped him without killing him, sir.”

  “Not from where you were placed, not with that line of fire. It was difficult enough for Piers. It was a remarkable shot.”

  “But you’re not forbidding me to see Octavia?”

  “No, Kate, I’m not forbidding you.”

  The hospital to which Octavia had been transferred from the emergency department at Ipswich was one of London’s newest and looked as if it had originally been intended as a hotel. In the immense entrance hall a silver-barked tree, looking artificial in its bright gleaming greenness, spread wide branches towards the roof of the atrium. There was a flower-and-fruit stall, a newsagent’s shop and a large café in which the customers, who looked to Kate’s eyes neither particularly anxious nor ill, were chatting over their coffee and sandwiches. The two young women presiding over the reception desk would have looked at home behind the reception desk of the Ritz.

  Kate walked past them. She knew the name of the ward she needed and had confidence in following the direction signs. She was borne upwards with other visitors and staff on escalators each side of the wide lifts. Suddenly she was aware for the first time of the distinctive antiseptic hospital smell. She had never been admitted to hospital but she had kept watch at too many bedsides—suspects and victims waiting to be questioned, prisoners receiving treatment—to feel intimidated or ill at ease. Even the ward complex was familiar: the combined air of quietly purposeful activity and meek acquiescence, the gentle rattling of bed curtains, the mysterious rituals carried on behind them. Octavia was in a small private room at the end of the ward complex, and the staff was meticulous in checking Kate’s identity before she was admitted.

  The story had, of course, broken. Even the efforts of the Met’s public-relations branch hadn’t been able to prevent the press from sensationalizing the drama. “Police Shoot Suspect Dead” was the kind of publicity the police could always do without. And the story had broken at a bad time. There had been no public scandal, no fresh gossip about the Royal Family to divert the press’s attention from the hunt and its sequel. And there had been no arrest for Venetia Aldridge’s murder. Until that case was solved or forgotten Octavia would always be partly in the public eye. Kate knew that the Reverend Mother of the convent Octavia had once attended had written to offer her hospitality as soon as the inquest into Ashe’s death was over. It seemed a
sensible solution, if Octavia would accept. In the convent she would at least be safe from the more rapacious journalists.

  Her small room was a bower of flowers, the side-locker, the window-sill and an over-bed table crowded with them. There was even a spectacular bouquet in a large vase in a corner on the floor. A line of greetings cards slung on a long cord adorned the wall opposite the bed. Octavia was watching television but switched it off with the remote control as Kate came in. She was sitting up in bed and looked as fragile and vulnerable as a sick child. The bandage round her throat had been replaced by a dressing fixed with plaster.

  Kate pulled forward a chair and sat beside the bed. There was a moment’s silence, then Octavia said: “Thanks for coming. I thought they might have stopped you.”

  “No, they didn’t do that. How are you feeling?”

  “Better. They’re sending me out tomorrow. It should be today but they want me to see a counsellor. Do I have to?”

  “Not if you don’t want to. Sometimes it’s helpful. I suppose it depends on who you get.”

  “Well, I won’t get anyone who knows about murder. I won’t get someone who’s watched their lover being killed. If they haven’t, I don’t see what use they’d be.”

  “That’s what I’ve always felt, but we could be wrong. It’s your choice.”

  There was a silence. Octavia said: “Will that detective, Inspector Tarrant, get into trouble for shooting Ashe?”

  “I don’t think so. There has to be an inquiry, but he was obeying orders. I think it will be all right.”

  “For him. It wasn’t all right for Ashe.”

  Kate said gently: “Perhaps it was. He wouldn’t have known anything about it. And the future was terrible for him, long long years in prison. Could he have stood that? Would he have wanted that in exchange for life?”

  “He didn’t get the choice, did he? And he wouldn’t have killed me.”