Cooee

by Vivienne Kelly

  It is a strange and frightening experience to handle a gun. The sight of a gun is so recognisable: it is familiar to us from movies and television, from gangster fiction and war documentaries; it is a part of our culture, a common pattern on the wallpaper of our lives.

  Yet actually to hold one, to consider it and balance it, to stretch out your arm and point it as if you were truly threatening someone — these are foreign and bizarre actions, as alien to the comfort of our souls as anything can be. The object exerts an uncanny fascination, so that touching or stroking or gripping it forces you to recognise that it is so much more than a mere object, so replete with its potential and with the menace deriving from its function. It’s unlike anything else. Its function is unmistakable and singular, and it cannot be contemplated without reference to that function.

  I could not accommodate the gun to the texture of ordinary life. I felt like a character who had landed in the wrong movie. I’d been looking all my life for something along the lines of The Princess Bride, and instead I’d found myself deep in the latest Tarantino release. I returned the revolver to its drawer and, a deep and unfamiliar disquiet in my heart, locked the cabinet with the shiny, new key the locksmith had provided.

  That evening I sat down with Borrow and a brandy and reviewed my situation.

  It was plain enough, I suppose, if unpalatable. I was a widow. I was a widow of means, but it appeared to me that any of my means might be stripped from me at any point. My own income was adequate but not magnificent. Max’s bequest was huge, but Max’s bequest appeared to be not just a house but a house on sand. Pretty wobbly sand, too.

  My marriage had been to a man I had never known. I had loved this man more dearly than I had ever loved anyone in my life, more (I was convinced) than I would ever love anyone again. Yet he had betrayed me monstrously and it seemed reasonable to assume or at least to speculate that his wealth had been accumulated by unorthodox and possibly illegal methods. If this were so, I supposed I might, as the inheritor of his possessions, face criminal charges. I might be convicted of aiding and abetting. I might in fact have aided and abetted, without realising I had done so.

  And he was dead. Nobody knew this but I. Nobody else knew I was a widow. And, given the circumstances of his death, that gave me some protection.

  Where did this leave me? Was I in danger? It seemed preposterous to regard myself as in danger of any kind, but I had lost my toehold on the tectonic plates of my life: they were slipping and sliding and could finish up anywhere. The gaps they left in the wake of their eruptions were alarming already, and seemed to be widening speedily. I was going to fall down one of those crevices any day now.

  It was like inventing a whole new landscape and inserting myself in it. It was something of a desert, this landscape, with many thorn trees and a good deal of hot sand and not much in the way of oases.

  So I had to find my way out of it. But it was hard to make my mind move. Normally I am a quick thinker, I believe: but now, stymied and shocked as I was, trying to devise strategies was slow going. I tried to force myself into a logical train of thought, imagining outcome, calculating consequence and risk.

  All I could really think of was that I had known one fine, glimmering light, one unrepeatable moment of apparent perfection, one dazzling flame of passion and — yes, purity — and that I had permanently quenched it. Yet the darkness I inhabited was not my fault. It was the fault of those who had betrayed me. The dazzling flame had been treacherous.

  Well, then, it must be my responsibility to discover the sunlight again. It wouldn’t ever again have the brilliance that had drenched me with Max’s coming, but surely I could ferret my way through the gloom that had descended; surely I could find a point from which I could start to try to refashion my life.

  When Steve was trying to work something out, he used a thing he proudly called his Thought Strategy: he had been taught it at some staff development seminar or other.

  SWAT. Strengths, weaknesses ...

  I ran into a brick wall here. Strengths, I muttered to myself. Strengths, weaknesses. Borrow whimpered quietly in his sleep. I stared at the wall.

  I had it. Not SWAT but SWOT. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.

  What were my strengths? Off-hand, I could bring none to mind. Weaknesses there were aplenty. Ditto threats. Opportunities? Concentrate, concentrate. I felt my mind slipping off track. I had another brandy.

  Well, if I had a strength it had to be financial stability. I had enough money. On the other hand, of course, I had now to suppose that Max’s ways of making money might have been at least open to question, in which case I might have my money taken off me. Since I had been married to Max, I wondered, might I be liable for his debts? It was surely likely.

  What had Max done, exactly? Photographs of young women were not in themselves incriminating items. They might have been models, actresses, applicants for respectable jobs. Because a mysterious man called Colin had burst into the house, it didn’t follow that Max had been involved in illegal activities. Was I being ridiculous?

  But there was the question of the name — the three names. And now there was the revolver, black and deadly in its dark drawer. And, the more I thought, the more it seemed to me I had been unforgivably stupid.

  Max had never answered a straight question on the origins of his improbable wealth. I’d never asked him one. I couldn’t get Bea’s voice out of my head. Tax evasion? Prostitution? Drugs? White slave traffic? I recalled his fabulous largesse, his evidently limitless funds, his casual teasing whose function was finally always evasion. I recalled the business trips whose purpose and outcome remained cloudy. Well, murky rather than cloudy, one had to say.

  But we had known each other intimately, hadn’t we? We had been transparent to each other, hadn’t we? There was no point in dwelling on any of that. What I had to do was focus on what I had to do.

