The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (13 page)

‘You can’t hesitate,’ he said, bending lower, proudly repeating to Michael what he’d learned from the master. ‘You move quickly. He has to go down … you do the job.’

Michael stared at the threadbare carpet, appalled at Liam’s metamorphosis. The weave had once been soaked in colours. Where had they gone?

‘There’s no other way,’ growled Liam, still kneeling, holding the gun by the barrel, offering the grip to Michael, his features blank and grey like the carpet. ‘All the thinking’s been done, hasn’t it? If you want peace, you’ll have to pull the trigger.’

In a kind of daze, Michael took the gun and asked for the silencer. Eyes narrowed as if he’d walked into a snowstorm, he told Liam there’d be no assassination and that they’d meet on Saturday of next week, when he’d return the weapon, modified with a tracking device in the handle. The rifles? Too big to hide. For the time being they would have to stay under Liam’s mother’s bed. His standing as an agent would be under review, along with the level of pay.

On reaching Thiepval, Michael sat down at his desk to fill in the CF but found himself staring at the page. His hand reached into his pocket and he took out the scrawled directions to a cottage in the Blue Stack Mountains. He watched his hand put it away again. He watched the other hand put the unmarked CF back in a drawer. All the while Liam’s Browning was lodged at the base of his back, the silencer standing like a stick of Brighton rock in the overcoat pocket that hung on the door.

During the night Michael tossed and turned. At one point he sat bolt upright … he could have sworn he’d heard a voice. But there was no other sound save the distant rev of a Saracen and the soft tick of his bedside clock. Instantly, as if carrying on where he’d left off, he thought of Colonel Stauffenberg, but it was Nigel’s words – the reference to Hippocrates – that came sharply to mind:

Take the risk. Make the difficult decision.

And then, mysteriously, he slept as if drugged.

By morning, when he woke, Michael wasn’t sure he knew himself. He was strangely cold, deep in his bones. The barracks – the whole of Northern Ireland – seemed a little far off; not quite within arm’s reach. Somehow he’d made a decision without articulating its content or implications. While shaving, he asked himself what lay at the forefront of his mind. It wasn’t the Troubles and the need for a solution, and it wasn’t the death of Eugene or his attempt to give it some clout. No, it was Liam Corcoran, spotty and callow. Michael wanted to change the direction of Irish history, so that people like Liam wouldn’t be needed to pry on rebels, hide their guns and take pocket money from the ancient invader. Michael dried his face, unable to see any further than the actions necessary to fulfil his objective. After dressing in casuals, he set about his duty.

First, he called Emma, saying he wouldn’t be coming home. Hush-hush. Then he put the Browning and silencer into his Billingham bag and took a train to Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, where he bought a jalopy for 450 punts, cash in hand, and left the gun in the boot. The next day, using his British passport, he flew from Shannon airport to Edinburgh, spent three nights in a hotel rehearsing his moves, and then came back again, re-entering the country on his Canadian passport. The whole back and forth was an expensive palaver. He wasn’t covering his tracks, as such, because a careful look at the plane manifests would reveal his name. No, the shift in location and identity was an attempt to separate himself from what he was about to do: to make the difficult decision, he would go away as a peacemaker and come back as a killer. The ruse helped him assume the role he’d never dreamed would be the ineluctable consequence of his coming to Belfast. And so, while the British Army officer was on leave in Scotland, the Canadian assassin headed north in a rattling Fiesta.

The Water Clock struck the hour, and Michael snapped out of his remembered holiday. After a moment’s clunking, the two figures in the bath sat up, spouting water from the pipes in their mouths. On the level below, the boys’ metal trousers dropped and they started to pee, each of them missing the toilet pan. It was funny, only Michael thought he might collapse. He turned away, thinking of Eugene and Liam, a man and a boy, both of them touts. They’d both relied on Michael to take down Néall Ó Mórdha and cut short the long war.

Crossing the road, Anselm and Mitch turned as one to look at the upstairs window. A net curtain fell. The monk and the musician shared a glance, each confirming to the other his strong suspicion: Doctor Goodwin did need to take a breather, but only because he wanted to move the conversation away from the person upstairs.

