‘It’s solid gold,’ I lied. ‘Twenty-four carat. Cost over fifty pounds when I bought it. Must be worth a lot more now – at least a hundred probably.’
The ring was half-buried in the sand at the bottom of the tank, just beside a cracked china mermaid. Wilson licked his lips.
‘Who are you trying to kid?’ he said. He started to roll up his sleeve and I turned my head away; I could not look him in the eye. My hands were starting to shake and I thought he must see them and suspect something. Instead, he was only thinking about the ring. ‘I guarantee that’s not worth what you say you paid for it.’ He carefully inserted his arm into the tank up to the elbow.
I had realized when killing my wife that hesitation could be dangerous and this time I did not hold back. My hand shot up and I knocked the fire off the shelf and towards the tank. At the same instant I threw myself sideways. There was a blinding flash that seemed to fill the whole room and a piercing shriek of pain that dominated every other sound. The lights went off and for a terrifying second I thought that I myself was dead. Wilson’s scream seemed to be going on and on through my head without stopping and I could still see the jagged white flame even with my eyes tightly closed.
Eventually the sound died away as if down a long tunnel and I became aware of the smell of burning. It was not a smell I had experienced before and I was forced to accept that this strange, singed odour must be given off by Wilson’s body. I sat on the floor with my back against the damp wall and hoped that he was dead. A sudden sound of movement made my heart leap towards my mouth. Then I realized that it was the fish slithering around on the floor; another noise turned out to be the bars of the electric fire in the grate contracting as they cooled. I felt in my pocket and brought out my torch: I was frightened in the dark yet I had no great desire to see what the light revealed.
Wilson lay with his hand still inside the fallen tank and the fire resting against his face. His eyes were open and staring with a terrible intensity and his chest and head were spattered with wet sand. The fish lay gulping, their eyes already dead; occasionally one would skip in the air before lying still again. I felt sorry for them but there was nothing I could do.
The object I noticed with most repugnance was the tin that had held the worms. It was now lying on its side amongst the debris. I crawled forward on my hands and knees and gingerly extended a hand to feel Wilson’s chest; if there was a heartbeat I could not find it. I tried one of the wrists with the same result. Now what I needed was to recover my ring. I shone the torch amongst the welter of cheap ornaments still piled up in the corner of the tank but it did not seem to be there. I began to panic and found a cheap biro with which I began to poke around in the mess of weed and bric-a-brac. There was no sign of the ring. I looked among the dying fish and searched diligently all over the floor where I found the now broken mermaid. Wilson had fallen on a strip of carpet and there was no possibility that the ring had slipped beneath the floorboards. With mounting exasperation I began to believe that it must be beneath his body; whatever happened I would have to move it to make sure and that would risk rousing suspicions when the police came to investigate. I nearly cursed out loud. The position of the corpse was perfect at the moment, giving a clear indication of what must have happened: a precariously positioned fire had been dislodged into the aquarium by a man probably made clumsy by drink. A tragic accident but not unique.
I lowered myself nearer to the floor and shone my torch into every nook and cranny. As I did so, something glinted at me from the worm tin. I quickly emptied it in my hand and received half a dozen worms and my ring. Dropping the can I snatched the ring and tried to shake the worms from my hand; two of them clung as if bound by an adhesive and I was forced to pull them away from my skin and scrape them off against one of the shelves. I was now thoroughly unnerved and shaking and sobbing – to have killed a man was ghastly enough without this. I was half way to the door before I remembered the tin that I had dropped on the floor; it would have my fingerprints on it. I returned and wiped it scrupulously with a handkerchief. I thought that I had struck the electric fire with the side of my hand but I took no chances and wiped that also. All the time I was trying to keep calm and think of everything that needed to be done, every trace that had to be covered. I had only taken my gloves off to remove my ring so there was nothing that I had touched bare-handed save the tin and, possibly, the fire. I pulled on my gloves and stepped over the corpse. Only one fish was still moving, its mouth opening and shutting rhythmically.
