The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (16 page)

Eisenmenger had sat looking at the letter for a long time before finally deciding to open it. He hadn't even moved it from the dirty, ever-damp carpet behind the front door, as if merely touching it would shift it from potential to concrete, from irrelevance to stinging account. He had heard it at once, although he was out at the back by the bird table, as if the slight sound of stiff paper falling to the floor was so odd, so sinister that significance had amplified the sound and struck alarms in his mind. He had not received mail in all his time at the schoolhouse, other than the unsolicited dross that every house, whether half-derelict or half-completed, had to endure. The very existence of the letter was profound. No one wrote because no one knew that he was there; no one except Helena, and Helena would not write without good reason.

And there was only one good reason. He knew what it was, at least in a vague way, knew that opening the envelope would prove decisive and would release a power over him, power that his seclusion for the past months had partially nullified.

He made himself a cup of tea while it lay on the mat, not looking towards it but aware of its presence, as if it were a rat that had crept in and he were trying to fool it into a sense of security before killing it with a sudden lunge. During this time he kept asking himself why he was so afraid, so suddenly emotional — it was only a letter, and possibly not even from Helena — but the answer that came, and kept returning, was not one that he felt comfortable with.

Because he loved her.

He had loved her since perhaps the first day he had met her, back when he was still with Marie, back when he had been able to pretend that was not in some way damaged. And this admission could not be allowed because it meant guilt; guilt that Marie's death had not been the meaningless act of a self-pitying and self-deluded woman, but an inevitable consequence, at best of his own selfishness, at worst of his deliberate but unconscious decision to cast her off in favour of Helena.

Yet all this was not the worst of it, for the letter that lay there stark and angular, was also a reminder that he was afraid of loving her. He did not even have the relief of her indifference, for she seemed to find him not only attractive but also useful; useful to find out who had murdered Nikki Exner and now apparently useful to find out if Millicent Sweet's death was straightforward.

And so he delayed picking up the envelope, while he sat in the small sitting room and drank his tea and tried to tell himself that he had the choice not to open it, while a voice that was surely his own sighed words of pity at this fallacy. Yet still he thought to escape or at least temper his fate. He told himself that he had to weigh options before committing an irrevocable act. He had to control his fate, not submit to it.

Abruptly he stood up and almost without consciousness he strode across to the envelope, picked it up and tore it open. It felt at once both like folly and like redemption, like both the bleakest and the brightest of futures.

Inside was a handwritten note and that made him happy because it was not typed; with it was a newspaper clipping reporting the death of Professor Robin Turner who had fallen from the top of a multi-storey car park. No one was yet sure if it had been accident or suicide, although the police were apparently satisfied that there were no suspicious circumstances. Helena's note said;

John
,

Millicent
Sweet
worked
in
Robin
Turner's
laboratory
.
I
haven't
official
!}/
seen
the
autopsy
report
but
I
understand
that
he
had
cancer
,
too
.
I
have
spoken
with
his
wife
—
he
had
had
a
check
-
up
three
weeks
before
and
he
was
told
he
was
one
hundred
per
cent
fit
.

Helena
.

Not much of a billet doux but he found himself gripping the paper as if it were a proposal of marriage. Once again he felt warmth that she had written, cold that she had not written enough, despair that she had written of the wrong things. He looked again at the note. So Turner had cancer, too. Did that matter? A medical had missed it — so what? Helena clearly had seen significance, but Turner was presumably of an age when cancer could not be considered surprising, and it was entirely possible the tumour had been small and occult. Or perhaps he had lied to his wife, perhaps he had been told that he had cancer and the short step off the multi-storey car park had seemed the easiest way to face the future. There were many explanations of this particular concatenation of circumstances.

Yet Millicent had had cancer and now she was dead; same too for her boss, although he had died in a fall. Something, nothing and somewhere in between. Was it enough to make him leave his exile?

The tea was cold, as was the room, and with the cold came the smell of damp. Suddenly everything was revolting to him and a feeling of disgust arose within his soul; disgust at his self-pity, disgust at his surroundings, disgust that he should again feel want for anything at all, let alone Helena. He told himself that Helena was using him, as she had used him once before, yet that made no difference and this realization only added to his self-loathing.

He stood up, knocking the coffee table so that it jerked up as if rearing at his carelessness. For a second he wanted to screw the note up and fling it across the room but he found that he couldn't. Couldn't even do that, so weak was he.

In total despair he picked up the mug and flung that instead, so that it cracked apart against the far wall, the tea forming jagged, black-flecked streaks that wove drunkenly away from the point of impact.

Even purgatory was not to be his.

Eisenmenger had expected Raymond Sweet to be small, perhaps decimated and therefore crushed by grief. He couldn't decide where this impression originated, wondering if it was something that Helena had said, although in truth he could not pinpoint any precise words she had used to suggest it.

The reality was different. Millicent Sweet's father was large; large and composed, but composed into incandescence, defined by his anger and his disbelief that Millicent was dead. Eisenmenger could see that those three words had corroded him, eaten into him like a parasitic grub, and now all that remained was the anger, girded by determination.

