The Lifers' Club

by Francis Pryor

  Time to reassess. Time for an alternative explanation. But time, too, was running out.

  He wouldn’t have admitted it to himself, but Alan was getting to like the PFC van. For a start it was warm and the heater could be turned higher and lower, not just on and off. It had a soundproofed cab and was quiet. He could hear the radio and even play CDs. The seat was adjustable and supported his back. All in all, it was a huge improvement on Brutus. One unexpected benefit was the fact that now he could think about more than just the road, while driving. He wasn’t being deafened. And he didn’t have to worry constantly about switching between fuel tanks, running short of gas – or smoking electrics.

  He was heading north and east. He could just discern the Lincolnshire Wolds as a thin blue band at the horizon, far to his left. On his right was the tower of the Boston Stump across five miles of open flat Fen, transected by dead straight water-filled dykes. His mind turned towards the people who had drained this Fen and how landowners in the past needed to have knowledge about what they possessed. In previous centuries it wasn’t like it is today, when ownership of land or real estate is merely about acquiring yet another ‘asset’, to sell at the drop of a hat.

  In many ways, he thought, AAC was the first of this modern species of landowner. He didn’t need to de-water his estate, as that had been done four or five generations previously. He didn’t even have to worry about maintaining his dykes and ditches, as that was done by somebody else too – usually one of the small, newly established Internal Drainage Boards. No, he just had to make his new possession look good, and in the process he would glorify himself and his family. Hence those ludicrous terracotta coats of arms.

  Then Alan got to thinking about the other landowner in his life. In some respects Mehmet was more old-fashioned than AAC, who had made money somewhere else and then bought his estate, pre-prepared and fully operational. Mehmet was more like those Jacobean and Georgian landowners, who actually did new and creative things with their properties – things that made them money. That was how they glorified themselves and their families. They didn’t need to buy fancy coats of arms. These thoughts led naturally to the Kabul centre, with the large statue in the foyer. How did he explain the motives behind all that?

  Then it came to him. The parallel for the statue in the foyer was the full-length portrait of AAC in the drawing room at Scoby Hall. Both were of the men after they had consolidated their big achievements. They weren’t about art at all. What they did was proclaim to everyone who saw them, one simple message: I have arrived. And you’d better accept it. Or else… And in both instances, the ‘or else’ was no mere physical or financial threat. No, far worse than that, the sanctions were social. Cross swords with these men, and you would be cast out of polite society. You’d be adrift and alone. And that meant, of course, that you would lose your identity, your friends, your relations – and all self-respect.

  Ultimately, Alan mused, the painting and the statue were symbols of power and respectability. No young person could have commissioned them. They’d have been ridiculed; but it was perfectly acceptable to do such things, at a later stage in life. As he drove further east, leaving the black peat fen and coming onto the paler silty fields, closer to the Wash, Alan realised there was another, darker side to such things, too.

  The question that arose from these thoughts was simple: was Mehmet doing the same thing? Was this new development at Impingham, complete with that ludicrous statue – was that all about raising him so far above the common herd that he’d be beyond question, and suspicion?

  And if so, what was he hiding? Alan thought back to the psychopath who had attended that first lecture at Blackfen. That stare, devoid of emotion. Wasn’t there some ancient tribe somewhere that believed if you murdered a man your victim took your soul with him, leaving you devoid of thought or feeling – just an empty husk? So, if you had killed once, were future murders simply a matter of automated action? Just as once you’d got over causing one incestuous stillbirth, the rest were easier to live with. But these were black thoughts and if archaeology had taught him anything, it was hope. There was always hope, so long as you could find it. And as far as Alistair was concerned, that would be his next task.

  Alan thought back to Alistair’s ancestor, AAC. He had successfully distanced himself so far above the rest of rural Lincolnshire society, that he could safely indulge his sexual perversion, without anyone daring to challenge him. Similarly, the vast, lavish Kabul Centre would effectively move Mehmet higher up the social scale, to realms inhabited by council leaders, high sheriffs, members of parliament, chief constables and the like. If that were the case, Alan reasoned, it would be far harder to crack the mystery once the centre had been built and officially opened. Once the Establishment had taken Mehmet under its gilded wing, doors that were now open, or at least ajar, would suddenly be banged shut.

  * * *

  Alan drove the van up the avenue to Scoby Hall. Alistair was standing at the front door and greeted him warmly. His wife, Claire, was in London again, and he was on his own. The place was absolutely empty; it was even the housekeeper’s day off.

  In the kitchen, Alistair made them both a pot of tea and they sat at the table, enjoying the Aga’s warmth. Outside it was overcast and a cold east wind had go up; early summer had briefly reverted to winter, as it can sometimes, even in May, close to the North Sea coast.

  Alan did his best to break the news about AAC and the DNA gently, but as he spoke he could see it was not going down well. Still, he was determined not to leave anything out, right down to the venereal disease. When the truth hurts so severely, it’s generally better to take the pain in one sharp dose. But at the same time, Alan had grown to like Alistair and he wasn’t enjoying what he was telling him.

