The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Dolphin Junction,” Michelle said. “If you heard the name, you’d summon up a picture easily enough, wouldn’t you? But it wouldn’t look like this.”

  Afterwards, it became part of our private language. A trip to Dolphin Junction meant something had turned out disappointing, or less than expected. It meant things had not been as advertised. That anytime soon would be a good moment to turn back, or peel away.

  And maybe that was it, when all was said and done. Maybe Michelle, during one of these dips in our journey, caught a glimpse of uninspiring fields ahead, and realized we were headed for Dolphin Junction. Would it have taken more than that? I didn’t know any more. I didn’t know what had happened. All I knew, deep in the gut, was that all wasn’t, in fact, said and done.

  Because she had signed her name Shell. Michelle had done that? She’d have been as likely to roll herself in feathers and go dancing down the street.

  She just wouldn’t.

  ***

  A few days later the card came back. Until I heard the thump on the doormat I hadn’t been aware of how keenly I’d been awaiting it, but in that instant everything else vanished like yesterday’s weather. And then, as I went to collect it, a second thing happened. The doorbell rang.

  She’s back, was my first thought. Swiftly followed by my second, which was – what, she’s lost her keys?

  Padded envelope in hand, I opened the door.

  Standing there was Dennis Farlowe.

  There are languages, I know, that thrive on compound construction; that from the building blocks of everyday vocabulary cobble together one-time-only adjectives, or bespoke nouns for special circumstances. Legolanguages, Michelle would say. Perhaps one of them includes a word that captures my relationship with Dennis Farlowe: a former close friend who long ago accused me of the rape and murder of his wife; who could manage only the most tortured of apologies on being found wrong; who subsequently moved abroad for a decade, remarried, divorced; and who ultimately returned here a year or so ago, upon which we achieved a tenuous rapprochement, like that of a long-separated couple who remember the good times, without being desperate to relive them.

  “David,” he said.

  “Dennis.”

  “I’m sorry about—” He grimaced and made a hand gesture. Male semaphore. For those moments when speech proves embarrassing.

  We went into the kitchen. It’s odd how swiftly an absence can make itself felt in a room. Even had Dennis not already heard the news, it wouldn’t have cost him more than a moment’s intuition to discern a problem.

  “Good of you to come,” I said.

  Which it probably was, I thought – or he probably thought it was. Truth was, he was the last man I wanted to see. Apart from anything else, the envelope was burning my fingers.

  But he had his own agenda. “You should have called.”

  “Yes. Well. I would have done.” Leaving open the circumstances this action would have required, I put the kettle on instead. “Coffee?”

  “Tea, if you’ve got it.”

  “I think we run to tea.”

  That pronoun slipped out.

  It was history, obviously, that had prevented me from phoning Dennis Farlowe; had kept him the missing degree in the circle I’d rung round. Some of this history was the old kind, and some of it newer. I poured him a cup of tea, wondering as I did so how many gallons of the stuff – and of coffee, beer, wine, spirits; even water – we’d drunk in each other’s company. Not an immeasurable amount, I suppose. Few things, in truth, are. But decanted into plastic containers, it might have looked like a lifetime’s supply.

  “Milk?” he asked.

  I pointed at the fridge.

  He fixed his tea to his liking, and sat.

  Twelve years ago, Jane Farlowe was found raped and murdered in a small untidy wood on the far side of the allotments bordering our local park. The year before, Jane, Dennis, Michelle and I had holidayed together in Corfu. There are photographs: the four of us around a café table or on a clifftop bench. It doesn’t matter where you are, there’s always someone will work your camera for you. Jane and Michelle wear dark glasses in the photos. Dennis and I don’t. I’ve no idea why.

  After Jane’s death, I was interviewed by the police, of course. Along with around eighty-four other people, in that first wave. I’ve no idea whether this is a lot, in the context. Jane had, I’d guess, the usual number of friends, and she certainly had the usual number of strangers. I would have been interviewed even if Dennis hadn’t made his feelings known.

  Long time ago. Now, he said: “Has she been in touch?”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s just a matter of time, David.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Everyone wishes you well, David. Nobody’s … gloating.”

  “Why on earth would anyone do that?”

  “No reason. Stupid word. I just meant – you know how it is. There’s always a thrill when bad things happen to people you like. But there’s none of that going on.”

  I was about as convinced of this as I was that Dennis Farlowe was the community’s spokesperson.

  But I was no doubt doing him a disservice. We had a complicated past. We’ve probably grown used to shielding our motives from each other. And more than once in the past year, I’ve come home to find him seated where he is now; Michelle where I am. And I’ve had the impression, on those occasions, that there was nothing unusual about them. That there’d been other times when I didn’t come home to find them there, but still: that’s where they’d been. In my absence.

  That’s what I meant by newer history.

  He said, “David. Do you mind if I make an observation?”

  “Have you ever noticed,” I said, “that when people say that, it would take a crowbar and a gag to prevent them?”

  “You’re a mess.”

  “Thank you. Fashion advice. It’s what I need right now.”

  “I’m talking hygiene. You want to grow a beard, it’s your funeral. But you should change your clothes, and you should – you really should – take a shower.”

