by Nicci French
‘All right.’
‘It’s not too far out of your way,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘At least you’d know,’ he said.
‘That’s all I want.’
I felt, almost for the first time, in the midst of all the fog and all the darkness, that I was seeing with clarity. The office was no good to him. If he suggested something else, I’d know. We stopped at some traffic-lights.
‘There’s a short-cut ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll direct you.’
‘All right.’
‘Turn left along there.’
I started the car, and as it moved forward, it jerked and stalled.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I haven’t done that since I was seventeen.’
‘I could drive for you,’ he said.
‘I’m fine.’
I drove as if hypnotized, as if someone else was doing the driving and I was just getting a ride and looking around in curiosity. I saw people walking on the pavement and it seemed to me that they were different from me, as if I was a visitor from another world, shortly to depart. I glanced at Joe, who was also glancing around. He rubbed his face. He looked tired. In fact, he looked worn out. Why hadn’t I seen that before? I had been so busy looking in the wrong direction. I wasn’t afraid. I felt a sense of peace. I wanted to know and after that nothing mattered.
‘You just turn left ahead. The second on the left.’
It’s funny. Wherever you are in London, however busy it is, you’re just a minute or two from somewhere desolate and abandoned. One day it’ll all be turned into bijou apartments, but not yet. A left and a right and we were among some abandoned office buildings. I saw a sign, almost eradicated by graffiti, for a carpet factory. There was another warehouse building at the end. And there were no cars in sight, and no pedestrians.
‘Bloody hell,’ Joe said. ‘It’s a cul-de-sac. I got it wrong. You’ll need to turn round. You’d better pull in here.’
‘Some short-cut,’ I said, as I stopped the car.
This was it. This was where it had all been heading. All roads meet here. All stories end here. Now I felt Joe’s hand on the nape of my neck, soft, caressing. ‘This reminds me of Porton Way,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘You know. Where Greg was killed.’
‘I don’t.’
And now I remembered where I’d seen those signatures.
‘I used to play a game when I was little,’ I said. ‘My friend and me, writing each other’s names, copying each other’s signature. You could do a lot with Marjorie Sutton’s signature. I guess she’s not someone who checks her accounts very thoroughly. It was you, wasn’t it?’
Joe looked at me stonily. I could feel his hand, hardly more than his fingertips, brushing the back of my neck.
‘The thing about Milena,’ I said, ‘is she had a nose for weakness, for something she could use. She saw it, picked it up, and when you dropped her for Frances, she used it. No wonder you wanted to clear out my house for me. You needed to find it. You must have been frantic. And when Frances guessed – as she must have done, or why would you have killed her? – was it easier the third time?’
Joe stared at me, but didn’t speak.
‘I just wanted to know,’ I said.
‘So now you do,’ he said quietly.
‘So this is what it’s going to be?’ I said. ‘Poor Ellie. Couldn’t take it. Couldn’t live without her husband. There’s just one thing.’
‘What’s that?’ said Joe.
‘I don’t care,’ I said, and I pushed the accelerator to the floor so that the rubber on the tyres screamed and the car leaped forward. No stalling this time. I heard a shout but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was in a dream anyway, in the car with this man whom Greg had trusted and loved until he hadn’t trusted him any more. Forty miles an hour. Then fifty. Then sixty. We were running out of road.
I heard a scream and I didn’t know whether it was Joe’s scream of terror or something inside my head or the tyres against the rough road, and I had a moment to remember that this was Gwen’s car I was destroying, and then it wasn’t fast and loud and violent, but slow, silent, peaceful. And it was no longer winter, a day pinched by darkness and ice; it was warm. A summer afternoon, fresh, soft and clean, the kind that’s like a blessing, full of blossom and birdsong. There he was at last – oh, I had waited so long – walking towards me over the grass and such a smile on his face, his dear, familiar face. The smile he gave only to me. How I’ve missed you, I said, I wanted to say. How badly I’ve missed you. And I wanted to say, Have I done well? Do I make you proud? And I love you, how I love you. I will never stop loving you.
