Oliver sat on the largest of three sofas in Jamie’s apartment, which enjoyed a picture window view over Battersea Park. He wore a black suit, white shirt and black tie. Jamie sat at the opposite end, he wore a black suit, white shirt and black tie. Mary leaned against the window looking out, she wore a black dress and dark black tights. They had been sat in silence for several minutes. The intercom buzzed signalling someone was downstairs at the controlled entrance.
“That’s Jenny,” Oliver said as he checked a text which had just arrived on his replacement mobile phone. He went to the intercom and saw Jenny on the small screen, dressed in black, at the entrance to Jamie’s flat. He pressed the ‘door open’ button to let her in. It had taken two days to find Minnie’s body, which eventually washed up several miles away on marsh flats beyond Gravesend. It had taken a further four days for the funeral to be arranged.
Oliver had spoken to Jenny day and night, as well as his friends but he had kept physical distance from them. He was tormented by his circumstances but had yet to share any of his insight into Minnie’s death with his closest friends or Jenny. He had upset Jenny to the point of anger, refusing her insistent offers to come up as soon as she received the terrible news. Oliver had secreted himself away from everyone, desperately trying to process the frightening situation he now found himself in.
“I’ll meet her at the lift,” Oliver said and left the apartment quickly.
“He looks like shit,” Mary commented after he had stepped out.
“I can’t get any sense out of him, he’s vague and evasive, I can’t tell if he is confused in grief or whether he has finally cracked,” Jamie said.
Oliver stood outside the lift waiting for Jenny. He looked into the sleek silver surround that edged the lift doors and studied his face. Unshaven, red eyed, slight grazing to his cheek and forehead, dilated pupils from amphetamine use, he didn’t look the best he thought.
The lift pinged and Jenny stood there framed in the mirrored and softly lit rectangular box, looking fresh and beautiful.
“You look stunning Jenny,” Oliver said.
“You don’t Oliver, what have you been doing?”
Jenny stepped out of the lift and they embraced. Oliver sobbed into her shoulder and she caressed his head and hair.
“I know more about this than I’m saying,” he whispered into her ear as he held her.
Jenny squeezed him tightly and whispered back, “I’m worried things are going terribly wrong Oliver. I think we all might be in some kind of danger.”
Oliver gathered himself and looked at Jenny, it was clear she was serious but what could she possibly know he thought.
Oliver shared his rambling thoughts of the last few days, “We need to talk, after the funeral. It’s the experiments. I think there are risks, grave risks. I have had a warning, a visitation, we have to get beyond harms reach. I have some ideas on what we all need to do. Mary and Jamie won’t be pleased but I think we need to take radical steps to stay safe.”
Jenny placed a finger up to Oliver’s rambling lips to calm him.
“After the funeral,” Jenny said quietly, afraid by what Oliver might know behind the words he spoke.
“It is difficult to know what to say about David at a time like this, about his life as we knew him,” Ryan spoke slowly, he paused as he gathered himself. As captain of the rugby team Minnie’s parents had asked him to provide the Eulogy, given rugby had been such an important part of their sons’ life. The modern chapel was full with every chair in the curved room occupied and many more standing. More than thirty rugby players were dressed in the team’s club tie and formal jacket with its embroidered emblem on the jacket pocket.
David ‘Minnie’ Howards notably large coffin rested on a plinth which was draped in mustard coloured material. It rested there in the centre front of the semi-circular room, a painful visual reminder of the loss the mourners all shared.
Ryan stood at the lectern in front of the mourners and continued, “Like I say when I was writing this it was difficult to know what to say about David to capture his life as we knew him in our team. Partly because I won’t be able to do justice to David’s memory but mostly because there is little we knew of him that I could say in a holy ceremony in front of a vicar and his parents.”
All those who knew Minnie well, including his parents (though not the vicar who still got the joke) laughed at Ryan’s affectionate take on Minnie’s approach to life.
“He was a larger than life character, I think we would all agree on that. A big man and a fabulous athlete. Only two things stopped him from becoming a professional Rugby player, London Pride and the women who loved him.”
There were more smiles and the affectionate laughter helped Ryan in his difficult task.
“There could be no more awesome a sight than watching David, a formidable number eight, roll off of a scrum and power over for a try. This was closely followed by his winning of the ball in the line out and the crunching tackles he would make. It is an often misused description but he was genuinely our talisman and I don’t know how we will play on without him with us. I was lucky to have known him well. We were childhood friends, we holidayed together and became inseparable as teenagers. David had a brain though which I don’t so he had two lives really, his rugby life with the lads and me and his successful career as a clinical psychologist. I think Barbara and Martin won’t mind me saying, well I know they won’t because I asked them, from humble beginnings David worked his way through school, sixth form and University to the top of his profession. He was halfway through a doctorate at University College London when he was taken from us. There he was studying neurosciences on a world class course, renowned for producing world class scientists and clinicians. And to his credit when you were with him you would never have guessed any of that.”
More laughter and that was how Minnie would have wanted it.