  Then he finished, and for two or three full minutes Alistair sat still, staring at the wall, and saying nothing. He was on the verge of tears, deeply shocked; there was so much to come to terms with. Eventually he spoke.

  ‘Oh dear, dear, dear… Poor little Tiny. How heartbreaking.’

  Characteristically, his thoughts were for the victim first.

  ‘Had you ever suspected anything of the sort?’ Alan asked, as gently as he could.

  ‘No – well, not as bad as this. AAC had the reputation in the family for being very arrogant, but that was how Victorian heads of households used to behave, wasn’t it?’ He paused. ‘But not this…’

  ‘Look, Alistair,’ Alan said quietly, ‘I don’t think there’ll be any need to report this to the police. So far as I’m concerned it’s all over and done with. Nothing can be gained by raking over such old coals.’

  ‘You’re right… and thank you…’

  He paused for some time, his brow furrowed. Alan let him be. Then he looked up:

  ‘But again…’ he continued, at first slowly, but with gathering pace, ‘it does explain, or it might help to explain some other things.’

  ‘To do with AAC?’ Alan prompted.

  ‘Yes. Or rather no… it’s about other people as well, but it might explain what happened.’

  He took a sip from his tea, which was now tepid. He pulled a face and took the warm teapot off the Aga. Alan gratefully accepted a top-up. Then he sat down again, looking puzzled.

  ‘Three or four years ago, when I was still in the City, I thought I’d use some of my money to assemble a book about the family. I’d write most of it with help from various relatives, and I’d edit it together. Two of my young cousins down in Suffolk are brilliant on the internet and they’ve done a lot of useful research, which they were happy for me to use.’

  ‘It sounds interesting. Did it get published?’ Alan asked, not sure where all this was leading.

  ‘Those two cousins wanted to publish it on the web, and not as a book. I wasn’t too keen, myself. Too many people would know too much about the family. There’s a big difference between an expensive illustrated book an
d a website.’

  ‘Yes, and I suppose the revelations about AAC have proved you right.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I must admit my initial researches into AAC didn’t endear him to me. He was generous, yes, but capricious too. He also had favourites, and now I’m beginning to realise why.’

  ‘Who were these people – members of the local county set?’

  ‘No, they weren’t. His diaries were very self-important and verbose, Trollope with knobs on. They read more like a series of sermons than accounts of daily life; but they make it clear that Tiny was looked after by the housekeeper, Mrs Jope, whose husband was the head gardener.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Well exactly. It seems to me that Mr and Mrs Jope could easily have disposed of the babies’ bodies and it might also explain why they, unlike any of the other servants, were given freehold possession of the house and garden they rented during AAC’s lifetime.’

  ‘This was all in AAC’s will, I presume?’

  ‘Yes it was. It’s in a deed box in the Muniments Room here. According to those papers, the will was contested by my great-great-uncle Hubert, but without success. It was absolutely watertight, because it wasn’t drawn up by the family solicitor in Boston, but by an expensive firm in London. At the time it struck me as odd. AAC was normally very consistent and this wasn’t the sort of thing Victorian gentlemen did.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Victorian gents tended not to be over-generous to their servants. Generally speaking, their concerns were entirely about the well-being of their own descendants. After all, these would be the people who would carry their reputation forward to posterity. Just like modern politicians, they were concerned about their historical legacy.’

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ Alan broke in, ‘do the Jopes’ descendants still own that house?’

  ‘Yes, although the estate has tried to buy them out many, many times.’

  ‘And do they still work for the estate?’

  ‘No,’ Alistair replied, ‘as soon as AAC died, they set up in business on their own. The family still run a small nursery – I suppose you’d call it a garden centre today – on the outskirts of Boston.’

  Presumably, Alan thought, they set up the new business with money they had also inherited from AAC.

  ‘I imagine,’ Alan replied, ‘having just one privately-owned property in such a large complex of buildings is, to say the very least, administratively inconvenient…’

  ‘Absolutely. And it doesn’t do much to enhance the overall value of the Hall and its surrounding buildings, either. To be quite frank it’s a pain in the neck.’ Alistair paused for a moment. ‘But at least now I know why it hurts so much.’

  Poor man, Alan thought, as he watched him empty the teapot down the sink, this place – his ancestral home – could never be the same again.

  ‘Look, this may seem odd, Alistair, but I once came across something a bit like this when I was at college. I was doing a vacation job, hop-picking up in Worcestershire, and the farmer was caught abusing his own children.’

  ‘What, incest?

  Alistair looked appalled.

  ‘Yes, incest. He was a rich man, a pillar of society, a magistrate – the works. The case caused quite a stir locally, and because I’d just been working for him, I followed what happened with great interest.’

  ‘I bet you did…’Alistair was listening closely.

  ‘Well, it then turned out that this seemingly honest farmer had been involved in all sorts of dodgy scams, ranging from race fixing to pyramid selling. That’s how he acquired the capital to buy his farm. Once he’d done that, he became a leading member of the local county set; he was appointed to the Bench and the rest of it.’

  ‘So he was rotten through and through? And you think AAC might be a similar case?’

