by Guy Ware
There are five of us in the office this afternoon. Yesterday was Matthew’s birthday. Gary took Matthew and his friends to the cinema. I could not face it. I offered to bake a cake, but Gary had already made one in the shape of a train. Here, real trains rumble by, one floor below our fourth-storey window.
Alex, unusually, interrupts. He says, A classic suicide wound: gun under the jaw, or in the mouth, bullet through the base of the brain. An interesting coincidence, given that it wasn’t suicide.
Theo says, Please allow Rada to continue.
I continue.
The hole in the wall was surrounded by a clearly discernible spray pattern of blood and brain and bone fragments from which the angle of impact could easily and accurately have been calculated, had it been necessary to do so, if the lethal shooting had not been witnessed by eight people from a variety of angles and vantage points. Admittedly two of those eight – Alex Corvin and Dmitry Kalenkov had their faces turned to the wall or floor respectively, throughout, and may therefore have limited value as witnesses. Even those, such as myself, who were observing events closely could not, with any degree of confidence, say whose finger had caused the trigger to be pulled, given the way in which the gun and three hands (those of DI Jenks, DS Proctorow and DC Moody) were trapped and obscured from sight between the slim and fat bodies of Detectives Moody/Proctorow and DI Jenks respectively. Nevertheless, none of the eight live people in the room, whether or not they had directly witnessed the shooting, doubted that it had been fatal, even though none, including me, had at this stage actually checked, not one of us had felt for a pulse or held a mirror near the mouth of the presumed corpse or a cigarette lighter up to its eyelids, his eyelids, but we were all, without anyone needing to say so, convinced that the nondescript, non-criminal, non-gun-toting policeman (whose name and rank were subsequently confirmed as Detective Sergeant Edgar Proctorow) was now dead.
I have not described any of this to Gary.
Throughout the struggle and subsequent presumed lethal shooting the sound of wailing/screaming from the room above the basement room had continued; if, as a result of shortness of breath or lessening of the immediate trauma or loss of blood and consequent loss of muscle and/or lung power, the intensity of the wailing/screaming had abated somewhat, it nonetheless redoubled at the sound of the second shot, even though that second shot did not penetrate the ceiling and posed no actual physical threat to the wailer/screamer (which fact may indicate that the wailing/screaming was more the result of shock and fear than of actual injury, although it is of course possible that an initial injury was followed by shock and fear which was subsequently intensified by the sound of a second shot, even though that shot did not, in fact, cause any further injury, at least not to the woman in the room above the basement room from whom it is to be assumed the wailing/screaming emanated). With a shudder the gun/policewoman Moody rolled the corpse of her former professional colleague off her own body and onto the carpeted floor to her right. As she did so the gun slid from her chest, revealing powder burns on her hooded fleece. There were matching burns on the dead Proctorow’s shirt. The shorter, fatter gun/policeman, still pinned to the floor beneath DC Moody, tried to pick up the gun but was impeded in this not only by the weight of his former professional and criminal colleague but in fact by the intervention of the taller gun/policeman – who, it turns out, was not in fact a policeman at all in the accepted sense of an officer of the law empowered to arrest malefactors and to keep the peace, not to say to carry arms, but was an accountant whose name and equivalent rank were subsequently determined to be Assistant Chief Constable William Nashe –
Across the table from me now, Nashe nods in acknowledgement.
– who stepped forward and placed his foot upon the pistol, then bent down, picked it up and stowed it in the pocket of his blue summer weight suit jacket, where it bulged and dragged the jacket down on the right hand side. From beneath DC Moody, DI Jenks said, You’re under arrest, but it was not clear if he meant it or intended it as a joke or, even, in either case, to whom he referred. No one in the room paid much attention because – presumably coincidentally, but at any rate simultaneously – there came the sound of a third gunshot, quieter and more muffled even than the second, but nonetheless distinct and unmistakable. The sound appeared to come from the room directly above the basement room, the room into which it is to be presumed the first bullet had passed and either injured or terrified (or both) the female occupant whose wailing/screaming had been audible ever since (but which now, on the occasion of the third gunshot, abruptly ceased). Six of the nine people in the basement room – including myself, Theo Day and Kurt, whose surname has not been subsequently determined, and who possessed no known rank, and whose house this may or may not have been – but not including Proctorow, who was dead, or Alex Corvin, who was facing the wall or Dmitry Kalenkov (ditto the floor) looked at each other as if to say: what now?
DC Moody – the gun/policewoman who had gone into the interview room behind the public area in the bank during Monday’s robbery and had fired the second shot there, after which the terrified wailing/screaming (which terrified wailing/screaming was not dissimilar to that heard during Wednesday’s siege/stand-off/shoot-out in the basement flat previously occupied by Matthew Rodkin, and which had just ceased) – began to cry; she tried to hide it, but could not. She was sobbing uncontrollably when the door to the basement room, the door from the cramped hallway that led past the kitchen and to the outer door that itself opened onto the garden where nothing currently grew but weeds, opened.
D says, I wasn’t looking at the floor.
Dmitry, please do not interrupt. You will have your opportunity to report.
