How the Dead Live (Factory 3) (19 page)

‘There are other ways of dying than being killed by a bullet, you know,’ she said after reading it, ‘just as risky. An idea can be a firing squad, a whole army – the continuing terror of loneliness can be its own trench, the long necessity of thought itself can rot you, leading you to the conclusion that the conditions of existence itself are intolerable: flesh shrinks, blood pales, bone fritters. Fear can kill you,’ she said, ‘and it makes it all the worse if you can think. I understand that now too late – intelligence is an introduction to fear, it’s no defence. Fear can really kill you,’ she said, her hand in mine.

And I think fear did kill her.

Sometimes I wish my mind would go away and leave me in peace; I would give all that I understand and feel and know, my very existence, to get out of my situation. I would grovel for the superb gift of stupidity, to be able to smile at my own death without knowing what it was, like the sheep did that I saw killed with my father when I was small – I don’t know what I would pay not to see through what I see, feel through what I feel, sense through what I sense, know through what I know, finding only the rottenness of others. All our agony is a short wonder to be forgotten like a day’s rain, as when the lights go down after a play and it begins to snow outside the theatre. But in my role how can I ever say what I intend – for language, like life itself, has become irretrievable, hobbling after what’s left of nature.

Few people have time to age in the face of beauty and terror, and I have been trying to do both for too long.

Do you see now why I detest the Charlie Bowmans, the bullies of this earth?

*

A child, a little girl, came up to me one night at Waterloo Station and begged me for a pound. She was so small, dirty and cold; the last dark daring was in her eyes that faced me like a gambler’s one card. She had single roses in her hand wrapped in plastic and I said, thinking of my own daughter: ‘How old are you, my darling?’ and she said: ‘I’m ten.’ Then I looked at her and saw at once that she
had been sent out into existence far too soon and would go to the dark; poverty would push and pull her to the slaughterhouse without her ever having known the air of love, as you manage cattle. But she was brave and human. In the rush-hour crowd around us I gave her ten pounds, all I happened to have, and she dashed away skipping, while I turned away to my train, holding her rose. When I was alone in the compartment I read the message printed round the frozen flower:
the pleasure of giving
.

I took both rose and paper back to Earlsfield with me and have them still among my few souvenirs, both of them wrinkled and dead now. Yet I keep them carefully in a vase on my mantelpiece; there’s a flower that will never die for me.

I was in difficulty for a while as a child myself for some time after the war and went through trouble in my head; I caught it from my father’s nightmares.

Pity, terror and grief.

The blanks on Baddeley, everything I needed to know, arrived by police courier at twenty to four in the morning. The phone rang, and I struggled out of a bad sleep. The clerk said: ‘There’s gear come for you,’ but I was already getting my trousers on.

The courier handed me a fat envelope, said sign the book, Sergeant, looked at his watch and was gone.

The night clerk had a bad cold. ‘You people never stop,’ he moaned, bubbling through his left nostril. He wiped it on the sleeve of his woolly. ‘It’s a strain I can tell you, my job is.’

‘It’s a doddle compared to the strain of what I do,’ I said, but he had picked up his porn again.

‘This is really hard stuff, this is,’ he murmured from behind it, ‘like lurid, yes, very fruity.’

I kicked his desk so hard that he dropped the book. ‘I hate you,’ I said.

‘It’s the time of day,’ he said philosophically, picking up his book again and whispering his fingers through the pages, ‘when emotion gets on top of you.’

‘I don’t hate you so much after that,’ I said, ‘it’s true. Have you logged any calls?’

‘I’m an unmarried man,’ he said, ‘and likely to remain one on my wages, that’s why I like reading
Dare
. It’s a sort of vicarious relationship I have with women through the snaps and the print, you know.’

‘About calls?’

He said: ‘Yes, now I think about it, someone did come round looking for you.’

‘What was his name?’

‘He didn’t leave one.’

‘Did you ask him?’

‘I didn’t bother.’

‘Did he tell you his name?’

‘He may have, I wasn’t listening. He left a card, but I’m afraid the cleaners threw it away, they’re quite ignorant.’

‘I’ll bet they’re brighter than you are,’ I said. ‘Now pull your finger out of your fundament with a loud pop and try to describe him.’

