Some Deaths Before Dying

JENNY

1

Jenny carried the portable phone round the house as she bustled to be ready to leave. The moment it beeped she pressed the button and said “Hi,”

“Mrs. Pilcher?” said a man’s voice—the wrong man.

“Sorry. I can’t talk now. I’ve got a call coming. And if you’re selling something, no thanks. Bye.”

In a few seconds the handset beeped again. This time she answered more cautiously.

“Hello.”

“Mrs. Pilcher. This is important—it’s about your pistol—“

“It’s not mine, and it’s not for sale. Goodbye.”

Brusquely she prodded the buttons. How the hell…? They’d promised the thing was absolutely confidential, no addresses passed on, no telephone numbers, not even names. And he was bound to try again. Yes.

“Hello.”

“That doesn’t sound very welcoming.”

“Oh, hi, darling, thank God it’s you. I’m being persecuted by some dimwit. How’s it going?”

“Dire. We thought we’d got the breakthrough last session, I told you? Now they’ve got back to Alma-Ata overnight and been told to try and squeeze us some more.”

“I want them dead. How long is this going on?”

“You aren’t going to like this. The Kazakhs came in all smiles this morning and announced that they’re postponing the auction, so we’ve got a new deadline. Thursday.”

“I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it. I’m coming over for the weekend. I’ll get on the Chunnel tonight somehow…”

“Oh, God! I wish you could.”

“Champs-Elysces, here I come.”

“No use, darling. We’ve been here four days and I’ve barely set foot out of the hotel. I haven’t been in a real restaurant, even. Billy loathes Paris…”

“He probably thinks the French don’t take him seriously. He wouldn’t like that.”

“Right. We’re only here because the Kazakhs wanted a go at the fleshpots, but if any of us isn’t under his eye Billy decides we’re hatching something up, so we all eat together in the hotel and then sit around in his suite all night pretending to go over the figures again…”

“You must get to bed sometimes.”

“Three o’clock, this morning.”

“I’ll be waiting for you. In a terrific Paris nightie.”

“Mmmmmh…I could chuck the job up, I suppose…I’m tempted…”

She could hear that he meant it, and it wasn’t fair on him. Working for Billy Cochrane was already frustrating enough.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll let you off the hook. Next time you’re taking a doctor’s certificate with you and you can show it to bloody Billy and tell him that sexual frustration is bad for your mathematical abilities and it’ll cost the company billions if you get your sums wrong.”

“I’ll try it if I get the chance. Look, what about next weekend? I could book us into a real hotel, not this plastic—“

“It’s Barbara’s wedding. Besides, it’s you I want, not Paris. Got that? You.”

“Mutual. Bloody hell…”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“All right. What kind of a dimwit? Double glazing?”

“No, I’m afraid it was about Uncle Albert’s pistol.”

“I thought we’d got away with that. Some kind of dealer, I suppose. Didn’t they tell you they kept everything confidential? How did he get hold of you?”

“I’ve no idea. He didn’t sound like a dealer, somehow. If he calls again, I’ll tell him to piss off. Don’t worry. Provided Uncle Albert himself didn’t see the programme. Anyway, don’t let’s waste time on that now. Are you all right? You don’t sound—“

“I’m dog tired but still functioning. The breakouts are the worst. Billy keeps us at it trying to guess what the Kazakhs are up to, so we explore all the blind alleys only he can’t see they’re blind alleys until he’s taken us down them…”

“Your problem is you’re too damn quick.”

“Maybe, but it’s no use telling him in advance, because it makes it look as if I thought the lot of them were dead thick, but I’ve got to keep listening in case Billy swings on me suddenly and says ‘How does that work out, Jeff?’ and I’ve got thirty seconds flat to come up with the answer. How’s things with you though?”

“I’m fine, apart from being miserable without you. But I’ve got piles of work to bring home because Trevor’s had to go into hospital and Jerry’s told me to go through his desk and sort out anything I can deal with—Trevor’s always behind with everything, anyway—and that’s on top of all my own stuff, so I haven’t got time to mope. There’s one of Trevor’s files which is bothering me a bit. I’ll tell you when I see you…and I’m on a crash diet so that I can really hog it with you when you get back. Duck and champagne?”

“Spot on.”

“They’re not going to change your deadline again?”

“Not without postponing the auction again, which…anyway, if they do, I’ll tell Billy you’re coming over for the weekend, and they’re giving us time off together, and the company are paying your fare and hotel bill, or I’m chucking it in.”

“You don’t have to, honestly.”

“Yes, I know, but I’ve just about had it with Billy. Anyway, I think it will work this time. He can’t replace me that quick. It might be a blot on my copybook with the company, but Billy’s riding for a fall in case. It’s more his fault than anyone else’s that the deal’s got screwed up the way it has, though given the chance he’ll wriggle out of it.”

“As far as I’m concerned Billy could shit for the universe. I’ve got to go now. Same time tomorrow. You’re going back to bed, I hope?”

“For thirty-nine and a half minutes, I make it. Look after yourself, darling.”

“You too.”

She slammed her finger onto the off-button so hard that she broke the nail, and threw the handset onto the floor. Cursing at the top of her voice she flung the pillows across the room, ripped duvet and sheets from the bed—almost undisturbed after a night of sleeping single—swept Jeff’s pile of computer mags off the bedside table and kicked them across the carpet, rushed into the bathroom, tipped the empty laundry basket on its side and lashed at it with her feet, and finally, satisfyingly, stood on it, scrunching it flat, and then jumped on it until the wickerwork was splinters. Though nothing like this had happened for years, she was well aware what was going on. The rage was semi-deliberate, a tantrum, Norma-stuff. (“Now, this isn’t my sweet little Jenny. This is horrid Norma. I’m not interested in what Norma wants. She isn’t my daughter.”) Meanwhile Jenny herself—the Jenny people met and talked to and thought chilly and reserved—hovered aside, controlling the fit just enough to prevent any damage she would later regret. She had long disliked the laundry basket, enforced on Jeff by an earlier girlfriend.