  It seemed to me that the first thing was to sell Rain. Some little time previously, the thought would have dismayed me, struck a dead chill into the roots of my soul. But I couldn’t bear Rain any longer. That man Colin had invaded with such ease, such neat, irritating panache; and there would be more invaders, I was sure. I could lock them out only for a brief spell: they would find their way in and would torment me. It was up to me to evade them, to make it impossible for them to up-end my life.

  And Max lay outside, under the smooth turf and flowerbeds of Rain’s brand-new back garden, under the rubble of the cool and gleaming pool I had designed for him. No, I didn’t want to stay.

  Well, Max had given me Rain. The title was in my bank: nothing mysterious or evasive about it, thank Christ. It belonged to me outright, and there should be no difficulty in selling it. I would call an agent the next day. Max had invested enough in the house: property was booming and probably the investment would prove to have ripened speedily.

  What next?

  I hadn’t changed my name, of course. If people wanted to find me, it would be Isabel Weaving they would have to find, not Isabel Knight. Nor Isabel Ritter, Templar, whatever. At first this seemed rather a strength, but, as I thought my way through it further, I didn’t think it mattered much. If Max had mixed with the sort of pals who were likely to seek me out and (for instance) gun me down, they presumably had kept tabs on me enough to know my name and my whereabouts.

  Yet why would anyone want to harm me? If they thought Max had absconded with funds; if they thought I knew Max’s whereabouts ... Or, to put a different spin on it, if they thought Max had absconded but that I had access to the funds. Then I might well be a person of considerable interest to them.

  Surely, however, nobody would guess the truth? Nobody would guess what had really happened to Max. Would they? The truth was so unlikely, so extraordinary and implausible, nobody could possibly guess it.

  This was a strength, I thought, not a threat. If it were an o
pportunity of some kind, I couldn’t see how.

  Then I thought of the revolver. My first instinct had been to creep out at dead of night (an evocative phrase, that) and hurl it into the nearest deep-flowing river. Perhaps, however, I should keep it as protection? Yet surely that was laughable: I, who had never fired a gun in my life, to use the thing for safety. I’d be more likely to shoot myself in the foot. Or the neck. And if I didn’t manage to kill myself, I’d surely kill someone else. That would make me a double murderer. On the way to serial status, in fact.

  So. I’d sell Rain. I’d get rid of the gun.

  I was starting to feel mildly better. Until now I’d been like a one-finned fish, swimming in circles and sinking to boot. If I could regain control — or at least the illusion of control — over my life, I might regain something more than control: I might feel that sanity and peace were possible again. For some time, now, they hadn’t looked like accessible options.

  The sooner I acted, the sooner I would be able to disentangle myself from a scenario whose ramifications were becoming alarming.

  I rang three agents the next morning and chose the one I thought the sharpest and least scrupulous. You could see from the glitter in his eyes how much he wanted the property, how far he’d go to get it and to sell it for a top price. He wouldn’t even have to lie. He didn’t know about the back garden and what lay in it.

  ‘I want to move fast,’ I said, and he nodded ecstatically.

  The house was clean already, but I got cleaners in. I got gardeners in, too, and I rented a huge skip and spent two or three days manically tossing out as much as I could.

  I spent five solid days driving around looking at units and houses nearer to Kate and Gavin and eventually found one I liked enough to imagine myself living there. I put a deposit on it and told my agent that I wanted Rain sold within a month. As it turned out he managed it in ten days.

  Then there was the gun to dispose of. It was easy, in fact. I took Borrow for a long walk, one night. It was dark and chilly; I wore a parka. In its deep left pocket was the gun, with a heavy axehead (I’d found it in the garage; I don’t know where it came from), swathed tightly together in an old rag. It knocked against my thigh as I walked.

  Borrow was excited: for some reason he loves walking at night and at first he tended to caper slightly, puppylike, displaying his pleasure in the unexpected treat. It was a long walk, though — nearly two miles, down to the river — and he settled eventually, padding beside me contentedly.

  When we arrived at the bridge, I threw the awful package over. It splashed, but nobody was there to hear it. Cars spurted back and forth; a tram rumbled past. No other pedestrians were around. It was so dark that I couldn’t see down into the water. I turned and headed home, faintly surprised that it had been so easy. A criminal life appeared less demanding than I had always believed.

  Then there was the car. The silver Audi, his pride and joy, which had stayed in the garage since his death. It was the third silver Audi he’d had since I’d known him, his third pride and joy.

  For Max, a new car had been like a new suit — perhaps even a new shirt. He had liked the luxury of new cars but the reliability of what he knew, the comfort of what he was accustomed to. He’d been happy with a silver Audi (well, why wouldn’t he have been?) and that was what he’d continued to buy. I imagine the salesmen at the Audi dealer knew him well.

  I couldn’t throw the car in the river. The registration papers were in the folder in Max’s study. It was Max’s, not mine. I couldn’t sell it. I didn’t want to drive it.

  If Colin came back, if anyone else came, could I give away the car, use it as a bribe? No: that wasn’t a good idea. It was too much: it would make them suspicious. More suspicious. I imagined the scene: Colin sliding into the house again, refusing to go until I told him where Max was. Or Matty. Or Martin. Whoever. I don’t know, I’d say. I don’t know, but here: take his very expensive car. Will that do?

