The Devil's Dice

by Roz Watkins

  ‘No, no, they’re not. And she’s fine, actually. Luckily she wasn’t a rebellious child.’

  I cringed at the sinister subtext about what happened to rebellious children.

  Edward escorted me to the door. As I was leaving, Grace pulled up outside. She hopped out of her car and looked over at me. Her eyes widened and she hurried across the parking area, her feet scrunching in the gravel. She touched my arm and peered at my face. ‘Inspector Dalton! Are you alright? Have you been hurt?’

  I smiled at the contrast between her concern and Edward’s failure even to notice my injuries. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Thank you though.’

  ‘Did Edward give you a drink? He can be so forgetful about—’

  Edward shouted from the doorway. ‘Come on, Grace.’ His tone was harsh ‘We need to talk. Felix has got us into an unholy mess.’

  Grace set off towards the door. ‘That man,’ she muttered. ‘He has demons inside him.’

  *

  The light was fading as I left Edward’s house. The cloud sat so low it seemed like there was a block of concrete in the sky above the trees. The gloomy weather added to my exhaustion. I ached deep into my bones, and my head was spinning.

  My mind wandered to the book on Edward’s table. I’d read about it a few months ago. There had been at least three cases in America of parents following its teaching and beating children to death. Maybe that was what I’d sensed about Grace – why I’d thought she was a Stepford wife. She’d had all the rebellion beaten out of her as a child.

  I arrived at Mum’s, let myself in, and walked into the hall just as she emerged from her study. She gave me a warm smile, with a hint of furtiveness hiding underneath, and locked the study door.

  She led me into the kitchen and gestured towards the table. I sat down, feeling prickly and hot like I was at a job interview. Mum walked to the sink and noisily filled the kettle. ‘Do you want some supper, love?’

  ‘No, I’ll get some at home. Thanks.’

  ‘You don’t eat properly.’ She stuck the kettle on and opened a cupboard above it, staring into it as if she’d forgotten what she was doing.

  The words rose up in me and forced themselves from my mouth. ‘Mum, I saw those notes you were writing yesterday. What was it about?’

  She said nothing for so long I thought she was going to pretend she hadn’t heard. She reached into the cupboard, rattled cups and fished out the best teapot, only to shove it back again. Finally she spoke with deliberate casualness, her back still to me. ‘Sorry to disappoint you after your spying, but it was just for a short story I was writing for the book group.’ She fumbled with tea bags and mugs.

  ‘A short story?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really? What was the short story about? Someone who’s addicted to barbiturates and joins a drug-trafficking group?’

  She paused with a teaspoon in mid stir, and turned to me. ‘Something like that, yes.’

  I felt tearful, scared for her now and panicking that maybe there had been an intruder, maybe it was Mum they were after on those steps, maybe the boiler and the light switch had been tampered with, maybe I’d put her in danger when I was only trying to protect her. ‘Mum, please tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘As I said, we decided to do a bit of creative writing in the group. To make a change from reading books.’ She stirred my tea, round and round, even though I didn’t take sugar.

  ‘I thought you said you were making notes on Gone Girl. Have you even read Gone Girl?’

  ‘Yes, most of it.’ She strode over and put two teas on the table. No table mats. That wasn’t like her.

  ‘Are you taking barbiturates, Mum? Did you start them after Carrie? How do you know about the Silk Road? What are you mixed up in?’

  She scraped the chair viciously on the lino floor – she knew that drove me mad – and sat down opposite me. ‘There’s this thing called Google. You should check it out. It’s great for researching stories.’ Was this really Mum? She seemed like a stranger. ‘You don’t think I’ve actually gone on these websites, do you? How would I have any idea about that? I can barely even use a mobile phone, as you so often remind me.’

  My belly churned like a concrete mixer filled with rocks. ‘You would tell me, Mum, wouldn’t you? If you were in trouble? After all we’ve been through.’

  She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. ‘It’s just for a story, Meg. Don’t worry about me, please. It doesn’t affect you.’ She gave me a bright smile full of fakery. ‘Anyway, have you had any luck with that dating site?’