Now, as Norma stood panting amid the wreckage, Jenny whispered in her mind.

“Better stop. I’ve got a client at nine-fifteen.”

She took a deep breath, let it go with a whoosh and was Jenny again. For the moment her main superficial emotion was surprise. Why now? For years she had known how to control these angers, keep them rational, channel and focus the pressure onto a target—a jet, not an explosion. Why this sudden loosening? She stared at the wreckage of the laundry basket, sensing it to be an omen, but baffled how to read it.

Turning to the basin, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, a known face, her mother, just woken but still half drunk. She’d been crying, she noticed.

“You’re disgusting,” she told the image.

Furious again, but this time with her normal efficient Jenny-anger, she cleaned herself up and dressed in her grey suit, with pearl earrings and pin. No time for breakfast—she couldn’t have swallowed it anyway. Her briefcase and laptop were ready in the hall. She slipped a banana into the case and left. After locking the door she paused and gave the inner pillar of the absurd little portico a pat, a pat for the whole house.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she told it, as if speaking to a pet dog, made anxious by a spat among the humans. “You’re all right.”

2

By dusk there was a chill drizzle slanting from the northeast, more like February than late March. The timer had turned the lights on, as if the house was doing its best to look welcoming, but this evening that wasn’t enough.

Anyone coming new to the house would have noticed only—as Jenny herself had, first time—the Ashford Road roaring and stinking by, and then, once inside, would have been mainly impressed by the view across the Weald, with the roofs of oast houses poking above the treetops. One large defect, one medium asset, the little house a sort of null value in between. It had taken Jenny herself several weeks of living in it to appreciate the quirky personality to which she had spoken so affectionately that morning. The line of the road must have been changed after it was built, but before the terrace of basic nineteen-twentyish houses to its right, so that it stood at an obstinate slant both to them and to the bramble-tangled belt of scruffy woodland to its left. And it even more emphatically asserted its indifference to their respective regularity and wilderness because its builder had apparently been determined to cram all the stock ornamentation he could onto its frontage—a kind of flattened portico, with barley-sugar pillars; above that an iron balcony too narrow to stand on; at the southeast corner a squat spire with an elaborate lightning conductor, and best of all, the pairs of cherubim on either side, apparently supporting the upper windowsills. They had sulky expressions as if the weight gave them headaches. (Jeff, of course, hadn’t bought it for any of that. It had been what he could then afford, because of the road.)

This evening Jenny’s affection wasn’t enough. She couldn’t summon up the personality. The house was dead, empty, because Jeff wouldn’t be home for almost a week. She had spent most of the day on Trevor’s leavings, and had brought her own work back to fill the dismal hours, but that would make them no less dismal. And worse, she would spend them thirsting for a drink. She and Jeff usually had a couple of glasses of wine each with their supper and she was now habituated to that, but she had long ago recognised in herself the risk of going the same way as her mother—it was in her genes, she thought—and had made and kept an inner promise that she would never drink alone. She would keep it still, tonight, and for the next five nights, but it would be hell.

Numbly she let herself in, switched off the alarm and went upstairs. The bedroom was a strewn chaos. She’d forgotten that she’d left it like that, but clearing it up was something to do. She changed into jeans, but had hardly started on the mess when the doorbell rang.

She went down, put the front door on the chain and opened it a crack.

“Mrs. Pilcher?”

She recognised the voice at once.

“Oh, it’s you. You called this morning. I’m sorry, but I’m really not interested. The pistol doesn’t belong to me, and I know the owner doesn’t want to sell it.”

“I’m not trying to buy it. Please. I just want to talk to the owners.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been asked not to talk to anyone about it. I should never have taken it to the show, but I didn’t know.”

“Please, if I could explain to you, then at least you could pass the message on. May I come in?”

“I don’t let people I don’t know in, especially at night. Sorry.”

She started to close the door. He resisted.

“Stop. Please. You’ve got to talk to me. Thing is, I’ve got the other pistol. And the box and all the trimmings.”

“You’ve got them with you?”

“They’re in the bank. Listen, I’m absolutely with you about not letting strangers in if you’re on your own. I’ve been waiting for you over at the pub. Suppose I went back there. Would you come and join me for a drink? Ten minutes only.”

Oh, Jesus, a drink, and not alone!…Jenny merely pretended to hesitate.

“Oh, all right. Ten minutes. I’ve got work to do.”

“That’s OK. I’m truly grateful. What’ll you have?”

“Draught stout, if they’ve got it.”

(The wine would be dire, and spirits risky.)

“It’ll be waiting for you.”

She closed the door and ran upstairs to check that he was crossing the road and not lurking in ambush for her behind the forsythia. He was still on the near pavement, waiting for a gap in the traffic, a large man who carried himself well. He was wearing a Barbour and tweed cap. The look was horsey country gentry, easy for a con man to fake, if he was one.

She counterdressed, for the hell of it, keeping the jeans but changing into her “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” sweatshirt and butterfly earrings, and left without hurrying, nearly ten minutes after he had.

She and Jeff weren’t regular pub-goers, though there was a pleasant little one a couple of miles across the fields, along footpaths, to which they would sometimes walk out at weekends. The Frenchman across the road was not of that kind. Even out of season there was often a coach or two in its park. There was a bouncy castle behind, and it advertised itself with a gross cartoon of a grinning sausage in a chef’s hat serving sausages and mash to a family of salivating sausages.

