The Happier Dead

by Ivo Stourton

  They had been travelling for perhaps twenty minutes when they finally came to a halt beside a low jetty. There was a second groundsman waiting for them there. He hailed his fellow and caught the tossed line as they idled to the planks. He offered his hand to Oates. Oates ignored it and clambered onto the grass unaided. The Superintendent took the proffered hand, and thanked the owner with exaggerated courtesy. They walked about two hundred metres from the bank to a fence, and as Oates watched he noticed the most extraordinary thing. Hanging suspended as if in thin air there was a neon-green sign bearing the legend ‘EXIT’ in capital letters. Its presence in the air was such an affront to logic that Oates blinked to try to unsee it. When he opened his eyes however the sign remained; even in the depths of this dreamworld, fire safety regulations were strictly applied.

  At the fence one of the groundskeepers stopped. He put out his hand, and the fence and part of the view beneath the exit sign swung open to reveal the concrete corridor beyond, the walls painted an institutional green. The air in that tunnel was a couple of degrees cooler than in the field, and the sound of distant machinery was audible somewhere down the length of it. From more than five feet away, the walls simply refused to disclose their presence. Just as he was about to pass through the door, Oates thought he detected a flicker in the spire of a church topping the trees in the distance, and he noted how the dead leaves and a crisp packet were piled against the bottom of the fence with a symmetry inconsistent with its visual dimensions. Still as he stepped through the door, he felt he was walking through a hole in the universe.

  Inside the corridor with the summer field closed behind them, the sound of machinery was loud enough to make you raise your voice. One of the porters told them they were near the turbine house that kept the river gently flowing, and the sounds in the walls came from the giant drill-shaped pumps churning the water. Oates excused himself to go to the toilet, and once inside a cubicle he pulled a fifty pence piece from his pocket. His hands were shaking a little when he flipped it the first time, and it slipped through his fingers and plopped into the streaked bowl. He ran his fingers through his hair and stared for a few seconds down into the foul water. He reminded himself that he didn’t really believe in luck, and went back out to where the others were waiting without having completed his ritual.

  They had set up an interview room complete with a camera so that the Superintendent could watch the questioning from outside. Ali Farooz was waiting there, and when Oates came in he greeted him as casually as if the Inspector had just popped out for a few minutes at the end of their last interview, and was now returned. This caused in Oates a momentary disorientation. The discrepancy between the events of the last couple of hours in his own life, and the changelessness implied by Ali’s greeting was unsettling. He felt a weird conviction that nothing had happened to him at all – that he had ceased to exist the moment he left Ali’s room, and was popping back into existence now on re-entry. It was an absurd idea, but it enthralled him, and he knew it would pass not with rational thought, but with the lapse of time.

  To gather himself he sat in silence for a few moments at the little desk between them, and pretended to study the custody log. Ali waited. They had moved further into the building so that the sound of machinery was deadened by the supervening walls. Despite the silence, Oates thought he could still feel some deep subsonic vibration in the ground as the giant turbines built the summer river a turn at a time.

  “So then, Ali. I trust you’ve been looked after.”

  “Yes thank you, Inspector, I have been most well looked after.”

  “Has anyone been in to see you?”

  “Lots of people. They have been very kind. I have seen a doctor and a lawyer and some of your friends. And one of my friends brought me a change of clothes and my toothbrush.”

  Ali smiled politely. Oates nodded. He got the message. Whoever had been in to nobble Ali, it would be no easy matter to identify him. The message could have come from anyone. If Ali had seen him coming, there was no point in being subtle.

  “I know you didn’t do it, Ali. Whoever killed Prudence Egwu was right handed.”

  He gestured to Ali’s left hand, and Ali moved it under the table.

  “Now I think you know who killed Prudence Egwu. I’d like you to tell me who that was.”

  “Why would I say that I had done something which I had not done?”

  “Come on, Ali. You’re not stupid. You’ve been in this country half a decade. You’re telling me a clever man like you, a political man like you, doesn’t read the papers, watch the news? You know what an Eddy is don’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes I know what is an Eddy.”

  “Well that’s what I think you are.”

  Ali stared a him for a few seconds in disbelief. Then he leant back in his seat, and burst into a rich, deep laugh. The boom of it filled up the room as the mighty pumps did in their distant atrium.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Ali’s laughter was almost hysterical. He doubled over in his chair, and shook his head. He squeezed tears from the corner of his eyes. Oates wanted to get up, walk around the table and smash his head. All the respect, all the strange affection he had felt for the man at the conclusion of their first interview was for a moment subsumed by rage at being laughed at. He thought again of the young man he had killed a few hours before. He felt angered on Dwayne Jeffries’ sbehalf.

  “Please Inspector, I do not mean to make fun. Only you see I have spent altogether in my life some time in rooms like this one, answering questions. In the first part of my life, it was policemen trying to make me to admit to things I had not done. They put pins under my nails and they kick me until I say I had done all kinds of things. And now in this country, I am being told to deny the crimes to which I have confessed.” He was still breathing hard from his laughing fit.

