Deep Sleep

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘The mask? Imagine you’re the patient. You are about to be anaesthetised with chloroform. Imagine an operating theatre, if you will, full of men in frock coats, all addressing each other as sir. You lie back, thus …’ Helen grasped the metal object, an oval-shaped frame of wire with two crossed struts, and tilted back his seat to a dangerous angle, holding the mask across his face. ‘The mask is a patent by Schimmelbusch, long since dead, and has a groove round the rim to catch surplus liquid. Sits over the face, wide enough in circumference not to touch. Gauze is placed on top, and chloroform is gently dripped on the cloth. The vapour sinks through, the patient breathes. Give him oxygen simultaneously and he can take more and last longer, as I explained.’

  ‘Why a mask at all?’ Helen demanded.

  ‘Keeps the gauze and the liquid from the skin. Doubtless for the benefit of the doctor. These gentlemen in frock coats who started this did not have rubber gloves. You could, of course, manage without the mask – I have – but a fastidious man would use it.’

  ‘And a chemist would know about this?’

  ‘If he were interested in history, yes. Otherwise it might be a piece of forgotten undergraduate knowledge. Not all pharmacists are interested in the power of life over death but you might be surprised at the number who enter their profession because they have an unhealthy fascination with drugs. Drugs are power, you see.’ He replaced the mask on the table where it made a satisfying clunk and reminded Helen of an empty crash helmet.

  ‘If only,’ said Collins, ‘we’d had some chance to look at the room. We might have found something, I don’t know. Like dents in the pillow. Wire sculptures. All Davies found, at Miss West’s insistence, was chloroform.’

  ‘Chloroform,’ the doctor observed, ‘would eradicate fingerprints too.’

  ‘But it’s all guesswork,’ Collins complained. ‘Apart from this.’ He tapped the report. ‘Apart from this reconstruction of how long it would have taken. Twenty minutes, you said.’

  ‘At least. Longer without the mask.’

  ‘And most of that time, she’s unconscious? Christ, it’s so cold-blooded.’ Collins stood upright, disgusted by the images. ‘A man standing there over someone asleep, keeping a mask in place, quietly putting more on the cloth. It’s worse than a slow strangulation.’ He breathed heavily as if avoiding contamination. ‘Shall I go and get a warrant?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have seen her face,’ Hazel reminded. ‘And the only sound would have been breathing.’

  Helen tidied the papers on the table into a pile. ‘No warrant without permission from above,’ she said, jerking her head towards the ceiling. ‘And only if I can put my hand on my heart and swear there was absolutely no possibility of suicide. No chloroform under the bed?’

  ‘No one looked,’ said Collins bitterly. ‘And besides, what difference would it make? If he was there?’

  Upstairs, Redwood heard the footsteps coming towards his door and quickly shoved his newspaper out of sight. There was no idleness in his reading the local rag since consumption of all relevant headlines was mandatory. ‘CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE COCKS IT UP AGAIN.’ ‘WRONG MAN ARRESTED: RIGHT ONE RELEASED.’ Yet more horror stories and a few writs in the offing with the words on the page reaching out to grab him by the throat. His sensitivities were as raw as the back of his neck. Entering his room, report in hand, refreshed by the icy blast from the window, Helen looked at his face and knew perfectly well what the answer would be.

  ‘And?’ asked Bailey later.

  ‘And nothing. Sweet nothing, apart from no, not yet if ever. A warrant for whom? Bring me proof, he said. Bring me some connection between this man and this so-called murder. Knowledge, I said: knowledge is the connection. Rare knowledge. Christ, why is everyone so slow? Opportunity. Motive.’

  ‘There is no motive.’

  ‘Yes there is. In marriage, you never need a motive.’ She flashed a glance at him, one mixed with frustration and mischief; then resumed brushing her thick hair with quick, irritated strokes. Bailey looked casually, noticed her nerves. Not for this case, he knew, only for the CID party, and he could not for the life of him imagine why. Her fears and braveries seemed to have no sense of priority, ranging as they did from a peculiar recklessness about life or health to this telling, acute irritation before a simple celebration.

  ‘He must have liked Hazel’s report.’ Bailey squinted in the mirror, knotting a tie.

