A Double Life

by Flynn Berry

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Flynn Berry

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Berry, Flynn, 1986- author.

  Title: A double life / Flynn Berry.

  Description: New York, New York : Viking, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018025071 (print) | LCCN 2018026669 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735224971 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735224964 (hardback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Murder--Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Literary. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.E76367 (ebook) | LCC PS3602.E76367 D68 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018025071

  This is a work of fiction inspired by actual events.

  Version_1

  To Robin Dellabough and Jon Berry

  After every war

  someone has to clean up.

  —Wisława Szymborska “The End and the Beginning”

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: Domestic

  Part Two: Foreign

  Part Three: Scotland

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  DOMESTIC

  1

  A MAN COMES AROUND the bend in the path. I stop short when he appears. The heath has been quiet today, under dark snow clouds, and we’re alone on a path where the oak trees form a tunnel.

  The man is wearing a hat and a wool overcoat with the collar turned up. When he stops to light a cigarette, I’m close enough to see his knuckles rising under his gloves, but his face is hidden by the brim of his hat.

  The dog is somewhere behind me. I don’t call for him, I don’t want the man to hear. Sparrows fly over our heads to the oaks, drawn into the branches like filings to a magnet. His lighter won’t catch, and the metal rasps as he tries again.

  Jasper brushes past me, and I reach for his collar but miss, almost losing my balance. The lighter flares and the man tips his head to hold the cigarette in the flame. Then he drops the lighter in his pocket and holds out his fist for the dog to smell. Jasper whines, and for the first time the man looks down the path at me.

  It isn’t him. I call the dog, I apologize in a strained voice. The path is narrow here, we have to pass within a few inches of each other, and I look at him again, to be sure. Then I clip the dog’s leash and hurry towards the houses and people on Well Walk. I wish it had been him, and that instead I was searching the ground for a heavy branch, and following him into the woods.

  It’s been like this for the past three days, since the detective’s visit. I’ve been seeing him everywhere.

  Last Thursday night, I came home from work and ran a bath before taking off my coat. While water filled the tub, I said hello to Jasper, kissing the crown of his head. His fur always smells like clean smoke, like he’s recently been near a campfire. I poured a glass of white wine and drank it standing at the counter.

  In the bathroom, I filled a small wooden shovel with Epsom salts and tipped them into the water. My friend Nell sent me the salts because they help with aches, she said, and I’m always sore after work. I undressed, listening to the tap dripping in the quiet flat. I left the bathroom door open, since the dog sometimes likes to come and sit next to the tub.

  I dropped under the surface, feeling the water slide along the length of my body. I need to suggest massage to Agnes for her arthritis, I thought, then tried to stop thinking about patients. It would help her loneliness, too. Her shoulders relaxed when I checked her heart and she went still, like she was absorbing the touch.

  I lay with just enough of my face above the surface to breathe, the water slipping over my chin. Pasta with pesto for dinner, I decided. A sound came through the liquid, and I raised my head to listen as water spilled from my ears. Someone was ringing the buzzer.

  My order, finally, I thought. The book was meant to be delivered two days earlier. I pulled a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms on over my wet skin, nudged Jasper back from the door, and ran down the stairs.

  There are two doors before the street, and I was in the icy space between them when I saw who it was. Not a courier. The inner door closed behind me. As I opened the next one, the woman lifted her badge. “Do you have a moment to talk, Claire?”

  She followed me up the stairs, which seemed to take a long time. My fingers were stiff and I had trouble with the keys. Jasper greeted her, offering her a stick from the towpath. My chest was bare under the sweatshirt, and I left her on the sofa to find a bra.

  When I came back, her expression was neutral, but I could tell she’d been studying the room. I wondered what she made of it, and if she’d expected worse, considering my background. It was warm and the lamps were lit. There were books on the shelves, invitations on the fridge, a holly wreath above the mantle. She might have thought I’d made the best of a bad hand.

  Or she noticed the open bottle of wine on the counter. The dog, who is half German shepherd, and the number of bolts on the door. It’s only at home, I wanted to tell her. I’m not that careful outside. I walk around at night in headphones. I sometimes fall asleep in minicabs, though not often, if I’m honest.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “DI Louisa Tiernan,” she said, unwinding her scarf. Her voice was clear and composed, with an Irish accent. The pipes squeaked as the man upstairs turned off a tap. She said, “There’s been a sighting.”

  “Here?”

  “In Namibia.” DI Tiernan clasped her hands on her knees, but she didn’t continue. I didn’t understand why she had come. This wasn’t news, there have been thousands of sightings.

  “Why do you believe this one?”

  She handed me an old photograph of my father holding a silver flask engraved with a crest. “Your father bought it at a shop in Mayfair forty years ago. A man has been seen carrying it in Windhoek. He’s in his sixties, about six feet tall, and speaks English without an accent.”