I approached the front door and paused. It was clearly Wilson’s habit to lock himself in securely at night. Despite my anxiety to get away from the place, I went back down the corridor and into the room on the left. This led to a low scullery with a back door and beside it a chipped, old-fashioned sink with an iron-framed casement window behind. There were dirty dishes in the sink and a row of grime-smeared washing products along the sill, some of them so old that I hardly recognized the design of the packets. The window opened outwards with a catch that swung sideways into a slit in the jamb. The back door was locked with the key on the inside.
I returned to the front door and slid home the bolt and connected the chain. Now it was completely locked as it had been when I arrived at the cottage. I went back to the scullery and moved some of the plates in the sink so that I could use it as a stepping stone to the window. I also carefully set aside the containers on the sill, noticing where each had been. Now I opened the window and shone my torch down till I found a brick-edged drain opening that would save me from leaving a tell-tale footprint on the still wet ground. I climbed into the sink and then, carefully, over the sill and down onto the drain surround. It was a feat I would have found a good deal easier a few years back when my body was more supple, but expediency is a great motivator and I was soon outside with my breathing hardly disturbed. I turned on a tap to rinse my footprints away and replaced the greasy plates in the sink. The washing products I rearranged one by one so they were standing in the same circles of dust-free sill as before. A drop of water had materialized on one cap and I carefully dabbed it away with my handkerchief.
Now came the difficult part. I folded back the securing rod against the frame and held it above the level of the holding spike as I gently closed the window. When my fingers were becoming pinched I manoeuvred the rod onto the spike and turned my attention to the swinging catch half way up the frame. This I pushed back until it pressed against the jamb when the window was almost closed. I tapped gently and the catch scraped back against the wood until it swung into its slot. The securing rod had not slotted onto the spike but this would have been almost too much to hope for. I tried to pull at the window but it would not budge; to all intents and purposes the house was locked from the inside. The thought gave me a fresh start of alarm as I imagined the consequences should I have left something incriminating behind. The fears receded when I thought calmly for a few moments and assured myself that this was not the case. I stepped carefully onto the damp earth and away into the night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was several days before the body was discovered. I remained in a considerable state of suspense but comforted myself with the thought ‘the longer the better’. If there were any queries about the cause of death then the more advanced the state of decomposition the more difficult it would be for the true facts to be ascertained.
Eventually the news was brought to me by Mrs Valentine who had heard it from Betty Mullins and rung the police to confirm that it was true. Apparently the police had gone to Wilson’s cottage after he had not been seen at any of his usual haunts and had failed to keep an appointment with a wild-fowling acquaintance. They had received no answer to repeated banging on doors and windows and had eventually forced their way in via the kitchen window – this detail afforded me considerable comfort, as their entry would almost certainly have obliterated any clues that I had left when leaving. Wilson’s body had been found sprawled out in the sitting room, where it appeared that he
had electrocuted himself when doing something to his fish tank. An added touch of unpleasantness was contributed by the fact that a cache of maggot-infested game was found underneath the floorboards. There were also some details of the state of his body that Mrs Valentine shuddered to reveal and which I did not press for.
I expressed what I hoped was the right amount of horror and sympathy and said that if there was any help I could give I would gladly give it. This offer, of course, I made in the full knowledge that it would not be accepted. Mrs Valentine said that I was most kind and asked if I could dispense with Mrs Mullins’s services for the day as she was most distressed by the news and wanted to go home. I said that I quite understood.
Subsequently there was an inquest and a verdict of ‘accidental death’ was recorded. I went to the funeral – I thought it was the least I could do. I remember standing at the back of the almost empty church and watching the sunlight shine through the stained glass windows behind the altar. Summer was coming in and I had already enjoyed many fine walks across the marshes and along the seashore. It was certainly true that the weather had a great influence on one’s moods, here particularly.
