The Night Book

by Richard Madeley

  But he was in complete turmoil and he needed to get away and think. He’d forced himself to flick through the other pages in the manuscript and from what he could see they were equally as disturbing as the ones he’d first read. He couldn’t see anything specifically about drowning – although there was one repellent passage involving boiling water – but without exception they were murderous chapters, steeped in extreme, sadistic violence and undiluted homicidal intent.

  And Meriel had lied at Cameron’s inquest. He knew she had. It was something to do with that bloody watch. The coroner had spotted it too.

  Had she crossed the line from fantasy to reality out there on the boat that afternoon? Had she somehow managed to contrive her husband’s death? He couldn’t think how, but his vague sense of unease after the inquest had now crystallised into an unmistakable misgiving.

  Suspicion.

  He suspected Meriel. He genuinely did. He believed there was an actual possibility she had somehow murdered Cameron that day. And got away with it.

  What if back then the police had somehow got their hands on a copy of The Night Book? Their subsequent questioning of Meriel would have been completely different in both tone and direction, that was for sure. They would definitely have organised a forensic search of the boat, too, and probably sent divers down at the spot where Cameron had drowned.

  In fact – and Seb started at the thought – that’s exactly what they’d do now if they were given these pages to examine. They would see them as potentially circumstantial evidence in a criminal investigation. They’d have no choice.

  For the umpteenth time, he asked himself what he was going to do. He’d got as far as dialling the first few digits of Dr Young’s phone number before hanging up again. He just couldn’t go through with it. He’d thought that contacting the coroner to ask for an off-the-record meeting might be somehow less significant than going direct to the police, but betrayal was betrayal.

  So was murder.

  Seb felt like tearing his hair out. He had to talk to someone about this. Someone he could trust. Someone older and wiser in the ways of the world: someone who could tell him what to bloody do.

  Suddenly, a name came to him.

  Of course. Of course.

  The engineer was in when Seb phoned. He’d been intrigued by the reporter’s suggestion that they meet within the hour at a riverside pub near his home.

  ‘This sounds urgent, Sebbie,’ Jess said. ‘Everything as it should be?’

  ‘Far from it,’ Seb replied. ‘I’m in a hole, Jess, and I need advice. You’ve been incredibly kind and helpful to me since I arrived here. I honestly can’t think of anyone else I can talk to about this.’

  ‘Blimey. I might not be quite the wise old bird you take me for, Seb, but I’ll do my best. Look: we’re just about to sit down for Sunday lunch at this end, so I can’t quite do the hour. But is three o’clock at the Swan OK for you? You know, the place down on the Eden near Armathwaite. I know them there, they’ll serve us a drink outside hours.’

  ‘Of course. See you there. And – thanks, Jess.’

  Seb propped his note to Meriel against a vase of flowers on the kitchen table. Then he carefully furled all the photocopies back into their cardboard tube and locked it in the Spitfire’s boot. Five minutes later he was on the road heading for the Eden Valley.

  As he drove, he found himself wondering exactly when he would see Meriel again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Meriel was astonished at the sheer size of her postbag. Peter Cox hadn’t been exaggerating; there must be close to a couple of thousand letters, postcards and sympathy cards. There were the inevitable crank ones too, from men who made lewd and sometimes downright disgusting suggestions about what they’d like to do to her now she was ‘free’.

  But the vast majority of those she had looked at were kind and thoughtful and she was genuinely touched. There was no way she could read them all, still less answer them personally. She’d have to write a general reply in her next column.

  There was hardly anyone else in at Lake District FM today; the place was deserted. All the station’s programmes were pre-recorded on Sundays, except for the news bulletins. Even those only went out at the top of every other hour and stopped completely after six o’clock.

  She looked at her watch. Almost three. There wasn’t much more she could do here. She’d made some notes for future programmes and left them for her secretary to type up. She couldn’t be bothered writing memos to her producer and Peter; she’d call them in the morning to tell them she’d be back next week.

