Honor Role

by Tim Hoy

  “How? I mean, how did it get into him?”

  “He ingested it.”

  “By choice? Freddy?” His tone said he thought it not bloody likely.

  “There’s no sign of a struggle, no sign of anyone else being with him, no CCTV footage of anyone entering or leaving the building other than service people and fellow tenants.”

  “But it wasn’t suicide?” Bethany asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, Mr. Bethany, not that it’s any of your business, that we’ve spoken with his family and some of his friends. As yet we’ve found no reason he might have taken his own life, emphasis on the words ‘as yet.’ On the other hand, we’ve no evidence the poison was forced on him.”

  He shook his head. “Well, I surely can’t give you a reason. All outward signs were that he lived the good life. Always a beauty on his arm, his salary here wasn’t at all shabby. Last year, with bonus, he was our top earner. I don’t think any of us wanted to be his new best friend, but here he was a star.”

  “Not liking him much seems to be a recurring theme,” I said. “Why?”

  “Well, I guess I’d say Freddy lacked, what would you call it, empathy? That or he was deeply self-centered. Or both. If he wanted something he took it. Didn’t sit well with a lot of people here, but I let him be because he delivered.”

  “Didn’t sit well how? Was he dishonest?” I asked.

  “Not so much; I think Freddy would have been shocked if anyone had called him out on his bad behavior. And I’m sure people have over the years. He ran through girlfriends like water through a sieve, from what I could tell. A few months, and they reached their sell-by date. Or maybe he reached his.”

  Earlier that morning, I had stepped out to retrieve the paper from the front step. Call me old-fashioned, but I still liked to feel a daily paper in my hands, to hold the news, to read and turn the pages at my leisure. Ken Larson was about to put his key into the door as I opened it. He was in uniform, luggage roll to his rear. In one hand was a cake shop box. The writing on it identified it as from a delicatessen in New York. We smiled at each other and nodded. He looked weary.

  “All good?” I asked.

  “Just in from America. It does a business with my body clock sometimes.”

  “Well, welcome home.”

  Ken looked at the item in his hands. “This is what’s left of a very good cheesecake, which I’ll never eat. Can I persuade you to take it off my hands?” he said.

  “You brought a cheesecake from New York?”

  “A gift from the cabin crew.”

  “For what, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Uh, my birthday actually,” Ken said. He looked embarrassed. He might have even blushed.

  “Today?”

  He nodded. I shut the door behind us and took the box.

  “Happy birthday, flat number 3. And thank you. Are your girls taking you out?”

  “They’re at some summer camp their mother found. French and good manners. And here I thought the two were mutually exclusive.”

  I laughed. “Sounds…conflicted, not to mention dreadful.”

  For the first time Ken truly smiled.

  “Be downstairs tonight at half seven,” I said.

  “Oh no, Tessa, you needn’t bother.”

  “I want to. It’s just Jonathan and me tonight. Jabirah will have made something delicious. You’ll share it with us and then we’ll work on this cheesecake.”

  Ken paused on the stairs but didn’t reply.

  “Unless you’d rather not,” I said. “I’m being presumptuous. We really are nice people, though.”

  He laughed. “You know, I think I’d love to.”

  “Right answer.”

  “Good. Now I’m going to crash, which is a word we pilots use sparingly. See you tonight. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Turned out it was. My pleasure, that is. And my son’s. Then again, what boy doesn’t love hearing about airplanes and flying?

  In the Matter of Frederick Hayworth, the coroner returned with an open verdict. Although the death was suspicious, Dr. Judith Gaitskell could reach no definitive answer on how the deed was done. Without some evidence of the deceased’s intentions—a text, a note, anything—a finding of suicide could not be made. An open verdict meant that if, at a later point, new information clarified things, then a final determination could be entered. As a result, Sofia Hayworth suffered the “added indignity” of hearing from her son’s life insurer that they would not be paying out on his generous policy. She called me in a frenzy after slamming the phone down on whatever poor “information-center” specialist at Prudential had the misfortune to take her call.

