‘So do the police.’
‘Do they?’ Kate seemed almost too tired to be interested. ‘She didn’t say so, but she more or less implied that if it was Richard who knocked her down running out of my office, he’d only just walked in and found us. Afterwards. She said didn’t that seem a good explanation?’
‘How about a good explanation for why he ran away instead of running for help?’ Liz asked, in a practical tone.
‘Oh, God.’ Kate rubbed her temples. ‘My head keeps trying to divide into three parts, like Gaul.’ She sighed. ‘Look, I loved Richard, once. And Jane has been grooming him to take her place when she retires. And Jody worships him. Is it so strange that we keep believing he’s innocent?’
‘Kate, the man is dangerous. Probably a killer. You always defended him when we were students, and you’re doing the same thing, now. It’s a knee-jerk reaction. We’re against him, so you’re for him.’
‘I want to hear what he says.’
‘So do the police.’ Liz regarded her empty glass and got to her feet. ‘I’ve got a load of papers to read and correct, and a test to prepare. I cannot stay here and get drunk with you.’
‘I don’t intend to get drunk.’
Liz looked down at her. ‘You should. It might help.’
Kate listened in misery to the sound of Liz’s steps going down the back stairs. She went into the bathroom and got some aspirin for her headache, took one, choked on the second, and was still coughing when the phone rang.
Even before she answered it, she knew it was Richard.
It had turned bitterly cold, and the slush-melt of the day had turned into crystalline menace on both pavements and streets. A scimitar wind slashed between the buildings from the river – pausing for a moment, turning, cutting, and turning again with a fresh edge. Kate pulled her old sheepskin coat more tightly around her and wished she’d put on an extra sweater to make up for the two missing toggles. Her boots caught on yet another frozen runnel that snaked across the elegant black and white patterns of the tessellated area in front of the Civic Centre. It was the latest addition to the riverfront. The snow had been carefully swept from it, but the surface was glassy and treacherous. Ahead she could see the brightly lit glass cube of an equally new McDonald’s. Within it small figures moved, like marionettes. Which one was Richard? Was he in front of the counter? Or at one of the tables? It was crowded – where did all the people come from? It was after eleven, the Plaza itself was empty, the streets deserted – and yet the glass cube was like one of those ant farms with a front you could look through to see all the activity within.
As she slithered closer, however, she saw that distance had conferred a false respectability on the customers. Some of those in the lines were well-dressed, presumably inhabitants of the apartment towers all around, looking for refreshment to consume with the midnight movie. But the ragged men hunched over their cups of coffee were only there for the glare, the warmth, and the illusion of company.
All the lonely people.
A sudden gust of wind nearly spun her around, so she had a momentarily kaleidoscopic view of the Plaza. Empty – save for a car decanting men on the far side. The black and white pavement made them seem like chess pieces on the far side of a gigantic board.
She staggered the last fifty feet leaning into and supported by the wind, so that when it dropped, in the lee of McDonald’s, she literally fell through the door. The turncoat wind rushed in with her. A dropped napkin did a saraband beneath the stairway to the floor above, and two french fries missed by the cleaners skidded after it. The door swung shut, and the wind, frustrated, rattled it a few times then went in search of new victims. It was a big city, after all.
Out of breath, Kate leaned against one of the stand-up counters and looked over the people in the lines. None of them was Richard. She stripped off her gloves, joined what looked like the shortest line, and when her turn came ordered coffee and a Big Mac. She carried them up the stairs and found a table near the window, so Richard could see her when he arrived. Her mouth was full and she was beginning to regret not taking off her coat when one of the hunched figures at the far corner table lurched up, steadied itself, and started resolutely towards her.
It wasn’t until he was nearly on top of her that she realized it was Richard Wayland. He walked past, going towards the men’s room, and muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Move to the back, in a corner.’
