The Lively Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  “I’d rather you just answered my questions.”

  He shook his head, smiling again, but wary now.

  “OK,” said Lydia, after a pause. “I’ll tell you some of the things that are worrying me. Mrs Newbury had a horror of drink, and a horror of empty bottles; and there ought to have been more fingerprints than just hers on the bottles. Then there was that night you made the transmitter and we went to the Russian Embassy—a man called Mr Diarghi told me some stuff about Count Linden and General Busch; afterwards Richard and I decided it was a rather obvious attempt to get me to refuse to renew the lease for the Consulate here, but then Mr Diarghi rang up to tell me he’d got his facts wrong. But he hadn’t. I looked them up. Then you’ve been trained in unarmed combat, and you’ve got a natural entreé into the Liv set-up here because you own a ship rather mysteriously released by East Germany. Then there was Mrs Pumice’s money—she dressed up to go and collect it, and she looked wildly excited, and she was obviously lying about where it came from—Don would never send her more than enough—and it meant that she didn’t have to move rooms so you could have Mrs Newbury’s room. And only a few days ago she came and told me (but she wasn’t at all coherent) that she’d behaved badly about something to do with money in a way which she imagined had let me down. I believe she meant she’d taken that money from you and pretended it came from Don. Then there was Dr Ng coming to tell me that he’d come into money too, and wanted to leave, and he seemed pretty nervous about something. And Mr Obb had been talking to me the day before about renewing the lease, and hinting that he’d like to expand into Dr Ng’s room; and he was also in a rather funny state, very nostalgic about Livonia and saying that he’d soon be tasting real varosh again, which he could only do if he went back to Livonia. And then there’s this stupid business of putting a mike in here. I can’t believe your explanation for that, I’m afraid…”

  “It’s true, Lydia.”

  “…and then, when you were alone with Mr Ambrose you told him something quite different from what you said just now. Dickie switched your machine on and I heard.”

  “Not different,” said Paul, accepting the half-lie. “Just more elaborate. I wanted to convince him that he’d suffer if he caused trouble.”

  “And you did that by telling him about the Organic Traveller Restaurant. That had to be true to be any good. How could you have known about it unless the rest of what you said was true?”

  Paul hesitated between a frown and a smile, neither very convincing. His sigh was more real.

  “I cannot see a pattern in these details,” he said. “What is your theory?”

  “Look, Paul, I’m not trying to find a victim. I don’t believe in punishment. I think you killed Mrs Newbury and I think it was a wicked thing to do, but it’s over now. If I could prove it, I’d still only want to use it if you started to mess around with the lives of the other people living in this house. That was your real reason for putting a microphone in here—you knew I discussed with Richard what I was going to do, and you needed to know everything about what the tenants were up to, and my plans for them, because I was in the process of moving everybody round to cope with the dry rot so there were all sorts of possibilities for intervening and gradually taking over the whole house, provided you knew in time. The sickening thing is that it’s exactly the same technique that Mr Ambrose’s organisation used when they wanted to take over a street. But all that’s over now too, and the police seem to be easing up as well. It is over, isn’t it, Paul? You haven’t been working on Mrs Evans, for instance? I noticed she seems suddenly a bit shy of meeting me.”

  Paul stretched and almost yawned.

  “And you still don’t believe I’m fascinated by you,” he said. “In the camp where we were taken by that train there was an old man with one leg, a cook. He’d been sent there from the South, almost into India. He used to tell us kids stories about the heroes of his tribe, little chiefs who had fought their big neighbours to hold onto their freedom, little kings with their own little courts who, for the sake of a few valleys, would hold off the armies of two empires which were trying to crush them from either side. And all this was five hundred years or more ago, but their names were still alive on the lips of an old cook sitting by a stove in Siberia. You are like one of those old heroes, Lydia. You have shown me something. I was taught that your view of the world was, at best, a mean type of self-deception, and now I know it is a noble type of self-deception. But even you, Lydia…can you explain to me the moral difference between the Russians using physical force to move people to a place which is more convenient for everybody, and you using economic force to move Mrs Pumice to a room which is more convenient for everybody?”

  “Mrs Pumice matters to me as a person. I wouldn’t have moved her against her will.”

  “But it was against her will, Lydia. As soon as she was presented with an adequate weapon, in this case a countervailing economic force, she refused to go. Those petty kings I was telling you about, they were admirable men, heroes, their names bring a brightness to the eyes of old men and children, but historically speaking all they achieved was to prolong for a couple of generations the miseries of their people.”

  “Talk about now, damn you!”

  He gave a little silent snort of laughter and shook his head. His eyes too had a brightness in them. He was, Lydia suddenly saw, getting a kick out of the situation. She tried to make allowances for what she knew to be her own imperceptiveness about other people, and her tendency to think of them in types—the downtrodden, the oppressor, the insular housewife—perhaps, she realised, it was Mrs Newbury’s blatancy of personality, breaking this barrier, that had made her seem so valuable to Lydia. But Paul…hitherto she had been thinking of him as the honed tip of a big machine for subduing people, and for killing those who couldn’t be subdued. Now she saw there was something else, all sorts of complexities, and that his absurd romantic babble about dead princes wasn’t merely a tease, though with part of his mind he was undoubtedly teasing her.

