Dear Departed

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Stop with the psychology. You’re making me dizzy.’

  ‘Seriously, when I said I bet he made a pass at you, she didn’t say he did and she didn’t say he didn’t. So I reckon he didn’t. Hell hath no fury, et cetera. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘at least if Chattie did have a fling, it was a brief one. Presumably she fell in a weak moment and got out of it as quickly as possible.’ ‘I’m not comforted,’ said Slider.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Can’t Say Y

  ‘It’s me!’ Slider called as he let himself into the narrow hall.

  ‘Hi! I’m in the kitchen,’ Joanna called back.

  It was every man’s dream, he supposed, to come home from work and find his beloved safely in the kitchen. He extended his sensitive nostrils and identified onions, garlic – tomatoes – some kind of herb. After a day of sensual deprivation he fancied something rich and tasty. And a good meal, too. He picked up his mail, which she had left for him in a pile on the edge of the hall table and went to find her.

  She was at the stove, stirring a pot. Hallelujah! It was going to be Bolognese sauce.

  ‘Yum,’ he said, kissing the back of her neck.

  ‘Me, or dinner?’

  ‘Both. Always,’ he said, opening envelopes. Bill, begging letter, you have been preselected to own one of our platinum credit cards (where were they going to go after platinum – titanium? Green kryptonite?), bill, bill …

  ‘I’m doing a proper ragù, with chicken livers,’ she said, ‘since I have time. Do you want it over short pasta, spaghetti, or baked in the oven?’

  ‘It would break Garibaldi’s heart if we had it over anything but spaghetti.’

  ‘Why Garibaldi?’

  ‘Wasn’t he the father of modern Italy?’

  ‘Dunno,’ she said. All I know is he made the biscuits run on time.’

  He wasn’t listening. He was reading the letter he’d just opened. He frowned. ‘What’s this about a scan?’

  She turned and craned her neck to read it, and then snatched it from his hand. ‘Don’t read my letters!’

  ‘It was in my pile,’ he protested.

  ‘Since when have you been “Dear Ms Marshall”?’

  ‘I didn’t read that bit. I opened it without looking. I assumed you’d sorted my stuff out from yours.’

  ‘You’ve no right to read my letters.’ Her face was a little flushed, though that might have been the heat of the stove.

  He looked at her carefully. ‘Jo, what is it? It says you’re refusing to have a scan.’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ she said, stuffing the letter into her pocket with an angry, careless gesture.

  ‘Well, it is, really,’ he said gently, not to annoy her. ‘It’s my baby too.’

  ‘You’re not the one who has to carry it and bear it and feed it. Ultimately it’s my responsibility.’

  ‘I can’t help being a man,’ he said. ‘I know you have the hardest part, but we’re having this baby together, and it’s my responsibility too. You both are. Why are you refusing a scan?’

  She turned her face away, pretending to be concentrating on the sauce. ‘They don’t like it, you know. Babies. They try to get away from it. You can see on the monitor. I went with a friend a couple of times, and you can see the babies hate it.’

  ‘But it doesn’t harm them, does it?’

  ‘How do we know? It doesn’t do any immediate, obvious damage, but who knows what it’s really doing to them?’

  He took her arms and turned her to him, against resistance. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘what’s wrong? What’s really the problem? Surely this scan business is simply routine? Why are you so against it?’

  ‘People managed perfectly well in the old days. My mother had ten children without ultrasound, or any of the other horrible machines they rig you up to these days.’

  ‘People in the old days had their legs cut off without anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘What’s the real reason?’

  ‘You haven’t thought it through. They scan to find out if the baby’s defective.’

  ‘Yes. Isn’t that a good thing?’

  She met his eyes with resolution. ‘And if it is defective? You know what comes next. They offer you an abortion. Are you prepared to take that decision? Because I’m not. I hate abortion. I would never have an abortion. But what if they say the child’s terribly damaged in some way, so that it wouldn’t die, but live on in some terrible condition?’

