The Murder Code (36 page)

I wrinkled my nose at the musty smell of it all. It had been a long time since anyone had opened a window in here, never mind tidied up.

‘I’m sorry about the mess.’

That
voice
.

I turned around slowly, looking at John Doherty again.
Do I know you?
He was clearing a pile of papers from one of the chairs, his back to me, a roll of belly fat appling out at his hips. His arms were hairless.

Where do I know you from?

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know why you’re here, okay.’

And I would have replied, but that was when I realised. That was when I recognised my brother.

It was obvious as soon as it clicked. There was no mistaking him. In the twenty years since we’d last seen each other, he’d barely changed at all. The height, the weight, the soft hair: all the same. Maybe it was the fact he
hadn’t
changed that had obscured his identity, simply because you expect people to. I certainly had, and he showed no sign of recognising me in return. We looked nothing alike, if we ever had. Seeing us together now, it would be easy to imagine we’d had different fathers. But of course, that wasn’t the case.

‘I know why you’re here.’ He placed the papers he’d cleared on the floor and ran one hand through what remained of his hair. ‘Christ. Don’t I just know. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

John Doherty.

After we’d been separated, we’d both been given new identities. He’d disappeared into the system, and I’d been fostered. I was born Andy Reardon; my brother had been John Reardon. I’d kept my first name and changed my surname. Apparently John had done the same.

I cleared my throat.

‘Mr Doherty. Would you calm down, please?’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘I’m here because of Emmeline.’

‘Yes.’ He gestured at the chair he’d cleared. ‘Sit down, please.’

I wanted to—I felt strange, shaky. The room itself seemed odd and off kilter, as though this might be a dream. I knew how I
should
be acting, and I knew how I’d
wanted
to act before arriving here, but the encounter had undermined me: regressed me slightly. I needed to re-establish myself.

‘I’ll stand. You sit.’

Doherty hesitated, then took the seat.

‘Is Emmeline here?’ I said.

‘No. No, she’s gone out. You don’t need—’

‘Yes. I will need to talk to her.’

‘
Christ.
’ He shook his head, looking down at the faded carpet. And was there a flash of anger there? My brother had never been an angry boy. Not on the outside, anyway. ‘She doesn’t need it. She has enough to deal with. We’re working it all through.’

‘I’ve received a complaint.’

‘From her parents.’

He shook his head again.
From her interfering parents.
Almost as though Gregor Levchenko had wronged him somehow by reporting what had been done to his daughter. Once again, this was common behaviour—a glimpse of the reality that existed just below that contrite exterior, the everyday ‘nice’ guy. In his head, in spite of what he’d done, he was also the victim here, and he was annoyed because the world was forcing him to confront that awkward truth, piling on the pressure, giving him even more to cope with.

Common behaviour. I’d seen it all before.

But this was … this was John.

‘I’ll be talking to Emmeline to see if she wishes to press charges against you. In the—’

‘She won’t. She doesn’t. I told you. We’re dealing with it together.’

In the meantime,
I’d been about to say,
I’m arresting you on suspicion of assault.
But something stopped me. I didn’t know quite what. Maybe I wanted to hear what he had to say. Maybe it was something else.

‘Look. I
know
what I did.’

He held his hands palms up, trying to emphasise how honest and straightforward he was being. The anger was better hidden now. If anything, he seemed to be on the verge of tears.

‘I
know
what I did. And I know it was wrong. You don’t understand. I came from a … violent home. I can’t believe that I did what I did. I … I mean, I
abhor
it. It sickens me.
I
sicken me.’

I didn’t say anything, realising that John’s prior conviction could be used to supplement this offence; I didn’t know for sure, but it was more than possible that he was on a life licence of some kind. But instead of thinking about that, his words were reverberating in my head. Because I knew exactly what a
violent home
meant. I’d lived there too; I’d lived it with him. Right up to the point where he took our father’s life, and sent both of our own lives on their different courses. We had come from the same place, he and I.

