The Returned Dead. Rafe Kronos
stewardship. It now has three branches. Mr Rankin was active in the town’s Business Forum and was a prominent Rotarian.
This is the second time that tragedy has struck the Rankin family in recent months. In May Mr Rankin’s wife Felicity was killed by a hit and run driver while crossing Carlingford Rd. Nobody has been arrested for that crime. The couple had no children.’
I sat for a while and thought about this. No, I couldn’t make sense of it.
“Well?”
I shrugged, “If that was you…”
“It was. It is.”
“So you died -- and then I assume you were buried?”
“Cremated, I checked.”
“You checked? You mean you weren’t there when it happened?”
Perhaps I was being too sarcastic.
He flushed angrily, “No, obviously not.”
We sat in silence. It seemed best to let him do the talking.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he said eventually.
Damn right it did. I still said nothing; I knew he’d speak if I kept silent. He did.
“Look, about my death – my supposed death -- what happened was this. After Fizzy – Felicity, my wife -- died, well, was killed, I was living on my own. We had no children so I was all on my own in our house. But the night I died, well, I was supposed to have died, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t at home. I’d decided to get away for a couple of days, to get away from the empty house, to be somewhere else.” He paused and took a deep breath, “So I wasn’t there. I tell you I wasn’t there when it happened.”
I could see why he was so insistent. If you weren’t there when you died then perhaps you didn’t die.
“But it appears someone did die, someone died and people thought he was you, right? That person died and then, according to you, he was cremated. Is that it?”
“Yes, yes, a man died in my house, in my bed. The cleaning woman, Mrs Moyles, came in next morning and she found me – him.”
“And she recognised him -- you?”
“She did.”
It didn’t make sense.
“So who made the identification for the death certificate?”
“My doctor and one of the people from my firm. I’ve checked that too.”
“And they knew you well enough to identify you?”
“Yes, of course they did. That’s why they were asked.”
Something odd there: why them? “So why were they asked to make the formal identification? Why not a close relative? Surely they’d have asked one of your family?”
He shook his head. “There wasn’t anyone; there was no-one they could ask. You see, I don’t have any close relatives. There’s a distant cousin in Canada, that’s all. I’m an only child, so was my father. I was – I am -- the last of my line, the Rankin line.”
I absorbed this for a few seconds and then asked the obvious question.
“So how is it you are walking round with cards for Roderick Baxendale?” I glanced again at the card. It was curiously blank: apart from the name it bore only a mobile phone number.
“Well, because that’s who I am, Roddy Baxendale. It’s a complicated story.” He sighed and his body slumped as if he was suddenly weary of everything.
“OK, so let’s start with the easy bits. What does Mr Roderick Baxendale do?”
“Actually, I don’t do anything. I don’t have to work; I’m rich, very rich.” He gave a quick smile and then his face crumpled into worry, lines and fissures appeared that aged him ten years in a second. Then the flesh of his face smoothed out again. “I’m very rich,” he repeated, “so I don’t work.”
Very rich? I began to think about doubling my fee. But perhaps all this was some sort of fantasy?
“OK, let me try to get this straight. If you, Jack Rankin, died over eight years ago,” I tapped the press cutting, “how long have you been Roderick Baxendale?”
“Just seven years and ten months,” he spoke quickly. Then he added in a less certain voice, “but also forty-seven years.”
I decided to concentrate on the more recent date. I could come back to the forty-seven years later.
“So after you died, or you didn’t die as Rankin – that was eight years and four months ago -- are you saying there’s a gap of about six months in your life, and after that you started your Baxendale life. Is that right?”
“Yes.” He nodded vigorously to confirm that I’d just grasped something important. Then he added, “But it was more like re-starting my Baxendale life. I was born -- as Baxendale -- forty-seven years ago.”
Well that explained the forty-seven years, though it didn’t make anything else clearer. I told myself to be patient.
“OK, just for the moment let’s concentrate on what happened seven years and ten months ago. What exactly were you doing in the period between dying and being cremated as Rankin and then being Baxendale?”
“Ah, that’s just it.” He leaned forward and I caught a whiff of expensive cologne and, under it, the unmistakeable smell of fear; it was a smell I knew well. So what was scaring him?
“I believe I was unconscious. I believe I was in a coma, in a private hospital. That’s what my wife’s told me.”
“Your wife? The one the newspaper says was killed by a hit and run driver?”
“No, no, no! That was Fizzy. This one’s Debby. My – Roddy Baxendale’s -- wife.”
This was getting worse. “You’re married?”
“Yes, to Debby. I just told you that.” He spoke sharply as if I had failed to grasp something obvious.
I was becoming more and more irritated by this bizarre story. I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. “Right, let me see if I’ve got this straight: you’re married to Debby and called Baxendale but you’re also Jack Rankin and dead but you’re not dead? Is that it? Have I got it right?”
He sighed, looked down at the floor, back at me and then gave a shrug, as if admitting how strange it sounded.
“Look, Mr Dawson, I know it sounds completely crazy, that’s exactly why I want you to sort it out. That’s why I’m here. Look: I know I’m Jack Rankin but I also know I’m Roddy Baxendale. I died but I didn’t. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I’ve come to you. I’m desperate. For God’s sake, you must help me, I’m really desperate.”
Desperate people will pay more. Perhaps I could hit him with an even bigger fee. I needed the money: another big payment was almost due.
“I think it’ll be best if you just tell me what happened to you.” I said, trying to make myself speak mildly, trying to suggest I had no doubts about his story. “Just explain it as well as you can.”
Just explain it if you can, I thought. I doubted he could.
CHAPTER TWO
Baxendale frowned, pushing his lips forward while he considered what to say.
“You