  He didn’t answer for a moment. No, he hadn’t thought about that before, and now he did, he saw the gravity of it. To choose life or death, death or tormented life, for your own child? And how much worse for the mother, with the child actually growing inside her, part of her in the way it could never be for the father?

  ‘There are other reasons,’ he said. ‘They could find something that could be corrected in the womb. It could save the child from being born with a defect.’

  ‘Do you think that makes it easier?’

  He saw then that she was really afraid, and close to tears. He pulled her against him and held her close, cradling her head, and she pressed in, needing his strength.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with our baby. Everything will be all right. It’s going to be healthy and normal.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ she said, muffled by her chest.

  ‘I believe it,’ he said firmly.

  She pulled her head up and laughed, shakily. ‘Oh, religion!’

  ‘Well, what else is there at a time like this?’ he reasoned.

  ‘Don’t you realise, you jughead,’ she said kindly, ‘that I’m not a sweet young thing any more? I’m what they call an elderly primipara. Biologically I’m an old lady doing what only young girls should do. It’s an extremely risky business.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘Women of your age and older have babies every day of the week – first babies,’ he anticipated her interruption. ‘You’re perfectly healthy and so am I. Why should anything go wrong?’

  ‘Things do.’

  ‘Not as often as they don’t, by a very long chalk. You’re falling a victim to the very thing you despise: haven’t you said how wrong it was that doctors treat pregnancy as a serious illness?’

  ‘They do. That’s what this is all about.’

  ‘They try to, but you don’t have to listen. You don’t have to let them get to you. You’re not ill, you’re doing something natural that nearly every woman on the planet does at some point.’

  ‘Easy for you to say.’

  He put her back a little to look at her seriously. ‘Do you really think that?’

  ‘No,’ she said, after a pause. ‘No, not really. I know you love me.’

  ‘It’s a bit more than that,’ he said. ‘I think your sauce is sticking.’

  ‘Blast,’ she said, and twisted out of his arms to stir it. He saw she had relaxed a little, given him a little of the burden to carry, and he was glad. ‘So what about this scan?’ she asked, in a small voice, her back to him.

  ‘I think you should have it,’ he said, after consideration. ‘Not because I think there’s anything wrong with the baby, but because if you don’t they’ll keep on bugging you about it and drive you nuts. But if you really don’t want to have it, then I’ll support you. I’ll write to them and tell them we don’t want it, and that if they send you any more letters about it I’ll come round and reprogram their computer with a very large axe.’

  She laughed, turning her head to look at him adoringly. ‘My hero! What would I do without you? D’you want to go and get changed? I’m going to put the water on so we’re looking at fifteen minutes to eating.’

  She said no more about it that evening, and he thought she had put it from her mind for the time being. But in bed, when they had made love and she was lying in his arms and he was drifting comfortably into sleep, she said suddenly out of the dark, ‘If I have the scan, and there’s something wrong, what then?’

  ‘If that happened, we’d face
it together and decide together. But it’s not going to happen. So don’t even think about it. Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.’

  She turned on her side then, into her sleep position, and he turned too so that she could burrow into him backwards. He folded his hands round her, one on her breast and one on her belly, and felt her fall instantly into sleep like someone tumbling off a cliff. He held her, wakeful now, thinking of the two lives that lay in his arms; and from there to a whole range of preoccupations, his thoughts knitting and spreading an invisible web into the darkness, stretching wider and wider, thinning and growing more tenuous as the world turned through the short summer night towards dawn. When the first bird sang tentatively outside in the blackness, he slept.

  Cornfeld Chemicals had its headquarters in Hemel Hempstead, a neat, new-looking low-rise block set in nicely landscaped surroundings on the edge of the town. Slider was received by Henry Cornfeld at nine o’clock in an office that was as different as it could be from his son-in-law’s. It was small, lit from unshaded windows, cluttered with the business of business, and devoid of the accoutrements of glamour and power.

