Dead Man's Gift and Other Stories

by Simon Kernick

  In truth, a part of me had wanted to unload everything. To let them know my suspicions about which one of us had killed Rachel, because – rest assured – it was one of us. To get the whole damned thing off my chest and face the consequences. But of course there was no way I could do that because the consequences meant, at the very least, a spell in prison, followed by public opprobrium over the fact we’d let an innocent man spend close to half his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

  I felt the guilt weighing me down more heavily than ever as I looked round the table at my old friends. Which of them felt the same as me, and which had let the guilt slip away like an unwanted smell? Charlie had no guilt, I could see that. I’d always thought he was a bit of a psychopath, incapable of empathy with others, and nothing that had happened since had made me change my mind. Luke probably felt bad about what had happened. He’d been pretty shocked at the time, as you would be, if you’d just woken up next to a girl with her head bashed to a bloody pulp – although that didn’t mean he wasn’t the one who killed her – but either way, he’d never been the type to dwell on anything too much. Marla was hard. She always had been. Whether it be fickle boyfriends, poor exam results, a death in the family or even murder, she was able to move on. Louise I wasn’t so sure about. She too had been pretty cut up at the time – and, if I recall correctly, had been the one most vocal about calling the police when we’d found the body – but had since done a pretty decent job of putting it behind her, what with her high-powered career, and now her perfect marriage and children.

  ‘This has got to end,’ said Crispin, his voice deep with emotion, and I knew he’d suffered as much as I had.

  ‘And it will end,’ said Charlie, calm and smug as ever. ‘All we have to do is ride the storm and in a month’s time this will all be over. We’ve made it this far, and we’re all going to make it a lot further.’ He lifted his wine glass, a fleshy smile on his face. ‘To us,’ he said. ‘To the survivors.’

  Which was the moment Marla screamed.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ demanded Charlie as Marla jumped to her feet.

  ‘I saw a face at the window,’ she said, pointing, her beautiful face shocked and white. ‘Just now.’

  We were all on our feet now, looking round. Charlie went over to the window. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘I’m not making it up. I definitely saw someone.’

  ‘Did you get a look at their face?’ I asked, my heart hammering in my chest.

  ‘No, he had something covering it, a scarf or something. And he was wearing a hat, so I only saw his eyes. But he was there, I promise.’ She looked how I felt. Spooked.

  Charlie sighed. ‘It must be Pat. He’s just dropped Crispin off, so he’s probably still about. And there’s no one on the island except us.’

  ‘Did he have a scarf and hat on when he dropped you off, Crispin?’ I asked.

  Crispin shrugged. ‘He definitely had a hat. I can’t remember about a scarf.’

  ‘Well, if it is him, he shouldn’t be spying on us like that,’ said Marla. ‘Pull those curtains, Charlie. And if you see him, put a rocket up his arse.’

  ‘We don’t want him listening in to anything, either,’ said Louise. ‘Not when we’re raking up all this crap.’

  ‘He’s going to the mainland now and you won’t see him again until you leave, I promise.’

  Charlie pulled the curtains, blocking out the night, and slowly we all sat back down.

  Six of us round the table. The survivors, Charlie had called us.

  But it turned out that we were anything other than that.

  4

  One of my bad habits is smoking. I ration myself to half a pack a day unless I’m having a particularly bad one, then I give myself a bit of leeway. I hadn’t smoked all evening, mainly, I think, because no one else was, and I didn’t want people to see that, even at forty-two, I hadn’t managed to kick the habit. So I smoked two in a row as I stood at the open window of the bedroom I’d been given by Charlie. It was at the back of the house, facing out across a surprisingly small manicured lawn that ended abruptly in the steep rocky hill that acted as a break against the westerly wind coming off the open sea on the other side of the island.

  I stared out into the night with the lights out. It hadn’t taken me long to calm down after the scare with Marla and the face at the window. I was pretty sure it was Pat, the taciturn caretaker who’d brought me out on the boat earlier. He’d seemed a nice guy – good-looking too, in a weather-beaten, slightly used way – and we’d struck up a half-decent conversation about the outdoor activities in these parts. I’d even attempted a bit of flirting, without much success, and I definitely didn’t see him as the peeping-Tom, lecherous type.

  I still had a vaguely uneasy feeling about everything, though, as I pulled the curtains and locked the door. Firstly, I’m a cynic. I’ve had too much experience of the terrible things people do to each other. Secondly, I didn’t trust Charlie as far as I could throw him. He’d brought the five of us here to this island in the middle of nowhere. Each of us could ruin him just by opening our mouths to the wrong people, and I was reminded of that old Sicilian saying: ‘Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.’

  I told myself to stop being so melodramatic as I slipped between the sheets and switched out the light. Out of habit I went to check my phone for messages, but of course there was no service, and I remembered Charlie telling us earlier that he didn’t have a wireless network in the house, either, as he thought it was better for his whole family to escape technology when they came here.

  I put the phone down and looked at the old-fashioned digital clock on the bedside table: 11.36. Downstairs I could still hear movement. After dinner, we’d retired to the lounge where Charlie had poured brandies and tried once again to lighten the mood.

