The Endings Man (14 page)

The woman was tired to the bone. It had been a hard day. She had sat down just for a moment intending to get up and finish the meal on the tray as a kind of supper before going to bed. Her eyes had closed and opened and closed again and she had slept. As she slept, her eyelids flickered and there had been some kind of dream. She had moaned a little and moved her head from side to side. One hand came up and stroked the silver chain around her neck. From the expression on her face, the watcher had been unable to tell if the dream was about sex or fear or the falling dream that everyone experienced as the sleeping heart missed a beat. It might have been set in her past or present or some place outside time. As she opened her eyes, the watcher had the impulse to ask her what it had been. He didn’t, though, and even if he had thought better of that a moment or two afterwards, it would have been too late, of course, since even so brief an interval of time would have dissipated the dream like a handful of smoke, which was a pity since it was the last dream she would ever have.

The strange thing was that when she opened her eyes and saw the blurred shape of a man’s head against the light, as it might have been of a husband or father or lover, she stretched out her hand with a gentle startled expression as
if to touch his cheek. The gesture frightened him so that he ducked away, fast as a boxer avoiding a blow. The violence of the movement brought her to her senses. Her mouth flew open, but instead of a scream or a cry for help, she gave a harsh unbroken seemingly endless gasp as he crushed her throat with both hands. Arms, legs, the trunk of her body, flailed and spasmed as she fought against him, making the shapes of someone falling until at last her heart stopped and she lay still.

As he woke, Curle reached for the warmth of a woman by his side, hand flexed as if to lift the weight of a breast. The space beside him was cold. It took him a moment or two to remember where he was. He rolled out of bed and pulled on his trousers and shirt. The red numbers on the bedside radio told him it was four in the morning. Room key in hand he went down through the silent hotel and out to the front steps. The Subaru was still there.

At seven he went down and checked again, then walked around the streets till half past when the dining room opened. He sat toying with cereal and pushing eggs and bacon round the plate till the fat congealed. He ordered more toast and drank coffee as people came and went. At half eight he went out again to check the cars parked outside. The Subaru was gone.

Sitting in the car, chilled from being parked in the open all night, he dialled Jonah’s number and let it ring till he was sure there would be no answer. Without much hope, he tried the office and was surprised when Alice, the PA, put him through.

‘You’re in early.’

‘Things to do,’ Jonah said. ‘What do you want?’

‘The home address of Brian Todd.’

There was a long pause. ‘What makes you think I would have it?’

‘I have faith in you. That and the fact I can’t think of anyone else to ask.’

‘Have you looked in the phone book?’

‘I’m not at home. Don’t ask.’

Jonah grunted. After another pause, shorter this time, he said, ‘Give me a minute.’

Getting the address had been an avoidance measure. Once he had it, there was nothing between him and the problem. What was he going to do? At some point, he’d have to go home, though he wasn’t sure what the word meant any more. Kerr would be back later after school and this was one of Liz’s afternoons at work. He supposed, despite everything, she would have gone to work this morning. Did Brian Todd have any children? He decided to go and find out.

As he stopped at a cash machine to refill his empty billfold, his uncontrollable imagination conjured an image of his wife trailing the faint unmistakable scent of fish around the pharmacy. What was that old story about women who herded together synchronising their periods? The entire staff of the pharmacy would be on heat. That manner of thinking did no justice to how bad he felt, but the habit of it was too old to break.

The address he’d been given was in Barnton, a substantial house on a corner site with cherry trees, winter skeletal, behind the hedge on either side of the path that led to the front door.

The bell was answered on the third ring.

‘Yes?’ She looked startled as if she’d been expecting a familiar face.

‘I wonder if I could speak to Brian?’

‘My husband’s at work.’ A man and woman apparently arguing together sounded from behind her until they were drowned in music. Since it seemed unlikely she had an orchestra in her front room, it was probably a radio.

‘I’m a friend of his.’

‘Ye-es?’ Without thinking about it, he’d assumed Todd would have a trophy wife, one of those heads of long blonde hair and white wet teeth that would look handsome mounted on a plaque on the wall. This woman had a face the size and colour of a little linen handkerchief with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. The teeth were white enough but they pressed against her mouth as if there was too little skin on her face. Standing with arms clasped tight around her as if for warmth, she had the look of an anorexic.

‘We were at school together,’ Curle said.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Maybe you could tell him I called.’ Give the bastard something to think about. It was better than nothing. ‘My name is Barclay Curle.’

To his astonishment, she broke into a wide smile. ‘Not the book writer?’ And at his nod, she stepped back and asked him inside.

As they sat down in the living room on fat armchairs that could have seated two people and left space for a midget, she explained, ‘I spend a lot of my time reading. I love detective stories. Your Doug Kirk is a particular favourite.’

He sat boorishly silent. All the stock responses he’d evolved to meet that kind of statement deserted him. He stared at the big close-ups of heads mouthing on the television screen. She’d put the sound off when they came into the room, but left the set on.

