Why We Die

by Mick Herron

Without a plan, he climbed to the crow’s nest. Being here by himself always tugged at something inside Arkle he didn’t understand and wouldn’t know what to call, except that he felt more at home here than he did at home, and guessed the others did too. Just one more thing binding them together; another reason he couldn’t allow them to fall apart. The money, he remembered. He was supposed to be considering the money; what Kay knew about it; whether – more to the point – she could get her hands on it. Whether this Whitby was part of some scheme to do that. And if Whitby was actually from Oxford, or if finding him again would be trickier than that.

  The light filtering through the meshed window had a greasy, secondhand texture, and the air tasted of whatever Trent had eaten lately: something fast and fried, and already cold by the time it got here.

  The phone rang.

  Afterwards, it would seem of great significance that when he heard the news he was in the crow’s nest, where he, Bax and Trent had spent so much of their shared lives together . . . It was Trent. Trent sounded sober. That was a first.

  ‘It’s Baxter.’

  Arkle said nothing.

  ‘He’s dead, Arkle.’

  And still he said nothing, as if this were the simplest way of undoing whatever complicated misunderstanding had infected Trent.

  ‘It was Kay.’ There was a curious vacancy in Trent’s voice, a vacancy which found an echo in Arkle’s heart. ‘She stabbed him, Ark. He’s dead . . .’

  The greased and heavy light clouded over, leaving Arkle in the dark.

  Chapter Five

  i

  It was a long drive home, and if Zoë had known it was going to end with her being dead, she’d have pulled into a layby and avoided it altogether. Life was too short to approach death head-on. On that journey, you took any diversion available – marriage, travel, children, alcohol. At the very least, you stopped to admire the view.

  The moors folded over themselves deep into the distance, and wherever one fell from sight, another rose. Their only limit was the horizon. All the evidence suggested they kept happening the far side of that, too.

  After the harried man had escaped the yard, the pair of them had raced down the street together like an elopement in progress, Zoë’s heartbeat underlining their urgency. If the apple hadn’t worked, she’d have had to do something else – and even with a gate between them, his attention elsewhere, shaven-head Arkle looked bad news; like somebody who’d squeeze whatever trigger was offered, for the pleasure of the damage it would cause. So she’d have had to do something, and had no idea what, though it would probably have involved being on the same side of the gate as him . . .

  Thanks to the apple, that hadn’t happened.

  They’d hared round two corners, Zoë and the man in white chinos and black jacket, before looking back. But nobody was following. She slowed, stopped and rested, heart hammering. When she closed her eyes, a picture from her past exploded in her head: that moment she’d been pulled clear of the canal just before her lungs burst, then plunged back in again, and held under.

  She was being talked to:

  ‘. . . Thanks.’

  Zoë, without opening her eyes, said, ‘Don’t tell me. You just popped in there, asking for directions.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  Now she opened them. ‘Oh, God. Tell me that didn’t happen.’

  ‘I was looking for somebody,’ he said at last. ‘I found him instead.’

  ‘Right.’ She tested her legs: reasonably steady. What was the matter with her? All she’d done was throw an apple and run. But even with the gate between them, that man had scared her. She’d recognized something dark in him, and knew that whatever she’d thrown to distract him – a kitten, a child – he’d have shot without thinking, and congratulated himself on his reflex. Her legs were okay now. It would be an idea to put space between him and her.

  On being asked a third time, she registered what the question was.

  ‘Boehm. Zoë Boehm.’

  They weren’t far from the car park, and judging by the relief on his face, he was parked here too. Belatedly, she asked his name: Tim Willerby, Wallaby, something like that. Who had come looking for someone and found Arkle instead, but had walked away intact. She should have advice to offer (don’t go into deserted yards with strange men) but that was ridiculous: he wasn’t much younger than her, and a little shopworn himself – hollow round the eyes; creased at the edges. Old enough to know better, in other words. She had rescued him, but only because he’d happened to be there. It wasn’t a big deal. Goodbye, Tim Willerby/Wallaby, she thought, and they parted in the middle of the car park. All of a sudden, she couldn’t leave this town fast enough.