‘Couldn’t,’ he said, ‘I didn’t look at him, I was busy reading. Anyway, fewer questions you ask, fewer you have to answer.’

‘It’s just the reverse in my job,’ I said.

‘That must be tough,’ he said, turning a page, ‘hey, look at this one.’

‘You’re great fun to be with,’ I said. I ripped the book out of his hand, tore it in two and threw the pieces on the floor. ‘But try and be useful, will you?’

‘Oh, God, now look what you’ve gone and done,’ he groaned, ‘it belongs to a mate of mine and I’d only got a bit of the way through it, there was masses more. That’ll cost you a tenner.’

‘It’ll cost you a tenner,’ I said. ‘You’re the taxpayer.’

‘I don’t believe in taxes,’ he said, ‘I’m a sociologist and I think taxes are robbery.’

‘In my job,’ I said, ‘I reckon robbers are robbery and if it weren’t for taxes I couldn’t do my job.’

‘Good,’ he said, ‘I can’t knock that, I cannot stand the police myself.’

‘Say that again when you’ve had your throat cut,’ I said.

I went upstairs, opened the packet and started reading. On top was a note from Harrison which read: ‘This was what I got by checking on Marianne Mardy with the Aliens Registration Office. Maiden name Vayssiere. Born Lyon, France, April 4th 1941. Married William Mardy October 14th 1963 at Russell Square Registry Office, London WC. Enclosed is a photograph of that date from the
Evening Standard
. Her father, now deceased, was Jean-Luc Vayssiere, area director of the Credit Lyonnais. Had
money, property in France. Daughter Marianne sole issue of marriage, sole heir. Mrs Mardy also, before marriage, worked for Credit Lyonnais and was posted to their London, City branch and met Mardy socially. Hope some of this will be helpful, Barry.’

I spent some time looking at this other photograph of Marianne Mardy. With her was a man, holding her hand. It was William Mardy, but I barely recognized him. Spruce, elegant and alert, he was gazing down at his wife. She was smiling up at him; it certainly looked as if they had been in love.

I got out everything else in the envelope and spread it out on the bed. There were twenty-two sheets of photocopied cheques, all Walter Baddeley’s and Wildways’ major transactions over the past year. Kedward’s were there too. Kedward received a cheque from Wildways on the tenth of each month, not that I had doubted it. The sum, two hundred and fifty pounds, never varied.

I also very soon singled out the cheques drawn on a company called Clearpath in favour of Wildways and signed William Mardy. They were all dated the first of the month to start with, but latterly the dates had become irregular. The first ten were each for a thousand pounds, the last five for five thousand apiece.

I got the area telephone book and looked up Clearpath. I didn’t seriously expect to find a listing for it – nor did I. Nor did I care much, because I could get such information as I needed about the cheques just by leaning on Mardy’s bank manager. It was a Thornhill bank, and if I was lucky I might get hold of a manager that had never been properly leaned on before.

Once I had got what picture I could from the cheques I cleared them away and went to bed, trying to make sleep come for a few hours. It was hard. Facts, theories, chased themselves in my mind; my brain wouldn’t give up the hunt.

I had to get into a position where I could give Baddeley and the Kedwards a hammering and, what with one thing and another, I was getting on. But Baddeley himself remained. I could get people down to go over his books with a comb so fine that it would clean a louse out from between two hairs. But that was just
for formal proof; I had to break him first. Mardy would have to be questioned over his payments to Baddeley too. But Baddeley, I had to get him down on his knees.

I fell into a feverish state that passed for sleep at times. In it I dreamed that I had lost my suitcase on a train. A shrouded woman was sitting opposite me in the same compartment and the train, unlit, halted at a big country junction. The woman, though we hadn’t exchanged a word, was important to me. Next, both woman and suitcase disappeared. I knew I had to find both immediately and searched the train, which was packed, without success. Finally I got off it to look on the platform; it was blinding down with rain. Thousands of people were hurrying about round me, jostling each other. When I found no sign either of the woman or my case I turned to get back on the train again, only to find that it had left; now I was alone under the glaring lamps, the wet rails.

I woke unrested and soaked with sweat.

Death is its own best friend, and our dreams know it.

Cryer rang at half past eight in the morning. I said: ‘Were you round here last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you leave your name?’

‘The man on the desk couldn’t be bothered to take it; I nearly stuffed my card down his throat. And where were you?’

