The Valley (4 page)

He was never unfaithful or wilfully cruel, just unbending. His hobbies – shooting, fishing, sailing, maths – were all either solitary or masculine, and he did not feel obliged to share or explain them. He would quite happily sleep with a girl but then leave her at two o’clock in the morning so he could lie in wait for a fox. In the end, the girls would always give up on him and drift away.

Occasionally our gardening schedule was disrupted by the British army. Originally I had thought Max attended the university’s Officer Training Corps for the same social reasons as all the other ex-public school boys, who would willingly spend an hour being shouted at by a sergeant major, if afterwards they could attend a cocktail party in a smart officer’s uniform. I learnt, however, that Max went to the OTC out of contractual duty, not love. The public school he had attended had very close links to the army and Max had exceeded their expectations. In his gap year, he had attended Sandhurst, been commissioned, served six months in a regiment and then pledged to serve at least five further years upon graduation. In return, he drew an Officer Cadet’s salary, further adding to his wealth.

In our second year at university, we had to move out of our hall of residence and Max asked me to share a small house with him. Its chief appeal was a huge garage where he could keep the weedkiller and fertilizer that we sold onto our clients. The bedrooms upstairs were dark and poky, and the bathroom squeezed between them was small and dirty. There was no central heating, but downstairs there was an adequate kitchen and an enormous unfurnished lounge – a perfect venue for Max’s parties.

It was a social world that I would not otherwise have known or chosen. But due to the gardening and Max’s insistence that he, courtesy of the British Army, paid most of our rent, I was now quite wealthy for a student and I fitted into Max’s circle as easily as I had slotted into all the groups I had hung around with since I had come to England. What remained of my South African accent even gave me an exotic appeal. Soon I stopped mentioning the five years I had spent in a Durham comprehensive. When I said my stepfather worked in the diamond business, people assumed he was a rich South African mining magnate. I didn’t lie about it but I did not rush to correct their false impressions either. And nor did Max. In fact he seemed to delight in the deception, as if it was all part of a wonderful practical joke. And I was too busy having a ball to care about the shaky foundations on which my new life was based. The girls might have originally all come to our house because of tall, elegant, smart Max, but quite a few of them stayed because of me. I was the cute if slightly quiet one, with dark hair and a toned rugby player’s body; and if that was not enough to get them into bed, I would tell them half-remembered stories of wild animals prowling the night under starry African skies. Soon I had experienced enough romantic entanglements to forget all about joining my family in Australia.

It was only after I had moved into the house with Max that I met his father. He was down in Bristol ‘on business’ he said, and insisted on taking us both out to lunch. I arrived at the restaurant before Max, but had no trouble spotting his father. The hair was a little thinner, the face more lined and the voice much quieter, but in every other way he was just Max fast forwarded by thirty years. He even had the same sort of patched tweed jacket and check shirt that Max sometimes wore.

After Max arrived at our table, there was a brief father and son catch-up that was mostly about shooting and fishing. Then, in an effort to include me again in the conversation, Max’s father asked what I was doing for Christmas. I let on that I was remaining in the house in Bristol on my own. My mother and Pete had tried to persuade me to come out to Australia, but it would have meant missing all the parties that I had been invited to in the run-up to Christmas Eve and over New Year. The fact that there were four days in the middle when everyone else would flock back to their families to celebrate Christmas did not bother me in the least. I had a dissertation to complete and was actually looking forward to the break. But Max’s father was truly horrified that I would be all alone on Christmas Day and he insisted that I stay with him and Max in Scotland. Max echoed his father’s invitation, and the two of them browbeat me into accepting, although I did wonder why Max had never asked me himself.

When the time came, I travelled up on the sleeper to Fort William, and then changed to a small local train, only a little larger than a bus, that chugged at almost walking speed through deep glens to a station with a Gaelic name that I struggled to pronounce. Although it was only mid-afternoon when I arrived, the sun had already set. Waiting for me on the platform was Max.

