How the Dead Live (Factory 3) (23 page)

‘Then I knew what death meant.

‘Of course it could be removed, I said, that place, only a sample of it would have to be taken first and sent for analysis. She turned to me among the roses and said simply: I want you to do it, William. Marianne, I said, I’m not qualified to do it, I’m struck off, you know that. But if you want, I can send you to some of the top surgeons in London, men I know, we were students together. But she would keep going on: no, no one but you is going to touch my body, I love you and I have faith in you. This is how it happened, Sergeant. Why, William, she said, you can do it, I know you can do it and it must be done; you’re not getting soft, are you? She said, you had the most
brilliant future ahead of you as a surgeon.’

‘But something happened to it,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you about that in a minute. Meantime I yielded to her. You know what women are? Or any people? I ended by going up to London and equipping myself with everything I should need. Where she is downstairs, that cellar, I turned that into a theatre for her. She came down with me and said, half curiously, I’ve never performed in a theatre like this before. It was such hot weather. We decided the date over dinner the night before, and I said, have a good dinner now, and then nothing till after the op. We ate everything we liked most; I remember it was oysters to start with, then roast beef, potatoes and a green salad, also two very good bottles of wine. You’ll be on a drip after this, I said, and she said yes, I know. All our tragedy was in our happiness over that meal. It’s for tomorrow evening, then, she said, and I said yes, if you’re sure you agree. I insist, she said.’

He turned to me and said: ‘Oh, what a fool I was ever to agree, but you see it was our love.’

I said: ‘You took the sample?’

‘Yes.’

‘And had it analysed.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and it was malignant, a sarcoma. Of course, I had had to cut her lip a little for the sample and she already looked different because of it. We had another dinner but she couldn’t keep it down. Later we toasted each other with champagne and she said, William, it is malignant, isn’t it? And I said yes, because we’ve never had any secrets from each other. She said, I knew it was, deep down.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘I told her that the whole growth would have to be removed but I said, Marianne, listen, you’ll have to go into hospital for it. No, never, she said. I’ve got no anaesthetist, nor possibility of any help, I said, you’ve got to understand, and that growth on your lip has got to be removed. But she said, no, I believe in you, and only in you, William. I said, and supposing I won’t remove it? She said, well then, I shall die, shan’t I?’

‘And the deep-freeze?’ I said.

‘We had that already,’ he said and added: ‘It was for me, I was twenty years older than Marianne. It was I that was going to come back in fifty years’ time, not Marianne.’

We were silent for a time.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘what happened next?’

‘I said, it’s wrong of you to insist that I do this, Marianne.’

I said: ‘But you did it.’

‘Yes, as soon as I was equipped and ready. I did it at night. It was a terribly hot night, not a breath of wind. I removed the whole growth and cleaned the wound.’

‘I know nothing about surgery,’ I said, ‘but you’ll be questioned by people who do. Are you satisfied in yourself that you carried out the operation as you should have done?’

‘Perfectly satisfied.’

‘And do you believe that another, impartial surgeon would say the same?’

‘I do.’ He wiped sweat away from his forehead and added: ‘You realize, of course, that I couldn’t be as dispassionate as an uninvolved surgeon would have been.’

‘I understand. And then she got worse?’

‘Very soon afterwards. She had discomfort with her mouth at first; then she was in pain and finally in agony, complaining of pain not just where the growth had been, but higher up inside her cheek, in her throat and in her ear.’

‘How did you treat the pain?’

‘I could only alleviate it.’

‘And how did you do that?’

‘With morphine.’

‘And where did you get it?’

‘You can get anything,’ he said flatly, ‘if you’re prepared to pay for it.’

‘Go on.’

‘I examined her. There were secondaries in her left cheek, in the throat, and the beginnings of a growth in the left mastoid. I said,
Marianne, you’ll have to do now what I should have made you do all along, and that’s go straight into hospital. She said, and if I die there I shall be buried in the usual way, and we’ll never meet again in fifty years. But I can’t treat you here, I said, I haven’t what I need and I’ve got no help. She said, I’m not going into hospital and that’s final. I said, Marianne, you’re very seriously ill – how can I just stand here and let you get worse and worse? It was like a nightmare, Sergeant.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I can see it was.’

