An Individual Will Read online

  Chapter Six

  “I’m going to be frank with you, Lisa,” I said. “We – the police – are inclined to take an unsympathetic view of your change of demeanour. You were deeply concerned about Adrian while he was alive, but seem fairly sanguine about his death. One interpretation might be that he’s no danger to you dead, but was while he was alive. Perhaps you’re relieved. Sad, too – of course; you're not a monster – but nonetheless relieved, which would suggest to us that you’re fairly sure he didn’t get around to doing whatever it was you feared he was going to do.”

  She played with her hair and smiled, showing perfect white teeth; asked somewhat coyly, “Am I free to go, Chief Inspector?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course. In fact, I'm going, too. You can let yourself out.” This was a course of action I knew would be frowned upon, or questioned, by some of my colleagues, but I could see no immediate purchase in detaining her. And I could easily argue that letting her go made sense politically. She had come in and emotionally reported a young man missing. The young man had turned up dead. So what? It wasn't, I would argue, grounds for holding her. Simon would assume I’d succumbed to political pressure; he’d understand and sympathise with that.

  I went to find DC Neil Taylor, who was doing preliminary work on Adrian Mansfield’s computer. Neil was a gangly, boyish-looking man with spiky brown hair. His light grey suit looked too big for him. I liked Neil, for the not very complicated reason that he liked me.

  “What have you got, Neil? Anything useful?”

  “You tell me, ma’am.” He handed me three type-written sheets of paper with three different headings: Contact List – Instant Messaging; Contact List – email; Bookmarks – browsers. Neil was methodical and meticulous, and consciously fought a tendency to become bogged down in details at the expense of the bigger picture.

  I scanned the lists. Lisa Markham, unsurprisingly, appeared on both the email and instant messaging contact lists. I said, “Can I take these, Neil? I'd like to make a start on these names straight away.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I can always print out another one.” Which meant: though I'd rather you'd waited until I'd finished.

  “Anything that stands out?” I asked.

  “Yes – he wasn’t very security conscious. Obligingly allowed his browser to save all his passwords. Handy for us.” Which meant he wanted to get on with it. He looked up. “I’ll have everything given time, ma’am. Emails, blogs, social networking, the lot. This is a goldmine.”

  I left him to his goldmine and returned to the/my office, where I stood in the middle of the room and took a deep breath. Activity. I was avoiding, or stepping out of, activity. Activity is the enemy of thought. Activity is doing, and one usually does when one doesn’t want to think. Paul, my partner, was fond of saying, “I have spent my whole life trying to reach a situation where I could comfortably do nothing, a situation most people work hard to avoid.” People like activity. Even pointless activity is preferable to no activity at all. Young people get bored because they have nothing to do. They misbehave because they have nothing to do. Solution? Activity. Give them something to do. Keep them occupied. Panic in the ranks? Answer: action, activity. While we tended the injured, we didn't have time to reflect on our own plight. Our Commanding Officer always kept us busy. Activity, the importance thereof. It is, however, regrettably or not, often an antidote to, or a substitute for, thinking. Action, any action, is better than indecision. We must do something, the assumption goes, with the something always assumed to be better than doing nothing. Small wonder, then, that people tend to define themselves and others by what they do. I once had a temporary clerical job, in which myself and three other temps found ourselves with nothing to do except pass the time. While I smiled inwardly and thought myself fortunate, the others, despite being paid, were bothered and bored, and complained about having nothing to do – or dooo. It has always made me wary – in myself and others – of doing for the sake of doing, or not doing.

