Why We Die Page 2

  Next to the bottle of amitryptilline he’d not even opened.

  He groaned, and alarmed himself with the noise . . . As if he’d just disturbed something nesting in its pit. He was the pit. This was the pits. Words that dizzied him, chasing their own tails round his mind: he made it to the bathroom, but just barely.

  Tim wasn’t keeping count, but it was two hours later he checked out of the hotel, doing so with a heavy sense of shame, as if he’d abused the premises somehow – sneaked in a prostitute, or accessed a pay-per-view that would have the staff sniggering in his wake. He barely glanced at the bill, though it was a lot more serious than it would have been if he were dead. Standing at the desk, watching the woman process his credit card, he almost excused himself – I was here once before. With my wife. The weekend we married – but recognized that for what it was: yesterday’s alcohol talking. The remains of the Macallan, he’d left on his bedside table. The drugs, he’d flushed away – a corner had been turned, and he wouldn’t be trying that exit again. Plans were not to be trusted. A sudden jump in front of a heavy vehicle might work, but anything more considered, he was bound to fuck up.

  That afternoon, safely home in the small terraced house Emma wouldn’t be returning to, he went to bed again: slept the sleep of the newly suicided between sheets unwashed in a month. When he woke, it was just before 5 a.m. His limbs were heavy and his stomach still churned, but mostly with hunger. He ate a bowl of cereal, then sat in his tiny back garden while autumn flexed its limbs, trying out a variety of small cloud-formations before settling for plain blue. He smoked cigarette after cigarette until they were all gone, and their fumes infused his skin as if he were toxic.

  The following morning, Monday, Tim called in sick, but got up in the afternoon anyway and washed his bed linen. He showered, and afterwards spent a while staring into the bathroom mirror. Lately he had been avoiding his reflection, the way he might cross a road to avert an encounter with a former friend, one who’d been out of touch too long for conversation to be anything but awkward. Now, though, Tim stared, as if indifference had crossed into hostility. ‘You worthless shit,’ he said to the familiar face with its few new creases; with the mole just under the jawline which had never bothered him, but did now. ‘You pointless jerk.’ He wondered what Emma would say if she could see him. But tears were sealed inside him so tightly they might never work their way out. He’d have to crack and fissure like a wrecked kettle for that to happen.

  He slept. He woke up. Everything that had already happened for the last time happened again . . . He dressed, ate breakfast, and left for work; was caught once more by the lights at the junction, and then was delayed again near the shopping drag, before the long dip towards Oxford city centre.

  An ambulance was parked by the subway, and some- body was being loaded into the back; there were policemen everywhere – Tim counted twelve, though he might have missed a few – blocking pavements; stringing yellow-and-black crime scene tape around the jeweller’s. Cars were waved past one at a time. Stuck in line, Tim tuned the radio to the local station and picked up a story about an armed robbery so recent it was barely over. A passer-by had been shot: unconfirmed reports suggested he was dead. And this is how it happens, Tim thought; this is how it really happens. Unplanned, unexpected, when you were on your way somewhere else – death is not a rehearsal. Like the T-shirts say about life, only with more of an edge to it. Death is not a rehearsal.

  Traffic began to move, and Tim moved with it: slowly down the hill, and into the heart of the city.

  ii

  Some nights, there was a problem with the rats. The problem was, there were no rats. While Arkle stood in the centre of the yard, the only noise came from the road; a passing taxi’s heavy-clutched grind, baffled by the high wooden gates which hadn’t been opened in a year. And even that was blotted by the underfoot crunch of sand and pebble; the carefully graded piles of which had leaked from their enclosures and drifted to the centre of the yard, where it would have taken an expert to tell them apart, though the old man would have managed all right – on a lightless night would have done that with his feet: just the odd taxi for a soundtrack, and no rats in evidence at all.

  Though Arkle could imagine the little bastards cowering in the darkness, waiting till he’d gone.

