Simon Beckett - The Chemistry of Death

Henry. The needle.

Jenny.

I tried to shout her name, but it came out as a moan.

'Shush, David.'

I twisted to look up at Henry, bringing on another violent bout of vertigo. He was leaning heavily on the chair as he laboriously pushed me down the hall.

Walking.

None of this made any sense. I tried to lever myself up but there was no strength in my arms. I collapsed back again.

'Jenny… the ambulance…' My voice was a slurred mumble.

'There's no ambulance, David.'

'I don't… don't unnerstand…'

But I did. Or at least I was starting to. I remembered how Jenny had roused when I'd brought her to the house, how frightened she'd been. Don't let him get me! I'd thought she was delirious, that she'd meant Mason.

She hadn't.

I tried to get up again. My limbs felt sluggish, as though I were suspended in aspic.

'Come on, David, stop it.' Henry sounded waspish.

I sagged back, but as we passed the staircase I made a lunge for the railings. The chair slewed around and almost spilled me out. Henry staggered, clutching for balance.

'God damn it, David!'

The chair had turned sideways on in the hallway. I held on to the railing, closing my eyes as everything began to spin again. Henry's voice, breathless and irate, floated down to me.

'Let go, David. This isn't doing any good, you know.'

When I opened my eyes again Henry was leaning for support against the wall in front of me, dishevelled and sweating.

'Please, David.' He sounded genuinely pained. 'You're only making this harder for both of us.'

I hung on determinedly. With a sigh he reached into his pocket and brought out a syringe. He held it up so I could see it was full.

'There's enough diamorphine here to drop a horse. I really don't want to have to give you any more. You know as well as I do what'll happen then. But I will if you force me.'

My mind sluggishly processed the information. Diamorphine was a painkiller, a heroin derivative that could cause hallucinations and coma. It had been Harold Shipman's drug of choice, used to send hundreds of his patients into a sleep from which they'd never woken.

And Henry had pumped me full of it.

Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place with terrible clarity. 'You and him… It was… you and Mason…'

Even now part of me expected him to deny it, to somehow offer a reasonable explanation. Instead he considered me for a long moment, then lowered the syringe.

'I'm sorry, David. I never thought it would come to this.'

It was too much to take in. ' Why, Henry…?'

He gave a crooked smile. 'I'm afraid you don't know me very well at all. You should stick to dead bodies. They're far less complicated than people.'

'What… what're you talking about…?'

The lines of Henry's face deepened into a scowl of contempt. 'You think I've enjoyed being a cripple? Being stuck in this hole of a place? Patronized by these… these cattle? Thirty years of playing the noble doctor, and for what? Gratitude? They don't know the meaning of the word!'

A spasm of pain crossed his features. Supporting himself on the wall, he made his way stiffly to the old cane chair by the telephone table. He saw me staring as he sank into it with relief.

'You didn't really think I'd give up trying, did you? Always told you I'd prove the specialists wrong.' Out of breath from his exertions, he mopped the sweat from his brow. 'Trust me, it's no fun being helpless. Having your impotence publicly on display. Have you any idea how demeaning that is? How soul-destroying? Can you imagine being like you are now, all the time? And then to suddenly find yourself presented with an opportunity to literally, quite literally have the power of life or death! To play God!'

He gave me a complicit grin.

'Come on, David, admit it. You're a doctor, you must have felt it sometimes. That little whisper of temptation?'

'You… you killed them…!'

He looked slightly put out. 'I never laid a finger on them. That was Mason, not me. I just let him off his leash.'

I wanted to close my eyes and shut all this out. Only the thought of Jenny, of what he might have done to her, prevented me. But as desperate as I was to find out, I was in no state to help either her or myself at the moment. The longer he talked, the more chance I had of the drug wearing off.

'How… how long…?'

'How long have I known about him, you mean?' Henry gave a shrug. 'His grandfather brought him to see me when he was a boy. He liked hurting things, making up little rituals around killing them. Only animals back then, of course. No concept that what he was doing was wrong, none at all. Quite fascinating, really. I offered to keep it quiet and supply tranquillizers to take the edge off his… proclivities, on the condition that I carried on monitoring him. My unofficial project, if you like.'

He raised his hands in mock submission.

'I know, I know, not very ethical. But I told you I'd always wanted to be a psychologist. I would have been a bloody good one, too, but coming here put an end to that. At least Mason was more interesting than arthritis and footrot. And I don't think I did too bad a job, actually. If not for me he'd have gone off the rails years ago.'

Fear for Jenny was tugging at me, but even a slight shift in the chair made the world spin and brought on a queasy wash of nausea. I began tensing the muscles in my arms and legs, trying to will some use back into them.

'Did he kill… kill his grandfather as well…?'

Henry seemed genuinely shocked. 'Good God no! He worshipped the old man! No, that was natural causes. Heart, I expect. But with George dead there was no-one to make sure Mason took his medication. I'd stopped seeing him in a professional sense years ago. Believe it or not, endless accounts of animal mutilations begin to pall after a while. I made sure old George had a supply of tranquillizers, but other than that I'm afraid I rather lost interest. Until he turned up on my doorstep one night and announced he'd got Sally Palmer locked in his father's old workshop.'

He actually chuckled.

'Turned out he'd had a thing about her ever since she hired him and his grandfather a year or two ago. Which wasn't a problem until the tranquillizers wore off and he started feeling his oats again. So he began stalking her. Probably didn't even know what he'd got in mind himself, but then one night her dog saw him and kicked up a fuss. So Mason cut its throat, belted her one to shut her up, and then carted her off.'

He shook his head, almost in admiration. I couldn't believe this was the same man I'd known for years, the man I'd believed was my friend. The gap between who I'd thought he'd been and this twisted thing in front of me was unbridgeable.

'For God's sake, Henry…!'

'Oh, don't look at me like that. It served the stuck-up cow right! Manham's "celebrity", slumming it with the yokels when she wasn't swanning off to London or somewhere. Condescending bitch! Christ, I couldn't look at her without being reminded of Diana!'

The mention of his dead wife threw me. Henry saw my confusion.

'Oh, I don't mean physically,' he said, irritably. 'Diana had far more class, I'll give her that. But they were two of a kind in other ways, believe me. Both arrogant; thought they were better than anyone else. Typical bloody women! They're all the same! Bleed you dry and then laugh at you!'

'But you loved Diana-'

'Diana was a whore!' he roared. 'A fucking whore!'

His face was contorted almost beyond recognition. I wondered how I could have missed such a depth of bitterness for so long. Janice had hinted more than once that the marriage hadn't been a happy one, but I'd dismissed it as jealousy.

I'd been wrong.

'I gave everything up for her!' Henry spat. 'You want to know why I became a GP instead of a psychologist? Because she got pregnant, so I had to get a job. And shall I tell you what's really funny? I was in such a hurry I didn't bother finishing my training.'