by Guy Ware
When I’d given Bernie long enough to get back to his own floor, I stepped out of my office and told Karen I was going out.
“If anyone rings, I’ll be back before two. Or you can get me on the mobile.”
Tomorrow I’d leave for good: no one was going to ring.
Karen said, “Have fun.”
I took the lift to the ground floor. When the doors opened Peter Thomson was standing there, waiting to get in. He had papers in one hand and held the doors open awkwardly and said, “If I don’t see you . . .” If he finished the sentence I didn’t hear it, I was already out of the building and heading east, then south, towards the river. It was still muggy, the air wet with the rain that hadn’t come. I loosened my tie and undid the top button of my shirt. I shrugged off my jacket and flipped it over my shoulder, dangling it from one finger. I looked casual, like any summer office worker, but I was a murderer. I had killed one woman and been an accessory to the murder of a second. Last week I was not a murderer; when I went to Eddie Likker’s funeral service I was not a murderer. Yesterday I was not a murderer. In between – on Monday afternoon – I had been a murderer, but only for a couple of hours; only until Moody said I wasn’t. Yesterday I was an accountant who robbed banks because it was fun. Because, in fifty-six years, nothing I had ever done had been as much fun as robbing banks. That was the simple truth. Have fun, Karen had said. Now I was a killer. I looked into the faces of the people walking towards me in the street; a few of them looked back.
For the first time, I wondered about the woman I’d shot, about who she was, if she had a lover, a husband, children, if her parents were alive. I had no idea what she looked like, no idea how old she was: I’d never seen her. I didn’t know if she was tall or short, thin or fat, old or young, black or white or none or neither, and it didn’t matter, because she was dead and I’d killed her and she didn’t deserve to die. No one deserves to die, but we all die anyway. That was no excuse. I’d killed her.
I’d always known it was a possibility, whatever Moody said. If you take loaded guns into crowded places and wave them around and shout, and everybody gets very tense and nervous, or excited, it’s probably only a matter of time before somebody gets shot. I’d told myself that didn’t mean they’d die, but that was always sophistry. I hadn’t meant to kill anyone, but I hadn’t stopped it happening. Moody, on the other hand . . . Moody had put a gun up to a woman’s head and pulled the trigger.
I called her mobile, left a message. I said it was urgent and told her to call, but I had no idea what I would say when she did.
I was walking too fast. Sweat began to gather in my armpits and the small of my back. I slowed down. I had reached the river again, and it seemed appropriate to lean on the parapet wall and watch the turbid water. The tide was low and below me there was nothing but grey sticky mud. I thought it was just as well I hadn’t come to jump in.
I’d thought about it often enough – about what I’d do if we ever, if I ever, shot anyone. Killed anyone. Because it was always a possibility. I’d never planned to, never meant to, never wanted to kill anybody – but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen.
I’d always thought I’d want to stop. The guilt would crush me; I’d fall down on my knees and vomit until the bile burned holes in the pavement and then I’d call the cops myself. They wouldn’t have had far to come. But it didn’t happen, and now I knew it never would. I thought about the gun, the Beretta, the weight of it in my hand, and I wondered what Moody had done with it. I thought about standing in the foyer of a bank, a new gun in my hand, watching cashiers filling holdalls with money. I thought about not standing in the foyer of a bank, about not telling the customers they had nothing to fear if they would just lie down and do what they were told, about never again walking out with the cash, the loot, and it was then that I felt sick. It was then that I felt crushed and I knew that I’d do it again. It was what I loved, what I wanted, there was nothing better in this life.
My mobile made the doorbell sound it makes when it receives a text. I nearly deleted it unread – I’m fifty-six, I have no children; the only texts I ever get are from the telephone company telling me how many texts I have left to use. But this one was from Moody. She was at a scene-of-crime, probably her last, but would try to get away at lunchtime. She’d meet me in a pub no one drank in. She meant no one on the force. I was pleased to see that, young as she was, she did not resort to abbreviation and the substitution of numerals for syllables. There was no real reason this should please me, but it did. There is a correct way to do things.
