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Self-Help for Cynics. Millicent’s books had no truck with self-pity. They didn’t propose chanting, or detoxes, or relentless positivity as solutions to relationship breakdowns and bereavement. They were tough and funny, but had at their core an understanding of real emotional pain.
Make your play and move on. Books for people like us, a generation of people who layer themselves in irony, people who would never be seen buying a self-help book because that would be absurd. Then, suddenly, the same eternal question: what to do? Or, as Millicent put it:
‘Which version of you are you planning to be, when you climb out the well you just filled with your shit? Sooner or later you’re going to have to swim to the top and drag yourself out. Make your play, and move on.’
Millicent’s cynicism, of course, was a well-constructed front. She could speak the language of the cynic, but she knew – and I know she still knows – that she’s an idealist to the core. She believes in love, and she believes that people are redeemed through loving each other. She could never allow herself to say as much – Millicent knows it would destroy the brand if she did – but Self-Help for Cynics worked because it was one bruised romantic talking to other bruised romantics, using the language of the disaffected.
People began to write to Millicent. ‘I don’t know why they’re thanking me,’ she said to me when the first letters had begun to arrive. ‘It’s pretty obvious. Get some sleep for Chrissakes. Consider not taking drugs. Go for a walk. Try to remember sex.’
Millicent had followed Self-Help for Cynics with Adulthood for Cynics and Parenthood for Cynics. Bereavement for Cynics won a minor award and got her invited to the Hay Festival; Marriage for Cynics had won a major award and was sold at the checkouts of upmarket supermarkets.
I took my hands from Millicent’s breasts, leaned against her chair. ‘I’m married to a brand,’ I said. ‘What more could a modern man want?’
‘I’m a moderately successful author. Of self-help books.’
‘You’re a brand,’ I said. ‘We can move to Crouch End.’
‘I make forty pence a copy. I’m on probation at the radio station. We can’t afford to move any time soon.’
She stood up from her chair, turned around, stretched, stood on the balls of her feet, yawned and kissed me.
I turned her around again, crossed my arms across her chest and slid a hand into her dressing gown, holding her very close. She leaned into me, asked me why I was so sweet to her.
‘I’m not,’ I said.
‘And yet somehow you are.’
You see, I thought, she needs you too.
I sat at my computer. I logged four hours of city landscapes in ninety minutes. Maybe my workload was manageable. Maybe my work was just another logistical brick in our plan for Max. Maybe Millicent was right. Maybe this was no more than a scheduling problem.
At ten to eleven two police officers appeared on the other side of the street, watching our house. I put the man at around fifty, and the woman at thirty, maybe thirty-five. Dark suits, but definitely police. They looked different from the other officers we had met, but I couldn’t immediately say why. Something about their bearing.
I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and t-shirt. Millicent splashed water across her face, came downstairs in a white linen dress that came halfway down her thigh.
‘Interesting choice,’ I said.
‘Too short?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘How do you dress for the police?’
She beckoned me downwards, reached up and did something to my hair.
‘I guess this is pretty much who we are,’ she said.
‘You ready?’
‘You’d better believe it, you handsome fuck.’ She held my hand in hers, and I could feel that she was trembling. She was trying to build me up. She was as nervous for me as I was.
I could hear the officers’ voices outside the front door now.
‘Are they, like … hovering creepily?’ Millicent’s voice was hushed now.
‘Looks like it,’ I said.
‘Do you think they …’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They heard nothing. You’re beautiful and poised, and they’re here to talk to me. And we have nothing – nothing – to hide.’
The man said something to the woman, and both laughed. How relaxed they sounded. How unlike us.
‘Yeah,’ said Millicent. ‘Easy to forget. I don’t like this at all, and it hasn’t even started.’
I opened the door barefoot: this is us at home, as we always are. But as soon as the door was open it felt like a mistake.