  ‘Loved it, very impressed after he’d read it. Reluctantly. Said without that, there’d be no case at all, and without Hazel, I’d be told to put the whole thing in the fire. Hazel is just about my only bloody witness. Hazel and his immaculate reconstruction of events, with mask.’

  ‘Helen, I’ve something to tell you …’

  ‘Oh, ho. Is it a story? Will I like it? I feel absolutely frustrated by the deliberately obstructive regime of things. Let’s have a drink.’

  ‘Yes, to the drink. On second thoughts, the story can wait.’

  ‘Everything’s got to wait, but I’m not finished yet.’

  Bailey was uncomfortable, but she chose not to question. He knew more than he said and would only say in his own time. He went into the bright spartan spaces of his huge living-room, the room which was really the whole of his flat, looked for the wine, found only whisky, gin and a pile of tangerines brought from the market.

  ‘The whole investigation may take time, Helen. You’re so impatient, but once you’ve got Collins interested, you can leave it to him. No rush, is there? Even if the chemist killed his wife, it doesn’t follow he’s a danger to any other soul alive.’ He thought of the man he had found in the back road to Herringbone Parade, then held his tongue, while Helen, not to be comforted, spoke his own words out loud.

  ‘Bugger the stupidities and reservations of the law. I’ve been told I can’t risk an assault on Mr Caring Carlton’s civil liberties. So what if there’s risk? Of course he’s dangerous. Anyone who can mimic an anaesthetist is dangerous. Once you know what it’s like, you don’t relinquish the power over life and death.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Bailey. ‘Sweetheart, you do talk rubbish.’

  ‘Make us a tea now, there’s a darling.’

  ‘I’m just doing this, won’t take a minute …’

  ‘Well, now means now. Not later.’

  He spoke very mildly, tapping the side of a plastic container of pills into the counting machine, his eyes fixed on the dial, muttering to himself, ‘Four a day for fourteen days makes fifty-six. Tea, soon, please.’

  The please was an afterthought, and Kimberley knew in that precise moment how none of the changes in him was the product of her imagination. Before Margaret’s death, even before the last police visit, she might have answered back any peremptory order, teased his passion for tea, made light of his frustrations and bossiness, Uncle Pip, ruler of all he surveyed with the whole of this damn Parade in thrall and half the surrounding neighbourhood too. Make the tea, there’s a love, sixteen times a day. In one month’s time, she would be able to call herself a pharmacist, practise in her own right, and yet he ordered her to make tea, run errands. Kimberley remembered the back dispensary, its sacrosanct secrecy; remembered how Pip had always made the simplest things seem complex, adding mystique where common sense would do, all to make this career appear more difficult than it was. She did not think all of this at once: her mind was with Tom, bound to be awkward as always after an evening with Dad. She was yawning. Then Pip reversed the mood in one of his sudden moves, restored the balance.

  ‘What am I talking about? Sound like some foreman, or school teacher. Stay where you are, I’ll make tea. Sorry, Kim. I must have sounded short. Short! Ha! Like pastry. Just like I feel. Let’s have some of that new herbal tea. Good for our nerves. It’s all those Irish builders tramping in and out. They’re behaving as if that site had a jinx. Wish they’d at least finish the foundations and go.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say she did not want tea: she wanted sleep and an end of dreaming.
Sleep without imagining things scuffling on her balcony. Sleep without this longing for Duncan, that brusque lover and husband who could still make her cry if only he waited to watch. Occasionally brutal Duncan, the treader of dreams, but oh, so certain in his certainty.

  ‘It’s OK, Pip, I’ll make it.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no. Me. I mean I. Eye for an eye and tooth for tooth. I owe you plenty. Not just tea.’ The last of this was muffled as he retreated into the alcove between the shop dispensary and his own little room. The alcove housed the kettle, and behind a door, the lavatory. ‘Now look here,’ he was saying, ‘we seem to be able to do better than tea.’ The hand in front of her face was flourishing a bottle of sherry. ‘Nectar in a measuring glass,’ he murmured, turning his back on her, rummaging on the shelves. Kimberley was so relieved not to have to drink tea simply because he had made it, the sherry seemed a good idea. One of these days, she would wake up and think of nothing. Maybe that was what Duncan sought on his binges. Waking up to the clear blue sky of nothing, with nothing to do, had to be a worthwhile state, however temporary. Kim had taught herself not to think: kept all observation to a minimum for the sake of her own peace of mind, and in one brief bout of recognition, she knew why Duncan drank.

