The Order of Things (6 page)

Just the use of this single French word put a smile on his face. Suttle had noticed the camper van on the hardstanding that served as a drive.

‘You’re retired now?’

‘We are. We are.’

‘And do you travel much? Abroad maybe?’

‘Of course. The ferry goes from Plymouth. All good, all good.
La belle France.
Can’t beat it. My wife does the driving now. Brittany? You know Brittany?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘You should. Very nice people. Give you the time of day. Helps to speak the language, of course, but when it comes to … you know …’ he touched his face lightly and lowered his voice ‘… this.’

‘This?’ Suttle was lost.

‘God’s imperfections. Mine I can’t help. Yours neither, I expect. But the French don’t seem to care about that kind of thing. After the Great War, of course, men lived without a face at all. Terrible business.’ The smile again, uncertain. ‘Do you use creams at all? My wife rubs some in every morning.’

It dawned on Suttle that this man was talking about the scars on his face. He couldn’t remember when they’d last been any kind of issue.

Golding came to the rescue. He wanted to know how well Weatherall and his wife had known Harriet Reilly.

‘Well, very well. Fantastic woman, if I may say so.’

‘You knew her socially?’

‘Er …’ He frowned, a sudden panic in his eyes. The spaniel stiffened and jumped off his lap. Then Molly was back with a tray of tea. Her husband gazed up at her. Adoring. At peace again.

‘Socially doesn’t quite do it justice, Mr Golding.’ She must have been listening from the kitchen. ‘We were neighbours. We’d bump into each other most days. We’d help each other out when we could. She’d look after Fleur sometimes when we were away.’

‘Fleur?’

‘The dog. She’d had a Lab once but I gather it died. She was good with dogs. Fleur adored her. Milk? Sugar?’

Golding helped with the tea. Suttle wanted to know who else might have been in Harriet Reilly’s life.

‘Her love life, you mean?’

‘Not necessarily, but if that’s where you want to start, then yes.’

‘She had a man. Would he have been her partner? I’m not sure. But she certainly saw a lot of him. He was a scientist. Worked at the Met Office. She was very proud of him, if that makes sense.’

‘Was this the man?’ Suttle produced the photo the media department were using.

Molly glanced at it, bobbed her head. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you ever talk to him?’

‘No. I tried a couple of times when I ran into them both in the lane or down in the village, but he wasn’t very …’ she frowned ‘… giving.’

‘Bloody rude, if you’re asking me.’ This from her husband. The spaniel was back in his lap.

‘Rude how?’ Golding asked.

‘Wouldn’t give you the time of day. Especially men. Hated men. You could see it.’

‘But they were definitely a couple?’ Suttle was back with Molly.

‘Yes and no. She was very fond of him. I know she was. Harriet was no slouch intellectually. She was a wonderful doctor – she’s been more than kind to us, and she had hinterland, she really did. She knew lots about lots, and I’m not talking medicine. She was curious about things. She never took things on trust. She always had to find out for herself. I always got the sense that most people bored her. Not this one. Not her Mr Bentner.’

‘She called him that?’

‘She called him Ali most of the time. Mr Bentner when he amused her, or when she was angry.’

‘She was angry a lot? He made her angry?’

‘Only once that I can remember. Harriet had very low blood pressure. It took a lot to rattle her.’

‘So what happened?’

Suttle saw a flicker of alarm in her eyes. Golding was making notes, and she wanted to know whether any of this would get Bentner into trouble.

‘I’ve no idea, Mrs Weatherall. Why don’t you just tell us what happened?’

She gazed at Suttle a moment and then shrugged.

‘Harriet had been riding with a friend,’ she said. ‘It was a weekend. The friend had brought a couple of horses over. The two women had just come back and they were preparing the horses before getting them back in the box. Mr Bentner turned up. He was very drunk. God knows what he was doing behind the wheel of a car. Anyway, he frightened the horses, one of them badly. It went off into the field out the back there. It took them for ever to catch the poor thing.’

‘And Harriet?’

‘Very calm. Very measured. First she took his car keys. Then she told him to fuck off home and find someone else to upset.’

‘She
said
that?’ Suttle blinked.

