by Guy Ware
He looked sheepish. I never actually said I was.
No?
Even from the relative disadvantage of my horizontal position, I projected the professional disbelief of the practised cross-examiner.
He said, I’m an accountant.
I was surprised, I have to say.
He said, Until tomorrow, anyway.
The policewoman, the one on the floor who’d pointed her gun at D’s head but for some reason had not shot him when she had the opportunity, but who had shot the other policeman instead, said she wasn’t arresting anyone. She’d just killed a fellow police officer and had to assume she was suspended from duty. And most likely would be until tomorrow, when she’d be redundant.
I turned to the shorter, fatter, more bearded officer of the law. He was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall opposite me. Just to his right was the gap in the skirting I’d found earlier, and outside which I’d vowed to leave a portion of uneaten cheese, but hadn’t. I said, You have a murder, handed to you on a plate. How often does that happen?
I could see he was thinking about it. I could see intelligence there, behind the damp eyes. But still he disappointed me.
He shook his head and said, I work in HR.
Besides, he said, he knew D’s father.
It was, I think, the first time I’d ever seen Theo surprised. He said, You knew Pyotr Kalenkov?
The HR-person said, We all knew Pete the Pontiff.
Theo got the look in his eye he sometimes gets when D reports something particularly inane; he said, He was well known to Human Resources?
The HR-person laughed. I wasn’t always in HR.
You were a detective?
The HR-person who hadn’t always been in HR nodded.
D said, And what was Dad?
Your father . . . your father was useful. To a lot of people.
An informer?
Amongst other things.
Theo stepped towards D. He seemed keen to take control of the conversation, as if he were concerned about what the detective might say next. He said, Your father was many things, Dmitry. Like most of us.
Rada said, But he wasn’t Russian?
Across the meeting room table, Rada shuffles the pages of her report. She looks at Theo, appealing for intervention, but Theo says it is what happened. He looks at the table as he says this.
Theo nodded.
The HR/police/gunman said, He worked for Likker. Sometimes.
Rada said, He didn’t kill himself, either, did he?
The fat police/HR/gun-man shrugged, his shoulders pulling up into his beard.
Did he?
The coroner said he did.
D said, more loudly than was necessary, I don’t believe you. Dad never worked for Likker.
The ex-detective shrugged again. That’s how it was.
Then how come he doesn’t turn up in Likker’s file?
It was obvious that meant nothing to the ex-detective. But the other one, the one who said he was an accountant, Nashe, said, Because he was Likker.
D said, What’s that supposed to mean? I’ve been through his life. That’s what we do.
Nashe said, Not Likker. You wouldn’t find anything he didn’t want you to.
D was getting angry again. He was always angry, but now it was on the surface again. He still had the knife in his hand. He said, That’s not the way it works. No one gets to pick and choose.
D, you see, was a believer. That was – is – his problem.
Across the table D makes a noise, deep down in his throat, his chest. If he were a predatory animal, a bear, perhaps, or a dog, you might call it a growl. I ignore him. I am only doing my job. To my right, D’s left, Theo is still looking at the table. At least, his head is bowed. His eyes may be closed.
Unchecked, undaunted, I carry on.
Theo spoke up, then, in the basement room, although he spoke softly. To D he said, Nashe is right. Likker was different.
D didn’t want to know. He’s still dead, he said.
Theo said, It was thanks to Likker that you are here. He certainly knew your father. It was because he knew your father that he asked me to give your sister a job. And, naturally, it was because she asked me, that I gave you a job, Dmitry.
After that there was a lot of shouting on D’s part, a lot of stuff I didn’t bother to follow, but the gist of which seemed to be that Theo had known all along, known since before D was even born, that Pyotr Kalenkov was no more Russian than I am, that he was a conman and a petty fixer, a go-between, a man who did small jobs for men with more money and more power than he would ever have, but that none of this mattered. D did not appear to agree. He thought it mattered a great deal. It made all the difference, he shouted.
Rada didn’t say a word. It was her father, too, but she didn’t say a word, then, and, until this afternoon, in the office, reading her report just now, she hasn’t said a word since, as far as I know. About her father; not a word.
Meanwhile, D grew louder and louder, his face redder, the knuckles of the fist that grasped the still-bloody knife grew whiter. Spittle flew from his lips and flecked the immaculate herringbone of Theo’s suit.
