The Order of Things

by Graham Hurley

  Neither of them, as it happened, was around. Enquiries at the shop next door revealed that they hadn’t been seen all day. Maybe Suttle might check further up the precinct. Geordie John had been around earlier.

  Suttle had never heard of Geordie John. He turned out to be a scruffy forty-something with a sizeable gut barely contained by a US Army combat jacket that had seen better days. His jeans had gone at the knees and he badly needed a shave, but he had a face made for laughter and definitely wasn’t drunk. He’d spread himself on a tartan blanket outside Boots. Two puppies nestled between his thighs, and his upturned forage cap was brimming with small change.

  ‘Gentlemen?’ he peered up and gestured them in from the rain.

  Suttle squatted beside him in the shelter of the overhang. The army-issue rucksack was full to bursting, and there were tins of dog food in the Iceland bag beside it.

  Geordie John was amused by Suttle’s interest.

  ‘If you get a choice next time, come back as a puppy. The women in this town? Never bloody fails.’

  Suttle offered his warrant card. Golding, still on his feet, didn’t move. Geordie John was staring up at him.

  ‘What’s this about then?’

  Suttle wanted to know where he slept at night.

  ‘Depends who’s asking, my friend.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  Suttle didn’t answer. Not at first. Then he asked whether other people slept at the same place, wherever it was.

  ‘Always. You can get rolled otherwise.’

  ‘The same people every night? People you know?’

  ‘Yeah. If you’re after names I’ve got a shit memory.’

  ‘Do strangers ever turn up?’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘People you don’t know.’

  ‘Yeah. Sometimes.’

  ‘And what happens then?’

  ‘Depends. Blonde? Nice tits? Good attitude?’ He threw his head back and laughed. No teeth.

  Suttle let him settle again. Then he produced Bentner’s passport photo. ‘How about this guy?’

  Geordie John spared it a glance, and Suttle knew at once that Golding had been right: Bentner was out there somewhere, not that far away, living rough.

  ‘Well?’

  Geordie John shook his head, rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn, then extended a filthy finger for one of the puppies to lick.

  ‘You’re telling me you’ve seen this guy?’ Suttle still had the photo.

  ‘I’m telling you nothing. Don’t get me wrong, but a man can’t live on dog food.’

  Catching Golding’s eye, Suttle nodded in the direction of a butcher’s shop across the precinct that sold burgers and sausage baps. Golding shrugged and then departed.

  Geordie John watched him go. He seemed, if anything, amused.

  ‘It’ll take more than that, my friend.’

  Suttle sorted a couple of twenty-pound notes from his wallet. He folded them carefully into Geordie John’s fist. ‘I need a location,’ he said. ‘I need to know where you people live.’

  ‘I bet you do. There’s another sixty in that stash of yours. I saw.’

  ‘You have to be joking.’

  ‘Never.’ He struggled to his feet ‘That mate of yours … what’s his name?’

  ‘Luke.’

  ‘Tell him no onions, yeah?’ He bent to gather up his puppies. ‘These little buggers can’t stand them.’

  Twenty minutes later, Suttle and Golding parked at the far end of the seafront where the long curl of beach collided with the looming mass of Orcombe Point. A zigzag path took them to the top of the cliff. From here another path led out towards the monument that marked the beginning of the Jurassic Coast.

  ‘Where did he say, skip?’ Golding was a stranger to Exmouth.

  ‘The wooded area off to the right. We’re nearly there.’

  The path suddenly opened out. Golding followed Suttle towards the trees that blocked the view from the cliff top. The scrub and brush was thicker than Suttle had expected but some of the vegetation had been flattened, an indication that people had been here recently. Suttle could hear the rasp of surf on the beach below. It was still raining, the trees overhead drip-dripping onto the sodden ground.

