Killing State

by Judith O'Reilly

  The sergeant tugged down the zipper of the bag, with his unspoken Now then, sunshine as gentle as if the body was that of a child.

  Battered by the rocks, the face of the corpse was a pulped and crimson jelly. It was impossible to say whether death was from drowning or from injuries sustained before the body went into the water. And perhaps that was what he really wanted to know – whether it was Peggy, and whether she’d suffered. Whether she was beaten or tortured. Perhaps he wanted to know that so that he could exact vengeance. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. The Lord’s and his. The sergeant gave another tug on the slider. Its teeth let go – the plastic canvas folding in on itself – and a torrent of pink water gushed out of the bag and on to the quayside. The mix of blood and salt-water escaping on to the concrete and over the shoes and polished boots of the nearest men. A second, and the hand fell palm upwards, its little finger at a 45 degree angle, slapping the concrete – the sergeant scowling as his younger colleague leaped away, swearing in terror.

  North stepped back and the crowd of onlookers and emergency workers closed up the gap he left.

  There was nothing to be done for the dead.

  And it wasn’t Peggy – Honor could relax.

  But if he told her it was the young banker who lived upstairs from her, she would insist on the police. There was no mistake. A lifetime ago, North had noticed the broken finger when she’d touched the lad on the arm and walked away. The banker had been smitten. Staring after her. Perhaps he was on a day off, and came down, concerned at the to-ing and fro-ing in Honor’s flat? Perhaps he disturbed them as they cleared away the corpse from her bathroom? Blood on the floor. In the bath. What the Hell’s going on? Where’s Honor? A credible witness.

  Or perhaps they believed he knew where his neighbour went?

  Honor would be distraught.

  Judging by the lad’s face, they beat him to death, making sure his teeth were in fragments, and then threw him from the helicopter some distance out at sea. They couldn’t have his body found anywhere close to home. Bad luck for them that the corpse washed in. They‘d have wrapped chains around his legs attached to a heavy weight, but at some point in the storm the chains unraveled and the body floated free from the muddy sea bed.

  North couldn’t tell her.

  This has gone too far. She’d tell the burly sergeant the same. It would be over for her and Peggy. The police would take her away in the back of their patrol car. She wouldn’t last the day.

  He shook his head to reassure Honor standing stock-still by the stuccoed wall of the harbour master’s office. But to any watcher North was sad and sober at the sight of the destruction the unruly sea could wreak.

  Taking his time, his head hanging, he walked back, nudging Honor into action, pulling her past the police while their attention was still fixed on the lifeboat. She was relieved, he thought. Relieved it wasn’t Peggy. Relieved enough to walk past the police car.

  “Who was it?” she whispered.

  He shrugged. “No one important.”

  He risked another look at the tall figure in the riding coat – searching his brain. The one-eyed man was down by the body now – kneeling, inspecting the damage wreaked by the beating and the sea – the long face grim. Honor focussed on the road ahead. Under the donkey jacket, her shoulders were hunched, her arms wrapped round the green-plastic wrapped parcel again. And as they trudged up the harbour hill, even the lobsters stopped struggling.

  It was raining hard by the time they reached the dual carriageway. The juggernaut slowed, its enormous wheels throwing up a sheet wall of filthy water and spray. North reached for the door handle, and pulled it open. A fug of synthetic pine and real-man sweat blossomed from the cab. “How far are you going?” he asked.

  Chapter 22

  YORKSHIRE

  Ten Years Earlier

  Peggy stood a little way from her father’s grave, shaking hands with those mourners who weren’t going on to the reception in the working men’s club a few streets away. Her back was turned, but Honor knew she’d seen the gravediggers in the lee of the trees leaning on their spades, waiting for them to clear the graveside.

  Honor hadn’t gone to her own father’s burial. Refused. JP was the only mourner, and she didn’t even want to know where he was buried. Miles from her mother, she’d insisted. But there was a good turn-out for Christie’s passing. Honor walked to the lip of the grave and looked over. Sunflowers were scattered over the coffin. Peggy got up early and stripped her father’s allotment and garden of every sunflower in them, and now their huge yellow-petalled faces lit up the dark down there.

