‘Here you are, sir.’ The notes were counted out in front of him. ‘And if you would be so good as to sign … Do you have identification?’
‘Yes, I …’ Reading the receipt, Lambert casually reached into his inside pocket. ‘Oh. My wallet must be in my briefcase in the car and I had to park down at the Hove end. Will these do?’
Two window envelopes, one from American Express, the other from the Inland Revenue, now addressed to George K. Buchanan, Priest’s Cottage, Telscombe, East Sussex, done on his word processor; the dates on the postmarks were slightly smudged. Primitive forgery, but easier than a driving licence and it had worked without any problems on previous occasions … the dealer, like the ones before him, was not particular.
‘Thank you, Mr Buchanan … and the date, please. Excellent. Do bring your wife when you’re next in Brighton. Good morning.’
*
After the first sale — four Doulton figurines to a shop in Towcester — Lambert had felt an urge to leave immediately, as though made visible by suspicion, but now it was becoming routine; thousands of antiques changed hands every day without awkward questions being asked. Confident of a fat profit, the dealer would be indifferent to the fact that he might have been lied to. When Lambert never returned, he’d draw conclusions, but by that time the vase would have been sold again. A foreign collector would be ideal, taking it out of England, where even now there was the danger of it triggering someone’s memory.
He walked to the Old Ship and into the bar, smoothing down what was left of his hair with the flat of his hand as he removed the cap. Some genetic flaw had struck shortly after he left Cambridge, blond waves ebbing in a matter of months to leave a pattern like haphazard streams on a pink estuary. It made him look, and feel, ten years older, but he’d rejected the vanity of a hairpiece. He ordered a double Scotch and added the day’s sale to the total filed in his electronic notebook. Just under fifteen thousand; more than twice as much again needed to reach his target, but he’d often had to sell for less than he would have liked … What next from the lock-up on the North Circular Road? Ironically, the most valuable thing was the one he daren’t dispose of. Turning up at Sotheby’s with some story about stumbling across what he thought might be an unknown Constable landscape in a junk shop meant the risk of publicity and the wrong person recognizing it. Perhaps he’d have to take it with him, a souvenir. So … the Chinese figures? The Toledo sword? Another piece of Georgian silver? The danger of exposure increased as he moved to the rarer items, but time was running out and he wanted to complete his escape tunnel as quickly as possible. Perhaps he should make the final preparations then raise as much as he could in no more than a few days, driving to different towns, accepting whatever he was offered. The passport was the problem; he wanted a British one, which would be accepted unquestioningly when carried by a self-confident white Englishman abroad, but he didn’t know who to approach. Plenty of people managed it, though; perhaps the manager of the discreet bank that asked few questions about personal offshore accounts could help.
He went through to the restaurant and was shown to a table overlooking the promenade. He gave the waitress casual eye signals simply for his own amusement as he handed back the menu, then gazed out of the window, pricked by renewed resentment. Tannerslade had represented the promise of a private income to be spent on indulgence, not necessity.
A man walked past the window outside, laughing and holding hands with a vibrant brunette, taut, honey-tanned skin, her navel exposed between tight, ragged-edged denim shorts, her breasts forced up and out by her halter top. From the surprisingly wide chasm that had opened up between his early and late twenties, Lambert crudely imagined … Was he in dirty old man country already?
He scowled and crushed out his Hamlet as his meal arrived, remembering meeting Jowett again. He still had the stigma of a loser, but was obviously making it: good job, flat in the Barbican, four hundred pound Timothy Everest suit, sodding hair still intact … and no petulant, whining child and a wife threatening to bleed him white. Jowett had given up his share of the money, but he’d been a weak sister, blubbering at the time, paranoid afterwards; now Lambert felt acid envy of his freedom.
His own upward curve from Cambridge had abruptly gone into free fall. Salary initially boosted by bonuses and only himself to spend it on, the first couple of years had meant skiing trips, whitewater rafting, weekends with a girl in Paris or some hotel that had caught their attention in a glossy brochure. Lotus-eating days made somehow more scented by the knowledge that he was a killer — not a psychopathic moron, but intelligent, empowered by a secret that only one other person in the world knew and no one else could possibly imagine.
