The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (40 page)

‘He can’t help it,’ said the second person in the room, a somewhat frail, stooped woman in shapeless clothes whom Anselm had seen only once before, waving at Mitch through a window. ‘He had a stroke, long ago when Mitch was a boy. Never got his speech back, just a few words. He swears like a trooper and he doesn’t know he’s doing it, do you, love?’

The man shook his head, still distressed; humiliated and frustrated by his incapacity. His eyes were wide and glassy, not really comprehending.

Anselm walked over and took the man’s hand in greeting. The grip was strong – he’d been a powerful man – and grateful. ‘Say what you like, when you like and how you like. I live with people who’d just love to do what you do and can’t.’

The man was called Jack, the woman Eileen. They were Mr and Mrs Robson.

‘Mitch tells me you’re the man who defended him all those years ago,’ said Eileen after she’d come back with the fresh tea. She stood near Anselm, pouring carefully into old, chipped china. ‘That was very nice of you.’

Anselm told her not to mention it and Mitch’s father gave a wink. He looked at his son proudly and winked again.

‘We lost faith in the law, didn’t we, Jack?’ said Eileen, sitting down. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying that, Father?’

‘Absolutely not.’

A selection of sandwiches had been prepared – ham, cheese, cress, tomato. They’d been laid on plates and brought to a table in the middle of the room before the guests had arrived. All the crusts had been removed. There was a cake, too. A Battenberg. The armchairs, upholstered in white linen with a pattern of red roses, stood close to the table. Anselm reached for a ham sandwich.

‘Well, I won’t bother you with all that,’ said Eileen. ‘Best forgotten.’

Jack, however, made a wave, nodding at his wife, urging her on.

‘No, love, I should’ve put my foot in my mouth.’

Anselm urged her to speak. It sounded as if he was being polite but he meant it. He well understood the urge. People who’ve had a bad experience of the law can’t help but mention it to representatives who cross their path; even ones who’ve left the fray. He urged her on, with a wink to Jack.

Mr and Mrs Robson had been driving home after a visit to Warkworth Castle. Eileen was driving a bit too carefully. Jack was telling her to speed up, for God’s sake. Only Jack was wearing a seatbelt. A drayman coming in the opposite direction veered round a bend, crossed the road and sent the Robsons into a field of sheep. Jack banged his head, broke a leg, an ankle and an elbow. Eileen broke a lot more. The absence of the seatbelt saved her life, because the steering wheel, pushed in by the impact, shoved her into the back seat. The drayman climbed out of his cabin without a scratch. Said it had all happened so fast and he was sorry. Jack smelled that hint of beer on his breath but passed out before he could tell the ambulance man. Turned out the police didn’t breathalyse him – but Jack knew, and he’d seen the accident happen. It was an open and shut case. Then, six months later, Jack had his stroke (‘didn’t you, love?’). When he came home, he could only limp. Couldn’t read, write or talk … not easily anyway. The big question was whether the stroke was caused by that bang to the head. If it was, the damages would be huge. If it wasn’t, well, fair enough. Medical experts were called. London. Leeds. Bristol. First for the Robson side, then the drayman’s. Funnily enough, the expert for the drayman said the stroke ‘would, tragically, have happened anyway’; and the expert for Jack said it was caused by ‘trauma to the cranium’. The insurers were getting ready for a big fight over how much to pay out, because Jack would never work again and he was the breadwinner and Mitch was only a lad. Eileen couldn’t work any more because she was looking after her husband. Unfortunately, the solicitor had forgotten to take a witness statement from Jack about what he’d seen and smelled. Which was a bit of a problem because, in truth, Eileen couldn’t remember a blessed thing (‘could I, love?’). When the other side found out that memories were weak, they decided to call in a road traffic accident expert to examine the road and the vehicle damage. Same for Jack and Eileen’s side. And funnily enough, the specialists just couldn’t agree on anything.

‘The case just dragged on and on,’ said Eileen. ‘I didn’t know what was happening. I’d ring and write and no one ever got back in touch. And we were borrowing money against the house to pay the fees.’

