Read Online Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) by Graham Hurley - Free Book Online

keep your little legs together and wraps your feet and puts your hands together and binds your thumbs like this.’ He mimed the action, showing Suttle. ‘Then your dad lifts you onto a piece of coloured cloth and wraps you for a final time and takes you away. Me? I’m watching all this. It’s something I’ve got used to. It happens maybe five times a week. It’s like a little piece of theatre. The gennie’s fucked again and the lights are flickering on and off and you stand there in the dark and you listen to make sure they’ve all gone. You have absolutely nothing to say. You padlock the drugs cupboard and then step outside. With luck, you’re alone. You have a cigarette, you look up at the stars, and you wonder if the rest of the guys back in the compound have left any beers in the fridge. But on no account do you allow yourself to think. No way. Never. Why not? Because that’s the truth about death. It’s ugly. It’s unsparing. And it’s fucking everywhere. So from where I sit, Kinsey probably had it easy.’
    There was a long silence. Gulls again, more distant this time, and a stir of wind in the street outside. Suttle, for once in his life, was lost for words. He wasn’t sure if any of this stuff served any evidential purpose but it was hard not to be touched.
    ‘You’re going back? To Sudan?’
    ‘Sure. And to Uganda and to Somalia and to all the other fucked-over places.’
    ‘So what does it do to you? Long term?’
    ‘I dunno. I guess that’s a treat to come.’
    ‘Are you worried?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Do you think it damages you?’
    ‘I hope so.’
    ‘ Hope so? ’
    ‘Sure. Because it’s real. Because this is what’s waiting for us all, some place down the road.’ He stirred again in the chair, his hand reaching for a packet of Gitanes on the floor. Suttle shook his head at the offered cigarette, watched Lenahan light up and suck the smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Look at it this way,’ he said finally. ‘You go to some fancy dinner party. It happens a lot around here. You’re heading for the cheese course and everyone’s still talking about house prices or private schools or which four-by-four is best for towing jet skis or the horse fucking box, and then comes a bit of a lull, because there’s always a bit of a lull, and you sense it’s your turn. But what the fuck can you offer by way of conversation? Have any of these people got a clue about Sudan? About cholera, malnutrition, pneumonia, kidney infections, measles, meningitis, gunshot wounds, snakebite, sepsis after female fucking circumcision? Has any one of them ever heard an infant’s heart stop? No fucking chance.’
    ‘So who do you talk to? Who understands?’
    ‘Is that a serious question?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Then it has to be Pendrick. This is a guy who lives in a dark part of the forest. He lives in the shadows. He lives in his head. But he’s good, bloody good, and he’s done a bit too, one way or another. Jesus, has he . . .’ He tailed off, took another drag, expelled a thin line of blue smoke up towards the ceiling. ‘If you want the truth, we talk about it a lot. Once you’ve been out there, I tell him, once you’ve seen it, lived it, been part of it, been swamped by it, you’re ruined. There’s a gap between you and the rest of the world. Nothing’s real. And nothing matters. You knock at my door and tell me Kinsey’s dead and you know what? I couldn’t care a fuck.’
    ‘You think he killed himself?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You think he fell by accident?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘What else might have happened then?’
    Lenahan’s eyes drifted to the copy of the Guardian , then he was looking at Suttle again. He was smiling.
    ‘You tell me.’
     
    Suttle was with Houghton by half past twelve. One of the other desks was occupied by a young D/C trying to raise someone in the marina. Suttle pulled a chair towards Houghton. Boiling down Lenahan’s account to the kind of brisk summary the D/I favoured