Читать книгу The Returned Dead - Rafe Kronos - Страница 3

He’d been dead for a long time before he came to see me.

“The thing is this, Mr Dawson: I died some years back. Now I need you to sort it out for me.” He flung the words at me as he lowered himself into the client’s chair. “You have to sort it out, you have to.”

I stared back across my desk. Despite the strange claim he did not look dead, not even a little bit. In fact he looked in the prime of life: fresh and rosy cheeks, an enviably slim waist and no nicotine stains on his fingers and heavy moustache. He wore Armani designer glasses with slightly tinted lenses, the top edges of the frames matching exactly the curve of his eyebrows. His face was nothing special, neither handsome nor ugly, but it was topped by a beautifully barbered thatch of dark brown hair. Dead? Definitely not.

Fit, healthy -- and something else -- something I had seen as soon as he walked in: wealthy. He was wearing a beautifully cut grey suit with a cream shirt and maroon silk tie. His feet were shod in well polished black moccasins – everything about him was stylish and expensive. I like expensive in potential clients. Yet, here he was, apparently convinced he was dead.

I looked at him without saying anything till he gave a slight nod, reached into a pocket and passed over a business card. He said, “That’s me.” I half expected him to say, “And I’m dead,” but he didn't.

I wasn’t sure I wanted a dead man for a client: it could make collecting the fee difficult. When did a corpse ever sign a cheque? And would any bank cash it? No, I definitely prefer live clients.

“I see,” I said, which was fatuous because I didn’t. “So tell me, when exactly did your death occur?” It felt strange asking an obviously live man just when he died.

“Eight years, four months and thirteen days ago.”

Well, that showed precision. But did exactitude make his claim believable? Sure as hell he looked very alive – and rich. The rich aspect appealed. Some things in my life demand a lot of money.

I pondered his weird claim for a moment or two. Something was very wrong here and I groaned silently. I’d had a bad night and it was making me sour, I wasn’t going to be pissed about. I felt a need to shake him up a bit. A bit of mockery might do for a start.

“So you’re dead, are you? If you don’t mind me saying so, you’re looking pretty good for a dead man.”

He sat up a bit straighter, pulled in his stomach, touched a hand to his hair and half turned his head so I could see more of his profile and said, “Yes, I suppose I am. I am, aren’t I?”

I noted the vanity in his response. “Even though you’ve been dead,” I calculated quickly, “eighty-eight and a half months, give or take a day or two.”

He nodded, his face serious again. “Right.”

I stared at him for a few more moments trying to understand what was going on. Then I asked him, “So what exactly do you want me to do? Undead you in some way?”

He gave a sort of suppressed snarl. “What I want, Mr Dawson, what I want, is for you to get my life back for me.” Suddenly there was urgency in his voice. “I want my life back, that’s what I want, that’s why I’m here, that’s why I’ve come to you. I need to get my life back.” He glared across as if challenging me to disagree.

“Not restore you to life, but restore your life to you? Is that it?” I thought it was a pretty neat bit of phrasing.

He wasn’t impressed. He gave a sort of tired sigh and said, “Well, I suppose you could put it like that. Yes, yes, if you want, you could say that.” He glared again, clearly warning me not to push my luck.

I gave him a reassuring smile. Despite my total disbelief that was rapidly shading into annoyance I was not about to turn away a potential client, not even one who thought he was dead. So what was the explanation? Was he mentally disturbed, was he suffering from hallucinations, imagining he was involved in some sort of zombie fantasy? For all I knew he could be completely bananas. In case he was, I had to tread warily. He might be dangerous, he might even have come here to harm me. I tried not to look up at the things hidden in the ceiling as I considered this.

I decided I might as well get some facts.

“OK, so let’s start at the beginning.” I glanced down at the card he’d given me. “You’re Roderick Baxendale?”

“Roddy Baxendale. Yes -- and no.”

I left that for the moment. “But you – Baxendale -- you’re obviously not dead.”

