A black cab drew up and we stepped back to let an elderly woman get out, struggling with an overnight case. She paid the driver and hobbled towards the main entrance. Possibly she would not come out again, I speculated, thinking of the body on the trolley. And why did mortuary trollies always rattle? Why couldn’t they muffle the wheels or something, out of consideration for other patients – if not for the bodies they bore? Maybe Mr Byrne could look into that as an interesting sideline: purveyor of silent treads.
Chas was pressing rather close to me in the back of the cab. ‘What I can’t understand,’ he muttered, ‘is why her GP, or Social Services, or some well meaning friend, hadn’t pointed the poor old dear in the right direction. She certainly needed attention for the swelling on her legs, and then there’s the personal grooming – she couldn’t wash too easily, I guess, with that arthritis. She had bruises, sure, most likely from the falls she’d have sustained while knocking about her home. But if you’re talking about the kind of bruise caused by a man – a big guy too, you said he was, who grabbed her by the arm in some kind of psychotic fit, no, I didn’t find anything like that. I told the police I examined the old woman very thoroughly before I cut her, particularly in view of that lesion on her head, which you did well to point out to us, Louise.’ He gave a thin smile.
‘Your student was closing up when I got there,’ I said. ‘Could she have missed something?’
‘Absolutely not. She didn’t do the autopsy.’
‘Really? You mean you didn’t let her do the evisceration?’
‘All she did was wash the body down and stitch. I did the examination, Louise. I did it because you asked me to do it,’ he said crossly. ‘Old folk bruise very easily. Edith had cataracts – if her eyes had been better, you can be sure I’d have tried to salvage something.’
‘For Christ’s sake …’
‘Why not? You can take a cornea up to twelve hours post mortem, to help save the sight of others – you know, be useful to some poor sod, but hers just wasn’t up to it. Her hip needed urgent attention. She must have banged herself quite a bit just moving about the flat. A large guy grabbing her by the arms or shoulder to give her a rough push would have been immediately obvious from the pattern of the bruising, but there was nothing like that, nothing. What was I supposed to do – go over her clothing looking for his DNA? No one told me this was a forensic case.’
I looked out of the window. We were turning out of Euston Road into the Inner Circle road which ran round Regent’s Park. I thought of a Styrofoam cup rolling into the rose bush, a cup that had run over.
‘I don’t give a shit what Veil says,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t think Roy needs psychowhatsit drugs, just so they can chuck him out on the streets again.’ But I was confused about this. I didn’t think that Roy was mad – no madder than the woman who had bus rage, no madder than the Bully Bubba; but I did think he needed asylum, a place of peace. ‘He needs time and space to grieve,’ I said, ‘for his mother, for his lousy life …’
‘That’s not your problem, Louise.’
‘Of course it’s not,’ I sneered. ‘I’m not my brother’s keeper.’
‘Fine,’ Chas snapped. ‘So join the Sally Army.’
‘I might just do that,’ I returned. ‘But this is not about the great unwashed and unwanted. This is about a person I know. I can’t not know him now, you must see that. People don’t just admit to killing their mother then walk off into the sunset …’
Chas cut me off. ‘Look at the facts,’ he said. ‘Factual evidence. The police look at facts, the courts – the process may not be perfect, but you can’t just proceed on the basis of some saddo’s letter. Whether you feel sorry for the guy or not is immaterial, Louise. He has a clinical history of mental illness. If Veil was with him now, prepared to state that he was prone to violence or whatever, then things might go the other way, but Veil won’t go along with his patient’s version, you can be sure of it. If it came out that this guy was a paranoid schizophrenic in danger of injuring someone – killing someone even – how would that look for the great shrink-head? You said Veil signed the discharge.’
‘He’ll be signing it again in a week or so,’ I said. ‘Then where will Roy go to? There’d have been other doctors assessing him, wouldn’t there?’
‘Sure.’ Chas shrugged ‘But these panels usually go on the say of the chief practitioner. I mean, Samuel Veil is a star.’