He held me in his arms at last, wrapped me in his solid warmth. And at last I could close my eyes and rest because I had reached the end and come home.
Chapter Thirty-two
It didn’t feel good to be dead, not the way it should have done. There were bits of me that hurt and bits of me that felt sticky and bits that were bent in different directions and there was something over my face and there was an insistent electric noise that went on and on and wouldn’t stop. Everything was dim and far away and becoming dimmer. I felt something from outside and there were presences close to me and hands on me, voices. I was being roughly handled. Didn’t they know I was fragile? That I was broken inside? I tried to protest that I wanted to be left alone so I could sleep, but something was forced into my mouth and I couldn’t speak. I felt cold air on my skin and then I was inside once more and I felt jostling. Something was shouted in my ear that I couldn’t recognize, and then I did recognize it. It was my name. How did they know? And then I sank without fear or regret into darkness. Not sleep but a state of non-being with no dreams, no thoughts.
I didn’t wake up from that nothingness. I gradually found myself in an existence of feverish semi-sleep in which I sometimes saw faces around me, flickering and unsteady, like candle flames. Some were familiar: Mary, Fergus, Gwen. I tried to say sorry about her car but my mouth was full and the words wouldn’t come. Once my eyes opened to see a policeman looming over me. It took an effort to put a name to the face. Ramsay. At first I wasn’t sure if he was real. I mumbled things to him and when he had gone I couldn’t remember what I had said.
The sign of my gradual return to life, to reality, was that I started to hurt in almost every part of my body. In that period when I could still barely tell night from day, sleep from wakefulness, a doctor came and sat by my bed and talked to me slowly and patiently. He talked about fractures and rib damage and a punctured spleen and operations and about gradual recovery and patience and determination. When he had finished he paused as if he was waiting for me to ask some question. It took an enormous effort.
‘Joe,’ I said.
‘What?’ said the doctor.
‘In the car,’ I said.
His expression changed to one of professional sadness. He started talking about how they had tried to revive him and how, unfortunately, they hadn’t succeeded and how they had been waiting until I was strong enough to bear the shock.
One morning I felt for the first time that I was really waking up and that I wasn’t stuck somewhere on the brink of unconsciousness. Over by the window a man was standing, looking out. I could only see his silhouette against the brightness of the sky. When he turned and I saw that it was Silvio, I was so surprised it made me feel dizzy and tired.
‘It’s an amazing view.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I said.
He walked over to the bed. ‘I brought you flowers but they didn’t let me bring them in. They think they’re some kind of risk. I don’t know whether it’s because they spread disease or the nurses don’t want them around. Or maybe they just want to take them home themselves.’
‘Thanks for the thought.’
‘I gave them away and then I went round the corner and bought some blueberries and strawberries. I don’t know if you like that sort of thing.’
�
��I do.’
‘I’ll put them on something.’ He lifted the cover off a plate on the table by my bed. ‘What’s this?’
‘I think it’s my lunch.’
‘Grey sludge.’
‘There’s some fish under it.’
I felt the weight of him on the bed as he sat on the edge and offered me the blueberries. I took a couple, put them into my mouth and chewed, feeling them burst against my tongue. ‘Lovely,’ I said.
‘Healthy,’ said Silvio. ‘Someone told me that if you have a handful of them every day, you’ll never get cancer. Or anything else.’
‘Can you give me some water?’ I said. ‘There’s a jug over there.’
He poured it into a plastic cup. I took a couple of sips. It was warm and tasted stale. I drank it all anyway and handed the cup back to Silvio.
‘Do you know everything?’ said Silvio.
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘But you know about the guy in the car with you?’
‘He died.’
‘The police said you were lucky to survive. It was in the papers. I saw a photo of the car. I don’t know how you walked out of that one.’