‘I’m going to anger management.’ John was crying now. ‘I’ve promised to go. We’re going to go to therapy too. I mean, you can’t imagine how disgusted I am with myself; I’d sooner hurt myself than her—I really would. I love her so much.’

‘If that’s true, then you shouldn’t be together.’

He shook his head.

‘Because you
will
do it again, John.’

‘No. No. I’m not a …
bad
person. I’m not that kind of person at all. I know how it looks, but you have to believe me.’

I just looked at him. It was ridiculous, of course: I’d heard the same thing a hundred times before; it’s what everybody says. I’m not a bad person. So no, I didn’t
have
to believe him, and I knew that I
shouldn’t
. But this was John. We’d grown from the same place. And if he was a bad person, then what was I?

You already know the answer to that question.

No.

Yes, you do.

‘I’m not a bad person. It will never, ever happen again. You can’t … you can’t imagine.’

My brother shook his head.

‘You have to believe me.’

Have to?

No. I didn’t have to. So why did I? I’ve gone over it a million times since. There are days when it’s all I think about. I’ve told myself it was down to the shock of seeing him again after all those years, and a misplaced sense of loyalty to him over what he’d done as a child to protect me. And perhaps it was partly that.

But it was also who he was, what he was. My flesh, my blood. Our father had been a disgusting, violent man. I didn’t want to believe that my brother had grown up into a similar monster, and that—just maybe—those seeds had been with him from the beginning. Because if my father was abusive, and my brother was too … what did that say for me? I wasn’t prepared to accept the possibility. I’d spent my life denying it.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t take him in and I never did get to talk to Emmeline. I slipped that day, and the result was that somebody else fell in my place and broke instead. Two days later, Emmeline was dead at my brother’s hands, and John had taken his own life.

A senior detective handled the murder inquiry; all I did was pass on the details of my visit and tell parts of the truth—that I hadn’t thought there was enough evidence to pursue the matter without talking to Emmeline, and I’d never had the chance to do so.

In our country, two women die every week from domestic violence. It’s horrible, but not inexplicable. I cling to that belief, still, that there are always reasons. And for Emmeline, I was one.

O
UTSIDE THE CHAPEL
, the assembled crowds have dispelled slightly throughout the sunlit grounds—dark suits standing out like shadows on the areas of bright, neatly tended grass.

Jasmina drifts between them, shaking hands and accepting condolences, until, after a while, she spots the two police officers standing to one side. She presumes they are both officers, anyway. It is the detective she reported her husband missing to, and he is standing with a woman who looks very much like him. They are talking quietly between themselves.

She touches her sister’s arm. ‘Excuse me for a moment.’

‘Do you want me to …?’

‘No, no. I shall be fine.’

She approaches the officers, remembering the man’s name just as she reaches them.

‘Detective … Hicks?’ she says.

He looks up. He looks haunted.

‘Yes. This is my partner, Detective Fellowes.’

‘Thank you both for coming.’

‘Not at all,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. We both are. I’m so sorry that it didn’t turn out differently.’

‘It is not your fault.’

Hicks appears awkward at that; he looks down at the ground for a moment. She has no idea why, when he did everything he could, but some people are like that. They take on too much weight. They take on all the weight they can see, even when it does not belong to them.

‘What about the man?’ she asks. ‘The man who did this?’

‘James Miller.’ He looks up. ‘The man who did this is in prison. The man who planned it was called Tony Wilkinson. He took his own life during his arrest.’

Again, that awkwardness—but of a different kind this time. She understands instinctively that Hicks saw Tony Wilkinson die, and that the sight weighs heavily on him. She feels sorry for him, although in many ways it is the best possible outcome. She does not mourn Wilkinson; he deserved to die. But that does not mean someone else deserves to have killed him.

‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘Was there a … reason? Some explanation for why he did what he did?’

‘We’re not sure.’ Hicks shakes his head. ‘We think his motivation was to murder his wife. To hide that crime amongst others so we didn’t realise he was responsible. She was pregnant, you see … we think he didn’t want the child.’

Jasmina frowns. It makes no sense to her that someone might not want their child. She has spent years doing nothing but.