  ‘There, skip.’ Golding was pointing to the left. A tarpaulin had been stretched between two saplings. Nearby was a smaller tent, zipped up against the wind that funnelled over the edge of the cliff. Beneath the tarpaulin two figures were huddled in sleeping bags, only their beanies visible. Suttle counted more than two dozen discarded cans of Special Brew, all crushed. He nodded towards the tent. More cans plus an empty two-litre bottle of White Lightning. No wonder these guys were wrecked.

  Golding circled the tent. No way would anyone escape. Suttle knelt by the entrance and slowly unzipped the front flap. The stench of unwashed bodies gusted out. He put his head inside, let his eyes accustom themselves to the gloom. Two more bodies, curled under a couple of blankets. He could smell the booze now. He gave the nearest body a shake. A head emerged. It was a woman, grubby face, piercings, few teeth, totally befuddled.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ Suttle looked at the other body.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  Suttle produced his warrant card, held it to her face.

  ‘Filth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She rolled her eyes then licked her lips. She needed something to drink. Badly.

  Suttle found what might have been water in a bottle nearby. She sucked greedily at it. Her partner farted, then raised his head.

  ‘What the fuck … ?’

  Suttle didn’t bother answering. No way was this Alois Bentner. He wanted to know where the money came from for the booze.

  ‘My pension, sweetheart.’ It was the woman again. London accent, thickened by roll-ups.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Then I don’t know. Ask the guys outside. Party time last night. You free at all?’

  Suttle withdrew from the tent, grateful for the fresh air. Golding was bent over the nearer of the bodies beneath the tarpaulin. Suttle joined him. The guy had done his best to roll over. He lay on his back, still trapped in his sleeping bag, blinking into the sudden daylight. Scarlet-faced, unshaven, he might have been a cartoon insect emerging from his chrysalis. Definitely not Bentner.

  Suttle held the photo inches from his face. A flicker of recognition.

  ‘You’ve seen this person?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Stay there.’

  Suttle helped Golding roll over the fourth body. Another woman – younger, out for the count. In the bushes nearby more discarded Special Brew tins.

  Suttle retrieved one of the tins and returned to the first sleeping bag and knelt beside the face.

  ‘You did this lot last night?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who paid?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Don’t fuck around. Just tell me.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘I’m going to ask the question one more time, OK? Who paid for all this booze?’

  The face stared up at him. Then came a shake of the head. Suttle glanced up at Golding and nodded. Golding checked around and then took a step backwards. The first kick was enough. The face grunted. Winced. Then two hands appeared. A gesture of surrender.

  ‘Big bloke. Beard. Well pissed.’

  ‘Is this him?’

  The face gazed at the photo of Bentner.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How long was he here?’

  ‘Saturday night. Last night. Fuck knows. Can’t remember. Nice tent though. Good gear.’ He nodded towards a rectangle of flattened grass.

  ‘Is he coming back?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Did he say he was coming back?’

  ‘He had a car. That’s all I know.’

  ‘What sort of state was he in?’

  ‘Pissed. Like us.’ His eyes returned to the same patch of yellowin
g grass. ‘Shame. He must have gone.’

  At the Major Incident Room Suttle shared the news with DI Houghton. Nandy, back from Plymouth, was on the phone. The conversation over, Houghton briefed him quickly. Alois Bentner had evidently spent Saturday night partying with a bunch of vagrants on a cliff top outside Exmouth. This would tally with cell site analysis of the call he’d taken from Reilly’s mobile. In Houghton’s view they should declare the site a crime scene, full bosh.

  Nandy didn’t believe it. Time was short. He was due for a live BBC interview down in Lympstone. Buzzard was suddenly news.

  ‘You think Bentner was in Exmouth?’ Nandy was already on his feet. ‘Total bollocks. You’re telling me he goes to an offie? You’re telling me he spends the night dossing with these people? You’re telling me he leaves his car out in the open on some street or other? After doing something like that?’

  Nandy, to Suttle’s intense pleasure, had nailed it in one go.

  ‘Totally right, sir. Unless it wasn’t him who killed her.’

