Hidden Man (12 page)

The policewoman asked again if she could come in and they went inside to the kitchen. She was wearing a fluorescent waterproof jacket that rustled as she sat down. Away from the flared light of the doorstep her face looked darker, prettier, but no less disconcerted. Ben saw that she was younger than he was by at least four years and that whatever it was she had been asked to tell him, she had never had to do it before.

‘You said that you couldn’t find Mark.’

‘That’s right.’ Her voice was very quiet and she could barely lookat him.

Ben began to ask another question, as if that would hold off the bad news, but she interrupted him.

‘There’s no easy way for me to tell you this, so I’m just going to come out and say it…’

‘Yes…’

‘I’m afraid it’s some news about your father, Benjamin.’ When she used his first name he felt that he was going to be sick. ‘He’s been involved
in an incident. He was found dead at his flat two hours ago.’

The news was simply a freak, a sick joke. Ben took several seconds to clear his head of what seemed like a wall of noise.

‘My father? But I had dinner with him tonight.’

For a moment the policewoman did not respond, but in time she said simply, ‘I am so sorry.’

Six months before, three weeks even, she could have walked in here and given him this news and his reaction would have been quite different. Not dismissive exactly, not unfeeling, but certainly less traumatized. Anything she might have told Ben would have been prior to his new experience: the reunion, the first failed steps towards reconciliation. But he was now locked into a new set of feelings towards his father, forever altered by the events of just a few hours before.

‘Are you sure about this?’ he said, and felt foolish for asking. ‘I just don’t understand. I had dinner with him tonight for the first time in twenty-five years. At the Savoy.
Tonight
.’

‘You hadn’t seen your father for that long?’

‘For the first time, yes. This is just ridiculous…’

‘I can understand how difficult it must be for you…’

‘You said you couldn’t find Mark? I spoke to him after dinner on the phone. He’s in Moscow. What happened? You said there was an “incident”. What does that mean?’

They were the first questions that had come into his mind, panicked sentences emerging from an absolute confusion. Ben had a sense that he had been robbed at a critical moment. When his mother was dying, in his early twenties, his whole life had seemed scarred by absurd bad luck; that feeling was suddenly apparent all over again.

‘We’re not very sure at this juncture, Benjamin.’ She kept using his first name. Was that what they were trained to do? ‘There appears to have been an intruder at your father’s flat.’

‘He was killed?’

The policewoman brought the sleeve of the waterproof jacket close to her face. That sound again. The whistle of the material. Then she was nodding slowly, eyes shuttling from one corner of the room to the other.

‘I have to tell you that he was shot.’

Ben appeared to freeze. The policewoman could think of nothing to say. He merely repeated the word ‘Shot?’ as his mouth slackened with dismay.

‘What I can do is arrange to come and pick you up in the morning and we can…’

But Ben was not hearing her. He had some basic sense of how hard it must have been to come to his house, to break news of this kind, a thing she would have to live with for the rest of her career. But he was now completely alone with his brother, orphaned, and that sudden realization consumed him.

‘… One of the things we do is to appoint a Family
Liaison Officer who can provide a designated point of contact with -‘

Ben raised his hand. He was shaking his head. He looked across the table. The policewoman’s lips were pushed out and creased and she was speaking as if from a handbook. Yet her sympathetic expression was more than mere professional courtesy: she seemed genuinely upset.

‘Would you like someone to stay with you?’ she asked.

‘I have my wife upstairs,’ Ben said, and for the first time felt that he was on the verge of tears.

‘I see.’

She hesitated. There was something else she was obliged to add.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘I’m afraid we will need somebody to identify the body. As soon as possible. In your brother’s absence, Benjamin, it’s my understanding that you would be the next of kin. Do you think…?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to come now?’

Again she paused. Edging round his confusion.

‘It would probably be better if you stayed away from the scene for the time being…’

‘I don’t even know where he lives.’

She looked astonished by this.

‘Mark knows. I hadn’t met my father until…’

‘Yes.’ The policewoman’s voice was quiet. She told him that he had lived near Paddington Station and wrote down the address.

‘So why don’t you try to get some sleep?’ she suggested. ‘Or perhaps let your wife know.’

‘Yes.’

She began to stand up. He could sense her relief at leaving.

‘I think it’s best that I go,’ she said. ‘Will you be all right?’

