Six Feet Under

by Dorothy Simpson

  With nothing to do but think.

  And this, he discovered, he was reluctant to do.

  Why?

  Cautiously, like someone gently testing an aching tooth with the tip of his tongue, he groped his way back into his previous train of thought.

  He had been thinking about Mrs Birch.

  And about Joy Ingram.

  And Henry Selby.

  And old Miss Cox.

  And Lineham’s mother.

  And there it was again, the same sense of pressure within his brain, the same need to get up and move about, as if his body were telling him, run, run like hell.

  He stayed where he was, putting his head down between his hands and pressing his fingers to his temples.

  What was the matter with him?

  And then, suddenly, he knew. The moment of revelation was sudden, blinding and exquisitely painful. He closed his eyes as if to blot it out, but of course the knowledge remained, once perceived never again to be denied, ignored or hidden away from his consciousness.

  Just as all these people had in one way or another crippled their relationship with those they would claim to love the most, so was he crippling his relationship with Joan. By seeking to hold her he would most surely lose her.

  He found that he was staring fixedly at the wall, sitting rigidly upright with hands clenched into tight fists. He stayed that way for a minute or so longer, braced against further pain. Then, slowly, he began to relax, to hold this revolutionary new idea up for scrutiny.

  He was exaggerating, he told himself. How could his relationship with Joan possibly be compared with these others? Had he not always been a faithful, appreciative husband? But, he admitted with painful honesty, that wasn’t the point. Relationships do not remain static and what might have been satisfying to them both in the past sufficed no longer. From what Joan said it was clear that her dissatisfaction had been growing for some time.

  What a fool he had been, he thought, remembering the arguments of the last few days, the widening rift between them—what a blind, selfish fool! After all, what right had he to expect that Joan should sacrifice herself to his needs, deny herself a fuller life simply because it would bring inconvenience, discomfort to his? What was the point of forcing her to remain in a role which was preventing her from developing her abilities to the full, if by so doing he would be stultifying, perhaps destroying the relationship which he had always counted one of the most precious things in his life?

  He stood up abruptly. He couldn’t wait to tell her, to apologise, to ask her forgiveness and explain the reasons for his change of heart. Upstairs in the bedroom, however, his newly-awakened guilt and contrition made him hesitate. Why wake her up, just to satisfy his own need for expiation? Quietly, stealthily, he slid into bed and, contemplating pleasurably the prospect of her delight in the morning when she heard what he had to say, composed himself at last for sleep.

  But it still wouldn’t come.

  Stimulated by his new insight he felt as alert as ever and returned to thinking about the case. Once again the principal characters marched across the stage, parading themselves for his inspection. One by one he contemplated them, thinking back over facts, conversations, snippets of information picked up disjointedly here and there, trying to penetrate the secret places of their hearts.

  And then there came to him an idea so monstrous, so bizarre that his eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright in bed.

  Was it possible?

  Joan stirred, mumbled and he froze, scarcely daring to breathe. His desire to talk to her had evaporated, ousted by his need to think. She settled back into sleep and, careful not to disturb her again, he lay down. Was it possible? he thought again. Could it be true?

  It was a fact that the person he had in mind had once behaved in a totally uncharacteristic manner, but surely this was not sufficient ground upon which to base a theory so outlandish, so truly extraordinary?

  He began to think back over the case in the light of this new idea and found that it had radically changed his thinking. Behaviour which at the time he had interpreted in one way he now saw could equally well be interpreted in another. It began to seem that his theory could hold water. Above all it provided him with a motive, a motive so powerful that he now understood at last why it had been essential for Carrie to be silenced.

  Yes, it all made sense at last.

  18

  “But where are we going, sir?” Lineham sounded positively plaintive, as well he might. No sooner had he arrived at the office than he had been scooped up by an impatient Thanet and whisked downstairs to the car.

  “To see an old friend of mine.”

  Thanet had awoken with a name in his mind: Harry Pack.

  “You see,” he explained to Lineham, “yesterday, after Arnold had been talking about his sneak thief, there was something nagging away at the back of my mind. You know how it is, when you just can’t put your finger on it. Anyway, this morning I realised what it was. The first time I arrived in Nettleton, with Doc Mallard, there was a crowd of onlookers at the entrance to the footpath behind Church Cottages. I had them sent packing, of course, but just as they were all drifting off I realised that I’d recognised somebody in the crowd. You know what I mean. I’d seen him, without it registering properly, and I just had this vague feeling that I’d glimpsed a familiar face. I didn’t bother to follow it up at the time. I didn’t think it could be important and anyway I wanted to get on with the job.”

  “You mean, it was someone with a record?”

  “Yes. A man called Harry Pack. He’s a petty thief, a pathetic specimen—you know the type, in and out of job after job, spends most of his time living on social security, has swarms of kids and a wife who can’t cope and is so useless he can’t help getting himself caught every time he puts a toe outside the law. I happened to be in court on another case the last time he came up. He was put on probation for what they assured him was the very last time. If he was caught again he’d be inside quicker than he could pick a lock.”