Reading between the lines, Anselm guessed that someone in the office had been out of their depth. They’d let the case ride. It happened sometimes.

‘Cutting a long story short, we changed solicitors three times,’ said Eileen. ‘And then, just as we were coming up to trial, we heard that the medical expert for our side had gone to France the year before. He’d retired, so we had to start all over again, didn’t we, Jack, and…’

Anselm examined the frail woman. She was a fighter. All those broken bones had been put to work to get Jack his compensation. She’d done all she could, trusted and waited. The new solicitor found another doctor. In Cardiff. And – thank heaven – the expert agreed with the man who’d gone to Biarritz.

‘Well, Father, I don’t really want to talk about the trial, do I, Jack?’

Her husband made a tired wave of the hand, as if to say that was enough for everyone. He winked at Anselm and pointed at the sandwiches.

‘It was a big case, Anselm,’ said Mitch. He’d opened up a pine cupboard by the chimney breast, and taken out a bundle of papers. ‘Here are the pleadings. Take a look.’

Anselm flicked through the Statement of Claim. Jack’s Schedule of Damages claimed £263,400.38 – in effect a sum for the injury, lost wages and cost of future care. Eileen’s sought £42,326.15. The grand total came to £305,726.53. The case had dragged on for seven years. Anselm began to have a premonition of where this tale was going…

‘I was there for the trial,’ said Mitch. ‘It was unforgettable.’

The trial never got beyond the dispute between the road traffic experts. Two men who’d written their reports years earlier. It became a technical argument about skid marks, braking distances and the quality of the photographs, the judge lapsing at one point into Classical Greek when a dispute arose over some term or other that Mitch could no longer remember. Counsel for Mr and Mrs Robson had joined in the quick banter with a stab at Latin, before losing his place yet again in the bundle. In a cold, intellectually precise and devastating judgement, the judge accepted the expert evidence obtained for the defendant, though – to show his fair-mindedness – he threw a few biting remarks at the drayman, rejecting his account on matters incidental to the issues at stake.

Anselm had closed his eyes, wondering if Mitch and his family had ever realised that the question of liability (as opposed to damages) could have been sorted out years earlier while they were waiting for those first medical reports. Three firms of solicitors had let that slip.

‘I found out afterwards that our barrister was a criminal specialist,’ said Mitch. ‘He’d picked up the case the night before from some personal injury hotshot in chambers who’d been double-booked. I could tell there was something wrong with his style … he kept making points as if he were trying to win round a jury … folk like my mum and dad. Didn’t seem to realise that the judge didn’t like it … that he might want to show, if only to himself, that his mind could work independent of feeling. That justice could be cold to be right.’

Shortly they moved on to the cake and Eileen moved on to lighter matters, though only marginally so.

‘And then, to top it all, the police started going for Mitch.’ She looked over at Jack with indignation, and the old man made a fist. ‘Accused of crimes he’d never commit. We’re just grateful he came to you, Father. Glad you were out there in the courts making sure justice was done.’

And she was so thankful that Mitch had done well in life. They’d been horrified when he didn’t go to the Royal College of Music – ‘the
RCM
, Father, one of the most
famous
colleges in the
world
’ – but he’d made his way in life and got a decent, honest job. What else could his parents ask for? When you look at how some children grow to treat their own.

‘He’s looked after his mum and dad, hasn’t he, Jack?’

A wink from Jack and another nod at the cake. There was a lot left.

‘Given us what was lacking when he could’ – she leaned towards Mitch – ‘though we’ve never asked, have we, Son?’

‘No, Mum,’ replied Mitch, quietly. ‘You’ve never asked for anything. Only what you deserve. That’s right, isn’t it, Dad?’

On the walk back to the boat the monk and the former insurance manager fell into step. They’d started out one in front of the other, but now they’d moved side by side. There was a heavy sense that important things had not been said. Truth is like that. It insinuates itself into the gaps of a conversation and then inflates like an airbag after a collision. Mitch, hands in his pockets and dawdling, said:

‘They’ve never had much luxury, just the sort of life they might have had if there’d been no accident.’

