Wildfell

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Wildfell Page 22

by Sam Baker


  With the door safely shut behind him, Gil reached for the coffee, taking the sad-bastard-cafetière-for-one Lyn had bought him from the cupboard. She’d given it to him for his birthday years ago, and been so proud of herself. All Gil had seen was that his barely twentysomething daughter never expected him to have someone to make coffee for again. Turned out she was right.

  He was so far beyond sleep he wasn’t sure he’d ever sleep again. Images furled and unfurled in his head. Bombed-out buildings he’d never seen and the corpse of a small boy he felt almost sure he had … And Helen, dark-haired, watchful-eyed Helen, years younger than him, young enough to be his daughter, in bed. Her naked body was in Gil’s mind. Her body, as he imagined it. She was smart and he liked smart, and she was talented and he admired that, and she was strong, somewhere inside the ruins that life and Art Huntingdon had made of her. Assuming he believed her. Against his better judgement, Gil was starting to think he did.

  You silly old sod, he thought, as he fingered the lone cigarette in his suit pocket. The last of the twenty he’d smoked through the night. He was being ridiculous and he knew it. Instinctively liking her shouldn’t be the same as trusting her. As if she’d have given him the time of day in any other circumstances. What if all this was fabricated and he was being played for a fool by a younger woman who’d murdered one man, and might, quite possibly, murder another? Him. Because, despite everything she’d told him, she still hadn’t begun to explain what happened that night.

  ‘She tells a good story,’ Gil said out loud. She did too. Such a good story it had to be true, didn’t it? Only a psychopath could carry that level of detail plausibly. But then – Gil paused, inhaled and, feeling his head swim, wondered when he’d last eaten – only a psychopath could set fire to her husband and walk away …

  As he smoked, Gil extracted his knackered old iPhone from his breast pocket and checked the Voice Memos: two hours forty minutes. Not bad, albeit less than half the night’s conversation. Better than nothing. He hadn’t used it in an age, so he hadn’t been sure it would work at all. He’d felt bad, flicking it on in his nearside breast pocket while she was downstairs making coffee, but only a fool would have done otherwise. He was a journalist and, like it or not, Helen Lawrence, as he was starting to think of her, was this close to being a suspect in a murder. Skimming backwards, he picked a point at random and pressed play, jumping as Helen’s cool voice echoed round his small kitchen.

  ‘His eyes were closed and he was curled as if in sleep, a plastic toy in his hand. There was no sign of the talking head now, but he could still be heard, explaining how I took the shot in the immediate aftermath of a car bomb. The photograph faded to be replaced by another shot. The boy from behind …’

  Gil pressed stop, trying to work out what it was about her tone that bothered him. That she was calm? Almost indecently so? Her voice steady even as he’d watched tears coat her cheeks as she described the boy. For most of the night he might as well not have been there. It was only when she remembered he was, and smiled – suddenly, incongruously – that he had to remind himself this was someone used to war zones, who’d heard bullets fired in anger rather than on film, who’d seen buildings broken that were places where people lived rather than sets designed with the sole purpose of being destroyed. He’d seen his share of bodies. Children killed in car crashes. Murder victims. Suicides. He didn’t doubt for one minute she’d seen more.

  Face it, Gil, he told himself, if she can recount horror so calmly, with no tremor in her voice, what else is she capable of? If she’d been through even a fraction of what she claimed, she was strong. Very strong. She had to be; she was alive and Art Huntingdon was dead.

  And whatever she said, whatever she claimed not to remember, she’d had the presence of mind to get herself here. And she was hiding from something.

  Gil knew he shouldn’t be thinking like that. He should be telephoning the police. If not them, telephoning a paper. Not the Post, a national. He’d been turning the idea over and over, ever since he’d worked out who she was. A scoop like this … it could give his career a whole new lease of life. Put him back on the radar. He wasn’t ready for retirement.