‘I didn’t walk out of it. How did you find out where I was?’
‘I just did what you’ve been doing,’ said Silvio. ‘Detective work.’
‘I didn’t do any detective work,’ I said. ‘Mainly I found out things by mistake.’
‘You’re like one of those women scientists.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’ve been studying history of science at school. There are these women scientists, they do all the research and the important experiments and at the end the guys come in and make the final discovery and get all the credit.’
‘What discovery?’
‘You’ve been going around stirring everything up, causing trouble.’
‘You could say that. What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Are you all right?’
He looked embarrassed; he flushed and turned to stare at the view again. ‘Yeah. I guess.’
‘I’m sorry about everything.’
‘Thanks,’ he muttered.
‘Have a blueberry.’
He popped several into his mouth. One split on his lip, leaving a dark stain. He looked about ten, angry, ashamed and full of confusion. Milena had certainly left her mark on the world she’d left behind.
Detective Chief Inspector Ramsay came to see me one more time. ‘You were lucky to survive that crash,’ he said.
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘You were wearing a seatbelt,’ he said, ‘but Mr Foreman wasn’t. I suppose there’s a moral there.’
‘I’m glad there’s one somewhere. So, is the inquiry over?’
‘More or less.’
I forced myself to think. My mind felt so slow. ‘He must have had help,’ I said. ‘Who collected the docket from the firm of solicitors? The woman who said she was me. It was Tania, wasn’t it?’
‘We’ve interviewed Miss Lucas.’
‘Did she confess?’
‘Confess?’ said Ramsay. ‘She admitted carrying out certain tasks on his behalf.’
‘Criminal tasks.’
‘She claims she had no suspicion of anything criminal.’
‘She was pretending to be me.’
‘She said that must have been a misunderstanding.’
‘Bollocks,’ I said. ‘They were sleeping together, you know.’
Ramsay coughed. ‘I’ve no evidence of that,’ he said, ‘not that it would be relevant. Except possibly to show she was in thrall to him.’
‘In thrall?’ I said. ‘You mean she’s a weak woman? So she’s not to be charged with being an accomplice to murder, interfering with the course of justice?’
‘We’ve got a file but we’re not sure there’s a reasonable chance of a conviction.’
‘What about the company?’
‘It’s currently in administration, pending investigation of certain irregularities.’
‘You mean Joe was stealing from his clients. That he was up to his neck in it.’
‘That has been suggested,’ said Ramsay.
‘And presumably Tania knew nothing about that either.’
Ramsay shrugged instead of replying. That was his reply.
‘I suppose at least you accept that Joe killed Frances.’
‘Yes, we do. We’re assuming that Mrs Shaw knew, or at least suspected, what he had done and was going to expose him.’
‘That makes sense,’ I said, remembering Frances’s agitation, the sense of guilt, how close she had come to confessing to me. If she had, she wouldn’t have been dead now. ‘She was clearly troubled.’
For a minute Ramsay stared at me gloomily, then turned to the window. A dishevelled pigeon was sitting on the other side of the glass, its beady eyes glaring in.
‘What about the deaths of Milena and Greg?’ I asked. ‘Do you also accept Joe killed them?’
‘We’ve reopened the file.’
‘You don’t sound very grateful to me.’
‘Your role in the investigation has been mixed,’ said Ramsay, ‘but at an appropriate time…’
‘Is that what you meant when you said the inquiry wasn’t completely over?’
‘Did I?’
‘More or less, you said.’
He paused, seeming shifty, ill-at-ease.
‘When this accident happened, or shortly before,’ he said, ‘you had developed suspicions of Mr Foreman’s role in the case.’
I suddenly felt under threat. ‘How do you mean?’