The two officers were as neat as we were wild of hair. Their eyes scanned us up and down, this straight-backed man and this straight-backed woman in their exquisitely tailored plain clothes. They were a little older than I had realised. She was forty perhaps; he was sixty. They were different in other ways, too, from the police we had met so far: their clothes were expensive and they carried themselves with a confidence that comes with high rank. I looked past them out into the street. Probably an unmarked car. Almost certainly something fancy and German. If Mr Ashani had seen them he would have guessed what they were about.
How did we read to them? Me in t-shirt and jeans; Millicent blowsy in her short linen dress. Both of us barefoot. Parents. It was eleven o’clock.
Could they come in, did I think? No. I looked round at Millicent. No. I turned back to them, looked down at my feet, laughed a self-conscious laugh.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’ No.
‘We could give you five minutes.’
‘No need,’ I said.
‘Right then.’
‘We don’t wear shoes in the house. But you are welcome to, of course.’
No reaction.
‘You have to understand,’ I said, ‘that we’re under quite a lot of stress.’
They handed me their business cards. They were detectives of some sort. I glanced at the cards and handed them to Millicent, instantly forgetting their ranks. Millicent would remember if necessary. Derek and June.
Now that I had gathered myself I was angry at the intrusion.
‘Coffee?’ I said. The woman shook her head.
‘No, thank you, Mr Mercer,’ said the man. Derek.
‘Coffee, Millicent?’ I asked.
‘Coffee, Alex.’
In the kitchen I unscrewed the coffee-maker. Tapped the old grounds into the sink. Filled the reservoir with water from the tap. The detectives stood awkwardly, looking around, taking in the disarray of our lives. I put coffee into the little funnel, and screwed the coffee-maker back together. I lit the gas and set it on the hob.
Millicent sat down at the table, produced a packet of Marlboro and offered me one. I watched the she-detective, enjoyed her irritation as I nodded yes. June, she was called. I was short on sleep and long on caffeine and nicotine, in no mood to apologise for the mess. Let them wait.
Millicent took a cigarette for herself and tossed the pack to me. I caught it, removed a cigarette, and lit it from the hob. Millicent lit hers from a lighter she’d found on the table, and we smoked silently as we waited for the coffee, owning the kitchen.
‘So,’ I said, ‘any idea how long this is likely to take?’
‘An hour. Possibly two,’ said the woman. ‘It depends what you tell me, Mr Mercer.’
‘I really should be working.’
‘I suggest you ring your employer.’
‘I’m working from home this week.’
‘Well, then.’
‘So,’ said Millicent. ‘You guys don’t need to speak to me, right?’
There was a long pause, and the detectives exchanged a look.
‘Actually, Ms Weitzman, there is something I’d like to discuss with you,’ said the man. Derek.
‘OK.’
‘We can talk about it while my colleague is speaking to your husband.’
Millicent put out her cigarette, put her hand to her face, rubbed the bridge of her nose with her forefinger.
‘Sure.’ She gave a stiff little smile. ‘Shall we speak in the garden?’
‘That would be fine, Ms Weitzman.’
Millicent stood up and opened the back door.
‘Your coffee, Millicent,’ I said.
‘Oh. Sure. Thanks.’ She sent me that same stiff little smile.
I poured her a cup, poured one for myself. Millicent and Derek went out into the garden. She shut the door with great care. She didn’t once look at me.
‘What’s that about?’ I asked.
‘Just something we need to clear up with your wife, Mr Mercer.’
‘Alex.’
‘As you wish.’
‘But what do you have to clear up with Millicent?’
‘Your wife is at liberty to share the content of the discussion with you, Mr Mercer. As of course you are to share the content of this discussion with her. Now, perhaps we should both sit down.’
We sat facing each other across the kitchen table. I felt a sudden urge to apologise for our mess, to make some excuse for the rudeness we had just shown. It’s not you, I wanted to say. We’re all just a little freaked out at the moment.
We’re not bad people.
We’re good parents.
But that would only make me look weak now, and besides, it would change nothing.
‘So, Mr Mercer, you understand why we’re here?’
‘The suicide of our next-door neighbour.’
‘It certainly could be a suicide.’
‘Could be?’