But I wasn’t.
Alex, looking now at the office wall, says, I was looking at the wall.
The man is dead, Theo says; as long as there was at least one, it really does not matter how many of us watched him die.
There was a thunderstorm yesterday: Gary and Matthew and his friends were all drenched on the way home from the cinema.
I find my place and continue.
An old man stood in the doorway. He had white hair and a wooden cane with a silver handle in the shape of an eagle. His shoes were old but well cared for, the thick leather burnished to a deep gloss. He was the man from the bank, or rather from the robbery, the man who had stood in front of me in the queue for the cash dispenser, who had moved slowly and who did not get down on the floor when he was told to, not even when the bank robber, whom we now know to be Assistant Chief Constable William Nashe (here Nashe nods again, less confidently) put a gun to his head, not even when Nashe fired his gun, inadvertently causing the terror/injury of the woman in the adjacent interview room which in turn resulted in wailing/screaming not dissimilar to that which had just ceased to come from the room above Rodkin’s basement flat. Theo also recognized the man, and greeted him by name. The man acknowledged Theo’s greeting with a slow nod. At the sound of the man’s name, Dmitry Kalenkov ceased looking at the floor –
I wasn’t looking at the fucking floor.
– and sat up, discovering in doing so that neither DC Moody nor anybody else was now pointing a gun at his head, the gun now being stowed in the pocket of Nashe’s blue summer weight suit, where it bulged visibly and made the jacket hang awkwardly, and said, Dmitry Kalenkov that is, said: Lopez?
It was Lopez, the Inquisitor, who said how pleased he was that we were all able to join him this evening and who did have a gun, a Beretta 8000D Cougar similar or possibly identical to that used by the police/gunman Nashe, in his right hand, the hand that wasn’t holding the cane with the silver eagle, and who now looked at the short, heavy, stubby gun as if surprised to see it there, in his own hand, although he must have been conscious of its weight, the Beretta not being a light weapon, whatever its other merits, weighing in fact 925 grams factory-shipped and un-adapted, and his surprise must have been staged, affected a
nd, indeed, had the air of a self-conscious theatrical gesture, accompanied as it was by a raising of the eyebrows, a shrug and a shake of the head that seemed designed, if anything, to draw attention to the theatricality of the gesture and to communicate to the nine people in the room, or rather to eight of them (one, Proctorow, being dead and not capable of appreciating or detecting falsely theatrical and ironic gestures, although it is possible that Lopez was not, at that point, aware that Proctorow was dead rather than simply lying, like DC Moody and DI Jenks, on the floor for some unfathomable – to Lopez – reason of his own), that his words were not to be taken at face value. Lopez reached back with his right hand, slipping it under his jacket. When he brought it out again the gun was not there, he must have had some sort of holster on his belt, or perhaps a specially-adapted pocket in the lining of his jacket, he did not appear to be the kind of person who would simply stick a gun into the waistband of his trousers, he looked too elegant, too precise and prepared for that. He said, You must be wondering why I invited you all here this evening. He said it with a sort of one-sided grin and another raising of his eyebrows and a tipping of his head to one side – the right side – that had the same theatrical/ironic effect as the earlier gestures in relation to the gun and which seemed to suggest that we should not take his words at face value, that he in fact wanted us all to know and to be in no doubt that he was teasing us, that what he was saying and doing was absurd, but consciously so, and yet to make us all, individually, wonder if he had in fact, in some way that we could not detect or understand or even begin to grasp, somehow caused us individually and severally to come together in this damp and unprepossessing basement bedsit of a recent suicide which somehow contained nine people – or, rather, eight people and one corpse – who might otherwise struggle to explain why and how they had collectively arrived at this unlikely gathering if it were not in fact the result of the unfathomable machinations of the tenth occupant of the room, viz, Lopez himself.
Could he have arranged it?
It is Nashe, the newest member of the team who has spoken, which is in itself surprising, irrespective of what he has said, this being his first ever meeting.
I say, No. It is not credible.
Alex says, I believe it.
D says, Fuck off, you don’t.
Theo taps his lacquered fountain pen on the tabletop, calling us to order.
I say that I have always assumed, and that everybody else in the room at the time – with the exception of DS Proctorow, who was dead – would also have assumed, that I was a free agent whose decisions and actions – however misguided – had led me there, to that room, and that the idea that we had all individually and severally, gathered at the instigation of someone, however clever and/or Machiavellian, that most of us had never met, or heard of, even, was as ridiculous as Lopez’s own ironic/theatrical gestures suggested it was, even if it did not feel that way at the time.
D smirks. He says, He certainly didn’t engineer what happened next.
This is unprofessional. D’s part in what happened next being not only central but also controversial, or at least, his continued presence within the team, after what happened, being controversial, representing, some might think, a conflict of interest, or, at the very least, a breach of ethical standards.
Rada, please continue.
