Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

Magnus said, ‘I’m leaving this afternoon.’ The remnants of the hymn they had sung when they had buried his father were in his mind, the words only half-remembered.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens…

Father Wingate said, ‘I made some bread yesterday. You must take some to help sustain you.’

‘Thank you.’

The old man was a poor cook, but the gesture touched Magnus. The truck’s cab smelled of rubber and burning dust. Magnus rolled down the driver’s side window. Will had latched the churchyard gate and was walking towards the car park. Father Wingate shifted slowly to the middle of the seat and Will slid in beside them.

‘Your friend’s a murderer.’ It had been his mantra since he had found Jacob’s body dead on the lawn, his head a gunshot mess.

‘You’re wrong.’ Magnus wished he had paid more attention to Jacob’s theories about Melody’s and Henry’s deaths. He had tried to explain them, but Will’s mind was fixed. Jeb was a convicted killer who had quarrelled with Jacob the night before he was shot dead. They had found a gun in his room, a room that had a clear sightline to where the priest had been shot.

‘You can leave.’ Will turned to look at Magnus. ‘But he stays.’

‘What good will that do?’

Will sighed. His eyes shut and then opened; sea-washed pebbles, brown and slip-shiny. ‘It will prevent him from murdering anyone else.’

Twice in the last few days Magnus had thought Will was about to try to kill Jacob. First by the barn where they had found Henry’s body, then in the kitchen, just before they had crashed in on Belle and Jeb. Both times had been crude and spontaneous, born of drink or frustration, but shooting a man in the head was hardly subtle.

Magnus said, ‘It could just as easily have been you. You hated Jacob and now it looks like you’re trying to take his place.’ It would not hurt that Jeb would be out of Belle’s way too, he thought, but did not say.

‘I didn’t hate him…’ Will faltered, his almost perfect English momentarily deserting him. ‘I would never have hurt Jacob…’

Father Wingate drew his cassock around his thin shoulders, as if he could feel the chill of the recently filled grave in his bones. ‘It wasn’t Will. He’s a good Christian.’

Magnus started the truck and reversed out of the graveyard.

‘Father,’ he said and the word sounded strange in his mouth. ‘We have a saying on my island. Old age does not always bring wisdom.’

The old man nodded. ‘That saying existed well beyond your island and there is truth in it, but it does not follow that all old men are foolish.’

Magnus rolled up his window and steered the truck down the church road, into the village. This was the bit of the route he liked least. There were no bodies in the main street, but there were reminders of how things used to be: a post office with pictures of a smiling postman delivering a package to an equally jolly white-haired grandma; a pub decorated with decaying hanging baskets and the proud boast that it had been established in 1622; a row of terraced cottages, each one with windows behind which anything might lurk. Will stared straight ahead, but Magnus could not help glancing at the overgrown gardens, the drawn curtains and uninviting front paths. Step inside , the cottages seemed to whisper. Why don’t you stop and take tea? There’s always someone home.

Father Wingate was still talking. ‘Jacob told me about how you were thrown into jail for trying to help a young woman. You were out of your element. Jeb helped you escape and you travelled a long way together. No doubt you shared trials and hardships. You may even feel that you owe him your life, but you mustn’t let these sentiments blind you.’

Magnus said, ‘And you mustn’t let prejudice blind you. Any one of us could have killed Jacob: me, you, Will, one of the girls.’

A cat, sharp-toothed and feral, darted across their path. Magnus instinctively touched the truck’s brake pedal. What did it feed on? he wondered. Rats or corpses? And was it just a difference of scale?

‘I know an old lady who swallowed a fly…’ he sang softly beneath his breath. ‘I don’t know why, she swallowed a fly…’

Will said, ‘We took a vote this morning. The community decided to stay together. We also decided that Jeb is guilty.’

It was on Magnus’s lips to say that four people were not a community, but he sensed it would do no good. He asked, ‘Without a trial?’

‘The evidence speaks for itself.’

‘He didn’t do it,’ Magnus repeated. ‘I’m sorry Jacob died, but I’m leaving this afternoon and I’m taking Jeb with me.’

‘You can go, but he stays.’

The quiet confidence in Will’s voice unnerved Magnus. ‘You’re not Jacob. You don’t have his authority or his back-up. We’re leaving.’

Magnus glanced at Father Wingate, but the old man nodded. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We have to return to the old ways.’

Magnus slowed the van. He would have halted it, but they were not quite out of the village and the hairs on the back of his neck were still bristling. ‘You want to execute him?’

‘We haven’t agreed yet.’ Will sounded regretful. ‘Raisha and Belle want to keep him locked up indefinitely, but even when our community grows it will be some time before we have the manpower to support prisoners.’

Magnus laughed. It was macabre. So many dead and here they were, preparing to kill one more. ‘How do you plan on doing it? A firing squad? The electric chair? Crucifixion?’

Father Wingate sucked in his breath, but it was Will who spoke. ‘I told you, we haven’t decided. Raisha used to be a chemist, maybe she can make something painless.’

They slipped past the Thank You for Driving Carefully sign and the national speed limit sign, into a country road bordered on either side by wavering hedgerows, so high they almost formed a tunnel.

Magnus said, ‘And if you kill him and then find out you’re wrong?’

Father Wingate seemed to have forgotten that the earth was still settling on Jacob’s corpse. He touched Magnus’s arm and smiled. ‘Then God will forgive him and us. Every death is a sacrifice to His name.’

A bird flew low across his windscreen, chirping out a warning call. Magnus tapped the brakes, though he was in no danger of hitting it.

‘Even innocent deaths? Aren’t you forgetting your Ten Commandments?’

The old man’s voice was sure. ‘We enter this world corrupted. Only death can purify us. That is what God revealed when He visited the sweats on the world. The plague is an act of love.’

Magnus stole a quick look at Father Wingate. He saw his arthritic fingers and trembling hands and knew that he would not have had the strength to force Henry’s wrists into handcuffs or Melody’s neck into a noose.

Leave Jeb behind , a mutinous voice in his head whispered. Get on your way and never think of him again. But he knew that would invoke another haunting, company for his suicide-cousin, Hugh.

Magnus said, ‘I’ll take Jeb north with me. You never have to see him again.’

Will said, ‘But he would still be alive and Jacob would still be dead.’

‘It wasn’t him.’ Magnus wondered why he was so sure of Jeb’s innocence. He had been with Will when he had burst into Jeb’s room, full of accusations and fury. He had seen the look of bewilderment on Jeb’s face turn to anger as he realised what he was being accused of. But the man had been an undercover policeman who had fooled the people closest to him for years. Perhaps rage had got the better of Jeb and he had fired into the dawn, fired at Jacob. Magnus could see it in his mind’s eye: Jacob walking the length of the kitchen garden, Jeb standing at his open window, the gun raised and aimed, Jacob falling to the ground, a swift descent driven by gunpowder and gravity. It was a scene he had witnessed countless times on the big screen and too like a movie to mean anything.