The Discourtesy of Death

by William Brodrick

  Look into the eyes of someone you love. Turn out the light with a flick of a switch.

  Someone you love. There was no one to hand. But Michael had a loved memory of a loved place. A tiny shop two hundred yards from the shore. He’d first gone there with Jenny when she was a child … after he’d come back from Northern Ireland. A sign on the window had warned customers that the proprietor used the old imperial weights and measures. Pounds and ounces. A Union Jack had been drawn on the bottom as if it were the seal of Her Majesty. There’d been two counters inside, one for children, the other for adults. To the left, jars of sweets containing Liquorice Allsorts, sherbet lemons, wine gums and sticks of bright pink rock. To the right, carved pipes, pouches of tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and matches. In the middle, a kindly man with a wide smile, always wondering which way to go. Michael had smoked in those days. A pipe. To give age to his permanently young appearance. Jenny would drag him along the pavement, one step ahead, her mind on the large jars of many colours. Even in those days she’d held his hand very tight, as though fearful something bad might happen if she let go. They’d enter the shop, Jenny facing the tobacco, Michael facing the sweets. The kindly man, hair short, sleeves rolled up, all homely in his long brown apron, would hesitate, not knowing who’d speak first. He seemed to be teetering, his face alight with expectation.

  ‘A box of matches, please,’ Jenny would say.

  Followed by Michael: ‘And two ounces of jelly babies.’

  He’d expected crossfire … Jenny right to left, Michael left to right, but they’d tricked him. When he got used to the pattern, they’d swap it round, just to knock him off balance. Just when he was sure the child at the tobacco counter wanted matches for her father, she’d ask for bonbons, sending him the other way, like a goalkeeper wrong-footed in a penalty shoot-out.

  ‘Don’t let go, Daddy,’ she’d say, as they stepped into the street, failing to appreciate that she, now, was trapped by a choice between two directions: the security of her father’s touch or having a free hand to dip into the paper bag. Back then, the choices had been so much simpler. It hadn’t mattered if you got it wrong.

  The shop was still there. The kindly man was now a kindly old man. He stood in the doorway watching life go by. There were trestles on either side of the entrance holding crates of fruit and vegetables. The windows were clean, the frames painted white. Inside – Michael had only glanced while scouting from the other side of the road – there was only one counter. The tobacco side had gone. It was all sweets now … but still in those big jars. The shelves along the sides and the back were crammed with them. Jenny would have loved it.

  You have to be calm.

  Michael rounded the corner. The sea lay behind him, restive, advancing, withdrawing, endlessly rolling forward and sweeping back. Ahead were the lighthouse and the pub. Dwarfed and open for business stood Number Nine St George’s Green. The locals had bought their fruit and veg for lunch. The kids were now at school. The streets were empty. The old man had just stepped back inside, limping slightly, an empty crate between his hands. He was still wearing a brown apron.

  His eyes are full of surprise … you can see it, just before you kill him. It’s the look of a newborn … and you can’t hesitate. You turn out his light.

  The gun chafed against Michael’s spine. The flush of sweat on his brow had dried in the cold morning air. His heart was beating hard, hitting out at the ribs, wanting to escape and pump life into another less tortured body. Michael crossed the road, looking right and left. The old man was bending down, placing the crate beside the wall. In seconds he’d stand upright, place a hand on his back and slowly turn around – Michael had watched him, he knew the man’s routine – and Michael had to get there at the moment he turned. Moving with determination – not speed or nervous haste but with a cold purpose – he stepped onto the pavement, one hand slipping through his open overcoat and reaching behind his jacket. His fingers slid into position just as the old man looked over his shoulder. He didn’t show a hint of recognition. Just a faint glow of surprise.

  6

  ‘Does the name Peter Henderson mean anything to you?’ asked Anselm, documents in hand. ‘Philosopher. A regular on the Moral Maze. Radio 4.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘He was once billed as a new voice in search of a new morality: someone trying to find a modern classification of right and wrong that doesn’t appeal to the failed systems of the past. That’s what he said in the Radio Times, anyway.’