  The media speculated. “Who Offed Freddy?” read one gossip-site headline, with the crawl underneath: “(If Not Freddy!).” The attention brought pressure on DI Lazarus and me, both from the press and our superiors.

  It doesn’t take much cyanide to kill. Whatever amount was in Freddy’s flat, all of it ended up in his stomach. There was simply no trace of it anywhere, including his storage unit in the depths below the building. So the question was, where would Freddy, or his killer, get cyanide?

  Dr. Samuel Khan’s surgery was next to King Edward VII’s Hospital in Beaumont Street. On a dry, not-too-chilly day it was a pleasant walk from the Yard. Dr. Khan had been Hayworth’s treating physician for seven years, since Hayworth came to London. The woman staffing the front desk took me to the doctor’s office, which was barely big enough for the two of us. He was in the process of wolfing down a sandwich and hot drink.

  “I’m sorry to eat in front of you, but we’re slammed here,” he said.

  “Not a problem.”

  “I read the papers. How would Frederick Hayworth even get hold of cyanide?” Dr. Khan asked. “I’m quite sure you have to sign for it or something?”

  “Vendors are required to keep a record of sales, check IDs. Did he have any history of depression?” I asked.

  “You think he might have killed himself? I don’t see it.” The doctor took a bit of his sandwich. “To answer your question, no.”

  “Why was he taking Paxil?”

  “The antidepressant? I didn’t prescribe it, so I can’t tell you. Did you find the prescription in his home? My name wouldn’t have been on it.”

  “No, it was a Dr. Patton, I believe.”

  “Don’t know him. Mr. Hayworth was a healthy young man. I treated him for minor ailments, bronchitis a few times”—he consulted his file notes—“a skin rash. Nothing major. I remember he was particular about cleanliness. A bit of a hypochondriac, to be frank. I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

  “We both know there’s an exception to patient privacy rules in the case of fatal accidents,” I said.

  Dr. Khan nodded, “Yes, I suppose.” He paused and then added, “You’re right.”

  “So no serious illnesses?” I continued.

  “He thought they were serious,” Dr. Khan said. “I didn’t. At least not the ones I treated. Better ask this Dr. Patton as well.”

  The aroma of something savory welcomed me home. Jabirah was in the kitchen fussing about, ready to be on her way.

  “Want me to drive you? At least to the bus stop?” I asked her. “I don’t mind.”

  “No, Tessa. Thanks, but I’ve been looking forward to the walk. Not a problem.”

  “Did you eat?” I asked.

  “I did.” She seemed anxious to leave.

  “Big date?” Meant as a joke. Clearly not funny to her.

  Jabirah reddened and kept silent. She looked into the hall mirror to check that her headscarf draped evenly, which it did. Thinking back, I’d wager nobody had ever asked her that particular question before. I shouldn’t ha
ve either, even in jest.

  “Remember, I’m not here tomorrow. I’ll see you Friday,” she said.

  “Yes, of course. Thanks, Jabirah,” I said, chastened, deservedly so.

  “Oh, right.” She stopped by the front door, picked up a canvas bag, and handed it to me. “These are for Ogueri,” she said as she stepped outside.

  “What are?” I asked as the door clicked shut. I watched Jabirah hurry away down the street with intent. The woman was on a mission. On the whatnot by the door was a canvas bag holding a number of bulky tomes. I opened the top one. It was Charlotte’s Web in braille, volume one. The left hand of each page was in print with pictures. The right page was in braille, so a sighted person could read from the left while the sightless person followed on the right, or vice versa. How perfect.

  Ken was on time for his birthday dinner, rested, in jeans. Silently, Jonathan sized up this unfamiliar adult. I led them to the kitchen and got us all drinks. It didn’t take Jonathan long to assume his usual role as chief interrogator; all I had to do was tell my son what Ken did for a living.