  Meriel looked around her office. She felt at ease here, and suddenly a profound feeling that everything would be all right washed over her. She really would be able to pick up the threads of her old life. Better than that, she would improve on it. No more Cameron to bully and torment and control her. No more stupid Night Book. Just lovely Seb to build a future with together.

  They’d have children, she was certain of that. Lots of them. And however their careers developed, she and Seb would always keep a home in the Lakes. They belonged here. They’d discovered each other here.

  She walked quickly to the lift. If she hurried, she could probably get back to Cathedral Crag before Seb had to leave for work. There might even be time to make love.

  ‘Christ almighty, Seb, this is bloody serious.’

  Jess hadn’t touched his pint and now it was too late to start: it had been sitting in direct sunshine in the Swan’s pretty rose garden and had become so warm it was virtually undrinkable.

  He’d listened to the younger man’s story with increasing incredulity, only occasionally interrupting to ask a brief question. For the most part, he simply sat there staring out at the ducks splashing in the slow-moving sunlit river while Seb told his tale.

  ‘I know,’ Seb said miserably, wiping perspiration from his forehead with the back of one hand. ‘Christ, it’s hot . . . I keep wishing I’d never loaded that sodding dishwasher, fused the place, and ended up finding . . . that.’ He gestured at the cardboard cylinder on the picnic table in front of them. ‘I wish to Christ I’d never seen the bloody thing, and it was still down there in the cellar.’

  Jess gently picked it up, weighing it for a moment in his hand.

  ‘Feels heavy. How many chapters are there?’

  ‘Oh God, I haven’t counted . . . about fourteen or fifteen, I suppose.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, as it’s here, can I take a look at it?’

  ‘Be my guest. Be warned, you might throw up.’

  The engineer grunted. ‘I doubt it,’ he said, easing the tightly scrolled papers from the tube.

  A few minutes later he had turned pale.

  ‘Fuck me. She’s mad.’

  Seb shook his head, almost violently.

  ‘No! That’s the whole point, Jess – she’s not. She’s wonderful. Well, I thought she was. She’s—’

  ‘How would you know?’ Jess interrupted. ‘You haven’t been together long. You can’t possibly know what she’s really like, Seb. I’ve been married thirty years and Sally and I are still finding things out about each other. Although I hope to Christ I never discover anything like this.’

  Seb turned his head away, and Jess stirred his hot beer with one finger before continuing.

  ‘You want my advice? OK, here it is. Take this horrible thing straight to the police. They have to investigate what it might signify.’

  Seb began to speak but the engineer waved him to be silent.

  ‘Look at it objectively, Seb. Put your reporter’s hat on. Here you have a woman whose husband’s drowned. Who was the only witness? Her. You yourself say there was something off-base about her testimony at the inquest and the coroner picked up on it.’

  Jess gestured at the papers scattered between them on the table. ‘Then all this stuff turns up. Sadistic death threats hidden away in the dark, like a guilty secret.’

  Seb remained silent.

  ‘It may mean nothing, or it may mean so
mething,’ the engineer went on. ‘Nothing, as in she just happens to be a harmless nutter with a deeply warped imagination. Or something, as an indicator of foul play. It’s not for you to sit on this, Seb, it really isn’t. You have to come forward.’

  Seb pushed his hair back with both hands.

  ‘But I love her, Jess. At least, I thought I did. I can’t . . . I can’t go behind her back. I—’

  ‘You already have done. You’ve shown it to me.’

  Seb rubbed his face repeatedly with both hands, and when he spoke again his voice was muffled.

  ‘Maybe the bloke just drowned, Jess.’

  ‘Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Not your call.’

  Seb groaned. ‘Jesus, I want all this to go away. I can’t bring myself to go to the police and I can’t talk to Meriel about it. I wouldn’t know where to begin, and anyway I’d probably want to believe anything she told me. I mean . . .’ his voice took on an almost pleading quality ‘. . . she must have some explanation for this, mustn’t she?’