“Not even a bit.” He tried to smile but the smile slid off his features, leaving them tense.

“But you’re also telling me you died some years back.”

“Yes, I did -- but then I didn’t.”

I was going round in circles. I’d felt this way before, though not this early in an investigation.

“Look Mr Dawson, maybe this will help to explain things.” He picked up his stylish green leather brief-case -- another sign of wealth, it had probably been made especially for him -- from beside his chair and opened it. He reached inside and pulled out a fawn folder.

I’d noticed the case seemed heavy when he came in, a bit swollen, say about four months pregnant. I was starting to wonder if the heaviness was a bottle. Was he an alcoholic? Alkies often carry a bottle with them. I couldn’t smell booze but perhaps his favoured tipple was odourless vodka. Alcoholic delusions could explain what he was saying. Perhaps I was looking at some rich bastard with a dose of the DTs.

He glanced at me as if to check that I was ready for whatever it was. I nodded in a way that I hoped was reassuring. He slid a press cutting out of the folder, leaned forward and passed it across the desk.

The paper was yellow and brittle with age. The side towards me showed a truncated photo of a wedding group, the bride, groom and bridesmaids were all cut off at the waist. The groom was looking unhappy but then marriage takes some people like that. Above the picture was the date: 1 July 2006. I did the sum: just under eight years and four months ago.

“Turn it over. That side’s just to show you the date,” he commanded.

I did -- and there he was, smiling out of a studio portrait beneath the headline “Sudden Death of Local Businessman.” I looked from the picture to him and back to the picture, then back at him. It shocked me. The face in the photo was the same as the one staring anxiously across my desk at me. In the photo he was a few years younger but there was no doubt it was him: same hair, same moustache, same rather ordinary face. It was him. What the hell....?

“Read it,” he instructed, his voice harsh.

I was about to but I nodded compliantly. If – if -- I was going to take him on as a client I wanted him to believe I’d do whatever he told me to. I might not, of course, but there was no point in letting him know.

I read: ‘Prominent local business Jack Rankin, aged 40, died suddenly at his home from a heart attack last Tuesday. Mr Rankin was the sole owner and Managing Director of Rankin Motors, the area’s main Ford dealers. The business was founded in 1957 by his father, Jack Rankin Snr., and expanded greatly under his son’s stewardship. It now has three branches. Mr Rankin was active in the town’s Business Forum and was a prominent Rotarian.

This is the second time that tragedy has struck the Rankin family in recent months. In May Mr Rankin’s wife Felicity was killed by a hit and run driver while crossing Carlingford Rd. Nobody has been arrested for that crime. The couple had no children.’

I sat for a while and thought about this. No, I couldn’t make sense of it.

“Well?”

I shrugged, “If that was you…”

“It was. It is.”

“So you died -- and then I assume you were buried?”

“Cremated, I checked.”

“You checked? You mean you weren’t there when it happened?”

Perhaps I was being too sarcastic.

He flushed angrily, “No, obviously not.”

We sat in silence. It seemed best to let him do the talking.

“I know it sounds crazy,” he said eventually.

Damn right it did. I still said nothing; I knew he’d speak if I kept silent. He did.

“Look, about my death – my supposed death -- what happened was this. After Fizzy – Felicity, my wife -- died, well, was killed, I was living on my own. We had no children so I was all on my own in our house. But the night I died, well, I was supposed to have died, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t at home. I’d decided to get away for a couple of days, to get away from the empty house, to be somewhere else.” He paused and took a deep breath, “So I wasn’t there. I tell you I wasn’t there when it happened.”

I could see why he was so insistent. If you weren’t there when you died then perhaps you didn’t die.

“But it appears someone did die, someone died and people thought he was you, right? That person died and then, according to you, he was cremated. Is that it?”

“Yes, yes, a man died in my house, in my bed. The cleaning woman, Mrs Moyles, came in next morning and she found me – him.”

“And she recognised him -- you?”

“She did.”

