A Shock to the System

CHAPTER FIVE

Death is the only power that actually stops time. Love and fear can suspend it; intense concentration or pleasure can make people unaware of it; but only death can stop it.

And since Graham Marshall didn’t die, time passed for him. It didn’t pass quickly, or comfortably, but it passed. He weathered an agonising weekend, and soon a whole week had gone by since the murder. Still there had been no policeman at the front door, no discreet but firm detective to greet him in the office.

Gradually the intervals of sanity between the panics grew longer. An attractive new logic crept into his thinking. There had been no witnesses to the murder. Even when the body was found, there might well be nothing to connect the death with him. Surely immersion of any length in the Thames would make accurate forensic examination difficult.

And, as for marks on his own clothing and the murder weapon. . well, he’d inspected them himself and seen nothing. But to be on the safe side, he had had the suit cleaned (a regular procedure which would not raise any suspicion). And, though it showed no apparent signs of its unconventional employment, he had contrived to leave his umbrella on the Piccadilly Line (again something he had done more than once before, guaranteed to prompt the not-quite-teasing comment from Merrily that he was getting old).

Given the circumstances of the death, the police were going to be hard put to it to point the finger at Graham Marshall. And since the victim was presumably a homeless vagrant, they weren’t going to make their investigations too exhaustive.

That was even assuming that they found the body. Graham remembered reading stories of corpses long submerged, cliches about rivers being ‘slow to give up their secrets’. Every day that passed with the body undiscovered would make more difficult the identification of the victim, and certainly of his murderer.

At times Graham’s calm was coloured by a sort of humour. If you’re going to murder someone, he thought wryly, choose a victim you have never met — it’s so much safer.

But such thoughts only came when he was at his most relaxed. And, though the intervals of calm were increasing, nausea and panic still stalked him and would pounce suddenly. And because he had dared to hope they might be gone for ever, each new attack seemed to come with increased force.

He had committed murder, and there was no way he could get away with it.

The worst attack of panic came on the Thursday morning of the week after the old man’s death. Graham had woken feeling moderately human and, while Merrily refereed the children’s breakfast in the kitchen, had taken his toast and coffee through to the sitting-room for a leisurely riffle through the papers.

Sunlight streaked in at the tall windows and what he could see of the garden suggested spring. For almost the first time, he saw the benefits of the new house, space and a bit of elegance. And an investment. Oh, there was a lot that still needed doing to it, but somehow they’d manage. Even without George’s job there’d still be the odd increment and pay settlement.

The loss of the job didn’t at that moment seem too appalling. Graham knew so much about the Department that Robert Benham was constantly asking him for information. And controlling the flow of that information gave Graham a kind of power. Besides, Robert’s urgency for change might make him too unpopular to stay long as Head of Personnel.

Graham had seen other bright young men overreach themselves.

His own role was clear — to wait in the wings, giving Robert Benham apparent, but limited, support, until something, as it inevitably must, went wrong. He certainly did not intend to tie his career so closely to that of the new Head as he had to the old.

He took a sip of coffee and glanced at the papers. The Daily Telegraph and, being Thursday, The Barnes and Mortlake Times. They only really had the local paper for cinema times and property prices; its news content of restaurant licences refused, under-13 swimming galas and resistance to ring-road schemes was less than fascinating.

But out of habit, he glanced down the columns.

There it was — at the bottom of the front page:

BODY FOUND

The body of an elderly man was found in the Thames near Putney Bridge on Saturday. He has not yet been identified, but is described as being in his late sixties and shabbily dressed.

Saturday. Only two days after the killing. That didn’t give long for the water to remove any clues as to how he died.

The happy vision, that the murder might never be discovered, shattered. The police had had five days to investigate. It wouldn’t be long now.

Graham was seized by a trembling so strong that he had to put down his coffee cup to avoid spilling it.

At that moment Merrily came into the room. She was wearing one of her fluffy lace dressing-gowns. When she had been young and waiflike, they had made her look like a fledgling in a downy nest; Graham had even used the image in the early days of their marriage. Now they only emphasised her angularity and the scrawniness of her neck; if any bird came to mind, it was a plucked chicken.

She looked down at the sun marking parallelograms on the floor. ‘This carpet,’ she observed, ‘rather belongs to the bear called Frederick.’

Graham was in no mood to sort out one of her precious remarks. ‘What?’

‘Fred Bear. Threadbare, darling.’

‘Oh.’

‘We’ll have to get a new one. Apparently there’s a sale at Allied Carpets. .’

Graham rose jerkily, upsetting his plate. The remaining slice of toast flopped on to the floor, marmalade-side down.

‘Oh, daaarling.’ Merrily had her mother’s knack of extending vowels beyond their natural span. And of infusing them with reproach. ‘Now we’ll have to get a new carpet.’

‘I must go,’ he blurted out. The trembling was worse. Merrily looked at him, concern emphasising the wrinkles of her tight little face. ‘Are you all right, darling?’

‘Yes, I. .’ He reached down to the local paper and roughly folded it so that the front page was hidden.

‘Graham, is there something. .?’ Merrily laid a thin hand on his sleeve.

He twitched his arm away as if she had been a nettle.

His mood at the office was subtly different, the panic dulled to a kind of acceptance. The bright image of ‘getting away with it’ had been shown up as a fantasy. Doggedly, like a condemned man, he went through his work, wondering how long he had got, waiting for the summons.

But the only summons came from Robert Benham, who asked him to go up to George Brewer’s office. Once inside, Graham was waved to a chair by his prospective boss, casual in a faded blue Levi sweatshirt.

‘I told George to take the day off. He’s looking pretty washed out and, quite honestly, he’s just a nuisance round the office these days, fussing like an old woman every time I want to look at a file.’

‘He is still Head of Personnel,’ Graham felt bound to say.

Robert read no reproach into this remark. ‘Yes, damn it. Still got a couple of months to go. Last few weeks, though, he’ll be kept out of mischief with company cocktail parties. But it means it’ll be some time before I can get down to any proper work.

‘Look, wanted to say — about this weekend down at the cottage to talk through things. .’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Got one of the directors coming down this weekend, next one I’m going to Miami. .’

‘Business?’

‘No, I just need a break. I’ll be reading reports and things, of course. .’

‘So how about the one after?’

‘Sounds fine.’ Graham remembered that that was yet another weekend that Lilian was coming to stay. Which made it sound even finer.

He assimilated Robert’s news about the weekend in Miami. It was the sort of flamboyant gesture he might