And Ben nodded.

‘We can send a car for both of you in the morning.’

‘That sounds fine.’ His mind was adrift with consequence. He was thinking about breaking the news to Mark, to Alice, and heard the policewoman say ‘Sorry’ as she walked down the steps. When she was no longer visible on the road he closed the front door and then climbed the stairs.

Their bedroom was stuffy, a smell of stale air and cigarette smoke woven into fabrics. He picked up the hot, sweet drift of Alice asleep, a curious blend of perfumes and sweat. Ben crossed the room and opened a window on to the street. Birdsong. Behind him, he heard Alice moan, an impatient sound. She turned over on to her side, exhaling heavily, and he felt reprimanded even from the depths of her sleep. He had been on the point of shaking her awake but something about her impatience made him hesitate. Why do it? Instinctively he did not want Alice to have any part in this. If he woke her, she would complain; as he told her, she would become confused. To involve her now would only complicate matters. He would have to take her feelings into account and, for
once, he wanted to act without interference. Ben felt that she might even appropriate the grief for herself, that his father’s murder might become something that he would have to comfort
her
over, rather than the other way round. She had a habit of doing that, of switching things around, of giving them a cynical emphasis. It was a part of her selfishness.

The room was much cooler now, fresh air from the open window. Ben went back out on to the landing, closed the door, and felt for the car key in his pocket.

18

He should not have driven.

At the Savoy Ben had drunk the better part of a bottle of wine and a double vodka and tonic. Back home, he had finished off a can of lager and then poured himself a whisky when he couldn’t get to sleep. There had been wine with Alice at eleven and that shot of vodka at eight. As he turned the key in the ignition, he wondered if the police would let him off if they stopped him on the way to Paddington.

The journey touched on the absurd: four times he took wrong turnings, four times he had to pull over and consult an
A to Z
. Slush fizzed under the tyres of his car. Ben became lost in one-way systems, pulled down side streets which led him further and further from the flat. With the heating on and the chill air outside, the interior of the car quickly fogged up and he was constantly having to wipe the windscreen with the sleeve of his coat. At times he had to crouch close to the wheel and try to peer through the steamed-up glass; then his eyes would be dazzled by lights catching on the slick surface of the road and he feared losing control altogether. As his mind became numbed by the thick, drumming heat in the car, only the sure conviction that he wanted to witness the crime scene
for himself, to get as close to his father as he could, drove Ben on.

He parked just after five thirty and had to walk two blocks towards the building where Keen had lived. An entire stretch of street had been cordoned off by the police with lengths of blue and white tape slung across the road. Three men wearing boiler suits and heavy overshoes were coming out of the entrance to the apartment building. Ben thought that he heard one of them laugh. A single light flashed blue in the road, strobing against London brick.

It was as if he was being controlled by forces outside of himself, a bank of instincts making decisions on his behalf. Ben ducked under the police tape and made his way towards a uniformed officer standing near the entrance. The presence of a stranger had unsettled them: Ben could hear the fractious static of voices breaking up on a radio concealed somewhere on the policeman’s uniform.

‘I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go into the building.’

He put a hand on Ben’s shoulder and it felt heavy, capable. The two men looked at one another.

‘I’m Benjamin Keen,’ Ben said. ‘I was his son.’

The policeman withdrew his arm like a static shock and took a step back towards the door.

‘The son,’ he replied, as if in the presence of something cursed. ‘I understood that one of my colleagues visited you at your house this evening.’

‘That’s right.’

‘We didn’t anticipate that you would come here.’

The policeman - Ben saw that his name was Marchant - stared across the street as if in need of assistance. Without looking directly at Ben he added, ‘Can I just say, sir, on behalf of all of us how very sorry I am…’

‘That’s kind. Thank you. Look…’ Ben’s voice was impatient as he asked: ‘Is there any way that I could just go up? I need to see my father. I need to find out what happened.’

‘I’m sorry, but we can’t allow ordinary members of the public…’ Marchant checked himself ‘… even close relatives such as yourself, access to the scene until the forensic examination has been completed. I’m sure you understand.’

A woman wearing a white boiler suit, holding a flash-mounted Nikon camera and a black Hi-8 video, came out of the building and walked across the street. Immediately behind her Ben noticed a man with a moustache dressed in civilian clothing, his dark hair cut short and neat to the scalp.