We headed out to the estate in a Land Rover similar to the one he drove in Bristol, except it was ten years younger and had two black labradors curled up in the back. It took us over an hour, all on single-track road. We only passed ten other cars. Whenever I asked a question about the family estate, Max just smiled and said I would have to wait and see it for myself.

We arrived in the dark. Max’s father strode from the house to meet us, insisting on carrying my bag, as he led us back to The Lodge, where he and Max lived. It was set back from a group of five cottages that I could just see in the dark, where the estate workers lived. There was no other human habitation in sight. Across the road, I could make out the shimmer of water in the moonlight. That, Max’s father said, was Loch Hourn, snaking in from the Irish Sea over twenty miles away, and on its far shore rose the dark shadowy shapes of the Glen Avon Mountains.

The Lodge itself was a solid four bedroom house, with an array of outbuildings and sheds. It was comfortable and absurdly roomy for the three of us, but had no hint of the grandeur I had expected. As I followed Max and his father up to my room, I noticed that the staircase had no carpet and the stairs creaked as I trod on them. Above my head were paintings, mostly of stags and dogs, except for one, which depicted a blonde woman, standing imperiously in a long white dress with a Tartan sash. When I asked who she was, Max said it was his mother.

He showed me to my room and pointed out the small electric fire in case I got cold; then on his way out, almost as an afterthought, he suggested that I might want to get changed because we were all going to have dinner at the Castle.

‘Is that a pub?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Max. ‘It’s where our Lord and Master lives, when he’s not in Chelsea.’

I should have figured it out before and by the time we drove over to the Castle, I had filled in most of the gaps. Max really had been bought up on a famous sporting estate in Scotland, just like the university rumours said he had, but his family never owned it. Instead his father managed it for its absentee owners, employing battalions of gamekeepers, stalkers, cleaners, cooks and river wardens to ensure that everything was perfect for the few weeks of the year they spent there. And Christmas, it seemed, was special, because the owners not only came over, but also liked to show their gratitude to their loyal agent by inviting him and his family to their Christmas Eve dinner, and this year I had been added onto the invitation.

The Castle was tucked away in its own small valley behind a headland that kept it invisible to outsiders who never penetrated beyond the Lodge. It was a hideous Victorian mansion decorated with fake battlements, and looked completely out of context with its surroundings. The owner, a rich aristocratic insurance broker from London called Rupert Gore, came to the front door to welcome us. As well as him and his wife and their two children, there were three other families staying with them and they were all waiting for us in what they called the sitting room – a vast formal reception room with two huge fires, one at each end.

Right from the start, both the Gore parents seemed to regard Max as a favourite son. Rupert Gore quizzed me on Max’s life at Bristol, whilst his wife, Mariel, doted on Max, acting like a godmother, genuinely concerned that his lack of a real mother might be depriving him of some vital maternal influence.

If there was anyone I felt sorry for it was the Gores’ real son and heir, a shy and rather gauche eighteen year old who seemed slightly in awe of Max. His twin sister and her school friends seemed much more fun. As Max was drawn into long discussions about shooting and fishing by Rupert Gore, I found myself surrounded by three good looking girls, all hanging on my every word. After dinner someone suggested that we dance a few reels. When I announced that I had never danced Scottish reels before, there was almost a cat fight over who should be my teacher.

It was four o’clock in the morning by the time we left. Max’s father had already driven home, so Max and I walked back along the loch shore.

‘This is paradise,’ I said, gazing out across the water to the moody black mountains beyond.

‘Yes,’ Max said, ‘but it’s someone else’s paradise.’

The morning after I left Max at the far end of Wandsworth Common, I made a conscious effort to get up on time and bicycle to the PropFace office – as if it was just another working day, and I was just another commuter. It was already Friday; Lucy had disappeared on Monday night; and it had been nearly a week since I had worked a full day inside the office. It was time to return to normal life.

I was just packing my laptop into a pannier bag when my doorbell rang.