‘We’re keeping an open mind, Mr Mercer. Now, before we go any further, I should say that we are aware that the experience of finding a body can be a traumatic one. We can arrange counselling if you should at any time find it necessary.’
‘It’s my son I’m worried about. This is tough on him.’
A patient smile. ‘I understand. But I’m also required to say that should you at any point require help in regard to what you have experienced, then we can assist you in arranging that help, either without cost or for a nominal fee. These things are tough on adults too.’
Since when were the police all pinstripes and counselling? I looked out of the window, but couldn’t see Millicent and the he-detective. Probably sitting down. On the love seat, I thought, and found the thought darkly funny. Millicent would be suffering spasms of social agony. She hated encounters with authority figures, especially authority figures with English accents.
‘Now then.’ The detective produced a small voice recorder and placed it on the table. ‘May I?’ Yellow-grey eyes, keen and unyielding.
I nodded. She pressed the record button, and told the machine where she was, and who she was talking to. Then she turned to look at me.
‘I should just say here at the start that you are by no means a suspect at the current time.’
‘At the current time? What are you saying?’
‘That you are not a suspect.’
‘You had me worried.’
This time there was more understanding in her smile.
‘We appreciate that the form of wording we use can seem vague. I hope you understand why we have to speak in these terms.’
‘Sure. Sorry.’
‘I need to start by asking you a little about your professional life, Mr Mercer.’
‘I’m a TV producer.’
‘And you work for?’
‘Myself.’
‘And what does that involve?’
‘It used to be said that you employed everyone else on set.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Now I pretty much just do what I’m told,’ I said.
These were her warm-up questions; my answers didn’t matter. She was establishing a pattern of question-and-answer, she was making it clear that she was in control.
‘I interview people on camera, so I know how this bit of your job feels.’ I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. She wasn’t trying to establish a rapport with me.
‘Do you have any imminent travel plans?’
‘I plan the shooting, and the editing. I have responsibility for the budget.’
‘Thank you. Duly noted. Your travel plans?’
‘There’s a whole lot of other stuff too. I also direct.’
‘All right, Mr Mercer,’ she said. ‘And do you plan to work outside the country in the next twelve weeks?’
‘New York. Next week. And Chicago. And LA. And San Francisco.’
‘Hmm. OK.’
‘Series with Dee Effingham. Her twelve favourite men in comedy.’
‘Duly noted.’ If she was impressed, she didn’t show it.
The real questions began. She asked me to tell her about finding the dead neighbour. She was patient and very thorough. She asked open-ended questions, never trying to antici-pate my answer. From time to time she would produce a small notebook from her inside pocket, write single words in block capitals. WATER. CRACK. ERECTION. If I started to interpret what I had seen, she would gently lead me back to the facts. All the while, the voice recorder sat at her side, bearing witness to my testimony.
Twenty minutes into our conversation, Millicent and Derek came in from the garden. Millicent was guarded, on edge. I tried to catch her eye, but she looked away, her attention focused on the detective, who nodded to his colleague but didn’t look at me.
I reached for Millicent’s hand, and she let it rest in mine for a moment. Then she was seeing the detective out of the room and to the front door.
As June and I talked, I heard water running in the bathroom upstairs, heard Millicent’s footfalls on our bedroom floor. Then I heard her coming down the stairs and quietly letting herself out of the house.
‘I’d really like to know what that was about now, please, if you don’t mind.’
‘And I’ve explained to you that I can’t discuss that with you, Mr Mercer. I’m sorry, I really am.’ She meant it, the sorry part. For the first time the professional distance dropped away; I could see something like sympathy in her eyes.
‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette? I could leave the back door open.’ She smiled. ‘And can I make some more coffee?’
‘Of course. I’ll have a cup too, if I may.’
This was worse. I didn’t want her pity, didn’t want there to be a reason for her to feel sorry for me. My hands shook as I made the coffee, shook as I lit my cigarette, shook as I handed her a cup.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Lack of sleep. And the fags probably don’t help. We both know we need to stop. For our son if nothing else.’
She gave me her sympathetic smile again, left her coffee cup untouched. I drank my own coffee and smoked in silence. I wondered where Millicent was.