  He’d do no such thing though. Not yet, anyway. Not until he was sure she was lying. People did lie. Of course they did. Women lied to men as readily as men lied to women. Lying to journalists was almost as great a tradition as lying to the police. The truth was subjective. Endlessly elastic. God knows, Gil’s life through his own eyes bore little resemblance to the version seen by his ex-wife; quite possibly no relationship at all to his life seen through the eyes of his children.

  Proof. That was what he needed. Taking his coffee through to the sitting room, Gil turned on breakfast news low in the background for company, flipped open his laptop and put ‘Art Huntingdon’ and Death into Google News.

  Six hours of talking. And in all that time she hadn’t even mentioned the fire that killed her husband, had made it clear she had no intention of doing so. Not a single mention. Call himself a journalist?

  If she wouldn’t tell him, he’d have to dig for himself. He’d start there and work back through Huntingdon’s life, see if what he found matched Helen’s description. He hoped it would; but then, if it did, there was another problem. If Huntingdon was as vile and controlling as she said, why had someone like her, a grown woman, successful in her own right, stayed with him that long?

  Gil understood the reasons in theory.

  He’d sat through enough rape trials, usually involving people known to each other, as most rapes did. He’d sat through child custody cases. Restraining orders being issued and appealed against. Injunctions applied for and then applications withdrawn by women too scared of the repercussions to fight. As a student, he’d heard his elder daughter talk with fury about how unsafe the streets were, how bad things could happen to anybody, even someone like her, and there was a thought Gil didn’t want to follow.

  But he didn’t understand. He’d never understood, not really.

  Right back when he began, when he was office boy, not even old enough to be a copy taker, one of the girls in the office got engaged to a clerk in the classifieds team. The man was tall, charming, played football for the paper on Sundays. One of the secretaries was overheard saying the girl was terrified of him, and the chief sub, a man as old as Gil was now, said, ‘You don’t marry a man you’re afraid of …’

  And the secretary, a quiet girl who ordinarily wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, rounded on the department boss and said, ‘Of course you do. That’s precisely the kind of man you marry, because how on earth would you say no?’

  A teenage typist, flattered by an ad salesman three or four years older … Possibly. But someone like Helen?

  It seemed unlikely.

  Gil thought of that as he drained his coffee. He didn’t like where the thought was taking him. If you couldn’t walk away, might you … Might someone that desperate resort to extreme means? And, if they did, would that make them a murderer? Or something else?

  Gil knew he had four choices: sell her story, call the police, help her, or do nothing. Sit back and watch and wait and hope no one else died. Like that was going to happen. Gil had never done nothing in his life. So he had three choices, and he had already, in the back of his mind, discounted the first two.

  So, you’re going to help a murderer?

  26

  Helen leaned her forehead against the upstairs window and watched him go through the gap in the curtains. The leading was cool against her skin, a chill draught lifting the wisps of hair on her forehead. Through the warp and weft of the centuries-old glass, she watched Gil’s loping strides make short work of the large forecourt, his body slightly distorted like a fairground mirror. To her surprise, he didn’t turn round. Didn’t look back. Didn’t even pause as he reached the gate and turned on to the road. She would have put money on him being a looker-backer. Just went to show what a good judge of character she was.

  Fatigue closed in t
he moment he vanished from sight. Allowing her eyes to droop she breathed slowly through her nose, condensation fogging her view as she tried to clear her brain. Thank God that was over.

  She laughed, a hard bark of a laugh, and opened her eyes.

  But it wasn’t, was it? It would never be over. Not now.

  Art was dead. And Gilbert Markham knew. He knew almost as much as she did. More, possibly. How much more there was to know Helen hardly dared think.

  The thought brought her up short. What if Gil did have more information than he was letting on? What if he’d already spoken to the police? What if he was toying with her, the way Ghost toyed with tiny rodents in the middle of the night?

  No. Helen shook the thought from her head. That wasn’t Gil’s style. She was sure of it. That was Art’s MO. She was transferring.

  Helen knew she should try to get some sleep, but adrenalin surged through her. The idea of putting on her pyjamas, closing her eyes and getting seven blissful hours’ rest was laughable. It had been laughable for as long as she could remember.

