The Order of Things (38 page)

‘Myself and Harriet. Jealous is too small a word. It wasn’t that. It was to do with possession. Gemma has to own things. They have to be hers. Exclusively. She owns Michala, for instance.’

‘And you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes what?’

‘She owned me. Or wanted to.’

‘There’s a difference, Mr Bentner. Did she own you? Or did she not?’

Bentner nodded, acknowledging the distinction.

‘Yes, in a way she did. She’s a powerful woman. I’ve no idea whether you’ve met her or not, but she has a presence – more than a presence, an aura, maybe even more than that. She’s one of those people you meet once in a lifetime. She’s committed. She’s a superb anthropologist. Most of her, including her heart,
absolutely
including her heart, is in the right place. We talked constantly. She never bored me, never irritated me, always left me wanting more. Her take on where we’re going and why was exemplary. I’ve never heard it better expressed. She’d penetrated the core of the problem and made it hers.’

‘Just like everything else?’

‘Indeed. That can be compelling. I’m a climate scientist. I can reduce catastrophe to hard facts, to lines on a graph, to the certainty of what’s going to happen. But Gemma is so much better than that. She has the gift of tongues. She can make the language dance. I’ve seen her with a hall full of students. They’re captivated. She’s got them here.’ His right hand settled softly on his heart. ‘She’s utterly compelling. An hour with Gemma, and you become someone else. It’s remarkable to watch. But it has consequences.’

He talked of moths around a flame. Far away you remained in the darkness. Too close and you risked immolation.

‘That was Harriet’s fate?’

‘Not at all. Harriet couldn’t stand her. Harriet thought she was a phoney. Harriet was never one of the converted, and Gemma knew that.’

‘But Harriet …?’

‘Knew I was one of the converted.’

‘Hence the fights? The diary entries?’

‘Of course.’

‘So why didn’t you defend her? And why did you become complicit in her death?’

Another silence. Suttle sensed this was new territory, even for Bentner’s solicitor. She was doodling circles on her pad. Frowning.

‘What did it for Gemma was the baby,’ Bentner said at last. ‘You didn’t want to be around when she found out Harriet was pregnant.’

‘Harriet told her?’

‘Harriet told her nothing. I told her. Gemma was like a child herself. It was like she’d been deprived. I’d betrayed her. Worse still, I’d betrayed what we had in common.’

‘Which was?’

‘The cause. Fighting the opposition. Fighting apathy. Fighting ignorance. Trying to get the world to wake up. Gemma has a way of making you feel that small…’ He narrowed his forefinger against his thumb. ‘I felt even smaller. Then she said there was a way we could still be friends, still make it work, still carry the struggle forward. I thought it was crazy to begin with, but then she explained properly and I said yes.’

‘To what?’

‘Sleeping with Michala. Making her pregnant. Giving her a baby.’

‘You did that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s carrying your child?’

‘Yes. We must have fucked twice. That’s all it took.’ There was a hint of pride in the half-smile.

‘And afterwards? Once the baby had been born? What then?’

‘It would become Gemma and Michala’s child, their baby. As far as everyone else was concerned, she’d bought sperm from a donor bank. Mr Nobody.’

‘But it’s going to be yours.’

‘I know. Because that’s the way Gemma wanted it. She likes me. She may even love me. She certainly loves my genes. There was no way she could ever have me properly, and she knew that. Harriet and I and our own baby were off to Scotland, and she knew that too. That’s why giving a baby to Michala was such a neat solution.’

‘And Harriet?’

‘She knew nothing. Obviously. I thought that was for the best. In fact I thought everything was for the best. Gemma was off my back. She and Michala had the baby they wanted. Harriet and I were off to Uist. Win-win. Easy.’

Win-win? Easy?

Rosie Tremayne was playing a blinder, Suttle thought. She could have been a therapist, a counsellor, teasing out the knots in this man, paving the way for the full confession. Most of it was there now. All Suttle wanted was some hint of regret, of contrition, even of anger. To date, as far as Harriet was concerned, Bentner had displayed indifference to the pain she must have suffered. At work, according to Sheila Forshaw, there were certain colleagues who put Bentner high on the autism scale. Maybe they were right. Maybe, on an ever-warmer planet, he remained ice-cold inside.

