“I’m not being funny,” says the woman in a sour voice. Then she pauses, and laughs, a cynical, angry sound. “But… I’ve seen a photo of your wife in one of his jacket pockets… I can’t think why else he would leave me for her.”
I nod, realising suddenly that, if she believes this, she will be no trouble to me. That she will just go away. Sour and bitter but no more bother.
I had expected angry, demanding questions in an ever- louder voice. Why has he left his car over the road? Why has he disappeared? Why hasn’t he spent any money? Used his cards? Vanished without trace? The final, screeched question, “Where is he?” preceding a call to the police.
“This man,” she’d say, “knows something.”
“He has a terrible secret.”
“You need to find out what it is.”
I thought that she would never let up. She would hound me. Follow me. Watch my every move. Until I gave in and confessed to what I had done. That I had killed my wife. Him too. And my son. Such awful crimes and so many others. But she has no idea. No idea at all.
I look sad and smile gently as if I agree with her.
“Do you know where they are? We’ve been putting up posters, offering a reward. We’ve been hoping someone might know where they are so I can find him and speak to him. To sort things out – the money, at least.”
I see Josie watching me, waiting for my reply.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “But if you leave your phone number I will give you a call if my wife gets in touch.”
The woman sighs, exasperated, as if I am expected to sort things out for her.
“It’s on this,” She says, passing me a poster. I look at it. The close-up photo of his stupid face in the middle. ‘Missing’ above. ‘Philip Rennie’ and ‘Reward £500’ and her mobile phone number below it. Like a lost dog.
“I could do with a reward,” I say, trying to sound cheerful, to lighten the mood.
“I don’t want him back. Not this time. But I do want to speak to him to sort everything out. I want a divorce.”
She goes to say something else but her phone makes a jingly-jangly noise.
I look at her face as she studies the phone, holding it further away as if she needs glasses, and then swipes the screen. It is a hard face. And she is older than I had first thought. I do not think she is as nice and gentle as I assumed. I believe the earlier warmth, the hugging, the sniffing, the wiping of eyes and nose, was just part of an act to win me over.
“Hello? Yes… darling, I’m at 56… the bungalow with the… yes, come down.”
She swipes the screen again the other way and looks at me and then Josie for the first time, “My daughter, Amy… the posters were her idea. Just in case,” she said, in a humourless voice “… I wish he had been murdered… or thrown his stupid self under a train.”
We sit there together, quietly, patiently, for what must be two or three minutes. Avoiding eye contact. Smiling vaguely. Waiting for the daughter to arrive. God knows why.
There is the sound of a door opening. We all look up. To smile at this Amy. Instead, the child, Christ, she’d slipped my mind, walks into the room.
She is holding my wife’s red and white scarf in her hand. Serious-faced, she walks over and gives it to Josie.
SATURDAY 29 JULY, 4.26PM
Josie takes the scarf and looks at it and smiles and says, “Oh that’s lovely, Lily, is it for me?” Then she wrinkles her nose and lifts the scarf up and adds, “Oh Lily, it’s really smelly, where did you find it?”
I have stopped breathing.
My heart is beating so fast and so loud everyone must be able to hear it.
I flush red hot.
The old Rennie woman looks at Josie and says, “I can smell it from here.” I’m not sure that she can, but I don’t doubt it stinks of damp and mould and maybe even worse than that. Blood. Decay. The smell of death.
A nightmare of a moment.
I cannot speak.
Do not know what to do.
I hold my breath as Josie folds the scarf neatly and places it by the handbag at her feet. The moment passes, although I know there are more to come. Josie goes to pull the child closer to her but she wriggles free and stands there, her back to me, facing Josie.
“Look at you, Lily,” she says, “you’re all covered in dirt, and your hands. Show me your hands.”
The child puts her hands behind her back, as awkward as ever.
“Show me your hands now, Lily.” Josie speaks in a firmer voice and I fear what the child is going to do. Turn and run back to the shelter, with Josie chasing after her, two, three, four steps behind? Then what will I do?
The child puts her hands out towards Josie.
“Lily, your hands are filthy, what have you been doing? Digging a hole to Australia?” She laughs and adds, “Go to the bathroom straight away and wash your hands and face… and don’t look so serious.”
The child turns, her face solemn, and she glances towards me as she leaves the room. I can see from her expression that she has uncovered my secret. I sit and watch, helpless and unsure what to do, with Josie and this Rennie woman with her mobile phone in front of me and the daughter about to join us.
I am trapped.
It is like being in a nightmare where everything is happening around you. And you cannot do a thing about it.
I cannot move.
I hear the porch door opening, then the front door, which must have been left unlatched by the older Rennie woman, who came in last behind Josie and me. I hear the footsteps of the young Rennie woman passing the child in the hallway and then she is standing in the doorway, a younger version of the hard-faced mother.
The mother stands up and gestures to the daughter, “This is Mr Todd, the husband of the woman Daddy’s gone off with.” She then waves a hand towards Josie and says, “And this is his daughter… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
In that instant, I think Josie is going to introduce herself, correct the ‘daughter’ reference, and give the younger woman her chair before going off to the bathroom to speak to Lily. Instead, she just smiles widely, gives her name, and then points the younger woman to the other armchair. We all sit there facing each other.
