Antman (6 page)

'In this case, no overwhelming and unambiguous motive for suicide is evident. There is evidence that the judgement of the deceased may have been clouded by the consumption of alcohol. There is further evidence of factors which could have led to the deceased being depressed. There is also evidence he was recovering from the particular trauma of the death of his father, four years earlier. There is no evidence he was suicidal over this. My conclusion, therefore, is that the evidence is not sufficient to support the verdict of taking his own life. I am giving an open verdict. This is a final verdict, but it leaves open the question of what caused the death. I should like, finally, to offer my condolences to you for this sad event and to thank you all for attending today.'

Tom was in a daze. Was that it? He'd given up a day's work for this ritualistic nod in the direction of truth. He hadn't realised the proceedings would come to a climax and end as suddenly as this. The clerk froze with bowed head and both hands pressing on her temples. The usher stood up and stepped forward:

'The Court will rise.' They stood while the coroner left the courtroom, followed by the clerk and the usher.

*  *  *

Laura looked across the wide pavement, with its scattering of tourists, shoppers and others, to where the two children had stood till a moment ago, noses more or less glued to the shop window. But now, the equilibrium, always delicate between these two strong, outgoing personalities, was disturbed. Sarah said something to Matthew and he pouted and pushed her.

While this was going on, unnoticed by the two adults, across the pavement, standing lopsidedly and gazing intently at both children and shop window, was a stockily built man. He was dressed oddly out of harmony with the brilliant sunshine, in orange anorak, bright blue hiking trousers and boots. He carried a large frame rucksack on his back. His face, too, was at odds with the outdoor gear. Instead of weather-beaten features, the puffy flesh of his cheeks and jowls was waxy and pallid, as though he'd been fed on some unsavoury fatty substances and had spent a long period away from daylight.

There was a moment when Matthew, sensing a sinister presence, stopped arguing and looked across the pavement. Afterwards, the eyes of the stranger, the silence which surrounded him and the chill of being near him, were what the little boy remembered.

The altercation between the children quickly became more public as the volume increased. The last sentence reached Laura's ears with the clarity of children's voices floating over a hundred adult conversations which also must have been within earshot.

'Shut up, Sarah, or I'll call Mummy.'

Laura made a sudden decision.

'I'll tell you about our last trip to Africa,' she said, 'but not when I'm shopping with these two.'

She pushed back her chair and made for the children, just arriving in time to prevent a full-scale eruption.

'Now, you two.'

'Mummy, who was that man?' asked Matthew.

'Which man, darling? I can't see any man.'

'Over there. He was staring at us.'

'What's the matter?' Laura asked Helen.

'He had a horrid face.'

'What does that mean?' Laura was getting no answers, which wasn't unusual, given the leapfrog imaginations of her two little ones.

'He walked funny.'

'The kids are on about a man watching them.'

Helen's mind wasn't on what was happening. 'When?'

'Just now.'

'I didn't see any man.'

'They see too much on their cousins' computer games. All those surreal situations with horribly realistic videos embedded in them.'

'He was dizzy.'

'Drunk, silly. Like Auntie Vera.'

'He smelt,' said Matthew.

'It's rude to say that,' said Sarah.

'He smelt of dog-meat.'

Laura was embarrassed by the children's loud voices. This is why I never get the chance to have a proper conversation with my friends, she thought. She was suddenly angry. It was doubly frustrating though, because Tom had sworn her to secrecy about the uncertainty hanging over the future of the Centre. She absolutely hated being a party to secrets at work and objected strenuously: 'How do you expect me to act naturally with the partners of your colleagues when you're constantly passing me these little time-bombs of confidential information? "Don't tell so-and-so, but … Don't say anything to anybody, but …" She felt inhibited from talking about her relationship with Tom, particularly on this day when Helen was likely to be vulnerable.

Suddenly Laura was feeling physically sickened by the whole situation. She couldn't escape from it quickly enough. She went back to the table, pulled out her purse from her handbag, extracted a five pound note and shoved it into Helen's hand.

'Pay for the drinks with this, there's a love. Come on, kids, time to go.'

Sometimes Laura hated Hull; the appalling deprivation, the down-trodden people wandering through the streets. She was trying to shelve this and reassure herself about the man.

'Probably a squaddy. Gulf war syndrome, makes them go dizzy.'

'That was years ago. Anyway, I thought they'd found no evidence that GWS exists.'

'Whatever you call it, as my doctor says, there's a lot of them about. Plenty of them still can't find jobs. Anyway –' Laura gathered up the children, who'd sensed the end of the game. She was showing signs of agitation. She leaned forward and kissed Helen on the cheek. 'See you later. Sorry about the –' She was already moving away and mouthed the word 'kids' and threw her hands up in a gesture of hopelessness.

'Don't worry,' Helen mimed. Then she waved to the kids and out loud called 'Byee.'