  Jess gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘You might not want to hear it.’

  He stroked his chin, thinking.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘So you won’t go to the police, and you say you can’t talk to Meriel.

  ‘So, do neither. Baby steps. Go and see the coroner, like you first planned to. Ask him if you can talk off the record. He’s not a policeman; I don’t think he has any powers of arrest, although you’d know more about that than me. He’s more a kind of civil servant, isn’t he? Anyway, it’d be a sort of halfway house for you, wouldn’t it? Buy you some time.’

  ‘Would it? What if he tells me I have to take this to the police? Threatens to turn me in for withholding evidence if I don’t?’

  Jess gazed levelly at him. ‘You’re nobody’s fool, Seb. I think that’s secretly what you want, isn’t it? For someone to tell you what to do. That’s really why you’ve come to me, isn’t it?’

  Seb didn’t reply.

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ the engineer continued, speaking more slowly now. ‘I think you’re beginning to wonder if you’re actually in love with this woman at all, or if it’s really an infatuation. Do you realise that twice in the last few minutes you’ve told me you think you love her?’

  Seb chewed his lip for a few moments before replying.

  ‘All right. I honestly don’t know what I think any more. Reading that thing was the biggest shock of my life . . . and yes, I’ve probably been kidding myself about this whole coroner business. Of course he’s going to ask the police to reopen the case. You’re right: I suppose I just want the responsibility for that taken out of my hands.’

  Jess spread his arms. ‘And there’s no shame in that. Anyway, perhaps we’re both wrong: maybe this horrible story-book has no bearing at all on Cameron Bruton’s death, legally speaking. Then I suppose you could just shove it all back in the cellar and try to work out what to do next. Although personally I’d run a million miles from someone who could even dream up this kind of shit, let alone write it down.’

  Seb’s voice was infinitely sad. ‘I won’t need to do that. When Meriel finds out what I’ve done she won’t want me anywhere near her. We’ll be finished.’

  Jess leaned forward and briefly squeezed the younger man’s shoulder.

  ‘Seb . . . I’ve become very fond of you, you know, since you joined the station. I talk to Sally about you a lot. I’ve tried to look out for you and I’m . . . well, I’m touched you’ve turned to me for advice like this.

  ‘So let me speak to you now as your Dutch uncle.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Can you imagine what life would be like with this woman if you stayed with her? Married her? Think of the years that lie ahead. No one knows how any marriage is going to turn out. Supposing yours started to go wrong. What if her horrible fantasies became directed towards you? What if you stumbled across something like this, except it was YOU she was writing about? How easy would you sleep beside her in your bed then, eh?’

  Seb stared at his friend. These were thoughts he realised he had been subconsciously struggling to push away.

  ‘Go on.’

  Jess nodded. Good; he was getting through.

  ‘Apart from all that you’d never be easy in your mind about what happened to the first husband. Be honest with yourself. You’re a journalist. You’d always want to know the truth of the matter. It would eat away at you. There. I’m done.’

  The two men sat without speaking for some time. It was Jess who finally broke the silence.

  ‘So, Seb? What happens next?’

  The reporter sighed.

  ‘First, I’m going to use the phone in the bar there to call in sick. I can’t possibly do the late shift with all this going on. Then I’ll ring the coroner. If he agrees to see me privately at his house, I’ll drive straight over to Bassenthwaite, talk to him this afternoon. And then, whatever happens, I’ve come to another decision, Jess. I’m going to go back to Cathedral Crag tonight. I’ve got to tell Meriel what I know, and what I’ve done.’

  He paused. ‘And what I suspect, too.’

  Jess raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? Going back to that house on your own? I’m sorry, Seb, but the woman could be dangerous.’

  Seb shook his head. ‘I owe her an explanation, Jess. I owe her at least that.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Miriam Young put the phone down and stared out of the window at Bassenthwaite. Tim was down there now, making repairs to their little sailing boat.