“Are you well, Mr Todd?” asks the older Rennie woman, suddenly. “You seem to be sweating rather much.”
They all watch me as I take a handkerchief from my pocket and mop my brow and face.
“I… I’m alright, thank you.” I can hear the stutter in my voice. It sounds strangely strangled. They look at me as if they expect me to say more.
“I… (I try to swallow, I cannot help myself, but my throat is dry)… I am okay.” I cannot add any more as my voice, my attempt to speak sentences, will betray my collapse.
The older Rennie woman speaks to her daughter, almost as if Josie and I are not here, “Daddy and… Mrs Todd… have gone away together… as I said… and Mr Todd has promised to call us when he hears from his wife.”
The younger woman turns to me and I nod.
It is all I can do.
I am almost speechless and I realise how this must look but I cannot seem to do anything else.
“Do you have any information, Mr Todd?” the younger Rennie woman asks. “Where they are, where they’ve gone… do you know what they are doing?”
Josie interrupts my attempted answer, “We know no more than you, I’m afraid. They’ve just run away. Left us all in the dark. Do you know anything?”
The younger Rennie woman answers, a trace of sarcasm in her voice, “We don’t know anything, only what the police tell us. We haven’t even got the car back yet. It’s why we are putting up posters.”
She holds the poster towards Josie and then says, “It comes to something when the only way to find your father is by putting posters on lamp posts… like he’s a lost cat.”
The older Rennie woman laughs, a cynical noise.
Josie smiles, a touch of sympathy on her face.
I try to smile as wel
l, but I am distracted by a sudden noise.
I can hear the kitchen door being opened. I think it must be Lily. I do not think she went to the bathroom. I did not hear that door closing, nor taps running, or the toilet flushing. I think she simply went back out to the air-raid shelter, hurried down the steps and slid in under the door, having already pulled off the rotted, broken pieces.
And now, having dug around, she is coming back into the bungalow. It scares me, the thought of what she will have in her hands this time, and whether it will be something that these Rennie women will recognise as belonging to him. Then what will I do, as the older Rennie woman, her face in shock, taps out 9… 9… 9 on her mobile phone?
I sit here, in as calm and relaxed a pose as I can.
Inside, I think I am about to die. My heart will stop, just give up on me.
The sweat streams constantly down my face and I think my face must be ashen.
Lily comes into the living room and I turn to look at her. Her hands are just as dirty as they were and there are thick marks of mud on her clothes where she has slid into the shelter. She has her right hand outstretched, her fingers clenched into a fist around something. I think it may be a button off Rennie’s jacket, or shirt, or cardigan; my mind has gone blank and I cannot recall what he was wearing.
Lily stands in the middle of the room, as if she knows she has an audience and that they are all watching her. She holds her hand out like a magician who is about to reveal a complete £20 note that she took from an audience member some time earlier and cut into so many pieces.
I want to reach out and snatch whatever it is from her hand. But I cannot move at the crucial moment. I cannot even speak. Nor scream. I think my heart is about to beat one final time and will then stop and I will simply fall, dead, as I hit the carpet, in front of them all.
Lily opens her hand.
I cannot see what it is, something gold and shiny. A button from Rennie’s coat, I think. Or maybe something of Adrian’s? Either way, the game is up.
“Oh Lily,” says Josie and pulls her forward to hug her.
The child drops what she was holding on the carpet and I see what it is. A clean and bright £1 coin. I do not know where she found it; from the floor of the shelter or from someone’s pocket. Hers. His. Adrian’s. I find myself breathing in great gulps of air. Try to steady myself. Appear and act as normal as I can.
“Well,” says the older Rennie woman getting to her feet. “I think someone needs a bath… We must be going… Thank you, Mr Todd… for your time.”
There is an awkward moment as I struggle slowly to my feet, the young woman even reaching out her hand to take my elbow to steady me. I stand facing the two Rennie women and Josie, who seems to be distracted by something Lily is saying to her.
“You really don’t look very well, Mr Todd. You should have a lie down when we have gone and see a doctor if you’re not feeling any better this evening.”
I try to smile, a warm and reassuring, ‘don’t-worry-about-me’ kind of smile, but it comes out as more of a grimace, I think. I can feel the sweat still pouring off me. It is all I can do to act normal. The most I can do is just stand here. After a second or two of further awkwardness, and I note Josie does not look at me, I raise my right arm carefully and gesture them towards the door.
This time, as they say goodbye, there is no theatrical hug or pretence of kindness or emotion. These two hard-faced women simply want to know where he is for financial reasons. They want money, plain and simple. There is no love in what they are doing. We shake hands, the four of us and the older Rennie woman smiles down at the child by way of goodbye.
I follow them to the door, Josie and the child just behind me whispering to each other again and we all stop as we get to the porch. The two Rennie women step outside and then turn and speak to me.
“We’ll put the rest of the posters up,” the younger woman says.
“Down as far as the supermarket,” adds the older woman, finishing the sentence for her.