*  *  *

Tom was shaking his head as he walked out of the courtroom into the warm summer's day:

'It's all wrong,' he muttered, 'all so terribly wrong.'

Despite his general feeling of dissatisfaction, he struggled to put his finger on any specific failing in the verdict on the gruesome account of Detlev Brandt's last day on earth. It was incomprehensible that Detlev should have killed himself.

'Watch out!'

The warning came from an old man pushing a bicycle across his path. Before Tom could stop himself, he'd cannoned into the machine. The man lost his grip and it fell over. Vegetables piled loosely in the basket on the handle bars spilled all over the pavement. Tom bent and scrabbled frantically to recover onions, potatoes and carrots before they rolled onto the road, or other pedestrians came along. He pulled the cycle upright and piled the rescued items back in the basket. The man went on his way to the mantra of Tom's profuse apologies.

Get a grip, Tom chided himself as he took a deep breath before walking off. You're becoming neurotic over a tragedy beyond anyone's control.

Chapter 3

'Damn, damn, damn,' said Tom to himself. His conversation with Roger Hedley, professor of legal studies, grew out of Roger's concern for him. He sat in the senior common room with a coffee, well before nine on the morning after the inquest.

'What are you doing in so early?' asked Roger. He reminded Tom of a used-car salesman, short, rotund, dapper, a few straggling silver hairs slicked across his scalp.

'I could ask you the same thing.'

'Touché. A hundred examination scripts to moderate in my role as external examiner. What about you? A bit tetchy for the time of day. Come on, Tommy, what's bugging you?'

Tom could take even this hated corruption of his name from Roger, his long-standing colleague. They were contemporaries, having been in the University so long, side by side in dissimilar, yet parallel situations. He gave Roger the gist of the previous day's events.

'Why didn't you set to at the time, old chap, and tell the police what you thought?' asked Roger.

'I didn't think it was significant at the time.'

'That's what our students say.'

Tom was so preoccupied that he missed the force of this remark.

'I'm kicking myself. It was only today I realised the limited scope of the coroner's court proceedings.'

'Most people never realise it, because they never have reason to come into contact with an inquest.'

'Even then, I had no inkling he would return an open verdict.'

'Things have changed since the old days.'

'How do you mean?'

'There's a lot at stake for families. Stigma and that sort of thing, to say nothing of the insurance. There's every incentive for the relatives to challenge what they view as an unjustified verdict of suicide. The coroner can't bung in a verdict of suicide without cast-iron evidence.'

'People aren't meant to benefit financially as a result of an inquest verdict.'

'They aren't. But you can't stop insurance companies including certain conditions in their rules. Many life policies exclude payment in the event of a person taking their own life.'

'I wasn't thinking so much of suicide as the other extreme of –'

'You think he was murdered?'

'I believe he was.'

'Good God. Why didn't this come out in the inquest? You made a statement.'

'That was months ago.'

'You've changed your mind?'

'Not exactly. I've reconsidered and am prepared now to examine the possibility that Detlev was killed.'

'You're prepared to examine the possibility. Sounds a bit wishy washy and typically academic to me, if you don't mind me saying so. A minute ago you said he definitely was killed.'

'Correction. I think he may have been murdered.'

'Have you any evidence for this remarkable assertion?'

'I could have, eventually.'

'In my world, Tommy, could have is never. It's nearly a year on. In my line, we say every year later is evidence lost. My advice is, if you don't know, keep your trap shut and stay out of it. Nothing you do will bring him back. It's over. Forget it.'

Roger was right about the difficulties of evidence, but wrong to say it was over. It had hardly begun.

*  *  *

It was mid-morning. After an early start, Tom already had been at work for almost five hours, when the phone rang.

'Tom Fortius.'

'Hi Tom, Robin here. Are you busy?'

'No more than usual.'

'Does that mean you haven't a few minutes to spare?'

'Quite the reverse. I could do with a break from this bloody job. I was about to brew up.'

'Beaten you to it. Come to my office. It'll give me the chance to run some ideas past you.'

*  *  *

Tom found Robin blithely unaffected by the chaos of boxes and files around him in his office, spilling into the departmental office. In all their years as neighbours, he had never known it to be much different. If their research interests had coincided, they would have gone to war, for they were almost incompatible. When Robin had particular concerns, they merged into the blur of items they discussed. Then came the perennial issue whenever a member of departmental staff went away on fieldwork leaving colleagues behind working in related fields.

'It would help to know what we might look out for, on your behalf,' said Robin.

Tom's long, tried and tested relationship with Robin enabled him to set aside the traditional hesitance of the academic about sharing his newest research preoccupations with another person.

'Let's think,' he said. 'As you might expect, it has to be the impact of various insect migrations on human settlement and agriculture in particular, and also I guess we'll find time for patterns of predation and communication. Probably most of all among the driver ants of course. We're building up quite a body of experience with them, and an ever longer list of questions. I'll make some notes on these. When are you and Helen off?'