‘My name’s Pat, but I expect you know that.’

‘Brian’s spoken of you,’ he lied.

‘I don’t know why he never said to me.’

A memory stirred of Todd claiming to have heard of Mae’s death from some article read to him by his wife.

‘You didn’t know we knew one another?’

The little face broke into a smile again. Vivaciously, she said, ‘He can be terrible like that. And you were at school together!’

‘We lost touch.’

‘It’s so easy to do that. I had so many friends and…’ She trailed off, then looked up and said brightly, ‘it’s so easy to do that.’

When she said that, something clicked in his mind like the slotting into place of a jigsaw puzzle piece.

‘Brian’s a sociable man,’ he said. ‘These last few weeks I’ve come across him all over the place. Does he bring many people home?’

Her lips pulled apart, but she didn’t speak, just stared with a fixed frozen little smile.

‘Home for dinner, I mean. My wife and I don’t have many dinner parties, but that’s my fault. I don’t like entertaining. Does Brian like entertaining?’

She shook her head.

‘You surprise me. He’s so sociable in company. Maybe he’s different at home. Some people are like that. One thing outside, and somebody different at home. Is Brian like that, different at home?’

‘He’s very busy,’ she said quietly.

‘That must be lonely for you.’ And before she could answer, he went on, ‘But maybe you have a job? My wife works, which is another reason we don’t have people to the house much. Do you work?’

‘No.’

‘You must be lonely.’

‘I read,’ she said.

‘And watch television in the morning.’

Her eyes slid to the set in the corner.

‘You should think about finding a job. It would get you out of the house,’ he said. ‘But maybe Brian wouldn’t like that?’

Suddenly he sickened of what he was doing. He wasn’t a bully, and he despised himself for what she had drawn out of him.

He waited for her to look back at him so that he could apologise and get out of there, but she kept watching the television, so intently she might have been making up dialogue in her head to match the faces on the screen.

‘I’m sorry,’ Curle said.

‘It was an odd reaction,’ Meldrum said. ‘You’re the first person who ever smiled when I told them someone was dead.’

‘I wouldn’t call it a smile. It didn’t feel like a smile. The truth is I was relieved.’

McGuigan asked sharply, ‘Relieved?’

‘When you said someone had been murdered, I thought you were going to say Linda Fleming.’

‘So you smiled?’ McGuigan sounded incredulous. ‘Are you saying you wanted to hear Linda Fleming was dead?’

‘No! That’s not what I said. Don’t twist what I said!’

‘Don’t get excited,’ Meldrum said quietly. ‘Your wife will wonder what’s happening.’

Oh God, Curle thought, and my son, my son’s upstairs. Softly he said, ‘I didn’t want anyone dead.’

‘What was that?’ McGuigan asked. ‘You’ll need to speak louder.’

‘What made you think it might be Linda Fleming who’d been murdered?’ Meldrum asked, himself speaking softly.

‘Have you spoken to her?’

The two detectives studied him in silence.

‘I saw her yesterday afternoon,’ Curle said. ‘She asked me to go up to Haskell’s room with her.’

‘You went to see Linda Fleming yesterday afternoon?’ McGuigan asked. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because I’d unfinished business with her. Because I went to Ali’s funeral.’ He looked at Meldrum. ‘You saw me there. And I wanted to tell her sister what I didn’t get a chance to say then. How sorry I was about Ali. That was all. But I was no sooner in the door than she started about Haskell being the one who had killed her. And then she said he’d asked her up for coffee, and would I go with her? If I hadn’t been there, I’m sure she’d have gone alone, even though she was afraid of him. She’s determined to find her sister’s killer.’

‘So she talks to you?’ McGuigan said dubiously.

‘Because she knows I would never have harmed Ali! She’s sure Haskell did it. She must have told you that. Why else would she have taken the diary?

‘What diary?’ Meldrum asked.

‘When we were in Haskell’s flat, she made an excuse about having to use the lavatory. But while she was away, she looked in his bedroom and took a diary she found. She showed it to me when we got out of there. I told her how foolish she’d been.’

‘She didn’t say anything about that to us.’

‘Because there wasn’t anything in it,’ Curle said. ‘Just dates with his dentist, stuff like that. God knows what she thought she’d find. A description of committing the murder, I suppose. It was just madness. But when you said someone had been murdered, my first thought was that Haskell had found his diary was missing.’

‘This is the diary that had nothing in it?’ McGuigan asked.

‘But it still meant she suspected him!’

McGuigan shook his head as if human foolishness never
ceased to amaze him. ‘It’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it? I can’t see anyone committing murder over a diary of dental appointments. In any case, we’re not here about Linda Fleming. Mrs Johanson was the one killed last night. And it wasn’t anything to smile about.’

Curle made a gesture of protest, looking to Meldrum as if for help. Meldrum, however, did not meet his glance.

‘Would you explain to us again where you were last night, sir?’ McGuigan asked.