  Cornfeld himself seemed to have aged since Slider saw him last. His movements were less brisk, his face seemed to have sagged; even his hair did not spring from his forehead in so lively a fashion. But his mind still gripped. He offered Slider a chair and coffee, seated himself and said, ‘Have you found out yet who killed my child?’

  ‘Not yet, sir, but there are promising lines we are following up.’

  ‘That sounds like a stock answer,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you anything better for me than that? I am her father. I love her.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It sounds hackneyed, but it is the truth. We don’t know yet, but I think we are getting there. I can’t be more specific than that at the moment.’

  ‘But you promise you will tell me, as soon as you know.’ His eyes became piercing. ‘The moment you know.’

  ‘If you promise you won’t take the law into your own hands,’ said Slider.

  He sat back a little and spread his hands. ‘I am an old man. What can I do?’

  Neither had promised the other anything, and they both knew it.

  ‘You have some more questions for me?’ said Cornfeld.

  ‘Yes, sir. I don’t know whether they have any relevance or not, but I’m feeling my way at present. I wanted to ask you about the proposed takeover of your company by GCC.’

  ‘Oh, you know about that?’

  ‘Is it supposed to be a secret?’

  ‘It’s not meant to be public knowledge yet. However, these things always do get about, no-one knows how. Everyone swears they haven’t told a soul, but somehow people know.’

  ‘So it is still going on?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I have been in negotiation for many weeks now. These things take time.’

  ‘And how do you feel about it? Are you for it?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Certainly, or I should not be in negotiation.’

  ‘Then – you’ve always been in favour? Forgive me, but has Chattie’s death made any difference to your attitude?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘From the beginning, when Global first contacted me, I felt it was the right thing to do. I am old, and it is time to pass on the baton. It was a good opportunity for me to leave my responsibilities behind while doing my best for my employees and the shareholders. The only difference Chattie’s death has made is that it has forced me to realise how old and tired I really am. I want to be done with it now.’ Steel entered his face again as he added, ‘But I shall drive a hard bargain, you may be sure. I’m not too old and tired for that.’ He eyed Slider. ‘You seem puzzled.’

  ‘It isn’t quite fitting in with what I was thinking.’

  ‘You thought I was unwilling to sell, and that killing Chattie was supposed to take the heart out of me and make me agree to it?’

  ‘You’re very shrewd,’ Slider said. ‘It was one of the lines I was working along. But obviously that’s not it.’

  ‘No,’ said Cornfeld. He looked bleak. ‘It’s true that I don’t want to go on now, but that hasn’t affected this deal in any way. Mine is a healthy, profitable company, with a proud history. We have done valuable work in our time, and produced some important benefits for the human community. I can look back on my life with pride – though this tragedy takes away the joy.’

  ‘That brings me to another question,’ Slider said. ‘Your mother mentioned, when I was talking to her at your house last week, that you have a new drug that’s about to come out, and that you are very excited about it. Can you tell me about that?’

  The animation came back. ‘Yes, indeed! We have been working on it for a long time, and we’ve just completed the two years of statutory trials. All we have to do now is to secure the approval of the various regulatory bodies, and we can launch it on the world!’

  ‘And what is it? What does it do?’

  ‘It is something quite tremendous,’ he said, his eyes bright. He leaned forward across the desk to emphasise the excitement. ‘It is a treatment for acne.’

  ‘Acne?’ Slider said.

  Cornfeld smiled and shook his head. ‘I can tell you don’t understand. Well, why should you? One can see you have never suffered from it. You think I’m talking about a few teenage spots. You have no idea of its ravages. You don’t know how many millions of lives are ruined by this disease. You can’t imagine how many billions of pounds are spent year after year on remedies that don’t work, or don’t work well enough, or have hideous side effects. Our product, Codermatol, works. It really works! It will benefit more people than you can imagine, allow them to come out of the shadows and live full lives. It is one of the most exciting and important breakthroughs of the last twenty years, the most important, I believe, that I have ever been personally involved in.’