  ‘Yes, please, Pip. Sir. Lord and master. Just a large one.’

  ‘And tea?’

  ‘No. To tell the truth, I’m awash with tea.’ He handed her one of the measuring cups, the sherry reaching up to the point of sixty millilitres. Rather a lot for a tired head. They sipped in a silence which was not quite companionable.

  ‘Are we nearly finished, Pip? Only I’ve got to get back. Duncan’s bringing Tom home, by seven o’clock, he said and it’s nearly that now. Don’t want him hanging about. He’ll be off sharpish, though, Duncan I mean. Got a party, or something.’ She remembered the Christmas parties she had enjoyed, thought of the lack of them this year and sighed, not listening.

  ‘How about a Chinese takeaway, then? I’ll come round later.’ The invitation was slightly listless, as if he expected her to refuse, but she caught the same hint, that suggestion of an order which she was beginning to dislike.

  ‘Sorry, Pip. I’m really tired. The wind last night: I kept hearing things and the blasted concrete mixer started before light. And I’ve got to tell Tom about Daniel.’

  His silent offence only increased the feeling of helplessness. Carlton’s Caring Chemist was becoming a place of isolation. Tombo rebellious, Daniel dead, Duncan obsessive and no one liking anyone else. Pip domineering and the wind howling.

  ‘Another time, then,’ he said mildly, back turned as he fetched more sherry. ‘Do you want me to stay with you until they get back? In case Duncan’s awkward?’

  ‘No,’ she said sharply. Every utterance she made seemed to be a refusal and she did not know how to soften any of them. ‘Wow,’ she muttered, rising from her stool and feeling giddy, steadying herself on the doorframe. ‘Strong stuff, this.’ Through her own efforts to stay upright, she could hear his smooth voice. ‘Too much tea,’ he was saying, ‘and not enough food. I’ll bring in some sandwiches for us tomorrow.’ She was too tired now to recognise that same proprietorial tone, beyond resentment. Now which of them had been the bossy one of the two? Philip Carlton or his wife? The distinctions were becoming confused.

  Kim plodded round the corner, slowly upstairs, searched for the key to her flat in the mess of her handbag. If Duncan was late, he need have no worries: she was too tired to shout, far too indifferent. The road was lighter than usual, a fact noticed by accident as she turned to prop the bag on her knee. Beyond the building site, she saw the huge crane which governed their view lit up with fairy lights across one magnificent, outflung arm, a red, blue, green salute, disembodied in the black sky, a sight so stunning in its savage but synthetic beauty that she could feel tears of sentiment and sheer surprise. She remembered tales of old paraders, memories of a sky lit by flames, night-time terrors, and suddenly felt their overwhelming fatigue. She left the door on the latch for Tom and stumbled inside.

  Pip Carlton retreated to his back room, and closed the flimsy door behind him. The shaded light reminded him of a wartime he had never known and a secrecy which was second nature. Having drawn down a new blind on the back door window, which exaggerated the impression of a blackout and had the desired effect of making him invisible from the street, he began to feel safe. In contrast to the muddle outside, both in the real world and the ante-room to the shop, this place was now tidy: jars, boxes, pipettes, measuring jugs were all accessible: there was a large, locked cupboard which he patted vaguely. From outside, he heard the sound of a car, one door slamming and the hint of a childish voice, high with anxiety in its goodbyes. ‘Go upstairs, you little runt,’ Pip muttered, ‘and tell me if she’s asleep. If only you weren’t coming home.’

  There would be fantasies with these experiments. If not the real Kimberley in his arms, a dream instead. Pip reached for the yellow duster, soft and dry by the sink, sat in the armchair next to it. What cocktail tonight, what treat in store. He could not be heard in the shop, where the lights still blazed as they would until morning. He was dimly conscious that the car he had heard was revving to depart, the driver infecting the engine with his own impotent anger. Pip lay back, duster in hand, a smile of benign joy on his face. He smoothed the crotch of his trousers beneath the white overall, watched the bulge forming. Oh, Kimberley Perry, oh my darling.