‘Who is it?’ I asked through the intercom.

‘Joy Clarke.’

After a brief hesitation I buzzed her in, calculating that it would be better to talk to her within the privacy of my flat rather than standing outside the mansion block’s main entrance, with all my neighbours walking past.

She appeared at my door with Steve, Milburn’s young, thuggish-looking sidekick.

‘We’ve bought you a present,’ she said, sweeping past me. Steve followed, holding up a clear polythene bag. Inside it were the bedclothes that Milburn had stripped from my bed.

‘I’m afraid we’ll have to hang onto your clothes,’ Steve said, passing me the bag. ‘You can claim compensation if you don’t get everything back within six months.’

‘And my laptop?’

‘It’s still being examined,’ he said, gesturing towards the spare laptop poking out of my bag. ‘Can’t you go on using that one?’

‘No,’ I said angrily, and was about to ask him whether he knew how much a decent laptop cost, when Joy interrupted.

‘I’ll help you get it back, John, if you help us in return. I’d like to ask you a couple of quick questions, if that’s all right?’

‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘It won’t take long.’

‘Do I need a lawyer?’

‘I doubt it,’ she replied, ‘but you have the right to one. In fact, Steve, why don’t you give John the full caution?’

As Steve ran through my rights and listed all the things that the police could do with my evidence, Joy strolled over to my backdoor and peered through its glass panel. Outside was a small patio I had created from a fire escape. It extended out five meters and then turned ninety degrees to form a narrow blind alley that led, via a metal ladder and a gate in the railings, to the side street above. Despite warnings from the council to keep the passageway clear at all times, my children used it as a play area, and it was littered with their toys.

‘This is very nice,’ Joy said, pointing to the patio. ‘What happens around the corner?’

‘Nothing: it runs into a brick wall.’

‘How appropriate,’ she said with a smile.

She turned and headed back through the kitchen to look at the photos on my fridge. ‘Are these your children?’ she asked.

‘Yes. How long is this going to take, Joy? I have to go to work.’

‘Two minutes,’ she said. ‘It’s about the clothes we’ve kept – the ones you were wearing in the Graingers’ house.’

‘What do you want to know about them?’

‘When you were at her house, Lucy Grainger put them in her tumble dryer, didn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then you washed them when you got back here?’

I nodded but Joy was no longer looking at me. She was examining my kitchen sink.

‘What puzzles me, John,’ she said, ‘is that you never mentioned washing your clothes when we questioned you.’

She briefly looked up and stared at me, before returning her gaze to my kitchen sink.

‘I’ve gone through all our recordings,’ she continued, ‘and you were very clear: on the night of 14th February, you left the Graingers’ house before midnight; you went straight to bed; and in the morning you went straight off to work. There’s no mention of you washing any clothes. We can show you the transcripts if you want.’

She glanced across at Steve. He now had a pen and notebook ready in his hands.

‘Well, I did go straight to bed, more or less,’ I said. ‘I mean if you want to be really literal about it, I had a piss, farted a couple of times, brushed my teeth, chucked some clothes in the washing machine and then went to bed. I just thought you could do without all those riveting details.’

‘Those riveting details are what my job is all about, John.’

‘And I thought I had an exciting life.’

She laughed: ‘Probably true. But all those things you just mentioned are a bit different from washing clothes, aren’t they? Every night you brush your teeth, and I’m sure you relieve yourself in the other ways you mentioned as well. But washing clothes…’

‘Actually I usually fart only once,’ I said.

I looked across at Steve who had started to write down my reply. He grinned sheepishly, glancing towards Joy for reassurance.

She laughed. ‘Very good, John, I’m sure Steve will adjust all our records accordingly. But let’s concentrate on the clothes washing. Because that isn’t something you do every night, is it?’

She pulled a dirty mug out of the sink and held it up in front of her. ‘You’re a typical bloke, John. You leave dirty things in the sink. And when men like you come back home drunk at midnight, they leave their clothes on the floor; they don’t put them in the washing machine. Or have I just gone out with the wrong sort of men all my life?’