Tremayne, yet again, didn’t disappoint.

‘Win-win is wrong, Mr Bentner.’ Her voice was soft. ‘You’re telling us Gemma killed your partner. Tore her belly apart. Mutilated the child she was carrying. Yet you never lifted the phone. I find that inexplicable.’

‘Me too.’ He nodded. ‘We talked afterwards on the phone. Gemma knew about Scotland. She knew I wanted to put money down on the property. She wanted us all to go up there. That’s why I went last week. To check the place out. To try and visualise what it might be like.’

‘You mean the croft?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s why you broke in? Stayed over?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘Hopeless. Being out there on the edge of things gives you perspective. The world is crazy. So is Gemma. No way would it ever have worked. That’s why I came back, booked into that pub across the road, gave myself up.’ He sat back, his story over, that same hint of relief on his face. ‘So here we are. Here we have it. Beware of Gemma. Be gentle with Michala. None of this is down to her.’

Afterwards

Gemma Caton and Michala Haas were interviewed later that same day. After consulting with the duty solicitor, who’d earlier conferred with Rosie Tremayne, Michala read a prepared statement admitting her role in the events of the previous evening. She’d used her phone to talk to Gemma while staying with Lizzie. She’d opened the door to her while Lizzie was asleep in bed. She’d done Gemma’s bidding, fetched the paper and the wood, and set fire to the bedroom. Asked why she hadn’t intervened when Gemma tried to kill Lizzie, she refused to comment.

Finally, Tremayne asked about the hire car from Budget. Michala admitted that she’d hired the Ford Focus to use at the weekend. She’d taken it to London and then driven Gemma back down on the Saturday evening. After Gemma killed Harriet Reilly, they’d both returned to London, their alibi intact. On the Monday Michala and the hire car were back in Exeter.

Gemma Caton did her best to browbeat both Tremayne and Myers. This was yet another show that belonged exclusively to her. She happily confirmed that she’d done her best to kill Lizzie. She suspected that Michala had told Lizzie everything. By getting so close to Michala, she had sealed her own fate. Agreeing to suffocate her before the fire took hold was an act of mercy. For that, Gemma insisted, she deserved nothing but thanks.

Tremayne ignored the suggestion. When she put it to Caton that she’d killed Harriet Reilly, she simply nodded. Asked to explain why, she said that Reilly had made Michala deeply unhappy by denying Kelly a pain-free death. Worse still, by getting herself pregnant she’d come to stand between herself and Alois Bentner. In the world that she and Alois shared, there was no room for another. Harriet Reilly was a trespasser and had paid the price. Caton had no remorse, no shame, no guilt. It was, she said, simply an overdue adjustment to the order of things.

Rosie Tremayne wanted to know where she and Michala would have headed next. The croft in Scotland was no longer a possibility. With Lizzie dead, the victim of a presumed accident, the pair of them would have been home free. But where was home?

Caton had seemed indifferent. The world was a big place. She’d already seen most of it. Bhutan? Laos? Certain parts of the Mongolian steppe? They were all possibilities. Michala would love it because all three of them would be together, far from the madness of the rest of the world.

‘Three?’

‘Me. Michala. And the little one.’

From Gemma Caton, to Nandy’s delight,
Buzzard
was thus looking at a full confession: not to one murder but possibly two. The news from the ICU was far from conclusive. Lizzie was still breathing with the aid of a machine, and there were hopeful signs that she might surface over the coming days, but the uncertainty about brain damage remained. Either way, in the opinion of the consultant in charge, she’d had a remarkable escape from what would otherwise have been certain death.

Golding thought the same. He and Suttle had driven over to St Leonard’s. The fire brigade had saved most of the lower half of the property, but the house that Suttle had so briefly known was a ruin. The roof had gone, charred rafters against the summer sky, and swallows dived and soared through the smoke still curling from the wreckage inside.

Suttle went to the front door. A fireman was standing guard. Forensic investigators were busy inside, combing through the debris to establish the seat of the fire. Within the hour they’d be joined by a Scenes of Crime team, but for the time being even Suttle’s warrant card couldn’t gain him entry.

‘Take this, though, buddy? Delivered this morning.’ The fireman gave Suttle a parcel. It was book shaped.

