Prepared to Die

by Peter Dudgeon

  Charlotte knew a sleepless night was on the cards, and was taking pre-emptive action. She drank warm milk, took a sleeping pill, and read in bed. Her eyes would surely get tired from the concentration. She downloaded ‘The Girl on the Train’ onto her Kindle. She’d been meaning to read it for ages; everyone at Yoga told her how good it was and that she must read it. Perhaps it was as good as they said, but she’d got to the end of the first chapter without absorbing any of it. The words swam in front of her, and, when persistent blinking made the words finally behave, it felt like they were rolling off her brain and out of her ear.

  Eventually giving in, she decided she needed a plan. She determined that, in the morning, since it was her day off, she would research cases brought by the General Pharmaceutical Council. They were sure to be a matter of public record. Yes, that was step one. Step two, pay a visit to the pharmacy to look River in those green eyes of his and confront him about the stock discrepancy. The final part of the plan was to go to St Hughs, to see if Reverend Jacobs was available to take confession. She had to get all of this off her chest: the marijuana pilfering, her relationship with her deceased best friend’s husband, her worry that perhaps she’d made a mistake and that drugs might have gone astray as a consequence. That was possible. Her head had been all over the place after Alison’s death, perhaps she had screwed up.

  You made no mistake.

  You could have.

  Not a chance.

  Not even a slim one? Because, if not, you know it means River’s guilty and you’ll have to prove it, don’t you?

  Her thoughts swam round until she finally threw her Kindle onto the mattress and grabbed a pillow, bending it over her ears as though it would help silence her thoughts.

  She drifted for an hour at around five in the morning. Her alarm went off at six. She remembered sleepwalking through the morning routine, getting Luke’s breakfast, and making sure he’d remembered to pack his school planner in his Spiderman rucksack (which she’d helped hitch onto his back). She recalled saying goodbye to Kerry too, who appeared to have matured over night; making her own lunch, doing her homework without prompt. She’d also developed an attitude, and was giving Charlotte the silent treatment, clearly smarting about their disagreement over her seeing Marcus. That concern would have to wait.

  Charlotte dressed without showering, pulling on a pair of jeans that probably needed a wash. She slipped on a khaki vest top and covered it with an open white blouse. It was the sort of outfit she’d throw on to spend a morning cleaning. Suddenly her appearance had become of little importance.

  She switched on her Sony laptop and sat at the dining table. She stared at googled GPC procedures, hoping that, with enough coffee, the contents might sink in. It sank in about as well as her Kindle’s tale of an inquisitive alcoholic commuter. Perhaps it would make more sense later in the day, when the muscle-bound ogre of sleeplessness had retreated.

  She decided to do this morning’s visit first. Autumn had turned the air towards winter and she grabbed her deep purple Barbour jacket from the hook by the front door, not caring that it clashed badly with her vest top.

  She headed out on foot, not trusting herself to drive after a night devoid of sleep. She visited the pharmacy first.

  Something was wrong. Mrs McCarthy, dressed as always in that doily shawl, was looking through the window, with her hands cupped next to her eyes as if holding binoculars.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Mrs McCarthy turned away from the window, towards Charlotte, “There’s a sign up saying ‘closed today due to unforeseen circumstances,’” she pointed towards the door and Charlotte saw the sign, written raggedly on a scrap piece of cardboard, hung with frayed yellow string. “Do you know anything about that?” asked Mrs McCarthy.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

  “Guess I’ll have to get my son-in-law to nip me into Louth then. You know it’s really not good enough.” With that, she marched off.

  Charlotte peered through the window, everything appeared normal. The register’s digital display was glowing green, the counter’s hinged section was lifted open. But it was all as still as a photograph. River must have opened up and then left. Perhaps he’s sick or something. Usually calls though. Perhaps I’ll go round to see if he’s okay.

  No.

  Why not?

  Remember what Daniel said. If he’s the one who took those drugs … he might be dangerous.