  ‘Well it’s possible, isn’t it? Think of it this way: both men were heads of families and highly respected by society at large. What I want to know is this: were their family crimes the only ones they ever committed? Or were they part of a broader pattern of dishonest behaviour, which they had learned how to conceal and control – in the Worcestershire farmer’s case unsuccessfully? Put another way, had they mastered the art of being villains, while simultaneously acting the high status big man, who was beyond the reach of mere mortals, and of course the law too?’

  ‘And that’s supposed to make me feel better?’ Alistair asked with a wry smile.

  ‘I’d be fascinated to know what you could unearth. Otherwise his behaviour seems inexplicable to me. And I do think you’re owed an explanation, Alistair, I really do, but I can’t think of anyone else better qualified to provide one…’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Alistair was curious.

  Alan paused. He wasn’t too certain how to phrase what he now had to say.

  ‘I know we can never make excuses for certain crimes, and what AAC did was terrible. Absolutely terrible, but I do genuinely believe that even the nastiest crimes become understandable if we can set them in context. A kind of archaeology of the emotions, if you like. That’s the only way we can discover what drove people to do what they did. Somehow, AAC seems even more of a monster, if all the other aspects of his life were beyond reproach. It means he abused his daughter Tiny in… in cold blood, purely for pleasure and for his own gratification, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it does…’

  Alistair was beginning to sound more convinced.

  ‘But if her abuse was part of a pattern of long-term crime,’ Alan continued, ‘then somehow it seems less aberrant – and in a horrible way, a bit more human. It’s the massive crimes you can’t get your head around.’

  ‘Like the gassing of eight million Jews?’ Alistair suggested.

  ‘Exactly. Like the Holocaust. Those things will always remain horrors beyond our experience or imagination. And that’s what makes them so utterly loathsome. Somehow they’ve sunk, to a different dimension – almost beyond human experience. Just to deny them suggests a degree of moral complicity. As I see it, you must try to pull AAC’s reputation back from those levels of insane evil.’

  Alan paused for a moment; these were difficult concepts.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ he finished, ‘I do genuinely believe he did love Tiny, despite everything he did to her.’

  For a few minutes they both stared out of the window. By now the clouds weren’t quite as heavy as they had been earlier in the day. Through an open window he could hear the insistent cries of a nestful of hungry fledglings, calling for food from somewhere deep in the wisteria.

  ‘As I see it now,’ Alistair was thinking aloud, ‘AAC must have known very well what he was doing, and he was prepared to spend money to deal with the consequences. That’s the bit I find almost impossible to forgive. As you say, it’s so cold-blooded… only it’s far, far more horrible even than that.’

  He stared down at the floor, lost for words, then continued, almost to himself:

  ‘But if this was just one aspect of a life in which he saw evil as the only means of achieving his goals, it somehow becomes more explicable.’

  At last, Alan thought, Alistair was starting to think about the future.

  ‘That way,’ Alan suggested, ‘at least we begin to understand the man, and what drove his life.’

  ‘Anything’s better than the way things are now.’ Alistair took a deep breath. ‘Believe me, anything.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan replied, rising slowly to his feet, ‘I wonder whether he wasn’t more amoral – he didn’t acknowledge that morality existed – than immoral. Some people are like that, you know. They have lost, or never knew, the difference between good and evil. Right and wrong.’

  He was thinking again of those piercing, expressionless eyes in the back row at that first Lifers’ Club talk. Were they AAC’s eyes as well? Were they Old Mehmet’s? />
  ‘Yes,’ Alistair said with just a slight hint of hope in his voice. ‘It might help explain things. Make him more like a human being.’

  They were now standing by the front door. They shook hands warmly, then Alan headed towards the van. As he started the engine Alistair gave him a wave; now his shoulders were back. He seemed more relaxed. With luck, Alan hoped, for him the worst would soon be over.

  For him, he thought. For him.

  Thirty

  The day after his sad afternoon at Scoby Hall, Alan found himself standing on the rough ground outside Paul’s office window, waiting for the JCB to turn up. He’d done everything he could to make the job run smoothly. By now, the Impingham trial trenches were starting to be interesting, and he didn’t want to be away from them for too long. Of course Lane’s advice was still fresh in his mind. But could he really do it? Leave everything behind and stand aside until it was all over? Twice before he’d been faced with similar situations, when managers had told him to return to the office and complete paperwork, and leave the survey to others. And in both cases he had ignored them. The first time it happened he had found a buried late Ice Age island, surrounded by intact Mesolithic settlements. The second, he was sacked. So which was it to be, now? For Alan, it was a no-brainer.

  Then it started to rain, and he took shelter in the porch of the Out Store, feeling increasingly fed up. He had booked the digger himself, and the man he spoke to at the AK Plant depot in Leicester, swore blind it would be at Priory Farm sharp at eight this morning.

  By half-past ten the JCB still hadn’t arrived, and Alan decided to go indoors and get a warm mug of coffee. Normally, he’d have phoned AK Plant and told them what he thought of them, but as things were now, he most certainly didn’t want to antagonise Paul. But around eleven, his patience ran out. He was just about to pull the mobile from inside his waterproof, when there was a sharp rap from Paul’s office window. Alan looked up. The window opened, and Paul shouted out.