Victoria had been another plump cherry, drop dead gorgeous, incredible in bed — and in the car, on the beach at La Londe, once in her parents’ garden. Lambert had never suspected that she was a honey badger — the female of the species went straight for the balls — but he later became convinced she had lied about it being safe to make love that night. She’d become hysterical when he’d suggested an abortion, and later he recognized that a designer child was the latest toy for a spoilt bitch. Darling Daddy had indulged her again, providing the deposit for Gloucester Hill, the trendy north London address his little girl had always wanted, and making it obliquely clear that if Lambert was going to be difficult he had a great many friends in the City, influential people who did each other favours … like stamping out promising careers. So Lambert had accepted. Marriage had been mentally pencilled in, if not for several years; and at least Victoria met the qualifications.
Then the trap had closed; Victoria obsessed with her brittle social life, neurotic over her looks — virtually manic at the appearance of a single grey hair — paraded Becky like an expensive, pampered doll and was resentful of any complaint about her spending. ‘Don’t be cheap, darling, if I wear the damned thing a third time everyone will snigger.’ And sex — from somewhere out along the seafront, a sensual figure skipped provocatively back into his mind — had reached the stage where it was no longer given, but granted, ending with a ‘Better now?’ smirk of power. He’d suspected a lover, but a private detective had found no conclusive evidence; in any event, he sometimes thought that Victoria now regarded sex as another bodily function which she required fulfilling less frequently than her husband. A new dress from Dolce & Gabbano or Lacroix was a much bigger turn on. Not that he bought them for her — they came out of Daddy’s allowance, while Lambert’s salary paid the mortgage and the bills, soon to be bloated by Becky’s private school. He resented having missed the frenzied City of the eighties that others told him about, juggling millions on the exchanges, gambling against currency movements, sneering at quarter million pound bonuses. He told himself he’d have been good at that. Now thirty-six thousand a year was poverty country, another weapon for his wife to lash him with.
The morning after the night he’d hit her in fury, she’d gone straight to her lawyer and divorce had been on the table for several months, but her terms were crippling. He could remain in the house, keeping strictly to his own part of it except for playing token attention to Becky, until the solicitors had agreed the money. Every time he tried to force her to retreat there’d been a phone call from her father, warning that he was quite prepared to make Lambert’s position worse. So he had played for time, endlessly quibbling about payments as Tannerslade offered the secret escape route, spinning dreams of the day she’d return home and discover the note he constantly reworded in his imagination, three years of growing hatred spat out as he disappeared. There were still places in the world where you could vanish, and the police wouldn’t be interested in trying to find another husband who’d done no more than walk out on his marriage. How the hell had he let a woman sink her claws so deeply into him … Abruptly, he beckoned the waitress.
‘This tastes like shit.’
‘Sir?’
‘This steak. What is it? Dog meat?’
‘I’m sorry, sir … If you’d
care to order something else?’
‘No, I’m not hungry any more. Forget it. Here.’ He took a handful of coins from his pocket and dropped them on the table. ‘Send your chef on a cookery course.’
He felt better as he walked out, eyes daring a hesitant young duty manager to stop him. Don’t piss with me, little boy, I’m way out of your league. He crossed the road on to the seafront, gazing at the pier as he breathed in warm wind. He decided to return to town for a decent meal at the wine bar in the Minories; some of the crowd from the office would almost certainly be there … including Kate? Body from heaven and morals from hell. He seemed to be the only man she hadn’t come on to — but perhaps she was buyable with a few drinks and the sort of chat-up lines he’d once been good at. He could afford to spend a couple of hundred on personal pleasure.