  “You think he might have been in the garden of number two, the night of the murder?”

  Thanet shrugged. “It’s a bit much to hope for, but you never know. The point is, if he was, he’d never have dared to come forward because if he did he’d have to say what he was doing there and he’d be virtually sending himself to prison.”

  “In that case, he’ll never admit it anyway, surely?”

  “I don’t know. We might just be lucky. Harry’s so dim that if he’s the pilferer he’s bound to have left some evidence lying around. Even if I hadn’t remembered seeing him that first morning, the men would have turned him up in the end, I’m sure. I checked their reports this morning and they haven’t got as far as Harry’s council estate yet. I could be wrong, of course. He might be in the clear. But I don’t think so. It all fits, somehow. It’s just typical of Harry to set out to pinch a bag of cement and find himself involved in a murder.”

  “But …” said Lineham, and stopped.

  “But what?”

  Lineham shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Oh come on, man. It’s obvious there’s something. How’s your mother, by the way?”

  “Fine, so far.”

  “Excellent. Well?”

  Lineham still hesitated. “Well, sir, I don’t quite see why all the rush. OK, Harry Pack may be the thief and he may have been there that night, but, well, it’s very much a routine enquiry, isn’t it? And you’re not usually so … keyed up as this.”

  Thanet grinned. “On the ball, aren’t you, Mike? You’re quite right, of course. Certainly I’m interested in what Harry’ll have to say, but there’s something else I’m far more interested in checking. But just in case Harry was there and did see something, well, I want to see him first. So I’m in a rush to get him over with, so to speak, because I want to get on with the other thing.”

  “I gather I don’t get to hear what that is, yet?”

  “No need to huff,” Thanet said. “No, I
’m not telling you at the moment, but not because I don’t trust you. It’s just that I’m afraid of looking a fool.”

  “You mean you think you know who the murderer is?”

  “I might. Now look, Mike, stop fishing. I’m not telling yet, and that’s that.”

  “But you’re pretty sure, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, because you’re looking so …”

  “Smug?” Thanet laughed out loud. “Well, I may be, but that’s nothing to do with the case.” He remembered with satisfaction Joan’s reaction this morning when he had told her of his change of heart.

  “I really mean it, darling,” he’d said, smiling at her. “Go ahead. With whatever you want to do. And I’ll back you all the way.”

  She had naturally been reluctant to believe him, had thought at first that once again he was only seeking to placate her, but he had managed to convince her at last and their reconciliation had been sweet.

  What a relief it was, Thanet thought now, to know that everything was all right between them once more.

  Nevertheless his euphoria was tinged with sadness. Examining his theory about the murder in the cold light of morning, he still thought that it might well hold water; but his initial elation at having solved the mystery had faded as its implications sank in.

  It was at times like this that he felt that he was perhaps not cut out to be a policeman after all. There was a softness at the core of his nature, a lack of single-mindedness, perhaps, which so often prevented him from experiencing undiluted pleasure in the apprehension of a criminal such as this one.

  Many of his colleagues, he knew, had no such qualms. For them, right and wrong were white and black; whereas for Thanet there were many shades of grey between. It was ironic that the very qualities which made him so successful in the solving of such cases as the present one—his intuitive understanding of people, his ability to grasp the subtleties of their motivation and their relationships—were the very qualities which in the end robbed him of unqualified satisfaction in his success. Having entered into the mind of the criminal, he found it all too easy to understand the crime—and even (and he found it very difficult to admit this, even to himself) to excuse it. It was only because murder was truly abhorrent to him, because he passionately believed that no one had the right to take the life of another human being, that he was able at times like this to go on functioning as an instrument of justice.

  And so it was that this morning he found himself divided. Part of him was anxious, as he had told Lineham, to forge ahead, prove his theory correct; while the other part held back, shrank from inflicting the pain which would be inevitable. There was never any doubt in his mind which part would win. He just wished that it could be a more comfortable process.

  He shifted uneasily in his seat as Lineham made the now-familiar left turn into Nettleton.

  “Pack lives in the little group of council houses on the right, half way through the village,” he said. “Number nine.”

  Number nine stood out from its neighbours by virtue of its squalor. Most of the other gardens were trim and neat, bright with daffodils and forsythia, but Harry’s was a square of balding grass and weeds, strewn from end to end with broken plastic toys, rusting tricycles, bits of rope, empty coca-cola cans and crisp and sweet packets.

  Two toddlers were scratching in the dirt with bits of stick and broken china, both of them dressed in grubby clothes much too big for them. Neither of them looked as though he had seen soap and water for some time. As Thanet and Lineham pushed open the gate they glanced up with slack faces and eyes devoid of interest or curiosity. Poor little devils, thought Thanet, smiling at them. He couldn’t help contrasting their appearance and behaviour with that of his own alert and lively children. What chance did they have, with a home like this? They reminded him unnervingly of the old people he had seen in the geriatric ward when he had visited Mrs Birch.

  Lineham had to knock several times before the door was finally opened. The woman who answered it was carrying a baby’s feeding bottle and the child’s thin, protesting wail rose from somewhere at the back of the house.