  ‘I like him already.’

  ‘You’re not alone.’ Anselm held up a photograph taken from a university website. ‘He’s based at University Campus Suffolk where he holds a Chair in Contemporary Ethics. Prior to that he was at Cambridge. Speaks with a refined vocabulary that often hides the unsettling implications of his argument.’

  And when it didn’t, he wouldn’t flinch from politely desecrating people’s sensibilities. Anselm had once heard him outline the circumstances in which the torture of children may well be a moral obligation. He’d brought the same challenging candour to a number of other questions … political assassination, animal rights, global warming, terrorism …

  ‘He’s a sort of Jack Bauer of the Academy,’ postulated Anselm. ‘Only he doesn’t shout and shoot. He just quietly thinks. But the conventionally minded are scared rigid of what he might say next.’

  ‘Jack Bauer? You’ve seen 24? In a monastery?’

  ‘No. Someone told me about him.’

  Anselm walked to a cork noticeboard on the wall and pinned up the photograph. Stepping back, he appraised the man’s features: a high, rounded forehead; black, unruly hair; dark stubble; hungry eyes; a confident smile.

  ‘I recognise the face,’ said Mitch. ‘I don’t remember why.’

  ‘Maybe because he ended up on the front page for his behaviour rather than his ideas.’

  Anselm remained standing. He’d mastered his brief. The facts were straightforward.

  ‘A few months back he was in the BBC studio in Manchester for a recording of the Moral Maze. One of the other panellists quipped that making an appeal to Peter Henderson’s conscience was rather like searching for Atlantis. It might not exist. Ordinarily, the soft-voiced philosopher would have hit back with some cleverness. But not this time. He stormed out of the studio.’

  Fate or chance – explained Anselm, authoritatively – has a way of goading the man who’s ready to fall. Gives him an otherwise innocent nudge to push him over the edge. It can be anything … a pencil that snaps on touching the paper … a diligent traffic warden … a tube of toothpaste without a cap. In Peter Henderson’s case, a few of them lined up to bring him crashing down, acting in concert with a sort of malicious delight.

  ‘He was striding towards the station when his passage was blocked by council workmen replacing some brick paving outside a baker’s shop. He couldn’t get round immediately because the remaining section of pavement was occupied by a pushchair and a young mother who’d dropped her shopping bag, spilling the contents everywhere. On the road itself an articulated vehicle was making a delivery. So he had to wait. According to one of the lads with a shovel, Peter Henderson swore violently and then his eye latched onto a boy who was watching him from inside the baker’s. Two customers testified that a staring contest ensued with Peter Henderson glaring through the window in an aggressive and threatening manner. If only the HGV had pulled away at that moment. If only the young mother had parked her pushchair just a little to one side. Peter Henderson would have walked to the station and taken the next train to London. As it is, he snapped and was taken, in due course, to the Crown Court.’

  Anselm came over to the table and picked up a newspaper report.

  ‘He was brought before Her Honour Judge Moreland. A friend of mine, as it happens. Recently appointed.’

  Anselm read out her judgement in the kind of voice he might have used if he’d ever been elevated to the bench – slow, ponderous and vaguely sad:

  You are a wel
l-known figure. You stand high in the public eye. You have – by fortune, talent and ambition – assumed a position of considerable importance in the civic life of this country. Even an eleven-year-old boy recognised your face. You have made moral problems and their analysis your special territory. You have not flinched to make stirring judgements about the actions of politicians and churchmen. You have sentenced many to ignominy, arguing that example is the touchstone of integrity. For this reason your own conduct falls under special scrutiny. Everyone understands the frustration caused by street works, spilled shopping and snagged traffic. We can all imagine that being recognised in the street might not be a welcome adjunct to celebrity. Everyone in this courtroom cannot but fail to have profound sympathy for your personal circumstances. But your response to these trials was nothing short of astonishing. You picked up a brick. You hurled it through a window at a child who dared to face you down. You broke his jaw and collar bone. You might have killed him. You traumatised all those present. You damaged property. You have, in passing, shattered your reputation.

