A Poison Tree (Time, Blood and Karma Book 3) (13 page)

18

DAVID

I put my elbows on the bar of the Bell as Ian pulled me a pint.

“So tell me,” I said. “Where does all this wisdom of yours come from, O Guru?”

“I’ve been studying Buddhism.”

“You mean you’ve been reading books? Familiarising yourself with sacred texts like
The Dhammapada
? I find that hard to imagine.”

“The Damn of What?”

“
Dhammapada
. The sayings of the Buddha.”

“Who’s got the time to read all that shit? I’ve got a pub to run. No, I picked up a copy
of Enlightenment in 15 Minutes
from a car boot sale.”

“Profound.”

“I skimmed some of it, mind you.”

“
Of course you did. It would be too much to ask for you to concentrate on anything for a whole fifteen minutes.”

Ian set the pint in front of me.

“Want me to summarise Buddhist philosophy for you?”

“I can’t wait.”

“OK.” He concentrated hard. “
No birth, no death, not coming, not going, not existing, not non-existing, not the same, not different
.” He looked pleased with himself.

“Thanks. I feel a lot better now. None the wiser, but much better informed.”

“It just means that everything you see is an illusion.”

“So this beer is an illusion?”

“Exactly.”

“So I don’t need to pay you for it, because you’re not really selling me anything?”

Ian shook his head vigorously. “Ah, no. You pay me but with imaginary money.”

“Imaginary money?”

“Yes, but it has to be
real
imaginary money.”

I took a five pound note from my wallet and handed it to him.

“I thought I read something about Buddhists believing in compassion, not imaginary money.”

“That too. It’s about making people happy.”

“So how do you make people happy? You’re a miserable bastard.”

“Beer makes people happy. I sell beer.”

“But it’s imaginary beer? So presumably it’s imaginary happiness?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

Imaginary happiness.

Is that what we all have?

We act. We share. We strive for purpose in a world without permanence. We create our own realities. But it is all inside our head.

All is illusion.

All is cant.

All is vanity.

Katie got the results she needed for Oxford.

We had a few anxious days after returning from Bali, and then the
dark clouds dispersed and our daughter’s career hopes took a mighty step forward.

We had a celebration dinner with the whole family at the most expensive restaurant in the
city. Even Max came along and did his best to fit in and show appropriate enthusiasm.

Claire’s trip to London was approaching
. As the date edged closer I found myself growing anxious. On a couple of occasions I almost asked her not to go, but I held back. There were other times when I considered telling her of my suspicions and asking for an explanation. But the moments passed, and we continued to trundle along the path of unknowing.

I had handed the torch to
the private detective, Cumberbatch.

I would wait.

Meantime, I endeavoured to act as normal as possible. It was a busy time at work and this served as a partial distraction. But another surprise lay in wait.

The day before Claire
was due to leave for London, I had an emotional phone call from Harry.

“David, have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“About Mark.”

“No.”

“He’s killed himself.”

I drove over to the Coventry showroom straight away, trying to process this information. On arrival, I found the staff in a state of shock. Some of them had known Mark for several years and it hit them hard.

Harry
sat in his office. His face was ashen. “I went round to Janine’s last night, after I’d heard,” he said. “The woman was in a terrible way.”

“What happened, Harry?”

He scratched at his brow and looked down at the desk before replying.

“You remember earlier this year when Mark said he might have a medical problem?”

“He was having blood tests. Yes, I remember. But the tests came back OK. He told me.”

“That’s what he told everyone. But they weren’t OK. And they weren’t ordinary blood tests. They were for HIV.”

“Oh, Christ. He tested positive?”

“
Yes. Of course, he had to tell Janine. He might have infected her too. That’s when everything blew up and he moved out.”

“She’s not –?”

“No, thank God. He confessed he’d been seeing this hooker for a couple of years, and apparently they hadn’t always used protection. That’s presumably how he got it.”

Confethed
he’d been
theeing
. Even now I couldn’t help noticing Harry’s lisp.

You cold bastard, Braddock
.

I took out my cigarettes and lit one. “Sorry, Harry, I think I need one of these.”

“It’s OK, David,” he said, and handed me a mug to use as an ashtray.

“How did Mark –?” I couldn’t finish the question.

“He drove out to a wood and hanged himself. Two ramblers found him.”

Harry got up and opened a window.

“He left a note for Janine on the mantelpiece of that hovel he lived in. Said he was sorry, but he couldn’t face the shame. You know, that kind of thing.”

Mantelpieth
.

Thaid
.

Thorry
.

Fa
yth.

“The poor bugger.”

If my anonymous caller was Mark Standish, I’d never know now.

But then, we can’t know everything.

Can we?

I spoke to Claire a couple of times on the phone while she was away in London. She didn’t sound happy, but neither did she sound miserable. She just sounded like Claire. I listened to the rhythm of her voice, dismantled later her choice of words, fixated on the length of the call. And I came up empty.

Mark’s death
had only served to accentuate the numbness that had taken possession of me. I felt lost, disoriented, glued to the spot while a sinkhole opened beneath my feet. I lacked the will to act, to speak even.