So this was the mystery to Mitch Robson. He’d packed in music so he could target two insurance companies, stealing a substantial sum from each. But he’d taken less than the sum sought from the court so that no one could ever make the evidential link between his theft and his parents’ loss. Not even Anselm.

‘There are other ways of handling damage claims after a car accident,’ said Mitch, as if Anselm might not know. ‘It’s called no-fault compensation. That’s what they do in New Zealand. The insurers just pay out.’

This was the rationale, then: Mitch had made an extreme attack upon a flawed legal system that didn’t match the situation on the ground. And this was where Anselm’s scheme for atonement had ground to an ambiguous, inconclusive halt. The irony was acute: he’d set out intending to reveal the truth at any cost, only to uncover a murder that would remain secret, and concealing in the process a number of other grave offences. And, to cap it all – and not surprisingly – he’d failed to convince Mitch that his principled approach to theft ought to be exposed. Life, morality and the law had joined forces to rob him of the restitution he’d hoped to make. There was to be no new beginning as a servant of justice, free from the complications that had dogged his days at the Bar. But the argument couldn’t end at this unhappy juncture. There was a great difference between leaving a crime unresolved and committing that crime in the first place.

‘I’m sorry, Mitch,’ said Anselm, diffidently, after a while. ‘It was still wrong. Life can be terribly unjust, but we can’t play God. We can’t bring about outcomes, regardless of the law, just because we believe them to be right … because that’s the road Jenny went down, at first. And Timothy followed her. Michael went somewhere similar. Ó Mórdha, too.’

Mitch wasn’t hurt and he wasn’t surprised. He’d expected Anselm to say as much. They’d taken differing views on the law a long, long time ago. But there was a quiet sadness in his face.

‘I didn’t expect you to approve,’ he said, ‘because I don’t either. I’m not proud. I’m not pleased with myself. I live with the discomfort.’

When they reached the
Jelly Roll
, Mitch suddenly turned around, struck by the one unresolved question:

‘I wonder who wrote to your Prior about Jennifer Henderson?’

Anselm looked back to the beginning; to be precise, a couple of days before that fateful letter had arrived.

‘The article in the
Sunday Times
had quite an effect on my Prior,’ he said, measuring his words. ‘He vanished into himself and when he emerged I was sure that he’d decided to limit my work to beekeeping, washing bottles, waxing floors. Humdrum stuff. And then, all of a sudden, the letter arrived inviting him to change Larkwood’s way of engaging with the world. As it happens – because of you – he’d been thinking along those very lines and the letter had served to remove any lingering hesitation. Now – and this causes me some disquiet – if I’d knocked on his door to say what he’d read, I don’t think he’d have listened; and yet after he’d opened that envelope, he did. Strange, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ replied Mitch, with a dawning smile. For an instant, they were both tongue-tied: their working relationship was over; henceforth Anselm would be on his own. There was a need for a gathering in and a send off. Rising to the challenge Mitch held out his hand, Geordie mischief in his eyes: ‘And now, troubled explorer, go forth into the wilderness and find another problem to solve.’

Anselm strolled home to Larkwood, the river murmuring at his side. He’d have to have another walk and talk with the Prior, at some point. He’d have to admit that he’d given his own vocation a bit of a shove. For the moment fish were jumping. Sudden and fleeting; appearances and disappearances; flashes of bright silver. Anselm barely had a chance to see them. They’d gone before he could acknowledge that they’d been there. And he thought if he could just speed up his discernment, or slow down their movement, he’d see that the wonder of their glittering existence was absolute; that they were what they were, regardless of whether anyone could appreciate them or not; that nothing was lost for the speed of their passing. And, elevating his mind above carp and trout, Anselm thought that the glory of life – even brief and trimmed down to the point of seeming insignificance – remained utterly breathtaking. That death, with all its power, would always be the one who came afterwards, the latecomer who’d missed the party. He paused, staring into the green water, past the flies skipping over the reflection of the evening sky.

‘You came and you went, so quickly,’ he said. ‘But I saw your flight; and I’ll remember you.’