  Mitch thought for a moment while Anselm placed the report back on the table. ‘Is this the new right and wrong?’

  ‘I doubt it. He asked for no mercy.’

  ‘Bloody right. Didn’t deserve any.’

  ‘He did, actually. But to understand why, you have to go back to the days when he’d just begun to make a name for himself. Before he’d found notoriety.’

  Anselm picked up another photograph, copied from a newspaper article.

  ‘This is Jennifer,’ he said, pinning the picture beside that of her husband.

  She had that alarming vulnerability captured by Degas. The same athleticism. A certain tiredness linked to fabulous energy. Her facial bones were clean cut, her eye sockets deep and dark. Anyone sitting in the back row couldn’t fail to notice her.

  ‘Started out as a dancer with the Royal Ballet but packed it all in just after she’d won her place. A career cut short. According to some, a Fonteyn in the making.’

  ‘Why stop?’

  ‘Motherhood. Shortly after meeting Peter she had a boy, Timothy. Never performed with the company again. Stayed at home looking after her son while Peter’s star rose higher in the firmament. School runs and the like until, ten years later, she opened a dancing school in Sudbury – nothing high powered, just something for the kids to do after school and at the weekends, but serious enough to pull in a brass band for a summer show. We’ll never know Jennifer’s true ambitions because things didn’t work out as planned. She put herself on the programme to give the mums and dads an idea of where the hard work might lead if Jack and Jill ever took dancing seriously.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Anselm became ponderous. ‘It had been a long time since Jennifer had captivated an audience. Maybe she got carried away. Maybe she’d failed to measure her steps. Whatever the reason, she fell off the stage and broke her back.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was paralysed from the chest down.’

  Mitch didn’t respond, but the control revealed something deep and compassionate, the knowledge of pain that brings everyone together when a tragedy occurs.

  ‘Aged twenty-nine,’ said Anselm, as if Mitch had asked a question.

  Peter – by now a celebrity – abandoned his media commitments and took an open-ended sabbatical from teaching. He became her nurse, on hand by day and night.

  ‘I imagine both of them thought that things wouldn’t get any worse,’ surmised Anselm.

  ‘They couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, they could and they did. After eighteen months or so, Jennifer was diagnosed with bowel cancer.’

  ‘Cancer?’

  ‘Advanced and terminal. Five months later, she died at home … on her birthday.’

  Mitch grimaced. ‘So that’s why he snapped.’

  ‘So it seems, though – curiously – not straight away. He returned to the classroom and the studio and then, two years later and out of the blue, he almost killed a boy who wouldn’t look in the other direction.’

  Her Honour Judge Moreland had ordered the preparation of pre-sentence reports from a psychologist, a doctor and a social worker. All of them maintained that the only explanation for the defendant’s behaviour was the tragedy that had engulfed both him and his family. But Peter Henderson himself had refused to endorse the conclusion. He’d refused to cooperate with the court’s attempt to find a meaning for his outburst of violence, maintaining a studied silence on all questions of importance. He’d simply wanted to be sentenced for what he’d done without reference to any mitigating factors.

  ‘His most vocal supporter was Emma Goodwin, Jennifer’s mother,’ said Anselm, selecting a cutting from a veterinary surgeon’s website. ‘She spoke to the experts and eventually to the court. She appeared frequently on the television, in the papers and on the radio. Sympathetic to the victim, she nonetheless stressed the extraordinary pressures to which Peter had been subjected, emphasising his contribution to the thinking life of the country, his dedication to her daughter and his devotion to their only child.’