  It was a long drive home, and it ended with her dead.

  Her first-floor flat shared a downstairs lobby, where mail, mostly junk, accumulated on a small table. This afternoon a posh cream envelope awaited her, along with a hand-delivered card, taped to a copy of the local paper. She carried both upstairs. It felt like she’d been away forever: her rooms had shrunk in her absence, and mustiness tinged the air. She flipped the light switch in passing, but nothing happened.

  It was an immutable law that bulbs only went when there was no spare on the premises.

  She swore, but quietly, under her breath. No big deal. Sitting, she thought about getting up again and pouring some wine, but if she started now she’d drink all evening, and this would leave her wrecked. Not that she had plans demanding sobriety . . . Best to sidestep the issue and read her card, which turned out to be cheap and sombre: embossed bouquet on white background, with Deepest Sympathy in raised gilt lettering at its foot. Inside, in a script she didn’t recognize, was scrawled Sorry to hear you’re dead.

  For a moment Zoë felt nothing – very specifically nothing. She could feel nothing’s edges, the space nothing occupied. Nothing threatened to expand and swallow her whole. Nothing, for a while, verged on everything. Then she forced herself to blink, and the shadows receded.

  She looked again at the envelope, but it gave no clues; just her name in block capitals, black ink. It didn’t matter. Clues only work when you’re already looking where they point, and this had Bob Poland written all over it. Putting it aside, she picked up the newspaper it had been taped to. A clammy knowledge of its contents was already clawing at her, the way the man in the Poe story scratched at his coffin lid, as if this would make the slightest difference.

  Her name was there in the middle section, under Death Notices. Suddenly, unexpectedly. No flowers, by request. Bastard. She threw the paper aside, her inner debate about wine forgotten, but the first thing she found in her kitchen was a pool of water on the floor by the fridge, and this time she swore out loud, already knowing what would happen when she tried the light switch – nothing. She tried anyway, just as somebody knocked on her door. Zoë marched out; took the stairs two at a time; threw the door open so fiercely, it was a wonder it didn’t splinter. The man on the other side took a step back, frightened. He lived downstairs.

  ‘Zoë?’

  ‘Dave.’

  ‘You’re alive.’

  ‘It would seem so. Has somebody been here?’

  ‘A policeman. Jesus. He said you were dead.’ Dave shook his head: he was thirty-four, and wore a beard. Death was a big thing. ‘A car crash?’ He made this a question. If anyone ought to know about her death, it was Zoë. ‘He said there’d been a traffic accident?’

  ‘And he had ID, right?’

  ‘It looked real to me.’

  And you’re an expert, she managed not to say. ‘So you let him in.’ They kept each other’s spare keys, which until now had seemed a good idea.

  ‘. . . I’m really sorry, Zo.’

  ‘Don’t call me Zo,’ she said. Then, seeing his face, said: ‘Look, it’s nothing. Really. Practical joke, that’s all.’

  ‘He wasn’t a policeman?’

  ‘He’s retired. He likes a bit of a laugh.’

  ‘He said you were dead,’ Dave repeate
d. ‘That’s supposed to be funny? Your friends play real rough, Zoë.’

  ‘So do I,’ she told him.

  She thought at first he’d managed to cancel her utilities, but she’d overestimated Bob Poland: he’d sliced her plugs, removed her fuses, reached his limit. Making out she was dead, leaving her flat a stone cold tomb – he didn’t get cleverer than that. Blunt weaponry was more his speed. And she felt her anger harden to a cold knot, and knew she’d make him pay for this, first chance she got.

  Meanwhile she retreated to her local pub, which had drums and trumpets fixed to the walls, and player-piano music on the ceiling, and ordered a large white wine she almost finished before reaching her table. There was nothing like being reminded about one bastard to make you forget another. Poland’s intrusion had pushed Arkle to one side, but now she was sitting quietly with alcohol thank God in front of her, the morning returned into focus, and her conclusion was immediate: no way did she want to tangle with Arkle. He’d toyed with that man like a cat with a cornered sparrow. Zoë didn’t know if he’d have shot him or not, but she wasn’t about to replay the experiment with herself in the target role, just to find out.