‘Yes. If you want the truth, I got the tiniest feeling this wasn’t just about the horse.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘I think there may have been someone else in his life.’

‘You mean another woman?’

‘I imagine so. I simply don’t know. To be honest, this is a wild presumption on my part and probably very unfair. But Harriet was extremely choosy about who she spent time with and who she didn’t. I think she really liked her Mr Bentner. In fact I think it was probably stronger than that. Was she jealous that day? Is that what I heard? Hand on heart, I can’t be sure.’

Golding scribbled himself another note. Suttle wanted to know more about the relationship. How long had they known each other? How had they met?

‘Met?’ Molly laughed. ‘As it happens, I can help you there. Most days Harriet would cycle into work. There’s a new path opened, down by the river. It’s a real success. One day, one evening I think, she got a puncture, and Bentner was the good Samaritan who helped her out.’

‘He cycled too?’

‘Every day, according to Harriet. That’s got to be a fair old hike, all the way to the Met Office and back. She said it was the one thing that kept him alive.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The amount he drank. She liked a drop too, but recently she seemed to have stopped completely.’

She exchanged looks with her husband then went across and helped him to his feet. Unsupported, he made it to the hall. Then came the sound of a door opening and closing.

‘Did Harriet offer to help with your husband at all?’ Suttle’s gaze returned to Molly.

‘Yes, of course. Harriet was a GP. That was her job. Gerald had a stroke around Christmas time. It didn’t look at all good for a couple of weeks but, touch wood, he seems to be on the mend now.’

‘And Harriet?’

‘She offered to help in whatever way she could, especially when things were really grim. I thought that was generous of her. These days GPs are rushed off their feet. He wasn’t even her patient.’

‘Of course. Did she have family at all? That you know about?’

‘She had a husband some time back, but I don’t think there were any children.’

‘Was he a local man?’

‘Not to my knowledge. I believe he was in the navy. They lived in Portsmouth for a while. She hated it.’

‘But he’s not around any more?’

‘Not that I’m aware of, no. I think his name was Tony.’

‘Tony Reilly?’

‘No. Reilly was her maiden name. She never mentioned her married name.’

‘But no kids?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I see.’ Suttle hesitated. From the hall came the sound of a lavatory flushing. ‘Did you know she was pregnant?’

‘Harriet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not at all. Are you sure? How much pregnant?’

‘Between three and four months.’

‘I’m astonished.’

‘She never mentioned it?’

‘Never.’ She frowned. ‘We’re talking Mr Bentner?’

‘We don’t know yet. Not for sure. Not until we get the DNA results.’ Suttle paused. ‘You think it might have been anyone else’s?’

‘I’ve no idea. Bentner is certainly the only man I ever saw in her life, but these days that doesn’t mean anything. Like I say, she was really, really fond of him. A
baby
?’ She shook her head. ‘Good God.’

Seven

T
UESDAY, 10
J
UNE 2014, 14.47

Lizzie spent the afternoon at a caravan site on the outskirts of Dawlish, a seaside town south of the estuary. Jeff Okenek occupied a mobile home tucked into a corner of the top field. A line of washing blew in the wind off the sea, and he’d created a small herb garden, carefully netted from pests, on the sunny side of the nearby hedge.

The mobile home was spotless. Sepia prints of San Francisco in the 1930s hung on the few available stretches of wall, and a fold-up double bed beneath the window at the end served as a sofa. Jeff had a cat he called Ferlinghetti in memory of a beat poet Lizzie had never heard of and a huge long-haired tabby of uncertain age that he treated with something close to reverence.

Lizzie had knocked on his door an hour or so after a catch-up on the phone with her friend from the Portsmouth Coroner’s office. Dawn had confirmed Lizzie’s Internet findings about death certification post-Shipman. She’d agreed it should now be impossible for any working GP to dispatch his or her more vulnerable patients without raising suspicions among fellow medics – GPs or otherwise – but half a lifetime straddling the no-man’s-land between medicine and law had taught her that legislation in this field was far from perfect.

