Little Fingers! (29 page)

“
Oh, about
three to four years' time, I would guess, when Tom is earning more
and we can afford to buy one of our own.”

“
I am afraid
that I was talking about weeks, not years.”

“
Why would
that be? We have no plans to leave at present, and you have no
grounds for kicking us out.”

“
Would your
perpetuating an incestuous relationship not be grounds? My lawyer
says that it is immoral behaviour, and therefore that I have the
right, and even the duty to ask you to leave forthwith.”

“
Forthwith,
Mary? You must have a very old-fashioned lawyer.”

“
You can get
as smart as you like, but that is the situation.”

“
No, it is
not. We are not perpetuating any incestuous relationship, thank you
very much indeed, so you have no right to kick us out.”

“
That is not
what I hear.”

“
You
obviously know the wrong sorts of people.”

“
Well, either
way, I am afraid that I have asked my lawyer to serve notice on you
to quit.”

“
We shall
leave when we want to leave, Mary, and not before.”

“
We will see
about that.”

“
Yes, we
will.”

“
I am going
over to Spain to visit my parents for a couple of weeks, and when I
come back, I expect you to be gone, or to see you in court. Is that
understood?”

“
Would this
be a good time to break it to you, Mary, that they are not your
parents?”

“
Of course
they are not my real parents. They were killed in a car crash when
I was four years old. How unkind of you to mention
that.”

“
Just keeping
the record straight, that you choose to acknowledge them as your
parents whatever they have done.”

“
It is only
natural, and none of your business, you little hussy. I cannot
begin to understand where you think this tactic will get
you.”

“
Nowhere. We
are not leaving anyway, and you cannot make us, lawyer or no
lawyer. It was just a spiteful comment from my side, meant to hurt
you. And to continue, there is nothing natural about your
relationship with Dr. Berringer, is there? Goodbye.”

Sam carefully
replaces the phone, and wonders if Mary has done the same. She
hopes she is shaking with remorse. There's a joke. Silly
bitch.

* *
*

As I walk
around the village, it strikes me as curious that there is no
casual meeting place anywhere in Hanburgh. In most villages abroad,
there will be a square where the villagers meet, free of charge, to
ponder the enormities and trivialities of life. In an English
village, this is rarely the case.

There is the
pub, the Hanburgh Arms, but that is different. Most people never
cross the threshold and, technically, children are not allowed to
do so.

Still, there
is much to appreciate about Hanburgh. A beck trickles down one side
of the church towards the green, disappearing until it re-emerges
in its second section, before flowing underground again into the
estuary. A series of old-fashioned buildings house the
greengrocer’s, the post office, the baker’s, and the florist’s.
Only the butcher’s is situated apart, on a corner at the northern
end of the church. There are several elegant houses in Hanburgh,
seven large ones - Georgian or Victorian - and a few more modest
ones. At one time the village was wealthy because of the passing
trade it attracted. Now it is wealthy because of the people who
come to live here, alongside those families who have occupied their
place in the village for centuries.

Hanburgh is an
apparently tranquil, picturesque, village that hides some right rum
goings-on, as the older locals are no doubt describing
them.

Mrs. Corbett
is struggling down the street, the hair that grows widly out of her
chin almost tickling her knees. She looks up at me sideways, and
says “Hello, dear. Are you having a bit of a ponder?”

“
You could
say that.”

“
I
did.”

“
Can I help
you?”

“
No-one can
help me now, dear. I am old, and burdened, and awaiting the call of
my maker. There is nothing that can be done about it.”

“
I could
carry something for you, if you are going to the shops.”

“
You'll be
the death of me, dear. It's carrying things all my life that has
kept me going all these years, although it has made me rather bent
along the way. You don't want to be helping old people like me,
dear. You'll be helping us into our graves.” She smiles at a very
odd angle. “It was kind of you to offer.” She fixes me with a
rapier eye. “I knew your grandfather, and his father, and your
grandmother, and your mother, and your father too, poor soul. Such
a terrible thing to happen!”

“
You
did?”

“
Yes. You
cannot fool me, I'm afraid. I know who you are, and the best of
luck to you. I always liked your family. I hope you find what you
are looking for.”

Just as I
decide to talk about my family, and indeed myself, she shuffles
off, and Brian appears.

“
Hello,
Julia. Chatting up the ladies, are you? A bit old even for you,
isn't that one?”

“
Thank you,
Brian. There's life in those old bones yet, don't you
think?”

“
I would say
so. She will see us all off, that's my guess. Anyway, where are you
going?”

“
To the post
office.” I wave some letters at him. “Letters.”

“
I was going
there myself. Can I chat you up along the way?”

“
Feel free,
but you won't get anywhere I am afraid.”

“
Oh
well.”

* *
*

On the way
back, I meet you, Inspector, pacing the village in your
flat-footed, rocking way. I bet your feet are smelly
too.

You always
seem to undress me mentally for the first few seconds of each
encounter. Ho, hum.

You are still
getting nowhere with your investigations, and so you are
frustrated, which you hide behind a faraway expression of
distraction.

“
Have you
seen Henry Spence recently?” you ask me.

“
Why on earth
do you ask me that?”

“
No reason. I
was just wondering. Do you know him?”

“
By sight,
and to nod to.”

“
Best kept
away from, I would say.”