  Zoë drank wine, and thought about Win. Win thought the Dunstan brothers ripe for robbing, and her logic was the same as her boss’s had been when he’d set the Dunstans on Sweeney – who could they tell? Where this collapsed was in expecting Arkle to pout, fume and forget it. He presented with the self-control of a heat-seeking missile, and last thing Zoë planned to do was light a fire in his vicinity.

  It was too late to do anything about plugs and bulbs; too early to go to bed, but suddenly that’s what she wanted to do anyway – close her eyes and put it all out of view: madmen, bastards, carnage on the roads. She had another drink first. The pub was filling as the nearby publisher closed its doors, and the ambient chatter of bookpeople masked her inner tension. Think about good things. Think about seeing Sweeney tomorrow: making her report, taking her money, pulling down the curtain. Bob Poland was a story for another day, and Arkle was history, clear and simple. Win’s dream of untold booty – whatever the Dunstans had stashed from their thieving outings – was only a pirate’s dream of other people’s money. Sweeney’s promised bounty, on the other hand, she’d earned. Take the money, pay her debts – she need never see or think about these people again. The next best thing to a happy ending was an ending.

  She finished her drink and went home, where it was dark and comfortless. And when she turned on her portable radio, she found that Poland had thought of this too: he’d removed its batteries. No light, no sound; no calming voices on Radio 4, murmuring secular certainties. ‘Fuck you,’ she said out loud. Did he think this would bring her to her knees; make her feel she was peering over the edge of an open grave? Zoë was too solidly of the here and now to be frightened out of it by that creep. Even an angry, vindictive stalker was only a stalker: sooner or later, you scraped him off your shoe.

  By light that swam through the window, she noticed, lying on her sofa, the other letter; the one she’d forgotten about after opening Poland’s. It could be good news. It was, of course, a bill. Damien bloody Faraday –’for consultation’. For being told, in other words, what she already knew: that she owed the Inland Revenue more than she could currently repay. Her fridge remained disabled, but she retrieved the half-empty bottle of wine from it anyway; finished it in one large glass, and went to bed.

  Thursday morning – crack of nine – she was outside the Cancer Relief shop again. No Miss Marple yet; no sign of Sweeney. She turned her mobile off, in case Jeff rang asking for his car back, and browsed The Independent: train fares up, military scandal, human cloning. Somebody got murdered, too: Totnes caught her eye, but before she could read further there was a tapping at her window, and she looked up expecting Sweeney. But no. It was Miss Marple.

  Zoë wound the window down.

  ‘I rang the council.’

  Now why wasn’t that a surprise?

  ‘And they said they’ve nobody surveying antisocial behaviour. Nobody at all.’

  ‘And did you complain about that?’

  ‘Complain?’

  ‘Council tax the way it is, you’d think they could afford a little antisocial targeting.’ Anti-antisocial, she meant. She wound the window up before this could be pointed out, and decided that waiting round the corner might be quieter – where the Dunstans had lurked, in fact. It was coming to something when you had to take parking tips from a bunch of armed robbers.

  Once there she felt restless, so got out and walked the block. The streets were busy now. All the other shops were open. Zoë felt, or possibly imagined, the gimlet stare of white hair/pink wool upon her, and wondered for a moment what it would be like to be that age. Then realized she was looking no more than, say, twenty-five years into her future, and tried to shut that channel down . . . Too late. What would she be doing in twenty-five years? Without a serious upturn in economic status, she might not be working in a charity shop, but she’d be buying her outfits there. This was not a good vision. She walked on, browsing windows, but found herself looking back every two minutes, because it stood to reason that one particular pair of minutes would be the one in which Sweeney appeared.

  Except none of them were. And though she waited a full hour past Sweeney’s usual opening time, for most of that, she’d known in her bones he wasn’t coming.

  ii

  Arkle, blind with fury, mad with loss, roared like a blood-red sunset on one of those plains he’d dreamed about. From the darkness something answered: echoing his pain, telling him to shut up, who knew?

  Trent said, ‘That copper? The one with red hair?

