by Ruth Rendell
‘I’m not asking you to let me live in your house,’ said Adam. ‘I haven’t asked for anything.’ He refilled Carl’s glass. ‘I don’t even want wine from you.’
This made Carl wince. The man was so calm. So quietly condemning. ‘What’s the point of all this then?’
‘I just wanted you to know that I know,’ Adam said. He leaned forward, his voice still reasonable, soothing even. ‘What I’d really like is for you to go to the police and confess what you did. You’d not have any worries then. It would all be over. You’d go to prison, but confessing would shorten your sentence.’
For a moment Carl felt an immense burden lift from his shoulders as he considered a life free from anxiety and fear. But then reality came crashing back. ‘Why should I?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a peaceful life now. I’ve enough to live on, everything’s worked out for me. Why the hell should I confess?’
‘Because I know,’ Adam said. ‘And you know that I know. Look, I’m not interested in retribution or punishment. I promise you I will never tell a soul, and I keep my promises. But why would you believe me? In fact, I can see right now by the look on your face that you don’t.’
He got up. ‘I’ll give your kind regards to Lizzie, shall I? She says you were at school together, but I’m sure you remembered that when she came round with Dermot’s things.’ He turned and looked at Carl. ‘I can see you’re suffering, but there is a way to end this, and you know what that is.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
OF COURSE HE didn’t believe what Adam Yates had said. You don’t believe someone who makes a promise and then says he doesn’t break them. Anyone can say that. After sleeping well for weeks, Carl lay awake that night. He thought of everything Adam had said, repeated it over and over, considered the man’s promise and dismissed it. He would tell. The police would put it all together. It was only a matter of time.
But the weeks went by, and then months. Andrew Page continued to pay the rent on the last day of each month. Mr Kaleejah continued to take his dog out three or four times a day, and Carl’s neighbours said good morning and hi and how are you when they encountered him.
One fine day Nicola came round. By that time he was drinking again, and as heavily as he had done in the days after Sybil had returned to her parents. Nicola refused a drink but asked if she could make herself a cup of tea. She made the tea and produced the white chocolate biscuits he had always liked but hadn’t eaten since she had left him. She told him she had met someone else, was living with him. They were getting married soon. Nothing of course was said about Dermot or Sybil or Stacey, and nothing about money. Nicola left after half an hour.
Carl watched her from the window, keeping his eyes on her until she had turned out of the mews into Sutherland Avenue. All the time she was with him, he had been drinking, no longer bothering to hide his habit from visitors and friends. Of all of them, only his mother reproached him for drinking so much. Nicola had said nothing. From her face, he thought he could see that she no longer cared.
Now that she was gone, he opened his third bottle of wine of the day and poured himself a large glass. The stronger kinds of alcohol, the whisky and gin and vodka, sent him to sleep quite quickly, but wine only made him feel rather dazed; as if nothing mattered very much. It took away for a time the damning sentences that kept repeating in his head: You murdered Dermot, you killed him, and Adam Yates’s There is a way to end this, and you know what that is. The words combined to make a kind of mantra.
Nearly a year had passed since Dermot’s death, six months since Adam Yates had come to tell him what he knew. He kept up his habit of walking, and now roamed further and over larger areas, covering Regent’s Park and exploring Primrose Hill. Breakfast started with a large glass of wine, a tumbler not a wine glass, which was refilled, so that when he began on his walk, he was dizzy with drink and had to sit down on a roadside seat, sometimes to fall asleep. He had ceased to write anything. The few attempts he had made to start something new he gave up after a paragraph or two. The rent continued to come in, though, and even after he had settled his utilities bills and the council tax and his small amount of income tax, the money mounted up.
Still, he bought the cheapest wine because there was no point in buying the expensive stuff. He drank it without tasting it, swallowing it fast to bring a few hours’ oblivion, and grew even thinner. His mother, whom he occasionally saw because, despairing of his visiting her, she came to visit him, told him that he looked more like his father than ever. For the first time in months he looked in the mirror, and saw a skeletal man with staring eyes and protruding bones.
Increasingly now his thoughts were centred not on Dermot’s murder but on Adam Yates’s knowledge of it. Few people visited him, and those who did were postmen or someone come to read a meter. He fancied that they stared at the scanty beard he had grown, and his emaciated body.
For a long time after Adam’s visit, Carl was sure that every ring on the doorbell must be the police. Of course Adam would have reported him, he told himself. Of course he would; his promise meant nothing.
He spent whole days thinking of nothing but Adam, about what he’d said, and the soothing tone of his voice when he’d told him that his worries could soon be over. He thought too of what must happen next, of the step that must be taken to restore the peace of mind he’d had before he crashed the green goose down on Dermot’s head. He had dreams about that earlier time, and although he knew he had been in a perpetual state of anxiety and bitter regret, he looked back on it now as calm and carefree.
Adam Yates had been right: if he wanted that peaceful life back again, there was only one way to do it.
‘He’s a very serious young man,’ said Dot Milsom. ‘He acts more like a man twice his age.’
‘Who does?’ Tom asked.
‘Lizzie’s young man, Adam.’
‘He’s a cut above any boyfriend she’s ever had.’ Tom looked up from his newspaper. ‘And very clever. Quite nice too, don’t you think? At least he’s got some manners.’
Tom, who had given up his joyriding on buses – as Dot called it – in favour of a modified form of motorbike tracking on a ploughed field, turned to the crime pages and gave a low whistle.
‘What is it, Tom?’
‘Wasn’t Lizzie at school with a boy called Carl Martin?’
Dot nodded. ‘What’s he done?’
‘He appears to have confessed to murder,’ Tom said. ‘Remember that chap who was hit over the head in Jerome Crescent? Well, that was Carl. Who did it, I mean. It says here that he walked into a police station and confessed. Imagine doing that!’
‘I’d be too scared,’ said Dot.
Tom shook his head, more in sorrow than anger. ‘It wouldn’t be as scary as not confessing,’ he said. ‘It might even be a comfort. Think what it must have been like to have that on his conscience.’
He put his newspaper down and leaned back in his chair. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘now it’s all over.’
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Epub ISBN: 9781473535244
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Published by Hutchinson 2015
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Copyright © Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd 2015
Ruth Rendell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hutchinson
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