The man was waiting without apparent impatience in a fake Victorian alcove in the saloon bar. The drinks were already on the table. His was Perrier. He rose and waited for her, smiling. Presumably he recognised her from the TV programme. His face was as military as his bearing, clean shaven, with an outdoor ruddiness. His grey hair, sparse but not balding, was cut short. His eyes were pale blue, with the stony, unimaginative look of a caste accustomed to command. They didn’t, to Jenny, seem in keeping with his voice, gruff and level but, she thought, too deliberately affable. She didn’t respond to his smile. He read the blazon on her bosom and grinned. She maintained the professional chill of her mien, but he didn’t seem put out.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said. “I know it’s an intrusion, Mrs. Pilcher. It’s very good of you to spare me the time. My name is Dick Matson, by the way.”

He produced a card and gave it to her. He worked, apparently, for a firm in Devon which dealt in agricultural feeds. His home address was near Tiverton. Jenny would have placed him in a considerably posher line of business.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I’ve got a few minutes. What do you want?”

“Well, it’s a bit tricky, so I’d better make it clear that I’m not making any accusations. This is just something I want sorted out.”

He picked up a brown envelope that had been lying on the table, took out a photograph and gave it to her. It was an eight-by-six, black and white on matte paper, and looked fairly old, but the focus was spot on, with every detail exact, the two pistols nestling into their fitted box with tools and paraphernalia around them. There was no mistaking the silver initials on the butts.

“That certainly looks like it,” she said. “How did you get hold of this?”

“My mother took it,” he said. “Ages ago. She gave my father the pistols just after the war some time. She’d no idea how good they were—bought them for the initials, same as his, you see—but then Dad did a bit of research and found out about Ladurie and all that.

My interest is that Dad left them to me in his will, and then he had a couple of strokes, pretty bad, but he hung on for a couple of years not knowing much about anything, and when he finally snuffed it they’d disappeared. My mother’s still with us, but she’s past it too now, poor old thing, and whenever I’ve asked her about the pistols she’s thrown a wobbly, so I’ve been waiting till she passed on before I did anything about it. They were supposed to be in the bank, like I told you…”

“You said you’d got the other one.”

“Did I? Well yes, but you weren’t giving me much chance to catch your attention. Sorry about that, but you’ll see why my eyebrows went up when you showed up on the box toting one of Dad’s pistols?”

“I suppose so, if that’s what it is. I mean, are you sure that one of yours is missing? If you haven’t actually seen them. I mean…”

“Well, no, I can’t be dead sure, but I’d bet my boots there aren’t any others. Ladurie didn’t make that many guns and his order-books still exist—Dad went into all this—and ours are there just as a single pair. The entry’s marked J. M. You see?”

“All right. I’ll accept that. Now, before we go on I’ll need to know how you got hold of me. The people at the programme promised us total confidentiality, and I’m careful about that sort of thing.”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. It’s a bit awkward. I’ll put it like this. Programme comes from Bristol, right? Well, it just so happens that there’s someone there who owes me a considerable good turn. I called them—notice I’m not saying if it’s a man or a woman—and said—”

“Had you called the programme first and found out that they weren’t going to tell you anything?”

“Not how I do things. If you know someone in the business, you get straight onto them. Networking, don’t they call it these days? So I didn’t think anything of it till this whoever got back to me and said they’d got what I wanted but I mustn’t let on how I’d found out or they and a good friend of theirs would be really in the shit. Of course if I’d known that’s how it was in the first place, I’d never have asked them. You see?”

“In that case, I’m afraid—“

“Hold it. Hold it a moment. As far as I can see we’re in much the same boat. We’ve both got hold of something the other one thinks we’ve no right to, and neither of us is willing to say how we got it. The difference is—now, don’t get me wrong, I’m dead sure you’re doing it in all innocence—but the difference is that all I’ve got is a name—I looked your number up in the book—it had to be somewhere near the Maidstone and there’s not that many Pilchers around—the difference is that what you’ve got is worth quite a lot of money, once the pistols are back together again, which they bloody well ought to be in any case, and one way or another, Mrs. Pilcher, I intend to see that it happens. I don’t want to have to go to law over it, if I can help it. Bloody expensive, lawyers are, in case you don’t know…”

“I’m one myself.”

“Are you now? Are you now?”

The blue eyes had come to life and were twinkling with factitious charm, but Jenny guessed that this was his response to being for the first time mildly taken aback. She didn’t much like Mr. Matson and was far from sure how much of the truth he was telling her. A good deal, she guessed, but neither the whole, nor nothing but. He had, however, two holds on her of which he was unaware. The minor one was that she was enjoying her drink and now wanted the other half. The major one was that at all costs the thing should be sorted out without troubling Uncle Albert.

Jenny had been looking through the boxes in the attic for clothes for the Oxfam sale while she waited for the engineer to service the washing machine. She’d had to take the whole day off because they wouldn’t tell her when he was coming. She’d found the box beneath, some strange old cricketing whites—wrong shape and generation for Jeff, and he’d never been a games player, but she had found no end to the weirdness of the objects he’d hung on to. (She herself was a ruthless thrower-out, except in the case of cotton socks. Her bottom drawer held nothing else but favourite pairs, now worn so thin that they would have been in holes after one more use, so she had not been able to bring them to that point. Typically, Jeff had never queried this quirk.) When she’d opened the box and seen the pistol she’d thought it was the same kind of hoarded curiosity as the cricket whites, but beautiful. Then the doorbell had rung, so she’d carried it: downstairs and put it on the hallway shelf as she opened the door.

Her caller was the engineer she’d been waiting for, a cheery oaf who apparently expected to be admired for the simple virtue of being male, and became openly contemptuous when Jenny didn’t respond. They had parted in mutual loathing, leaving Jenny feeling that she couldn’t move comfortably around her own kitchen until it was aired and decontaminated of his presence.