  “Right.”

  “Or possibly two.”

  “Am I offending you?” I asked him. “Should I leave?”

  “I’m trying to help. That’s all.”

  “Did you know this was going to happen?”

  “Michelle leaving?”

  “Well yes, I – Christ, what did you think I meant? That we’d have tea this morning?”

  He said, “I didn’t know, no.”

  “Would you have told me if you did?”

  “No,” he said. “Probably not.”

  “Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “I’m her friend too, David.”

  “Don’t think I’m not aware of that.”

  He let that hang unanswered.

  We drank tea. There were questions I wanted to ask him, but answers I didn’t want to hear.

  At length he said, “Did she leave a note?”

  “Did the grapevine not supply that detail?”

  “David—”

  “Yes. Yes, she left a note.”

  Which was in a padded envelope, on the counter next to the kettle.

  And I couldn’t wait a moment longer. It didn’t matter that Dennis was here; nor that I already knew in my bones what the experts would have decreed. I stood, collected the envelope, and tore its mouth open. Dennis watched without apparent surprise as I poured on to the table the postcard, still in its transparent wrapper; the letter I’d supplied as a sample of Michelle’s hand, and another letter, this one typed, formal, beyond contradiction.

  Confirm that this is … no room for doubt … invoice under separate cover.

  I crumpled it, and dropped it on the floor.

  “Bad news?” Dennis asked after a while.

  “No more than expected.”

  He waited, but I was in no mood to enlighten him. I could see him looking at the postcard – which had fallen picture-
side up – but he made no move for it. I wondered what I’d have done if he had. What I’d have said if he asked to read it.

  At length, he told me: “I’m going away for a while.”

  I nodded, as if it mattered.

  “I’ve a new mobile. I’ll leave you the number.” He reached for the writing tablet on the sill, and scrawled something on it. “If she calls, if you hear anything – you’ll let me know, David?”

  He tore the uppermost leaf from the pad, and pushed it towards me.

  “David?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

  He let himself out. I remained where I was. Something had shifted, and I knew precisely what. It was like the turning of the tide. With an almanac and a watch, I’ve always assumed, you can time the event to the second. But you can’t see it happen. You can only wait until it becomes beyond dispute; until that whole vast sprawl of water, covering most of the globe, has flexed its will, and you know that what you’ve been looking at has indisputably changed direction.

  With a notepad available on the windowsill, Michelle had chosen to unclip a postcard from the door of the fridge, and leave her message on its yellowing back.

  Flipping it over, I looked at its long-familiar picture for what felt like the first time.

  VIII

  The doorway into the second room is precisely that: a doorway. There is no door. Nor even the hint of a door, in fact; no hinges on the jamb; no screwholes where hinges might have swung. It’s just an oblong space in the wall. The ghost of stone. She steps through it.

  This is a smaller room. As wide, but half as long as the other. In a previous life of this building – before it succumbed to the fate all buildings secretly ache for, and became a ruin, scribbled on by weeds and tangled brambles – this would have been a secondary storeroom; only accessible via its larger twin, which itself can only be entered by use of a ladder dropped through the trap in its roof. Hard to say what might have been stored here. Wine? Grain? Maybe cheese and butter. There’s no knowing. The room’s history has been wiped clean.

  And in its place, new boundaries:

  To her left, a wall of tin. To her right, a screen of plastic.

  IX

  The Yard of Ale was one of those theme pubs whose theme is itself: a 400-year-old wooden-beamed structure on a crossroads outside Church Stretton, it was plaqued and horse-brassed within an inch of Disneyland. There wasn’t a corner that didn’t boast an elderly piece of blacksmith’s equipment with the sharp bits removed, or something somebody found in a derelict dairy, and thought would look nice scrubbed up and put next to a window. The whole place reeked of an ersatz authenticity; of a past replicated only in its most appealing particulars, and these then polished until you could see the present’s reflection in it, looking much the same as it always did, but wearing a Jane Austen bonnet.

  Michelle and I had stayed there four years ago. It was spring, and we’d wanted a break involving long fresh days on high empty ground, and slow quiet evenings eating twice as much as necessary. An internet search produced the Yard of Ale, and for all my dismissive comments, it fitted the bill. Post-breakfast, we hiked for miles on the Long Mynd; counted off the Stiperstones and scaled the Devil’s Chair. In hidden valleys we found the remnants of abandoned mines, and sheep turned up everywhere, constantly surprised. And in the evenings we ate three-course meals, and drank supermarket wine at restaurant prices. The bed was the right degree of firm, and the shower’s water-pressure splendid. Everyone was polite. As we checked out Michelle picked up one of the hotel’s self-promoting postcards, and when we got home she clipped it to the fridge door, where it had remained ever since.

  I set off about thirty minutes after Dennis had left.

  The rain began before I’d been on the road an hour. It had been raining for days in the south-west; there’d been weather warnings on the news, and a number of rivers had broken banks. I had not paid attention: weather was a background babble. But when I was stopped by a policeman on a minor road on the Shropshire border, and advised to take a detour which would cost a couple of hours – and offered no guarantee of a passable road at the end of it – it became clear that my plan, if you could call it that, wanted rethinking.