  Helen saw the crane, lit with lights of many colours, prominent from Blackfriars Bridge, and wanted, for one uncontrolled second, to clap her hands at the first thing which made her rejoice in Christmas. One brilliant arm in the sky, standing solid; a spectrum of light seen for a few seconds like a firework display against black clouds. She could not even say, Look, look, for fear of spoiling this childish pleasure, and wished they were going home from this party instead of being en route. Earth hath not anything more fair, a poem on Blackfriars Bridge: the poet had imagined this crane twinkling against the water. No poet ever dreamt of attending a policeman’s ball.

  Number Two Area’s CID party was the daddy of them all. An effort frantic with munificence, blinding with glitter, stiff with shoulder pads. Gone was any sign of epaulettes and caps, the jeans or worn suits which Helen privately preferred: the men were in mufti, some following instructions to wear silly hats. A joke, Len, a joke: I knew you’d believe it. You don’t think we’d have a party and turn up in hats, do you? We only said hats, to see if some silly wankers would fall for it. This is plain clothes, Len, remember. Nothing plain in sight, except Helen’s rather elegant dress, calf-length, red, without any adornment whatever, and in it, she felt like a misplaced grandmother waiting and hoping to be sat in a corner with tea and smelling salts. Helen did not know the meaning of snobbery: she would not, in general, have noticed who was black, senior or junior, but the prospect of a good old knees-up in company with five hundred others made her quail even more than the risk of being thought a snob. Which was saying something, since she knew of no greater social fear than that. Stupid, said Bailey; ridiculous. You are the last person in the world anyone would ever call that: you are, sometimes, too egalitarian, too indiscriminate in your likings for your own good, whatever that is, and besides, it really does not matter what people think. It does, she was thinking now: it matters because they are your colleagues, your peers, and I have helped to isolate you from them: it matters terribly what they think.

  Not only they, but also their wives. Always find a nice woman at a party; female solidarity, the comfort of life. Helen was deeply suspicious of any woman without good women friends, but standing by that was sometimes an uphill struggle on occasions like this. The wives and girlfriends gathered to powder and puff, adjusting earrings which half covered profiles, teasing fresh hairdos, pulling down their short straight skirts which skimmed their shiny knees; excited and stinking of perfume, a breed of butterflies allowed to flutter three or four times a year. And as she crossed the floor of this old-fashioned dance hall i
n a converted cinema, housing three hundred people for bingo three times a week, Helen could see why the sparkle on the women’s clothing, in their hair, round their necks and on their ears, was so necessary. If you had nothing about your person to catch the light from the revolving globe in the middle of the ceiling, you were lost for ever. She had joked with the ladies in the loo, yielded her place by the mirror as they all scrabbled for lipstick, but when they heard her accent, their jokes diminished into shyer smiles. Although she realised this was her own fault, Helen regretted it all the same.

  She struggled through an anonymous crush with a dozen excuse-mes, gently pushing past the soft and solid suited bodies of all the men. Policemen one to one were fine – she knew how to deal with almost all – but weaving at sea in so great a volume of them, many the subject of awkward professional interviews, was a minefield of embarrassments. At first, she was the only woman at the bar. At this kind of party the men collected the drinks; the women hung back and awaited collection themselves. Helen was wrong again.

  ‘Cor, look at that,’ said a voice by her ear, the masculine appreciation sent straight over her head in the direction of the female huddle.

  ‘Triffic. All right for them. Not enough to go round, is there? She’d have to be a right prune not to get lucky tonight. Ger in there, Dave. Oh, hallo, Miss West …’ She grinned at a familiar face, aware that his guttural appreciation of the others was being swallowed in the knowledge of what she might think. Bailey was standing alone, the way he so often seemed most alone in a crowd, removed from these men by so many attitudes, rank and temperament, but pleased, like some paterfamilias, to see them relaxed. Helen took the proffered drink, gin and tonic, dispensed from barrels below the bar, free booze all evening and plenty of those present showing the signs already. She yelled in his ear above the din, ‘Hey! Is this a party or a cattle market?’

  ‘Both,’ he yelled back. ‘There’s food over there.’ He was itching to move, do his duties, meet what wives he could. He would abandon her to whatever she could find, confident she would manage with her usual panache. ‘You all right?’ he yelled, bending to impart the most commonly said words in the whole evening.