The Evidence

by Christopher Priest

  ‘This was when he gave the baseball bat to Lew?’

  ‘I think that’s right. He would almost certainly have given the other boy a present too, but I’ve no idea what it might have been.’

  A memory of an inscription in squarish handwriting flashed like a shard of sunlight glimpsed through trees.

  ‘I think it was a book,’ I said. ‘An instruction manual of magical techniques.’

  ‘Yes – I suppose that’s possible,’ Spoder said, apparently not too interested.

  ‘Tell me about the man Jessa moved to Hames with,’ I said.

  Spoder re-engaged with his information.

  ‘You won’t be surprised to learn that his name was Antterland,’ he said. Amongst the relative flood of new information I had been absorbing, it had not yet in fact occurred to me that I still did not know why the twin brothers had that name, but I said nothing. If Spoder had not telephoned when he did I would have guessed anyway, but he was a long way ahead of me here.

  He went on: ‘Antterland was not from Dearth – it’s not clear where exactly he came from. Somewhere else in the Archipelago, obviously. He travelled around a great deal, maintained an air of intrigue about his doings, was secretive about his meetings and sometimes used false names. His real name was Raffe Antterland, and he was a businessman of sorts, a self-styled entrepreneur, constantly setting up schemes and companies, then selling them or using the equity to raise more capital.

  ‘He was about ten years older than Jessa. They met while he was negotiating a string of business deals in Dearth. He seems to have dazzled her. It must have been love at first sight, because within a few weeks of meeting him Jessa packed up her life and moved with him to Salay. After her divorce finally came through she and Antterland married. They set up a home on Salay Hames. As far as I can tell this was the same house in which Lew was later killed.’

  I tried to imagine what Enver Jeksid must have gone through during this period. He and Jessa were so young, still in their early twenties. It was a sad story: a recent marriage, sudden abandonment and desertion, removal of the children to a distant island. Presumably the relationship turned toxic. She had met and married another man, a business operative with plenty of money. She changed her name. Perhaps Raffe Antterland seemed glamorous, a bit of a cad but attractive with it, high on his success, a deal-maker who used other people’s money.

  ‘When were the boys given Antterland’s name?’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t been able to date that exactly,’ Spoder said. ‘It appears to have been soon after she remarried.’

  ‘And was Jeksid a Dearth cop at this time?’

  ‘No – that came a year or so later. He had another job – I don’t know what it was. He gave that up and applied for a police cadetship. When he was recruited as a full constable he appears to have thrown himself wholeheartedly into the job. A way of keeping his mind away from other things? He did well. A lot of new police officers are like that. They often see joining the police as a new start, a chance to put things behind them. I know the feeling, sir. That was me too. For the first two years I was the keenest young cop on the force.’

  Like Spoder, I felt some sympathy for the young Enver Jeksid. He was still more or less unknown to me, but I was glimpsing the details of his life as they took on a comprehensible shape.

  I said: ‘Spoder, have you written all this down?’

  ‘No – but I’ve sent you links to the internet sites where you can find everything.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Yes, but that meant of course I would have to spend more time looking through these old records. Many of the links Spoder would have sent me were likely to be duplicates of sites I had already found, or mirror sites with the same data. I didn’t want to discourage him. Then the others, the ones I hadn’t yet seen: it would be a case of working through them to confirm what Spoder had just told me.

  ‘Couldn’t you print out the relevant ones, and let me have them next time I see you?’

  ‘I’ve already emailed them to you. It’s always best if you have the original data. You told me that once.’

  ‘I know.’ Spoder was only doing exactly what I asked of him. I went on: ‘So where were Jessa and her husband when Lew was murdered?’

  ‘That is something I haven’t been able to find out. All I know is that Lew was living alone.’

  I took a break from the phone call, and told Spoder I would look at what he had sent me, and call him back. I tried contacting Jo again – she was still not answering, but I knew she was likely to be busy. I made some coffee, then strolled around the garden in the warm sunshine. Barmi was sunning himself outside the garden windows.

  I returned to my desktop computer and started to search the links Spoder had sent. The story had finally taken hold of me. All these people, all these old killings. They were gaining in depth and solidity for me at last, becoming human. Everything would make sense in the end.

  As I suspected, Spoder had sent me links to a number of sites I had already visited, which I skipped. I bookmarked several others, experimentally following a few more links from some of them. He had, for instance, sent me a website of newspaper cuttings about Frejah Harsent: news of a medal she was awarded for long police service, an announced promotion to superintendent, her involvement in a long search for a particular transgressor, her appointment as commissioner, the first woman on Dearth to reach that level of policing. There was a photograph of her as a young woman, another one that was more recent.

  I believed she was the key to all the killings, this entanglement of police officers and the murders they were involved with, long ago.

  I called Spoder back. It felt like an old-fashioned novelty to keep speaking on the landline.

  ‘Thanks for what you sent me,’ I said. ‘It’s a sad story.’