  Oates didn’t want this man’s history. He didn’t want to be mollified by the fact of his suffering. He wanted the truth. He wanted the truth from him as a hungry man wants the meat from an animal. He couldn’t give a shit what happened to him after the truth was out of him. He could be discarded, and Oates could get back to his family. He stayed silent and stared at Ali.

  “Even let us say you are right,” Ali said, “I would not know who had done this thing. I would know only who had invited me to take the blame.”

  “And who was that?”

  “If someone lies to the police, that is an offence, is that not so?”

  He looked at Oates, waiting for an answer, and Oates nodded his head and folded his arms across his chest.

  “That is what they call wasting police time, yes? Perverting the course of justice? And for an offence such as this, one could also go to prison for some time. Only when one got out of prison, there would be no reward at the end. Let us say that a man does what you are suggesting, and accepts that he will take the blame for something in return for something else. Well, if he cannot any more take the blame, he will not anymore expect his payment. But that does not mean he would want to go to prison just for the hell of it.”

  “We can make a deal, Ali. If you tell us everything and tell us now, I will do everything in my power to make sure you get off.”

  “If there was a man with the power to offer such a thing as eternal life, that man would also have the power of death in him. Would you not say this?”

  Oates did not reply. Ali watched him for a few seconds, and nodded slowly at this confirmation of his thinking.

  “And would you not further say that if this man was betrayed, he might take the trouble to find out who had done this thing, and to pay him back?”

  “We can protect you, Ali.”

  “I tell you again what I told you before. I really did go to see Mr Egwu like I said. I really did go up and see him after dinner.”

  “This is a one time only thing, Ali. If I walk out of this room now, you won’t have another chance to tell the truth and get credit for it.”

  Ali said nothing, but
raised his palm to Oates, as if all the answers he might seek were written in the dark lines of the unexpectedly pale skin. Oates pictured the scene as it would appear to the Superintendent on his little coloured screen. He reached around to the back of the camera, and switched it off. Then he went over and locked the door.

  “Have you ever heard of something called the Tithonus Effect?”

  “I have heard of this, yes. This is the thing these people come here to make better.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I know nothing.”

  Ali looked down and away from him, and Oates was certain that he was lying. He leant forwards across the table, and gripped his lapels.

  “I killed a boy today. He wanted to get hold of some papers on the Tithonus Effect. Why would anyone die for something like that?”

  Ali did not seem at all surprised. There was no resistance in his torso, he simply allowed his shoulders to be pulled forwards over the table.

  “I am sorry, Inspector. I do not know anything about it. Only this one thing. When I was at first school, the teacher she used to tell us about Hell. She say it was a burning lake of fire and we would go there if we were bad. And the worst thing about Hell, it is forever. She told us to imagine the wing of a butterfly, brushing a ball of steel as big as the earth. The time it would take to wear away the ball of steel with the butterfly’s wing, that was not even one million part of the time we would spend in Hell. When she told me, I had nightmares for months. My mother, she even complain to the school. I used to lie awake in my bed at night, thinking about it. This Tithonus Effect, I am thinking it is Hell. And the people who go there, that is where they deserve to be.”

  The handle to the door turned, and finding it locked, a firm knocking followed. Oates stood up from the table, and flicked the switch to turn the camera back on.

  “We’ll find this guy, Ali. And when we do he’ll throw you in as part of his plea-bargain.”

  “That is the way things go for people like me, would you not say, Inspector?”

  Oates unlocked the door, and stormed out past the waiting groundsman. He slammed the door behind him, leaving Ali alone in the room with his hands folded before him on the desk.

  “SOMEONE’S GOT TO him. I need to find out who spoke to him, who moved him down here. All that stuff about perverting the course of justice, he’s smart but he’s not a bloody lawyer. Someone’s been in to put the frighteners on…”

  “I find that highly unlikely,” John said, watching the still figure on the monitor, “All the conversations he has had since being brought down here have been recorded. And I didn’t hear him say a single thing a man couldn’t pick up from watching the news and crime drama on the television.”

  “You asked me to handle this, sir, because you wanted to know whether or not he was an Eddy. And I’m telling you I think he is.”

  “I asked you, DCI Oates, because I value your judgment, but I do not think it infallible. Whilst you were pursuing your own investigations in London, Sergeant Bhupinder was engaged in the rather more old-fashioned process of actually interviewing witnesses. Stuffy and conventional I know, but we aren’t all blessed with your levels of intuition. It appears that one of the guests saw Ali walking up to Mr Egwu’s room shortly before the murder took place. He couldn’t sleep and was smoking a cigarette out of the window.”

  “He’s already said he went up there, first to carry the case then to argue with Egwu about the money.”

  “This witness further indicated that he heard the sounds of an altercation some moments later. The timings coincide with the scenario put together by the Oracle. You know how I loathe the predictable, but I don’t think we should be seeking out originality even at the expense of the truth, do you?”