  He’d borrowed Baxter’s fancy watch. It withstood pressure fifty metres underwater, explained due north, and, more relevantly right now, lit up when he pressed a button: 10.45. Price was due at eleven, which realistically meant he might turn up within the next three hours. After one last look around – the weapon heavy in his hands: he hated it when he came out shooting, and found nothing to shoot – Arkle trekked back up the metal staircase to the temporary cabin that had perched there twenty-five years, a big tin coffin on a stepladder. Through its grimy window the portable’s blue flicker leaked. Arkle’s boots on the stairs made that dull thudding sound you got in submarines.

  When they’d been smaller, Trent had worried about that, and also about the missing slats – you could see right the way to the ground. Trent was worried he’d fall through the gaps.

  ‘No one in recorded history,’ Baxter told him, ‘has ever had that happen.’

  ‘You don’t know all of recorded history.’

  But Baxter was pretty sure he’d have been informed.

  At the top Arkle stopped and looked back. He wore a long black coat, and even in the dark his shaved head shone, as if recently charged. The lights of Totnes stretched up the hill, the chains they made broken where buildings or trees interrupted them. Somewhere out of sight, beyond where the streetlights dipped into invisibility, Kay’s old man still lived: a confused idiot last time Arkle had seen him. Years back you could have laid a garden rake against his backbone, touching all the way. It was one of those lessons life taught: that getting old was just another way of fucking up.

  So: he placed his weapon on the flat roof. When he pushed the door it jammed briefly, and when he put weight on it, the office shook. Inside, Baxter and Trent perched on wooden stools that were just this side of fire-wood, watching the TV buzzing soundlessly in its corner like an electric aquarium. Despite the hour, Baxter looked – as always – splinter-sharp: tonight a dark grey suit over a collarless white shirt, no tie. He looked like a posterboy for something expensive but ultimately soulless, like alcohol-free lager, or a New Labour policy initiative. Trent, though, looked like Trent. When you saw those newspaper articles about Britain today, how everybody was getting rounder and pastier, it was quickest just to think about Trent and nod.

  But then, Trent had always had a problem. Fifteen years back, Arkle’s first impression was Trent was terrified all the time. He’d thought there must be something basic, something all-encompassing, that gave Trent the willies 24/7: hair, shoes, the weather, paving stones. Turned out, he was frightened of Arkle. So at least the little mutt had some brains.

  It was Baxter who cleared this up. ‘He’s worried you’ll forget your lunch one day, and bite his head off to keep you going.’

  Arkle tried to imagine this. ‘Does he think I’ll chew clean through, or just scoop the insides out?’

  Baxter had never had problems being scared of Arkle; or more likely, Baxter had quickly got used to not showing fear. Probably before he was three. Baxter was light brown, so when it was summer, looked like he had a really good tan. But when it wasn’t, you knew there was mixed blood going on.

  ‘Is your dad a brown man?’ Arkle had asked him, back then.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Why don’t you know?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘That all you fucking say?’

  And Baxter had fixed him with huge oval eyes, dark as chocolate. ‘Don’t know.’

  These days, Trent wasn’t as scared of Arkle as he used to be, because Arkle had learned how not to put the fear on, which was energy-saving. Also, Trent was hungover. You could always tell when Trent was hungover; his hangovers clouded round him like a separate wea
ther system. Trent reckoned he was a champion drinker because he drank so much, but this was like thinking you were a champion boxer because you got punched lots. Right now, he looked recently mugged.

  When Arkle slammed the door it rattled the window: reminded everybody they were one small accident away from being bounced like a can of marbles.

  ‘Price showed?’

  Arkle barely got halfway through patting his pockets, looking over his shoulder, before Baxter said: ‘Christ, enough, okay? Just thought his car might have pulled up.’