  “Has he been arrested?”

  “We’re coordinating with Interpol,” she said. She looked to be in her forties, which meant she was a teenager when it happened. She must have heard about the case, it was in the news for weeks, and since then has only become more famous. He was the first lord accused of murder since the eighteenth century.

  “Why are they waiting?”

  “You’ll be notified if charges are filed,” she said. I wondered if she was surprised to find herself investigating him, after all this time.

  “Who told you about the flask?”

  “Our source wants to remain anonymous,” she said. To avoid the embarrassment, I thought, when he turns out to be wrong. My father has been missing for twenty-six years. People have claimed to see him in almost every part of the world, posting long descriptions of their encounters in the forums about him.

  “We hope that you’ll be able to help us confirm if it is him,” she said. They needed a DNA sample from me. The
detective started to explain the process, while my wet hair dripped onto my sweatshirt. I thought of the full bathtub in the other room. I hadn’t been out of it for very long, the water would still be warm, the surface perfectly smooth.

  The detective put on a pair of surgical gloves. I opened my mouth and she ran the swab against the inside of my cheek, then screwed it into a sterile plastic vial.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask,” she said, “but has your father ever contacted you?”

  “No. Of course not.” The curtains were open behind her, and I could see a Christmas tree in the flat across the road. My mouth still tasted like rubber from the glove. I wanted to ask what she would do next, what else she needed to prepare.

  After she left, I pulled the drain from the tub, dried my hair, and changed into warm clothes. I boiled water for pasta and opened a jar of good pesto. There was no reason not to eat well, not to watch a show, not to sleep. I didn’t need to change my plans, because it wasn’t him, it hadn’t been any of the other times.

  Though the flask is the sort of thing he’d keep, to remind him of the Clermont Club. The click of the lighter, bending his head with a cigarette in his mouth, betting on hands of chemin de fer.

  He is a hedonist. That’s part of my fury—during all of this, even now, he’s somewhere enjoying himself.

  * * *

  —

  THE LAST TIME I saw my father was the weekend before the attack. He’d taken me to Luxardo’s in Notting Hill. I had a scoop of ice cream covered in coconut, so it looked like a snowball, and my father ordered a peppermint ice cream. It came with a stick of red-and-white candy, which he gave to me.

  Someone was angry with me that day, a friend of mine from school. I can’t remember why now, but I remember how heavily it weighed on me, how bruising it seemed, and I remember how reassuring it was to be with my father.

  I’ve gone over this visit so many times. Him in a dark suit, against the parlor’s striped green walls. He had a scratch on the back of his hand, how did that happen? Did he get it during his preparations? I know from one of the forums that the police found a pulped melon at his flat. Since reading that, I’ve had the idea of him setting a melon on the counter and bringing the pipe down on it again and again, working out how hard he’d need to swing. The idea seems absurd, but no more than the rest of it. Was there a moment—while he was scooping the melon pulp into a bin, maybe, or walking to our house—when he realized what he was doing? Did he almost change his mind?

  I’ve been over all of it, his work and his hobbies and interests, looking for the warnings. He liked bullfights, he brought Mum to one in Madrid once. Should that have been a cause for alarm?

  He also watched horror films sometimes, but only the ones with good reviews, the ones most people ended up seeing. He didn’t seek them out, as far as I know. He said that I didn’t need to be afraid of them, he explained the different special effects, he told me it wasn’t real blood.

  Now everything seems like a warning, but you could do this for anyone. Pick out a few odd interests, a few bad days, and build a theory around it. You could do it for me. You could consider the fact that I haven’t moved on as proof of something wrong with me. I’m thirty-four years old and a doctor at a practice in Archway. This shouldn’t still consume me, but it never goes away. It’s like living in a country where there’s been a war. Sometimes you forget; sometimes, on a normal road, in daylight, you’re too frightened to breathe; sometimes you’re furious that it’s fallen to you now to understand what happened, to put it to rights.

  But he planned it. He came to our house that night wearing gloves and carrying a length of steel pipe. He’d used a saw to cut the pipe down to the right size, and he’d wrapped gaffer’s tape around its base so his hand wouldn’t slip.

  He might have already made the weapon before we sat together in a booth at Luxardo’s. It’s difficult for me to think about that visit. Not because I could have stopped him, exactly. I was eight years old. But the scene seems grotesque. The little girl, accepting a stick of red-and-white candy from him. It’s like he made me complicit.

  2

  MY PARENTS FIRST MET at the Langham hotel on a Saturday night in 1978. The hotel restaurant had curved banquettes and velvet wall panels, and each table had a small lamp with a pleated red shade. Both of them had arrived with other people. Mum and her fiancé, Henry, were having an argument, and sat with their faces turned down to the large menus.