I nod, smile, go, just go.
“Keep in touch,” says the older woman. “Call us when you hear something. You’ve got our number, on the poster.”
Go, for God’s sake, go now.
“Have we got your number, Mr Todd? So we can call you if we hear first?” the younger woman checks.
I shake my head. Shrug. They have to go. Now.
There is a searching for a pen in the older woman’s handbag. A torn-off corner of a poster. My landline number written in a shaking hand. Is that a one or a seven? A seven. A dash is added through it. Final farewells.
I hope to God I will not see them again.
That they will eventually give up the search.
Accept that he has gone forever.
I stand, smiling, as they move down the path and to the gate, then go right and walk down the hill. Neither of them acknowledges my presence, politely waiting there.
I turn to speak to Josie, to say something about Lily and the scarf and the coin, some kind of explanation, but neither she nor the child is standing behind me any more. The hallway is empty. They have both gone to the air-raid shelter.
Composing myself, I walk down the hallway and move towards the kitchen. I now know what I have to do. What I should have done already. I have to go into the kitchen and get a big, sharp knife from the rack on the side.
And kill Josie.
Then the child.
That is the only way that I will – at last – live happily ever after.
SUNDAY 30 JULY, 2.19AM
I have been lying here all night.
On my back, gazing up at the moonlight.
I think it must be 2 or 3am and, for once, all is quiet.
I can hear traffic from the road at the front of the bungalow but the noise is low and sporadic and I hardly notice it. It does not bother me at all.
The railway line at the back of the bungalow has been silent for hours. I ponder whether, with the heatwave and then such relentless rain, a train has been derailed, blocking the line. If so, the line may remain silent for days.
The neighbours, to both sides, have not made a sound at all. No late-night singing or revelry. They have gone to bed without even a single noise. It makes for a peaceful night. The world is fast asleep. Except for me.
I am in the air-raid shelter.
I am bound and gagged and my feet are roped to a large metal ring in the wall.
The moonlight comes through a crack in the door.
The last thing I remember before waking here is hurrying into the kitchen and seeing Josie standing in the doorway from the garden. I recall her face. Horror. Shock. Disbelief. I knew there could be no reasoning with her. None at all. There was no room for debate. She must have gone straight to the shelter and seen the bodies. Adrian. Her. Him. Then pushed Lily into the garage and come back to confront me, to protect the child. Frantically telling her to stay hidden in the garage; a real-life, live-or-die, game of hide-and-seek.
I moved towards the knife rack. Because of all that had happened, I was not as fast as usual. But my hand was almost upon it.
She stepped forward quickly and raised her hand above her head. I noted a very strange expression on her face; her eyes were full of madness and her teeth were bared, like a wild animal’s.
She was holding a huge spanner from the garage and I saw it coming down towards my head. It all seemed to happen in slow motion.
The next thing I remember was waking up here on my back with a constant pain above my left eye and what felt like dried blood down that side of my face. Something soft, such as a sock, had been pushed into my mouth and black tape she must have found later in the garage was wrapped round and round my head covering my mouth. It took me a few minutes to control my overwhelming sense of panic and urge to scream.
I can only breathe slowly and carefully through my nose.
One of my nostrils makes a slight whistling noise. I worry that my nose may become blocked over time.
And then I w
ill not be able to breathe at all.
The rest of the black tape, and she must have used all of the rolls in the garage, has been wrapped around my body from shoulders to feet. I am encased. I have tried very hard, several times, to flex my muscles against the tape to try to break it or at least loosen it so that I might free a hand, or even a finger or two. I have not succeeded. There is no give at all, no sense of movement. I am trussed up tight.
The front of my trousers is damp.
I have wet myself.
I know that I will soil myself soon.
I have also been tied up with rope, the same rope that used to be a washing line and that I had kept in the garage in case it came in useful one day. It has been cut into three pieces: one loops round and round my torso, another around my legs and the final one attaches my feet to a steel ring in the wall. I do not know what it is nor why it is there but I wish it wasn’t.
I have managed to leverage myself a little to push myself, by my feet, away from the wall to see if the ring will break free or at least loosen a little. But there is no movement at all. All I have been able to do is to roll over, with some effort and several attempts, so that my face is in the moonlight.
The thin shaft of light keeps me sane.
I could not bear to be in total darkness.
Everything around me would scare me to death.
I try not to look at the corpses too often. Her face, sagged and collapsed and decomposing, is towards me and she would not like to be seen like this. She was always very particular about not being seen without her make-up on. Now, she does not even have a proper face.
Her body is obscured by his body, his back to me. I have noticed that he is – was – wearing a hair piece. I had not spotted it before. It has come loose and hangs there in mid-air, half stuck to his scalp. I see coins from his pocket on the floor and am pleased, though that may not be the correct word, that the child came in with one of those rather than the wig.
Adrian’s body is sprawled on top of them as if in a playground game of bundle. He looks almost normal as if he could actually still be alive. In truth, other than her ghastly, rotting face, they are no more than a mass of torsos, arms and legs at awkward angles.
Mr Todd's Reckoning Page 24