  As often happened, and for no reason he could put his finger on, Arkle’s mood lifted, tension leaking out of him exactly as if there’d been rats to shoot. Everybody had their own way of dealing with the climbdown after a job. Trent got drunk. Baxter – Baxter was wrapped pretty tight; probably had ways of letting off steam Arkle didn’t know about. Probably involving Kay. Arkle didn’t drink, and rarely touched women, but he had his moments. ‘He’ll be here. It’s early yet.’

  Baxter put his hand out.

  Arkle tossed him his watch back.

  On TV, a guy with a dark suit, bow tie and American teeth was displaying an empty top hat to a studio audience: you could almost taste the rabbit. It was funny how stuff that was naff ten years ago was cool again – Arkle rated TV magicians below radio ventriloquists. That guy who hung himself in a glass box over the Thames? They should have seized the opportunity and microwaved the prick.

  But to be friendly, he said: ‘Why’s it quiet?’

  ‘Sound’s buggered. He just made a car disappear, though.’

  Arkle was staring at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s fucking TV, Bax.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You watched Superman last week. You think that guy can really fly?’

  Trent said, ‘That was a film.’ It came out fillum. He sounded like his throat needed rodding. ‘This is telly.’

  ‘You probably have a point. I wonder what it is.’

  ‘They said it was real. No mirrors or nothing.’

  ‘And if Price offers magic beans, you’ll believe him?’

  Trent said, ‘Films are made up. Telly isn’t,’ but said it largely to himself, so Arkle didn’t let it spoil his newfound well-being.

  Baxter said, ‘I’ve never worked out whether I prefer you in a good mood or a bad one. Or what the difference is.’

  Arkle rose above this. Baxter had occasions when basically he was just going to grumble, but the office was Arkle’s space, and he wouldn’t be crowded out. Baxter didn’t like it, there were other places he could be.

  Most of which were cleaner. Apart from the TV, the room – the crow’s nest, the old man had called it – held a metal table, the stools Baxter and Trent were using, a chair which was Arkle’s, a filing cabinet stuffed to buggery with invoices, receipts, catalogues, paperwork – not a scrap of it less than a year old – and one of those hatstands with horns, had to have fallen off the back of a lorry. And every last inch of everything, Baxter excepted, covered in dust. That was a rule: you couldn’t run a gravel merchant’s without a lot of airborne particles invading your space. The surprise was how Baxter avoided it; like he actually repelled the stuff.

  The TV buzzed on wordlessly. Dust – dust would be doing that; choking its workings, so the words tangled up inside, and never got loose. Not that some dickhead with an undone bow tie had anything Arkle wanted to know.

  ‘He’ll be here soon,’ he said, just to be saying something.

  Baxter grunted.

  ‘Price.’

  Baxter grunted.

  ‘I’ll be outside.’

  Arkle scooped the weapon off the roof on his way down the stairs.

  Big clouds shifted overhead; the moon a bright edge behind them – a silver thread knotting in the middle. He could hear his own breath; hear his clothes rustle as he lifted the weapon to his shoulder and waited. Something would happen. His eye and the weapon were ready; a conjunction that demanded a third party: a victim that didn’t know it was willing yet. Above him the crow’s nest creaked, but Arkle was focused now; was all vision and trigger finger. Any moment now, the last living rat would show its whiskers. And half a second later he’d be on it, in it, through it . . . The rat would never know life was over. The last thing to pass through its mind, Arkle’s steel bolt.

  iii

  Death was on her mind when she heard about the money. Death and taxes: the two great constants, the latter somehow guaranteeing the former – nobody could afford to live forever. The interest alone would kill you.

  ‘Four thousand, seven hundred?’

  ‘Four thousand, seven hundred and thirty-one.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And twenty-six pence.’

  ‘Where did they get that from?’

  ‘Well, they’re rather hoping to get it from you.’

  This was what Zoë Boehm needed: a comedian. This was why she’d come through the door marked ‘Accountant’.

  ‘I fill in the forms. Every year. The self-assessment –?’

  ‘The SA100.’

  Thanks.

