Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“She was going to die?”

“Oh yes. She was going to die, and how. Maybe in three months, maybe in six.”

Sam thought that he understood. “So you killed her.”

“So I did as she asked,” Reed said with justifiable pedantry.

Sam, though, seemed less impressed by Reed’s aspiration to mercy. “Why like that? Why naked in a bath? Why not tablets? You must have access to any number of tablets.”

“I know about death, Sergeant. It’s my job, God help me. You have to be careful with tablets. They can make you sick, they can make you fit, they can give you unendurable stomach pains. Whereas lying in a warm bath, your lifeblood slowly draining away… there is no pain or vomiting or convulsion. Just slow, lazy unconsciousness from which you never wake up.”

“You say you slit her wrists and that she was quite happy for you to do it. I can’t believe that. It must have hurt like hell. No one would willingly allow someone else-no matter how much they love them-to put a blade through their flesh.”

Reed’s demeanor suggested that he was in front of a particularly dense medical student. “You’re right, of course… unless you use local anaesthetic first.”

Hannah understood. “The puncture marks on her wrists.”

Despite everything, Reed seemed impressed by this piece of professionalism. “They were noticed? Good. Who’s your pathologist?”

“Colin Browne.”

He nodded, then said gently, “Tell him to treat her with dignity.”

“I’m sure he will.”

Sam remained untainted by sentimentalism and intruded on the moment. “Forgive me for being dense, but you’re asking us to believe that you sat there and watched her die? Isn’t that a bit ghoulish?”

“What was I supposed to do? Go and make a cup of tea? Perhaps watch Countdown on the telly?”

“But just to sit there? To watch your own wife, who you claim to love, dying?”

Reed was distracted, the last hours of his wife still playing in his mind. “She didn’t want to die alone. Who does?”

“Is that the only reason?”

“Yes. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because I think you enjoyed sitting there while she died.”

He shook his head. “It’s a funny thing. I know all about death. I’m totally familiar with what it does in all its forms; so much so I can work back from the traces that it leaves on the corpse to deduce what form it took when it visited. That’s my skill.” He paused, then said, “Yet I know nothing about dying. That’s as alien to me as the surface of Jupiter.”

Sam thought he understood. “So you treated your own wife’s death as some sort of peep show?”

“No, Sergeant. I did not enjoy the experience one bit.”

“I think you’re sick, Dr. Reed. I think you drugged your wife, slit her wrists, and then sat there drinking wine and enjoying her death.”

At which Reed gave up on his student. “I don’t really care what you think, Sergeant Rich.”

“It’s bad enough that you were willing to cut your wife’s flesh yourself, but then to watch her bleed to death…”

Reed’s head was bowed, as if penitent. “I didn’t want to do it, but when the time came, she couldn’t do it herself.” In a slightly louder voice he asked, “You don’t think I enjoyed doing it, do you?”

“You were fascinated, weren’t you? A little experiment: Slit the wrists and then sit back and watch. Did you make notes? Did you get off on it? Was it worth-”

“Shut up!” Reed suddenly looked up at Sam and rose slightly from his chair, so that they were face to face in a posture of animal aggression.

Hannah said mildly, “Well, perhaps we’ve got as far as we’re going to get for now. Come on, Sam.” They stood up, then to Reed she said, “We’re going to have to charge you, I’m afraid.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll need to discuss with the superintendent whether it’s manslaughter or murder.”

“Perhaps-”

She failed to notice that Reed had something more to say. “And of course, when we get the toxicology and the full autopsy reports back, they may change matters.”

“No doubt, but-”

“Even if you were acting from the best of motives, I’m afraid that what you did was illegal. Manslaughter is the very best you can hope for.”

Reed smiled. “You think so? I would have said that the best would be redemption.”

“Redemption for what, Phil? You claim that what you did was some sort of act of kindness, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, then…” She shrugged. “I think you can switch the tape off now, Sam.”

But at this, Reed said suddenly, “No!”

“No? Why not?”

He took a deep breath. “I want to tell you something more.”

She looked at him, then sat back down slowly. “Really? We don’t often get such voluble people in here.”

“It’s your lucky day, then.”

“What do you want to tell us about, Phil?”

“The swirling patterns.”

This non sequitur found her lost. “I’m sorry?”

Slowly he repeated the phrase. “The swirling patterns.” His tone was dreamy, almost awe filled. “As I cut Kate’s wrists, the blood dripped into the bath water and made swirling pink patterns that faded as they curled around and around…”

She looked again at Sam, saw that he was as intrigued as she. “What about them?”

But Reed, it seemed, was in a circumlocutory mood. “It wasn’t a happy marriage-hadn’t been for some time-but we still loved each other, and as we sat together while she died, we both realized just how much.” His voice trailed away for a moment, before, “Of course, happy marriages are made, not born, and ours was made unhappy by only one thing.”

“Which was?”

“Children. When they’re born, they keep you awake at night, they scream and they puke and they dribble. The lie in their own excrement, and they live entirely for themselves. They suck you dry and then come back for more. They drive you beyond the limits that you thought you could endure, and with a heartlessness that not even the most evil dictator in the world would ever show, they come back for more of you.” And with surprise they saw that there were tears in his eyes, and more than that, for he was crying almost uncontrollably. His last words were almost lost in this flood of sorrow, were uttered in a soft moan. “And we could not have them.”

Over the sound of a late-night news program on the radio, Reed heard what might have been the sound of weeping coming from the en suite shower room. He sat forward in bed. “Kate? Are you all right?”

There was no response. “Kate? What’s wrong?”

The door opened. Kate, dressed only in a long nightdress, came out. Her eyes were red, her manner combative. “What do you think is wrong? The usual, of course. Another bloody period.”

“Oh.” He relaxed back into the pillows. As she climbed in beside him he said gently, “Don’t worry, Kate. It doesn’t matter…”

Which was precisely the wrong thing to say. “Of course it matters! It matters to me anyway.”

“And to me.”

She was on the edge of tears again, but these were not just the tears of sadness and frustration, these were also of anger and suspicion. “Really?”

“Yes, of course.”

She stared at him, examined him as if she had caught a pickpocket. “You’ve never been keen on having a baby.” This had been an unspoken accusation for some months now, the elephant in the corner that was, until now, ignored by both of them.

“Yes, I am.” He protested his innocence as vehemently as he could, but the effect was spoiled when he went on, “It’s just that I’m a bit scared. It’s a big step. And there’s a lot going on at work… I’m under a lot of stress at the moment.”