  Charlotte made her way towards St Hughs, taking a wavering path. Her thoughts became disjointed and unhelpful. She imagined the whole trial process, and what prison would be like, and remembered being a child and not wanting to be in trouble with anyone, and Alison’s funeral, and making love to Daniel - how simultaneously right and wrong it had been - and how she’d fancied River, but not in a deep way, a shallow frivolous way, like Mrs McCarthy probably fancied him, and when did she last book the stock in anyway?

  An iron fence lined the perimeter of St Hughs. Ornate Fleur-de-lis shapes atop the fence at chest height warned you not to climb. Charlotte had no need to climb; the gate was unlocked. As she walked through, it creaked a plea for oiling. Above her head an iron archway had “St Hughs” fashioned into it and it crossed her mind that people don’t tend to bother with such ornateness anymore; the modern Methodist Wesley chapel, less than two miles south of St Hughs, had a simple wooden plaque screwed into brick for its sign. This was one of the things she liked about St Hughs, it spoke of a time when people displayed care and passion despite their poverty. In the circle forming the top of the ‘g’ a spider sat mid-web wavering in the chilled breeze. Her skin tightened and prickled against her blouse.

  She walked carefully up the hallowed, snaking path. It was liable to trip you with the exposed roots of trees, which stood unapologetically amongst gravestones. Those roots, with a patina of algae, looked like the elongated fingers of witches; perhaps belonging to the Wicked Witch of the West, buried beneath the church’s foundations.

  It was a surprise nobody had sued the church after falling. Scratch that. The sort of people who went there, like Charlotte, wouldn’t think of suing anybody. That was just a stupid trans-Atlantic infection, caught by people who would do anything to make a quick buck. She was definitely of the, ‘look where you’re going and you won’t trip’ school of thought.

  The arched door sang a loud creak, but once it had swung itself shut behind her, St Hughs was as quiet as a tomb. There was a damp smell, redolent of decaying paper with varnish undertones.

  It had the sort of cold that settles on your chest; a soothing heaviness. She zipped up her jacket, aware but not caring that this made her blouse flap unattractively over her backside.

  As she walked the aisle, she wondered whether she would ever be a bride again. She envisaged a grey-suited Daniel waiting for her by the altar, head turning over his shoulder to glimpse her dress. The vision was comfortable and came too easily.

  Her eyes fixed on the confessional booth and all pleasant, distracting thoughts dispersed like grease in soapy water. She was reminded of what she came to do.

  The confessional wasn’t at all like others she’d seen where the confessor kneels in full view of fellow churchgoers, next to a box with ornate grate. She couldn’t think of anything worse than having people looking at you whilst you bared your soul. St Hughs's confessional was built into an arched alcove of whitewashed brick. That arch always reminded Charlotte of holiday villas, as if you could walk through it and emerge next to an integral brick barbecue, overlooking a pool. Except, there was no way through. Beneath the arch sat a beautifully ornate dark-wood confessional, most likely purpose built for the alcove.

  If someone had told Charlotte the confessional was a portal to another world she would have laughed it off, then secretly imagined the possibility. It had a pleasing symmetry. The outer most barley-gold curtains, draping their seven-foot lengths to the floor, were held aside in sober welcome by thick matching ropes. A third, central curtain covered the arch window
of a room where the reverend would sit. The confessional had been so beautifully carved that the hinge and seam of the thigh-high door were virtually indiscernible, unless you got really close. Charlotte was close, and paused with one hand on the curtain, looking up at an LED light which spoilt the whole ancient effect. It sat midway on the arch. Its white light turned to green as Charlotte slipped beyond the curtain. She unhooked the curtain’s rope and was plunged into darkness, embraced by the tenebrous cubicle.

  At the foot of the wall next to the priest’s chamber was burgundy padding which sagged from the knees of countless confessors. Charlotte kneeled and bowed her head below the grate, its ornate form reminiscent of gnarly thorn-pitted branches.

