Ann Cleeves - A Lesson in Dying

Throughout the day Jack Robson had begun to emerge from the cocoon of numb sadness which had protected him from his grief. The exhaustion and apathy which had kept him in his armchair for days disappeared suddenly, as if he had recovered from a serious illness. He cooked and ate a large meal and enjoyed it, tasting every mouthful.

The memory of Kitty in the prison and the school house was sharp and painful, but he was no longer overwhelmed by it. Like the image of Kitty as a girl, skipping in the school playground, he saw the recent past as a piece of fiction, read and passionately reacted to, but in the end unreal. His infatuation for her seemed like an illness too, a fever. He wondered how it could ever have happened. All that was left was a sense of guilt and responsibility, and Jack had too strong an instinct for survival, too little imagination to be devastated by that. He was more at home with action and as he took control of his life again, he wondered what he should do.

What would Joan say? he thought and that too was an indication that things were returning to normal, because since his wife’s death he had asked the question many times. He could almost hear her speaking: ‘ Get off your backside, Jack Robson! It’s no good moping around the house. You’ve work to do.’

What work? he thought. Hadn’t he caused enough damage with his meddling? Yet he longed for the sense of purpose which the original investigation had given him. The excitement, the questions, the exhilaration of discovery were addictive. He wanted to see a result. He wanted to go to Ramsay and see the policeman’s face when he told him the name of the murderer. Although that was still a long way off Jack felt that he might know who had killed Medburn. Almost unconsciously, as he sat in his stupor of mourning, he had been worrying at the problem of the headmaster’s death and had developed a theory so unlikely, so bizarre, that it seemed like a feverish nightmare. Yet it answered all the questions. He wondered now what he should do to prove it, and his wife’s words came to him again: ‘Jack Robson. Get off your backside!’

On an impulse he got out of his chair and made a telephone call to the coach station in Newcastle. He found out that there was an evening coach to the south. He returned to his chair and thought for a few minutes.

There was the same feeling of health and vitality that had come to him earlier. His head was full of ideas and plans. He went upstairs and packed the small suitcase he had bought for Joan to take to hospital when she was first ill. He was ready. Only then did it occur to him that his daughter might be worried if he suddenly disappeared. He was too excited to tell her. She would think he was mad to rush off into the night with nowhere to stay, and would stop him going. He felt he was coming out of a period of insanity but it would be hard to explain that to her. In the end he wrote to Patty. His note said very little. He needed time to think, he said. He would go away for a few days. She wasn’t to worry. He did not tell her his destination. Perhaps he wanted to create a mystery of his disappearance, to make himself important. He gave his neighbour’s son a pound coin to deliver the letter the next morning on his way to school.

He looked at his watch. It was too early yet to get a taxi into Newcastle but he wanted to be out of the house. Now he had decided on action he could sit for no longer. In the street he saw Ramsay hurrying through the fog, and felt smug and triumphant because he was sure the policeman was on the wrong track altogether. In the Northumberland Arms he drank a pint of beer, and it felt like a celebration.

The news of Jack’s disappearance spread round the village and as time went on the rumours grew wilder and more unlikely. He had been seen by the customers of the Northumberland Arms to get into a taxi. Some claimed to have heard the destination. They had noted his suitcase and before Patty received his letter the following day the gossip had already started. He’d had to get away, some said, because he was so upset by Kitty’s death, but the men in the Northumberland Arms discounted that, he hadn’t looked upset to them. He was like his old self. He’d had a bit of a joke and he’d bought a round. No one listened to them for long. Rumour was more exciting than reality. Women in the bus queue, shopping bags at their feet, discussed it. One suggested that he intended to commit suicide too. Perhaps he could not face life without Kitty. The other women were enchanted. The idea brought romance to the grey, November day. It was like being at the pictures.

By the time Patty had dropped the children at school the gossip was more vicious. There was speculation that he was running away from the police. He had killed Paul Wilcox, people said, to prove Kitty’s innocence. They had been having an affair for years, since before Joan’s death. Kitty had killed Medburn to set herself free, then Jack had murdered Wilcox to throw suspicion elsewhere. Now he had run away. Patty heard the gossip in the schoolyard and the playground and wherever she went she felt their curiosity and sympathy. She was angry and worried, and wondered what on earth her father was doing.

Ramsay learned of Jack’s disappearance in the school. The teachers were grumbling because the caretaker had not arrived and no one else knew how to work the boiler. The cleaner, whose husband had been in the Northumberland Arms the night before, told of his suitcase and the taxi which had come to take him to Newcastle.

‘I saw him with his suitcase,’ Ramsay said casually. ‘ I thought he was going to stay at his daughter’s.’ Poor old bugger, he thought. I don’t blame him for wanting to get away.

He was back at the school, asking questions with a renewed energy, a nervous frenzy. He had been given to the end of the week to get a result. Then he would be moved to what his boss called a ‘ less sensitive assignment’. Patty’s confidence in him had provided a new determination to prove them all wrong. He stayed around the school through a kind of superstition, as if the answer to the case was in the stone walls if only he knew the magic to release it. By mid-morning he realized he was being foolish and knew he was in the way. He left the school and went out into the damp and gloomy village.

Patty saw Ramsay next at six o’clock that evening. Jim had come home from work and the children were watching television. She was in the kitchen peeling potatoes and it was Jim who opened the door to him.

‘Yes?’ she heard her husband say. ‘What do you want?’

‘Can I speak to Patty?’

‘Aye. I suppose you’d better come in.’

The three of them stood in the small kitchen and Jim looked at the policeman with obvious hostility.

‘Have you seen your father?’ Ramsay asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You know as well as I do. You’ll have heard all the gossip. He’s gone away for a few days.’

‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘He phoned me up this afternoon. It was a peculiar phone call. I wasn’t sure if he was quite sober. He said he knew who had killed Medburn and Wilcox and that he’d meet me at his house to tell me all about it as soon as he got back. He was expecting to be here by five. I’ve been hanging around for him.’

‘He hasn’t been in touch with me today.’ She was offended. Why hadn’t her father consulted her before disappearing? She had thought they were partners. ‘Where was he phoning from?’

‘He didn’t say. He didn’t say much. He was in a call box and his money had run out. Or perhaps he didn’t want to tell me any more. It was somewhere noisy. A bus station probably. There was the sound of engines and a crackly public address system.’ He looked at Patty. ‘You’ve no idea where he might be?’