‘But why …?’

Hicks misunderstands the question. ‘Why not just leave? Again, we’re not sure. He worked in the military as a janitor. He wouldn’t have been able to keep the job; it wouldn’t have paid enough to support a child, whether he was with the mother or not. He would have had to find something else. And we think working in the military meant a lot to him.’

‘Why?’

‘His father was in the army, you see. He was a code-breaker in the war. But Wilkinson failed the entrance exams on medical grounds. He had several early episodes of self-harm on file. And he saw his father die and was hospitalised with an overdose just afterwards. When he applied, he was judged psychologically unfit to serve. But it seems that he was trying to, in his own way.’

He goes on, painting an incomplete picture of the man ultimately responsible for Gregor’s murder. A man wanting to be like his father, but also perhaps competing with him. A man wrestling incompatible memories, desires and needs. A man who, ultimately, could not be fully understood from the outside.

Jasmina understands that much. Wilkinson’s motivations and reasons will remain sealed in a room to which they have no access; they can only guess and suppose. Even if those reasons were laid out, plain to see, what would it really matter? They would still not be enough. The effect remains the same.

In the end, the effect is all that matters.

‘We don’t know.’ Hicks looks pained. ‘I realise it doesn’t make much sense. I wish it did. I wish we could explain it all.’

‘It does not always make sense,’ she says.

Hicks looks even more troubled at that. He seems to consider something. Then he gathers himself together. ‘I also wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened to your daughter.’

Emmeline. The mention stings a little more than usual today. But still—it is an old wound, and he means well. She nods once.

‘Thank you.’

‘It wasn’t right what happened. I’m sorry.’

‘It is not your fault. What is right is rarely the same as what happens. All we can do is try to live with it.’

Emmeline’s face is in her mind.

‘Do you have children, Detective?’

‘Yes,’ he says immediately.

‘Well, you must look after them, as best you can. It is all you can do.’

He looks at her, then nods.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I will.’

That night, Jasmina lies alone in the huge, empty bed. Her sister offered to share it, but she refused, so Corinna is now sleeping downstairs on the settee. Jasmina left her slumbering, gently placing a blanket over her before retiring upstairs. And although they are both old, she remembers how young her sister looked in repose. Sleep erases lines, restores the peace of childhood. It soothes troubles, however transiently.

If only she could have that. But sleep escapes her.

A lamp glows softly on the bedside table. Beside that is the photograph of her daughter, now joined by the framed image of her husband she chose for the funeral. They are together now, in whatever way they can be—even if that is simply here, on her table and in her thoughts.

And before the photographs, the candle.

Jasmina lies staring at it for a long time. And then, because she cannot sleep right now, she slides out of bed and searches the drawers for the box of matches she knows is there.

The match makes a crisp, fluttering noise as it strikes and flares, the flame confused and frantic for a second—then suddenly shy and vulnerable. She cups it gently, protectively, as she lowers it to the wick. There is a tiny crackle as it takes. The flame grows, while a single spot of dust lights on the wick, glowing bright yellow before winking out seconds later.

Jasmina shakes the match out, then licks her fingers and cools the tip.

She lies back down on the bed and watches the candle burn. As it begins to melt, she smells the honey her husband infused into the wax. It was cast at a single moment, this candle—the night of their daughter’s murder—but it seems now to enfold an even deeper history: a string of cause and effect that stretches beyond that day. It begins many years ago, with the paramedic who saved her husband’s life; it passes through the horrific, endless evening when they learned Emmeline was dead; and it ends today, here, in the combination of circumstances that have led to its lighting.

Jasmina watches the smoke drifting up from the flame, history unravelling in spirals in the air. It is impenetrable to her—but then, perhaps that is how it works. One moment leads inexorably to another, and everything is built on what precedes it, but there is no obvious reason or purpose behind it. A pattern will never be discernible to the human eye, and none of it will make sense in a way that matters to us. But that does not mean there is no pattern. It does not mean that, in some unfathomable way, there is no sense. All it means is that from the inside, we cannot see it.