  Her flatmates were going to a party in Covent Garden and then to a nightclub, Annabel’s. She’d watched them get ready, sitting on the bed while Christy ironed her hair and Sabrina pulled on a pair of burgundy suede boots that reached to her thighs, leaving an inch of bare leg beneath her skirt.

  “Tell me, what do you think,” Henry said to the waiter, “between the flank steak and the tournedos?” Faye looked on without smiling. Under the table, she touched her knee, which was covered, disappointingly, in ten-denier tights. After the waiter left, Henry turned to her, expectant, as though he deserved to be congratulated for having been nice to the man.

  Right now, her flatmates would be drinking cheap prosecco and laughing, Sabrina pinching the bridge of her nose, like she always did when she laughed. They had put on Lou Reed while they dressed, and now the song was caught in her head. I said, hey, babe. Take a walk on the wild side. Faye drummed her fingers on her leg. The restaurant was playing jazz at a low volume. She thought, When was the last time I left somewhere with my ears ringing?

  She’d ordered the Dover sole, and when it arrived, she thought, I don’t want this, I want chips on the night bus home, I want to be on my own.

  Across from her, Henry was twisted in his chair, trying to signal the waiter. Their argument had begun in the cab. Henry had been listing for her, yet again, the reasons for leaving his job and the reasons against. She’d said, “It doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re not going to retrain as an RAF pilot, you’re not going to direct films, what difference does it make which bank you work at?” She hadn’t meant to say that. He’d said, “You’re an assistant. Not quite setting the world on fire.”

  Not yet, she’d thought. She worked for a chartered accountant, but wanted a job at a record label. As an education, she went to shows on her own four nights a week, all across London. She checked her watch. Only half past nine. She wondered if she could get into Annabel’s dressed like this. Maybe if she kept her coat on. Henry was staring at her. “Another bottle?” he asked. What’s the point, she didn’t say.

  He ordered the Chablis. She’d told him once that it was her favorite. But she’d only said that to be funny, she’d never tasted it before. I’m not like you, she wanted to say, I grew up above a pub, my favorite drink is rum and Coke. Though Henry knew all that. She suspected he was proud of himself for liking her anyway.

  “Want to drive down to Arundel tomorrow?” he asked. He never held a grudge. Not fiery enough, not passionate enough, she thought, and sat drinking her wine, answering his questions. She wondered who was chatting up her flatmates right now. She pictured Christy dancing a little as she searched the kitchen for a clean glass, Sabrina leaning out a windowsill with a man pressed next to her, sharing a cigarette. She folded her hands between her crossed thighs and rocked her foot. Her stomach felt light, her skin flushed. She looked at Henry and said, “I’m going to the toilets.” She crossed the floor and turned down a carpeted corridor. She went to the coat check and said, “I’m so sorry, I don’t have my ticket. It’s a plaid coat and a white scarf.” The boy handed them to her, without any more convincing.

  She wasn’t surprised when a man materialized at her elbow, or that he was alone. She’d noticed him earlier, he’d been at the banquette opposite hers. She’d never seen his date’s face, only the back of her head, a smooth blond curtain.

  He handed over a ticket while she stood to the side, doing up the buttons on her coat. As she climbed the stairs, h
e fell into step with her.

  “I’m Colin,” he said.

  “Faye.”

  He took the compartment behind hers in the revolving door. Outside, she was brought up short. Rain drilled the road, and they stood together under the streaming portico. There weren’t any cabs in front of the hotel, or down the wet street.

  He said, “There’s a bar next door.”

  “Actually,” she said, “I’m going to Annabel’s.”

  * * *

  —

  HAVE I GOT IT RIGHT? I’ve done so much research, and there’s plenty of material. The detective who led the investigation wrote a memoir, my father’s friends gave interviews, the police submitted evidence to the coroner. Mum kept diaries, on and off, from when she was a teenager until she died. During their first year together, she wrote in her diary every day, long entries, like she didn’t want to miss any of it, even the parts when they weren’t together.

  The rest of it I’ve imagined. And with every new piece of information, I adjust my reconstruction. I have to be methodical about this, because somewhere in my research is the explanation.

  I’ve learned a lot about the night my parents met from the people on the forums. They know so much about my family. They know the type of perfume Mum wore, the show we watched the night of the murder, the exact lightbulb in the kitchen that was burned out.

  They know that the girl my father was with at the restaurant was named Isabel. He told her he was going to the lavatory and never came back, leaving her with the bill. At the time, she was working for an art dealer for very little money. She gave an interview after the news broke. She must have wanted to talk about it, her close brush.

  Mum never saw Isabel’s face, only the back of her head. I imagine the girl turning, and Mum seeing from across the room that her face was covered in bruises. But that can’t be right. The police interviewed hundreds of people who had known my father. Unless some of them were lying, he didn’t have a history of violence.