  The woman herself, though probably in her early thirties, looked a good fifteen years older, Thanet thought. Her sagging breasts, protruding stomach, blue-veined legs and lank, greasy hair proclaimed that continuous child-bearing and the inability to meet the demands of a large family had long ago destroyed her will to do anything more than survive with the minimum of effort. Families such as these were the eternal despair of the social workers.

  “’E’s still in bed,” she said, in response to Thanet’s request.

  “Could you tell him we’d like a word with him? We’ll wait outside, in the garden,” Thanet added.

  If such it could be called, he thought, as he and Lineham strolled around to the back of the house. Here, too, was the same neglect, the same detritus of living. There was, however, one interesting feature. He and Lineham exchanged significant glances at the sight of the straggling, uneven concrete path which stretched two thirds of the way beneath the washing line. It was clearly still under construction; broken planks shored up its sides.

  “Got him, I think,” said Thanet with satisfaction, making for a pile of rubbish against the fence. He stooped to pick up an empty cement sack. On its side, clearly visible, was the sign with which Arnold had been marking his property. He folded the sack up and whipped it behind his back as the rear door of the house opened and Harry appeared, bleary-eyed and unshaven. He was a small man with a whippet-like face and cringing manner.

  “Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, Harry,” Thanet said. “Just one or two little questions we wanted to ask you.”

  Pack stood aside as Thanet and Lineham approached, and led the way through a urine-smelling kitchen to a grubby living room.

  “You know why we’re here, of course,” Thanet said, declining the invitation to sit down. He smiled benignly at Harry, who darted a nervous glance at the notebook and pencil which Lineham had ostentatiously taken from his pocket.

  “Don’t know what you mean, guv’,” Harry mumbled.

  “This, Harry,” said Thanet. And, careful to keep the marked side away from Harry he produced the sack, unfolded it and displayed it like a magician who has just conjured a white rabbit out of thin air. “This.”

  Harry licked his lips, said nothing.

  “You know what it is, of course.”

  Harry glowered.

  “Precisely. It’s a sack. And we both know what was in it, don’t we? Don’t we, Harry?” he said more fiercely, when there was still no response.

  “How should I know what was bleedin’ in it?” said the little man sullenly.

  “Oh, come on,” Thanet said wearily. He gave the sack a little shake and a fine powdering of cement dust drifted down to coat the accumulated layers of dirt upon the floor. “That’s a very fine path you’ve been laying out there, isn’t it, Harry?”

  “It was the wife,” said Harry defensively. “On and on about it, she was, the mess what got carried in after she’d been hanging out the washing …”

  “Never mind the excuses, Harry. Just give us the facts. No don’t bother, or we’ll be here all day. I’ll give them to you instead. This sack contained cement and you stole it from the garden of number two, Church Cottages, didn’t you, Harry?”

  “That’s a bleedin’ lie,” Harry burst out.

  “Is it?” Thanet shook his head, clicked his tongue. “Poor old Harry, you do have bad luck, don’t you? Trust you to nick something that’s marked.” And indeed, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man. He was one of life’s natural victims. It showed, now, in the look of resigned despair in Pack’s eyes, as if he had been half expecting something like this to happen.

  “Marked?” Harry’s voice was little more than a croak.

  “I’m afraid so, yes.” Thanet turned the sack about, to display the circle with the A in it. “A for Arnold. Mr Arnold—that’s the builder
who’s renovating number two, Church Cottages—got a bit tired of someone walking off with his building materials and decided to lay a little trap.”

  “I’ve never seen that sack before,” Pack said desperately.

  “Blew over the fence, did it? What a shame. Let’s hope the magistrates believe you. What was the suspended sentence? A year? But, let’s face it, you’ll be inside a lot longer than that. Murder’s a very different matter from pinching a few tea spoons, isn’t it?”

  The unhealthy pallor of Pack’s skin became suffused with a pink which faded as quickly as it had come, leaving him ashen. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged.

  “Did you say something, Harry?” Thanet said.

  Pack tried again. “Murder?” he croaked. “What d’yer mean?”

  “Oh come on, Pack,” Thanet snapped. “Stop playing games. You bumped into her that night, didn’t you? Miss Birch? She caught you in the act, didn’t she? So you had to shut her up, make sure she didn’t talk because if she did, as we both know, don’t we, Harry, you’d have been inside before you could have said, ‘probation’. So you bashed her on the head with a handy bit of wood and then …”

  “No! No, I never,” said Harry desperately. He had been watching Thanet like a rabbit mesmerised by a stoat, but now he could contain himself no longer. “It wasn’t like that, I swear it wasn’t …”

  “Then what was it like, Harry?” Thanet said softly. “You tell us.”

  Pack looked at Thanet’s face, then at the marked sack in his hand. His thought processes were almost audible. What’s the point in not coming clean? he was asking himself. They’ve got me anyway. Then his eyes narrowed as a new idea occurred to him and he stiffened, gave Thanet a calculating look. “What if I did see something … something that could be useful to you, like …?”