It is arguable, of course, that Theo’s own position is also somewhat compromised, given that (a) his role in what happened, whilst not by any legitimate standard of judgment as central or fundamental or directly causal or culpable, even, as D’s, was nonetheless contributory, at the very least, and (b) that it was his decision that D remain on the team, in the Office, and attend this meeting, and even, when we get to that point in the agenda, report on the incident, rather than, say, being sacked, and/or handed over to the police, or to the Office’s own internal security (such as it is, post-Lopez, which may be negligible, or non-existent, the whole question of the capacity, or continued existence, or reality of the Office of Assessment being, in itself, central and fundamental and causal to what happened, in the dead solicitor’s basement flat, after Lopez entered, holding a gun and teased us – teased is certainly the appropriate word – about why we were all there, in that fetid basement on a hot, unpleasantly humid Wednesday evening at the end of June).
Lopez ignored the corpse on the floor – or pretended to ignore it, it was hard to tell – and turned to Theo, asking whether he was enjoying the aesthetics of the situation. Theo asked Lopez whether he had yet found Likker’s money and, when Lopez only smiled, answered his own question, saying it was clear he hadn’t or we wouldn’t be here, would we? Lopez was not surprised, at least he did not display surprise – his face and general demeanour remaining calm, untroubled, amused and superior, or patronising, perhaps – but he was not prepared or willing or inclined to respond to Theo’s question, or his answer, preferring to ask, instead, a question of his own, viz: How was Jackson?
Theo said that he had not seen Jackson in some time.
The Inquisitor smiled, then, or grinned, the corners of his mouth pulling back before Theo had even finished speaking as if he, Lopez, knew what it was that Theo was going to say before he said it (which it is possible that he did, or that he wished to convey the impression he did).
He said, And why is that?
Theo sighed gently, shifting his weight and switching his own silver-headed cane, the cane with the dog’s head handle, from his right hand to his left, and said, I think we both know why that is.
Lopez nodded, and Theo nodded and Dmitry, from the floor, where he was still sitting, and where he seemed to be holding his left forearm strangely in his right hand, as if one of the bones, the radius or the ulna, were broken, said, Why is it?
Neither Lopez nor Theo answered, they just looked at each other and neither of them, as far as I could see, looked at D, who now stood up awkwardly, still holding his left forearm with his right hand, as if his wrist were injured and he was wondering how to stop the blood flowing, stood right in front of Theo, right up close, the room wasn’t large and was crowded with so many people in it, but still, D stood closer to Theo than he actually, arguably, needed to, and said, Why haven’t you seen Jackson?
It was Lopez who said, Because Jackson’s dead.
D did not turn away from Theo, did not turn to face or even look at Lopez, but said, instead, to Theo, What about Rivers?
It was Lopez who said, Rivers, too. They’ve both been dead for years.
Theo didn’t say anything.
19
IT FELT VERY crowded in my room.
My room? How quickly we acclimatise.
The room was small, there were too many people in it, too much noise. I kept my face to the wall and hoped that they would go away, but I knew that they would not.
Dmitry Kalenkov had always been angry. It is one of those things I knew without knowing I knew, but which became clear the moment the knife emerged from the sleeve of his jacket. The anger is a function of his stupidity, I think. A by-product. When it happened I was surprised it had taken him so long. It made sense.
I wanted a cigarette, still. I wanted to know what had happened to my lighter.
It makes no sense that D is Rada’s brother, that they share the same DNA. It must be the mother that makes all the difference.
We cannot blame heredity.
D has to take responsibility for his own stupidity, for the frustration and the rage it causes him, because, to be fair, I think D half-knows he’s stupid. I hope he does. I hope a corner of his brain is alive to the inadequacy of the rest. That it listens when he quotes whatever self-help tract he’s read this week and laughs. That it says: It surely didn’t need to turn out like this? Look at the genetic advantages you had; look at your sister; and now look at you, you pathetic worm.
Maybe there isn’t.
Maybe D really is as stupid as he looks, as he sound
s, and as he acts. Maybe there is no self-consciousness there at all. Perhaps he really did think that his genius would be recognised? That the Office would spot his talent, would appreciate the true quality of his work and his ideas on Lifetime Value and would take him under its wing. That Jackson, or Rivers, would look down from Riverside House and see that he was good. That they would stop by, one day, to let him know, quietly, that Theo was a great man, of course, a loyal servant for whom we all had the greatest respect, but that it was time for his legacy to pass into the hands of a younger man. A man like D, perhaps . . .
Perhaps he believed that. I had always assumed not. I had assumed his persona was impersonal, an act. That the cars and the gym and the breezy insensitivity were all, somehow, a pretence.
I had to believe that, but it seems that I was wrong. There really is no hope.
When D stabbed Lopez in the throat and Lopez sank to his knees, and then tipped forward, face down on the floor beside Moody, beside Proctorow, I asked whether anyone was going to arrest him. The room was full of police officers, after all. It was just like D, when he finally succumbed to the temptation of serious violent crime, to do so in full view of the law. It was consistent, I thought.
There in my room, in Rodkin’s room, I invited the police persons present to do their duty. I became quite animated, despite the warning looks I received from Rada. I appealed to the tallest of the police persons, perhaps instinctively recognizing the authority of height, but he said: I’m not a policeman.
I did my best to look quizzical. It seemed appropriate, and he must have got my gist.