  It hadn’t worked. First Crispin had gone to bed, having hardly said a word to me (which, I have to admit, grated on me a little); then Marla shortly afterwards; and I’d gone a few minutes after that, partly I suppose to check that Marla wasn’t using her exit as an opportunity to try it on with Crispin (she wasn’t), leaving the other three talking.

  I shut my eyes and tried to imagine how differently my life would have turned out if Rachel Skinner had never been one of our group. If she’d just made a different choice on her university application form. It was a daydream I often indulged in, with various different endings, all of them one hell of a lot better than reality, but tonight I drifted off to sleep before I could really get going.

  I awoke to the complete silence of the countryside. Even the wind had dropped to nothing. I looked at the clock: 1.51. Another broken night’s sleep. The story of my life. I decided to take one of my herbal sleeping tablets, but for that I needed water and I didn’t have any. After a short mental battle between the lazy me and the more proactive me, I slipped out of bed and unlocked the door.

  The main light on the landing was on, and everyone’s door was shut as I tiptoed down the stairs and into the gloom. Stairs creaked underfoot and I could hear the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. The atmosphere felt vaguely spooky as I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, taking a big gulp to get rid of the dry, stale alcohol taste in my mouth, before heading back out into the hallway. As I passed the big oak front door, I saw it was bolted from the inside, which was a comforting thought, and then, just as I was about to climb the staircase, I glanced quickly into the lounge where we’d been drinking the brandies earlier and could just make out through the darkness a figure asleep in the chair. It looked like Louise.

  I thought about leaving her there, but it struck me that it would be good to have a quick chat with her on her own about the situation, if she was up for it. And if she wasn’t, then she’d probably want to be woken anyway rather than sleep in a chair, so I tiptoed into the living room.

  She was lying away from me and I leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder.

  She di
dn’t move.

  I tapped her again. Still no movement. So I tugged at her blouse, turning her towards me.

  And gasped in shock.

  Part Two

  During

  5

  For a good minute I stared, unblinking, at the huge knife jutting out of Louise’s chest, the shock striking me in powerful, intense waves, just as it had that terrible morning when I’d first seen Rachel’s battered corpse. I wanted to cry out, to be sick, to throw open the front door and run away, but I was unable to move. I could feel myself shaking as a panic attack began, and knew that if I didn’t do something soon I’d succumb to it.

  ‘Help!’ I yelled, my voice reverberating round the house as I finally broke free from my torpor. ‘Get down here now! It’s Louise!’

  And then, for the first time, the fear factor kicked in as I realized that the murderer could still be here. What if he’d killed everyone already and was just about to come for me? I swung round fast, in case he was sneaking up on me, already yelling some more, but the room was empty, and it was clear that people were still alive because I could hear the sound of doors opening upstairs and then rapid footfalls on the staircase.

  The first one through the door was Charlie and he immediately switched on the main light, making me squint against the sudden brightness. He was dressed in old silk pyjamas and was pulling on a dressing gown like something Hugh Hefner would wear. He was closely followed by Luke in a T-shirt and boxers.

  For a couple of seconds neither of them seemed to compute what had happened but then, as I stepped out the way and they both caught sight of Louise in the chair, their mouths gaped open in shock.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Charlie as he approached the body. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Luke, moving in behind him.

  I stared down at her too. Louise looked like a waxwork dummy, her eyes half-closed, a blank expression on her face. The knife jutted out of her chest like a stage prop, only the handle and an inch of blade showing, surrounded by a single uneven stain of blood no bigger than the size of a man’s hand. I thought of her two children and it made me want to throw up.

  At that moment there was a commotion in the doorway as Marla came in, dressed in a baggy nightshirt, skimpy white panties and pink socks, somehow managing to look incredibly sexy for someone who’d just leaped out of bed. She put a hand to her mouth and let out a muffled scream. Behind her a sleepy Crispin trailed in, wearing the clothes he’d arrived in. The sleepy expression vanished as soon as he saw what we were all staring at.

  Charlie leaned down and – rather unnecessarily, I thought – felt for a pulse, before shaking his head and retreating.

  The five of us stood there, scattered about the lounge, keeping a distance from our murdered friend, and for several minutes, maybe even longer, no one spoke.

  It was Crispin who finally broke the deafening silence, his voice shaky. ‘It looks like she’s been dead a little while. The blood looks pretty dry and there’s not much of it. I read somewhere that the heart stops pumping blood the moment it stops beating, which means she must have died very quickly.’

  ‘That knife looks like it was plunged straight into her heart,’ said Charlie. ‘By someone who knew what they were doing.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Luke again, seemingly unable to tear his eyes from Louise’s corpse.

  ‘Do you think it was the same guy I saw at the window?’ asked Marla, looking round anxiously. ‘He could still be here.’

  ‘We need to check the house for any signs of forced entry,’ I said, fighting to stay calm. ‘He didn’t come in the front door. It was bolted from the inside.’

  ‘He didn’t come through the windows here, either,’ said Crispin. ‘They’re all locked.’