  ’ Arkle’s noise might have meant yes, he knew the one; no, he didn’t care.

  ‘He said it would have been quick. He said Bax didn’t suffer.’

  Trent didn’t feel drunk, which was alarming. He’d been drinking all day. If he wasn’t drunk, he’d possibly turned some evolutionary corner.

  ‘I said, didn’t suffer? She stuck a fucking kitchen knife in him. That’s gotta hurt.’

  He was sitting at the foot of the metal staircase, washed in the light of the last unburnt-out overhead lamp, and his eyes were red and aching. Around him lay torn, wadded copies of newspapers, most of which had had something to say about Bax, about Kay; all of it liberally sprinkled with inverted commas. ‘Abusive.’ ‘Self-defence.’

  Last time he’d seen Kay, she’d had that shiner decorating her face: what they call a mouse. Even a mouse’ll roar, if you poke it hard enough.

  Arkle was back and forth, back and forth. He looked like he was wearing a mask again, except this mask was fashioned of anger, grief and fury; the three of them working his features, making him their puppet.

  What Trent mostly felt was numb.

  There’d been coppers, naturally – a whole day’s worth – and while they’d started out sympathetic, this had changed yesterday evening, when something tribal had occurred. Attitudes hardened, and things became more recognizable. From the unfamiliar role of innocent bystander, Trent had been shifted to his usual position of being somebody he probably shouldn’t be. In a way, this was a comfort. Baxter was still dead, but at least Trent was still Trent, whom policemen eyed with suspicion as a matter of course, if only for being Arkle’s brother. And Arkle was a walking war zone.

  Look at him now. Back and forth, back and forth. There’d been journos buzzing round like flies on meat. At the police station, Trent and Arkle had been ushered out of the back door to avoid them: a courtesy allowed on account of their brother being the meat, despite the newfound suspicion he might deserve to be. But journos tracked them to the yard anyway, and stood outside the gates, rattling the woodwork. This was what it must be like, the wrong side of a zoo. When their noise penetrated Arkle’s grief, he’d gone out and flattened the nose of the first to reach him. There’d been a scattering, as if news were breaking elsewhere. In the midst of it, Trent noticed a woman watching from over the road: la
te fifties, mad grey hair and thick glasses; wearing a belted brown raincoat, from under which tufts of a tatty green cardigan poked. Bag lady, he’d thought. Astonishingly, she’d yawned. He’d turned to check on Arkle, and when he next looked, she was gone.

  It had become clear reasonably quickly that interviews weren’t going to happen. The journalists dispersed shortly after.

  Time had passed. The light was long gone; the moon a ghost under covers. Trent had two empty vodka bottles at his feet, one two-thirds full in his hands, and every time he took a swallow, he wondered why he wasn’t drunk yet. If Bax had been here, he’d have had words on the subject. ‘It’s not just your liver you’re killing,’ he’d have said. ‘It’s your brain. Your dick. Your heart.’ And he’d have added: ‘I know you’re not using them, but miracles happen, right?’

  ‘Miracles happen,’ Trent said out loud.

  Arkle raged at the ghostly moon.

  ‘Miracles happen,’ he said again, but they didn’t. Baxter was still lying the other side of town in a fridge, while Kay was on police bail; cushioned in a four-star hotel, probably, spilling her story to a sleazebag with a cheque book. Tell me how he blacked your eye. Tell me what a bully he was. Yeah, right: so you killed him. You couldn’t have just walked out, bitch? His vision filled with tears again. You take something sharp, you stick it in your heart. That had to hurt, didn’t it?

  Trent tried to stand, and it turned out that he was, after all, inhumanly drunk. But being short, he didn’t have far to fall.

  When he woke, he was in the crow’s nest. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken somewhere without the faintest memory of getting there: usually, though, he’d just aligned himself to the nearest horizontal surface while unconsciousness took its course. Tonight, it appeared he’d managed to sit in Arkle’s chair – which had been known to be unwise – after wrapping himself in a blanket. All of which must have happened, because the alternative wasn’t feasible.

  Arkle said, ‘You okay?’

  He tried to speak. Decided he wasn’t ready yet. Nodded.