‘So that’s that then, is it? No one can speculate further, without some further facts? Never mind the fact that Roy is homeless and vulnerable and sad and – I don’t know what. He gets some temporary section order to satisfy the police and the social workers, then Veil lets him out again, pushes him out, and he is right back to square one, sleeping rough in the park, twitching about on psychotropic medication, torturing himself about his mam?’
‘That sounds like a reasonable prognosis. You tell me where you can find the evidence to show she died of unnatural causes, Louise, and I’ll put it in the microscope for you. As for her son – there’s lots more where that poor bastard comes from. What do you think you can do about it? You think you can save the world?’
‘He’s just one person.’
‘Stay away from it, Louise. You’ve been injured yourself, remember. And how the hell can you hope to do counselling work if you let people get to you like this? It’s worse than the stiffs,’ he shrugged. ‘At least you knew for sure you could do nothing more for them. Maybe you should come back to work at the mortuary after all.’
‘No thanks.’
We were drawing up at Chas’s house. His bike was still outside, under its tarpaulin. The Fat Boy was gone.
‘It’s like these so-called biographers who make some spurious statement about the subject’s sex life or whatever,’ he said, as we walked upstairs. ‘They make these speculations and they twist the arguments to serve themselves, even though they know full well this kind of hair-splitting can never be substantiated because the subjects themselves are long dead …’
‘Edith’s dead, OK, but Roy is not. I can’t just make him disappear, and nor can you.’
Chas let us into the flat and motioned me towards the sofa, a Scandinavian thing, built more for style than comfort.
‘You could try,’ he said, looking narrowly at me.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Look, why don’t you go and lie down for a bit.’ He smiled. ‘I could order in some take-away. There’s a new place that delivers, Curry in a Hurry. I’ve got a leaflet here somewhere.’
‘All right.’ But I stayed where I was, between the devil and the deep blue sea. ‘Could Caroline sleep in that bed?’ I asked sharply, as he searched for the leaflet by the phone. ‘At least it’s better than the sofa.’
‘This is what you call trying, is it?’ He came up to me and made me look him in the eye. ‘I’m trying, Louise. Help me out here.’
He was right, of course, to resist my way of thinking. My way would steer us both into a murky puddle which science could not probe. The blind leading the blind.
‘Let’s try to leave it lie,’ I said, and seized his hand.
***
Chapter 15
When I finally got to sleep that night, in Chas’s bed, I dreamed of roses covered in greenfly: yellow roses, not a touch of red or white amongst them; and when I started to paint them red, they turned quite black and rotted in my hands. Off with her head! someone shouted. Off with her head! I parted the bushes to see who was yelling, but just as I was about learn the identity of my would-be executioner, the telephone woke me up. Chas answered it and turned away from me. ‘OK, OK,’ he kept on saying. ‘It’s probably something or nothing. Ring me when he’s out of A & E.’
‘Is everything OK?’ I said when he’d hung up.
‘It’s Gus.’ He picked up the alarm clock and tossed it on the floor in disgust. ‘Three o’clock in the fucking morning. He’s had another of his seizures.’
‘You mean your sister’s friend? Was that Stasia?�
� Gus was the man who lived with her, a self-styled new age guru who peddled meditation, while Chas’s sister ran the household as B & B, and made pots encrusted with shells and bits of beach glass, to make ends meet.
‘He’s at the hospital in Plymouth,’ Chas added, as an afterthought.
‘But that sounds serious. Will you have to go?’
‘No, why should I? It’s probably just indigestion.’
‘What does Stasia say it is?’
‘Myocardial infarction.’ He looked away from me.
I got up to find my painkillers. The phone rang again as I was swallowing the tablets. I waited, listening, then Chas came into the living room.
‘He’s gone,’ he said. ‘Fancy that.’ He went to fetch the brandy bottle.
‘Gone? You mean he’s dead? He had a heart attack?’
‘That’s it, the real thing this time. Looks like he called wolf once too often.’ Chas offered me the bottle, but I showed him the pill box.
