Death Comes for the Fat Man

8

At three o’clock that afternoon in Nottingham Crown Court after a series of delaying tactics that would have made Fabius Cunctator seem impetuous, the prosecution finally admitted defeat and shortly afterward Abbas Asir, né Michael Carradice, stepped down from the dock, a free man.

As George Stainton, his solicitor, shook his hand, no emotion showed on what could be seen of his client’s face behind a vigorous black beard which, extending halfway down his chest, made his stocky body seem even shorter.

A court official approached and courteously invited Mr. Asir to accompany him to go through the formalities of processing him out of the system and returning to him the personal possessions removed when he’d been taken into custody some six months earlier.

“I’ll step outside and keep the media happy,” said the lawyer. “You’re sure you want to talk to them, Abbas?”

Carradice nodded.

“You will be careful what you say? Mustn’t give the buggers any excuse to take you back into custody.”

The two men parted.

Stainton went out of the main entrance of the court building to be greeted by a media pack that began howling and yelping when they saw he was alone.

“Mr. Asir will join me shortly,” he assured them. “Yes, he will be happy to answer questions. Meanwhile, if I may offer my own reactions to the trial and its outcome…”

He began a carefully rehearsed statement in which the terms dodgy intelligence, rule of law, police state, historical freedoms, free speech, etc., etc. occurred frequently, in fact rather more frequently than rhetoric demanded as his client’s nonappearance obliged him to recycle his declaration of human rights to fill in the time.

The pack members, scenting a deception, were beginning to snarl once more.

Finally the solicitor excused himself and went back into the building.

The court official who had approached them earlier assured him that the formalities of release had been completed at least ten minutes ago. His last sighting of Mr. Asir had been as he left the room, presumably heading to the main entrance to celebrate his freedom.

Stainton could only speculate that his client had changed his mind about meeting the gentlemen of the press and found another way out of the building. Doubting if he could persuade these same gents that he hadn’t been party to the deception, and realizing that even if he succeeded, all he would be doing was making himself look a fool, the solicitor decided his best option was to follow his client’s example.

Several of the more persistent pack members were already waiting for him at his office and in the end he had to tell his switchboard not to accept any more calls unless they were certain of the identity of the caller.

He rang home to warn his wife. She told him rather irritably that there were already journalists camped outside the gate, with a few bolder ones poking around in the greenhouse and the garden, clearly suspecting that Asir might have taken refuge there.

He told her not to speak to them, and when he finally headed home it was with some natural trepidation at the prospect of the welcome he was about to receive both outside and inside his house.

But to his surprise and relief as he drove into the pleasant dormer village where he lived, he could spot no sign of alien life around the gateway of his mock-Georgian villa, and his wife confirmed that ten minutes earlier they had all suddenly got into their cars and headed off with much burning of rubber.

“I told you not to worry,” he told her rather pompously. “The good thing about our media is that like children they have a very short attention span. All that it takes to soothe away the pain of a disappointment is the promise of another bigger treat. Now I think I’ve earned a large G and T.”

As he busied himself preparing the drinks, his wife turned on the television to catch the early evening local news program.

“Oh look, George,” she said. “Isn’t that the mere?”

As ardent bird-watchers, one of the attractions of their house for the Staintons was its proximity to a large reservoir with a thriving population of both resident and visiting waterfowl.

“There’s something going on there,” said Mrs. Stainton. “I do hope they’re not disturbing the greylags.”

Stainton turned to look at the picture. The camera was panning over crowds of people on the reedy banks of the reservoir. He recognized some of them. The disappearance of the reporters was now explained. He’d been right about the promise of a bigger treat and they were all here, thronging the banks in anticipation of it.

The sound was turned down low but he thought he caught the name Carradice and suddenly felt a vague unease. He took a drink from his glass, topped it up with gin and went to sit down next to his wife.

“Turn up the volume, will you?” he said.

The commentator was explaining, clearly not for the first time, that every main media outlet had received a message suggesting that anyone concerned about the outcome of the Carradice trial should go to the reservoir, where they might find something to their interest.

The camera now moved to give a shot out across the water.

About sixty yards from the edge floated what looked like an inflatable rubber dinghy with a short mast and a loosely hanging sail. A motorboat full of uniformed policemen was speeding toward it. But the camera was quicker, zooming in close.

There seemed to be something in the dinghy, but its alignment in relation to the camera made it hard to be certain what. Then a puff of breeze swung the vessel round.

“Look at those poor grebes,” said his wife indignantly as birds scattered, panicked by the motorboat’s approach.

“Oh shit,” said the solicitor.

Lolling in the dinghy with one arm trailing in the water was a man, his mouth agape, his eyes wide and staring. He had a thick black beard which stretched halfway down his chest.

The camera moved slowly up the mast, which turned out not to be a real mast but an oar or paddle propped upright. And the sail wasn’t a real sail but some sort of banner with words printed on it, illegible until another puff of wind straightened it out above the reservoir’s dark blue water, revealing it as the kind of swallowtail guidon that might have fluttered above a troop of medieval knights galloping into battle. The resemblance didn’t end there. At the broad end of the pennant, in bright red, was painted the cross of St. George.

Alongside it were some words, block capitals in black. It took a little time for the camera and the wind to make these readable, but when they were, the solicitor emptied his gin and tonic in a single gulp.

NOW IT’S SAFE!