  God, did I tell her about that? I didn’t even remember. ‘It’s full of old, married men pretending to be single, lying about their age and looking for pubescent blondes.’

  ‘You’ve not found anyone then?’

  ‘You sound like Gran. Funnily enough, I don’t actually need a man to complete my life.’

  ‘You’re not one of those lesbians, are you? I wouldn’t mind if you were.’

  I let out a sharp laugh. ‘No. Sadly, my inclinations don’t tend that way.’

  ‘I often thought it would be much easier,’ Mum said. ‘You know, women are just… less bother to get along with.’

  I smiled despite my frustration. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but don’t think you can deflect me that easily with your surprisingly modern views. I still want to know why you were writing notes about barbiturates and the Silk Road.’ I kept my tone light. ‘And then lying to me about it.’

  She looked into my eyes and I felt the world shifting. Mum had been the only solid, reliable thing in my life and I realised I didn’t know her at all.

  ‘Please believe me, Meg,’ she said. ‘I’m okay, and you don’t need to worry.’

  ‘But I do worry, Mum. What if that gas leak wasn’t an accident? And the light switch. You need to tell me if you’re in danger. I can do something about it.’

  ‘Meg, don’t be ridiculous. The gas man said it was wear and tear. It’s my fault for not getting the thing serviced and checked. Same with the light switch. It was nothing to worry about. You’ve always had a tendency to over-dramatise things. You were always looking for mysteries and conspiracies even when you were a child.’

  ‘Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, Mum.’

  ‘You have to accept I’m fine. Honestly, stop worrying.’

  Chapter 32

  The next day, I woke at five fretting about Mum. I crawled downstairs, shoved the heating on, and set about making tea and toast for brain food. Hamlet bashed through his flap and yowled at me, pleased to see the staff up at a decent time for once. I opened Organic chicken with rice and herbs and left him dining while I carried my less exotic fare to the living room.

  I slumped on the sofa, balancing my toast plate on its arm, and pulled the laptop off a pile of books on the coffee table. Of course I knew Mum had been lying, but short of hauling her in for questioning, I couldn’t see how to get the truth out of her. I just hoped I was wrong about the connection with Peter Hamilton.

  The uncomfortable fact hovering at the edge of my consciousness was that Nembutal could be used to kill people. Mum couldn’t have anything to do with killing people, but what about Kate Webster?

  I stuck Nembutal euthanasia into Google. Yep, there it was – the drug of choice for a quick and painless death. Was Kate Webster getting hold of Nembutal to help people kill themselves?

  Hamlet strolled in, licking organic chicken from his lips, and jumped onto the arm of my chair. With balletic grace, he walked over my toast plate, settled next to me, and purred obtrusively. I stroked him and clicked a link to an article about a recent right-to-die case. A video played and I sank back on the sofa and watched. An impeccably dressed young lawyer stood outside court, his pin-stripes gleaming in the sunshine. He spoke at the camera. ‘It’s wrong that this man should be forced to live a life of terrible pain, when all he wants is a dignified death. If he was able-bodied, he would be able to kill himsel
f but the law denies him this right. It’s horrifically cruel and we will fight on.’

  The video flipped to the man who wanted to die. He slumped in a wheelchair, his head lolling to one side and his face slack. The man couldn’t talk but his wife read a statement.

  ‘Like Tithonus in the Greek myth, condemned to an eternal life of misery and torment, I am stuck inside my useless body, denied even the right to end my suffering.’ A tear crawled down the man’s face as his wife continued with a trembling voice. ‘I wish those who deny me this right could spend just a day inside my body. I promise they would change their opinion.’

  Tithonus. The note on the paper in Kate Webster’s fire. The man who was given eternal life but not eternal youth, who was locked behind shining doors when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, who could neither move nor lift his limbs. The man who begged for death when death wouldn’t come.

  I grabbed a slip of paper and scribbled down the dying man’s name. Could it be a coincidence that he was talking about Tithonus?

