Macdonald looked at him and sucked his teeth. He had a big face with small ears like delicate handles on an ugly hand-made pot.
'Look here, fellow... ' he began.
He went no further. Harry had heard that tone before. It was the sound of a policeman who thinks he can get away with murder and he was not going to have it.
'Do you know who I am?' Harry said, pushing his face close to Macdonald's. 'Do you know who my friends are? Do you realize,' he stood up and it would have been ridiculous for Macdonald to stand up too so that Harry remained towering over him, 'that the Chairman of Mobil was a close friend of mine. Not only my wife... ' he hesitated, 'is dead, but also my colleagues. Now if you wish to harass me, to cause me and my family trouble tonight I will be on the telephone and I shall have your arse kicked so hard you'll spit your teeth out.'
Macdonald hesitated.
It is a measure of Harry's confidence in his safe position in Hell that his slow anger at the behaviour of the police, his grief, his irritation that Macdonald had commandeered the dining room rather than the kitchen, that no one was going to light the fire if he didn't, came forth in such a controlled silk-gowned display of rage.
Macdonald, having seen the house to be expensive but not of the first rank, was as surprised – more surprised – than the people in the kitchen who stirred expectantly and waited.
When Macdonald gave in it was not because Harry's face was red and his eyes yellow, nor that he was a widower, possibly an innocent one, nor was it the quality of his hand-stitched suit, whose expensive subtleties were lost on Mac-donald, but that Harry said '
There was something in this combination of correctness and violence which he instinctively reacted to, and he decided to give him, at least for the moment, the benefit of the doubt.
'We have an unpleasant job to do,' he said stiffly, lining up some pieces of paper on his clipboard, 'and we try to do it as pleasantly as possible. I understand that you're upset.'
Harry nodded and stepped back to allow the man to stand.
On this sort of night (wind rattling the tall windows in the dining room, the big fig scratching itself against the western wall) they would have eaten pea soup from big white bowls, baked vegetables and Honey Barbara's apple pie. They would have opened a magnum of Raussan Segla. Bettina would have sat in her wing-back chair, her face tired, a glass in her hand, while Joel nestled at her feet and gently rubbed her generous calves. And everyone would have been momentarily caught in a honeyed silence accompanied only by the oboe of the wind, the brush of the fig and the low percussive thump of the door.
Ah, Honey Barbara would have thought, all those dreams! And seen behind all those flame-flickered eyes the shimmering shades of decadent utopias.
But tonight the room was dark and the street light threw down a blue sheen, like a spilled light globe trapped beneath the wax of the polished floor, and there was a deadness in their eyes that even the lights, once turned on, did nothing to change.
Only Joel burned bright and it occurred to no one that the energy he brought to lighting the fire and preparing the meal which no one had the stomach to eat (bacon, eggs, pancakes, maple syrup) was not fuelled by inexhaustible supplies of life but was more like that expended by blow-flies caught against the glass.
They admired his optimism and were irritated by it at the same time. They wanted a warm place to weep freely without shame but he placed sensible, practical things in their laps.
Yet nothing could prevent the mental image they all secretly carried: blackened, bubbling, Bettina's unseen corpse, this turd floating insistently before them, showing itself; unfolding, parading even before their open eyes.
Among the practical things they discussed, huddled around the fire on blankets and mattresses, was the need to remain silent about Honey Barbara. It was Harry's suggestion and they all supported it, except Joel who could not see that it was so important.
'I told them already,' Joel said, 'but they weren't interested.'
'They were interested,' Harry said, 'they asked me. If they ask you again say you made a mistake.'
'Why?'
'Because,' Harry hissed, 'she's poor. That's how it works, isn't it. We're rich, they leave us alone. We've bought our safety.'
'You were fantastic,' Lucy said, 'you were wonderful.'
'But we haven't done anything wrong,' David said.
'Don't matter,' Ken said. 'I was busted once by the cops for dope and it couldn't have been my stash because it was in the teapot, a great big lump of hash, and they were drinking tea out of it. The stuff they busted me for, they planted on me, but I couldn't say that in court. Harry's right. They bust poor people.'
'But we haven't done anything,' Joel said.
'They don't need a reason,' Harry said.
'Because Bettina has killed a lot of rich people,' Ken said. 'And rich people don't like to see other rich people get killed. It makes them go crazy.'
They shared out tranquillizers solemnly and drank them with cognac to make them work better and then they built up the fire and bedded down beside it, without even discussing why they might do such an unusual thing. They huddled together on an odd assortment of mattresses, lumpy shapes under blue blankets and pale eiderdowns, like travellers in a waiting room in a foreign country.
Only Joel stayed awake, feeding the fire. At one o'clock Harry heard him cooking potato chips in the kitchen.
*
The noise was insistent and irritating, a continual bump, bump, bump. It was Lucy who wrapped a blanket around herself and went down the wet steps on that grey overcast morning.
The noise came from underneath the verandah and was caused, she later discovered, by Ken's electric drill which was hanging from its cord and being blown against one of the house's high wooden stumps: bump, bump, bump.
It was not the drill she saw, however, it was Joel, who had used its strong black cord to hang himself. His shining shoes were just an inch from the ground and the smell, the horrible stench of his shit, made it perfectly clear that, this time at least, he was not playing a joke.
There was no sympathy from the police. They put everyone back in the kitchen and started all over again, but this time there was a pale excitement in their faces and when Harry saw the thin impatient set of Macdonald's lips he knew that there was no safety for him in Hell. He was
They yarded them like cattle, dragging them out for ques-tioning one at a time, sometimes just for one question, for ten seconds, then back into the yard.
'In here.' Lucy was called into the dining room where Harry stood.
'Say that in front of her,' Macdonald said to Harry.
'I've never seen that map before,' Harry said.
'O.K., take her back.'
It was unnerving. Like standing in front of one of those machines that throw tennis balls.
'How tall are you?'
'Five foot eleven.'
'When did you first meet Joel?'
No one was nice any more. Herpes did not show the photo of his holiday house. Macdonald told no jokes. Other policemen with beards and long hair began a search of the house which was neither stylish nor gentle. In the garage outside they used a rattling power tool to dismantle the Jaguar.
'You fink Joel was in on it, don't you?' Ken asked Herpes.
Herpes pointed a thick finger and narrowed his red-lidded eyes. Ken was quiet.
The police found passports, air tickets to New York, a can-, cer map. They did not doubt that Joel was in on it.
When everyone had been interrogated once, Macdonald came and leant against the doorway in the kitchen.