The more she accused me of, the more she smiled. I noticed that she was wearing the same shiny patent leather shoes she had worn at the police station, and I wondered why a woman, who in every other way dressed conservatively, would want to wear them.

‘I don’t know Joy,’ I said, at last. ‘I usually put my clothes in my laundry basket. But that night it was full, so I bunged everything in the machine and turned it on.’

Joy moved across to Steve, checking his notebook. Then, without looking up, she said casually: ‘Lucy Grainger’s washing machine was also used on the night she disappeared.’

‘I told you: she tumble dried our clothes.’

‘No, after that. You see in the morning, when we searched her house, we discovered freshly washed clothes in the drum. They had been through a full wash cycle. And they included the clothes she was wearing earlier that night when she met you. Do you think it’s purely a coincidence that her clothes and your clothes were washed on the same night?’

When I had first met Joy, this was exactly the sort of question that had tripped me up. But I was now more experienced.

‘No, Joy, it’s not a coincidence. Lucy and I got thoroughly drenched in the rain. She would have wanted to wash her clothes properly afterwards. I mean isn’t that what girls typically do, Joy, when they have damp, wet clothes? Or have I just been out with the wrong sort of girls all my life?’

Joy laughed and flicked her hair back. I wondered whether this was how she acted when she really wanted to flirt with someone.

I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry but I really do have to go to the office now. Is there anything else?’

‘One more thing,’ Joy said. ‘Do you know someone called Charlie Wall?’

‘No.’

She nodded at Steve who pulled a couple of mugshots out of his attaché case.

Charlie Wall was a chubby-faced skinhead, who looked friendly rather than menacing. I guessed he was about forty years old. Neither his name nor his face was familiar.

‘Are you sure you haven’t seen him before?’ Joy asked.

‘Quite sure.’

‘Not outside the Graingers’ house, when you left, whenever that was?’

‘I’ve already told you Joy: I left the house before midnight and I didn’t see anyone.’

For a few seconds there was nearly complete silence, disturbed only by the noise of Steve taking notes with his pen.

‘And you’ve never seen him with Max Grainger?’ Joy eventually asked.

I remembered her insinuation that I had murdered Lucy on Max’s orders and worded my reply carefully. ‘I’ve barely seen Max for five years.’

‘Charlie Wall’s a South African,’ Joy said. ‘A white South African – just like you.’

‘And five million other people,’ I said.

‘That’s true,’ Joy said. ‘But he’s about your age. He’s an English speaker, born in Cape Province, just like you. He’s living in London now like you are, and – ’

‘I don’t tend to socialise with South Africans.’

‘Why not?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

She looked at me for a moment and then thanked me for my time and moved towards the door. As she opened it, she turned around.

‘Were you here all yesterday?’

‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘I went out for lunch, though.’

She smiled and tilted her head. It was her ‘tell-me-more’ expression. But this time I was not playing her game. I just smiled back at her, and let the silence build until Steve muttered something about remembering to contact them if I ever saw Charlie Wall. I told them I would, and ushered them out of my flat, Joy making a point of handing me back my dirty cup.

Bicycling into work, I spotted two Charlie Wall lookalikes. One was driving a bus; the other stood smoking a cigarette outside a building site. If I stood outside Stamford Bridge when Chelsea next played at home, I could probably rack up over a hundred sightings in a single day.

Once inside the office, I spent all morning on the telephone. There were less than ten days to go until the end of the month and we still did not have enough money to pay the salary bill. Normally that would have been enough to focus my attention, but I kept thinking about my conversation with Max as we had walked through Wandsworth Common. Pleading with clients for a few thousand pounds seemed rather irrelevant when a two million pound investment hinged on something else.

