The Discourtesy of Death

by William Brodrick

  ‘Completely fascinating,’ applauded Anselm, dutifully, marvelling – genuinely – at the breadth of Mitch’s imagination. ‘I’d never have been able to come out with that lot in a million years. But – no offence – we’re engaged in a serious investigation and I think we’d better stick to the notes on the page.’

  ‘I just played it as I saw it.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ affirmed Anselm. ‘But we’ve got to be practical. Frankly, it’s not that kind of case.’

  The jazzman didn’t reply. He wasn’t offended. Improvising was a hit and miss activity. You put yourself on the line and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Instead he suggested lunch. He was always hungry after a performance. Even a bad one.

  The sausages were excellent (enthused Anselm). Home-cured pork, prime cuts. At Larkwood there was a consensus that the bulging chipolatas served on feast days contained eyelids, earlobes and nasal hair collected from makeshift abattoirs throughout East-Central Europe. A ghastly image of the production process came suddenly to Anselm’s mind and, transfixed, he dropped out of the conversation, leaving Mitch to ruminate over the death of Jennifer Henderson. When Anselm came around, the jazzman was still chewing over the same theme: why murder a paralysed woman with terminal cancer? What was in it for the killer? What was in it for the doctor? All they had to do was wait. Her death was already guaranteed.

  ‘What motive could they possible share?’ wondered Mitch.

  His tone was disingenuous, as though he had a good idea, but Anselm didn’t favour him with the invitation to speculate. He said: ‘I appreciate that’s the question investigators always pose but in my experience people do very strange things for even stranger reasons. Best leave motive till last. For now let’s stick to the facts. Plain, boring facts.’

  ‘But no one’s going to give us any. You said so yourself. They’ve closed ranks.’

  Anselm had already considered the matter. Perhaps it was his monastic training, but notwithstanding the acclaim set forth in the Sunday Times, he didn’t especially rate his own importance, let alone his abilities. If Anselm was the last resort – he’d concluded – there must have been a first one.

  ‘The writer of the letter believes that Jennifer Henderson was murdered. I’m inclined to think that they are not alone. My guess is that someone did, in fact, go to the police. I refuse to believe that Jennifer Henderson died without anyone raising the alarm … even timidly. So that’s where we begin … where the timid left off.’

  10

  Anselm had first met Detective Superintendent Olivia Manning at the outset of her career, an opera buff who couldn’t understand Anselm’s obsession for jazz. They exchanged CDs in the hope of finding common ground. The venture failed and, in time, they stopped meeting for coffee or lunch. Things that might have happened didn’t happen. But not just because of their differing tastes in music. Fate or chance – those goading imps who’d vied to ruin Peter Henderson – placed them on opposing sides in a string of significant trials. Trials Olivia had cared about and lost. Trials that Anselm had won. Sitting in her office on the second floor of Suffolk Constabulary HQ in Martlesham, they’d steered away from victory and defeat; and what might have been.

  ‘So you’re a detective, now?’ she asked, wryly.

  ‘I prefer “fretful explorer into the dark places of the human conscience”.’

  After digesting that mouthful, Olivia’s expression seemed to quip, ‘Did you bring a compass?’ but she held back. After all, her old adversary had become a monk. He’d placed the search for truth above all else.

  ‘I ought to have cautioned you,’ she said, feigning regret. ‘But you know the score. Just remember anything you say from now on may, and will, be given in evidence.’

  Olivia hadn’t changed much. Her hair was still short and jet black though responsibility had turned a few strands into silver. They fell from the crown like neatly trimmed piano wire. Long black eyelashes moved slowly as she spoke. Her voice was hard without being harsh.

  ‘You’ll be listed in Yellow Pages?’

  ‘No. I’ll rely on word of mouth.’

  ‘A public service?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For those who can afford it?’

  ‘No, for those who can’t.’

