Dirty Tricks (23 page)

‘Thomas Carter. It’s about the madrigal group.’

‘Hi, Tom! You sound a bit strange.’

‘I’ve got a cold. Is your mom there?’

‘She’s gone to Dorset. Grandfather’s been taken poorly.’

‘Oh I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do? She hasn’t left you there alone, has she?’

‘No, Alex and I are staying with friends. I just came over to practise. Mum will be ringing tonight. Can I give her a message?’

‘No, no, don’t bother her. It’s not urgent.’

As I hung up, I recalled the winking light on the answering machine the night before and spent five frantic minutes searching for the tape, which I had removed in order to erase the one I had taken from Clive’s.

‘I’m sorry not to reach you in person,’ said Alison’s voice, ‘but I’m forced to concede that these machines do have their uses after all, and I suppose in the circumstances it’s safe enough to leave a message.’

It took me a moment to realize that the circumstances she was referring to were Karen’s supposed trip to her mother’s. Already I was having a hard time remembering who knew which part of what story.

‘I won’t be able to make lunch today after all. My father has had a stroke, so I have to go down there and organize things. I’ll be in touch as soon as possible.’

I capered round the living room like a manic morris dancer. With luck like this, how could I lose? I snatched up the phone again and called the police. Not 999, just the number in the book. After all, this wasn’t an emergency, I told the woman who answered, at least I didn’t think so. It was probably nothing at all, in fact, there was most likely some perfectly obvious and innocent explanation, only I was just a bit worried because, well, the fact of the matter was that my wife seemed to have disappeared.

On Monday I took the portable generator back to the hire shop in High Wycombe. When I got home, the police were waiting for me in an unmarked Ford Sierra. There were two of them, a tall sturdy bearded fellow and a shorter, slighter man with the studiously glum expression of a school prefect. I’ve forgotten their names. Let’s call them Tom and Dick. Tom, the bearded one, approached me as I parked the BMW, introduced himself and his colleague, and asked if they could come in for a moment.

‘Perhaps it would be better if you sat down, sir,’ he suggested once we were inside. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some rather bad news.’

I lowered myself into a chair. Dick appeared to engross himself in a study of the Parsons’ record collection while Tom recited his piece as though reading it from an autocue.

‘Powys police have recovered a body which they believe to be that of your wife, sir. We would like you to accompany us to Wales with a view to identifying the remains.’

‘Dead? How?’

‘The body was recovered from a reservoir, we understand.’

‘But that’s ridiculous! Kay’s an excellent swimmer. She
teaches
it! She’s got certificates, cups …’

Tom looked at Dick, who stuck his tongue between his upper lip and teeth and sucked hard. He was clearly longing to make some crack about it being hard to swim with a concrete post tied to your back.

We reached Llandrindod Wells, the county town, early that evening. Tom and Dick maintained a discreet silence throughout the drive, like undertaker’s assistants. Left to my own devices in the back seat, I reviewed the story I had prepared, searching for loopholes and finding none. After some backchat on the two-way radio we were met by a local police car which escorted us to the hospital where the body had been taken. I was then conducted to the mortuary chapel, where a small group of men were standing around a plinth supporting a polythene-wrapped package. One of them introduced himself as the Home Office pathologist and explained that in order to preserve continuity of evidence it was necessary for me to identify the body before they could proceed.

Two of the others undid the tape binding the package together and carefully parted the flaps so as to allow me a glimpse of the face. It was not a pretty sight. They say that in the first week of a diet you’re just shedding water, and spending thirty-six hours in a reservoir obviously has the opposite effect. Karen looked all puffy and pouchy and wrinkled, as though she’d been on a steroid treatment that had gone terribly wrong. They’d positioned me on the left side, so that the injury to the temple was invisible. Nor could I see the concrete post, though its bulk was evident, or the tow-rope binding her to it. It was all very discreet.

I nodded numbly.

‘It’s my wife.’

The two men immediately set about sealing up the package again. Poor Karen! For the past three days she’d been out of one plastic bag and into another like a bit of left-over food at the bottom of the fridge.

