Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

‘Perhaps you need to say it out loud.’

‘To someone with a sympathetic ear?’ Some of the fight had left Jeb, but his voice still held a challenge. ‘Aren’t there enough priests in this house?’

Magnus grinned. ‘Too many.’

‘That’s the truth.’ Jeb reached beneath the table and brought out a bottle of whisky. He nodded to a shelf above the bed. ‘There’s another glass over there.’

Magnus got up from his seat. Things were easier between them now. Perhaps it was their shared experience and imminent parting, or maybe being newcomers to Tanqueray House had united them in a way that saving each other’s lives had not. A small stack of paperback novels sat beside the glass. He said, ‘Has Belle been looking after you?’

‘You’d make a good detective.’ Jeb poured himself a tot and passed the bottle to Magnus who did the same. ‘Belle’s a nice girl. She isn’t used to being on her own and she’s trying to be brave about it. Helping me helps her.’

There was truth in what Jeb was saying, but the convenience of it made Magnus uneasy. He picked up one of the paperbacks to look at its title and saw a revolver secreted behind the pile. He lifted it by the barrel.

‘Did Belle bring you this too?’

Jeb took another sip of his drink, hiding his expression behind the glass. ‘Like I said, she’s a nice girl. I told her I needed something to protect myself with and she gave me that. It’s okay for you, you’re heading into the blue yonder. I’ve no chance of running away if anything kicks off.’

There was truth in what he said. Magnus slid the gun back into its hiding place and replaced the book on top of the pile.

‘You still haven’t told me what you were in for.’

Jeb took a sip of his drink. Magnus thought he was going to refuse again, but he met his eyes and asked, ‘What if I say I’m in for murdering the woman I loved?’

‘It depends on circumstances, I suppose.’

‘And what if I tell you a bundle of lies?’

‘I’ll have to trust my own judgement on that.’

Jeb’s stare was level. ‘I thought I could leave all this in Pentonville, but it’s on me like skin. If it’s going to come out, maybe it’s better I tell you than someone else.’

‘I’ll be gone soon. I’ll keep it to myself.’

‘If you don’t, you know I’ll find you.’ Jeb looked up towards the far corner of the room. His hair had grown out of the suede head he had worn in prison and was twisting into loose curls that gave his face a softer appearance. ‘I said that I was innocent. That’s not strictly true. I’m not a sex offender and I didn’t do what they put me away for, but I deserved to go down.’ Jeb’s defensiveness was still there, but it had flipped to an insistence on his guilt. ‘My trial was all over the papers, it was three years ago, but a lot of people still remember’ — he paused and corrected himself — ‘remembered, my face. There were two photographs that they used, one of me in uniform, smiling like every mother’s dream. It was taken by a photographer for a local paper on a school outreach visit, not long after I completed training. My hair’s long in the other one.’ He touched his curls. ‘And I’ve got a scruffy beard, like a tramp that’s not had any attention from the Salvation Army in quite a while. There’s a stupid expression on my face, as if I’d just sucked up an exceptionally long joint, which is exactly what I’d done.’ Jeb came to a stop, as if he could see the photographs in front of him.

Magnus said, ‘You don’t sound like ideal police material.’

‘I was superb police material. Perfect for what they wanted at any rate.’

‘Which was?’

‘Being a lying bastard.’ Jeb knocked back the last of the whisky in his glass and freshened it with more from the bottle. ‘I was an undercover police officer. Serpico, that was me, all cock and beard.’

Magnus took the bottle and poured himself another measure. A memory stirred. A documentary about police officers who had formed relationships with some of the women they were meant to be keeping under surveillance. One of them had had a wife elsewhere, a legitimate family.

He said, ‘Were you married?’

Jeb gave a tight smile that hid his teeth. ‘No, but you’re on the right lines. My job was to infiltrate a group of environmental activists. I had to immerse myself in the organisation, dress like them, talk like them, act like them. I thought I was James Bond, though Bond wouldn’t be seen dead in the grungy crap I wore undercover.’

It fitted with Jeb’s shape-shifting personality, his swing from prison inmate to keen-eyed strategist. Magnus tried to keep his voice light. ‘No nightclubs and casinos then?’

‘No, but there were beautiful women. The main difficulty of infiltrating a network is that you come from nowhere and have to get people to accept you straight away. The easiest way to do that is to become involved with someone already on the scene, usually a woman.’ Jeb made a face. ‘If I’m honest it was always a woman.’

‘You did it more than once?’ Magnus had pulled on different personalities for his routines, but he had shed them when he came off stage. He tried to imagine how it would be to target a woman because of who and what she knew; to live with her and make love to her as someone else. ‘Didn’t you feel like a whore?’

Jeb put a hand over the candle flame and a shadow hand appeared huge and black on the wall. He took it away and looked at Magnus.

‘I was a police officer, an undercover police officer.’

‘And you could switch it on and off?’ Magnus disliked the echo of the Kirk in his own voice, the black-suited minister passing judgement from the pulpit. ‘Have sex with some girl and then report back on what she was up to?’

Jeb shrugged. ‘Like I said, I thought I was James Bond. These people were talking about bombing laboratories, assassinating scientists, setting free animals that had been infected with deadly strains of viruses.’ There was warmth in his voice now. ‘Fuck, for all we know it was someone like them who set off this whole bloody disaster.’ He realised that he was close to shouting and looked at the door. The house was still, but he lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I was flattered to be chosen. Our handlers made us feel special. We were in the know. Of course we didn’t know the half of it. They targeted us the same way they taught us to target the people we were surveilling.’

The shell of aggression Jeb had worn in jail was fractured. For the first time since Magnus had known him he looked sorry for himself.

‘We were encouraged to identify vulnerable people in the movement. Cherry fitted the profile. She was a single mum struggling to make ends meet. Her passion for animals had tipped into radicalism and she’d joined a group who thought people involved in animal testing were akin to the Nazis. She was also gorgeous: big eyes, lots of red hair, petite. She looked like a Disney princess, but there was a bit of steel in Cherry. I liked that from the start. She was also unstable. I spotted that at the start too, but I thought I could handle it.’ Jeb took another sip of his drink. ‘I was arrogant enough to think I could make it into an asset.’

Magnus said, ‘When did she find out you were a policeman?’

Jeb gave a sad half-smile. ‘When I told her. These operations don’t just last for a couple of weeks, a few months, they stretch on for years.’ He shook his head. ‘I should never have chosen a woman with a child. Cherry had episodes. She may have been schizophrenic, but she was too mistrustful of doctors and hospitals — they were Nazis too — to get a diagnosis. Her daughter was called Happy. She was one when I met her, three when I decided I couldn’t stand it any more. It was partly down to her that I came out. She was a little sweetheart. Happy by name, Happy by nature. Cherry and I were squatting in a tower block that was due for demolition. It was a dump and Cherry insisted on a flat on the fifteenth floor, even though the lifts weren’t working, because fifteen was her lucky number and she could keep a lookout on who was coming from up there. She thought people were spying on her.’ He gave a small smile. ‘What did they used to say? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you? It was squalor, but Happy didn’t mind. Who knows how she would have turned out, but she was the most even-natured child I ever met.’