Avedissian snapped into his counter-measure routine. He switched on the lights, lit the electric fires, and turned on the television to provide the distraction of noise. He paused briefly to look at the screen and saw that a woman was jumping up and down in requited greed on a quiz show. The host was flashing his practised smile at the camera and pretending to share in her joy.
'Shit,’ muttered Avedissian but he did not switch it off. That would have meant silence, being alone with himself, and that was to be avoided at all costs. After a moment of contrived tension the woman decided to 'go for the big one' and Avedissian decided to go to the kitchen.
A rectangular lump of Spam made a slow, constipated exit from the tin after much coaxing with a table knife; it slid out on to the plate in a trail of slime. The opener slipped from the lid of a tin of beans for the third time and Avedissian abandoned technology at two hundred and seventy degrees for brute strength and a knife. But, as the lid snapped back, it caught his thumb and ripped the skin over the knuckle. Blood began to flow.
Avedissian put his thumb in his mouth and kept it there as he went to the bathroom to search, one-handedly, through the cabinet above the basin for a plaster. He was rinsing the wound and cursing his luck when the doorbell rang.
Avedissian swathed his thumb temporarily in toilet tissue while he answered it. Two men stood there. One said, 'Mark Avedissian?'
'Yes.'
'May we come in?'
'Who are you?'
The man doing the talking flipped open a wallet and held it up. 'Police, sir.'
Avedissian closed his eyes briefly before opening them again and saying with resignation, 'Come in.'
Nightmares of the past had been rekindled in Avedissian's head by the sight of the warrant card. What could they possibly want this time?
The two men entered and looked about them like tourists in a stately home.
'Sit down.' Avedissian indicated chairs.
‘Trouble, sir?' The man was looking at the wad of tissue on Avedissian's hand that was now crimson.
'Just a cut,' murmured Avedissian. 'If you'll excuse me for a moment.' He turned to go back to the bathroom.
'Of course, sir, anything we can do to help?'
Avedissian declined and left the room. He closed the bathroom door and leaned his back on it muttering, Firbush, the little turd.'
He dressed his thumb and composed himself before returning to join the policemen.
Both men had stood up in his absence and were wandering about the room; one was holding the photograph of Linda that he kept on his desk. Avedissian stared at it and the man put it down.
'We have had a complaint from one Cyril Frederick Firbush, sir. Mr Firbush says that he was the victim of an unprovoked assault at your hands.'
‘1 wouldn't say that it was unprovoked,' said Avedissian quietly.
‘Then you admit the offence, sir?'
'It happened.'
'Would you care to give us your version of the incident?'
'I don't think so,' said Avedissian, feeling drained.
The policemen exchanged glances and shrugged. 'Are you quite sure, sir?' said one of them.
Avedissian smiled wanly at the man's attempt to help him and said, 'Quite.'
'Have you ever been in trouble before, sir?'
'Once.'
Another exchange of glances. 'Really, sir. What?'
'Murder.'
So it had come to this, thought Avedissian as he filled his glass. He was unemployed and due to appear in court on a petty assault charge. The discomfort of shame vied with the numbing effect of the gin and, for the first time in many years, he thought of his parents and was glad that they had not lived to see him in his present state. He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.
Despite his name, a legacy from an Armenian great-grandfather, Avedissian was English and had been brought up in a village near Canterbury, that most gentle of English towns. His childhood, as the only son of a prosperous businessman, had been a model of middle-class order and pride in achievement.
Having been a bright child Avedissian had had no difficulty in showing the academic success that his parents had valued so highly and, although they had been dead for many years now, they had lived to see him commissioned in the forces and had later supported him in his decision to leave the army and go through medical school.
His mother's pride had been the straightforward pride of a mother in her son and Avedissian smiled as he remembered with fondness the ridiculous floral hat that she had worn at his graduation ceremony. But his father's attitude had been different.
John Avedissian had always been as concerned about his son's development as a person as about his academic achievement, although he too had been proud when Avedissian had graduated as a doctor. To be his 'own man' had always been the goal that John Avedissian had set his son. 'Make up your own mind what is right, then do it,' he had urged. 'Don't run with the herd. It's difficult, make no mistake about it, but resist! Be your own man.'
Difficult! Avedissian snorted at the memory. Just look at what being his own man had done for him! Had his father not realised that people who told the truth, people who did what was right, were an embarrassment to society? What society really wanted was people who played the game; people who knew the rules and played the game… or was that self-pity and gin-nurtured cynicism? Avedissian refilled his glass.
The magistrate was lenient. He saw in Avedissian a fellow professional who had fallen on hard times and, in the unspoken way of these things, he back-pedalled when it came to meting out punishment. That Firbush had come across as an ingratiating, slimy little Uriah Heep of a man had also helped Avedissian. The crumpled suit and the rather grubby, unironed shirt could not belie the fact that Avedissian belonged where Cyril Frederick Firbush, for all his golf club tie, did not. Justice might be blind but it would take more than a comfortable little homily to destroy Mr Giles Carrington-Smythe's eyesight.
Avedissian paid the fine and walked out into the afternoon, not reflecting too deeply on whether he had got off lightly or not. His immediate thought was to find a nearby pub and order up a large gin. He checked his watch. Ten minutes to closing time.
Two had passed by the time he reached The Earl of Essex and entered the cool, dark interior.
'Just in time, sir. What'll it be?'
Avedissian ordered a large gin and took it to a table after telling the barman to keep the change.
The barman was effusive in his thanks but that only annoyed Avedissian. Whatever happened to dignity, he wondered? Why didn't he tell me to stick my money? Because he was afraid to lose his job? No, that wasn't it. Someone was giving him money, therefore he was happy. A nice simple philosophy.
Avedissian took a large gulp of the gin. Maybe Firbush was right. Maybe he was too grand for the standards of the market-place, but that was hardly a consideration because he was no longer in the market-place. He saw the reality of his situation in the dregs of his empty glass and did not like what he saw. He was lost and alone. One thing Firbush had been right about was the fact that his career as a doctor was over for good. He would never practise again and that thought recurred to gnaw at his insides like an ulcer.
The idea of living without being able to work at what he loved had been bearable, though only just, when Linda had been alive. But with her death the sun had gone out. Not only could he not accept his wife's suicide, he could not understand it and that made it all the worse for they had been so perfectly matched. They had shared an intellectual harmony that had given them such pleasure; it seemed unthinkable that one of them could have had such secret thoughts of death. Did it mean that he had never really known her at all? Had it all been arrogant presumption on his part? Had Linda possessed a secret self, a frightened lonely self who had been unable to confide in him? The thought was unbearable.
'I'm sorry, sir, we're closing now.'
Avedissian did not hear the statement until it was repeated. He glanced at the man in the white jacket and