  She made a shrug, but the indifference wasn’t entirely convincing. Sensing an open door and a softening of memory, Anselm spoke plainly, addressing the past and the future: ‘This time I want to do something completely different. I don’t want to shift evidence around trying to make a pretty picture. I want to get it absolutely right … even if no one likes what they see. This time the client is the situation. I’m no longer taking sides, not for any price.’

  Anselm produced the letter. He explained its background and his thinking. He made no reference to Mitch’s fantasy that the author had tasked him to uncover evidence to support a verdict of suicide; that another murder had been planned. This was not the time for laughter, even for the purpose of completeness. The real problem with this case was not a fresh, unfolding drama, but the stale and settled history. The past had been left undisturbed for years. It had become compressed and solid. Anselm’s difficulty was to find a crack on a seemingly smooth surface.

  ‘I’m imagining that back then someone approached the police. Since they’ve never made any public declaration, I’m guessing they wanted an off-the-record meeting. I’m hoping they had an irrational distrust of junior detectives and came to someone senior. Someone with the power to act behind the scenes. Someone who shut the case down because there was no evidence of any crime.’

  Olivia’s stern face slowly relaxed and, for a moment, Anselm thought they were in a wine bar near the Old Bailey. They’d just exchanged confidences, shyly: Tosca by Puccini for Lady in Satin by Billie Holiday; different takes on love and dying. Things hadn’t quite worked out. It had been difficult explaining why because a murder trial had lain between them. This time, the vibes felt promising. Olivia couldn’t quite suppress her amusement. She, too, had been warmed by the remembrance of wanting to be understood and to understand, recalling, too, the unexpected disappointment. And now, when the shape of their lives had changed beyond recognition, they were moving in the same direction.

  ‘I know who wrote the letter,’ she said, smiling.

  Had there been a wine bar in Martlesham, they might have gone there to reclaim even more of the past; to toast (perhaps) a strange and unforeseen fulfilment. Instead, Olivia made tea. She’d always had a passion for tea, keeping in her locker a private stock of mysterious blends from Asia and the Orient. Her interest bordered on the religious. She’d tasted aspects of revelation.

  ‘A couple of years back I got a phone call from a man who wanted to see me on “a matter of some delicacy”.’ Olivia used two fingers to open and close the quotation marks. ‘They didn’t want to talk on the phone so I suggested they come here for a meeting.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Nigel Goodwin.’

  The first name meant nothing to Anselm and his face said so.

  ‘Jennifer Henderson’s uncle,’ explained Olivia. ‘The brother of Michael, her father. Estranged brother, I should say. Turned out they hadn’t seen each other for years. There’d been some sort of dispute or breakdown in the past that had never been resolved. Your territory, I imagine, not mine.’

  ‘Then why come to you?’

  ‘He was also Jennifer Henderson’s godfather. She’d died three days earlier. He wanted to know if the police had the power to request a post-mortem examination notwithstanding the existence of a death certificate. Whether it could be done without the consent of the immediate family. Whether it could be done secretly.’

  ‘No, no and no,’ replied Anselm with a flourish, though not entirely sure about questions one and two. He reflected for a moment. ‘A post-mortem?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A solicitor could have answered his question.
Why come to you?’

  ‘He wanted to make an allegation without making an allegation. To report a crime without naming a crime. He was distressed. As was his wife. I got the impression she had something to say … that she wanted to interrupt and give her point of view. But she just sat there, letting her husband do the talking. He’s a man who’s used to running the show.’

  Anselm drank some Gorreana, a tea from the Azores. Olivia had branched out from the mysteries of the East; she’d looked closer to home for enlightenment. The thought came to Anselm like a welcome distraction, because in this desperate meeting between godfather and police officer lay the first and last opportunity to obtain concrete evidence of any crime before the burial of Jennifer’s body. It would have been there … faint abrasions on the neck, a chemical in the blood … however it was done, there’d have been some signs of forensic significance; and those indicators would—

  ‘You can’t act on this kind of thing,’ she said, quietly, following Anselm’s thoughts. ‘He had a suspicion … but it was based on nothing he was prepared to reveal. He wasn’t even involved with the Henderson family. He was a stranger to everything that had happened after Jennifer’s accident. I sensed he was kicking himself for not having sorted out the problem with his brother.’