  Nine

  TUESDAY, 10 JUNE 2014, 18.33

  The Lympstone murder was the lead story on the BBC’s local magazine programme. Lizzie, still making notes at home on her conversation with Jeff Okenek, lifted her head from the laptop to watch. The reporter was live from the slipway. He gestured towards the nearby terrace of houses. Over there, he said, a woman had died at the hands of an unknown assailant. The killing was so brutal that investigating officers were refusing to release details.

  The shot cut to a man in a dark green anorak. Introduced as Senior Investigating Officer Det-Supt Malcolm Nandy, he was slim, early fifties, receding grey hair cut short, his eyes pouched in darkness. He shifted from one foot to another like a boxer pre-fight, and he’d clearly anticipated the reporter’s question. Lizzie recognised him at once. Jimmy’s boss, she thought. She’d met him twice. Nice man if he liked you, but aggression on legs if he didn’t.

  ‘Progress, Simon?’ Nandy was talking to the reporter. ‘These are early days. We have leads, of course we do, but our priority just now is trying to find a particular person of interest.’

  Nandy changed his eye line, addressing the camera direct. Lizzie had no idea whether this was his idea or the reporter’s but it certainly worked.

  ‘If you see this man,’ he said, ‘please get in touch with us. His name is Alois Bentner. And since the weekend, he seems to have disappeared.’

  Lizzie found herself looking at a photo of a forty-something white male. A tangle of greying hair. Full beard. And an expression she could only describe as forbidding. The photograph might have come from a passport booth, she thought, but even so she guessed he rarely smiled.

  Back with Nandy, the reporter was wrapping up. A national manhunt was under way for Alois Bentner. His photo was all over Facebook and Twitter. If there was a moment to be thankful for social media then this was surely it. Nandy offered a grim nod and added a final health and safety warning. If you see this man, don’t approach him. Just give us a ring.

  Lizzie returned to her laptop. A couple of keystrokes took her into the Devon and Cornwall Police Facebook page. There, on the home page, she found the same face but a different photo. She was wrong about the smile. Alois Bentner was pictured on a beach she recognised as Copacabana, sitting cross-legged on the white sand. His jeans were rolled up to his knees and he was wearing a red singlet and a back-to-front baseball cap. He was lightly tanned, and either the sunshine or the face behind the camera had brightened his mood. He looked relaxed, even radiant. By no means the monster Det-Supt Nandy was so keen to nail.

  Lizzie’s phone rang. It was Anton. He needed to sort out his evening. Were they still going to see Ralph Woodman?

  Woodman lived in a beautiful Georgian house at the end of a gravel drive near the airport. Anton had rung ahead, and Woodman must have been waiting inside because he stepped out of the front door the moment Lizzie pulled her Audi to a halt. He was a tall man with a slight stoop. Lizzie guessed his age at past seventy. He wore needlecord trousers over polished brogues and a green quilted gilet against the strengthening wind.

  The lounge was at the back of the house, a big handsome room, exquisitely furnished. An acre or so of garden filled the view from the big sash windows: freshly mown lawn, flower beds bursting with a palette of colours, a wooden gazebo occupying the far corner. One day, Lizzie thought, my garden might look like this.

  ‘May I?’

  Lizzie turned to find herself offered a glass of sherry. Fino. Dry. Nice. She was trying to work out whether anyone else lived in this glorious house. A view like that was made for sharing.

  ‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ she said. ‘I understand it was motor neurone disease.’

  ‘It was, my dear. I’ve been a Christian all my life. We both were. But we were sorely tested, believe you me.’

  The merest nod directed Lizzie’s attention to a row of framed photos on the marble mantelpiece.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Lizzie wanted to look at the photos.

  ‘Not at all. I understand that’s why you’re here.’

  In the car Anton had explained that Ralph Woodman had recently become a major supporter of an organisation called Dignity in Dying and believed that Lizzie was in a position to offer publicity and perhaps PR advice. In his view she needed to understand in some detail the blessings conferred by assisted dying. Hence the invitation to The Old Rectory.