Then Anita Verey had shown up to collect the Oxfam clothes, but also carrying an absurd clock ornamented with stuffed finches which bobbled around at the strike, a series of bird-like twitters. She was on her way to ask about it at this TV programme which happened to be in town. She’d wanted someone to chat to while she queued. Jenny had felt the need to be out of the house for a bit. Anita was good company, and it would be pleasant to get to know her better. Thus it was that Jenny had taken Uncle Albert’s pistol to The Antiques Roadshow last summer.

She’d told Jeff when he came home.

“Oh, God!” he’d said. “It’s all right, darling, you couldn’t have known. Let’s just hope the old boy doesn’t get to see the programme. When’s it on?”

“Uncle Albert? Why? What’s up?”

“You remember I had to sort his stuff out when he went into Marlings? He was a bit more on the spot then than he is now, but he was pretty bewildered all the same. He sat in the middle of the room while I did the packing. He wasn’t interested. Anything I asked him about he said, ’I’m through with that. Chuck it out.’ I’d noticed he was clutching this box on his lap and I assumed it was something he was set on taking with him, but when I’d finished he pulled himself together and handed it to me.

“‘Now you’ve got to take care of this,’ he said. ’Seeing I don’t know who’s going to come poking around this place you’re sending me to. You put it somewhere safe and don’t you go showing it around nor telling anyone about it. Right?’

“I took it from him and without thinking I started to open the box and see what was in it, but…well, remember me telling you how I was brought up scared stiff of him, though as far as I know he’d never laid a finger on anyone, or even raised his voice to them.”

“He’s got the most beautiful manners still. That’s how I’m going to raise ours, if I can.”

“You probably can’t see it, but it’s pretty well in my genes, being scared of the old boy. I’d thought I was past it, but by God, no.

“ ‘And what do you think you’re up to, my lad? Did I say open it up? Did I? No I did not. Put it away somewhere safe, I said, and don’t you go showing it around nor telling anyone about it. Right?’ ”

Jeff had got the old soldier’s voice and manner spot on. He then laughed and shook his head, as if trying to come to terms with his having let himself be so dominated.

“You did look, all the same,” said Jenny. “You knew it was a pistol.”

“Well, yes. I was putting it away and decided I’d better check, but even then I felt guilty. God, I bet there was more than one recruit who pissed himself when Uncle Albert picked on him for dirty boots or something. Let’s just hope he doesn’t see the programme. When’s it on?”

“Next winter sometime. They shoot miles more than they use, so they’ll probably leave me out.”

But they hadn’t. She’d watched the programme with Jeff the Sunday before he’d left for Paris. All other reasons for watching were instantly forgotten in her fascination by her own appearance…nothing like the mirror of course, but not much like photographs, or even the odd glimpse on a wedding video. This was the Jenny strangers seemed to see, the chilly little bitch. (She had actually overheard that phrase after a case conference, from a QC who had tried to chat her up.) Yes, there was more than a touch of that on this apparently neutral occasion, when she hadn’t at all been aware of turning it on deliberately…and anyway she must stop wearing that denim jacket. It gave her a curious hump in profile…

“Well, let’s just hope he’s missed it,” said Jeff with a worried sigh, as he switched off.

“He can’t still do anything to you, darling.”

“It isn’t really that. Or not just that. He hasn’t got much grasp of what’s going on these days, but that doesn’t stop him being pretty-shrewd at times. I told you he was talking about selling his medals to help with the fees at Marlings…”

“He can’t. You’ve got power of attorney.”

“That isn’t the point. I think he’s worked out that I’m paying some of it—he’s no idea how much, of course, but he still doesn’t like it. He hates the idea that he might be dependent on anyone. He’s saved all his life for his retirement, and he thinks that and his pension and the little bit he gets from the Cambi Road Association ought to be enough to see him out. Of course it isn’t, anything like, not at Marlings anyway. He likes it there. He’s got friends. The staff think he’s great. But if he decides that I can push him around and do what I like with his stuff because I’m paying the fees, he’s going to try and insist on moving out and going somewhere he can afford on his own. It would kill him, for a start, and anyway there’s no such place. Besides, I just don’t want the hassle, I get quite enough of that at work.”

“Suppose I went and talked to him. I could tell him it was all my fault, and you didn’t know anything about it…”

“It’s a thought. Look, I’ll call Sister Morris now and tell her we’ve just seen something on the box that might upset him, and could she just check if he’s OK without letting on that’s what she’s up to…”

Sister Morris had said that the residents had been having their tea during the programme. The TV had been left on, but it was much more likely to have been ITV, and anyway Uncle Albert had had his back to it. He was fine. So that had seemed to be that.

Until now.

Jenny finished her drink, taking her time. Mr. Matson didn’t seem to mind waiting. If he was telling anything like the truth, he, or at least his family. obviously had a good claim on the pistol. For herself, she wouldn’t, have had any hesitation in handing it over, given reasonable proof of ownership, and she didn’t imagine Jeff would either. But she was pretty sure he wouldn’t do so without consulting Uncle Albert, who’d then be extremely upset, try and insist on leaving Marlings, and so on.

Fortunately, Mr. Matson didn’t know about any of that, and otherwise he was no great problem to deal with. Apparent cooperation without any concessions—the lawyer’s stock-in-trade. So, since the company wasn’t particularly enjoyable, she concentrated on not wasting her pleasure in the stout, relishing both the mild alcoholic kick and the way the smooth creaminess contrasted and combined with the slight harshness in the flavour.

“What about the other half?” he said as she put her glass down.

“My turn,” she said, rising. “What’s yours?”