  “You don’t understand at all, do you?” he said.

  “I understand that you’re being exploited just as much as the rest of us,” she said. “Only you think you aren’t.”

  At last she had surprised him. It was as if a wrestler, poised and balanced, had felt something squirm under his foot.

  “Somebody your side wanted a bloody great cock-up,” said Lydia. “They decided you were the man to produce it. I wouldn’t be at all surprised either if somebody in our own FO had guessed what was going on, and was just allowing you enough rope to hang yourself. There’s plenty of that sort of bastard about.”

  “Now it’s my turn not to understand at all.”

  “Think about it. You were sent here with instructions to infiltrate the Liv Consulate, which you did. This probably started as a minor operation, because it must have been preparing for several years, but when we expelled all those Russian agents it suddenly became more important, because it offered you the opportunity to create a fresh base…”

  “Lydia, you are being absurd. You cannot seriously believe that if I were a Russian agent I would have jeopardised my task by an unnecessary killing. I say that since you seem to think…”

  “You didn’t even blink when I suggested first time that you’d killed her. And yes…”

  “But there are plenty of large empty houses in London.”

  “Not with diplomatic immunity there aren’t. When we expelled those Russians we expelled part of a big machine, which needed to work in a single establishment and was geared to having diplomatic immunity. Bosses like the ones you work for can’t ever be quite happy about letting agents loose on their own in a capitalist society. Look how you love that car of yours. They must have thought this was a unique opportunity, with an agent already here and ready to start work.”

  “But don’t you see, that would be risking this carefully planted agent?”


  “I know. There are two things about that. The first is that I’m sure the original purpose in getting you here at all was to work to discredit the Livs, and if possible all the Baltic Consulates, with the British Government. Mr Diarghi was still working on that, as you learnt that first night you used the microphone—we were still sleeping in here then. When they decided on this new plan they said to themselves that they’d do it in such a way that if it went wrong it could always be blamed on the Livs. That’s why you had to kill Mrs Newbury in just that way, so that if the murder was discovered it would turn out to be one of the ways in which Count Linden used to dispose of people. That’s quite well known—there were even questions asked about it in Parliament. His motive would have been to provide a funeral for Aakisen. One thing puzzled me for a long time—the Russians must have known for ages that Aakisen was here, so why didn’t they say who it was when his body was found? That would have completely discredited the Livs, even if they couldn’t make the murder stick. Great national hero, supposed to be fighting and suffering behind the Iron Curtain, actually pottering around in Kensington making booze for a gang of ex-Nazis.”

  “Well, why?”

  “Because this other scheme looked like coming off. I bet it was a near thing, but they let you go ahead in the end. They probably told themselves that even if they set up a spy nest here it would be blown in a few years but there would still be this bonus—the British would be pretty well bound to close the Consulate down then, and perhaps the other Baltic Consulates as well.”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Too tricky,” he said.

  “Exactly,” said Lydia. “But you were the agent. I said there were two reasons for the risk. I very much doubt whether you had permission from your bosses to kill Mrs Newbury. Under the new scheme you were supposed simply to infiltrate the Consulate, buy Obb if possible, and then expand by offering me more rent than my existing tenants were paying, buying them out where necessary. But you like risks. For instance even I could see that you enjoyed the idea of fighting Mr Ambrose…”

  “It amuses me that you still call him Mr,” said Paul. He did sound genuinely amused, too, as he twiddled the deadly little spike between finger and thumb. Perhaps he was enjoying this fight also—same arena, different opponent.

  “I’m grateful to you for getting me out of that,” said Lydia. “Even though I know you had to fight him. You couldn’t have his crowd muscling in on your schemes. But what I was saying is that I think you enjoy risks—you actually need them. You have a romantic view of yourself. Perhaps you told yourself that it would be satisfying to have Count Linden falsely convicted of a murder done by the same means as the murder of your father. Revenge is a horribly romantic idea…”

  “Horribly?”

  “I think so. What you were saying just before about me being like a medieval prince—you meant that as a compliment, but it isn’t one. I’m not like that and I don’t want to be like that. But I think it is how you see yourself…”

  “If so, we are the same kind of person. Because you are like that, Lydia.”

  “No we’re not! You think you can use people. You don’t think about them as people, individuals. There’s just you and the rest of the world. Look how you used Mrs Newbury, just as if she’d been a handy piece of timber, one of those planks which are exactly the right shape for the job you have in hand… What you don’t seem to realise, Paul, is that you’re being used in exactly the same way…”

  “But according to your theory I am acting beyond my instructions.’

  “That’s right. But I bet there’s somebody—somebody quite high up in the system—who guessed you would. I know the type. You get them on committees. They’re professionals. They don’t say much, they just cover their own position and let you go along into disaster. In my case it’s usually because they like to see amateurs making a mess of things; but in yours it’s because there’s a lot of high-ups in your organisation who are bitterly opposed to the whole idea of detente between Russia and the West, and are perfectly happy to engineer a bloody great security row to try to spoil things, provided it doesn’t endanger their own position… I bet you can guess just who it was, too.”

