Prologue-2
838 Words
‘THERE'LL BE ANOTHER one along in a minute—wasn't that what they said? Inspector Joseph Rafferty gazed at the very dead old lady in the bed and mused that usually it was in respect of buses, not bodies.
But this week the bodies were bunched like the rush-hour double-deckers on Elmhurst's congested streets. The first death had been of a World War Two veteran whose suicide note had derided the notion that this was land fit for heroes to live in. This old lady was the second suicide. And it was still only Wednesday morning. Rafferty, chockful of Irish superstition, felt he could be forgiven for becoming equally chockful of the conviction that they wouldn't get through the rest of the week without a third. As he remarked to Sergeant Llewellyn, in his experience, bad things always came in threes. It was a depressing thought.
Almost as depressing as the February weather, which, like the previous autumn, was as grey and dank as a dirty floor-cloth. Even the jolly holly bush, with its urgent tap-tappings at the window, seemed to have had enough and to want to come inside for a warm. Hardly surprising the suicide rate was up.
Unlike the first suicide, on Monday, this one hadn't left a note. Not that there was anything unusual about that. Rafferty knew that only about a quarter of suicides left notes.
Pity stirred again as his gaze shifted from the aged cadaver in the bed to the stiffly posed sepia wedding photo on the mantelpiece. It showed a pretty young bride with glossy midnight black hair, her arm possessively linked with that of the darkly handsome brylcreamed groom.
Next to the wedding photo was another picture, presumably the bride and groom again, though now much older and unsmiling. Middle age hadn't changed the bride that much; in the later photo it was still possible to trace the girl she had been. Not so the groom. Middle age had transformed the slim young man into a bald gnome, red of cheek and jowly of jaw. There were pictures of a boy, too, presumably their son. His hair was fair, and although he shared her dark eyes, his were solemn, not laughing like his mother's.
Rafferty sighed. The son would have to be found and notified. He dragged his gaze from the picture gallery, and the smiling bride, and back to the bed; to the old lady the bride had become.
The glossy black cap of hair was now thin, wispy, and grey. The slender hands, now calloused and work-roughened, were clasped neatly together outside the covers. Rafferty's gaze flickered over the scarred dresser with its empty pill bottles, and the jug and glass both now scummy with clouded water, and he reflected on what it must be like to get so old and lonely that killing yourself became an attractive alternative to going on.
After routinely checking the body for any sign of life, he turned away, and commented flatly to Llewellyn, ‘There's nothing for us here.’
As soon as the words were out, he was struck by how callous they sounded, and felt ashamed. He realised he hadn't even asked her name before dismissing her and her passing. The trouble with such lonely deaths was that they inclined him to melancholy for days. Experience had taught him that the only hope of escaping the glooms was by spending as little time as possible at the scene. Now he asked quietly, ‘Who was she? Do you know?’
‘The neighbours only knew her as Dodie.’
Rafferty nodded, and beckoned Llewellyn onto the landing where the air was less redolent of death. ‘The neighbours hadn't known her for long, then?’
‘Some six months or so, I understand. Would you like me to check?’
Rafferty shook his head. ‘No. It doesn't matter.’ He added, more or less to himself, ‘Six months, and all they knew was that her name was Dodie.’
He wasn't altogether surprised. Half the street of terraced houses was boarded up to prevent squatters and vandals gaining access to empty properties. What had once been a friendly community was now an itinerant neighbourhood, the sort of place where your neighbours came and went without making a ripple in your life. Apparently, in this case, without even discovering more about you, your family and background than your first name. It was a sad indictment of modern life and did nothing to reduce Rafferty's gloomy feelings. ‘She must have some papers,’ he remarked, and called down the stairs for Constable Smales to have a look for some. His voice, echoing loudly down the narrow stairs in this house of the dead, sounded oddly intrusive.
Llewellyn, unlike Rafferty, generally managed to retain a certain objectivity under such circumstances. ‘Doctor Arkwright should be able to tell us more. The neighbours were at least able to tell me he was the old lady's General Practitioner as well as their own.’
Rafferty nodded. Old Doctor Arkwright had been practising in the town for around a third of a century, so would be able to put a surname to their suicide as well as provide details of any other family she might have had. ‘Get on to him, Dafyd. Tell him what's happened and get him over here.’
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- Writer