  Simon returned carrying a blue envelope folder and wearing a pleased with himself expression. One might almost have thought it had been his idea to return to the Mansfields’. Martha (Bottomley) had, indeed, been there, and had been able and willing to shed a good deal of light on the personal darkness of others. Supportive friend or death-watch beetle, it hardly mattered, for the facts she provided were stark and dark enough in themselves. Adrian Mansfield had had a sister, who four years ago at the age of fourteen had stood on a level crossing in the path of an inter-city train travelling at ninety miles an hour. Suicide? Certainly. No-one was in any doubt. She had left a note for her parents. It’s probably my fault, she had written, but I just can’t bear it. I hate waking up in the morning. Every day hurts, and school is a torture. I’m sorry. Love, Emma. It transpired that young Emma had been a member of an online group in which the – dreary, dreadful, deathly – dullness of the ordinary was discussed at length by sensitive, bright young things, who feared more than anything the prospect of a normal life. Normal was a word used disparagingly, as was ordinary and respectable. A young man called Anthony had written: When I'm depressed, I sometimes wish I was more like my sister – so thick and happy and normal. Unlike their normal peers, these young people concerned themselves with spelling and grammar, and, more subtly, mode of expression. Gemma, from Warwickshire, had written: My mother’s dead inside. She’s obsessed with respectability, always has been. The moment my dad offered it to her, she respectably dropped her knickers. And Jane, from Brighton: I would rather die than be ordinary. What’s the point of being alive if it just means a shit job, a boring relationship, and a photo album of dull events. Sam, from Derby: So far I’ve managed to avoid THE TALK – you know the one: about how the world doesn’t owe you a living and you only get out what you put in. You know, the icing on the cake of parental betrayal. And so it went on, young people railing against the “curse of being alive”. Jeremy, from Norfolk: They want to train us to be good little drones. The best you can be is something for someone else – a good student or employee, a good father or mother, a good wife or husband, a good son or daughter. And while you’re busy being and doing all that, the bit of you that’s really you – the bit that might have mattered to you – withers and dies unlamented.

  Martha confessed herself fascinated by this. She was, according to Simon, a weird, middle-aged woman. I assumed I could rely on the assessment of her age. She lived on her own in a bungalow – which she owned – in Upper Cotely, a village a mile or so north of Amberton. She had worked as a teacher and a social worker, though she had not been professionally involved with the Mansfields, and now wrote articles on philosophy and gave talks – “not lectures, sergeant; those are a professor's chore” – on writing. While condoling with the Mansfields on their daughter’s suicide, the circumstances surrounding it, or the reasons for it, had pricked something like professional interest. She had found the youngsters online conversations sufficiently compelling to download them to her computer's hard disk, since she had feared the content might be deleted or replaced. Simon asked if he could see it, and she invited him to follow her home.

  She tore off at law-breaking speeds, and briefly drove on the wrong side of the road. She took the turning into her gravel driveway without dropping speed or gear. So abrupt was this manoeuvre that Simon shot past, and was forced to brake and back up before making the turning. She left her car and came up to him, apparently exhilarated. “Imagine if everyone did that?” she said in a clipped, fruity voice. “That would shake ‘em up.”

  “Sorry?” Simon mistakenly assumed she was talking about the driving.

  “Killed themselves because life wasn't good enough. Get away from the crappy creed of surviving at any cost. Once we lose the fear of death, we’ll demand more of life. These kids are ahead of the evolutionary curve.” She turned and led the way into the house. Simon followed her into what he assumed was her study. It was a large, square, plushly carpeted room with a high ceiling. Three of the
walls had floor to ceiling bookcases filled with books and papers and ornaments. A shelf at waist height accommodated – somewhat oddly – an old black and white portable television. Simon remarked on it.

  Martha smiled. “Yes, it’s odd how old technology captures the attention. I think it’s because it has an accelerated ageing process – it ages faster than the things around it, and strikes an incongruous note. When one sees an old television or radio, one has the sensation of meeting an old friend mostly forgotten and curiously unchanged. There is a shock of recognition followed by a sensation of nostalgia. Isn’t there something – a joke perhaps – about seeing a boy or girl from school, only to remember that, of course, it couldn't possibly be them, for they, too, would have aged with the passing of time? Time and memory play havoc with the human soul. No other animal is so burdened.”

  She had started her computer, which sat atop a capacious mahogany antique desk with lion’s paw feet and a bottle-green leather inlay. A laptop being used as a base unit, it was connected to a large flat screen monitor, a printer, and a keyboard and mouse. She sat down, hand on mouse, and stared intently at the screen. It might just have been concentration, but Simon thought he detected a fanatical gleam in her eye. She clicked the mouse and the printer whirred into life. She stood up abruptly and waited impatiently for the printer to finish printing. She waved the page in the air to aid the drying of the ink, and then handed it to Simon. “Bear in mind,” she said, “that this was written by a fourteen-year-old girl. I’ll put the rest on a pen drive for you.”