‘Out looking for villains.’

‘Find any?’

‘A few.’

‘You always find a few. Any story yet?’

‘It’s shaping.’

‘Anything I can print now?’

‘No. Maybe tomorrow. I told you. And perhaps there’ll be parts that I’ll never let you print.’

‘Ah, Christ,’ he said, ‘those’ll be the parts I want to print, I don’t mind betting.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what have you been doing?’

‘I’ve been to the pub. A pub run by an army-type gent called Goodinge, where I found a man called Baddeley.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I said, ‘I told you not to go rummaging about.’

‘It was almost an accident.’

‘I know your kind of accidents,’ I said. ‘They’re the kind where you just happen to drop on the man you want to see. All right, tell me about it.’

‘I found him very interesting.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, looking at the time. ‘Come and have breakfast with me; the kitchen’s not shut yet.’

When we met downstairs the clerk said: ‘If it was breakfast you
was wanting you’re too late, the kitchen’s shut.’

‘Oh, come on,’ I said, ‘don’t be absurd, it’s only twenty-five to nine. You could make an exception.’

‘I could,’ said the clerk, ‘but I’m not going to. If I started with you folk I’d have people wanting breakfast at any old time – why, we’d be serving breakfast all day.’

‘All part of the profit principle, I should have thought,’ said Cryer.

‘I’m not paid to think,’ said the clerk. ‘That comes extra and nobody seems to want it, so I just carry out hotel policy without doing any thinking, see?’

‘Give it up, Tom,’ I said, ‘it’s hopeless. There’s a transport café just down the road anyway.’

‘Yes, that’s where I send ‘em,’ nodded the clerk. ‘We get any amount of complaints about breakfast.’

‘Well, fancy that,’ I said.

The windows of the transport café, the OK Joe, were steamed up from the frost outside; inside it was filled with the roar of men, the crash of plates, the smell of tobacco and food. We ordered double egg, sausage, tomatoes and chips with tea, bread and marge. We had to shout to make ourselves heard above the truck-drivers. (‘How are you, Jack my old son? You off to Wales again?’ ‘Yeah, I never seem to get anything but Swansea.’)

I said to Cryer: ‘Well, what about Baddeley, then?’

‘The news editor wasn’t best pleased when I rang him and told him where I was – said I was wasting my time.’

‘He didn’t think there was a story in it?’

‘You know what they’re like,’ he said as our meal arrived. ‘He’d got me lined up to cover a jewel robbery at some old titled bat’s in Knightsbridge.’

‘You might be a news editor yourself some day,’ I said, ‘and I can just imagine a son of yours saying to a mate, Christ, Dad doesn’t half dig up the rubbish. And so?’

‘I told him I was going to stay down here a while longer,’ said Cryer. ‘Whatever the editor thinks, I believe there’s a story in this. I know the sort of things you uncover. I know you.’

‘I’ll say this,’ I said. ‘Some people around here are going to get the loud pedal on this music, some people are going to get the soft pedal. You can be the loud pedal if you want.’

‘Baddeley?’

‘Most certainly,’ I said, ‘because I can make it stick.’

‘What’ll the charge be?’

‘Heavy,’ I said. ‘Blackmail. Accessory to a murder, manslaughter at any rate, that’ll depend on the DPP. Eat up.’ I had a sudden thought and said: ‘Have you been round to see Baddeley at his home by any chance?’

‘Yes,’ said Cryer, ‘I have as a matter of fact.’

‘You’ve got a fucking nerve,’ I said, ‘you really have. Christ, you move faster than I do.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I haven’t let you down.’ He added: ‘Walter certainly makes a lot of money, you should see the place.’

‘I know he makes money,’ I said. ‘Did he give you any idea how?’

‘I’ll tell you how I played it,’ said Cryer. ‘I played it direct. I went up to the house bold as a whore, rang the bell and said Press.’

‘Sounds promising – what’s the point my doing my nut with you now you’ve gone and done it? And how did that approach go down?’

‘Not bad to start with. Press – he’s a vain old bastard.’

‘Let’s have the background. Rolls in the garage? I’ve heard he’s got one.’

‘No, it was out on the drive being washed – custom-built, the kind the Americans buy. House worth two hundred long ones and horrible with it.’