  Slumping on the settee, she looked around the drawing room. It reeked of Gil, she realised. She’d got so used to the constant fug of B&H that accompanied him that she hardly noticed. The miasma of smoke that hung in the air wasn’t the only evidence of their long night. Empty mugs, vodka bottle three-quarters drained lay to one side on the floor, a saucer overflowing with cigarette butts perched precariously on the arm of the chair where he had spent the last six hours, hardly moving except to light another cigarette or take another shot of vodka. The carpet around his chair was confettied with cardboard. The B&H packet, Helen realised, noticing shards of gold in amongst the white. Shredded into tiny pieces and then shredded again. She could still make out the clear spot on the carpet, where his feet had blocked their landing.

  And she was meant to be the anxious one.

  As inquisitors went, Gil Markham seemed strangely benign. Even Ghost seemed to think so. Sometime during the night he’d slunk into the room and settled beside Gil’s chair, a puddle of black fur barely visible against the dark red of the rug. His presence was strangely comforting.

  But Gil wasn’t benign. You were either an inquisitor or you weren’t. Gil was a journalist. He fell firmly into the former camp. And he would be back, she knew that. And with him would come more questions. Questions that right now she didn’t know how to answer.

  Dragging the old settee closer to the three-bar fire, Helen lay down and curled her legs up beneath her. Tucking her arm under her head, she waited for sleep to come. Her head throbbed – vodka, smoke, anxiety, exertion – all four, but the headache didn’t bear the hallmarks of a migraine. This was a good old-fashioned tension headache.

  Gingerly she closed her eyes. The second she did, images crowded in. A small boy, maybe five or six, sitting on a filthy doorstep, surrounded with rubble. Brown eyes huge. Bare legs skinny and bruised, ending in lace-less, too-big plimsolls. In his hand was a red Power Ranger. She squeezed her eyes tight in an attempt to banish him and was rewarded with an orange haze and the over-powering stench of smoke. She could have sworn she heard something crack.

  Her eyes shot open.

  Just an overflowing saucer of B&H stubs, a three-bar fire and a snoring cat. Nothing more. She rolled over and lay on her back, eyes wide open staring at the ceiling. It had been white once, but now it was cream, faded with age and stained yellow with nicotine. The coving engrained with dust where it met the ceiling.

  Now she’d let them in, they’d taken root. Art and the boy. Not that either of them had ever gone away.

  A montage of images she’d studiously pushed to some distant corner of her brain began replaying over and over.

  Art in the bar in Baghdad, half-empty Bud in his hand, twinkling like he knew how to twinkle when it suited him.

  Art looming over her in a concrete stairwell, his breath hot on her face.

  Art gazing at her earnestly over a café table in Soho. ‘Marry me.’

  Art, thin-lipped with rage at something or other she’d done. Got pregnant. Lost it. Got a job. Got a front page. Got an award. Talked to someone he didn’t like the look of. Someone like Carl.

  Art, holding her close in the debris of her exhibition, stroking.

  Outside the window, a crow took flight, wing batting the pane as it did so. Helen jumped, leg shooting out and kicking the vodka bottle. In the corner, Ghost stretched, arching his back and then effortlessly inverting his spine in a way Helen could never have achieved in a million yoga lessons. Yellow eyes stared at her.

  ‘Not yet, cat, I’m sleeping.’

  Ghost gave her a look of pure contempt and padded closer, fixing her with his yellow glare.

  She closed her eyes, couldn’t bear what she saw there and opened them again.

  Ghost started up a low-level purr. The frequency went right through her.

  ‘All right!’ Helen knew when she was beaten.

  The cat allowed her a two-minute detour to her bedroom to put on her running kit and then followed her into the bathroom, where he worked a figure of eight around her legs as she sat on the toilet and then moved with her to the basin while she cleaned her teeth. Like Gil, he had no plans to let her out of his sight until she’d given him what he wanted. At least in this case it was just breakfast.

  Too lazy to go via the road, she slipped out through the back door, locking it behind her, and crossed the courtyard, unbolting the gate that led into the gardens beyond and down to the copse. The sun was rising, still low, but unmistakably there, and for a moment or two she allowed herself to wonder if it was a sign of better things to come.

