by Guy Ware
“OK. I was there, too. Afterwards. She got there first.”
“And what did you discover?”
If Theo hadn’t asked – if I hadn’t walked myself into a place where he was bound to ask – I might not have had to tell him. Not until I’d had the chance to work out what it meant and what I could get out of it. But now if I don’t tell Theo about the lack of bodies, I’ll be in deep shit when the facts come out. Which they will, in the end. I have no choice.
“There aren’t going to be any claims.”
Alex sits upright for the first time since I arrived. Even Theo’s arrival hadn’t straightened him up more than a few degrees.
“Rada got it wrong. The manager says nobody was shot. Nobody was even seriously injured. No bodies: no claims.”
Theo lifts one hand from his cane and strokes his short, trimmed beard.
“Do you believe him?”
“I said he might be lying, just to see if he reacted. But he was adamant. Got cross, which made me wonder. But, honestly, why would he lie?”
Alex says, “It’s possible.”
“But why? What’s in it for him?”
“I mean it’s possible no one got hit. All we know is a shot goes through the wall, Rada hears screaming, the gunwoman goes back into the room behind, fires a second shot and the screaming stops. Maybe there’s a woman in there who got a bit hysterical when a bullet came through the wall, and maybe nearly hit her, but didn’t; the gunwoman comes in, fires a shot through the ceiling to get her attention and she shuts up. It’s possible.”
Theo says, “Why did we assume that somebody was dead?”
I say, “Because Rada said so.”
“Are you sure?”
I’m not, honestly.
Alex says, “If there were no claims to walk away from, Rada didn’t do anything wrong. There’s no point in a disciplinary.” He swings his chair to look directly up at Theo. “You can let her back and call off the investigation.”
“I admire your concern and your loyalty, Alex, but I’m afraid I cannot do that. It would not have been unreasonable for Rada to suppose that at least one death had occurred, if not two – just as we did when we heard her report. By her own testimony she did not investigate this possibility. We therefore need to establish exactly what she believed to have happened at the time before we can reach any conclusion.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I have already contacted Riverside House. Mr Lopez will be here tomorrow. He expects to remain until the end of the week. In the meantime, I will take on Moon and Brewster; I expect you two to divide Rada’s remaining caseload between you. You only need do what’s urgent for now, but please keep them ticking over.”
Theo swings his cane in front of his feet precisely, as if sinking an easy putt, and strides into his office.
Alex whistles and says, “Lopez. Shit.”
I don’t ask.
Alex says, “The Grand Inquisitor.”
I’m still not going to get into this. Alex is just winding me up. If he isn’t, I’ll find out soon enough.
At lunchtime I call into the bank to pick up my gym kit. I ask to see Wenlock again.
“I’m sorry, sir. Mr Wenlock is very busy. Normally he would be out on the floor at this time of day. But, today . . . you’ll understand.”
“Then perhaps you can help me?”
The PA looks uncomfortable, but asks what she can do. I can think of any number of answers to that, but this really isn’t the moment. I say, “I need the ATM records for the morning of the robbery.”
“Would that help?”
Of course it would help. It would help me, anyway. I say it would help establish precise timings, but the woman doesn’t give up.
“We have everything on CCTV. We’ve already given it all to the police.”
Of course they have. It looks like I’ll be having that drink with Proctorow sooner than I thought.
I summon up my most endearing smile, the sort of smile my father used to give my mother when she found the pair of us in the tree house with a bottle of vodka and a radio tuned to the World Service. I say, “Triangulation.”
Her eyes cloud over and her bottom lip disappears between her teeth. It looks cute, even if it’s just stupidity.
“I really can’t say any more. But it is a matter of life and death. Well, more than that, really.”
I can practically hear the cogs turning in her head. She sucks on her pen and says, “I couldn’t authorise that.”
“Are you sure?”
She giggles. With heroic effort, I keep my voice calm. I am patient, I am just enquiring; I am not threatening her.
“So who could?”
“Mr Wenlock.”
I smile again. This is harder muscle work than the gym. “But Mr Wenlock is very busy. You can’t disturb him.”
She shakes her head.
“So . . . ?”
“I’ll ask the deputy manager.”
Bugger.
She makes a phone call. I watch the way her lips brush the handset. I have to get something out of this, after all.
“Mr Meersow will see you in Room 1 in fifteen minutes.”
“Room 1?”
“It’s one of the interview rooms downstairs. I’ll show you the way.”
I sling my gym bag over my shoulder. She leads me to the lift and presses the button for ground level. It’s only a couple of floors, but still takes long enough for the silence to feel awkward. I say, “Have you worked here long?”
She shows me to the interview room, says Mr Meersow will be down soon, and leaves me at the door. She doesn’t even offer me a coffee. Whatever the deputy manager is going to say, it’s not going to be of course, you can have the information you want. Anything to help.
