Ruth Rendell: The Best Man To Die

His first day back. His first job on his first day, the first return to normal routine after the earthquake. Jack didn’t know why he had chosen to come here – there were a dozen names who needed him on his list. Perhaps it was because some unformed unrecognised hunger in his subconscious cried for the solace and the refreshment of looking on beautiful things; perhaps because this place was unique in his experience, alien, and remote from anywhere he had ever been with Charlie.

But as always when he found himself at the house in Ploughman’s Lane, a clumsiness dragged at his feet and his deft fingers began to feel all thumbs. He was like a barbarian who, having entered a forsaken Roman villa, stood dazzled and amazed, overcome by the awe of ignorance. He crossed the hall and pretending to himself that he did not know the precise location of the switch – there was no need to, he was alone now – he opened door after door to peer in wonderment at the treasures within. A muttered ‘Pardon me, lady’ would have been his defence if one of them had been occupied but there was no one about and Jack looked his fill undisturbed at velvet and silk, dark tables inlaid with ivory, pictures in gilt frames, flowered china holding real flowers, a bust in bronze, a pomander whose orange spicy scent was brought to him on warm sunlight.

Afterwards he was unable to say what had suddenly brought Charlie so vividly to his mind, except perhaps that the memory of his dead friend was never far from it. Maybe this flash of pain, sharper and more real than any he had yet felt, came when he opened the door of the Chinese room. It was here, just inside the door, that his task awaited him and he stepped for a moment on the threshold stunned into immobility by the strange rich colours. It was too early yet for the sun to have reached the back of the house but the reds and golds, the unearthly sea greens and citrus yellows, blazed fiercely enough in shadow. Jack put down his tool bag and gazed about him numbly. He had been here before and yet it seemed to him that he had never seen the room until this moment. It was as if his nerves had been stripped raw and, unprotected, received the impact of these glorious yet intolerable colours in a series of vibrations like electric shocks.

Half in a trance he approached the chessmen that Charlie had called an army and saw in the face of one of them, a red knight, the perfect facsimile of his dead friend’s face, sharp, cunning, astute and kind. A longing to possess and preserve it seized him but he was afraid even to touch the delicate carved jade and he heard himself give a low sob.

It was his awed and perhaps childlike descriptions of this house which had, he supposed, led Charlie here. Just as he, Jack, might have gone to the grocer’s, so Charlie Hatton had come here to buy the best. Jack’s sorrow dissolved in admiration of that audacity. His friend had penetrated this museum too and that not as a servant or a workman but as a customer. Vigo had brought him into this room and drunk with him. Jack could imagine Charlie’s cocky poise, his hard brown hands even daring to lift a cup or finger a silk picture while he commented on its quality, its desirability, with brash impudence. Had he recognised himself at the head of that scarlet army? And the Philistines slew Jonathan… How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!

Jack turned away from the sharp little faces that seemed to scrutinise him and, opening his bag, squatted down in front of it. He felt worn out, exhausted at ten in the morning, and the girl’s voice behind him made him jump.

‘Thought you might fancy a cup of tea.’

He could guess his own expression and he didn’t want her to see his face. ‘Mr or Mrs about?’ he asked. ‘I’d better see one of them.’

‘Haven’t you heard then? She’s gone away and taken the boy. The police arrested him yesterday for killing that lorry driver.’

There had been tears in Jack’s eyes and now his eyelids burned as they sometimes did after an evening with Charlie in the smoke-filled bar of the Dragon. He was staring into the heap of tools but not seeing them. His brain had become an empty red space. He got to his feet and there was a hammer in his hand, although he couldn’t remember selecting it from the heap.

The red light before his eyes split into a spectrum of insane red and gold and sea green that roared as it twisted and leapt about him, as if a kaleidoscope could make sound as varied and as fantastic as its changing pictures. Behind him another, shriller noise echoed. The girl had begun to scream.

‘A bull in a china shop,’ said Wexford.

He picked his way through the fragments which littered the carpet, stopping occasionally to lift between finger and thumb a sliver of transparent porcelain. His expression was impassive and cold but a little heat entered it as he approached the table where the chessmen had been. Not a piece remained intact, but here and there among the red and white gravel he found a delicate spear with an amputated hand still grasping it, a fragment of ivory lace, a horse’s hoof.

Burden was kneeling down, smoothing out torn remnants of the silk pictures. A big rough footprint scarred the scales of the painted fish, the print of the same foot that had ground sake cups to dust.

‘Frightening, isn’t it?’ said Wexford. ‘Barbarity is frightening. I’m glad I don’t know…’

‘What all this stuff was worth?’ Burden hazarded.

‘Not so much as all that. I meant I’m glad I don’t know it’s uniqueness, its age, its quality really; looting must be like this, I suppose, wanton, revengeful.’

‘You said Charlie Hatton was a soldier of fortune.’

‘Yes. Is there any point in going to talk to his comrade-in-arms? I suppose we have to.’

Jack Pertwee was in the kitchen with Sergeant Martin. He was sitting down, his arms spread and his body slumped across the table. Wexford shook him roughly and jerked his head back. Their eyes met and for a moment Wexford still held on to the electrician’s coat collar, shaking it as might a man who has brought a destructive dog under control. Jack’s jowls shook and his teeth chattered.

‘You’re a fool, Pertwee,’ Wexford said scornfully. ‘You’ll lose your job over this. And for what? For a friend who’s dead and can’t thank you?’

His voice almost inaudible, Jack said, ‘The best… The best friend a man ever had. And it was me sent him here.’ He clenched his fist, drove it hard against the table.

‘Oh, take him away, Sergeant.’

Jack dragged himself to his feet. His fist opened and some thing fell to the floor, rolled and came to rest at Wexford’s feet. The chief inspector stared downwards. It was the knight’s decapitated head. The wicked sharp face, tricked into expression by a ribbon of sunlight, grinned widely and showed its teeth.

‘Charlie,’ Jack whispered. He tried to say it again but great agonised sobs tore away the name.