Helen Fields - Perfect Death

Ailsa pulled back the sheet to reveal naked head and shoulders. There was an intake of breath from Glynis. Ava reached out an arm to put around her shoulders, tempted to look away but there was no scope for cowardice when Glynis was having to be so brave. Still, it was dreadful to see. Death was never so final as when you had to stare it in the face. Ava hated the slackness of the Chief’s jaw and the way the flesh of his cheeks had rolled back towards his ears, as if his body couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be human any more. Life had literally deserted him.

‘Why is he so red?’ Glynis asked.

‘Carbon monoxide poisoning can do that after death,’ Ailsa said. ‘Can you confirm that it is George?’

‘It is,’ Glynis said. ‘Oh God, it really is.’ She turned around and walked through the door into the corridor. Ava let her go.

‘Have you had a chance to have a look at him, Ailsa? Can you give me any information?’ Ava asked.

‘I’ve had a few minutes, that’s all. It’s been a busy day,’ Ailsa said, covering Begbie’s face once again with the sheet.

‘I heard,’ Ava said. ‘I’m sorry. You must have a lot of families needing you at the moment.’

‘I do, but George was my friend. I was working with him when you were still in school. Never thought I’d be asked to perform his autopsy. But the symptoms are classic suicide by inhalation of carbon monoxide. That cherry red colour of his skin? Means he had to have breathed the gas in. If you’re looking for me to tell you someone killed him and posed him there, then I can’t. He has no injuries. He wasn’t restrained in the car. He hadn’t defended himself.’

‘Nothing?’ Ava asked. ‘Really Ailsa? You knew him better than me, and I know the Chief wouldn’t have taken this way out.’

‘You don’t know anything of the sort. People break, Ava. They get bad news, they suffer a loss, they stop working and find their lives suddenly empty. They look in the mirror one day and find they got old and that scares the hell out of them.’

‘It’s cowardly,’ Ava said. ‘It was beneath him.’

‘Suicide is the most human and lonely of acts. It’s not for you to judge him,’ Ailsa said.

There was a pause. Ava reached a hand out to the huge man beneath the sheet, drew it back again and turned to the wall.

‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, Ailsa. I just feel like I failed him somehow. I should have visited more often after his heart attack. I should have made sure he was coping. I just carried on, always too busy.’

‘When there’s a suicide the people left have a tendency to make it about themselves – what they didn’t do, or say, or remember. It’s not about you, Ava. It’s not about Glynis, or their children, or anyone else. It’s about the place George found himself in. I’m not expecting to find anything in the autopsy to be honest, although I’ll be liaising with his doctor to check any recent diagnoses. His body was unmarked except for this.’ Ailsa walked around to lift the sheet from the left side of George Begbie’s body. ‘Here, on his inner wrist – you can barely make it out now because of the reddening – but it looks like letters, albeit clumsily drawn. Capital N next to a small c. I suspect they’ve been scratched into his arm.’

‘Means nothing to me,’ Ava said. ‘N c. I’ll check it out. I’d better get Glynis home now. She’s been more stoic than I’d ever have expected, although of course she’s in shock. That combined with being the wife of a long-serving police officer. She probably spent years half-expecting that knock at the door. It’ll take a while to sink in. She’ll need to contact the rest of the family, too. Let me know, would you, when you have the full autopsy results.’

‘Of course. You should go home and get some rest, too. If days like this teach us anything, it’s that you never know what’s coming. Every moment counts.’

‘I w-want to volunteer,’ the man said, his Adam’s apple working almost completely independently of the remainder of his body.

‘You know they won’t pay you, right? There aren’t any proper jobs going at the moment,’ a woman wearing clothes more usually seen at an eye-assaulting runway from London Fashion Week told him.

‘I know that. I’m not here for the money. I just really w-want to help. It’s a good thing you do here,’ he said.

‘You’ve got some alternative means of funding yourself that allows you not to have to work for money, do you?’ the woman asked, looking from his haircut down to his shoes in a manner that signalled disbelief.

‘I w-work somew-where else as w-well,’ he mumbled. ‘I just thought that a few hours a w-week might be a contribution. Even if I’m just making coffee or filing paperw-work.’

She sighed, pulling a sheet of paper from a drawer and clicking the end of a pen as she waited for him to finish the sentence.

‘I can take your name but I’m not sure there’s anything for you.’

‘That’s fine, Sian, I’ll take it from here thank you,’ another woman said, placing a gentle hand on fashion disaster’s shoulder and smiling softly. ‘Why don’t you come into my office? I’m Cordelia Muir. You are?’

‘Jeremy,’ he said, feeling the weight lift as he followed her. She was somewhere between forty and fifty although good bone structure, careful moisturising and a trim figure made it hard to guess precisely. The media had listed several different ages for her, all to be taken with a pinch of salt, but they were universally agreed on the good her charity was doing in a variety of African countries. Crystal was a clean water initiative that relied on educating communities in how to build wells, then funding them to teach their neighbouring village so that a network of safe, sustainable water systems spread like a life-giving spider web, changing lives and securing futures.

‘So, Jeremy, I have to say it’s very generous of you to offer to volunteer. Sian does our day-to-day administration and she has a fairly rigid view of the world, but she doesn’t mean any harm. I hope she didn’t put you off, but she was right to point out that we can’t pay you. We have limited resources and I make sure that as great a percentage of donations as possible reaches its intended destination. I’m not much of a one for expensive offices or endless amounts of staff.’

‘That’s w-why I’m here,’ Jeremy said, head down towards his lap. ‘I read that about you. It’s the reason I’d like to help. You seem …’ he blinked a few times, chewing his bottom lip. ‘You seem good.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘And if you’re serious about helping then I’d love to have you here. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?’

Jeremy flushed, took a deep breath, and steeled himself to make eye contact as he spoke.

‘Twenty-five,’ he said. ‘I like to help people.’ He spoke slowly, deliberately, every word considered. ‘I w-was fostered. Nice people. I’d like to give something back. Other times I do some gardening w-work. Not much call for that in w-winter.’

‘I guess not,’ Cordelia said softly. ‘I know what you mean about wanting to put something back. I was lucky. My parents were both Kenyan but from wealthy families. They moved me here when I was just four, at a time when racial integration was still a work in progress. My father worked in the finance sector. I was sent to a decent school, had holidays abroad, got through university without any debt. After my degree I sailed into the corporate machine, making piles of money for people who didn’t need any more than they already had. I suppose I got fed up and wanted to find more of a purpose, and here I am. Doing something to improve the lives of people in Africa felt like joining up the ends of a circle for me. You know, I think you’re going to be a real asset around here. What matters to me more than anything is working with people who have a positive attitude and the desire to do good. Why don’t you come in next week, spend a few hours getting to know what we do and where you can fit in, and if you like us we can make it more regular? In the meantime, fill in a personnel form with some details and the name of a referee if you have one.’