The hours dragged on until it was five o’clock. Often we would open a bottle of wine at this time on a Friday evening, but this week no one wanted to – or at least, not until I had gone. Rather than linger at my desk, I slipped out early, returning briefly to my flat before walking over to my former home to pick up Jack and Tom.

As they gathered up the toys they wanted to bring over to my flat, I loitered in the hallway. When Karen came up to me, I thought she wanted to resume one of our normal topics of conversation – shared bills, mortgage payments, parent-evenings at the school – but instead she asked whether there had been any further news about Lucy. I was just about to mention the South African skinhead, when she added: ‘Actually, could I see you on Sunday evening, John? We haven’t really talked for a long time, have we? Why don’t I come over at tea time and then I can take the boys back with me?’

I looked at her, trying to guess what she wanted to discuss, but the boys barged past, keen to start the walk back to my flat, and all I could do was agree the time.

The next morning I took the children to their football clubs on Wandsworth Common. Standing on the touchline, blending in with all the other Valley dads, I wondered whether any of them knew I had recently been arrested for murder and how they would react if they did: fairly similarly to Angela, the New Zealand pilot who had rushed out of my flat, I reckoned.

On the way back, it started to rain and we spent the rest of the day playing Snakes & Ladders, finishing it with the three of us squeezed onto my small sofa, eating crisps and watching ‘Finding Nemo’ for the umpteenth time. It was only after the boys went to bed that I turned on my laptop and scoured the internet for news about Lucy Grainger. Apparently Max was offering a reward of a million pounds to anyone who could give the police information about his wife’s whereabouts.

In the morning I had the radio switched on whilst I cooked the boys’ lunch, and there was a short snippet from a press conference where Max repeated his million pound reward. I glanced across at Jack to see whether he recognised his Godfather’s name. But Jack was too busy playing with a toy castle to notice. Afterwards, as a treat, I took them to Battersea Park, where we rented a pedalo, taking it out into the middle of the lake inside the park, with Jack steering, me peddling and Tom yelling, ‘Faster, faster, faster!’

We returned to my flat at exactly the same time as Karen arrived, and I noticed how the children rushed up to her in a way they never did with me. We let the boys finish their tea by eating ice cream in front of the TV, so the two of us could talk in relative privacy across the kitchen table at the other end of the room.

When I told Karen that I had met Max for lunch, she looked surprised.

‘How was he?’ she asked

‘A bit strained – understandably.’

After a pause, Karen said, ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

We looked at each other. I reckoned I knew what she was thinking, so I said it in a quiet voice: ‘They always suspect the husband in cases like this, don’t they?’

Karen and Max had never really got on, and I was relieved when she shook her head. ‘Max isn‘t a murderer,’ she said. ‘And from what the police told me, I don’t think they suspect him anymore.’

It took a while for her words to sink in. ‘You’ve talked to the police?’

‘They came around last week. Twice.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘You, of course.’

I glanced across at the children, in case they had heard, but they were engrossed in the television. ‘What sort of questions did they ask?’

‘They wanted to know why our marriage broke up.’

‘What did you say?’

‘A combination of things: money worries, arguments, a lack of trust.’

Neither of us spoke. I think we both realised that the police had asked what I had never dared to. Eventually Karen said in a quiet voice: ‘You didn’t, John, did you?’

‘Didn’t do what?’

‘Have a fling with Lucy Grainger?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘And just for the record, I didn’t kill her either.’

‘Dad!’

We both looked up. The DVD had ended.

‘Dad!’ Jack cried out again. ‘Can we watch another film? Please.’

‘No,’ Karen said, standing up quickly, ‘we ought to go. You’ve got your homework to finish.’

When the boys had left, I started packing away the toys that I kept in my flat, trying to spot the ones that they no longer played with. They were growing up fast, and were mostly growing up without me. When I had finished, the flat seemed emptier rather than tidier.

The phone rang. To my surprise, it was Max. He wanted to know if I could come to the Alpha Tec offices towards the end of the week to talk about his possible investment in PropFace. He stressed the word ‘possible’.