When Claire returned, I
met her at the station, hugged her and told her I’d missed her. She hugged me back and told me she’d missed me too. Then she kissed me.

That was the first time I felt the
bite of anger.

We all indulge in magical thinking.

We cross our fingers
and decline to walk under ladders. We scream at the television during football matches as if that will somehow alter the result. We ascribe events to fate or destiny. The mother comforts the child with the grazed knee by ‘kissing it better’. We wish for things.

It
is all illogical and irrational, and we do it all the time. It is the consequence of being equipped with a brain that constructs reality around a premise of
usefulness
rather than
truthfulness
.

We love wizards and warlocks. Human characteristics are routinely ascribed to family pets, as though they think and feel the same way we do. The magic amulet that wards off evil
assumes many shapes and forms, but its essence remains the same – an attempt to exercise control over those things which we cannot control. It is a charm to provide a protective barrier against the vagaries of the world and the unfairness of life.

And the lure of the magical is at its strongest at those times we experience cognitive dissonance; that unpleasant, grinding sensation when our deepest-held beliefs are exposed as fallacies. We fight against facts and bend logic until we can explain away the hard evidence that contradicts our world view
or threatens our fragile peace of mind. Either that or we ignore the evidence altogether where the consequences of paying attention would be too painful to bear.

The belief that ultimately there is meaning to our existence, is our last redoubt. Without meaning, it is problematical to hold onto the delusion of
our eternal existence. The pillars that support our idea of self, and our own unique place in the universe, collapse, and the rubble that remains is incomprehensible.

We can live without happiness. But we cannot live without meaning.

The day of reckoning eventually dawns. The bitter time when we will have to stare at the sun, even if it blinds us.

That day for me was the occasion I went to see
Cumberbatch for the second time, on the first of September 1999. It was the Wednesday – Odin’s Day – following Claire’s trip to London. Not a date I would forget any time soon, if ever.

Driving to his office, I felt hollowed out, like the aftermath of a neutron bomb explosion where the buildings remain but the people who occupied them have perished. I
had become a pseudomorph, a creature of structure but without essence. My recent happy time with Claire had been nothing but a sham, the lovemaking of actors playing a part. My thoughts teetered on the edge of the void.

Yet even then, I entertained a residue of hope. So much of my life’s purpose, I realised, was invested in my marriage.
If I could have prayed, I would have.

I had to park several streets away from
Cumberbatch Surveillance, thanks to some oaf in a sports car who sneaked in to take my parking spot while I was waiting to reverse. It didn’t improve my mood.

Dolores was reading some
style magazine when I arrived. She got up with reluctance and knocked on the door to the inner office. There was a muttered voice from inside and I was shown through.

I knew immediately the news was going to be bad.

Cumberbatch’s bearing as he greeted me was that of a funeral director comforting a bereaved relative. He was far removed from the rambunctious individual I had encountered some weeks before.

He opened a khaki wallet file and began reading in a dull monotone. He told me that on two occasions Claire had met Jack during the day at a teashop in Market Harborough, and he had followed them three times to Kettering where they had visited the site of
Jael Construction’s new development. The only untoward behaviour he had witnessed was that once Jack had put his arm around Claire.

“That’s
not conclusive of anything,” I said. “So I didn’t know about them meeting for tea or coffee or whatever, but that isn’t a crime.”

“No,”
Cumberbatch said carefully. “It isn’t.”

“Tell me about London.”

He consulted the file. “They both stayed at the Imperial Hotel. Your wife had a room on the first floor and Mr. Irving was in a suite on the top floor.”

He put down his papers and looked at me. “It’s difficult to track movements inside a hotel without being obvious
, and my appearance is rather, um, shall we say, memorable?” He pointed to his white hair. “I’ve tried wearing wigs but –”

“Can you just get to the point, please, Mr
. Cumberbatch?” I sounded testy.

“Of course. Yes. Well, I figured if they were staying in the same room, it would likely be Mr
. Irving’s, given that it was a suite. However, as I didn’t see them both go into it, I couldn’t be sure. I’d just be speculating.”

“I see.”

He paused. “I do know they spent the night together, though.”

“How?”

He took a sip from the whisky glass on his desk and pulled a face. “I thought I needed some hard evidence for you, so at one o’clock in the morning I set off the hotel fire alarm.” He seemed embarrassed. “Yes, I know. It was a bit naughty of me. I’m afraid I’ve had to resort to this sort of thing before. But I couldn’t hang around the hotel all night. It would have been too suspicious.”

“So you saw them both come out of Irving’s room?”

“A few minutes later, yes. Then when the all-clear was sounded, I followed them back upstairs.”

“And they went back to his room?”

“Yes.”

I looked down at
the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I want you to go on following my wife.”

Cumberbatch
looked pained, as if he were the one who had received the bulletin of betrayal.

“Mr
. Braddock,” he began, choosing his words with care, “I could take your money. God knows, I need it. But you have all the evidence you need. I will provide you with a full, written report, and I have photographs of your wife and Mr. Irving together, should you want them.