  One last goodbye. A final thanks so much for coming, and Peggy was there at her side. She slid her arm around Honor’s waist and leaned in towards her, resting her head on Honor’s. Lofty and Titch, Christie used to call them. Little and Large.

  Honor had loved him and Peggy adored him. But they couldn’t keep him. The size of a tree, over the last four months Christie had shrunk away to a bundle of twigs. Christie, who couldn’t believe he’d fathered anyone as clever as his darling Peggy. I did something right in another life, he said in wonderment to Honor at Peggy’s graduation, standing to applaud his glorious girl in his one good suit and his polished lace-up shoes. The same suit and polished shoes they buried him in.

  It was quiet in the churchyard. The sound of birds. Distant traffic. Wind through the leaves of the yew tree.

  “He’d put his arm around me on the back step and he’d point out the constellations. And the moon he’d save for last and he’d say ‘That’s where your Mam is, Peggy lass. Looking down on us. Wave at Mam like a good girl.’ It must have been so hard for him, but he never once complained.”

  Honor wiped away tears she hadn’t realised she’d been crying with the back of her hand.

  “What will I do, Honor? I’m an orphan,’ Peggy said, “and I’ve read the books. Terrible things happen to orphans.”

  Honor turned her friend away from the grave and slipped her arm through the crook of Peggy’s elbow. She felt Peggy’s resistance, the desire to stay rooted here among the dead, but she started moving anyway. Pulling her friend back into the world of the living.

  “It’s as well you’ve got me to look after you then,” Honor said. “Lesson number one: write down the time you were born, which day of the week it was and your actual birthdate – somewhere you won’t lose it in case you forget, or need your fortune telling. Lesson number two: never buy a cat – it will certainly eat you in your sleep or in the event of a fall. Lesson number three: never fall. It hurts. Lesson number four: drink – particularly gin which is a consolation for orphans and is to be encouraged…”

  And as the women walked together down the gravel path, the gravediggers stepped out from the shadows.

  Chapter 23

  NEWCASTLE

  8.15am. Wednesday, 8th November

  The Gallows Widow stood alone – her companions knocked to the ground years ago. A train passed by on the High Level bridge alongside, and the pub shivered as if cold, while the painted sign with its crone clutching a noose, creaked on its brackets.

  The poster on the window advertised “Early-bird specials – all day.” North didn’t need to stop, They did however need to be off the streets to re-group.

  “We need to eat,” she agreed when he pointed to the poster, and North felt guilty suddenly at the blood she’d lost, and the fact he had barely considered it since. She wasn’t him and she needed to rest up.

  As he pushed open the swing door, someone somewhere pressed pause and all conversation stopped. An early morning pint glass held to a mouth. Warm beer unswallowed. Water that didn’t drop from a tap. A rough-looking heavy and a washed-out girl in a jacket that hung to her knees. Nothing and no one. Play resumed.

  A doxy with a face the colour of tomato soup broke off from flirting with an ancient postal worker to take their order for sandwiches and coffees.

  “Do you have rooms?” he asked. An unusual request for so early i
n the morning. He kept the tone casual. If she did – fine. If she didn’t, it was all the same to him.

  The barmaid gave North a contemptuous stare. Honor a worse one. As far as she was concerned anyone who wanted to check into the pub’s rooms had little money and no sense.

  “£45 for a double. Shared bathroom along the corridor, but there’s no one else staying if you’re fussy that way.”

  “Clean sheets?”

  “They used to be.”

  Two plates of bacon stotties clattered on to the counter in front of him and Honor opened her mouth. The early-bird specials. He shook his head. The tiniest of movements. The barmaid’s back was to them as she poured coffee from a glass jug, its bottom burnt black from the hotplate, but North figured she was listening. They were strangers and strangers were always worth listening to.