  ‘As if that might have made a difference?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Anselm placed his cup on the edge of Olivia’s desk. As with Tosca, he couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Perhaps his palette lacked refinement. That’s what Olivia had managed to say when Anselm had given back the recording. He’d lost the booklet that had come with the box. Worse, a killer had been acquitted earlier that afternoon. He’d shaken Anselm’s hand afterwards and asked if he could have one of the autopsy photographs.

  ‘He should have spoken up while he had the chance,’ continued Olivia, trying to reach the brooding monk; she’d lost him, suddenly, and felt the separation. ‘If he’d said something specific before the burial, I could have responded appropriately. But he said nothing. And he’s saying nothing now. He came to me in secret and now he’s come to you in secret. But behind all this is a simple, tragic, all too human story. It often happens when people enter retirement. They look for something to do. Something meaningful. And Nigel Goodwin … he’s a distant uncle who feels he let his niece down. She was sick and he didn’t pull his weight. To make up for his absence while she was alive, he’s become her saviour in death. He’s lost his way.’

  Anselm retrieved the letter. He looked at the words without quite reading them.

  ‘This is not a case you or I can investigate.’ Olivia was leaning on her desk, hands joined, her almost black eyes levelled upon him. She was saying to Anselm what she’d probably said to Nigel Goodwin and his subdued wife. ‘There’s no evidence and no crime. Just a broken husband.’

  The killer had got off because Anselm had found a small hole in one of the prosecution’s forensic reports. An innocent slip. He’d picked away at it with smart, technical questions, making it seem far bigger than it really was. The distinguished author had been outraged and the jury had confounded righteous indignation with the bluster of incompetence. Now, remembering that great triumph, Anselm vowed to trap his man. There was no forensic evidence against this other killer, no hole in the paperwork, nothing for a scornful barrister to pick wide later on. And that was all to Anselm’s advantage.

  ‘Have you heard of the Red Barn Murder of eighteen twenty-seven?’

  Olivia blinked slowly. ‘Yes. The case began with a dream … a nightmare.’

  ‘And the evidence came afterwards,’ observed Anselm. ‘Sometimes we just have to persevere, especially when we can’t sleep easily any more.’

  Olivia walked Anselm to the main entrance. She’d given him Nigel Goodwin’s address. She’d warned him not to expect much when he got there. They stood beside each other in the sunshine, wondering where the years had gone. They spoke of judges, counsel and detectives, people they’d both known, seeking points of contact. There weren’t many, because Anselm had been out of the field for a long time. It was like they were trying too hard to be nice. Time seemed to run out and anyway, Mitch was right in front, waiting in his rusted Land Rover.

  ‘I want to make up for the cases I should have lost,’ said Anselm, abruptly.

  Olivia made another unconvincing shrug. ‘Then you’ve a lot of work to do.’ But then she seemed to turn a page, more interested in what was to come than in what had already happened. ‘Why not just … do your best, again?’

  Anselm could settle for that. He said goodbye but then surrendered to an afterthought.

  ‘Just out of interest, is Nigel Goodwin a doctor?’

  Olivia made a slight start, impressed that this ‘fretful explorer’ had discovered a man’s profession through the simple exercise of his imagination. It was a promising beginning.

  ‘He is, actually. But I wouldn’t trust him to treat the common cold.’

  The condemnation unsettled Anselm. It had been harsh, suggesting there was more to this man than troubled grief. Mitch (emboldened, now) begged to differ. Clunking through the gears, he improvised once more and Anselm, disinclined to put much store on his assistant’s judgement, stared out of the window, barely listening. His mind soon drifted away from the inept doctor to the haunted brother, the quiet man with the lowered face in all the photographs. What had happened to Michael Goodwin that he’d chosen the shadows? Grief, on its own, wasn’t a sufficient explanation.