  In the darkness, the priest’s profile through the grate was a mess of amorphous shadows. Reverend Jacob’s voice surprised her by saying, “Sit my child, if it’s more comfortable.” Her kneecaps had instantly begun to ache and she said, “Thank you father,” taking the wing-seat which faced the curtain, rather than the grate. Something about the position of it, and its comfort was going to make confessing seem a little odd. Not that the whole thing didn’t feel strange, it had been … what was it … two years since her last confession. Oh well, best get that part over with first.

  She gripped the end of the chair’s padded arms. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…” her fingers released their grip, touching her jacket's zip, tracing the sign of the crucifix, down then across her chest. “… my last confession was two years ago."

  Her words came out in a flood. She laid it all out, about stealing marijuana; about her sexual encounter with Daniel and her irrational jealousy of Aitken’s relationship with him; about being worried that she might be implicated for murder. All the time painfully aware that Alison had been a dear friend to Reverend Jacobs and to the church. Once she’d finished there was a long pause.

  Charlotte recalled that at this point of her last confession, the Reverend had read scripture, something from the Gospel of Luke, if memory served her. This practice was novel to her (back then Reverend Jacobs had been new to the parish.) She’d liked it. Somehow it made the whole process less one-sided. But today it seemed he wasn’t offering anything. The pause went on so long that she needed to say something, ‘Should I do penance?’ Reverend Jacobs’s voice said simply, “Yes my child, but before I give you your penance … may I ask, does anyone know you’re here today?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  As Charlotte was making her confession, Aitken was driving Daniel to Lincoln. The purpose of the visit was threefold: report progress to DCI Edwards; meet with Robinson; pick up Daniel’s car. Daniel begrudged the hour and fifteen round trip but considered that, perhaps, it wasn’t entirely dead time. They could throw ideas around Aitken’s Corsa. He looked across at her, smiling at her Mr Magoo driving posture, then away from her, out of the window, stifling a giggle.

  The road cut a straight path through the woods. Mighty oaks were shedding their leaves, forming a blanket by the roadside, which the October rain - when it inevitably came - would turn into a dark chestnut pulp. For now though, the leaves appeared light, delicate and brittle. A childhood memory came from nowhere of Hubbard’s Hills where Daniel’s mother had taken him in all seasons. Autumn had been the best; he’d loved kicking through the fallen leaves in his Wellingtons. Aitken’s voice stirred him from this brief reverie.

  “Something keeps nagging at me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What we overheard in the tearooms, and what Mrs Nixon said about that caretaker - the guy with the manikins.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well I know there’s no evidence. But don’t you think that when enough people are suspicious, it’s worth exploring.”

  Daniel considered this, fighting his desire to dismiss the idea. “It can’t harm checking him out I guess. The sceptic in me wants to say it’s a bit too ‘Scooby Doo’ to be true.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wasn’t it always the janitor?”

  She laughed lightly, “No … sometimes it was the guy who ran the funfair.”

  “True enough.” And they both laughed. “We’ll add him to the list, but I’d like to get to Mrs Jackson first. Anyway, what else?” They’d reached a single lane humped-back bridge and Aitken sat more upright, her neck stretched like a meerkat on watch, trying to see over the apex. “I’m interested in other theories. Let’s throw some around,” said Daniel.

  “Okay … something about your data bugs me.”

  “My data?”

  “Well, you know what I mean. If this is a pattern of incidents, perhaps we need to look wider than murder-suicides.”

  “What’s your thinking?”

  “Well, what if there are similar incidents, which have happened in remote locations? This place is pretty rural after all. What if, for instance, deep in those woods there are two undiscovered dead bodies. One victim and one murderer who’s taken his own-”

  “Or her.”

  “-or her own life? They wouldn’t show up on your statistics, sorry the statistics then, would they? They’d be reported as missing persons.”

  “Good thinking. But, to critique that for a moment, I think in a place like Blaine, if others had gone missing, I’d have heard about it.”

  “True, but if we have a third party involved. Who’s to say they’re not playing outside of Blaine, maybe they’ve got a wider perimeter.”