  ‘I fill it in. I declare everything. So how come I suddenly owe four thousand, seven hundred and thirty-one pounds in unpaid tax?’

  ‘It’s a system. Like all of them, it has its flaws. You know what the problem with self-assessment is?’

  She was about to find out.

  ‘Self. If you’d come to me in the first place, you wouldn’t be here now.’ He hesitated, as if aware of a paradox lurking in that. ‘An expert would have avoided the pitfalls.’

  ‘So you can make it go away?’

  He said, ‘You realize we’re talking after the event.’

  Four thousand, seven hundred and thirty-one pounds.

  Zoë – forty-something, five foot nine, dark-eyed, curly black hair – had been leading one of those second-chance lives lately: air smelled fresh, coffee tasted great. When she walked down the street, attractive details jostled for attention. But there was a use-by date on second chances, and she’d reached hers. The floral displays hung on lampposts, autumn sunlight stroking sand-coloured stone – they’d revert to visual irritants on her way home. Everything would be back to normal.

  ‘I’ve never tried to cheat the revenue.’

  This was about eighty per cent true. She’d never tried to cheat the revenue in a way she could be found out, and this was what was pissing her off now.

  ‘There’s a policy about ignorance being no defence? It turns out you’re not entitled to some of the set-offs you’ve claimed.’

  ‘Four grand’s worth?’

  He looked down at the papers in front of him. ‘They’re going back a while. It adds up.’

  ‘They can do that?’

  Short of walking through walls, his look said, they could do pretty much whatever they wanted. And don’t place bets against the walking through walls.

  ‘So what made them decide to look at me?’

  ‘Roughly twenty-eight per cent of all small businesses –’

  ‘What made them decide to look at me?’

  ‘I imagine somebody gave them your name.’

  Autumn sunlight slanted through the window. On the ledge birds shuffled and cooed.

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘You’re a private detective. I assume you’ve made enemies.’

  This was nice too.

  Damien Faraday was mid-thirties, so hadn’t had as much practice as Zoë at making enemies. Zoë imagined he’d be a natural, though. She’d picked him out of the phone book, and there was always a sense, doing this, that you were conjuring somebody from yellow paper: an origami miracle. In which case, the product ought to conform more closely to what was needed. This one was a little too smooth, a little too self-satisfied.

  She said, ‘I haven’t worked in a while.’

  ‘Such people have long memories.’

  She assumed his experience was born of celluloid.

  The desk between them was hi-tech, a
polished black surface with chrome edging, on which sat a photocube, displaying pictures of Damien, and a sleek computer whose screen was angled away from her. She had a sudden vision of the numbers he poured into it: an endless stream the machine would chop and change, delivering them back again as fractions, percentages, roots and dividends. And he’d be shaving points all the time, of course. It wasn’t like he sat here for free.

  ‘Have you been away?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘You’ve not been working, you said.’

  She wasn’t about to give him her medical history. ‘Yes. Which has kind of hammered my savings.’

  ‘We can arrange a payment schedule. They won’t be expecting a lump sum.’

  ‘This is your advice?

  ‘Like I said, Miss Boehm.’ Ms, she didn’t bother saying. ‘We’re a little after the event, here. We can make sure it doesn’t happen again. But there’s not a lot we can do about what’s already done.’

  She wondered if this was what talking to a backstreet abortionist was like.

  ‘You no longer have an office.’

  ‘No. I run the business from my flat.’

  He made a spreading gesture: what did she expect? The office had been her biggest business expense, a handy hole in the tax demand. Deciding it was also a luxury had been a bit hasty, judging by the man’s obvious disappointment in her: he might have been offering Zoë tax windows for years, on which she’d insisted on pulling the blinds. So pay the bill, woman. Forget about it. Just one tinsy problem with that, Damien.

  ‘We could throw together a list of legitimate expenses. Expenses you unaccountably forgot to claim. I doubt they’d look at them at this stage, but if you wanted to make the effort . . .’