*
It was past eleven when he returned home, dejectedly drunk. Kate had been there, but letting some whizz kid from accounts paw her before they had left together, and the evening had become an all-male session of industry gossip, sport, crude jokes and stories of unlikely sexual conquests. Victoria’s bedroom light was on, but downstairs was in darkness, and he had to fumble for the hall switch. The morning’s post was on the table: ‘Congratulations. Our computer has selected Mr Giles Lambert of 17 Gloucester Hill, NW3 to be entered for’ … ‘Twenty pounds could save the life of this little girl in the Sudan’ … Postcard of tropical palm trees from Greg and Anna; amazing they’d found time to write it … Double glazing again … Credit card statement … How the hell could one woman spend so much in a month? … Another letter from Mother; usual moans about being lonely …
‘You’ve decided to come home then?’ Victoria appeared at the top of the stairs, wiping astringent cream off her face. The nightly operation was part of her obsession that her breasts might have fallen a millimetre or her neck had begun to show fatal hints of shrivelling. At thirty-three, she had already started lying about her age. ‘You didn’t say you’d be late.’
‘I got held up.’
‘You look as though you need holding up now. Don’t wake Rebecca when you go to bed.’
She walked down the landing and he heard her door close. Pain throbbed in his head as he climbed the stairs and went into the bathroom. Sighing with satisfaction he urinated noisily, then looked down. The couple he’d seen on the Brighton seafront came back. What were they doing now? Within ten seconds he’d imagined a great deal, the thought of someone else’s enjoyment more vivid than any of his own past experiences. Fantasy sex was always better. He examined his face in the cupboard mirror above the lavatory; defeat stared back, and he hated it. His depressed and muddled brain told him to do something. Now.
Victoria glanced up from reading the Tatler as he walked into her room, then laughed sarcastically.
‘Oh my God, it’s the Hampstead flasher! Put it away before you frighten the horses.’ She returned her attention to the magazine.
‘I’m sleeping in here tonight.’ He was pulling in his naked stomach.
‘No, you’re not.’ She flicked over a page without looking at him again. ‘Just piss off and sober up.’ Her eyes flashed with anger as he walked towards her. ‘Giles! If you don’t get the hell out of this room this instant …’
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘You’re not going to scream; you’ll wake Becky.’ He lifted the duvet and began to climb in beside her.
‘How much have you been bloody drinking … Get off!’ She tried to get out her side, but he grabbed hold of her hair. ‘Ouch! Let go you pig!’
‘Oink, oink.’ He giggled as he forced her towards him, free hand fumbling as she stiffened with revulsion. He knew she wouldn’t physically fight; forced sex was better than risking him damaging her precious looks.
‘It’s still rape when you’re married, you know.’
‘Then call the police.’ He pushed her on to her back and pinned her down with his weight, trying to kiss her as she squirmed her head away. ‘Lie still! You used to like it when I got rough.’
‘You’re sick!’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Sick of you. But this will make it better.’
She pulled a face of disgust as he entered her, then her body went limp as he began. ‘Is it in?’ she asked, staring at him with contempt. ‘I can hardly feel it.’
‘Fuck off,’ he grunted.
She started to examine her nails. ‘Teddy was much bigger than you. And Simon. And … well, just about everybody. Georgina had hysterics when I told her how many times I had to fake it with you. Eat your heart out, Meg Ryan … Oops! There was something. Not much, but definitely something. Get it over with before I fall asleep.’
‘Shut up!’
‘Oh, please, darling. Didn’t we once say we’d be honest with each other, express our innermost feelings … not that I’m having any at the moment. Are you sure it’s in the right place? I really can’t … Oh. Is that it?’ She smiled triumphantly as he rolled off her, panting. ‘Sorry, I missed my lines.’ She began a mocking monotone chant. ‘Oh my God, oh my God. Fill me up. Give it to me. Oh, oh, oh. Yes, yes, yes. That was incredible.’
She pushed him savagely and he half fell off the bed. ‘Now get out of here before I kick you in the balls! I mean it, Giles.’