He glanced ostentatiously at the slogan on her bosom and chuckled.

“If you insist,” he said. “Another of the same, thanks. I’m driving to Devon.”

“We had a cook once, used to drink stout,” he said when she carried the drinks back to the table. “Mrs. Moffet. Little nut of a woman, henpecked poor Moffet stupid, but she made a wonderful roly-poly. I’ve never tasted anything to touch it. Well, here’s mud in your eye, Mrs. Pilcher, and I’ll drink your health for real as soon as I’m home.”

“How long will that take you?”

“Bit under four hours, coming, but it’s Friday evening. I might be in by midnight if all goes well.”

“You drove all this way, just on the off chance of seeing me?”

“They matter to me, Dad’s pistols. The old boy was potty about them. I want the other one back. What do you say?”

“It’s not as straightforward as that, Mr. Matson. As I’ve told you, the pistol doesn’t belong to me. I found it one day in the attic, when my husband was at work. A friend asked me to go with her to the Roadshow programme and I took it so that I’d have something to show too. I told my husband when he came home and he said it wasn’t his, either. It had been given to him for safekeeping by an elderly relative whose affairs he looked after, and he’d been asked to put it away and not talk about it or show it to anybody.”

“A bit fishy, do you think?”

“Not if you know the old man in question. It’s not just that he’s an ex-soldier—that doesn’t mean anything—but…well, no. I’m absolutely certain he came by it honestly, so all I can say is I’ll talk to my husband about it. Jeff’s in Paris at the moment, but he may call tomorrow morning and if he does I’ll tell him what’s happened, and then he or I will get in touch with you. That’s really the best I can do.”

“All right,” he said, with surprising resignation. “I get you. You talk to your man. You keep my card. Now, I’ll tell you my offer. You’re obviously straight, Mrs. Pilcher, and I’ll take it your man is too—Jeff, did you say his name was?”

“That’s right.”

“So this is what you—”

He stopped abruptly. He had been looking into her eyes, all sincerity. The look changed to one of astonished revelation. He gave a silent laugh.

“Tell me,” he said. “This old soldier, the elderly relative you’ve been talking about—are we by any chance speaking of RSM Albert Fredricks of the Second Derbyshire Regiment? It’s all right, Mrs. Pilcher. You play your cards as close to your chest as you please, but last time I visited Sergeant Fred—that’s what we used to call him when we were kids—he was full of this nephew of his who kept his papers in order. Wasn’t he living with his sister near Aldershot someplace? Grand to know he’s still alive and kicking. RSM Fredricks, salt of the earth. I remember him since I was knee high. Tall and skinny—looked as long as a flag pole to a kid my age, with this bony great nose sticking out at the top. That was before the war, of course, then he went east with Dad and the Japs got them a week after they’d landed, and then they were on the Cambi Road together. And that pretty well did for them, except that they both had what it took to haul themselves round. Well, well, well, how is the old boy?”

Jenny hesitated. Presumably once again Mr. Matson was telling her something very like the truth. She couldn’t imagine how else he might have made the connection, or known what he appeared to about Uncle Albert, but in the end both professional habit and her own continuing distrust won out.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t even tell you that, until I’ve talked to my husband. He told me his possession of the pistol was confidential and I’m not in a position to decide for myself what’s relevant to that and what isn’t.”

“Lawyers, I love ’em,” said Mr. Matson, shaking his head. “You’re not in court now, Mrs. Pilcher. You’ve told me, and you know you have. But you talk to your man and tell him this. What was it the fellow on the telly said the pistol was worth, as it stood? Three or four thou, wasn’t it? Let’s split the difference, call it three-five. We’ll make a date and I’ll show up with the other gun in its box, with all the trimmings and a copy of Dad’s will—you couldn’t ask for clearer proof it’s mine than that—and I’ll hand over three thousand five hundred in cash for the one he’s got, no questions asked about how he came by it. Now that’s a very fair offer, he couldn’t ask for a better, and Sergeant Fred could do with the money, I dare say—it’s no joke what it costs looking after an old buffer like that—I don’t like to think about what my old ma’s costing us in nursing. When is your man back? Thursday, you said. We’ll give him another week to think about it, so if I haven’t heard from him by the end of the month, I’ll be coming after him. Right?”

Jenny finished her glass and put it down. It hadn’t given her anything like the satisfaction of the first one.

“I’ll tell my husband what you’ve said,” she said, rising. “After that it’s up to him. It won’t be any use getting in touch with me, so please don’t come again without first checking that he’s in and is willing to see you. You understand?”

“Only too well, my dear. It’s none of your business, and you want no part of it, and nor would I if I were in your shoes, so I don’t blame you. Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, and thank you for sparing the time. Good night, Mrs. Pilcher, and give my regards to Sergeant Fred next time you see him.”

3

When she was alone in the house, especially at night, Jenny kept the CD player turned up as far as she thought the neighbours could stand. She wasn’t musical—wouldn’t even have described herself as a music-lover—but the sound provided a sort of magical companionship, a force field that kept at bay the little insinuating monsters of silence and darkness. Human voices were more potent than instruments, and foreign languages better to work to because the words were mere noise, without intrusive meanings. She had no strong feelings about styles or composers. Handel was as good as Wagner, but it happened to be Verdi that evening, with the Anvil Chorus going full blast, so she never heard the key in the lock or the movement of the door, and the first she knew was when the clamour suddenly muted and Jeff’s voice said “Hi.”

Her whole body jerked with the bounce of shock. She shoved the laptop aside, staggered to her feet, and round the sofa and into his arms. Behind her eyelids, as they kissed, pulsed a dark red rectangle, the counterimage of the screen she had been staring at.

“Why aren’t you holding me properly?” she mumbled.