  Lizzie was looking at the photos. One pictured Ralph’s wife as a child, sitting on her mother’s knee. Another was more recent. A lifetime later, even in a wheelchair, Julia Woodman had retained a beauty and a presence that Lizzie could only describe as luminous. She sat erect, if a little lopsidedly. Her face was turned to the camera, strong features, a full mouth, a melting smile. She must have been the sunshine in this man’s life, she thought. To lose a woman like that would close the curtains on years of warmth and laughter.

  ‘You know anything about MND?’ Ralph had joined her at the mantelpiece.

  Lizzie shook her head. Mercifully not, she said.

  ‘Then you’re lucky. It’s the stranger that comes ghosting into your life. For months you don’t realise it’s there. A little stiffness in the legs after a decent walk? Difficulty getting the odd word out? Looking back, you realise what these things meant, but at the time you dismiss it. In the army I’d have called it collateral damage. None of us is getting any younger.’

  Julia, he said, had been nearly sixty before the medics could put their finger on what was wrong.

  ‘That was how many years ago?’

  ‘Four. She’s always been the younger woman in my life, the one I nabbed when she was silly enough to say yes. I always worshipped her. Nothing ever changed in that respect. Even at the end.’

  ‘I understand she died recently.’

  ‘Nearly nine months ago. To tell you the truth it feels like yesterday.’ He took Lizzie lightly by the arm and guided her across to the window. ‘She’s down there by the gazebo.’

  ‘You buried her in the garden?’

  ‘I did. In a wicker coffin she designed herself. My daughters wove flowers into it for the celebration. Very hippy.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘I visit her every morning. Take little gifts. We talk to each other. I find it helps immensely.’

  To be frank, he said, the Church had been a disappointment, and the same was true of their GP. After countless tests, Julia had been diagnosed with a variant of the disease called progressive bulbar palsy. PBP, he said, was something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. It attacked the nerves in your face and throat. You started to drool. You couldn’t swallow properly. You had difficulty breathing. And as it got worse, you lived every day in terror of not being able to breathe at all.

  ‘Then there was the crying,’ he said. ‘Julia was always the strong one. She could stand pain, disappointment, despair, everything that life throws at you. In that department she always put me to shame. But towards the end she simply couldn’t cope. She’d cry and
cry, and that, of course, only made it worse. My poor, poor love. You’ve no idea what that does to a man. There’s a sense of utter helplessness. You’re together day and night. You do your best, of course, but deep down you both know there’s absolutely nothing you can do.’

  He turned away from the window, shaking his head.

  ‘Your GP … ?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Absolutely useless. Nice enough man but wouldn’t begin to entertain what we both had in mind.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Ending it. May I call you Lizzie?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It wears you down, Lizzie. It wore me down, and dear God it certainly wore my darling wife down. There’s help out there if you want it. Physiotherapists. Reflexologists. Dieticians. You name it. But after a while you realise you’re at a place from which there’s no coming back. The only absolute certainty, the only thing you can rely on, is that this disease, this hideous stranger, is here for keeps. Until one morning he decides to end it all. His decision. Not ours. That’s the moment when you start getting angry, the moment when you realise that both your life and your death are beyond your control.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I’d met this young man.’ His eyes settled on Anton. ‘One of my daughters teaches at the university. She bumped into Anton one day and they started talking. Normally she wouldn’t dream of sharing these kinds of confidences, but it turned out that Anton was something of an expert in the field. His mother had elected to die in Switzerland. You’re aware of the Dignitas people?’

  ‘Of course.’ Lizzie was looking at Anton. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘You never asked.’

  ‘Your mother was ill?’

  ‘She had pancreatic cancer,’ Anton said. ‘ She was very brave but sometimes courage isn’t enough.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Ralph reached across and patted his arm. ‘Absolutely right. And so young Anton here became part of our little family for a while, which was wonderful because he started to teach Julia German. Me too, when I could get my brain into gear.’