I still kept up my precautions against the worms – the scouring crystals and the disinfectant – but it was a long time since I had seen one in the house. I was beginning to think that they were a seasonal thing or perhaps a one-off manifestation that would never happen again. I even went down to the boathouse by myself without qualm, although I chose not to do so after dark. There were certain memories that I knew would never go away. My eyes drifted sideways as the vicar’s voice droned on and lighted on the carved relief of the worms of hell on the side of the tomb. How cleverly they were done – one could almost swear that there was a tremor of movement in the stone. Strange that this particular form of imagery should be employed here. I had never seen it used anywhere else.
My eyes moved on down the aisle to the cheap coffin that contained the remains of Wilson – William Thomas Wilson as I now knew him to have been christened. With his death and the disappearance of the worms I felt that a great weight was lifted from my shoulders. Now I was free from fear and I could begin to enjoy my life at Blanely.
How wrong I was.
PART II
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I think it’s disgraceful,’ said Mrs Hovell. ‘Quite disgraceful. We ought to get up a petition.’
‘It’s going to take more than a petition to stop it,’ said Mrs Hughes grimly. ‘We need one of those fighting committees that they have when they’re going to build airports.’
The conversation was taking place as I entered the village shop, a dark, timbered room that looked as if the black beams were resting on the piles of biscuits, breakfast cereals and tinned beans that filled every corner, hardly leaving space for people to pay newspaper bills and draw their old age pensions.
The two women turned on me and nodded a brisk greeting. ‘What do you think, Mr Hildebrand?’ To be greeted by my name was a mark of acceptance that it had taken me the best part of a year to earn. Summer and autumn had passed, and we were now in the bleak, post-Christmas trough when nature seemed to have ground to a halt and one despaired of ever feeling warm sunshine against the cheek or seeing a bud come to flower.
‘What is it?’ I said. ‘The marina?’
‘The marina!’ Mrs Hovell made a sharp clicking noise with her tongue and tossed her head scornfully. ‘That’s not a marina they’re going to build.’
Mrs Hughes leant across the counter and projected her voice like a bullet. ‘It’s a nuclear reactor.’
I was rendered speechless; the idea seemed so implausible as to be almost ridiculous. A nuclear reactor? Here? They were always in Scotland or somewhere miles away from anywhere . . . A moment’s rational thought followed: Blanely was miles away from anywhere. I remembered the time I had been on a walk and first seen men with theodolytes on the marsh; I had immediately asked them what they were doing and the replies had been evasive: checking the sea defences. I had accepted that and been no more than mildly annoyed when a kind of builder’s yard was established a mile down the road; I had noticed the stockpiling of materials and the erection of workingmen’s huts surrounded by a wire fence but paid no particular attention until workmen started to build a road across the marshes and lorry-loads of foundation were carried out to the sea’s edge and dumped in untidy piles like refuse. There was a local outcry and we were told that a private firm had leased part of the marsh to build a marina. Permission had been given because it would bring more holidaymakers to the area and provide work for local people. The harbours in the local tourist villages were small and overcrowded and it was difficult to find a mooring, so there seemed a certain logic in the case for a marina, but it occurred to me now, as I stood in the village store, that I had never seen anything in writing about the marina. Nor had the foundation that was being laid at the water’s edge fitted in with my conception of what a mooring place for yachts would look like. It was not easy to see too clearly what was happening because a fence had been built round the site and there were notices saying that the area was patrolled by guard dogs. I had assumed that this was to prevent pilfering; now I was not so sure.
Mrs Hovell and Mrs Hughes were still staring at me, waiting for a reaction.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said.
‘It’s true. Mrs Bates’s boy works at Lynn in the council offices and he saw the plans. “Nuclear Reactor, Blanely” – that’s what they were marked.’
I was silent. Somebody else came into the shop and I turned away as the women launched in to her. A nuclear reactor: I did not really know what it was apart from a means of producing power from atomic energy, but the words frightened me. When I thought of nuclear energy I thought of death and danger; I saw mushroom clouds and hairless mis-shapen bodies of radiation victims. I had read of the dangers implicit in harnessing nuclear energy to peaceful needs but I had never believed that it would touch my life. Above all I loathed the thought of some huge, ugly, man-made structure permanently scarring the lonely beauty of the marshes. Would there be columns of smoke soaring into the sky as from a power station? Nauseating odours polluting the wind? Toxic waste matter poisoning the environment?