He pushed her away, brought his other arm out from behind his back and gave her gift-wrapped box.

“Paris nightie,” he said. “I don’t know how terrific it is. I just had time to grab it out of a shop on my way to the station. You’re cold.”

“I’ve been working. What’s the time?”

“Half past one.”

“What’s happened? You said…”

“I’ve lost my job.”

“Great! So’ve I—or I’m just going to. Let’s go and celebrate. Have you had anything to eat?”

“Later.”

They got up and made scrambled eggs at five in the morning, then went back to bed till noon.

“I’m not sure Billy didn’t push me into it on purpose,” he said. “It was yesterday morning, and we were having the usual sort-out over breakfast, and Simon asked about the deadline—he’s got a family holiday booked—and Billy shrugged and said, ‘If I’ve got to stretch it again. I’ll stretch it. I trust you’ve all got that.’ And then—this is what makes me think he saw the chance to set one of us up—not necessarily me—it was the way he did it, looking slowly round the table, forcing us to answer in turn. Anyway, people started mumbling things like ‘I suppose so,’ except for creeps like Neil who tried to sound all eager to carry on for another month—that’s what pushed me into it—Neil—because I was next and I came out with what we’d just been talking about, you and me—you coming over to Paris and so on. I gave Billy plenty of slack to treat it as a joke, but he didn’t. He gave me that stare of his and said, ‘If that’s your line. I don’t want you on my team.’ And I said. ‘That’s my line, Billy.’ and picked up my stuff and walked out.

“I don’t know whether he’d expected me to back down, but I don’t think he cared. It’s not that I’m irreplaceable, but I really know the stuff, and without me they’d be stuck for—oh, call it a fortnight—and there’s no way the Kazakhs are going to wait that long.

“That suits Billy fine. The deal was on the rocks already, and it was Billy who put it there, and he knew it. Sir Vidal set it up in the first place, remember—it’s his baby—so walking out the way I did gives Billy the chance to put someone else’s head on the block.

“I worked that out on the train. All I thought at the time was that he was trying to show me, publicly, that I belonged to him, body and soul, and I wasn’t having it. I’m sorry darling.”

“They can’t just fire you for walking out under stress. It would be constructive dismissal, at the very least. If you were my client…”

“That’s not how it will look in Billy’s report, and he carries a lot of clout. Our industrial relations setup is palaeolithic.”

“I’m rubbing my hands. Just the sort of defense client I like. Seriously, darling, they can’t fire you, not without whopping compensation. How long have you been with them? It can’t be worth it. They know you’re good—OK, it’ll be a black mark on your CV…”

“Billy will still be there.”

“You won’t be working for him.”

“He’ll be out to get me, all the same. I don’t mean just casually. He’ll make a point of it. Your turn.”

“My… Oh, well…I haven’t actually walked out yet, but…Did I tell you about Trevor having to be rushed into hospital and Jerry asking me to clear up anything on his desk I could deal with, and pass on anything I couldn’t to him? It was a pretty good mess—surprise, surprise—though Millie usually keeps him on the rails. It makes me sick. He takes home four times what she does because he’s a partner and she’s just a secretary. But even so there was quite a bit of stuff—contracts he should have sent on to clients weeks ago and he obviously hadn’t even read yet, that sort of thing—and then yesterday morning I found a letter from a client about a case we’d lost last year. I think I told you—the one about the fun fair ride. I did a bit of work on it but then I went and married someone and by the time I was back from the honeymoon the case had come up and we’d lost it. I was a bit surprised, but I gathered our QC had made a hash of it and that was that.”

“The one about the ride that collapsed and a couple of kids got killed?”

“That’s right, and eleven others injured. It was big stuff, in the papers, whacking damages. We were acting for the fairground owner. He was insured, but there was a clause in the contract which effectively meant that if the fairground owner was at fault then he was liable for the first five hundred thousand. It all turned on a maintenance docket. Our client’s case was that the fault was caused by an unsatisfactory repair by the original manufacturers, which our client couldn’t have known about. The manufacturers said that the ride hadn’t been properly maintained. The crucial docket was missing. The fairground owner was a blind old man called Colin McNair. He had this amazing memory. He could, literally, reel off the dates and details of the maintenance of every machine in his fair for the last three years. He swore the maintenance had been done, and the checks made, and the docket had been among the papers he’d provided, but it wasn’t, and the inference was that the reason it was missing was that the maintenance had never been done. So we lost, and Mr. McNair went bankrupt.

“Well, among the stuff on Trevor’s desk was this pathetic letter from the old boy, eight pages long. He’d had to dictate it, of course, but it was totally coherent, as if he’d worked it up from notes on a PC. I mean he’d been brooding, of course, but it wasn’t at all crazy. When he got to the docket he didn’t just list what was in it, he tried to show how clear his memory was, so he told Trevor about the day he’d brought the papers in and gone through them with him, what the weather was like, and what kind of biscuits Millie had brought with the coffee and so on. And a telephone call Trevor had had to make about a butcher’s business someone was buying, and the name of the client and what Trevor had said to him. There was a whole page of that.

“Trevor had written a draft answer, fobbing him off, of course, saying what a shame it was and how he understood the old boy’s disappointment but there wasn’t anything more to be done. Just generalities. The only actual point he answered was to insist that a thorough search had been made for the docket and he was quite certain that we hadn’t got it, and what’s more that we’d never had it. He had rephrased that bit a couple of times.

“Now, I’d actually met Mr. McNair, and I knew Trevor, so if Mr. McNair said one thing and Trevor said another I was pretty sure who was right. And why just that one point? There were plenty of others he could have said something about. I don’t believe he’d read the whole letter. I think he just skimmed it, and stuck on that one because it was bothering him. I couldn’t possibly have done a full file search—it would take weeks and in any case Millie’s far too possessive of Trevor’s stuff—but I waited till she was at lunch and went and got out the file about the butcher’s business. The docket was in it. Please register amazement.”