  North gestured at Honor to pick up the plates, as the barmaid rang in their cash – they were officially out of Peggy’s £50 – waving her fat hand in the direction of a rickety round table to the rear of the room. She wasn’t best pleased with the guests. She’d be the one changing the sheets.

  It was warm in the bar and the bacon stottie and coffee was better than North had expected.

  Honor slipped off the donkey jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. Quiet, her face was white like bone with violet smudges under her eyes as she pulled out the package. It was dry now. She placed it on the table between them, laying her hand over it, still in no apparent rush to open it. To see what it was her friend hid in the open seas. To think why Peggy would do such a thing.

  “It feels wrong to be in Peggy’s city when she’s not here with me.”

  It didn’t feel wrong to North – it felt exposed. Like they were doing what the Board would expect them to do. Looking for Peggy in her home town.

  “Can you believe it was only yesterday that you tried to kill me?”

  Yesterday, when she lived in a civilized world as an MP with prospects and powerful friends. Before her transformation into a mentally disturbed fugitive facing up to the prospect of imminent death with a one-time assassin her only ally. Her tone wasn’t hostile but even so, North winced. She wasn’t one to sugar-coat the situation.

  She took her hand off the parcel to try and tuck an unruly strand of hair behind her ear – slamming her hand back down as she realised the vanity left the parcel undefended from him or from the curious scrutiny of the world. He didn’t know which bothered her more.

  “And now look at us,” he offered, “sitting down to breakfast together.”

  She smiled, before remembering who and where she was. Her eyes went to the parcel again and he willed her to open it. To stop pretending that it wasn’t all she was thinking about. Proof of her friend’s innocence, or proof of her guilt. And if Peggy was guilty, Honor needed to know. To accept the fact and to disown her. Maybe then he could broker a deal with Tarn. An amnesty for them both. He thought about Bruno. Bullets peppering the choppy sea. Tarn wasn’t one for clemency, but he would have to try for Honor’s sake.

  A burst of laughter from an old woman knitting with her friend in the corner. The gentle scrape and click-clack of their needles hung with half-finished matinee coats. Maybe when you were that old, it came to a choice between laughing and crying. North told himself he was reconciled to an early death, but he wondered if Honor would get to be old – make that choice between laughing and crying. Because right this minute, her chances didn’t look at all good.

  “When I was 15,” she spoke so quietly he barely registered the words, and he was forced to lean closer, “my father suffered a psychotic breakdown. That’s what the TV was referring to. It was a big story at the time. My dad worked with JP, the business unwound, and Dad committed fraud on a massive scale. When JP found out, he brought in the police – that’s the kind of man JP is. There’s right and there’s wrong. I admire that about him.

  “My father was furious of course. Denied everything. Blamed JP. But that night, when he got back from the police station, he made us cocoa and laced it with my mother’s sleeping tablets. While she and I slept, he nailed planks against the windows. He shifted all the wardrobes and chests to barricade the doors and stacked the chairs on top of the chests. That’s what I came down to when I woke up in the early hours. Our very own prison. A tomb. And they were fighting – which they did sometimes. When my mother saw me, she started screaming at me to go back upstairs. I didn’t want to but I was frightened. I thought me being there was making it worse, so that’s what I did.”

  She paused in the telling, the screams ricocheting around her mind, but spoke through them.

  “Days before, my mother locked up the shotgun cabinet and hid the key but he smashed his way in. I knew what it was when I heard the bang. He loaded the gun and shot her in the face. Obliterated her. There was a minute of quiet while he reloaded, and then he came upstairs.”