She was right about the pub. I’d never heard of it. But her message included a hyperlink that – to my surprise – took me to a map and brought up a photo: big bay windows and gargantuan flower baskets. When I arrived – an hour earlier than anyone would call lunchtime – I found stripped floorboards and burgers made of lamb, not beef. Salads were also available. I bought a pint and a packet of crisps and watched the place fill up. The other customers were mostly young, but looked prematurely middle-aged, the kind who read Art History before being given jobs in galleries or private banks. People for whom ‘weekend’ was a verb. I wondered where they all came from. I wondered how on earth Moody knew this place.
When she turned up I asked her, not because I really wanted to know, but because the alternative was to plunge straight into the bank, the dead woman, the dead women, and the fact that Moody had lied and I needed to know what had really happened, and I didn’t want to know – not yet. She shrugged the question off at first, but then she said a boyfriend used to take her there. Which left me still wondering how – and why – she’d found a boyfriend who would drink in a place like this, or could afford to, so I asked if she’d met him in the line of duty. She actually blushed as she said, “No, school.” There was something about the way she said it that suggested the school concerned was not a local sink; that fees may have been involved. Her face turned roughly the colour of her boots. I thought of the Moody I’d met in the first Losers Group, sprawled in a chair with her knees apart, arguing with the guy from HR; I thought of her saying there was no way she’d go into a bank with a gun that wasn’t loaded, that was just stupid; I thought of her out in the woods the day she’d taught Bernie and me to shoot without killing ourselves or each other, and I thought she was a tourist. A rich girl slumming it. I asked why she’d shot the woman.
“What woman?”
I tried to give her the look Bernie gave me. “The woman in the bank.”
“You mean the woman you shot, sir?” She said ‘sir’ as if it were an insult.
“All right. The woman I shot. I didn’t mean to, but I did. But then you went back there, didn’t you? What did you find, Rachel?”
She started slightly at the sound of her own first name, but didn’t answer.
“Rachel?”
She said, “I told you. I found the woman screaming and bleeding. I saved her life.”
“That isn’t true, though, is it?”
She took a long sip of her drink and said, “I was there. You weren’t.”
“I heard you fire a shot . . .”
“Into the ceiling.”
“And now the investigating officer has told Bernie there were two bodies.”
“Two?”
I couldn’t tell if she was surprised or not. I decided that, in whatever future life we had, I would not play poker with ex-DC Moody.
She said, “Who is the investigating officer?”
I told her and watched all the tension drain out of her at once. She smiled as if a minor misunderstanding had just been cleared up.
She said, “Proctorow’s a pillock. Plus he hates Bernie. I wouldn’t believe a word he says.”
It was possible, I supposed. “But why would he make it up? He didn’t know Bernie had any interest in the case.”
“He was just showing off.”
“But Rachel, if yo
u’re telling the truth, there was nothing for him to show off about.”
The blank face returned. She said, “It’s possible the paramedics made a bollocks of it. I mean, I tied the tourniquet. She should have been all right. I know she should. But maybe, when they took her to hospital . . .”
“Proctorow said ‘bodies’.”
The certainty returned to her voice: “Proctorow’s an idiot.”
It was possible. It was unlikely, but it was not impossible.
Moody said, “Have you seen the news in the last couple of days?”
I didn’t think I had. I couldn’t recall.
She said, “I have. National; local. Pretty much every bulletin. If we’d killed two people – one person – don’t you think it would be all over the TV?”
I pictured the bank again, the interview room where, apart from a fresh coat of paint, I’d seen no sign of a crime – no sign of one murder, let alone two. I tried to remember if there’d been a bullet hole in the ceiling, but it was no use. I hadn’t looked. I remembered Meersow, the Deputy Manager, whose pitted, cadaverous face seemed to float before me, saying nothing at all about murder, but being keen to talk about the second witness, the woman who had apparently followed the old man out of the bank. Kalenkova, he had said. Rada Kalenkova.