He went on and the door to the toilets clunked shut behind him. She sat there for several seconds before remembering to finish chewing what was in her mouth. He’d looked awful – as if he hadn’t shaved, washed or eaten in days. She gathered up her things and moved to a table that was partially screened by a planter. She smelled him before she saw him return. Bitter waves of nervous sweat and whiskey enveloped her as he dropped on to the far end of the padded bench. ‘Did you bring the money?’
‘I brought all I had in the house. Around ninety-three dollars. Sorry, ninety-one after I bought this.’
He glanced at the Big Mac and his mouth tightened. ‘Never could resist them, could you?’ His hand closed over the money she produced from her handbag and she saw his skin was grey with ingrained dirt. There was a scab on one knuckle that was beginning to fester. When she looked into his face she saw more dirt, and more scratches down one cheek. She was so shocked by this evidence of violence and neglect that he had to repeat his question to her.
‘What happened to your face?’ he asked, his voice rough and blurred.
She reached up and her fingers encountered the strip of adhesive on her cheekbone. ‘You don’t know?’
‘Should I?’ He was putting the money she’d brought into a pocket, absorbed by the problem of jamming it in. It seemed to evade the opening, as if it didn’t want to come with him, had better places to go.
‘Richard – have you been drinking?’
He looked at her with empty eyes, ‘Yes, I have been drinking,’ he said, very carefully. ‘And I intend to go on drinking until I am filled up. I will vomit, and then I will drink more. Do you have any goddamn objection to that?’
‘Oh, Richard,’ she mourned. ‘Why?’ And then she wished she could snatch the question back, because she realised he was going to answer it and she really didn’t want to know. He was a stranger, someone who had been created anew in the years between what he had been and what he seemed to be, now. A war baby, born in Nam; his secret time, the years he’d refused to talk about. He’d made a joke of it. Now she knew the laughter had been merely a bandage.
‘Why? Because I’m a murderer, that’s why. Everyone says so. Haven’t you seen my face and name in all the papers? I always wanted to be famous, Kate. You remember how I always wanted to be famous, don’t you? We used to talk about it.’ He was perilously close to tears. ‘Wouldn’t that make you take a drink?’
‘But you’ve been missing since Monday.’
‘No, I haven’t. I’ve been with me the whole time, knew right where I was every minute.’
‘Wednesday night? Where were you Wednesday night?’
He looked at her, tried hard to focus his eyes, his thoughts, his mind. ‘On Wednesday night I know right where I was on Wednesday night on Wednesday night I was . . . in . . . a bar.’ He grinned at her, fatuously, triumphantly, a real thought pulled out of the hat at last.
Kate stared at him, aghast. Pictures came to her, super-imposed on the bleary face across the table: Richard refusing drinks because he said he was ‘allergic’ to alcohol, Richard going on weekend ‘fishing trips’ when he’d always hated fish, broken dates, grey-faced mornings he claimed to have been awake all night with ‘migraine’.
Richard Wayland was an alcoholic.
Was that what had been wrong with him last Friday night? She’d left him scowling in the restaurant while she went to the Ladies’ Room, came back to find him sitting near the bar, full of smiles. Had it sta
rted then? Because later anger had returned, abrupt, unreasonable, inexplicable. He’d said it was rage against Aiken’s taunts. Had it really been thirst? Had he left her, slamming the door, on his way to Aiken – or the nearest bar?
‘Richard – did you see Aiken on Friday night?’
‘Sure. You did, too.’ His eyes were sly. See? he seemed to be saying, you can’t catch me out that easily.
‘I mean after you left me.’
‘Yep. Laughed like hell when I saw him lying there, like a dummy.’
‘You did go back to the University?’ she whispered.
His eyes became furtive. ‘Did I?’
‘Did you kill Aiken?’ She had to ask him, she had to.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, solemnly. ‘I tried to kill him – got the idea from one of your books, you know, fiendishly clever, diabolical – but I don’t think I did it. That is, I don’t think he did it.’ For some reason this was funny. He began to shake with suppressed laughter. ‘Shhhhhh,’ he said, looking around. ‘Don’t make a scene, Kate.’
Kate drew back. Was this the truth, or just some fantasy he was acting out? If he’d been drunk since Monday, his brain must be hopelessly muddled. ‘What about Edward?’