“Registered. That’s bloody awkward for you. What’s Jerry going to say?”

“I took it to him yesterday afternoon. He cancelled all his appointments and sent for the files. So he’s taking it seriously, but my bet is that in the end he’s going to ask me to keep quiet about it.”

“I thought Jerry was all right.”

“Oh, I like him. And he’s certainly everyday all right, if you see what I mean. Decent, but…look, if we come clean about this, we’re dead. It’s a partnership, not a limited company, so ultimately the partners are liable.”

“You must be insured.”

“Yes, of course, we have to be. There’s a limit, though I don’t know how much in our case. A few million, I should think.”

“That would pay for a fun fair, wouldn’t it?”

“I should think so, but it isn’t just Mr. McNair’s losses we’d be in for. His insurance company had to pay out for the deaths and injuries—I told you there were whacking damages—and they could come after us because if we’d won it would have been the manufacturer who’d have been liable. That’d take us well beyond our insurance limit.”

“So how’s Jerry going to put it to you?”

“I expect he’ll—”

The telephone rang. Jeff answered.

“No. I’m back,” he said. “Our affairs came to a crashing halt. You can certainly say that…I’ll hand you over.”

“Jerry,” he mouthed as he passed the handset across. Jenny felt her heart contract but spoke unflurriedly, her outer persona closing automatically around her inward self.

“Hello.”

“I gather you’ve got him back early. You’ll have been missing him.”

“To put it mildly.”

“So you won’t be too keen on having a bit of lunch with me tomorrow.”

“Well…”

“I need a word with you. Away from the office, for preference. Thing is, it’s about that stuff you dug up yesterday afternoon. We’re going to have to sort something out, but the fewer people who are involved at this stage the better all round. You follow?”

“Yes, of course. Hold on a moment.”

She put a hand over the mouthpiece.

“He wants me to have lunch with him tomorrow. Can you bear it?”

“Better get it over.”

“How did it go?”

“Take me somewhere where nobody can hear me if I scream. I mean that. Literally. Please.”

He thought for a moment.

“Do you mind getting wet?”

“No.”

They drove in silence. The rain sluiced down. He pulled in at the entrance to a forestry plantation.

“All right if I came along?”

“If you want to.”

She didn’t wait for him. The skirt of her Sunday-lunch-with-the-boss suit constrained her to a stupid mincing run along the squelching track. A shoe was sucked off, but she didn’t stop. The track curved out of sight from the road. Another track crossed it. She slowed to a walk. Leafless branches dripped onto dead and sodden bracken. This was the place.

Where the four ways met she stopped, raised her arms like a priestess at a shrine, summoned Norma into being and let her rip, waiting for each scream to fade into the drenched, indifferent trees before she screamed again. Her throat was really painful before Sister Jenny told her that that was enough.

Jeff was waiting a few paces back, with the big umbrella up and her shoe in his other hand. She took his arm and they walked down to the car and drove home, still in silence, with the heater full up. He made her a linctus with honey, scotch and lemon, and then joined her in the shower. They went to bed again and forgot about everything but each other. After awhile she fell asleep, waking several hours later to find him still beside her, reading a Tom Clancy with the same rapid but exact attention that he would have given to an oil policy analysis.

“How’s the throat?”

“Better. Thanks, Jeff.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Nor did I. It was a sort of experiment. I mean I hadn’t tried using her like that before, not since I was a kid.”

“Who?”

“Norma. You don’t know about Norma.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I want to. I didn’t before, because I thought I’d given her up, but yesterday, after you telephoned…”

She told him slowly, whispering to spare her throat, and absent-mindedly fondling his forearm as she talked.

“…of course a lot of little girls have screaming fits,” she said at one point. “But I started again after Dad walked out, and Mummy started drinking, and that meant I had to do stuff for Grandad because she was snorting on the sofa. I would have been about nine.”

“Didn’t Sue help?”

“She did it for a bit but then something happened. No one told me what, but she was very upset and I heard Mum screeching at him later. After that Sue wouldn’t go near him and Mum told me I’d got to do it. She gave me a wooden ruler and told me if he tried anything I must hit him across the knuckles with it. I hadn’t any idea what she was talking about, but she must have said something—I don’t remember what—something about him being as good as dead, or he should’ve been dead by now—something like that—but I got it into my head that the horrible old man actually was dead, only…I’m all right, darling, I want to tell you…just…He had a sort of chuckle…oh, God, this dead thing…only he wasn’t…Listen, before that, when he was in hospital and Mummy took us to visit him, there was this nurse, Sister Somebody, in her blue uniform and her starched pinny and cap, and a wide belt with a big silver buckle, all clean and strong and alive among the dirty, smelly, falling-to-bits old horrors in the beds, and they couldn’t touch her, they couldn’t infect her with their mess and nastiness because her uniform was sort of magic…Anyway, that’s how I invented Sister Jenny, and I gave her an imaginary uniform and while I was wearing it in my head he couldn’t do anything to me, he couldn’t touch me, he couldn’t come and get me and make me dead like him…Do you understand, darling?”

“There was something going on, wasn’t there, when I took you to meet Uncle Albert first time?”

“It wasn’t that bad. You were there. It wasn’t my responsibility. I don’t know if I could’ve done it alone. Anyway, being Sister Jenny got me through dealing with Grandad, but really it was a way of bottling up the other stuff till I was out of his room, then when it was over I’d go out into the barn where there was no one to hear but the pigs and get rid of it by screaming and chucking things around. That’s Norma.

