He Died with His Eyes Open (20 page)

The bobby said it was politicians had caused the whole thing. He was an old country bobby; he didn't care what he said, anyway not to a child. He said the plane wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for politicians. When he had ridden off to make his report I went back and snatched a piece of tailplane that had been blown off and kept it for a souvenir. It was exciting, a really adventurous day. But the strange part was that, over the years, the passing of time altered the meaning of those two figures in their leather helmets, relaxed yet intent, shimmering in the fumes—time placed a different and deeper meaning on the experience.

29

I rang up my boss and said: 'I'd better come and see you.'

'What about?'

'The Staniland case.'

'What about it? Solve it. What's stopping you? Don't you know who did it?'

'Yes I do, but I haven't got a case. What I know I can't prove. The DPP's office would never run for it; I wouldn't get a warrant for my people because it wouldn't stand up in court. Cassettes aren't proof. Yet it's a case where nearly everyone I've interviewed so far helped to kill him, directly or indirectly.'

'You'd better interrogate them. Really interrogate them.'

'I could interrogate them for a year, they'd never break. Why should they? There were no witnesses.'

'That's difficult.' He sighed. 'But police work is difficult, you know that. Especially these days.'

'And especially in this department.'

'Well, coming to see me isn't going to change anything. I really don't see the point.'

'I'm trying to say I care too much about this case. I've got over-involved in it.'

'Well, you mustn't. You know that. You've got to be completely objective.'

'If I hadn't got involved, very involved, I wouldn't have got this far.'

'Yes, well, it's tricky.'

'I feel the guilty have got to pay,' I said. 'But how can I make them if I haven't got a case?'

'I leave the whole thing to your judgement.'

'My feelings sometimes get the better of my judgement.'

'It's because you're so human,' he said, with a glimmer of amusement, 'that you work for this department. If you'd been a machine like Bowman, I'd have transferred you to Serious Crimes long ago.'

'That doesn't help me.'

'Of course it doesn't. That's why there's no point in our discussing this. You're completely on your own. I haven't the people to give you any help.'

'I'd like to be taken off this case,' I said.

His voice hardened. 'If you come off this case, I'll junk you. You'll be finished, do you understand?'

'I'll resign,' I said. 'I'll follow this up as a private citizen. That way I won't need a warrant, and I can forget about the Public Prosecutors.'

'Now calm down. Let's say I didn't hear what you just said.'

'It's easy for you to talk,' I said. 'You haven't heard the evidence in this case. You don't realize what this man knew, what he'd learned, what he was! It's not just the death of an alcoholic I've got on my hands here.'

'I don't just talk, Sergeant. If I hadn't done it all myself, I wouldn't be sitting up here. Now, you can't resign,' he continued, 'it's a matter of your own self-respect. But these conversations are quite irregular. You must do whatever's necessary to solve the case. You know who's guilty—nail them. But don't break the rules. Is that clear?'

'In a way.'

'Well, thank God the obvious is clear, anyhow,' he said, hanging up.

30

I got to Earlsfield and parked. There's a turning off the main route into central London called Acacia Road, and I live in a roundabout at the top called Acacia Circus. It was half-past three in the afternoon and there were very few people about. It was a bright day, but that only made my block look newer and nastier. It is three storeys high; I live on the second. The flat consists of sitting-room, bedroom and kitchenette, WC and bath. The place is built of concrete, which sweats in the winter when you have the central heating on. The sitting-room gives onto a balcony that is too narrow to take a chair out and sit in summer, and I go to the flat as little as possible, except to sleep. There are a few houses adjoining, all new, where men garden at the end of the day, doing things to their hedges with clippers they have bought by direct mail. Lining the concrete road are a few acacias that don't look as if they would get far in life; that's how the raw scar of my street got its name.

I got out of the car and searched for my latchkey in my back trouser pocket. I went upstairs and let myself in. The sitting-room was bathed in afternoon sun and was too hot. It was not a friendly room. There were some sticks of furniture, a cushion on the floor in patchwork leather left behind by the previous tenant, and a TV set. I went and opened the window and looked out onto a bright blue sky, the blink and glitter of traffic on the main road, and houses, more houses, still more houses.