Tom and Dick escorted me back to the Sierra, where we were joined by a Welsh detective I shall call Harry. He was a soft, secretive man with mottled skin, and reminded me irresistibly of a toad.

‘First left at the lights, lads,’ he told the others. ‘There’s Sal’s cafe burned out since she left the deep-fryer on all night and now it’s going to be a Wimpy. Just up here on the right, past the antique shop. Couple from London bought it last year, ever so nice but I can’t see how they’ll make a go of it with the prices they charge.’

At local police headquarters Tom and Dick went off to the canteen while Harry led me into a bare room rather like an old-fashioned doctor’s surgery. I sat in the patient’s chair and Harry went off in search of someone called Dai. He offered to fetch me something to eat, but I declined, feeling that a man who had just viewed his wife’s corpse shouldn’t have an appetite. Dai turned out to be a bluff, cheery man with a red face, like a reporter for the local farmers’ gazette. He sat down beside Harry on the other side of the desk, opened a large notebook and licked his pencil as though it were a lollipop.

‘We just want to get your side of the story,’ Harry explained, ‘for the record.’

I repeated the account of events I had given the police the day before. Karen had told me that she was going to spend the weekend in Liverpool with her mother. On Saturday morning I had driven her to Oxford station and seen her off on the train. I then returned home and spent the day alone. When I phoned Liverpool the next morning, my mother-in-law told me that Karen was not there, and that she had not been expecting her.

‘Why did you phone then?’ asked Harry casually.

‘I noticed an announcement in the Sunday paper about a concert I particularly wanted to go to. It would have meant I wouldn’t be home when Kay got back, so I wanted to check that she had her keys and so on.’

Harry nodded while his colleague busily scribbled away in shorthand.

‘So you took your wife to the station on Saturday morning at about nine thirty, and phoned her mother at about the same time on Sunday. And in between?’

‘I didn’t see her.’

‘What about other people?’

‘I was at home all day, apart from going for a walk in the late afternoon.’

‘You were on your own the whole time, then?’

‘Well there were other people out on Port Meadow, of course, but no one I recognized.’

‘No one came to the house or spoke to you on the phone?’

‘No.’

Harry nodded.

‘Only we’ve got to ask, see, because of this alleged kidnapping.’

‘You think someone kidnapped Karen?’

‘No, no. We’ve got a man here, see, Phillips is the name, claims to have been locked in the boot of a car and turned loose in the mountains round this way on Saturday night.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘Well, you see, he says you did it.’

I pshawed. You don’t often get a chance to pshaw these days, and I made the most of it.

‘That’s preposterous! I don’t even know any Mr … Just a minute. What did you say his name was?’

‘Phillips.’

‘Not
Clive
Phillips?’

Harry’s face lit up, as though all our problems were now solved.

‘Ah, you know him!’

‘Clive? Of course we do! Karen’s first husband was his accountant. They were quite close. Actually we haven’t seen much of him since our marriage. I particularly didn’t care for his manner with Karen.’

‘How was that, then?’

‘Well, it’s hard to describe. He had a way of treating her as though she were still single.’

Harry took out a packet of Silk Cut.

‘Smoke?’

‘I don’t, thanks. Perhaps it would have been different if we’d had children. Without them it’s all a bit theoretical, isn’t it? Not that Karen seemed to mind, about Clive I mean. But I found it all in rather poor taste.’

‘Kiddies are a blessing in disguise all right,’ Harry agreed.

‘Karen said she didn’t want them. It was out of the question of course, with my vasectomy.’

The beauty of the dead, I was beginning to realize, is that you cannot just speak ill of them, you can say what the hell you like without the slightest fear of contradiction.

‘If only we could have had a family,’ I went on. ‘At least there would be something of her left behind …’

I broke down. Mugs of tea and packets of biscuits were produced. I gradually pulled myself together.

‘Where exactly was she found?’ I asked Harry.

‘Up Rhayader way.’

‘Rhayader? That’s odd.’

He looked at me expectantly.