“
Oh, is he a
prime suspect of yours?”

“
I was
referring to his profession. No, he is not a prime suspect. No-one
is, not even you. I am out of suspects altogether. I cannot get a
single angle on this case. It is as if there is an invisible thread
joining all the bits together, and making them all invisible in
their turn. I shudder to think what is going on here, but I cannot
believe it is healthy.”

“
You are
probably right.”

“
Any ideas
yet?”

“
No. I am
trying, though, I promise.”

“
And what if
I told you I believed your life to be in danger?”

“
Nothing. I
don't believe it is for a second, at least not more than any life
is. I could be run over by a bus,” I add, watching the one of only
two buses a day to come through the village drive past.

“
Surely
someone can give me a clue somewhere in this revolting
village.”

“
It is a
beautiful village.”

“
Yes, and it
is beginning to stick in my craw.”

There is a
scream at the other end of the village, around the corner, up
Beckside. Hilary Spence comes into view, flailing her arms and
screeching without any of her accustomed reserve.

She comes
racing up to you in an ungainly, almost threatening manner.
“Inspector,” she exclaims, gripping your arm. “Young Tom Becker is
lying in the mortuary, covered in blood, with his throat cut open.
Help him! Help him!”

You
double-take. Hilary Spence works in a health centre. Why is she
asking you? Then you rally yourself. Shock. It empties our brains
sometimes.

We run to the
mortuary. By the time we get there, young Tom's body has lurched
around in its final death throes, and landed dead on the white
ceramic tiles, blood washed away from him inexorably across the
floor.

“
Talk to Mrs.
Corbett,” I suggest.

“
You think
she did this?”

It is most
unseemly, but we both laugh as Hilary Spence watches on flummoxed
and outraged.

Sometimes when
shock empties your mind, it tickles.

* *
*

I have had a
short life, if thirty-three years can be considered short, and not
a particularly happy one. In recent times it has been simply weird.
I do not really know why I am still alive. I should have chosen to
die after the car crash. My spirit outwitted my
intelligence.

It is not
worth living this life.

There is so
much I did not expect after the accident. I did not even begin to
imagine the insights into human nature I would develop by crossing
the divide, by gaining the intuition to understand what people are
thinking all around me. It is an extreme of data overload. A human
being cannot process so much. I receive every thought from almost
everyone around me, and I cannot cope with, or use, most of it. It
frightens me, it shocks me, it infuriates me, it depresses
me.

Human thought
is at base so base. We do such trivial things with all that
intelligence we have been lavished with. We could work towards a
better world, towards making even the smallest of differences, and
we waste our time worrying whether somebody of no importance likes
us or not.

People are
nicer than they fear they are, but we are also more futile, weaker,
and lazier. We make only a minimal amount of effort to achieve
things of lasting value, with the exception of those people in
over-drive who work towards little else, much to their own
vainglory.

We are not
balanced. We go from peaceful intentions in peacetime to murderous
ones in war. We are easily provoked to hatred by the simplest of
cynical exploiters. We fall for the same trick a thousand times
without recognising it. We, the wealthiest generation of all time,
are more obsessed with the acquisition of yet more possessions than
any generation in history. You would think that we would have
reached satiety with all that we cram our homes with and later take
to the dump. Apparently not. Rather than counsel ourselves that
enough is enough, we carry on accelerating our desires, and
cheering on people whose only intent is to profit from
them.

We may be
decent, but we are certainly stupid.

Sorry, I am
feeling down today. I cannot say why. I woke up cheerful and
optimistic, and then everything crashed around me because of
nothing in particular. I cannot identify any incident that threw me
into this state. It suddenly took over, and refused to be lifted
off.

Things are
going fine with Mary. We are in love again. There are
complications, but those should not be depressing me.

Writing about
these deaths, and about the shoddy little goings-on of the people
in Hanburgh is beginning to burden me. Tom's death was
catastrophic, shades of Louise. He was so young, he had just
experienced terrible trauma with Charlie and bravely battled
through it with her, there is a baby on the way, and now he is
dead. Why?

I am beginning
to believe that death is stalking me, waiting to strike me down
too. I fear it at a time when perhaps I should be welcoming it. It
is the anticipation of the jolt of it that scares me, suddenly
coming face-to-face with someone with a coldly evil mind intent on
doing me extreme harm.

Are all lives
like mine, where apparent normality masks strange and ugly
deeds?

We never
consider ourselves to be wrong in our entirety. We may know that
what we are doing is considered wrong by society or by a group
within it, but we have the justification to argue that in this case
everything is as it should be.

What can the
killer, or killers, be thinking? What is their motive? How do they
plan it? What goes through their minds just before they deal the
final blow, while they are delivering it, after they have reduced
their target to a bloodied or bloated heap? Do they stand and
ruminate? Do they run away? Do they switch off and tidy up around
the body? Do they dream about what they have done? Do they
celebrate it? Do they relive it? Do they regret it beyond the
remorse of being caught? I wish I understood these
things.

I have never
been able to hear what they are thinking. I can hear the victims
insofar as they themselves realise what is going on. Tom did not.
George knew for quite a while as he strangled to death. Young
Becker had a fleeting intimation. I cannot hear the murderer or
murderers. I have no better clues as to their identity than you
have, Inspector.