‘You feeling bad?’ he frowned. ‘I’m sorry, Louise. You don’t need this, expecially now … I guess I had better get down there.’ He was twisting his long hair into a bunch, but it kept springing loose. I had loosened it earlier and thrown the elastic away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Stasia must be devastated.’
‘Seems the crash team gave him a good innings. Look, Louise, I told her I’d get down as soon as I could. I’m sorry to pull the plug …’
‘That’s OK,’ I said, although it did feel like some spoilsport turned the music down, before the party got going. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘What? Well, sure, if you think you are up to it.’
‘I expect you want to take the bike,’ I said doubtfully.
‘Not if you come along. We could go on four wheels.’ I could see he was in shock.
‘I liked Gus,’ I said. ‘I know you didn’t, but they seemed right together.’
That seemed to rally Chas: a bucket of cold water. ‘Are you kidding?’ he flared. ‘His kissing off like this is the best thing that could have happened to my sister. He was a freeloader.’
‘Don’t say that to her, for God’s sake.’
‘Maybe she’ll find a real man now.’
‘I thought she was gay?’
‘She didn’t have much choice with that fairy round the place now, did she?’ He was furiously throwing on his clothes. I slowly put on mine while he went round to fetch his car from the rented garage where it spent most of its life. I had attended close to eight hundred sudden deaths in my time at the City, but the sudden death of someone known to me was still a rarity. It had happened only once before, with Eddie Kronenberg, and his death still gave me goose bumps when I thought of it. Gus and I had met, what, five or six times during my relationship with Chas? and I had always been determined to like him, for Stasia’s sake (I wanted Chas’s sister to like me), and because Chas’s dislike seemed so infinite, almost bordering on the homophobic. Gustav had been gay, though celibate (he said) since he met Stasia. Who was also gay.
Nausea overtook me as we hit the motorway, though it would have been unfair on Chas’s sister to request a pit stop. She was waiting for us at the big old house, leaving Gus, or the remains of Gus, still at the hospital. ‘Well, she has to let them get on with it,’ Chas said. ‘At least this way she’ll get the chance to find out how it happened.’
But that would not be how Stasia would see it. Hospitals were where people went to be cured. Hospitals gave the illusion of hope, but Gus was coming home in a tin box.
There were other cars parked in front of Stasia’s place. ‘Christ, she’s got guests, on top of everything,’ Chas moaned, turning the car into the stable yard. Stasia had been left the old house by an elderly friend of the family, but in order to live here and pay for its Grade 1 upkeep, she’d been forced to open it up as a bed and breakfast, offering year-round retreats to those of a disposition to find themselves or rediscover their inner child, courtesy of Gus’s teaching. What would she do now, I wondered? Who would take the role of guru here to draw the punters?
I got out of the car and pulled my jacket around me. The news had come so unexpectedly, we had travelled so fast on the news of this sudden death (from eros to the other place), I felt disoriented. But Stasia had to be faced. She opened the kitchen door and came running out across the courtyard, her hair all down, her long skirt trailing in the mud. Chas held his sister for a moment with a grimace. ‘Louise can stay on for a bit,’ he said, as though that would be some comfort.
Stasia peered at me, her expression stricken. Had she known about my falling out with Chas? She must have known we were no longer seeing each other. Now we were on again – and what did that matter, I thought? What could other people’s on/off relationships possibly matter to Stasia at this moment, when hers had been turned off for good? I pressed my lips into a sympathetic smile, which she did not return. Chas steered her towards the light inside the house.
‘There’s such a lot to do,’ she said, ‘I can’t think straight. He was always at the doctor’s – I can’t understand why they have to do it, you know, the post-mortem. It’s ghastly.’
‘No it isn’t.’ He glanced back at me. ‘They just need to check what happened to him.’
‘You know it’s ghastly, Charles. You’re always joking about it.’
‘Let’s think about your guests – my God, you’re in a right state here. But it’s OK, Stas, it’s OK.’ He helped her to the wooden rocking chair before the stove.
The kitchen was in chaos, dirty crockery piled onto every available surface. At least I could be helpful here. I went over to the Aga stove and took charge of making more tea. The pot that cheers, I heard Roy say. There were faint sounds of movement in other parts of the house: the guests were up and stirring.
