Stephen Booth - Scared to Live

‘He’s a smart bloke, that doctor,’ said Matt. ‘That’s all I needed, really — somebody to listen. I felt a lot better afterwards.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

Ben reflected that it was perhaps what he’d refused to do himself, to listen. He hadn’t wanted to hear what Matt was saying.

‘Do you know what I reckon?’ said Matt. ‘I think I was getting worked up about this business over Mum’s problem so that I didn’t have to worry about the real stuff.’

So they were back to the euphemisms. Back to the family collusion, the maintenance of the pretence. That was quite normal.

‘Anyway, I thought you’d want to know. Was I right to call?’

‘Yes, you were right, Matt. Thanks. I’ll see you at the weekend, probably.’

A moment of silence again. The sound of Matt thinking. ‘Are you OK, Ben?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

Finishing the call, Ben went back to his PC. There was an offer of fake Rolex watches that hadn’t been caught by his junk-mail filter, and an advert for the latest bargains at an online CD shop he’d used once. And there was an email from Liz. It was only a short one, but it meant a lot more than all the others put together. It finished with a little smiley face formed by a colon, a dash and a bracket.

It was odd to think that this might have been Rose Shepherd’s means of communicating with the world. Emails were a deceptive form of communication at the best of times. Without hearing the intonation in someone’s voice, or getting clues from their facial expression or body language, it was easy to misinterpret the meaning of their words. Irony could be taken literally, a joke could be read as an insult, and ferocious arguments could develop for no reason. Conversation was transmitted through a filter that got half of it wrong, like some unfinished translation program.

But at least it was communication, of a kind. Cooper remembered his mother’s attitude after she’d begun to get really ill and almost never left the house. Lying in her bed at Bridge End Farm, she had once said to him in a lucid moment that she wasn’t sure the world existed any more. When he asked her why, she explained that she had no evidence it was really out there still. Other people talked about it sometimes, but she never actually saw it for herself.

It had been pointless for him to argue with her. Of course, her family and friends often sent her postcards from the places they visited. Cheerful, colourful pictures of sandy beaches and historic buildings. France, Italy, Florida, Skorpios. Bulgaria, even. But Isabel Cooper didn’t believe in those places, any more than she believed in the people she saw on TV. For her, the outside world had become a series of images on a screen, and a set of postcards in a box. Just another illusion.

Maybe she had come to believe, like Bishop Berkeley, that nothing existed unless she perceived it for herself. Cooper didn’t know much about philosophy, only what he’d learned in a sort of slogan form during General Studies lessons at Edendale High School — esse est percipi , the principle of existence through perception. So he wasn’t sure what else Berkeley’s theory said. Was the opposite true? If you perceived something, did that mean it existed? Or could perception be an illusion, too?

Saturday, 29 October

When the Lowthers arrived at West Street next day, Fry showed them into the DI’s office, where they sat in an uncomfortable silence. Hitchens swivelled his chair once, then stopped when he heard the squeal and looked embarrassed.

Fry found a seat to one side, out of the Lowthers’ immediate view. But it was her that Moira Lowther was looking at when she spoke. ‘You weren’t listening, were you? I told you John wasn’t a danger to anyone but himself. He was psychotic, not a psychopath. I told you, but you didn’t listen.’

Fry didn’t know how to answer her. According to Cooper, Dr Sinclair had said the same thing. And it seemed they had both been right.

‘Our officers did their best to save your son’s life,’ said Hitchens with a placatory gesture. ‘It was a very difficult situation.’

‘You were pursuing him.’

‘No, Mrs Lowther.’

‘ She was.’

The jerk of the head was insulting, but Fry stayed calm.

‘DS Fry wasn’t even at the scene when the incident happened,’ said Hitchens.

‘What about the officers who were there? Why can’t we speak to them?’

‘There’ll be a full enquiry into the circumstances, I assure you.’

Fry and Hitchens exchanged glances. The enquiry wouldn’t be comfortable, and these things often left a sour taste — personal grievances, doubts about where loyalties lay, and whether officers could depend on the support of their chiefs. But it all had to be done properly and above board.

‘We’ll keep you to that promise,’ said Mrs Lowther.

‘Of course.’

Fry could still feel herself being glared at. ‘We questioned John as part of the investigation into your daughter’s death,’ she said. ‘We were trying to cover every possibility, that’s all.’

‘It’s ridiculous. John would never do anything like that. They were so close. As close as a brother and sister could be.’ Mrs Lowther choked on the last word. ‘And now we’ve lost both of them.’

Cringing at the onset of tears and the threat of full-blown hysterics lurking below the surface, Fry looked at Hitchens for support. In a storm, you clutched at any straw.

‘Mr and Mrs Lowther, I can’t tell you how sorry we are,’ he said. ‘Believe me, if there’s anything at all we can do — ’

Henry Lowther had been sitting rigid and furious, his tension showing only in the trembling of his hands and the throbbing of a small vein in his temple.

‘Anything you can do?’ he said, his voice an ominous whisper. ‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough to us already?’

Cooper couldn’t help looking for the Lowthers’ Rover in the visitors’ car park that morning. Sure enough, they’d already arrived. He could see their car in front of the main entrance as he pulled up to the gates of the compound.

It was impossible to imagine how Henry and Moira Lowther would be feeling now. Cooper wondered if he ought to offer to talk to them, and whether it would do any good.

As he locked up the Toyota and walked towards the building, he tried to analyse his own feeling, too. That was difficult enough, God knew. One part of him wanted to talk to the Lowthers in the hope that it might make some sense of their son’s death. But another part of him was afraid — afraid of what too much emotion could do. That was the shallower side of his character, he supposed; the scared and defensive side.

In the CID room, he found Gavin Murfin already at his desk. That was unusual in itself. Gavin never arrived at work before him, especially on a Saturday.

‘You know that the what’s-their-names are here?’ said Murfin when he saw Cooper. ‘The Lowthers.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘They’re in with Diane and the DI.’

‘There haven’t been any messages then?’

‘Not yet. If I were you, Ben, I’d find a reason to get out of the office as soon as possible. The DI can deal with it.’

‘Maybe.’

But Cooper took off his jacket and sat at his desk to see what he had to catch up with. There was nothing from Scenes of Crime, so no new information on the gun. But there was a copy of the full post-mortem report on Simon Nichols, alias Simcho Nikolov, complete with a set of photographs. He hadn’t really looked at Nichols too closely before, but guessed that he hadn’t been much prettier in life than he was in death. Not for the past few years, anyway. The marks left by the man’s lifestyle were etched deep into his face, just as surely as they’d ruined the interior of the caravan. Too much alcohol and not enough food. Too many cigarettes and not enough attention to hygiene.