I began to tell Moody.
She interrupted me. “You went back to the bank? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
It was after two when I got back and Gerald Pryor was sitting outside my office. Karen had made him a cup of coffee – which meant Angela liked him and her PA had passed the message on. He was sitting with his knees together, the report to the Programme Board he must have cobbled together since I’d rung him the night before balanced on his lap. The report he wanted me to sign off.
I checked with Karen that there had been no messages – there hadn’t – and ushered Gerald in to my office, to the chair where Bernie had sat that morning and cried.
We discussed the weather for a while – we agreed it really was unbearably humid – and Gerald asked what plans I had for when I left. Then he pushed the report across the desk. I picked it up and scanned it. It was fine. It wasn’t my money. It might even have been the right way to spend it. I signed the cover sheet but before I passed it back I said, “So?”
“The investigating detective is DS Proctorow.”
I nodded slowly, as if the name meant nothing to me.
And then Gerald said, “And the name of the customer who withdrew cash during the robbery was . . .” – he paused to do a little drum roll with his hands on the top of my desk – “. . . was . . .” – he pretended to consult his notes – “. . . Edward Likker.”
I found I couldn’t speak.
Gerald said, “Wasn’t there a Likker who did Angela’s job? Before my time. But it could have been him.”
I almost said: Do you think I don’t know Likker? Instead, I said: “It wasn’t Likker.”
Gerald wasn’t much bothered; it wasn’t his business. He said, “That’s what the bank’s data shows. Oh, and he didn’t actually get any cash: request denied, it says. Insufficient funds.”
I said, “Likker’s dead. I went to his funeral.”
Gerald shrugged: it wasn’t his problem. He reached out and picked the report up off the desk.
12
THIS MORNING ALEX isn’t here, still, at home, in his bed as he would normally probably be at this time on a Wednesday morning, or the morning of any working day, and I wonder if D was possibly in fact right and Alex, however unlikely, not to say inappropriate and unprofessional it might seem, has in fact stayed over with Gina, albeit possibly in some company/comfort-offering rather than specifically sexual scenario. It is not possible for me to picture Gina Spence and Alex in any kind of sexual scenario. I know that Alex is not at home in bed because I checked. His bedclothes were rumpled and creased in a way that suggested they had been slept in, but they were cold, suggesting that they had been slept in at some earlier point, and possibly for several days, or rather nights, or weeks, even, without subsequently being pulled tight or straightened or made up in any way. This does not concern me – the frequency with which Alex makes his bed, or launders his bedclothes being in a sense none of my business. Alex is an adult not related to me and for whom I am not in any meaningful way responsible. But the fact of the sheets’ coldness does bother me to some extent.
I ring his mobile from the bathroom, and after six or seven rings it diverts to voicemail, which tells me nothing. I consider leaving a message but am uncertain what to say and so leave a few seconds of silence instead before I manage to hang up. If he is OK and has his phone he will know that it was me who rang in any case.
I dress in cycling gear and put my work clothes in my bag. I eat muesli with Gary and Matthew and ask Matthew if he slept well and what he dreamed about because the alternative is to tell Gary what is going on vis-à-vis work and my suspension and the frankly troubling arrival of Lopez in the situation and the impossibility, given my suspension, of even asking Theo what the hell is going on and if it’s going to be all right. I am not up to telling Gary this. I am aware that not telling Gary carries a risk that the inevitable disappointment of finding himself married to a fuck-up no longer capable financially of supporting him and his – our – almost eight year-old son as I had hitherto done and had in reality, albeit implicitly, committed myself to doing for the foreseeable future but now would not be able to do, and that while it is theoretically possible that Gary himself could return to work, as a librarian, or a baker, perhaps, and therefore that the outcome of the situation, even if the worst came to the worst with the investigation and any subsequent disciplinary action, which the involvement of Lopez suggests has to be at least a serious possibility, would not necessarily be destitution, homelessness and scraping the bottom of skips for food and clothing, I nonetheless have to acknowledge that he – Gary – would be disappointed and concerned, and also that my not having told him for several days, would, in the event that this becomes clear to him, add considerably to that natural disappointment and anxiety a deep and wounding sense of very real betrayal. Gary may feel that my inability to tell him what is happening demonstrates a lack of trust that will itself make it harder for us to weather the storm and to survive as a family unit. I am aware of this risk. And yet I cannot bear to tell Gary what is going on. There will be some way around this, I am sure.