I look around the small room. It’s about ten feet by eight. No windows. It smells of disinfectant. There is only one chair and that’s trapped between a table and the wall too tightly for anyone to pull it out or sit on it. It looks as if the table has been pushed back from the centre of the room. Sure enough, I can make out four dents in the carpet where it must have stood. Like everything in the bank, the carpet here is mostly red, but I can make out darker patches, that might be coffee stains, just about where a person would have sat at the table, before it was moved. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I begin to count: one – in; two – out. I visualise my movements coming from the lift to the room, ignoring the image of the PA’s arse I had focused on at the time, working out my bearings. Right out of the lift, facing the street. Left, left, right into the room. The wall now on my right would be the one that separated this room from the foyer, the one the bullet must have come through. I look up and sure enough, at about head height, there is a coin of fresh plaster the size and shape of a fifty pence piece. On the wall opposite hangs a large poster in an aluminium frame, advertising a savings bond. The application deadline passed last week. By the time the deputy manager turns up, I’ve used a buckle on my gym bag to remove a couple of the screws – enough to lever the poster frame forward an inch or two and see the dark stains sprayed up the wall behind.
6
I KNOW OF LOPEZ.
We’ve heard stories, but no one admits to having met the man. Theo must have met him.
D says we should divvy up Rada’s cases. He seems to be in some sort of hurry. He logs on, leaning back and grunting like a sow at the tardiness of his PC. He does this every day, as if it would make a difference. You would think he might learn.
He says, There’s only five.
Five files is nothing. It is not nothing, but it is not many. I have a couple of dozen, myself, perhaps thirty.
D says, My sister always was a completer-finisher.
Is that something he read?
He says, Theo’s taking Moon and Brewster. That only
leaves three. And two of us.
I dig a silver coin out of my jeans pocket. Heads or tails?
What are we tossing for?
Loser takes all?
That’s not fair.
He sounds like a toddler, and I tell him so.
He says, But it isn’t.
I sigh and open the files on my own screen. I say, Sister Angelina’s got to be a shoo-in?
OK. You take her and the traffic guy. I’ll take Rodkin.
The traffic guy’s a repeat drunk driver who ploughed into a crocodile of primary-age kids on a pedestrian crossing. He only died because the airbags in his unnecessary SUV suffocated him. The case would take about ten minutes. I could write it up without leaving the office.
Are you sure?
It’s OK.
Only Rodkin’s a suicide.
Rada and D don’t do suicides; I do. D always says he wouldn’t mind. It’s just that he never does.
D says, It’s OK.
He’s positioning himself, showing he can handle everything now. I don’t much care. He’s still not getting Theo’s job. But Rodkin probably deserves better. Whoever he is.
I say, It’s my field. Theo shouldn’t have given it to Rada in the first place.
If D wants to push the point now, he’ll have to acknowledge there’s a problem that has to do with suicide, with his father, and I know he won’t do that.
D says, I didn’t know you cared enough to have a field.
I shrug and print the file.
D says he’s going to lunch.
The thing about suicide is you never quite know where you stand. There’s always a presumption against, but even God seems to recognise a degree of wriggle room. So much depends on context.
The God I can’t quite believe in makes most things turn out all right in the end, but doesn’t involve himself much in the details. When we were at university, Rada was the sort of student who went to the careers advisers and the recruitment fairs. It was a tutor who suggested she talk to Theo. Her God intervenes and takes sides; he has rules and punishes people.
It was Rada who suggested I talk to Theo, too.
I’d been at the Office six weeks when he handed me my first suicide claim: a woman with a devoted husband and grown up children, who also had a perforated liver from the bottle of wine or two she’d drunk each day of her adult life. Her note said she was sorry, she just couldn’t bother with it all any more. The husband spent most of our interview pulling out photos of them both dressed in waterproofs on one hillside or another. She had always been so full of life, he said.
Back at the flat that evening, I rolled two cigarettes and tried to explain. Rada said, It always matters.
I mean to me.
I didn’t know then. She hadn’t told me.
She was dressing to go out. She smoothed a non-existent crease from her skirt and asked how she looked. She was meeting Gary, who worked in the library and had recommended her latest favourite author.
I said, Tall.
That’s not very helpful.
You’re not helping me.
Rada had always known stuff, had always helped. I said, The Book’s not much use.
I expected her to sit down then, to ask me what it had to say. To which the answer would have been not much. What there was made no sense.
I said, There’s Judas, I suppose.
Rada tugged at the sleeves of her blouse.
And Samson, sort of. Died a hero; buried beside his father.
She turned back towards the mirror, then, away from me. She began brushing her hair.
I said, Zimri.
I’d been looking this stuff up. It wasn’t at the tip of my tongue.
Over her shoulder she said, Who?
First Book of Kings, chapter 16.
She turned back towards me. She put the brush down and ran her fingers through her short hair until it looked just as it had when she started.
He was only king for a week.
Rada stepped into a pair of shoes, took them off again.
Ahithophel. Hanged himself in a fit of pique. But he ends up buried in his father’s sepulchre. No word on his soul. Being buried beside your father seems to be a major plus.
Rada closed her eyes for a moment, then grabbed a jacket from her wardrobe and said she was going out. I asked what I should do about my report and she said I’d have to work it out for myself.