Stasia rocked back and forth, the rockers grating on the grey stone flags. I stared about the room, wondering what to cook the guests for breakfast. When I had stayed here before, in Chas’s retreat above the stable, we had just eaten biscuits before going out for a fry up. The B & B, however, offered vegetarian and vegan options. Gus, I knew, baked bread.
‘He wants to be cremated,’ she whispered. ‘Just like Ghandi-Ji. We’ll build a pyre in the woods … Oh, Gus.’ Her face crumpled.
‘Can you do that here?’ Chas frowned. ‘I know you’ve got the licence for the woodland burials, but a pyre … It sounds dangerous to me.’
‘It’s just so unfair,’ Stasia wailed. ‘It’s so unfair.’
I went to put my hand on her shoulder. ‘We know not the day nor the hour,’ I said softly. Her eyes flashed back at me in anger. ‘What can I help with?’ I asked her, scalded. ‘I think the guests are up.’
Stasia half rose from her chair, then sank back again. ‘There’s porridge in that cupboard over there,’ she said morosely. ‘No, don’t bother with porridge. I’d better go up and explain, or can you do that, Charles?’ She looked pleadingly at her brother. ‘They’ll have to make do with tea and toast … Oh God, the bread. I didn’t put it in.’
‘They can have cornflakes,’ I said, spotting a tupperware container on the table. ‘Will there be enough here?’
‘Oh don’t bother, Louise. Charles will explain to them.’
He had gone to break the bad news. We sat waiting, respectfully, while he was making his announcement. I hoped he would not be too curt.
‘I’ll have to ring the council,’ Stasia said suddenly. ‘It’s true, we’ve never done a cremation before.’
‘Can’t you have it at the crematorium and bring his ashes back to the site,’ I said gently. ‘That would be the most practical …’
‘No we can’t. Gus hated those things. They waste energy. We’ve got the licence here, why not?’
‘Wasn’t Keats cremated on a pyre?’ I said.
‘I think that was Shelley. In Italy somewhere, with Lord Byron.’
‘Keats was cremated,’ Chas said, coming back and emptying the teapot. ‘We saw it once, r
emember, Louise, in that Ken Russell film, the one where Byron goes down on some woman and gets blood all over his face? You can’t top Ken …’
‘Shut up!’ Stasia interrupted. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up.’ She was on her feet now, twisting a tea towel that had been drying on the stove around her fingers. I made a move towards her. ‘No, sit down,’ she ordered. ‘Don’t touch me. I can’t stand anyone touching me.’
She rushed out into the scullery. I sat down, stung. ‘I don’t think she wants me here,’ I told Chas. ‘What did the guests say?’
‘Oh, they’re almost as cut up about it as she is.’ Chas nodded towards the scullery. ‘That bastard always dumped on people.’
‘What will they eat?’
‘Sweet FA,’ he said. ‘They’ve all got kettles in their rooms. They can make their own arrangements. Would you believe that some of them are asking if they can stay on for the funeral already, as though it’s a state occasion?’
‘He did seem to have a lot of followers.’
‘That’s no reason to act like he was God or something. Jesus Christ.’ He made fresh tea and carried the pot to the table. Stasia came back to fetch a stack of dirty plates, not looking at either of us.
‘Let me do the dishes,’ I said. ‘Please, Stasia. I want to help.’
‘The guests are helping themselves,’ Chas said. ‘I told them all they should check out today, but some of them wanted to check that with you. You’re insured for refunds and things, I take it?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t think straight.’
‘Let me do the dishes …’ I repeated.
‘All right, all right, do what you want.’
They had eaten some sort of crusted casserole the night before. The dishes were hard to scrub clean, but I applied myself. At last I heard the phone ring in the kitchen. Chas picked up. ‘My word, that was quick,’ he said impressively. ‘I’ll make the arrangements to have him collected.’
‘Was that the mortuary?’ I whispered as he came into the scullery.
‘Yep. It’s cut and dried. They don’t mess about there, do they?’ He glanced at his watch.
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