Pleasure and a Calling (29 page)

‘Do these look familiar?’

Both men scrutinized me as my hand went to my pocket, and I felt my throat suddenly dry up.

‘Opera glasses,’ I managed to say.

‘Are they yours?’ Monks clasped his hands in front of his face and looked over them at me, eyebrows raised.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘They were recovered from the vehicle owned by Douglas Sharp. The new owner of the car discovered them when he tried
to open the tool compartment. Wedged into a crevice, he said. Imagine that.’

Roberts, arms folded, allowed himself the faintest smile. ‘Mrs Sharp tells us you were using a small pair of binoculars in her house?’

‘It’s possible. I use them for checking roofs and gutters, that sort of thing. I suppose you’ve checked them for fingerprints,’ I said.

He gazed at me.

‘I’m guessing you didn’t find mine.’

Neither of them spoke.

‘Otherwise, wouldn’t you just clap me in irons right now?’

‘Are they your binoculars, Mr Heming?’

‘Do you think I might have a glass of water?’

‘Please answer the question, Mr Heming. Are these your binoculars?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Because mine are here.’ I took them out of my pocket and laid them alongside the evidence. ‘Similar enough, you might say, but not identical. I’ve had these beauties for years.’

Monks inspected them and handed them to Roberts, who turned them over, as if looking for something that would tell him what to say next.

I looked at my watch. ‘If there’s nothing else, I am quite busy.’

I ran. I ran as I had never run before. Fine leather-soled English brogues are not running shoes. They pounded the pavement in front of me as if they were separate entities that the rest of me was pursuing. Bemused pedestrians stepped out of my way. I escaped the town centre, down an alley, skirting the backs of the buildings. Abigail would surely be unlocking her bike by now,
before heading through the park and on to the river path. From where I was, I calculated, it would be quicker to stick to the main road, the route Abigail herself took when returning from her run, ending with the hill and the crossroads with the baker and the newsagent I had spoken to. I was already out of breath. I had to hope she would be held up – by a colleague, or a flat tyre. I could hear the distant music of the funfair in the park. The park would be full of children. That would delay her. Still I ran. It had to be a mile at least, perhaps two. On I ran, though it was hopeless. I clenched my teeth and ran, past the filling station, past the Wellington, then past the familiar streets and houses above to my left that looked down on the woodland that banked up from the river and the park. Under my breath I named each street in turn until I could run no further. I had to stop. And when I did, and looked back, I saw a bus rounding the bend. I set off running again. I could see the stop, a hundred yards ahead. I sensed the bus rapidly gaining on me and I put out my hand to wave it down. It rumbled past then I saw its indicator slowly flash, before it heaved into the bay.

I clambered aboard.

‘Nice day for a bit of exercise,’ the driver chirruped.

I could barely speak. ‘Fount Hill,’ I panted, and offered him a handful of change. ‘Thank you. Saved my life.’

But had he? It was twenty past. I looked ahead now, watched the bus eating up the road, readied myself to jump off again. The door hissed and swung open. Now I was loping past the newsagent, across the road in the face of oncoming traffic. I looked for her bike chained to the railings. It wasn’t there. I reached the house and leapt up the steps to the blue door, fumbling for the key. And now I saw her, back down the road, a figure in red. There she was, surfacing, steadying her bike, watching the cars
to her left, her foot on the pedal. If she looked at this moment, she would see me. I unlocked the door and closed it behind me. Sharp’s key was on the mat. I snatched it up and dropped hers to replace it.

There was still time. If I wanted to I could simply open the door and put on a surprised smile – explain that the prospective buyers had arrived later than arranged and had just left. I waited, deciding, my nerves electrified. Two, three weeks before I would have found myself dashing up the two flights of stairs to the attic, curling up in my den of furniture and silently relishing her arrival, eyes closed in anticipation, ears alert for the key, her first movements and murmurs. But that was over. I had dodged a bullet today and anything seemed possible – but not that.

I hated her for it. I hated her for drawing me into this quicksand, away from my life and place and purpose and duty, for giving me something precious and then luring me close and seizing it back.

But of course it was not over. I still breathed. And there would be the Perettis of this world to set my heart beating anew. They flickered in my mind as the time ticked down, as the exquisite heat of imminent discovery rose with the scrape and clatter of bicycle against railing, Abigail’s flat tread on the steps. In seconds the key would turn …

And then I fled, withholding – deferring – the aching pleasure of the moment, as I had in other houses on other occasions, holding it within myself as a memento of this perilous day, out of the back door, through the garden and breathlessly, thrillingly, into the lane behind and away.