He worked as a building labourer, the weather having blasted him, cursed him and then kissed him with its burning lips, the work having left him strong and hard and quiet. His wife had died five years before — "Blood poisoning," he said, "following a dog bite" — and, although he gave forth no more details, it was clear that he had seen Millicent's death as the second half of a terrible, terrible bane, a misfortune beyond all others. In this light, the subsequent loss of Millicent's body was only another strike against him in what had become his personal battle with a malignant fate.

Perhaps, Eisenmenger wondered, he was right. Certainly it had given him an overwhelming presence, an aura of quiet dignity.

Raymond Sweet was frowning and staring at his knees. "Millie was terrified," he murmured. "Scared shitless."

Eisenmenger glanced at Helena before asking Sweet, "How do you know she was so scared, Mr Sweet? I mean, what did she say to you?"

Sweet continued to stare downwards at the leather patches on his olive green cords. "It was when she got sick. She kept saying that she was afraid she was going to die."

"When she got sick?" Eisenmenger enquired. "But I thought that she died in her flat. You mean she died at home?" He looked at Helena but before she could explain, Raymond Sweet was talking, as though his mind was softly stroking tender memories.

"No. Millie died in her flat. I never saw her after she left me the last time — about five months ago."

"Then what do you mean … ?"

"She rang me. The day before … " He paused. When the pause started it could have been to remember, but as it continued, it became clear he recalled things only too well. Eventually he whispered, through a sniff, "Millie rang me to tell me that she was unwell. It was then that she said she thought she was going to die."

Eisenmenger thought at once,
This
is
a
waste
of
time
.
She
got
the
flu
.
Felt
awful
and
said
the
kind
of
thing
anyone
might
say
.

Sweet was openly crying now. Eisenmenger felt exposed to something secret, felt as if he were blaspheming by bearing such witness. "But that was probably just an expression, Mr Sweet." Eisenmenger tried to be gentle. "Just something she said because she felt so awful with the flu."

"No. It wasn't like that."

"How can you be sure? It's the kind of thing anyone might have said, if they felt really under the weather."

But their client was adamant. "She meant it. Millie knew she was going to die."

"From cancer?"

A nod, but nothing more. Eisenmenger looked to Helena for help but she was looking at her client, staring at him as if trying to see some overlooked speck of truth in his face. She asked, "Why do you blame Pel-Ebstein, Mr Sweet?"

"She worked there."

His voice was so full of certainty it was nearly bursting.

"But what else?" persisted Helena. "There must have been something to make you think that they were responsible for her death."

He found it difficult to articulate why. In his mind it was a fact, incontrovertible and therefore unrequiring of substantiation, that her early death was linked to her time at Pel-Ebstein. Eventually, as if he had spent the intervening moments leafing through a dusty archive, he said, "She was terrified after the fire, when she came home. She said that she was going to die."

"When was this, Mr Sweet?" asked Helena.

"'Bout two years ago."

"What was her job at Pel-Ebstein?"

"Research." This with more than a sheen of pride. He even sat up a little straighter.

Eisenmenger said at once, "Do you know what type of research?"

But Millie's father didn't. Research was research was research.

"Did Millie mention the term 'Proteus'?"

Not that he could recall.

"Do you know whom she worked for? Who her boss was?" Eisenmenger persisted.

No.

Eisenmenger subsided and Helena, when she had finished writing, asked, "Do you know which laboratory she worked in?" PEP had facilities up and down the country and throughout the world.

"She worked on an island. In Scotland."

But he had either never been told or he had forgotten the name.

"What did she tell you about the fire?"

Nothing of substance. It had been a large fire, destroying a substantia] part of the facility, but beyond that …

"Was she burned?"

"No."

Eisenmenger looked up at that. "Why was she sent home then?"

Raymond Sweet, he noticed, was sweating, as if he were trying to hide something, but they both knew that his distress grew from grief, from the memories they were coaxing back into sad existence. "Because they closed the laboratory."

Helena expected Eisenmenger to pursue the matter, but he had sunk back into reverie. "It must have been a bad fire," she remarked, at which Sweet merely shrugged. Helena had the feeling that they had found all the diamonds that were to be dug from this mine. "But it was from that time that she became convinced she was going to die?"

"That's right. As soon as she came home, she said she was afraid she was going to die. I asked her why, but she wouldn't tell me any more."

"What did she do about it? Did she consult a doctor about this? Have tests?"

"She didn't need to. PEP did 'em."

Eisenmenger jerked his head up at that. "Really?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. That was what reassured her. She said the tests were negative."

Helena looked up from her notes. "But you don't believe that now."

Raymond Sweet snorted. "At the time we both thought that was end of it. But now I know different. They lied."

He began to cry again, his head down, shaking slowly from side to side. "They lied," he whispered.

They had no more questions that mattered, but he still had a surprise for them. Just as Helena was ushering him out, he asked, "Do you think that I should try to get into contact with Carlos? Warn him?"

"Carlos? Who's he?"

"Friend of Millie's. He worked at the laboratory as well."