  “He flies the kind of planes we see from the garden sometimes, going to the airport,” I explained.

  “Or leaving it,” Ken said to Jonathan. “That I do.”

  For the next ten minutes at least, Jonathan quizzed Ken, who was patient and attentive. He told Jonathan about his training as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force, which my son found captivating. When Ken left the service, he worked a few years for a company that flew rich, often famous people around the world on private jets. Like an airborne taxi or Uber driver, he said. Ken knew how to speak to children, but Jonathan wasn’t the only one who found him interesting. I enjoyed the show.

  Yes, I thought, perhaps I chose well this time, tenant-wise. Again.

  I went to bed that night thinking of Freddy Hayworth. I wondered if Freddy would have touched the delicious meal we’d just enjoyed. Chicken in a spicy sauce, basmati rice. Would it have satisfied his fussy palate? Had Freddy been good with children? Why was he taking Paxil? Why did he stop taking it? The nearly full thirty-day supply had last been filled at a Boots in Tottenham Court Road eleven months prior.

  How good it was not to need such things, medication to calm my nerves, to maneuver through the minefield of life. Being home with my son provided all the happiness I could hope for.

  “It wasn’t necessarily depression, Detective Inspector. The medication has other palliative uses,” said Dr. Constance Patton the next day. I had gone to her office to ask about the Paxil, which she had prescribed.

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “Treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorders.”

  “And that is why Mr. Hayworth was taking the drug?”

  She paused and then nodded. “As he’s no longer with us because of what we might call troubling circumstances, I’ll answer that. It didn’t seem to have much effect, he said. He was much more responsive to behavior modification therapy. We had made some significant progress and then this.”

  “You’d taken him off Paxil?” I asked.

  “Tapered him off, as recommended,” she replied, punctuated with a nod.

  “Could going off the drug trigger suicidal thoughts?”

  “I suppose it’s possible, but extremely rare. And as Mr. Hayworth wasn’t taking it for depression, it would surprise me.”

  “How long had he taken it?” I asked.

  “Not quite a year. Long enough for it to get into his system; long enough for him to come to an opinion on its effectiveness. He was an intelligent man, Detective Inspector, just one that was plagued with quirks, tics, whatever word you want to use, that made life difficult for him and, I suspect, those around him.”

  “What would be examples?” I asked.

  “I have a patient who wears plastic gloves everywhere she goes. Won’t touch anyone or anything. Another wakes up at five o’clock every morning to get to work by nine—his office is ten minutes’ walk from his home. Each morning he takes a thirty-minute shower, no more, no less. He actually times it. He scrubs his body so intensely he’s drawn blood. Frederick Hayworth wasn’t—what’s the word—as severe as these two, but he was what I’d call on the spectrum.”

  “Can you tell me how it manifested itself with Mr. Hayworth?”

  “Well, there was compulsive behavior, but nothing that seriously interfered with his life. I know he had to take a shower every night before bed, and one in the morning. He had to brush and floss his teeth at night even if he’d not eaten, but a lot of people do that. Probably more of us should. Little rituals, nothing too jarring. One was he couldn’t share food. If someone picked from his plate that was it. No more for him. Little things that added up. A girlfriend, for example, who spends the night and runs late in the morning. She needs to take a shower. She eats his last wholemeal bagel; something like that. Frederick didn’t deal well with interruptions to his routine. They unsettled him. He didn’t deal well with choices, so he did his best to banish them from his life. To his credit he understood his behavior was ‘off’ as he put it. That’s what we worked on.”

  “This is not my field of expertise by any means,” I said, “but you’re reminding me of a girl I went to school with. Nothing was ever a choice for her. She had to eat all the foods in her lunch bag separately so she wouldn’t have to choose what her next bite would be. She had to eat by a certain time and wash her hands before eating, even if she wouldn’t be touching the food. I went clothes shopping with her once; it was a nightmare. She couldn’t make decisions, so she made sure she didn’t have to. Does that make sense?”

