Now You See Me
Page 23
I walked all the way to Central,where I posted the letter to Mick and threw away the gloves,then I caught a cab to a few streets away from home.I slept like the dead—like Tom—for the few remaining hours of the night.
*
They took so long to find him.I spent the next few days in a ferment of anxiety,ringing the Glebe motel every now and then and leaving messages for him,to establish my ignorance of his whereabouts.I needed him to be found.I spent hours indulging in terrible fantasies that the motel owners at the Cross had had him carted off to form part of the concrete foundations of a new office block,that his disappearance would always be a loose end that someone might feel the need to tie up one day and that might instead unravel back to me.But,in fact,it was just that the staff there were incurious beyond my expectations.
It was Friday before anyone bothered to investigate the room with the constant Do Not Disturb notice,and the car that hadn’t been moved for nearly a week.By then there was a Missing Persons file open on him,and after that things moved swiftly.
As always,I was lucky.My careful preparations proved unnecessary in the end—no,I shouldn’t belittle myself,they ensured that everything was consistent at the post-mortem.It was all taken on face value,and he was cremated the next week.I was at the funeral.
No-one was particularly surprised when I resigned and decided to get away from everything,though it made Alastair miserable until I told him he could visit me when I was settled.Mick even wanted to give me a farewell party of sorts,but I told him I couldn’t face it.I slipped out of the country without telling anyone what flight I was on.
There is only one obstacle now standing in the way of my perfect safety,and that will soon be removed.Alastair hasn’t yet put any of his spying observations together to form a pattern—perhaps he never will.But he could.He has it in his power to ruin me if he ever realised.There might have been nights when he could testify I was not at the clinic,despite the altered records I left there,nights when perhaps he could trace my movements to Diana’s flat,even to the places where I met the children.There might come a time when his veil of besottedness lifts and he wonders about the coincidence of my friend Paddy in prison and my lover Tom a desperate suicide.
Next month he’s coming to London to stay with me.I have taken a month’s leave from the hospital—a death in the family,wills and property to be sorted out.The French understand these things.They already think my occasional weekends in England have been to visit my sick aunt,now the trips will be explained by the flat I have inherited at her death.
Alastair and I will have a good time for a week or so,I’ll make sure of that;he will be happy and believe we have a future at last—he has already talked of looking for a job in London when his residency is over—but he forfeited his future when I realised he was still watching me.
We will go to Switzerland to ski,I have promised him that,and he will never come back—an unfortunate accident to the young foreign doctor,while drunk.He will not realise that I have registered under a false name at the ski lodge—I will take care that he doesn’t—and no-one who matters can put us together,anyway.
Afterwards I will join Giselle in Paris.She will be solicitous and gentle with me,just returning from my beloved aunt’s funeral.She will soothe me as she knows how,with her particular French sensitivity,and we’ll return to Marseilles together.Then I’ll stop taking the sedatives to give me sleep.Then I will let the demons come again.
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