  “You’re sure I can’t get through this way?”

  “If your vehicle’s maybe amphibious. I wouldn’t try it myself. Sir.”

  Sir was an afterthought. He’d drawn back as I’d wound down the window to answer him, as if rain were preferable to the fug of unwashed body in my car.

  I said, “I need somewhere to stay.”

  He gave me directions to a couple of places, a few miles down the road.

  The first, a B&B, had a room. There’d been cancellations, the man who checked me in said. Rain was sheeting down, and the phone had been ringing all morning. He’d gone from fully booked to empty without lifting a finger. But there’d be more in my situation; folk who couldn’t get where they were headed, and needed a bed for the night. It was still early, but he seemed confident there’d be little travelling on the local roads today.

  “I was headed for Church Stretton,” I said.

  “You’ll maybe have better luck tomorrow.”

  He seemed less worried than the policeman by my unwashed state. On the other hand, the smell of dog possibly masked my odour. The room was clean though. I could look down from its window on to a rain-washed street, and on light puddling the pavements outside the off-licence opposite. When I turned on the TV, I found footage of people sitting on rooftops while water swirled round their houses. I switched it off again. I had my own troubles.

  I lay on the bed, fully clothed. If it weren’t for the rain, where would I be now? Arriving at the Yard of Ale, armed with enquiries. I had a photograph – that was about it, as far as packing had gone – and I’d be waving it at somebody. It wasn’t the best picture of Michelle ever taken (she’d be the first to point out that it made her nose look big) but it was accurate. In some lights, her nose does look big. If Michelle had been there, the photo would be recognized. Unless she’d gone out of her way to change her appearance – but what sense would that make? She’d left me a clue. If she hadn’t wanted me to follow, why would she have done that?

  Always supposing it really was a clue.

  Perhaps the rain was a blessing. It held off the moment of truth; the last ounce of meaning I could dredge from the note she’d left. The note there was no room for doubt that she’d written.

  But had signed Shell. An abbreviation she’d detested. And what was that if not a coded message? It was a cry for help.

  And no one was listening but me.

  ***

  At length, I turned the TV on again. I got lucky with a showing of Bringing Up Baby, and when that was finished I swam across the road to the shiny off-licence, and collected a bottle of Scotch. Back indoors, before broaching it, I belatedly took Dennis Farlowe’s advice and stood under the shower for twenty minutes, using up both small bottles of complimentary gel. There were no razors. But the mirror suggested I’d crossed the line between being unshaven and having a beard.

  And then I lay back on the bed, and drank the scotch.

  Alcohol never helps. Well, alcohol always helps, but when there are things you need to keep at bay, alcohol never helps. Dennis Farlowe’s appearance had disturbed me. Dennis’s appearances inevitably did, though on most occasions I could mask the visible symptoms: could smile, give a cheery hello; ask him how things were going while I manoeuvred my way into my own kitchen; stood behind my own wife; put my hand on her shoulder, still smiling. All that newer history I mentioned. The history in which Michelle and Dennis had re-established the relationship we’d once all enjoyed, before the older history had smashed it all to pieces.

  That history didn’t end with Dennis’s wife’s murder. Ten days after Jane Farlowe’s body was found a second victim came to light, in a town some distance from ours. I was at a conference at the time – that phase of business life was already in full
swing – so didn’t see the local press reports until they were old news. Wounds on the body indicated that the same man was responsible for both murders. You could sense our local tabloid’s frustration at the vagueness of this detail, as if it had hot gossip up its sleeve it was bound not to share. Gossip relating to the nature of those wounds.

  “Have you spoken to Dennis?” were my first words to Michelle on reading this.

  “I tried calling him.”

  “But he wouldn’t talk?”

  “He wouldn’t answer.”

  He would have been in shock, of course. Just a week and a half since his own wife’s body had been found: did this make it worse for him? To understand that his wife’s end was sealed by random encounter, not precise obsession? Because there was surely – can I say this? – something of a compliment buried in the murder of one’s wife, if it was intended. If it didn’t turn out that the murder was just one of those things; a passing accident that might have happened to anyone’s wife, had they been in the wrong place at the right time.

  The random nature of the murders was confirmed with the discovery of a third body: a little later, a little further away.

  I poured more scotch. Switched the TV on. Switched it off. It was suppertime, but I didn’t want to eat. Nothing was happening outside. The rain had eased off, and I could see the puddles dancing under the streetlights’ glare.

  In the gap between the discovery of the first two bodies – Jane and the second woman, whose name I’ve forgotten – Dennis Farlowe had suggested that I was the man responsible. That I was a rapist and murderer. We had been friends for years, but in his grief he found it possible to say this: You wanted her. You always wanted her. The police would have interviewed me anyway – as they did all Jane’s male friends – but Dennis’s words no doubt interested them. Though they subsequently had to spread their net wider, with the second death; and wider still with the third … A local murder became a two-county hunt, but the man responsible was never caught, though he stopped after the third death. Not long after that, Dennis moved abroad.