‘Are you all right, Mr Mercer?’
‘Yeah, can we get this finished now?’
We were at it for another hour. The same patience, the same open-ended questions, the same absolute professionalism. But that edge of concern in her voice, the knowledge that she now felt sorry for me – that was unbearable.
‘You haven’t really asked me about Max,’ I said, as I realised the discussion was ending.
‘No.’
‘Are you planning to question him again? Because I don’t think he could take that.’
‘Mr Mercer, that would be a very different kind of investigation, and I don’t anticipate that.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You can draw your own conclusions.’ She smiled, that expression of concern again.
‘OK, so what happens now?’
‘We’ll be in touch. Unless of course you or Max wish to access any of the support services we have spoken about.’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘And I must ask you to remain in the country. You will need to reconsider your American trip.’
‘What?’
‘We’d like you to remain in the country.’
‘But you just said, or heavily implied that I, or rather that the investigation wasn’t …’
She cut across me. ‘Mr Mercer, you are helping us with our enquiries.’
‘But I’m not a suspect.’
‘Not at this stage.’
We ended the meeting, and she left me at the kitchen table, paralysed by my thoughts.
There was a thing, then. Some thing has happened.
It was the water that stirred me. For a moment I was sure I was wrong, that the tap in the neighbour’s kitchen could not be running. Then I knew that it was, and wondered why the sound troubled me.
I shook myself from my trance, became aware of my legs, rose slowly, trying to rub the sleep from them as I moved towards the wall that divided our house from the neighbour’s.
Water. Definitely water.
I put my right ear to the wall. Short percussive bumps. In pairs. And the water was still running.
I moved slowly to the sink, tipped wine from yesterday’s glass, shook out the last drops, and returned to the wall that divided our house from the neighbour’s. I placed the base of the glass against the wall, and put my ear in the bowl of the glass. Again those short percussive bumps. The sound was no clearer than before. I moved my head away, looked at the glass. Wasn’t this the way it was done? I turned the glass around, put my ear to the base of it; the sound was still no clearer. Pairs of percussive bumps. Still the sound of the water through the pipes.
I put the glass down on the table, and returned to the wall, cupped my ear to its smooth white surface with my hands.
A bump. A metallic crash. No second bump this time.
A woman’s voice. A cry of frustration.
I thought for a moment of Millicent, but why would Millicent be in the neighbour’s house?
I opened the front door and went out into the street.
‘Look, sir, look.’
Mr Ashani was standing on the pavement outside our house. He nodded towards the dead man’s house and made to speak, but I smiled and tapped him on the elbow, walked past him to the neighbour’s front door. Then I saw what Mr Ashani had meant me to see.
A locksmith had fitted two small steel plates, one to the door, one to the frame. They had buckled slightly, as if under force, and the padlock that had held them had given. Someone had placed the lock on the low wall in front of the house, as if meaning to replace it.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Indeed,’ said Mr Ashani.
‘No yellow tape, though.’ Perhaps the police weren’t thinking murder after all.
‘In this country, sir, police tape is blue and white.’
‘Well,’ I said, and folded my arms.
Mr Ashani shot me an uncertain half-smile and went back into his house.
I rang the dead neighbour’s bell. The door opened. I guessed at once that she was his sister. She was tall, and a little too slight for her frame. Her skin was very pale, and her brown hair hung crisply at her shoulders: the kind of woman my mother would describe as willowy. The kind of daughter my mother’s friends had. Pretty, in other circumstances.
‘Alex,’ I said. ‘I live next door.’
I looked past her. From here I could not see the sink, though I could hear the tap running in the kitchen. I could see the source of the crash, though. She had pulled a drawer out of its mount, and the sides had come away from the base as it landed. Impractical slivers of stainless steel were strewn across the kitchen floor. I guessed that the flat ones were knives, the curved ones spoons. The forks seemed to have only two prongs.
The words Crime Scene flashed across my mind. She doesn’t know.
‘I was making a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Trying to. Would you like one?’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’
She stood, uncertain, as if waiting for me to say more.