  I hurriedly typed the man’s name into Google. There he was. Motor neurone disease. Almost completely paralysed and getting worse by the day. A recent article reported he’d lost his case. The judges were sympathetic but were bound by the law. Any doctor who helped him die could risk fourteen years in prison.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I whispered.

  Hamlet stretched a paw in my direction and yawned.

  I clicked a link to another article on the case. There was a quote from the man’s lawyers, Templeton Law, a Nottingham firm. I peered at a tiny picture, hit ‘control’ and scrolled to zoom in. One of the lawyers was the pin-striped man I’d seen on the TV outside the courtroom. The other one was a woman.

  I felt a chill like someone had chucked ice down the back of my neck.

  It all crunched together in my mind. A group of people who helped patients die. Named after Tithonus, the wretched man cursed with eternal life. I’d finally worked out why Charity-shop-chic-girl had thought Kate was talking about typhus.

  The lawyer was Beth Hamilton.

  It felt like the substance of me had drained downwards, leaving my head empty. Mum was somehow involved in this. Of course I’d worked out she was up to something but it was still shocking to have it confirmed. Could this be the Sunday-night book group?

  My mind shifted to accommodate this new information. It felt as if the room was spinning. I couldn’t understand how Mum had got involved with this. How had she even met these people? I had to find out more.

  It was still only seven o’clock, so I stuck some clothes on, jumped in the car, and set off for Mum’s.

  I headed out past East Mill. It was doing its full dark satanic number on me today, towering high above the road, its windows an ominous dark grey against the red brick. I normally found it beautiful but today it just brought to mind exploited workers and evil Victorian mill-owners. I took the road to Eldercliffe.

  I pulled up outside Mum’s house and opened the car door. I didn’t want to get out. I sat with my eyes closed. There was a hint of smoke in the air, reminding me of those rare occasions in my childhood when Dad had decided it was a good day for a bonfire, and swept us all along with his manic enthusiasm. For a couple of hours, we’d stare into the flames and forget everything.

  I found Mum in the back garden, weeding the patio, which seemed a strange thing to be doing when it was barely light. She didn’t look up but I knew she’d heard me. I stood behind her, my hands scrunched into fists. ‘Mum, you can stop lying to me. I’ve found out about Tithonus.’ She rose slowly and turned, trowel in hand.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said.

  She clutched the trowel as if it was a weapon. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Meg, why do you think? I was protecting my friends. A lot of people depend on us. And you’re in the police.’

  I wrapped my arms tightly around myself. ‘Can we go inside? It’s freezing out here.’

  She hesitated as if wanting to make me suffer a bit longer, then wrenched open the tasteless plastic patio doors to let us into the kitchen. She strode around making tea, slamming mugs on counter-tops and bashing cupboard doors unnecessarily.

  I sat at the table and crossed my arms and legs. ‘You could have told me—’

  She spun round. ‘No, I couldn’t. You’d have had to report it or risk your career. I could go to prison. What will happen to your gran if I can’t look after her?’

  ‘You could go to prison?’

  ‘And the group will have to stop. And that will be a very bad thing.’

  ‘I never knew you felt so strongly,’ I said.

  ‘I have my reasons.’ She picked up the mugs and brought them to the table, sat down and looked straight at me. ‘Honestly, Meg, I think if you give the matter some serious thought, you’ll agree with me. People are being forced to stay alive, people who are begging to die. Have you ever seen a grown man crying because he’s been suffering unbearably for twenty years and no one will allow him to end his suffering?’

  I felt a chill as I remembered the man in the wheelchair outside the courtroom, tears seeping down his flaccid cheeks.

  ‘If you did it to an animal, you’d be prosecuted for cruelty,’ Mum said. ‘Anyway, we decided we’d help these people. If the government won’t change the law, we’ll bend it a little.’

  I warmed my hands on my mug. ‘So, how exactly does the group work? You may as well tell me.’

  Mum hesitated. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that. Just tell me.’