  ‘All the windows automatically lock when they’re shut,’ said Charlie. ‘There are only two doors in, and I bolted them both after Crispin arrived, so no one got in that way.’ His words had lost all their usual power and he looked pale and drawn. He seemed devastated by what had happened to Louise, but for all I knew, it could have been an act. Charlie was a politician, so he was used to lying for a living.

  He saw me watching him and looked away. ‘We’d better take a look round the ground floor and see how he got in.’

  I wondered who Charlie meant by ‘he’, since he’d made a big deal about the fact that Pat had gone back to the mainland and we were alone on the island, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I followed Charlie as he led us out of the room in a long, fearful line. En route he picked up a bronze sculpture of an African tribesman, which he clutched in front of him like a club, in what I suppose for him passed as an aggressive pose, but which I couldn’t help thinking was unlikely to scare any cold-blooded killer in our midst.

  He found the open window quickly enough. It was in the downstairs toilet and, although it wasn’t the biggest opening in the world, it would have been easy enough to get through. There were streaks of dirt on the toilet seat that looked like they’d come from the sole of a boot.

  When we’d all taken turns to have a look, Charlie shut the window and we retreated to the dining room, well away from Louise’s body.

  ‘I’m getting a nasty sense of déjà vu,’ said Marla as we stood round the table. ‘Seeing Louise like that reminded me of Rachel.’

  ‘We need to call the police,’ I said. ‘I’m assuming you’ve got a landline here.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘I have, but let’s not be hasty about making any calls.’

  ‘What do you mean, don’t be hasty?’ I demanded, trying not to lose my temper. ‘Our friend’s just been murdered in your house. We have no idea who her killer is, or even if he’s still here in the house somewhere.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that? I was just talking to Louise about her kids …’ Charlie’s voice was a hoarse shout. ‘The problem is if we call the police, we risk having to explain what we’re all doing out here. Don’t you think it’ll look extremely suspicious, coming just after Danny Corridge has been released from prison?’

  ‘Right now that seems to be the least of our problems,’ I said. ‘There’s a killer on the loose. We can say we were just here for a reunion. The timing might be iffy, but it’s not proof we did anything wrong. What do you think, Crispin?’

  ‘I think we should call the police,’ said Crispin.

  ‘So do I,’ said Marla. ‘Luke?’

  ‘I don’t know. Charlie’s right. We need to think about this.’

  Marla looked aghast. ‘Our friend’s lying dead with a knife in her heart and you need to think about it?’

  Crispin looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t see who could have killed her. The only other person on this island is Pat. How well do you know him, Charlie? He looked a bit of a strange guy.’

  ‘He’s worked for me for three years. I know him well. I can’t see why he’d suddenly turn into a murderer and kill a woman he’s never met before. And he shouldn’t even be here. He was going back to the mainland.’

  ‘Well, who the hell does that leave?’ said Marla.

  No one said anything for a moment. Then I spoke. ‘One of us,’ I said simply.

  Everyone looked at me and the room seemed to grow colder as we all took that rather grim statement on board.

  ‘Look, someone broke in,’ said Charlie, but he no longer sounded like he believed it.

  ‘That could have been faked easily enough,’ I said, a new authority in my voice. I was scared – God, I was scared – but I was also angry because it was probable that someone in this room was Louise’s killer. ‘Who was the last person to see her alive?’

  ‘Charlie was,’ said Luke. ‘I left the two of them down in the lounge. That was about half-past midnight.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘It’s true. We carried on talking for about another ten minutes or so. I finished my drink before she did and told her I was turning in. She said she’d make her own way to bed, and when I left her, Louise was sitting where you found her.’

  Luk
e looked puzzled. ‘Why would one of us want to kill her?’ he asked, aiming the question at me.

  ‘God knows,’ said Charlie.

  I looked at them both. ‘Well, it wasn’t random, was it? Louise was murdered for a reason and it looks like she was taken completely by surprise, before she could cry out. And from the position she was sitting in, she would have been able to see anyone she didn’t know coming through the door, so there’s no way they could have crept up on her. Which means she would have had time to cry out or at least make a break for it, and she didn’t.’ I paused for breath. ‘So I think she knew her killer.’

  When I’d first started speaking, I don’t think I truly believed that one of us had murdered our old university friend, but now that I was laying everything on the line, it was becoming more and more obvious that someone in this room had done it. I looked at each of them, trying to prise out any signs of guilt, but the faces that stared back at me were full of shock, confusion and, of course, fear.

  ‘And you were the last person to see her alive, Charlie,’ said Marla, glaring at him. ‘You could easily have done it. Louise wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

  Charlie looked exasperated. ‘But why? What would have been the point?’

  ‘Because it’s one less witness to worry about,’ I said.

  ‘You organized this whole weekend, Charlie,’ continued Marla. ‘Almost immediately someone ends up dead and, lo and behold, you were the last person to see her alive.’

  We were all looking at him now and he took a step back.

  ‘If you’re fucking us about, Charlie, and you killed Louise, then you are a dead man,’ said Luke, leaning forward threateningly.

  Charlie cringed away from him. ‘I didn’t do anything, I promise. I invited everyone here to get our stories straight. That’s it. I’m no killer. I’m just a bloody politician.’