‘I came back to Long Melford a few months before Jenny died,’ he said, as the Land Rover juddered into life. ‘Early retirement. Zimbers hadn’t been the easiest assignment. I wanted to write and I’d been asked to do some tutoring at Cambridge. Turn right.’

Doctor Goodwin had given no indication of where he was leading them. He restricted himself to simple directions.

‘Straight on. We bought the house with family money before I was ordained. Stayed there in the holidays. Whenever I saw Jenny, I saw Peter and he never tired of asking me, when I left, how I squared a loving God with suffering. He was absolutely sincere, but I think, deep down, I, too, scandalised him, with my myths and incantations. I was a colluder … with ignorance. Stick to the A134.’

Anselm looked over the empty fields, meditating on collusion. It was a disagreeable word.
The Force Research Unit. Shoot-to-kill. Stray dogs.

‘I would have liked to discuss
faith
with him,’ continued Doctor Goodwin. ‘Not its content, but its function as a kind of daring commitment to what we don’t fully understand, but I fear the very sight of me provoked him … to assert what he believed was true, as a man of reason and science. He didn’t seem to appreciate that so much of science rests upon a faith in evolving explanations, a readiness to question all our certainties. The recognition of doubt as shared ground in the search for truth … well, it could have brought about a very
interesting
discussion, for both of us. As it is, he preferred to set up things I didn’t believe and then knock them down.’

You provoked your brother, too,
thought Anselm.
Michael had to turn away, even after Jenny’s fall from grace. Why? Because he didn’t like Evensong any more? Or was it guilt, roused by what you represent?

‘Helen can’t forgive Peter,’ acknowledged Doctor Goodwin, careful (for professional reasons) to dissociate his name from the declaration. ‘She’s tried but one can’t escape history. There’s been no gathering in of all that’s happened. So the resentment lives on. And so it should. Because it’s
honest
. It’s the necessary precursor to any profound reconciliation. And, in our case, I doubt if that day will ever come to pass. He killed her, you know. We can’t prove it, but she was murdered. He knows it and we know it. Bear to the right.’

Anselm leaned on the shuddering, grimy window, thinking of Helen. She didn’t think it was Peter at all but she’d said nothing to disabuse Nigel.
I have my own theory about Jenny’s death … but I can’t tell you in front of my husband.

‘What about Michael?’ asked Mitch, with a tap to the indicator. ‘Is he sure, too?’

‘I can’t speak for him,’ said Doctor Goodwin, perfunctorily. ‘As I told you, my work had kept us apart. After Jenny’s death he … he slipped further out of reach. I don’t know what he thinks.’

‘And Emma?’

‘She felt as I did, as Helen did … because there was only one person who wasn’t surprised by Jenny’s sudden death.’

‘Peter?’

‘Exactly. It was as though he’d known she was dead before she died.’

Anselm put the counter-argument, intrigued to know how Doctor Goodwin would reply: ‘But this is a man who’d argued for the importance of legislative safeguards. How could he come to kill a defenceless woman?’

‘Because when he found himself in a concrete situation that he didn’t like very much, his ideas gave out. High principles often collapse when they get in the way of a quiet life. And Jenny was the weight dragging him down. You’ll understand what I mean once I’ve told you her story … and this is where it begins, Polstead.’

Doctor Goodwin opened the farm-style front gate bearing a plaque that read ‘Morning Light’. He let Anselm and Mitch pass onto a gravel courtyard and then led them to an adjacent lawn and a neat arrangement of teak garden furniture. Ahead stood a thatched cottage, the clean lemon plaster pierced by white-framed windows of different sizes, randomly placed, it seemed, adding a capricious stroke to the builder’s seventeenth-century construction.

‘Jenny loved this place,’ said Doctor Goodwin, eyeing the warm, grey thatch. ‘She thought she had everything that was worthwhile and good … a home off a biscuit tin lid, a young son, a brilliant partner…’

Of course, there’d been no marriage. Church or civil. Peter – rightly – wouldn’t take vows or enter a civil contract inconsistent with his beliefs. But right from the word go, he’d protected Jenny financially, placing all the main assets in her name. House, car, even the contents of the house. That was
his
avowal of trust and commitment. His only property rights were set out in Jenny’s will.

‘Till death us do part,’ observed Mitch.