  Maybe everything would be all right. Maybe talking to Gil would bring her memories back. If she could remember what had happened that night, maybe she wouldn’t have to leave after all?

  Maybe she would.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Helen,’ she muttered, as she slipped through the lychgate and picked up her pace through the shadowy cover of the copse. ‘He’s a journalist, not a priest.’

  The Dales were quiet this time of the morning, like the day she’d arrived. Just sheep, crows and a couple of early morning birdwatchers. Helen gave the twitchers a wide berth and ran in the direction of the Scar, picking up pace and letting the movement of her body, muscles pumping, blood pulsing, push all thoughts from her mind.

  Although she didn’t usually come at it from this direction, she was starting to know this part of the Dales like the back of her hand. So well, she could almost run it with her eyes closed. To test herself, she did, and immediately stumbled on a crop of boulders that came from nowhere.

  ‘Idiot,’ she muttered, catching herself before she hit the ground, and moving off again.

  At the bottom of the slope, Helen stopped and looked around. She hadn’t been far from here when she’d seen him that time, the small boy, the one with big brown eyes and no coat. It was him, she’d known the second she saw him. If she’d been able to get closer she’d have been able to see the red Power Ranger he always carried in his hand. She’d wanted to tell Gil last night, but she wasn’t sure he’d believe her. Silly, considering everything else she’d entrusted him with, but he didn’t seem the superstitious type. Mind you, neither was she.

  In some cultures, they believe that taking someone’s photograph steals a bit of their soul. Helen had always felt that with the boy, that she’d taken a little bit of him with her when she snapped that first shot, a bit that was never meant to be hers … A bit that remained with her.

  She looked up, half-expecting to see him standing next to her now. Instead, one of the birdwatchers had moved closer, binoculars raised in her direction. Helen looked upwards, following the angle of his gaze, expecting to see a hawk wheeling above. But the sky was empty. Not even a bunch of crows. When she glanced back the birdwatcher in the dark cagoule was still staring.

  She looked up again, thinking she must have missed something. But no.

  The fine downy hairs on her arms prickled and He
len felt the ground beneath her give.

  Steadying herself, she turned and started down the slope, zig-zagging too hastily between boulders, almost tripping. At the fork in the path that would take her back the way she’d come she jinked left towards the road instead. In the distance a jogger, small, probably female, was coming towards her.

  Don’t be so paranoid, she told herself, slowing as she reached the drystone wall that bordered the road. Lack of sleep, too much vodka, too much thinking about Art … They were messing with her head. Nevertheless, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the man with the binoculars hadn’t been watching birds at all. He’d been watching her.

  27

  Gil was obsessed, he knew it. He recognised the signs. Had seen them before. He could tell himself it was the story, the thrill of the chase. But it wasn’t. It was the woman. He wanted to believe her. More than that, he wanted to understand her. And to do that, he would have to get under the skin of Huntingdon.

  He started with his Facebook account, unused since the fire, and his Twitter account: 7,500 followers. Somehow Gil had expected more.

  Huntingdon’s feed was a slow boil of outrage and dislike. Protests that the truly talented were ignored. Sweeping political generalisations. Insults to politicians followed by sycophantic climb-downs to any who bothered to reply. He introduced himself, on Twitter, to Rupert Murdoch as a man with skills to offer. He tweeted a critique of the Royal Family’s news handling to a palace account. Hire me was his endless unsaid plea. When no offers materialised, his position changed. It was a conspiracy. What society needed was genuine meritocracy.

  As someone who started his first job at fourteen and worked his way up only to meet others coming down from university into jobs above him, Gil could sympathise. But Huntingdon came from the generation that went to university almost as a matter of course. From what Gil could discover, the milk round had given him a traineeship on one of the top newspapers. He started in Fleet Street. What did Huntingdon think meritocracy could offer that this hadn’t already handed him? The tweets stopped, obviously enough, with the man’s death. Shutting down the twitter feed, Gil moved on to Google Translate.

 

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