The Business of Dying

A writer friend once told me that all the best stories start with a great "what if?" and that might explain what makes The Business of Dying such a gripping read. It begins with one of the best "what if?" assumptions I have ever encountered. What if a mid ranking police officer became so disillusioned with his job that he decided to moonlight as a professional hitman? It's a thrilling place to start a book because within a few pages three men have been murdered in a gangland style killing and the reader does not discover that the gunman is actually Detective Sergeant Dennis Milne until a roadblock forces him to use his warrant card to escape. (Unless you read the jacket blurb, of course.)

It soon becomes obvious that he has been set up, however, when news reports show that the dead men were customs officers, rather than the drug dealers he thought he had assassinated. In spite of his part-time occupation Milne is not a bad man. He joined the force to help remove some baddies from the world. He took up shooting them only after it became clear that modern policing was unlikely to have any long term effect on crime rates or to apprehend the real offenders. There is some interesting and thought provoking discussion on how he justifies his double life and readers are left wondering whether, in the same circumstances, they might not be driven to doing the same thing.

Given that Milne is a senior detective it is no surprise that bodies arrive thick and fast in this tale, and not all as a result of his handiwork. There is enough police procedure to satisfy the amateur sleuths who want to work out for themselves whodunnit but this is not a polished forensic drama. It has none of the glib crime-fighting paraphernalia that has taken over a lot of detective fiction since the advent of CSI.  Neither are the murders quite as straightforward as many writers would have us believe. Guns jam. Victims fight back. Blood squelches. Corpses make revolting noises. The business of dying is truly messy.

The book is Simon Kernick's first, and is a much better novel than an author's debut outing usually achieves. It has been re-released on the strength of his later success with Relentless, but this one deserves to be widely read too. Milne comes across as a real guy, facing real dilemmas in a very real world. He is also lacking in many of the now clichéd world-weary copper attributes that have littered crime novels for the last decade. For example, he drinks because he enjoys it, or because he has had a bad day at work, or because he has just killed someone. We imagine we would have a glass or two for the same reasons. His habit is not a plot device, it is a genuine part of the character.   OK, so his love life is not too promising, but police work is often cited as having a high divorce rate so that is also believable. (It does mean that he is free to sleep with a suspect, however, even after she makes some startling admissions, which is a little far-fetched.)

Beyond that there is little to detract from this cracking tale with its unusual premise. It spins along at a good pace and is far from predictable along its route. Read it soon. Because life’s too short. 

The Business of Dying

Simon Kernick

2002

Father

My father has been dead for more than a decade now so I really should have got around to sorting out his possessions a long time ago. I initially put off the inevitable emotional strain for my mother’s sake, but I had no excuse any longer - had no excuse for almost eight years, in fact. She was long gone as well, but the boxes of belongings were still there, stacked away in my attic so that I could pretend I had forgotten them, although I never could.  I adored my father with an intensity I can not describe. He was my hero for as long as I could remember and I was always Daddy’s Girl. It was his influences that formed the person I am today; his interests and hobbies that take up my time now; his values that shape my current view of the world. I remember my childhood as an idyllic time that seemed surrounded by happiness and love. There was a warmth in our home that, for me at least, emanated from my father and permeated everything around me.

A talented and creative man, my father was forced to endure a tedious job in order to provide for his family; mother, my elder brother and me. He worked long and strange hours and showed signs of the stress that caused throughout his life. Employment ate into his nights and weekends and meant that he was often trying to sleep when other folk were wide awake but, when he had free time and I was not at school, he dedicated himself to me and was always there to offer advice, help with homework or just have fun.  He compensated for the strain of his job by giving free rein to his artistic side and our home was full of paintings and sketches that he produced. To my young eyes they were priceless works of art but he would never agree. He denied his talent and claimed that his pictures were nothing more than daubs or messes. But he continued to paint because it brought him pleasure, and he owned all kinds of art materials that he was more than willing to share with me.

When Dad died, unexpectedly of a heart attack at the relatively young age of 73, I packed batches of his belongings into crates and took them away from my parents’ home so that Mother would not need to go through them herself. I had watched her attempting to sort through his clothes, lifting each item to her face and breathing in deeply, as if she could bring him back simply by remembering his smell; dabbing at her tears with the fabric of his shirts but failing to revive him or conjure him to reality. All the time her eyes were glazed and focussed in the distance, as if she could see him there, walking away from her, and she could never catch up with him. I knew I could not leave her with the task of sorting his possessions because it would never be completed, and she would never begin to recover from her sudden and terrible loss.

It was sudden and terrible for us all, of course, but her obvious devastation forced us to put our own sorrow to one side while we comforted her. It was what Dad would have wanted; how he laid down the rules. Mother always came first. She was always right, even when we knew she was wrong. Beyond my pain was the sound of his voice telling me to look after her, to make sure she was cared for and that someone stepped in to carry the responsibility he had left behind. My brother made it clear that he felt I should be the one to take care of Mother. It needed a woman’s touch, he said, and he was no good with emotional challenges. And beside that, he had never had the same kind of relationship with Dad that I had. He was eight years older than me and had been sent off to boarding school before I was born; an expense I never fully understood but Mother would only say that it was better for boys to have private schooling and that it would help [brother] to grow up stronger and more independent. So he offered to help with any paperwork or legal questions but retreated from any task that required empathy. 

So I packed up the boxes and I fought back the tears that welled up as I handled the items Dad had used. I ignored the knowledge that the last hands to touch them were his, and that those same hands would never touch anything again. My wonderful, gentle father was dead and he would never create more art. He would never hold a paint brush or a pencil. The sketchpads would remain unfilled and the paints would harden in their tubes because he was not there to work his magic on them.  But I could not allow myself to think of that as I placed his goods into boxes and sealed them up, ostensibly to be sorted at my home but, in reality, to be stored until I was strong enough to go through them with some detachment. Ten years later I had still not had the courage to open the boxes and dispose of anything. I had never felt dispassionate enough to make decisions about what to keep and what to give away. I knew that there were some perishable materials that would need to be thrown out, but I never felt able to face it, never believed I would be capable of such an act of finality. While the packing crates were there, so was a part of Dad, and I was less than willing to say goodbye. So they had remained in my attic, gathering dust and preserving the last remnants of a life that I wished could be brought back.

But now I am moving house – downsizing as the estate agents call it – and I have been forced to face up to my reluctance. I have been surprised by the strength of my aversion to opening the boxes.  Even after 10 years it is not something I want to do. I know that the objects I find in them will bring back memories and, although I believe most of them will be happy ones, I still feel the loss of my father on a daily basis and I do not want to do anything to intensify that. I have managed to bring everything down from the attic and the boxes are arranged in a small group in my lounge. I keep telling myself that I should make a start, and that I have to deal with them in order to make space in my new home. I have even tried convincing myself that I might find treasure, valuable items I could sell to help pay for my move. But my subconscious mind knows that there is nothing of intrinsic value, but the boxes are full of priceless memories of a wonderful man.

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Some years ago I attempted to write a novel.  This was the introduction.