Theo did not move. He did not flinch, much less retreat. The storm of D’s rage broke around him.
And still the trigger-happy policewoman did not shoot him and the accountant and the HR-detective declined to intervene.
Which left Proctorow, the policeman who’d been shot, who was an actual policeman, not a bank robber, and could have arrested D, and might have done so, had he not been dead.
And D walks amongst us still, tall and raw and stupid as he ever was.
20
SO PROCTOROW, WHO was a pain, I’d have to say, but who probably, all the same, didn’t actually deserve or need to die, was dead. What was left of him lay on the carpet, his blood sprayed up the wall and most of the top of his head not actually on the top of his head. DC Moody and DI Jenks were still there on the floor, too. Jenks had got as far as sitting up, but Moody was lying where she’d fallen, where she’d been when the gun went off and Proctorow died so spectacularly and she’d eventually rolled his body off her own. Nashe was standing over by the wall, near the door, near the poster with the bollocks about he-goats scribbled on it in fat black marker pen. Rada was all right, she was sitting in the only chair, not saying anything. Alex was curled up on the bed like a baby, like he was wishing we’d all go away and leave him in his cot. Kurt was looking from one to another of us like he’s wondering what fucking planet we’d all come from and I can’t say I blame him, really, because in amongst the blood and brains and madness there were Lopez and Theo facing off across the room in their elegant suits and their hand made brogues and talking all that old man shit where what they said was about a tenth of what they were saying and it was like they didn’t really need to talk at all because they each knew what the other was going to say before they even said it. And the rest of us were supposed to be able to fill in the dots, or, if we couldn’t, they didn’t care because it was just because we’re stupid. I’m not stupid but I couldn’t be doing with all that any more so I got up, carefully, because whatever they thought they knew, I knew something they didn’t know, and I asked, “Why?” And even though I never asked him, even though I was looking at Theo and talking to Theo, Lopez took it upon himself to say, “Because Jackson’s dead.” It turned out he wasn’t the only one. Rivers was dead, too. They’d both been dead for years, apparently, since before I’d joined the Office, Lopez said, perhaps before I was even born. And it was the way he said ‘Office’ that did it. For once I was pretty fucking sure I was getting the other nine tenths, I still am, and that’s when I turned and stepped away from Theo and towards Lopez. I dropped my left hand and let the knife slide down and I already had it in my right hand when Theo said, “Dmitry.” But it was too late. Clever as Lo
pez was, or thought he was, or wanted us to think he was, he wasn’t clever enough to see it coming, or sharp enough to move, at any rate.
He had it fucking coming, a fucking long time coming, and now he was dead.
He was as dead as Jackson. Or Rivers. As dead as Rodkin and Likker, as dead as the woman, or women, in the bank, who’d screamed, and then stopped screaming, as dead as the woman upstairs, Kurt’s girlfriend, perhaps. As dead as Proctorow, who was a pain, and not the sharpest knife on the rack, and was still there with us, on the floor with his brains all up the wall.
It’s quiet in the office when I read this. It’s like no one knows what to say or how to look at me, even.
And then Alex, who always was a snotty bastard, and who never liked me, and believe me the feeling was fucking mutual, asked if no one was going to arrest me. But Proctorow was dead and the policewoman wouldn’t, and it turned out the other two weren’t really plods anyway, they were pen pushers of some sort. But one of them had been a copper once, he said he’d known my father, and it turned out Theo had known Dad, too. And Likker. I mean Theo had known Likker, but also Likker had known my father. It seemed like everyone had. I was half expecting fucking Alex to say he had, too, and I probably would have killed him, I nearly killed Theo. I certainly wanted to kill someone, even though I just had killed Lopez. Lopez knew my father, too, apparently. “Knew him well enough to kill him?” I asked. Because it was as clear as fucking day that he’d killed Rodkin, or had him killed, nobody slits his own throat with a breadknife, Alex was right about that at least, and OK there was nearly thirty years between the two, and no connection, except perhaps Likker, who was the kind of man who killed people, or had them killed. And Theo didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.
“Or was it Likker?” I said, because there didn’t seem to be any reason for any of this, for anything, for why my Dad wasn’t Russian, despite him being more Russian than the fucking Volga, but Likker was the common point, the only common point.