  Having added the portrait to the others on the noticeboard, Anselm paused to consider the picture. She had a sympathetic face, with the fine bones of her daughter. She had the same smooth forehead, too, and the deep-set eyes. Being imaginative, Anselm saw not an animal doctor but a choreographer, one of those artists of the human body who know how to move people around; how to get them into position, making it look completely natural. She’d been adroit with the press and the court. No doubt she’d nudged others around, too. Cutting short this interesting but irrelevant meditation, he turned to Mitch and said:

  ‘A quieter presence was Emma’s husband and Jennifer’s father, Michael Goodwin. Couldn’t find a decent photograph anywhere. He’s always got his head down. A broken soul, I suspect. Grief’s like that. Hits people in very different ways. Emma became energetic whereas Michael sank deep into sadness. The most he could do was hold his wife’s hand while she spoke for Peter and pleaded for mercy.’

  Mitch made another grimace. ‘But he nearly killed a child.’

  ‘Judge Moreland’s observation before she sent him to prison.’

  The presentation over, Anselm sat down and helped himself to cold coffee. But then, being a man who liked to put things in perspective, he said, ‘There was a memorial service for Jennifer in Polstead, a pretty village near Ipswich. Do you know it? Famous for its cherries … Polstead Blacks.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Famous, too, for the Red Barn Murder of eighteen twenty-seven.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  Anselm gave the soft tut of a disappointed local historian. ‘A young girl eloped with her tomcat boyfriend,’ he explained, patiently. ‘Or so it was thought. But the stepmother – another tenacious woman; another Emma Goodwin – dreamed that the girl had been killed and buried in a grain storage bin at the rear of a barn. So the dad – a quiet molecatcher – took his spade and went to have a look, and sure enough, he found his daughter’s body. The authorities tracked down the missing lover, tried him and hung him from the gallows in Bury St Edmunds. Used his skin to bind the court proceedings. Scalped him, too, and left his body to a dissecting class from Cambridge. All of which is by the by, save to say that a murder can be solved even when there’s not a trace of evidence on the table. All it takes is someone who can dream about the truth.’

  Mitch watched Anselm expectantly, glancing occasionally at the photographs on the board; the close family bound by fidelity and tragedy.

  ‘And this is the case you want to solve?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there’s no crime. It’s just a really sad story.’

  ‘That’s what everyone thinks,’ agreed Anselm. ‘But then, thanks to you, someone wrote a letter on Jennifer’s behalf, marked for my attention. Gives her side of the story. Changes your understanding of why a man might throw a brick through a window.’

  7

  The Spinning
Mule had once been the comfortable residence of a wool merchant. He’d run a smallish operation transporting rolled fleeces to chosen weavers along the Lark. Hence the landing stage at the end of his garden. Following the decline of textile manufacturing, the house had passed through several hands until a couple with vision and a passion for real ale had stumped up a deposit to buy the place. They’d sold the rights over the river to Mitch, along with the mooring and an access route, providing their neighbour with a glorious location to dock his floating home. The small talk over, Mitch read the letter sent to Larkwood’s Prior.

  ‘You take this seriously?’ he said, on finishing.

  ‘I do.’

  In the absence of mischief and malice, Anselm didn’t think an allegation of murder could be easily ignored.

  ‘Peter Henderson will be released next week. Between now and then I hope to find out if the accusation is anything more than fanciful.’

  Mitch folded up the letter, listening carefully while Anselm continued his exposition. The view of the media and the courts was that Peter Henderson enjoyed the unqualified support of his dead wife’s family. Not one of them had ever raised a word against him. When he fell to be sentenced, no friend or neighbour seized the opportunity to yell from the gallery or feed a line to the press. But someone had now broken rank.

  ‘They belong to the inner circle,’ said Anselm. ‘They have the confidence to speak in Jennifer’s name. They knew her well enough to say that she had no appreciation of the danger to which she was exposed. They know sufficient, with hindsight, to recognise that the risk to her life was plain to be seen. And now they’re telling themselves that they should have seen it coming; that they should have done something to protect her. The implication is that Peter Henderson murdered his wife.’