  No. That wouldn’t look good.

  I had keys, of course: each of us had owned a set of keys, although I had my own car and had rarely driven the Audi. I should have got rid of it somehow at the very beginning, I thought. I hadn’t been thinking properly, not to do that. But then, of course, nobody knew that I hadn’t. Nobody had seen inside the garage. The natural thing for Max to do would be to drive away in his car, and I could still make it look as if that’s what had happened.

  So I drove the car out the next Friday evening, when the shops were open late, and headed for somewhere a long way away. I’d decided a big shopping centre would be best. I’d gone through the glove box and removed anything that would provide easy identification. Not that it would matter in the long run, of course; the registration would identify the car and its owner. But I figured the more time I gave myself the better it would be.

  I parked the beautiful silver thing in a multi-storey car park in a shopping centre on the city fringe. I’d never been there before, and I didn’t plan to return. I lowered a back window a tiny bit, placed the key in the glove box, patted the Audi on its sleek and bulbous bonnet and caught a bus back into the city.

  So that was the end of the car, I thought. For the time being, at least.

  These decisions, these actions, gave me a new sense of control, a sense that I had some sort of power over what was happening to my life. Until now I had felt perilously like one of the crude cartoon characters in the computer games of the time — dashing hither and yon, avoiding random assaults from traffic, buckets of water, arrows and boulders. Dominic had a game like that: he was remarkably good at it. With Dominic at the joystick the round-headed man had a genuine chance. I didn’t know how much chance I had: I seemed to live with a permanently breathless feeling that a boulder was about to drop on me and shatter me.

  Part Four

  And the boulder did drop, one day. The sharp-eyed real-estate agent had sold Rain, but I was still living there. I was about to leave: I think the move was scheduled for two or three days distant, and I had started to congratulate myself on evading the buckets of water and the arrows. Colin had never reappeared. Nobody else had descended on me. It seemed I was safe.

  I was drinking black coffee before going to work, glancing around me at the denuded, too-clean kitchen and wondering how I would adapt again to an ordinary, little kitchen — without a long sweep of polished granite bench, without dozens of smooth capacious cupboards, without a vast walk-in pantry — when the knock rattled the front door. A purposeful, deliberate knock, a knock that meant business.

  This time, it was a policeman. I knew he was a policeman because he was in uniform. I thought I would have preferred a gangster.

  He was a middle-aged, thickset man with short spatulate fingers and pale eyes. He didn’t look friendly. He flashed his ID at me. I tried to look nonchalant and slightly surprised. I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was an approximation of a kind of lazy detachment, and unlocked and opened the security door. I always kept it locked, now.

  ‘Frank Pritchard,’ he said. ‘Inspector Frank Pritchard. Mrs Knight? Mrs Isabel Knight?’

  ‘I don’t use that name,’ I said.

  ‘You’re married to Maximilian Knight?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with a so-what-if-I-am? inflection. ‘But my name is Weaving.’

  ‘Could I have ten minutes of your time, Ms Weaving?’

  There wasn’t much point in saying no. And I was impressed by the carefully enunciated ‘Ms’. Most policemen, I felt, wouldn’t have been up to it: they would have messed around with Mrs and Miss and finished up mumbling something that could have been anything.

  I led him into the lounge and saw him glancing around with what struck me as disproportionate interest. I gestured vaguely at the sweep of cream leather and he sat down. Some people felt overpowered by all the leather and perched on the edge of the seats. Inspector Pritchard wasn’t. He sat
firmly foursquare, and gave me his full and undivided attention. I reciprocated.

  ‘Mr Knight’s not in?’ he said.

  ‘Mr Knight hasn’t been in for some time.’

  ‘He no longer lives here, ma’am?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Might I ask on what date he moved from this residence?’

  He really did talk like that. And he really did have a notebook, too, and a pencil.

  ‘I don’t remember the exact date,’ I lied. ‘It must be six or seven months ago.’

  ‘You’re not expecting him back?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Do you have a forwarding address?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘A contact number?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Look, what’s this all about?’ I injected mild irritation into my voice.

  ‘We’re conducting an investigation,’ said Inspector Pritchard, examining the end of his pencil.

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘Into the whereabouts and activities of Mr Knight.’

  ‘I know nothing about either.’

  ‘Forgive me, ma’am, but if you’re married to Mr Knight I think you must have some knowledge of Mr Knight’s activities.’

  ‘I don’t regard myself as married to him any more.’

  ‘Do you mind explaining that to me, ma’am? Are you divorced?’

  ‘Separated.’

  ‘Since what date, may I ask?’

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘You’ll let me be the judge of that, perhaps.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I won’t,’ I said, thinking that perhaps it was time I started to show a bit of temper. He wasn’t being rude or unpleasant, but he had control and he wasn’t about to relinquish it. But if I was too subservient, if I tried to mollify him, wouldn’t that make him think I was hiding something? On the other hand, I didn’t want to get him offside.

  ‘You’d be well advised to cooperate, ma’am.’