Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

Magnus got out of the cab, slammed the door and jumped down into the stubbled corn. The sky was blue and almost cloudless. There were no jet streams intersecting in the sky, white on blue like ragged saltires. Jacob tipped a water bottle to his mouth. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand and then reached into his bag and passed another bottle to Magnus who unscrewed its lid and took a drink. Jacob was wearing dark Ray-Bans that contrasted oddly with his dog collar. It was hard to see his eyes, but Magnus could feel the priest watching him.

Jacob said, ‘Did you tell anyone about Henry?’ Magnus considered lying, but he hesitated a moment too long and the priest asked, ‘Who? Jeb?’

‘He used to be a policeman. I thought he might be able to tell whether it was murder or not.’

Jacob nodded. ‘The same thought crossed my mind.’

Magnus said, ‘He told you he used to be in the police? You’re privileged.’

‘He didn’t have to tell me.’ The priest smiled, his eyes still hidden. ‘Jeb Soames is distinctive. He’s changed, grown a decade older in two or three years, but I got a feeling of déjà vu when I was setting his leg. The pain brought out those big bones in his forehead. It took me a while to place him, but then I remembered a newspaper photograph of him wearing the same expression as he was taken into court on the first day of his trial.’ The priest paused as if something had just occurred to him. ‘Do you know his history?’

The sun was warm on the back of his neck. Magnus took a hanky from his pocket and mopped his face with it.

‘He told me some of it. He wanted to convince me he was innocent.’

‘Did he succeed?’

Magnus thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’

‘The judge and jury thought he was guilty.’ The priest’s voice was neutral, as if guilt and innocence were all the same to him. ‘The newspapers did too. Jeb was bulkier in the photo, like a human battering ram. I remember wondering how a man his size could bring himself to lay violent hands on a child.’ Jacob stared up the field at the rolled bales of harvested corn. ‘The girl who died was the same age as my younger daughter. Maybe that’s why the story stuck in my mind.’

Magnus said, ‘And you don’t mind having him here?’

‘If I’d realised who he was when we first met, I might have walked away…’ The priest shrugged. ‘He’s here now. Maybe God intended it that way.’ He tilted his water bottle to his mouth and drank. ‘Is he getting close to Belle?’

‘I think he feels sorry for her.’

The priest took off his Ray-Bans, wiped his eyes and put them back on. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes.

‘Love is the thing that will make the post-sweats world bearable, love and children; new life. But it’s probably best if Jeb doesn’t get too close to Belle. From what I remember of the press coverage she’s rather too like the woman he killed for any good to come of it.’ Magnus was about to say that Jeb might still be innocent, but the priest asked, ‘What did he say about poor Henry?’

Magnus shrugged. ‘Nothing much, just that he’d like to talk to you about it.’

‘Did he tell you that he thought it was probably me who killed him?’

‘No,’ Magnus lied. There were whole fields surrounding them and no one to care if Jacob should decide to aim his gun and shoot. He went north , the priest would say, home to his family . ‘Why would he think that?’

‘I would in his position. You’ve already seen me kill and I was the one who found the body. I reckon that makes me a prime candidate.’ Jacob grinned. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’ve no intention of burying you among the corn. At least not until we get our three fields done.’ He reached into his bag and took out the bread and cheese he had been wrapping in wax paper when Magnus had joined him in the kitchen early that morning. ‘Next year at harvest we’ll be eating bread made with our own flour.’

‘I won’t be here.’

Jacob passed Magnus one of the doorstop sandwiches he had made.

‘Perhaps you’ll come back.’

Magnus bit into cheddar and home-made pickle. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t blame you, I suppose, but you’d be a valuable asset to a new community like ours.’ The priest sat on the step of the combine. He took off his glasses, though the sun was still skull-cracking sharp and his eyes creased against its glare. ‘I know what Jeb was convicted of, but I don’t really know anything about you.’

Magnus looked across the fields. The flatness of the land gave the illusion that you could see for ever, but there were plenty of places for people to hide among the long corn and he wondered if anyone was watching them.

‘I was a comic. I was doing okay and had the potential to do better. I might have been at a turning point in my career, or it might have been another false dawn. I’ll never know.’

The priest’s eyes were almost as blue as the sky. Like bits of broken glass, his wife had said. He asked, ‘Why were you in prison?’

Magnus’s sandwich caught in his throat. He coughed, tried to swallow and coughed again. When he had caught his breath he asked, ‘How did you know?’

The priest sat with his legs stretched out in front of him. He bit into his doorstop as if he were at a Sunday-school picnic that had done away with daintiness.

‘I didn’t. I just made a guess.’

Magnus shook his head at his own stupidity. ‘I was innocent. I hadn’t gone to trial and when I did, I would have been released.’

The priest had finished his sandwich. He took an apple out of his bag and polished it against his shirt. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’

‘What’s the point?’

Jacob glanced at his apple, rubbed it against his shirt some more and then bit into its flesh. ‘I want to be able to trust you.’

It was difficult to know where to begin and so Magnus told him about the Dongolite falling beneath the train, the drunken evening in Johnny Dongo’s hotel room, the fist Johnny had put in his face and the man pawing at the drugged girl in the alleyway. Once he had begun, Magnus found he needed to go on and so he told the priest about Pete dying slowly in the bunk beneath him, the man he had hit — killed — with the fire extinguisher. He even found himself telling Jacob about his father, caught in the blades of the combine and his cousin Hugh, walking into the sea, until the water covered him and the rocks in his backpack dragged him under. Magnus stopped suddenly, feeling lighter, but knowing that shame would soon follow. The priest tossed his apple core into the field beyond.

‘The absence of so many people makes the past seem stronger. We need to grieve, but we need to start making a future too.’ He took his Ray-Bans from his pocket and fingered them, as if he needed to give his hands something to do. ‘I thought about telling Father Wingate my suspicions, he’s my spiritual adviser.’ Jacob smiled. ‘We’re each other’s spiritual advisers. But however wise he is, he’s an old man who has been through a lot. He views the coming of the sweats as an opportunity to build a better society. I’m not sure what discovering there is still wickedness in the world might do to him.’ The priest looked up at Magnus, his eyes narrowed against the sun. ‘I had my suspicions about Melody’s death before we found Henry. There was something about the position of the chair she supposedly stood on to hang herself. It was lying too far from her body. I marked the spot and after we buried her I experimented with it. I’m taller and stronger than Melody was, but no matter how many times I kicked that chair away, it always fell short of where it was lying when we found her. I asked Henry if he had moved it, but he swore blind he hadn’t. At the time I convinced myself he had forgotten he’d done it. He was in a state of shock. But now that we’ve found Henry…’