‘I said, Marianne, don’t you want to get better and see your friends again and sing? I’ll never sing again, she said slowly, I know that, and I don’t believe I’ll ever get better now. You mustn’t talk like that, I said. You must go where you’ll be properly cared for, and that means hospital. I’ve got all that on tape as well. I listen to it over and over.’

Now I knew really what the voices I had half heard were saying – the dread, desperate arguments.

He continued: ‘It’s my face too, she said. I’ve looked at it. William, I want you to smash every mirror in the house, and I did. She said, if ever I do go out I shall wear a veil.’

I said: ‘Did you continue to operate on her?’

‘Yes. Part of it was in her vocal cords.’

‘And you operated there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you consider that you carried that operation out in a proper way?’

‘Yes.’

‘Under those circumstances?’

‘The test of any surgeon is his courage.’

‘Were you successful?’

‘I removed everything that I had to, but still I couldn’t halt it.’

‘Did you operate on her any further after that?’

‘Yes. I removed the new growth in her cheek. I had to go through the cheek, of course, but that was nothing; it would have left the smallest of scars. But you may know how it is with cancer.
You remove one secondary and then almost immediately another one—’ He stopped.

I said: ‘And the mastoid?’

‘I had to do it,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see that otherwise she would have died in worse agony than she did?’

‘So that was why she was bald.’

‘Of course. I had to shave her.’

‘I’m asking the kind of questions that you’re going to have to answer at your trial.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but you must remember that I had to do everything alone. Normally I would have had a team. But this was like being back in the war, trying to work on a battlefield.’

‘Where did she die,’ I said, ‘and when?’

‘It was on August 14th at teatime, in her bedroom. It was three days after the last operation.’

‘Was she in pain?’

‘No more so than usual. It had got to the point where at the first signs of distress I would give her morphine with a whisky base, and she would lie there dreaming and smiling.’

Half bald, I thought, and no lower lip. Dressings on her cheek, her throat and on the left side of her head. ‘Could she speak after the throat operation?’ I said.

‘No, just a croak,’ he said, ‘but she was most often on morphine anyway.’

‘What finally killed her?’

‘Shock, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘She was so weak after what she had already undergone that in her last hours I could watch her just slipping away.’

‘Do you think that any treatment could have made her well?’

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘and a woman – think of her face. In fifty years, of course—’

‘How was she when she died?’

‘Happy – I saw she was going and I put my arms round her, and she died looking out of the window at the sun, whispering old songs and stroking my face. I’ve come a long way from my own
country, William, she said, but I’m going back there now. The morphine had really removed her from me already, but I could tell what she wanted to sing; we used to sing it together:
Les filles sont volages, fréquentez-les donc pas; un jour elles vous aiment, un jour elles vous aiment pas
. I sang it for her, and when I had finished she turned to me in my arms and thanked me very gravely, went grey and was gone.’

‘Did you take her downstairs yourself?’

‘I had to.’

‘When did Baddeley first start to bite?’

‘That was in November, about three months after Marianne had been downstairs, and the electricity strike happened. I was taking her flowers to her when the alarm from the freezer suddenly started. I looked at the thermometer; the temperature was only minus forty, so I rang Baddeley about the dry ice.’

‘Was Sanders working for you at that time?’

‘No, he had left; he was doing odd jobs for Baddeley.’

‘There was no trouble about Baddeley giving you this dry ice?’

‘Not at first.’

‘He didn’t ask you any questions? Didn’t ask you why you wanted anything so unusual?’

‘No, he made no trouble about it at all.’

‘You didn’t think that was strange?’

‘I was only thinking about Marianne.’

‘So you packed the dry ice in with her and then the strike ended. Then what happened?’

‘About a fortnight after that Baddeley came up to see me.’

‘Alone?’

‘No, there was a man called Prince with him whom he described as his assistant.’

‘What kind of person was he? Prince, I mean.’

‘Unpleasant.’

