John Carré - A Delicate Truth

‘If you’d just put me down at the roundabout,’ Toby said.

‘Now I thought you said you was visiting a friend,’ Gwyneth replied accusingly.

‘So I am.’

‘Well, why don’t you want me to drop you at your friend’s house then?’

‘Because I want to surprise them, Gwyneth.’

‘Not many surprises left in this place, I can tell you, boy,’ she said, and handed him her card for when he wanted to go back.

The rain had eased to a fine drizzle. A red-haired boy of eight or so was riding a brand-new bicycle up and down the road, honking an antiquated brass horn that had been screwed to the handlebars. Black-and-white cattle grazed amid a forest of pylons. To his left ran a row of prefabricated houses with hooped green roofs and the same shed in each front garden. He guessed they were once the quarters of married servicemen. Number ten was the last of the row. A whitewashed flagpole stood in the front garden, but no flag flew from it. He unlatched the gate. The boy on the bicycle came skidding to a halt beside him. The front door was of stippled glass. No doorbell. Watched by the boy, he tapped on the glass. A woman’s shadow appeared. The door sprang open. Blonde, his own age, no make-up, curled fists, a set jaw and angry as all hell.

‘If you’re press, you can bugger off! I’ve had my fill of the lot of you!’

‘I’m not press.’

‘Then what the fuck d’you want?’ – her voice not Welsh but old-fashioned fighting Irish.

‘Are you Mrs Owens, by any chance?’

‘What if I am?’

‘My name’s Bell. I wondered whether I could have a word with your husband, Jeb.’

Leaning his bicycle against the fence, the boy squeezed past him and stood at the woman’s side, one hand clasped possessively round her thigh.

‘And about what the fuck are you wishing to have a word with my husband, Jeb ?’

‘I’m actually here on behalf of a friend. Paul , his name is’ – watching for a reaction but seeing none – ‘Paul and Jeb had a date to meet last Wednesday. Jeb didn’t show up. Paul’s worried for him. Thinks he may have had an accident with his van or something. The cellphone number Jeb gave him doesn’t answer. I was coming up this way, so he asked me to see if I could track him down,’ he explained lightly, or as lightly as he could.

‘ Last Wednesday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like a week ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘Six fucking days?’

‘Yes.’

‘Appointment where?’

‘At his house.’

‘Where the fuck’s his house, for Christ’s sake?’

‘In Cornwall. North Cornwall.’

Her face rigid, the boy’s also.

‘Why didn’t your friend come himself?’

‘Paul’s stuck at home. His wife’s sick. He can’t leave her,’ Toby replied, beginning to wonder how much of this he could do.

A big, ungainly, grey-haired man in a buttoned woollen jacket and spectacles was looming at her shoulder, peering at him.

‘What seems to be our problem, Brigid?’ he enquired in an earnest voice that Toby arbitrarily awarded to the far north.

‘The man wants Jeb. He’s got a friend called Paul had a date with Jeb in Cornwall last Wednesday. Wants to know why the fuck Jeb didn’t show for it, if you can believe him.’

The man laid an avuncular hand on the boy’s red head.

‘Danny, I think you should pop across to Jenny’s for a play. And we mustn’t keep the gentleman standing on the doorstep, must we, Mr –?’

‘Toby.’

‘And I’m Harry. How d’you do, Toby?’

Curved ceiling, iron trusses holding it up. The linoleum floor glistening with polish. In a kitchen alcove, artificial flowers on a white tablecloth. And in the centre of the room facing a television set, a two-piece sofa and matching armchairs. Brigid sat on an arm. Toby stood opposite her while Harry pulled open the drawer of a sideboard and extracted a buff army-style folder. Holding it in both hands like a hymnal, he placed himself in front of Toby and drew a breath as if he were about to sing.

‘Now did you know Jeb personally at all, then, Toby?’ he suggested, by way of a precautionary introduction.

‘No. I didn’t. Why?’

‘So your friend Paul knew him but you didn’t, is that correct, Toby?’ – making doubly sure.

‘Just my friend,’ Toby confirmed.

‘So you never met Jeb at all. Not even to set eyes on, as we may say.’

‘No.’

‘Well, this will come as a shock to you, Toby, all the same, and no doubt a much bigger shock to your friend Paul, who is sadly unable to be with us today. But poor Jeb very tragically passed away by his own hand last Tuesday, and we’re still trying to come to terms with it, as you may suppose. Not to mention Danny, naturally, although sometimes you have to wonder whether children manage these things better than we adults do.’

‘It was splashed enough over the papers, for fuck’s sake,’ Brigid said, speaking across Toby’s mumbled protestations of condolence. ‘Everyone in the fucking world knows about it except him and his friend Paul.’

‘Well, only local papers now, Brigid,’ Harry corrected her, passing Toby the folder. ‘It’s not everyone reads the Argus , is it?’

‘ And the fucking Evening Standard .’

‘Yes, well, not everyone reads the Evening Standard either, do they? Not now it’s free. People like to appreciate what they buy, not what’s pressed on them for nothing. That’s only human nature.’

‘I really am deeply sorry,’ Toby managed to get in, opening the folder and staring at the cuttings.

‘Why? You didn’t bloody know him,’ Brigid said.

WARRIOR’S LAST BATTLE

Police are not looking for any other suspect in the death by shooting of ex-Special Forces David Jebediah (Jeb) Owens aged 34 who, in the words of the coroner, ‘fought a losing battle against post-traumatic stress disorder and its associated forms of clinical depression …’

SPECIAL FORCES HERO ENDS OWN LIFE

… served gallantly in Northern Ireland, where he met his future wife, Brigid, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Later served in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan …

‘Would you like to telephone your friend, Toby?’ said Harry hospitably. ‘There’s a conservatory at the back if you require the privacy, and we’ve a good signal, thanks to the radar station nearby, I shouldn’t wonder. We had the cremation for him yesterday, didn’t we, Brigid? Family only, no flowers. Your friend wouldn’t have been missed, tell him, so no cause to reproach himself.’

‘What else are you going to tell your friend, Mr Bell?’ Brigid demanded.

‘What I’ve read here. It’s awful news.’ He tried again: ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, Mrs Owens.’ And to Harry: ‘Thanks, but I think I’d rather break it to him personally.’

‘Quite understood, Toby. And respectful, if I may say so.’

‘Jeb blew his fucking brains out, Mr Bell, if it’s of interest to your friend at all. In his van. They didn’t put that bit in the papers; they’re considerate. Some time last Tuesday evening, they think he did it, between six and ten o’clock. He was parked in the corner of a flat field near Glastonbury, Somerset, what they call the Levels. Six hundred yards from the nearest human habitation – they paced it. He used a 9mm Smith & Wesson, his weapon of choice, short barrel. I never knew he had a fucking Smith & Wesson, and as a matter of fact he hated handguns, which is paradoxical, but there it was in his hand, they say, short barrel and all. “Can we trouble you for an official identification, Mrs Owens?” “No trouble at all, Officer. Any time. Lead me to him.” Just as well I’d been in the constabulary. Straight through the fucking right temple. Small hole on the right side and not much of his face at all on the other. That’s exit wounds for you. He didn’t miss. He wouldn’t, not Jeb. He was always a lovely shot. Won prizes, Jeb did.’