“His second life was with his colleagues and close friends, Jamie, Oliver and Mary. All bright sparks the lot of them, to us he was a talisman and the teams funny bone, to them he was an enigma. A vibrant friend he was the talisman of their parties and the glass half full student on the courses and studies they did together. I looked up Enigma, it means a riddle, a puzzle and one of nature’s secrets, that is what the online dictionary says. David was definitely one of natures best kept secrets and I was privileged to have known him.”
Ryan bowed his head for a second, “David Howard had one more life that not all of his friends would know so well. That life was as a loving son to Barbara and Martin. David would play rugby, murder the opposition, quite literally on occasion, stomp off the field almost beating his chest such was his drive to win. He would then go back to the dressing room, sit in the corner, pull out his mobile and phone his dad, ‘we won dad, through to the quarter finals, yeah I played alright’ he would say that when in fact he’d won the game for us. I can remember how this six foot six giant would look like a child for a moment when his mum and dad would appear to watch him play, which they did often. Jamie told me yesterday that at the end of his first term for the PhD, he threw a party and couldn’t find Minnie, as they all looked for him afraid he was drunk and asleep in a skip. It had happened before. Jamie searched and searched, eventually finding David out in the hall of his apartment beyond the noise of the party. David was whispering into his phone ‘I got an A mum for the first paper’. Of course they teased him mercilessly for that. But it showed how close the big man was, to his friends and his rightly proud parents. Barbara and Martin I am so sorry David lived only a short life it is very wrong he has been taken away, I’ll never understand that. But the life he lived burned brightly, so very brightly for us all.”
Ryan rubbed his eyes and took one more breath.
“And no eulogy would be fitting for David without some words from the big man himself, it’s not uncommon in Rugby clubs because we can be a little dark at times, to have more serious discussions with a beer, or two, in our hands. About a month ago the question came up, ?
??how would you like to be remembered?’ So the answers started, ‘for my charitable work’, said George, who works in the City, ‘by many beautiful women’, James who if you look at him in the third row there has no chance, many other answers were offered that I can’t repeat here. So it was David’s turn and we sat waiting for the punch line. And it never came, he just said a few simple lines from a poem and we all fell quiet. Then George punched him on the arm for being soft. I asked David afterwards where he’d got that from, it was a poem he had heard read at his Grandmas funeral and he liked it very much he said.”
Barbara dropped her head onto her husbands shoulder and held him tighter than ever before as she cried for both the loss of her mum and so much more for the son who had been ripped from her life.
Ryan continued, “And this was the depth and intelligence of David that he so modestly masked with his humour and tom foolery. We stood at the bar getting a round in and David said to me what a funny thing it was that people might worry about how they are remembered. I remember this so well, he said that in a short space of time, maybe less than a century we would all be forgotten. What was important he felt was the strength of the memory people had of him whilst he was still alive. Surely, Ryan, he said to me, the most important thing was people thinking about the joy, support and friendship you gave them in life. Surely that way you would always be remembered in death? Then he asked me for a Sambuca chaser with his pint. He was right though wasn’t he? We will never forget you big man. Goodnight David my friend.”
Ryan bowed his head and stepped back from the lectern.
There is a strange moment after a cremation, after the mourners have left their loved one behind, to be cremated in the coffin concealed ceremoniously behind heavy curtains. Without the burial to punctuate the process, mourners are left floating around the edges of the gardens of remembrance. No one is ever quite sure at what point the right time is to leave. Usually it is prompted by the arrival of the next fleet of mourners. It was in this moment Oliver talked face to face with Minnie’s parents for the first time.
“Thank you for the flowers Oliver,” Barbara said as she embraced Oliver. They both shed tears together.
“I am so sorry Barbara, Martin, more sorry than I can find the words to say, more than you can know,” Oliver said.
In turn, Mary, then Jamie offered their condolences. Jenny hung back not wanting to invade a very personal space the three friends of Minnie shared with his parents.
“Can we still come round for chips Barbara?” Jamie asked smiling through tear filled eyes.
“Of course, I insist, don’t lose touch with us now,” Barbara said.
“Do you know anymore Jamie, on that lunatic who did this to our David?” Martin asked, knowing Jamie knew the Lambeth coroners office well through his work as a doctor.
“They still haven’t found his body, but the man who is missing and most likely to be David’s assailant had family and financial problems,” Jamie answered.
“But that’s no reason to attack an innocent passer by, no reason at all,” Martin said with barely hidden anger.
“I’m sorry Martin, I’ll let you know more as soon as I find out,” Jamie said.
“Thanks lad, look you’ll join us at Fern Lodge, we have a buffet laid on, after we’ve scattered his ashes. David would want everyone to have a good few beers, wouldn’t he Barbara?”
“Yes, he would, more than I’d approve of,” Barbara replied trying to smile.
The three friends all agreed, of course they would want to join Martin and Barbara and be there to remember Minnie.
Oliver excused himself and went to the red and brown brick toilet block that served the ten acre Garden of Remembrance for Lambeth Crematorium. Once there he vomited into the toilet bowl. A combination of grief and guilt made him feel nauseous into the pit of his stomach. Oliver felt more guilt than grief. He knew that Minnie would be alive that day had he not recklessly and blindly pursued his research into regression.
36.