‘The worms aren’t going to like this,’ I said. I spoke the words out loud without knowing what had brought the thought or its expression into my mind. The three women broke off their conversation and stared at me.
‘Beg pardon, Mr Hildebrand?’
‘Nothing,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I was just thinking out loud. It’s terrible about the reactor.’
They nodded and went back to their conversation as I began to fill my basket. Occasionally one of them would glance towards me, followed by the other two, and I knew that they were now talking about me. I think I had a reputation for being slightly strange. Country people are great gossips and there was I, living alone yet not so far from the widowed Mrs Valentine; it was not surprising that tongues should wag. I think Betty Mullins carried a lot of gossip back to the village. She could never understand my fetish for scouring the drains; she was always picking up the caustic soda and shaking her head. If she had been a more companionable woman I might have told her about the strange infestation of worms but she always guarded her distance and I did likewise. There was also something sly about her, which made me slightly uneasy in her presence. I knew that she had visited Wilson’s cottage after his death but she never came to the funeral. She was a funny woman.
When I left the village shop I took my purchases home and looked out of the living room window across the marshes. Thankfully I could not see the site of the nuclear reactor but knowing it was there, just beyond the sweep of my vision, made my heart ache. The wind rattled the window panes and I wondered what subconscious impulse had made me speak out as I had done in the village store. ‘The worms are not going to like this.’ I repeated the words and the wind blew harder and bent down the grasses below the window as if forcing them to bow in vigorous assent.
I turned round quickly because I had the sudden impression that there was somebody standing behind me but the room was empty. It was a long time since I had had any trouble with my nerves and I put it down to anxiety about the nuclear reactor. The women in the shop might be right; it should not be too late to do something, to form some kind of action group. If people could stop airports being built or force councils to build by-passes, then surely we could at least make them think twice about siting a nuclear reactor on our marshes. What was alarming was the sinister way in which work had been started without any of the locals knowing about it. An outcry must have been anticipated and the authorities had acted with a furtive sense of purpose to get the project under way. This implied a degree of forethought and determination that it would be difficult to combat. The country was desperate for more energy supplies; would the government allow a few isolated nature-lovers in the lonely East Anglian marshes to stand in the way of the needs of millions?
It was in a mood of deepening gloom that I pulled on my wellingtons and set off for a walk across the marshes. I felt that I needed to see what was happening for myself. The cranes loomed up like the spires of a distant cathedral and soon I could see the slab outline of the foundation they were standing on. Construction was racing ahead and I was amazed to see how much had been done since I had last passed by the site. Skeletal fingers of steel poked out of blocks of reinforced concrete and what looked like a huge, squat brick kiln was taking shape.
Any last doubts concerning what I had heard in the village shop vanished: this was no marina. I watched a line of lorries waiting to dump more gravel for the foundation and began to follow the fence round to where a couple of bulldozers were pushing earth over sunken drainage pipes. I had taken only a few steps when a uniformed man holding an alsatian on a short lead materialized from behind a clump of rushes. He asked me where I was going and, when I said I was out for a walk, demanded identification. I told him that I did not have any and he asked where I lived. On hearing the words Marsh Cottage he immediately said my name. I was startled and a little frightened. If they were employing security men who had checked up on everybody in the area, then the authorities certainly meant business. I deemed it unwise to mention anything about nuclear reactors but asked what was being built. The man told me that it was going to be a small power station that would give a substantial boost to existing resources in the area and take the weight off the national grid. It sounded like a prepared response but I did not press for further information; I commented that it looked like rain and turned on my heel. The alsatian sniffed my coat as if making a note of my smell and the guard wrote something in a little book as I walked away. It was an experience that left me with an even greater sense of foreboding.
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