In the end I argued that the woman’s suicide was an act of contrition for a dissipated life: the severity of the transgression only demonstrated the sincerity of her repentance. She went down anyway, but Theo made a point of letting me know that Riverside House had been impressed by the quality of my report.
On the bus I read what notes there are in Rodkin’s file. It is a life. The bus is crowded and hot. The man sitting next to me turns sideways to talk to a friend across the aisle. He pushes his backside into me and drops bits of fried chicken on the floor. I could have caught the train. I’d have been here in five minutes, but speed is not my goal. Goals are not my goal, either. I have always done my best to avoid them.
Rodkin was forty-nine; he would have been fifty in two months. He married late, and had two children, but divorced while they were still at primary school. Rented a flat just round the corner from the family so he could see plenty of the children. Ordinary, then: gross contribution negligible. D’s average piece of shit. Maybe there’ll be something more.
Rodkin was a solicitor – family law, which is ironic, perhaps, but hardly cause for suicide. He made modest charitable donations every month.
Rada’s notes show Rodkin visited his GP twice in the last year: once with persistent indigestion, once complaining of an intermittent loss of sensation in his left arm. He would wake from a disturbed night’s sleep, the sinister limb completely numb, immobile. When he got up, sensation would gradually return, although muscle aches continued. The GP took his blood pressure – which was normal – and ordered tests, none of which had proved conclusive by the time he killed himself.
The bus shudders to a halt opposite a depot. A handful of passengers, including the man next to me, alight from the centre doors, which close behind them. The driver turns off the engine. He picks a clipboard from behind the steering wheel and scribbles something; he unhooks the metal box that holds his fares. He stands, and reaching up above the forward door, turns a lever; the door opens with a heavy pneumatic sigh. He steps off into the street. The door closes again. With no air coming through the stationary windows the temperature inside the bus rises rapidly. I can smell food and acidic, greasy sweat. After a while, two or three passengers stand, then bend down to look out of the windows. One of them punches the seat in front of him. The rest sit silently waiting for a new driver to come. I should have got off, too. I could – any of us could – turn the same lever that the driver turned and let myself out, but passengers are not supposed to do this, and none ever does.
The next stop is only a hundred metres away.
It isn’t suicide itself – the act or the mechanics of it – that interests me. It is the motivation. I am constantly surprised so many people care enough about whatever it is they care about to kill themselves. Statistically, suicide is a major cause of death.
I told Rada that, just after the woman with the liver. I said she’d be surprised.
Rada had seen Gary a few more times by then; he’d been at the flat for dinner. He was still there the next morning, making coffee and toast, when I got up. Rada skipped around the kitchen in cycling gear, scooping keys and phone and diary into her pannier bag, getting ready for work, all without taking her eyes off Gary. I couldn’t see the attraction.
If Rada was surprised, she didn’t show it; she pretended not to hear what I’d said.
I picked a slice of toast off her plate. I said, Apart from natural causes, suicide
is right up there: second only to traffic accidents. I still didn’t know.
Gary said, Alex?
Two and a half thousand people every day. More than war and violent crime combined.
That’s very sad.
Every thirty-six seconds someone somewhere decides all the monumental tedium isn’t worth it.
Neither of them was looking at me.
I said, Tell me they’re wrong.
In my defence, I didn’t know about Rada’s father then.
I’d known Rada almost three years at the time, and she had never mentioned it. We’d shared a student house. We’d been drunk and stoned and off our faces together. We’d been away on holiday after finals, six weeks in Spain and France and Italy, sharing rooms and even beds when we had to (although she kept her underwear on). I’d told her that I loved her, once. She’d told me not to, kissed me on the cheek and asked me where we were going next. When we got back we rented a flat together, started working, moved here, but she’d never told me about her father.
She said, I’m going to work. I’ll see you there.
When she left, Gary said: Well done.
He didn’t mean it.
She’d told Gary. She’d known Gary a fortnight and she’d told him.
And he told me.
Rodkin’s flat, when I find it, is no surprise: a one-bed basement in a monstrous nineteenth-century terrace set back from the main road by six metres of cracked concrete and weeds. The weeds have wilted in the heat, but they’ll be back. Three cars are parked at intersecting angles on the concrete; none is less than ten years old. As a rule, nothing is easier to break into than a basement flat, but this one is really only waist-deep below ground level, and constantly overlooked from the busy street. Worse still, there are wrought iron cages bolted over both the door and the big bay window. The bars look out of place – Mediterranean, like those on the Catalan castle Rada and I stayed in, before she went and married Gary. But they are strong enough.
I climb the steps up to the main door, half a floor above street level. A house like this would have been home to a solid bourgeois family and their servants. Now half a dozen buzzers are screwed raggedly to the wall beside the door. The one at the bottom has a label: Basement flat, but no name; the one above says: Howard. I press it, and nothing happens. I press it again, and step back to look up at the windows on the upper floors. The front door opens about ten centimetres and a woman says, Who are you? She is young and skinny and has nothing on her feet. She crosses her arms over a stained and dirty shift the colour of cold tea that might be a long shirt or a short nightdress.