T
HE MASK IS CRITICAL
. I bought it from an online hardware superstore, who had it delivered to my office the next day. Zoe signed for it. It is not very attractive. If you opened your eyes and found me leaning over you wearing this mask, you would have a fit. But the instructions say that it will give me fifteen minutes, which will be enough. As promised, the mask was ‘Quick and Easy to Don’, bright orange in colour, and sure enough a nose clip or mouthpiece was not required. It has not impaired my hearing, though there is not a great deal to listen to at this hour. If I cocked an ear, I might catch the sound of a cat in the yard. If I heard anything else stirring I would start to worry.

I am sorry it has come to this. But it is inevitable. The role of the next victim is ever to clean up after the last. I hope I have drawn a line under things now, and that quiet will follow and torment cease.

I
F
I
SOBEL THOUGHT
I would not take the trouble to find out where she lived and then get in my car and drive a hundred miles to see it for myself, she didn’t know me very well. The colour understandably drained from her face when she opened the door.

‘What do you want?’ she said, stepping back.

‘What do
I
want? Didn’t you write telling me of your distressed circumstances? Well, here I am.’

‘Elizabeth will be back from school soon.’

‘Excellent. How
is
Elizabeth?’

Her eyes flicked to someone or something behind me. A neighbour taking an interest. I smiled at Isobel. After some hesitation, she let me in. The cottage smelled of damp. The furniture – a sofa, an upright piano, a long sideboard and drinks cabinet and a hideous blue stone vase, all recognizable from Aunt Lillian’s house – was too big for the lightless front room with its low sloping ceiling and pinched leaded windows. Even on this fine spring day it felt cold.

‘It’s freezing in winter,’ she said, reading my thoughts.

‘That’s the wind from the Siberian steppe. It sweeps right across the flatness of the terrain.’

‘I know,’ she snapped.

She didn’t offer me tea and biscuits. I sat while she remained standing, her arms folded. I found the resumption of hostilities reassuring. In a way it made things easier. From time to time she peered out of the window, as if the neighbour was still nearby and in sight.

I began by asking what she hoped to achieve by furnishing murder detectives with details of my youthful misdemeanours. ‘I was ten, for goodness’ sake,’ I pointed out. ‘I was troubled.’

‘You were seventeen when you were expelled from school. You attacked another pupil. He lost an eye. Imagine if the police knew
that
.’

‘That’s not true. It was nowhere near his eye.’

She shook her head, and gazed out, showing me Aunt Lillian’s profile, her disapproving, downturned mouth. ‘Anyway the psychiatrist said you were disturbed, not troubled.’

‘What psychiatrist?’

‘The one my mother made you see after you left school. I do know.’

‘I’ve moved on, like everyone else. I’m a respected estate agent. You could damage my reputation spreading gossip about me. You think because my sign was outside the house where a man was found dead that I had something to do with it? That’s madness. At one time or another, my name is on every single street in town. I can see your mother has poisoned your mind against me.’

‘I know what I know,’ she said. ‘And what you
don’t
know is how much my mother protected you back then, and more than once. The council would have locked you in a home and your father would have let them.’

‘Your mother stole her sister’s husband. Her dying sister. Her dying sister who was having a baby.’

Isobel shook her head and gave a snort. ‘And what did you do?’

She turned to face the window again. A wave of anger surged through me. I could seize that hideous blue stone vase and stove her head in with it. But now the front door opened and slammed.

A voice called out, ‘Hi, it’s me.’

I left cousin Isobel’s far from happy, but with things settled, or at least with an enforced sort of peace in place. Something had been achieved; something bad had been lanced. It was still light when I set off back. There was no one around, and no traffic for the first mile, which took me from this hamlet she’d had to move to with its down-at-heel cottages, village school and abandoned pub to the A11 and westward to home. I was still angry. Some of the things she had said defied belief, though when pressed for corroborative detail – with Elizabeth in her room, starting her homework with a glass of milk and a biscuit – she’d proved maddeningly persuasive. She’d finally evoked the great name of Marrineau.

‘He came here, you know,’ she said.

‘Marrineau? Here?’

‘To my mother’s. I was there when he arrived. It was one Sunday. He’d finished at university and had come from Cambridge. He was weird, if you want the truth. He said he had come to forgive but also to be forgiven, or some nonsense like that. He wanted your address, but my mother wouldn’t let him have it. He said he understood and respected that. His parents were wrong, he said, to have had you expelled.’