Suttle returned to the car. They both got in.

‘Oona?’ They were driving back to the MIR.

‘Talked to her about an hour ago, skip.’

‘And?’

‘She thinks you must be in a state.’

‘She’s right.’

‘She says to give her a ring when you’re ready. Not before.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘You’re asking me?’

‘I am.’

Golding nodded. Stared out of the window. ‘Houghton told me the way you played it last night,’ he said at last. ‘You pushed it to the limit. I thought that was gutsy.’

‘And Oona?’

‘She thought the same.’

Suttle spent the evening alone. He bought himself a bottle of wine from the Co-op in town, returning to the shelf from the queue at the cash desk to make it two. He had no appetite for either food or football, preferring to sit at his window and watch the sun expire over the smoky ridge lines of the Haldon Hills. It was a beautiful evening, more swallows against the last of the light, and after darkness had fallen he fetched the parcel from the kitchen.

It was from Amazon. It was addressed to Lizzie. It had a return address in Seattle. He unwrapped it. Dr Gemma Caton,
Native Indian Rituals on the Pacific Coast.
He opened the book, looked at a photo or two and poured himself another glass of wine. The writing was brighter and more fluent than he’d anticipated. This woman could compel attention on paper as well as in the flesh. She had the knack of recreating an entire way of life, of taking you there, of making you aware of just how precious, and just how precarious, life in the wild could be.

Then salmon leaped into the story. How important they were. How they held the promise of survival. And how the elders of the tribe awaited the moment when they appeared offshore, nosed up the river and began the last stage of their journey to their spawning grounds. On a bad year they were late. Once, on the Fraser River in the 1840s, they didn’t come at all. The elders conferred. It was, they concluded, a question of propitiation. The spirits were troubled. The spirits demanded a sacrifice. And so they found the most pregnant woman in the tribe. Killed her. Opened her belly. And offered the child’s head to the river. The salmon, wrote Caton, appeared next morning. And there was much rejoicing.

Three days later, with Lizzie still unconscious in hospital, Suttle phoned Oona and asked her to come down for the evening. Her car was in for servicing, so she took the train. Suttle met her at the station. She gave him a hug and then another, and linked her arm through his. En route home, a detour took them to a pub called the Bicton Arms. Suttle had used it a couple of times and knew the landlord was a fishing fanatic.

Oona, intrigued by the place, perched herself on a stool while Suttle waited for the landlord to appear. There were a couple of trophy specimens in glass cases behind the bar. When the landlord finally arrived, Suttle asked him about current prospects on the river. The landlord said the fishing was good. Promising bass. Plenty of mackerel. Even a decent show of pollock.

‘And the salmon?’

‘Came late this year. Unheard of.’

‘And now?’

‘Back. Loads of them. Strange, eh?’

Acknowledgements

I owe this book to a series of storms that hit the West Country just after the Christmas before last. Neither Lin nor I – both connoisseurs of extreme weather – had ever seen anything like it. The force of the wind was beyond belief. The sea wanted to eat you alive. On a couple of wild nights the highest of tides exploded over the promenade and threatened to flood whole areas of the town. Scary.

A couple of months later I was talking to a friend, Mark Martineau, who knows the Exe estuary intimately. For the first time in living memory, he said, the salmon had failed to show. This phenomenon, in some respects, was as alarming as the weather. Might there be some link between the two? Did the salmon know something we didn’t? Thus does a book like this begin to shape itself.

Speculation, though, is barely a start. For a hard-core brief on the study of climate change I had to turn to experts in the field and happily the Met Office was just down the road in Exeter. Dr Debbie Hemming and Phil Bentley gave me an extensive tour, answered endless questions, and set me on the road to Chapter One. From the moment I stepped out of the building, I knew exactly where the book would lead.

Other contributors to this wild adventure? To Dr Amy Todd I owe a big thank you for sharing some of the secrets of the world of the GP. To Amy’s dad, Peter Todd, an equally warm round of applause for introducing me to the Fureys. An unforgettable evening. My eldest son, Tom, happens to be a gifted – and fearless – photographer. He lives round the corner and whenever my memory of those winter storms became a little hazy he’d send me a video or two he’d managed to shoot as the ocean came roaring out of the darkness.