‘Edward?’
‘Did you take him home on Monday?’
‘Sure. Edward is a nice old guy, you know? He’s got no legs, Kate. Poor old bastard, no legs at all. No legs to stand on.’ Again, the suppressed mirth. ‘I took him home. He didn’t mean to kill Aiken, you know. But he was upset and wouldn’t take his pills so I put one in his coffee. He never knew.’
‘You put pills into his coffee?’
He drew himself up. ‘Only one. I’m not stupid, you know. I was a medical orderly in Vietnam, I know about pills. Poor old bastard needed some sleep is all. I helped him sleep. I’m a good guy, too, you know. Really. I’m a good guy.’
‘Richard – did you come to the University on Wednesday night and take Aiken’s manuscript?’
‘What manuscript?’
‘I don’t know much about it. Apparently Aiken had just finished a book about the Fourth Cavalry, whatever that is. The girl . . .’
‘Fourth Calvary?’
‘I don’t know, really, I only saw the title. Something like that. I was going to give it to Dan, only he got his ear cut off . . .’
‘His ear?’ He kept echoing her phrases like a parrot, staring at her. ‘Dan’s ear?’
‘Did you go down to the University, Richard?’
He nodded. ‘I had to stop him, Kate. I couldn’t let him take it, you know.’
‘You mean the manuscript? You mean it was something he’d taken from you?’ She stared at him as this new possibility presented itself. ‘You mean Aiken stole your work? About Whitman and the civil war? Is that what Edward was talking about?’
‘Stolen work? Was that it?’ Richard said, suddenly, sounding absolutely sober. ‘He thanked me, don’t you remember? He had the gall to thank me right there in the car – said it was because of me that he was going to be famous. It’s my fault.’ He began to cry. ‘It’s all my fault. I didn’t know he’d take it, I never thought he’d take it.’
‘Take what?’
‘Is that why you got hurt? Because you read it? and Dan? and Jane – poor Jane. All my fault. All my fault. You’ll all hate me, now, and I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean to do it . . .’
She’d never know the truth until she sobered him up.
‘Come on, love. Let’s go home,’ she said, standing up. She took hold of his arm and found him surprisingly docile, rising lumpishly but obediently to stand beside her. He came along, the big smile still handsome in the filthy unshaven face.
‘You’re not cross with me, Kate, are you?’
‘No, Richard, I’m not cross at all. We’ll go home and you can have a bath, and I’ll make you some coffee . . .’
‘Join me in a cup of coffee,’ he giggled. ‘Do you think there’ll be room for both of us?’ He laughed hugely, staggering down the stairs, and other customers turned, some smiling, some scowling. Kate had never steered a drunk, before, and found it as difficult as trying to push a piece of string. She got him to the door and butted him through ahead of her. She felt a jolt through his body as the wind hit him. It had been waiting outside.
And not waiting alone.
‘Okay, Kate – we’ll take him, now.’
Men surrounded them in a darkness that was all the deeper after the glare they’d just left. One shape was big – Sergeant Toscarelli – she recognised his voice. Another was small, standing to one side with hands jammed in his pockets and legs braced against the wind.
Stryker.
‘You must listen to him, he – ’ she began, but Richard turned on her, all his merriment gone in the instant.
‘You bitch,’ he said.
And ran.
They hadn’t expected it – he’d gone from sagging clown to wild man in an instant. The wind, perhaps recognising a kindred spirit, joined in by throwing a truly magnificent gust at them, sleet-laden and fierce.
Seen from above it could have been comical, for the wind rose up so strongly that they literally had trouble making headway against it in the vast open expanse of the Plaza. Yet, with only a moment’s start, Wayland had a great advantage, for he ran ahead of the wind that howled after the scattering pack of baying police. Bucketing and backing, the wind was like a great and whimsical child pushing its dolls this way and that. The ice beneath their feet made them skaters and dancers and clowns. In a moment they were gone, with only occasional echoes of shouts and cries heard above the gleeful whistling of the wind as it rose up from the Plaza to the top of the nearest building and began to dismantle a television antenna.
