John Carré - A Delicate Truth

She’s a doctor, he had been telling himself consolingly since early afternoon. Hardened to it. Does death every day.

‘Jeb committed suicide the day before he was due at your parents’ house,’ he begins without preamble. ‘He shot himself through the head with a handgun.’ And when she says nothing: ‘Where can we talk?’

Her expression doesn’t change but it freezes. Her clasped hands rise to her face until the knuckles of her thumbs are jammed against her teeth. Only after recovering herself does she speak:

‘In that case I got him all wrong, didn’t I?’ she says. ‘I thought he was a threat to my father. He wasn’t. He was a threat to himself.’

But Toby’s thinking: I got you all wrong, too.

‘Does anyone have any idea why he killed himself?’ she enquires, hunting for detachment and not finding it.

‘There was no note, no last phone call,’ Toby replies, hunting for his own. ‘And nobody he confided in, so far as his wife knows.’

‘He was married then. Poor woman’ – the self-possessed doctor at last.

‘A widow and a small son. For the last three years he couldn’t live with them and couldn’t live without them. According to her.’

‘And no suicide note, you say?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Nobody blamed? Not the cruel world? Not anyone? Just shot himself. Like that?’

‘It seems so.’

‘And he did it just before he was due to sit down with my father and prepare to blow the whistle on whatever they had both got up to?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Which is hardly logical.’

‘No.’

‘Does my father know yet?’

‘Not from me.’

‘Will you wait for me outside, please?’

She presses a button on her desk for the next patient.

As they walked, they kept consciously apart, like two people who have quarrelled and are waiting to make up. When she needed to speak, she did so angrily:

‘Is his death national news? In the press, on TV, and so on?’

‘Only the local paper and the Evening Standard , as far as I know.’

‘But it could go wider at any moment?’

‘I assume so.’

‘Kit takes The Times .’ And as an abrupt afterthought: ‘And Mum listens to the radio.’

A gateway that should have been locked but wasn’t led across a scruffy patch of public park. A group of kids with dogs sat under a tree smoking marijuana. On a traffic island stood a long, single-storey complex. A sign said HEALTH CENTRE. Emily needed to walk the length of it, checking for broken windows while Toby trailed after her.

‘The kids think we keep drugs here,’ she said. ‘We tell them we don’t, but they won’t believe us.’

They had entered the brick lowlands of Victorian London. Under a starry, unobstructed sky ran rows of cottages in pairs, each with its oversized chimney pot, each with a front garden split down the middle. She opened a front gate. An outside staircase led up to a first-floor porch. She climbed. He followed her. By the porch light he saw an ugly grey cat with one forepaw missing rubbing itself against her foot. She unlocked the door and the cat shot past her. She stepped in after it, then waited for him.

‘Food in the fridge if you’re hungry,’ she said, disappearing into what he took to be her bedroom. And as the door closed: ‘The bloody cat thinks I’m a vet.’

She is sitting, head in hands, staring at the uneaten food on the table before her. The living room is sparse to the point of self-denial: minimal kitchen one end, a couple of old pine chairs, a lumpy sofa and the pine table that is also her workspace. A few medical books, a stack of African magazines. And on the wall, a photograph of Kit in full diplomatic rig presenting his letter of credentials to an abundant female Caribbean head of state while Suzanna in a big white hat looks on.

‘Did you take that?’ he asked.

‘God, no. There was a court photographer.’

From the refrigerator he has rustled up a piece of Dutch cheese, a few tomatoes, and from the freezer sliced bread which he has toasted. And three quarters of a bottle of stale Rioja which with her permission he has poured into two green tumblers. She has put on a shapeless housecoat and flat slippers, but kept her hair bundled. The housecoat is buttoned to her ankles. He’s surprised by how tall she is despite the flat shoes. And how stately her walk is. And how her gestures appear at first glance gauche, when actually, when you think about them, they’re elegant.

‘And that woman doctor who isn’t one?’ she asks. ‘Calling Kit to say Jeb’s alive when he isn’t? That wouldn’t impress the police?’

‘Not in their present mood. No.’

‘Is Kit at risk of suicide too?’

‘Absolutely not,’ he retorts firmly, having asked himself the same question ever since leaving Brigid’s house.

‘ Why not?’

‘Because as long as he believes the fake doctor’s story he doesn’t present any threat. That was the purpose of the phoney doctor’s call. So for God’s sake let them think they’ve achieved it, they , whoever they are.’

‘But Kit doesn’t believe it.’

This is old ground, but he goes over it nonetheless, for her sake:

‘And has said so very loudly, mercifully only to his nearest and dearest, and me. But he pretended to believe it on the phone, and he must keep pretending now. It’s only about buying time. Keeping his head down for a few days.’

‘Until what?’

‘I’m putting together a case,’ Toby says, more boldly than he feels. ‘I’ve got bits of the puzzle, I need more. Jeb’s widow has photographs that may be useful. I’ve taken copies. She also gave me the name of someone who may be able to help. I’ve arranged to see him. Someone who was part of the original problem.’

‘Are you part of the original problem?’

‘No. Just a guilty bystander.’

‘And when you’ve put your case together, what will you be then?’

‘Out of a job, most likely,’ he says, and in an effort at light relief reaches out for the cat, which has been sitting all this while at her feet, but it ignores him.

‘What time does your father get up in the morning?’ he asks.

‘Kit does early. Mum lies in.’

‘Early being what?’

‘Sixish.’

‘And the Marlows, how about them?’

‘Oh, they’re up at crack of dawn. Jack milks for Farmer Phillips.’

‘And how far from the Manor is the Marlows’ house?’

‘No distance. It’s the old Manor cottage. Why?’

‘I think Kit should be told about Jeb’s death as soon as possible.’

‘Before he gets it from anyone else and blows a gasket?’

‘If you put it like that.’

‘I do.’

‘The problem is, we can’t use the landline to the Manor. Or his cellphone. And certainly not email. That’s very much Kit’s opinion too. He made a point of it when he wrote to me.’

He paused, expecting her to speak, but her gaze remained on him, challenging him to go on.

‘So I’m suggesting you call Mrs Marlow first thing in the morning and ask her to pop over to the Manor and bring Kit to the phone in the cottage. That’s assuming you’d like to break the news to him yourself rather than have me do it.’

‘What lie do I tell her?’

‘There’s a fault on the Manor line. You can’t get through direct. No panic, but there’s something special you need to talk to Kit about. I thought you could use one of these. They’re safer.’

She picks up the black burner and, like someone who’s never seen a cellphone before, turns it speculatively in her long fingers.

‘If it makes it any easier, I can hang around,’ he says, careful to indicate the meagre sofa.