Life and death decisions at the end of somebody’s life, she’d pointed out, were famously difficult. If someone was truly suffering, and you had the means to bring all that to an end, wouldn’t it be kinder to put the poor bastard out of his misery? In the world of pets no one raised a peep if Tootsie had to be put to sleep. So how come human beings had to hang on and on because no one had the guts to do anything about it? This was strong stuff, but Dawn made Lizzie laugh when she added a thought about the eighty-pound payment made to a GP for completing the cremation form. This, she said, was known in the trade as ‘ash cash’.

Lizzie had wondered about sharing this with Jeff, but fifteen minutes’ conversation convinced her it would be deeply inappropriate. Jeff was a serious man, intense, the gauntness of his face hollowed out by an energy you could almost touch. He spoke with a light American accent. He was barefoot. He wore black jeans and a grey vest that hung baggily on his thin shoulders. He must have been at least fifty, but his eyes glittered with the passion and focus of a much younger man. Once he knew she was a friend of Anton Schiller – a fact he took the trouble to check by making a phone call – he was very happy to tell her about Alec, about the way it had been between them, and about what had happened at the end.

‘This was a guy you’d give your life for. Me? I was happy to do that, and he knew it. We first met in LA. He was living down the street. Every day I used to watch this guy going off to work. He used to carry a bag, like a sports bag, and I so wanted to know what was in that bag. Then one day I met him coming home. It was in the afternoon. We’d never met, never talked, but right there in the street I asked him about the bag. That was a pretty hot move, right? I mean the guy could have said anything.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He said to come up to his place. Then he’d show me.’

‘And you went?’

‘Of course I fucking did. And you know what was in the bag? Ballet tights and a kind of jerkin thing. Turned out the guy was a dancer. He performed with a company downtown. He had the build for it. He was slim but so, so strong. And he had balance like you wouldn’t believe. This was a guy who never walked, this was a guy who
glided.
No way you wouldn’t fall in love with a man like that.’

‘And you did?’

‘Big time. And it turned out he felt the exact same way. Me? I’m no ballet dancer, but a body like Alec’s isn’t hard to please. My pleasure, I used to tell him. And you know something? I meant it.’

They moved in together. They became a couple. They left LA and went upstate to San Francisco. They lived in Haight-Ashbury, hung out with the art crowd and got on with their lives. Jeff worked in IT. Alec taught dance in a local performance centre. Weekends they’d use a particular bathhouse until Alec woke up one morning with swollen glands, a raging fever and a mysterious rash. HIV had ravaged a generation of gay men by now. Antiretrovirals could slow down the progress of the disease, but Alec was careless with his meds, and very slowly his body’s immune system began to collapse. He was dying and they both knew it.

‘We were over here by now. I’d been in England before. I loved it. Man, we were so, so frank with each other. I said there was no better place to die, and Alec believed me. We had a little money. Enough to meet the rental on this place and maybe travel a little. I bought a car from a guy up in Exeter, a big old Jaguar, seven hundred bucks, drank gas. I polished it up real nice, looked after it. A ride fit for a king, I told him. Alec loved that car. He loved the leather seats, loved the way you never heard the engine, loved the way people looked at us from the sidewalk. I drove my adorable man everywhere in that car. There isn’t a beach, a cove, a bay we didn’t visit. But most he loved Cornwall, the north coast, the light especially. When the sun shone, he’d say it was a trailer for heaven. When the wind blew and the gales came, it was a trailer for hell. Either way, he couldn’t care less. We’d had a fine life. We’d had each other. Towards the end he was so, so thin. Nights he would sweat so much. I’d try and hold him but he’d push me away. Then the sores came, places you didn’t need them, and his glands blew up, and then it even got tough to breathe. That man’s whole life had been his body, and it was like – hey – you’ve betrayed me. I can’t tell you how pissed he felt. And he hurt too. He hurt bad. And that was hard for both of us.’

He swung off the sofa and fetched a photo from a drawer. The face in the photo could have belonged to a man in his eighties: the dullness in his eyes, the sagging flesh, the thinning hair, the purple blotches around his mouth.

‘This is Alec?’

‘Yep.’

‘Sad.’

‘Yep.’

Lizzie took another look. Jeff was right. This thing of beauty, key to a precious relationship, had become a husk of a man. She wanted to know whether Jeff had been registered with a doctor.

‘Sure. A guy right here in Dawlish.’

‘And what did he say?’