*

After Raymond Sweet had gone, Helena got more coffee. While she was gone, Eisenmenger looked out of the window, onto the courtyard three stories below. Her address had improved, he mused. When first they had met her office had been on the high street of a decaying suburb, but now the postal code numbers were lower, the distance to the seat of government considerably reduced. The air was calm and patrician and far removed from all that was depraved, deprived or just despairing. It felt to Eisenmenger as if Helena had homed here.

The office, too, was considerably plusher, considerably more ordered, as if Helena herself, having come to a place of sanctuary, were now more relaxed, more confident. The furniture was new, the clutter was gone and there was less dust; much less dust. Even the potted plants looked happier and more inclined to survive.

Helena returned. As she put down the coffees she remarked, "Well."

"That's one of the reasons I gave up clinical medicine. Irritation with patients. It doesn't matter how closely you question them, how carefully you build the picture, they nearly always hold back some vital piece of information. It's as if they just want to play games."

"Clients are the same, as you've just seen. Sometimes it's wilful, but usually it's just humanity's endless ability to exasperate."

She poured cream into the cups and proffered one to him. "The question now is whether he'll be able to find a surname and an address."

"Even if he doesn't, we've got enough to be going on with, for now."

"So you'll help?"

He smiled. "Let's just say I'm intrigued enough to look into what happened."

The smile she returned, one of relief and (he dared to think) genuine pleasure, was broad. "Good," she said. "I'll write at once to the Medical School about your enquiry. Let them know you're coming and in what capacity."

"Fine."

She then said, "I've also written to Pel-Ebstein."

Surprised, he looked up. "Really? To what end?"

"To ask them for details on Millicent's employment with them."

"You really think it's connected to her death?"

She shrugged. "The client does. That's really all that matters. He'll expect me at least to have asked."

Eisenmenger allowed a small smile out for an airing. "I guarantee you'll get nowhere. Even without commercial confidentiality, they'll clam up if they so much as suspect that you're trying to demonstrate some form of liability."

"Maybe." She sounded surprisingly positive. Suspicious, he asked, "Do you know something l don't?"

From the file she produced a letter, which she gave to Eisenmenger. "The reply came this morning. They want a meeting."

He looked at her for a moment. The sweetness of her smile was as good as a scoreboard proclaiming her small victory.

The letter was from Benjamin Starling, the Head of Biological Research at Pel-Ebstein, inviting her to attend his office on the seventeenth.

"Sometimes the direct approach works," she remarked.

He sighed, accepting defeat graciously. "You win."

"I'll need you there. Can you come?"

As if he had sixteen other commitments that day. She went out to copy the letter for him and when she returned he asked, "How's Raymond Sweet paying for this? The fees, I mean. He doesn't look as if he's got more than ten pounds to his name, and he certainly doesn't have the brains to earn much."

"Mrs Sweet was considerably brighter than her husband, I think. At least she had the sense to arrange life cover for the pair of them. Her death left him quite well off."

"And obviously she passed the IQ onto their daughter."

"Apparently."

They sat and finished their coffees. The silence changed imperceptibly but surprisingly rapidly into one that was faintly embarrassing, as if they both had things to say, and both had reasons for saying them. At last Helena asked, "How are the dreams? Are you still having them?"

He shrugged. "Now and again." True but misleading. Three times a night and worsening, Marie would come and burn before him. Before — before Marie had turned fire into hell and life into ashes — it had been another victim who had haunted him. Little Tamsin, burned beyond life by her mad mother, had died in his arms and had somehow come to represent something to him, something significant but elusive of analysis. Marie's self-deluded sacrifice had wiped Tamsin from his sleep, erasing her but leaving her own scratched scar. Tamsin had somehow been comforting — innocence destroyed — but Marie's shade was negative through and through, sapping something from him.

Why was she returning so frequently now? Was it because he was edging back into life, into pathology and crime, or was it (as he feared) because he was reminded now of how beautiful Helena was, and how much he wanted her.

Eisenmenger said, "I really think, if you agree, that … "

She looked at him over her cup and it was as if she knew what he would say. Her eyes were large. He couldn't see her mouth. There was a pause and he was just about to ask her out to dinner when she said, "Formalize the agreement? You're quite right. At least this time we're both going to get paid."

And the moment passed.

*

Helena was not one of life's shoppers. To her it was not a pleasure but a distressing need, like having one's hair cut, or urinating. It got in the way, it took her from other matters; it brought her out of the world she had created into the one she had chosen to abhor. It was not that she disliked food — she loved to eat well — merely that shopping exposed her, displayed her (or so she felt) before those whom she did not know and therefore did not trust. It was because of this that she tended to hurry when shopping, and this hurry extended to her exit from both the supermarket and the car park.

Thus it was that she ran someone down.

It was, even the victim admitted, a low-impact collision, but nevertheless it sounded distressingly solid to Helena in her car, and it produced a sound that was half-cry and half-imprecation from outside. Helena stopped reversing at once and swore under her breath. She got quickly out of her seat and rushed to the rear of the car, very afraid at what she would see.