Don’t go in.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to ask you this, but you have spoken to the police?’
She nodded, and pushed the corners of her mouth inwards. ‘But not since the night. Not been feeling very sociable. Haven’t been charging my phone.’ There was a glassy look to her eyes, and I could see she badly wanted not to cry.
‘I don’t think you should be in there just now,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Why not?’
Because the police think I might, just possibly, have killed your brother.
‘Did you force the lock?’
She nodded. Etiolated, I thought. You wouldn’t think there was enough strength in those narrow shoulders.
‘I think the police fitted it,’ I said.
‘I slightly realised after I’d done it,’ she said. ‘Stupid, isn’t it, what grief makes you do?’
She looked at me and smiled, as if that explained it.
‘I think you need to turn off the tap and leave.’
‘Couldn’t you just come in while I get myself sorted out?’
‘I’m sorry, no. Is that your bag?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You can come and sit with me, if you like.’
Mr Ashani must have been watching. He sprang from his house, and had his hand on my arm before I reached my front door.
‘Mr Ashani.’
‘Mr Mercer, I must speak with you.’
‘I’m a little busy just now, Mr Ashani.’
‘I wish to discuss with you what kind of man this was.’
Leave us alone.
‘I’m expecting his sister for tea. Perhaps we could talk later?’
‘This is a discussion we must have, Mr Mercer.’
For a while I didn’t think she would come. I made coffee and tidied up a little. I could still hear the tap running through the wall, and I guessed from the tiny scraping sounds that she was picking up the cutlery and trying to replace the drawer. Eventually she turned off the tap, and a minute after that she was sitting at our kitchen table.
Her name was Rose, and her hands shook as she drank her coffee. Her lower left arm was covered in silver bracelets, which glinted as she moved: a soft metallic sound, like breath. Why hadn’t I noticed before?
I suggested she speak to the police. I hoped they wouldn’t reveal that I was under suspicion, because there was something genuine about her, and I wanted her to like me. Even in her grief she was sweet and self-deprecating and funny.
‘Was it you who found him?’ she asked after a while.
‘Yes. And my son. We were looking for the cat.’
She nodded as if that explained it.
‘Thanks.’
We sat and drank coffee in silence. Then she asked if I minded if she smoked. ‘In the garden, I mean. Would that be OK?’
‘You don’t need to go in the garden.’
She produced a packet of Kensitas Club and offered me one. She took out a silver lighter and tried to light my cigarette, hand shaking.
‘You’re not really a smoker, are you?’ I said.
‘It’s that obvious?’
‘Girls like you don’t smoke Kensitas Club.’ I sniffed the cigarette in my hand. ‘And these are stale. You nick them from a party?’
The sadness lifted from her, and she smiled, making light.
‘Busted.’ A glint in her eye. More than just a nice English girl, then.
‘Want a proper cigarette?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
I lit two cigarettes at the stove, handed her one. She gripped the cigarette like a pen, took a drag, watched the smoke as it curled upwards. She was nothing like Millicent but she had something of the same underlying strength, some quality that made me feel I could trust her, almost as if we shared a secret, though if you had asked me to define what I liked about her I would have struggled, would have worried that you thought I was attracted to her.
‘Was it awful for you?’ The aching sadness was back. ‘Did it look as if he was suffering? I mean, of course he was suffering. He had to be to do that. But how did he seem?’ I could feel her struggling for the words. ‘Did he look all right?’
‘I think it was OK. He looked OK.’ I thought again about that rictus smile. Of course it was awful. The erection. The violence of it. Of course he didn’t look all right. But the poor man was someone’s brother. He was Rose’s brother.
‘He looked dignified. He looked peaceful.’
He looked murdered.
‘You’re a good man, aren’t you? Was it really not awful?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not good. Other people are good. And it wasn’t awful.’ I was lying to soften the blow.
‘You are good, you know,’ she said. ‘There’s kindness in your voice.’
She got up, asked if she could use the lavatory. Of course, I said, of course. I hoped we had shut the bedroom door.