  “I suppose so. Tell me Aitken and be completely honest. Do you think we’re off beam with this third person theory? Perhaps I’m just looking for something that doesn’t exist.”

  “Well … what do we know, what are we certain of? Dalgliesh was being tortured and it’s likely he’s hiding the identity of someone connected with Fallon. There’s a third party all right, the question is whether that person has anything to do with Fallon’s death.”

  Daniel said, “Agreed. There’s something else we know which, by all rights we shouldn’t. Last night I found out about stolen drugs.”

  Aitken’s arms flinched and there was a sickening thud against the bumper. Daniel glanced over his shoulder and saw a feathery lump the size of a football in the middle of the road. An old-style mini cooper behind them swerved to avoid it, easily regaining its path as though on rails.

  “It came at me so fast,” said Aitken.

  “Pheasant I think.” said Daniel.

  “I hate it when that happens. Steve hit a deer once when I was in the car. It was at night and we were doing sixty on a quiet, narrow stretch of unlit dual carriageway on the A46. The first we saw of it was the headlight reflecting in its eyes. I don’t know how long it had been standing there, just a second or ten minutes, who knows. He tried to steer round it but it was too late. Oh god, I still shudder at that thud. We pulled over to look for it, but it was gone. Must have limped off into the woods to die. To me that sort of thud is the sound of death, and I can’t stand it.”

  Daniel’s mind was thrown back to Alison’s final days. To Daniel, a thud wasn’t the sound of death. That sound was the slowing hiss of respirated breaths, which steadily decreased in frequency like an old watch winding down.

  They were just passing the city of Lincoln sign, which proudly boasted of being twinned with Neustadt and der Wein Strasse. It occurred to Daniel that there must be some point in twinning towns, but its benefit was beyond him.

  “Anyway, you were saying about drugs,” said Aitken.

  “Large quantities of Ketamine and two others …,” he pulled his notepad from his back pocket, and reacquainted himself, “ … Scopolamine and Mescaline are unaccounted for at the pharmacy in Blaine.”

  “How do you know th-. Oh … Charlotte right?”

  He turned away from her and nodded.

  “So what are you thinking?” asked Aitken, as Ryvita House distantly appeared.

  “One of the few things we know for certain, in terms of a connection, is that statistically, the chance of these being random
incidents is extremely low and two, in both, the perpetrator acted out of character, to the point of brutality. Now that could be explained if either Nixon or Jackson were drug lords or had a history of violence. Neither did. So, that only leaves one explanation as far as I’m concerned: neither of them were of sound mind when they did what they did. Neither had a history of mental health problems, which leaves just one possibility-”

  “Drugs?”

  “That’s what my money’s on. While you were getting dressed I put a call through to Bornthwaite to make sure the tests they’re doing would detect the drugs we’re missing. I also asked him to put a rush on it.”

  They parked up and headed towards DCI Edwards’s office. As they climbed the stairs, Daniel said, “So what do you think of the drugs theory?”

  “The jury’s out for me but if you’re right, Robinson’s going to look pretty stupid for not exploring this when Fallon died.”

  “My thoughts precisely.”

  Daniel knocked on the glass of Edwards’s door, paying no attention to who was inside. He was too busy looking at Aitken.

  Daniel wasn’t at all surprised to see Robinson in Edwards’s office. He hadn’t, though, expected DS Jerry Cliff to be there. Daniel pulled up two further chairs, Robinson and Cliff parted theirs so Daniel and Aitken could sit between them, forming a crescent of chairs opposite Edwards’s desk.

  Edwards introduced Cliff to Aitken. They stretched across Daniel to shake hands.

  “I’ll get straight to the point if I may,” said Edwards, who was unbuttoning his jacket as though he’d only just sat down. “I’m afraid I’ve had to move Robinson off to work full time on another case. Does anyone have any issue with that?”

  Daniel and Aitken shook their heads then Daniel said, “That’s fine as long as I can have continued access to all the files, including recently taken witness statements?”