  Simon was looking at a short story, single-spaced, on a single page of A4. It was called The Dead Commuter. He settled himself in a nearby chair and read.

  The daily awakening. Aching body, fuzzy, tired mind. The alarm, cruel and persistent. You move. You have to move to turn it off. Hit snooze. So tired. Please – another five minutes! Another five minutes of precious sleep! It sounds again, and you move again. Turn it off, properly this time. Sit up now, stand up now, move down the hall. Run a bath. Hot water, easing pain.

  Dry. Stand in towels, brushing teeth. Dress. Don’t speak. There are others to consider. Misery, at close quarters, is infectious. They don’t want to hear it. You are ready, ready at the same time as you were ready yesterday, ready to leave the burrow, ready to do your living-making thing. You hang the card around your neck, the one that grants admission to your place of work. The card is a badge of belonging and ownership. You belong and they own. They take the card away if you leave or are thrown out.

  Leave your home, drone, and walk to the station in all weathers. Bitter cold this morning, dawn’s light coming grudgingly. Take your free paper and board the train. The train starts here and is empty. There’s a faint, sour smell, the stink of the dirty, disinfected water used to clean it, and the cursory, sloppy nature of the job done. Sit, settle, read. You’ve made it this far.

  What little peace you have won’t last. The train will stop, others will board. They will talk – to each other or on phones. Coarse, loud, ignorant voices, the men’s oafish and vulgar, the women’s slack and twanging. "Yeah... Nah... Yeah... Nah... Know-wot-I-mean?... Innit..."

  You put your coat on, shoulder your bag, and leave the now crowded train. You cross a platform. A lumbering tube train will take you the rest of the way. Again, you will get a seat. You always do, and you’re grateful for it. Sit, read. People rarely talk on tube trains, and those who do can barely be heard over the roar of the train itself, as it grunts and wheezes its way from station to station. The train – with you on it – comes to the end of the line. You’re reminded not to forget your belongings. You leave the train, and it hisses behind you like a tired beast. You have a fifteen-twenty minute walk to work. You walk briskly. You tell yourself the exercise does you good.

  You arrive at the office building, and your card lets you in. A little green light tells you the door will open if you push it. There are six floors. You want the third. You could walk, but decide to take the lift. You leave the lift, and your card lets you into the work-floor. Rows and rows of computers. People staring at monitors, hands on mice. They are work units, these people, numbers on a spreadsheet.

  As you approach your desk, you recognise people individually. You greet them, and they you. At your desk, you drop your bag and remove your coat. You sit down. You greet the people on nearby desks as they arrive. You log on to your computer and start work.

  You will do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after, and the day after that...

  When Simon looked up from the page, Martha said, “Emma Mansfield wrote that a week before she died. Don’t you think it’s rather magnificent?”

  “Magnificent?” Simon was slightly bemused. “I’m not sure I’m qualified to judge. Would it even be interesting if she hadn’t killed herself? It’s well enough written – good for an A in English I’d have thought. You tell me, ma’am, would a teacher be disturbed if a student handed this in – maybe for an exercise called Going to work?”

  “I’d certainly have been impressed. It speaks of discontent.”

  “A fairly common discontent,” Simon said. “No-one likes getting up for work, and no-one likes commuting, especially if they have to put up with crowded trains. Grown-ups moan about it all the time. It’s something a sensitive teenager would pick up on.”

  “Perhaps,” she said testily. Simon’s phlegmatic approach was irritating her. “I think the title speaks of a rejection of the adult world. Its promise – of freedom and control – is a lie. Children yearn to be grown-up, only to find themselves standing on a crowded slave train five days a week to keep the economy ticking over. Emma Mansfield saw the lie before she had to live it.”

  Simon said, “A young woman killed herself, ma’am; that can never be a good thing.”

  Martha handed him the pen drive. “Unless you choose to see it as a philosophical victory. I think that’s how she’d have liked us to see it.”

  “Do you want this back, ma’am?”

  “What? Oh, the pen drive. If you remember, Sergeant. I won’t sue if you forget.”