  His tread as he climbed the staircase. The creak of the landing floorboards as he listened, then the hammering and shouting at her door. North’s chest hammered in time with Honor’s telling of it. The chest of drawers – her name picked out in sparkling mauve letters. But Honor was a quick study, and if a barricade could keep them in, it could keep her father out. The wardrobe tipped. Bent double as she drove the bed over the carpet and across the room to reinforce the chest. A teenage Honor curled up in the corner, hands over her ears, refusing to come out and play happy families. “We need to be together…Do as I tell you…There’s been an accident – your mother’s hurt.” Frantic. Stabbing at the buttons of her phone. He’d wanted to kill her too, and when he realised the police were on their way, he did the next best thing, he went back to lie down besides his wife’s corpse and turned the gun on himself.

  “I loved my father, but he was a violent man even before he did what he did. People knew – they tried to help. JP in particular, but my dad wasn’t having any of it. After they died, after he murdered my mother I should say, I blamed myself. Ridiculous – but that’s what happens. Survivor guilt – I’ve had therapy. You wouldn’t believe how much therapy. I’d have gone away, that’s to say – I’d have finished myself if it wasn’t for Peggy at university. She was so dazzling and so kind. The only moral creature in our entire universe. I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t looked after me. I owe her this North – finding her. Whatever it costs, because I should have died a long time ago.”

  “Extreme security risk.” The order said.

  The whole operation was a clean-up. The sort of clean-up required by an extreme security risk. Except it wasn’t Honor who was the security risk. It was her friend and the loyalty Honor owed her.

  Water dripped from the cuff of Honor’s donkey jacket on to the red linoleum floor, giving the impression that something somewhere was bleeding.

  “I wasted time because I was cross with her for disappearing,” she made a face at her own ineptitude. “But I can’t lose Peggy too. I’ve been frightened for the longest time, North, and now the worst thing’s happened. Because the worst thing isn’t dying – it’s being left behind.”

  “All my fault,” he heard.

  She moved her foot to sweep dry the small red pool under the dangling sleeve, and with it came back to the present.

  Drawing the parcel to herself, she tore away the rotting green and black refuse sacks that the lobsters had done their worst with. North glanced around the room. A few florid-faced drinkers. A couple of baggy-eyed shift workers. The elderly and lonely in from the cold. No one was interested. For her next layer, Peggy had used black gaffer tape over heavier-duty refuse bags. The first few layers were sodden with salt water. The next few damp. The one under that dry as was the waxed tarp it was wrapped in. More gaffer tape sealed the edges. It was a thorough job. The work of a scientist. With the last unravel of the tape, the contents slid out of the tarp and on to Honor’s knees.

  A black leatherbound book. Not a diary. A notebook. Laying it on the table between them, Honor opened it with one finger. Print-outs of grap
hs and pictures were glued to the pages of the book where they blazed in blues and oranges and bright gold. No numbers. No words. She turned the pages one by one.

  “Do you know what we’re looking at?”

  She was silent. A second. Then another.

  “Space? Noise? No idea. She always used to say ‘Look for the unexpected’ but I don’t understand enough about her field to know what that is.”

  There was something they weren’t seeing, he was sure of it. Why was he a target?

  Because Honor was a target and he didn’t kill her. Why was Honor a target? Because Peggy disappeared and she made a fuss. According to Ned, Peggy wasn’t the only one to disappear. But why was Peggy in particular a target? Because she knew something or was doing something the Board didn’t like. What did Peggy know? She knew astronomy and physics. What did she do? She researched the noise the earth makes. The jeopardy was somewhere in there.

  “What was the name of the astronomer you talked to at Peggy’s university?”

  Honor thought for a moment, wrinkled her nose. “The one who took her office? Walt Bannerman. He’s a first-class creep.”

  There was no choice. They needed an expert to decipher the notebook, and creepy Walt just volunteered.

  “I’m going to show him the book.”

  She went to stand up, swaying on her feet at the sudden movement, and he tugged her back down into her seat – the chair scraping against the floor and the scowling barmaid looked over to see the cause of the disturbance.

  “Me – not you. You’re going to rest up.” He kept his face relaxed and smiling. Nothing to see. “Nobody knows you’re here, but they might be watching the university. I can get in and out of there easier alone. And you’re exhausted which makes you a liability.”