I supposed I might as well eat. I kept some frozen things in the fridge; I took out a packet and started reading the instructions on the back. The contents sounded disgusting, so I let the packet fall on the Formica-topped kitchen table, which it hit with a crack. I took a can of beer out instead and went back to the sitting-room. I felt ill at ease and disturbed after my conversation with upstairs. They knew I was in a hopeless position and were just letting me sail on into it.

Presently I got out the cassettes I had found at Romilly Place and put one on the player that I hadn't heard yet—I still hadn't had time to hear them all. I switched the player on. Soon there was a noise like a rasping sigh, and Staniland started to speak. He began talking about his daughter, Charlotte. I sat and listened, drinking some beer from time to time. Staniland said:

Darling, talking to you like this somehow brings me a little closer to you. I know I've wronged you terribly, and it does hurt me so. I've hurt your mother, too; when you're older you must ask her for the truth. Oh, darling, I know you're only ten now, but always try and think very straight and then everything will come out right, you'll see. I am capable of so much love, but it has been crowded out by my doubt and disbelief in myself. Though I set such store by the truth, I have found it difficult to be honest— I think through life being so temporary—and that's why I never loved you and picked you up and kissed you as I should have done, I see that now. Please try and forgive me; I loved you so much, but I was trying to do something very difficult in life at the same time.

There was a pause on the tape and I drank some beer, which was getting warm as I held it forgotten in my hand. I thought that by rights the child's mother must have the tape, but wondered if perhaps it might only make her suffer even more. Staniland continued in a sort of aside:

Oh, please, God, make her understand; I can't bear to make any more mistakes... It's all right, I'm talking to you again, darling. I want you to know how happy I am we had you, in spite of everything. Everyone down at Duéjouls, the neighbours, your schoolteacher Madame Castan, everyone, says what a sweet, happy, intelligent little girl you were and how they miss you. The house at Duéjouls is for you and Mummy, sweetheart, only for you; the deeds and my will leaving it to you both are with Garlenc, the notaire in Rodez.

That settles it, I thought, switching off. Staniland's widow must have the tape. I brooded about it for a bit, then turned on the player again. Staniland said:

Darling, you're the sort of girl that other people will live and die for when you grow up—if only I could have told you that myself. But I quarrelled with your mother too much, and I drank too much. I spread only sorrow and disaster among us because somehow I knew too much, and wanted to find out even more. But I haven't. All I've done is massacre our family life.

It has all been for nothing, and I don't care what happens to me now. I really was no good and you must try to forgive that if you can. Don't let people defame me, though. People who do that never know all the facts; they base their judgements on nothing but hearsay, and are no good, either.

All this nightmare inside me began when I was a child, after your great-uncle was killed in the Second World War. His ship, the
Ceramic,
was torpedoed in the Atlantic in May 1941; he was in the engine-room when it happened and he was scalded to death by steam when the boilers exploded. There was only one survivor picked up out of fifteen hundred aboard, a stoker, and he told my father about this. I adored your great-uncle, and it was then that I began to wonder what we were all for. My dear little sweet girl, we shall meet again somewhere, I know we shall. What I did was—

But I couldn't bear to listen to what Staniland had done, not right away. I had had enough for a while, and switched the player off. I looked at the tape to see if there was still a lot of it to run. There was. Presently I thought, It's no good, I've got to play it. It was a horrible experience, like listening to a man choke to death. But I lit a cigarette, threw it away, and managed to switch the tape on again. Staniland's voice ran in my ears, sounding desperate:

I had a stab at the great experience, at the truth... But I hadn't the equipment, I hadn't the strength of will, I made a dreadful mess of it. I got what I was trying to do mixed up with banal desires; in the end I put you and your mother on the table like my last chip, and I lost you too. Your mother and I quarrelled too much; we both drank too much. One night at Duéjouls she told me I couldn't get another woman if I tried. Well, I went away and got one and your mother left and took you with her. But none of it did any of us any good. All our troubles started there, in fact.

But fuck the facts.