It didn’t make sense.

“So who made the identification for the death certificate?”

“My doctor and one of the people from my firm. I’ve checked that too.”

“And they knew you well enough to identify you?”

“Yes, of course they did. That’s why they were asked.”

Something odd there: why them? “So why were they asked to make the formal identification? Why not a close relative? Surely they’d have asked one of your family?”

He shook his head. “There wasn’t anyone; there was no-one they could ask. You see, I don’t have any close relatives. There’s a distant cousin in Canada, that’s all. I’m an only child, so was my father. I was – I am -- the last of my line, the Rankin line.”

I absorbed this for a few seconds and then asked the obvious question.

“So how is it you are walking round with cards for Roderick Baxendale?” I glanced again at the card. It was curiously blank: apart from the name it bore only a mobile phone number.

“Well, because that’s who I am, Roddy Baxendale. It’s a complicated story.” He sighed and his body slumped as if he was suddenly weary of everything.

“OK, so let’s start with the easy bits. What does Mr Roderick Baxendale do?”

“Actually, I don’t do anything. I don’t have to work; I’m rich, very rich.” He gave a quick smile and then his face crumpled into worry, lines and fissures appeared that aged him ten years in a second. Then the flesh of his face smoothed out again. “I’m very rich,” he repeated, “so I don’t work.”

Very rich? I began to think about doubling my fee. But perhaps all this was some sort of fantasy?

“OK, let me try to get this straight. If you, Jack Rankin, died over eight years ago,” I tapped the press cutting, “how long have you been Roderick Baxendale?”

“Just seven years and ten months,” he spoke quickly. Then he added in a less certain voice, “but also forty-seven years.”

I decided to concentrate on the more recent date. I could come back to the forty-seven years later.

“So after you died, or you didn’t die as Rankin – that was eight years and four months ago -- are you saying there’s a gap of about six months in your life, and after that you started your Baxendale life. Is that right?”

“Yes.” He nodded vigorously to confirm that I’d just grasped something important. Then he added, “But it was more like re-starting my Baxendale life. I was born -- as Baxendale -- forty-seven years ago.”

Well that explained the forty-seven years, though it didn’t make anything else clearer. I told myself to be patient.

“OK, just for the moment let’s concentrate on what happened seven years and ten months ago. What exactly were you doing in the period between dying and being cremated as Rankin and then being Baxendale?”

“Ah, that’s just it.” He leaned forward and I caught a whiff of expensive cologne and, under it, the unmistakeable smell of fear; it was a smell I knew well. So what was scaring him?

“I believe I was unconscious. I believe I was in a coma, in a private hospital. That’s what my wife’s told me.”

“Your wife? The one the newspaper says was killed by a hit and run driver?”

“No, no, no! That was Fizzy. This one’s Debby. My – Roddy Baxendale’s -- wife.”

This was getting worse. “You’re married?”

“Yes, to Debby. I just told you that.” He spoke sharply as if I had failed to grasp something obvious.

I was becoming more and more irritated by this bizarre story. I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. “Right, let me see if I’ve got this straight: you’re married to Debby and called Baxendale but you’re also Jack Rankin and dead but you’re not dead? Is that it? Have I got it right?”

He sighed, looked down at the floor, back at me and then gave a shrug, as if admitting how strange it sounded.

“Look, Mr Dawson, I know it sounds completely crazy, that’s exactly why I want you to sort it out. That’s why I’m here. Look: I know I’m Jack Rankin but I also know I’m Roddy Baxendale. I died but I didn’t. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I’ve come to you. I’m desperate. For God’s sake, you must help me, I’m really desperate.”

Desperate people will pay more. Perhaps I could hit him with an even bigger fee. I needed the money: another big payment was almost due.

“I think it’ll be best if you just tell me what happened to you.” I said, trying to make myself speak mildly, trying to suggest I had no doubts about his story. “Just explain it as well as you can.”

Just explain it if you can, I thought. I doubted he could.