‘Oh, it’s just a coincidence, but we stayed there once, you see. At the Elan Valley Lodge. Last September, it was, just before we got engaged. Lovely spot. I’ll always remember the walks we took together …’

Out came the hankie again. While my head was lowered, I tried to think if there was anything else I wanted the police to know. They could surely be trusted to discover that Karen and Clive had been booked into the same hotel the previous weekend, and that the deposit had been secured on one of her credit cards. I couldn’t think of any way to communicate the fact of Karen’s interesting condition, but that would presumably come to light during the post-mortem that was currently in progress. I had mentioned my vasectomy, so once they found out that Karen had been pregnant, it was going to be a clear case of
cherchez l’homme
. They wouldn’t have far to look.

‘Right, that’ll do for now,’ Harry told me. ‘I wonder where those two lads from Kidlington have got to. You’re not planning on leaving the Oxford area, I take it? Only we may need to get in touch again, see. It’s a pity no one saw you that Saturday. Someone you know, I mean. Someone who could …’

The words ‘… provide you with a much-needed alibi, failing which you are liable to find yourself in dead lumber with regard to this one, John’ hung almost visibly in the air.

I once lived in a flat whose previous tenant kept an incontinent dog. The Parsonage stank of its former owners in much the same way as that flat did of dog piss, and eventually I could stand it no longer. I knew that clearing out my late wife’s possessions so soon after her death wasn’t the coolest possible thing to do, but I hadn’t gone to all that effort just to end up entombed in a perpetual monument to the Parsons’ trashy lifestyle. I needed open vistas and unfettered horizons. So the following Monday, a week after my return trip to Wales, I gathered some of the most offensive items together and took them to a charity shop in Summertown.

There was still no clear indication of the line the police were taking with regard to Karen’s death. I had heard nothing from either Kidlington or Llandrindod Wells, and the newspaper reports were sketchy in the extreme. An inquest was opened on the Thursday following my trip to Wales, and promptly adjourned to allow the police to pursue their investigations. But beyond the fact that they were treating the case as one of murder and that a senior officer had been brought in to ‘head up’ the inquiry, little detail emerged.

I had phoned Alison several times during this period, but luckily she was still away tending her aged relative. Until I knew which way the police were going to jump I wanted to keep my options open. The less I told Alison about what had happened, the easier it would be to change my story later if the need arose.

I was in the shower, scouring away the smell of the charity shop with a Badedas body rub, when the doorbell chimed. It’s just like the ads say, I thought, things happen. But when I went to the door in a terrytowel bathrobe, I found not a blonde astride a white steed, but Harry.

‘All right?’ he said.

I assumed this meant ‘Are you coming quietly or do I have to use the cuffs?’

‘I’ll just get dressed,’ I said.

‘Fair enough. Only it won’t take a moment.’

His tone seemed to suggest that he wasn’t there to arrest me. ‘All right?’ I belatedly remembered, was simply the Welsh for ‘How are you?’

‘I’m just down this way to tie up a few of the loose ends,’ he went on, ‘so I thought I’d drop by and put you in the picture. We haven’t given it to the media yet, but now we’ve got the confession it’s all over bar the shouting.’

‘Come in,’ I said.

Still feeling shocked, I poured myself a whisky. Harry accepted a bottle of beer.

‘It was finding the spare tyre in that quarry that did it,’ he explained. ‘Up until then he’d denied everything, but when we showed him the telex from Kidlington he broke down. “I suppose I must have done it,” he said. Near to tears he was. It’s a great relief, you know, getting it off your chest.’

‘Yes, it must be.’

For a moment I found myself wondering if Clive really
had
murdered Karen. Not only did the police think so, but so did Clive himself, apparently. Well, he should know, shouldn’t he? It was difficult to say what had really happened. My own memories remained clear enough but they were no longer attached to that invisible but solid backing by which we distinguish fact from fancy. They were floating free, just another version of events, perfectly possible, although not quite as plausible as the official account.

Harry now claimed that Clive’s kidnapping story had never been taken seriously. That wasn’t the impression I had received when he questioned me in Llandrindod Wells, but I didn’t say anything. At some point in that last week, a policy shift had taken place which effectively ruled me out of contention as a suspect. At the time, of course, I had no way of knowing what had caused this. Nor did I care. If Harry wanted to rewrite history in the light of this new approach, I certainly wasn’t going to embarrass him by pointing out the inconsistencies.