  “I want to speak with this bloke.”

  “Which bloke?”

  “The one Bhupinder interviewed. This witness. I want to hear it from him.”

  “Why?”

  “To satisfy my curiosity.”

  John shook his head.

  “He’s no longer staying at St Margaret’s.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “Because he wanted to and there was no reason to stop him. If you must know I suspect he’s one of the people we may have to thank for the circus outside.”

  “One of Nottingham’s competitors?”

  “Yes. He works at another bio company.”

  “What does he do?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Chris Rajaram.”

  The answer shocked Oates into a momentary silence. He had pushed the events of the afternoon to the back of his mind, but the mention of the name of Hector’s employer created a sudden nexus. Could this Chris Rajaram have killed Prudence Egwu in an effort to conceal the theft of his accumulated research? For a moment, he had the unpleasant sensation that he was shaping external reality, that the link he had forged in his mind had somehow infected the real world.

  “I want to speak to him,” Oates said.

  He and John stared at one another. Oates could feel an old alliance on the point of dissolution. They had worked together on and off for the best part of a decade. Though John could be supercilious and sarcastic he was basically a decent man. They had always held one another in mutual respect. But Oates could sense in both of them a reckless desire to tear down that relationship, and to throw up in its place a new and profound enmity. What was the reason? Standing there in the maintenance rooms of the Great Spa, it felt like nothing so much as a fascination with what might happen. It was kin to the sensation that seized Oates at the top of high buildings, the whisper of how easy it would be to step into the air. Finally John looked away and shook his head.

  “Speak to him then, hear the story for yourself. But I want you back up here before tonight, I want Ali charged and taken down to London. We’re going to need every man we have on the streets tonight. The Commissioner has cancelled leave and men are being bussed in from everywhere from Cornwall to Yorkshire.”

  “And if I’m not satisfied?”

  “If you’re not satisfied, Detective Chief Inspector, I will want to know why. So I know what to tell my own superiors.”

  Oates thought again of Minor’s last words to him in the pub: “It’s you as should watch your back!”

  “Did you ever fancy having the Treatment yourself, sir?” he asked.

  Quite unconsciously, the men had squared up to one another. Oates looked down, and noticed their fists were closed. He thought for a moment he had gone too far. He hadn’t actually accused a senior officer of corruption, but he had come as close as made no difference. To his surprise, a grin spread across John’s face; not the ironic smile which was its habitual resident, but an expression broad and boyish.

  “I rather think one lifetime is enough, wouldn’t you say?”

  “One can seem like a lot.”

  There was a knock on the door, and the porter was waiting outside to escort them back to St Margaret’s. The two of them took the launch back along the river. This time the beauty of the scenery held no distractions, and Oates was grateful for the sound of the engine on the way to the main body of the spa. It removed any obligation to speak. He couldn’t be certain of anything in this place. It interfered with the frequencies of his self-belief. His nose had got bunged up in the summer fields. Was he being as perverse as John’s exasperation implied? He had no particular wish to help Ali after his behaviour in the interview room, but his desire to see the right man punished penetrated deeper than personal prejudice. If this Chris Rajaram was involved in the murder, Oates would run him to ground.

  Was Ali clever enough to be double-bluffing? That would have been an incredibly dangerous tactic to adopt, but if he had been caught virtually red-handed perhaps it had seemed the only option. Perhaps he even planned to revoke his confession at some point prior to the trial, claiming he had been paid, but was unable to identify the parties who had made the offer. If th
at was the plan, a testimony from an investigating officer to the effect that he had doubted the man’s guilt to the point of defying a superior would be a valuable thing. Oates tried to remember the exact words he had used in the interview room, and how useful they would be to a defence team trying to take that line.

  The doubts multiplied inside him like the worlds inside opposed mirrors. He clung to the idea of interviewing Chris Rajaram. His confusion could not be complete, so long as there was an identifiable gap in his knowledge still to be filled. With that interview outstanding, the crisis of a decision on whether or not to charge Ali Farooz could be postponed.

  He and John barely said goodbye to one another when the launch nosed back into port. There were things they needed to settle between them, whether John was intending to stay, how many men might be needed for operations in London, but the inertia of the silence proved impossible to disturb. There were other conversations to be had within St Margaret’s, but Oates found he could not face them. His overriding desire was to fix in place the guilt or innocence of Ali Farooz – not only for the purposes of his investigation, but for his own peace of mind.

  Back outside the main gates, Oates’s car was where he had left it. The confrontation around the barrier seemed to have ended, but the flow of cars away from the tarmac and onto the grassy wasteland was gathering pace. All around the darkening fields, interior lights created warm little worlds where men and women huddled companionably in their car seats. In one or two places, he saw tents were mushrooming. It was if a travelling circus had descended on a village green, filling it up with lights and strangers, caravans and wonders and crime. It was nearing dusk when he turned the car, and he had the headlights on as he drove back into London. As before, he alone appeared to be travelling that way.