‘Absolutely.’ The doctor flicked a crisp, brown leaf off the table.

‘The career in ballet,’ invited Mitch. ‘She just let it go?’

‘Sometimes the big decisions make themselves.’ Doctor Goodwin glanced at his questioner. ‘Jenny had become a mother. Suddenly, without time to think or choose, she had this little boy in her hands. But make no mistake about this: even though she’d lived and breathed for dancing, she wanted this child and all he represented. And as the years went by, though she didn’t dance, I got the impression she was
grateful
; thankful for this very different life that had come with the birth of her son. She’d been surprised by contentment.’ Doctor Goodwin paused reflectively. ‘And, I’m sorry to say, distress.’

According to Emma – who’d told Helen – problems began to surface between Peter and Jenny within a year of Timothy’s birth. The age gap needn’t have been an issue, of course, but it was. Jenny was still very young, still growing up; whereas Peter was settled, mature, and knew his mind. There was a profound imbalance of experience. They were not equals – and couldn’t be. Before she could assert herself, Jenny had yet to catch up and become who she might be. But there was also the sheer intellectual disparity between them. Jenny wasn’t especially interested in the French Eighteenth-Century Argument. Or the English one. She listened to Peter’s valiant attempt to explain Kant’s Categorical Imperative, but had to cut him short to change Timothy’s nappy. Jenny had more important things to do. More pressing, at least.

‘So Peter found other company.’ The phrase was laden with meaning. ‘At the same time his media career was taking off and he was very much in demand, very much appreciated, and very much at home … when away from home.’

Some women – Doctor Goodwin supposed – can tolerate the affairs of their partner. They can even be an agreed course of diversion. But Jenny wasn’t like that; and parallel relationships, however fleeting, had never been canvassed as part of the balance of things. But this was the central problem: nothing had been canvassed or agreed. They’d been bound together by Timothy’s birth and were now trying to learn about each other and find an agreed way forward.

‘My view is that Peter simply lost sight of Jenny,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘He could no longer see the qualities that had once attracted him. She was no longer the thin, haunting beauty he’d met in a wine bar off Soho. He wasn’t interested in playgroup gossip and the tensions that come with relationships determined by children. He bought a flat in London because of his media commitments. Couldn’t make it home, especially if he was on
Newsnight
. In effect there was a separation, though it was never decided, never named, and was, I can assure you, the last thing Jenny wanted.’

‘And what of Timothy?’ asked Anselm.

‘Well, there’s a curious twist to the story. Because of Peter’s absence, Timothy became very close to his mother. And she to him. They were … friends. And because of the strength of this bond, I don’t think Timothy quite noticed that his father was busy elsewhere. If anything, he was proud of him … this man who was always on the radio and television with his face peering out of magazines and newspapers. The person who really lost out, of course, was Peter. He wasn’t there for Timothy in those very early years. He didn’t watch him slowly grow. He regrets that now, I suspect.’

For Michael and Emma, continued Doctor Goodwin, it was very difficult. They could only watch the years unfold. Emma was devastated. She saw Jenny lose her dancing career only to find herself alone while Peter stimulated some television producer’s assistant in White City (her phrasing). She found fault with all he did, especially his parenting after the accident, which set her apart – strangely – from Jenny. For throughout her ordeal – this sustained rejection – Jenny remained steadfast … waiting for Peter to come home.

‘And Michael?’ asked Anselm, from afar, polishing his glasses on his scapular.

‘He bottled it up. Silence was the price he paid for staying close to Jenny’s hand. He moved quietly across the room, offering fresh coffee.’

Inwardly boiling, outwardly cold, thought Anselm. Baked Alaska the wrong way round.

They ambled down a lane flanked by trees coming presently to a church of flint. Sheep were grazing in distant fields. Scattered headstones leaned in various directions as if to resist the wind. One of them was upright, still strong. Purple tulips stood in a vase beneath an inscription:

Jennifer Goodwin

1977–2008

Dance, dance wherever you may be

The doctor’s voice came very low. He was harrowed, as if he could see his god-daughter’s upturned face: ‘I was in Bristol at the time of the accident. I came to see her. And she just said, “God has left me.” She was in bed staring down at her legs. There was going to be no cure for the lame. No miracle on the Sabbath. All I could do was listen.’