‘Tough?’

‘Big, from London, six foot two, hair crew-cut, sharp clothes. I saw them in this room. Baddeley sat in that corner there with his arms folded and said, I’ll let Mr Prince do the talking.’

‘And what did Prince say?’

‘It’s not the sort of language I use, but as near as I can recall he
said: listen, you old cunt, what did you want that dry ice for a fortnight back? We think it was for your wife. Now you’d better play this straight up with us, otherwise the law’ll be round in less than five minutes and you’ll be right in the shit. And what about you? I said. Never mind about me, Prince said, you just worry about yourself.’

‘That makes sense,’ I said. ‘Yes, I can hear that music.’

‘So then he said, we want to see the body, darling, to make sure, and that sharply. I said, and if I won’t? If you won’t, he said, I’ll turn this stinking old barracks over from cellar to attic and find out what we want to know anyway, and in a very short time. There’ll be some damage done in the process too, he added – in fact, by the time I’ve finished you won’t know your arse from your elbow in this place, and you could even get hurt yourself.’

‘And Baddeley?’

‘Baddeley just sat nodding and smiling and saying, I think you’d do best to cooperate with Mr Prince and myself, William.’

‘Had you ever talked about cryogenics in Thornhill?’

‘Yes of course,’ he said, ‘as a theory.’

I said: ‘Go on. Did either of these individuals in fact offer you violence?’

‘Yes. I was only thinking of Marianne. I was terrified the police would come and take her away. I didn’t care about myself so I prevaricated, until in the end Prince said, I’m getting fed up with this – if you don’t show us what we want to see, you miserable old bastard, I’ll do no more but knock the shit out of you, and what do you think about that?’

‘Did you in fact show them your wife’s body?’

‘Yes. I’m sixty-three, and I’m afraid my courage ran out in the end.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘So what happened when you told these two priceless crown jewels what they wanted to know?’

‘They put their contract to me.’

‘Did that include the reversion of this house to them on your death?’

‘It did.’

‘And what did you get in exchangc for this reversion, and for the thirty thousand pounds you paid them?’

‘The promise of their silence, Marianne and I left alone, and no trouble from the police.’

‘It’s really very very interesting,’ I said. ‘Yes. Now there’s a case that will most definitely go to trial when I’ve finished, and you will be a valuable prosecution witness in it. I cannot stand blackmailers.’

‘I was a fool to think I could keep her death secret,’ said Mardy, ‘but I was desperate.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘So then Baddeley set up these two companies, Wildways and Clearpath?’

‘Wildways existed already,’ Mardy said. ‘Clearpath was just for me to make the payments.’

‘Anyone else on the board except yourself?’

‘My wife. She can be a sleeping director, Baddeley said.’

‘I find that really very sick,’ I said.

‘Yes, they both burst out laughing when Baddeley said that, and then Baddeley said to me, it’s all right, she doesn’t have to sign the cheques, and her director’s fees can come straight to us, OK?’

‘The money you paid them,’ I said. ‘It was too much for you, wasn’t it, financially.’

‘It broke me.’

‘I will tell you something,’ I said, ‘if it’s any relief to you. You will have to go to trial, of course, but I’m the arresting officer, and I will tell you for nothing that there will be mitigating circumstances. Secondly, certain people in Thornhill, some more prominent than others, I have already marked down for arrest, and they will go down with a crash you could hear in Australia.’

‘But Marianne,’ he said. ‘What about Marianne?’

It was the question I couldn’t answer.

I thought as I walked back to the car that Mardy had been further abroad in the realm of terror and risk than most people would ever go.

As for me, I set my webs in the dark, and wait for my prey to come to me.

My prey is never innocent; it causes me wicked and frightening dreams, I am alone against it. All I want is for our democracy to be rid of violent bores.

I don’t mind how it’s done if we protect the innocent.

Hardly had I ceased thinking about bores when by Christ I was confronted by one. I was just going through the doors of the hotel when somebody darted out of a plastic armchair in the foyer, grabbed me by the wrist and said: ‘All right, what the hell’s going on with this Mardy business?’