  He shook his head, still smiling, but his eyes were angry. Perhaps he really did want her admiration; he didn’t mind her thinking of him as cruel and treacherous, but he did mind that she should think he could be used, like a tool, without free will.

  “It is funny,” he said. “I’ve always thought of you as a practical person, yet here you are indulging in this enormous fantasy, and it isn’t even coherent. I’d expect you to make your fantasies work, at least; but here I am in your fantasy, threshing around and causing chaos; and yet at the same time things were going very well according to another part of the fantasy. It was only by accident that Richard dug up Mrs Newbury’s body.”

  “That must have been a shock.”

  “It was. I thought Busch was going to have a heart stoppage.”

  “But I think she would have got out somehow.”

  His eyebrows rose in apparently genuine surprise that she should admit to this pocket of blatant fantasy.

  “I don’t mean physically.” she said. “But there are some people you can’t ever quite bury, and she was one of those. I wish I thought Aakisen was another.”

  “This is an absurd situation. It is like a sort of French farce for moral philosophers. We both demand that the world shall breed heroes. You choose that terrible old woman to be yours. I choose you to be mine. Then you accuse me of killing your hero.”

  “But that’s real. You did, didn’t you? You brought her down the empty bottles, wiped clean of fingerprints, so that only hers would be on them. Count Linden makes the varosh, so taking his fingerprints off might throw suspicion on him. I don’t know how you tricked her into drinking some vodka but I know how you laid her out, because I saw you do it to Mr Ambrose. Then you injected more alcohol into her blood stream while she was still alive. Then you killed her the way Linden used, with that spike. And last of all you faked the fall to cover any bruises. Bodies can bruise quite badly after death. I know that. Am I right?”

  He looked at her, head cocked on one side, then sighed.

  “Let us pursue the fantasy. Let us suppose I did. What then?”

  “Don’t let’s start on that yet”

  “No, that’s what matters. You said so yourself. Everything else is over and done with, like my father’s death. It doesn’t matter any more.”

  “I didn’t mean exactly that”

  “That’s exactly what you said, in effect,” said Paul. He had left his head cocked in its teasing attitude, but she could hear in the dryness of his voice that he was only barely controlling some emotion, grief or anger.

  “Let us suppose all your fantasy is true,” he said. “Let us consider what the consequences are of your discovery. There would have to be some sort of bargain, for your silence. You would not expect an organisation which has invested time and effort and prestige into setting up the system you’ve imagined—you wouldn’t expect them now simply to shrug and go away and not trouble you any more.”

  “No,” said Lydia slowly. “I’ve thought about that. Organisations aren’t machines, though. They consist of people, and people do have free will. I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t simply stop working for them…”

  “Defect?”

  “Not if it means working for our side instead, in the same way. We’re just as bad. But I’m sure you must have arranged some escape-routes for yourself—escapes from this whole world. If you took one of those, that’d be enough. All I’d need is proof that it was you who’d killed Mrs Newbury, and I’d only use it if somebody else was accused of killing her.”

  “Then you’d be an accessory after the fact.”

  “I’ve got to risk something, haven’t I?”

  At last he uncocked his head and
leaned forward with the bright little spike dangling loose in his hand.

  “Doesn’t it strike you,” he said, “that an organisation such as the one in your fantasy might consist of people who choose to work for it, of their own free will?”

  “Yes, I’d thought of that too. In that case I’d still need proof, and I’d still only use it if I or my family or my tenants were threatened by your lot, or again if someone else were accused.”

  “Have you considered what would happen if my supposed organisation simply withdrew our protection from you, and informed Ambrose?”

  “Yes. I’d have to find ways of fighting them off.”

  “You would lose.”

  “Still, I’d have to try.”

  “Suppose, in exchange for your silence and their continued protection this organisation were to accept a renewed lease for the Liv Consulate, including the floor where my room is?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps they might also be able to arrange protection for Miss Newbury when she comes to live here.”

  “No!”

  “Why the emphasis?”

  “You would want to use her. She’d become a tool, a thing, a prisoner again!”

  “Lydia, where is the tape-recorder?”

  He caught her completely off balance. She felt the blush encrimson her neck and face.

  “I have realised almost since we started talking that there must be one,” he said. “I think I understand you very well, Lydia. You like to achieve everything by yourself, without help. It is inconceivable that you would arrange for police witnesses.”

  He sat back, but seemed now not at all relaxed. There was something about the movement of his fingers, playing delicately but restlessly along the line of stitches on his cheek that reinforced Lydia’s perception of sharp emotions reacting inside him, like chemicals in a retort—the old anger for the death of his father perhaps, and the stress of facing her and the deeper stress of facing the nature of his own actions, desire for her admiration, fear of his own masters—at any rate, she sensed, the reaction was coming to its climax. Perhaps it was not too late to persuade him to take one of the escape routes. At least she ought to try. The first essential, then, was to show that she trusted him.