  ‘If anything it gets worse. I’ve been looking in the Hames newspaper archives. When the two sons were adults, aged twenty-four, Jessa died. She was in hospital for a minor operation, but sepsis set in and they couldn’t save her. There were other medical complications. The story appeared briefly in the newspaper, but there were few more details. I’ll send you a link to the archive entry. Lew was still living with his mother in Hames City, and to a certain extent also with his stepfather, Raffe Antterland. It was around this time that Dever went to live and work on Sekonda. According to a newspaper in Corlynne, the town where the carnival is, a young magician had been hired to entertain visitors at the park. They say little about him, but he was already using Willer as a stage name. Raffe was increasingly absent on his travels and Lew was often alone. After Jessa died, Dever did return to Hames to be with his brother, but he never stayed long and his absences grew longer.’

  ‘So what happened to Raffe Antterland?’ I said.

  ‘It’s impossible to tell. There’s no more mention of him – he was at Jessa’s funeral, but after that he seems to disappear. The Hames census return, which was taken the following year, shows Lew still living at the house on his own. Dever was by then permanently on Sekonda – I think we both realize he was probably opening his magic theatre at Bonnzo’s Park, or at least getting it ready. But there was nothing about Raffe Antterland. I’ve tried all sorts of census searches on his name – it’s not a common one but there are Antterland families on several islands in the Archipelago. None of them is the right one. No Raffe, or anyone with even a remotely similar name.’

  Spoder sometimes amazed me with his thoroughness. ‘How long did it take you to search for all that?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Do you suppose Raffe died too?’ I said.

  ‘Not likely, is it?’ Spoder said. ‘Not in the way Jessa died. She was ill. He might have died around the same time, or later, but there’s no record of that anywhere. He could still be alive today. Probably is. I came to the conclusion he just took off after she died, and left the two young men to fend for themselves. He doesn’t seem cut out for family life.’

  We agreed to leave it at that.
I told him Jo was returning the next day, so I would not be thinking about ‘all these Dearth cops and their murders’ for a few days at least. Spoder sounded amused: I think we shared a feeling that we had found out everything about them that it was possible to know.

  Afterwards, I checked my bank’s website. Nothing had changed for the better.

  I went to my usual social media feeds, browsed around. Some of the people I knew who also lived on Raba were talking about the chaos the financial crash had brought to their lives – their worries, the desperate attempts to buy food, and so on. For them the crisis continued. I added nothing to the debate, with the uncomfortable feeling of almost certain responsibility looming around me.

  But it was not a crisis for all: several people said that they had found cash machines that were working again, and, like Spoder, that their bank had promised everything would return to normal in the near future. A lot of messages went to and fro, about whether one should move to a different bank, how to do it, and so on. Again, I added nothing to the comments.

  After this, I carried out a more detailed search for information about my own bank, but again received negative answers. Negative in the sense that nothing appeared to have changed for the better.

  Thinking about that shadow of responsibility, I remembered the way I had used the software on the hotel key card to invoke a mutability safeguard, so-called. I thought I had uninstalled the program, or at least that part of it. I wondered if there was some residual effect still present. Should I check the program?

  Nervously, I thought not. It was a beast. I went to the kitchen and made myself more coffee.

  While I was there I found a long forgotten can of soup in the cupboard and warmed it up, trying to avoid thoughts about the mutability of old food. The can must have been sitting there at the back of the shelf, unused for at least a couple of years. The soup smelled all right so I consumed it anyway, but immediately afterwards I drove to the local grocery and purchased a few basics: milk, bread, eggs (thoughts of Spoder), cooked meats, salad vegetables, some cans of beer. I was astonished by the prices: most of my remaining cash was used up.

  In the calm of the afternoon, with no phone calls from Spoder, with no more links to follow, with no rumbling exhaust of an over-powered roadster, I thought that if I proceeded carefully through the mutability software I might be able to discover what in fact it had done. I remembered how long it had taken for the program to load – afterwards I had discovered a note of the huge amount of internet data that had been sent to and fro. I also found allegedly temporary files on my hard drive in obscurely named folders.

  I located the program and ran it, went carefully past the questions about language, social level, password, location, software update (I clicked on No). I saw the menu I had used before, and pulled it down. The option for Financial Services under Salay, Raba was still pre-ticked. I moved the cursor to the box, and unticked it, just in case.

  I then tried looking in more detail at the various front menus, searching for some idea of what the program was capable of doing. The Help page, written in coders’ geek, contained a note of recent upgrades to the software. While I was looking at the Help option I searched for warnings about the possible side-effects of the program. There were no warnings: all the documentation under Help was cursory and opaque.

  I selected Exit.

  Immediately, a message flashed into sight:

  You Have Concurrently Safeguarded a Background Option:

  Salay Group: Raba, the fourth – Arts / Literature and Books / Fiction / Novels / Commercial Novels / Writers / Detective Thrillers

  Do you wish to Deconcatenate this Option? [y/n]

  I stared at the screen.

  What did that mean? A ‘background option’? I did not remember doing more than going through those menus – was that enough to initiate the program? And did I wish to ‘deconcatenate’? Deconcatenate what from what? If I clicked No, would that mean the option would be concatenated? With what?