  She hated troubling him with work on a Sunday. But it had been such a peculiar phone call. She had recognised the young man’s voice, even before he identified himself as the radio reporter who covered Tim’s last inquest. He had explained that the inquest was what he was calling about.

  But this Seb Richmond had been circumspect. All he would say was that he had come across new information which may, or may not, be of interest to the coroner. Something to do with the widow in the case, Meriel Kidd. At this stage it may not warrant a formal approach, but nevertheless a face-to-face conversation was probably in order. The sooner the better.

  The reporter had been very polite, but there was something unmistakably insistent about his tone.

  The coroner’s wife made up her mind.

  ‘Jasper! Jasper! Come on, boy – walkies!’

  The three-year-old Labrador bounded into the room from his basket in the kitchen, his leather lead already expectantly gripped in his mouth.

  ‘Come along, Jasper. We’re going down to fetch daddy.’

  ‘I told him to ring back in half an hour,’ she told her husband breathlessly as they climbed back up the hill together from the little harbour where they moored their boat. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted you unnecessarily, darling, but I just had this . . . well, this feeling that it was important.’

  The coroner squeezed his wife’s hand. ‘Miriam, I keep telling you – I trust your instincts absolutely. Now, tell me again what this chap said.’

  She considered, struggling at the same time to bring her breathing under control. She must go for more walks with the dog; she was becoming ridiculously unfit.

  ‘There isn’t a lot to tell. It wasn’t so much what he said . . . it was how he said it. You know, like that Australian chappie off the telly put it the other day: “It’s not what you say – it’s how you come over.”’

  ‘You mean the columnist . . . Clive James.’

  ‘Yes, him, the Observer man. Well anyway, this chap – Richmond, he said his name was, Seb Richmond – he was strangely compelling, Tim. I told him you weren’t in but he was very clever; he knew how to get my attention. He said one of the reasons he was calling you was that he felt exactly the same as you about that missing watch business. That made me sit up.’

  Her husband stared at her for a moment and then shrugged. ‘It could simply be that he noticed I wasn’t entirely happy with that part of her evidence.’

  ‘Yes, but then, as I
said, he told me he’d found out something to do with the widow. Something that might shed a fresh light on things, but that he would only discuss it with you. Off the record. He must be clever because it worked and here we are.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The house, a 1930s-built wood-framed building that vaguely resembled a ski-lodge, was coming into view. ‘Anything else?’

  His wife thought for a moment before replying.

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘there is one more thing. He sounded sad. Really quite sad. As if he didn’t actually want to be talking about it to anyone at all. And yet he seemed almost desperate to come over and see you today, as soon as possible.’

  ‘Most intriguing.’ Dr Young felt his pulse quicken, and it was nothing to do with the fact they were now climbing the steep steps that led to the veranda at the front of the house, with its stunning views to the dancing waters below and sunlit mountains beyond.

  ‘The game’s afoot, Watson,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘What’s that darling?’

  ‘Nothing. Come on.’

  There was no direct road from Armathwaite to Bassenthwaite. Seb was forced to follow a series of winding country lanes that skirted beneath the mighty Skiddaw.

  He almost turned back when he was halfway there. Was this all a huge over-reaction? So what if his girlfriend had a taste for extreme fantasy? She’d made no secret of her hatred for her husband, had she? So what if she channelled it in the form of these admittedly gruesome scribblings? Why connect them to Cameron’s death? Or interpret her stumble in the witness box as anything other than a completely understandable wobble under pressure? She’d explained it all to him, hadn’t she? The business of the watch and those last words?

  Seb had a habit of talking to himself when he was wrestling with a dilemma, and he did so now, the wind whipping his words away as he sped, top down, along the dusty back roads.

  ‘That’s you thinking like a lover, Seb, or more like a fool in love. Finding excuses. Looking for ways out. Now do what Jess suggested. Try thinking like a journalist.’