I'm trying to write again now on a tape recorder. I've left it very late, but I know I can do it, and I've got such strange things to tell. I want what I write to be like a buoy that marks a rock; I don't want anyone else wrecked on it.

Barbara... I don't want to talk about her much, darling. If we manage to teach each other what goodness means, she might prove a friend to you in the future. But she might not. Atrocious suffering, but I believe I may be breaking through with her now.

I miss you desperately, my darling Charlotte. I feel as if I had been killed—as if my mistakes had turned into someone with a gun and shot me. I have to try to explain everything in the time I have left—all the errors, the grief and the love. Goodbye, my little one, good-bye, good night, my sweet, and remember one thing—all the evil in the world is powerless against intelligence and courage. Never pretend. Anything, even death, is better than that.

Good night, my darling.

There was a long pause. The tape rustled on, then stopped. Staniland had said elsewhere: 'Why must we suffer like this? Others have behaved worse than I have, yet got off scot-free. My whole brain feels bruised.' And: 'I have taken a terrible beating from the truth and feel tamed, wise and desperate, as if I had taken a short route to wisdom through a mirror, and cut myself badly on it as I passed through.'

I don't know how long I sat there thinking about him, but the shadows had altered, and there was no more sunlight in the room when I was brought to my senses by the ringing of the telephone. I thought it might be Barbara as I picked it up. But it was Bowman.

'Christ,' he said, 'what are you doing in that pad of yours at this time of day?'

'Don't get up my nose just now,' I said, 'if you don't mind.' 'Fuck that,' he said. 'You'd better come over to Soho on the hurry-up. Petworth Street. Christ, why do your cases always turn up right where I happen to be?'

'Fate,' I said. 'What's happened up there?' 'Another of your bleeding Stanilands,' he said, 'and he
was
bleeding.'

'Dead for long?'

'Twelve hours or so.'

'I'll be there in the time it takes me to get over.' I rang off and thought: What does it matter how long I take? He's dead, isn't he?

31

'It was suicide,' mused Bowman. 'Must have been.' He was alone when I arrived, standing by the window in Eric's room. He had opened it, which was a good idea, because the weather was close and Eric had been in there dead for a while. Bowman came across and we stood over him. The bundle was covered with a red blanket; Eric's Doc Martens poked out from under it. There was fingerprint dust everywhere. Bowman pulled the blanket down.

'Not very nice, is he?'

'He was never noted for that,' I said.

Bowman stepped back and looked at me. 'All right,' he said simply. 'Why did he do it?'

I didn't answer. I gazed down at the body. Its throat had been cut under the left ear. Bowman watched me as I looked and said: 'E nearly took is bleedin ead off.'

There was a razor blade between Eric's right thumb and index finger. The carotid had been severed, and there was a thick spray of blood over the wall where it had happened, shaped like a fountain.

'Amazing way for a man to take his life,' said Bowman. 'I never can understand it. No trace of anyone else in the room when it was done—not as far as we can see. As I said, would you like to comment?'

'Well, if you and your people say he was a suicide,' I said, 'why should I have anything to say? You lot examined him.'

'Oh, come on,' said Bowman impatiently. 'Look, we're two coppers alone in here. Now, I've already sent a detective-constable over to his mother's, and he's told me that you went round to see her and that she gave you the lad's address. She told the officer that you'd promised to break the news of his step-father's death to him. Is that right?'

'Yes,' I said, 'that's right.'

'Now look,' said Bowman, 'was you leaning on this geezer?'

'I questioned him as to what he knew about his stepfather's death, certainly.'

'How hard?'

'Pretty hard. I don't like being consistently lied to any better than you do.'

'He have anything to do with it?'

'Oh, yes,' I said. 'Eric was a pusher. He worked clubs and pubs all over London. He was chronically short of money, because he had a habit himself. I'll never have a chance to prove it now, but I'm convinced he knew the villains who topped his stepfather. I'm convinced they used Eric to force money out of Staniland. Then, after I'd been over here to see him, Erie lost his nerve and told them I'd been. Eric didn't fancy another spell in the nick, and against my advice he went to see them to see if they would get him off the hook. And so they did,' I said, looking down at him. 'So they did, in their way.'