  ‘I see,’ Slider said.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I take your word for it, sir. You convince me. And this new drug – this is part of the sale, I take it? It goes with the company.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cornfeld. ‘Naturally. That is partly why I am demanding such a high price. GCC knows that once it goes on the market, the share price will jump, so that must be reflected in the offer.’

  ‘And have you any idea when the deal will be concluded?’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Very soon. I anticipate the announcement will be made at the end of this week. I am only hanging on to receive the regulatory approval. I want that to come to me, as the crowning moment of my business life. Then I shall go. I shall take the money, and Kylie, and go abroad. I haven’t had a holiday in years. I intend,’ he said, with a look that dared Slider to mock, ‘to make a very expensive fool of myself in all the smartest resorts and casinos in the world. I intend to go out in a blaze of glory.’

  Slider didn’t mock. He hoped very much that the old man would enjoy it; but he felt it was a hollow ambition and was afraid Cornfeld would find it a disappointment – and, moreover, that he knew it would be, even now at the planning stage.

  * * *

  Slider stood at the door of the CID room, looking round the bent heads.

  Hart noticed him. ‘You’re back,’ she said.

  ‘Plus ten for observation. Who had the list of Chattie’s telephone calls?’

  ‘Andy,’ she said. ‘Shall I get it for you?’ She jumped up and went across to Mackay’s desk.

  Slider wandered off into his room. Atherton followed him there. ‘I know that look,’ he said. ‘Did Daddy Cornfeld say something interesting?’

  ‘He’s for the takeover,’ Slider said. ‘He always was. Killing Chattie didn’t make any difference to his decision. He’s been in negotiation for weeks.’

  ‘Another damn fine theory hits the dust,’ said Atherton, scratching the back of his head. ‘So what does that leave us with?’

  ‘There’s something burrowing away at the back of my mind,’ said Slider.

  ‘Yes, I know, I just had that feeling,’ At
herton said, but Slider, frowning in thought, didn’t hear.

  Mackay came in with the list. ‘You wanted this, guv? I was just getting a coffee.’

  ‘Yes, give it here.’ Slider sat at his desk and ran a finger up the list. Mackay had written against the numbers who the subscribers were. ‘Here it is,’ Slider said, tapping the paper. ‘She phoned Cockerell on his mobile on the Monday before she died. Why didn’t you mention this?’

  ‘Well, guv, once I found he was a family member – you said anything unusual. I didn’t think that counted.’

  ‘Hm. I suppose so.’

  Atherton leaned over and looked. ‘You were expecting to find that call?’

  ‘It was a hunch,’ Slider said. ‘Don’t you see? She made the appointment with him.’

  ‘And you can deduce that from the mere fact of a telephone number?’ Atherton marvelled.

  ‘Don’t get cute. Why else would she call him?’

  ‘Maybe she called him about something else, and he used the opportunity to make the appointment. Why would he pretend he made the running?’ Atherton countered.

  ‘Because whatever she wanted to see him for, he didn’t want us to know about. We knew he was lying. This is what he was lying about.’

  ‘Ah. Even so, where does that get us?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I have to think.’ He waved them away.

  Mackay said kindly, ‘Shall I get you a cuppa, guv?’

  ‘Yes, that’ll help. Thanks.’ He turned to Atherton. ‘Can you bring me the list you had of the drugs GCC makes?’

  ‘Okay. Anything I should know about?’

  ‘You’ll know when I know,’ said Slider.

  Mackay was a long time getting the tea. He came in at last, saying, ‘Sorry, guv. I got waylaid, and then there was a queue.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Slider said absently, with the look that told Mackay he probably wouldn’t remember it was there until it was well cold. ‘Can you do something for me? Track down Mrs Hammick and get her to come in. I want to ask her something. Don’t alarm her.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mackay. Slider’s head went down again. ‘Don’t forget your tea, guv. I’ve put it just here for you.’