“I’ve never told anyone else about Norma. Sister Jenny’s the one people get to meet. They don’t like her much. Mummy invented Norma, not me, to try and get me out of my tantrums. She was supposed to be a joke, only she wasn’t. Not for me. Kids get things into their heads, you know. Like Grandad being dead. So I was two people. I don’t mean I’m clinically schizophrenic, or anything. It was just a way of coping, but it got a bit stuck, that’s all. Well, now you’ve met Norma.”

“Hi.”

“You aren’t worried?”

“Why should I be? Tell her to come in and make herself at home, if you feel like it. Unless you’re bothered about being married to a bigamist. Though I must say I don’t quite see what Jerry’s got in common with your grandfather.”

“It isn’t Jerry. It’s me being stuck with a filthy mess which isn’t anything to do with me, except I’ve been landed with it… No, I could cope with that. And Jerry himself couldn’t have been nicer. I mean he didn’t try to tell me the docket didn’t exist, or it didn’t mean what I thought it meant, and he was furious with Trevor for being so idle and incompetent, but he must have been ill for a while before anyone realised, including himself, and now he’s dying… Oh Jesus! I don’t know why this is getting to me so badly. People keep dying all the time, don’t they? It’s all right, darling—I can cope. It was just I had a sudden picture of him lying in hospital with all these tubes in him…It’s some kind of marrow cancer you have to catch early, and they didn’t. Jerry didn’t make a big deal of it, actually. I mean he said it was ghastly for everyone, of course, but it didn’t affect the principle of the thing, which is to do the best we can for old Mr. McNair. Jerry says he doesn’t think the docket would have made all that amount of difference, it’s just what Mr. McNair has fastened on because he’s known all along he was right about it. But what really lost us the case was that the manufacturer’d got hold of a much better expert than we had. I don’t mean he knew more about it, but he put on a much better show, and so did their QC, so we’d have lost the case anyway. But suppose Mr. McNair was told about the docket now, he’s not going to get the case reopened. All he can do is sue us for the money he lost. But he couldn’t stop his insurance company coming after us too—I told you about that—and the way these things are set up they’d have first claim on all assets and there wouldn’t be anything left for Mr. McNair, and he’d still have his costs to pay and they’d be a packet. So actually it might be kinder not to let him know.”

“A bit specious?”

“No. I mean, I think Jerry genuinely thinks that, and he’s probably right, except that in the meanwhile Mr. McNair is going crazy with the knowledge that he gave Trevor the docket and no one believes him. And then—Jerry didn’t make a big thing of this, apart from telling me that it was only fair to warn me that it was bound to come out that it was me who started the thing off, and it was an unfair world but people really weren’t that keen on hiring someone who’d pulled the rug out from under their firm in however good a cause—but he didn’t say anything about the firm going down the tube, or Trevor having a rather hopeless wife and three young children, or Millie with her mother to look after, or Selina’s bloke walking out on her and the kids—but of course he knew I’d know all that—it’s a very friendly office, and that’s mainly Jerry’s doing. He really is everyday decent…so all I could do was sit and listen and say helpful things and try not to think about Trevor lying in hospital…”

“Sister Jenny. With his mess to clear up?”

“That’s right.”

“And then go into the wood and scream? If you’d given me a bit of warning I could have arranged for some pigs.”

Later, lying on his back at some unknown hour, he said in a dreamy voice, “You were being persecuted by a dimwit. When I called from Paris.”

From time to time since he’d come home it had crossed Jenny’s mind that she should tell him about Mr. Matson’s visit, but she hadn’t, and she understood why, without having to think it out. This last—how long? Less than forty-eight hours—had been extraordinary. Nothing, not their first physical explorations of their passion for each other, not the boost of renewal on the honeymoon, had been like this hunger, endlessly satisfied, endlessly aching back into life, her whole body like a soft, faint bruise, delighting to be touched. Their need for each other was their only need, though their world, their assumptions, their lifestyle, everything, melted away around them. The stuff they had so far been talking about and dealing with, Jeff’s trouble with Billy, hers over Jerry, had been part of the melting, part of what allowed them to seal themselves into this capsule and watch the process with indifference. Only in the capsule could Jenny have brought herself to tell anyone, even Jeff, about Norma, and done it with such ease and such relief.

Mr. Matson’s visit was different. It concerned Jeff alone, she had been merely an agent, an intruder, who had made the first mistake and then compounded it. The event wasn’t, somehow, part of the melting process.

“I needed a drink,” she said.

“Everything is explained. And forgiven, where appropriate.”

“I may need to hold you to that.”

Adjusting her head on his chest she told him what had happened.

“He’s lying,” said Jeff when she’d finished. “Aunt Clarisse looked after Albert’s affairs until she had her heart attack. That’s when I took over, when I had to move him to Marlings…It sounds to me as if he knew about Uncle Albert all along.”

“Oh…I suppose he might have. He did ham it up a bit when he made the connection. And he was lying earlier on, telling me he’d got the other pistol. But I think a lot of the other stuff was true, or nearly.”

“It doesn’t matter, actually. The only thing that matters is whether he can prove he’s the rightful owner. If he can then I suppose we’ve got to hand the thing over. But I won’t say no to the money he’s offering if it’ll help tide Uncle Albert over for a few months.”

“You don’t think Mr. Matson’s father could have given it to him as a keepsake?”

“Splitting the pair up? And in any case, Uncle Albert would have had it hanging on the wall and told everyone about it, instead of…No, I don’t buy it. Hell, Uncle Albert isn’t going to like it. But I’ll ring this man tomorrow and tell him…”

“I think it is tomorrow. We’re wasting time. Come here.”

But the seal on the capsule was broken, and the late night trucks fumed past on the Ashford Road, and love was no longer any more than love.