The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (22 page)

From Eisenmenger's viewpoint, there was certainly an affectionate clench, perhaps even something more than a peck. Helena admitted the visitor and Eisenmenger saw a man of nearly two metres, fair-haired, grey eyed and (the bastard) good looking. He was in his early forties and Eisenmenger saw fitness smoothed into him. He looked up from Helena's face, over her shoulder at Eisenmenger. His broad smile became tinged with curiosity. Catching the change in his attitude Helena looked briefly over her shoulder. "This is John Eisenmenger, an acquaintance of mine. He called in to discuss a case."

The man advanced towards Eisenmenger, confidence, friendliness and charm exuding into the space between them. He proffered a hand. "Good to meet you. Alasdair Riley-Day."

The hand was neither too firm nor too soft, too dry nor too wet, Eisenmenger felt as if he'd shaken hands with Abraham Lincoln.

"I'd best be off," he said to Helena. He nodded to Riley-Day. "Good to meet you." It didn't sound as if he meant it, at least to his ears, which didn't come as a huge shock.

He picked up his coat from the back of the sofa and moved to the door, feeling distinctly like an ambulant and green soft fruit. "We'll talk about this some time tomorrow."

Helena only nodded in a small, decisive manner, which found him strangely sad.

When the door closed behind him Riley-Day turned to Helena. "Did I interrupt something?"

She laughed. "Nothing for you to worry about," she said.

"You're angry."

"Only furious,"

"May I ask why?"

She smiled, picked up a clutch bag, put her coat under arm and held out her hand towards him. "Let's eat."

Behind her, Alasdair Riley-Day smiled.

*

"Daddy?"

Jake was in bed, the nightlight casting ill-defined, diffuse shadows that were ghostly comforts, memories of childhoods past and present. Annette was out, spreading her intellect over an outing of legal types, a dinner in the Strand; Hartmann was of the opinion that Annette's life was lived in a twilight, Wodehousian world.

"What is it, Jay?"

He had been about to leave the room, having read the obligatory Paddington story, on his way to Jocasta who was shouting and screaming and, almost certainly, using her bed as a trampoline. He sat back down next to his son, smiling and trying not to let fatigue make his temper brittle. His son was almost completely immersed in the bedclothes, the duvet meeting the pillow and allowing only a small pocket into which Jake could thrust his face, as if for air.

"What's a divorce?"

The question was asked with innocence and was therefore brutal to Hartmann, as if this small, skinny boy had stabbed a knife into his stomach. Hartmann was suddenly immersed in the memory of Scotland, feeling the shame rush over him.

"What?" he asked incredulously, although he had heard quite plainly. "What was that, Jay?" Jake always had a serious expression on his face, his brow lowered and pinched over dark blue eyes, his mouth slightly pursed. "What's a divorce?" he repeated.

"A divorce? Where did you hear that word, Jay?" He hoped that the answer would be the television or something, but his hopes were futile.

"I heard Mummy talking about it. On the phone today."

Hartmann was suddenly swamped again by his remembrance of what he had done. He smelt again the scent of Claire's perfume, tasted once more the slight cinnamon tang of her tongue and teeth, felt anew the softness of the flesh between her thighs and the moistness of her excitement. This time, however, there was no desire, only abhorrence, and no tumescence, only deflation. He suddenly felt tears as if they were some sort of emotional extinguisher. He swallowed and smiled at the same time; perhaps, he at once realized, a mistake.

"What did she say, Jay? Exactly, I mean."

The small face descended into deep contemplation, its seriousness far too adult to be borne by such fine, immature features. The corners of his mouth turned down and his eyebrows conjoined. Beside him Teddy also bore an expression of profound consideration but since this was a perpetual, unchanging look it conveyed not great intellect but great imbecility.

"She said that getting a divorce was the only thing to do."

A million questions, perhaps a million and one, ran through his mind. Most of them began with "How," a few began with "Why." Suddenly the concept of an end to his marriage — a terror in the dark, a phantom worse than death — was stepping into the light.

And then, "She said that they had no other choice."

Hartmann seized on the potential reprieve. "Who? Who's 'they'?"

"Auntie Charlotte and Uncle Jack."

Hartmann's relief paralyzed him. It surged into his abdomen and made him feel nauseous. It compressed his chest; restricted his breathing. The tears returned and would not be held back but then laughter followed and he was a curious mix of feelings.

Hartmann had always found his children annoying, no matter how hard he tried to appreciate them. Annette had wanted them — but only two and definitely one of each (her grasp of biology did not compare favourably with her knowledge of company law) — and he had consented, but without enthusiasm. He often wondered if this were the root of his feelings but, very occasionally, something would happen and he would have an epiphany in which he connected with a different reality; one in which he was no longer a man who happened to have children, but really and absolutely
a
father
.

He hugged Jake, feeling for once that he was hugging his son, not just a child. His tears blurred the words as he whispered into his son's small shoulder, "Oh, God."

*

Carlos Arias-Stella looked again at the toilet bowl, now bespattered by vomit. It was a familiar sight — too familiar, if he was forced to confront some truth for a change — and it accompanied a familiar feeling of myalgia, grogginess and thudding headache. Then there was the stench.

It came again, the waxing nausea, the anticipation of coordinated, painful muscle spasm, the loss of control. Much against the advice of his higher mental functions, he plunged his head closer to the water surface, deeper into the miasmic detritus that had so recently snuggled itself in his gastrum.

He retched, involuntary noises echoing from the porcelain. There was little more than bile-stained chyme left to come and he wondered what was worse — the pain of vomiting nothing or the burning taste of semi-digested food.

The door behind him vibrated with a fusillade of thumps. "Carl? Carl?"