‘You followed me,’ Kate said, in a flat, half-swallowed voice. ‘You watched me and followed me.’
‘We thought he might come to you,’ Stryker said, his voice equally remote, his figure still in the shadows.
‘Of course.’ She gave a big, blank smile. ‘Who else could he trust?’
The wind had momentarily tired of its games. In the empty Plaza there was the kind of stillness that follows an explosion. Empty and waiting. She could hear, in the distance, a car horn, shouting, a freighter on the river muttering its heavy way toward the lake. The coldness seemed even more bitter in this sudden stillness, and she felt as if everything, everything, was turning to ice.
Including herself.
TWENTY-SIX
They hadn’t stopped her leaving the Plaza. Having served them as bait, they needed her no more. She was as free as she’d ever be, remembering the look of panic and betrayal in Richard’s eyes. She knew she’d driven home, because here she was. She had thought she was exhausted – and yet, she was still wide awake, long after midnight. The wind had matured into a steady roaring presence, clacking the branches of the naked trees that lined the street. The car radio had warned of a blizzard coming from the north. As yet there was no sign of new snow. Just the invisible wind, shaking the house.
When her doorbell rang Kate’s heart jerked like a fish on – the line. She went to the window and looked out, rubbing the glass free of her own brandied breath. Below, foreshortened and stomping his feet, was a familiar figure with a tweed cap pulled down to his nose.
‘Go to hell,’ she shouted, loud enough to be heard through the window. He turned and looked up to see her misty figure behind the glass.
‘Let me in, I have to talk to you.’
‘No,’ she said, and pressed the buzzer that released the door downstairs. She ran back to the sitting-room and knelt on a cushion facing the wall, wiping her face on the sleeve of her ratty old robe. She heard him come slowly and wearily up the stairs. He came a couple of steps into the room and stopped.
‘What’s happened to your furniture?’
‘I haven’t got any
furniture and take your shoes off before you walk on my six thousand dollar hand-made carpet.’
Stryker stepped back into the hall, kicked off his wet shoes, and then padded back in to look at her sitting there. He was reminded of Alice’s caterpillar on the mushroom. He wished he knew which side would make him big. He certainly couldn’t feel much smaller. The room was large and empty save for the cushions and a stereo unit, and The Carpet, lush and rippling, like a sunburned field of wheat. ‘This is a nice carpet,’ he said, carefully. ‘Keeps the ankles warm.’
‘Did you catch him?’
‘No, he got away.’
‘So you’ve come here to wait for him.’
‘No – he won’t come here, whatever he does.’
‘Thanks for that.’
‘Kate, I’m sorry. I had you watched, but it was the only way. Surely you can see that? Won’t you look at me?’
‘There’s nothing about you I want to see.’
‘How much money did you give him?’
‘About ninety dollars.’
‘That ought to keep him drunk for a while.’
He was silent for so long that she finally turned to look at him. He’d sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of the carpet. His collar was half-in half-out of his pullover, his scarf was trailing down into his lap, and he had an elbow on each knee, resting his chin in his steepled hands. His eyes were closed. He could have been meditating. She didn’t think he was. ‘If you didn’t think Richard would come here why have you come here?’ she demanded, in a quavery voice.
‘I came here to talk about Richard Wayland, obviously. When did Adamson seduce him?’
Kate felt exhausted and unable to defend herself or Richard any more. She knew, suddenly, that Stryker was there to stay until he got what he wanted. If she’d had any energy at all she would have attacked him. As it was, she simply sank back down on to her nest of cushions and wept. He was too much for her.
Stryker, feeling as rotten as he’d ever felt in his life, sat very still and waited for her to finish. Her curly head was bent, exposing the nape of her neck, and her small, bare feet were tucked beside her. She looked about nine years old. When she’d reached the hicupping stage, he went into the kitchen. He brought back a handful of paper towels, just as she was running out of dry sleeve.
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