Rupert Thomson - Death of a Murderer

“Is she really?”

“It’s still hard work, though. We have to watch her all the time.”

Phil nodded, his eyes on the ground. “Sorry about the seven-to-seven, Billy,” he said. “There wasn’t anyone else I could call on, not just at the moment.”

“That’s OK.”

Or it would have been, Billy thought, if only Sue had let him have his nap. After their argument at lunchtime, he had gone back upstairs, hoping to get another couple of hours’ sleep, but he had been in bed for less than ten minutes when Sue walked in on him, and even with his eyes closed, he’d had a clear picture of the inside of her head, all sparks and broken china.

“You don’t care about us,” he heard her say. “That’s what it comes down to. You just don’t care.”

“That’s not true,” he murmured into his pillow.

“You don’t care about me and Emma. The way you walked out when she was born—”

“Don’t bring that up again. And anyway, I didn’t ‘walk out’…”

“What?” She was leaning over him now, her face only inches from his, and she was pushing at his shoulder. “ What was that?”

Sometimes he had the distinct feeling that she was trying to goad him into violence. Then she would be able to stand back with a look of triumph on her face and say, You see? I knew it. I knew it all along.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

He hurled the bedclothes away from him, brushing her aside. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her stagger — a little theatrically, he thought — then press herself against the wall. Once on his feet, he didn’t know what to do. In his T-shirt and underpants, he went and stared out of the window. The garden lay below him, with the allotments just beyond, the various plots forming a kind of patchwork that sloped gently uphill to the woods. Away to his right, a cornfield shifted and swirled as if governed by mysterious tides, hidden currents. When he first viewed the house it had been summer, and the corn was high, its yellow randomly sown with poppies. He’d rarely seen anything so beautiful. Today, though, its beauty seemed inappropriate, if not actually malicious. To think that their marriage had started there. To think that he had taken Sue by the hand and led her out into the middle of that field — Susie as she was then…And now, a decade later, here they were, bound together by little more than arguments and tears, by vicious words, by things they didn’t even mean. I might as well go to work right now, he thought, for all the peace I’m going to get.

Phil began to talk again, this time about the woman whose body they were guarding. Since she had already been hospitalised on a number of occasions during the past two or three years — first for osteoporosis, then for a cerebral aneurysm and, most recently, for respiratory problems — the police had been able to develop procedures for dealing with her when she left the confines of prison. Now that she was dead it was no different. The police were duty bound to protect her from anyone who might want to take revenge on her or do her harm — and there were plenty of those, as a glance at the Internet would tell you — but, equally, they had to see that the other patients and their families were not upset or disturbed. He had worked intensively with hospital staff to make the place secure while simultaneously attempting to keep disruption to a minimum. There were police stationed at the rear of the building, and in many of the corridors. There were police patrolling the grounds as well. Every entrance and exit had been covered.

A door clicked open somewhere behind them, and Billy heard rapid footsteps. Phil turned sharply, but it was only a nurse hurrying off in the opposite direction. Soon she was fifty yards away, her reflection a smudgy, swaying blur in the bright mirror of the floor.

“We have to make sure nothing happens,” Phil said, his eyes still on the nurse. “If we manage that, we will have been successful.”

Billy nodded. It didn’t surprise him that Phil was jumpy. Should anyone slip up, he would be held responsible — and, what’s more, it would be splashed all over the front pages of tomorrow’s papers. Make sure nothing happens: it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

Ahead of them, a pair of double doors swung outwards, their leading edges padded with black rubber, and two men in dark-blue Adidas emerged, both with a cocksure, slightly bow-legged gait that Billy recognised from estates like Gainsborough and Chantry. A soft thump as the doors swung back. “She don’t want it done, though,” one of the men was saying. “Don’t she?” said the other. “No,” the first man said. “She’s frightened, isn’t she.”

Hospitals, Billy thought. It was a world you tended to forget about, wanted to forget about, but it was always there, and most people passed through it in the end. Lives turned down so low that you wondered if it was worth it. No actual flames any more, just pilot lights. Then all the agony and mess of dying…

The colour of the corridors had altered. All trace of white was gone. Gone, too, were the gardens and the copies of Good Housekeeping and the bright framed prints. Only those who truly belonged would venture this far in, and there was less need now for tact and reassurance. Everything was green. Sombre. Medical. The green was in the walls and in the air. In the pouches under Phil Shaw’s eyes. This was the business end of things. The autopsy, the coroner’s report. Bodies opened up like bags, then fastened shut again, their contents not as tidy as before. A gruesome customs house. One last border to be crossed, one final journey.

To Billy, it suddenly felt colder. The length of the corridors, the endless labelled rooms, the hush: he was approaching something huge, oppressive, even dangerous…But this line of thinking would only unsettle him, and he had too much experience to let that happen. He kept his thoughts ordinary, prosaic. Seven-to-seven. A twelve-hour shift. Still, at least there’ll be some overtime in it. And then, I hope I didn’t forget my sandwiches. And then, It’s just a job. Those words again. Though this time he was trying to convince himself.

The double doors that led to the mortuary were pale-green and set deep into the wall. To their left was a notice that said for entry please push bell once. Another notice close by said staff only. Fixed high up on the wall was a circular convex mirror in which both Billy and the sergeant featured as thinner, more alien versions of themselves. Bulbous heads, bodies tapering away to nothing. Like tadpoles. Behind him, Billy could see a wide passage or ramp that sloped up to a large, cavernous area. Parked at the top, and motionless amid the constant, low-level grinding of generators, were several small-scale fork-lift trucks that were known as tugs. Phil told him they were used for ferrying the patients’ dirty linen to the back of the hospital. The woman’s bedding had been brought here too, though it had been treated not as laundry but as non-chemical waste. The moment her body was wheeled out of the private ward where she had spent her last days, her sheets and pillowcases had been disposed of, as had anything else that she had come into contact with. All such items would inevitably be viewed as souvenirs, he said, and that sort of temptation had to be removed.

Billy watched as Phil pressed the mortuary bell. The door opened from the inside, and a young blonde constable let them in. Billy didn’t know her. They were using officers from a number of different stations. Whoever they could get hold of, really.

“You next, is it?” she said, looking at Billy.

He nodded.

“It’s all right.” Her face angled back into the room. “Just boring, that’s all.”