The handle rattled. He groaned quietly. "Fuck off, Nerys." This was addressed in an undertone to the bowl.

"Are you all right?"

He continued his monologue to his so-recently-evicted meal. "Everything's brilliant, Nerys. Just fucking brilliant. Nowhere else I'd rather be."

"Can you hear me?"

He got slowly and painfully to unsteady feet, the cistern proving to be one of his few remaining friends. The transfer to the basin successfully completed, he ran cold water, first to drink, then to sluice over his greasy skin. All the while, the accompaniment from Nerys continued, varying from percussion to increasingly panicked vocalization.

Eventually he opened the door.

Nerys wasn't unattractive. Since he had moved into her flat — seven quarrel-laden months before — his dependence on her had grown. At the start, there had just been the sex — great sex — and he had planned then merely to continue the relationship based on regular cunnilingus and explosive orgasms, but he had reckoned without the capriciousness of the heart. Affection had sprung up where it had not been wanted, and they had passed from the pleasures of biology to the pleasure of companionship. "'Bout time, you drunken sod." She pushed past him. She was wearing her short, pink dressing gown, the one that showed her backside so nicely, but in his condition he wasn't interested in the curves of her buttocks.

"You're getting fatter," he pronounced. It wasn't altogether a lie, and it was therefore all the more effective. Nerys was obsessed by her weight. She didn't turn round but above the noise of water of water pouring into the basin she said to his reflection behind her, "It smells like a doss house in here, you pig." Her nasal Welsh twang was constructed for scorn. "You're a complete mess, you are. You're nothing but a drunken waste of space."

He came up behind her as her attention returned to her reflection, grabbing her breasts and nuzzling her neck. She passed rapidly from shock to enjoyment to mock exasperation.

"Get off, you silly sod!"

He released her, smacked her arse and went into the bedroom. He lay back down on the bed, hoping that closed eyes and steady breathing would alleviate the returning malaise. It didn't. The smell of cigarette smoke suffused directly into his stomach lining and into his strobing brain.

Nerys came in. "How much did you have to drink last night?"

He failed to find the need to reply.

"I saw you down five pints, and that was before I left the pub, so God knows how much you ended up pouring down your throat."

He found that he had to fight the nausea and fight also the irritation he felt when forced to confront his drinking habits. She continued her exhortation remorselessly. "You're going to be late for work …
again
."

He wasn't, actually. Nerys had never become comfortable with the life of a research assistant. To her, proper jobs were nine to five, and his habit of turning in for work at ten-thirty was foreign.

He kept his eyes shut. It made no difference, not to anything. "You're going to have to cut down, you know, Carl. It's not good for you."

Perhaps it wasn't the best time to remain silent. "It was the kebab."

It had the desired effect, for she stopped and then asked, "You what?"

He reflected how ladylike she wasn't. "The kebab," he repeated. "I had a kebab after I left the pub."

She had sat down at the cheap white self-assembly dressing table, combing her hair with a small red plastic brush. Nerys and plastic had an affinity. Depending on his mood and libido, he found it either arousing or derisory. She said sweetly, "You're a fucking liar, Carl." It was said much as God had pronounced light on the world.

He returned to his hangover.

Nerys said nothing more for a while. She stripped off the dressing gown and through near-closed eyes he watched her and thought pleasant, if pornographic, thoughts.

She said no more while she put on a blouse and short, green skirt, followed by make-up that covered more than her clothing. When she had finished she came back to him. "Seriously, though. You shouldn't drink so much."

"Maybe you're right, baby. Maybe, I'll try to cut it down." He smiled.

Then she left the room with a final and affectionate, "Lazy bastard," for her beloved.

She continued to move through the flat in a practised choreography of movement — orange juice taken from the refrigerator, poured and drunk was one element, coat and shoes out of the hall cupboard then simultaneously donned was another — before leaving, the performance terminated with the crash of the front door.

He opened his eyes, twisted his head to look at the alarm clock and then relaxed. His head was still pounding to the beat of the engines of God, but the sickness was receding. At half-eight he could afford another forty-five minutes in bed.

He closed his eyes.

*

Pel-Ebstein Pharmaceuticals had a United Kingdom head office that dominated a broad expanse of midland moor. It beamed its imposing presence of glass curves, steel struts and rising turrets fully fifteen miles in all directions. The architecture had won awards, the local landowners had won colossal windfalls as their acres were acquired, and the local economy had won total dependence on its newest, biggest and brashest inhabitant.

As they drove towards it. Eisenmenger saw it early and hated it early; the closer they came, the greater the hatred. He could see the beauty of the architecture, could see that it was not physically out of place, but saw with startling clarity that it was as spiritually suited to its environs as a Mother Superior would have been to a mutual fisting competition. It spoke of dominance and superiority; it bullied the observer into accepting that it was far more important than all around it.

Eisenmenger was driving, with Helena beside him. Trying not to look at her legs was a full-time occupation. The journey had lasted two hours, enlivened only sporadically by episodes of chat, as if neither of them could find subjects of mutual interest, or perhaps as if the subjects of mutual interest were also of mutual discomfort.

They were stopped by guards at gates that were tall and set into a chainlink fence that stretched away to either side, enclosing an area of bleak moorland that must have been several thousand hectares in extent. They were stopped again fifty metres on, having passed several black dogs roaming free. At each checkpoint they were asked for identity, the car was searched and their reason for visiting was verified by radio.

"Impressive security," Helena remarked as they drove on. On either side of them small complexes of low buildings could be reached by spurs from the road. Outside them were notices such as "Protein Modelling and Synthetics," "Biomimetics," "Artificial Memory Group," and "Neural Network Development."