‘What I’m trying to say, Ms Falkner,’ said Ramsay, in a deliberate tone, as if he was speaking to a child, ‘is that I’m working under the assumption that you had suspicions of Mr Foreman and then he realized you had these suspicions and that there was some sort of struggle while you were driving. Perhaps he tried to seize the wheel. And you crashed. Accidentally.’
I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t remember,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember anything about the accident. It’s a blank. Is that all right?’
‘Yes,’ said DI Ramsay. ‘That’ll do.’
Chapter Thirty-three
I walked to Fergus’s house with the box in both hands. It was early, a soft dawn breaking over the rooftops. Even here, in the streets of London, birds were singing all around me. At that time of the morning the volume seemed to have been turned up. I could see the blackbird on the branch of a tree, its throat pulsing.
Fergus was waiting. He opened the door before I knocked and stepped out to join me, kissing me on both cheeks and giving me a small smile.
‘Ready?’ I asked.
‘Ready.’
We didn’t talk. After twenty minutes or so we left the road and entered the Heath, making our way along the empty paths to the wilderness. We could no longer see the city glittering in the pale sunlight, or hear the noise of cars. I remembered that other dawn when I had walked there: then it had been winter, and I had come alone to talk to Greg. Standing under the boughs of an oak tree, I turned to Fergus.
‘It began like this,’ I said. ‘The alarm went and he woke and reached over to my side of the bed to turn it off, then he kissed me on the mouth and he said, “Good morning, gorgeous, did you have nice dreams?” and I muttered something thickly in reply but he couldn’t make out the words. He got out of bed and pulled on his dressing-gown, leaving me still tangled up with sleep. He went downstairs and made us both a cup of tea, and he brought mine upstairs in my stripy mug – which was what he always did, every morning. He watched me struggle up to sitting, half laughing at me. Then he had a quick shower. He sang in the shower, loudly, humming where he couldn’t remember the words. It was “ The Long and Winding Road”.
‘Mornings were always a bit of a rush and that morning was no different. He put on his clothes, brushed his teeth, didn’t bother shaving, then went downstairs, where I joined him, still not dressed. He didn’t
have time for a proper breakfast. He bustled around, making coffee, reading out snippets from the headlines, finding a folder he needed. Then the post arrived. We heard it clatter on to the floor and he went to get it. He opened it standing up, tossing junkmail on to the table. He opened the envelope containing Marjorie Sutton’s signatures or, rather, Joe’s practice versions of them. He read Milena Livingstone’s scrawled message. He didn’t understand what he was looking at but he was puzzled. He tossed the sheet of paper on to the table, along with the rest of the discarded post, because he was late and in a hurry. The last time I saw him, he had a piece of slightly burnt toast in his mouth and he was running out of the door, keys in one hand, briefcase in the other.
‘He drove to work and got there by about nine. He made himself and Tania a pot of coffee, then went through his post and his emails, which he answered. Joe wasn’t there – he’d left a message with Tania that he was going to see a client. Then you arrived, to help with the new software that was being installed. Greg sat on his desk, swinging his legs, and talked to you about the IVF treatment I was going to have. He said he was sure it would turn out all right in the end. He was always the optimist, wasn’t he? Then he had a meeting with one of his clients, Angela Crewe, who wanted to set up a trust fund for her grandchild. After that, he made five phone calls, then another pot of coffee and ate two shortbread biscuits, which were his favourite. He kept them in the biscuit tin with the sunflowers on the lid.
‘He went out to lunch with you at the little Italian place round the corner from the office, and he ate spaghetti with clams, which he didn’t finish, and drank a glass of tap water, because he had just decided that bottled water was immoral. He probably told you that.’
‘Yes, he did,’ said Fergus.
‘You also talked about running, compared times. You went back to work and he went into his office and shut the door. The phone rang and it was Milena. She asked if he had received the page of signatures in the post and he replied that he had. She said she was sure that an intelligent man like him must have grasped its implications and Greg responded sharply that he didn’t deal in suspicions and implications and put down the phone.’