  Part Two

  The Diary of Timothy Henderson

  It’s very quiet in the house. Except for the clock. There’s a clock in the sitting room that ticks really loud and I’m wondering why it carries on like that. It just keeps going as if nothing has happened. Tick tock, tick tock. My mum stopped breathing yesterday but the clock’s still working. It’s like someone walking past. Doesn’t even slow down. My mum’s dead. And the clock’s still working.

  My granddad gave me this diary after my mum’s accident. He told me to write down my feelings because otherwise they’d get stuck like leaves in a drain. But they didn’t. Because my mum was still with me. She’s gone now, though. Everyone’s saying she died of cancer but that’s not true.

  ******

  16th June

  My granddad was right. He knew what was going to happen two years ago. I’m all blocked up, just like he said. I’ve been like this since the night my mum died and it’s getting worse. So I’m going to write down what’s happened and what I feel.

  My dad was sent to prison last week because he threw a brick at a boy in a bread shop. They all reckon it’s because he feels bad about my mum’s death. They’re all wrong. He feels bad but he can’t tell them what he did and why. When I saw my dad in the cells before they took him away, I could see it in his eyes. He was glad. He wants to be locked up. It’s the only way he can get away from me. Because most days, there’s one of these moments. He looks at me asking himself just how much did I hear and see. I don’t say anything and he doesn’t say anything. We just look at each other and I can tell he feels bad. But now he’s in prison. He’s glad and I’m glad. My grandmother’s glad, too.

  23rd June

  My grandma doesn’t realise it, but she stares at me while she talks. She’s worried. She’s got questions but like my dad she’s afraid to ask them. She puts down animals at work. She’s no idea how many cats and dogs she’s killed. Must be hundreds. She doesn’t feel a thing when she does it.

  My granddad never asks any questions, not any more. Instead I ask him and he doesn’t have any answers. I watch him avoiding the truth and I wonder if I should even stay and listen. He keeps two passports. Like the others, he’s two people.

  Uncle Nigel wanted to know who saw my mum after he left on the night she died. He knows something happened but he’d never guess what it was.

  7th July

  I just want my mum back. I loved her and I still do. The paralysis and the cancer didn’t change her. She wasn’t any diff
erent, not to me. She was still my mum. Everyone else felt sorry for her and said she didn’t have much of a life. But I didn’t, not once, and I’m unhappy because she’s gone and I miss her every day. No one understands that even though she was ill, I didn’t want her to die. They all said, ‘She’s at peace now,’ as if that changed everything. Well, it doesn’t. She was given peace but mine was taken away.

  11

  Michael lay on his bed. He’d kept on his overcoat as a kind of protection, a thick skin against the awful cold he was about to remember. When he’d come back from Northern Ireland, Danny, the army psychologist, had told him to lie down on a bed and listen to some tapes – chimes from a Buddhist monastery, the sound of the wind in the trees, the sighs and murmuring of the sea. The idea – advanced for the times – had been to help Michael relax; to calm the anxiety so that his suppressed anguish could surface … in the imagined mountain air, in the dreamed-up woods, on a make-believe beach. He’d tried his best but with each foray into the subconscious he’d simply fallen asleep. When he’d turned up for the interviews, taking his seat by the table with the box of tissues, he could only yawn. But now he was savagely awake, his senses sharply attuned to the crash and sudden lull of real waves upon real sand. The tide was coming in. Michael let himself go back to that terrible late November. Eyes wide open, heart beginning to race, he watched Captain Michael Goodwin act and speak; watched himself as though he was a disembodied spirit observing the preliminaries to the unforeseen catastrophe. Everyone was acting normally, even though their nerves were frayed …

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Michael.

  ‘He’ll come.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. Relax. He said he’d come.’

  ‘It’s dangerous for me here … and for you; for us all. We should have met out of town, not here. For God’s sake, the place is crawling with Provos.’