So He Takes the Dog. Jonathan Buckley

his face is the face of a man bruised by the sufferings of the world. He urges us to take to heart the lessons of Henry’s lonely life and lonely death, to think about what his death tells us about our society, to keep the poor man and his family (wherever they may be) in our thoughts, to pray that the killer be apprehended soon. All nod solemnly, thinking: ‘Amen to the last bit anyway.’ Alice, however, doesn’t nod when told to think of Henry, even though she’s had Henry in her thoughts for longer than any of them. She simply closes her eyes and meshes her fingers on her lap, and it’s as if she’s no longer listening to Beal but instead is in touch with the soul of Henry, or calling for him silently. Her face has no expression that you could describe. It’s perfectly still and beautiful, and distant, and almost frightening. It’s like looking at the face of a praying woman on a tomb from centuries ago.

      Business concluded, the Reverend Beal takes up his station outside the door for the leave-taking. Shuffling his feet on the gravel, he shakes hands with them all, has a few words for everyone, and they in turn have a few words for him.

      ‘Lovely sermon.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘And how is your daughter?’

      ‘Fine, thank you.’ A halo of breath hangs around his head. ‘Keep moving,’ he’s thinking. ‘Thank you and keep moving.’ It’s like prize-giving day without the prizes. But he singles out Alice for a lingering clasp and meaningful eyes, as if she has an understanding that the rest of them lack, or perhaps it’s just because she’s the wife of a man who, he suspects, hasn’t yet found a lodging for Christ in his heart. ‘A ghastly business. Ghastly,’ he says, with a three-second look of pity. Alice bows her head and says nothing.

       4

      Benjamin Kemp had nothing substantial to add to his original statement. With wide and watery eyes he stared aghast at Milo and the rug on which he was slumbering, as if the dog had brought Henry’s remains into the house and spread them out around him. ‘I saw him a few times, walking on the beach,’ said Benjamin, shaking his head disbelievingly. He kept scratching the back of his head and there was a tremble round his mouth when he wasn’t talking. Christine sat on the chair opposite, watching her husband’s quivering mouth, and there was no discernible affection in her eyes, none at all. She seemed embarrassed by his lack of backbone and annoyed by the trouble he was putting her to. Looking out of the window, she frowned at the falling rain, vexed by what the day was up to. ‘And what about you, Mrs Kemp?’ asked Ian, pretending not to have noticed the discordancy of the household. ‘Is there anything you can tell us about Henry?’ She blinked, frozenly amazed by the question. Why on earth should she know anything about the disreputable old codger?

      Five minutes later she was showing us out. ‘I’m sure someone will be able to give you more help,’ she said at the door, in apology for her useless spouse.

      We begin the house-to-house slog, to assemble the victim profile. One of the first calls is at the home of Mr and Mrs Fazakerly, whose home overlooks The Maer. Kevin Fazakerly is an independent financial adviser; Sophie, his wife, arranges big parties, conferences, weddings, business events and so on. Lucrative lines of work, evidently. The driveway is fancy brick, scrubbed clean as the day it was laid, and the front of the house – a sort of neo-Georgian mansion, but with extra-wide windows – is likewise immaculate. No salt damage to the paintwork and it appears that no seagull has emptied its bowels anywhere on this patch of real estate. Inside, as expected, it’s a show home: you’re tempted to touch the walls to check if they’re still wet. Instantly you know there are no kids. Sophie ushers us into the kitchen, which is not a lot bigger than a squash court. We sit around the breakfast bar, a little pier of top-grade Scandinavian timber. You could perform open-heart surgery in this room, with no risk of infection.

      Kevin and Sophie are both in their mid forties. Sophie is wearing tight pale jeans and white socks and narrow little white trainers with very white laces, and up top there’s an odd bright-blue zippered cardigan thing, with the zip pulled right up to the neck. She’s as tightly done up as a parachute in a backpack, so you get the feeling she might inflate to three times her size when she gets undressed. When you look at Kevin you think of some fourth-division American golfer, runner-up in the North Dakota Invitational, 1986. His hair has a retro ruler-straight parting and sticks out at the front in a little horizontal quiff, and over his shirt he has this horrible salmon-pink floppy cashmere jumper. The jeans are a bit baggier than Sophie’s, but precisely the same shade. We receive the impression that they’ve got things to say on the issue of Henry. Tea is made, biscuits arranged on a plate that perhaps has been designed solely for this function: the Jan-Arne Simonsen Biscuit Plate, £100, plus postage and packing. It is suggested we carry our cups through to the living room. We troop across the acres of laminated floor. The living room is a little longer than the driveway and under-furnished with angular scarlet chairs and a pair of low-backed sofas, all of the same design.

      Side by side on one of the sofas sit Kevin and Sophie, facing the two policemen. ‘Isn’t it terrible?’ says Sophie, stroking a thumbnail rapidly with the thumb of her other hand. ‘How could it happen?’ she wants to know. Kevin pats her knee consolingly and concurs about the terribleness of what has happened, its incomprehensibility. ‘It’s awful,’ says Sophie. ‘Just awful.’ Sophie examines Kevin’s hand – his fingernails are pathologically well-maintained, the sort of hands you see in adverts for very expensive watches. ‘To think it happened on our doorstep.’ It’s another boisterous evening. The rain is ticking quickly on the windows and the trees in the front garden are in spasm. Sophie touches Kevin’s hand and he pats her knee; she touches his hand, he pats her knee. They can’t get through a minute without touching each other. When a gust rattles something metallic up the drive, Sophie grabs at a cushion. It’s as if the monster’s out there in the gloom, making an assessment of the security arrangements, and we’re their last protection.

      ‘His name was Henry,’ Kevin tells us, but he doesn’t know his surname. ‘He used to pitch camp out on The Maer,’ he adds, looking to his wife for verification, and Sophie agrees that Henry used to sleep on The Maer. At night, she adds, they would sometimes see him settling down for the night, in the shelter of the trees. Once or twice he waved to her, when she was at the bedroom window, and she waved back, but they never spoke. ‘Kept himself to himself,’ observes Kevin.

      ‘Nobody knew much about him,’ Sophie contributes. Kevin tries to recall the last time he saw Henry, but cannot; Sophie also tries, and sadly draws a blank. Twenty minutes we’re there, learning nothing, reassuring the Fazakerlys that they are not going to be murdered in their beds, but to lock up at night anyway. Of course they’ll lock up at night. They always do, always have done. Kevin as a kid used to lock his toy cupboard at night, you just know he did. They’re more likely to piss on their twelve-foot hand-woven organically dyed Turkish rug than leave a window open after bedtime.

      We might as well have been interviewing ourselves, but Ian loves these house calls, even if he doesn’t take a liking to the residents, which is the case in about fifty per cent of our visits. He gets a buzz from checking out where people live, because Ian is convinced that a very large proportion of our fellow citizens are less than entirely sane, and it’s only when you get inside their houses that you see what lies behind the day-to-day normalness. Sometimes you have to look hard, but there’s inevitably something, a crack in the mask. And as far as Ian is concerned, our fruitless session with Mr and Mrs Fazakerly has proved his case. ‘Weird as Mormons,’ he murmurs, the moment Sophie has closed the door. ‘Did you see the framed menus? In the hall?’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘Signed by the chef, for fuck’s sake.’

      ‘And his handshake? Get more grip from an empty glove.’

      ‘Creepy creepy creepy. But’, Ian goes on, raising a finger for the point that would settle the issue, ‘did you clock the microwave?’

      ‘Everyone’s got a microwave.’

      ‘Yeah. But on top of it? Obvious