  “It does indeed. That’s definitely part of what causes people to succumb to their compulsions. They don’t have to think. They don’t have to make a wrong choice—with the anxiety that would cause—because there are no choices.”

  “And how did you decide to, what was the word, wean him off the drug? The Paxil.”

  “Taper. That was Mr. Hayworth’s idea, and I went with it. He was improving. If, after a month or two, there were signs of relapse, he agreed he would go back on the medication—that, or we’d try another. There are a number of helpful options today,” she said.

  I thanked Dr. Patton for her time and left. Walking to the bus, I wondered about Hayworth. He was “improving,” his therapist said. Nevertheless, the impression was forming that he’d left a load of fed-up people in his wake, colleagues, ex-lovers, former schoolmates even. It only took one who was himself—or herself—on the spectrum of psychopathy to decide that the world would be better off without Mr. Hayworth. Many had motive; only one need act. Still, there was no evidence that anyone had. On a Monday morning, somehow Freddy Hayworth had willingly taken a fatal dose of poison.

  One of his last texts, the night before he died, was a link to the website for a new West End restaurant, impossible to get into, which he sent to Scott Kramer, Mungo Kenroy, Greg Shafer, and David Colfax. To date, I’d only met Kramer and Kenroy. The message was “Know a waiter there from the gym. Can get a table next Thursday. 8:30. Who’s in?” That Sunday evening, only hours before his last breath, Freddy Hayworth was contemplating dining, not death. So the presumption, rebuttable of course, was that Mr. Hayworth hadn’t killed himself. This left us with a list of possible suspects, none of whom was anywhere near the vic at the time of death.

  The key had to be the source of the cyanide. That had to be our focus. Well, my focus, as Peter couldn’t seem to be bothered. The rest of the day was taken up with other matters, although Carl Bethany’s assistant rang late in the afternoon to say his boss would like to see me again. I proposed to drop by the next morning round ten, which proved acceptable. By six-fifteen I was headed home.

  “Do you think some people aren’t cut out for relationships?” Jabirah asked as she sat at the kitchen table helping me deconstruct a muffin. I’d been reading a slew of tedious emails on my
laptop. A chat with Jabirah was a welcome diversion.

  “Where did that come from?” I asked.

  “It’s just that you don’t seem, what, unfulfilled or anything.”

  “Don’t use me as a role model, Jabirah. I can’t strut that runway,” I said, popping the last crumbs into my mouth. “Don’t you just love gluten?”

  “It’s not that,” she said, glossing right over my rapier-like wit. “I mean, I do admire you, Tessa, but…it’s not that.”

  “Not sure I’m worthy of your admiration—single mother, list of faults and all. But thanks, I guess.”

  “Not by choice, though. Not unmarried by choice,” said Jabirah, which I left alone. If only she knew.

  “To be honest, I’d like Jonathan to have a stepfather. I just don’t seem to do anything to make that happen. The last date I went on was with Alec. My husband.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “I miss the man I met,” I said. My usual line. “Or the man I thought he was when I first met him.” I don’t disclose more than that. And won’t.

  “People change, don’t they?” Jabirah asked.

  “Yes, but the thing was, he didn’t change. I just came to know him—and myself.”

  “I’ve never been alone,” Jabirah said after a moment. “Really alone. Okay, I come to work by myself sometimes, but by public transport, so I’m not really alone. I’ve never eaten in a restaurant by myself, never gone to the cinema alone. I’d love to go off for a weekend sometime, take a room in a nice country inn, bring a stack of books, take walks, and not read a text or answer the phone. I’d love that.”

  “You want to marry someday, don’t you?” I asked. “I mean, hypothetically?”

  “Yes, I think so, although I’ve never been given a choice about it. And I won’t be given a choice of who I can marry either. I want to marry, but I also want to live, to grow.”

  “You know forced marriage is illegal in the UK, Jabirah.” I sounded like someone’s stern grandmother.