Gary reminds me that Matthew is going away on a school trip and will not be back until the weekend. He does this by talking to Matthew, not me, prompting Matthew to tell his mummy what he will be doing today. Matthew says it’s going to be great. There are zip-wires and tree-walks where you go up twice as high as the house, at least, but I am not to worry because his teacher says that nobody has died there recently. I remember the teacher said the same thing at the meeting for parents about the trip, and some of us laughed. Gary has bought Matthew new wellington boots and new pyjamas; Matthew has announced that he will not be taking Gonzo, the cuddly toy gorilla that has accompanied him every time he has gone to bed since he was three months old. I hug Matthew and tell him that I love him and will miss him but he’s going to have a fantastic time. I tell Gary that I love him too, because I do, and then I get my bike out of the basement and ride away without telling either of them what is happening to me, or where I am going, because even though it looks as if I am going to work, even though it looks exactly as it must look every other day when I go to work at this time on a weekday, I am certainly not going to work and do not in fact know where I am going at all, but I am going anyway, because I love them both.
When I get out onto the road D is already in his car, revving the engine in soft thrusts. It occurs to me that I could visit Gina Spence. It then further occurs to me that if I were to do so at this hour – that is, at 8.30 in the morning – it might, if Alex is in fact there, appear less as if I have come to offer condolences to an old
albeit not particularly close friend and former colleague on the tragic death of her son, and more as if I am checking up on the whereabouts of my closer friend and current colleague, which of course I would be, but which would seem in any circumstances inappropriate and might, in these circumstances – if these are the circumstances – make the situation considerably worse, in that I imagine, if Gina has consoled herself and sought to assuage or at least distract herself from grief through casual not to say destructive and ill-considered sex with Alex, then there is at least a distinct possibility that by this time – that is, by 8.30am of the morning after the fact – she will be feeling guilty and disgusted with herself and regretting whatever it was she did, and not wanting to think too much about it, but will not yet have managed to get rid of Alex, much as she must want to, Alex not being physically capable, in my experience, of leaving anywhere or doing anything much this early in the day. A car passes within centimetres of my right thigh. It becomes necessary to stop cycling and pull my bike into the gutter and rest one foot on the kerb while I consider the quandary: (1) it would be desirable at some level, and certainly well-mannered and appropriate, to visit Gina and offer her my condolences, but I cannot pretend to myself that my prompt and motive for doing so at this particular moment is actually a matter of concern or etiquette rather than a desire to see if Alex is there, and therefore all right, and not in any physical danger; but (2) while my principal concern at this moment is to establish the safety, well-being and, if possible, whereabouts of Alex, finding him at Gina’s house in, as it were, flagrante delicto, would create a situation that would render any condolences I might offer worthless, whilst quite possibly failing to convince Alex that his welfare is, in fact, my primary concern; I reluctantly conclude therefore that (3) I must delay my visit to Gina’s house to find out if Alex is there long enough to ensure that he is not in fact there any more, if he ever was. I will then have to offer sympathy whilst subtly questioning Gina as to whether or not she has seen Alex recently and, if so, whether her “recent” is as recent as last night, not to mention this morning, rather than, say, a year or two ago, which will be skating on very thin ice indeed, offence-wise. Or, (4) it occurs to me now, I could cycle to Gina’s street and wait, preferably inconspicuously, outside her house until Alex comes out, or does not come out. This is the option I select.