Stephen Taploe looked to his left and found himself staring directly into the eyes of Benjamin Keen. Already drained by shock, by the shame of losing a joe, he flinched and turned away.

‘That guy,’ Ben said. ‘He’s not part of the forensics. He’s wearing ordinary plain clothes. How come he’s allowed in?’

‘That’s one of our investigating officers,’ the policeman lied. He had first set eyes on Taploe just thirty minutes before, nodding him through under orders.

Uppity, dismissive, shrewd. Your classic grass skirt.

‘Why all the police?’ Ben was asking. ‘How come there are so many people?’

It was a question to which Marchant himself would have liked an answer. When the call had gone out about Christopher Keen, it seemed as if half of London had climbed out of bed.

‘Why don’t I take you over to our vehicle?’ he suggested, trying to deflect Ben’s question. ‘We can sit down there and I can introduce you to some of my colleagues.’

Ben nodded, as if gradually acknowledging the hopelessness of his situation. He spent the next thirty minutes inside a white police Transit van, sipping heavily sugared tea from a polystyrene cup. An older officer, rank of DCI, explained how a neighbour coming back from a party had noticed that his father’s door had been left ajar. He had discovered the body and immediately telephoned the police. No, they had no idea of a suspect: they were still at a very early stage in their enquiries. Yes, they would keep him apprised of any developments. Ben would be asked to identify the body in a few hours’ time and given the chance to answer any questions that might help to piece together his father’s last movements.

‘And may I add my sincere condolences, Benjamin,’ the DCI said. ‘This must be a very difficult time for you. Why don’t I have one of my colleagues take you home so you can have a shower or something before we take you up to the station?’

Almost as if somebody had been listening from outside, the back of the van opened up and Ben was introduced to a black policewoman whose thick leather gloves felt damp as he shook her hand.

‘Will you escort Mr Keen backto his house, Kathy?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘We’ll arrange for a car to come and pick you up at around ten.’

‘Fine,’ Ben said, now exhausted to the point of collapse. He wondered when he would ever sleep again. ‘Thanks for the tea,’ he said, and stepped down on to the road.

The street was now a trench of stunned activity. Ben experienced a strange kind of amazement that a new day was beginning, the city oblivious to his loss. Residents were emerging from nearby buildings, asking questions of uniformed officials, walking backwards as they stared up at the windows of the fourth floor, like boxers on the ropes. Marchant was still standing on the door, taking the names of everybody who entered or came out of the building.

Standing fifty metres away, beside a battered telephone box, Taploe watched Ben emerge from the van looking lost and broken. The policewoman ushered him down the street, under the taped cordon and, finally, to a car parked two blocks away that was just a shadow in the distance. Minutes later, Keen’s body was brought downstairs on a stretcher and placed in the back of an ambulance which drove slowly away in the direction of Edgware Road. Taploe watched
this, listening to the appalled murmurings of the crowd, and wondered if he was witnessing the final act in his long and as yet undistinguished career.

Nevertheless, he sensed the remote possibility of second chance.
Clear the trail
, he told himself.
Distance yourself from the victim
. And from his coat pocket, Taploe extracted the Post-it note he had removed from the door frame. Tearing it into six separate pieces, he dropped the shreds into a storm drain and went in search of a cab.

19

When they had buried Carolyn, seven years before, Ben and Mark had floated through the funeral in a trance of grief. Mourners had drifted in and out of focus, approaching them tentatively, offering their whispered condolences. Now and again one of his mother’s friends would take Ben to one side, her eyes swelled and puffy with tears, and attempt to make sense of what had happened. These conversations were all eerily similar: the friend would do most of the talking, invariably relating an anecdote which conveyed Carolyn in a good light, touching on her bravery throughout the long illness, her sense of humour, or the loyalty she showed to close friends. Ben was not cynical about this; he realized that it was a necessary and inevitable part of what the second-rate shrinkhe had briefly visited described as ‘the grieving process’. But on each occasion he had the distinct impression that he was being taken aside not to be consoled but rather, by his sheer presence, to offer consolation to his mother’s friends. The entire afternoon was like a dumb show of the English stiff upper lip: Ben said and did all the right things, kept his emotions in checkfor the good of the crowd, and felt a strong determination not to let anyone down.