Theo said, “Likker didn’t kill your father.”
“So who did?”
And Rada asked what did it matter? My sister said that. He was her father, too. But she said it didn’t matter, and then she didn’t say another fucking word, and hasn’t said a word until today, reading her report which like all her reports was unbefuckinglievably tedious and ninety-nine percent totally missing the fucking point.
Yesterday, Sunday, it rained like there was no tomorrow, and it washed away all the flying fucking ants. Theo had given us a couple of days to recover, and to prepare our reports. So now, tomorrow’s here, and Rada’s still saying nothing and Alex is still looking at the wall, and Nashe, the new recruit, the ex-accountant-copper, ex-Assistant Chief Constable, ex-bank robber and possible murderer, or killer at least, if we think back as far as only last Monday, Nashe, who’s apparently on our team, now (whatever that means after what Lopez let slip and I understood, and maybe – I don’t know – maybe everyone knew anyway, everyone but me, I mean, I honestly thought there was an Office of Assessment because, after all, it’s been paying my wages every month on the nose, and the money’s been real enough, you’ve only got to see my car to see that,) Nashe says: “So what happened to the money?” And I’ve got no fucking clue what money he’s talking about. But it seems Old Man Theo knows, and even Alex, because Alex says, like it has something to do with whatever it was we are talking about here, “There was a hole, a gap in the skirting,” and Theo says, “I expect Mrs Rodkin will be grateful for that, at least.” And I still have not one fucking iota of a clue what they’re on about, and I’m beginning to wish I still had that knife with me, the boning knife, the one I stuck in Lopez’s throat, and I think: breathe. One, two. Breathe.
There’s some more talk, some more conversation, then Nashe, the new boy, is giving his report. He’s asking if we know what Willie Sutton said, whoever Willie Sutton was, but I’m not listening, I’m breathing and I’m focusing like the book says, focusing on the air passing through my nostrils. I observe the sound of voices, the fact of the sound, I mean, but I do not register what they are saying. I observe myself observing and then I let the observation slip away. And no one else is dead.
When I return to the room, Nashe is saying, “Alex is right: no Book of the Dead shows the heart weighing more than the feather of Maat. There’s a reason for that.”
I say, “It’s not my call, but Lopez should be going down.”
Nobody says anything. I can hear the trains rumbling past the window, behind me, and I look at Nashe, the new boy, and he’s looking at Theo. I look at Rada, who’s looking down, looking at her papers, straightening the edges of the pile, squeezing her paper clip back into place. I look at Alex and he’s looking at the wall.
Nobody says anything.
I say, “What? Isn’t that what we’re doing here? Making decisions?”
Theo leans back in his chair, settling his shoulders. Alex – fucking bastard Alex, fucking parasitic, soul-sapping, energy-depleting bastard fucking Alex – is still looking at the wall. Nashe – I don’t mind Nashe, but I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing here; after everything that’s happened and is obviously going to happen, or not happen, given what Lopez said, like any of us getting paid, or having a job or anything at all, I don’t know what Theo thinks he’s doing increasing headcount – Nashe is looking from me to Theo to Rada and back to me, but not saying anything. Rada, I have to say, Rada, my sister, the only family I have, my only human contact with the world, when you come to think about it, and I love her, despite her choice of friends, and despite her husband, who, let’s face it, is a wanker and doesn’t deserve her, or anybody, for that matter, and her kid, my nephew who isn’t to blame for any of this, Rada is looking down at her papers on the table in front of her, and fiddling with the fucking paper clip, and saying nothing.
Then Theo, when he’s finished settling his shoulders and looking around the table at us all, says, “We make recommendations. Not decisions. That’s not our job.”
So that’s that, then. Apparently we’ve still got a job.
Acknowledgements
I AM GRATEFUL TO Felicity Everett, Claire Seeber, Judy McInerney and Phyllice Eddu for their support, encouragement and comments on (very) early drafts.
From the conversations of Nashe and his colleagues it is obvious I owe a debt to Where the Money Was (Willlie Sutton with Edward Linn, Broadway Books, New York) which taught me almost as much about the power of myths as it did about the craft of robbing banks.
Everything else I owe to Sophy Miles.