Simon Beckett - The Scent of Death

I’d thought that about other places, too.

Jason had described his and Anja’s second home as a cottage. Compared to their main house in London, an enormous villa in Belsize Park, it might have been, but that didn’t do it justice. Built of warm Cotswold stone, it was a rambling old place with a thatched roof that could have graced the cover of a homes-and-gardens magazine. It stood on the outskirts of a pretty village whose pub boasted a Michelin star, and where Range Rovers, Mercedes and BMWs crowded the narrow main street every weekend.

When Jason and Anja had invited us over for a long weekend I’d been concerned there might be some awkwardness. They’d been my closest friends, before my wife and daughter had died in a car accident. I’d met Kara at one of their parties, and they’d been godparents to Alice, just as I’d been to their daughter, Mia. I’d been relieved at how well the two of them had hit it off with Rachel, but the occasional drink or dinner was different to spending days in each other’s company. Rachel and I had only met earlier that year, during a traumatic murder investigation in the Essex coastal marshes. I’d worried that taking her to stay with friends from my old life would seem strange, that my shared history with Jason and Anja might make her feel excluded.

But everything had been fine. If every now and then I still felt an odd sense of dislocation, a disquieting overlay of my old life over the new, it didn’t last. The weekend had been spent walking across Cotswolds fields and woodland, taking our time over pub lunches and long, lazy evenings. By any standards, it had been an idyllic few days.

Except for the nightmare.

The coffee had started to bubble behind me, filling the kitchen with its aroma. I took the percolator off the Aga and was pouring two mugs when I heard the stairs creak as someone came down. From the heavy tread I didn’t have to look around to know it was Jason.

‘Morning,’ he said, looking bleary and rumpled as he shambled into the kitchen. ‘You’re up early.’

‘Thought I’d make some coffee. Hope that was OK.’

‘So long as there’s a cup for me.’

He sank down on to a stool at the kitchen island, making a half-hearted attempt to adjust the towelling bathrobe around his heavy-set frame before losing interest. A pelt of dark chest hair sprouted from it, creeping up his throat to stop at his shaving line. The stubbled face and thinning hair above it seemed to belong to a different body.

He accepted the coffee I handed him with an appreciative grunt. We’d known each other since we were students at medical school, back in the days before my life had been thrown on to a different track. Instead of medicine, I’d chosen an often-turbulent career as a forensic anthropologist, while Jason had become a successful orthopaedic surgeon who could afford a second home in the Cotswolds. He’d never been a morning person even when he was younger, and the additional years hadn’t changed that. Neither had the wine he’d drunk the night before.

He took a drink of coffee and grimaced. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any tips for a hangover?’

‘Don’t drink so much.’

‘That is so funny.’ He took a more cautious sip from his mug. ‘What time are you and Rachel heading off?’

‘Not till this afternoon.’

I’d driven us over from London in my ‘new’ car, a second-hand but reliable 4x4, and we didn’t have to get back until that evening. But the reminder that the weekend was almost over — and the thought of the next day — left a hollow feeling in my chest.

‘When’s Rachel’s flight tomorrow?’ Jason asked, as though reading my mind.

‘Late morning.’

He studied me. ‘You OK?’

‘Sure.’

‘It’s only for a few months. It’ll be fine.’

‘I know.’

He considered me for a moment, then decided not to pursue it. With a wince, he went to a wall cupboard and took out a box of paracetamol. His meaty fingers deftly popped two tablets from the foil strip.

‘Jesus, my bloody head,’ he said, opening a bottle of mineral water from the fridge. He washed down the tablets and gave me a sour glance. ‘Don’t start.’

‘I didn’t say a word.’

‘You don’t have to.’ He waved a hand at me. ‘Go on, get it off your chest.’

‘What’s the point? I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.’

Even when we were students Jason had always been a man of large appetites. Now, though, he’d reached an age when excess had started to take its toll. Always heavily built, he’d put on weight, and his features were developing a puffiness that matched his unhealthy colour. But we’d only recently picked up the friendship again after a gap of several years, and I hadn’t felt able to broach the subject as I would once have done. I was glad he’d brought it up himself.

‘There’s a lot of pressure at work.’ He shrugged, staring out through the window. ‘Budget cuts, waiting times. It’s a mess. Sometimes I think you did the right thing, getting out when you did.’

I made a point of looking around the beautifully equipped kitchen. ‘You didn’t do too badly.’

‘You know what I mean. Anyway, bottom line is I might have been pushing things a bit, but it isn’t like I’ve got a cocaine habit or anything.’

‘I’m sure your patients are thankful for that.’

‘At least mine aren’t dead.’

The comeback seemed to restore his humour. Rubbing his stomach, he headed for the fridge.

‘Fancy a bacon sandwich?’

Rachel and I left after lunch. Jason cooked a Sunday roast, a sizzling rib of beef that he tended lovingly, and Anja had made a meringue for dessert. She insisted we take some back with us, along with thick slices of roast meat.

‘It’ll save you having to shop,’ she insisted when I tried to decline. ‘I know what you’re like, David. As soon as Rachel’s left you’ll either forget or make do with whatever’s in your fridge. You can’t just live on omelettes, you know.’

‘I don’t live on omelettes,’ I said, sounding unconvincing even to myself.

Anja smiled serenely. ‘Then you won’t mind taking something extra, will you?’

Rachel and I were quiet on the drive back to London. It was a glorious evening, the Cotswolds fields green and golden, the trees beginning to take on russet hues as autumn approached. But the spectre of her departure the next day shared the car with us, tainting any enjoyment.

‘It’s only for three months,’ Rachel said abruptly, as though continuing an unspoken dialogue. ‘And Greece isn’t far.’

‘I know.’

It was far enough, but I knew what she meant. That summer she’d let pass a chance to return to her career as a marine biologist in Australia. She’d stayed to be with me, so I was hardly going to complain about a temporary research post in an Aegean marine reserve.

‘It’s only a four-hour flight. You could still come out and stay.’

‘Rachel, it’s all right. Really.’ We’d already agreed it would be better if she settled into her new job without distractions. ‘It’s your work, you have to go. We’ll see each other in a few weeks.’

‘I know. I just hate this part.’

So did I. I suspected that was why Jason and Anja — probably more Anja — had asked us over for the weekend, to take our minds off Rachel’s departure.

There was no avoiding it now, though. She went through the limited choice of music I kept in the car. ‘How about this? Jimmy Smith’s The Cat ?’

‘Perhaps something else.’

Rachel gave up on my music collection and turned on the radio instead. The background murmur of a programme on alpaca farming replaced the silence for the rest of the trip. The fields gave way to suburban sprawl and then the built-up concrete and brick of the city. I resisted the automatic instinct to head for my old flat in East London. I hadn’t lived there for most of the summer, but it still seemed strange to be going somewhere else.