A second shove toppled him on to the floor. As he went down he caught his ear against the bedside table, sending a swilling wave of nausea from his stomach to his throat. He suddenly felt very hot as he gurgled and gulped, then looked at her, his focus blurred with tears, before making a clumsy, furious lunge. He’d forgotten how hard she could slap, her long nails adding thin scratches before she leapt away and left him sprawled in sobbing humiliation.
‘I hope you enjoyed it, sweetie,’ she snapped. ‘Because that pitiful fuck’s going to cost. You won’t believe how much.’
She walked out and he heard her cross the landing to Becky’s room, locking it behind her; a spare bed had been put in there in case she was ever unwell.
He scrabbled for tissues in the box on the table, wiping eyes and nose before dabbing them against the scratches, then flopped back, exhausted. Six years ago, he’d murdered five human beings; now one woman could drive him to desperation. He cringed with self-disgust as he tried to comprehend the stupidity of what she had made him do. Had it been the uncontrollable urge of sexual frustration or just hatred of her because that was preferable to detesting himself? All he’d achieved was to give her more weapons to fight him with.
Chapter Five
Isolated and defenceless, Tannerslade Farm appeared ahead and to Jowett’s right, exactly how he remembered seeing it the afternoon they had first driven past and taken the photographs. When it had been some sort of daring game, like students planning an outrageous Rag stunt. The fields bore the same crops, the slender poplars still protected the back of the house and the hawthorn sheltered one side of the track that led off the road. Having psyched himself up to walk the half-mile straight that led away from Finch, he knew he would not have the courage to go to the actual house that day. He had to approach it in hesitant stages, each one taking him closer. He forced himself to look at it for as long as he could, overcome with the conviction that someone unseen was watching him, accusing and vengeful, knowing that this was no stranger on a casual afternoon stroll. Five tense paces took him beyond the farm entrance — the gate was open, as it had been before, a trusting invitation to visitors — and he was unable to look back, as though he had nerved himself to cross a fragile bridge over fire.
A public footpath sign stood by a stile on the other side of the road and he paused to check his map, seeking another way back; the path led to the Pegman meadow and the western arm of the village crossroads. He walked through the channel alongside ripening wheat, stalks flattened near where a discarded contraceptive packet lay among poppies and wild garlic. It was humid and still, almost utterly quiet, then he half ducked and whirled in alarm as a black fighter jet leapt out of the empty shining sky above him, its engines roaring like clamouri
ng thunder in deep caves, speed ripping through hovering calm leaving a tremor of savage assault. As he watched, the plane tilted its wings, rapid and arrogant. The bellow grew distant until it was no louder than the fierce drone of an insect, then quietness seeped back.
He had adopted a form of words that he repeated softly to himself as he walked on, four sentences into which he distilled his guilt. I am sorry they are dead. If there is a heaven, may they be in it. I am ashamed I cannot confess. I wish for a way to forgive myself. Sometimes he told himself it was meaningless, a robotic repetition, beads of a private rosary trickling through mental fingers, a negotiated agreement for salvation. But without it he could not accommodate the magnitude of what he had done. He sought comfort from the fact that he had been able to approach Tannerslade Farm again, persuading himself that next time it would be easier because somehow he had learnt something.
The wheatfield ended and he went through a gate into Pegman meadow, startling grazing rabbits that rippled into the shadowed protection of a hedgerow. The gate back on to the road was opposite him and he dropped into the bottom of the warmed bowl of captured sun, scented and bee-humming, for a few moments unable to see anything but the rising slope all around him, before starting to climb out. His mind had started to drift, the peace of the countryside betraying him into forgetting why he was there … Forcing himself back, he returned to his mantra. I am sorry they are dead. If there is a heaven … He reached the gate and fumbled with the sprung metal bar, then secured it again before stepping out on the road and turning back towards Finch. Tar softened by the heat, the surface felt adhesive and he stepped on to the verge, unkempt couch and cocksfoot grass brushing his legs. I wish for …
‘Good afternoon!’ For a second he was startled; there seemed to be no one visible on the deserted road. Then he saw her, kneeling on a padded cushion by the railings.
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