  She looked out of the window. ‘Well, okay, you know the gist of it anyway. We have to be careful, obviously. We spread the word about ourselves very discreetly to doctors who share our views, and who have patients who want to die and aren’t physically capable of committing suicide on their own. We have a website but you won’t find it on Google. Peter did all that side of things.’

  ‘Is that on the Dark Web?’

  ‘Well, it’s on a bit of the internet you can only get to if you know what you’re doing. I don’t really understand it.’

  ‘And did Peter buy Nembutal from the Silk Road?’

  ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Yes, well, I think that one was shut down but others sprung up. Obviously Kate and Mark could get drugs through work but they had to be very careful. These things are monitored. So, we bought supplies online.’

  So, Mark was involved. This explained the feeble alibis for Sunday night – they were all at the ‘book group’.

  I sat listening to my heart thumping, looking at this woman I hardly recognised.

  I steeled myself. ‘Is this something to do with Carrie?’

  Neither Mum nor I had mentioned her until now, but she was there. Always there in the background, daring us to look at her. Thinking about her was like picking at a scab, except it was more like a stump where a whole limb had been severed. And I was loosening the tourniquet I’d had around it for the last twenty years.

  Mum was stronger than me. She looked straight ahead. ‘She asked us to help her die.’ She took a breath, her face tight. ‘We were selfish. We didn’t want to lose her, we wanted every last second with her. Your father got angry. It was horrible. Anyway, you know what happened.’

  ‘I didn’t know she asked to die,’ I whispered, wiping a tear from my face. So, maybe it wasn’t my fault after all?

  ‘She died too soon. If we’d have just said, When you’re ready, we’ll help you go, she’d probably have lived at least a few more months. Lots of people never take the drugs we give them – they know the option’s there. It allows them to carry on. If they ever can’t bear it any more, it can be over.’ Mum laced her fingers together and clenched her fists. ‘People who don’t get help, they go to Dignitas while they still can. They lose months or even years of life because they’re scared to leave it too long.’

  I pictured Carrie in those last few weeks. Emaciated and grey, her lovely hair all gone and her eyes huge and sur
rounded by shadows. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum… for how it worked out.’

  She sat up straight in her chair. ‘Well, this is her legacy. Tithonus. No one who we help has to do what she did.’

  ‘Kate, Beth, Peter and Mark all lost parents when they were young, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, and had to watch them suffer terribly. Mark remembers it clearly. He can’t bear suffering. And Kate’s father begged for death for years. He had a high neck fracture. Eventually died of pneumonia.’

  ‘Beth was very young, wasn’t she, when their mother died?’

  ‘Yes, she doesn’t really remember it well,’ Mum said. ‘Beth’s very logical about it all. She can out-argue anyone. Most of the people against assisted dying are religious, even if the campaigning groups try to hide it. I just get impatient with them, but Beth focuses on logic.’

  Mum didn’t seem to know Beth was dead. I hadn’t told her and it looked like neither Mark or Kate had. I hadn’t the heart to break it to her now.

  ‘I always thought you believed in God,’ I said.

  ‘I do believe in God. But he gave us free will and with that we invented medicines and so on, and we keep people alive way beyond when they would have died naturally. So, why wouldn’t we use medicine to help them die when they want to? I don’t see how a compassionate God could be against that. And, the thing is, if religious folk don’t want to take advantage of euthanasia for themselves, that’s fine – we’re not trying to make them. But why should they stop others, based on their beliefs? They can believe what they like, they can believe in Santa Claus if they want, but don’t use it as a reason to torture people.’ She shook her head sharply. ‘See, I’m getting annoyed again. I’m no good at talking to those people.’

  I’d never really considered Mum’s opinions about anything. Dad had opinions, I had opinions, but Mum was just Mum. She looked after everyone else. No one asked her what she thought. And all the time, she’d had these ideas – well thought-out and intelligent and brave. I felt a wave of sickness rising up in me. I’d never really seen her. I’d allowed her to be invisible, to fade into the background, to be defined in my mind only by her relationships with the rest of us, like so many women since the dawn of time. How could I have been so blind and self-centred?