  Had the people who wrote the program used the word ‘concatenate’ in the usual sense of linking one thing to another? Or was it computer jargon, perhaps specific only to this program? Only to this moment of software choice, a single use, in this particular program?

  I remembered the evening when I had gone through the menus, looking for some subject in the options that might mean something to me, might be relevant to the life I knew, playing around experimentally with what I entered.

  I also remembered shrinking back from going any further: unless there was some other writer of commercial detective thrillers living on Salay Raba (and I had never heard of one) then the program was going to zero in on me. Here – this house, perhaps even this room. Me, protected from mutability. Concatenated.

  My cellphone made the beep that meant a text message had arrived. I picked it up. The text was from Jo: AT MURISEAY AIRPORT. WHAT ARE TIMES FOR RABA SHUTTLE FLIGHTS? HOME AT LAST!!! SEE YOU TOMORROW! JO XXX

  The inter-island shuttles took off every forty-five minutes throughout the day – some flew direct to Raba, others stopped at intermediate islands. This meant that the scheduled times for arrival were erratic. I hurried away to the next room, where we kept the most recent shuttle timetable. I knew roughly what time her overnight flight from Muriseay would land at Salay Ewwel, so I picked out the three most likely connecting flights. I quickly composed a reply, listing the departure and arrival times of all three, but added that she should text or call me once she was about to board the plane. I would then still have time to drive to Raba Airport to meet her.

  She replied at once: THANX!

  I walked outside, holding the cellphone in case she contacted me again. It was the delicious hour of the evening, when the sun was going down, the air was still warm, and the cicadas had not yet started their nightly celebration of insect rapture. I believed that with the running out of interest in all those Dearth cops I had everything to look forward to. I was thinking actively about the next scene in my novel draft, glad to be getting back to it after so many interruptions. Jo was likely to be at home for an extended period. We could plan that vacation.

  I finally returned to my office, where the computer monitor was still showing the attractive pale blue background. While I had wandered around outside in the balmy air I had made the decision simply to click on No, and then be done with it. However, there had been a development while I was away.

  The screen said: Mutability Safeguard Timed Out. Option Auto-Concatenated.

  When I touched the keyboard, the program closed.

  25

  Todd’s Last Case

  We are close to the end. How is it going to turn out?

  First I must prepare the ground for what is likely to happen.

  There are two major problems with any mystery novel or detective thriller. The first is the almost invariable subject: the presence of death – the problem of the way death is handled in crime fiction. The second is the unavoidable anticlimax always present, lurking blandly at the end of the book.

  Neither of these appears to affect the popularity of the genre with readers, nor do writers pay much attention to them from the evidence of the books they write, nor even when they get together socially or at crime fiction festivals.

  Death and anticlimax are surely a contradiction in terms?

  Death is unspeakable, partly because of the dread we all feel about it, but also because of the inherent unanswerable question facing any novelist: what can be said about it now, or indeed at any time, that would be original, profound or helpful?

  Even so, in all the arts, literature in particular, death and the prospect of death, and the process of dying, are subjects which are recurrent themes. Just like describing the birth of a child, the movement of the seasons, the passage of time, the falling in and out of love, a spiritual awakening or renewal, the approach or fear of death provides a theme of classical unity and grandeur.

  But outside the arts death is a personal tragedy. The death of someone close
to us is always a shock, even after a long illness has been endured, or the deceased passed away after reaching a great age. It is a cause of inconsolable upset and a feeling of helpless loss. For the person who dies it is an entry into the fathomless oblivion from which there is no return, no reporting. Death is a mystery solved by everyone, but only once and always too late – the experience cannot be described, so we cannot therefore learn about it from others. Some deaths are harder than others for the survivors to bear: the death of a child, of a new lover, of a close parent, of a brother or sister.

  Sometimes, when we hear of the death of a stranger, occurring in peculiar or unusual circumstances or as a result of violent action or an avoidable accident, we are moved to the same sense of dismay and loss, even though all we are told about it is the terrible context. We know nothing of the person. The human condition ensures that we identify not only with the one who has died but with the people he or she was closest to.

  All this is because we know our own deaths are inevitable and final. We do not know when death will strike. We live our lives in expectation.

  Descending to the practical: a writer of thrillers deals with death on an almost daily basis. Most crime novels include at least one death, and in many cases that will occur close to the beginning of the narrative. The rest of the writer’s work is therefore with the consequences. How was the murder actually carried out? Who did it? Why? Was it really a murder or only an accident?

  Some novels include several killings.

  In the classic mystery a body is discovered: in the library, in the garden, in the drawing room, in the cellar, in bed, in some improbable place in inexplicable circumstances. For the writer and reader this is the start of the mystery, and is essentially a mere plot device. The story becomes concerned with what is not clear about the death: the motive, opportunity, money, property, relationships, grievances, jealousy, secret dealings, legacies, and with the investigation, the police procedure, the role of the detective, the identity of the killer. We find out about these as the story develops.